STAR TREK
"All Our Yesterdays"

From Wikipedia:

"All Our Yesterdays" is a third season (and the penultimate) episode of Star Trek: The Original Series, first broadcast March 14, 1969 and repeated on August 5, 1969. It is episode #78, production #78, written by Jean Lisette Aroeste, and directed by Marvin Chomsky. It guest-stars Mariette Hartley as Zarabeth. The title comes from a well-known soliloquy given by Macbeth in Act V Scene V.

Overview: Kirk, Spock and McCoy are trapped in the past on a world threatened by a supernova.

More here.

Watch it here.

Notes and pics:

* This is a nice little mind-fuck teaser. Atoz is one of the more enigmatic guest characters in Star Trek history.



* I love how this library is also a travel agency, in essence, and how Atoz flip-flops between dire warnings about the impending supernova and sales speak aimed at getting our heroes to choose an escape plan.

* The Atavachron looks like Gary Seven's computer.



* Oooh, really nice DOUBLE mind-fuck, Kirk runs out the door only to find himself transported to what appears to be a scene from The Three Musketeers; McCoy and Spock immediately follow, but end up in some sort of Arctic wasteland, instead. As if there wasn't enough cool cerebral confusion already.







* Even though Kirk has a phaser at his side, he goes for the sword fight anyway.



* Oh well, it wouldn't have worked anyway. No phaser-warmed chunk of rock this episode...



* This chick is straight out of a Midwestern university drama department Shakespeare production. The lady doth playact too much, methinks. Not bad as far as wenches go, though. I mean, for what they are.



* Thank you, Spock, for explaining what the fuck is going on.

* This reminds me of the old Alpine Sleigh Ride at Astroworld.

* I love faceless people wearing hoods.



* Nice subterranean spread.



* Well if it isn't James Garner's television wife! And why does she seem to be talking like a four year old?



* Spock: "I am substantial. You are not imagining this." That's what the techno people should have sampled, instead.

* Oh fab. Now the graduate acting student is calling Kirk a witch: "He's a Wiiiiitch!!!!" Excellent.



* I also love the yelling-in-the-dungeon moment.

* Hubba-hubba. And now, I want to buy an Instamatic for some reason.



* We haven't seen McCoy all fucked up like this since "City on the Edge of Forever."



* "There ARE witches! There are!" This guy's fucking great.



* Spock's speech: "I'll repeat it. Get this through your head..." This is how how I've been wanting Spock to respond to McCoy in these spats for years.



* Kirk taking out the Atoz replicas is sublimely weird.



* Spock eats animal flesh. And enjoys it.



* I love Spock as a lover. He's just waaay better at this than Kirk.



* Okay, trying to cart Kirk out the door is pretty funny.



* Nice. McCoy's using their ongoing feud to make Spock realize how he's descending into a Vulcan ancestral rage.

* Nice goodbye scene for Spock and Zarabeth.

* Beautiful Spock speech: "And she is dead. Dead and buried..." Nice pathos, sort of reminds me of Kirk's "Let's get the hell out of here" at the end of "City on the Edge of Forever."

* Good solid episode with some moments of near greatness. Four stars. Sure, it gets a bit too goofy here and there, but for the most part the weirdness of the set up with Atoz in the library, combined with the two unlikely plot lines in the past, one featuring some very fine Leonard Nimoy acting work, thoroughly outweighs any quality lost from sci fi stupid. I like it.

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