The Butcher Shop

"The Omega Glory" Season 2, Episode 23. Okay, this one wins the Planet-of-the-Apes award for strangest ending. You'll see what I mean. The Enterprise comes to the planet Omega II and finds the USS Exeter already in orbit. The Exeter is empty. Only uniforms are left and the people have been turned into crystal powder. McCoy says the water was removed from their bodies. Contamination again! Some disease! Amazing how they have no procedures for this. So they beam to the planet and McCoy discovers a "natural immunization from the planet itself." Captain Ron Tracy of the Exeter is alive and well on the surface, apparently in charge and messing with the people, violating the Prime Directive. Tracy says, "None of us will ever leave thi planet." Tracy shoots and kills red-shirted Lt. Galloway and takes over. McCoy finds that there is no disease on this planet and indigenous people like Wu are 462 years old and his father is over 1,000. McCoy disc...

"The Changeling" Season 2, episode 3. An attack out of nowhere and we find out it comes from NOMAD, a probe said to be launched in the early 2000s. (I love references to space time that never come to be-- Lost in Space 's Jupiter II was launched in 1997, Buck Rogers was frozen in the 1990s, Khan was ruler in the late 1990s after World War III [I find it remarkable that Roddenberry deemed World War III inevitable], in 2001 we are taking shuttles to the moon, etc.--But I digress.) "You are the Kirk, the Creator," NOMAD says, in a remarkable coincidence of the plotline of Star Trek: The Motion Picture with V'Ger (Voyager). NOMAD's prime purpose has been mixed with an alien probe, just like the movie. Bones gets to say, "He's dead, Jim" over Scotty's body. NOMAD easily "repairs" Scotty. Two guards get killed by NOMAD and then two more. All four are vaporized so they can't be miraculously repaired--why wasn't S...

Cover to Action Comics #21

Cover to The Flash #31 volume two

Weird Tales of the Future cover by Basil Wolverton

Great pic of the Fourth Doctor and his TARDIS

Cover to Action Comics #253

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I pick better than ESPN, at least so far. Last week (3), I went 12-4, putting me at 33-15 for season. Tom Jackson on ESPN is currently winning their little pool at 31-17. (Technically, I don't know if that includes Thursday. If it does, I lost Thursday, putting me at 33-16.) It's not much, but I am no expert at this. I should not be picking better than these guys, even a little bit.

I love Netflix. I can access episodes faster than if I had the DVD boxset. So I am re-watching Star Trek: The Next Generation from beginning to end. In the first season, I get to "Skin of Evil" again. Watched it years ago, maybe twice, remembering that it is not a very good episode overall. I wanted to see it again after all this time, especially to consider again when watching those ones later where Tasha's Romulan daughter attacks. This is the episode with the death of Tasha Yar. This is a main character, credit during the opening and everything, something very prestigious in Star Trek overall. What, did she last 23 episodes? And, she gets her name still on the credits for at least the next episode after her death, where she is not seen or mentioned. Anyway, just pretty cool to kill a main character instead of a redshirt, albeit in a silly, stupid way. Good episode. Fighting just a purely evil entity. Good stuff. But it is the end that bothers me. After they all ge...

"The Galileo Seven" Season 1, episode 16. This is one of those "Spock character" episodes. There is a Commissioner Ferris trying to get the Enterprise to rendezvous with another ship to get medicine for a plague to some colony. The rendezvous is five days away and it only takes three days to get there, so Kirk, in all his infinite wisdom, decides to play for a couple of days and send a scientific crew of seven to investigate a quasar. And, of course!, they get lost in space. There is, of course!, some kind of ion storm (a phrase that writers use to say, "OK, we need a plot complication that nobody can define! How about an ion storm!") that makes all the sensors on the Enterprise useless. So the shuttle crashes on type-M planet no less, and Spock is in command. You just love watching this one to see Kirk squirm, knowing he made a really stupid mistake. Mr. Boma, who we never see again in Star Trek, yells at Spock for his lack of emotion, drivin...

Don't forget that Peter Cushing was a Doctor too--in two feature films!

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Covers from the series The Incredible Hulk: Future Imperfect and that amazing two-page spread of the souvenir room by George Perez. Written by Peter David.

Cover to Action Comics #20

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Disney Infinity 2.0 Marvel Rocket Raccoon Figure : Your favorite superheroes from the Marvel Comics universe come to Disney Infinity! This Disney Infinity 2.0 Rocket Raccoon Figure will help you continue your Disney Infinity adventures with Marvel's  Guardians of the Galaxy !  In Disney Infinity: Marvel Super Heroes, players will use real-world interactive Marvel figures to activate original storylines (Play Sets) in the virtual game worlds of some of Marvel's most popular franchises, including  The Avengers . In the Play Sets - penned by award-winning Marvel comic writer Brian Michael Bendis - players will be able to take on the role of more than 20 Marvel characters including Captain America, Iron Man, Black Widow, Thor, Hulk and Hawkeye to battle enemies, complete challenging missions, solve puzzles and ultimately save the world from destruction. Measures about 3-inches tall. Ages 6 and up

From Action Comics #38, Bernard Baily drew a series starring Mr. America. In this installment, Mr. America is after the megalomaniacal villain. The villain escapes! However, our intrepid hero trips over the bomb, sending it at the villain. It apparently incinerates him. Don't you love it when the hero accidentally wins? He tripped , for Pete's sake!

Superman in Action Comics #19

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Cover to Action Comics #18

The Third Doctor with a Yeti!

An old Marvel comic book of Doctor Who, which just reprinted stuff from UK, had a spread about major characters. And they spelled Davros wrong!

Cover to Action Comics #17

K-9 from one of the Doctor Who annuals.

Did pretty well last week. I'll add them up later. All I know is that so far I could get a job picking winners on TV. Week four winners Washington Baltimore Chicago Houston Indy Detroit Miami Pittsburgh San Diego Atlanta Philly New Orleans New England

Cover to Action Comics #15.

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Doctor Who: The Crawling Terror by Mike Tucker Ok, I love these ones. The Doctor faces a menace on Earth. Eerily reminiscent of adventures by the likes of the Third and Fourth Doctors, Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker, this Doctor Who adventure is a great, quick, adventurous read. Such simple writing, yet it builds to a crescendo of a climax. Reading almost like a screenplay, this episode in the adventures of the Doctor could easily be transformed into an actual episode of the TV series. Unfortunately, the hard part is recommending it. Yes, I love reading these Doctor Who books and this one in particular was very good. Of the couple dozen Doctor Who novels I have read over the years, this has been one of my favorites. The character of The Doctor, though, could be just about any of his incarnations--there’s nothing here that screams individuality except for the one paragraph or so that specifically told me which Doctor this was, that could be changed for any incarnation....

Great pics of Daleks and a Cyberman.

Cover to Action Comics #16.

Hilarious. Have to look at some comic book panels with a devious mind, but these simply wouldn't go out today. This one is obviously referring to fighting, but it doesn't seem that way if you don't know the lingo!

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Cover to Action Comics #14

Cover to Action Comics #13

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FYI--I already logged these picks in before Thursday on this CIProud.com pick 'em challenge that I do. Last week I went 13-3. The only shocking loss was Seattle losing to San Diego. That means I'm 21-11 so far. Week three winners Atlanta--already picked! San Diego Cincinnati Cleveland Detroit Indianapolis New England New Orleans Houston Philadelphia Dallas Arizona Miami Seattle Chicago--Go Bears! Carolina

"Amok Time" Season 2, episode 1. The Spock mating ceremony installment. It's that Ponfar we see again in Star Trek III : The Search for Spock . You know, for a Vulcan who is known to be stoic in his demeanor, there are quite a few episodes that show his full range of emotions. This one has Spock racing to Vulcan in order to mate with his betrothed. Bones says, "He'll die, Jim," if you don't get him to Vulcan...to mate! It's amazing that the medical corps in Starfleet would not have 100% medical data on a race, one of whom is "the best first officer in the fleet." Spock does say it is for no offworlder to know about, but it's still funny--what if it happened during a real mission, or too far from Vulcan? Spock's betrothed, T'Pring, is also mentioned again later in that really good novel I read this year, The Lost Years by J.M. Dillard. Kirk must fight Spock with weapons that look like sharpened shovels with weights at th...

Some great pix from old comic books with Peter Davison as the Doctor.

In college, I had this ad, probably ripped out of Rolling Stone magazine, pinned on the wall above my desk. I just love the overall theme of the message. There are many athletic lines here, but some good ones about just seizing the day. I'm an English major. I love that carpe diem crap! And the line "Call her." So simple, yet if you were anything like me that could be one of the hardest things to do in the universe. And I just liked Both Jackson. I remember voting for him for the Heisman when they were using these 900 numbers that cost like 60¢ per call. I called ten times.

"The Cloud Minders" Season 3, Episode 21. They're out to rescue a planet with a cure for a plague. They need to get a substance called zenite from a planet called Merak II and bring it to the planet Ardana. However, they run into difficlty when they come between the apartheid policies of the "upper class" living in the cloud city of Stratos and the "working class" living in the mines--a quite succinct literal interpretation of "upper" and "lower" class. It is interesting how the beautiful "upper class" woman that Spock tries to woo shows her bitter social hatred, proving that beauty is more than skin deep. I would have liked to have seen Spock chastise her for it, or at least somehow address it. He does leave her completely alone after he sees this, but I wish it had been confronted. Also, is Kirk violating the Prime Directive when he tries to help the working class? He basically frees them. While personally I appla...

Episode 6: "The Lost Warrior" Apollo while out on patrol is attacked and manages to escape to a planet called Equellus. Then it gets strange. It turns into a space-western. Here is where the entire series specifically turns into a "What's on this planet?" type of show. Uh, first of all, why is there a planet with people here? Is it a colony or not? Is it not part of the Twelve Colonies? Old Red Eye is a malfunctioning Cylon controlled by Boss Laserta in town, playing an enforcer taking tribute from people. Could TV seriously not get away from the Western concept, complete with gunfights? (Digressing, the TV show for The Planet of the Apes also seemed to do a lot of old-West type of junk.) Apollo basically sacrifices one man so as not to blow his own cover. There's a classic quick draw gunfight because Apollo as the only laser gun on the planet that can take out Old Red Eye (why, oh friggin why, doesn't Apollo sneak up on the dam...

Cover to Action Comics #12.

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"A Piece of the Action" Season 2, episode 17. One of the great episodes if you go into it with that tongue-in-cheek attitude. The Enterprise visits a world that was previously visited by the USS Horizon from a time before the Prime Directive. They inadvertantly left a book on Chicago gangs of the 1920s, published in 1992. Kirk must retain control. One of these reasons to slip into this episode in the right mindset is the amount of times Kirk and his men get captured. Starfleet, phasers and all, getting overtaken by bad mobsters with tommy guns. It's like they forget that their phasers can stun. I would love to see the obvious sequel to this, because McCoy forgets his communicator. The planet because of their susceptibility to imitation, would then become like Starfleet. That could be a fun revisitation of a concept.

"Arena" Season 1, episode 18. This is one of my favorite Star Treks, one I especially remember as a kid. It is inspired by a story from SF great Fredric Brown. I love the one-on-one fight and how Kirk wins by being smarter and making gunpowder. O'Herlihy, a redshirt, is vaporized quickly during a barrage and Kelowitz and Lang die off screen. It's like a future mortar battle, although I am wondering why you wouldn't beam the bombs to the camp? Can they only get through by mortar fire? Kirk almost gets blown up twice but rolls into a communicator conversation with Sulu. The enemy lock onto Spock's tricorder signal and detonate it. "They've fed back my own impulses and built up an overload!" They eventually pursue the aliens who have blown up this settlement on Cestus III into space. Both ships are scanned by an unknown solar system (How can a neighboring solar system to an outpost be unknown?). Kirk is ready to annihilate the enemy ship, wi...

Cover to Action Comics #11.

Cover to Action Comics #10.

"Obsession" Season 2, episode 13. A vampire space-cloud! This episode is kind of like a role-reversal of Star Trek II : The Wrath of Khan . Kirk is obsessed with hunting down this strange cloud from his past that decimated the crew of his first deep space assignment, the USS Farragut . He will even withhold important medicines from a colony in order to hunt it down. Neat episode about guilt and recriminations. It opens with no less than three red-shirted crewmen, just waiting to die on the planet's surface. Two die immediately by the strange cloud that sucks red corpuscles from bodies, and another, Rizzo, will die later in sickbay. (One interesting note is that McCoy uses cordrazine, that intense drug that makes him crazy in the classic episode "City on the Edge of Forever.") One Deus ex machina is that the new security officer is Ensign Garrivick, the son of the Captain of the Farragut , prompting Kirk even more guilt on this specific mission. ...

Action Comics #7 featuring Superman!

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Cover to Action Comics #8. Notice the lack of Superman.

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In my many years of analysis of The Prisoner, one of the biggest questions pertains to Number Six's real name. Many, including Markstein, said that it was John Drake from Danger Man. The episode "The Girl Who Was Death" is often cited as proof because a character named Potter, who often drops Drake information, appears. The same actor and specifically called Potter by the McGoohan character. "Chin up...Potter." There is a momentary pause as he addresses him. Number Six is not John Drake and this episode proves it. I don't want to admit this. I always liked the idea that this is what happened to the Drake character. I began with The Prisoner in the late 80s and didn't even get to Danger Man until I could watch it on DVD through Netflix--in the 21st century. I wanted to know who Number Six was before the Village. I knew what he was. Having the whole Danger Man series is sort of like a neat prequel, especially with those episodes that give rise to the o...

"Plato's Stepchildren" Season 3, Episode 10. There's some weird stuff that goes on in this episode. A distress call from an unknown planet where we find a race that can screen themselves from the Enterprise sensors. McCoy needs to heal the leader. We find from Kirk's log: "When their planet novaed millenia ago, they transported themselves to Earth during the time of Socrates and Plato. After the death of the Greek civilization they idolized, they came to this planet and created for themselves a utopia patterned after it." They are thousands of years old but if they get cut and infected, it could kill them. Apparently this hasn't happened in thousands of years. The aliens are psychokinetic. They are powerful enough to control the Enterprise up in orbit and prevent communications. They want to keep Bones as their doctor. They torture Kirk and Spock like puppets and make their dwarf helper, Alexander, ride Kirk like a horse. I'm not kiddi...

"For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky" Season 3, episode 8. The Enterprise encounters a spaceship made into the center of an asteroid. It's on a collision course in a year and a half with a Federation planet. When Chekhov gives the heading of the asteroid, in numbers, Spock immediately, without consulting the computer, calculates that it will hit the planet in 300+ days (he gives the exact number but I forget). I didn't know Spock had all of the orbits of every planet in relation to the ship memorized, even in his Vulcan brain. It's like they didn't want to take the extra seconds to show Spock consulting a computer. They beam down and are, of course!, captured by the inhabitants, who are oblivious to the fact that it is in fact a spaceship. McCoy diagnoses himself with some rare illness without a cure, giving himself a year to live. Kirk then pimps out Bones to make moves on the High Priestess of Yonada, whom he marries in this episode, so...

After the Third Doctor's harrowing adventure, here are some of the wrappers as collectibles of the era.