Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Albatross

*** (3 stars out of 5)

"Albatross". I'm an albatross! Flap, flap, flapping my albatross wings...plastic bag, plastic bag! Sorry, Tom Green ADD moment, where was I? Right! I'm still watching these Star Trek cartoons.

On planet Dramia III, Dr. McCoy is arrested for murder! He's charged with doling out inoculations like some sort of DOCTOR... plus causing the plague on Dramia II nineteen years ago.

The Dramians are effectively alien-looking aliens. Tendril hands, goat ears, orange bell bottoms. Easy to imagine them at the space disco.

Kirk prevents daring Dramian Demos making an attack on the ship by "accidentally" making it easy for him to sneak aboard... through an open shuttle door. Then they force him along on a fact-finding mission to ravaged Dramia II, a fog-shrouded world of "the walking dead". One of them makes a half-hearted attack on Kirk... which is still more action than 'The Walking Dead' season 2.

The sobbing ghouls are the families of the plague victims, remaining in the ruins and in caves out of grief. Except Kol-Tai, who claims to be the only survivor. He credits McCoy with saving him from the Saurian virus. They bring him along as a character witness.

Except Kol-Tai shows the first symptom of the plague: blue skin! Soon everyone but Spock is blue!

(Maybe I just discovered what was wrong with the "OH-ree-ons". And why we never heard from them again...)

Spock makes a jailbreak- only McCoy doesn't want to go! He wants to face trial and know the truth. Until Spock explains about the plague being back.

McCoy risks his life to make a diagnosis.
And he's much, much faster than that limping human wreckage Greg House, MD. He cures everyone in minutes once the pigmentation change is discovered to be a blue herring.

Rather than be beholden to Spock to rescue him next time he's jailed, McCoy tells Kirk 'Just let me rot."

Does the title reference Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner"? If so, I guess Bones is the albatross, but fortunately this time around no one hangs him around anybody's neck.

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