Watchcast Schedule for January 2023

Hey everyone, and a happy new year to you all! Hope you've had yourself a good holiday season, and had a chance to recharge heading into 2023. We're officially back to posting tomorrow with our first Watchcast of the year, and to make sure you're caught up on what to watch, here's the full schedule for this month.

Monday, January 2nd: Star Trek: A Taste of Armageddon and This Side of Paradise

A Taste of Armageddon: The Enterprise arrives at a planet to establish diplomatic relations and finds itself in the middle of a "peaceful" war that threatens to destroy the ship. This one's got everything: the Enterprise inadvertently wandering into a conflict it doesn't understand, a pissing contest between the command crew and a Federation bureaucrat, and some A+ hats.

This Side of Paradise: The Enterprise crew is trapped in paradise when they come to rescue colonists who have fallen to pacifying alien spores and become infected  themselves. While this may sound suspiciously like some episodes we covered already this season, this one's probably the best of this lot, thanks in no small part to Leonard Nimoy getting to cut loose for once.

NOTE: As we are getting back from the break, this episode may go up later in the day than usual, but it will post tomorrow for sure.

Monday, January 9th: Blade (1998)

For our two films this month, we're going to cover the highs (and lows, more on that later) of pre-MCU Marvel films, kicking things off with what I'd call the best of all Marvel movies, Steven Norrington's 1998 adaptation of Blade. Vinny declaring he'd never seen this one is what prompted this little theme, and I'm very excited to make him watch it. Spoiler: This movie is still cool as hell.

Monday, January 16th: Star Trek: The Devil in the Dark and Errand of Mercy

The Devil in the Dark: Kirk investigates a series of grisly murders on a mining planet that are the work of a seemingly hostile alien creature. IIRC this is one that really stretches the show's creature effects budget, as they square off against what appears to be a pile of day-old challah bread. But I also remember this one being pretty good. We'll see!

Errand of Mercy: The Federation and the Klingon Empire teeter on the brink of war as Kirk investigates Organia, a humble planet inhabited by pacifists that is unwittingly caught in the middle. Klingon alert! I repeat, we have a Klingon alert! 

Monday, January 23rd: Captain America (1990)

Oh brother, here we go. To illustrate the "lows" of pre-MCU Marvel filmmaking, I went with Albert Pyun's extremely wobbly (and rubbery) Cap adaptation (Capdaptation?). Why this film, when there are SO MANY bad early Marvel movies to choose from? Because Pyun recently passed away, and while this certainly isn't among his best films, I at least wanted to pay a bit of tribute to the filmmaker. Plus, I don't know if I have it in me to sit through Hasselhoff's Nick Fury, or enough desire to make people dig up bootleg copies of Corman's Fantastic Four. And as bad as this movie is, I do remember at least having some fun with it.

If you're wondering where you can watch this, there is a Blu-ray release out there, but I don't think it's streaming anyplace. We might look at trying to show it in our Discord ahead of the episode, so keep your eyes peeled for announcements regarding that.

Monday, January 30th: Star Trek: The Alternative Factor, The City on the Edge of Forever, and Operation: Annihilate!

We're closing out the month of January with a Star Trek triple-header to finish up season one. Here's what's on the docket for the finale:

The Alternative Factor: Kirk and Spock encounter an alien named Lazarus who claims to be from an anti-matter universe. I do not remember a single thing about this episode, and it's possible this is one of the ones I've never seen.

The City on the Edge of Forever: Kirk and Spock must travel into the past in order to correct a change that will alter history. Oh hell yeah, we've got time travel consequences again! Been a while for me on this one, but I remember it being a pretty good example of a Trek crew going back in time and futzing around with history.

Operation: Annihilate!: Kirk and the Enterprise must combat parasitic aliens. OK, really burying the lede there with that description. The parasites look like Nickelodeon Gak. That's really the important part.

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And that's the schedule for the month! As we are going to be closing out Star Trek season one this month, a reminder that we will be taking a breather from our trek through Trek after this month. How long? Can't say just yet, but we have some things planned for the next few months that I think folks will really dig, and we'll give a heads-up once it's time to return to the bridge of the Enterprise. Until then, we hope you enjoy this month's slate, and thank you for watching and listening along with us!

--A