MONDO EXTRAS

Back on the street corner, Kirk divvies up the money amongst the crew as a particularly unfortunate example of bad '80s fashion walks by. Is she wearing a knee-length oversized black blazer with shoulder pads? Yes. How about a big dowdy sweater-blouse? Yes. And tight capris and a head full of teased-up hair serve to complete the ensemble. Everyone scatters, leaving Kirk and Spock to find themselves some whales. Kirk asks Spock how they can find them. Spock says he will very logically use a nearby map. Kirk gets bored in about three seconds and starts looking around. He sees an advertisement on a passing bus. You can see humpback whales George and Gracie at the Cetacean Institute in Sausalito and have a whale of good time too! Kirk rudely interrupts Spock's clever calculations to tell him he knows exactly where the whales are. Because of logic. And because of having ADD. Kirk and Spock board the bus, only to be thrown right back off again. "What does it mean, 'exact change'?" Spock asks, because he apparently didn't take the English Mastery Course back at the Vulcan Memory Retrieval Institute.

McCoy asks Scott how they can find a whale tank as Sulu looks around, taking in the San Francisco scenery and generally trying to get some audience attention. It turns out he doesn't need to do any of that, because the LEATHER CAPE he's wearing does it all already. That's right, folks: Sulu is wearing a leather cape. Like, as part of his normal, everyday outfit. Now that makes a statement. I'm not sure what that statement is, but it's there, and you can't ignore it.

Scotty says he can build a tank out of transparent aluminum, but Sulu points out that that hasn't been invented yet. Too bad, because if I could have the wrapping power of tin foil combined with the transparency of Saran Wrap for my leftovers, I'd be a happy camper. The group wonders where they can possibly find the twentieth-century equivalent of transparent aluminum, then stand around cluelessly…in front of a giant advertisement for the Yellow Pages. That's the second time an advertisement has been used to help the Enterprise crew on this mission. I can't figure out if this movie trying to tell us something about the usefulness of a capitalist society or how evil the waste and paranoia it creates is.