Saturday, January 21, 2012

Star Trek TOS: Episode 45 - THE GAMESTERS OF TRISKELION



Another one of my random favorite episodes. All of a sudden in season two the show has turned into a comedy! Again, Chekov is hilarious. I’ll explain later. Gamesters has some great action in it, the height of this is the fight scene between Kirk and the scariest villain ever. This guy is huge, dressed like a caveman and has the teeth of a wild boar. So basically he’s from Kentucky.

The premise is thus: Kirk, Uhura and Chekov suddenly disappear; they end up on a strange planet. They are forced to fight as gladiators, all for the gambling pleasures of a group of beings (who are pretty funny as they argue over bets). It is the lamest gladiator games ever. There are only 7 fighters and no crowd (other than these few unseen entities).

Each of the crew members are assigned a thrall (basically a trainer/lover??). Uhura gets a steroid head white guy that immediately tries to assault her. Kirk gets a vapid green-haired bitch, as usual Kirk breaks her down. But, Chekov’s scene is the best. His thrall comes into his cell and is immediately sexually attracted to Chekov. Unfortunately his thrall is a man in drag. Chekov is horrified and he soon turns into a stuttering fool as Divine tries to have sex with him. This may be my favorite scene in all of Star Trek.


Kirk is forced to fight that huge behemoth, all while being bound with his hands behind the back. Kirk gets whipped a hand full of times …the whip actually makes contact with the stunt man … Kirk remarkably wins the fight. The entities (the Providers aka three brains in a bubble) dislike Kirk and want him dead. But, he offers one final bet. If Kirk defeats the thralls than the crew will be released and the Providers will end the games forever. They except. And well I won’t spoil the outcome, but well … Kirk wins.

The costumes are terrible.  It’s like when you purchase a Halloween costume from CVS, Walgreens or Rite Aid. Also the head of the gladiators looks like Howie Mandel. Now Sulu was supposed to be in the place of Chekov, but Takei was off filming The Green Berets with John Wayne. Honestly, Chekov makes this episode and Sulu just wouldn’t have worked.

ST TOS COUNTDOWN: 46 down 34 to go

2 comments:

capt.naps. said...

that green hair thrall lady (slave?) is kind of a butter face....like every girl on Star Trek. Hot body, weird face

Mugato said...

I totally agree!