All posts by Lorelei Marcus

Movies

[July 24, 1969] Bursting at the Seams (with Monsters) (Godzilla film: Destroy All Monsters)

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by Lorelei Marcus

I recently went to Japan and discovered a new obsession. I'm still a fan of the miniskirts and psychedelic patterns of Western fashion's new trends, but there's something ethereal and ancient about the Japanese woman's daily wear.

The kimono, a style of dress which has deliberately maintained a particular silhouette for centuries, commands an aura of respect and luxury. The woven and hand-painted silk is infinite in its multitude of designs and execution, and yet always recognizable in its construction as the ancient pattern of the kimono.

They are also quite an expensive garment, unless you know where to look. A friend of mine introduced me to her favorite antique store in a little town called Owari Asahi. There, stuffed in a cardboard box, was a treasure trove of previously worn kimono for a discounted price. Thus began my journey of collecting old and damaged kimonos from secondhand shops across Japan.

Occasionally, I would take breaks from my quest to enjoy other parts of Japan. Between two of my stops was a movie theater playing the newest kaijuu ("monster") movie, Destroy All Monsters. For old time's sake, and to give The Traveler a break from endless stalls of kimono accessories, we decided to give it a watch.


The Japanese title, 怪獣総進撃, better translates as "all-out monster attack"

The movie begins on Monster Island, a man-made reserve that contains and sees to the needs of all the world's monsters. I greatly appreciated the concept of Monster Island; the monsters in their movies typically don't set out to destroy humanity, instead by chance crashing through the world's most notable landmarks while trying to reach some other goal (eating, mating, what have you). They are also established as practically indestructible, so course the best solution is to create a home and care for the monsters such that they never want to leave. Brilliant!


"Morning, Frank!" "Morning, Bob."


Monster Island gets five networks!

But of course, something still goes wrong. The underground control center of the island is sabotaged, and the monsters are released to strategically attack many of the world's major capitals. After some investigation, it's discovered that the culprits are Kilaaks, an alien species from an asteroid who seek cohabitation on Earth. They threaten to continue controlling the monsters and sending them to wreak havoc until humanity yields to their demands.


Behold the Arc d'Collapse

Thankfully, the humans respond quickly and find the radio receivers the Kilaaks have hidden across the world. The Kilaaks are clever, though, and always seem to be one step ahead of the humans. They retain control of the monsters via remote bases established while humanity was busy hunting down the radio receivers.


The bad guys

Enter our hero, commander of the magical moon rocket – a miraculous vehicle that can maneuver well through both atmosphere and vacuum, and also never runs out of fuel. The captain and his crew fly to the moon, where one of the Kilaak bases is suspected to be. Sure enough, they land in a suspicious looking crater and their ship is engulfed in flame. The crew barely escapes in their moon buggy, which is conveniently both armed and effective against the Kilaaks' defenses. With a quick blast of the moon buggy laser cannon, the Kilaak base is destroyed, and the aliens' true forms are revealed: they're really creatures of pure metal which are dormant unless exposed to extremely high temperatures. With their environmental control destroyed, the aliens turned back into lumps of rocks and become harmless.


The Moon ship


The Moon crew


Pew pew!


The bad guys' true form

Despite having been thoroughly toasted, the crew's ship still works just fine, and they use it and their infinite fuel supply to fly back to Earth. Now only one Kilaak base remains, embedded in the west side of Mount Fuji, and this time the humans have help!


The magnificent nine!

Apparently scientists have managed to decipher and disable the monster control technology the Kilaaks used, and the kaijuu are now on humanity's side – not because the humans are controlling them, but because the monsters recognize the Kilaaks as their true enemy. A vanguard of monsters charge Mount Fuji, led by Godzilla, but the Kilaaks have another trick up their sleeve. Suddenly, King Gidira appears, summoned from outer space, and an epic monster versus monster battle ensues.

After five minutes of monster sound effect cacophony, with Minilla (Godzilla's adopted child) dancing in the corner until his final attack is charged, Gidira is defeated.

The monsters rush in and destroy the Kilaaks' base and revert the aliens back to their dormant forms. There's one last conflict with the remaining Kilaak ship (disguised as the "fire dragon monster") but it's quickly destroyed by our good old all-powerful moon rocket, and the day is saved.

The film ends with the monsters restored to Monster Island, coexisting happily with each other and the humans. Godzilla even waves to the control center helicopter as it flies away and the credits roll. How sweet.



"Bye, kids!"


"Bye, folks!"

I wouldn't say this is the best Toho movie I have seen, but overall it wasn't a bad experience. The miniature work was gorgeous, though as always, I would like to see more city destruction. The sheer variety of monsters was also a treat, with an appearance from every Toho monster released on film in the past decade. The monster suits did look a little odd, though. I suspect they intentionally designed them to be more cute than menacing since the monsters are meant to help the humans in the end, but the result is rather silly. The acting is decent with a surprisingly international cast, including the most British man I've ever seen.


The carnage we pay to see


The Honourable Lord Sir Nigel Colin Billingsworth-Londonthames

I dug the Ultra Q-style uniforms and the When Worlds Collide/Forbidden Planet-style effects and palette (indeed, the film feels more 1950s than '60s…except when it feels decidedly pulp era!)

The only failing point of the movie is the writing. There are too many "of course that's the solution" moments without any set up. Events just sort of happen without any kind of arc to lead them along. Still, for a ride through 1950s pulp movie nostalgia with monsters added for spice, it wasn't too bad. I suspect it also would have helped had I seen the Toho movies from 1965-1968 (and Atragon, from 1963), which included the debut of several monsters I was hitherto unfamiliar with. I did recognize (and cheer on) Godzilla, Anguirus, Rodan (pronounced Radon), and especially Mosura, but Gorgosaurus, Manda, Kumonga, Gidira, and Minilla were new to me.

Anyway, three stars. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some kimono to learn how to wear!




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TV

[May 8, 1969] Cooked in the Chrysalis (The Monkees TV special: 33 1/3 Revolutions Per Monkee)

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by Lorelei Marcus

I recently watched and reviewed the new Monkees movie, Head—a depressing and existential capper to both the TV show and The Monkees band itself.  I ended the article questioning whether the members of The Monkees would be able to weather the deliberate self-sabotage of their band, or be doomed to obscurity by disappointed fans.  While I appreciated Head for what it was, reception has been mixed and, in the main, less than positive.  It seemed the end of The Monkees would be a quiet, tragic one.

Until April 14 of this year.  Scheduled opposite the Oscars, NBC broadcast a TV special entitled 33 1/3 Revolutions Per Monkee.  While half the country was dazzled by movie stars and award ceremonies, I watched the last hurrah of Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd.  It was an unusual finale, and not far removed from Head stylistically and, perhaps, in intent.  But in contrast to the grim movie, I thought I saw a glimmer of hope.

The special starts strong with the surreal introduction of a pair of musical brainwashers: ebullient Brian Auger (he introduced "Drimble Wedge and the Vegetation" in the movie Bedazzled) and the enigmatic Julie Driscoll—the front-folk for the popular British band, The Trinity.  The Monkees are summoned in on Star Trek-ish transporters and then trapped in giant tubes, hypnotized by a strange machine until they have lost all identity and free will, rejecting their own names for "Monkees No. 1-4".  This and their subsequent (though not immediately following) musical number, "Tinman", wherein they play wind-up versions of themselves, make clear their still strong feelings of being manufactured and forced into the band-idol role.

But unlike Head, the TV special offered glimpses of what The Monkees could be if given their freedom.

Even trapped with the tubes, The Monkees are given license to dream their most desired fantasy (essentially, what songs each might sing if they had complete license), and we view these dreams in the first four vignettes of the special.  Micky sings a soulful duet of "I'm a Believer" with Julie Driscoll.  He is at home on the stage, comfortable with being a vocal performer.

Peter sings a soft, mystical ballad with plenty of Indian influence.  The artistry of both the lyrics and the music emphasize his skill as a storyteller and musician.  They also echo his role in the pivotal Eye of the Storm scene in Head.

Mike's act involves a warring duet…with himself.  There is both humor and commentary as the stereotypical Texas country boy Mike and the slick, suit-wearing, city boy version of Mike compete for dominance in the song.

Finally, Davy stars in the most fantastical and theater-like number where he sings and dances in an oversized room with several female partners dressed like fairy-tale-inspired dolls.  He also demonstrates his prowess as a performer, and he seems the most entwined and comfortable with his (manufactured?) Monkees persona.

These acts are perhaps the best part of the special, with each Monkee getting to express his own personality and talents.  However, it does not last, and from there, the show begins to lose its way.

First, we get a random and slightly out of place modern dance piece performed against a volcanic/lava-lampy/biological matte background, that seems to be a depiction of evolution and creation.  This is in service to a motif introduced by Auger as Charles Darwin, describing the evolution of music. 

Then, we get a musical skit where the Monkees are dressed as actual monkees.  It might also be an homage to the first act of the movie 2001, the music is only passable, and a bit too similar to the next skit.

Here, the Monkees reach their ultimate form as a manufactured rock band in a full blown '50s nostalgia concert, poking fun at the success of idols like Elvis and The Beatles.  There are some impressive guest stars, including Fats Domino, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Little Richard, but as with the prior two segments, the scene goes on for much too long, losing meaning with every new dancer and musical guest brought on. 

As the concert reaches its climax, the film literally burns apart, and we are left with Auger and Driscoll declaring (in their native accents, as opposed to the weird German of Auger and the…alien harpy of Driscoll) that they're tired of their brainwashing role.  All they want is total freedom.  They warn, however, that such freedom could result in total chaos.

At first, their caution seems unfounded as we cut to Davy singing a normal and pleasant song atop a set of scaffolding.  Then, in the ensuing silence after he finishes, the camera pans to the cluttered ground floor, reminiscent of a theater storage room.  Peter arrives, and without a word, sits and plays a masterful Baroque fugue on an electric piano.  His performance is a poignant moment, and it feels like a long-deserved recognition of his immense musical talent…also a kind of goodbye, for the papers have since announced that Tork left the band after this special.

Then, just as casually and quietly, Micky sits at his drumset and Mike picks up his guitar.  They take a moment to tune, and then they begin to play a new song: "Listen to the Band."  For a little while, everything feels right again.  The band is together, the music is good.  They appear to be where they want to be.

The mood elevates as suddenly a whole orchestra joins in, and a new singer takes over for Mike. There is excitement in the dancing and flashing colors and swelling music—it's all a bit reminiscent of the final recording of The Beatles "All You Need is Love" as seen on year-before-last's satellite broadcast of Our World.  But then confusion sets in as the Monkees disappear from view in the massive crowd, and the music itself devolves into a cacophony of blended, formless sounds.  This also goes on for far longer than is comfortable, until the iconic Monkee's gorilla himself closes the book on the special, its cover titled, "The Beginning of the End."

Overall, I didn't enjoy this special as much as Head.  It felt much less thought-out and clever, lacking a cohesive narrative.  To a degree, I think this was intentional.  Time and again, both The Monkees and their music gets lost, drowned out by other musicians and strange editing.  In a specific sense, it is a direct metaphor for what happened to The Monkees.  In a general sense, it symbolizes the fear of being lost in the tide of change and innovation.  Or perhaps it represents simply being overwhelmed by the pressures of modern sociery.  Either way, it didn't make for the best viewing experience.

Still, I see a future where The Monkees do pull through.  Each of them has immense talent and an ambition to succeed in some aspect of show business.  In the beginning of the special, we see what they can do, and even if it's drowned out by the end, that doesn't mean they can't resurface.  In fact, as their band crumbles apart, disappearing may be the best path for a while, until they've thoroughly shaken off their former legacy and started fresh.

It's bittersweet having to say goodbye, and I wish it could have been done more elegantly, but I doubt this is the last we'll see of Micky, Peter, Davy or Mike.  It'll just be when they do come back, they'll have created something completely new.


"Listen to the band…"

33 1/3 Revolutions per Monkee was a paving stone in the path toward that innovation, and while it wasn't fully successful, I can see the potential within it for future success.

Three stars.




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Movies, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[April 22, 1969] Corpse or Cocoon? – (the Monkees movie Head)

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by Lorelei Marcus

"In this generation… Love is understanding, we gotta be free"

lyrics from 'for Pete's sake', performed by the Monkees, written by Joseph Richards and Peter Tork

The Beatles released an album called 'Rubber Soul' in America on December 6, 1965 and it heralded a new era. Practically overnight, the music, the fashion, and the youth all changed. Hemlines rose, hair grew out, psychedelia and rock started to merge, and like never before the teenagers of America became a visible force through their protests and love-ins and consumption.

Someone had the bright idea that this force could be profitable, and thus the Monkees were conceived: a fake band of four handsome, mop topped young men manufactured to sell Kellogg's cereal, concert tickets, and merchandise. They would star in a comedic TV show to create wider access and appeal, to turn them into a real happening deal, and it worked. Every week we tuned in to follow the exploits of the Monkees, narratively portrayed as deadbeat musicians trying to scrape by. It was fast-paced and fun, well executed and unique in that it featured intercut lip-synch segments with original songs by the Monkees. But the show really succeeded for the same reason it ultimately fell apart: the members of the Monkees are genuinely talented and driven musicians.

The legacy of the Monkees is great, with two seasons of the series, countless international live concerts, and several self-written albums. With such strong success, it was inevitable that the Monkees would eventually outgrow the narrow caricatures that first helped them to superstardom. Every member of the Monkees in some regard has raw talent in musicianship, composition, acting, and comedy. They each personally have the capacity to pursue new, innovative projects, and the ambition to do so. There is only one thing that restrains them from that independence: their own legacy.

Particularly in the eyes of the adoring fans, the Monkees are not brilliant creatives, but still silly poor musicians going on adventures to make a quick dollar. Particularly because of the manufactured nature of their origin, nobody expects anything more from them, and thus won't acknowledge what exists beyond the popular false image of the Monkees. Still, there will be, and has been, a transition from the Monkees to just Mickey, Davey, Mike, and Peter, and it is necessarily a destructive and torturous one. To be free and independent in image, they must destroy what they were, or else be confined by it forever.

Nothing makes this more evident than their new movie, Head, which not only hammers the theme of desire for freedom to its audience, but does its best to rend asunder everything that the Monkees used to be. The film is constructed as a series of vignettes which abstractly flow one into the other. Structure is given to the story by three disparate elements. First, the story is circular, with the Monkees literally ending in nearly the same place the movie begins, emphasizing the feeling of being trapped eternally.




Second, we as an audience are given glimpses at the beginning of the movie of everything that happens, artificially creating a sense of foresight, implicating the audience as complacent jailers as the Monkees continuously run in circles for our amusement.

Finally, the essence of each vignette is the same. Every scene is a different scenario of the various Monkee members trying to escape a contrived, television-like setting, which ties all the disparate moments together as one long interconnected attempt to extricate the Monkees from TV itself.



Some of the imagery of imprisonment is very literal, with the Monkees trapped in a big black box, or stranded in the desert without the reprieve of a cool beverage (in itself a play at subliminal marketing), or stuck on the fake set of a Western where the only way to exit is to tear a hole in the backdrop.

There are also more disturbing metaphorical elements that speak to the feelings of being commodified by the very role of famous celebrity. At the end of the one and only concert film the Monkees do in the movie, their stage is swarmed by rabid, screaming fans. The Monkees are subtly replaced by mannequins of their likeness, which are promptly and ruthlessly torn apart by the mindless, grasping swarm of fans. The horror of the moment is compounded by the fact that the music video that precedes it is intercut with actual news footage of victims of the Vietnam War, overlaid with the screaming teenage girls of the concert.


All of this serves to send a complex message to the audience of the film: one that reveals the artificial, facile nature of the Monkee television image when contrasted with the atrocities of the real world, and also demonizes the audience/fans by portraying them as passive and active destructive forces in their pursuit of that very escapist television. This stimulates a call to action to emerge from the cocoon that commoditized Western television provides, and to use the incredible energy of the youth to tear down the fantasies we are complacently spoonfed; it tells us to see the real world, with all the horrors that it entails, and to make change, just as the Monkees want to.

The Monkees themselves are part of this struggle, drifting in and out of character over the course of the movie. Sometimes they are the Monkees of the show, mindlessly filling their roles and facing an artificial enemy who appears in various vignettes (played byTimothy Carey). Other times, reality leaks through as the actors confront aspects of the roles that are distasteful or untrue, such as Peter being disturbed by the idea of hitting a woman, or the Monkees being forced to laugh at a cripple, or even Davey seeing a giant eye behind the mirror—a representation of the audience watching the illusion unfold.

There is only one moment of true clarity and personality in the whole film, when Peter gives his soliloquy as the Monkees are trapped (again) in the black box. His speech, given in silence and with the rapt attention of the other Monkees and the audience, is a refrain on opening the mind to escape and emerge free. It is the one oasis of peace in the movie.


But it does not last, and soon the Monkees are arguing and retracing their steps through all the previous scenes and all their previous prisons, until they reach the grim finale.

The film ends with the Monkees being chased by all the faux villains they've encountered and being cornered atop a high bridge. Without hesitation, Mickey jumps over the side, and soon the other Monkees follow. For a moment, it seems that the only escape is death.




But the Monkees don't die when they hit the water. Instead they plunge into a dreamlike world, free to swim and explore, refracted by strange colors and camera filters, as if their image is finally morphing into something new. But then the dream ends, and it is revealed that the Monkees are actually swimming in a fish tank. They bang on the glass as they are driven away by the 'director', the true, larger-than-life villain of the story. The credits roll and the Monkees are sealed to their Sisyphus-like fate.

It is a bitter and dark ending that successfully taints the happy and carefree image of the Monkees. Yet the nihilism is also refreshing in that it's reflective of the larger helplessness felt by the youthful generation. The stresses of assassinations and poverty and politics and the war underlie the suppressive hopelessness that creates both the depression and the need for fantasy television in the first place. The young are trapped and stifled by their very society; they need a world of media to escape into that grants the illusion of freedom. But the Monkees refuse to be that escape anymore. They want to move on and tell their own stories. They will no longer coddle us and in turn be coddled, because they have a right to an independent identity, and in that vein, so do we. Whether we follow them or not, they will forge a path. The only question is whether, while on their new path, they will be able to emerge from the corpse of their former images. Or if we, in our inability to let go, will drag them back to the grave where the brand that they killed remains.

I think the first step, if you haven't already, is to go watch Head for yourself. It's a bit grim, but also funny and brilliant and an editing masterpiece. The seamless transitions from scene to scene give the viewer the impression of riding a carousel; it's unlike anything else I've seen. It's also a glimpse into the real sentiments of the members of the Monkees, so if you're a fan, it's worth it just for that. But beyond the great acting and the technical execution, I think the true value of the movie comes from how it successfully encapsulates the growing restlessness of our changing society in a way that many art films can't. It has the advantage of the metanarrative that the history of the Monkees' name provides, and thus a richer mode of expression than any one standalone piece. You may find that it changes how you see the world, or at the very least, triggers some unconventional thoughts.

For everything Head tries to do and succeeds at doing, I give it five stars.




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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

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

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by Lorelei Marcus

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

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

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

And "That Which Survives" is no exception.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


by Gideon Marcus

Full reverse!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Blech.

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

2.5 stars.


by Janice L. Newman

Slivers of Silver

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

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

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

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

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

Are There Men on This Planet?


by Mx. Blue Cathey-Thiele

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

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

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

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

3.5 stars

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[February 22, 1968] Reich or Wrong? (Star Trek: "Patterns of Force")

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Cowboys and Indians and Nazis


by Lorelei Marcus

Thrice recently we have been cautioned of the importance of the Prime Directive, and the consequences if it is not followed properly. While it seemed almost nonexistent as a concept up until halfway through season two, the prime directive now stands as one of the most popular story devices in our recent crop of episodes. "Patterns of Force" is no exception; it can almost entirely be summarized as a less elegant, Nazi flavored clone of "A Piece of the Action", another episode that featured the prime directive prominently.

The Enterprise arrives at planet Ekos in search of John Gill, a cultural scientist sent to observe the planet's primitive culture and development. His recent disappearance sparks the Federation to investigate, and what they find is a planet far beyond what its technological level should be, a society modeled exactly on Nazi Germany, and John Gill as "Führer".


Not since Martin Landau as Martin Bormann have we seen such an effective portrayal of a Nazi.

Like the gangster world in "A Piece of the Action", the Ekosian society's emulation of Earth history is no coincidence, but the result of direct tampering from outside forces. However the tampering of Ekos' evolution began not with the Federation, but their more advanced sister planet, Zeon, which led to Ekos accessing nuclear warheads and a space fleet. Still, even after fifty years relations between the two planets remained peaceful, and only in the past six years did Ekos begin to model a fascist regime. The only explanation is further manipulation from Gill himself.


Filmed at the Reich Building in Beautiful Downtown Burbank!

Kirk and Spock beam down to the planet to try to find Gill and get an explanation. Despite their clever civilian disguises, they are quickly identified as aliens by SS guards. Much judo chop, neck pinch, and uniform stealing high jinks later, they try to infiltrate Nazi headquarters, and are once again discovered thanks to Spock's ears. One obligatory whipping scene later, with some good special-effects for Spock's green blood, and our leads find themselves in prison alongside a Zeon rebel. We learn that the Ekosians plan to wipe out all Zeons both on their own planet and the Zeon home world, their "final solution" as Isak the rebel puts it.


Sweeps week

Horrified, Kirk and Spock fashion a quick escape by using the transponders embedded in their arms for a purpose they were absolutely not intended (turning them into primitive phasers? I'm sure we'll never see this highly useful technology again). With Isak's help, Kirk and Spock join forces with the underground resistance. They plan to infiltrate an elite banquet that night where the Führer is to make an appearance.


Berets and ascots–that's how you know they're resistance

A string of good luck and hidden allies sees them into the banquet, and subsequently the sound booth where Gill gives a speech to the nation initiating the final solution operation. After the speech, they discover that Gill has been drugged, likely by his second in command, who has been the real force pushing for Zeon extermination. Spock performs a Vulcan mind meld to discover why Gill chose to instate a Nazi regime in the first place.

Gill explains that he was only trying to unite a fractured world under an efficient state. He never foresaw such consequences to his actions. Luckily, he is able to give a speech to the people before he dies, and the Holocaust is ultimately called off.


"You won't have John Gill to kick around anymore…"

This story, like "A Piece of the Action", relies on imitative aliens who build their societies around the books and words of outsiders. The sociopolitical situation of two already communicating planets seems too complicated a situation for Gill to have been able to come into and impose an entirely new social structure. I will admit I am a little tired of how Star Trek treats its aliens as if they are children who simply play the Cowboys and Indians they see on TV, rather than think and build for themselves, no matter how primitive the society. For "A Piece of the Action" it worked, particularly because there was a 100 year lead time and a naturally curious and imitative civilization that was infected. This episode was less effective, especially with two pre-existing aliens complicating the mix.

That said, along with its many flaws, there was much to like about the episode. I'll let my co-writers cover the details, but I will say that while the episode was fun to watch, it left me feeling a bit hollow and unconvinced, as if its true purpose for existing was to just put Kirk and Spock in (and occasionally out of) SS uniforms.

Three stars.

Out of Time


by Joe Reid

Having traveled a bit in my time I have come across people who I felt held beliefs and a way of life that held them back from being all that they might be.  Without naming places I can clearly remember times when I thought, “if I could only do something to change how these folks live, they might all be able to make something of themselves.” Faced with places where people lived in poverty, violence was not far.  Never once did I think that struggling people would be better off if we could just make them all Nazis.  This week’s episode failed to adequately answer how a learned historian like John Gill could have come to that conclusion.  I feel like the episode lacked the time needed to explain how that could have come to pass.

It would have been one thing to have taken elements of mid twentieth century German Nazi culture and apply parts of it to make a society better.  After all, I have always been told that under Hitler the trains ran on time (a fallacy to be precise).  It was a total other thing to copy the Nazis whole hog: symbols, behaviors, and uniforms.  The members of the crew that saw what Fuhrer Gill had created all knew how bad the Nazis of history were and were perplexed that it would be repeated.  The brief half-comatose explanation from Gill that Nazis were efficient fell a little shy of the mark.  If we had been given time with a lucid Gill who could have explained why he felt no better options existed, it would have added more credibility to the events as they played out.


"Didn't you see Judgment at Nuremberg?  How about The Brothers Karamozov?"

My next quarrel with the episode is in regard to how quickly it ended.  Within a minute of Gill receiving a fatal shot from his captor, three things happened: The Zeon representatives decided that all of their problems were over and they could take care of things going forward. Kirk considered the planet for admission to Star Fleet, and the ship left the planet.  This leads us to the conclusion that Gill wasn’t wrong at all.  The people were doing great and always would have done great as Nazis as long as no bad people took charge.  That torture, oppression and fear are great tools if you do it without being evil.

Lastly, the motivations of the villain of the episode (Deputy Fuhrer Melakon) went completely unexplained.  He drugged Gill, assumed command, and fought a campaign of oppression against a people for no other reason than, he’s just a bad guy.  If we had only learned that he had a bad history with the Zeons, or that he was one himself and hated it–anything as a motivation–it would have been a good use of time to further the plot.

As it stood, “Patterns of Force” fell too far from believability to be considered a good use of my time.  The leaps that I was asked to make were too far.  Given more time and explanation, perhaps we could have come to a better story.

Two stars.

Springtime for Hitler?


by Janice L. Newman

My feelings on “Patterns of Force” are mixed. There was much to like about the episode. There were two ‘volte-face’ moments that were excellently done. The first caught me by surprise, yet was completely plausible: of course the rebels would want to make certain that the people they were allowing into the heart of their base weren’t secretly Nazi spies. The second moment was cleverly set up, so that it was less of a surprise yet very satisfying. It wasn’t even implausible that there would be Ekosians and Ekosian supporters at high levels of government. After all, Gill would have surrounded himself with good, like-minded people during his rise to power, people like Eneg and Daras’ father. [And don't forget the recent example of Eli Cohen, the Israeli spy who made it to the #3 position in Syria before being caught and executed. (ed.)]

Yet there were elements of the episode that bothered me. For one, other than the aforementioned curveballs, the plot was subtle as a brick, to the point where it threw me out of the episode. Gee, do you think the ‘Ekosians’ might be an especially imitative people (‘echoing’ the culture of others)? Gosh, with names that sound like “Issac” and “Abraham”, how could the people of “Zion” — sorry, I meant “Zeon” — be anything but Jewish?


Funny–they don't look Jewish…

More frustrating than the heavy-handed writing was an important assertion that the story left unchallenged. Even today, there are people who glorify the Nazis and buy into their propaganda. Gill states that Hitler’s regime was the “most efficient state Earth ever knew,” and Spock, the voice of reason, supports and reinforces him! “That tiny country, beaten, bankrupt, defeated, rose in a few years to stand only one step away from global domination.” However, this argument is fundamentally flawed. Just as “Space Seed” fails to challenge the idea that eugenics could work at all, “Patterns of Force” leaves out the fact that Hitler’s success was built on theft, lies, and broken promises long before Germany went to war.

But in the end, my issue with this episode is more emotional than logical. A Piece of the Action does a wonderful job of showing how a culture could be ‘infected’ by another culture. But the Mafioso characters are deliberately cartoonish in their portrayals, fun and larger-than-life and slightly ‘off’. It doesn’t work as well with Nazis. Watching stormtroopers beat and kick and scream at innocent people in the street, seeing them whipping characters I care about, seeing characters I like dressed like Nazis–these things made me uncomfortable. Yes, watching Nazis repeatedly getting knocked out, neck-pinched, shot, and led around by the nose was fun. And yes, I appreciate the message that “Nazis are bad”, even if it was a bit simplistic and unsubtle. But for me, I’d just as soon not see Nazis infect my futuristic science fiction, especially accompanied by mostly unchallenged assertions that they were ever “efficient” or successful.

In quality this was a four-star episode, but my discomfort takes my personal rating down to three stars.

Lord Acton was right


by Gideon Marcus

"Absolute power corrupts absolutely."  It was explicitly referenced in this episode, and it explains a lot.  After watching "Patterns of Force", one of the biggest objections of my fellow watchers to the episode's premise was that resurrecting the Nazis was a bridge too far–too obvious, too ridiculous for a serious historian to consider.


"Hogaaaan!"

But is it really so unbelievable that John Gill, elevated to Godhood to the Ekosians by his knowledge of history and technology long before he became "The Fuhrer", would choose that model?  You and I know (especially if we've read Shirer's Rise and Decline of the Third Reich) that the Hitler regime was anything but "the most efficient the world had ever seen", but would Gill?

We're less than a quarter century from the passing of the most evil government on Earth, yet just last year, the American Nazi party leader was assassinated by one of his henchmen for not being fascist enough. Kids who push counters around on maps in games like Blitzkrieg and Afrika Korps call their clubs "4th SS Panzer", "The Gauleiter Club", "Panzer Lehr Division", and like that.  I have no doubt that, two hundred years from now, there will be historians who miss the point, seduced by dazzling military conquests, Leni Riefenstahl films, and Hugo Boss uniforms.

So, I actually find "Patterns of Force" all too plausible.

I also found it (he said a little sheepishly) quite enjoyable.  With the exception of one clumsy scene edit (the one that ends with Yitzhak saying, "This is more our fight than yours") it's a well put together episode.  Shatner reins in his Shatnerisms, delivering a compelling performance.  Nimoy has the charm one expects of a real ubermensch among people playing at being ubermenschen.  Kelley has a truncated role, but he is at his very best.


"What in blazes is going on here?"

The scoring is an effective mix of library and new music.  The guest stars are quite excellent, actually (though the dubbed "actors" in the first scene on Ekos are some of the worst).

And the showrunners clearly know that women make a big part of their audience.  Why else would the two leads be half-naked for half the episode?


"Very interesting!"

Four stars.

"There's a new episode of Star Trek tomorrow!" "I'll drink to that."

Come join us–here's the invitation!



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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[December 22, 1967] In all the old familiar places (Star Trek: "Obsession")

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by Lorelei Marcus

Out of mind, out of sight

Centuries divide Captain Kirk's escapades to the edges of the galaxy from Captain Hornblower's dashing adventures on the high seas. Still, there remains a structure that echoes across this gap of time, something inextricably human in its tendency towards order and organization. Both the naval ships of old and the starships of the future operate with efficiency and grace due to the rigid military structure their crew hierarchies are built on. Every person has a job to accomplish, and ideally, all will attempt to do so to the best of their ability for the sake of their own lives, and the ship's.


Hornblower is a clear inspiration for Kirk.  In James Blish's novelization of Trek episodes, both Hornblower and Kirk are tone deaf!

What has changed in the days since wooden ships is the enemies that threaten such lives. The British Navy fought against Napoleon's rebel forces, man against man. The Enterprise has similar foes in the Klingons and Romulans. However, there are times when Kirk and his crew must face creatures that are totally alien and beyond human understanding. The results of such encounters rely both on the brilliance and competence of the captain, and mental fortitude of his people.

We see that fortitude tested in Captain Kirk in The Obsession. It begins with a routine planetary survey, as a landing party of Kirk, Spock, and a few security officers explore and analyze the planet's resources. Suddenly, Kirk smells the sickly sweet odor of honey, and goes on guard, calling for red alert and ordering the security men to patrol with armed phasers. His fear is quickly justified as the security team is attacked by an amorphous sparkling cloud. It drains the blood from two of the officers' bodies, killing them, and attacks the third, all before any of them have the chance to fire their phasers. Distraught, Kirk returns to the ship with Spock, before the cloud has a chance to attack them, too.


Occupational hazard.

Clearly shaken by the encounter, Kirk orders the Enterprise to remain in orbit, a direct contradiction of their original mission to rendezvous with the USS Yorktown and collect perishable vaccines for a deadly plague. He chooses to delay, knowing full well it may cause deaths planetside in a Federation colony. Everyone in the crew is startled by this order, but no one dares question him.


A crew aghast.

Kirk attempts another landing party, this time ready to face his unknown foe head on. He brings Ensign Garrovick, a security officer fresh from the Academy with a notable last name. Despite their preparations, two more security personnel end up dead, and Garrovick is relieved from duty for hesitating to fire a split second too long.


Garrovick doing his job.

Concerned by Kirk's harshness, and anxious about the time pressure of their other mission, McCoy and Spock corner Kirk, threatening to label him unfit for duty due to medical reasons. Throughout the episode, Kirk has been hinting to McCoy and Spock both to analyze records from eleven years ago, believing it will justify his actions. Finally, left with no choice, he reveals why: eleven years ago, on Kirk's first deep space assignment as an ensign, his ship the USS Farragut was attacked by an entity just like the one they are fighting now. Two hundred of the crew were killed in the encounter, along with his first skipper–a Captain Garrovick (the ensign's father). Kirk blames himself for these deaths because of his failure to fire at the entity when he had the chance. He insists the creature is sentient and has malicious intent, and claims he communicated with the creature when it attacked him.


Kirk explains himself.

McCoy and Spock are doubtful that what they are facing is intelligent, but they decided to trust Kirk's intuition. The hunt continues. The entity takes to space, and after a thrilling chase, the Enterprise fires every weapon available to try and destroy it. Nothing is effective.

The creature – Spock is convinced it's intelligent now by its behavior – attempts to enter the ship through the impulse vents. It almost kills Garrovick, but they manage to flush the cloud back into space, and the odor it leaves behind tells Kirk it intends to return home to spawn.


Kirk smells something funny.

Kirk sacrifices two more days to return to the planet and risks his and Garrovick's life planting an antimatter bomb, the only way he can think to kill the creature. He is successful, and so sure of it, he need not even check the scanners before returning to his former mission.


Escaping in the nic-o-tine.

There is a strong implication that Kirk formed some sort of psychic bond with the creature after it attacked him eleven years ago. With that in mind, his erratic and illogical behavior begins to make sense. This was not a traumatized Captain lurching blindly for revenge, but rather the one person in the galaxy who could truly comprehend the depths of this creature and the danger it posed. It is a testament to the loyalty of the crew and the validity of a captain's intuition that the Enterprise was able to succeed.

Ralph Senensky's sharp direction and Art Wallace's tight script made for a very strong and thought-provoking episode. The military structure of the enterprise shone through the characters' competence, and emotions were high and tense thanks to excellent delivery from all the leads and Stephen Brooks' (Garrovick) body language. The episode's most spectacular feat was its intertwining of personal, interpersonal, and galactic-scale struggle into one seamless experience that evoked human history and human nature itself.

Five stars.

Respect for the Mission


by Joe Reid

At first, I sincerely hoped that we were not seeing a pattern for upcoming entries in the series.  This was the second episode in a row, last week's episode being “The Deadly Years”, where Kirk’s command was challenged by his own crew, because they saw him as incapable to lead.  Until now the crew of the Enterprise had been incredibly loyal to their captain.  The only time that I remember the crew turning on Kirk of their own volition was early in this season in “Mirror, Mirror”.  Granted that it wasn’t really our Kirk, but a twisted alternate universe version of him.

If I were to use what happened in the last couple of episodes as foreshadowing of what is to come, the future doesn’t look good for the captain of the Enterprise.  In “The Deadly Years”, Kirk’s body and mind started to fail due to rapid aging.  The crew noticed it and were troubled by it, yet they were incredibly hesitant to turn on their captain and Spock had to be forced to hold a hearing to test the competence of the captain.  Even after he proved that he was not capable to lead the crew still refused to vote against him.

In “Obsession”, there seemed to be a lot less resistance for the senior staff to turn on the captain.  This time instead of being forced into a hearing, the crew threatened Kirk with action to remove him from command, because they disagreed with his decision to pursue a smoke monster instead of delivering time sensitive medicine to sick people on another world.


Senior officers confront the captain.

It was nearly unthinkable that the crew would doubt the orders of the captain.  Kirk once stated that when he gave an order he expects that it be followed.  Kirk’s orders have now been receiving a degree of scrutiny that didn’t exist before.  This leads me to wonder where this will all lead.  If the crew started as loyal followers, then became reluctant betrayers, and after that becoming thoughtful opposers, what will they become next as they grow more accustomed to bucking Kirk’s leadership?

If the crew continues to participate in this erosion of respect for their captain I fear that mutiny might be in store for our hero.  Should mutiny darken the bridge of the Enterprise there would only be one person to blame: Captain James T. Kirk.  If Kirk is swept from his position, it will be because he put himself ahead of the mission, when in truth the mission is more important than the man.

If the crew acts against their captain in the future, they will be completely justified in their actions.  They arrested the mirror universe Kirk, held a hearing which ousted the geriatric Kirk, and warned an out-of-control Kirk this week.  The crew of the Enterprise has repeatedly shown that they value the mission first and will support that captain if he guides them to completing that mission.  It is good to see that the crew of the Enterprise will fight to complete their missions, even if they must fight their own captain to do it.

Although not a terrific episode, due to the an arguably slow and repetitive plot, along with strange actions being taken by some characters, Spock included, this was a thought provoking episode showing a counter to previously unchecked power.

Three stars

Tragedy and Truth


by Janice L. Newman

Star Trek is a show that rewards dedicated watching from week to week. Not only do we learn more about the universe our favorite characters inhabit, but every once in a while we learn more about the characters themselves.

We’ve learned a great deal about Captain Kirk over the course of a season and a half. We’ve learned that he was ‘a stack of books with legs’ back in school, and that he was terrible with women; both traits that he seems to have left behind at some point, since we rarely see him reading, and he’s seduced his share of human women, androids, female-shaped aliens, and the like (in fairness, he was usually captured or kidnapped first).

We also learned that he endured a great tragedy as a teenager, having been one of the few survivors of a terrible masacre on Tarsus Four. And in this week’s episode, we learn that, on his very first assignment out of the academy, he survived another tragedy. One can only wonder the guilt that Captain Kirk must have suffered when 200 of the crew and the captain of the ship were all killed, but he survived. Perhaps this survival of two horrific events drove him to take more responsibility. Perhaps it was a crucible that changed him, eventually transforming him from a bookish, awkward young man to the charismatic captain that we all know today. Would he break, I wonder, if he endured what Decker did? Or would his past experience of tragedy make him better able to move forward afterward, as a broken bone strengthens when it heals?

I can’t help but wonder what else we’ll learn about other characters in the future. I would love to know more about McCoy’s, Uhura’s, Sulu’s, or Scotty’s pasts. Hopefully we’ll see some stories that focus on them, not just on Spock and Kirk.

As to the rest of the episode, I was less impressed. It felt too staged, too unreal somehow, with the characters posing more like actors in a play than people living their lives. There are a few standout scenes, the best of which is when Garrovick throws himself on his bed, covers his eyes, and jerks in a convulsive sob before the camera cuts away. But overall there was much I found unconvincing.

Three stars.

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[November 16, 1967] Star Trek: "Metamorphosis"

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by Lorelei Marcus

What Ever Happened to Commissioner Nancy?

The tomfoolery of "I, Mudd" was a delight, but I'm personally more of a fan of the serious episodes that delve deeply into the drama and science. The preview for this week's episode presented a new planet, mystery, and even new characters–how exciting!

"Metamorphosis" begins with Kirk, Spock, and McCoy on a Galileo shuttle craft, escorting a civilian woman back to the Enterprise. The woman is Nancy Hedford, Commissioner for the Federation, who was acting as a diplomat to prevent war between two colonies before she was pulled from her task after contracting a rare but deadly disease. She must be treated within the next twenty-four hours or she'll die.


Commissioner Hedford, after her promotion from the city council of Mayberry

I'm always pleased to see new competent female characters on Star Trek, and here's one that isn't set up to be a love interest for Kirk. Unfortunately it doesn't seem like her character is going to last long. Almost immediately, the shuttle craft is hit by a strange energy beam and is pulled towards an asteroid with its own atmosphere, almost exactly like that of Earth's. Spock theorizes that the planetoid is a fragment from a larger planet that's been split apart. That still doesn't explain how such a small celestial body could retain its own atmosphere, but perhaps there's some supernatural reason for it that they will explain later.

Hedford understandably begins panicking and orders Kirk to put the craft back on course. It's a fascinating contrast to see her civilian reaction compared to the coolheaded and seasoned Enterprise crew. Unfortunately, despite Kirk's best efforts, the craft is still forced to land on the asteroid, and thanks to a powerful dampening field, cannot take off again.


The Galileo Four

Soon after they land, something – or someone – calls to the party and begins to approach them. It turns out to be a young man in a jumpsuit, reminiscent of the Federation uniform, but clearly older in style. The man is amiable, and he seems relieved to see other people again. He recognizes Spock as a Vulcan, but he takes particular interest in Hedford because she is a "beautiful woman". Hedford, twenty-three hours away from death and stuck on an asteroid in the middle of nowhere, brushes off the advance irritably.


Disdain at first sight

The man takes the party to his home, a building he apparently built with the scraps of his ship which was pulled to this planetoid like the Galileo craft. Except, it's revealed, that his ship crashed 150 years ago and he's actually Zefram Cochrane, the original inventor of warp drive! Cochrane explains that at age 87 he took a ship into space to die, but he was discovered by an alien being which drew him to this asteroid and forced him to live there with it. The alien, which he calls the Companion, restored his youth and stopped him from aging, and he's since built a life here with his newfound immortality. (And he was able to grow crops to sustain himself, despite the asteroid's soil comprising almost entirely nickel and iron, but perhaps the Companion had something to do with that).

Kirk's craft was brought here because Cochrane told the Companion he would die of loneliness without other humans in the hopes of being freed. Instead the Companion brought the humans to him, and now refuses to let them leave. Hedford's fever worsens, and she breaks down hysterically, disgusted by the idea of being trapped and forced to be someone's consort.


I wouldn't be too happy, either.

Forced into action by Hedford's deteriorating condition, Kirk begins to think of a plan. The Companion is intelligent and can communicate with Cochrane fairly fluently. It also appears to be composed of raw electricity, and possesses great healing properties if Cochrane's de-aging is any example. Of course the only way to deal with a one-of-a-kind, sentient, all-powerful creature like that… is to kill it! (What is that speech that Kirk gives in the intro? Something about seeking out and exterminating new life and new civilizations? I can never remember.)

Spock conveniently pulls out his electric impulse scrambler (I can only guess where he keeps it), and their attack on the Companion goes about as well as you might expect. Kirk and Spock almost die and are saved only by Cochrane's intervention. McCoy gently suggests to Kirk that perhaps they could try negotiating with the alien instead of hurting it. Kirk agrees that the negotiation sounds like a good idea, and he orders Spock to adjust their universal translator to work on incorporeal beings.


Yes, maybe talking is the better option.

One cut later, and Spock's magically gotten the translator to work. Kirk explains that the alien's voice from the translator will be interpreted as however the creature perceives itself; what a surprise when the voice that comes out is female. Cochrane is dumbfounded, "how can that be possible?"

Kirk makes the point that male and female are universal concepts that apply to all living creatures, and obviously this creature is just female. (I guess he forgot about his basic biological studies and the numerous asexually reproducing living creatures: single celled organisms, plants, certain lizards, Talosians…)

Anyway, because of the Companion's newly discovered sex, Kirk makes the completely baseless assumption that the creature is romantically in love with Cochrane and that is why it sustains him. Cochrane, despite having the wisdom of two entire lifetimes, and living the better part of that time with this creature, finds the possibility of being loved by an alien absolutely disgusting, and he completely rejects the Companion.

Just then, Hedford cries out, and everyone remembers that she exists. On the verge of death, she makes a moving speech lamenting that though she lived an accomplished life with a successful career, she will never get the chance to love romantically or be loved. How selfish Cochrane is, for receiving such a pure form of love and then rejecting it because of his own biases.


I never had time for love because I stop wars for a living.  What's his excuse?

Kirk tries to negotiate with the Companion one last time, in the hopes that it might possibly free them to save Hedford's life. Except, instead of actually discussing a deal and offering the Companion literally anything, Kirk pulls his Kirk logic on the alien and convinces it that the only way for the Companion's love and Cochrane to coexist is for the Companion to be human. I think it would've been simpler to ask if the Companion could just let McCoy and Hedford go so they could save her life, and then he and Spock would stay behind to keep Cochrane company until the Enterprise could return and sort things out. Just me?


The Garden of Zephrem.

Of course the Companion disappears, and then shortly after a completely healed Hedford appears, restored by the Companion who has now occupied her body. Hedford walks towards Cochrane and explains with the Companion's voice that if not for the alien's intervention, Hedford would have ceased, but now they coexist inside her body and are both there, and are both in love with Cochrane. Cochrane instantly gets over his xenophobia now that his lover has a female body, and they decide to stay on the asteroid and live happily ever after together. Oh yeah, and by possessing Hedford's body, the Companion gave up her immortality and Cochrane's with it, and also she can't leave the asteroid because it's the source of her life force, so they are actually stuck there for the rest of their lives. But now they can spend the next 100 years planting fig trees and having sex, so it all works out.

And what about the intergalactic war that Hedford was supposed to stop? Well, in the words of Captain Kirk, "I'm sure the Federation will find some woman, somewhere to stop it."

This episode was so frustrating because it started with so much promise, and then failed in every regard at the ending. I was intrigued to see how they would handle the psyche of a 200-year-old man, and also the relationship between a human and a non-humanoid alien. The writer and Glenn Corbett's performance did neither of these subjects justice. Shatner's performance was particularly stilted, to the point where I had trouble following what he was saying at many points. The pacing started off sharp, but began to meander as the characters made stupider and stupider decisions, and the focus jumped to fun but unnecessary scenes on the Enterprise. But what bothers me most of all is the tragedy of Hedford's character framed as a happy ending.


Not necessarily a happy ending.

The companion speaks for Hedford at the end, and while it claims that both of them are there in consciousness, there is no evidence to justify it. All of Hedford's personality, her tenacity, her drive to complete her duty, and her anxiousness to return to her very pressing work, are gone after she is possessed. Presumably, she really did die on that asteroid, and all that remains are her body and her memories, which the companion takes advantage of to its own end. Or perhaps more horrifyingly, Hedford is still there, but so overpowered by the Companion that she is imprisoned in her own body, doomed to be the slave of this alien and its lover.

I can only hope that this type of story is a fluke, and will not become a standard for Star Trek.

Two stars.


by Joe Reid

Who’s Fooling Who?

It is often the case that at the end of an episode you are left with all of the answers to the questions that were posed in the show and a reasonable conclusion to the adventure of the week.  The intelligent heroes are drawn to a place.  In that place they discover a mystery.  They use the powers and abilities at their disposal to solve that mystery and are rewarded.  The rewards are treasure, or freedom, or their own safety, or that of the ship.  It’s been a reliable formula that I’ve never had reason to doubt, until this week’s episode.

We never doubt what we have seen, because Kirk and Spock directly tell us exactly what is or has happened.  In “Mirror, Mirror”, Kirk told us that the crew has traveled to a parallel universe.  In “The Changeling”, Spock told us the origins of the space robot named Nomad.  “The Doomsday Machine” had Kirk telling us that the giant space funnel was an ancient planet killing weapon that got out of control and destroyed its creators.  How in space did he know that?  More importantly, what if Kirk was wrong in some of his musings?

We ascribe superior intelligence to characters in sci-fi: they are smarter than us, and smarter than whatever baddy they face.  What if this time, instead of our heroes understanding, and outsmarting the baddy, it was the creature who outsmarted the members of the crew?


One smart lady.

“Metamorphosis” featured a powerful entity.  “The Companion” finds an 87-year-old man, Zefram Cochrane, who may or may not have been dead when she found him.  She rejuvenates him to the prime of youthful manhood, feeds him, and keeps him from going insane for 150 years.  She communicates with him in a physical way, enmeshing herself among his very cells.  She must have been pretty advanced to do that.

When the Companion discovered that “the man”, Cochrane, needed female companionship, she reached millions of miles into space and located a vessel containing a dying human woman which would provide the means for her to personally meet the needs of the man.  She grabbed the moving shuttle craft, and by power of force drew it several millions of miles to be stranded on her little asteroid.  If that wasn’t powerful enough, when the Enterprise started to search for the lost shuttle, they discovered a trail from the shuttle to follow.  The Companion, millions of miles away, made the trail vanish.  This creature possessed the ability to manipulate living and inanimate matter on a cellular level from a vast distance. 

As our heroes attempted to communicate with the companion, we thought we were shown a creature that demonstrated the intelligence of a child in her understanding of humans.  A creature that they had to guide to an understanding of humanity using their superior intellect.  What we really saw was a creature so smart that it guided the heroes down a path where they felt accomplished, but it met its own agenda.  All without threatening the Enterprise or killing anyone.

In the end the Companion was able to convince a 230 year old man to love her, everyone else that she was not a threat, and she convinced a dying, love-starved woman to allow her to possess her body.  This episode posed a challenge to the assumption that we understand the story as it is portrayed on the screen.  “Metamorphosis” gave me the satisfaction of doubt at the conclusion.  I liked it.

Four stars.

Boring Sex(es)


by Jessica Dickinson Goodman

As I watched "Metamorphosis," I found myself thinking of fig wasps. In my evenings and weekends, I run a small community garden on a church campus; a volunteer fig tree grows long and tall between the fence and the tool shed. When Mr. Cochrane mentioned wanting to plant a fig tree, I figured he was referencing this line:

"But they shall sit every man under
his vine and under his fig-tree;
And none shall make them afraid;"
(Micah 4:4, Tanakh, New Jewish Publication Society of America; a similar quote can be found in 2 Kings 18:31-32 Christian Bible, Revised Standard Version)

The thing about fig trees is they require pollinators. Trees can't ask other trees on dates – or kidnap them for 150 years to flirt with them in incomprehensible energy being ways – so they rely on wind or other species for reproduction. Many trees are self-fertile, meaning the adventuring pollinator need only traipse from one blossom to the next on the same branch, finding different reproductive parts at every turn in a complex mosaic. A few dioecious trees segregate these roles tree-by-tree, but most are self-fertile and don't break into easy categories like "male" or "female."

In general I find, the more I know about plants and pollinators, the less concepts like "male" and "female" mean anything at all.


"Yes. The matter of gender could change the entire situation."

Take figs, as Mr. Cochrane so clearly wants to. Figs can only be pollinated by a tiny wasp who crawls through their fleshy outsides to get to tiny flowers inside, sometimes ripping its wings off in the exercise because the fit is so tight, and spreading pollen as it goes. You see, the fruity flesh we love to eat on toast or in jams is not actually a fruit, botanically speaking, but mushy flowers. The wasp repeats this journey from flower to flower until, exhausted, it lays its eggs and dies inside the fig, to be consumed by those flowers. One portion of the baby wasps – once they metamorphosize from eggs to adults and mate with their own siblings – will live and die without ever leaving that fruit, spending their entire lives carving tunnels for the other portion to escape and continue the cycle.

I don't know about you, but very little of the above sounds like human sex to me, whether the act or the category.


"The idea of male and female are universal constants."  Really?

Still, human scientists often slap labels like "female" on the wasps that climb into figs and "male" onto those who never leave them. They even do so for other pollinators for whose societies those categories fit even less well, like European honeybees, who have at least three clear reproductive roles, and for whom scientists have weirdly assigned "male" to two of (drones and workers) and "female" to the third (queen). The nature I work with every day is vastly more creative and varied than "male" and "female" – a fact which Jewish scholars know well, as the Talmud references up to eight sexes (zachar, nekevah, androgynos, tumtum, aylonit hamah, aylonit adam, saris hamah, and saris adam).

What about an alien society with three sexes, or eight, or none at all, or one who relies on star-blown space ships for their own reproduction? What if Hedford's death had been framed as part of the life-cycle needs of the energy being and not the pale nothing it was?

Now that is science fiction I would love to watch.

As Lorelei points out, this episode had so much promise. While I don't expect television writers to love the complex realities of Earth's natural world in the way that most gardeners do, I do expect them to do even the most basic of research about the world we all share every day, rather than slapping labels on alien life in ways that limit our imaginations rather than expanding them.

Two stars.

The next episode of Trek is tomorrow! Apparently, we're going to meet Spock's parents…

Come join us!



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Movies

[June 24, 1967] Oh no, not again!  (The James Bond movie, You Only Live Twice)

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Join us today, June 25, at 11:45 AM Pacific (2:45 Eastern) to see the very first, round-the-world broadcast: "Our World", featuring the premiere performance of the Beatles song, "All You Need is Love" (and a whole lot more!)


by Lorelei Marcus

My father and I took a trip to downtown Escondido last Friday to stroll and see the sights. Our first destination was the public library, a pleasant establishment my family visits often. That day, however, we were there for more than just books.


The Escondido Public Library

You see, Escondido is an old town for California, dating back to the previous century. While the sleek Main Street with its boutiques and shops is grand and all, father and I, travelers that we are, were out to discover some history. We made our way to the back corner of the library, full of dusty filing cabinets and drawers, and began rummaging through stores of old maps, newspaper clippings, and photographs in search of adventure. Soon after a kindly librarian came up to us and explained that there was a historical district just down the street. With a sheepish 'thank you' and 'farewell', we left to pursue the lead.

The expedition was a success. We saw a number of buildings from the twenties and before. The nearly Victorian architectures contrasted interestingly with some of the newer sites, including a very modern house of worship built just two years ago.


Escondido School District office building


In front of the Christian Science church


The brand new Methodist church


The El Plantio plant store!


Among the plants.


Lasagna break!


Modern works of art

The trip made me appreciate a little more the wonderful beauty of old things, and the amazing persistence of art, as we continue to remember and admire things long after their creation.

Fool me Thrice…

This week I watched the newest Bond film, You Only Live Twice , at its premiere. I can only hope that the philosophy of art preservation and adulation does not apply to this film in years to come.

I didn't have high hopes for the movie, particularly after the disaster that was Goldfinger (and previously, From Russia with Love). Yet with the setting being Japan, and our last trip several years behind us, the propect was too good to refuse.

And now there are two hours of my life that I'll never get back.

I will concede You Only Live Twice is the best of the Bond films (at least the ones I've seen), and I mean no disrespect to Roald Dahl who adapted the screenplay. However, the story takes some real squinting to hang together properly, and occasionally the only solution is to close your eyes altogether. Allow me to explain:


And pay attention.

Imagine it's 1966, the midst of the Cold War, and your goal is to get Russia and America to go to war with each other. You have a large budget and a small army of expendable workers. What are a few ways you might get the two superpowers to turn things hot? Do you have an idea in your head? Maybe two or three? Alright, now I'll tell you how Spectre decided to do it.

Step one: Design and construct a spacecraft capable of upright takeoff and landing (something which no nation in the world has ever managed), and large enough to contain another spacecraft.


It goes up and down. Spectre would make more selling this design to the highest bidder.

Step two: Construct an underground facility/launchpad to house said spacecraft.


Complete with Disneyland monorial.

Step three: Launch the spacecraft during American and Russian space shots, align the craft with other ships in orbit, and use the Spectre ship to retrieve American or Russian crafts in overly dramatic fashion.


Reusing Cronkite's Gemini simulation set, apparently.

Step four: Keep the astronauts as prisoners, not to interrogate or hold for ransom, or anything really. Maybe they make nice pets?


New pets for Spectre.


Spectre's current pet.

Step five: America and Russia blame each other for the stolen spaceships and go to war.


At a special session of the Security Council, both the U.S. and U.S.S.R. blame the U.K. for its lousy film franchise.

How simple! And elegant! And economically efficient! I can't think of a single thing that could go wrong!

I think I've made my point here, so let's move on.

Plots in the Hole

Spectre, with the priority of theatrics over efficiency, go through with their evil plan. MI6 tracks that the shots are coming from Japan and send their 'best man' for the job, James Bond himself. On his arrival, Bond has a run in with the charming Aki (Akiko Wakabayashi), who turns out to be the assistant of Tiger Tanaka (Tetsuro Tamba), leader of Japan's spy organization. One thing this movie does do right is having an ensemble of likable characters. James Bond is an insufferable character as it is, and Sean Connery is particularly weak in the role. The charisma of his co-stars alone was what kept me invested through most of the movie.


Wakabayashi and Tamba try once more to explain the script to Connery.

Of course Aki is killed off halfway through, just to make sure my opinion of the film doesn't get too high. She is replaced by a pretty girl from a fishing village who poses as James Bond's wife. Her special skills include having the personality of a cardboard sheet, and being able to hike an entire mountain in a bikini.


Talent!

But when Bond isn't throwing himself at anything with breasts and legs, he's taking credit for other people's work in saving the world. After he infiltrates Spectre's super secret volcano base, Bond gets captured trying to pose as one of their astronauts. Luckily, his friend Tiger shows up with an army of one hundred ninjas to rescue him and take Spectre down.


Ninjas!

An intense battle ensues, and Bond manages to press the self-destruct button for the Spectre spacecraft just in the nick of time. (That is, when it's right next to the Gemini spaceship in orbit. I'm sure that explosion will have no repercussions.) The day is saved, Spectre's plan foiled, etc., etc. Hooray.


"Houston! Something just hit us in the….[crackle]"

I can only imagine the masterpiece this could have been if it weren't a James Bond movie. The cinematography and special effects were both phenomenally gorgeous. The music was good, the setting was fun (and to some degree familiar), and most of the acting was good, too. For the first half I actually felt like I was watching a fairly interesting spy flick, despite its star.


The scenery didn't hurt, either.

But then it stumbled and fell into the pitfalls of the franchise. So long as Bond remains a womanizer whom every pretty girl falls for (despite his incompetence and frankly, ugliness); so long as death has no consequence and people are killed for cheap drama left and right; so long as the villains and their plots make no sense whatsoever and should fall apart the second they're set in motion; so long as all of these things remain staples of the James Bond tradition, I doubt I will ever appreciate a James Bond movie.

But perhaps just as the bright colors on the sophisticated Escondido houses were once seen as gaudy, this film will rise from the ashes as a historical classic for the ages. Or maybe it's just schlock. Only time will tell.

Out of all the Bond movies, three stars. Out of all the media I've ever seen, two stars, one for Tiger and one for Aki.



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Fashion, music, politics, sports

[May 8, 1967] The Old and the New: Did Success Spoil Tony Randall?

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by Lorelei Marcus

It’s happened. They said it never would, but it’s finally happened. I’ve fallen out of love with Tony Randall.

Now before, dear reader, you careen away in horror and begin searching frantically for what blasphemous thing he could have done to cause this, I’ll simply tell you. Nothing. Tony Randall is the most considerate, chivalrous, and kind man alive, and virtuous…and married. While he is perfect, he is also perfectly happy with his wife, and may perhaps never even know my name. An unrequited love can only burn for so long before it must sleep in somber acceptance.

And so, the day has come for that to pass. But do not weep, dear reader, for I am not here to tell a sad tale of love lost, but rather to send off these two good years with a short trip through his movies and my memories of why I fell in love. Welcome to my farewell letter to Tony Randall.

The Beginning:

My first exposure to Tony Randall was in The Seven Faces of Doctor Lao. Ironically enough, thanks to his immense acting ability and an impressive makeup department, I only saw his seven characters, but never his actual face. I had respect for his name, but that was about all. Until, of course, I saw him on the game show ‘Password’ the next week. That was the real him, and oh boy was he incredible. He won four games in a row, (unheard of!) and he used words I’d never known existed. And so, the seeds of love were sown.

From then on I vowed to watch everything Randall has ever been in and will be in, a blessing and a curse. While Dr. Lao was an unusual set of roles, I particularly admired Randall as Lao himself, and the wise, leading persona he put on. I began searching for movies with him in that handsome leading role, and was sorely disappointed. Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?, Brass Bottle, and Fluffy may have all had his name in the title cards, but that didn’t save them from being fairly awful movies. Worse yet, in all of them plays a type: an ineffectual, weak, neurotic man. They could not have been further from the man underneath the act, the one I was searching for.

Until now. Perhaps I was able to move on partially from the closure Bang! Bang! You’re Dead, Randall’s most recent film, gave me. Since Dr. Lao, this movie is everything I’ve been looking for and more.

Bang! Bang! You’re Dead, or Our Man in Marrakesh, as it’s known in England (and what I will refer to the film as from here on out because I like the title better), is a spy farce directed by Don Sharp and written by Peter Yeldham. It stars an ensemble cast with some big names, including Senta Berger, Herbert Lom, and Terry-Thomas. The advertising for the film is horribly misleading; don’t be fooled by the posters of Tony Randall crawling awkwardly through a bikini-clad woman’s legs. The plot and its handling of both Randall’s and its female characters is very nuanced and sophisticated.

Speaking of plot, here’s what the movie is about. A powerful syndicate leader is trying to make a deal to fix votes in the United Nations. The last step to his plan is to make contact with a courier carrying two million dollars, one of six people on the bus from Casablanca. The only problem is at least three of them fit the bill for his contact, and he doesn’t know which one it is.

Randall plays unassuming Andrew Jessel, who gets accidentally roped into this mess when he finds a dead man in his closet. With the aid of a mysterious, beautiful woman who can’t tell the truth to save her life, and the natives of Marrakesh, he must unravel the truth and stop the syndicate before the contact is made—or die trying.

The film is a wonderful balance of poking fun at the absurdities of the spy genre and utilizing them in serious and satisfying ways. It is complex, with characters and problems that are not strictly black and white. It has action and romance, but in believable forms that make the movie feel grounded in reality despite its farcical nature. But most of all, it gives an opportunity for Randall to play the leading man I always knew he was capable of. He’s not suave and cocky like James Bond, nor cool-headed and calculating like John Drake. He’s no spy, at least at the start, but he is clever, confident, and competent, and that’s the kind of main character I like to see. Perhaps even the kind I can fall in love with.

The End:

Tony Randall, the perfect man, in the perfect role. How can one not love him? Well, sadly, Our Man in Marrakesh is the exception, not the rule. He’s played quite a few nebbish side characters in all of the Doris Day/Rock Hudson movies, and that bizarre romp Island of Love.

That trend began in his first film role, Oh Men, Oh Women!, which, ironically, has been the final movie of Randall’s I’ve seen. In it he plays Grant Cobbler, a neurotic nutcase dogmatically chasing a man’s fiancee. While he plays the role excellently (I would expect nothing less), the experience of watching him applies neatly to the rest of the movie as well: tedious bouts of discomfort with the occasional flash of hilarity. The plot is fairly convoluted, but generally it follows the strife in two marriages and how it’s resolved. As I mentioned before, not particularly pleasant to watch.

I think this film was the nail in the coffin for my dwindling feelings. It cemented that the roles Randall plays are so far from his true self, and yet are the only format I will ever be allowed to see him in. I don’t want to live from movie to movie, game show to game show, hoping and longing for the hint of a glance at the man underneath the mask. I fell in love with the man, not the character, and that is possibly the hardest truth of all. For among his many, many talents, Tony Randall, at his core, is an actor.

The Beginning (Again):

I once heard that to love someone is to want what is best for them, even when it hurts you. I wish only success for Tony Randall, and I will continue to support and respect him as an actor. I think it is only fitting to begin this new relationship with objective ratings of the two movies I’ve reviewed here, just as I would do in any other article.

Our Man in Marrakesh gets five stars; it brilliantly executes everything it tries to do. Truly the “Russians are Coming” of spy films. I would love this movie regardless of who was in the leading role. Go watch it while it’s out in theaters.

Oh Men, Oh Women! gets two stars. This movie did not translate from a stage setting to a film one very well. I’m still trying to figure out what the point of it was. Go see Our Man in Marrakesh twice before you consider watching this movie.

And so, it ends as it begins, without him.

Farewell, dear Tony. Thank you for everything.



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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[January 18, 1967] Temper tantrum (Star Trek: "The Squire of Gothos")

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by Lorelei Marcus

The incomprehensible versus the inconceivable

Alright, I admit it.  My love affair with Star Trek is on the rocks.  I think what hurts the most is that I wanted to love this show.  Everything was stacked in favor of a whirlwind romance: A science fiction premise, a multi-racial cast, serious plot lines, and a high budget.  But ultimately, there's one fatal flaw standing between me and complete commitment.

I can't stand fluffy science fiction.

In other words, I like stories about complex futuristic societies, spaceships, aliens, and wild scientific discoveries, as long as there's some explanation to how it all works!  Books like The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, World of Ptavvs, and Earthblood, to name a few, have given me that satisfying extra layer of realistic depth that I love.  And Star Trek…hasn't.

Sure, there are hints about the operation of a larger universe, and crumbs of detail about how certain technologies work, but for the most part, strange happenings are explained away as "psionic powers" or "extremely advanced technology"

"Shore Leave" was particularly egregious.  The crew stumbled about the whole episode while a third party is teased in the background as being the orchestrators of the situation with the use of some interesting technology.  In the end, we do not meet this third party, but of course, their machines are "beyond human comprehension" and we get no further explanations or analysis of this entirely new alien race.

With all this being said, you may be surprised to find that I did love the most recent episode of Star Trek, "The Squire of Gothos", a story that features psionic powers, hyper-advanced technologies, and not much explanation about how any of it works.

This is entirely due to the subtle difference between the inconceivable and the incomprehensible.  I will explain in a moment.  But first, a summary for those who missed it:

Cruising across a star desert, the Enterprise happens upon an unexpected planet.  Before they can investigate, Captain Kirk and Mr. Sulu disappear from the bridge.  After a quick scan from the ship's sensors, it is determined that the planet's atmosphere is toxic, composed largely of methane, and unbearably hot–normally uninhabitable by human life.  Mr. Spock decides to beam down a party anyway.  I really appreciated this first scene, because it sets up the mystery of Gothos well, and also throws in actual scientific detail.  It also addresses that commanding officers shouldn't be assigned to landing parties (a problem this show has had numerous times).  Spock refuses Scotty's request to be sent down with the party, and he, of course, stays on the ship as well.  Little things, but important ones.


Scotty makes an admirable but inadvisable request to search for the Captain

The landing party quickly groups up with Kirk and Sulu in an 1800's-style house (finally a set other than foam rocks!), which resides in a small portion of the planet with an Earthlike climate.  The entity behind this anomaly presents himself as retired General Trelane (William Campbell), a man in ancient garb who speaks in archaic idiom.  Trelane has been studying Earth from afar, but as one crewmember points out, his information is 900 years out of date–the time it would take light to reach Gothos.  Yet another scientific detail that crucially adds to the story and also, happily, allows us to extrapolate that Star Trek takes place sometime in the 28th Century. [The events of "Miri" suggest Star Trek occurs in the 23rd Century.  Someday they'll get it straight… (ed.)]

Kirk, disgruntled at being taken from his ship by force, demands to be sent back with his crew, but Trelane ignores this request entirely, continuing to play with them.  Thus ensues a long game of cat-and-mouse with Kirk leaving and returning to Gothos three times in the course of the episode.  The Enterprise seems to escape twice only for Trelane's power to prove overwhelming.  Even when they destroy what seems to be the source of Trelane's ability to convert energy to matter and back again, the Squire ensnares them. 

Hoping to at least save his ship, Kirk agrees to a one-on-one game of Hunt with Trelane, so long as he promises to free the Enterprise in return.  Trelane agrees, though at the point of victory, he announces his plans to renege.  With his sword pointed at Kirk, two heavenly beings shimmer into existence to reprieve the captain and reprove their…son?


"Oh hi, mom, dad."

Trelane's posh demeanor falls away, and it is revealed that he is actually much younger than we initially thought (in maturity, at least).  It's a twist, I'll admit, I did not see coming, and which reframed the entire episode.  This is one of the few I'd like to catch in summer reruns knowing what I know now.

So what makes this episode so great?  As hinted at before, it's the little things.  Here's one: when Trelane first meets the landing party, he extrapolates their extractions by their last names and greets them with stereotypes of their nationalities.  When he bows to Sulu, the helmsman scoffs, "You gotta be kidding."  (We all know Sulu is French.  Just watch "Naked Time").  I also appreciated that, when Trelane bows condescendingly to Sulu again later on, it's his fellow (white) crewman that angrily attacks the Squire.  I appreciated that, in the future, racism is both ridiculous and not tolerated–by its targets nor their allies.  The only other show where I've seen this kind of progressiveness is I, Spy, another Desilu production.


DeSalle won't stand for Trelane's bigotry.

Beyond this, this episode never failed to surprise me.  First Spock uses rational thinking to extract the landing party.  Then, when he and his team are captured again, Kirk uses deductive reasoning to determine that Trelane is not infallible, and that his power must be coming from a machine, not the Squire himself.  He maneuvers the situation such that he can destroy it and thus makes an escape.  In any other story, this would have been the end of it.  The hero outsmarts the villain and saves the day.  But Kirk's guess is wrong, or at least incomplete.  In the end, he is saved seemingly by chance alone (though it does seem Trelane's "parents" may have been monitoring their little brat.)

I think it is this twist of orthodox storytelling that gets to the heart of my point.  In most other episodes, the enemy is "inconceivable".  We are told that their powers or their technology is beyond our understanding and there is nothing to be done about it.  In "The Squire of Gothos", we are shown that while some of Trelane's powers can be reasoned at, they are "incomprehensible"; we still cannot understand them enough to defeat him by human means alone.  Paul Schneider, the screenwriter for this episode [and also "Balance of Terror" (ed.)], gives us just enough details to make Trelane believable, even if he is unbeatable.  That's good writing and good science fiction.

I give this episode 4.5 stars.  There are a few flaws, mainly in the drawn-out ending, which also misses an opportunity to expand on the alien race.  There are logical inconsistencies: Trelane doesn't know what food tastes like, but he knows what music sounds like.  Still, I enjoyed it, from the acting to the costumes.  It has restored my faith in Roddenbery's show just a little longer.

Perhaps there is still a chance for my romance with Star Trek after all.


by Gideon Marcus

All the old, familiar faces

I'm still trying to parse my thoughts about this latest outing of the good ship Enterprise.  In many ways, it feels like a patchwork of things I've seen before.  Kirk and crew finding an uninhabitable world, with a terrestrial habitat set up by an enticing but ultimately deadly alien menace, calls to mind Uranus in The Seventh Planet.  The improbable, out-of-time nature of the villain (and good on Trek for landing a guest appearance by Liberace!) seemed straight out of a Lost in Space episode.  The moody cinematography, somehow lending an objectively goofy episode more gravitas than any outing of Nelson's Seaview, as well as the revelation of Trelane's true nature, felt very Serling-esque to me.  And, of course, the Squire of Gothos ("Bothos" according to my paper) appears to be a close cousin of Charlie Evans, who the Enterprise team met in "Charlie X"."


Liberace's latest tour: The Sahara, the Hollywood Palace, and Gothos!

I did feel Kirk could have been more diplomatic at the beginning (his job is to seek out new life and new civilizations), and Trelane's ranting at the end was about twice as long as it needed to be.  It's an episode that shouldn't work, but the professionalism of the Starfleet officers, as well as the actors playing them, sees it through.  And the planet, as seen from orbit, was stunning.  As one 'zine lettercol writer noted, it's like something Chesley Bonestell might have painted.

Three stars.


by Elijah Sauder

Through the eyes of a child

"The Squire of Gothos" explores an interesting concept: how the human species looks to an outside observer. In "Gothos", we see humans (and a human/Vulcan hybrid) through the eyes of a super advanced immature child. I feel this idea could be explored in greater depth.

If there were something, living or otherwise, that could observe us, what would their thoughts of our civilization be? Would it focus on the outward facing, publicly praised bravado and gregarious exploits of our luminaries and stars, or would it take notice of the simple home life? Would it, as the episode suggests, focus on the military exploits and gallant behaviors of the famous members of our species, or would it become fascinated with the social, educational, and working life of the general populace? We may never, nay probably will never know; however, I feel inclined to side with the writers of this episode in that they (this hypothetical super advanced thing) would focus on the glamor and intrigue of the people who have made names for themselves. Maybe that is my humanity talking, but it is what makes the most sense to me.

To me, the introduction of this idea alone is one of this episode's saving graces–I was not partial to the conclusion of the episode, which focused on the immaturity of the antagonist of the episode. As a whole, I feel this episode scores 2.5 out of 5.

Again? That Trick Never Works


by Erica Frank

While Trelane's appearance and setting were unique, I had the distinct feeling we'd met him before… several times. Star Trek keeps revisiting the plot, "someone with godlike powers decides that the crew of the Enterprise is a set of living toys for them to play with; no amount of force or reason can change his mind; instead, a combination of luck and deus ex machina interventions saves the day."

I will set aside, for the moment, the nonsensical background of this episode–an alien who studied humans enough to create a historical house complete with ancient weaponry, but failed to notice that peaceful exploration missions exist. Perhaps Trelane truly is that oblivious, or perhaps he understands that war isn't what humanity is about–but it's what interests him, so he's going to pretend all humans he meets are warriors.

However, I'm growing very tired of near-omnipotent aliens (or humans with alien powers) who somehow have the manners of a bratty five-year-old who's been told he's not getting ice cream after dinner. The recurring message of "with great power comes great vice and great pettiness" is really starting to annoy me. I'd like to believe the future, alien worlds, and exotic technology can bring out the best in people, not just their worst. But aside from that–it makes for a boring story.

We've seen "powerful person decides to ignore both law and local customs, and lacks any shred of empathy" several times: in "Charlie X," in "Where No Man Has Gone Before," in "Dagger of the Mind," and in "What Are Little Girls Made Of?" None of those are bad stories in themselves… but that's almost a third of the show taken up with minor twists on the same theme: "Absolute power corrupts absolutely."

I do hope Star Trek starts showing more variety in its super-powered beings. The alien in "Shore Leave" was a nice start; I'd like to see more like him. I'd like to see less like Trelane, who reminded me of Eros from Plan 9 from Outer Space–I almost expected him to start yelling "Stupid!" at Kirk for not sharing his love for war history.

One and a half stars. Kirk got into a sword fight and didn't even get his shirt ripped.

Diplomacy, Even When It’s Hard


by Jessica Dickinson Goodman

I wanted to dive into one small, but I think important part of this episode: Captain Kirk’s complex commitment to peace. We’ve seen an odd mish-mash of military and scientific hierarchies on the Enterprise that don’t clearly mesh with any modern civilian or martial system I’m familiar with. My current best guess is that whatever broader organization built the Enterprise and manages the vast resources necessary to maintain her and her crew is similar in structure to something like the U.S. State Department, with Foreign Service Officers who hold titles directly equivalent to military ranks, or the U.S. Public Health Service, whose commissioned medical officers serve in uniform but are not under another branch of the military.

It is clear to me that while the Enterprise may be armed like a warship, its crew does not think of her as one. As Captain Kirk says in this episode: “Our missions are peaceful, not for conquest. When we do battle, it is only because we have no choice.”

Later in the episode, we see Captain Kirk do battle twice precisely because he has no choice. Up until that point, he avoids direct confrontation as consistently as he can, engaging in diplomacy with a being that seems to have no concept of the idea. (Perhaps if Trelane idolized Napoleon a little less and Benjamin Franklin a little more, he would have understood more of Captain Kirk’s strategies).

But while Trelane is ignorant of diplomacy as a method of connection and conflict resolution, Captain Kirk is not naive to the allure of violence. First in the Hamiltonian-duel and then in the sword fight, he eggs Trenlane on, encouraging him to become more violent, particularly towards Kirk’s own person. As he says: “Then vent your anger on me alone.”

One does worry about Captain Kirk’s habit of inviting violence towards himself. It seems that Kirk’s commitment to peace is institutional and systemic, but not necessarily personal. To put it more simply, the Enterprise’s missions may be peaceful, but Kirk won’t always be.

There are significant limits to standing in front of bullets to hope the other person stops shooting. As Erica mentions, the resolution of this episode was a somewhat formulaic deia and deus ex machina, and one wonders what Kirk’s plan was if Trelane’s parents hadn’t removed him. Keep fighting forever? Keep surviving by what Malcom X (citing Frantz Fanon) would call “any means necessary”? One struggles to imagine Captain Kirk just laying down and dying, particularly not if his crew was still in danger. But we don’t really know what his system of ethics is. As Lorelei notes, we just don’t get much more than hints about the broader universe, the broader way of life that Kirk is reacting to or operating under.

A U.S. Consul serving in an embassy abroad has the same rank as Captain in the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Surgeon General is a three-star Admiral, but I would no more expect a Consul to take up arms than a three-star Admiral to write a peace treaty. But I could see Captain Kirk doing both. Trelane was wrong to assume all humans were war-loving, but there does seem to be some room for violence in Captain Kirk’s “peaceful missions,” if only when it is directed at himself.

I’ll be interested to see more of this world as it develops.

Three stars.

We may get a nice glimpse of a larger world in the next episode tomorrow at 8:30 PM (Eastern and Pacific)!

Come join us!



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