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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[March 8, 1968] Inglorious (Star Trek: "The Omega Glory")

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by Gideon Marcus

Last year, Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry won science fiction's highest award, the Hugo, for writing the two-part episode "The Menagerie".  It was a deserved laurel.  After all, he not only had written the excellent pilot that formed the germ of the double-show, but also made a reasonably interesting extension to fit the new format.

Unfortunately, Roddenberry has yet to reach that high water mark again.  Despite having plenty of screenwriting experience, he seems to only have had that one good story in him.  First, there was his disappointing adaptation of "A Private Little War", originally by Jud Crucis (that's got to be a kind of Cordwainer Bird).  And now, we have his worst outing yet–"The Omega Glory":

The setup should be interesting.  Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and the red-shirted Lieutenant GAWLway beam aboard the abandoned but undamaged starship Exeter in orbit around an uncharted planet.  Everyone onboard has been reduced to crystals–sort of a reverse "Man Trap" phenomenon.  This seems shocking to Kirk and co. despite having seen a very similar phenomenon just last episode.  Obeying the exhortations of a tape by the mortally ill Exec of the Exteter (who, like Spock, is apparently a double-duty officer), they beam down to the planet.


"Save yourselves!  Go down to the planet!  I dunno why we don't, but you go ahead!"

There, they meet Captain Ron Tracey, the second active-duty Starfleet captain we've seen other than Kirk (we met four others in "Court Martial", at least one of whom had graduated to Starbase running).  According to Tracey, the planet confers immunity to the disease that killed his entire crew when the rest of the landing party beamed back aboard.  Also, the planet somehow makes all the inhabitants live life spans measured in millennia.

In the six months since Tracey beamed down, he teamed up with the 'Coms', "yellow" city-dwellers under siege by the savage "white" people.  Flagrantly violating the Prime Directive, more explicitly spelled out here than in any episode prior, he exhausted his hand phaser defending the village.


"We drained four of our phasers, and they still came. We killed thousands and they still came."

Now that Kirk is here, Tracey wants to go into the immortality bottling business, distilling the essence of the anti-disease and anti-aging qualities of the planet.

Except, as Bones soon figures out, there is no such thing.  The immunity is a natural (and permanent) phenomenon, and the natives live a long time because of freak genetics resulting from the near-total bacteriological catastrophe that wiped out civilization centuries before.

That's one thread of the episode.  The other involves finding out that this is a parallel Earth, like "Miri", and the 'Yangs' are the descendants of Americans (white ones, of course), adopting the ways of the Indians in order to survive, but carrying a corrupted tradition of Founding Father document worship.  Thus, they mangle the Pledge of Allegiance and the Constitution's preamble without understanding.  Luckily, Kirk is an avid historian, and he explains what these holy words really mean.  He also insists that the Coms (what's left of them–it appears the Yangs have killed nearly all of them by the end) are people too, and they need to be treated with the dignity and equality prescribed by our nation's most central document.


"This document is absolutely perfect as is.  It's a good thing you never made any changes to it."

And then they beam back to the Enterprise.  Happy endings for everyone.

Except the audience, of course.

So much about this show doesn't make sense, from the lack of children, to the paucity of population centers, to the way genetics and natural immunity works on the planet.  I won't even touch the racial aspects of the episode, which my colleagues are champing at the bit to address.

I will say that I am utterly confused by Captain Tracey's actions.  We've been led to believe that Starship captains are a breed apart.  Sure, Commodore Decker had his issues, but they were understandable given his situation.  But Tracey?  As soon as his crew fell ill and he didn't, you'd think he'd have beamed at least some of his people down.  And certainly he'd hold sacred the highest of orders (though not the one that violation incurs the death penalty.  That's number four.) Instead, he lets his crew die, doesn't warn Star Fleet of his situation, and becomes a little dictator.


"Crew?  What crew?"

The only thing that could possibly explain the situation is that "Ron Tracey" is actually Dr. Simon van Gelder, escaped from Tantalus without being cured, somehow assuming Captain Tracey's guise and stealing the "Exeter".  Outlandish?  Sure, but no more than this episode.


"I'm the real Captain Tracey!"

Two stars.  Why two?  Because I actually kind of dug how the show went back to the parallel Earth thing and didn't just abandon it for one episode.  Of course, they didn't do very much good with it…

When Worse Comes to Worst


by Janice L. Newman

We’ve had the best of episodes, we’ve had the worst of episodes. But never have I watched an episode so infuriating as “The Omega Glory”.

Like last week’s By Any Other Name, the story starts out promising. We’re swept up in the mystery and the danger to the senior officers we’ve come to know and love. And like “By Any Other Name”, it seems that “The Omega Glory” is prepared to play against expectations. On the planet Omega, the white people are violent and savage, while the non-white people (in this case apparently of Asian extraction) are peaceful and good. What a switch!

Just kidding! It turns out that the white people are the good guys after all. They’ll be setting up a democratic government any day now, and they’ll even let those no-good commies in…as long as the commies are okay with living under their system.


"I am Cloud McCarthy, and this is Wise Dicknixon.  We promise equality and fairness for the Coms."

I described Patterns of Force as “subtle as a brick”, but this episode went beyond that. The pro-democracy message was as direct and painful as a bludgeon to the face. It was all the more insulting in the way the white “yangs” (“Yankees”, GET IT?) started out as savage, violent, unwilling to parley or compromise, yet were still painted as the triumphant good guys in the end, for no other reason than that they were descendents of a Christian nation with an American democratic system (despite literally having no understanding of the very documents and principles they revered).

One grudging star, only because I can’t give it zero.

Losers Keepers


by Joe Reid

I recently saw a preview at the theater for the upcoming Planet of the Apes movie (based on the book) starring Charlton Heston. It's a flick about a world where cavemen-like humans in rags are dumb beasts and mistreated by the intelligent thinking and talking apes. 

Much like this week's episode, which featured wild men dressed in rags that appeared to be unable to speak and behaved like beasts.  A couple of months back we had the “Gamesters of Triskelion", which featured a Master Thrall Galt who shared the look of Ming the Merciless from “Flash Gordon”.  In fact it was that same episode that had me complaining about the amount of borrowing or sometimes outright theft that Star Trek employs in its stories.

If imitation is the best form of flattery, Star Trek is the Casanova of Burbank, California!  The number of its paramours have surely become legion.  Much like the erstwhile lover of legend, Star Trek is never able to focus on attaching to one thing at a time.  Episodes must borrow from multiple sources.  Even from other episodes of Star Trek.  For example, just last week we saw an episode where the powerful Kelvans turned members of the crew into white minerals.  This week a disease did it.  Two weeks ago the Nazis from Earth history showed up on another planet.  This week the US flag and constitution showed up, for no reason other than to attempt to throw a twist at the audience.  Both of these last two examples make me feel as if I am watching an episode of the Twilight Zone instead of Star Trek.  So many episodes of that show introduce elements into settings where they should not exist.  When it happened in the Twilight Zone it was thought provoking.  When it keeps happening in Star Trek, it lacks the same effect and is starting to leave me pining for repeats of the episodes that have more original stories.


"A man…can't just…turntosalt!"  "Captain, need I remind you what happened just last episode?"

I’d love for new episodes to stop with the borrowed elements and stick to bold new content, not plucked from the theaters, or the current newspaper headlines, or popular Earth characters like Jack the Ripper. 

Although the recent “Patterns of Force” was not an episode that I loved, I do love the fact that it was original and not an obvious rip-off from something else.  “The Omega Glory” could have been more glorious had its elements not been entirely borrowed.  That's only one of its sins, of course, but it'd be a start.

1 star

Beyond the Pale


by Amber Dubin

I want to preface myself by saying I am whole-heartedly enraptured with Star Trek. It is my first and only love, the only fictional universe I'd gladly abandon my own life to walk one day in its storyline, and I'd defend the continuation of this show to the death and beyond. I feel the need to profess my undying loyalty as a fan of this series, because I am about to unleash a diatribe that could only be wrought by the betrayal of an immeasurable love. This episode made me apoplectic. I've had my hackles raised from some insulting implications about the nature of women or certain races, but so far most of my reactions have been to subtleties. Subtle this episode was not.

The least subtle attack on my sensibilities was the racism. The Yangs are introduced as inhuman savages that cannot be reasoned with when they are first encountered. However, it turns out that they are not feral, merely driven wild by religious fervor. The supertext is that the Yangs' nature is that of Native Americans (what we have ignorantly called, for centuries, 'Indians'). I cannot begin to describe how offensive this concept is. Gene Roddenberry is saying here that Native Americans as a race are naturally a savage subspecies of whites, but they, like the fictional Vulcans, have trained to control their natures through a spirituality reverential governmental system. The fundamental insult lies in the implication that the government of whites partially tamed their savage nature (only partially, because the whole time sacred ceremonies take place, the majority of the tribe is outside yipping and howling at the moon). I hate that I have to explain this, but in reality, Native Americans have had democratic systems in place before most white societies that the white founding fathers actually drew from when they were drafting their governmental systems. In addition, the role of spirituality in most ancient Native American tribes was not a controlling cult-like obsession as could be argued is displayed by many modern organized religions, and was instead a much subtler, reverential guiding force that soothed the more offensive natural human instincts like a balm rather than a set of shackles.


"What do you mean 'they're too white?'  What do you think this is?  High Chapparal?"

Unfortunately the racial attacks in this episode are not only leveled at the Native American peoples. When it comes to the Comms, although it is implied that their genetics/immunological resistance is superior to humans, they are also implied to be inferior to the white race. This is apparent in the way that they immediately recognize Ron Tracey as their leader, after "getting over the shock of [his] white skin." This is offensive not only in the way it implies innate white supremacy, but also in the way they imply that it is natural for "asiatic races" to choose innately flawed governmental systems (godless totalitarianism and communism – for shame!) over the morally upright white, democratic Republicans. They even managed to throw in fetishization of female Asians just because this steaming pile of an episode needed a little sexism for spice.

And the science! My God, the poor, poor science! I'm too angry to even go into how terribly this episode mangled the concepts of genetic and cultural evolution. It didn't even have the most basic understanding of immunology and epidemiology! The fact that any of the plot of this episode made it off the cutting room floor goes beyond the pale of my tolerance and understanding. To say I am deeply disappointed in Gene Roddenberry is an understatement of the highest degree.

I wish I could give it less than one star, but I, like the actors in these scenes, am contractually bound by the system in which I work.

One star

Speaking of Star Trek, it's on tomorrow!  And it seems to presage a civil war…

Here's the invitation! Come join us.




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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[Feb. 2, 1968] All creatures great and small (Star Trek: "The Immunity Syndrome")

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"Beyond our Experience"


by Amber Dubin

Only the best of science fiction challenges us to question the laws of physics and our reality. In this, "The Immunity Syndrome" does not disappoint. This episode takes a similar phenomenon as was seen in "The Doomsday Machine" and "Obsession" where a mind-numbingly dangerous sentient entity is found cutting a swath of destruction through space and the Enterprise is sent to find a way to stop it. This time, however, the nature of this space organism is so far beyond our experience that it has stunning implications for both the nature of humanity and for life itself.

We open on an already exhausted crew heading toward a well deserved break before they are yanked off course by a Priority 1 distress signal. As they are being informed that Starfleet has lost contact with an entire solar system and the Vulcan-crewed star ship that was sent to investigate, Spock nearly collapses onto his console. Teeth gritted in agony, he exclaims that the Intrepid and every member of its 400-strong Vulcan crew is dead.

We soon find out that Spock was right, that both the Intrepid and an entire solar system has been wiped out under mysterious circumstances. In sickbay, McCoy inquires as to how Spock could possibly have known the moment it happened and he replies with what is probably my favorite line in the entire show: "I've noticed that about your people, Doctor, you find it easier to understand the death of one than the death of a million. You speak about the objective hardness of the Vulcan heart, yet how little room there seems to be in yours."

A now more somber and grief-rattled Spock returns to the bridge and the crew resumes investigating the source of this massacre. They soon stumble on a starless patch of space that appears to be a hole in the viewscreen. Being unable to gain any knowledge from a probe launched towards it, Captain Kirk decides to take the ship closer to get a better look. With a sudden piercing noise, the ship finds itself fully enveloped in this absence of stars. Immediately half the crew collapses, their life forces suddenly drained. Scottie informs the bridge that the deflectors and power cells have suffered a similar fate. Eventually it is surmised that the Enterprise has been ensnared in a spider's web of some kind, a negative zone of energy created as a consequence (deliberate or otherwise) of a massive creature's movement through space. This creature is apparently structured like a single celled organism that consumes energy in order to reproduce and expand its influence across the universe, like a bacterial cell would as it infected a host body.

After a lot of scrambling and trial and error, the Captain and crew discover that the only way to find this creature's weakness is by sending a shuttle inside of it. This leaves Captain Kirk in the unenviable position of having to choose which of his two best friends, Spock or McCoy, will pilot the shuttle and likely never return. With a heavy heart, he chooses Spock, and even McCoy has a hard time making light of the situation the way he usually does, reluctantly watching as Spock makes his funeral march to the shuttlecraft.


Spock and McCoy: a no-win decision.

Of course the crew narrowly eke out a win, the organism is killed, and the trio is reunited in the end; yet it is the questions that arise from the existence of this creature that linger on past its demise: "Where did it come from?" "Is this the beginning of an invasion?" "Is the universe itself an ecosystem with perceivable edges?" "Did this creature come from beyond those edges?" "Is the universe itself alive when viewed with a large enough lens?"

On a smaller scale, we are given another compelling morsel of mind-taffy in the new knowledge that Vulcans feel the dying minds of their own kind. A fascinating implication is that a genocide would be impossible on Vulcan because Vulcans literally feel pain when large amounts of their kind are slaughtered. McCoy echoes the sentiment of many audience members that humans do not envy this ability: "Suffer the death of thy neighbor, eh Spock? You wouldn't wish that on us would you?"

Spock sagely replies, "It might have rendered your history a bit less bloody."

Yet here I must disagree with Spock. Spock claims this Vulcan ability to avoid massacres gives them a survivalist edge over humans, yet it is this lack of experience with societal trauma that left them vulnerable in this case. They could not conceive that the annihilation of the Intrepid was even possible, and thus they literally died in disbelief.

This episode has the cleanest script I've seen in the series so far, and it gave my brain something to chew on with a rather satisfying crunch…5 stars


by Tam Phan (Secret Asian Man)

A Stoic’s Guide to Vulcanianism

“Damn your infernal Vulcan logic!” A sentiment expressed all too often by Dr. McCoy, but is it truly the logic that is so infuriating to the prickly old doctor? Spock’s virtual lack of emotion seems to be characterized as having stemmed from his dedication to logic, but we see logical decisions made by the captain even in his most emotional states. Even his hunches, acted on with no strong emotional component, are based on an assessment of the situation. He may not have a clear explanation at the ready, but those decisions are not made on a whim.

At the same time, we have seen Spock display genuine emotion. For example, in “Amok Time” when he exclaims, “Jim!” upon discovering that he is alive, and again at the very beginning of “The Immunity Syndrome”, whether it is grief, despair, or agony, when he is clearly suffering from the sudden death of 400 Vulcans. He would probably explain the phenomenon as pain, but I do not buy it.

Having been sent to sick bay, Spock is questioned by McCoy as to how he knew the Vulcans had died. As far as he knows, in order for Spock to know what someone or something is thinking, he had to have contact. Instead of answering the question in his usual way, Spock lashes back with what sounds like anger. As a result, it may be the most unclear he has ever been. When McCoy questions him further, he resorts to insults.

There are other occasions in the episode where Spock lets his feelings out, but this is not to nitpick about whether he has or displays them. The idea that emotion equals irrationality and a lack of emotion equals rationality is a dichotomy that has major issues even aside from the fact that it is not a true dichotomy. We know that Spock has emotions. Whether they come from his human side is not really important, but the idea that lacking emotion is somehow more logical is flawed. He is no more or less logical than anyone else on the ship. Rather, he has a clear understanding of what and why, and he carries out his duties with little excitement and characteristic coolness he calls "logic".


Lack of emotion does not equal logic.  Emotion does not mean lack of logic.

It would be unfair to expect anyone to recognize this philosophy of virtue and ethics, but what the show presents is not a lack of emotion, or "logic", but Stoicism. Spock’s resistance to desires and fears and living with the virtues of wisdom, temperance, justice, and courage are classic tenets of Stoicism.

Taking a look at his demeanor, we start to see how Stoicism plays a significant role in the way he approaches the world. Being the chief science officer on the Enterprise, Spock is a truth seeker. He is an observer that accepts what is presented to him in his exploration of the universe. There is no expectation of what the universe should or should not be. He has faced the fear of death on numerous occasions stepping in to save his friends and colleagues. Kirk relentlessly demands to be given answers. Spock responds with the only correct answer in that situation (“insufficient data”) rather than speculation. Spock carries out his duties on the shuttle craft despite a likely fascination and a desire to study this new discovery. We can imagine McCoy acting in self-interest, but it never even crosses Spock’s mind. He has no judgments about the organism that killed the 400 Vulcans. It would be understandable if he had a sudden desire to seek revenge, but instead, he continues to carry out his duties on the ship.

McCoy’s frustrations with Spock are blamed on his logic, but so often it is merely his discipline and self-control that irritates the good doctor. What McCoy understands is that Spock keeps his feelings inside. It is not that he does not have them. He just infrequently acts on them. They both care for each other, but Spock would rather sacrifice himself for the ship. Thankfully McCoy is not having any of it. So “shut up Spock! We’re rescuing you!”

Five Stars

Amoebic Anatomy 101


by Joe Reid

This week on Star Trek we got a bit of an elementary school biology review, as the creature of the week was a humongous protozoa.  What type of protozoa you ask?  Well, there are actually 20 types of protozoa and this was a giant space monster on a weekly sci-fi show.  Although, if I were to guess based on my general knowledge of actual science, this creature best resembled the amoebic variety of protozoa.  I think they even called it an amoeba at some point in the episode.  Let’s talk about how this giant twelve-thousand-mile-long amoeba compares to the amoeba that we learned about when we were children.


A real amoeba, at least, so Trek tells us.

In the interest of keeping this a reasonable comparison and not sounding ridiculous, we are going to completely ignore the following elements.  The size difference.  The ability to make pockets in space without starlight.  The powerful attractive force that draws starships to their doom, and vacuum of outer space, which no protozoa known to modern science could survive.

The amoebas that we might find in our local pond water are single-celled living organisms that have the following structures: a nucleus, containing 13 chromosomes; an outer membrane, to hold in the gelatinous cytoplasm.  In the cytoplasm there are various organelles.  Along with the nucleus, you have a contractile vacuole, which helps in motion and fluid exchange, along with multiple food vacuoles to digest food.  Mitochondria and other organelles also exist inside of amoeba.

The giant nemesis in “The Immunity Syndrome” had a nucleus, but this one had forty chromosomes.  That’s six fewer than what humans have and a fair bit more than our microscopic analog.  There was a cell membrane, but the Spock and Bones called the substance inside protoplasm.  This is technically not completely wrong.  Protoplasm refers to all living matter of a cell–including the cell membrane, cytoplasm, nucleus, and the organelles.  All that said, the crew called the substance protoplasm when they should have called it cytoplasm.  As, respectively, a doctor and a scientist, I expected better from Spock and McCoy.

Also, an amoeba that you look at under a microscope has a method of locomotion that involves creating pseudopodia by extending portions of its membrane to move itself about.  Our space monster didn’t demonstrate this type of motion and it wasn’t mentioned in the episode, so I cannot count that against the accuracy of details.  Outside of the nucleus, membrane, chromosomes and “protoplasm”, no other parts of the amoeba in the episode are called out by name.  Did they exist?  Perhaps.  The crew was focused on finding the most efficient way of killing the dangerous monster before it caused any more harm and before it reproduced.  Which in tiny amoeba can be done in two ways.  A process called cellular fission, where the nucleus splits in two before the amoeba breaks off the rest of its parts and the membrane pinches off creating two daughter cells.  Also, sporulation… but I digress. 

Outside of the cytoplasm/protoplasm substitution, the number of chromosomes, and the space monster powers, the writers of this episode gave a passable representation of the anatomy of an amoeba.  Is it enough to pass your Biology 101 quiz in school the next day?  Heavens no!  You need to hit those books, kiddo!  This was good enough to not pull you out to the moment when watching what overall was a good episode of Trek with great acting, a decent plot, and dramatic tension.  I liked it!  I can even forgive the crew’s strange decision to fly right into a dark blob in space that had already killed another ship.

Four stars

The next episode of Trek is TONIGHT! You won't want to miss it:

Here's the invitation!



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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[December 8, 1967] You're a Big Girl Now (Star Trek: "Friday's Child")

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"Episodus Interruptus"


by Amber Dubin

Every episode of Star Trek is 51 minutes long, with nine minutes left over for ads and bumpers.  And while this week's episode, "Friday's Child", doesn't clock in any shorter than usual, you may finish the hour feeling like you've missed something.  It's a show very much in a hurry, and it cuts a lot of corners to get where it's going.

We open on a bridge crew meeting in which they are discussing the best way to approach mining treaty negotiations with the 7 foot tall, war-like, tribal people of Capella IV. This routine excursion immediately goes off script when Kirk, Spock, McCoy and Officer Grant greet the Capellan representatives. A Klingon accompanies the Capellas. Before anyone can stop him, Officer Grant draws his weapon on the Klingon, forcing a Capellan to neutralize the threat. Grant collapses into Kirk's arms, a weapon buried in his chest. Thus, the first death of the episode occurs before the opening credits can even run.


Trigger-happy Grant, we hardly knew ye.

When the landing party finally gains an audience with the king (Ti-er), it becomes clear that there is unrest in the royal tent over who should be given mining rights between the Federation and the Klingons. The current Ti-er, Aka-ar, seems to side with the Federation, due to their honesty and respect for the Capellan planetary autonomy. On the other hand, Ma-ab, who claims to "speak for many" favors Kras the Klingon, whom he thinks has values that more easily align with his macho, Darwinian survivalist, Capellan traditions. Aka-ar offers to fight it out, but Ma-ab retreats, claiming it should be the choice of the Ti-er.

Meanwhile, in space, a ship claiming to be a Federation freighter lures the Enterprise, Scottie in command, away from the planet. That Scottie does so without alerting the landing party, nor determining why they do not answer his hails, I find suspect…to say the least!


"Let's go, lads. After we answer the phony distress call, maybe we can do some last minute Christmas shopping."

In one of the wildest cuts of the episode, we find ourselves back on the planet, the entire village erupted into civil war. In short order, Ma-ab emerges victorious and claims the throne. The issue at hand soon becomes removing the threat posed by the previous Ti-er's pregnant wife, Eleen. All agree that she must be executed to prevent the birth of her child, except Captain Kirk, who snatches her away from the blade about to plunge into her body. The pregnant widow then declares her right to see Kirk executed, as "no man may lay hands on the wife of the Ti-er." The condemned are taken to a tent, from which they promptly escape, dragging the reluctant widow with them.

The landing party retreats into the mountains, using clever traps and inhospitable terrain to keep the Cappellan pursuers at bay. McCoy exercises his prerogative as a doctor, tending to Eleen's arm and checking on the progress of her pregnancy. The Ti-er's widow takes poorly to this, and a slapping match ensues. Rather than becoming upset, Eleen is impressed with McCoy's cheek, tenderly taking his offending hand in hers. Spock witnesses this part of the exchange. McCoy snatches his hand back, but not before receiving a raised eyebrow from the Vulcan.


To be fair, this is about the only acting Nimoy gets to do this episode.

With this permission to touch her thus established, McCoy is able to help deliver her son, but in trying to get her to want the child she hates, McKCoy inadvertently claims ownership of the child. Logically, she then knocks McCoy unconscious and leaves him with 'their' infant to rejoin the Cappellan pursuer. It turns out this is actually to save their lives; she tells her countrymen that she killed them.

But the Klingon is dubious. He demands to see the bodies of the Earthmen himself. When Ma-ab expresses affront at Kras' doubting the word of a Ti-er's wife, Kras goes berserk, slaughtering his former allies. Ma-ab sees he was wrong to trust this Klingon and relinquishes his right to the throne, staying the widow's execution in exchange. He then offers his life to the Klingon to distract him while Ma-ab's second in command gets in position to finally strike the Klingon down.


"Klingon!  I challenge you to a jumping jacks contest!"

Extremely late to the party, Scottie and a huge troop of security officers emerge from the shadows, revealing that after he determined the distress signal to be a Klingon deception, he bypassed a conflict with a Klingon vessel offscreen and beamed down an entire party–without contacting Kirk first or getting any idea what kind of situation he'd be beaming his troop down into. Bolstered by this show of force, McCoy reveals the newborn Ti-er. He instructs the infant's new mother how to care for her child and the hastily settled coup somehow doesn't cause any hindrance to the mining treaty that is quickly signed off screen. Cue a final laugh line (the child is named Leonard James Aka-ar) and finis.

My biggest problem with this episode is how poorly the pacing of the two storylines blends together. With the intricate culture of the planet and the cat-and-mouse game in space, there's simply too much for just one episode. It's as though "Friday's Child" was planned as two episodes, but allotted just one. The editing required to fit results in two thirds of a story–or perhaps a whole story, but with vital scenes missing almost at random. Hence, we get endless scenes of Scotty and the bridge crew figuring out the Klingon deception, but no depiction of its resolution. What's left remains solely to break up action on the planet's surface.

The storyline on land isn't without inconsistencies either, the first of which lies in the quick acceptance of Grant's death. When Kirk drops his body to the ground, Doctor McCoy makes no move to dislodge the weapon or check his life signs or make any attempt to revive him. Kirk then laments that Grant was "young and inexperienced" in order to distance himself from the fallen officer's behavior. But why bring a young, inexperienced, trigger-happy security officer to a delicate diplomatic situation? It's also never made explicit why the widow hates her child, and her subsequent about face is similarly mysterious. And while I'm glad to see a woman in charge (Eleen is made regent off screen), I find it hard to believe that such an unstable political situation could have been resolved so quickly. But they needed a quick, happy ending.

There's a lot here to like: a second brush with the Klingons, a challenging diplomatic situation, some excellent interactions both on the planet and the Enterprise. Had the episode been fully developed, it could have reached five stars, but whatever was left on the cutting room floor took my full endorsement with it.

Four stars.

The Cultural Aspect


by J.M. North

This episode impressed me in a number of ways, primarily with the writers’ ability to create a deep and unique, primitive culture at the core of a dispute between two galactic superpowers, and secondarily with the Federation and the Kling-on’s dedication to their rivalry with one another. Even after the Enterprise is briefed about the peace accord in place on this planet and the sensitive nature of this delegation, the action begins after a Federation red-shirted mook instinctively goes to shoot at a Kling-on on sight.

The 10 Tribes society that governs the planet Capella, like the Corridians in the episode prior "Journey to Babel", are an adolescent race not yet introduced to advanced technology, much less even to bows and arrows. They are mostly decentralized, but still elect a representative ‘Teer-akar’ that acts as king but who can be lawfully challenged and usurped at any time. Theirs is a culture that values strength and victory alone; we can see evident parallels to the Freemen from Dune in aspects like their native sovereignty, tribal structure, and in their cultural behavior; honor and ordeal by combat.


Tuesday on Capella.

With the speed that civil war breaks out after the sitting Teer-akar is challenged to single combat, one could assume that these tribal wars are not uncommon on Capella. It is difficult to ignore the covetous and self-advantageous nature of the Kling-on and the Federation who, embroiled in their own cause to gain advantage over one another, precipitate this civil war among Capella’s natives and end up killing a large number of them, and in no shy way at the end does the Federation celebrate getting to conveniently install a puppet-Teer-akar who will deal in favor of them for its lifetime after defeating the pro-kling-on Teer Maab in the final fight.

One sequence I most enjoyed was how Julie Newmar’s character Eleen struggled with her own perceptions of reality, culture and duty. She burns her arm early in the episode and spends a long time conflicted over allowing McCoy to treat it. She is immediately and convincingly impressed by modern medicine but evidently still nervous about it. Later when McCoy suggests that he can save her life, despite her constant protesting, she concedes briefly that “It is always preferable to live..”; after she delivers the baby, her dedication to her duty and to tribal society leads her to attack McCoy and abandon the Earthmen she fled with. It appeared to me that her decision to spare them by telling Maab she had already killed them was only convenient for her and not really her original intention when she abandoned her child with McCoy.

Overall, 4 stars–minus one only because of the number of short-cuts in the plot.

A chance to shine


by Gideon Marcus

In a newspaper clipping I was mailed over the summer, DeForest Kelley talked about how pleased he was to have been given an "also starring" credit in the second season credits.  He noted mildly that it was sometimes difficult to stand out when playing opposite such scene stealers as Nimoy and Shatner.  We've seen Dr. McCoy take center stage before: "The Man Trap" was definitely his first season standout.  But it was also the first episode of last season, and since then, while he has certainly had plenty of prominence, he's never been the star of the show.

Well, "Friday's Child" was a 'Bones' episode, through and through.  From his first briefing to the officers of the Enterprise, to his delivery of Eleen's daughter, to his literal upstaging of Kirk when the captain threatens to make a hash (yet again) of diplomacy, McCoy is at the hub of the story.  Kelley's chemistry with Newmar is excellent, particularly the slapping scene and the "the child is mine" scene.  One can really see that the actor is an old pro, effortlessly selling each moment without mugging or scenery chewing.


"Definitely a ten-pin ball in there…"

To his credit, Shatner isn't bad either.  He doesn't inject so much of himself into Kirk this time, though he does keep his hands raised after the security guard dies from a case of trigger-happy-itis for about ten minutes.  He also does that characteristic "sauntering into a monologue" thing at least once.  But at least he's consistent.  He broods over the loss of a crewman; he's a soldier, not a diplomat; and when he chews McCoy out, he later apologizes.

Left on the cutting room floor are all of Nimoy's great moments.  I don't think he even speaks until fifteen minutes in, and then he doesn't get very much (though his silent exchange with McCoy on the hilltop speaks volumes).  We do get a number of scenes involving the B-list on the Enterprise, reminiscent of "Metamorphosis", but with a bit more purpose.  It makes me wonder if we shouldn't just have two shows–one starring Scotty and co., and the other involving the Big Three going on intragalactic adventures.

Anyway, while the show suffers for its skeletal form, it does hang together.  Three and a half stars.

A giant among women


by Lorelei Marcus

If there's anything I love, it's babies. I could watch babies do their funny little baby things all day long, and I certainly want a few of my own someday. I was pleasantly surprised that this week's episode featured a newborn, and while most of the time it was played by a bundle of cloth, every so often we got an adorable shot of its sleeping, slightly frog-like face. I was also pleasantly surprised to see Julie Newmar grace the Star Trek stage as a featured guest this episode. Considering Newmar's previous roles, I think it was a good fit.

I'm a bit of a Julie Newmar fan, which is unusual because I don't much care for her acting. In whatever role she plays, she always has a very flat affect that makes her portrayal of the characters feel a little "off". She also has a subtle accent and often stilted delivery which made me wonder if she might have struggled with a hearing impairment growing up. All of this was actually to her benefit as the humanoid robot in My Living Doll, but it didn't serve her as well in the Monkees, or even Batman. What she is good at, though, is physical comedy. Her background as a trained dancer (and perhaps also her experience as a concert pianist) has given Julie Newmar expert bodily control, which she excels at using to emphasize the humor of a moment.


"Don't get fresh with me, Mac-Koy!"

This is where she truly shone in today's Star Trek episode. Her massive height alone made her the perfect choice for a seven-foot tall alien, and she does a very convincing job of appearing encumbered by the weight of a pregnant stomach. The way she avoided being touched by people was also very funny, between her petulant delivery of lines and her slapping at people's hands or even McCoy's face! In a way, her unusual speech patterns also aided in her appearance as an alien, or at least a humanoid used to a different language. Her intentional butchering of McCoy's name always got a laugh, and her misunderstanding of who her baby belonged to also seemed very plausible.

Overall, I think Newmar did a wonderful job in this episode. Despite her shortcomings as an actress, there's something very endearing about the giant beauty who keeps much of her brilliance just below the surface. Whether it be another guest star role or perhaps her own show, I will definitely be looking out for her name in the TV guides again.

In addition to Newmar, everyone else did a great job of acting in this episode. The premise was fascinating, and the new alien culture very interesting; it would have been a five-star episode if (as Amber notes) the editor hadn't left half of it on the cutting room floor.

Three stars.

The next episode of Trek is tonight!  Plus, a little before-the show treat.

Come join us at 4:30 PM Pacific (7:30 Eastern) or at 6:30 PM Pacific (9:30 Eastern)!



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[November 10, 1967] Mudd in the computer (Star Trek: "I, Mudd")

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"And Thereby Hangs a Tale"


by Amber Dubin

"I, Mudd" follows the tradition set by three other episodes we've seen so far, in which the crew of the Enterprise has to out-logic a robot ("What are little girls made of," "Return of the Archons," "Changeling"). Even though this episode recycles many of the same themes we've seen in those episodes, it offers enough unique elements to make it my favorite of its kind.

We open on a hallway conversation between the ship's doctor and chief science officer where the ever-cynical medico's instincts lead him to correctly identify an interloper on the ship in the form of the newest crewmember, Lieutenant Norman.


"What did he call me?"

Unfortunately, Spock rebuffs Dr. McCoy's theory (logically) because his reasoning points out Norman's inhuman behaviors, many of which overlap with those of Spock himself. McCoy insists that "the ears make all the difference" but the damage is clearly done as the supposedly unemotional Spock abruptly extricates himself from the conversation with an acerbic retort.


"I mean, you're one of the good ones."

McCoy is immediately vindicated when Norman's next move is to hijack the ship. He single handedly dispatches two security teams, all of engineering including Scotty, rigs the controls to blow if the ship deviates from the course he assigns it, and barges straight onto the bridge to explain the now-captive crew's new situation. Norman presents Captain Kirk a "choice" to either go on a four day voyage to an unknown destination or face the immediate destruction of the Enterprise. Ever cool under pressure, Kirk demands to know the nature of his attacker. Norman responds only by peeling back a panel under his shirt to reveal an android abdomen full of wires.


An android's navel–note that these robots don't use integrated circuits…

Further inquiries over who sent him are met with "I am not programmed to respond in that area" before he immediately shuts himself off. So confident is he in his power play (pun intended) that Norman leaves his unconscious body standing in the middle of the doorway to the bridge. Apparently no one disturbs him for four days as the crew seems startled from their normal activities when Norman abruptly awakes and makes further demands. He acts as if he's giving the crew another choice as he requests a set of personnel to accompany him on the planet they're now orbiting, but again refusal means certain death. At least he said “please” this time.

It soon becomes clear why Norman was reluctant to reveal who sent him, because we next open up to a throne room centered around none other than the illustrious Harcourt Fenton Mudd. Undeterred by Mudd's declaration of newfound sovereignty, Kirk charges at him and commences a delightful volley of banter where Mudd catches the crew up on what he's been up to since they last left him in custody for his transgressions. Surprising no one, Harry's made a mess of every situation he's been involved in and has found himself marooned on this planet of 200,000 androids while fleeing the consequences of his actions. Through much childish bickering on Harry's part, Kirk manages to wrench the truth out of the scoundrel, soon discovering that Mudd is just as much a prisoner of the androids as the Enterprise crew is.


"They won't let me go!"

A strange detail comes into play when the crew is being led away and stumbles upon the shrine to Stella, Mudd's wife. It seems odd that Harry would be so sentimental as to make an exact replica of the nagging shrew he gratefully abandoned galaxies away. It must follow that either the loneliness of being the only human on an android planet compelled Mudd to seek security in the familiar or he is such an adversarial man that the ability to make a version of a nemesis he could program with an off button proved to be an irresistible temptation. The most ironic element of that situation is that Stella may be shrill and harping but with a husband like Harcourt, the audience can't help but be squarely on her side.

Unsurprisingly, the androids reject Mudd the second they have any other humans to compare him to, and devote themselves to providing everything the crew wants so they can better serve humanity. They explain that serving humans gives the androids renewed purpose and protects humans by taking care of their every need to save them from themselves. Elements of the gilded cage they're presented with tempt each of the crew members in turn, but whenever a wish contradicts the terms of their captivity, the crew begins to notice that the androids balk at the paradox by freezing in place, their ID necklaces flashing until the conflict is resolved. It is subsequently discovered that the androids are part of a partial hive-mind directed by Norman and that they defer to him to avoid overloading individual units when logical computation is stalled. Thus ensues a campaign to confuse and overload as many androids by whatever means possible. Fake music, subterfuge, logical fallacies, play acting and flat-out lies become weaponized against the unsuspecting computers; each crewman performs their ridiculous acts admirably, especially Spock, who befuddles several androids all by himself.


"Sorry, ladies.  I'm just too good for you."

The episode reaches a delightful climax as the crew's play-acting for Norman finally causes literal steam to billow out of his ears and he admits humans are too complex to be managed by anyone but other humans. In the even more satisfying conclusion, after reaching a peaceful solution to coexist with the androids, Mudd's punishment is revealed to be exile on the android planet so they can help him rehabilitate his nefarious ways. Mudd initially rejoices in this reward of a punishment, until the crew unveils his personal attendants: 500 copies of Stella, this time without her off switch.

Not one line of the script is superfluous and every crewman is at their most efficient and capable as they execute every plan flawlessly. The script, plot, performances and design of this episode click together as seamlessly as the gears powering a well-constructed android.

I am a self-confessed, dyed-in-the-wool robot-a-phile. It is thus inevitable that I give this episode…

5 stars

The Shrew in the Ointment


by Janice L. Newman

I’ll admit, the preview for this episode had me worried. “Mudd’s Women” had some good elements, but was overall one of the weaker episodes of the first season. Happily, this episode was much better than that first one starring Mudd. There was just one problem that took it down a star for me – a fly in the ointment, if you will.

It was an old, old, joke even when Shakespeare did it: the harridan wife and her ne’er-do-well husband. Despite the fact that the audience knows that Harry Mudd’s perspective is unreliable, and thus his version of his wife may not represent the real woman, upon seeing the cartoonishly-awful “Stella” android we can’t help but be repelled and thus sympathize with the charismatic Mudd. Yet a moment’s thought makes one realize how nonsensical it is in the context of Star Trek. This is the future. Is it really so hard to get a divorce if one is unhappy with one’s spouse? If two people are so miserable together, is it truly necessary for one of them to flee into outer space? And sure, another moment’s thought is all it takes to realize that Mudd likely married his wife to gain some kind of monetary benefit, and that if we were in her place, we might be shrill, too. Still, Stella isn’t particularly funny, and for me, even Mudd’s comeuppance was poisoned by her sour, nagging presence.


If Harry Mudd put you in a closet, you'd make this face, too.

The rest of the episode is great, though; one of the best “break the computer” ones we’ve seen. Four stars.

A little bit of Vaudeville


by Gideon Marcus

Something I love about the stellar anthology show, Star Trek, is how versatile it is.  One week, we're getting political commentary, with ramifications right from the headlines of today (e.g. "A Taste of Armageddon"), another we're getting a Halloween-themed piece ("Catspaw").  An episode might be a rendition of a classic war movie ("Balance of Terror") or a retelling of Hamlet ("Conscience of the King").

"I, Mudd" takes place almost entirely on a spartan subterranean set, and largely features entertaining characters conversing with each other.  It's like an extended Hollywood Palace sketch.  It really shouldn't work, but it does.

From Kirk's masterful exchanges with Mudd (with Kirk displaying just the right mix of exasperation, anger, and amusement) to Chekov's lively Cossack dances, to the halting…yet endearing…cadence of…the androids, to Uhura's silky mock betrayal (she really is getting a chance to shine this season!), to the grand finale filled with pantomimed absurdity–it's a stage-bound pageant of comedy.  Interestingly, the avante garde Marc Daniels was tapped to direct rather than the more stagey Joe Pevney.  You see his surrealistic influences particularly during the dance scenes.


No caption required.

That the story is actually pretty good is a bonus.  If the show doesn't quite reach five star status for me, it's because while I enjoyed the show thoroughly, it was a bit too frivolous to feel like "real" Star Trek–essentially the same complaint I had about "Catspaw", but with an execution that makes me all but forgive the lapse.

Four stars.

Tonight's episode seems like it will be more of a serious affair.  At least we'll find out what happened to Glenn Corbett after he left Route 66…

Here's the invitation! Come join us.

Also, copies of The Tricorder are still available — drop us a line for details!




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[November 2, 1967] Trouble and Toil (Star Trek: Catspaw)

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Such stuff as dreams are made of


by Joe Reid

For the first several episodes, this second season of Star Trek was solidly impressive.  We got to attend a Vulcan wedding.  We saw a mythological deity from human antiquity in a sci-fi setting.  We saw a transistorized deity faced and defeated.  Then a dark alternate universe, followed by a giant cornucopia of doom!  I regret that I must mention the episode with the red colored rock lizard worshippers, since that was undoubtedly the low point of this season.  Sadly, this week’s episode, titled “Catspaw” comes very close to hitting the low that “The Apple” achieved.

Dear readers, in my opinion, futuristic sci-fi shows should avoid doing holiday themed episodes.  I have no desire to watch sci-fi episodes about Christmas or Thanksgiving.  Nor Easter, the 4th of July, Passover, Saint Patrick’s Day, or Columbus Day.  So, watching what clearly stood out as "made for Halloween" was disappointing.  Especially since I do not feel that the episode was served by the inclusion of said theme.

We started this seventh episode of the second season on the bridge of the Enterprise as our heroes awaited a report from the landing party composed of Scotty, Sulu, and a Crewman Jackson.  A message came in from Jackson, with no word about the others.  As Jackson beamed up to the ship, he arrived on the transport circle dead on arrival.  Then from the non-moving mouth of the dead man came a ghostly warning to leave the planets and that the Enterprise was cursed.


"There is a curse on you!  Also, you've left the oven on"!

Determined to find out the fates of Scotty and Sulu, Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, and Dr. McCoy beam down to the planet to find their people.  Arriving on the surface they find that it was a dark and foggy night.  What comes next, I was not expecting: As the trio begin their search, they are confronted by three ugly witch apparitions, and wouldn’t you know it they have a poem to share.  “Winds shall rise, and fog descend, so leave here all, or meet your end.” Poetry so bad that it even garners a negative review from Spock.


"Hail Captain Kirk, Thane of Cawdor!"

If that isn’t a blatant enough holiday reference, Kirk and the others soon find themselves at a dark and eerie castle.  Upon entering they are startled by a black cat which leads Kirk to make the first explicit Halloween reference of the night about trick or treat.  They follow the cat hoping to see where it would lead them only to be knocked unconscious as the floor collapsed below their feet.


"There's my litter box!"

They awaken to find themselves chained to the walls of a dungeon next to a skeleton that looks exactly like what it is: a Halloween decoration, or maybe a model skeleton from my kid’s science classroom.  As the doors to their cell open, we get our first looks at Scotty and Sulu as they enter the dungeon.  Both are under some sort of magic spell and can’t speak but make it clear that they will take Kirk and the others to the people in charge.


I hope they weren't paid by the line for this one…

They meet two aliens that have taken the forms of a wand-sporting wizard named Korob, and the beautiful witch, Sylvia.  Kirk, Spock, and McCoy find themselves at the mercy of powers that could endanger the Enterprise in orbit, conjure items out of thin air, and mind control their crewmembers.


Korob and Sylvia–a tale of two coiffures

It is here that the spooky themes began to subside as the magicians reveal themselves as truly alien, with little understanding of humans or even having physical bodies.  They need humans and our minds to allow them more of the new experiences that they had created.  An interesting premise, but since this is Halloween, it is drowned in hocus pocus.

In the end, Kirk is able to learn about and destroy the magic wand…er…transmuter, the item that allowed their powers to work.  The defeated aliens returned to their original forms and promptly die.  The conclusion of the episode comes fast with virtually no transition, save for a brief explanation from Kirk to his newly liberated crew.


"The missing pages of the script are right there."

Outside of the unnecessary holiday theme, this episode managed to stay true to the elements of what makes Star Trek good.  The characters' behaviors were consistent with what we have come to expect.  Kirk was smart and brave.  Spock was insightful, and others, so long as they were not mind controlled, behaved as they should.  Also the aliens had actual, explained reasons for their actions. All this combined made this episode passable and not the absolute debacle that “The Apple” was.

3 stars.

A fool thinks himself to be wise


by Janice L. Newman

It wasn’t a surprise to learn that the same author who wrote "What Are Little Girls Made Of?", one of the worst episodes of the first season, also wrote "Catspaw". Robert Bloch is famous for his horror writing, particularly the movie Psycho. But his horror fantasy scripts simply do not translate well to the grounded science fiction of Star Trek.

"Catspaw" was a frustrating experience. Not just because it didn’t feel at all like a Star Trek episode (and naysayers in the fanzines will no doubt comment, as they did with "Miri" in the first season, that they happened to catch this episode and weren’t impressed), but also because it had the potential to be an interesting episode but simply couldn’t make it work.

Firstly, the idea that the ‘collective unconscious fears’ of our species would be reflected in a gothic castle, Shakespearian witches, and black cats, is simply ridiculous. If there is some kind of collective unconscious for humanity, the reflection of it must necessarily be both much more chaotic and universal to the human experience. This flaw could have been overcome either by saying that the aliens drew their ideas of us from our popular culture, or perhaps that they drew on one particular crewmember’s unconscious fears. Alternatively, rather than using the traditional gothic symbolism, the show could have tried something more innovative, imagining what might frighten any human anywhere throughout all of history.

Another flaw was the pacing. The scene of Sulu unlocking everyone’s chains took far too long, for example, while the final scene felt rushed. The scenes on the bridge were dull, especially with the wooden DeSalle in charge.


"I am acting!"

A particularly annoying problem with the episode was that it set up situations to be resolved and then didn’t follow through. The most egregious example of this occurs when the bridge crew finally manage to ‘dent’ the forcefield around them—only to have the forcefield lifted by one of the aliens before they can escape it on their own. While I would have been mildly irritated at the similarity to "Who Mourns for Adonais?" if the crew had cleverly managed to escape, I was far more irritated that the crew was set up to escape and then not given the opportunity to do. What was the point of those scenes on the bridge, then?

The ‘horrific’ aspects to the story often came across as comedic instead. Perhaps the ugly witches might scare a young child watching the show, but the room full of adults I was watching with chuckled at their appearance and their sung proclamations. One of the saddest pieces of wasted potential was the aliens’ true appearance. They looked like little birds made of pipe cleaners, and when they came on the screen they got the loudest laugh of the evening. A scene which could have and should have been poignant or grotesque was again turned comedic by poor writing, pacing, and framing.

I’m torn as to what rating to give this episode. On one hand, it didn’t even feel like an episode of Star Trek. On the other, there were some interesting elements, and it wasn’t confusing like "The Alternative Factor" or dully exasperating like "The Apple". Plus, there was a cat. Still, when all is said and done, the wince-inducing scenes between Kirk and the Sorceress canceled out what good there could have been. I can’t give it more than one star.

Signifying Nothing


by Amber Dubin

It's ironic that this episode is called "catspaw" because the plot is about as cohesive as a heavily pawed ball of yarn; a tangle of threads that don't hold together or go anywhere.

The acting quality of the episode peaks early with the deeply convincing collapse of ensign Jackson off the transporter pad. Yet the fact that he is the only non-essential crewman sent down to this clearly hostile planet makes less than no sense. Continuing the madness, after Jackson's corpse is used to deliver a message of warning that's immediately ignored, Kirk, Spock and McCoy are subjected to another gratuitous display from disembodied witch heads spouting Shakespearian-esque poetry. You would think this theme of theater-obsessed eccentric illusion-projectors would continue, but you would be wrong, as the only further theatrical implications come in the form of the heavily made up and costumed Korob, whose appearance is given no explanation.


Though you must admit: the camera loves him!

In further defiance of explanation, the crew wakes up chained to the walls of a dungeon after the floor of the castle they enter haphazardly collapses beneath them. Next ensues an absolutely mystifying scene where a zombified Sulu painstakingly unlocks their restraints cuff by cuff. This gesture is immediately made unnecessary when they are teleported into a throne room with Korob, one of their captors. As we've seen in "Squire of Gothos" or "Who Mourns for Adonais?" Korob reveals himself to be overpowered alien attempting to understand the nature of man. He doesn't get too far in his speech, however, before he is upstaged by the real star of the play, the necklace-wearing black cat that transforms into Sylvia, a beautiful woman.

I was hoping Sylvia's introduction would lead to a McCoy-centered episode, as Bones seems to be unable to take his eyes off her.. necklace.. from the moment she enters. That theory is immediately banished as they are all teleported back to the dungeon and McCoy re-enters as a zombie (a role to which he is well-suited). The task of seducing the femme-fatale then predictably falls on Kirk, who delivers his clunkiest and least believable performance in the series so far as he outright fails in his attempt to make her feel too pretty to harm them any longer.

Despite this entirely nonsensical plot, somehow the biggest disappointment of the episode is yet to come as the aliens descend into madness. Korob is killed by a giant door, which is as easily avoidable as it is imaginary, making it therefore harmless to a being capable of casting such illusions. Even more absurdly, these magical beings, who are said to be powerful conjurors with no abilities of sensory perception, are suddenly revealed to resemble tiny, delicate bundles of exposed nerves.


Jim Henson presents: rejected muppets!

The episode abruptly ends, nothing is resolved, no one understands anything better and I'm baffled by the fact that a simple framing device of a crewman explaining Halloween to Spock at the beginning of the episode could have cleared up where these aliens got material for all the imagery in the episode. Instead, we spent more time watching Sulu unlock imaginary restraints than we do deciphering the nature or motivations of crusty blue pipe-cleaner puppet-gods.

Ridiculous. Two stars.


by Gideon Marcus

The Play's the Thing

I must confess–I did not hate this episode.  Not because it was good; heavens no!  It wasn't even Star Trek.  Just our favorite characters having a Halloween lark.  In fact, in my mind, I've completely disregarded it as a Star Trek episode.  Just as Spock and Uhura sometimes jam together in the lounge (why haven't we seen that this season?), and just as Kirk insists that real turkey be served on Thanksgiving, I've concluded that it is an Enterprise tradition that Halloween is celebrated with a big todo.

I can see Sylvia actually being Lt. McGivers' replacement, and with a minor in theatrics.  Once aboard the Enterprise, she began penning her magnum opus: a play involving all of the senior officers of the ship.  Suddenly, all the nonsensical bits make sense.  The beaming down of Scotty and Sulu as a landing party, the spooky settings and effects, the endless kissing scenes ("Oh, but Captain, these are vital to the plot!  Really, it won't breach protocol at all…")


"Did I hear a door slam?  Darn.  We'll have to do the whole take over!"

Taken as such, suddenly the episode is palatable.  It does move pretty well. Theo Marcuse is always a delight (and a genuine war hero, and he has a great last name; he's probably my cousin).  The score was nifty, particularly in the fight scene.  Less so in the five minute bit when Sulu unlocked Kirk's fetters.

And there was abundant display of a cat.  That, alone, is worth a star.

So, again, "Catspaw" isn't a good episode.  But I would watch it in reruns three times before I suffered through "The Apple" again…

Two stars.

Something Wicked this way Comes


by Jessica Dickinson Goodman

I rather enjoyed this episode. As Amber said, it wasn't good. But it was fun. Maybe it's because I enjoy camp. I liked Theo Marcuse's silks and jewels and perfectly shaved eyebrows. I liked the kitschy sets – perhaps borrowed from a recent vampire flick? – and as other writers have noted, the cat was a special treat.

I was less impressed by how many of the so-called ‘collective unconscious fears' involved woman-hating. Crones and seductresses, liars and cheats, the non-crewwomen in this episode were like something from Jesse Helms' fever dreams, no collective I'm a part of.

Janice's proposition that the episode would have been better if it had featured truly universal fears sparks my imagination far more than anything in the episode itself. What truly scares everyone? In a world with apocalypse-worshiping churchgoers, can we say everyone is afraid of death? I would say that many, many of us are afraid of a nuclear attack from our friends across the Bering Strait, but people living outside of the blast zones could be reasonably excused from the universality of that fear.

Stepping away from the philosophical mindtwister Janice gives us and back to this rather silly episode, I am looking forward to seeing this one in reruns. There's just something so fun about our heroes getting tied up – several times – like maidens in a gothic novel.


I think the Captain is starting to enjoy it…

Watching Captain Kirk once again try to kiss his way out of trouble was made all the more fun when his captor/target caught him at his game and refused to play anymore. Despite Sylvia's embodiment of a mushy handful of cruel gender stereotypes, I found myself enjoying her time on screen more than almost anyone aside from the core cast. Cheers to Antoinette Bower for taking a two-dimensional role and turning it into something fun and memorable.

There were many, many, many ways this episode could have been improved. I would be disappointed if next week's episode shared in the same nasty stereotypes of women. I fear it will, as it centers on one of my least favorite characters in this series, Mr. Mudd.

Perhaps Sylvia will make a guest appearance and turn him into a toad before he hurts more women.

Three stars.

I don't know how likely it is that Mudd will get his comeuppance, but we can certainly hope!

The episode airs tomorrow night.  Here's the invitation! Come join us.

Also, copies of The Tricorder are still available — drop us a line for details!




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[October 26, 1967] Duet in G(ray) (Star Trek: "The Doomsday Machine")

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by Gideon Marcus

Remember, thou are but a mortal

For the past year and a half, we've thrilled to the sight of the Enterprise, a graceful vessel that calls to mind the spindly beauty of tall ships and the blunt power of a battleship.  We've seen her proudly sailing the ether, shaken about by time streams, canted oddly after an attack.

But until last week's episode, we never saw one of her class utterly wrecked.

In the opening scenes of "The Doomsday Machine", when the Enterprise comes across the wrecked Constellation, accompanied by a most effective dirge, it is a gut punch.  The misaligned warp pods.  The charred saucer.  It calls to mind visions of Pearl Harbor, of kamikaze-ravaged ships.  A starship is mortal, we realize.

So, too, is its captain.  The sight of Commodore Decker, mute with shock when Kirk first beams aboard the Constellation, is all too believable.  This is a man we can believe has been stunned out of his mind first by the wreck of his ship by an enormous, extragalactic planet-wrecker, and then by the destruction of his helpless crew by the same implacable menace.  That he alone should be the sole survivor of this disaster is all the more painful–to him, and to us.

If we sympathize with poor Decker, ably played by the ubiquitous character actor William Windom, we can feel little but revulsion for the planet killer, a cross between Saberhagen's berzerkers and Marvel's Galactus.  Plated with impenetrable armor and self-regenerating, the juggernaut has the power of Nomad, but with none of the human-induced fallibility.  It is simply a mindless killing machine.

In the battle that ensues, we root for the crippled Constellation, helmed by Captain Kirk and held together by Scotty, Washburn, and two unnamed crewmen.  We root for the Enterprise, crippled by the presence of a maniacally driven Matt Decker, who assumes command over vociferous and constant objections by Mr. Spock.  If the three-cornered fight is occasionally hindered by inconsistent special effects, it is immeasurably helped by fine acting and an incomparable, Emmy-deserving score.

The drama that takes place on the bridge of the Enterprise is no less compelling, drawing strongly from The Caine Mutiny, complete with Decker fondling tape cartridges like Queeg's ball-bearings.  And unlike in that tremendous book (and less successful movie), Spock has no stomach for mutiny. Deliverance of the Enterprise must wait until Kirk can reestablish command.

"The Doomsday Machine" sees the death of Commodore Decker and the near death of Captain Kirk, both vital to the destruction of the planet killer.  Decker's suicide run with a shuttlecraft establishes the enemy's weakness; Kirk's determination to ram the Constellation inside the machine proves the strongest weapon against it.  But it is really the loss of the Constellation, sacrificed to immolate the destroyer from inside, that impacts the most.  One of the Enterprise's 12 sisters is dead.  Its skipper and complement of 400 will have no thrilling adventures, no end-of-the-episode laugh line.  And if one starship can die, any of them can.

While credit must be given both to the regular cast and this episode’s guest star, and I have already praised the music, there are yet laurels to pass out.  Marc Daniels has consistently impressed with his tight and creative direction, especially in contrast to the competent but rather staid work of the fellow he seems to alternate episodes with, Joe Pevney.  Whomever edited this episode also did a terrific job, often cutting seamlessly between two dialogues to ratchet up the pace.  And, of course, writer Norm Spinrad is no stranger to good science fiction, having been writing it since 1962.  It is probably him we can thank for the "hardness" and plausibility of this episode.

There are a few quibbles, a few scientific gaffes, and my comrades may discuss them.  But for my money, this was perhaps science fiction's finest hour on television.

Five stars.

Call him Ishmael


by Amber Dubin

The tale this episode follows is a well-worn one in sea-faring lore, but I was nevertheless pleasantly surprised to see Star Trek take on the classic story of Moby Dick. Commodore Decker is cast as Ahab, a shipwreck of a captain on a wrecked ship maddened by the obsession with the entity that took everything from him. His illogical pursuit of his white whale is just as turbulent as the protagonist of the famous novel, but what sets this retelling apart from the rest is the gracefulness with which the crew of the Enterprise strike a delicate balance between adherence to duty and survival.

This is on full display in the way Spock does his best to ignore the commodore's obvious madness in order to follow the rules of his station. I found myself shouting, "just nerve pinch him!" as I was forced to watch Decker spit on every opportunity Spock offered him to choose a logical path. Kirk, on the other hand, ever the space cowboy, immediately undermines all the subtlety of the crew's struggles by exclaiming "blast the rules" and outright calling the commodore a ship-stealing tyrant. I found this to be a refreshing deviation to the plot, because Kirk was very much speaking my mind and I was grateful to see the crew rally behind him in exhausted, fearful relief.


A happier crew

While I wasn't thrilled about the spacial reasoning behind the climactic battles, it's incontestable that the score and cinematography in this episode were phenomenal. The last scene, when the transporter kept malfunctioning up until the last seconds before the explosion, had me literally biting my nails with suspense. Likewise, the pulsating droning of the music that started when the crew boarded the shipwrecked vessel left me authentically unsettled and made me wonder what horrors they would stumble upon. This thematic wariness provided the perfect backdrop to introduce the commodore, as he was essentially a discarded shell of himself, a dead man cursed to haunt the abandoned halls of his once mighty and powerful ship.

The place where this episode lost points for me was the forced simile Kirk kept pushing about the killer robot being a doomsday device like an H-bomb. It felt like a ham-fisted attempt to force relevance to our times, which I found unnecessary when a story of a powerful man driven mad by failure was timeless in itself. Moreover, stating that this robot must have been used as doomsday device is a view as limited as the potential usages the H-bomb, or the power behind it. True, the mahine has the destructive power of a powerful bomb but the robot could just as easily have been once used to convert inert material into energy to feed a planet, not destroy it. I'm most disappointed that there's a gaping hole in Kirk's logic over the origin of this device and Spock isn't even tempted to close it. Possibly Spock doesn't challenge his captain's theory because he has been burnt out from challenging illogical authority figures all day, but I have to stretch to make this explanation fit.

Four Stars

There but for the grace of God…


by Janice L. Newman

The Traveler nicely summed up how painful it was to see a sister-ship of the Enterprise fatally wounded. But what held my attention was Commander Decker’s plight and performance. Though some of my companions gently mocked his scenery-chewing tendencies, I found his first appearance and his explanation of what had happened to his ship to be compelling. This was a man at the end of his rope, who had endured the greatest loss any starship captain could imagine: the loss of his ship and crew.

If Captain Kirk should ever live through such a nightmare, I firmly believe he would behave in much the same way. Starfleet must choose captains who have a certain, shall we say, obsessive streak when it comes to their ships and crews. We’ve seen Kirk become aggressive and irrational when his ship is threatened. We’ve also seen him brought back from mind-altered states more than once when giving in would have meant the loss of his ship. For Kirk, the Enterprise and its complement mean everything to him. It’s all too easy to picture him in Decker’s place, a broken, desperate, suicidal, and vengeful man.


Would Kirk face the death of his own ship so calmly?

Four stars.

By the way, we're just burning to see what happens in the next episode of Star Trek, coming out tomorrow night!

Here's the invitation! Come join us.

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[October 12, 1967] See you on the flip side (Star Trek: "Mirror, Mirror")

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by Joe Reid

A Shadowy Reflection

As this most intriguing and excellent season of Star Trek continues on we find ourselves delighted week after week with more thoughtful and fantastical stories.  This week takes the cake!  I have stated repeatedly that Star Trek is a mirror to society here on Earth, today in 1967.  This episode took that mirror and held it up to its own world and its characters.  Appropriately, the writers called it “Mirror, Mirror”.  Let’s take a gander at it and see what’s on the other side.

The episode opens on an alien world as a storm rages.  Captain Kirk is in discussion with the very human looking Halkan Council to allow the Federation to mine dilithium on their planet. Uhura, Dr. McCoy, and Scotty are with him as part of the landing party.  With negotiations stalled, as the Halkans don’t wish to see their dilithium used by those who may cause harm to even a single person, Kirk decides to return to the ship due to the coming ion storm.


"Do not try to adjust your communicator. We control the horizontal and the vertical." (Vic Perrin, head Halkan, is the narrator for The Outer Limits)

As the four of them are transported to the ship, something goes wrong and instead of appearing on the USS Enterprise they find themselves wearing different clothing as they appear on a different Enterprise.  They are immediately confronted with Spock sporting a goatee who then calls for the eradication of the Halkans for not giving their dilithium to the "Empire" and who is quick to painfully punish Transporter Chief Kyle for an issue with the transporters.


Performance reviews are brutal on this Enterprise

Kirk soon figures out that the four of them are in a parallel universe.  Finding themselves isolated among violent familiar looking strangers, the quartet seek to find a way to save the Halkans from destruction and get themselves back home.  As they attempt to masquerade as "themselves" on the brutal ISS Enterprise while trying to carry out their secret mission, Urura is forced to resist the advances of a savage and craven Sulu, while Kirk barely survives an assassination attempt by an ambitious and bloodthirsty Chekov.


"You die, Captain, and I get to sing Mickey's songs."

Soon thanks to the male voiced, magically capable ship's computer, Kirk and McCoy confirm how they ended up on the opposite side of this dark looking-glass and learn of a way to return to their universe.  As amazing as that was, we soon meet the other Captain Kirk's mistress and confidant, Marlena, waiting for him in his quarters, who shows our Kirk the powerful assassination weapon that he has at his disposal to wipe out all of his enemies.  Marlena threatened to use it on Spock after he made clear to Kirk that he was under orders to kill him if he failed to purge the Halkans for refusing to allow the Empire rights to the dilithium.


The new Admiral TV not only has the brightest color, but it eliminates unwanted personnel!

The action and excitement then gets fast and intense as our crew carry out their plan to get home.  Uhura gets into another struggle with the wicked Sulu and has to strike and almost shank him to save herself.  Goatee Spock realizes things aren't right and captures our righteous four crewmembers for answers.  This leads to another fight against the powerful Vulcan.  Just as they found a way around Spock, the devious Sulu returns to kill everyone and murder his way to command of the ship.  After an amazing save by Marlena using the weapon she told our Kirk about, she approaches the captain, explaining that she had learned everything about them and wanted to return to their world with them.

In the end it is the unerringly logical Spock of the violent universe helps our people return to their world as Kirk made a passionate, Nomad-level logical plea for him to rescue the people of this dark universe.


"And we have better donuts."

Our crew finally made it home and things were back to normal.  The final scene has all four members of the landing party stricken with surprise as they meet the normal universe’s version of Marlena for the first time.

The range that we saw in some of the actors was chameleon-like. In particular, Sulu was a completely different person with a different deck of facial expressions than we are used to.  Truly unlikeable. 


"Peel your apple?"

From concept to story to acting, this was the best night of television that I have seen in a dog’s age.

Five stars.

The Enemy Without


by Janice L. Newman

This week’s episode of Star Trek was about a good Kirk and an evil Kirk. Sound familiar? If you watched The Enemy Within, this episode might sound like it’s just the same idea revisited. Don’t be fooled! It’s not.

The premise of the episode, that there is a “parallel” universe similar to our own but where history took a different course, leading to a totalitarian empire instead of Starfleet and the federation of planets, is an intriguing one. The people in that universe are shaped by their environment: they are vicious, self-serving, traitorous, and sadistic. And yet, there are exceptions. Spock is still Spock, even when he is enforcing the empire’s orders. He describes McCoy as ‘soft’ and ‘sentimental’ (if McCoy is as dedicated to being a healer in this harsher world, it’s no wonder that Spock would think so).


A kinder McCoy?

The Enemy Within was a story of ‘man versus himself’, exploring what makes us human from the inside. Mirror, Mirror asks the opposite question: “How much does our environment make us who we are?” It’s an intriguing thought: who we might be if born under different circumstances. What kind of an environment creates a Hitler? Are we but one universe over from a world where someone – maybe you – pressed the button to start World War 3?

If there is anything this well-paced, well-acted episode lacked, it was screentime for the landing party’s counterparts. Unfortunately, the story simply couldn’t fit a focus on them in the hour-long runtime. I did appreciate that ‘our’ crew immediately realized that there was something wrong and locked up the alternates.

If you missed this week’s episode, I highly recommend catching the re-run next summer if you can. As much as I liked The Enemy Within, this episode is even better.

Five stars.

The middle road


by Lorelei Marcus

Star Trek gives us a future that is aspirational, and perhaps brighter than our own. The Starfleet Federation borders on utopian, with scarcity of resources becoming almost nonexistent, and the main military body existing solely for goodwill and scientific exploration. It is refreshing to see a future where people of all colors and sexes (and even nonhumans) can work and be treated equally, particularly on the decks of the Enterprise.

In today's episode, we were presented with an alternative universe completely opposite to the Star Trek we are used to. Rather than a utopia, the world order resembled a totalitarian dictatorship with security police and brutal forms of punishment. It was a shock, to say the least, to see all of our favorite characters in this new environment and how they and their hierarchies changed. The lack of women on the mirror ship particularly stood out to me, and those that were left were no longer equal with the men – forced to prostitute themselves to gain any power and security.


How to win friends and influence captains.

The parallel universe possibility intrigued me. Star Trek's main universe and this mirror universe are two ends of the spectrum. Could there be more parallel universes? And what would one that falls right in the middle of that spectrum look like? How closely would it represent our modern world? I can imagine a ship where there is still some distinction based on race and sex, if only systemically. The Enterprise would probably be sent on missions to settle the protests of disquieted colonies, or to do tactical phaser strikes on rogue planets that have sided with the Romulans. I see a universe with more poverty and more discontent with the Federation. Maybe Kirk would have an episode where he falls in love with a poor colonist girl, but she is an anti-Federationalist, and ultimately he must reject his personal life to reaffirm loyalty to his cause.

This thought experiment only makes me appreciate the world of Star Trek even more. Roddenberry really has done a spectacular job of building an independent universe that is not just a gussied up copy of our own. When I am watching, it is never hard to believe that what is on my television screen is truly the future. (Except for sometimes when they show Chekhov's hair).

The episode as a whole was fantastically done with an interesting premise and phenomenal acting.

Five stars.

"A Well Oiled Trap"


by Amber Dubin

Although this episode was most likely meant to repel the viewer with horror at the savagery exhibited by the mirror universe, the entire episode was so charged with the kind of raw, animalistic energy that it had the exact opposite effect on me.

From the very beginning of the episode, it becomes clear that the unrelenting barbarism of the mirror universe necessitates the exposure of the Starfleet's most exceptional qualities; both literally, with the flashy and extremely flattering improvements to the crewmen's uniforms, and figuratively, in the way all of them rise to the challenges they are faced with. This is displayed most dramatically by Uhura, who, bolstered by Kirk's faith in her, manages to overcome her initial fears and slips on the camouflage of a violent seductress as easily as putting on a second skin. Similarly, on the other ship, Spock's notorious intuition proves itself almost comically effective when he immediately recognizes the landing party as dangerous imposters and goes straight to work trying to get his real Captain back.


A most entertained Spock.

An even more intriguing theme in this episode is that as savage and chaotic as the behavior of the crew in this alternate universe is, their selfishness and barbarity only served to make them more human. Mirror Chekov and Sulu's actions are self-serving and violent, but their motivations are neither unreasonable nor excessively malicious in the context of their environment. If anything it could be argued that, stripped of the need to adhere to formalities, the way they behave is more honest and truer to their desires than their more 'civilized' counterparts. As our Spock says, the mirror crew were "In every way, splendid examples of homo sapiens. The very flower of humanity." This is shown best by the introduction of Marlena, a woman whose intelligence and impressive powers of intuition and seduction have allowed her to not only survive but to wind her way around the heart of a violent and psychopathic Captain Kirk. She even proves that she has not lost her moral center by saving Kirk's life even after he has revealed himself to be an imposter and wounded her ego by not succumbing to her wiles after she "oils [her] traps" for him. The alternate version of Spock shows this same level of integrity when he chooses to help the landing party return to their universe, despite the fact that this version of Kirk would logically be much easier to usurp and control than his stubborn, unreasonable, greedy and angry counterpart. The actions of these two mirror crewman suggest that this universe is not in fact evil, but may just be stripped bare of inhibitions that cause the crew we know to control or polish their true selves.

With the smooth delivery from its cast, brilliant script and mind-teasing metaphors, this episode acted upon me as a siren song that by the end had me echoing Marlena's plea to "take me with you."


Sexy Spock with a beard didn't hurt either…

This episode deserves all the stars in the universe, but since the rating system limits me to five, I give it all of them.

Women's Liberation


by Erica Frank

Uhura found herself in a universe where women’s uniforms are made with a fraction of the fabric used in men’s, where they have to endure sexual advances at work, where some women get ahead by sleeping with the boss, and nobody dares object.

So…. not too different from our world, hmm?

After the initial shock of realizing her officer's uniform was smaller than some swimsuits back home and that Sulu’s spark of interest in her own world (“I’ll save you, fair maiden!”) was an obsession here, Uhura quickly adjusted her expectations and behaviors.

She didn’t cringe from the lustful gazes that followed her everywhere. She didn’t frantically check her wardrobe, trying to find something, anything that covered more skin and was still considered a Starfleet Empire uniform. She didn't demand one of the other men escort her and protect her.

She got herself a knife.


Chief Security Officer Sulu discovers that some women prefer to manage their own security.

She knew exactly how to cope with a workplace where men are allowed to demand sexual favors… and where women are allowed to set whatever terms they’d like, as long as they back them up with force.

As much as Uhura wanted to go home — back to a world where women have status based on their skills in the workplace and not between the sheets, where promotions are assigned by talent and not assassination, where Starfleet operates on principles of compassion instead of conquest — she knew how to operate in this one.

Drawing that knife on Sulu must have been tremendously vindicating. She wasn’t just facing him, but every faculty advisor who ever stood too close, every regional manager who said “come back to my place and we'll talk about your promotion,” every police officer who did a pat-down that was more grope than inspection.

In that shining moment, Uhura acted for all of us, every woman who's been told, "Smile more; women should be pretty!" (Followed by, "What was I supposed to think? You were always smiling at me!") The mirror-universe is a dark, twisted version of our own… but that moment on the bridge explained why some women are proud and happy to belong to the Starfleet Empire.

A world where men openly harass women and require them to be sexy at all times is not unknown to us. A world where we can strike back…that’s new.

Five stars.

Speaking of Star Trek, it's on tomorrow!  And it seems to star Godzilla…

Here's the invitation! Come join us.

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[September 28, 1967] We have met Divinity, and He is Ours (Star Trek: "Who Mourns for Adonais")

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God is in the Details


by Janice L. Newman

After Star Trek’s incredible second season debut episode last week, we were on pins and needles. Would the episode hold up to the new standard set by “Amok Time”?

The episode starts out unpromisingly, with Kirk, McCoy, and Scotty ogling a pretty female lieutenant. Scotty invites her for coffee, and McCoy and Kirk exchange quips on how she’s just going to “get married and leave the service”.

Given later events in the episode, one can squint a bit and pretend that they’re talking about this specific crewperson, not women in general. Still, it was jarring, particularly in the context of “Balance of Terror”, where we saw a female officer getting married and still doing her job just fine.

The ship continues on its mission, only to be interrupted by what appears to be a giant hand floating in space, which reaches out to grab the ship. No matter what they try, they cannot break free of its grasp. The crew is sharp and competent here, a pleasure to watch. As they experiment, a floating head appears on the viewscreen. It hails them and begins to talk of welcoming them after a long wait. When Kirk tells it to release the ship, it says it will close its hand, increasing the pressure both inside and outside the ship. Kirk, having no choice in the face of this superior power, agrees to accede to the being’s demands.

Spock, in a refreshing change, remains in command aboard, while Kirk, Scotty, Chekov, McCoy, and the pretty lieutenant, Carolyn Palamas, join him in beaming down to the planet. Once there, they are greeted by the self-proclaimed god “Apollo”, who states that they will remain on the planet and worship him, herding flocks and playing the music of the pipes. It sounds like an idyllic, and very boring, life.

From the start, Apollo is much taken with Palamas. For a nominal ancient history scholar and archaeologist, she doesn’t seem terribly interested or excited about meeting a being that claims to be an actual god and who supposedly interacted with humans on earth 5000 years ago. She is excited when Apollo transforms her uniform into a shiny, pink, skin-baring outfit, though! (My reaction to having my clothes suddenly transformed into something else would not be, “Oh, it’s beautiful!” no matter how lovely the dress.) Apollo sweeps off with Palamas, leaving the remaining crewmembers to look for a way out.

Kirk, as is always the case when the Enterprise is in peril, doesn’t care about anything but getting his ship and crew back. He repeatedly defies Apollo, who punishes him in various painful ways. Scotty apparently loses his head trying to protect Palamas, and also challenges Apollo repeatedly, even going against Kirk’s orders to do so. All this defiance and punishment leads to the discovery that Apollo seems weakened after he shoots lightning bolts or otherwise displays his ‘godlike’ powers.

Meanwhile, the crew on the Enterprise have been looking for a way out. They are a pleasure to watch, with Spock issuing crisp orders and the crew following without question (a nice change from “The Galileo Seven”). Uhura even gets to do some soldering at one point!

Back on the planet, Kirk corners Palamas and orders her to spurn Apollo and break his heart, which will hopefully cause him to use his powers and weaken him enough to give them a chance. At first Palamas resists, but Kirk convinces her. She tells Apollo that he’s only interesting to her as a ‘specimen’, infuriating him and causing him to call a great storm.

The crew aboard the Enterprise is able to get a message through just in time. Kirk orders them to use the ‘holes’ they’ve been able to make to shoot through Apollo’s barrier and attack the source of his power on the planet. The crew obey, and great phaser beams come from the sky, focusing on the temple. Apollo screams at them to stop, but the phasers continue until the temple is left in ruins. Apollo weeps, turns his face to the sky, and lets himself dissolve as his fellow gods and goddesses did thousands of years before.

I think the best word to sum up this episode is: “uneven”. There were parts I liked very much. Anything with the crew being smart and competent was fun to watch. I found Apollo’s monologue at the end to be very affecting. And there were other small moments of brilliance, such as when McCoy complains at Chekov’s insistence on being thorough, saying, “Spock’s contaminating this boy, Jim.”

On the other hand, the subtle deprecation of women was not only frustrating, it didn’t make sense. Apollo calls Palamas, “Wise, for a woman.” As even the most cursory review of Greek mythology reminds us, the god of wisdom was a goddess: Athena. Add to this Kirk’s humanocentric speech to Palamas – strange, considering that his first officer isn’t human – and his line about finding “one god quite sufficient”, which felt artificial and forced in the context of the rest of the story. Scotty’s unprofessional buffoonery was more annoying than funny and Chekov’s really terrible wig was distracting.

Still, the episode as a whole was worth watching, and I’ll probably even catch it on the rerun this summer. As such, I give it three stars.

Update: Having just re-watched this episode in the summer re-runs, I've decided to increase my rating. While there are still a few irritating flaws, the episode as a whole was strong enough to hold up extremely well to a re-watch. Apollo's monologues in particular were very effective. Even knowing it was coming, I still got goosebumps when he talked about Hera spreading herself thin on the wind and later calling to his friends to take him. Palamas, too, seemed less like silly damsel and more like a woman struggling to protect her crewmates. When she initially goes with Apollo, it seems more appeasement than interest. It's only after Apollo's promise to raise her up and make her the mother of gods that she truly seems to become enamored with him, and as I said aloud to my friends, I'd go with him after a speech like that! And in the end, in the face of that temptation, she still does her job. Upon re-evaluation, I'm raising my rating to four stars.

A finely tuned machine, or Deus ex Machina


by Lorelei Marcus

Something I have always appreciated about Star Trek is the seamless operation of the crew of the Enterprise. While on the bridge, one can always hear the murmur of radio chatter as various ship sections give their status reports. If a crewman has to leave his post, there is always another ready to take over at a moment's notice. Repair personnel can often be seen in the halls, patching up the damage after an attack. All of these details give the impression that the USS Enterprise is a plausible naval vessel, well-trained and well-run.

This became particularly apparent in this week's episode, when Spock is left in command of the ship, with no contact with the ground crew or his Captain, while in the grip of Apollo. All of the First Officer's actions are purely logical, of course, but the best part is seeing how his crew carries out the orders without fault or question. Everyone is competent at their station, providing innovative solutions to problems, like Uhura manually soldering a bypass circuit, or Sulu scanning the planet for major energy signals. I personally love the line Spock says when Sulu can't pinpoint the exact origin of the energy: "Simply scan where the energy is not, and use process of elimination to determine its origin." Such a simple, yet ingenious solution.

In addition to being smart and creative, the crew also works well under pressure (sometimes literally!) Even after the ship is almost crushed by Apollo, status and damage reports come flying left and right from the edges of the bridge. McCoy reports the situation in sick bay, Scotty states the strain on the engines, and Sulu notes how the ship has lost all speed. It's moments like these that remind me how good Star Trek can be. I can truly believe that the Enterprise is a highly trained military vessel, and one of the best on television, sci-fi and not. I'd like to see how Admiral Nelson's submarine would fare against Apollo's antics!

While the scenes on the Enterprise are excellent, the scenes that take place on Pollux IV are inconsistent, and so I give the episode three stars. But so long as the shipboard action remains as taut and believable as it was this episode, it will be hard for an episode to fall below that baseline.

5000 YEARS OF LONGING


by Joe Reid

Do you remember the good old days?  Those times long ago, when men were more manly, and women were reserved.  I do.  Those were great times!  Should those times ever visit us again, I know that I for one would be overjoyed!  To reclaim the simple pleasures of life.  Those days when I felt truly alive.  Surrounded by people that loved and appreciated me.  They needed me, and I needed them. 
These are the sentiments that I hear from old (and not-so-old) folks reminiscing at the family gathering.  This sentiment was the very soul of the antagonist in this week’s episode of Star Trek, “Who Mourns for Adonais?”.

As I have stated in my previous observations, Mr. Rodenberry’s weekly excursion to the stars seeks to take us to far away places, to meet sensational characters, and to capture our eyes and minds in order to fill them both with images of who we are today in 1967.  I love that Star Trek gives me a positive vision of a future time, I hate that it at the same time shows me a negative image of who we are.  Of who I am.

In this episode we got to meet an honest to goodness god.  Not the “Gee-Oh-Dee” of the Good Book, although the title may cast allusions in that direction.  Apollo is the god the crew of the Enterprise must contend with and is he ever a handful!  I’d rather go twelve rounds with Ali than get into a fight with this bruiser.  Apollo remembers a time when he and others like him lived with humans.  5000 years ago to be exact!  They were times that Apollo remembered and loved.  When humans loved, worshiped and revered him.  When he loved them in return, guided them, cherished them.  The episode doesn’t go into detail on how the relationship between the gods and mankind was broken but is the very clear that the advent of humanity to his new home brings him hope that the relationship with mankind will be renewed.  It is this hope which is the root of the conflict in this episode.

In Apollo we see a wounded exile.  One given the hope that a bond as old as recorded history will be restored.  That he will be able to pick back up where he and the people of ancient times left off and go back to paradise.  In the end humanity wanted something different for themselves and the hoped-for reunion left Apollo in tears.

How much like Apollo are we?  We think back to times past and wish they were here again.  We hold on to temporary things as if they were permanent.  Whether those things be people, places, positions, patterns, or our own potential.  In reflection of this story, I must ask a question.  Who might the crew of the Enterprise have encountered on that world if Apollo had been able to move past his longing and desire for what he had long ago?  I leave the answer of that to your own imaginations, friends.  That question invites a second one.  Who might we be if we are able to let go of the past and accept people, places, positions, and potential as we find them today?  As they are right in front of our noses.  If we can answer that for ourselves, then we may no longer need to mourn what we lost.  We only need enjoy what is.

3 stars

A Woman’s Place is on the Enterprise


by Robin Rose Graves

While at times Lt. Carolyn Palamas played into the stereotypes women often play in television, ultimately Star Trek went against expectations.

“One day [Lieutenant Palamas] will find the right man and off she'll go, out of the service,” McCoy observes at the start of this episode, mirroring what many viewers probably think upon seeing Scotty’s flirtatious invitation for coffee. This reflects a trend in our own world, as women are often expected to abandon their careers to focus on home and family when they marry. With this setup, I assumed the episode would conclude with Lt. Palamas abandoning all scientific pursuits for a man.

But Star Trek did not give in to social pressure!

The episode reaches its climax when Lt. Palamas, despite her love for Apollo, rejects him to preserve the Enterprise crew, suggesting there is more to a woman’s life than being an object of a man’s affections.

It’s also worth noting Lt. Uhura’s active presence in this episode. She is shown to be both competent and crucial to returning the crew to the Enterprise. Her plot reinforces the theme in this episode that women are just as important to the crew as the men. In Uhura's case, indispensable.

I rejoice thinking of the young girls who might be watching, who will admire both Lt Palamas and Lt. Uhura’s beauty, knowledge and capability and think “I, too, belong in science.”

Four stars.

This article, we welcome Amber Dubin, an editor of a scientific journal who spends far too much time wondering if her 10 year old cat has become more human than she is.

She has a decidedly different opinion on the portrayal of Lieutenant Palamas than Robin…

Lackluster Elegy to a God


by Amber Dubin

My biggest problem with this episode is its inconsistent and disparaging narrative about the nature of women.

In a disappointing start to the episode, Captain Kirk and Dr. McCoy make a condescending observation about Lieutenant Palamas, that she's approaching that 'time in every woman's life' where she'll throw away her career for a marriage. Star Trek usually transcends the sexist zeitgeist of our time, so the presence of this message personally disillusioned me. Moreover when she betrays her crew the way it was foreshadowed, her seduction itself makes absolutely no sense. In an analogous scenario in the episode "Space Seed" the bewitching of the female Lieutenant is much more plausible. In "Space Seed," historian Marla McGivers has a documented obsession with powerful men throughout history; thus when Khan appears to step directly out of her fantasies and shows her intense interest, she is putty in his hands. Though the lieutenant here has had significantly less character development in her episode, even by what we do know about her, how easily Lieutenant Carolyn Palamas is seduced is nonsensical.

First, it is implausible that a 'typical space faring woman' like Palamas would want nothing more from life than to be offered a pretty dress and ruling status over a deserted planet. Second, Apollo's plan for seduction is as follows: 1) Show up half naked 2) alter her appearance without her permission 3) isolate her from everyone she knows 4) Call her beautiful four times and 5) Rank her among his previous conquests. If she was a lonely, bored shepherd woman like Apollo is used to impressing, this would be sufficient, but to imply that a woman whose job it was to study cultural evolution would be impressed by this culturally unevolved male display is insulting to both women and anthropologists. It's almost as if her character was written by a man who doesn't understand how to write a woman.

In stark contrast, the concurrent scenario on the bridge casts Uhura in the role of 'strong, dependable woman' in a way that's so jarring with the rest of the themes of this episode that one has to wonder if it was penned by a different hand. In trying to save the landing party, Uhura is tasked with a complex and delicate maneuver and Mr. Spock expresses respect for her intelligence and competence implicitly. Uhura is trusted to take care of herself and fulfill her duties, the exact opposite of how Scotty insists that Palamas is a helpless prop. It makes no sense to praise one woman for her intelligence on the ship, while in the presence of a God, a woman who reveals the same level of intellect is met with revulsion, outrage and literal divine wrath.

Overall, I felt personally let down by this episode because I feel like the narrative voices did not harmonize well and the resulting cacophony of misfiring ideals made for a lackluster elegy to a God.

Two stars.


by Gideon Marcus

With Great Power…

There is much to both enjoy and to wince at in this episode.  It treads familiar ground, from "The Squire of Gothos" to "Space Seed" to "Charlie X".  But there is also a poignant message about outgrowing the need for external deities, and the folly of a godlike being of trying to force worship from a race that can no longer give it.

What really fascinated me about "Adonais" was its contradiction of Acton's Dictum, which says "Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

Apollo was a second-generation God, descendant of space traveling beings capable of projecting tremendous power. Yet, his race almost assuredly started out as baseline human.  This would be laughable in any other setting, since the odds of human beings evolving twice (John Campbell's beliefs notwithstanding) are vanishingly small–I'm not even convinced there is life on other worlds.  But in Star Trek, it's a given; q.v. "Miri" and "Return of the Archons", for instance.  For some reason, humans and even Earths exist all over the galaxy.

So it is not implausible that, say ten thousand years ago, Apollo's race was indistinguishable from us, complete with smog, network television, and bad wigs.  Then they developed space travel and scattered among the stars.  Some of them may have become the Metrons or the First Federation.  One group came to Earth and settled in Hellas.  They were, accordingly, worshiped and revered.

Yet they let that worship and reverence die!  Apollo's brood did not long mingle with mortals, instead repairing to Mount Olympus.  They didn't continue to demand adoration from the increasingly sophisticated philosophers and leaders of Greece and Rome.  They didn't search out another group of shepherds to lord over.  They simply left, even though, in the end, it meant their death.

Why didn't "superior power breed superior ambition (a la "Space Seed") in this case? I have an idea.

Apollo's god status is never disputed.  His story is taken at face value.  We've simply, as a species, outgrown him.  Why?

Because we are now gods. 

Take the Enterprise. While Apollo initially had the upper hand (haha), by the end of the episode, Kirk had at his command power equal to and even surpassing that of the Greek deity.  Humans are now at the level of Apollo and his cohorts.  To any primitive society, what else could we be but gods?

What a responsibility that is!  It is no wonder that the #1 rule of the Federation, the so-called "Prime Directive", is not to interfere with aboriginal cultures (first referenced, I think, in "Return of the Archons").  It is a wise rule given the stakes.

Perhaps Apollo's brood had this same rule.  Maybe a small group allowed themselves to give in to temptation for a little while, mingling with the Greeks they found so charming.  And then, realizing their corrupting influence, first removed themselves from direct interaction, and finally, from any contact at all.  Apollo might have been a dissenting vote, though in the end, he knows the same tragedy as his comrades.

Would that we not suffer the same fate!

Four stars.

The next episode of Trek is TOMORROW! You won't want to miss it:

Here's the invitation!



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