Spirit Folk

* (1 kissing cow out of 5)

If you leave a hologram on long enough, it starts to get wise. Right? This is known. But recreational holograms that get too smart might notice how weird their lives are... and might attack the meat players like the robots from Westworld.

Changing car tires with computer commands (so he won't dirty his dainty hands) and turning Harry's holographic date into a cow (because he doesn't like having a friend?) makes Tom Paris look A) like an idiot and 2) like a black mage in league with the devil.

Funny Drunk Hologram Seamus gets it into his head that anyone who can manipulate the environment like that is a leprechaun and he's going to hold Tom Paris by the toes until he gives up his pot o' gold!

Captain Janeway actually, ACTUALLY chooses to put Tom and Harry's LIVES at risk rather than harm a hair on Fair Haven's imaginary heads. I know they're on the cusp of sentience, and we like them, sure, these charming, backward potato lovers-- but this is ludicrous! Two human lives! I contend Kim and Paris (especially Kim) are worth more than characters that CAN be re-created once erased. If the inhabitants of Sim City kidnap people, I don't care how many weeks the game's been running.  I'm unplugging it.

And why has it even come to that? Because nobody remembers how to say "FREEZE PROGRAM"?!? When the shotguns come out, I don't know about you, but I'm freezing the program.

"Spirit Folk" is a little bit about religion, a little bit about hologram rights, and a lot dumb. The moral seems to be: "If you can't be responsible with your toys..." and then it trails off. I think it's supposed to be a comedy but it's not fun or funny. Watch any previous holodeck story instead.

The Magicks of Megas-Tu

*** (3 stars out of 5)

If "The Infinite Vulcan" was weird, "The Magicks of Megas-Tu" is completely off the rails. But it expresses itself well and I guess I've realized the spirit in which it was intended: a rainbow coalition inspiring kids to worship the beast.

Researching whether the center of the galaxy is making more matter in 'the creation point', the ship is caught in a whirlwind. Instead of the land of oz, they are delivered to a planet resembling a peppermint. And instead of Lincoln on the screen, it's Satan. And he's a hugger!

Lucien was hoping 'lovely primitive humans' would come looking for him. This world, Megas-Tu, is in a universe which operates... by magic.

It's the counterpart to 'Who Mourns For Adonais?' This time, it's the Devil hoping to "rollick" with humans again. Nobody seems eager to take him up on it...

In a trice, Mr. Spock is drawing pentagrams and using magick to make concerned parents' groups write letters.

The Megans, fiercely angry at human intrusion, tear the Enterprise in twain and put the crew in stocks in Salem, Massachusetts, 1691. The prosecutor is the wizard Asmodeus. His ilk are disgruntled since being burned as witches and have never gone exploring again.

Lucien alone finds humans kindred spirits because of their questioning and togetherness. For taking their side, he is sentenced to isolation in limbo. Kirk speaks up in the goat-man's defence. Asmodeus asks if he would still defend Lucien by his Earth name: the tempter Lucifer?

Kirk says being a living thing is all he needs to defend someone. He is not much troubled by old legends. (A different captain, perhaps, from the man who 'found the One God sufficient'?)

But, perhaps, a more tolerant one?

My perspective has skewed again completely. I used to say this was the among the worst of the series, what with all the crazy blasphemy and cultural insensitivity to wiccans. But for its day, and for what it's trying to say about respecting people, not judging books by their covers and also not burning the books or the people, I gotta give it 3 drinks with the devil out of 5.