{"id":5531,"date":"2014-08-13T23:42:38","date_gmt":"2014-08-13T23:42:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/23-The-Practical-Joker"},"modified":"2014-08-13T23:42:38","modified_gmt":"2014-08-13T23:42:38","slug":"23-the-practical-joker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/relivethemajesty.com\/index.php\/2014\/08\/13\/23-the-practical-joker\/","title":{"rendered":"2.3 &#8212; \u201cThe Practical Joker\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"\n        \n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>2.3 &#8212; \u201cThe Practical Joker\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Plot:<\/strong> After sneaking through an energy field to dodge an armada of Romulan fighters, the crew of the <em>Enterprise<\/em>  begins to experience a rash of unwelcome practical jokes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Thoughts:<\/strong> This episode introduces the <em>Enterprise<\/em> Rec Room, prototype for the Holodeck, and almost simultaneously, Star Trek&#8217;s first Holodeck malfunction. Apparently Gene Rodenberry wanted to deploy a Holodeck-like device in StarTrek as early as Third Season of TOS, but the budget precluded it. This is not my favorite stoytelling device. Still, Trek history is made.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Just as interesting to me is that this episode, first aired on September 21,1974, predates the development of common metaphors about computers. Hence, the &#8220;energy&#8221; that invades the computer system acts like \u201cbacteria\u201d causing the computer to have a \u201cnervous breakdown.\u201d Today we continue the medical metaphors, but would say that the computer caught a &#8220;virus&#8221; and became &#8220;infected.&#8221; Wikipedia says the term virus was first used in a paper to specifically refer to a self-reproducing computer program in 1984.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Beyond that we have a fairly slight, but amusing, episode. It bothers me that ship-to-ship combat with Klingons and Romulans is treated so cavalierly in this series. It seems to be just a fact of starship life, often ending humorously, not with death, destruction, war, or interstellar incidents. It&#8217;s like they&#8217;re just playing Cowboys &#038; Indians on the final frontier for no stakes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The theme of an intelligent shipboard computer turning on is crew is an evergreen and resilient science fiction plot, familiar of course to early 1970s audiences from <em>2001: A Space Odyssey<\/em> (1968). A similar concept was used in the second season TOS episode, &#8220;The Ultimate Computer,&#8221; but with graver consequences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">2.5 out of 5 cream pies in the face.\ufeff<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"http:\/\/en.m.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Practical_Joker\" class=\"embedly-card\" data-card-recommend=\"0\" data-card-width=\"100%\">http:\/\/en.m.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Practical_Joker<\/a><script async src=\"\/\/cdn.embedly.com\/widgets\/platform.js\" charset=\"UTF-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n      ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>        2.3 &#8212; \u201cThe Practical Joker\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[18],"class_list":["post-5531","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-star-trek-relive-the-majesty-tas-episode-threads","tag-kevin-black"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/relivethemajesty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5531","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=5531"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/relivethemajesty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5531\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/relivethemajesty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/relivethemajesty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/relivethemajesty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}