***What happens when I, a 30-something-year-old fanboy, decide to look at the Star Trek franchise for the first time with an open heart? You get “Rob Watches Star Trek.”***

SERIES: Star Trek
EPISODE: S2.E19. “A Private Little War”
STARRING: William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley
GUEST-STARRING: Nancy Kovack, Michael Witney
WRITERS: Jud Crucis (Story), Gene Roddenberry (Teleplay)
DIRECTOR: Marc Daniels
ORIGINAL AIR DATE: February 2, 1968
SYNOPSIS: Kirk and Bones reluctantly become involved in an arms race among primitives on a once peaceful planet.

There’s a scene in “A Private Little War” where Kirk gets bitten and thus poisoned by a gloriously cheesy-looking monster. The scene calls for him to suffer and shiver as he struggles to tell Bones on how to save him. Given how William Shatner performs the scene, I felt compelled to type “chewing the scenery” into Urban Dictionary.

Fittingly enough, part of the definition you get is, “In reference to actors (William Shatner comes immediately to mind) …”

What I’ve found in watching these select episodes of Star Trek is the longer the series goes, the more of those infamous “Shatner Moments” we see. And having seen clips of the first two Trek movies, I know there are more to come.

I talked about this not long ago, but it bears repeating: I don’t think he was or is a bad performer. Heck, the he’s a trained Shakespearean actor. Does he have his “Shatner Moments?” Sure. But what he turned in works well in service of the show. “Rob Watches Star Trek” has brought me a newfound respect for him. Not just for what he turned in with Star Trek, but what he went through after Star Trek. He went from being a bona fide television star to losing his home and living in a trailer after the show was cancelled. And yet now, at the age of 89, he’s still chugging away. Imagine the life this guy has lead.

At the very least, Shatner’s performances as Kirk are still memorable after 50 years. There’s something to be said for that. Hell, you fight the Gorn and see what you turn in.

A Private Little War is a great episode, all the atrocious wigs notwithstanding. Nancy Kovack’s smoldering performance as Nona (shown below) is almost worth the price of admission on its own…

The only thing I found a little bit disappointing was that Bones didn’t get the spotlight I thought he would. He’s a perpetual fish-out-of-water. He’s constantly going on these field missions which, in theory, he’s not supposed to be on. That’s why one of his famous catchphrases from the show is, “Damn it, man! I’m a doctor, not a [whatever they’re asking him to be in that episode]!”

So when Kirk gets poisoned, Bones goes back to the encampment with the natives. Kirk is unconscious, and Spock is injured on the Enterprise. The big conflict in the episode is whether or not to give these primitives guns to combat an opposing tribe armed thusly. Instead of waking Kirk up, why not have Bones be the moral center of it all? As a healer, he’s obviously against the idea of introducing firearms even as a defensive response. Maybe some of the carnage he sees causes him to switch sides? But alas, instead we go back to Kirk.

That’s another thing about Shatner. We love the guy, but he tends to pull focus.

Email Rob at primaryignition@yahoo.com, or check us out on Twitter.