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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[March 12, 1969] Rock Opera (Star Trek: "The Savage Curtain")

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by Erica Frank

This episode opened with the Enterprise circling an uninhabitable lava planet with a poisonous atmosphere, but anomalous readings of some kind of civilization or power source. They planned to leave anyway, until they got a message…from Abraham Lincoln.

title card for the episode superimposed over an over the Sulu and navigator shot of the viewscreen with Abraham Lincoln sitting in a high-backed chair against the background of space
"Welcome to Washington, Captain Kirk!"

Our crew is now very experienced with meetings with aliens who seem to be people from history or mythology. Most of them wanted to call his bluff immediately, but Kirk played along: he wanted to find out what's happening.

What's happening: A creature made of rock has decided to figure out what good and evil are by pitting four "good" heroes against four "evil" villains for the edification of its people.

a roughly humanoid rock creature with multiple glowing eyes stands in front of a styrofoam rock formation
Your host for the evening: an Excalbian rock creature that can read minds, terraform parts of a lava world, and shapeshift.

The Excalbian had arranged for Kirk and Spock—two people on the side of "good" (and the only living people involved)—to be joined by Abraham Lincoln, whom Kirk respects deeply, and Surak, the Vulcan philosopher who led the Vulcans out of war into their modern peaceful, logical society.

screen capture of Spock, Kirk, Abraham Lincoln, and Surak
Abraham Lincoln dresses and speaks like a 19th-century statesman. Ancient Vulcan philosophers apparently dress and speak like the hippies who hang out at Haight & Ashbury in San Francisco today.

They were given opponents: Four of the worst villains from history (three of which we have never heard of before this episode)—two humans, one Klingon, and one other.

The Excalbians wished to "discover which is the stronger" of good or evil, and they had arranged what they call a "drama" with all the delicacy of a small child placing bugs in a jar and shaking it. In essence, "Here, we have put you all together and demanded you fight… whoever lives, that side must be the strongest."

As leverage to force the "good" side to fight, Kirk's crew would all be killed if he fails. The villains faced no such threats. Nor could they; whatever family or friends or honored associates they once had, none are alive today.

screen capture of the four villains of the episode. Genghis Khan is in furs, Colonel Green is in a red jumpsuit, Zora also in furs but with a bare midriff, and Kahless is in the standard Klingon uniform of stripped grey mesh vest and pants over a black long-sleeve shirt
The villain line-up, from left to right: Genghis Khan, who needs (or at least gets) no introduction; Colonel Green, a genocidal war leader from 21st century Earth; Zora, a mad scientist from Tiburon; Kahless the Unforgettable, the Klingon tyrant.

At first, I wondered about the inclusion of Zora and Kahless: Is Klingon history so well-known to Kirk and Spock that the Excalbians can draw him from their minds? But the Federation and Klingons have been at odds for some time; they might well be familiar with their most famous historical figures. Zora seemed an outlier—until I remembered where I'd heard of Tiburon. It was the home of Dr. Sevrin, who led the quest for Planet Eden. (Apparently Tiburon has a history of unethical doctors.) Spock might well have known more about the planet's history.

The events that followed were annoyingly predictable. Green briefly attempted to negotiate, which was a distraction for an attack; the villains were driven off; Surak followed to speak to them, which resulted in his death; Lincoln tried to rescue him only to die as well; Kirk and Spock managed to defeat or drive off all four of the villains by themselves.

The Excalbian declared them the winners, but said he does not see any difference between their two philosophies. Kirk pointed out that he was fighting for the lives of his crew but the villains were fighting for personal power or glory. The Excalbian did not seem convinced, but sent them on their way, unharmed.

What was missing: Any mention that the value of "good" over "evil" is not shown on a battlefield, but in day-to-day living. That one strength of "good" is cooperation and shared resources—nearly irrelevant in a fabricated setting, with no time to develop tools, and a pre-selected pool of people who were chosen to play specific roles.

screen cap of Colonel Green, a swarthy middle-aged man in a red jump suit holding a sharpened stick taking cover behind a styrofoam boulder
Colonel Green, the only white man on the "villain" team, watches from behind a rock while his companions fight for their lives. Maybe their lack of unity did matter.

I would have liked more consideration of the true nature of the six historical people: Just before they beamed "Lincoln" aboard the Enterprise, Spock said his readings were those of a "living rock" with claws. It seems likely that all the other people were Excalbians playing the part of historical characters. They were offered "power" if they won—but what would that mean? Would the other Excalbians hand them each spaceships and send them along to their respective planets? What could they possibly offer Genghis Khan?

Three stars. Interesting, but the pacing was odd (long, slow buildup to a couple of quick fight scenes), and I wanted more from both the philosophical and science fiction aspects.

Fair to Middlin’


by Janice L. Newman

Star Trek does like its ‘message’ episodes. Sometimes, as with "Day of the Dove or "The Enterprise Incident", the scriptwriter does a pretty good job of addressing the issues of the day. Other times, the scriptwriter does a poor or muddled job of Saying Something, as in "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield".

The Savage Curtain falls somewhere between these two extremes. Roddenberry had a couple of pretty clear messages he wanted to send: “violence can be justified if the cause is just” and “peace is an admirable goal, but one that takes time and sacrifice, and in the meantime sometimes violence is necessary”. It’s not surprising that the man who wrote (or re-wrote) “A Private Little War” would want to make these points. But in doing so, he missed the chance to make a much clearer distinction between ‘good’ and ‘evil’, one that would have served the story better.

The ‘evil’ characters in the episode showed an absolutely remarkable amount of teamwork. Colonel Green immediately took charge, and the others simply deferred to him and obeyed him. It stretched credibility just a little to see GHENGIS KHAN passively taking orders without so much as a peep of protest. In order to tell the exact story Roddenberry wanted to tell, characters that should have been backstabbing each other to get ahead or refusing to work together at all instead acted as a well-oiled unit. They had to trust each other, support each other, and listen to each other. In fact, the ‘evil’ characters had to act a little bit good. (While the ‘good’ characters in turn had to commit violence to make the story work, necessitating that they behave in an ‘evil’ way.)

How much more effective could it have been if the ‘evil’ characters had actually behaved in a selfish, anti-social, backbiting manner, and were defeated by people who worked together for the common good? How much more powerful could the message have been if the ‘good’ side found a solution that wasn’t based in violence, using teamwork, cleverness, and the combination of their knowledge and skills?

Maybe it would have been trite, but the idea of good and evil being absolutes is pretty trite, too.

screen cap of Kirk, Uhura, and Lincoln on the bridge of the Enterprise
The bit with Uhura explaining that race relations had progressed so far that words were no big deal was nice, though.

Three stars.

By What Right

by Mx. Blue Cathey-Thiele

In an episode that gave us Abraham Lincoln in space, cultural figures from Klingon and Vulcan history, and an amazing alien design, the thing that I kept thinking about after the episode was this:

KIRK: “How many others have you done this to? What gives you the right to hand out life and death?”
ROCK: “The same right that brought you here. The need to know new things.”

The question has been posed before. What right does Starfleet have? As early as season one, in "The Naked Time", a crewman despaired over humanity polluting space and sticking their noses where they “didn't belong”. His distress was exaggerated by an alien liquid, but the question was real. Is the crew—or Starfleet at large—doing harm in their quest for knowledge? The first directive shows that there has been significant thought on this, instructing Kirk not to infringe on cultures and to make repairs when possible if there has been a violation of the directive. It's an imperfect rule, and one that is broken frequently. Kirk or another officer decides that he knows better, or finds a reason why the directive doesn’t apply. There have been times when that directive hampers life-saving action.

The Excalabian’s actions are cruel by human standards, and as a means to understand the philosophy of “good vs. evil” make no sense to me. But that itself works as a mirror. I have no insight into the alien mind, no way to know what metric it judges by, no concept of how it views humans in relationship to itself. Equal beings? The way humans might regard a very clever animal? Insects under a microscope? Maybe even the way humans view other humans that fall outside their range of “people”.

screen cap of the Enterprise view screen showing an overhead shot of the villains Zora, Khan, and Kahless splitting up in rocky terrain to ambush the good guys
This amoral broadcast brought to you in living color on NBC!

Human history is full of examples of people seeking knowledge and trampling over others to get it. The many places considered “untouched” on Earth that already have inhabitants, lands reshaped and mined for resources, animals hunted to extinction. The victims of experiments done under the guise of “progress”, psychological and physical studies done without permission, or care for the comfort or pain of the subjected person. Plenty of this has been done deliberately, but lack of ill-intent doesn't change the consequences either. As astronauts practice maneuvers in space, it is important for us, now, to remember that everything leaves a trace. The moon is a remarkable example, but hardly the only one. Just because we can doesn't mean we should – and yet, humans have a place in the universe too, and knowledge is part of that.

The question is not one with an easy answer, and might not have a correct answer. I think it is a question we should not stop asking though, because if we stop, that is when we have decided that yes we *do* know better, and stop caring what, or who gets hurt.

Even with all that philosophy, the episode still felt much like re-do of Kirk fighting the Gorn Captain in Arena, with more puzzling pieces than actual interesting plot.

2 stars

Truly Alien


by Joe Reid

“The Savage Curtain" was something unique.  We have witnessed previous episodes where alien races test humans to see if they are honorable, or understand empathy, or if they are worthy of something.  This week we had an alien race that wished to weigh the concepts of good and evil by playing the parts of the noble and of the wicked themselves; instead of seeking to understand something conceptually, they chose to understand experientially.  Coupled with the inhumanity of their physical appearance, they were the most alien aliens that we have seen in a very long time from this show.

If I wished to understand women better, what options would be available to me?  I suppose that I could talk to a woman to learn about them.  I could go to my local library and borrow a few books about women.  Hell, I could even watch women to attempt to learn about them through observation.  I don’t have the ability nor would choose to become a woman and fully live as one merely to satisfy my curiosity.  Excuse that poor and possibly male-chauvinistic example. 

Let’s say I wanted to understand Phantom Limb Syndrome.  That is the sensations that amputees experience from limbs that are no longer there.  It would be impossible for me to truly understand what it is like without experiencing it.  My point being that who would be willing to go through dismemberment to experientially understand something?  Although through grave misfortune we could experience such a thing, we would experience it as ourselves.  The Excalbians had the ability to learn by becoming who they were not. The very concept is alien.

screen cap of the rocky Yarnek confronting Captain Kirk
"Don't look so stone-faced, Captain.  Haha.  That's an alien joke."

Walking a mile in another man’s shoe is one thing, walking with another man’s legs is entirely different.  As novel as this ability of the Excalbians is, what’s more interesting and alien is the lack of judgment they had against the concepts of good and evil.  It was as if these creatures never ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil as humanity had in the story from the book of Genesis.  How would beings such as the Excalbians gain that knowledge?  Kirk and crew had a clear sense of right and wrong, the Excalbians seemed to not only lack it, but also held no bias of one over the other.  Kirk apparently came to the same conclusion.  As the Enterprise left Excalbia at the end of the episode, the crew cast no negative aspersions against the Excalbians for their lack of understanding.  They were aliens and they got what they were after.  Thankfully no one died.

In this episode the crew clearly found a new lifeform and new civilization.  This one being a powerful yet innocent race of aliens whose reasoning is far removed from human rationale.  They were refreshingly different and a welcomed change to the way that aliens are usually presented, as humans with some greasepaint.

4 stars

Eclipse Glasses for War


by Jessica Dickinson Goodman

On September 11th of this year, people on the west coast of America will see most of a solar eclipse. Adults who are smart or at least a little prepared will be viewing it through special eclipse sunglasses. Those of us with small children will be building cardboard boxes with pinholes in them, since there’s nearly nothing as futile as putting unwanted sunglasses on a toddler.

The boxes work like this: you pick a box big enough for both of your heads — like a home television box — and poke a round hole in it. When the appointed time to look comes, you put the box on your heads with the pinhole behind your right shoulder, aim the pinhole at the sun, and look the other way. The shadow of the earth will then creep across that perfect bright dot beaming onto the opposite wall of the box, allowing you and your child to track its progress without risking young eyes.

The dark box is a child’s version of Plato’s Cave, allowing us to safely view astronomical truths too large and too bright to safely see with the naked soul. It is also a bit like going to the movies: the appointed time, the rising tension, peak, and denouement, the use of light and darkness to tell a story. Most important to the experience is both the smallness and safety of it and of us: the sun is no more in that box than we are on its surface, but viewing it so allows us access to realities we could not otherwise safely imbibe.

That’s how I think of Star Trek’s suite of war analogy episodes, thoughtfully listed by Erica in the head article. The daily truth of America’s war on Vietnam involves numbers so astronomical, forms of violence so molten and charring, it is difficult to look directly at, much less explain to a child. But there are some dimensions of the conflict which can be conveyed in an episode like this, just as that pinhole box can convey the sun’s roundness, brightness, the semi-circular shape of earth’s intruding and then receding shadow, and the emotional excitement of having a Mama put a funny box over your head for 45 minutes during playtime. Likewise, this episode gave us some shapes from the war: the torture of POWs becomes Sarek’s simulated cries over the hilltop; the horror of punji sticks embedded in the darkling trails of the jungle become stakes carved and thrown by the characters. And tens of thousands of soldiers become four against four; brutal still, yes, but grokable. We don’t have Lodges and Westmorelands, Ho Chi Mins and Mao Tse-Tungs, but we can see the flickers of them in the shadows on the wall.

Lincoln, crouched in his black suit and stovepipe hat, attempts to untie Surak, who is seated and tied to some bamboo stakes in foliage
A poor man's Hanoi Hilton

Maybe you didn’t see this week’s episode as an allegory for Vietnam, but remember, we too are in the box or the cave, and what we bring with us affects what we see there. I see punji sticks and you may see the Bataan Death March. I see POWs and you may see a lynched man. But this episode gives space for us to approach different forms of violence and peace, evil and good, as and when we need to.

One way it does this is with the abject silliness of seeing Abraham Lincoln in space, shipless and fancy free. See, the episode seems to say, nothing is real here; this is just a silly sci fi show. But that is part of the box too and of the cave. The silliness of joining a new context shakes us free of our old one and allows us to see the dot on the wall, its roundness, its brightness, and the exact geometries of its transfiguration in a way we could never see the sun directly. The disgust I felt for the rock monster treating our beloved crew as chess pieces and bargaining chips only lightly touched on the incandescent rage I feel towards the Westmorelands and Maos of the world—playing greater power games as children die bloody. But it did allow me to touch it, to engage with it, to see it as small enough to understand the shape of it for once rather than be overwhelmed and blinded by its light.

This was not a good episode, as detailed above. The dialogue and morals were cloudy and at times crudely wrought. But as one in a series of episodes touching on different aspects of our nation’s current war, it did what it was supposed to: give us 48 minutes in the dark and the quiet to think about things we might not otherwise have been able to, see the shape and changing ways of them, and come out of it having touched something far beyond our reach.

Three stars.

[Come join us tomorrow (March 13th) for the next thrilling episode of Star Trek!  KGJ is broadcasting the show live with commercials and accompanied by trekzine readings at 8pm Eastern and Pacific.  You won't want to miss it…]





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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[January 31, 1969] Clinging to life (Star Trek: "That Which Survives")

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by Lorelei Marcus

I'm convinced Star Trek is cursed.  Around the same time every season, the episodes drop off in quality, going from engaging teleplays each week to bottom of the barrel Hollywood hack.  Of course, the divide isn't quite so clear cut, but there is a distinctive shift as the producer runs out of his stellar front-runners and begins scrounging for TV-writer backlog to fill space.

I had hoped Season 3 would be an exception to this given its new producer and absolutely sublime first half ("Spock's Brain" notwithstanding!) but alas, the proverb remains true: the bigger they are…the harder they fall.

Now, granted, the recent decline has not been a degeneration of ideas, which often carry promise and interest, but their clumsy and contradictory execution.  We as the audience are baited in on hooks, reeled in on the currents of the episode, and then discover, too late, that the answer at the end of the line is more convoluted and less inspired than the theories we'd developed during the journey.

And "That Which Survives" is no exception.

title card for the episode with That Which Survives superimposed over a blue planet

We begin with the Enterprise circling a newly discovered planet anomaly: it has an atmosphere and plant growth despite its young geologic age and small size.  Kirk, McCoy, Sulu, and senior geologist D'Amato (an exciting new face—but don't get too attached) beam down to study the planet.

As they're being beamed, however, a mysterious woman (Losira, played by Lee Meriwether, lately of Time Tunnel) pops aboard and kills the transporter technician!  The landing party makes it down anyway and ends up in the center of a vicious earthquake.  The Enterprise experiences a similar tremor and is flung 990.7 light years from the planet.

Losira, in a purple outfit, stretches her hand out toward the party as it begins to beam down, a transporter technician in the background
"Wait!  Let's shake hands, first!"

Spock standing behind Lt. Rahda, Scotty looking up at him, on the bridge
Spock is more concerned about rounding errors than the ship's current predicament, chastising Lt. Rahda for describing the distance as "1000 light years".

The landing party immediately began protocol for a survival situation after failing to detect or contact the Enterprise.  Sulu and McCoy both pick up odd readings on their tricorders: "Like a door opening and closing."  At the same moment, D'Amato sees a beautiful woman—the same one from the transporter room—who claims "she is for him" and tries to touch him.  She succeeds, and he drops dead, every cell in his body disrupted.  His corpse is soon discovered by the other three, but the woman is nowhere to be found.

A nervous D'Amato points at Losira (not depicted)
Arthur Batanides is both delighted not to be cast as a mook this week, and dismayed that he's about to die

While the landing party scenes are the most interesting part of the episode, not much more happens.  The woman eventually reappears and tries to attack Sulu, but Kirk and McCoy intervene, discovering in the process that the woman can't hurt anyone but the person she is targeting.  She disappears and reappears again, going after Kirk this time, but Sulu and McCoy successfully protect him.  For no apparent reason other than a limited runtime, the three are then allowed access to the planet's defense control center, and they learn the truth of the mysterious woman.  It turns out the original builders of the planetoid accidentally invented a disease which killed off their race thousands of years ago.  The commander left behind a computer imprinted with her personality and programmed it to kill any intruder.  Kirk manages to destroy the computer before it can kill them, and all is well.  A fine solution, though rushed and poorly explored, the episode would have hung together alright…if the scenes on the Enterprise didn't destroy all meaning in it.

Elevated shot of Kirk, McCoy, and Sulu in an octagonal room, Losira in front of them, a shimmering cube on the ceiling in the upper right
"Wait!  Maybe I can talk it to death.  It's worked with every computer before…"

Shortly after the Enterprise is flung 1000 light years away, the death-robot woman appears on the ship, is implied to read the mind of a technician, kills him, and sabotages the matter/anti-matter combustion tubes.  This raises questions like:

"How did the woman travel so far from the planetoid?"

"Why did she bother to attack the ship when it was no longer anywhere near the planet?  Isn't 1000 light years far enough away for the computer to no longer see the Enterprise as a threat?"

It would have made more sense if the ship had simply been damaged from teleporting (logical, since it was never explained how the feat was done) and Lee Meritwether's lost screen time could have been made up for on the planet with additional scenes of the landing party unraveling the mystery of the lost civilization.

I haven't even mentioned the terribly dull scenes of Scotty trying to save the Enterprise from a Losira-induced explosion.  Every party of that sequence felt like an artificial addition to stretch runtime.  To summarize, Spock tells Scotty how to do his job, Scotty hesitates, runs into some roadblocks, then finally, in the last ten seconds does the job and saves the Enterprise.  That's it.

Scotty in a tube, shrouded in blue sparks, sticking a wrench into a small hatch.
"I've found the leak, Mr. Spock!  I canna change the laws of plumbing!"

Once again, this is an area that could have been improved with some minor changes.  Instead of the whole ship blowing up, have it simply be stranded.  The tension comes from whether Scotty can fix the ship in time without getting himself killed.  Have Spock as a commander wrestling with whether to eject the pod Scotty's working in because a wire's accidentally been tripped and now the whole ship is at stake.  That would have been compelling storytelling.

This episode had so much promise: the promise of another ancient civilization and 4-D beings (Losira's teleportation effect is genuinely neat), of new cool characters and cameos of old beloveds like Sulu and Dr. M'Benga, of survival plot interwoven with futuristic technology.  Indeed, there were a lot of pieces to love.

But, like a robot who is only beautiful on the surface, the actual experience was less than pleasant.  Three stars—2 for the episode, and 1 for Merriwether's great acting.  Hopefully, next week will be better.


by Gideon Marcus

Full reverse!

Remember the execrable episode, "The Galileo Seven"?  There, we were meant to believe that Spock had never held a command in his life, and when forced to lead just six stranded crew on a hostile planet, he kept tripping over the basic emotional needs of his human comrades.

Now recall "The Tholian Web", where a much-improved Spock handled Captain Kirk's presumed death with tact and even compassion, officiating a funeral, commiserating with McCoy, and generally earning the respect of his crew.  Scotty even called him "Captain", in a tear-inducing moment.

Heck, just recall last week's "The Mark of Gideon".  While in no wise a good episode, Spock carried out negotiations with Chairman Hodin with reserve and acumen.  This was a man who could, when the need arose, handle the center seat without issue.  And we know from "Court Martial" that people in blue shirts sometimes become starship captains…

This week, the Enterprise is imperiled, Spock's two best friends and the ship's Third Officer are missing and presumed dead, and yet the half-Vulcan pedantically harps on decimal points and the human compulsion to be thanked for carrying out their duties.  He is a cold fish, inspiring no loyalty.  He also never seems in much of a hurry to do…well…anything!  It is absolutely inconsistent with his demeanor as acting-skipper established over the last two seasons.  Moreover, it is inconsistent with his ever-deepening bond with Kirk and McCoy.  The real Spock would be mad with worry…and covering it up with a stoic and efficient veneer, welding together a 430-man team whose sole purpose is to retrieve the distressed landing party.

But it was easier to write a caricature.  As one of our guests last week noted, it was as if the episode had been written by someone who hated the characters and wanted to lampoon them.

Spock gets up from his chair on the bridge, holding an gadget, several crewmembers behind him
"Is it already time to harass someone else?  Goodie!"

Then, of course, we get the egregious bit where it's Spock who tells Scotty how to fix the failed matter/antimatter regulator.  As Joe Reid has noted many times, Kirk often gets the pleasure of being the smartest person in the room, suggesting solutions to folks who should be telling him how to solve problems.  This time, Spock is the beneficiary of this irksome trend.  At least in "The Doomsday Machine", Scotty is ahead of Kirk in the figuring out of things, and he beams admiringly at his captain as if at a promising student.  In "That Which Survives", Scotty has considered and discarded Spock's solution—manually fixing the antimatter flow—as too dangerous.  With no other solutions, what, exactly, is it more dangerous than?

Blech.

While we're at it, Kirk was quite the jerk to Sulu on the planet.  Perhaps this was because he was distraught from the potential loss of the love of his life (the Enterprise), but at least he could have said he was sorry, as he has done in every other instance where he has snapped at crew under tension.

2.5 stars.


by Janice L. Newman

Slivers of Silver

While I agree with my esteemed co-writers about the poor characterization and plot holes in this episode, there were some good new special effects that I don’t recall seeing before.

I always enjoy looking at the props, especially after having read the interview with the man responsible for creating them in one of the many fanzines. The blue-tipped grass on the planet was pretty and interesting, giving it a slightly alien feel. The effects with Losira disappearing by seeming to fold up into a black line were new and intriguing. When Scotty went to fix the broken warp engine, a neat ‘blue lightning’ effect made a barrier across the tube. The flickering red and green lights on his face, though a bit headache-inducing to watch, also aided the illusion and increased the tension of the scene.

Scotty's face illuminated by a green gel light
"There's your problem, Mr. Spock—a green gel light!"

Losira’s costume was cleverly-designed, but felt strange and wrong for her role. Several of my friends commented on the fact that she didn’t look at all like the head of a distant outpost whose members had just been killed off by a plague. With the cutouts in her shirt and her elaborate hairdo and makeup, she did not have much of a ‘last survivor’ or ‘hearty commander’ feeling. Of course, there is nothing wrong with being feminine, and for all we know she may have dressed up in her race’s version of formal wear before giving her final report. Still, it clashed uncomfortably with the plot for many of us, even if the seamstresses among us were mentally trying to figure out how to re-create the look.

Unfortunately, well-done effects cannot carry a story, and, while the episode was mildly-engaging, it didn’t leave much of an impression. Two stars.

Are There Men on This Planet?


by Mx. Blue Cathey-Thiele

I was not the only viewer disappointed by some stand-out moments which highlighted that, progressive though Star Trek is, it still has weak spots. In particular this week: sexism. Losira is a replica of a commander, the last survivor of a disease-struck station. Her costume, while intriguing in design, conveyed none of that. Sulu comments when first threatened that he “doesn't want to shoot a woman.” As chivalrous as the helmsman is, by the time of starships and alien worlds, I would hope that humans no longer treat women differently than men, deadly touch or not. And then too, the repeated focus on beauty. A storm can be beautiful and deadly, but observing a force of nature is not the same as McCoy, Sulu, and Kirk making a point to comment on how Losira looks. These are the same crew who get excited about flying into the heart of a giant amoeba or historical facts from centuries past. After all they experienced on this not-a-planet, it seems improbable to focus on whether or not they found an alien woman attractive. As explorers and scientists, why not marvel at the mysterious botanical and geological feats, the design of the defense system, or the fact that that defense system was able to send the Enterprise through a molecular transporter and 990.7 light years away! Or wonder why a defense system would be calibrated to perfectly match a target, and seemed as equally focused on unifying as destroying?

Losira appears holographically on a wall in front of Kirk and Spock after her computer is phasered
(sings) "What intrigues a man about a woman is elusive…"

Despite the flaws, and feeling put off by the attitude of the men, I still enjoyed the episode. Characters had time to share the spotlight and pull on threads from previous episodes. I love seeing the crew operate the Enterprise when the Captain is away, and how different officers handle command. Lt. Rahda did a fine job as helmsman, and it was nice to have Dr. M'Benga return to the screen. Logically, a ship this size must have multiple doctors, but this episode confirmed that a minimum of three were present, despite us usually only seeing McCoy and Nurse Chapel. (Maybe the ship could spare one to give Spock a check-up after that bump to his head.) I also noted Kirk's persistent focus on supplies—he brought up the need for food and water at least four times—which may have been in part due to his experience on Tarsus IV, which started with a crop blight: something that is bound to leave a lasting impression regardless of whether he talks about it.

The overarching plot was lacking, and I would have liked to have gotten more explanation or simply explanation spaced out better. However as an episode among a larger story, it gave us a great look at the workings of my favorite starship and crew.

3.5 stars

[Come join us tonight (January 31st) for the next thrilling episode of Star Trek!  KGJ is broadcasting the show live with commercials and accompanied by trekzine readings at 8pm Eastern and Pacific.  You won't want to miss it…]




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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[January 16, 1969] Mixed messages (Star Trek: "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield")

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by Janice L. Newman

Star Trek has given us some great episodes this season. Sadly, Let That Be Your Last Battlefield was not one of them. It was ineptly written, poorly directed, and both ham- and heavy-handed in its delivery.

The story opens with the Enterprise coming across a stolen shuttlecraft on the way to Ariannus, a planet which urgently needs ‘decontamination’ else millions will die. The shuttlecraft is in distress, and the crew bring the vehicle aboard and treat its lone passenger. The scene with the shuttle bay opening and closing is a good effect…but would have been even more so if they had edited out the “1701” across its side.


The latest rage: All Federation shuttlecraft have the Enterprise's serial number

The scriptwriter here makes the first of a number of blunders. Over-eager to ‘explain’ the strange black-white coloration of the alien, the author penned an awkward conversation between Doctor McCoy, Captain Kirk, and Mr. Spock about how such a being might have come to exist. The problem is that this explanation is unnecessary and feels forced. The audience has seen plenty of strange aliens thus far and almost never has there been a need to ‘explain’ how they came about. Furthermore, the explanation doesn’t explain anything. Spock and McCoy write off the divided coloration as being a totally unique mutation, while Kirk nonsensically opines that “…he is the result of a very dramatic conflict.”


They got blue people and green people but this guy looks weird?  And no one suspects it's not a cosmetic affectation?

The alien’s name is Lokai. He takes umbrage at the assertion that he ‘stole’ the shuttlecraft, both implying that he was only borrowing it and outright stating that his great need justified taking it. When Kirk attempts to interrogate him further, he becomes uncooperative and refuses to answer any more questions.

Kirk is called back to the bridge when an alien ship shows up—or doesn’t show up, as the case may be. The sensors are picking it up, but it doesn’t show up on any of the screens. It’s on a collision course with the Enterprise and ends by disintegrating against the hull and depositing one alien onto the bridge in the process.

This entire scene was awful. It’s a little tricky to put into words what made it so bad, but it had me groaning and hitting my head against a pillow repeatedly, so I will try.

First, the camera repeatedly did an extra-dramatic zoom in and out and shake effect on the red alert light. It drew laughs from the watching crowd, feeling more like something out of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea than Star Trek. The entire sequence is contrived and unnatural, existing only to get the characters where the writer wanted them. Efforts to ‘explain’ the ship and its fate, like the prior conversation about mutation, serve only to highlight how silly it all is.

The new alien is named Bele, and in direct contradiction to the previous conversation about one-of-a-kind mutations, has the same half-black and half-white coloration as Lokai. He states that he’s “chief officer of the Commission on Political Traitors” on his planet, and has come to claim Lokai. Kirk challenges him, but agrees to let him see the other prisoner.


"Riddle me this, Captain: what's black and white and insufferable all over?"

Bele and Lokai proceed to react to each other with pure vitriol. Lokai claims that he is a revolutionary, fighting for the rights of his people. Bele calls him a loathsome murderer. Lokai turns to Kirk and demands political asylum, while Bele demands to be taken to their home planted, Cheron, immediately. Kirk tells them both that Starfleet will sort it out after the Enterprise finishes their decontamination mission, as millions of lives are at stake. Bele states that this is unacceptable, just before the Enterprise takes a new heading, seemingly all by itself.

Maddeningly, Kirk doesn’t connect the misbehavior of his ship with the presence of the aliens aboard until just before Bele outright claims responsibility. Lokai and Bele have another confrontation on the bridge, both of them ignoring the fact that “millions of lives” on Ariannus are at stake. Kirk orders both of them to the brig, then shot at with phasers set on stun, neither of which are effective against the aliens’ “personal shields”.


The rarely seen "tickle" setting of the phaser

Contrived, contrived, contrived. I felt the hand of the scriptwriter turning and moving the ship like a child with a toy. The scriptwriter didn’t want Bele or Lokai thrown in the brig or knocked out, so they were given invincibility. The creator of the story wanted certain things to happen, and so forced them to happen in the bluntest and most direct ways possible.

However, Kirk’s response to Bele did lead to a scene I actually liked. Kirk tells Bele that the ship will fulfill its mission to Ariannus or he will destroy it. Bele tries to call his bluff, and Kirk initiates the self-destruct sequence. This was perhaps a little drawn out, and the codes for self-destruct could have been more complex than variations of, “one, code one, one A”. Still, Kirk’s defiance and unwillingness to surrender his ship is great, very in-character, and the scene actually managed some genuine tension.


"This starship will self-destruct in five seconds…"

Kirk’s never tolerated threats to his ship well, so it’s a little jarring that he chooses to give them free run of the ship after that. On the other hand, how could he stop them? They’ve been shown to be invincible and Bele is both able and willing to take over the ship, even at the cost of “millions of lives”. Kirk has exactly one possible counter-move, and it’s one that would lead to a Pyrrhic victory indeed.

Lokai begins making friends among the crew, making his case to them. He says something interesting here that could have been great if the writer had bothered to follow up on it: “Do you know what it would be like to be dragged out of your hovel into a war on another planet? A battle that will serve your oppressor and bring death to you and your brothers?”

This tantalizing hint of actual background is once again casually ignored by the rest of the story. We cut to Bele, drinking with the Captain and trying to win him to his side much the same way that Lokai is doing with the crewmembers. It is in this conversation that we come to the crux of the episode, a point delivered with a sledgehammer. Bele is amazed that the captain and Spock can’t see his superiority. He is, after all, black on the right side, while Lokai is white on the right side.

Wow, this racial metaphor is so nuanced and clever!


A punchline not worth waiting for

Well, perhaps in more skilled hands, it might have been. There is certainly a simplicity to the message, to the point where even a child could understand it. We the viewers are shocked by what appears to us to be such bizarre and extreme racism over a minor difference. We are meant to take it to heart, to apply it to our own lives and question our own prejudices.

The problem is, the message becomes muddled despite itself. I will leave going into detail as to why the portrayal of the two aliens undermines and even contradicts the episode’s theme to the other writers on this piece. Suffice it to say that the “revelation” of the source of the racial differences elicited more groans than gasps from the watchers in my house.

Ariannus is successfully decontaminated, and Bele takes control of the Enterprise again, this time burning out the directional and self-destruct circuits first. (In other words, the scriptwriter’s hand once again descended upon the ship and turned its course to Cheron.)

The ship arrives at Cheron and finds that the people on it have destroyed each other (presumably fairly recently, since there are still bodies on the planet). Bele chases Lokai through the corridors of the Enterprise, with Kirk doing nothing to stop them. Pursued and pursuer beam themselves down to the dead planet, presumably to try to kill each other. Kirk leaves them there, and we are spoon-fed the other Important Message of the episode:

SPOCK: To expect sense from two mentalities of such extreme viewpoints is not logical.
SULU: But their planet's dead. Does it matter now which one's right?
SPOCK: Not to Lokai and Bele. All that matters to them is their hate.
UHURA: Do you suppose that's all they ever had, sir?


The ashes of Detroit still smolder after 50,000 years

Well. That was a mess of poor writing, inept directing, and Shatner’s own particular brand of scenery chewing. And as much as I appreciated the messages the writer so desperately wanted to convey, it would have been more effective if the plot could have settled on one of them instead of trying to cram in both. If you want to watch a good episode about the dangers of racism, irrational hatred, and unchecked violence, wait for a re-run of Day of the Dove.

One and a half stars (the half almost entirely for the self-destruct sequence.)

Bones beneath the fat


by Lorelei Marcus

At a sacrifice in Ancient Greece, Prometheus once slaughtered an ox and offered up two piles for Zeus to choose from.  One contained the meat and much of the fat.  The other was a pile of bones artfully arranged under a layer of glistening juices so as to look like the more appetizing pick.  Zeus chose the latter, and was so angered by this deception that he withheld fire from humanity.

From the unsubtle makeup to Lokai's stirring speech against Bele in Sick Bay, "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield" presents itself as a racial narrative in favor of Black rights.  Yet, somewhere along the way, it loses that thread and ultimately concludes with a different message: If we continue to hate one another, we will only destroy ourselves.

This is quite a turn which clashes spectacularly with Lokai's initial characterization.  Of course, Lokai is bound to hate the group which subjugates and ghettoizes his people.  His revolutionary vigor seems justified when he is fighting for "basic dignity", a trait Kirk has often associated with humanity's freedom when dealing with alien enslavers and oppressors.

However, the finale would have you believe that Lokai's hatred is unjustified, or at least, excessive.  Therein lies the true sin of the episode, because to achieve the dramatic final theme, it must gut its initial framing of racial injustice and the characters that metaphorically represent it.

Lokai is consistently unlikable.  He arrives as a suspected criminal, refuses to communicate or cooperate, and he is quick to anger.  Regardless of how noble his initial goals, or how genuine his pleas for amnesty, he is never truly taken seriously by the Enterprise crew and therefore, we also see no reason to sympathize.  Throughout the episode, he is termed a firebrand, a troublemaker, and even a murderer, with no redeeming actions to prove otherwise.  He also reveals a prejudice, not just against his oppressors, but also the monocolored humans and audience, further alienating him and his cause.

Bele's character, in contrast, while evil by default, is treated with respect, making Lokai look worse still.  Bele is quickly established as the oppressive, bigoted, authority.  He also commits heinous acts like hijacking the Enterprise from a critical, planet-saving mission for his own selfish purposes.  But isn't he justified because he has toiled for nearly 50,000 years to capture his criminal, a mass-murdering fanatic?  And after all, he does eventually allow the Enterprise to finish her mission, so can he really be so bad?

Well, yes, and the ending would even like to remind us of that: even with his whole planet destroyed, Bele is doomed by his own hatred to forever chase Lokai across their barren world.  But first, he is allowed to roam the ship like an esteemed guest and even dine finely with the Captain.  Even certain emissaries have not had so high an honor, but I suppose there are special treatment regulations for starship hijackers. 


"Well, in compensation for our not immediately flying you to Havana, have some brandy."

While Bele's motives are prejudiced and unsympathetic, this kid-glove treatment affords him some respectability, furthering Lokai's appearance as irrational in comparison.

This brings me to my conclusion.  Lokai and Bele both ultimately come across as incomprehensible extremists.  Lokai is logical in motive, but not in action; Bele is logical in action, but not motive.  Tragically, their extreme hatred seems to be a microcosm for their whole planet's struggle—they appear as figureheads of the two sides.  Thus, the episode becomes a cautionary tale against extremism.

Yet, the shroud of the race-relations narrative remains, literally expressed by the ever-present alien makeup.  So the two themes join, linking extremism with the race struggle and its leaders.  This, in turn, undermines both causes.  If Lokai's genuine issues can be disregarded with the justification that he is unlikeable and dangerous, then what implication does that have for the black man?  Did the riots not begin because pacifist pleas for change fall time and time again on deaf ears?

The episode is so self-righteous about stopping hatred that it sours the positive social message it could have had, and instead, vilifies the struggle it claims to represent.

And so, some of the fire in my passion for Star Trek diminishes.  To describe the episode in a word, I'll quote Mr. Scott: "Disgusting."

One star.

An end to war


by Jessica Dickinson Goodman

24 men died on the USS Enterprise yesterday, another 85 injured as a rocket exploded onboard; 11 planes were also destroyed. Those young men were on that ship in service of a war many had no right to vote for just seven short months ago. The Enterprise herself has touched many conflicts — Vietnam, Cuba, Japan, the Middle East — and was preparing for her fourth deployment to Vietnam. This is the fourth time a U.S. aircraft carrier had caught fire in 15 years, accidents that killed 537 sailors in total according to The New York Times; of the four, only one involved enemy fire.

I was thinking about the ways in which war destroys the people who wage it while watching “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield.” Rather than an atom-powered football field-sized carrier ferrying fighter jets to bomb a country that barely has an air force, the war in this episode is reduced to two men; a binary pair. Their hatred is made irrational, and while other reviewers found it ham-handed, I found it operatic.

We have the sense of scale conveyed by a few terse lines — millions in danger; 50,000 years of pursuit! We have the stentorian arias given by Kirk, Spock, and our two representative combatants — where Kirk and Spock could have been Purcell tenor roles with their clear, short, decisive words, Lokai and Bele were all Mozart at his muddiest and most secretive, all Sarastro lecturing Pamina in coded Masonic lessons about how the world works with none of the delicacy or lightness of the Queen of the Night’s aria to lift us up again afterwards. We also have the oversized tragic ending — not just these two men killing each other, as they've been trying to do all episode long, but their entire world dead, corpses left on the ground unburied, and them doomed to chase and haunt each other amongst the moldering wreckage of their hatred forever more, like the ending of a Noh Play written for Tom and Jerry.


But what of Lazarus?

With the bright light of the teleporter and the offstage decision makers driving the plot, it reminded me of nothing so much as the end of Puccini’s Suor Angelica, where the former-aristocrat-and-current-nun learns her child out of wedlock has died and she kills herself. Obviously the plot is not the main parallel; Suor Angelica is mostly women’s roles, making it a favorite of mixed gender opera programs around the world, and Star Trek is sometimes pressed to include 2 speaking women per episode, much less a dozen. It is the feeling of the ending as an audience member that is the same. In my favorite productions of Suor Angelica, as she sings her final aria, begging Mother Mary to save her after she’s poisoned herself — “Madonna! Madonna! Salve me, salve me!” complete with its glorious high A's — a bright light floods down on center stage, a transporter beam from the Madonna herself, bringing Suor Angelica up with her to heaven to reunite with her child.

For me, there is something likewise satisfying about the ending of “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield.” These two men have wreaked havoc across the galaxy for centuries, trailing their hatred like plague corpses, disrupting societies, destroying lives as they whirl and swirl and clash against each other. And as of the end of the episode, they cannot. They are planet-bound, returned to the home they both thought they were fighting for, deprived of the tools to hurt anyone but themselves. Trapped, forever, in a Hell of their own making, reunited and secure in their hatred.

Real war is nothing like opera or science fiction. It is famously boring until it’s not, and mostly kills people who had no say in its arrival or its leaving. Many who die in war and no small number who fight in it fervently wish that each clash would be their “last battlefield”; after all the useless deaths of sailors the real life Enterprise and of families who are Vietnamese, Nigerian, Palestinian, Eritrean, Guatemalan, Rhodesian, Laotian, Irish, and so many more who are suffering war today. It was nice, for a little less than an hour, to see a world on my screen where no matter how bloody, some wars end.

Three stars.

You've Come a Long Way, Baby


by Mx. Blue Cathey-Thiele

Ads for Virginia Slims cigarettes have been playing over the past several episodes. Women sneaking away to smoke and getting caught, with an emphasis on how outdated the idea is. Thanks to the suffragettes we see, women won their rights in 1920. Modern women can vote and smoke! It's fashionable to applaud that movement, and from this side of history, relatively easy. None of the ads have mentioned the much more recent Voting Rights Act, though, which passed among significant backlash just a few years ago.

Part of Star Trek's appeal is that it offers a future that upholds ideals of equality. Most of the time.

The most important scene, to me, is not the final moments of pursuit against a backdrop of destruction. It is instead, a conversation held almost off-camera as Spock listens from behind a door.

LOKAI: I act the madman out of the anger and frustration he forces upon me, and thereby prove his point that I am a madman. [….] How can you understand my fear, my apprehension, my degradation, my suffering?
CHEKOV: There was persecution on Earth once. I remember reading about it in my history class.
SULU: Yes, but it happened way back in the twentieth century. There's no such primitive thinking today.

Except, prejudice is there when McCoy casually insults Spock for his biology and culture, or when crew members disregard his authority after he acts in accordance with Vulcan philosophy.


"Preach it, Lokai."

The message is tucked away from the rest of the ship and the rest of the episode. It's easy enough to make broad statements decrying hate. It is harder to face up to the part that we ourselves might play, to confront the systems that allow hate to act with authority. As fans of science fiction, many of us like to think of ourselves as more open-minded, more accepting. It's only logical. The true test is when those standards are challenged, when equality extends “too far”. Yes, yes, rights for women – but not too many. Freedom of religious expression – for some.

How many people today will support the cause of the oppressed, and yet sit and break bread with the oppressors under the guise of “civility”? Bele admitted his people's culpability in the crimes Lokai accused him of, and still was treated better than some of the diplomats the Enterprise has been charged with carrying.

Kirk tells Bele, “I cannot take sides.” He can, and by his own moral standards, he should. He may have limited power against an alien who can take control of the ship with his mind, but that has never stopped him from speaking his piece before.

Lokai is loud and angry, he insults the crew even as he asks for help and asylum. Nothing about his behavior is particularly endearing to his cause. And that, whether the rest of the episode discusses it or not, is important. The Federation, represented by the Enterprise, has standards of justice, and none of those standards are based on being well-mannered. What is right does not depend on what is easy or palatable. The meanest, rudest individual still deserves rights, because rights do not depend on being likable.

3 stars

Rich Tale to Poor Tale


by Joe Reid

“Let That Be Your Last Battlefield”, the second episode of Star Trek for the new year, drew out of me thoughts both praise and derision, with feelings of familiarity and futility.  This episode at first took a simple message and elevated it with meaningful layered acting, only to become so utterly absurd, undermining said message. 

The Enterprise encountered a stolen shuttle with a man in need of help.  Aid was rendered by the crew to ensure that the alien man survived to answer questions.  Things quickly went downhill as the half white half black alien, named Lokai, awoke in the infirmary with a suspicion on his face as was accused by Kirk of theft.  Lokai objected only to being further pressed by Kirk on the matter, which led to no questions being answered by the two-tone alien as he refused to continue being interrogated.  The brief exchange revealed that Lokai had a purpose for “using” the ship, which he was willing to face consequences for.  Also, that he had been disappointed by “monotone humans” in the past.

This scene to me felt different than others on TV—the difference being that the character with the hidden cause in custody is often Negro or some other race.  I felt a familiarity with Lokai’s circumstances.  To be thought of as a criminal before trial.  To be frustrated by a lack of or even willingness by some to understand my situation.  Lokai served up a lot in this short scene.  I found it interesting that the performance was carried out by a white actor portraying an alien who was neither black nor white.  If the character were black like me, I might’ve identified with his plight and sympathized with his frustration at authority and the evasiveness it brought about.  Since Lokai was not black, his position as a victim required proof, and the frustration that he expressed required justification to be seen as righteous. There is an old proverb that says, “Hope deferred makes the heart grow sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.” (Pro 13:10).  Lokai clearly had a sickness of the heart making him unpleasant.  We are willing to forgive sickness in others only if we identify with their hopes.  Lokai appearing as he does, made that challenging and interesting.

Later we were introduced to another alien man who’d been pursuing Lokai for fifty thousand years.  Bele, also two-toned half black and white, appeared on the bridge of the Enterprise without warning.  Unlike Lokai, Bele was not accused of anything although he invaded the bridge in what could’ve been seen as an attack.  He demanded the “cargo”, Lokai, be handed over to him.  Not frustrated in his interactions with Kirk as Lokai was, Bele was mildly irritated to have to defer to Kirk and challenged the captain’s authority repeatedly.  His interaction with Lokai established that they were at odds for reasons of class and privilege.

The role of Bele was played by another white actor.  Though two-toned himself, the duo considered themselves different based on which side of their bodies were black or white.  Black on the right side was dominant and Bele was domineering in every way.  Taking control of the Enterprise twice.  Although Bele’s actions were resisted, he was never held accountable by Kirk.  He was even allowed a pleasant social dinner with the captain after his first hijacking attempt. 

Bele and Lokai obviously represent the color-based stratification of the U.S.  Choices that were made by casting and the actors themselves in how they personified those roles, took an American reality and obfuscated it to detach it from our world.  I was pleased by this execution, until the third act. 

Then the Enterprise arrived at the home of the dual-toned men, the planet Cheron, devoid of life due to war.  The episode was saying that we could be doomed to suffer the same fate due to our own hatred.  The final act featured interlaced footage of burning buildings, possibly from the riots after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.


Happy memories of traipsing through the streets of Dresden

Social messages, especially simple ones, are better delivered if you don’t break the obfuscation in the telling of the story.  Allow the message to speak through the story, and not scream over it.  The ending displayed poor choices for what could have been a meaningful tale.  It cheapened the emotional depth witnessed in the early part of the story and replaced it with shallow visual exposition just in case the audience was too simple to understand nuance.  It was a poor choice.

Two stars

[Come join us tomorrow night (January 17th) for the next thrilling episode of Star Trek!  KGJ is broadcasting the show live with commercials and accompanied by trekzine readings at 8pm Eastern and Pacific.  You won't want to miss it…]





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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[January 10, 1969] Mad for this show (Star Trek: "Whom Gods Destroy")

3 Comments

The Cure for Schizophrenic Storytelling


by Joe Reid

Happy New Year to everyone!  1969 is upon us and the first new episode of Star Trek for this year is come!  “Whom Gods Destroy” is the episode of the new year and although it was a smaller story, it was well crafted and concise.

It started off with the Enterprise arriving at a poisonous planet named Elba 2: a planet for the criminally insane. Kirk and Spock beamed down with an unnamed medicine that cured all incurable mental illness.  As the curable ones have all already been cured throughout the galaxy, the asylum only had about a dozen patients in it.

Upon arrival they meet Governor Donald Corey, a very jovial man, who informs them that the asylum recently welcomed its 15th patient, Garth of Izar, a former captain that Kirk revered.

On the way to visit Garth, Marta, a green skinned Orion woman, says that Corey is not who he says he is. Corey laughs it off and takes them to Garth's cell, only to find that Corey, the real Donald Corey, is in the cell.


"Also, I'm Batgirl—why won't anybody believe me?"

Garth had tricked them, changing from Corey into his true form before their eyes, and freeing the inmates in the surrounding cells, bringing them to his side.  Kirk and Spock are trapped on the planet.  As Spock is dragged away unconscious, Kirk is put into the cell with the real Corey.

Lord Garth, leader of the future masters of the universe, as he now demands to be called, transforms into Kirk as a part of his plan to take the Enterprise and pursue vengeance against his former crew that mutinied against him. 

As Garth contacts the Enterprise in the guise of Kirk, he is foiled in his attempt to gain access to the ship by Commander Scott.  “Queen to queen’s level 3”, says Scotty.  It's a passcode that the real Kirk set up as an increased security measure.  Garth blows a gasket after this occurrs.

Garth then decides that he should change tactics.  He goes back to Kirk, bringing Spock back and inviting them for dinner.

All the free asylum inmates, now Garth’s crew and subjects, are present and entertaining each other.  We are even treated to a dance by the lovely, jade-colored Marta.


"Dessert, Captain?"

At this point I considered this episode, written by Lee Erwin, to be fully set up. 

What came next was an expertly written tale of misdirection and subterfuge, by all parties.  Kirk as the hostage trying to use his intelligence and wits to find a way out.  Scotty, as a commander seeking to find a way to rescue his captain without causing him harm.  Garth, as a brilliant, but insane, changeling able to match wits and brawn with Kirk to achieve his aim of universal domination. 

Several times throughout the episode I had my assumptions challenged and my expectations subverted.

Again, I give credit to Mr. Erwin for crafting a tale with fleshed-out characters and subtle nods to history.  Garth, wearing his coat with this left arm in the sleeve and the other draped over his shoulder, hinted at him being a futuristic Napoleon Bonaparte.  Marta was a complex character who was as insane as the other inmates, yet lived within some rational rules and boundaries, never lying to anyone about anything.

Kirk, and the rest of the crew made no mistakes in the episode that a less skilled writer might employ to increase tension. 

In the end this small, self-contained story did many interesting things, but didn’t try to do too much.  There were many paths that this story could have meandered down, but Mr. Erwin skillfully kept the main thing the main thing.  A great start for 1969 Star Trek in my opinion.

Five stars


by Janice L. Newman

The Little Captain

I was very much impressed by “Lord Garth’s” performance. He took a role which would have been terribly easy to overplay and made it his own. Thanks to movies, TV, and comic books, we’re all familiar with the idea of the inmate of an asylum who ‘thinks he’s Napoleon’. Often such roles are treated as one-note portrayals: usually for laughs, occasionally to be creepy or frightening, sometimes to be pathetic. Brilliantly, Steve Ihnat manages to infuse his performance as Garth with all of these, smoothly transitioning from menacing and cruel, to throwing a tantrum like a small child, to being unintentionally funny even as one tries not to laugh.

One of the most interesting and subtle aspects was Garth’s furred, gold-lined coat. Throughout the episode, except when he is disguised as someone else, he is never seen without it. He’s constantly fidgeting with the coat, swinging it around him like a cloak (with one sleeve hanging ridiculously off the back), slinging it over one shoulder like a toga, or even cuddling it like a child with a security blanket. The coat becomes a physical representation of his delusion, and it’s not until the very end of the episode, when he’s beginning to respond to the treatment of his mental illness, that we see him without it at last.


"Don't tell me how to wear my clothes…"

There were many other things I liked in the episode, but the one that stayed with me, and which I suspect will stay with me for some time to come, was “Lord Garth”.

Five stars.


by Gideon Marcus

Birth of a Dream

As is tradition, before we tuned into Trek Friday night, we all gathered 'round the dinner table for a fanzine read.  Trekzines are a land office business these days, and my mailbox sees a good half dozen amateur publications in it each month devoted just to Trek (not counting the half dozen or so others that cover science fiction in general).  This time around, it was the near-pro quality Triskelion issue #2. 

The first piece in the fan-mag is by none other than Hal Clement, the famed hard science fiction author and professor, writing about the Enterprise and its basis in real science.  Abstruse stuff, but interesting.  It just goes to show how engaging the universe of Star Trek is, above and beyond the weekly drama and our favorite characters.

In addition to being a fine piece of writing and a showcase for some quite good acting, "Whom Gods Destroy" was compelling for how much it told us about the setting of the show.  For though the episode takes place in the claustrophobic confines of Stage 10 on the Paramount lot, redressed to look like the prison colony of Elba, the dialogue fills in details about the show that seem to address the very beginning of the entire Federation.

When Kirk was put on trial in the episode "Court Martial", we learned that he had an award for "the Axanar peace mission".  No other details were given at the time.  In "Whom Gods Destroy", it turns out Axanar was the site of a terrific battle, one in which Fleet Captain Garth's participation was essential to victory.  Kirk recounts that he was a "newly fledged cadet" when he went on the subsequent peace mission (in a role that could not have been too momentous given his inexperience).  If Kirk is 35, which makes sense since last year he was 34, then he was a cadet probably 17 years ago, when he was 18.

And just last episode (well, last rerun), Spock related he'd been serving in Star Fleet for 17 years.

Hmm.

Add to that the fact that the Axanar accords resulted in Kirk and Spock being "brothers", and the significance of the event becomes pretty clear.


Kirk, Spock, Garth, red boa-cloak, and piggy-face: brothers, thanks to Axanar

In the first half of the first season of Trek, there were no references to the Federation.  The Enterprise was an "Earth ship" reporting to the "United Earth Space Probe Agency".  Only gradually did the words "Star Fleet" and "Federation" get bandied around with frequency.  That suggests that the United Federation of Planets is a fairly new nation.

I deduce that Axanar was some sort of titanic conflict between what would be the major races of the Federation: the humans, the Vulcans, the Andorians, the Tellarites, the Orionids, and all the rest.  It might even have resulted in a defeat for the Vulcanians—the "conquering" to which McCoy refers in "Conscience of the King".  But now, the UFP is like a United Nations with teeth, ensuring harmony among the myriad worlds that have banded together in the name of peace.

Garth, a soldier's soldier, and maddened by a grievous injury, could not stomach this clemency, so he tried to incite an insurrection on Antos IV.  Happily, the Antosians were having none of it, lest the shaky foundations of the Federation be toppled even as they were laid.

After Axanar, Kirk became an explorer first, and a soldier second.  Now that Garth is on the way to recovery, perhaps he can join Kirk on that noble expedition to the stars.

About face


by Lorelei Marcus

It is not often that our Captain Kirk submits readily to another person.  He gives his respect to direct Starfleet superiors, but to an esteemed alien passenger or important civilian escort, he shows only the required amount of deference, and sometimes less.  Even when he or his ship is threatened with mortal danger, he refuses to buckle to the whims of any supposedly all-powerful being, often to his own detriment.

Yet, in "Whom Gods Destroy", Kirk not only lacks hostility towards his captor, but in fact follows Garth's orders and tries to reach an understanding with him through exclusively nonviolent means.  One could argue this was merely Kirk acting out of self-preservation, as Garth could have killed him with a phaser at any time.  However, in a similar episode, "Plato's Stepchildren" Kirk relentlessly resisted the physical control of the Platonians, almost to his death. He is not one to give in easily, if at all.

Then why the change in temperament with Garth?  I postulate two reasons.  First, Garth is a former starship captain and Federation hero.  Kirk grew up reading of his exploits and admires Garth as a man of greater rank and accomplishment.  Even in his delusional state, Garth still invokes an awe that commands obedience, even from Kirk.

Second, Kirk understands that Garth is mentally ill and doesn't hold him accountable for his actions.  When dealing with other enemies, Kirk is unyielding from his position of righteousness.  Other foes act horrendously, with full intent and cognizance, justifying Kirk's equally stubborn resistance.

But Garth does not truly know what he's doing, at least not the Garth Kirk worships and admires, and he's better dealt with using a soft hand.  Ironically, this ends up being the wrong choice.  On multiple occasions, Kirk tries to reason with Garth and talk him down.  However, his diplomacy never works—as it shouldn't, given Garth's insanity is incurable.  If not for Spock's clever ruse and confidence with his phaser, they might never have escaped the prison.


Kirk gives diplomacy the old college try

Between the acting and the development of Federation history, "Whom Gods Destroy" makes for an excellent bottle-esque episode.

5 stars.


by Mx. Blue Cathey-Thiele

Second Verse, Same as the First

GARTH: You wrote that?
MARTA: Yesterday, as a matter of fact.
GARTH: It was written by an Earth man named Shakespeare a long time ago!
MARTA: Which does not alter the fact that I wrote it again yesterday! I think it's one of my best poems, don't you?

Kirk seems destined to watch his heroes fail. Professors and peers from the Academy, fellow officers, esteemed scientists. Time and time again, he expects better from his fellow humans, and is met instead by (mostly) men who think that the only issue with ultimate authority and unchecked ambition is the personal failings of previous tyrants.

“It has been said that history repeats itself. This is perhaps not quite correct; it merely rhymes.” -Theodor Reik

Even with all the horrors he has encountered, perhaps even in spite of them, he is quick to declare a paradise, to look for the best in others. The rank of Starship Captain must demand a degree of ego, surely, to be capable of commanding over 400 persons, making life-or-death decisions, and being the first to approach previously unknown species and planets. Setting the stage for humanity and the Federation is a doozy of a first impression! A sense of confidence is a must, then.

We have seen Kirk mishandle situations, fall prey to his own weaknesses. But he also relies on Spock and McCoy to check him. Is it enough? After peers and mentors keep making the same mistakes with catastrophic repercussions… is it telling of the system, of the people, or both? Just what sort of curriculum does the Academy promote, that so many graduates have gone on to lose perspective, take over planets, view tyrants from history as inspiration, reconstruct fascist regimes? To repeat the mistakes and tragedy of history, thinking that this time they can do things right.


Starfleet: molding megalomaniacs for more than 20 years!

Consider Dr. Daystrom's desperate need to achieve again, at the cost of lives in war games with his M5. Or Lt. McGivers, so enamored with how men “used to be” that even as a historian who knew of Khan, she was easily swayed. Remember Dr. Adams who used a neural neutralizer to gain complete control of Tantalus, or Gary Mitchell declaring himself a god upon gaining psychic powers? And of course we can't forget John Gill, a historian and teacher so sure of his ability to do it the 'right way' that he recreated the Nazi regime. Kirk and his colleagues have stumbled to different degrees over the Great Man theory, the notion that history hinges on exceptional individuals.

More importantly, on dismissing those who aren't Great Men. Only the fact that his crew mutinied saved the planet of Antos 4 when Captain Garth was unable to handle the rejection. And yet, without his crew, he could do nothing. (Mutiny! As recently as in The Tholian Web, there is no recorded instance of such on a starship.) The story was written before, it will be written again. Abuse finds home in authority. Once one thinks of people as something less than human (or in Trek, alien), it is possible to justify any number of injustices.

Much of this episode was a re-wording of what has been said before, and usually said better. It wasn't terrible, but I'd like a key-change, at least.

3 stars

[Come join us tonight (January 10th) for the next thrilling episode of Star Trek!  KGJ is broadcasting the show live with commercials and accompanied by trekzine readings at 8pm Eastern and Pacific.  You won't want to miss it…]




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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[December 20, 1968] A failure to communicate (Star Trek: "The Empath")

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by Trini Stewart

This week's episode, “The Empath”, gave Star Trek fans some wonderful interactions from our crew on a rescue mission, but also had them running on a vaguely-guided track throughout the episode.

At the start, the Enterprise is tasked with evacuating a research station before the star it was studying goes nova, but when Kirk, Spock and McCoy arrive at the station, there is no one left to rescue. An enormous solar flare threatens the Enterprise during the search, so the ship leaves to safety just before a record tape reveals where the former inhabitants went. Kirk, Spock, and McCoy watch as the station researchers suddenly disappear while a strange noise shrills on tape, and the three distressed crew members are almost immediately teleported away by the same noise.


Where Kirk was…a very effective effect!

They find themselves in a dark area with a mysteriously mute woman, whom they nickname Gem. While the crew attempts to ask Gem about how they got there, two large-headed figures, the Vians, bluntly introduce themselves and refuse to tell Kirk what is going on. The crew is easily overpowered, the Vians collect data from Gem, and they vanish with the crew’s weapons. A small cut on Kirk’s head is suddenly healed when he checks on Gem, and McCoy realizes that Gem communicates through her highly responsive nervous system; all of Kirk’s feelings and ailments can become hers from just a touch.


The healing power of interpretive dance

Spock then locates a sophisticated lab, where they discover the Vians preparing large perspex tubes for the crew members, and the missing inhabitants of the station dead in tubes of their own. The three officers learn that they are meant to be subjected to deadly tests for reasons unknown, and they flee with Gem through a cave mouth. The Vians trick the escapees with a mirage of a search party to test their wills, and capture Kirk once they observe the crew’s perseverance. Kirk sacrifices himself by insisting he be the one specimen the Vians want for their cruel torture, after which Gem reluctantly heals his potentially deadly wounds at McCoy’s behest.


Shatner is devastated that he's not in the spotlight…

While Spock works out how to attune the Vians’ instrument to allow their escape, the aliens come back to reveal that they plan to gravely injure either Spock or McCoy next, and that the trio must choose the victim when they return. This leads to one of the most endearing displays of the crew’s dynamic I have seen in the show: both officers insist they be the test subject without hesitation, and antics ensue. The two begin to argue that the other is more valuable to leave with the captain, but Kirk insists he will be the one to decide, only to be rendered unconscious by McCoy’s treatment. Spock then notes his approval of the treatment, as it relieved Kirk of a rough decision and put Spock in charge as second-in-command. McCoy punctuates that sentiment by ambush-sedating Spock, saving the critical Vulcan the only way he could. Gem sheds a single tear as McCoy is taken away, since she has now emotionally connected with both Kirk and Spock and feels the depth of their affinity for him.


A single tear—Gem's race has not had time to be acquainted with clichés

The two remaining officers eventually awaken and begin to configure the Vians’ device, acknowledging that the aliens likely wanted them to escape and leave McCoy behind. Instead, Spock transports Gem and them to the lab, where McCoy is found with multiple fatal injuries, and he tries to make light for everyone’s sake. The two realize their only hope for McCoy is for Gem to help him despite the risk, and the Vians restrict them in their force field to prevent their interference. The aliens begin to explain that they must see how Gem reacts on her own, because she is being judged of her worth on behalf of her whole species; Gem’s choice to save McCoy would determine whether the Vians use their limited resources to save Gem’s species. Spock and Kirk escape the force field, and Kirk indicates that the Vians do not know the value of the compassion they claim to idolize. The aliens, humbled all too quickly, mend McCoy and whisk Gem away with a short farewell. The episode ends with the crew appreciating Gem as an entity, and Spock delivering a fun riposte to Scotty in response to his joke at the Vulcan's expense.


"There.  All better.  No hard feelings?"

The episode did a great job at highlighting the main characters, but left the intentions of the new ones blurry in execution. It is unclear why the Vians specifically found compassion to be the only trait worth preserving, especially when they didn’t practice it. It is generally accepted that self sacrifice is the ultimate show of love, but the weight that carries as a theme is undermined by how dubious the whole experiment is.

The crew’s interactions give a good taste of what the impact should have been, but the incomplete understanding of the threat ultimately caused the intense stakes built up for the captives to fall flat. Moreover, the Vians were presented as an overwhelming force, yet they hardly understood why they were conducting experiments, to the extent that insults from Kirk immediately caused them to question their motives. Not to mention that they conveniently and inexplicably had the means to save one of the races in the solar system. The crew’s roles in this episode outshone the disappointing parts, so I still consider this a good episode as far as enjoyment goes.

3.5 stars.

Amateur work


by Gideon Marcus

Joyce Muskat's name is probably new to you.  It wasn't to me—she's a N3FFer (member of the National Fantasy Fan Federation.  Also, a few months ago, her name was mentioned in one of the Trekzines.  I can't remember which one it was, but the author was pleased that her fan friend, Joyce Muskat, had sold a script to Trek on the slush pile.  This was remarkable since Trek officially doesn't take unsolicited manuscripts.  So, good for her.  I love that Trek has opened the door to new talent, particularly women.

I'd really like to know if the inconsistencies in the episode were the result of a spotty understanding of the material or revisions after submission.  I suspect the latter.  No true fan (he said hopefully) would write the Federation as inhuman monsters who would let the sundry races of Minar die when the sun went nova.  No sf aficionado would make the boner mistake of having a planet's atmosphere protect the surface from cosmic rays, but not the Enterprise's shields, not to mention having cosmic rays cause earthquakes.

It's never even made clear whether or not Gem (Jem?) comes from a race of empaths or if she was unique among them.  The latter seems more likely; I find it hard to believe that a race of empaths could fail to feel compassion.  I could see telepaths walling themselves off to avoid a confusion of the psyches ("where do I stop and you begin?") but given that Gem cannot verbally communicate at all, an empathic race would have to rely on its mental powers to relate.  And as Heinlein pointed out, no beings have more compassion than those who "grok" each other.

There's much to like about the episode, from the performances of the leads to the creative use of set and costume (the Vians have excellent Outer Limits-style make-up, though it is strange seeing such in color).  On the other hand, the unremitting score, the odd pacing (Shatner slo-mo-ing to the ground for about a minute springs to mind), the nonsensical motivations for the Vians' experiment, and frankly, the directorial decision to keep focusing on Gem's facial expressions, which made her look somewhat clownish, all drag the episode down to average territory.


If only Harlan Ellison had written this episode of Outer Limits…

Three stars.

Substitutionary Theology


by Joe Reid

“The Empath” is this week’s episode of Star Trek.  In it the crew of the Enterprise explore another strange new world.  Yet again they face forces that are overwhelming.  Yet again they find a way to pull their fat out of the fire and yet again the writers of this show chose to lace in overt theology into their story.  Not only were these salutes to God and the Bible poorly executed, they sought to teach biblical morals without delivering the substance of the message through the narrative of the story, but through imagery and exposition only.  This practice proved to be utter folly. 

In one of the opening scenes we witnessed a recording of two missing scientists going about their work when a quake happened.  This prompted the scientist named Ozaba to quote the first part of Psalm 95, verse 4, “In his hand are the deep places of the earth;…” A verse that when looked at by itself means nothing, but surrounded by the other verses in Psalm 95 that speak of the grandeur and majesty of God.  Ozaba quoting this added nothing to the scene nor did it make his sudden disappearance meaningful.  It was as if the writers desired to open the episode with a random scripture and blindly opened a Bible and picked the first verse they saw. 

At the very end of the episode this time Scotty delivered the references to scripture, without quoting it this time.  It was Mathew 13:45-46, where Jesus speaks about the kingdom of heaven being like a pearl of great price—it being worth selling everything that one has in order to obtain it.  Although closer related to the something in the story, (Gem) this scripture like the previous one was a bad fit for the message that the story was attempting to deliver: sacrificing oneself for the benefit of another. 

Strange use of scripture aside, the troubling part for me was in the main story of the episode: the imagery of Kirk as he was tortured by the aliens.  His hands were bound and his arms were stretched wide as if he were on a cross.  A nearly impossible position to hold as his wrists were bound with two ropes.  It was done intentionally so as to place Kirk in a crucified posture.  Conversely when McCoy was bound in a similar way his hands were above him.


Shatner's double is dying for the episode's sins

The combination of the out of place scriptural references and imagery used for both Kirk and the girl (in particular, the Pietà at the end as she is draped in a Vian's arms) muddy the waters of what this episode is attempting to say.  A much more effective method would be to keep the moral message and the story only based in the environment of an alien world and deliver the message without the forced and uninspired asides to scripture.  I’m fine with teaching morality tales using other mediums. I’m not fine with the poor application of scripture. It has the potential to cause more harm than good if misused—as we’ve seen done throughout the centuries.

Lest I be misunderstood, it's not so much that I found the episode offensive; rather it was too shallow and ineffective to deliver its message faithfully and respectfully.

One star

Staging a Comeback


by Janice L. Newman

When movies and television became widespread, early directors and producers treated them much like stage plays. There’s a static quality to shows, noticeable all the way up through the fifties and early sixties.

Eventually creators began to innovate, finally realizing that they could do things that weren’t possible on a stage. We began to see more creativity in how things were filmed, and particularly in how things were staged. In Star Trek we’ve seen both styles. Some episodes have had more traditional, static staging with actors carefully lined up in staggered and visible rows, while other episodes have pushed the boundaries of what can be done with a camera (the moving shots from Nomad’s point-of-view in Changeling come to mind).

“The Empath” is an interesting hybrid. There are a few scenes on the surface of the planet, and a couple on the Enterprise, but most of it is shot in a dark, empty space with minimal props. This makes it feel like a stage play, but more like a modern production than a traditional play. Gem’s interpretive dance-style form of communication strengthens this impression as well. It’s interesting to see how we’ve come full circle, from techniques drawn from the stage, to more dynamic shots made possible by modern filmmaking techniques, and now returning to a stage play, this time deliberately, to get a particular tone and feeling.


Filming in limbo—next door to Tombstone

There was much I liked in this episode: the interactions between Spock, McCoy, and Kirk were excellent, and I loved the idea of Gem’s special ability. Unfortunately, rest of the story made no sense, with important or dramatic information revealed late and then ignored in ways that were entirely uncharacteristic. I found myself wondering, as Gideon did, how many of the inconsistencies were due to the original script and how much to modifications made by others (certainly Roddenberry never hesitated to cut up or re-write a script, as Harlan Ellison will bitterly tell you). The bright spots and dark spots canceled each other out, leaving me with a somewhat disappointing three star episode and a lot of questions.

A Familiar Song


by Mx. Blue Cathey-Thiele

The Talosians are back! Oh wait, these are different beings with bulbous skulls, silver robes, illusory abilities, and a penchant for experimenting on humanoids. Supposedly the Vians have the power to save an entire planet (but only one!) from the imminent nova, and are deciding the fate of said planet by coercing an empath to absorb injuries to the point of death. Are there representatives from other planets being tested elsewhere? If Gem “fails" will the Vians save their own planet? Why does an entire world need to reach a certain standard of “compassion” to deserve being rescued from annihilation? Pay too much attention and you will start to wonder if the Vians are making it up as they go along. Note the dead scientists stored in macabre tube displays! Nothing says good intentions like having three more tubes ready and labeled for when the landing party eventually dies!


"The Red Cross is getting overambitious with their blood drives…"

The Talosians- sorry, the Vians pay strangely little attention to Gem, for all their claims. It's hard to tell if Gem was left on the sidelines more from being a woman, or from what translated in human terms as a disability. Captain Pike is one of the few men who have been equally dismissed by an episode at large, and it's very clear that his role in The Menagerie was impacted by his limited means of communication. Despite clearly being able to comprehend what was happening, his binary Yes/No indicator left him largely out of the conversation. Even when he did express an opinion, it wasn't always respected. Gem had a more interpretive means of communication, but she too was often overlooked. In a future with translators that can talk to glowing clouds, and in the company of Spock, a touch telepath who has expressed a growing willingness to meld with aliens he encounters, it's beyond me how the crew ever opts not to try to communicate.

Upon first finding Gem, Kirk wants to know what is wrong, why she won't speak. Most aliens they've met have compatible languages, after all. McCoy's analysis: “She appears to be perfectly healthy. As for the other, her lack of vocal cords could be physiologically normal for her species, whatever that is,” provides a good reminder about human norms and poses the question, is a being “mute” if their species doesn't speak to start with? If her entire civilization uses empathy to connect, then the landing party likely seems just as restricted to Gem as she does to them. Being an alien, she doesn't nod or shake her head, but she does press McCoy's tricorder into Kirk's hands when the question of where to go arises. Given the option of escape, she votes to rescue the doctor.

Katheryn Hays brought a lot to her role as Gem, when the episode remembered she was there at all. Her performance, the set, and some choice scenes between the landing party couldn't make up for the surrounding episode, though.

3 stars

[Come join us tonight (December 20th) for the next thrilling episode of Star Trek!  KGJ is broadcasting the show live with commercials and accompanied by trekzine readings at 8pm Eastern and Pacific.  You won't want to miss it… Plus early coverage of the Apollo 8 launch!]

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[November 28, 1968] Puppet on a String (Star Trek: "Plato's Stepchildren")

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Who Is the True Child of Plato?


by Erica Frank

This week's Star Trek began with Kirk, Spock, and McCoy beaming down to a planet in response to a medical distress signal. The sensors showed no signs of life, indicating that the Enterprise desperately needs new sensors, as this is the third time in recent weeks the sensors have failed to show the people who would soon be assaulting our crew.

They met the "Platonians," the remnants of a near-immortal race that idolized Earth's ancient Greek civilization and patterned their own after it—or at least, patterned their outfits after it. They have extremely powerful psychokinetic abilities but no infection resistance whatsoever.

Are we to believe these people have never gotten a papercut in the last 2500 years? I shall endeavor to convince myself that their susceptibility to infection is a recent development—that for thousands of years, their environment lacked the bacteria that caused infections in open wounds. Now that it's somehow evolved on their planet, they have no defenses against it.

The Platonians were very grateful for McCoy's medical assistance—so much so that they insisted he stay with them to treat any future injuries they may have. And rather than petition the Federation for volunteer doctors who would love to talk Greek philosophy, they decided that kidnapping with a side of torture and mockery was the way to go.


Welcome to Platonius; your compliance with the local dress code is appreciated—and mandatory.

Plato recognized four primary virtues: Courage, moderation, wisdom and justice. Yet we see none of these in their society—if you can call a group of fewer than four dozen a "society," with no children and no growth or change. (Kirk might've called them out for being stagnant, if he weren't busy calling them out for being despotic bullies.) Instead, we have a pack of apathetic lotus-eaters with a penchant for ridiculing anyone who doesn't have their power.

I saw the Platonians and thought, I am so damned tired of stories where psychic powers turn everyone who has them into bratty tyrants. I was delighted to realize that such is not the story here.

Parmen called himself a "philosopher-king," but he was neither. We saw no hint of philosophical insight from him, and no rulership other than "I am stronger than everyone else, so do what I say or I will kill you." He claimed to live in "peace and harmony," but his "peace" was nothing but the threat of force and humiliation.

Alexander, treated as a slave and court buffoon, had the best understanding of Plato's principles. He immediately argued in favor of the strangers' lives, and was punished for it—which he had to know would happen. He did not want access to the power that had tortured him for so long; he only wanted to escape it. He was understandably enraged with Parmen and wanted to kill him, but when Kirk asked, "Do you want to be like him?"—he immediately dropped the knife.

Alexander warned Kirk about the conditions on Platonius, heedless of any future punishment. He wanted very much to get away from the people who had tortured him for thousands of years, but he did not try to dissuade Kirk and his crew from acquiring the same power that had been used against him for so long. He recognized that corruption is not a matter of power itself, but how it's used, and he had enough faith left to trust his new allies. And when he had a chance at revenge—he turned away from it.


Kirk talks Alexander out of a suicide mission.

Parmen said, "We can all be counted upon to live down to our lowest impulses"—but that's not true. Alexander declined the opportunities for both power and murder. Parmen wants to believe that anyone would turn into a tyrant if given enough raw power… because he doesn't want to acknowledge that the man his court keeps as "a buffoon" has a better understanding of Plato's principles than him and his thirty-odd courtiers.

I can imagine that, in the future, the Platonians are in for some shocking changes. Kirk's report will bring visitors to a planet where psychokinesis is available a few hours after receiving an injection—think of the construction projects that could be done, with no need for clamps or glue to hold pieces in place while they are being assembled. Think of the art that could be created by multiple brushes working together from different angles. Think of the surgeries, with no hands getting in the way, no tool handles blocking the surgeon's view, no gauze compresses interfering with the stitching, because the nurse can pinch the blood vessels shut with a thought.

…And then think of what the Platonians had instead: A sterile world of indolence and petty cruelty.

Five stars.

Katharsis


by Mx. Blue Cathey-Thiele

We get multiple time references in this episode, and many of them are incompatible. They arrived on this planet 2500 years ago, but Philana is only 2300. She was 117 and Parmen 128 when they married. The voyages of the Enterprise take place about two centuries after 1990, according to Kirk in Space Seed, so none of those times match with Plato's lifespan. This is frustrating at first glance, but now I'm inclined to think it works. The Platonians live in a stylized world, based on the appearances and ideas that they have handpicked from Greece and Greek philosophy. It's a facade, set dressing that props up their own personal desires and calls it harmony. I suggest that the infection that McCoy treats is also a ploy, one that Alexander tried to protest before Philana cut him off.

Platonians make the crew move and speak – this is either an incredibly complex set of movements all being controlled at once to move the mouth, lungs, and vocal chords to shape sounds, or a manipulation of the brain itself to force those actions. If they have that much control over bodies that belong to others, surely they can control their own and facilitate healing, or prevent infection from taking hold. Alexander would not necessarily know this though, as he doesn't have that ability, and the others constantly reinforce their control over him. As far as he knows, they did last thousands of years without injury.

Whether the anniversary Parmen references is actually that of 2500 years or not, it is all set up as a performance. He and Philana lead the Platonians in a voyeuristic farce, torturing the crew explicitly and more subtly by making them think that there was ever a choice to leave at all, making McCoy feel complicit in his friends’ pain.


Convulsed with agony, Kirk fights his manipulation

“Tragedy is an imitation of an action that is admirable, complete (composed of an introduction, a middle part and an ending), and possesses magnitude; in language made pleasurable, each of its species separated in different parts; performed by actors, not through narration; effecting through pity and fear the purification of such emotions.” Aristotle, the Poetics

The spectacle of it all reflects aspects of Greek tragedies, interestingly, something Plato's student Aristotle had many thoughts on and wrote about in a reply to Plato's Republic. Through the pain of the “playthings”, Philana and Parmen draw satisfaction. The landing party takes center stage, suitable protagonists for a tragedy, noble and with character traits to be exploited; McCoy's empathy, Spock's stoicism and self control, Kirk's confidence and pride. Uhura's bravery in facing fear and Christine's affection are also twisted to cut right where they are most vulnerable. While the Platonians hardly seem to feel any pity for their victims, they certainly gain an emotional release from the suffering they inflict.

Would I say I enjoyed this episode? Not much of it! But it was a good episode, the way that the crew and Alexander reached out to each other in actions and words amidst the pain was powerful.

5 stars

Refuting Acton's Dictum


by Gideon Marcus

"Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely"

In many ways, "Plato's Stepchildren" is "The Menagerie" redux: a race of humanoids rendered decadent by their superpowers.  "Stepchildren" takes things a step further.  The big-headed Talosians were at least willing to do things on their own behalf, including zapping Pike unconscious with a sleepy staff.  The Platonians refuse to lift a finger, even to that final confrontation between Parmen and Kirk.  How easy it would have been for the 37 Platonians to simply throw something at Kirk, or to step forward for personal combat.  Yet they all shrink at the image of Alexander with a knife.

Perhaps it is the nature of the power that so atrophies the Platonians.  After all, the Talosian power was that of illusion.  The Platonians really do have physical mastery of their environment.  Either way, the lesson is clear: power is an irresistible narcotic.

Which is why it's so refreshing when it isn't.

McCoy, in creating a telekinesis potion (and that was an excellent scene combining science and computers in a logical fashion a la "Wolf in the Fold"), has unlocked a frightful Pandora's Box.  Who wouldn't want those kinds of powers?  Answer: Kirk doesn't.  He much prefers to do things for himself.  Alexander doesn't.  He's seen what happens to those who partake.


Alexander, handsome star of the show

And can we just turn a spotlight on Michael Dunn's performance as Alexander?  In an episode characterized by excellent performances, Alexander yet shines.  Humble, noble, resourceful, admirable, vengeful, not to mention the incredible physical control he displays, alternating from painful hobbling to acrobatic feats as he is "thrown around" by Parmen.  Bravo.  I could not have loved Dunn's character half so much were he not so well-realized, nor would the lesson to be learned from the Platonian's folly have been so effective.

There's not much to this episode—just a few sets, a lot of talking, a lot of torture.  On the other hand, with such tools, Aeschylus created Prometheus Bound, and I think "Plato's Stepchildren" will be as enduring a classic.

Five stars.

In the Face of Oppression


by Lorelei Marcus

Fear is power.  It is a tool of control, wielded to maintain hierarchy and oppression.  Plato's stepchildren (the Platonians) reveled in the fear they caused in others, or seemed to cause, and the sense of control it gave them.

Yet Uhura said, even as her body moved against her will, "I am not afraid."  While the Platonians had physical control, her defiance was a resistance, a crack in the facade of their total dominion.

I have to wonder if Nichelle Nichols was at all afraid acting this scene, for her kiss with Shatner, too, was a kind of resistance.  What ripples and backlash will this episode create?  What consequences will she, the actress, have to face?  Perhaps she found strength, like Uhura drew courage from the Captain's prior steady influence, because she was not the first.


The performance of the actors, so clearly resistant, undercuts any torrid interpretations

Last year, Nancy Sinatra had an hour long musical special featuring several of her groovy tunes strung together through a loose narrative exploring her life and the people in it.  It was an all-star cast, including dance numbers arranged by the choreographer for Hullabaloo and cameos from several members of the Rat Pack.  Two of the numbers, successively, featured Dean Martin and then Sammy Davis Jr.  Both were duets, and both ended with Nancy kissing them, much like a girl kisses her uncle, or performers kiss in greeting/departing.  The kisses were sweet and harmless—and very deliberately staged for impact, particularly the latter kiss.  When Sammy and Nancy kiss, it looks impromptu, but the performers deliberately caused the embrace to occur at the end of the shooting day, right before Sammy had to leave, such that the director couldn't demand a retake.


Black meets white on Movin' with Nancy

I don't know if there has been much reaction to that kiss, but I have seen Sammy host Hollywood Palace a few times since, and his activist spirit only burns brighter and more fervently the more he appears.  He's trying to drive change and inspire others to follow.  That kiss was only one of example of his efforts.

And with Star Trek and Nichelle Nichols following in his footsteps, not to mention groundbreaking movies like Guess who's coming to dinner?, I think that momentum is building.

In the face of a fearsome enemy, the two primary human reactions are paralysis and/or anger.  Plato's stepchildren evoked both as I watched our beloved characters manipulated like puppets.  It also inspired me, in the face of overwhelming crisis and inequality, to not be afraid.  Indeed, I will hold onto my fury and let it drive me, until we have the power to overcome our oppressors.

Five stars.

[Come join us tomorrow (November 29th) for the next thrilling episode of Star Trek!  KGJ is broadcasting the show live with commercials and accompanied by trekzine readings at 8pm Eastern and Pacific.  You won't want to miss it…]




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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[October 4, 1968] (Star Trek: "The Enterprise Incident")

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by Erica Frank

This episode begins with Kirk acting strangely, and everyone on the Enterprise has noticed. He is snappish, angry, arbitrary; he gives orders that defy Federation law and threatens people who argue with him.

His crew is loyal; they have been through many hardships together—so when he orders them into the Romulan Zone, they obey, although they are obviously nervous.


The Captain's orders are final

They are, of course, discovered, surrounded by Romulan vessels of a new, Klingon design. Kirk and Spock are compelled to beam aboard the Romulan ship to discuss matters, in exchange for two Romulan prisoners sent to the Enterprise. Kirk insists their location is a matter of instrument error: by the time they discovered the mistake, they were too deep in Romulan territory to get away quickly. The Romulan Commander (the first woman flag officer we have met in the show) says that sounds like—well, she doesn't call it the produce of a hind end of a male cow, because she is being politely formal, and this is a television show for families (and the Romulans may not have cattle), but she obviously indicates that it sounds implausible to her.


Color her unconvinced

Spock… confirms her opinion. Says the captain has been irrational recently. That he ordered them past the Neutral Zone. Kirk gets angry and threatens him, and is removed to the Romulan brig. Later, he injures himself enough that they call McCoy to attend him, and he attacks Spock. Spock defends himself with the "Vulcan death grip," an attack we haven't seen before, that looks surprisingly similar to the mind-meld grip.


The closer Jim gets, the worse he looks…

The Romulans send the captain's body back to his ship while the Romulan Commander attempts to convince Spock that he'd be much happier in the Romulan empire.

Have we seen this before?

McCoy revives Kirk. (I wonder if anyone actually thought Kirk died.) Kirk tells a select few people that his supposed insanity was a ruse, a form of dodging accountability in case they were captured. This is an undercover mission. 

The interesting part of the episode, for me, is the Romulan Commander's discussions with Spock. She attempts to seduce him in multiple ways, first laying out how much more power he'd have in the Romulan empire, and when Spock says he does not want command of a ship, she switches tactics. She offers him fine Vulcan food, which he admits is better than what's on the Enterprise. Pours him drinks—first a clear blue-green liquid, and later something orange, served in small glasses like liquor. Spock eats tiny food on toothpicks, and relaxes with her.

She puts herself into the bargain: "Romulan women are not like Vulcan females; they're not… dedicated to pure logic." She drapes herself enticingly, making sure he knows what she's offering. She whispers her name in his ear, and he tells her it's beautiful.


Oiling her traps

At each point, he makes appreciative comments, tells her that the offer is indeed a good one. That he can tell he'd have more power, more freedom, more creature comforts in the Romulan empire.

Eventually, he agrees to her terms: he will lead a small party of Romulans aboard the Enterprise, and from there order the ship to surrender at a Romulan port, her flagship at its side.

It doesn't matter what the terms are. He's lying. He's obviously lying—at least, it's obvious to anyone who knows him. Maybe outsiders who think Vulcans are actually emotionless would believe that Spock agreeing that the food is good means he's content to betray his heritage and his captain and wander off to a government with helmets designed to cover pointed ears.

Predictable but not boring

Instead, it turns out Spock was stalling for time so Kirk could sneak back to the Romulan ship in disguise and grab the new cloaking device. Scotty then has to install and use it before the Romulans get their phasers online—of course there's a deadline. But if we didn't believe Spock used a death grip on Kirk, we weren't going to believe the Romulans would succeed in blowing up the Enterprise. We wonder how they will escape, but not whether.

We could see the Commander convincing herself that her seduction was working—and we could also see Spock watching her reactions, feeding her facts that would convince her that he agreed, without actually admitting to being moved by her offer. Since he's a Vulcan, she doesn't expect him to offer an emotional reaction—and she fails to notice that not only is his enthusiasm lacking, so is any admission that he's actually been persuaded.

He says that the food is better than what the Enterprise has—he doesn't say that he'd leave his position for it. "Please give up your career; we have better snacks" is not going to work on anyone who actually likes their job.

Four stars. I loved the nuanced interactions between them, and I could tell something was off about Kirk but wasn't sure what until McCoy revived him.

Rewriting the present


by Gideon Marcus

Somewhere in North Korea, 83 American sailors and officers are interned, their captain occasionally forced to make confessions as to why his spy ship, the U.S.S. Pueblo, was inside Communist waters in January of this year.  I'm sure you all remember the news—air units were redeployed from Vietnam to Japan, the U.S.S. Enterprise (the aircraft carrier, not Kirk's ship) was stationed off the North Korean coast, and there were rumbles of an impending World War 3.  Indeed, if it hadn't been for the North Vietnamese launching their Tet holidays offensive at the end of January, shifting our focus, who knows where things might have ended up?

With The Enterprise Incident, the metaphor couldn't be more blatant.  The Romulans have been remolded.  Gone are the Kriegsmarine/Roman hybrids that populated "Balance of Terror".  Now they are cloaked in Orientalism, down to the little sideburns Joanne Linville sports, with their smooth speech reminiscent of every movie that features a sinister Red Chinese or Korean.  Vina's exotic theme from "The Cage" has been reworked for the Romulan Commander (effectively, I might add).  The defense-minded Romulans, who showed no interest in capturing the Enterprise when it violated the Neutral zone in "The Deadly Years", suddenly want nothing more than the prize of one of Star Fleet's finest vessels, a greed that proves their undoing.

And so, the American public gets to have its cake and eat it, too.  The Romulan Commander has the right of it when she accuses Kirk of entering Romulan space on a Federation-sanctioned espionage mission to get the cloaking device.  Yet, thanks to a series of Mission: Impossible-style exploits, the "good guys" get away with not only bearding the lion, but stealing the lioness. Rah, rah.  We win.


For ease of maintenance, you can't beat the easy-to-remove Cloaking Device!

This episode is only the latest in what has become a kind of motif.  Earlier this year, John Wayne's "The Green Berets" (the movie that took Sulu away from us for much of Trek's second season) turned Vietnam into World War 2, complete with a platoon with soldiers named Muldoon and Kowalski—and precious few black troops.  David Janssen, no longer a fugitive, plays a jaded reporter, who comes to learn the value of the American presence in Southeast Asia.  And so, contrary to any news you might have read this year, we win the war in Vietnam.

And just last month, the movie Anzio came out, detailing that SNAFU of a landing on the Italian coast in January 1944.  Robert Mitchum plays…a jaded reporter, who comes to learn the pointlessness of the American presence in southern Europe.  Thus, the anti-war movement comes to World War 2.

Mind you, "The Enterprise Incident" is better than either of those two movies.  It's superlatively paced, the dialogue crackles, the chemistry between Nimoy and Linville is palpable, and Shatner makes a convincing Romulan.  I'm even getting used to Scotty's new hairdo.  But the flag-waving has not been so blatant since "The Omega Glory".  Juxtaposed with the nauseating Nixon ad that aired halfway through, lambasting American policy in Vietnam and promising "peace with honor", the episode just didn't sit well with me.

Four stars.  Just have your Maalox tablets handy.

The Lady IS the Tiger


by Janice L. Newman

I’ll admit, when I watched The Enterprise Incident the other night, at first I was frustrated by the behavior of the Romulan Commander. But upon watching the tape we made of the episode with our trusty “Videocorder”, my feelings changed.

Women have an interesting, inconsistent place in the Star Trek universe. Sometimes they are slaves or seemingly exist only to titillate the male characters, like Shahna or Kara (the dancer from “Wolf in the Fold”). Sometimes they have positions of power and importance, like Uhura, Commissioner Nancy Hedford, or Sylvia. Yet even the women in the latter group often give up their position or power when tempted by romantic love. I originally thought the Romulan Commander fell into this same trap, but upon re-watching the episode, I realized I was wrong.

The Romulan Commander is doing her job.


These boots are made for commanding

When the Enterprise flew into the neutral zone, what a plum it must have seemed had fallen into their lap. After the ‘shoot first, ask questions later’ response from “The Deadly Years”, perhaps the Romulans re-evaluated their policy for when a ship like the Enterprise strayed into their territory. Or perhaps this particular commander was just especially ambitious. Regardless, rather than immediately blowing up the ship, she looked for a way to capture it and its wealth of intelligence. Knowing that the crew would surely self-destruct rather than let themselves be taken, she sought a crack in their armor that she could exploit.

Her interest in Spock thus becomes a rational, considered strategy rather than that of a woman letting her heart overrule her mind. She is believably attracted to him, but she is also doing her duty. If she can ‘turn’ Spock, and if he then orders the crew to surrender rather than self-destructing, not only will she win the starship, but the cooperation of a high-ranking Starfleet officer.

Perhaps her reach exceeds her grasp. Perhaps she is too greedy. With the benefit of hindsight and inside knowledge of Kirk’s and Spock’s personalities, it’s easy to be judgemental and say, “She should have just blown up the ship,” or “She should have known better.” But these are still better than, “She should have been thinking with her head rather than her heart.”

When her actions are viewed as those of an ambitious Romulan Commander who wants to get ahead and who is loyal to her people, they make perfect sense. After all, how many times has Captain Kirk used seduction to manipulate women and get what he wants? Can we blame the Romulan Commander for taking a gamble and trying the same? She may have lost, but I can’t help but respect her for trying.

I also appreciated Spock’s acknowledgement that no other outcome was possible, because she would not have truly respected him if he’d made such a choice. No matter how attracted to him she might have been, in the end she would merely have been using him, and they both know it. If there were any doubts that she was seducing him for political more than personal reasons, this line lays them to rest.

Three and a half stars.

The bounty


by Mx. Blue Cathey-Thiele

Two officers beam onto a ship. The captain is confident and capable, skilled at manipulation, and fools even the audience. One provides a distraction and the other collects a valuable asset in a dangerous gamble.

No, I don't mean Kirk stealing the cloaking device.

It was a neat trick and one that allowed the Enterprise to escape without a trace, but I would argue that it was not the actual mission goal, or at least, not the only mission goal. As Kirk and Spock went up against the Commander – who could serve as the Romulan answer to Captain Kirk – this was yet another layer of the ruse. Romulan technology is advanced, but what is more powerful? Knowledge.

It was only in "Balance of Terror" that Romulans were even seen for the first time in a century. Additionally, Starfleet intelligence had already told some of the Bridge crew that Romulans were now using Klingon ship design. Between a cloaking device and the weapons capability to obliterate entire outposts, why switch to a design that the Fleet is not only more familiar with but has dealt with more often? The Enterprise could be destroyed before they ever make contact with a ship past the Neutral Zone. An alliance with the Klingons could change the terms of the Organian peace treaty. Klingon/Federation battles may not be possible but bringing in allies might circumnavigate the way the Organians neutralized fighting capabilities. Finding a way to disrupt a power consolidation such as that seems a far more compelling reason to risk losing the Enterprise or potentially igniting a new conflict with the Romulans.


Spock obtains the real prize of the expedition

With Kirk "dead" and the more immediate threat "discovered", Spock was free to act. He and the Commander shared cultural information, confirming aspects of what the species knew of each other. He also had time to observe Romulan command structure, the quarters of the Commander, and possibly even collect information from her mind. This would be a gamble, as they share distant ancestry and Spock can be vulnerable when connecting with another mind, but not inherently riskier than the plan for Kirk.

Whether they escape with the cloaking device or intelligence, Starfleet gains something to use.

5 stars

Mission: Possible


by Joe Reid

In his letter to the Corinthians, Saint Paul says, “…I am made all things to all men, that I by all means save some.” This episode, “The Enterprise Incident”, epitomized becoming many things to a varied audience.  This episode skillfully blended multiple themes and genres into a cohesive quilt that when looked at from a distance you realize isn’t a quilt at all.  It is a beautiful tapestry, a singular thing that through different sets of eyes will reveal itself differently. 

In the past I complained about episodes that attempted to do too many things in one airing: “The Gamesters of Triskelion” comes to mind.  The different themes in that episode were not blended, to the point of being jarring.  “The Enterprise Incident” presents a military thriller, a heist story, a secret agent tale, a romance, and a science fiction story all rolled into one.  This unified, multifaceted story is not the only reason that I loved this episode.  Here are some other reasons:

It didn’t go out of the way to tell the audience what was happening.  The events told the story.  There was no long explanation from Captain Kirk as to what was happening.  We were given no reason why Romulans were flying Klingon ships.  There was no discussion as to why the commander of the Romulans was female and whether that was common.  The audience was given no revelation as to whether or not Romulan commander had feelings for Spock or if she was simply tricking him.  In this episode things were what they were, and it was up to the audience to make sense of the event for themselves.  An intelligent tale for intelligent viewers.


Even Subcommander Tal is impressed

Another reason to love this episode is because of the amount of respect that was given to the Romulans.  There were not overtly evil, mustache twirling, or stupid enemies in this episode.  The Romulans made no logical missteps in the episode.  Their actions were based on information that they verified.  The Romulan commander didn’t take it for granted that Kirk lost his sanity, she allowed the information to be verified by both Spock and Bones before believing it.  The Romulans monitored transmissions from their own ship and acted when they discovered alien/human signals.  They remained vigilant and intelligent in every scene.  Spock and the others didn’t defeat the Romulans, they simply outmaneuvered them by being slightly more clever in the way they responded to the information that each person had at the time.  Outside of Kirk faking his death, no one was even killed in this episode, which for Star Trek is rare.

Seeing what came before it, I would have thought it impossible for Star Trek to tell a unique and novel multifaceted story, representing so many things to so many people, without speaking down to the audience.  I’m happy to say that they successfully completed the mission in more ways than one.  For that I am grateful.

Five stars




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Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[August 24, 1968] Here, There, and Nowhere (August 1968 Galactoscope)

1 Comment


by Mx. Kris Vyas-Myall

The Cassiopeia Affair by Chloe Zerwick & Harrison Brown

In Redo Valley, Virginia, a radiotelescope complex in the late 20th century hunts for extra-terrestrial intelligence. One night Max Gaby detects a signal coming from Cassiopeia 3579. Inside there is a two-dimensional picture being sent out via binary.

Binary Code Puzzle from Cassiopeia
Can you solve the binary-code puzzle?

This provides proof of an alien intelligence.

At the same time, conflict is brewing between Russia and China, one that could plunge the world into nuclear war. Is this evidence of intelligent life among the stars the greatest hope we have for peace?

Yes, this is yet another story of Radio Astronomy. These are now becoming as regular in science fiction as space adventures and superhuman mutants, but this stands out as a wonderful example. I believe this is the first fiction from the pair, with Zerwick being primarily a visual artist and Brown being a scientist. Together they have created something masterful.

Although much of the novel is taken up by discussions of scientific theories or information on how to programme radio telescopes, it is raised up by excellent writing and a real understanding of character. Whilst Judith Merrill criticised it for being dull, I never found it so. It was a book I was dying to pick up whenever I got the opportunity. It is a testament to the authors that it never felt dry.

Regarding the characters, it is a huge cast, but one where they all feel considered and with depth, not merely props for discussion. These include Max Gaby as the wide-eyed believer, Barney Davidson the grouchy cynic, Rudolph Calder the Machiavellian hawk and Adam Lurie the disillusioned drunk who is secretly sleeping with Gaby’s wife.

Throughout there are little moments that make it feel real, such as Gaby calling Adam up at 4 am about a possible sighting and Adam grumpily insisting on having his shower and coffee first, or when someone tries to bribe Davidson and he threatens to kill him.

The characters are not perfect either, we regularly change perspective and sometimes see that they are downright unpleasant. But it is made clear we are not meant to sympathise with everyone’s point of view, rather to gain an insight into their motivations.

It also tries to consider the politics of the situation carefully. It demonstrates how different factions will react and what they will want to do with this information. A particularly interesting, if depressing, touch is that the hawks on both sides of the Iron Curtain distrust Gaby as he is a refugee from Hungary in 1956. This element gives it both a sense of excitement and verisimilitude that is often missing from these heavier works.

These kinds of harder science fiction stories are not usually the ones that appeal to me. However, I was enthralled. It may be even more enjoyed by fans of Clarke and Niven and I would not be surprised to see it on the Hugo ballot next year.

Five Stars


by Victoria Silverwolf

Assignment in Nowhere, by Keith Laumer


Cover art by Richard Powers.

This is the third in a series of novels dealing with alternate universes. The first was Worlds of the Imperium. The Noble Editor gave it a moderately positive review.

Next came The Other Side of Time. I thought it was pretty decent, if not outstanding.

Both books featured a fellow named Brion Bayard, a man from our own universe who went on to be an agent for the Imperium, a British/German empire that dominates another version of Earth.

Bayard plays a small but important role in this new novel, but the main character is a man named Johnny Curlon. He's also the narrator. Let's say hello to him.

He's a Real Nowhere Man

Johnny is a big, strong guy who lives in Florida and runs a fishing boat. The story starts off with some tough hoods trying to intimidate him, but he deals with them easily. At this point, I thought I was reading one of John D. MacDonald's Florida-based suspense novels, particularly those featuring Travis McGee, a big, strong guy who owns a houseboat.

(If you haven't read them, give 'em a try. They're really good.)

Anyway, we find out this is a science fiction novel when Johnny gets rescued from his floundering boat, which the bad guys have sabotaged, by our old pal Brion. He carries Johnny around in a vehicle that can not only travel between universes, but is able to pass through solid matter and become invisible. Mighty handy little gizmo.

Naturally, Johnny is confused by all this. It seems that he's the key to preventing lots of universes from being wiped out by something called the Blight (capital letter and all.) There are antagonists eager to use Johnny for their own purposes.

At this point, Johnny's knife, which is actually part of an ancient sword handed down to him by his ancestors, gets reunited with another part of the ancient weapon. That's our first hint that this SF novel is going to seem a lot like a fantasy adventure.

Johnny winds up working with a fellow who is very obviously the main bad guy. (Obvious to the reader, anyway, although it's quite a while until Johnny catches on.) They travel to a universe whose only human inhabitant is a stunningly beautiful woman, straight out of a sword-and-sorcery story. She even has a pet griffin, and there's a giant around.

(This middle section of the book reminds me of Robert A. Heinlein's novel Glory Road. That was science fiction disguised as fantasy. This one is fantasy disguised as science fiction, to some degree.)

After leaving that magical place with another piece of the sword, the villain takes Johnny to the universe he wants to rule. It's a place where Richard Lionheart didn't die in battle, but lived to be a weak ruler. He wound up surrendering his kingdom to the French, so France is still in control of England, which is called New Normandy.

(Brion already told Johnny that he was the last descendent of the Plantagenets, so it all ties together, sort of.)

The bad guy's plan would come at the cost of destroying a bunch of universes. (You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs, I guess.) Can our hero set things right? (Go ahead, take a guess.)

In typical Laumer fashion, this is an action-packed yarn that moves at a dizzying pace. It's not as tightly plotted as some, and I'd say it's the weakest book in the Imperium series. The middle section — you know, all that fantasy stuff — seems to come from another novel entirely. There's a lot of pseudoscientific blather trying to explain what's going on, and none of it makes any sense.

Two stars.


by Gideon Marcus

The Two-Timers


Cover by Leo and Diane Dillon

Nine years ago John Breton nearly lost his wife. Now, a decade later, he and Kate are drifting apart, their knives out at every opportunity, their marriage a fast cooling ember. John has thrown himself bodily into his geological consulting business, and his wife has picked a hobby John has no interest in, befriending Miriam Palfrey, an automatic writer. At a typical crashingly dull dinner party with the Palfreys, characterized by endless sniping, John decides only profound drunkenness will get him through the night.

Whereupon he receives a call:

"You've been living with my wife for almost exactly nine years–and I'm coming to take her back."

Because nine years ago, Kate had died. Two years into their marriage, a stupid fight had compelled Kate's husband to stay home, while she trooped through the night, headed for a party she would never attend, intercepted by a brutal rapist and killer.

John, calling himself Jack at the time, was devastated, wracked with guilt. More than this: he began to be unhinged from time, taking trips weekly to the scene of the crime. Jack resolved to stop Kate's murder, even if it meant rending the very fabric of space and causality.

Two timelines were created: Timeline A, in which Jack led a lonely, monomaniacal life, and Timeline B, in which a sleek and unappreciative John enjoyed his misbegotten wife, the fruits of the labor of his alter ego.

Thus, Jack hatched a plan–move sideways to Timeline B…and fill John's shoes, whether he liked it or not.

But the law of conservation of energy is a hard fact, in the multiverse as well as the universe. Jack Breton's actions threaten not only the rocky relationship of Kate and John, but also the whole of humanity.

According to the book's blurb, this is Shaw's third book, but the first to achieve wide distribution. I don't know what his first book was, but I read his second, Night Walk last year. Between that and his short stories, it was clear Shaw was a gifted author just waiting to grow out of his adolescence.

With The Two-Timers, he has done so.

I picked the book up just before bed and had to force myself to put it down. Eight hours later, it was in my hands again, and it did not leave until I'd finished the story come lunchtime (it was a welcome companion as I waited in the courthouse for a jury duty that never materialized).

The characters are vividly, deeply realized, all of them evolving throughout the story. We initially hate John and sympathize with Jack, but neither of the Bretons is wholly irredeemanble, nor sympathetic. And Kate is no prize to be won; she is an independent entity with her own virtues, failings, and feelings. Shaw reminds me a bit of Larry Niven, drawing people with quick, deft strokes. But Shaw has a sensitive style, working more with emotions than hard science. It's the people that matter in this piece; the SFnal content is exciting, necessary, but secondary.

The pacing in the book is exquisite, from the painful depiction of a marriage gone sour at the beginning, to the arrival of Jack, through the resolution of the resulting triangle. The interspersed scenes of the slow collapse of the physical universe around them are deftly handled, as is the closing in of Lieutenant Blaize Convery, the detective who knows Breton saved his wife nine years ago; he just can't figure out how.

As Lorelei (who picked up the book on my recommendation and tore through it in short order) notes, aside from the poetic writing, the real triumph of the book is that you get so many viewpoint characters, and so many changing perspectives on these characters, and none of it is confusing. It's just masterfully done.

It's a hard book to read in parts. The emotions here are fraught ones, and there are some rather unpleasant (though never gratuitous) scenes. Nevertheless, these are emotions that must be explored, and thankfully, the mystery and the brilliant writing carry you past them, as well as the satisfying resolution of the threesome's story. My only quibble is that the end doesn't quite work, logistically, though it makes sense thematically. And as Lorelei notes, it's a touch rushed.

Nevertheless, The Two-Timers is a terrific work, definitely a strong contender for my Hugo ballot next year.

4.5 stars.

Omha Abides

We Americans love a good revolution story. After all, our nation was founded by a rebellion, and the appeal of an underdog throwing off an oppressor has been popular since David threw a rock at Goliath.

C.C. MacApp takes a stab at the theme with his latest book, Omha Abides, a tale of the 35th Century. 1500 years before, the Gaddyl had conquered the Earth. The amphibian aliens did not succeed without a fight, but their advanced technology, particularly their craft-shielding Distorters, proved decisive. Human civilization was shattered, the population reduced to a bare fraction, many of them condemned to slavery. Meanwhile, the Gaddyl build their own fiefdoms amidst the ruins of the human cities and built an interstellar teleport transit hub in Arizona.

Now Earth is a hunting preserve, humanity largely quiescent. The North American continent is home to just 25 million people…and half a million overlord Gaddyl. The humans who are not slaves roam in bands or live in primitive statelets. They have no hope of taking back the planet, until a series of events precipitously brings success in their reach.

Our hero is Murno, a freed man who lives with his family in Fief Bay, once known as San Francisco. A new, cruel lord has ascended to the fief throne, and he has decided that no longer shall free humans be off limits to hunting parties.

At the same time, Murno is contacted by the underground. He is entrusted with three items, two of them Gaddyl, and one of ancient human make, which he is tasked to take east, beyond the Sierras, beyond the mysterious Grove, even past the mighty Rockies, to where the mythical deity named "Omha" waits.

If you had a subscription to the recently defunct magazine, Worlds of Tomorrow, you may have read about half of this book. Victoria Silverwolf reviewed Under the Gaddyl Tree, which comprises about the first third of the book, and Trees Like Torches, which contains bits from the middle. Victoria gave both stories three stars and felt they were competent, but nothing special.

Often, the expansion of stories into a novel results in something less than the sum of its parts. The opposite occurs in this case. Now, instead of just being isolated, mildly interesting adventure stories, now Murno's encounters with Gaddyl, blue mutant humans, a giant grove of telepathic trees, and so on, gird a compelling plot. Humanity shouldn't have a chance against the Gaddyl. But neither should an electron, per classical physics, be able to jump energy levels. But thanks to quantum physics and the Uncertainty Principle, given a short enough period of time, an electron can possess abnormal amounts of energy.

Similarly, a confluence of circumstances makes for a successful rebellion opportunity. Because humanity had been waiting for its chance. The telepathic Blues had spies in pivotal places. There was an underground poised for action. There really is an Omha (and you can guess what its nature is early on, which will also clue you in on how to pronounce the word).

Add the trigger of the Gaddyl getting a bit too complacent and a bit too cruel, as well as the theft of some vital technologies, and a human victory becomes plausible.

The pacing of the book is a little off. Much of the human victory isn't even detailed until the last 25 pages of the book (though it turns out that's not really too short a span; MacApp pulls it off). Also, much reference is made to Murno baffling his alien pursuers with "trail puzzles", a phrase with which I'm not familiar, and whose meaning I still don't apprehend. Occasionally, the story does lapse into conventional adventure fare–more like a tale of the American West than the American future.

But, it's a book with real cinematic quality to it; the scenes in California were particularly resonant for me, a Golden State native. The Gaddyl are portrayed perhaps a touch too human, but I appreciated the range of types, from scoundrel to honorable enemy. And as an American, I suppose I've got as much a soft spot for overthrowing tyranny as anyone.

Four stars.


by Mx. Blue Cathey-Thiele

Last year's pairing of E.C Tubb and Juanita Coulson's has gotten an encore. In fact, both novels are sequels. My esteemed colleague and editor had favorable reviews of both, so I was excited to read them:

Ace Double H-77

Derai, by E. C. Tubb

Earl Dumarest, the itinerant interstellar provocateur and do-gooder from The Winds of Gath returns in Derai, hunting news of Earth. On his way he takes a job escorting the Lady Derai of the House of Caldor back to her family on the planet Hive. He soon determines that Derai is a telepath. Her father sent her to the college of Cyclans to treat the constant fear and nightmares brought on by hearing the minds of those around her. Derai ran away from the college, where Cybers (once-humans with emotion and sensation excised who now can connect to a collective mind) wanted to use her genetics, turning her into a mindless vessel to bear telepathic children. Her home planet has its own risks – her uncle wants to take over the House, planning to assassinate her father and half-brother, and marry Derai to her cousin to gain legitimacy.

Dumarest keeps much of his thoughts to himself, both from the other characters and the reader, but cannot keep his developing feelings for Derai from her telepathic ability. He carries himself as a man who has seen too much. He inspires loyalty, and in those he has helped that is understandable, but it also comes from some who have only just met him. One man he meets through a mutual friend takes the chance of being burned to death to get a blade to Dumarest in a deadly maze arena.

Dumarest almost seems to resist the plot, needing to be pushed into each new quest. At times, his struggle as a character made him feel like a disparate individual, one side grim and withdrawn, another altruistic at great cost to himself; it's as if author Tubbs had two distinct directions for the novel in mind, and was unable to find the balance between them. Dumarest's staid demeanor only allows him to rebuff so much, and he is, if reluctantly, still prompted to aid disenfranchised travelers, save a gambler from himself, and compete in a tournament to prolong the head of Caldor House's life. Each time he intends to leave the House to its own devices, his feelings for Derai bring him back.

Tubb has a lurid, graphic style of description. It's equally evocative of beauty and violence. In a particularly unsettling set of scenes, Dumarest barely escapes being eaten alive like his companions by bird-sized bees. For how memorable the depictions of the insects were, I anticipated them playing a larger role in the overall story. The scenes stuck with me for several days due to the excessively grisly details.

Something else that ate at my brain: thanks to medical advancements and travel stasis Dumarest and Derai are chronologically far older than they seem, but Derai was described as childlike far too often for my liking. Tubb could have left it at one use of "nubile".

3 stars

The Singing Stones, by Juanita Coulson

Geoff is a member of the Federation, the galactic government introduced in Coulson's Crisis on Cheiron. He embarks on what could be a suicide mission to the protectorate of Deliayan, Pa-Lüna. Both humans and Deliyans have been exploiting the people of Pa-Lüna, tricking them into indentured servitude. When a man is murdered right in front of him over a stone, Geoff investigates, finding the stone in question has strange, enchanting properties. He and Tahn, a Pa-Lünan, set out for the protectorate, and they meet Nedra, priestess of a mysterious goddess.

From the outset, he is on a clock: a past planetary mission left his team dead, and him with the lingering impacts from a past poisoning that flares, causing him pain and debilitating him with growing frequency. The nature of his sense of duty and outlook, framed by his limited lifespan, is compelling.

Geoff is a skeptic, both of motive and means. He views the people of Pa-Lüna with a mix of respect and condescension, but Geoff witnesses the tangible effects of the stones of song. They induce a euphoria and they, or their "goddess", can heal the sick and injured and strengthen her followers over time. Does the Goddess bestow gifts freely or are her worshipers trading one form of servitude for another, framed in a softer light? Are the powers of the Stones and the goddess's telepathic messages divine or an advanced, but still mortal mechanism?

I appreciated the exploration of what is becoming a new trend in sci-fi–rejecting overt military intrusions and favoring a system that furthers a newly-contacted culture's sovereignty. It's not a bad direction to go, though authors vary in degrees of patronizing the native people of these worlds, from treating them roughly as equals to regarding them as "primitive" beings who need protecting. And it does say something that it takes someone from outside the system to truly put things in motion, no matter how long change has been brewing. Having the fight be against not just an alien threat but also a human, institutional threat asks if human expansion is truly helping, needs tempering, or if it is causing more harm in the end.

All in all, a solid book. Had I not recently read several other books with a similar premise I would have liked it even more. However, I can't fault Coulson for the trends of this year. She created a rich tapestry and I would be happy to explore her worlds and characters in future stories.

4.5 stars




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Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[June 14, 1968] Men, Women, and Monsters (June 1968 Galactoscope)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

Physicians (and Nurses), Heal Thyselves


Anonymous cover art, and it has nothing at all to do with the book.

A Piece of Martin Cann, by Laurence M. Janifer

My fellow Galactic Journeyers have reviewed a couple of Janifer's books (Slave Planet and The Wonder War) and found them lacking. Let's see if this one is any better.

The time is the second half of the 21st century. There are references to a devastating plague that happened a long time ago, travel to the planets in the solar system, and the replacement of all nations and governments with a single, worldwide authority.

Never mind all that, because these science fiction themes have nothing at all to do with the story. The novel could easily be set in the very near future, because there is only one important speculative element.

Technology allows people to enter the minds of others. This is used to treat mental illness when all other methods fail.

(The premise is somewhat similar to that of John Brunner's novel The Whole Man. In that book, however, the technique was used by a natural telepath, and did not require machines.)

Two nurses and two physicians enter the mind of a man in a catatonic state. In his imaginary universe, he is God. He has created angels and light, but nothing else. The medical professionals arrive in the form of angels as well.

Their motive is to convince the patient, through argument with the other angels, not to create anything else. Why? Because they believe a fully realized world would prevent him from ever escaping his solipsistic existence.

The process has its dangers for those who use it. We're told it can even be fatal, although there is no real evidence for this. One of the characters will suffer the consequences.

This synopsis is a lot more linear than the plot. The author frequently shifts point of view among the characters. (I haven't even mentioned the patient's mother and girlfriend, who also have important parts to play.)

The book reminds me, in some ways, of D. G. Compton's novel Synthajoy. Both works are introspective and deal with devices that allow one to share another's experiences.  Both have depth of characterization, but Janifer's isn't quite as profound as Compton's.

A Piece of Martin Cann also lacks vividness.   The scenes of debate among the angels are difficult to picture.  Overall, the book fails to provide much emotional involvement.

I admire the author's ambition, even if I question his execution.  This is definitely not an ordinary escapist adventure story.  It has a touch of New Wave to it.  (Although Janifer is American, the novel seems very British to me.)  I might describe it as an interesting failure.

Three stars.


by Mx. Kris Vyas-Myall

Of Men and Monsters by William Tenn

Of Men and Monsters Ballantine Cover

In the days of yore (also known as 1963) our esteemed editor noted that William Tenn’s Men in the Walls was only half a story. Five years later, we have finally got a novel length version of the tale. Does it fulfil the promise?

Apart from a few minor tweaks, the original novella makes up the first third of the book, renamed Priests for their Learning. In order to avoid repetition, feel free to reread the original synopsis.

The second part Soldiers for their Valor follows the now exiled Eric as he heads into Monster territory, here he meets others, people from further back in the burrows. They do not have experience in fighting monsters as the front burrow people do but have more complex organization and are willing to experiment with alien science in order to try to gain an advantage over the monsters (a subject verboten among the men of the front burrows). However, they end up captured and brought to an experimental laboratory of the monsters. Eric manages to survive being vivisected but is put into the cage of a strange woman.

The third part, Counselors for their Wisdom, finishes the narrative. The woman is named Rachel and she is from the far back burrows where they have retained much more knowledge from man’s time before the arrival of the monsters. After spending much time learning such varied subjects as the nature of the current Earth (the burrow is merely one of many in this particular monster’s house), astronomy and metaphysics. After they fall in love they escape and devise a plan to solve humanity's problems.

After the strong start in the first part, I found it less interesting as it went along. Firstly, moving the majority of action from burrows to the cages in the lab removes a lot of the atmosphere that made the prior segments so effective. In addition, the unveiling of the world moves away from exploration to explanation. For example, rather than encountering the “Wild Men”, who primarily live outside the monsters houses in the open, we are merely told by Rachel that Eric resembles one. This approach leans things away from excitement and more towards tedium.

Secondly, Tenn makes a lot of the points in a clumsy manner. One example is having Eric regard Rachel like a piece of cattle, assessing her viability for mating and thereby showing his lack of understanding of love. Having multi-paragraph descriptions of his thoughts on her naked body feel less poignant and more voyeuristic. Another would be where “little brown men” are put into the cage with men from the burrows we know and they end up fighting over customs.

And then for all of that, it doesn’t end up feeling very profound or unique. I think I can understand the points Tenn is making but it doesn’t feel that different from Micromegas, Giant Killer, Gulliver’s Travels, The Twilight Zone: The Invaders, or a hundred other tales of perspective and size based conflict. On top of that, the ending just felt perfunctory to me and a little silly.

That is not to say there are not good pieces to it. I agree with the initial review that the first section is very strong, Tenn has a great turn of phrase and at points there is a real sense of adventure to it. But it doesn’t really add up to much.

I would give the whole thing three stars, but not anything more.


by Blue Cathey-Thiele

The Still, Small Voice of Trumpets, by Lloyd Biggle

Based on Still, Small Voice, a short story Biggle published in Analog, 1961. The initial work was met with optimism, but left our reviewer disappointed. Let's see how the novel fares.

"Democracy imposed from without is the severest form of tyranny."

This is the Interplanetary Relations Bureau's code, and a bold statement to make. IPR, tasked with guiding planets to qualify for membership in the Federation of Independent Worlds, has been working for over 400 years to unseat a monarchy in Kurr. Forzon, a member of the Cultural Survey, is called to the planet and met with no orders and no democracy – surely there has been a mistake. Something suspicious is happening in the IPR headquarters. He is taught the wrong language, dressed as an enemy, and sent into an ambush. What saves him then will save him later: beauty. The people of Kurr surround themselves with art and even the most mundane items receive decoration.

Kurr has bread and, crucially, circuses. The system is flawed, but the "ugliness" is mainly unseen. The official punishment for any offense (real or imagined) is amputation of the left forearm, the victims sent to "One-hand Villages". Out of sight is out of mind with so much beauty to observe instead. Beauty and morality are often equated, and the book falls into sexism. Artisans pass their craft from father to son in a caste system, and while women play a rounded harp, that is the only note of their artistic endeavors. IPR had attempted to foment dissatisfaction among the women of Kurr, but was met by indifference and a denial that they lacked equal treatment. (I would have liked a better explanation for this, or any explanation at all.) Later, Forzon marries an IPR agent whose most noted trait is a memorable nose.

IPR must work within the existing culture, motivating the people to take action as democracy needs to occur without apparent outside influence. The "Rule of One" allows an exception. A single technological advancement may be introduced… but no one has done it before. It sounds simple. Flintlocks, for example! But those require metalworking, trigger mechanisms, gunpowder. Technologies build on what came before, and progress may look different depending on need. This brings up questions about whether civilizations are actually "more" or "less" advanced… or just different.

Forzon has a trumpet made and given to a newly handicapped harpist, who rejoices in the ability to create music again. Not limited by caste, the One-Hand Villages take up the instrument. Kurr is enchanted, having only known string instruments. The king is as well… until he realizes that the players are one-handed and he bans them as the sight weighs on his conscience. Denied beauty, the people rise up.

Did the rebellion depend on this king having a conscience? Did Forzon play things close to his chest or did he make it up as he went? It's left muddy. Even the IPR agents, despite living so long in Kurr were confused by the cause of the rebellion- which I found hard to believe. The concepts behind the book held up better than the execution. The short story only received 2 stars, so this is still an improvement.

3 stars


by Lorelei Marcus

The Last Unicorn

Once, unicorns filled the forests. They frolicked and played and rested their heads in giggling virgins' laps, indifferent to the passage of time. Then one day they all disappeared, and only one remained. "I am the last," she said. "I must find what happened to the others."

She traveled far and long in a new world that could only see her as a white mare. She found companionship in a uselessly powerful magician and a harlot with a soft heart, who followed her on her travels. And at the end of their journey they came to face a wicked king and his brutal, frightful weapon, the Red Bull. A tale of tragedy and hope, the Unicorn reunites with her kind, but can never dream to be one with them ever again.

I can't help but feel that something is missing.

That was my first thought after finishing The Last Unicorn. I was ready to cast it aside as just another well-written fantasy novel, nothing more, but then friends and family, one after another, came to tell me how wonderful the book was. How fantastic. How excellent. I felt the mystification and perhaps jealousy that Schmendrick felt when he could not touch the Unicorn, but Molly could. Why couldn't I see how wonderful the book was? What was I missing?

I can agree that Peter S. Beagle's writing has a magical quality. The way that his words twist and conceal, describe and suggest, it caters to the human imagination – creating the sense of mystery that fairytales were born from in the first place. His characters, too, run counter to expectation and yet fall into their roles beautifully. Perhaps that is the difference for me. No matter how much Beagle allows his words and characters to push at their boundaries, they are still just words and characters to me. This book is just a story, and painfully, so are the unicorns within it. I think this is the difference between me and others. Others can believe in the magic, even if only for a little while. I simply cannot.

That said, I found the unicorns fascinatingly science-fictional, and thinking about them in an SFnal way made me appreciate the book more.

What are the unicorns? They never die from old age, but they can be killed. They see through disguises and can heal with the touch of their horn. Most importantly, though, they exist outside of time. Here is the passage that struck me most of this fact:

"Often then, between the rush of one breath and the reach of another, it came to her that Schmendrick and Molly were long dead, and King Haggard as well, and the Red Bull met and mastered – so long ago that the grandchildren of the stars that had seen it all happen were withering now, turning to coal – that she was still the only unicorn left in the world" (92).

What is unique about this paragraph is the way the Unicorn foresees the long distant future as if she were already existing there, but lacking the foresight of how her journey will truly end. It viscerally describes her experiencing her inevitable immortality, and yet she has this vision only midway through her journey, long before that time will come. Her human companions live and breathe beside her and yet also, paradoxically, are long dead ancestors in her mind. In a way, she is a fourth dimensional being, capable of seeing the present and elements of the future at the same time.

The Unicorn's ageless immortality and her ability to preserve her home forest in a perpetual spring also support the idea that unicorns are creatures with some dominion over time. The unicorns exist outside of time, adding somewhat to their wonder, and they have the ability to extend some of their immortality to the world and creatures around which they dwell. Perhaps their ability to heal is also a kind of time travel, in which they revert the afflicted body or mind to a time when it was healthy.

As inter-dimensional beings, it would also follow that unicorns would be able to tell false truth. When trapped in Mommy Fortuna's midnight carnival, the Unicorn is not deceived by the overlays the witch puts on her poor display animals. She sees in multiple dimensions their true forms and their disguises, and it is only the soaking of time that make it more difficult for the Unicorn to tell the difference

I think this leads to one of the key themes of the novel: that time affects all things and over time we as living (and eventually dying) creatures affect our world back. The mortals (such as King Haggard) bend the world around them until the earth itself is transformed and bearing their legacy. Meanwhile, the unicorns cannot change, and thus their surroundings do not change either. Their forests remain green and un-hunted, but also never grow beyond their boundaries. The Red Bull, too, is an immortal constant, but it is constrained to always require a master, never ruling its own domain or leaving a visible impact.

So it is only the humans and other mortal creatures that, while constrained by time, also reside within it. They can saturate time with meaning, and that meaning can then permeate the ground, seeping into the three lower dimensions. The unicorns exist statically, outside of time, barred from ever feeling its touch or touching it. They get eternal beauty and life, but they do not love. I do not know which existence is superior, but at least looking at it through this SF lens, I feel that I understand the unicorns and their book a little better. The unicorns are the opposite of the human experience, and by extension I think that makes us aware of what the human experience is. Schmendrick and Molly and even King Haggard are all foils to the unicorn to exaggerate how alien she is. This then reflects back how human her companions are, and how human we the readers are. The last unicorn is a fairytale, but it contains truths so vivid and tied to reality, it seems to exist outside of itself. Therein lies the true magic. Through only the power of words, Beagle creates life.

4 stars




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Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[May 18, 1968] Four Out of Six Ain't Bad (May 1968 Galactoscope)

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by Victoria Silverwolf

Stranger in a Strange Time

I was greatly impressed by Robert Silverberg's recent novel Thorns. It seemed to mark a new direction for a prolific author of competent, if undistinguished, science fiction. Will his new book reach the same level of quality? Let's find out.

The Masks of Time, by Robert Silverberg


Cover art by Robert Foster.

Christmas Day, 1998. A naked man appears out of nowhere, floating down from the sky. This fellow calls himself Vornan-19, and he claims to come from the year 2999.

With the year 2000 approaching, members of a worldwide apocalyptic cult fill the streets with wild orgies of sex and destruction. As you'd expect, the arrival of Vornan-19 changes things. Is he a fraud? A sign of the impending end of the world? Or proof that Earth will survive for many years to come?

Let's slow down a bit, in the same way the novel does at this point, and introduce some important characters.

The narrator is Leo, a physicist. He's working on time reversal. So far, all he's been able to do is transform a particle into an antiparticle, sending it backwards in time, but also causing it to be instantly destroyed. He's convinced that honest-to-gosh time travel is impossible, and therefore he thinks Vornan-19 is a phony.

Jack is a brilliant graduate student. He's been working on the theory of obtaining all energy from an atom (without the pesky side effect of a nuclear explosion), but he's not interested in any practical applications. For unclear reasons, he drops out and goes to live with his stunningly beautiful wife Shirley in a remote part of the Arizona desert.

The United States government sends Leo and a few other scientists to act as tour guides for Vornan-19, of a sort. They really want these geniuses to figure out if he's truly from the future. (Even if he isn't, he could be useful in convincing the cultists that the world isn't going to end in the year 2000.)

What follows is an episodic account of Vornan-19's encounters with people of the twentieth century. He causes chaos at a billionaire's party, in a mansion that keeps changing shape. He seduces men and women. Vornan-19 remains a mystery, revealing very little about himself or the world one thousand years from now. He becomes an object of religious devotion, leading to the book's dramatic but enigmatic conclusion.

After the intensity of Thorns, this is a surprisingly leisurely book. (I believe it is also the author's longest novel, at about two hundred and fifty pages.) We spend a lot of time with Leo, Jack, and Shirley before the narrator goes off with Vornan-19.

There's also quite a bit of sex. Jack and Shirley are nudists, and pretty soon Leo joins in. The group of scientists following Vornan-19 around includes both women and men, and we get to learn who's sleeping with whom, and who wants to sleep with whom, and who isn't sleeping with whom. Leo spends time with two prostitutes, one supplied by a grateful U.S. government, the other working at a legal, automated brothel.

(I've heard that Silverberg writes a lot of so-called adult novels under various pseudonyms, so maybe he's gotten into the habit of including this sort of thing.)

There's even a sex scene that serves as the book's climax. (Sorry, I couldn't resist the obvious pun.) We also find out why Jack ended his research, and what that has to do with Vornan-19.

This is an elegantly written novel that held my attention throughout. As I've indicated, it's hardly a thriller; the reader needs to be patient to fully appreciate it. There's a touch of satire and some interesting speculation about the technology of the near future.

Four stars.


by Mx. Kris Vyas-Myall

The Programmed Man by Jeff and Jean Sutton

Programmed Man 1968 book cover

I sometimes like to read books by authors I know nothing about, in the hope of getting a nice surprise. Well, this one certainly is not nice!

What is there to like about this?
The plot? No, dull plodding sub-Reynolds spy nonsense.
The characters? Paper-thin, laden with racist stereotypes.
The style? Long run-on sentences and expository dialogue which are about as exciting as drying paint.

Feel free to miss out on such writing as:

"Are you talking about the Alphans or spacemen in general?"

"Spacemen in general." The Doctor lifted his eyes. "I'll have to admit, I often think the Alphans are more complicated than others."

"In what way?" asked York.

"They're rather inscrutable," Bendbow explained. "As a psychomedician, I realize they don't wear their emotions or thoughts as transparently as most of us. But that's a racial characteristic."

Don’t buy it. Don’t read it. Don’t even acknowledge it. See it coming down the street, run the other way.

Save yourself!

Indeed, so bad, so offensive is this book, with enough off-handed bigotry to make even John Campbell blush to publish it, that with the blessing of the Journey staff, we've inaugurated a brand new award for badness. If the Queen Bee is bestowed for conspicuous sexism (thank goodness we have a word for the phenomenon now!) then there is only one name for the "honor" The Programmed Man deserves:

The Grand Wizard.

Close up face from Invasion of the Bodysnatchers
You have been warned.


by Robin Rose Graves

The Reproductive System by John Sladek


Is it an anatomical textbook? No, it's the debut novel of John Sladek.

Scientists want to create a self-replicating machine. Why? To get a government funded grant of course.

Quickly this invention gets out of hand, with robots consuming large quantities of metal and electricity, multiplying and converting other machines into robots, displacing humans from their homes, and even killing them.

The story follows a large cast of characters, ranging from scientists to soldiers, love interests, foreign spies, reporters, et cetera. At times, it’s difficult to follow, particularly in one fast paced section of the book where nearly every paragraph hops to another character’s perspective. With a number of names to follow, characters are best distinguished by their quirks, and while sometimes they feel more like caricatures than characters, it makes for a funny read.

The tone of this book reminds me of Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 or Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle. Speaking of the latter, I can’t help but think this is a also response to the creation of the atomic bomb. The plot revolves around the negligent nature of scientific discovery without consideration of the consequences. Much like the atomic bomb, the reproductive system might solve a more immediate problem, but the lasting effects continue to hurt civilians who had nothing to do with the creation or any say in whether something like that should exist.

Possibly this is a response to Karel Capek’s play "R.U.R." a work that is referenced in the story. To spoil a forty year old play, the fatal flaw in the robot’s revolution is their dependency on humans to make more robots. I can see this being the inspiration for Sladek’s main conflict.

Author John Sladek

Though an American writer, Mr. Sladek is currently publishing overseas, and were it not for the hilarious title, my sister probably would not have bought this book as joke on her latest trip abroad. Hopefully it will come to the states soon.

I enjoyed reading this and it earned quite a few laughs from me. While lighter on the science side, The Reproductive System clearly comes from a love of science fiction, referencing many works that came before it. The ending is perhaps appropriately happy, though a bit too convenient for my taste, but I think that was intentional on Sladek’s part, ending on one last humorous critique of the genre.

I look forward to what Sladek will write next.

4 stars.


by Gideon Marcus

After Some Tomorrow, by Mack Reynolds

Are you a Mack Reynolds fan? Then you'll like this book because it is the essence of Mack Reynolds from top to bottom, incorporating all of his strengths and few of his weaknesses.

In brief: The time is the late 20th Century. The setting is the United American States. If you've read Reynolds' Joe Mauser stories, then you know this future Earth is both a utopia and a dead end. The Cold War still simmers, but the People's Capitalism of the UAS and the Communism of the SovWorld are now two sides of the same coin: automation has put most people out of work, and wealth is concentrated with the elite while everyone else is stuck in fairly rigid castes, most living on the dole and watching telly while tranked up on free drugs. Common Europe and the few neutral countries aren't much better off.

Mick Grant and Anna Enesco are scholarship students, awarded their grant from the Joshua Porsenna endowment for a very specific reason–both seem to have the talent of precognition. The plot thickens when the mysterious and (in most places) illegal Monad Foundation also offers both of them exorbitant grants. All the Monads want is for the two to study socio-economic texts, from Anarchism to Zapata, Communism to Technocracy. Throw in the involvement of both military and government intelligence, and you've got the makings for quite an exciting time! But Reynolds manages to throw in yet another twist before finishing this slim novel, revealing the identity of the mysterious Porsenna.

The pacing for this book is excellent. Not a single chapter concluded that didn't tempt me to move on to the next. The setting is fascinating and also disturbingly plausible, and the motivation of the Monadians makes a depressing amount of sense. Of course, this being Reynolds, the book is peppered with historical essays with subjects like the anarchist Bakunin and the Greek colony of Cumae. Somehow, Reynolds makes it work. Maybe it's because the subject material was germane or simply well-presented, but it never turned me off.

The only real disappointment I had was the Anna Enesco's evolution into a caricature. She is at first played for frigid but independent. Over time, she falls for Mick, but there's never really a pay-off scene that sells the attraction. It's just accepted as having happened. By the end, her dialogue is stilted in the extreme.

I think dialogue has always been Reynolds' weak point. The man has traveled the world and has a broad knowledge of things. He knows how to plot, how to pace, how to build a world, but his characters are simply pieces in that world (though Mick isn't badly drawn, if a bit dense).

Unfortunately, this book came out November of last year; I only got to it now. As a result, though I'm giving it four stars, it's too late to make last year's Galactic Stars. Still, I recommend it.


by Blue Cathey-Thiele

Ace Double H-59

The Time Mercenaries, by Phillip E. High

Captain Randall and his crew have been preserved inside their submarine for over a thousand years. When an alien species refuses all compromise and sets out to destroy human life to make space for their own ever-growing population, these men are revived. They find humanity has genetically suppressed aggression and can't fight back, even in self defense against the Nerne.

Randall is physically outmatched, but future technology defends against future threats, and using old tricks and weapons they are able to sneak attacks under the radar. He is assigned eager robots who join his crew. After one of his men accidentally discovers how to unlock aggression – in one of my least favorite segments, when he hits a woman who insults him after they have sex, after which they… fall in love immediately and decide to get married – Randall recruits more humans. An unanticipated ally comes in the Revain, who have been fending off the Nerne for centuries. These alien allies bring their advanced tech, ships, and pills that work just as well to unlock aggression.

In the end, what ends the war isn't overwhelming force or superior firepower – it's social disruption. Using the computing of the robots, and the methods of the past, they undermine the highest ranking Nerne and cause the population to question the waves of existing lives sacrificed for potential future life.

The Nerne aren't alone in upheaval. Humans have also had a shift. With aggression, passion was also suppressed. Visible violence was removed, but other insidious forms remained – the crew had been used as a sort of nearly-alive wax museum for years before revival as a grim reminder, the government overruled the people's say, sent political opponents to become aggressive "deviants", and tasked robots – who were capable of feeling – with fighting and "dying" for them. Randall is disgusted by modern humanity's hands-off approach that still puts others in the line of fire and at the callous disregard of life by the Nerne. He doesn't delight in war, but recognizes when violence is called for to stop more death.

High makes clever use of the change in times and thinking. They didn't swoop in and do more damage, they were simply unexpected. How did they make humans violent again? Punching them in the face! It sounds absurd, and it is! But in a society without aggression, no one would be able to take that first swing.

While the whole book is set in a theater of war it explores what it means to be peaceable and how that can, and can't be achieved. It also makes a compelling case for contraceptives, and against eugenics.

4 1/2 stars

Anthropol, by Louis Trimble

Anthropol member Vernay is sent on an undercover assignment to a planet that his organization recently made and lost contact with when their scout team was killed. He is conditioned to fit in with the people, once from Earth, who live on Ujvila. It's a society strictly ordered by sex and rank, with men as subservient. He joins up with resistance fighters, helping facilitate change through the planet's own people and systems. Vernay must work around the Galactic Military (Gal-Mil) who have the same end goal but use force. He is captured and tortured, then meets the political and spiritual leader, the Kalauz. She confirms the existence of an alien presence that Anthropol had previously thought only metaphorical. These small aliens operated replicated human-forms but are no longer a threat as planetary defense scans for them.

Lori, the Captain of the Gal-Mil presence, is captured and sent to a "joy-labor camp" where prisoners rarely live past two years. Vernay volunteers himself to the camp to break her out or die trying. They escape with rebel help.

Vernay puts together odd hints he has noticed through his time on the planet, and brings it to a head when he calls to see Rosid, a resistance leader. Many of the rebels are, in fact, Ngign aliens posing as Ujvilans. Trisk, an Ujvilan rebel and cousin to the Kalauz, is horrified to discover that her people's minds were destroyed to create duplicates for the aliens. Vernay finds the one weak spot on the constructed body, the Ngignians dying in moments without a means to filter the atmosphere. They reach the Kalauz, but she too has been replaced. Trisk destroys her body, and takes over as Kalauz, starting social reform.

The epilogue calls Vernay and Lori back to the planet, as Trisk had spent four years improving the world, only to regress it to the original state, spurring new revolutionaries.

Anthropol went from a political revolution plot to an alien takeover in the last moments of the book. Although clues lead up to it, the plot turned so many times in the final chapters that it seemed there was another book's worth of material that hadn't been fully incorporated. Since so much time was spent exploring alternative methods, having the ultimate defeat come by physically attacking and killing the aliens instead of using Anthropol tactics was a let down. Also, Trimble recreated a female/male style system among the women, with feminine, "pretty" women as leaders, and masculine women given the roles usually assigned to men. As a commentary on the treatment of the sexes, it fell short.

3 stars




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