"A Piece of the Action" Full Reaction! - Star Trek: The Original Series Season 2
Added 2024-05-24 18:00:10 +0000 UTCFollow along with me using your own copy of the episode!
Comments
This does not sound like a good way to go π³
bunnytails
2024-05-27 16:54:55 +0000 UTCGood one! π
bunnytails
2024-05-27 16:54:00 +0000 UTCWhy am I not surprised π
bunnytails
2024-05-27 16:51:46 +0000 UTCAhh I see! Makes sense, thanks π
bunnytails
2024-05-27 16:48:52 +0000 UTCOh thanks for the clarification!
bunnytails
2024-05-27 16:48:29 +0000 UTCDidn't know that. I was always psyched when getting a new Trek novel on audio tape in the 90's when Doohan was narrating. He always put in an excellent performance.
Mark Gosine
2024-05-27 01:22:21 +0000 UTCI'm surprised that no one yet in the comments has explained the 'concrete galoshes'/'cement overshoes'. An old gangsters' method to hide and dispose of a body. The idea was you put your victim's feet in cement, let it harden, and then throw them in the river/water. The body stays at the bottom. Ok episode, but a fun watch.
Mark Gosine
2024-05-27 01:18:36 +0000 UTCThis is my number four episode after Balance of Terror, Doomsday Machine and Space Seed. It is really fun and funny.
Mike_G
2024-05-27 00:46:39 +0000 UTCCould have called this, "A Piece of Reaction."
Gary Shapiro
2024-05-26 21:55:17 +0000 UTCI love this episode, lots of fun. The prime directive in a general form of try not to interfere with less advanced cultures is ok, but becomes extremely immoral and ridiculous in the Next Generation and beyond.
Russell
2024-05-26 21:50:37 +0000 UTCBy far one of the genuinely funniest episodes of the show! So glad to see your reaction to this one, it hypes me up for when you eventually get to the fourth movie The Voyage Home. π
Matt B
2024-05-26 02:59:40 +0000 UTCIt's all Fizzbin to me, Bunny. The acting is fun, the costumes are kool. I'm glad you had a chance to watch this one " On the other side of the Blower". without being "Put on ice". π₯Ή
timothy w moyer
2024-05-25 15:54:57 +0000 UTCJames Doohan also was a voice actor. You can hear him as the radio announcer, when Spock is attempting to adjust the radio to contact the Enterprise.
Dave Riley
2024-05-25 13:46:35 +0000 UTCAm I the only that thinks of the TV series "Alice" whenever I see this episode? Skip to 25 seconds in: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8Z4yCfJ3L8
Tom Occhipinti
2024-05-25 12:17:30 +0000 UTC"A Piece Of The Action." This is kinda when thing started getting a little silly. Good episode...but a bit silly. And...for the record, someone actually made all the rules for the card game fizzban.
Carlos Stevens
2024-05-25 05:17:42 +0000 UTCThe problem with Kirk driving was he kept releasing the clutch too fast. You're supposed to ease off on it slowly while the car engages the next gear, otherwise it will grind the gears or stall the engine.
3dbadboy1
2024-05-25 04:58:04 +0000 UTCThis season has shown that Kirk has an imitative streak of his own. A good example of this came in "Tribbles" when Cyrano Jones departs the station manager's office saying, "Well, I must be tending my ship. Au revoir!" A few minutes later, Kirk repeats this statement as he leaves, even copying Jones' hand-to-midsection maneuver. But nothing showcases this tendency of Kirk's better than "A Piece of the Action." He tries several times to reason with the various bosses, but it isn't until he adopts their costuming, mannerisms, and language that they take him seriously. For that bit of characterization alone, I hold this episode in high regard. (Plus it provides William Shatner an opportunity to flex his comedy muscles with enthusiasm, which he must have loved.) When it came time to celebrate Star Trek's 30th anniversary in 1996, the producers of Deep Space Nine considered several possibilities, one of which involved a return to Sigma Iotia II to discover that the entire population was now dressed and behaving like Starfleet officers. However, the producers went in another direction and wound up paying tribute to a different second season episode which Bunny has already seen. Finally, there was a returning actor: John Harmon (Tepo) previously appeared in "The City on the Edge of Forever" as the unfortunate fellow who stole McCoy's phaser and disintegrated himself.
Lee
2024-05-25 02:02:52 +0000 UTCI like the acting in "A Piece of the Action" particularly Krako-great Al Capone impression! My general rule is to avoid videos on the mob. Five minutes into something like "The Sopranos" I find all of the characters extremely unlikable. I should stay and wait for them to grow on me but it rarely gets better. (except for Godfather two) The only way I can last is for it to be like a movie from the 1930s. APOTA is pretty close to that. Kirk has trouble with shifting. I don't know why it's backfiring. I think it's a maintenance issue, not the driver. Another stab at the prime directive: the landing party was worse than the Horizon! Horizon didn't think the Iotians were such geniuses at reverse engineering to invent submachine guns and put up the industrial complex to manufacture them. I'm sensing a pattern where the Enterprise imposes a solution and promptly leaves.
William Terry
2024-05-24 23:45:10 +0000 UTCIβm 58β¦. 4 months older than Star Trekβ¦. I loved this episode when I was 10, and love it just as much now. π€ͺ
Tom Occhipinti
2024-05-24 23:12:33 +0000 UTCI don't know what it is about Star Trek and mob culture... xD It's clear this episode is not meant to be taken too seriously. Everyone keeps stealing tommy guns from each other. And all three commercial breaks are just Kirk and co. getting captured again. But! Watching Kirk and Spock wear mob clothes and drive 1920s cars made it worth it.
SuicuneSol
2024-05-24 21:56:16 +0000 UTCThe cement overshoes is when they trapped someone's feet in a bucket of cement and then threw them into the river to "sleep with the fishes."
J. Scott Phillips
2024-05-24 19:27:11 +0000 UTCI really like this episode, but I agree with you Bunny it's one of the more 'silly and humorous' episodes that Star Trek did now and then, which some people love and some people hate. I really like these more lighthearted ones, as Star Trek is such a serious franchise a lot of the time, that you NEED these episodes now and then for a change of pace. Even during some of the most complex and serious plot lines in later Star Trek shows every now and then the writers will go 'we know things have been dark and gritty for a while, here's a lighthearted one for you all!' and it just plays to the lasting appeal of the franchise. To answer some of your questions -- Spock mentioned at the start of the episode how the USS Horizon had visited the planet of Iotia before the Prime Directive was established. The Horizon was either a pre-Federation or a very early Federation ship -- it says 100 years have passed. Something happened to the ship -- either the ship was lost while they were visiting or it was lost shortly after it left. The Iotians sent a message about the ship, but since it was sent by radio it took 100 years for the Federation to get. Several items were left behind by the crew of the Iotians, including a history book (or an encyclopedia, again it's not clear) on the Chicago gang wars and mafia control of the city during the 1920's. The Iotians, being a smart and curious people, thought that this must be a 'holy book' by the more advanced civilization, a Bible if you will, and copied their whole world and society based on it. By the time the Enterprise arrived the damage was long done, so the best Kirk and company could do was to try to unite the people and bring order and some stability back to the planet. Great acting from everyone here -- Kirk was able to adapt real quick to the ways things worked down here and showed his smarts and talents, and Spock and McCoy helped out a lot also. And again some great guest actors here with Anthony Caruso and Vic Tayback playing the two biggest bosses, both of which were long running and good character actors for movies and TV shows. This must have been one of the more easier and cheaper episodes to make -- like westerns, mob films and TV shows were popular at the time (The Untouchables as one example) so the sets, costumes, guns, etc. could easily be provided without much expense. There's a sequel to this episodes of sorts in a later Star Trek game. Konami produced a Star Trek 25th Anniversary game for the NES (a totally different game then the one with the same name that was on PC), which plays like a old school adventure game -- you control Kirk and company in a bunch of missions happening both groundside and also in space. One of the missions has you returning to Iotia, to fix the damage that was caused by McCoy leaving his communicator behind. You also find, humorously enough, that Kirk gave them enough details on that fake card game of Fizzbin that people actually play it now! I agree this episode gets better with future watching, so maybe your opinion will change some once you do the editing on it. As always, though, thanks for all you do!
Greg Polander
2024-05-24 19:14:43 +0000 UTCIt's funny... I liked this one as a kid... the action, the comedy, the gangsters... and so I was prepared to write a pretty glowing review. But after watching with you, yeah, I guess it's not holding up as well for me, now. I still love the comedic timing of Shanter, Nimoy, Vic Tayback (Krako) and the Fizbin game and the "Piece of the Action" kid are still a lot of fun to watch. But, as the 3rd pretty much all-out TOS comedy (following Mudd and Tribbles) it plays a little too much over the top now. Still, I love the idea. Maybe the plot is a little too much back and forth, I don't know. Yes, this was the network clamping down on the budget, getting their money's worth out of the existing backlot, costumes, props, etc... and it's a good attempt, seen in that light.
Skyman's Follies
2024-05-24 19:07:11 +0000 UTC
