Hit The Deck - It's Shooting Star Trek!

Literally
This actually cropped up in my mind earlier this afternoon, except there wasn't time to post it as, inevitably, it needed a bit of research.  Plus I had to hurry up and post the blog in time to get down and snaffle a bargain or two at the Co-Op before closing, which is 4 p.m. on a Sunday.
     "Ooookay," I hear you mutter.  "This isn't going to be the episode about a lost colony that replicates Cold War conflict between South Canada and the Sinisters, is it?"
     Bite your tongue!  No it is not.  Anti-matter, that's what I mean, and how even the most minute quantities of this substance create a very, very big bang.  The following full stop . if made of AM would make a crater big enough to bury a block of flats in.  Apartments, if you wish to be trans-Atlantic.
     So!  To the "Star Trek" moment in question:

Jim prepares to let fly

     This is from the very well-regarded episode "Arena".  A human colony has been viciously bruited about by the Gorn, who are lurking in the near distance, picking off members of the away-team when they get the chance.  Jim et al retaliate with this puppy, a species of mortar.

Traditional Gorn hospitality

     Here an aside.  Some commentators criticise the lack of guidance or aiming systems on the weapon or it's ammunition, because they don't know the first thing about a mortar.  It's not a weapon designed for pinpoint accuracy, it's an area-effect weapon.  A mortar is, essentially, a dirt-cheap piece of artillery, made to be simple, which this device plainly is.  You're not going to go providing state-of-the-art weapons systems to a bunch of glorified farmers out on the far distant frontier, are you?  No.
     Anyway, Jim lets the Gorn have one of the little blue eggs at a range of 1200 yards, which is uncomfortably near to point blank; indeed, one other crewman calls it (with splendid Anglo-Saxon understatement) "a little close".  Patently these things aren't either nuclear nor yet thermonuclear as they're far too small.
     Which leaves anti-matter as the explosive element!  That blue sphere is obviously a containment vessel, to allow the 0.001 grams of AM to be transported in safety.  When it lands the vessel automatically breaches and - BANG!

Mr Spock gives the Stolid Face Of Approval

     The Gorn decide sticking around is a bad idea and leave post haste, meaning they have, in fact - er - gorn.

Today's Coincidence Is Actually Yesterday's
Once again, I simply didn't have time to add this in to the hectic interwebz scribbling of Saturday, so please just imagine that today is yesterday.  No, The Doctor can't come round to either your house or The Mansion to sort this out, he's busy off saving the world whilst being filmed by the BBC to boot - and you think the Bake Off contestants have it hard!
     Well, okay, here is a dusty tome that I might consider as my Bus Book for next week, rescued from spiderweb oblivion at the back of a cupboard:

A little fuzzy - apologies for that

     I didn't remember having this volume at all, which is either an indictment of my memory or a testament to how long it's been hidden.  Perhaps both ...
     Next up we have a photographic essay on the BBC's website about "Doctor Who"*, around Patrick Troughton.  Art?

Pat being winsome

     Scroll along the photographs and - what do we have here?

NO! No, Art, not the Large Hadron Collider!

     Get it right this time, Art.

Entitled "Another curio from 'A Tale Of Two Cities'

     Which is enough to give one a worried  pause, if only for  - DON'T SNEAK UP ON ME LIKE THAT!

     <short pause whilst your humble scribe re-sets his fusion-powered circulatory pump>

How To Class This?
I'm not sure if this is another coincidence or proof that some amongst us - including me, naturally - are gifted with good taste and perception well above the human norm.  Let Art illustrate my point**:

A Mark Kermode tweet, just to be clear

     Tom at work might sneer at this, the short-sighted technophone***, but I'm sure you all instantly recognise Robby the Robot from "Forbidden Planet", one of the most seminal and influential sci-fi films ever made, and a firm favourite of Conrad's.  So too a firm favourite of Mark Kermode's, which - let us just class it as Two Men With Good Taste, eh^?

Finally
Proof that weasels really are our friends:



*  World's longest-running drama-mentary reconstruction series
** One-handedly, as the other is still taped to the slurry tank.
*** Like a technophobe, except you can call them out
^  Well, one man and the other is me.