As local MC this year for the Cerebral Palsy Telethon, Leonard Nimoy was a Vulcan no longer. He'd taken off his pointed ears, kept yakking bout astrology and the greening of America, plus he did not say "logical" or "fascinating" once or knock off a couple of the gimp kids with his phaser (inferior beings, harmful to their race) Nevertheless, the fans kept on trekin" cuz they wouldn't let him be. Ya couldn't begin to count all the Mr. Spock jokes and how many times kids asked, "Where's yr pointed ears?" and Lebnard just grinned (only answer he could think of) like he was doing an Alpo commercial. Sure, lotsa autographs (he'd do em for money), and kids wanted him to sign his "X" on their copies of his albums (circa "67 loOe generation when Sky" Saxon ruled the roost) or scribble doodah on his book of love poems (includes a McKuenesque beauty called—"Jack Webb Dies In Pots of Puking Stink"). And the fun was watching Leonard trying to escape that MR. SPOCK IMAGE. (Wants to get outa the bubblegum card trip into the world of REAL ACTING, like in dinner theaters.)

Obviously all that Star Trek racket is just peaking. The demand is so huge that a movie is in the works, the Star Trek Convention was a blockbuster, and models of the Starship Enterprise are being manufactured faster than potato chips. What's more, cities everywhere may be recycling Mickey Mouse Club and You Bet Your Life (to name two of the more worthless), but Star Trek is the only re-run on the tube, I betcha, outranking even the news in ratings.

Agreed, science fiction is the pits. I'd rather watch Harry O than the Outer Limits or Police Surgeon instead of Starlost anyday. It's a genre which just sits there itching for computerized wirerim nobodies with a recently read Gravity's Rainbow under their belt to yawn over ("see, it's ah icon for all fiction"), and in otder for it to even be approachable it's gotta absolutelV smell rotten (Zontar, The Thing From Venus and that ilk). But if you're gonna Watch sic-fi, well, it might as well be TV SCIFI cuz that's the best in the world, and the best of the best is Star Trek (any loyal reader of The Monster Times will tell ya that).

79 shows: some ok, some pathetic (esp. when Capt. Kirk falls in luv and turns glassy-eyed), and some got highlights of such COSMIC CORN that they put a good Jay Ward cartoon production to shame. The first season of Star Trek has the greatest amount of the crudest shows. The series was just getting settled (takes a year for any good series), and the producers had to test the patterns and develop characters according to the viewers" response. This experimental stage overused Mr. Spock to the extent that the comic relief of each show relied upon Capt. Kirk or Dr. McCoy's slight jab at Spock's logical mind. Possibly the best of these first shows is the two-part episbde called "The Menagerje." Jeffrey Hunteris this half-human, half machine invalid that's got Spock under its spell. The technique, tho, is the clincher cuz the producer decided to use the bulk of the pilot as a narrative within the entire episode which is swell cuz that was about as complex as Star Trek ever got plot-wise. Honorable mention also must go to Theodore Sturgeon's "Shore Leave" for opening the episode with a scene straight from Alice In Wonderland. Also, the secret to a lot of these first shows was simply the cashing with a good supply of androids from Roger C. Carmel to Michael J. Pollard (best acting award: Ted Cassidy as Ruk in "What Are Little Girls Made Of?," his' greatest performance since Lurch).

The second season has the most identifiable episodes (and possibly the best stories) with "Amok Time" (Spock gets married), "Mirror> Mirror" (the Enterprise battles its double), "Journey to Babel" (we meet Spock's parents), "The Deadly Years" (the crew of the Enterprise grows old), "A Piece of the Action" (Star Trek invades the gangster genre), or my personal favorite tcuz it's the dumbest and real bad), ".Patterns of Force" (Capt. Kirk rescues the universe from Nazism). But just ask any fool, and he's gonna tell ya that this season marks the arrival of probably the best Star Trek episode of all-time, "The Trouble With Tribbles."." This means it's funny, got good writing, never is dull, and the idea of these strange looking fluffballs (but innocent like cuddly toys), which reproduce themselves as they eat, covering the Enterprise with their bodies and posing a harmless threat to the ship is just about as clever as Star Trek ever gets.