{"id":4550,"date":"2013-08-12T05:21:52","date_gmt":"2013-08-12T05:21:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/115-Shore-Leave"},"modified":"2013-08-12T05:21:52","modified_gmt":"2013-08-12T05:21:52","slug":"115-shore-leave","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/relivethemajesty.com\/index.php\/2013\/08\/12\/115-shore-leave\/","title":{"rendered":"1.15 &#8212; \u201cShore Leave\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"\n        \n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>1.15 &#8212; \u201cShore Leave\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Written by Theodore Sturgeon(!)&#8211;\u201dShore Leave\u201d veers away from last week\u2019s ship-to-ship battles with Romulans into broad comedy, complete with silly, comedic music in the vein of Looney Tunes.*\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The story is simple enough&#8211;the crew beams down to a supposedly uninhabited planet to check out it\u2019s shore leave potential, only to discover their daydreams coming to life to accost them. \u00a0The managers of the planet must have also pumped a lot of stupid gas into the atmosphere. \u00a0We have just seen Captain Pike see right through a series of pleasant illusions sent to trap him in \u201cThe Menagerie\u201d&#8211;and resist them!&#8211;yet in this episode Kirk and the crew seem to meet a long string of dangerous impossibilities with a cheerful shrug and a new round of \u201cAlright, gang, let\u2019s split up.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">What galls me about \u201cShore Leave\u201d is that everyone involved, up to and including the composer of the godawful incidental music, knows (and wants us to know that they know) that the circumstances are silly and the crew\u2019s actions are stupid. Lighten up! It\u2019s a comedy episode. The actors were evidently coached to act broadly and to use big hand gestures, which does not serve this fine ensemble. As a result, this is a worst episode acting-wise for just about everyone, with DeForest Kelley coming off especially badly. \u00a0Whereas I feel that commitment to realism is the key to Star Trek, I could not help feeling like my time was being wasted. \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I did appreciate the makeup, camera work, and choreography in Kirk\u2019s long fight scene, the location shooting (I believe this is the first time for this, and the location shots were impressively well integrated with studio work), and the bits of backstory about Kirk\u2019s days in the Academy, where he was apparently frequently taunted by a demented Leprechaun. \u00a0I felt offended to discover that Rand had been replaced by a younger, prettier Yeoman, albeit one with the hots for the Doctor instead of the Captain. \u00a0This is probably because the first draft of the script was written before Rand was cut from the show&#8211;according to IMDB, we never see Yeoman Barrows again, so she does not become a recurring character.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">When Spock relates his discovery that the planet is draining the ship of its power, I thought \u201cOh no, it\u2019s sapping our precious bodily fluids!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">*For the record, I don\u2019t know what\u2019s supposed to be funny about xylophone music and staccato woodwinds.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Shore_Leave_(Star_Trek:_The_Original_Series)\" class=\"embedly-card\" data-card-recommend=\"0\" data-card-width=\"100%\">http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Shore_Leave_(Star_Trek:_The_Original_Series)<\/a><script async src=\"\/\/cdn.embedly.com\/widgets\/platform.js\" charset=\"UTF-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n      ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>        1.15 &#8212; \u201cShore Leave\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[18],"class_list":["post-4550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-star-trek-relive-the-majesty-tos-episode-threads","tag-kevin-black"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/relivethemajesty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4550","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/relivethemajesty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/relivethemajesty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/relivethemajesty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/relivethemajesty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4550"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/relivethemajesty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4550\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/relivethemajesty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/relivethemajesty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/relivethemajesty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}