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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[June 12, 1969] Heavy on the Bitters (Star Trek: Turnabout Intruder)

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by Janice L. Newman

The mood was bittersweet as we gathered to watch the final episode of Star Trek. It also held a hint of trepidation: would we get another instant classic, like All Our Yesterdays, or another disappointment, like the string of episodes before it?

As it turned out, the final episode of Star Trek, probably the last new one that will ever be aired, was compelling, well-acted, well-paced, well-directed…and disappointing for an entirely different reason.

The episode opens with Kirk encountering a former lover, a woman by the name of Janice Lester (not to be confused with Janice Rand, his former yeoman). Lester is ill, having received a dose of unknown radiation, and Kirk stays at her bedside to discuss their shared past, which was rife with emotional upheaval. Then Lester utters a sentence that gave every one of the watchers pause: “Your world of starship captains doesn't admit women. It isn't fair.”

This, on the face of it, makes no sense. I will discuss why later in this piece.

Kirk agrees with her that, “No, it isn’t.” When he turns away from Lester for a moment, she sits up and remotely triggers an alien machine which causes their “souls” to be switched. Kirk’s mind is now in Lester’s body, and vice-versa.

The plot that then unfolds is simple: Kirk must try to convince his crew that he is himself, despite being in Lester’s body, while Lester must convince them that “Janice Lester” is dangerously insane and that she is Captain Kirk. Lester is hampered by the fact that she is emotionally unstable, to put it mildly, and clearly unfit to be a starship captain. Spock uses Vulcan telepathy early on and believes Kirk, and the rest of the crew slowly come to support him as well, despite no medical tests showing anything off about Kirk (this is another implausible point—surely brain scans, psychological tests, or gauges of emotional stability should have shown that something was different.)

I have to give both Shatner and Sandra Smith, who played Janice Lester, credit here. Shatner does a good job playing someone not himself, particularly with body language (small touches like primly sitting with his knees together in the captain’s chair, for example). Smith also does an excellent Kirk impression. It's clear she studied his mannerisms before the role, and the tight, narrow-eyed, watchful look she has throughout definitely evokes him.

Eventually, apparently with the help of Spock’s telepathy, Kirk is able to force a reverse mind-transfer. Lester breaks down, and Kirk ends the episode with a mournful, “Her life could have been as rich as any woman's, if only. If only.”

There are a couple of ways to interpret this story. You could, as we tried to do, simply say that Lester sees sexism where it none exists, blaming an outdated concept for why she couldn’t get promoted rather than her own mental and emotional instability. Unfortunately, this is undercut by Kirk’s agreeing with her statement that, “It’s not fair,” and Kirk’s own final words that her life could have been as rich as “any woman’s”.

On the other hand, taking it at face value seems wildly counter both to previous episodes and to current (present-day) trends. “Number One” from The Menagerie was a woman, and even acting captain of the Enterprise back in Pike’s day, years before Kirk was put in charge. Perhaps there hasn’t been a female starship captain yet (there are only 13 Enterprise-class ships, per Tomorrow is Yesterday) but you don’t make someone First Officer if there’s no avenue for them to eventually become a captain. And in “our world”, two world leaders are women: Golda Meir became the Prime Minister of Israel just two months ago, while Indira Gandhi has been Prime Minister of India since 1966! In every other way, the “Federation” has been shown to be an organization freer of prejudice than our own time. Race hatred is a thing of the past, so much so that the very idea causes revulsion in Day of the Dove and helps Kirk realize that they are being controlled. Yet we are to believe that this same future somehow bars women from holding certain positions of power?

Perhaps…yes. The ugly truth is, no matter how we spin it, those lines on the face of them say to female viewers, “Stay in your role. You are allowed to do certain things, but not everything a man can do. To want more is madness.” This, from a show that made so many women into science fiction fans, and for which female fans have fought so hard and created so much support, is doubly insulting.

In summing up, I can’t put it better than a friend who goes by Greenygal, who has had thoughtful and interesting commentary on a previous episode as well:

Do I prefer to think that all the dialogue of women's limitations and hating womanhood and "as rich as any woman's if only" is just about Janice Lester's own issues and not institutional and societal sexism in the Star Trek universe? Sure, of course. Are those lines perfectly innocent? No. Do they hurt? Yes.

Bittersweet indeed. Four stars, despite the script, because the production and acting were just that good.

Despite Itself

by Lorelei Marcus

While it's true that the episode sets out to send an egregious message about female incompetence in the realm of leadership, I think the result is quite the opposite. In the world of literature there is an emphasis on showing rather than telling the audience any information that needs to be conveyed. Not only is presenting a concept visually rather than verbally more engaging and complex, but also more impactful because of our dependence on sight as our number one sense of reality. We may not believe everything we hear, but we almost always believe what we see. Perhaps that is why I was so moved to see a woman unquestionably in the captain's role, with no epithets to belittle her importance.

The person on screen may be the soul of a man trapped inside a woman's body, but what we hear and see is a woman's voice and a woman's face speaking with the same determined spirit of Captain Kirk, receiving the same respect from the male first officers as any leader of the Enterprise. She is not a "beautiful" Captain, or an "ice cold" Captain, or even a "woman" Captain. She is simply, The Captain, a person with a role beyond her appearance.

Before this episode I had not realized the extent of the limited portrayals of women in television. I had heard the first season of The Avengers was remarkable because the co-star role had been written for a man, but ended up being cast as a woman, and the characterizations were excellent because of it. I never saw this first season for myself though, and when I tuned in later several seasons in, it was to a new female co-star relegated only to being the seductress, beauty, and potential romantic interest for the lead.

Nearly everywhere, women characters are written differently than men, and severely restricted in the roles they can play in a story. Even in the lauded Is There in Truth No Beauty?, the female guest star is primarily interacted with on the basis of her beauty and her ultimate destiny is to fall in love, despite her being a talented ambassador and telepath. Female characters, no matter how intelligent, or complex, or interesting, will always be confined by the expectations of the characters around them and the audience. The first thing noticed about them will always be appearance, and unless they're meant to be the villain, they will always end up in some sort of romantic scenario, because that is the way it is. But Turnabout Intruder made me realize that it's not the way it has to be.

No one calls Janice's body “beautiful”. No one tries to court her. Once the first officers understand her authority, they never question her intent or her orders. And thanks to brilliant acting and slow pacing, there were moments when I forgot that she was meant to be Kirk at all, and simply believed a woman was the Captain of the Enterprise. In much the same way that seeing Uhura on the bridge for the first time was world changing, seeing Janice sit confidently in the captain's chair, or at least the witness chair, which is much like it, was inspiring. She is a symbol that makes me believe that even I could become a starship captain someday.

I can only hope that this is one of many examples to come. Television is a reflection of our larger society. If women of the silver screen can break free from the bonds of limited expectation, then so can those of society. For the positive role model, and a good viewing experience, I give the episode four stars.

Painfully Familiar

by Jessica Dickinson Goodman

"Your world of starship captains does not admit women."

That one line hit like a phaser to the back. It was just one of the many times I had a strong, visceral reaction to lines and moments in this episode, vacillating wildly between recognition and revulsion.

It is a hard thing, to hear true words spoken by a villain. Dr. Lester has to be a villain, because she hurts Kirk, and then gloats about it. She killed her team, has never moved past her and Kirk's young connection at Starfleet Academy, and declares that she never loved him but instead loved "the life he led," his "power."

This poisons the powerful truth telling of her words.

Watching Dr. Lester-in-Kirk’s body back up when the officer in orange is menacing her-in-his-body, was so recognizable, so clear an experience known to many of the women and perhaps fewer of the men watching. Likewise, when Dr. Lester-in-Kirk stands over the young communications officer and hollers at her, that too, is painfully recognizable. That she-as-he treats Spock with the same overbearing arrogance is just another reminder how tenuous a protection gender is to anyone deviating even a blue eye shadow’s swipe away from the straight and narrow.

After that dominance-driven performance on the bridge, with all its uncomfortable complexity, we are back to the same sexist clichés that too many people explicitly and implicitly trot out to force women out of so many leadership roles: "hysteria" and "emotional instability" and "erratic mental attitudes." This too is a danger of science fiction, taking cruel characterizations that rarely if ever entirely encompass a real, living human being, but on screen can flow out to fill the edges of a full character, leaving no complex internality to explore or expose.

These characterizations perfectly match what we see on screen, and what we see other women believe about Dr. Lester on screen. I was particularly disappointed by Nurse Chapel's easy agreement that the woman in front of her was insane, with no one but a strange man's say-so. Chain of command means passing little to this crew when it suits the plot, but in this instance it turns Nurse Chapel into a tool as if she has no other purpose or will but to obey.

Setting aside the male chauvinism that made my skin crawl and neck itch throughout the entire episode, if we treat Dr. Lester as a whole person, desperate for a chance to engage in leadership, it is fascinating to see what an incredibly bright woman, kept outside of the power structures that she still chooses to serve, sees as the motions and emotions of power. Though Bones's recitation of Dr. Lester-in-Kirk's body's mental changes is one correct summary, there are other aspects to highlight.

Dr. Lester-in-Kirk thinks that leaders—or perhaps just Captain James T. Kirk—has power by virtue of his title and rank, his smirking glad-handing relationships with his staff, his willingness to bully and raise his voice, his knowledge of and position within the legal and hierarchical systems of Starfleet, and when in a moment of extreme danger to Dr. Lester-in-Kirk's masquerade, his willingness to use violence. Yes, Bones was horrified to see Dr. Lester-in-Kirk hit Kirk-in-Lester. And yes, and Spock brought it up chidingly later. But one slapped Dr. Lester-in-Kirk in irons, threw him in solitary, or drugged him with sedatives because he'd laid hands on a nearly-naked, nearly-dying ill colleague (I would have wished for the actor's sake that the director would have tried for one more take of that scene, perhaps one where her half her bottom wasn't visible when she was lifted by the crew).

This vision of brute-force leadership is both cruel and perhaps one most of us have seen in our own lives or that of our country.

But then I swing back to recognition during the interrogation by Spock and the trial, not from the actions of Dr. Lester or Captain Kirk, but by Spock. Spock's argument and method of discovery are both deeply, traditionally feminine: in a system designed by human men, his forms of evidence are not accepted, the reality of his perceptions are not honored as evidence in their systems of justice, and his entire position is mocked and undermined, from the smirking guards to the giggle of the young communications officer we saw Captain Kirk dominate over earlier.

And yet, in the best of feminine traditions, Commander Spock persists. He insists on hearing Kirk-in-Dr. Lester. He believes his own mind, his own way of knowing things, is valuable, and while he is disappointed not to have it confirmed by the methods and sources acceptable to Starfleet tribunals, he does not waver and does not drift from his convictions.

"Her intense hatred of her own womanhood," is Captain Kirk-in-Dr. Lester's summary of why he dumped her. And that is one way of viewing her. But a fuller version of her, one made less glassy and plastic by the world of our own viewers, has the potential to be more Beatrice than Cruella de Vil.

Beatrice cries out in Act IV, Scene I of Much Ado About Nothing, after the young rake Claudio has ruined the life of Beatrice's even younger cousin Hero:

Beatrice: You dare easier be friends with me than fight with mine enemy.

Benedick: Is Claudio thine enemy?

Beatrice: Is he not approved in the height a villain, that
hath slandered, scorned, dishonoured my kinswoman? O
that I were a man! What, bear her in hand until they
come to take hands; and then, with public
accusation, uncovered slander, unmitigated rancour,
—O God, that I were a man! I would eat his heart
in the market-place.

That fantasy of Beatrice's is so much more violent and explicit than anything Dr. Lester-in-Kirk ever says, ever does: eat his heart in the marketplace.

Wow.

While Dr. Lester first simply aims to have Kirk warehoused on a strange planet, a cruel and earthbound life for a starship captain that provides some deep irony, it is not as explicitly violent as it could have been.

It is nearly as cruel as having her colleague take ownership over Dr. Lester when she finally loses, her body and life given to him because he promised to "take care of her."

That was a final, deeply disturbing moment in an episode that gave me such a strong and impenetrable mix of feelings, I found myself wishing for a Vulcan mind-meld to sort them all out with me.

I was however heartened by the final lines. "Her life could have been as rich as any woman's, if only … if only."

One read is, "’if only’ she had surrendered earlier in her life to a gender role of vastly limited scope and ambition." But it just as likely could have been, "’if only’ she had lived in a more enlightened time, when her leadership yearnings were treated with respect, honed, corrected, and empowered so she could become the powerful, effective starship captain she so clearly wanted to become."

Three stars.

Love and Ambition


by Joe Reid

If the woman I loved were so jealous of her ex-boyfriend that she pretended to be him to take everything he had accomplished, could I still love her? My answer is a resounding NO! However, in this week’s episode of Star Trek, titled “The Turnabout Intruder,” we meet a man who would answer yes: Dr. Arthur Coleman. I have rarely seen anyone, woman or man, as committed as Dr. Coleman was to Dr. Janice Lester.

We meet both doctors on the planet Camus II. The Enterprise arrives in response to a distress call from the planet. There, we find an infirmed Dr. Lester under the care of Dr. Coleman, the last two surviving members of a research party. Kirk recognizes his former girlfriend and speaks kindly of her. Then, as signs of life appear elsewhere, the crew and Dr. Coleman leave to assist, hoping to find another survivor. Kirk is left alone with Dr. Lester. In the ensuing silence, Lester springs her trap, using an alien machine to swap bodies with Kirk. Lester now inhabits the healthy body of Captain Kirk, while Kirk lies struggling, trapped in Lester’s weakened body. What follows is a secretive cat and mouse game as Lester, in Kirk’s body, tries to eliminate the man trapped in hers, all while avoiding the suspicious gazes of the Enterprise crew and later matching wits against a fully recovered Kirk in female form. Through it all, Dr. Lester could fully rely on Dr. Coleman, who would do almost anything for her.

In this episode, Coleman proved his incredible loyalty to Lester. As someone who had not fared well in his career, Coleman and Lester appear to be kindred spirits, with her feeling held back herself due to her sex. Lester apparently concocted her plan upon discovering the alien mind transfer machine that lured Kirk, her former mate and the man who had achieved all the accolades she felt she deserved, to Camus II. In carrying out this scheme, Lester eliminated the other members of the research party. Through it all, Coleman stood by her side. He himself refused to kill anyone, allowing Lester to pursue her intent. Even when Lester, in Kirk’s body, gave Coleman senior medical authority on the Enterprise and asked him to murder the new Janice Lester. Bloodying his own hands was the only line he would not cross for her. Coleman’s devotion to Lester proved to be heartfelt. At the climax of the episode, the mind switch was reversed. Kirk and Lester being once again in their own bodies, left Lester insane with grief and devastated. It was here where Coleman professed his love for Lester and vowed to care for her going forward.

Coleman’s love for Lester was unquestionable, his loyalty steadfast. This raised the question in my mind of what Coleman would have done had Lester remained a man. Would his love for Lester find expression if she were in a man’s body? Perhaps he hadn’t thought things through, or perhaps it wouldn’t have been an issue for them. We saw, during one of their private moments, how Lester related to Coleman in a feminine manner as she touched his shoulder, attempting to coerce him into killing for her.

In the end, Coleman got exactly what he wanted. He was given permission to love and care for the woman he would go to almost any length for. Arthur Coleman proved more valuable to Lester than all she had hoped to gain in Kirk’s skin. Although her ambition for power failed her his love didn’t.

Overall, “Turnabout Intruder” was very well acted, with heavily nuanced performances by Mr. Shatner and Ms. Smith. Kirk delivered subtle femininity, softness, and female exacerbation convincingly. Lester grew more stoic and strategic as the story reached its climax. For its complex character dynamics and fine acting I’m willing to say this is among the better episodes of Star Trek.

Four stars

The End?

by Trini Stewart

After finishing "Turnabout Intruder", I’m inclined to reflect on Star Trek as a whole. I can’t help but acknowledge that my expectations for the episode are largely influenced by the loss of the beloved series. My first instinct is to be let down by the episode as a finale, since I hold the series so dear and the final episode had a fairly weak delivery as far as the intended message goes. What we got was an antagonist who, despite her compelling acting, I didn’t quite resonate with, even as a woman who regularly faces systematic sexism in a male-dominated work environment. While I found that Dr. Janice Lester’s challenges are inherently relatable and frustrating, her excessively drastic, vengeful means of getting her way made it more difficult to connect with her or understand her exact desires.

Nevertheless, instances of imperfect composition from Star Trek have never been enough for me to write off an episode or feel this kind of complete malaise about one as a result. There were enough ingredients for an enjoyable Trek episode in this one; there was convincing character work from everyone on the Enterprise, good teamwork from the close-knit crew to determine what was best for the well-being of the ship, plenty of Spock being the competent knock-out he ought to be, and an ending that avoids a high-stakes threat for a crew member. Regardless of whether I could relate to her, I was still intrigued by the consequences of Dr. Lester's futuristic and unconventional solution to systemic sexism, and I was curious about what exactly prevents women from being in leadership positions like being a starship Captain in the future.

Maybe what was more disappointing to me than the actual content was that there was a lot of lost hope for something more profound: a grand episode that needn't be perfect or anything, but at least answered some long-standing questions or gave hints of where the crew would be after we could no longer join them. There’s so much in this universe left to discover and explore, and many more discussions to be had with other fans. Not only that, but there is plenty of content I have yet to see from seasons one and two—I realize that my experience of the series is incomplete in more ways than one, and feeling robbed by the series’ cancellation doesn’t help.

Like thousands (millions?) of others, I fell in love with this show for its characters, its sense of adventure in uncharted territory, and the community that has grown around it, and I am simply not ready for all of that magic to end. "Turnabout Intruder" turned out to be a good episode overall, and a decent one to end the series on, all things considered. I’ll be looking forward to the reruns and continuing to celebrate Star Trek with so many others who treasure it, too.

3.5 stars.

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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

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

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by Erica Frank

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fair to Middlin’


by Janice L. Newman

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

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

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

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

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

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

Three stars.

By What Right

by Mx. Blue Cathey-Thiele

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2 stars

Truly Alien


by Joe Reid

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

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

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

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

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

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

4 stars

Eclipse Glasses for War


by Jessica Dickinson Goodman

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Three stars.

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





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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[April 4, 1968] Time and time again (Star Trek: "Assignment: Earth")

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by Amber Dubin

Time travel is a concept which every science fiction show must one day address. Yet, unlike the plausibly possible science of navigating space-travel, successfully representing time-travel comes with much greater risk, not only of straining credulity, but of destroying continuity: tearing a time-line—or in this case a plot line—to ribbons. "Assignment: Earth", the last episode of Star Trek's second season does a better job of avoiding the pitfalls of "Tomorrow is Yesterday" and "The City on the Edge of Forever," though it is not without its foibles.

We begin with the announcement that the crew has used the technique they discovered by accident in "Tomorrow is Yesterday" to travel to the past, on purpose this time, to the year 1968 in a cultural observation mission. This mission starts going off the rails pretty much immediately as the ship starts to shake violently. Attention is drawn to the transporter room, where it is found that the transporter pad is intercepting a transporter beam of unknown origin.

Upon the pad materializes Robert Lansing as Gary Seven, a mysterious, cat-carrying, super secret agent sent from a distant "advanced civilization" in order to save planet earth. Captain Kirk is immediately suspicious of the man and the tiny silver-collared black cat, and he orders him to surrender himself for observation while they verify his lustrous claims. Seven briefly appears to comply, despite his insistence that he must be allowed to continue to beam down to the planet, or face the annihilation of earth and life as they know it. He suddenly changes his mind and he and the cat, who he refers to as Isis, launch into an attack where he puts down an entire room full of officers and repels even Spock’s Vulcan nerve pinch before being subdued by the stun of Kirk's phaser.

It then follows that Gary Seven possesses powers to back up his claim as earth's clandestine savior. He easily manages to free himself from the brig using a wand that both deactivates force fields and causes officers he targets to fall into very pleasant-looking slumbers.


It beats being judo chopped!

As he's forging a path to his escape as easily as a knife through butter, the senior officers obliviously discuss the plausibility of his claims and the risks to allowing him to carry out his mission. The dilemma, of course, is the paradox faced by all time travelers: not knowing if one's interference will derail or cause the events meant to occur in history as they know it. On the one hand, Seven could be telling the truth and by detaining him they could be dooming humanity to destruction in 1968. On the other hand, coming back to this moment could be a fated occurrence that prevented a lying, intergalactic criminal alien from destroying the earth in the same way. The opinion of the crew seems split down the middle and the discussion goes nowhere. It's worth noting that Isis is completely underestimated throughout, getting cuddled by Spock and allowed to freely roam the ship, despite it being very obvious to this viewer that she is no ordinary feline.


"A most curious creature, Captain. Its trilling seems to have a tranquilizing effect on the human nervous system. Fortunately, of course, I am immune to its effect."

While the crew is distracted, Gary Seven and Isis manage to escape to beam down to their original destination. The episode then shifts from a typical Star Trek episode to a cross between Mission: Impossible, Get Smart! and Mannix, complete with secret agent gadgets, a wise-cracking super computer and a lovely human secretary named Roberta, who's just as charismatic and whip-smart as she is goofy and unique.


At home in the Seven cave.

The supervisory secret agent checks in to his mission to discover that it's all gone wrong and Roberta is there because the agents who hired her and were supposed to be completing the mission were senselessly killed in an automobile accident before they could bring their plans to fruition.


Gary Seven has Roberta Lincoln give dictation to her typewriter.

Thus ensues a cat-and-mouse game between Seven and Isis (who are trying to complete their mission to sabotage a rocket carrying an orbital nuclear bomb) and Kirk and Spock (who are pursuing trepidatiously, not entirely sure whether they should be helping or thwarting the oddly capable team). Roberta's meddling aids both teams in their conflicting missions, culminating in a nail-biting scene where Kirk makes the last minute decision to trust Seven in the end, and the agent swiftly causes a nuclear warhead to detonate harmlessly in mid-air, thus scaring the world out of participating in a fatal arms race.


A genuinely gripping face-off.

The Enterprise's crew then confirms in their history banks that the time-line has been restored and their interference was actually predicted by the details of the event as recorded in history. This episode does not suffer from a rushed nonsensical 'it was all a dream' ending like "Tomorrow is Yesterday," nor did it have the dissatisfying 'they were never there' conclusion of "The City on the Edge of Forever." Instead, this explanation reflects my favorite and most plausible time travel theory: that contamination is impossible because all actions successfully completed by time travellers were fated to occur because they have always occurred and will always occur exactly as they did.

Overall, I'd say this episode passes muster. I only had two personal arguments with it: First, it seemed like Nimoy was the only actor on set who knew how to hold a cat. The cat seemed to begrudgingly tolerate Lansing but it was only purring in Nimoy's arms (I agree, cat). Second, the fact that they chose 1968 as the "most volatile in earth's history" was clearly an arbitrary decision to make a more comfortable crossover with Lansing's backdoor pilot set in modern times.

I'd say in the Star Trek time-line, the Eugenics Wars/WW3 seem like a much more volatile time in earth's history, and I'd argue that they could gain much more insights from directly observing WW1 or WW2. I didn’t like how the author just left a naked bias towards the particular year chosen which I felt could be easily covered up using an easily fictionizable event.

4 stars for the above reasons, and also because I thought downgrading the sentient cat to a humanoid alien woman at the end was disappointing and unnecessary.


Teri Garr is disappointed, too.

Inhumanly Perfect or Perfectly Human?


By Mx. Blue Cathey-Thiele

This episode ties up neatly and happily – on the surface. How much of what we saw is as it seems, though? Gary Seven didn't cause a world catastrophe, and indeed, may have averted one! But the question of who and what he is remains. He claims to be a human, an agent from a planet that is still unknown in the time of the Enterprise. The Kelvans in "By Any Other Name" also scanned as 'perfectly human' and were decidedly not. He's also immune to the Vulcan neck pinch…

And what of Isis? Is this a cat who can turn into a humanoid being? A woman who can turn into a cat? Or a completely separate alien species altogether? Are they partners, or is there a command structure? Perhaps Isis is Gary's handler.

Beyond this, if Gary was part of the same program as his two lost agents, he would be (according to his own description) a descendant of humans taken from Earth six thousand years ago, all raised and trained to operate on a planet that is no longer a home to them. And as Gary told Isis, they don't intend to stay long. Whether he means in the year 1968 or on Earth, the here and now is something he finds almost unlivable. After generations of living away from Earth, would any agent feel at home there? One wonders if he really does have "lots of interesting adventures in store."

A nice bit: while waiting with Spock down in mission control, Kirk’s supplemental log says he has never felt so helpless. Unlike when he followed McCoy to the 30s, he isn't here to correct a problem and set the path of history to right. As heartbreaking as it was to follow through when told "Edith Keeler must die," he was reacting and preventing a worse outcome. A known quantity, as far as he was aware. Unlike then, he doesn't know what, if any, action is necessary – and in that moment there isn't anything in his power that he can do to change things. All that knowledge, technology, and will… and he is left to watch.


Our heroes, helpless.

The whole reason the Enterprise traveled back in time was to observe a time period so tumultuous that either lack of records or sheer incredulity has the crew wondering just how we make it through. Roberta, however, doesn't have the security of hindsight, saying, "We wonder if we're gonna be alive when we're thirty." It's a bleak thought. Kirk may be reliving his history books, but Roberta is there as they are being written. She's frightened and caught off-guard by the strange people and happenings around her, but even so, she adapts. It may hinder Kirk, Spock, and Gary, but over the course of the episode she tries at least three times to get outside help. When she recognizes that Gary has to be lying and is interfering with dangerous things, she tries to talk him out of it, and puts herself in harm's way to physically prevent him from taking action. If Gary is in a spy thriller, Kirk and Spock in an historical drama, then up until nearly the end, Roberta is cast in a horror. Despite this, she manages to stay a cheery person. Surrounded by both normal—as normal as the current world can be—challenges and time travelers, she does her best. She's out of her depth but she still tries.


Roberta takes control of the situation.

Ultimately, the crew of the Enterprise is left with only their original mission to fulfill: they watch. This isn't their time, and they have neither the responsibility nor the means to change it. On the bridge, Lt. Uhura monitors the channels and hears military powers across the globe preparing to respond. Kirk and Spock are equally powerless in the control room as they are in front of Gary Seven's computer. All they can do is listen to Roberta, and step back to allow Gary to finish what he started. The only way out is through.

There was little action from my favorite crew, but within the context of the story, that fit. Gary, Roberta, and Isis were interesting new characters and I would enjoy seeing them again.

3 stars

Colonel Savage


by Lorelei Marcus

I have seen Robert Lansing star in many other shows, from Twelve O' Clock High to the shortlived The Man Who Never Was and even The 4D Man. I have always been charmed by his grave and understated performances. “Assignment: Earth” was no exception; it was delightful to see Lansing as a mild-mannered, cat-petting spy from outer space. My only grievance with the character is that he must live and die within a single Star Trek episode.


Gary Seven, Secret Agent (hey, better than Amos Burke!)

To a degree, the Star Trek setting is a strength. Gary 7 expands the Star Trek universe further beyond the Enterprise, introducing an alien world and beings that even Kirk and Spock can’t find. There is also fun in seeing different SF worlds collide. Two years ago I received audio tapes from England and reports of the new Doctor Who, an ongoing SF show on TV across The Pond. Gary 7 reminds me strongly of the Doctor, with his space-traveling machine and his plucky young human companion. (There are notable differences, of course, like his cat and stun-gun pen gadget, which feels more out of a spy flick than SF). Seeing our space-faring heroes encountering a being reminiscent of the Doctor and witnessing the adventures that ensued was quite amusing. (And sounds like a story I might have to write for the next issue of The Tricorder!)

The tragedy is not just that we only get to see Gary 7 once, but the very limitation of his screen time means his actor doesn't get quite enough time to breathe. Lansing thrives in a starring role where he can mold the show around him to his mood and level. His portrayal suffered for having to split the spotlight with the regular Trek heroes, leaving only glimpses of the potential of what he and the character could have been in their own show. I mourn the loss of what could have been, but for giving me anything at all, I give the episode five stars.

That's a wrap!


by Gideon Marcus

This was the first episode we got to see secure in the knowledge that there will be another season of our favorite science fiction show.  I will say this for it—it's different!  Sure, we've seen the Enterprise go to past Earth before, and we've seen lots of period pieces (this episode must have been particularly cheap), but the intersection of two powerful races, and the focus for much of the episode on an independent guest star, made for a very unusual experience.

I'm not sure how I feel about it.  In some ways, it dragged down the pace of the episode, reducing Kirk and co. into a bunch of bystanders.  On the other hand, that's how life is sometimes—you're not always the star.  In the end, I'd say this was a successful experiment, but one not likely to be repeated…unless Trek turns into a true anthology show, which I would not necessarily be opposed to.

Some things the show did extremely well.  The integration of the very recent Apollo 4 launch was particularly good.  I also appreciated the incorporation of Fractional Orbital Bombardment System (FOBS) technology.  This is absolutely accurate, though I think only the Soviets actually are testing such a system.  Several of their "Kosmos" tests have actually been launches of nukes on rockets that sail into space and then deorbit before completing a first orbit, thus allowing them to land anywhere.  It's a terrifying development, and one I hope will be banned if the superpowers update last year's Outer Space Treaty.


We'd probably use a Titan, not a Saturn, but this is a divergent history.

As for how "Assignment: Earth" serves as an ending to Season 2, well, it's kind of an odd duck.  It doesn't hit any of the main subjects we've seen thus far—no Klingons or Romulans, no Vulcan notables; just a joyride through time.  I feel that the show might have been better served ending on a more Trek-ish episode, something like Mirror, Mirror or Journey to Babel.  Instead, we got the 22nd Century's equivalent of Wild, Wild West.

Well, I guess it fits in alright.  After all, like the season as a whole, there were high points, low points, but overall, we enjoyed the experience.  Moreover, we got to see Robert Lansing, which is appropriate given that Trek cribbed the iconic "Enterprise theme" from Lansing's show, Twelve O' Clock High.

3.5 stars.

Live long and prosper, and we're looking forward to resuming Trek coverage in September!




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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[March 22, 1968] (Two Things Only the People Anxiously Desire, Star Trek: "Bread and Circuses")

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Strange New Worlds?


by Janice L. Newman

In the first season of Star Trek, we saw the crew visit plenty of “strange new worlds”. From the rocky planet where they met The Man Trap to the caves of The Devil in the Dark to the green and deceptively-pleasant planet This Side of Paradise, they took us to places we’d never been and introduced us to thoughtful, interesting ideas. Even when sets were more familiar locales (Miri, Tomorrow is Yesterday, and The City on the Edge of Forever come to mind) the stories were usually fresh and interesting.

In the second half of the second season, we’ve been seeing a new trend, perhaps based on ideas first introduced in “Miri”: planets which have, for one reason or another, evolved to look almost exactly like Earth at some point in history. A Piece of the Action took us to Prohibition-era Chicago. Patterns of Force brought the crew to Nazi Germany. And this week’s episode took us to a ‘modernized’ version of ancient Rome.


The story opens with the Enterprise seeking out the survivors from a ship that was hit by a meteorite six years ago. They track the trajectory of the debris back to a planet and Kirk, Spock, and McCoy beam down to seek out any survivors. They immediately encounter a group of escaped slaves, members of a sun-worshiping cult, who agree to help them. Before they manage to get near the city, though, they are captured and imprisoned. They’re greeted by Merik, the captain of the lost vessel and now “First Citizen”, and Proconsul Claudius Marcus, who knows much more than he should about who they are and why they’re there.

Claudius tries to force Captain Kirk to call down the crew of his ship. When Kirk refuses, Claudius orders Spock and McCoy thrown into the ‘arena’ for a televised battle. The set is a fun merging of modern culture and ancient Roman aesthetics. As Kirk watches with helpless frustration, Spock unwillingly fights against the gladiator assigned to him while McCoy is fortunately assigned Flavius, a “Brother of the Sun” who tries to refuse violence, even as he is “encouraged” to fight by a guard wielding a whip. The “Amok Time” fight theme is well-integrated here, and it makes for an exciting scene. In the end Spock defeats his opponent and rescues McCoy by giving Flavius a Vulcan neck pinch to knock him out.

Spock and McCoy are returned to their cell, where Spock visibly agonizes over their separation, repeatedly trying the bars and looking for a way out. McCoy sheepishly tries to thank Spock for saving his life, which Spock responds to with replies clearly meant to needle and annoy the good doctor. It’s nice to see their roles reversed for once, with Spock doing the deliberate antagonizing. McCoy responds by getting in Spock’s face and hissing out a pointed jab at Spock’s vulnerabilities. Spock’s quiet response, which manages to combine acknowledgement and defiance in two words and a lifted eyebrow, is a work of art. This is my favorite scene in the episode, and one of my favorite scenes in all of Star Trek so far. All of the ‘old married couple’ arguing and mutual antagonism we’ve seen in prior episodes between the ‘heart’ and ‘mind’ of the Enterprise come together to shape this moment of intense intimacy.

Meanwhile, Kirk is brought to a luxurious bedchamber and offered the use of an eager female slave. He doesn’t refuse.


Ah, there's Roddenberry's influence

Claudius returns to Kirk a few hours later in a rather nice transition and tells him he is to be executed on national television. Scotty, who has not been idle on the Enterprise, delivers a careful blow to the city’s electrical system, blacking everything just long enough for Kirk to get away and return to the prison (where he tells his two officers that their captors ‘threw him a few curves’, haha). Merick redeems himself by tossing Kirk a communicator, and the three men beam back to the Enterprise in the nick of time, leaving the Roman planet behind.


Credit where it's due–the escape scene is masterful

And so it’s all over but the shouting, or rather, the final pun: the sun worshippers don’t worship the sun, they worship the son – as in, the son of god. Cue smiles from some of the Christians in the audience and an eyeroll or two from the Jewish and non-religious viewers.

Did I like this episode? There were many things to like, starting with the scene between McCoy and Spock, which is a five if taken by itself. There were definitely some things to dislike, such as the ‘sun/son’ setup and Kirk’s unhesitating willingness to take advantage of the attractive female slave offered to him. Overall, though, the cinematography, use of library music, and use of sets and props was a cut above the usual. The episode was well-paced and exciting, and Shatner’s acting was more understated than usual. Despite a couple of things dragging it down, I give it four stars.

The Unbroken Planet


by Joe Reid

We tend to think of heroes as powerful people who use their powers to right the wrongs of the world.  Star Trek has provided us with heroes that always right wrongs.  When Jim Kirk gets to a new world and finds something amiss, he will do everything possible to make sure that baddies are struck down and peace is restored.  This has been especially true when the cause of the disturbance on a planet was a human, or even worse… a Klingon!  This season we had two examples of Starfleet people purposefully taking control of native populations for their own benefit.  In “Patterns of Force”, John Gill literally turned the inhabitants of one planet into Nazis in order to “help” them.  Then, in “The Omega Glory”, we had Ron Tracey ruling over one faction of humans to eradicate another in order to gain immortality.  Both stories took place on Earth-like planets which boasted histories divergent from our own.  Each story ended with Captain Kirk dealing with the corrupting influence and setting the cultures back on course. 

This week’s “Bread and Circuses” started off much the same as the mentioned episodes.  Some Starfleet person was stuck on a very Earth-like planet with a divergent history.  The crew had a similar obligation as before; to get the space people off the planet before they ruin the people of that world and pervert their development.  Here is where the similarities end.  “Bread and Circuses” turns that recurrent theme on its ear.  Instead of the inhabitants of a planet having to contend with a strong and smart human dominating them, this time it was the weak human, Captain Merik of the SS Beagle, who was dominated by the strong and intelligent Proconsul Marcus.  Marcus overpowered Merik’s mind and will, causing him to sacrifice most of his crew to gladiatorial games in order to save himself.


Puppet and master

Previous episodes on this theme had Kirk seeking to find an alien titan like himself and remove them from power.  This world already had a home-grown titan, who corrupted and broke the man Kirk was looking for.  There was nothing for Kirk to set right on this world.  The humans were the victims, not the victimizers this time.  Kirk found himself outmatched by Proconsul Marcus.  He was captured, threatened, and made powerless by Marcus, just like Merik was before, although Kirk put up more of a fight than Merik did, earning some degree of respect from Marcus.  Marcus was eventually going to break him, as well, given enough time.  The mission ended with Kirk, Spock, and McCoy fleeing for their lives and Merik dying from a knife to his back after a last-minute act of failed heroism. 

This was the one time where the captain of the Enterprise could not fix the problem on a world.  It’s mainly because there was no problem to fix, at least none that he was legally allowed to fix. The society on the planet was progressing down its natural evolutionary path.  Human intervention didn't topple the wagon.  Humans ended up run over by the wagon, which carried on unabated.  “Bread and Circuses” had a subversive twist on what had preceded it in the other episodes.  It felt original, even though some themes started off appearing reused before the twist came about.  In total, the costumes, acting, sets, camera work, and story were all done well.  It was pretty good. 

4 stars

Don't throw back the throwback


by Gideon Marcus

David Levinson, who tends to write letters in after the fact rather than contribute directly to our Trek coverage, noted recently that he was starting not to care if the show got renewed for a third season. We had run into a pretty dire patch of episodes, after all. But between last week and this week, his faith is somewhat restored.

Mine, too.  I observed early on that "Bread and Circuses" felt more like a first-season episode than any of its second-season brethren.  Perhaps it was the copious use of outdoor settings, or Shatner's return to first season form.  Maybe it was Ralph Senensky's crisp direction (he may well supplant Marc Daniels as my favorite on the show).  Maybe it was the collaboration of the two Genes, Roddenberry and Coon, who reeled in each other's excesses rather than adding to them.

I also absolutely adored the fusion of gladiatorial games and modern television.  It was subtle satire in the Sheckley or even Pohl/Kornbluth vein.


Not much different from a boxing match or football game

The one missed opportunity was setting the planet on a near-Earth rather than an exact duplicate, a la "Miri."  I've always liked Lorelei's idea that the galaxy is largely populated by Earth-clones (for some unknown reason) and that's why we get these close parallel history episodes.  Having a completely different planet evolve humans, let alone 20th Century Romans, beggared the imagination.

On the other hand, as our newcomer, Blue Cathey-Thiele explains, maybe it's not so implausible after all…

Four stars on my end.  There are some hiccoughs in the episode, but they're lumped early on, and you've forgotten them by the conclusion.

Bread, Circuses, and Laurel Leaves


By Mx. Blue Cathey-Thiele

In "Bread and Circuses", McCoy comments that the Romans had no sun worshippers. He may need to brush up on his history – or even just ship logs! Earlier this season in "Who Mourns For Adonais", the crew met Apollo on Pollux IV, and while many Roman deities shared traits but not names with their Greek counterparts, the god of music and the sun was known as Apollo to both cultures.

And this raises an interesting question: could the wayward god have stopped over at this planet on his way to Pollux IV? It would go a long way in explaining its many similarities to both modern and ancient Earth. Whether he visited alone or with the rest of his pantheon, his powers would have been enough to leave a lasting impression. A world built to suit the needs of a deity who thrived in Greece and Rome close to two millennia ago, by the time the Enterprise shows up. In fact, a better question might be, why would Apollo ever leave?

Perhaps it was not him, but one of his cohort. He was the last of his kind, and while he said that gods do not die the way mortals do, they fade. Per his account, one of the goddesses spread herself thinner and thinner until she was gone. Could some part of her have found this world and influenced its development? Remained there as things like the industrial revolution came along, the invention of television, while her diminished presence ensured that the Roman Empire kept a firm grip on society?


The ex-senator explains why he no longer worships Apollo

The inhabitants even spoke English! Having a lingual origin of Latin would greatly increase the chances of a language developing with even a slight similarity to the form of English currently spoken. Who better to serve as a source of this language than someone who was there when the people around him used it on a daily basis? Apollo (or his shadowy companion) would be a living dictionary.

We can even guess about the stirrings of the "Son (not sun) of God". Apollo stayed long enough on Earth for belief to fade in him and his fellow gods of Olympus. He would have been around to hear of an emerging belief system, particularly one that was in competition to his own status. Apollo was hardly shy about sharing his own history, and if he mentioned this Earth faith, someone, somewhere would take interest.

To this viewer, a powerful visitor leaving a lasting influence on the planet seems far more likely than running across yet another example of "Hodgkin's Law of Parallel Planetary Development" in such a short span of time.

4 stars.




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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

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

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by Gideon Marcus

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

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

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


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

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

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


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

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

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

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


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

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

Except the audience, of course.

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

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


"Crew?  What crew?"

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


"I'm the real Captain Tracey!"

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

When Worse Comes to Worst


by Janice L. Newman

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

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

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


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

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

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

Losers Keepers


by Joe Reid

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

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

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


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

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

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

1 star

Beyond the Pale


by Amber Dubin

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

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


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

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

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

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

One star

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

Here's the invitation! Come join us.




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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[February 8, 1968] The Trek Offensive (Star Trek: "A Private Little War")

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by Gideon Marcus

Science fiction often takes the events of today as inspiration for the stories of tomorrow.  Star Trek has been no exception, tackling current issues like Mutually Assured Destruction ("Errand of Mercy", "A Taste of Armageddon"), brainwashing ("Dagger of the Mind"), eugenics ("Space Seed"), and invasive species ("The Trouble with Tribbles").

But no episode has been so nakedly topical, so ripped from the headlines of today, as last week's episode, "A Private Little War".  For as it aired the Viet Cong were (and are) in the midst of a nation-wide assault on South Vietnam, from Vinh Loa in the south to Quang Tri in the north.  No provincial capital, no military base, was spared the boots of Communist troops, the booms of mortar fire. 

At the heart of Saigon, capital of South Vietnam, terrorist forces even managed to take the American embassy for six hours before being repelled by allied forces.  The myth of a hard but impending victory in southeast Asia has been shattered by the 80,000 enemy troops marching seemingly at will throughout the countryside.

And on the small screen, "A Private Little War" directly referenced 20th Century "Asian brush fire wars" as it explored the superpower-fueled conflict between the village and hill peoples of a formerly peaceful planet.

In brief:

The Enterprise has returned to the site of a Lieutenant Kirk's first planetary exploration, an idyllic world of peaceful hunters and traders that the captain had visited 13 years before.  There, he had befriended Tyree, a hunter of the hill people.

But things have changed in 13 years.  The trader city dwellers, formerly at an Iron Age level of existence, have suddenly jumped 12 centuries in technology, wielding flintlocks and hunting the hill people for sport and profit.  Surely, this cannot be a natural development.

Of course, it turns out it is not–a Klingon agent, rapidly advancing the armaments’ state of the art for the city dwellers, has designs on turning the planet into an Imperial colony.

Kirk reaches the conclusion that his only option is to arm the hill people so that they may resist.  But Tyree, now chief of the hill people, is a pacifist who refuses to kill, despite the strong entreaties of his wife, the Nanutu witch woman, Nona.  When Nona proves unable to sway her husband, she attempts to ensnare Kirk with her natural and artificial wiles. This effort unsuccessful, she finally makes a hasty attempt to defect to the city dwellers, apparently preferring the role of Quisling to that of martyr.

Sadly for Nona, the city dwellers have become addicted to rapine and plunder, and (in a scene I'm surprised passed the censors) first assault and then kill Nona.

Captain Kirk, over the strenuous objection of Dr. McCoy, arranges for the Enterprise to manufacture a hundred muskets.  He instructs Tyree, now infected with murderous rage toward the city dwellers over the murder of his wife, in their use.  And so the balance of power shall remain, maintained behind the scenes by two galactic superpowers.

There is, of course, more to the episode, including an interesting "B plot" involving Spock aboard the Enterprise, but I will let my colleagues discuss that.

This episode, smartly directed by Marc Daniels, and reasonably well-scripted by Gene Roddenberry and "Jud Crucis", nevertheless left us with some uncomfortable messages.  For one, it suggests there is no place for the conscientious objector in war, something we just saw hotly (and ably) debated on a recent episode of NET Journal.  "A Private Little War" also seems to say that, under the specter of Mutually Assured Destruction (in this case, at the hands of the Organians rather than by A-bomb), there is no way to win a proxy war.  Rather, the only option is to maintain both sides at armament parity.

I'll let Janice discuss the merit of this argument, but it was noted that, if "A Private Little War" is supposed to be an analogy for Vietnam, it's not a very good one.  Vietnam constitutes a stalled (for now) revolution in a former colony.  The existence of two countries in what was once eastern Indo-China (and Saigon correspondents hesitate to characterize South Vietnam as a functioning nation) is a brief anomaly whose existence has lasted less than 15 years.

Perhaps Roddenberry was not thinking of Vietnam for this episode, but the more apt situation of Korea, where after three years of inconclusive fighting, the superpowers have settled for a more-or-less nonviolent face-off behind the 38th parallel.  Of course, this conflict threatened and still threatens to spiral into active bloodshed with the seizure of the intelligence ship U.S.S. Pueblo two weeks ago.  Indeed, perhaps the only reason this incident has not met more outrage is thanks to the ongoing Tet Offensive thousands of miles away.

In any event, the result is something of a mixed and forced metaphor, a bit of rah-rah for the now obviously bankrupt American policy in Southeast Asia.  These drag down the otherwise excellent acting, writing, and direction (and good use of library music) to make this a three star episode.

False Dichotomy


by Janice L. Newman

“A Private Little War” presents us with a seemingly unsolvable quandary. With the Klingons arming one side, what is Federation to do but arm the other, allowing them to maintain a careful balance and thus preserve the species?

However, this is a false dichotomy. The fact that Kirk doesn’t recognize this, that he lets himself be mournfully caught up in the narrative of “We have no other choice!” suggests that he is so mentally mired in history and uncreative that he can’t even imagine another course of action. Or it suggests that he’s simply out-of-character, acting as a mouthpiece for a thinly-disguised Gene Roddenberry to explain why we have no other choice but to fight in South Vietnam and anywhere else that might fall to Klingon—I mean Communist—aggression.

There are countless possibilities for how the artificial conflict could have been handled. The Federation could have approached the Klingons with evidence of their interference and sought a solution. They could have removed the advanced tools and metals the Klingons were supplying the villagers and offered them better, non-violent alternatives. Captain Kirk could have worked with the hill people to attempt a rapprochement, reconciliation, and ongoing non-violence treaty with the people of the village, no matter how many weapons the Klingons offer. As horrible as it sounds, the Federation could even have held to its own principles of non-interference and chose to let one side destroy the other, leaving only one power on the planet. The fact that none of these options are even considered is awfully damning. It suggests that the writer wanted the audience to come to one and only one conclusion at the end of the story.


Federation diplomacy

Hopefully when Captain Kirk presents his findings to the Federation, cooler, smarter heads will prevail and determine a better way for handling the planet and its people. For, like McCoy, the sole voice of reason in this episode, I can only say, “…furnishing them firearms is certainly not the answer.”

The forced false dilemma dropped the episode a great deal in my estimation. The deeply disturbing rape and murder of Nona dropped it as well. The episode was well-made in many ways, and McCoy is wonderful as always, but I found the message and elements of the content repugnant enough that I can’t give it more than two stars.

Offensive Trek


by Charlotte C. Hill

With rare exceptions, women don’t fare well in Star Trek. We haven't seen a single one rank above Lieutenant. Too often they are harpies or husband-seekers. So today I’m serving a light helping of sexism, chattel slavery, and femicide, since that’s what they served me in "A Private Little War".

Seen through generous eyes, this episode introduced complexity with respect to women. Uhura is featured on the bridge, and Nurse Chapel in the medical bay. Kirk and McCoy see the one indigenous female they meet, Nona, as influential and worthy of respect. But Nona’s culture is a supposed “garden of Eden,” and her only avenue to power is through her husband, Tyree.

When she can’t Lady MacBeth Tyree into committing murders to advance her aims, she steals the captain’s phaser and tries to switch sides. If the leader of the hill people won’t wield the power she wants, she’ll offer power to his enemies… who don’t want it either, at least from a woman.

I expected the villagers to appreciate that Nona is a “witch” who knows medicines and can save a man’s life. But they ignore her skills and her misguided efforts to bring their people power and decide that the prudent thing to do is try to gang-rape her, and when that is interrupted, to murder her.

Perhaps Kirk’s “garden of Eden” references only the hill people, and during his long-ago planet survey he never understood the detente they’d maintained with evil villagers. Or perhaps this Eden had no sexual oppression before the Klingons poisoned the village people. I’d like to believe that. I’d try to believe it, if not for Nurse Chapel.

Woven through this episode are brief interludes with Nurse Chapel and the wounded Mr. Spock. What could have displayed modern women’s status compared to the immature natives was mostly a set-up to denigrate Chapel’s unrequited love for Spock. When she does what she should to help wake Spock, Scotty (of all people) appears in the sick bay and grabs her. And Scotty keeps holding her.


The scene speaks for itself

Thus, even the professional Nurse Chapel is restrained by a man when she clearly doesn’t want to be restrained. Her sanity and behavior are questioned even as (the male) Dr. M’Benga takes her place to complete her work, and she is only released when M’Benga orders her release. (Look! It’s the 23rd century and now when we physically restrain women, we aren’t considering rape. We’re so advanced!)

The scene ends when Chapel returns to Spock’s side to offer him help and her affection, which he rejects. Chapel is spurned. Ha. Hah.

Once again, only Lieutenant Uhura retains her promotion to full personhood over both her blackness and her gender. She is the shining beacon in an episode that offered far too much to criticize about Trek’s perspective on women.

A four-star episode with problems becomes a 2-star episode for casual rape, and for its narrow vision of equality in the future.

Something strange is going on tomorrow. You won't want to miss the next episode:

Here's the invitation!



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