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Being aware of another Star Trek movie opening soon might have been what I needed to get around to the "Best of The Original Series" DVDs I had bought back around when the previous movie made a big deal of giving the whole thing a new start. (Having finished commenting on all the episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000 did help there too, of course.) I suppose I've been aware in a general way of Star Trek for quite a while, starting with reading a tatty copy of "The Making of Star Trek" and some of James Blish's short story adaptations in my home town's library perhaps as far back as when Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan was new. That wasn't that different from how I'd started off with The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, but when it came to Star Trek on TV I never quite got around to watching any more of its series than very occasional episodes. My family not having cable might have had a role to play there, but with the first series in particular the impression of stiff and poorly composited period special effects might have counted too. I did therefore take a bit of interest in news of "Remastered" episodes with new computer-generated effects, even if a certain amount of discussion of them seemed to pack veiled or not-so-veiled jabs at the Star Wars Special Editions.

Of course, "you have to sift through a lot of chaff" gets dumped on all of Star Trek as well, and that did have its own effect on why my first-hand experience has been so spotty. I may have been a bit more influenced by one joke in Futurama's most involved homage, "You know. 1966? 79 episodes, about 30 good ones." As I started into what was modestly identified as "the best" of the formative series, though, I did find myself thinking that even with limited production values "remastering" can't address (yet, anyway), there was a sense beyond the familiarity that this was an honest effort by everyone involved back then.

Commenting on this experience did come to mind, but I knew right from the start I wasn't going to say something about every episode I watched. Seven episodes in, though, a sort of surprise did start me trying to set my thoughts down.

I suppose some complex mixture of "holding it up seems to put everything else down" (found in other contexts, of course and unfortunately) and not wanting to actually see the death of Spock has kept me from watching all of The Wrath of Khan, but I was still interested in the episode where the character was introduced. I'd known a crucial factor in Khan taking over the Enterprise was one of its crew, the historian Marla McGivers (whose name sounded more like "MacGyver" than I'd imagined, I'll admit) joining him, but I did have the somewhat uncomfortable sense of 1960s sexism seeming to be implicated in her becoming infatuated and dominated by him. Then, though, leafing through a "Star Trek 365 Days" book I'd bought at a remaindered bookstore just a little while ago (79 episodes and some extra information divided among 365 pages does mean a relatively breezy glance at each, though) did point both the sexism and Khan's charisma having a certain effect on the regular cast's characters as well. McCoy's measured response to Khan holding a scalpel to his throat did also get my attention, anyway.

Some, I'm sure, would lament there not being interplanetary sleeper ships suitable for leaving the solar system in 1996, as this episode states; others might just be glad we weren't stuck in "the Eugenics Wars" back then. I was inclined to wonder if anyone working on the series back then could imagine people still watching their work three decades later, as much as that brings to mind "overestimating some changes and underestimating some others." "Eugenics," anyway, might well be replaced with "genetic engineering" these days, but could still set up the issue of "man versus superman." There are science fiction works more than ready to take the side of the superhuman and say we have to be improved for our own good, even if that to me can pack unpleasant, self-loathing, misanthropic overtones. There's also what might be called the "superhero" solution, where some superhumans have been imbued with ethics sufficient to stand up for those not able to defend themselves, but that does pose the problem of "ordinary" people being reduced to spectators. Perhaps it could be said it's not "sufficient" just to be superior physically and mentally without also being "humane." In this episode, anyway, Kirk's victory seems a matter of knowing part of an engineering station comes loose and whacking Khan with it. With that taken care of, though, both characters are respectful and reconciled in a certain way afterwards, even if this does get overturned by unexplained cosmic catastrophe when the movie needed a memorable antagonist.
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