Big Gay Longcat reviews Star Trek V: The Final Frontier

Previously on Big Gay Longcat's Big Gay Longblog...

And now the continuation...

Captain Kirk is climbing a mountain.

Mr Spock bothers Captain Kirk until he falls off the mountain, but Mr Spock has rocket boots and he catches Captain Kirk. I think this scene is here to show that Captain Kirk and Mr Spock are still best friends, and it will take more than a little trolling from Mr Spock to get between them.

On the Planet of Galactic Peace the baddy's army captures the Federation, Romulan and Klingon ambassadors. This gets the story underway as it is obvious that the Enterprise is going to have to go and save them.

Scotty thinks the new Enterprise was "put together by monkeys." Wow! A spaceship made by monkeys! That must be the best spaceship ever!

Lt Sulu and Mr Chekhov are lost and Lt Sulu pretends they're in a blizzard but Lt Uhura sees through this subterfuge and makes them come back to the Enterprise.

Dr McCoy has made dinner for Captain Kirk and Mr Spock around a campfire. Dr McCoy and Captain Kirk sing a song but Mr Spock has trouble joining in. Lt Uhura comes to get them in the middle of the night and takes them to the Enterprise.

Captain Kirk goes to the bridge and gets the mission to rescue the ambassadors. They head straight for the Planet of Galactic Peace, but there are Klingons on their way there too.

Captain Kirk gets a message from the hostages and the baddy leader, and Spock recognises him because he is a Vulcan. They go down to the planet in a shuttle.

Lt Uhura distracts the baddy guards by doing a dance with a couple of fans, which she must have brought with her for that purpose. I think this scene would have been better if Lt Sulu had been the one who distracted the guards.

There is a big fight until Captain Kirk and Mr Spock rescue the ambassadors, but then they turn out to be on the baddy's side and so Captain Kirk and Mr Spock are captured.

The baddy leader is called Sybok. Mr Spock tries to arrest him but Sybok laughs and thinks Mr Spock was joking. He wasn't, which makes this a funny bit.

They go back to the Enterprise and Lt Sulu has to crash the shuttle into it to avoid the Klingons shooting them. Everyone is knocked out. Captain Kirk and Sybok wake up first and they fight. Mr Spock gets a gun but he doesn't shoot Sybok. This is because Sybok is Mr Spock's half-brother. This is a shocking revelation, because everyone thought Mr Spock didn't have a brother until now.

Captain Kirk, Mr Spock and Dr McCoy are put in prison by Sybok's men while Sybok uses his hypno-eyes on Lt Sulu and Lt Uhura, and then Mr Chekhov and everyone else so he can take over the Enterprise.

I wish I had hypno-eyes like Sybok, then I could get fish whenever I wanted. "Each fish hides a secret pain... hypno-eyes!" I would say. Then I would nom the fish.

Sybok wants to go the centre of the galaxy to visit a mythical planet. Presumably he means Megas-Tu, which the Enterprise visited in the episode The Magicks of Megas-Tu. To get there they will have to go through the Great Barrier.

Scotty has not been hypno-eyesed yet, and he rescues Captain Kirk, Mr Spock and Dr McCoy.

"I know this ship like the back of my hand," he says. But then Scotty knocks himself out by hitting his head. Clumsy Scotty!

Captain Kirk, Mr Spock and Dr McCoy climb up a lift shaft to escape the baddys - this way of escaping was cleverly foreshadowed by the mountain climbing scene at the start of the film.

Mr Spock goes to get rocket boots again. As they fly up to escape, we can see that the deck numbers are in the wrong order - those cheeky monkeys!

Captain Kirk sends a distress signal, but it is the Klingons who intercept it so they can chase the Enterprise again.

Sybok catches up with Captain Kirk, Mr Spock and Dr McCoy. He tries to hypno-eyes Dr McCoy and then Mr Spock by showing them things that make them sad. Captain Kirk doesn't let Sybok even try to hypno-eyes him, and then Sybok realises his hypno-eyes has not worked on Mr Spock or Dr McCoy.

Sybok thinks he will see Ceiling Cat on the other side of the Great Barrier. He is clearly being silly, any cat could tell you that Ceiling Cat watches us from the ceiling, not from the centre of the galaxy (unless your ceiling was in the centre of the galaxy, I suppose).

They fly into a big blue cloud until they find a blue planet. It doesn't look like Megas-Tu, so maybe this is a different centre of the galaxy? I don't know about science things, I'm just a cat.

Sybok, Captain Kirk, Mr Spock and Dr McCoy go the planet in a shuttle. For a while it looks like there isn't anybody on the planet, but then it suddenly gets dark and big rocks appear like massive hands under the ground - a very scary bit!

There is a light and a face appears - it doesn't look like Ceiling Cat to me!

"What does God need with a starship?" Captain Kirk is suspicious as well.

God zaps him - God is really a baddy!

Mr Spock gets zapped too, and then Dr McCoy and Sybok realise it's not really Ceiling Cat but some bad god of the kind the Enterprise has encountered before. A lot.

God makes himself look like Sybok to scare him, and Sybok sacrifices himself trying to hypno-eyes God. The Enterprise shoots God so Captain Kirk, Mr Spock and Dr McCoy can escape. They run back to the shuttle but can't take off. Scotty manages to beam up Mr Spock and Dr McCoy, but the Klingons arrive and shoot the Enterprise before Captain Kirk can be rescued.

Captain Kirk is still in danger, because God is not dead. God tries to zap Captain Kirk some more, but then the Klingons turn up and shoot God. Captain Kirk is beamed aboard the Klingon ship. He has been rescued by the Klingon ambassador and Mr Spock, who have taken charge of it.

Captain Kirk goes to hug Mr Spock but Mr Spock says "Please Captain, not in front of the Klingons."

LOL! With this funny bit it is the end of the adventure and everyone is safe. Except for Sybok who is dead.

The film finishes with Captain Kirk, Mr Spock and Dr McCoy going back to their camping. Which, let's face it, has got to be the best way to leave them.

In conclusion this is a fabulous, fantastic film and I am a happy cat for having seen it. I think it is already my sixth best film of all time, with only the other Star Trek films being better.

Monkey Challenge: The Fires of Jealousy

There's a highly dubious morality at the centre of this story - the Queen of Fire has broken up with her husband, the King of Water Buffaloes, and has made a lair surrounded by impassable volcanoes that just happen to be in the way of the pilgrims' progress to India.

Most of the episode concerns various attempts by Monkey to gain possession of the Queen's magic fan, which can be used to quell the volcanoes so they can pass by. But although Monkey gets his hands on the fan by disguising himself as King Water Buffalo, the real King steals it back by disguising himself as Sandy.

The Queen captures Tripitaka in an attempt to get her fan back from Monkey. Tripitaka finds out that the Queen is bitter because her husband has run off with a human woman, but he tells her that to get her husband back she must ask the King to forgive her for her jealousy.

While this isn't as outrageously sexist as the likes of Star Trek's Turnabout Intruder, the idea that it is the woman's fault for the man's infidelity does make me cringe. Suffice to say that this does work and everyone makes it up at the end.

There are two noteworthy (in a good way) aspects to this episode. First is the way that every time King Water Buffalo gets into a fight - and it happens twice, first in a fight with Sandy and later a fight with Monkey - he has a group of minions that run in and join in the fight, then vanish without a comment when the fight is over. Pure set-piece fight scenes, with no attempt to disguise this.

The second is a scene that has to be seen to be believed, and I can only assume was included because the episode was under-running. After they have used the magic fan to make it rain and put out the volcanoes, Monkey, Pigsy and Sandy perform a curious and exceptionally silly dance to the Monkey theme song.

I only wish I could get some screenshots of the faces they pull; they're bizarre. Alas my PC isn't working properly at the moment for me to do this - I may come back to it if I get the chance.

A Good Man Goes to the Impossible Missions Force

Good Morning Mr Briggs.
Eyepatch Woman, the mysterious 'Big Bad' of this season, makes her headquarters in the Demon's Run asteroid. We've learned that she has kidnapped Amy Pond and will attempt to turn her unborn child into a temporal weapon which could upset the balance of power.
Mr Briggs, your mission, should you decide to accept it, would be to rescue both mother and child from Demon's Run.
As always you have carte blanche as to the method and personnel, although we can only afford Hugh Bonneville's character for a cameo appearance.
But of course should you, or any of your IM Force be caught or killed, the secretary will disavow any knowledge of your actions until you can get Amy to remember you back into existence.
As usual this recording will decompose one minute after the breaking of the seal.
Good luck Dan.

The Space Adventures of Little Gay Longcat

Part 21: Cat Watch

Monkey Challenge: Two Little Blessings

Some great lines from the narrator in this one:

"Once they asked the wise man 'Is he who gives you a wild tiger in a jade box being truly generous?' The great sage replied 'How should I know?'"

"Truly it is said that dragon's feathers are as rare as sympathy for an expectant father. Never has a father been expectant in quite this way."

"Defeated, the god of fertility turned over a new leaf. This is why, today, very few men have babies."

I wonder if this is based on an original legend, because it plays like a messed-up fanfiction: Pigsy and Sandy both get pregnant from drinking the sacred water of a fertility god. Then Monkey has to obtain the antidote, reuniting two star-crossed lovers forced to be the god's slaves in the meantime.

"Mummy!"

There's a greatly amusing scene where Pigsy imagines himself fighting bandits with his child - a pig - on his back, in the style of Lone Wolf and Cub.

The Space Adventures of Little Gay Longcat

Part 20: Forbidden Technology

Monkey Challenge: Village of the Undead

After the quality of the last couple of episodes, this is a bland and unmemorable one (when watching it yesterday I remembered I had seen it before, but couldn't recall anything about the plot itself).

The evil-spirits-of-the-week are phantoms who will only really exist if the pilgrims believe in them. They plan to prove their existence by killing them, eventually getting Monkey into a cauldron of acid that will only kill him if he believes it will.

Those wacky buddhists, eh?

To give the episode some credit where it's due - the changes in lighting between the seemingly harmless, though deserted, village and the domain of the undead is well done and atmospheric, which does help to create a sense of danger for Tripitaka. The lack of silly monster costumes for the phantoms helps too.