TAS: The Practical Joker

            Second season episodes of TAS feel more like kids cartoons than the first season. This episode is filled with goofy practical jokes and doesn't really make a lot of sense. It does introduce the Recreation Rooms which are pretty much just holodecks with a less fancy name. And just like the holodeck they are immediately causing problems and threatening the lives of the crew hoping to use it to recreate. 
            The episode begins with the Enterprise wrapping up a routing asteroid survey when they are suddenly attacked by three Romulan ships! The Enterprise is damaged and forced to flee. The Romulan captain hails them and claims they violated the neutral zone which is clearly not true. The Romulan ships pursue the Enterprise which flees into an unsurveyed energy cloud. They emerge seemingly unscathed other than the damage from the Romulans which they stop to repairs as the Romulans broke off the pursuit. It is then that the jokes begin. At dinner the glasses have all been modified to leak on the person using them. Then Spock finds a new instrument on his desk that has ink on it that gets on his face. And food flies out of the maybe not replicator. You get the idea.
            Things get more dangerous when McCoy, Uhura and Sulu decide now is the perfect time to use the recreation room to go wandering in a forest. The computer keeps them from hearing the general quarters call and then traps them in a pit in the forest. Then it tries to freeze them to death as Scotty and his team try to pry the door open. Eventually they escape and Scotty tries to disable the ships computer. It reverses gravity until he gives up. Just then the Romulans show up but are distracted by a giant inflatable Enterprise the ship somehow makes and deploys. Kirk acts scared of going into the energy field again which I guess tricks the computer into doing it which cures the Enterprise computer and messes up the Romulans.
           
            Review: Not a very complicated or a particularly good plot. I guess introducing the holodeck is of some note but this childish 2001 ripoff doesn't come off very well. One extra point however for introducing and ruining holodecks in the same episode.

3 out of 10