The Squire of Gothos

While enjoying collegiate poverty, in lieu of cable television I had rabbit ears of questionable utility and a small variety of VHS tapes, with the bulk of those being Star Trek: The Original Series, along with two of the Star Wars films.  (That and dial-up internet (at times using a free trial regenerator of some sort) were my primary forms of entertainment.)   

But, due to a prior misfortune, one of the tapes ended up wiped, at least in part.  Thus, it has probably been at least 15 years since I last saw "The Squire of Gothos".   I'd had opportunity before to watch it but . . . well, I didn't remember it as being particularly necessary.   But, upon realizing it had been fifteen years or so, I decided to have a go.   

Quite remarkable, really, to see a virtually-new episode, from my perspective, especially with the new CBS Digital effects.  While their work was not especially good, it was certainly good enough for me to say "whoa!" when the Enterprise was dodging an onrushing planet.  It certainly looked a lot better than it ever did on my old 13-inch TV/VCR combo!

(That sat, incidentally and coincidentally, on the bottom shelf of an old "metal shelf" etagere of the type seen at the bottom of this EAS page (more specifically the one in the Riker shot with Wes in front of it, but the same basic idea either way).)

There's actually a good bit of tech in the episode, too, from the Enterprise zipping away from the planet at a nice clip while explicitly at impulse power, to the whole planet-dodging sequence, to the little breathing masks they wore, not to mention the oft-forgotten laser signaling device.   Seems like that sort of thing didn't need to be quite so big, what with Texans doing the same thing in 2012 with a simple 1-watt unit on a turret mount.   You'd think a tricorder or communicator could have a simple self-aiming doodad for that purpose.