Tag Archives: erica frank

[March 18, 1969] What a way to go! (Star Trek: "All Our Yesterdays")


by Gideon Marcus

The other shoe dropped on February 17: Star Trek is officially canceled. Moreover, ABC won't pick it up for its "Second Season" in January. Fan efforts are being directed at CBS, but I can't say the prospects are promising.

One has to wonder if the decision was made due to the spate of lousy episodes that have plagued the second half of the Third Season. On the other hand, the decision was probably made based on the reaction to the first half of the season, which was actually quite good, so maybe Trek was always destined for the block.

This makes the latest episode, what appears to be the penultimate (if, indeed, they even air the last episode sometime in May after eight weeks of reruns and substitutions), particularly bittersweet. "All Our Yesterdays" is possibly Trek's finest hour, even as the clock ticks the show's last minutes.

title card "All Our Yesterdays" in front of Enterprise orbiting an Earth-like blue and green planet

That the show is so good comes as no surprise; writer Jean Lisette Aroeste wrote the sublime "Is There in Truth No Beauty", and director Marvin Chomsky ran the excellent "Day of the Dove". It is also an unique episode in many ways, from the profusion of excellent sets, to the complete absence of the Enterprise from the show (a phenomenon I cannot recall occurring in any prior episode).

For those who missed it, Kirk, Spock, and McCoy beam down to the planet of Sarpedon, a civilized world doomed to be destroyed when its star, Beta Niobe, goes nova—in just a handful of hours. I guess they're there to pick up refugees (if so, there won't be very many…)

The Big Three find themselves in what looks like a post office or safety deposit box annex attended by an elderly Mr. Atoz. This fellow, assisted by several kindly replicas, is a "librarian" who has used his "Atavachron" (a great name for a time machine) to send all of the citizens of Sarpedon into the past, where they will be safe from the stellar explosion. Mr. Atoz assumes the three officers are Sarpedonites who are late to the party, and he gives them run of the archive to find eras to jaunt to.

Spock and McCoy stand behind Kirk, who is looking down at Mr. Atoz, a balding, white-haired man in a black gown, sitting at a table with some kind of viewer and mirror-surfaced disks
"You've run up some considerable overdue book fines, young man!"

Well, through misadventure, Kirk ends up in Cromwellian England, where he is locked up under accusation of witchcraft, and McCoy and Spock end up in the planet's last Ice Age, risking frostbite and worse. Apparently, Sarpedon's past is identical to that of Earth, which would be egregious if we hadn't seen similar phenomena in "Miri" and "Bread and Circuses". Indeed, this is actually a welcome data point rather than risible.

two men in 17th century clothing accost Kirk in a brick alley
"You're under arrest, guv'nor…for overdue book fines!"

Spock and McCoy are shivering against an ice wall
"It's colder than a witch's left…" "Agreed, Doctor."

Luckily for Kirk, his judge is one of the refugees from the future, who helps him find the portal back to the library. Luckily for the other two, a lovely woman named Zarabeth, exiled from a time prior to the Enterprise's era, rescues them and gives them refuge in her cave. She quickly falls for Spock (who wouldn't?) and the half-Vulcan finds himself reverting to savagery as a result of his psychic bond with primordial Vulcans of five thousand years ago. Spock peeves at McCoy, moons at Zarabeth, and acts the least Spocklike we've seen him since "This Side of Paradise" in a very honest and affecting way.

A seated McCoy talks to Zarabeth, viewed from behind, wearing a fur bikini, a Spock looks at him with folded arms, in a red-lit cave

Bones convinces Spock to go back to where they arrived in the Ice Age so as to find their way back to the library, which they manage with the help of Kirk. Returned to his time, Spock becomes himself again, but not without a touch of subdued regret at the loss of yet another opportunity at love.

The pacing for this episode is leisurely but consistent, really letting us soak in the environs, the characters, their emotions. The Act-end cliffhangers are unusual and sometimes not even danger points. All of the cast turn in masterful performances, and the guests do as well—standouts include Mr. Atoz (the actor last seen in "Bread and Circuses") and the magistrate who saves Kirk. Mariette Hartley (Zarabeth) is fine, and there is no question that she is lovely, but it's the pickpocket who Kirk rescues in his era, with her period speech and game manner, who is truly memorable. The optical effects are stunning, particularly the Atavachron portal effect.

A florid, long-blond-haired, older man in a black hat and robe visits Kirk in jail
"Just give the book back. No one will press charges."

Though something of a cul de sac in terms of development of the setting (time travel on Sarpedon only goes to Sarpedon, and the system blows itself up at the end of the episode), it is the opposite of a bottle show. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this episode, and so much that is right.

Five stars


Historically Inaccurate

by Erica Frank

In this episode, we see a mirror-image of the usual dynamic between Spock and Doctor McCoy. The doctor is the rational one, driven to find a solution that lets them get back to the Enterprise—while Spock is distracted by strange circumstances and a pretty lady, and he risks isolating them both because of his emotions.

He attacked McCoy over the epithet "pointy-eared Vulcan"… and although the insult was clear in McCoy's voice, it's also a simple fact: Spock is a Vulcan and his ears are pointy. McCoy has said more directly insulting things to him in the past, but this was apparently his breaking point.

Spock has his palm wrapped around McCoy's neck, the doctor pressed against the cave wall
You'd think if he wanted McCoy to shut up, he'd use the Vulcan neck pinch on him. Instead, he grabs him by the throat and brings him in close.

We are supposed to believe that tensions have come to a head because Spock is stuck in the past and atavistic patterns are controlling his behavior. That Spock reverts to savagery because the Vulcans of several thousand years ago were warlike barbarians who ate "animal flesh" and fought for dominance over petty insults.

The problem with that is…

Five thousand years ago on Earth, the Aegean Bronze Age was starting. Imhotep built the Step Pyramid of Djoser; around the same time, Stonehenge was built. Those were ancient human cultures, but they were not so alien from modern humans that a person transported to that time would find their entire nature changed. A modern human thrown back to that time — even with their cell structure and brain patterns adjusted to fit in — would act much like humans do today.

Our records show that human activities and motivations have been very similar throughout history, even as our technology and religions have changed. People complained about politicians, bemoaned their rebellious teenagers, and mourned the passing of beloved pets. Some fought over minor differences and more sensible people denounced those who could not get along with their neighbors. Some were involved in huge, elaborate projects that would not see completion in their lifetimes, and yet they found reason to participate and build on the work of those who had gone before.

Black and white photo of the large, rectangular bloks that comprise Stonehenge with visitors in front of them
Visitors at Stonehenge, perhaps considering what life might have been like 5,000 years ago on Earth.
"Stonehenge 1960s" photo by Annabel M, CC-BY 2.0

Are we to believe that Vulcans were violent barbarians much more recently than humans? That while humans were developing cuneiform and hieroglyphs, establishing the basics of accounting and medical texts, Vulcans were irrational and vicious—but have since surpassed humans in technology and developed powerful psychic abilities?

Something about this doesn't add up. I can more easily believe that Spock, badly disoriented by the trip through time and deeply worried about his friend's survival, latched onto the first viable way to cope: Accept that they are stuck here and focus on surviving in their new home.

Of course, this is only plausible if one believes that Spock would give up his friendship with Kirk for a life with McCoy and a woman he met an hour ago. That possibility raises even more questions.

Four stars. I can quibble over some of the "science," but the character dynamics were riveting.


Treasure from Trash


by Joe Reid

This week’s episode of Star Trek contained many interesting elements: a star about to go Nova, eliminating a solar system and the desperate race to find survivors. A man with duplicate copies of himself. A civilization with the power to travel in time. All interesting concepts that could fill volumes of science fiction. Sadly, these concepts were cheapened by the unnecessary common plot devices which ran rampant in this episode. From jumping to conclusions to failing to ask questions, there didn’t appear to be any characters in this episode unwilling to make critical mistakes that made situations worse than they already were.

Let’s start our examination on an individual level with Kirk and Atoz. Kirk and crew went to a doomed planet where everyone was gone, looking for people to save. Atoz, having saved everyone, was perplexed as to why these newcomers hadn’t escaped yet. This left us with a comedy of errors that shouldn’t have occurred. Had Kirk or Atoz not jumped to conclusions and taken a minute to fully introduce themselves and state their purposes, all parties would have been allowed to move on with their respective businesses without incident. Instead, we were forced to bear witness to two men fighting so hard to save each other they were willing to almost kill each other.

Mr. Atoz tries to push Kirk through the trapezoidal portal of the Atavachron, whose activation is indicated by a bright yellow light
"Kirk, go to your room!"

The second cause of frustration in this episode revolved around the fact that questions were never asked during the times when people were the safest. Again, our two subjects are Atoz and Kirk, but mainly Kirk. Had Kirk asked before he leapt to aid the sound of a screaming woman, he might have saved himself some trouble. Even Spock and McCoy fell into the same situation, chasing after Kirk’s voice as he had the woman. Have none of them ever been taught that the time to ask questions is when you are still at the library, not after you’ve left? Eventually Kirk and crew were able to formulate questions after they found themselves in predicaments. They discovered the answers which led to their salvations. All completely avoidable.

At the end of the day, these mistakes lead to the exploration of fantastical places with many surprises. The journey to the frozen wastes, where Spock and McCoy find the lonely and beautiful prisoner, pushes Spock and McCoy to the brink both physically and emotionally. Kirk has to find unwilling allies in a strange past to save himself from his own prison, and after all that, has to fight to prevent re-imprisonment to save the lives of this crew. I found it amazing that this episode was able to push beyond the cheap narrative devices to deliver a worthy hour of TV. It ultimately rewarded the viewer’s patience for putting up with these forgivable follies to get to some good sci-fi at the end. All gripes aside, I enjoyed watching “All Our Yesterdays”.

Four stars.





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


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…]





[February 28, 1969] We Reach (Star Trek: "The Way to Eden")

The Corrosive Threat of Antidisestablishmentarianism


by Amber Dubin

US-world relations have been growing increasingly concerning as we venture cautiously into the first couple of months of 1969. From never having quite gotten back on the right foot since last year's Tet offensive (and with this year's edition currently ongoing) to the aftermath of the Pueblo incident, to the newly renewed Moon Race, it sometimes feels like America is standing on the world stage with shaky legs. It is easy to react to these uncertain times by pining for a prelapsarian epoch in human history.

It’s rather apropos, then, that Star Trek writers have once again turned to the often-referenced biblical Garden of Eden. Here, however, I'd argue that “The Way to Eden” approaches this subject in an unique way by suggesting, as Spock does here, that all advanced societies “hunger for an Eden, where spring comes.”

two screen shots, both title cards over the Enterprise zooming toward the camera: the first says The Way to Eden, and the second says that the teleplay is by Arthur Heinemann, the story by Michael Richards and Arthur Heinemann
What happens when you set transporter coordinates for Haight/Ashbury

The episode opens on a familiar scenario where the Enterprise is hotly pursuing a stolen vessel that is overheating its engines to alarming levels. They manage to beam over the occupants just before the fleeing vessel explodes, and the crew of the Enterprise is confronted by a motley crew of ragamuffins. Kirk greets the strangely dressed, wild, love-and-peace-preaching, anti-authoritarian naturalists by informing them that they were only spared consequences for stealing and destroying a Federation ship because the wayward son of a political figure is among them.

screen shot of Kirk in his uniform looking flummoxed facing Tong Rad, a purple-haired space hippie with a high forehead
"Don't trust the Fuzz, man!"

They respond to Kirk’s mercy without gratitude, disrespectfully requesting that the Enterprise act as a ferry in their quest to reach a planetary Eden and relocating to sickbay with extreme reluctance.

Meanwhile, Ensign Chekov discovers that a lovely dark-haired Russian beauty from his Starfleet Academy days is among the band of miscreants. Irina Galiulian and Chekov lost touch when she dropped out of Starfleet to chase nebulous and flighty pursuits, a choice that Chekov deeply disapproves of. They have an angry, yet charged, discussion which resolves nothing before she returns to her more amiable family of choice.

screen shot of Chekov in uniform and Galilulin in a revealing, flowery two-piece, talking in a corridor as another crew person watches
Is Chekov going through captain's training? Because I thought it was Kirk's job to be so enamored of the pretty lady that he forgets to protect the ship.

Back in sickbay, the situation has descended into chaos. The group’s leader, ex-research engineer Dr. Sevrin, has been determined to be a carrier for a superbug that is both incurable and created by the advanced sterilization techniques used to sustain Federation environments. He is thus quarantined and isolated from his flock, an action against which the rest of the group protests heavily.

Acting as both the snake and the snake charmer, the now deemed insane Dr. Sevrin spurs on the rest of his group to break him out of isolation and seize control of the Enterprise, knowing their musical seductions and rapscallion ways will cause the crew to lower their defenses and underestimate any hidden, nefarious intentions.

screen shot of an Enterprise room where four space hippies perform, one playing a sort of space age guitar without a box
Tonight on Hullabaloo!

Furthering this goal, Irina isolates Chekov and effortlessly steps into the role of femme-fatale, doing little else other than batting her lashes and breathing lightly on Chekov’s lips to get him to spill his guts about every single operating mechanism of the ship’s security and navigational systems. Next, the group minstrel, Adam, begins a pied piper act, strumming and singing his way through the whole ship. He even convinces Spock to display his instrumental talents in a seemingly impromptu concert that gets broadcast over the ship’s speakers, in a very effective misdirection campaign that covers for his comrades as they disable ship security and free their leader.

Now in control of the Enterprise, the group barrels into Romulan space towards a planet that ship’s scanners have defined as Eden, setting a trap to disable the crew and allow them time to escape. There is a brief pause where members of the group try and fail to dissuade the power-mad Dr. Sevrin from making this trap fatal for the Enterprise crew, but thankfully this is the one part of their plan that the crew is able to disrupt before succumbing to those permanent consequences.

screen shot of the Enterprise bridge, Sulu, Lieutenant Palmer, and someone else all unconscious at their stations
Asleep on the job

The band briefly appears victorious in the acquisition of their fabled garden, but find the paradise hostile to humanoid life, and the bare-footed hippies literally get burned by the acid-coated plants growing in an Eden that was supposed to welcome them. Faced with the devastating failure of his quest, Dr. Sevrin willfully consumes the deadly fruit, very plainly demonstrating that the insanity brought on by his dual lust for anarchy and power was fatal.

screen shot of Dr. Sevrin, a bald, puffy eared man in a tree holding a fruit with a bite taken out of it and looking stricken
The metaphorical apple (still much better than "The Apple")

I think boiling this episode down to “the one about beatniks in space” is both simplistic and disrespectful to the subtlety of the message it’s trying to convey. I see how, on its face, it could appear that the plot of this episode is a ham-fisted attempt to judge the reactions of the Enterprise crew when introduced to hippies from our time, but I’d argue their role here is to demonstrate the corrosive nature of antidisestablishmentarianism. I think the fact that such a small group of humanoids, with no greater powers of intelligence or manipulation than any other aliens we’ve met so far, was able to so swiftly and effortlessly take control of the ship, speaks to the power of hiding in plain sight.

Rather than the loudly chanting overtones that kindness can be fatal, the more subtle message here is that these intruders merely awakened seeds that were pre-sown into the mind of every being in known society. The unspoken fear that our zeitgeist whispers, is that every established system only functions as long as the seeds of hedonism, anarchy and sedition do not grow to destroy it. It is the reason power fears the rhetoric of communists, cultists and anarchists; why it tries to silence the rabble-rousers, quell the mobs, round up and isolate the dissenters, and burn the witches.

The wolf is efficiently hidden in sheep's clothing when love-drunk, starry-eyed hippies prove themselves not to be peaceniks –but weapons. Weapons so effective that, in a matter of hours, they reduce an advanced, peaceful, orderly, military vessel to the plaything of a handful of gleeful, half-naked, singing fools.

screen shot of a security guard with eyes closed in rapture just before being thumbed unconscious by Tong Rad, one of the hippies, while Dr. Sevrin, a bald, puffy-eared male, watches from behind the force field in the brig
If only they let Bob Hope tour the Enterprise, the crew wouldn't be so starved for entertainment.  Then again, they might…

This episode very effectively warns against the dangers of what can happen when a charismatic, silver-tongued leader sinks his fangs into the impressionable minds of restless sycophants. It demonstrates how powerful that sharp-witted leader can become when he knows how to wield such universally disarming weapons as pleasant music, a righteous and honorable cause, and the promise of affection and approval from smiling, scantily-clad, untamed youths.

Despite its disarming façade, this episode is not a light romp. It is a cautionary tale; and in my opinion a particularly well-woven yarn.

5 stars.


Space Hippies


by Erica Frank
We only see six of the Edenites, but they must be part of a larger movement: Spock knows their greeting and their philosophy, and "reaches" them well enough to be the ship's liaison with them. Either they are very numerous, or very influential, or both.

screen shot of six space hippies sitting in the transporter room
Clockwise from center: Dr. Sevrin, a brilliant engineer; Adam, a musician; Tong Rad, son of the Catullan ambassador, who plays drums; nameless blonde musician who plays the stringed wheel; nameless brunette woman; Irina Galliulin, Chekov's former girlfriend.

Spock respects their goals even when he recognizes that Sevrin is manipulative and deceitful. At least three of them are well-educated, talented, and lauded in their fields; we have no reason to suspect the others are random dropouts. These aren't people who have failed at mainstream society and are chasing myths to make up for their inadequacy–rather, they have judged the Federation and found it wanting in soul and harmony. As Spock says, "They regard themselves as aliens in their own worlds… a condition with which I am somewhat familiar."

They have lost their leader and their Eden, but four of them remain, and they need not give up their quest for a peaceful community, away from a technological, regimented society.

We've seen at least two places they could go: One where people can live a mellow and gentle life, but slowly lose their drive for creativity. And one where they could have fantastic adventures, but none of it would be real. Or they can keep searching for a tropical paradise planet that's not full of acid and poison, although any of those in Federation space are likely to be populated ("exploited," I'm sure they'd say) unless there's some reason not to go there.

…Maybe paradise planet is being used as a retirement facility now, and is too commercialized for the hippies. Maybe the Shore Leave planet is restricted – the aliens who run it don't want the Federation trying to figure out their technology. So perhaps they need to look for somewhere else. But on their quest, they can visit other planets and find people looking for a simpler, gentler life.

screen shot of the space hippie, Adam, lying dead on the ground with a half-eaten apple lying next to him
They'll need to find a new lead guitarist.

Five stars (but I'm probably very biased). I loved the music, and that the ending, although touched with tragedy, wasn't "it's all ruined." There's room for hope that someday, they will find their Eden.


Back to the Beginning


by Gideon Marcus

Remember first season Star Trek?  When Kirk was a "a stack of books with legs", stiff and Hornblower-like?  When Spock was cold on the outside, hot on the inside?  When other members of the cast had lines?  When the Enterprise halls were filled with crew members and guests?  When music was a fundamental part of the show?  (viz. Uhura singing in "Charlie X" and "The Conscience of the King")

There are many reasons to like "A Way to Eden", and they are well-represented in the above entries by my colleagues.  But what I loved about the episode the most was that it felt like a return to the Trek I liked best.  After so many episodes in which the characters acted contrary to their nature, when plots were half-baked, when technology was inconsistent, when our favorite vessel seemed sterile and incomplete—finally, the Enterprise feels alive again.

You can even see the relief in the crew.  The fellow guarding the brig was mesmerized listening to that (quite excellent) jam between Spock and the exquisite and talented Deborah Downey.  He must have been just parched for entertainment.  No wonder they all were so susceptible to the influence of One.

screen shot of Spock playing the Vulcan lytherette alongside a zaftig blonde woman in a blue sundress playing what looks like a bicycle wheel
I'd watch this episode of Jazz Casual any day…

Spock's heart-wrenching expression of support of the Edenites' quest, his solidarity with their feeling of alienation within utopia, was worth the price of admission all on its own.  The space hippies weren't characterized as naive, pampered rich kids who didn't know what was good for them.  They are the free spirits for whom middle class American values just don't wash.  A key message of this episode: surely, the Federation must be big enough for them, too.  Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combination, ¿qué no?

And finally, if Charles Napier and Deborah Downey ever release an album of their performances on this show (I can absolutely buy that Adam's space guitar provides perfect acoustics and amplification for his voice), I will be the first in line.  Also, if anyone's started a Deborah Downey fan club, I want to be a charter member.  Otherwise, I might have to make one myself…

Four stars.


[Come join us tonight (February 28th) 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…]




[February 20, 1969] The Old Man and the She (Star Trek: "Requiem for Methuselah")


by Joe Reid

This week’s episode of Star Trek will likely turn many members of the audience into devout Buddhists.  It’s an episode which stands as a reminder of the destructive nature of desire and why the devotees of the Buddha eschew that emotion.  “Requiem for Methuselah” showcased a level of desire that proved more contagious and damaging than any infectious fever.

title card over Enterprise in orbit over a red planet, a golden moon above the limb of the world

The show started with the Enterprise in orbit of Holberg 917-G, in the Omega system.  3 crew members had died and 23 were sick with Rigelian Fever.  Kirk, Spock, and McCoy beamed down the planet in search of ryetalyn, a mineral that could cure the ill.

As they were about to split up to locate the vital substance, a hovering robot reminiscent of Nomad, from “The Changeling”, showed up and fired on them.  It rendered their weapons useless and had them cornered until “Do not kill!” was shouted by a voice whose owner was out of view.

A spherical robot of gray steel floats menacingly in front of Kirk, Spock, and McCoy, who have their phasers out
"You are the Kirk?  The Creator?"

A finely dressed older man with a Caesar haircut revealed himself, demanding that they leave the planet. Kirk and crew would not be deterred and threatened they would take the ryetalyn if they had to.  The man, named Flint, said that he could kill Kirk, implying that the crew and the starship were no threat to him.  McCoy pleaded with Flint, saying that Rigelian fever was on par with Bubonic plague.  This caused Flint to think back to the city of Constantinople and what the plague had done to the people there.  Flint relented and allowed the crew to stay, while his flying robot, M-4 (likely unrelated to M-5 from “The Ultimate Computer”), went off to gather ryetalyn.  Flint promised that M-4 could gather the materials faster than they could.  Being that those who were sick on the Enterprise had only four hours before the disease progressed, McCoy and the others agreed to allow it.

Image of Flint, an older man in a ceasar hair cut, a futuristic Shakespearian noble outfit, complete with tights, standing in a blue-walled room with a Renaissance painting on the wall
"What else can I get you?  A bag of reds?  Keys to my Mercedes?  An original copy of the U.S. Constitution?

Flint took the trio to his castle.  Inside Spock noticed a treasure trove of classic art.  Art from DaVinci.  Music from Brahms and other fineries.  Flint left them alone to enjoy some brandy, after telling them that he lived alone with only M-4 as company, while in another part of the castle, a lovely young woman watched Kirk and the others on a screen.

Rayna, sitting in a chair and wearing a polychrome, metallic gown, views a cream-colored flat screen
"I do so love that Johnny Carson!"

Flint entered the room and spoke to the young beauty, named Rayna.  She looked on the other men with desire and said she wanted to meet them, since she had never met other people besides Flint.

As M-4 returned with the ryetalyn, Spock continued to marvel at the priceless art pieces housed in the castle, but he also noted that they were created using modern materials and not ancient ones.  Flint then entered and sent M-4 away to prepare the ryetalyn, with the promise that it would be completed faster than it could be on the Enterprise.

As an apology for his initial rudeness, Flint introduced Kirk and the others to Rayna, her very presence being as a gift to the men in attendance.  At first sight, desire for the beautiful young woman flooded Kirk’s eyes.  Flint’s method of apology apparently landed well with Kirk in particular.

Image of Rayna and Kirk, leaning over a pool table with a cue ball and two red balls; Rayna is helping Kirk with his cue fingering
Rayna teaches Kirk how to hold his stick

The introduction of Rayna started the main arc of the episode in earnest.  Her beauty and intelligence seemed to have stirred something in Kirk rather quickly.  She in turn began to explore emotions that she had never felt before due to Kirk’s focus on her.

The desire between Kirk and Rayna was visible and out in the open, whereas Flint was a man filled with deep desires that he protected viciously.  The story also revealed him as a man of many secrets, holding so many of them that it was not until we finally learned the truth about him and also about Rayna, that the real danger of the episode took hold.

In the end, the painful desire and vast longing on display in this episode brought one character to complete ruin and threatened to destroy the rest in their wake. 

In conclusion, outside of the insane speed at which Kirk falls for Rayna, this episode had an interesting plot and premise.  The characters seemed compelling and the type of people that would be tempting to see on adventures of their own.  Suffice it to say, that Rayna and Flint didn’t feel disposable to me as other characters often do.  Also, the narrative twists and surprises near the end were not overly foreshadowed.  They took me by surprise and I appreciated that.  Now, if I can just find a Buddhist temple to ensure I remain free of what happened in this episode.

Four stars


What Could Have Been


by Janice L. Newman

“I’m tired of broken episodes,” my daughter said wearily after the credits had finished rolling. I couldn’t help but agree. For the past several weeks, we’ve had frustrating episode after frustrating episode, made all the more dissatisfying because in every case, we can see what could have been.

With shows like Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, the plots are generally silly enough not to be taken seriously. But we’ve seen just how good Star Trek can be, and it’s obvious that the script writers are trying. Sadly the most recent batch of episodes has been filled with poor characterization of our beloved crew, plots that made no sense, stories that tried to Say Something but stumbled over their words, and things that…well…just didn’t feel like Star Trek!

The most recent episode suffered from many of these ailments. For one, it had two conflicting plots: the epidemic on board the ship and the mystery of the old man and his ‘daughter’ on the planet. A competent version of the script would have played these two threads off of each other, keeping the viewers in suspense about whether the captain and his men would be able to bring back the cure in time. But since all three crewmembers treat the epidemic situation casually, it’s hard for the viewers to take it seriously or become invested in it. We never see anyone sick on the ship, so it’s up to Shatner, Nimoy, and Kelley to give us a sense of urgency. Instead, Spock is intrigued by the mystery surrounding Flint and Kirk far too quickly becomes enamored with Rayna. Their constant distraction feels out of character and irresponsible to the point of dereliction of duty. Yet it could have been good with a few changes.

Then, too, the plot thread of Rayna’s humanity could have been great. Star Trek has played with the idea of androids or computers with emotions before, but mostly it's used the concept as a plot device where such feelings can be leveraged as tools to trick or confuse hostile mechanical beings. Rayna’s awakening to human emotions could have been poignant and meaningful. Instead it felt cheap and forced. I could even have accepted her becoming infatuated with Kirk since he was one of the first humans she’d ever met besides Flint. But Captain Kirk returning her feelings is patently ridiculous, particularly given the extremely short amount of time they knew each other, her utter lack of personality, and the fact that his entire crew were hours away from painful deaths. By making the story mainly about Kirk’s feelings instead of hers, the writer really missed the mark. Two of the major problems could have been easily fixed if Kirk was focused on helping his crew while Rayna actually expressed her growing feelings for him (or for another character—either Spock or McCoy would have been a more interesting choice).

Image of Flint leaning heavily against his chair, as if greatly moved and, perhaps, dismayed

Image of an image on the flat screen viewer of Kirk and Rayna kissing
Flint watches his home-made stag film; good thing his peep show has a good cinematographer!

The interplay between Spock and McCoy was good as always, partly because Kelley is such a pro in his delivery, while Nimoy’s ‘stoic face’ is excellent. But Spock’s choice at the end killed any good will the story had managed to scrape together. The idea that Kirk, no matter what he said in a moment of weakness, would willingly submit to having his memory erased is ludicrous. Even setting aside the events of Dagger of the Mind, where he had his memory toyed with, this is a starship captain we’re talking about. I cannot believe that he would truly want a memory, even a painful one, removed. And I likewise cannot believe that Spock would do such a thing without permission. It was an interesting idea, but once again the execution fell flat because it felt all wrong. If it had been a different crewmember, McCoy for example, and if he’d given his permission, it could have been an amazing moment. Instead, it was ugly and nauseating. Quite simply, it didn’t feel like Star Trek, or at least not the Star Trek I love: where women are treated with respect, Spock would never take advantage of his captain even in the name of ‘helping’ him, and Kirk actually cares about his crew.

Two stars, because inside the bad episode there was still a good episode trying to get out.


Just Another Pretty Face


by Lorelei Marcus

I found Louise Sorel's depiction of Rayna to be vaguely reminiscent of another blonde android I'd seen on TV a few years before: her stiff head tilts and unfocused gaze reminded me of Julie Newmar's Rhoda, the superhuman, do-it-all robot thrust into Bob Cumming's unwilling care on My Living Doll.

As Rhoda's guardian, Cummings had to ensure her artificial nature was kept secret, but this became increasingly difficult due to Rhoda's extraordinary abilities.  The show shouldn't have worked, but despite Cummings' off-putting performance and his character's incompetence, it hung together—thanks to Julie Newmar's incredible physical comedy and skill.  Be it the countless amusing ways Rhoda misinterpreted commands, or her incredibly mixed up piano performance, or the way she instantly slumped whenever anyone pressed the little "off button" on her back, Rhoda was a wonderfully funny character and (more importantly) individual, and she was the reason I tuned in every week to watch the show.

Image of Bob Cummings in a suit next to Julie Newmar in an evening gown; a title card says Also Starring Julie Newmar as The Doll

The same, sadly, cannot be said for Rayna.  While it's true that wacky humor wouldn't suit the character nor the tone of the episode, any form of charisma would have made Rayna better than the blank slate we got.  The only details we know about her are the number of degrees she has, and that she would have liked to have had a conversation with Spock—something she never actually gets to do.

Instead, she's whisked into a forced, 20-minute romance with Kirk, in which we continue to learn nothing about her personally.  Then she dies, unable to make a single choice for herself because of the clashing desires of other people.  Bleah.

For all that we've had too many Kirk love interests this season, I'm going to make the unpopular assertion that this one could have worked.  I think Rayna could have so bewitched Kirk that he would lose sight of the urgency of saving his ship and crew, but for that to work, she would have needed to make us fall in love with her, too.  Reduced to a pretty face, without initiative nor personality, I can't imagine she'd be able to seduce Ensign Chekov, much less Captain Kirk!  For the missed opportunity of an interesting character, and the loss of integrity of everyone else's character as a result, I give this episode 1.5 stars.


"Train up a child in the way that he should go" — King Solomon


by Erica Frank

I planned to write about Rayna – about the utter ridiculousness of "the equivalent of 17 university degrees in sciences and art" as judged by one man. About her claim that Flint is "the greatest, kindest, wisest man in the galaxy," based on her vast experience of… an hour spent in the company of three other men.

Those made more sense after she was revealed as an android, programmed rather than taught. Others have already mentioned how bland her robotic tabula rasa personality was, without managing to be quirky or entertaining.

I find myself more interested in Flint. The man who claims to be (presumably is, in the Star Trek universe) Methuselah, Solomon, Lazarus, Alexander the Great, Merlin, Leonardo da Vinci, and Johannes Brahms. An artist, inventor, and wizard: his ultimate creation is the woman he falls in love with.

Flint and Rayna view what looks to modern eyes like a flat-screen television
Did he invent the paper-thin large-screen television as well? Can I get one of those?

…Whom he promptly loses to a broken heart; he failed to teach her anything about how to make hard choices, how to find a solution when both options will hurt someone. …Just what did those 17 degrees cover? Any study of history should be packed with examples of art made in despair after facing choices with no good outcomes.

But why should she be facing a no-good-options choice? After six thousand years of human life, in an array of different cultures, can he not contemplate a relationship with more than two people? Solomon had 700 wives, but Flint today cannot handle the idea of a wife with two husbands?

Close-up of Flint with a pensive expression.
Flint despairs that Rayna might care for someone other than him.

Ah, but Rayna doesn't see him as a husband yet—no surprise, since he's been telling her he raised her from childhood, like a parent. If she was to be his mate, why didn't he teach her that: "Someday, when you are ready, we will be married—full partners who love each other." She would've been looking forward to some unknown change, some nebulous marker of full adulthood, to take her place by his side. (With or without Kirk as a harem-boy on the side.) Instead, he treated her like a daughter, like a student, not like someone intended to be his peer.

Setting aside all of that—and much more that I didn't mention—once he had perfected Rayna, why didn't he just make another one after Kirk left? Even if he's limited to a normal human lifespan now, there's time to try again.

Kirk leans over Rayna #16, who is deactivated on a bed, with red hair. Behind her, covered in blankets, are Raynas 14 and 15
The current Rayna is 17.  One more and she's legal!

Two stars. The idea of Methuselah changing identities and living throughout human history is fascinating, but it is bungled here.


Too Many Beaches to Walk On


by Gideon Marcus

One of our readers sends us letters after every episode.  He has developed a rating system not on quality, but on the number of times an element or device is used in an episode.  For instance, "Wig Trek" (if there are wigs in evidence), "Cave Trek" (if there is a subterranean setting), etc.

He recently introduced a new scale: "Love Trek".  More and more often, we see one member of the crew or another falling in love.  This theme has been used to good effect in shows like "This Side of Paradise" (Spock falls in love, or at least, is able to express his love), "The City on the Edge of Forever" (a better case of "Tahiti Syndrome" than "The Paradise Syndrome", honestly), and "Spectre of the Gun" (Chekov and the saloon girl, whose name I can't remember.) It is less tolerable in any case involving Scotty, as the engineer, when lovelorn, becomes a moron.  C'est l'amour, I guess.

It is least tolerable when it's Captain Kirk.  Oh sure, the Enterprise's skipper has developed a reputation for randiness over the course of the last three years, but usually, said reputation is actually undeserved.  For the most part, Kirk is the pursued rather than the pursuer, or he uses sex as a weapon, kissing antagonists until they submit.  First season Kirk was positively chaste, and he recognized that his supreme obligation was to the Enterprise.  Afflicted by the alcohol-like effects of the Psi 2000 disease in "The Naked Time", Kirk laments that he has no time, no capacity for love—"no beach to walk on."

It's something of a tragedy, but it's also a poignant and useful character trait.  The scene in "This Side of Paradise", when Kirk's fidelity to his ship shakes the influence of the Lotus-Eater spores of Omicron Ceti Three in "This Side of Paradise", is still perhaps my favorite of the series.  In "Elaan of Troyius", when Kirk is made a thrall of Elaan by her love-inducing tears, the audience knows he will break their influence once his ship is put in danger—and he does.

So howthehell does Kirk find the love of his life in less than five minutes of dancing with Rhoda Rayna the Robot?  Especially such a bland, nonentity of a not-woman?  (If she'd been played by Julie Newmar, there might have been some—not much, but some—justification.) Kirk's entire crew is dying.  He is dying.  His crew is his ship.  Yet he carouses, drinks brandy, banters about Brahms and Da Vinci with Spock, and generally acts as if he is on shore leave rather than less than four hours from the death of his first and greatest love.

In a sumptuous drawing room, Spock, McCoy, and Kirk hold glasses filled with amber Saurian brandy
These three really look like they're worried about the imminent death of the Enterprise crew…

The episode is not utterly horrible.  As Janice notes, there are some intriguing elements.  That it has some resemblance with Forbidden Planet doesn't do it any favors, but both share an ancestry that goes back to The Tempest, so I can forgive that.

But the utter savaging of Kirk's character, not to mention Spock's uncharacteristic blasé attitude, his sudden role as a love guru, and his casual use of the Vulcan Mind Touch (remember when using such was all but tabu?) makes me hate this episode in hindsight all the more.

1.5 stars.


[Come join us tomorrow (February 21st) 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…]





[January 24, 1969] Make rheum, make rheum (Star Trek: "The Mark of Gideon")


by Gideon Marcus

"Gideon"—the very name connotes greatness.  Grandeur.  Brilliance.  Romance.  Surely, any world with that namesake must be a living paradise.  So it is no wonder that the Federation bought the reports sent from planet Gideon declaring it to be just that.  No wonder that the Federation would tie itself in knots so as not to jeopardize the chances of welcoming Gideon to the Federation.

Unfortunately, Gideon has other plans.

Title over Kirk wandering lost through the corridors of a fake Enterprise

From the moment Captain Kirk, the sole allowed representative of the Federation, beams down to Gideon, "The Mark of Gideon" catches your attention.  We've seen Kirk on an empty Enterprise before—in "This Side of Paradise", "By Any Other Name", and (sort of) "Wink of an Eye", but it's no less effective for its repetition.  Sure, it's just a re-use of the standing sets on Stage 9, but then so was "The Tholian Web", "The Omega Glory" and "Mirror, Mirror".  Indeed, because we have seen the sets used to represent other ships and other dimensions, the audience has already been trained to think in terms of historical precedents rather than the true situation.

That true situation, of course, is that Kirk is actually in a fantastically detailed replica of the Enterprise, so good that it takes him a (credulity-stretching given how quickly Spock figures things out) long time to figure out that he's not on his beloved ship.  But fairly quickly, the episode's focus returns to the real Enterprise and Spock doing his usual sterling job in command, the "Mark of Gideon" becomes less "Where is Everybody?" and more "Stopover in a Quiet Town" (respectively, the first episode of The Twilight Zone, and one of the very last).

The plot is quite simple: Gideon was once Heaven-on-Earth, but it has since become a Malthusian nightmare due to the one-two punch of no native diseases and a fanatical reverence for life.  Only the very privileged get a few square meters of space to themselves (Holy Shades of the Soviet Union, Batman!) So, the Gideon council hatches a plan to capture Kirk, withdraw some of his blood, and use the lingering, though harmless, remnants of Vegan Meningitis therein to infect Odona, the council chair's daughter.  She will then serve as an example and a vector to infect the rest of the population of Gideon, which presumably will be devastated before natural immunity kicks in (or enough Gideonites stop wanting to be sick).

Chairman Hodin looks over his sick daughter, Odona, on a bed
"Father, could I have a Bayer?  No other aspirin works better."

The real problem with this episode is not the story, nor the effective bits with Kirk and Odona on the empty ship, nor the entertaining segments featuring Spock sparring with Chairman Hodin.  It's that the plot and the events don't match up.

Regarding the disease: it's not stated what happens if mortality turns out to be 100%, or what the Gideonites will do once the disease loses its lethality.

It's never explicitly stated, either, why (or how) the Gideonites went through the trouble of building a replica of a starship on their surface for the purpose of letting Kirk wander around in it.  If all they need is his blood, he could have been kept unconscious for the nine minutes required to take his blood and then sent back to the Enterprise with some kind of cover story.  Did the plan really require that Odona join Kirk in the simulated halls of the starship?  Did she really need to fake falling for him?

Kirk grips Odona by her shoulders passionately on the empty bridge of the fake Enterprise
"I have.  to.  kiss you.  Odona.  It's in…the script."

I really want this episode to work.  Not just because it bears an absolutely terrific name, but because it is genuinely entertaining to watch from beginning to end.  Our crowd advanced a few hypotheses that I like.  The best was that the ship was Odona's idea, and like the Dolman from "Elaan of Troyius", she could be refused nothing.  Moreover, there was an intense voyeuristic desire on the part of the Gideonites to see beings in a truly open space, so this plan killed two birds with one stone.  Another is simply that Kirk was drugged when he woke up, and the mock-up didn't need to be perfect (a la last year's Assignment: Moon Girl).

As for the idea that it is hypocrisy for the Gideonites to value life yet hatch a scheme to indirectly kill billions (trillions?), I am reminded of the orthodox Jew who could not turn on a light switch himself on the Sabbath, so he cannily lifted his infant son (too young to be bound by mitzvot) to within flicking range of the switch.  And religion is, indeed, in the crosshairs of this episode, for did not Pope Paul VI this summer enjoin Catholics from using The Pill, humanity's main hope of stopping the population boom?

I'm writing this piece in the cold light of day, when I should be more inclined to savage the episode in light of its inconsistencies and absurdities.  But I find myself feeling charitable—perhaps it's because director Jud Taylor finally seems to be finding his sea legs (even if Shatner. did. employ many. unnecessary pauses. last week).

Three stars.



Deeply Creepy


by Jessica Dickinson Goodman

Maybe it was the feral cats yowling over my fence in the middle of the episode, but this is for my money the creepiest episode we've seen yet. Something about those yearning, horrifying disembodied faces just got me right in the shivvers.

It also had me thinking about ferality, about what happens when something once tamed becomes unruly. Consider pigeons. Tamed and bred by humans for 10,000 years as messenger birds, companions, and beauties, only to themselves over the course of a bare century transition back to a wild world that they had never been prepared for.

The people of Gideon likewise seem to be at the devastating mercy of a too-too civilized society whose very progress towards perfection endangers their lives. Yes, I felt the storytelling placed too heavy a burden on just telling us that they love sex too much to prevent vicious overcrowding — a cultural quirk that felt too big to swallow. But the feeling of confinement, of encroachment and enclosure came through loud and clear.

In a way, their whole society had become feral: bred and evolved for specific purposes and suddenly set adrift with all of that breeding and evolution still in place, but none of the supports and expectations which allowed it to happen in the first place. The individuals seemed civilized enough, grading on a curve of aliens we've seen thus far, but the entire concept of a society so desperately, brutally crowded seemed fundamentally wild to me.

Let's get to the criticism. As beautifully creepy as the premise was, the synthetic bodysuits and wobbling crowded walks outside the windows were closer to funny than horrifying. The question of where they got space to build a 1:1 model of the Enterprise also beggared belief. Some science fiction and fantasy writers believe you get one big lie, a total of one shocking premise that the audience will just go with you on because, hey, it's a genre story, them's table stakes. But you only get one.

For me, the Big Lie of this episode was that Kirk was lost and wandering around a completely empty Enterprise. That was disturbing enough. But then it turns out many of the assumptions we'd taken on faith as an audience were false and that just felt like being crudely manipulated. I watch shows to be manipulated, but I like it to feel earned, not like I'm being rushed from plot point to plot point, each more giddily hideous than the next. She's not just a fake damsel in distress, she's the weirdo ruler's daughter! And a national hero! And dying of some exotic disease! That she wanted! So they could cull their society like a dairyman shrinks his herd when the price of milk is down!

That's just too many additional premises in one story for me.

A beautifully staged shot of, from left to right, Lieutenant Brent, Dr. McCoy, Mr. Spock, Lieutenant Uhura, Ensign Chekov, and Mr. Scott, on the bridge of the Enterprise, as Spock parlays with Hodin
Even Spock is incredulous of this episode

I wish we'd kept the lens tightly on Kirk and the crew and the mysterious woman. I wish the weirdo ruler's throne room had given us a hint that claustrophobia was going to be the enemy of the day. And I wish we'd gotten more of the woman actress, she was doing so much with so little. I hope we see more of her.

Overall, this piece will be memorable for its premise and a few fine lines, but the execution was lacking.

2 stars.

How Crowded Is This Place?


by Erica Frank

Odona says, "There is no place, no street, no house, no garden, no beach, no mountain that is not filled with people." This sounds like the Earth of Harrison's Make Room! Make Room!: an overcrowded world, very little privacy, and extreme government measures to cope with the seemingly infinite population. (Can you imagine living on a planet with seven billion people, as we're expected to have on this planet by the year 2000?)

However, we get glimpses that imply it's worse than that. We are led to infer, from the masses of people in plain bodysuits visible behind the High Council room, that the planet is literally so crowded that they don't have space for a few rooms for office work. That aside from their fake Enterprise, there is no empty 20'-by-20' room on the planet.

Kirk looks sternly at Ambassador Hodin offscreen. In the background, we see the people of Gideon milling around aimlessly.
The real question isn't "are there really that many people" but "why do they have a viewing window into the High Council room?"

I reject this notion. I believe Gideon is crowded, yes, but not that it's so packed that most adults spend their waking hours packed like sardines, slowly bumbling around in huge crowds.

If that were so, how would they even find space to make the fake Enterprise? What happened to the people displaced by it? No, while I can accept that Gideon is "full of people," I cannot believe they are literally shoulder-to-shoulder across the planet, nor even "…except for special cases" like childbirth and whatever space is needed to design and sew the High Council's uniforms.

Ambassador Hodin wearing a suit mostly made of brown velvet hexagons with some kind of wide ribbon between them, and a shiny metallic blue row down the front. He is flanked by two assistants in all-black hooded bodysuits.
Perhaps they're made of hexagons because they can be assembled by hand — no space for a sewing machine necessary.

Do the people have jobs? Families? How are children raised? How do they maintain a culture focused on the "love of life" if they are just walking around staring at nothing all day?

My answer: The people we see are probably tourists — visitors to the Capitol, hoping for a rare view of the Council chambers, which is separated by one-way glass. They may be required to keep moving; that gives everyone a chance to see the Council when the glass is raised, perhaps a few times a day.

This is a ridiculous conclusion, but the whole episode is ridiculous. A culture that refuses birth control on ethical grounds will use a fatal disease to cull their populace? How will they decide who to infect — will they be selected by computer and told to line up for it, as in A Taste of Armageddon? Or will they volunteer to die, these miserable people who reject diaphragms, IUDs, and condoms because life is too sacred to prevent?

The individual scenes of this episode were fascinating but the underlying story just doesn't add up. Two stars.


Old Fools


by Joe Reid

The story this week was about a people claiming to love life so much that they couldn't harm one another, and so long-lived that they developed an overpopulation problem.  Overpopulation so severe as to cause them to lure a Starfleet captain who survived a deadly space disease to their planet to infect them with the pox.  Why?  Perhaps this seemed like the most interesting way to die?  For people who love life their treatment of every life seemed to be just the opposite.

Let’s start off on the grand scale.  Unlike most of the technically advanced races in the galaxy, the Gideonites lacked the most basic imagination when it came to needing more space.  If there isn’t enough space where you are, go somewhere else and find some.  Am I to believe that a people who could perfectly reproduce a spaceship as a ruse weren’t able to produce their own ships to take them to other planets to spread out?  What weak imaginations these advanced humanoids must have had to not consider that most basic of solutions.  During his career Kirk had been to dozens if not hundreds of worlds where a hardy race like the Gideonites could expand.

The next charge affirming the utter hypocrisy of the Gideonites had to do with how freely they lied. Although it might not be fair to lay this charge at the feet of all the people, their leaders certainly were not honest Abes.  They lied about transport coordinates. The location of the captain. The girl lied about her origins, claiming to know nothing about Gideon.  The entire fake ship was a lie.  They only ever resorted to the truth after each specific lie was uncovered, and not a minute sooner.  It might explain how these leaders came to power.  Even in our world, you don’t come to power by telling the truth.  It makes me wonder if the planet was even named Gideon, although saying, “welcome to the planet Marcus”, doesn’t quite roll off the tongue.

[Au contraire, mon ami.  We've already had a planet Marcus 12 in "And the Children Shall Lead".  If Odona emigrated from planet Gideon to planet Marcus 12, she'd be "Odona Gideon Marcus 12" (ed.)]

Hodin, flanked by two council members, harangues Kirk in the council chambers
"Not only have we no space, but I am using the planet's only hairpiece!"

If they really did love life, it must only have been the lives of their own people.  These Gideonites showed a complete lack of basic empathy for anyone who wasn’t them, for example, concocting a plan that lured an alien captain to their world to kidnap, imprison him, and bleed him dry.  These actions sure sound out of character for the "lovers of life" they purport to be.  In truth, the Gideonites were unimaginative in every sense of the word.  Trapping their own people on a planet that can’t support them is evil for an advanced technical society.  Using misdirection and bad faith negotiation tactics to carry out their shortsighted plan was contemptible.  Making the incarceration and blood letting of an unsuspecting victim their plan to save a planet was morally bankrupt. Attempts by the leader's daughter to redeem their reputation by choosing to sacrifice herself in the end fell flat for me.  There wasn’t enough good in the episode to salvage it from the bottom.

One star


[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…]




[December 8, 1968] Hippies and Robots (July-December 1968 Playboy)


by Erica Frank

I have once again dipped into the magazine of "entertainment for men" who want to feel intellectually superior while they browse photos of mostly-naked women they like to imagine are sexually available to them.

October 1968 Playboy cover, featuring a woman in a short silver-white dress with long angel sleeves, holding a bunny mask near her face

There are some good stories. Some good political commentary. Some funny cartoons. And a whole lot of self-aggrandizing pontification, and a lot of wealthy white men insisting they know what's best for everyone, especially women.

The Fully Automated Love Life of Henry Keanridge by Stan Dryer (July)

Our protagonist, Henry Keanridge, has a wife, a mistress, and two girlfriends; he manages the scheduling for this complex arrangement of obligations and secret-keeping via a computer. That's our science fiction aspect. He works at a trucking company, and he has fed his own name into the system as a truck, and the four women as "stops" on his route, and it manages his schedule, reminds him of birthdays and holidays, and so on.

Hyman Roth artwork showing a giant woman covered by machines; a man is at a control panel
Hyman Roth's art led me to believe this story had more substance than it does.

Here's a quote: "Before their affair, Dee had been a girl of impeccable virtue. She would no more have thought of having a love affair than of, say, not wearing a hat to church." That tells you everything you need to know about both Dee and Henry.

As a story: Two stars, providing you can tolerate Henry's male chauvinist perspective on life.
As science fiction: One. I read it so you don't have to.

Masks by Damon Knight (July)
This one, unlike many of Playboy's stories, is unquestionably science fiction. Medical technology, full-body prosthesis, what happens to a human when you put his brain in a robot body? They can't get the robot to look fully human, can't give it a full range of facial expressions–that's okay, though; he can wear a mask.

But the project's funding is uncertain, so our protagonist–unnamed for the first half of the story–may have to justify his right to "two hundred million a year" in medical expenses, when normal full disability support is $30,000.

Two stars. Probably would've been three if it weren't for the sudden gratuitously violent twist.

Silverstein Among the Hippies by Shel Silverstein (July)
Shel Silverstein comments on the Hashbury community, mostly by drawing cartoons of hippies. They're clever and often insightful.

Newsstand guy argues with Shel, "I mean, why do these punks have to rebel and protest and try to change the whole damn world?"
Why indeed? Headlines include: Detroit Burning, Kill 720 Viet Cong, Sniper Kills Six, Self, New Fallout Danger Warned, Girl Raped, Alabama Riot, War in Sinai…

The Trouble with Machines by Ron Goulart (August)
Maximo is a machine, a robot designed to hunt and kill the reporter who keeps criticizing technology companies. Maximo is disguised as a refrigerator which will be delivered to the reporter's house. …Maximo has, or acquires, some interests of its own, and runs off before it reaches its assigned destination.

This one had a plot twist I didn't see coming (wow, the sexy lady is actually a person! She is part of the plot!) and a story resolution that, while not groundbreaking, doesn't leave confusing loose ends.

A solid three stars.

More Silverstein Among the Hippies by Shel Silverstein (August)
He's back! Or maybe he just hasn't managed to escape yet.

Shel faces a row of hippies holding signs with letters: L G L Z D R G S
"It was supposed to say 'LEGALIZE DRUGS'… but E is out trying to score, A and I are on an acid trip, the other E just got busted, and U was simply too strung out to show up!"

Playboy Interview: Stanley Kubrik (September)
This is not just an interview; it begins with a few pages of biography and background information showing how Kubrick got his start in film: "He quit his job at Look, raised $20,000–mostly from his father and his uncle–and began shooting 'Fear and Desire'… Though rejected by all major distributors, 'Fear and Desire' toured the art-house circuit and eventually broke even."

On the one hand: It's got some solid information about how his career led up to 2001. On the other: Four pages in all-italics is hard on the eyes. Next time, Playboy, consider using a scene divider of some sort and leaving the introduction more readable.

For the actual interview, Kubrick is very full of himself. 2001: A Space Odyssey showcases his VISION!!! It has a MESSAGE!!!… which he is not going to explain, of course, because he is an artist–would we better appreciate La Gioconda (that's "the Mona Lisa" to us plebes) if Leonardo had explained why she was smiling? (I wish that were a made-up example. It is not; he directly compared his film to the Mona Lisa.)

Some words and phrases he throws around in the interview: Cosmos, man's destiny, the lumpen literati (he's not fond of his critics), grandeur of space, chrysalis of matter, tendrils of their consciousness… he does like to talk about his grand ideas. Much of the interview is him saying "What if…?" and the interviewer politely feeding him the next question. He did manage to say a few things I agreed with, including, "Why should a vastly superior race bother to harm or destroy us?"

Two and a half stars. I am neither a film buff nor an arts buff, so much of this is tedious to me. If you like rich guys with an interest in science fiction showing off their education, there's 16 pages of it here.

Fortitude by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
This is a story in teleplay script format, beginning with a discussion between the esteemed Dr. Norbert Frankenstein and his guest, Dr. Little. Frankenstein's assistant, Tom Swift, occasionally comments with details. His patient, Sylvia Lovejoy, is now only a head attached to a machine–apparently a popular concept in Playboy these days; new writers should consider submitting stories with similar themes as it seems like they're buying.

Sylvia's every mood is controlled by complex machinery, except occasionally a small spark of her former self begs to be allowed to die. Dr. Frankenstein has foreseen this desire, and has programmed her robot arms to be unable to point a gun at herself or bring poison to her lips.

Four stars; the reader is left wondering if Sylvia has any possible route to escape, even after the circumstances of her vigil have changed.

Here Comes John Henry! by Ray Russell (September)
John Henry is the first man on the moon–or rather, the first man to land on the moon and come back. The first lunar landing mission is a Black man teamed up with a Russian as a show of international cooperation. The media have a field day making corny slogans about the duo, often playing on tacky racial slurs. John Henry is not bothered by tacky media coverage; he's just thrilled to be going to the moon.

The two guys have a lot in common, it turns out, starting with their names. The other fellow is Ivan "Vanya" Genrikhovich–"John, son of Henry" in Russian. Both are from Georgia, just from different parts of the globe. Both are from the capital city. Both are descendants of slaves. ("My father's father was a serf," Vanya says.) They are becoming great friends, bonding over their shared joy of space, taking pictures on the moon… until they notice that their fuel measurement is a bit low.

Not a lot low. Not low enough that the ship can't make it back. It just… can't carry both of them back. They quickly realize they have been set up: this mission has been calculated down to the last ounce, the last paperclip's worth of mass. Someone decided that only one of them should come home, and didn't bother to tell either of the pilots.

I won't spoil the solution they find, because it's worth reading; it's so much better than the one proposed in Godwin's "The Cold Equations." Five stars.

Mr. Swift and His Remarkable Thing by Jeremiah McMahon (October)
Two modern hippies, Mommababy and Daddybaby, have settled down to suburban life after the unplanned arrival of Frankenbaby five years ago. They try to be properly hip and permissive, but Mommababy does not like their neighbor, Mr. Smith, who is making some kind of sculpture-thing in his back yard. It's ugly, and Mr. Smith is always walking around muttering things like "Is the missing factor X?"

She doesn't want Frankenbaby playing in Mr. Smith's yard. Frankenbaby, however, has his freedom: after he's sent to his room, his parents spend the evening focusing on the "good things–flowers, beards, sideburns and beads." Mommababy considers checking on Frankie at bedtime, but Daddybaby warns her against being overprotective, so Frankie manages to slip out of the house. They discover him missing after the great explosive blasts from next door rock the house.

It turns out the weird sculpture was a rocket ship, and Mr. Smith and Frankenbaby have blasted off. It's unclear if they have a destination or are just going on a joyride.

Another solid three stars: This is an enjoyable read; it just doesn't really have a point—much like Mommababy and Daddybaby.

What's Your SQ (Sexual Quotient)? (October)
"A man's love life—whether he be single or married—is intimately related to his business career, to his social pastimes and even to the car he drives."

This is a 54-question personality quiz; each question has 3 options, with a key provided at the end for interpreting the results. It tells readers that, if none of the answers seems to apply, just pick the one that seems least unlikely.

It is, of course, expecting all participants to be heterosexual men of reasonable wealth in 1968 America. "You" own a car, have a job, have an active sex life with women (which will usually be called "girls"), and so on. These biases are visible throughout the quiz.

Moreover, it is assumed that you perceive sex as something you do for personal reasons only, not a shared activity of mutual pleasure.

Question 17 from the quiz, asking about the reader's concerns during sexual intercourse. The three options are: Performing as well as others, premature ejaculation, and maintaining an erection.
You are not, of course, concerned with whether your partner is enjoying herself.

The end result: Men's personalities can be sorted into three categories, although most men will have a blend of all three. Type A: "a Don Juan or a 'phallic narcissist'; a ladykiller." Type B: "his sense of security is strongly dependent upon being loved, cared for, and emotionally supported by others; he feels unworthy of this attention." Type C: "dedicated to fighting intemperance and immorality in all its forms; inflexible in both body and mind."

I can't figure out how to give this stars. I can say: If you're not a heterosexual man with the common mundane biases of current late-1960s America, the "analysis" after the quiz isn't going to be useful to you.

Colorless in Limestone Caverns by Allan Seager (November)
Our protagonist, Reinhart, is a dislikeable sort of fellow who tortures animals in the name of science and gets himself acclaim and tenure for it. He orders some blind cave fish on a whim, planning on researching their feeding habits, but instead, a change comes over him: From the first day he acquires them, he spends all day in the lab staring at them, and he becomes quiet and unresponsive at home. He feels a great kinship with the fish.

His wife worries. His mother worries. He thinks about fish. His wife and mother call in psychiatrists. He snaps out of his lethargic funk, speaks blithely of the research he's going to do, apologizes about worrying his family, and goes back to normal.

Two stars. I kept waiting for the story to start, and then it was over.

Scrutable Japanese Fare by Thomas Mario (November)
This article has nothing remotely science-fictional about it, and it is not related to the new-trending cultural shifts of which I am so fond. It's about dining in Japan, and since Gideon visits there occasionally, I thought I'd read it. It's one page of actual article followed by 10 recipes.

It mentions sukiyaki, shabu shabu–which it claims is a great food for dinner parties; host and guests share preparation activities–and tempura with random ingredients, "gleefully scattered over the tray in no fixed pattern." It talks about Japanese steakhouses that cook on a metal slab at the dining table, and describes how to prepare warm rice wine for best enjoyment.

It includes several recipes: Broccoli salad with golden dressing, cabbage salad with soy dressing, sesame dipping sauce, scallion dipping sauce, chicken yakitori, shrimp tempura, (which it insists should be eaten hot rather than prepared in advance; "One device for party service is to hire a domestic geisha who will fry and deliver it in large batches"), tempura batter & sauce, Japanese steak dinner and the shabu shabu the article begins by praising.

I found myself mildly disappointed by the lack of pictures of any of the food, and that the recipes aren't clear about how many servings they make–the "Japanese steak dinner" wants 4 lbs of steak, cut into ¾" cubes! That's not dinner for two or even for a family–that's the whole dinner party's meal. The recipes also don't list which cooking implements they need; that's folded into the narrative instructions.

Not rating for stars. It's a pleasant enough read, and the recipes are nice, although they lack a few details from being well-made.

Ad for Barbarella the movie
Coming soon to a theatre near you! Finally, you can see the actual scenes from the pictorial review earlier this year.

The Mind of the Machine by Arthur C. Clarke (December)
Clarke discusses whether computers can be said to truly think (…no, despite a few radical fanatics here and there), and what it might mean to society if they could, or they gain the ability in the future. He takes it as a foregone conclusion that they will:

…[T]he fact that today's computers are very obviously not "intellectually superior" has given a false sense of security—like that felt by the 1900 buggy-whip manufacturer every time he saw a broken-down automobile by the wayside."

He also has a very narrow view of how the future needs to play out:

The problem that has to be tackled within the next 50 years is to bring the entire human race, without exception, up to the level of semiliteracy of the average college graduate. This represents what may be called the minimum survival level; only if we reach it will we have a sporting chance of seeing the year 2200.

Although there's some obvious pandering to those who believe themselves the intellectual elite, he does cover a lot of the current trends in computer development, and a reasonable amount of speculation about possible future ones, albeit with, like the SQ test above, a lot of unmentioned biases.

Three stars; a nice review of the current state of scientific development and good suggestions about what might come next.

Wealth versus Money, by Alan Watts (December)

Alan Watts is neither a science fiction writer nor a scientist; he is a philosopher and zen buddhist guru. However, his article begins with an emphatic statement that the United States of America will cease to exist by the year 2000–which puts it firmly in the realm of fantastic speculation, as much as any of the stories I've reviewed.

He points out that a nation has two definitions: One, its geography, biology, and acknowledged physical boundaries; the other, its culture and sovereignty as recognized by its people and others. He points out that this second aspect of the USA is on the verge of destroying the first, and that much of this problem is caused by the conflation of money and wealth.

Money is assigned by the government. It is a deliberately limited resource. Wealth is a matter of valuable resources that has nothing to do with numbers written on slips of paper. Money is a measurement—purportedly of wealth, but as with any measurement, it can be applied in multiple ways.

"[T]rue wealth is the sum of energy, technical intelligence, and raw materials," he says. And he continues to point out that mankind is not separate from the world around us, but part of it—"like a whirlpool is to a river"—we cannot "conquer" or "invade" our own home, and our best chance of survival in the future is to recognize the value of leisure and enjoy the wealth that surrounds us.

Four stars (although I am likely biased in this rating); I have a great fondness for anything that can make Playboy—an overtly libertarian, capitalistic publication—recognize other approaches to life.






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

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…]




[October 31, 1968] How the Western was won (Star Trek: "Spectre of the Gun")


by Janice L. Newman

This is Not a Test

Star Trek continues to surf the New Wave in this week’s episode, Spectre of the Gun. While the plot incorporated many things we’ve seen before (both in and outside of Star Trek) it combined and presented these elements in new and innovative ways.

The story opens with the ship encountering a strange object floating in space. All of the crew receive a message, ‘hearing’ it in the language they are most familiar with: Vulcan for Spock, Russian for Chekov, and in a nice call back to earlier episodes, Swahili for Uhura. The message warns them to stay away from the area. The crew, under orders to make contact with the Melkotians (the race who left the warning) choose to disregard it and beam down to the planet. Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scotty, and Chekov make up the team.


The Melkotian buoy—to Trek's credit, they didn't simply reuse the music from The Corbomite Maneuver

Shortly after they arrive on the planet, a threatening figure appears. It’s one of the aliens, a Melkot. It tells them that they will be punished for disregarding their warning. Since Captain Kirk is in charge, their deaths will be ‘patterned’ on him.

Aliens can be difficult to render convincingly on television, but I was impressed at how effective the Melkot is. The image is of two glowing eyes piercing through a surrounding haze and the suggestion of a bulbous, hairless head on a stalk-like, armless body. Since it’s surrounded by mist and weird lighting, we don’t get a close look at it, which adds to the menacing quality and keeps it from feeling fake or cheesy.

No sooner does the Melkot pronounce judgment, than the five men find themselves in the middle of a western town. Except, it’s not a fully-realized town. It’s made up of pieces of scenery, just enough to suggest a town in broad strokes. It puts one in mind of a theatrical production, where a facade is used to represent a building and one can see inside a shop or house. It’s unsettling in this context: signs and clocks hang on empty air, and unlike the actors in a musical, the crew are well-aware that the buildings are unfinished.


Open air bar

It takes a few minutes and an interaction with one of the ‘locals’ to jog his memory, but Captain Kirk puts the pieces together to deduce that the setup represents the shootout at the O.K. Corral. He and his men are the Clanton brothers, destined to die to bullets shot by the Earps and Doc Holiday. Bullets that will kill them, as they discover when Chekov is shot down in the street.

Our heroes try to avoid their fate through diplomacy, trickery, and ‘the better part of valor’. Nothing works, not even the sleeping gas bomb that McCoy and Spock build together. But the fact that it doesn’t work when it should have worked convinces Spock that none of what they are experiencing is real. The bullets cannot hurt them, he tells the others, unless they believe they will.

In order to make sure the humans are all as convinced that the bullets are harmless as Spock is, he mind melds with each of them in turn. Then they stand, unworried, as they’re shot at. The fence behind them is filled with holes, but they, as Spock promised, are unharmed. Afterward Kirk has the opportunity to kill the Earps and Holiday, but chooses not to, even though he badly wants revenge for Chekov. The Melkotians, surprised at Kirk’s choice, agree to open diplomatic relations with the Federation.


A touching moment

We’ve seen a lot of these bits and pieces before. Westerns are ubiquitous, and the story of the shootout at Tombstone is an oft-visited well for modern-day storytellers. But how many of them cast the Clantons as the good guys? We’ve seen the Vulcan mind meld before, but never on multiple people in turn, and never to convince them of the unreality of their senses. We’ve seen powerful, telepathic aliens before. But unlike many of the others, the Melkotians aren’t messing around with the humans for their own amusement, or to protect us from ourselves, or to ‘test’ us. It’s clear that they don’t expect the humans to survive the punishment, and that they’re shocked that Kirk chooses not to kill the aggressors in the end. Whether the form of punishment was meant to be humane, giving the humans a familiar setting to die in, or whether it was supposed to remove the weight of responsibility from the Melkotians by forcing the humans into a ‘kill or be killed’ situation, or whether it was for some other reason entirely, we cannot know.

What we do know is that these familiar pieces fit together to make an entirely new kind of story, one that’s clever, compelling, and up there with the best of the Star Trek episodes we’ve seen.

Five stars.


Best Western


by Amber Dubin


I was pleasantly surprised that this episode marked another in the inspiring trend of season 3 episodes that absolutely knocked my socks off. The overarching premise is nothing special on its face: a shadowy, menacing entity issues an ominous warning a-la-Dante's-Inferno "abandon all hope, ye who enter here." Kirk promptly ignores the warning buoy, charging head-first into danger like the reckless adventurer we know him to be, and at first we appear to be treated to another "Catspaw"-like simulation with a western twist. This is where the similarities end between the season 2 and season 3 Halloween episodes, because this time around, the simulated world is much more intricate, meaningful and all around well-crafted.

Starting with the aliens' motivation for submerging the crew in this simulation, they explain that "you bring violence like a disease." This is a very valid threat and makes a lot of sense that the Melkotians would want to have this simulation in place to protect their planet from approaching unknown cultural contaminants.The crewmen have already refused to heed the initial warning, so it could hardly be called an escalation to issue this execution edict as judgment for their trespass. They prove themselves to be much more fair judges than some of the other alien species we've encountered, because they essentially allow a loophole in their trial, wherein the participants have one final chance to prove themselves worthy of access to their planet. It is fair too, that they design the interactive tribunal from details found within Kirk's mind, as it was Kirk that chose to disobey their warning and therefore Kirk should bear the bulk of the responsibility for their punishment.


Here come the Judge(s)

This is the first time, in my opinion, that they have found a valid reason to recreate ancient American history, as Captain Kirk has always been a stand-in for the audience's 1960's perspective, and one of the points in our history that Americans enjoy recreating most in film and fiction at this time is the Wild West. This time, incorporating our perspective is neatly explained by saying that Kirk has both the genetic memories of ancient North Americans from this era, and memories from his fan-crazed obsession with all things historical and fictional from American History. I even found it radically creative that the director manages to elegantly justify the half-finished western set pieces, as it was not only necessary that the crew know that the simulation was false, but also it was encouraged that they use that to their advantage to beat the system.

I also love that the trial that the crew endures this time is branded not as a trial but as an execution, further setting up the crew to fail as they would be inclined to see it as an inescapable punishment rather than an simulation whose outcome they could influence. The Melkotians may well have hoped the humans would fail. Certainly, they were surprised when they didn't.

I'm particularly impressed that this episode got me to do something I previously thought unthinkable: enjoy western-themed television.

5 stars

Unexpected Diplomacy


by Lorelei Marcus

Captain Kirk took an unexpectedly persistent talk-before-phasers approach to interacting with the Melkotians and their executioner puppets.  At the beginning of the episode, he mentions the importance of contacting the Melkotians and implies the goal of peacefully adding them to the Federation.  Given the importance of the mission, and our Enterprise captain's previous track record handling aliens, I can only imagine the training exercise Star Fleet put Kirk through to prepare him for his task:

"Alright, Captain.  On the table, you will see a phaser and a communicator.  The scenario is you are attempting to make contact with a peaceful alien species.  Please choose the object you feel is best suited for this situation."

(Kirk reaches for the phaser and is shocked with an electric buzzer.)

"Ouch!"

"Please choose again."

(Rubbing at his wrist, Kirk reaches for the communicator this time.  A green light turns on and a pleasant song starts playing.)

"Very good, Captain.  Onto the next task…"


"I can't just kill them!  I won't get any candy!"

In any case, I found this episode to be quite fun, particularly our new, diplomatic captain.  Four stars.


We Come in Peace


by Erica Frank

"We come in peace," said Kirk… as he raised his phaser. No wonder the Melkot didn't believe him.

The Melkotians were clear that they wanted no part of the Federation. When the Enterprise decided to visit anyway –"establish contact at all costs"–the Melkotians were ready for them. (Kirk, you did establish contact; you met and conversed, and their response was No. If you meant "establish regular communications and diplomatic negotiations," well, that dance takes two willing partners.)

Kirk and his team wound up somewhere that looked more like a movie set or a stage play than an actual town. They thought this was "the Melkotians' idea of a town" rather than "a construct taking place in our own minds," despite having substantial experience with powerful telepaths who can make them experience entire landscapes that don't actually exist.


Why did it take them half the episode to attempt to leave town and discover the force field blocking their exit?

They spent most of their time trying to figure out how to get out of the impending gunfight, instead of looking for loopholes in the "reality" that they should recognize as false. However, even as they accepted the storyline they're stuck in, Kirk looked for ways to avoid the ending.

I don't know if he insisted on not fighting the Earps because he honestly believes it's wrong, or because he recognized that, in this story, once the shooting starts, his entire team will be killed.

They passed the Melkotians' test by refusing to shoot. (…Spock's getting awfully free with the mind-melds, recently.) I'm not sure I'd accept the results: Kirk knew that there was no way to win a shoot-out. Perhaps that was the point–not, "prove you are a non-violent species" (obviously not true), but "prove to us that you can find other ways to solve problems."

I like the Melkotians. They're only the third near-omnipotent aliens we've met that aren't petty tyrants. The Metron had a similar test, making Kirk fight the Gorn–they, too, were pleasantly surprised that Kirk found a way around killing. And we never learned the name of the race that built the Shore Leave planet.

Four stars.


I suppose he is the "Spectre of the Guns."


A Near-Shakespearean Paen for Nonviolence


by Jessica Dickinson Goodman

With death served up on the doorstep with the morning paper, I needed this episode this week. Bracketed by political campaign ads crowing about violence in various cities and jungles, I found Kirk's passionate nonviolence struck a powerful chord. The episode's overall contrast with the morning death toll was satisfying but somehow it was Commander Spock's cool lines that I loved the most.


"A radical alteration of our thought patterns must be in order."

In that moment, the episode twists reality to reach the profound fantasies of those of us whose loved ones are – or tomorrow will – lay in the grave, or in the mud, waiting for a G.I. sniper or Viet Cong fighter to take what life they have lived and in all their future lives. To restate it, Spock's idea is that in the constructed world of this week's impossibly powerful alien, if you know you cannot be killed by bullets, you cannot. "Know" because "believe" requires the acknowledgment of the potential for doubt, but knowing requires a perfect certainty. In Spock's psychic certainty there is physical safety and real, true resurrection for the marooned crew.

This is what I love about science fiction, the fantasies that science fiction allows us, fantasies that give us enough breathing room to imagine a better world. Sometimes that world has to be far simpler for the conceit to play out. The world of this episode is much simpler than our own, which is why this trick of Commander Spock's is so intuitively effective. It felt in many moments like a stage play, and made me wonder how the Bard would have set the prologue:

Two families, both alike in indignity,
in fair Tombstone Arizona is where we lay our scene,
from lukewarm grudge break to new mutiny,
where uncivil blood makes uncivil hands unclean. 

There is a little bit of a sweet Romeo and Juliet going on with Chekov in this episode, though it doesn’t entirely play out, ending up more of a joke than driving the narrative.

It really is our dynamic trio who make the episode, in their debates as to how to avoid furthering the cycle of violence the alien of the week has thrown them into. Kirk's attempt to explain was so satisfying to watch as he shouted and fought not to fight. His framing of his own family's history added a depth of character for me, as many of the passing references in this season do.

While we can understand that his ancestors were part of the genocide against the Native Americans of the American West, I like to think if Kirk was alive right now and his draft number came due, he would hike over the border to Canada. Draft dodging in this way would be a key way to keep his hands and mind and blood from being complicit in killing, whether of one man or entire families, entire communities. If no one fought, there would be no wars, and we see how that can start with someone like Kirk refusing to fight. In this case, there are no deadly consequences for the draft dodgers, as Spock's science fictional defense is perfectly effective.

In our more complicated reality, it is not so easy. There is no curtain call on the battlefield, and no alien to blame for the violence that engulfs us. So many occupied graves may make draftees feel obligated to fill in a few more before they punch their final ticket. But I do fervently hope that those who are conscripts or reservists or draftees called to slaughter can watch this episode before they board their planes and tanks, before they load up their all-too-lethal guns with human-killing bullets. I hope it inspires them as only science fiction can to consider another path, the all-too-human journey of nonviolence.

5 stars.


The Greatest Show off Earth!


by Gideon Marcus

Most of my colleagues were impressed by the story, the message, and so forth.  Those are all laudable topics, and I'm glad they've covered them more eloquently than I would have.  However, I just want to comment on how much I've been enjoying the third season of Star Trek, how far this show has come.

1968 is an interesting moment.  Laugh-In has infected all other media.  Psychedelia is de rigeur It's a time of experimentation and irreverence.  As I noted in my last review, the New Wave has made it to Trek.  Indeed, my friend, part-time Journeyer Brian Collins said that, if he didn't know better, he'd have thought Phillip K. Dick wrote this episode!

So it's no surprise we get all sorts of neat stuff, visually, aurally, literarily.  According to my friend Maurice, the partial "limbo" that comprises the setting actually borrows a lot from the 1953 musical comedy Red Garters.  However, "Spectre" uses the setting to unsettle, to connote things unfinished, and also because it's just cool and weird!

The score is once again brand new.  That makes it the fourth or fifth new score we've had this season, and as usual, it is excellent and fitting.  Trek has the best music this side of Hollywood Palace.

Vince McEevety's direction is, once again, excellent.  I don't think it's a coincidence that his episodes ("Balance of Terror", "Miri", to some degree "Patterns of Force") have not only been innovative in their execution, but have also wrung out good performances from its actors.  Shatner, in particular, has had a tendency to ham things up (very unkosher!) since the end of the 1st season.  There's none of that in this episode.  His encounter with Sheriff Behan, when he plaintively yells that he can't kill the Earps, his mourning over Chekov's death, his subtle reactions to his crew, particularly in the gas testing scene…all terrific.  Chekov finally gets a role he can chew on, and he's great.  Scotty as well.  The Big Three are thoroughly in character, up to and including McCoy arguing both sides of the fence—"Cheer up, Jim!" followed by "Shut up, Spock!  We're grieving!")


"I am not someone you can marry, although marriage was inwented in Russia."

And the guest stars, particularly the Earps/Doc Holliday, turn in performances that are nearly robotic, but highly emotive nevertheless.  It's a hard needle to thread, but they manage it.

I find my esteem for this episode rising in the glow of the morning after, and in the conversations it has sparked with my comrades.  I was going to give it 4 stars, but I think it moves up to 4.5 now.






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


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






[September 26, 1968] Brain drain: (Star Trek: "Spock's Brain")

[Star Trek is back for its third season!  Accordingly, we've devoted a great many inches to this rather uneven debut….]



by Janice L. Newman

This week we gathered all our friends together to start off a new season of Star Trek. We served dinner, then put our little portable color set outside and everyone enjoyed the lovely late summer night.

Well, everyone except me, that is. I was stuck inside with a VERY nasty cold that, oddly enough, no one else wanted to share with me. It made watching Spock’s Brain a lonely experience, but it did give me space to focus on the episode without being distracted by gasps, groans, or laughter—except my own, that is.

With the recent threats of cancelation and huge fan response, I expected NBC to put their best foot forward starting the new season. For Season 2 they knocked it out of the park with Amok Time. Could they do it again?

In a word, no.

Spock’s Brain had a lot of good elements. The set up was interesting, if fairly typical by now. An unknown alien vessel confronts the Enterprise. An alien woman appears on the bridge and knocks everyone out with a gadget worn on her wrist. When the crew awakens again, they are horrified to discover that Spock is missing. Then, in a twist I could not have predicted, they find that Spock’s body is in Sick Bay, but his brain has been carefully removed!


Kirk's brain doesn't pass muster…

Somehow Spock’s “incredible Vulcan physique” (McCoy’s words, not mine) allows him to survive without a brain until McCoy can get him on futuristic life support. However, they must get back Spock’s brain within 24 hours, McCoy tells Kirk, or they won’t be able to reconnect it.

Kirk, furious and terrified, orders the navigator to follow the trail of the other ship. When it dead ends in a known system, they must determine which of the three planets has Spock’s brain. Playing a hunch that the audience knows will be correct, Kirk chooses the one that seems the least likely.

The surface of the world is cold and barren, populated by all-male tribes of primitive humans. Beneath the ground, women live in luxury and comfort. But both groups are strangely childlike. Neither understand what Kirk wants when he demands “Spock’s Brain”.

The away team consists of Kirk, McCoy, Scotty, and Mr. Spock—or rather, his body, controlled remotely by McCoy with a little gadget. He is even more inexpressive than usual, and little ticking sounds are heard whenever he moves. If it sounds ridiculous, that’s because it is.


Own your own clockwork Spock!

The team is captured, escape, and eventually make their way to where Spock’s brain has been hooked up to the machine controlling the entire complex. His autonomic functions have been repurposed to control the air, water, heating, and so on. It’s not a new idea in SF—Anne McCaffrey’s The Ship Who Sang did something similar if I recall correctly—but it was one of the more interesting plot points in the episode.


Spock's brain after getting the Sargon treatment

The team learns that the childlike people occasionally get temporary boosts to their knowledge by wearing a funny helmet with pins sticking out of it. This is how their leader was able to remove Spock’s brain. When they force her to again partake of the forbidden knowledge, however, she refuses to help them. If Spock’s brain is removed, the machines will cease to function and her people will die.

McCoy, left with no other choice, dons the helmet himself, receives a temporary boost in knowledge and skill, and proceeds to reattach Spock’s brain. The knowledge runs out before he can finish, but fortunately he’s able to connect Spock’s vocal cords, and the Vulcan is then able to guide him through reattaching the rest.

Kirk, meanwhile, tells the leader not to worry her pretty little head, because soon the women and men will be living together like they should have been all along, and the Federation will ‘help’ them.

Spock is unusually garrulous as the episode ends, lecturing them all on Ancient Rome as the theme swells triumphantly.


Spock is all better now—he didn't even muss his hair!

The frustrating thing about Spock’s Brain is that there’s so much good in it. The acting is very good. Kelley, Shatner, and Nimoy feel like they’ve really started to slot together as a team. Their banter is smoother than ever, Kirk’s over-acting is kept to a minimum, and they deliver the most nonsensical lines with absolute sincerity and straight faces. For that alone, they all deserve Emmys.

Added to that is Marc Daniels’ excellent direction, with interesting angles and innovative camera work. The music, too, was new.

Yet none of it mattered, because the fundamental plot was such schlock that it was impossible to take seriously. Every time McCoy screamed out, “Where are we going to look for Spock’s brain?” or Nimoy robotically walked across the screen as little ticking sounds followed along in the background, I was thrown right out of the world of Star Trek and into a bad B-movie. It was funny. It just wasn’t Star Trek.

Hopefully next week the studio will have something better to offer us.

Two stars.


A Sow's Ear from a Silk Purse


by Amber Dubin

This episode started with promise, the way the scantily clad, mysteriously powerful alien women that smoothly and silently dispatches the entire crew harkens back to the hostile takeovers we’ve seen in other episodes like Norman from “I, Mudd” or the Kelvans from “By any other name.” We expect, then, the plot to follow a similarly cerebral path where this new species of alien demonstrates how their improvements upon humanoid society have allowed them to surpass us in power while sacrificing one very human trait whose immense value they’ve forgotten. That would be following a tried and true formula of an episode that, while banal, can still be entertaining. It is seemingly from this scaffold that this episode attempts to reach to higher heights, without recognizing that it never truly took the time to support itself beforehand.

This reach is visible in the beautifully presented viewscreens, the dramatic "behind the captain's chair" camera angle they debut in this episode, the smooth score, matchless acting and the shiny new svelte uniforms they've adorned the cast with. They took a step backwards with Scottie's new haircut, which is so devastatingly unflattering that it makes Chekov's Monkees wig look tolerable, but it's a small misstep when compared to the unforgivable sin of completely forgetting to attach these shiny tassels to an intelligible script or plot.


For once, Chekov's hair looks better than Scotty's…

The most obvious problem with the plot is the concept of removing Spock's brain. Spock has had his body hijacked countless other times but the insistence of using the removal of his physical cerebral organ this time, instead of just his consciousness, makes all the subsequent actions ridiculous. Also, the fact that none of the Imorgs even seem to know what a brain is is absurd. This leads me to my second biggest problem with the episode, and that is that the alien societal structure is incredibly poorly designed. Ostensibly, the species is segregated across gender lines with the females (the Imorgs) living underground, most likely for their own protection as the males (the Morgs) seem to have descended into violent, brainless savages. The most interesting implication I find with this structure is that Imorgs are described by the Morgs as “bringers of pain and delight.” This implies, to me, that their society must survive by the Imorgs periodically returning to the surface, not just to discipline the Morgs, but also to.. ahem.. milk them of their genetic material for reproductive purposes.

While this is a comical concept, the explanation for this setup makes no sense. It is explained that they became so advanced and so comfortable that their species' intelligence gradually atrophied like an unused muscle, thus requiring the externalization of said intelligence in the archival brain-training headset that certain members of society can put on to receive the combined knowledge of the ancients at their intellectual peak. Yet this raises the question: how did their loss of intelligence happen so slowly that it was unavoidable and yet so quickly that they were able to see it coming in order to store it externally to be used later? Perhaps there was a brain-eating disease that only spared the less intelligent? Yet this does not explain how McCoy's readings picked up evidence of a gradual degradation and does not explain how the best solution that these highly intelligent beings could come up with is to turn their habitat into a body controlled by a physical cerebral organ sustained for 10,000 year periods; meanwhile the remnants of their species are left to crawl around said body mindlessly like ants in a glass-bound ant hill.

As absurd as this premise makes the episode, it introduces what I see as its most redemptive quality: the positive sexism. As often as this show strives for portraying women as valued members of an advanced society, it's my personal opinion that it falls short too many times. This episode seeks to bend the needle at least a little bit in favor of a 'women being smarter than men' narrative, and I am a fan. The Imorgs, while dumb, are no more dumb than the Morgs, and I am quite fond of the fact that their highly intelligent ancestors chose the females as the more reliable receptacles into which to download the collective knowledge of their species. I also enjoyed that, while graced with the knowledge and basically the consciousness of the ancients, the Imorg priestess is successfully able to out-smart Kirk and is completely immune to his powers of persuasion. I find it infinitely refreshing that Captain Kirk doesn’t once again save the day by aggressively teaching the femme-fatale the value of love. Although when said woman decries that they can’t control the men without systems of punishment and reward, Kirk does sneak in a snide “there are other ways.” I could be reading too far into it, but the way he delivered the line made me think he was more than willing to provide instructions as to techniques that women can use to get men to do what they want (maybe he’d even suggest a hands on approach to the milking process).


"How about some lessons in healthy sexual relations?"

Despite this episode's obvious flaws, which there are many, I wouldn't overall say this is a bad episode. It's a testament to the commitment of the actors that they're willing to deliver solid performances of the sometimes silly lines with depth and sometimes deadly seriousness (Nurse Chapel’s 10 second fall alone is Oscar-worthy). In general, the characters appear much more polished than we've seen in some other episodes; and the lighting, which I think is a little too severe for Shatner's face in a couple of scenes, was an interesting departure and a bold choice. What the episode lacked in structural continuity, it tried to make up for in fluid pacing, an exceptional score, and special effects opticals that I believe have vastly improved from even the last season. Ultimately, however, the failure of editors to cut the obvious silliness out of the script makes all the high quality elements feel like lipstick on a pig.

They say you can’t make a silk purse from a sow’s ear but apparently you can make a sow’s ear from a silk purse. This episode makes for one very stylish pig, but if it’s just going to dunk its head in the mud, I don’t see the point of the wasted effort.

Three stars.


The Mental Divide


by Joe Reid

Star Trek has returned for a 3rd season!  I've missed our weekly sneak peek into the future as well as that regular glance into the mirror of our present.  “Spock's Brain” is the name of this entry.  Spock's brain is the apparent focus of this episode, at least on the surface.  As I stated before, Star Trek is sometimes a mirror to show us who we are or may become.  In “Spock's Brain”, we don't look good.

Watching shows like Star Trek, we see ourselves as the heroes.  We picture ourselves as Kirk.  We are Uhura.  We are Chekov.  From a narrative standpoint, we are actually the silly characters that the crew of the Enterprise are fighting, kissing, lying to, or helping each week.  This week, we are the inhabitants of Sigma Draconis 6.  What do the people of this planet tell us about ourselves?

The people of Sigma Draconis 6, which I will call Sixers from here forward, were divided by sex.  The Sixer males were ignorant of relationships with the females outside of knowing them as the ones that bring pain and pleasure.  Similarly, many men in our world don’t understand women.  We sometimes reduce women to being instruments of pleasure, which if not handled correctly might lead to intense pain.  Of course, it doesn’t help at all if men are uneducated and uncultured.  Such men are reduced to seeing women in the context of either, “Heavens!  She makes me feel good!”, or “Dammit! She is a pain in the neck!”


Women gain the upper hand in the battle of the sexes.

The Sixer women, being physically weaker than the men, and as ignorant as them, defaulted to using instruments of pain and pleasure to get what they wanted from men.  Although the episode didn’t offer what pleasures were given to the men, I myself am intimately aware of the pleasures that today’s women use to get their way from a man and of the pain some of them inflict when they are not satisfied.  Bill Shakespeare wrote about the fury of a woman’s scorn.  I find myself questioning which is better—the long deep pain caused by a woman who hurts your soul or the short and intense pain of this episode’s futuristic torture device.  Both seem equally bad ways of dealing with the opposite sex, based on an utter lack of compassion.

This portrayed male/female struggle, although interesting, was not a perfect mirror to our culture in that it gave no example to the pain that men have caused women today and throughout history.  Also giving no notion that men could bring pleasure to women outside of what they can physically provide through their labor. In the end, "Spock's Brain" shows us that there must be more to successful human relations than simple Pavlovian techniques.

Another key lesson of the episode involves Spock’s brain and how it was to be used on Sigma Draconis 6.  Sixers females could only continue their way of life if a controller was there to run their world.  Without a controller, the females and males would have to rely on each other in a different way.  This may seem far from reality, but I think this lesson should be taken as a warning rather than an indictment of our society.  We should be wary of any leader, religion, philosophy, or machine that promises to take care of our needs or manage our lives to such a degree that it reduces our interdependence with those around us.  Women and men need each other to survive, but all are better served through understanding and love over pain and pleasure.  Families need each other in the same way.  As do neighbors.  Coworkers.  Citizens of a country.  People of a planet.  Dependence on a solitary thing to care for us may lead to retardation of how we relate to one another.


Why think for yourself when you can just be force-fed knowledge?

For this exciting and thought-provoking episode of Star Trek, I offer 4 of 5 stars.  It told a compelling and suspenseful yarn laced with relevant social commentary and caution—exactly what one wants from science fiction.

Four stars


Third Season Drinking Game


by Erica Frank

Take a drink every time you spot bad science, male chauvinism, Federation cultural supremacy, or the Enterprise crew pretending that an alien culture has human needs, interests, and abilities. …For this episode, make them small drinks. Sips only. Optionally, take long drinks; you may bypass a few others while you're raising your glass.

I'm leaving it to others to discuss the computer technology (take a drink), the womens' clothing (take a drink), and Kirk's ethics (take another drink), so as to focus on the split communities: Women living underground in the warm, computer-controlled facility; men living without technology on the frozen surface.


How are they making their clothes with "no sign of industrial development?" Those are awfully straight seams for hand-worked leather!

They have lived this way for thousands of years, long enough to have long forgotten why, even if they had attempted to keep records. They seem mostly content (or at least resigned): The men fear the women, but they do not band together to attack them; the women see no reason to change anything until they need a new "Controller."

(I have no idea how children happen. They're aliens. Maybe they lay eggs and the Controller keeps them in an incubator.)

But we are probably supposed to believe they are human-like, just split into communities so separate they don't even have words for sex or gender. Are we to believe these people, human-like enough to prefer buildings that are well-suited for our crew, wearing clothing that seems designed for human cultures, have no concept of human-like relationships? Of course not!

We have plenty of examples of what kind of relationships humans have, if you segregate them by sex: sailors, military forces, and even nunneries have a long history of homosexual behavior.

Of course, the residents of Sigma Draconis 6 won't have "gay" relationships that look like modern human ones: They have no notion of "husband and wife." They don't raise children together, don't have one employed partner and one housekeeper. (The men probably need every able-bodied person working for survival; the women's physical needs are all met by the Controller.) So their relationships – which may not be limited to pair-bonding the way that child-raising couples tend to be – would be mostly invisible to casual, short-term visitors like Kirk and his crew.

When the Morg realize that Spock is Kirk's oath-bonded partner, his assault on the women's complex will make so much more sense to them!

Two stars – mostly for the fascination of "how does that work?"; bump it to three if you've been drinking enough to put yourself in a pleasant fog.


Anything but Star Trek


by Lorelei Marcus

I think we're entering a new era.  The music feels different, as if it's finally finding its groove after many years of experimentation.  The politics are different, too, with black delegates trying to sit at the convention (and a young Julian Bond making a plausible run for Vice President!), and a weird match-up between two Vice Presidents.

Most of all, the TV is different.  It's all in color, and there's just so many shows, most of them new.  From Julia to The Mod Squad, everyone's jumping to be the fresh, hip thing.

Except, apparently, Star Trek.

It's ironic that this show, which broke new ground on television in not just science fiction but ethnic diversity chose to take such a step back into the past for its Season 3 debut.  "Spock's Brain" felt like a plot straight out of the '50s.  The society separated by men and women, the spooky science beyond our understanding, and even the new, tighter-fitting uniforms made the episode feel right at home next to Forbidden Planet.

What's worse, this quaint exploration of an alien society clashed sharply with the actual Enterprise and crew.  For instance, the (excellent!) scene in which the bridge crew decide which of the three Sigma Draconis planets to investigate in search of Spock's brain feels like a scene from another show—and might as well be: the sentient races on the other planets never become relevant to the episode.


The bridge becomes the briefing room in one of the best scenes of the episode.

I didn't actually have much problem with the whole "brain removal" element of the plot, just how it was executed.  A lot of the lines felt forced and corny, particularly Spock's indifferent voice-overs.  His dialogue should have been the highlight of the episode, not the drag.  Also, the surgery montage at the end of the episode was cheap, taken straight from Ben Casey or maybe even General Hospital.  I was laughing too hard at that point to care whether or not the brain restoration surgery was a success.

Don't get me wrong.  I did enjoy the episode at the time, and the actors salvaged what they could with the lines they were given, but it ultimately left a bad taste in my mouth.  I'm disappointed that "Spock's Brain" was chosen to be the debut of Season 3.  Perhaps a tongue in cheek episode like this (assuming the camp is deliberate) could have been fine midseason, but putting it front and center feels disrespectful to the show and characters, not to mention the audience.  I don't regret writing all those letters to Mort Werner to keep Star Trek alive, but I fear the result may be a degraded, less sophisticated program.

Let's hope this episode is a fluke and not representative of the rest of the season.

Three stars


Minority Report


by Gideon Marcus

I'm going to go out on a limb here.  I enjoyed this episode.  Perhaps it was the endless summer over which I was starved for new Trek.  Maybe it was the terrific giggles I got out of every time one of the gifted cast had to seriously pronounce the words "Spock's Brain" (usually preceded by variations of "Where are we going to look for…" and "Give back…")

The story didn't bother me.  Was it rushed with intriguing concepts left undeveloped?  Sure, but that's par for the course.  There are only 50 minutes each week with which to introduce a plot and resolve it.  The rest must be done with shorthand.  Indeed, the episode wastes little time, clanging into action with a red-alert signal.  And while Kirk does destroy a 10,000 year old society with no compunctions, he's done so before, under similar conditions ("Return of the Archons" and "The Apple"), and the Federation has specialists to help clean up the ensuing mess.  Plus, in this case, it was personal—they'd taken (chortle) Spock's Brain!

Speaking of plots we've seen before, Spock's Brain (guffaw) is really just the inverse of "Return to Tomorrow".  In that episode, three disembodied brains want Spock's Body (and those of Kirk and Dr. Ann Mulhall).

Of course, in the cold light of day, when I can't be swept along by the superb pacing, the new scoring, the slick new uniforms, the beautiful Daniels-shot bridge (how about those lovely viewscreen shots?!), getting to see all of the B-team doing their jobs, Scotty's disaster of a new hair style (did Jimmy's new wife Anita approve of this?), I can see there are issues with the episode.  For instance, the idea of snatching a brain to power a society is fine.  The notion of finding the best brain for the job makes sense.  But Sigma Draconis had three class M planets in it.  Surely there were scholars on Planet 3 or scientists on Planet 4 who could have done the job.  (Also, Planet 4, with a technology grade of "G" or 2030 A.D. presumably has space travel and perhaps even warp drive—why hadn't they settled/explored Planet 6?)

Also, all this gas about "ion propulsion" being the cat's meow made no sense.  Ion propulsion is something we use today, which I talked about in my article on the (failed) satellite ATS 4.  It is a low thrust , economical drive that uses the constant ejection of cesium atoms to propel a spacecraft.  Maybe Scotty's "ion propulsion" means something different, but it sounds goofy without further explanation.  It's why Trek moved from "lasers", which are new but well known, to "phasers", which are made up but sound cool.  Call it "muon" propulsion or better yet (to make up a word) "buon" or something.


"She's steam-powered, Cap'n!  Far beyond what we can do with antimatter…"

All that said, I want to think that this rather silly script was Trek's essay at deliberate camp, sort of how The Trouble with Tribbles and A Piece of the Action were deliberate comedy and Catspaw was deliberate Halloween creepiness.  In any event, the episode accomplished the main goal, which is that I'm eager to see what's on next week…even if it means I have to stay up past my bedtime to watch the furshlugginer thing, now that they've moved the air time to 10 P.M.!

3.5 stars