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[March 6, 1967] Men On The Moon (Doctor Who: The Moonbase)

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By Jessica Holmes

Hello again, everyone, and boy do I have a fun serial for you this month!

The Doctor and pals have had a bumpy landing on the Moon, arriving at a lunar base in the '70s– the 2070s, that is! However, it soon turns out that things are not quite what they seem at this weather station, and an old foe lurks in the shadows…

Let’s recap and review Kit Pedler’s The Moonbase.

the moonbase from outside

EPISODE ONE

We start off with an absolutely cracking episode full of suspense, mystery and a looming sense of dread.

Following a bumpy landing and a nasty crack on the head for Jamie, the Doctor and company find themselves on a multinational lunar base, soon meeting their leader, Hobson (Patrick Barr). This is the station from which all the world's weather is controlled, but lately things haven't been going well.

There’s a nasty pathogen going around, a rapidly-progressing disease that leaves the victim helpless in a matter of seconds.

The base is expecting a relief doctor from Earth, so it’s pretty handy that our Doctor arrived when he did. Don’t worry, he is a real doctor. He got his medical degree from Joseph Lister himself back in the 1880s. I daresay medical science has progressed since then.

However, there may be more to this disease than meets the eye. In the storeroom, one of the base’s scientists notices signs of tampering and hears the approach of footsteps…and a familiar shadow appears on the wall.

Could it be?

shadow of a cyberman

While attending to Jamie in the sickbay, the Doctor and Polly bear witness to the last words of the base’s doctor, who screams something about a silver hand before dropping dead.

The Doctor runs off to tell the others, and the familiar silhouette appears again. Though Polly screams for help, it’s gone before anyone else arrives.

The group goes to examine the body, but to their surprise upon pulling back the sheet they find only a few large bags of sugar.

There’s a body snatcher on the loose!

The base staff still have a job to do preventing a hurricane smashing up half the world’s coastlines, so they leave Polly alone with Jamie again. Delirious, Jamie asks Polly to fetch him some water. No prizes for guessing what happens while she’s out of the room. It's almost like a pantomime! A really, really creepy pantomime, that is.

All together now: He's behiiiind you!

The silhouette appears once more, and we finally see what it belongs to. Did you guess right?

The design is a little different now, admittedly. A tad more high-budget, but no less unsettling. Where there was once fabric, the face is now smooth metal, the plastic casing on the chest a little less bulky, but there’s no mistaking those handles.

It’s a Cyberman.

Cyberman

EPISODE TWO

The Cyberman inspects Jamie before moving on and dragging one of the other patients off. Polly catches him leaving, and immediately tells the Doctor what she saw. He believes her, but Hobson doesn't, beginning to grow suspicious of the newcomers. He gives them 24 hours to solve this mystery, or get off his base. The Doctor gets to work, his demeanour much more serious than it has been of late. It's a little jarring!

Unfortunately, this episode is a bit of a drag, with much of its runtime eaten up by the base’s efforts to control a hurricane on Earth using a device called a Gravitron. The Gravitron will be important later, but that doesn’t mean it makes for interesting television right now. Still, it is somewhat amusing to watch everyone try to get on with their work while the Doctor goes around stealing people’s shoes for analysis.

Suspecting that it may have been sabotaged, two of the men on base head out to inspect the Gravitron, only to run afoul of a pair of Cybermen. Just how many of these things are lurking about?!

a cyberman approaches jamie

The body-snatching Cyberman comes back again while Polly attends to Jamie, knocking the pair out before absconding with yet another patient. Having had enough, Hobson accuses the Doctor of being behind all this sabotage, sending him into full pacification mode. He pretends to have found something, and Polly makes everyone coffee in an attempt to smooth things over.

It mollifies Hobson, but only for a moment, as one of the men suddenly collapses, his skin developing the tell-tale vein-like marks. That’s when the Doctor realises how this pathogen is spreading– it’s in the sugar!

Hand with black vein-like markings

See, this is why I don't sweeten my tea.

More worryingly than a bit of contaminated sugar however, the Doctor has another epiphany. The base has been thoroughly searched for signs of Cyberman incursion…but the sickbay, having been continually occupied, hasn’t.

And that’s when they realise that one of the patients isn’t a patient at all…

the doctor and company look on in horror as they spot a pair of silver shoes underneath the covers of a hospital bed

EPISODE THREE

It turns out that not only do the Cybermen have new faces, they have new voices. The odd sing-song has been replaced by a more straightforwardly robotic monotone, which is interesting, but I don’t find it as unnerving. Perhaps a combination of voice modulation and the uncanny sing-song vocal performance would maximize the terror?

Curiously, like the Daleks, the Cybermen also recognise the Doctor despite his new face. How can they tell it’s still him? Can they see something we can’t? Perhaps he still wears the same cologne.

In the nearby Cyber-ship, the other Cybermen prepare their captives for conversion. It’s all rather ghastly, but we’re spared any gruesome surgical scenes, as the ‘conversion’ appears to only go as far as mind-controlling the captives.

A man with an apparatus on his head and black veiny markings

The Cybermen are kind enough to explain their dastardly plan and their motives. Why do villains always do that? Anyway, they’re going to take control of the Gravitron and use it to wreak havoc on the weather and obliterate everything on Earth’s surface. It’s nothing personal, but life on Earth is a threat to them, so they're eliminating it.

For a bunch of baddies that supposedly don’t feel emotions, I can’t help but think this sounds like they’re scared.

Jamie finally recovers from his head injury, and Ben and Polly discuss how they might beat the Cybermen. Unfortunately this time around they don’t have any handy radioactive material, so they’ll have to get creative. At Jamie’s mention of sprinkling witches with holy water, Polly gets a smart idea. Perhaps a solvent could corrode the boxes of machinery on their chests?

But what solvent to use? After all, there’s lots of different plastics out there and what works on one might not work on another.

In an experiment that absolutely should not be repeated at home, Polly mixes all the solvents she can get her hands on and puts the concoction into spray bottles.

Polly’s Magical Melting Potion:

1 part benzene (fair enough, that’d work on polystyrene)
1 part ether (permeates most plastics but won’t really melt them into goo)
1 part alcohol (Polly doesn’t say which kind, but I’d guess ethanol. Ethanol will degrade certain plastics, but only very slowly)
1 part acetone (probably the most useful solvent in the list)
1 part epoxy-propane (I’m not even sure if this can be used to melt plastic, and I’m not about to buy some and test it out)

Directions:

1. Mix ingredients
2. Put mixture in…plastic…spray bottles. Hmm.

Not only would this not work, I think it might actually be dangerous, and definitely not a good example for children, who might get it into their heads to make their own anti-Cyberman spray.

With that done, Ben and Jamie go off to squirt some Cybermen. Polly’s not invited, because this is MEN'S WORK! Polly does not pay them any mind, of course, and I admire her restraint in not spraying solvent in Ben’s eyes. Jeez, Ben, ever heard of feminism?

jamie, polly and ben with squirty bottles

They burst into the control room and let loose, the Cybermen proving no match for Polly’s concoction. Their death noise is funnier than it should be: ‘wubwubwubwubwub!’ I had a guinea pig who used to make a noise just like that when he ran around on the carpet.

Safe for now, the Doctor and company remove the headpieces from the controlled men and rush them to the medical bay, while the others try to get the Gravitron back under control.

Realising something must have gone wrong, the Cybermen on the ship have a change of plan. The time for subterfuge is over. Now it’s time for an invasion.

A group of cybermen

EPISODE FOUR

Things come to a head in this episode, with plenty of tension (and sometimes stupidity) to go around.

The Cybermen cut off the base’s line of communication with Earth, but those inside the base don’t panic just yet. Having been unable to contact the base, Earth will surely have sent help by now, so all they need to do is sit tight until help arrives.

Sit tight, and maybe keep an eye on the recently mind-controlled men?

…No?

Two cybermen

The Cybermen transmit their control signal again, directing one of their thralls to escape the sickbay and gain access to the Gravitron controls. Somehow, nobody notices as he walks right through the control room and into the Gravitron room, where he knocks out the man on duty and takes the controls. I’m not being funny, but there’s literally a window into the Gravitron room. Does nobody have eyes?!

Our heroes’ joy at seeing the approaching Earth ship is short-lived, as it abruptly turns around and starts accelerating towards the Sun, deflected by the beam from the Gravitron.

Taking things from bad to worse, the Cybermen blast the outer shell of the base with a laser weapon. Air rushes out through the hole, and it’s only with some quick thinking by Hobson that the whole group doesn’t suffocate.

The Doctor hands Polly an oxygen mask

With the mind-controlled thrall now unconscious, the group regains control of the Gravitron.

The Cybermen don’t realise this, however, and find themselves greatly surprised when their next laser blast deflects harmlessly off the Gravitron’s beam.

Now with the upper hand, the Doctor and Hobson disable the Gravitron’s safety controls and point it right at the advancing Cybermen, sending them floating off into the vacuum of space. Let’s hope wherever they land, they land with a crash.

A cyberman floats away

The base gets to work to get the world’s weather back under control, and the Doctor and pals head off, not bothering to say goodbye.

Back in the TARDIS, the Doctor decides to use the time scanner to get an idea of the future, and gets a glimpse of the dish of the day at the nearest seafood restaurant.

Or maybe a space monster.

But my money’s on the lobster.

Final Thoughts

I was a bit surprised to be seeing the Cybermen again so soon, but I’m not complaining. This serial doesn’t really expand on them much or explore their worldview in greater detail, but hopefully we might see some of that in the future.

It's also a little surprising that the Cybermen have been redesigned already, given other recurring enemies like the Daleks have been very consistent in their design. Then again I suppose it does make narrative sense. As their own technology improves, it follows that they would repair or replace outdated components. Still, I hope that the design won't end up completely inhuman. The real horror of the Cybermen is that you can very much recognise that there is a person under all the machinery, so it would be a real shame to lose that.

So, that was the Moonbase! Some jolly exciting stuff, I’m sure you’ll agree. Admittedly the minor characters aren’t very interesting (they’re basically interchangeable, apart from their accents) and there’s a definite lull in the second episode. Still, on the whole it’s very well plotted and tense.

Here's hoping the Cybermen will be back again before too long, and that this streak of fun stories continues!

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars



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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[March 2, 1967] (Star Trek: "A Taste of Armageddon")

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A Cold, Cruel Counting


by Jessica Dickinson Goodman

Most of my friends only experience the war through numbers. Unless they have family on the streets where the bombs are falling, in uniform or not, kill counts reported on the screens in our homes are the only way many people track the war in real-time.

It helps me to remember that TV show writers don't live in a pocket universe, one more far-seeing, wiser than the one in which we all shower and shave and find holes in our socks every day. Unless they are unlucky enough to have participated in the current war, their knowledge of the war comes from those same sources.

The pictures we see on television or in our papers – bombs, bodies, landscapes we've never driven through, leaders speaking languages we do not, propaganda both crudely and delicately crafted – have limited currency. But numbers, kill counts especially, are strangely memorable. We repeat them, over and over, as if these numbers tell us something of what it is like to fight and die on the other side of the world.

Gideon's copy of The World in 1966: History as We Lived It by the Writers, Photographers, and Editors of The Associated Press (Published February 1967) has this to say about the ongoing conflict in Vietnam:

"The allied side lost nearly 14,500 dead during the year, including some 4,800 Americans.  Enemy dead were placed at 50,000, but some officials privately said the figure was inflated."

The war in "A Taste of Armageddon" feels like the product of this numbers-based approach to understanding war. In this writerly extension of bloodlessly reported casualty counts, Captain Kirk and his crew face two entire societies (Eminiar Seven and Vendikar) which conduct their war via computers and then tally up the expected deaths. Living people then march into disintegration chambers to keep their 500 year war's gory score. Those societies have chosen to ensure that:

Anan: […] Our civilization lives. The people die, but our culture goes on.
Kirk: You mean to tell me your people just walk into a disintegration machine when they're told to?
Anan: We have a high consciousness of duty, Captain.

Backing up, Captain Kirk and his crew had been ferrying Ambassador Fox to open up diplomatic relations with Eminiar Seven, who they have little knowledge of. They are warned away, but acting under the Ambassador's orders, they disregard the warnings. It soon comes to light that, by entering orbit around Eminiar Seven, the Eminians and Vendikans now consider the Enterprise as a fair target in their murderously bloodless war games. When Captain Kirk declines to order the crew to transport themselves to the surface to be disintegrated, the leaders of the planet hold him and the rest of the landing party hostage.

There is some clever interplay, personal bravery, voice-faking trickery, stubborn commitment to principals on both sides, a self-sacrificing lady in distress, a self-important diplomat, some cruel things said about diplomats as a category by Mr. Scott ("Diplomats. The best diplomat I know is a fully activated phaser bank"), and finally, a threat of overwhelming force, via the apparently genocidal standing "Order Twenty Four." (I spent much of the episode hoping "Order 24" was an old joke between the Captain and Scotty, but that shoe never dropped, leaving me disturbed as to Starfleet's comfort with destroying sentient life en mass). Eventually, Captain Kirk gains the upper hand and forces the Eminians and Vendikans to the negotiating table, with the following mandate:

Kirk: "I've given you back the horrors of war. The Vendikans now assume that you've broken your agreement and that you're preparing to wage real war with real weapons. They'll want to do the same. Only the next attack they launch will do a lot more than count up numbers in a computer. They'll destroy cities, devastate your planet. You of course will want to retaliate. If I were you, I'd start making bombs. Yes, Councilman, you have a real war on your hands. You can either wage it with real weapons, or you might consider an alternative. Put an end to it. Make peace."


Make Love, not War

Because, despite the callow specimen of a diplomat that Ambassador Fox turns out to be, all wars – computer-run or otherwise – end at the negotiating table. Smart leaders try to get there as soon as possible, because they know the reality that the Eminians and Vendikans did not seem to grasp: every life lost in war is a blow to that culture. Every dead body, bomb explosion, pitted landscape, dead leader, and bit of corrosive propoganda is part of cultural death.

To be clear, I am not against self-defense in war. A proper pacifist, I am not. If I had the option of being drafted, I could not honestly mark myself a conscientious objector because I do believe there are some wars that need fighting; the jacket I wear in my photo was a relative's Plebe jacket from West Point, class of '49 and he is not the only one to serve in my family. But wars of choice are an entirely different matter to me. Those leaders who wake up one morning and decide to send other people's children to die over borders they should not have crossed in the first place are a curse upon our shared world. We have no idea how the war between the Eminians and Venikans began – by choice, by misunderstanding, by cement-shoe treaties, or with one attacking and the other defending. They do not seem to recall the inciting incident either. In the end, like all wars, peace will only come from talking.

And I find myself agreeing with Captain Kirk, wishing more people would know the consequences of war, and not just the counts of it. Perhaps we too would seek peace and hold her more dearly if we did.

Four stars.

A Polite and Gentle War?


by Erica Frank

I'm sure Dr. Leary would have something to say about the psychology of a whole society—two whole planets, in fact—that has indoctrinated its people so well that they politely march off to death when a computer tells them to.

This is exactly the opposite of the Human Be-In that took place in San Francisco last month, with its focus on "Turn on, tune in, drop out." Instead, the Eminians (and, presumably, Vendikans, although we don't meet them) have a whole culture of "Show up, tune out, drop dead."


The Eminians could take a page from our book…

While their society appears peaceful to Kirk and his team, there must be a great deal of turmoil under the surface. It's not easy to get people to just politely walk to their deaths, so their indoctrination must start very young—perhaps in infancy. Otherwise, how could you explain to a six-year-old that Mommy is leaving forever because a computer said she's dead now? Do parents calmly hand over their children to be disintegrated? …Or are children exempt from "war death," and that's one of the "messy" parts of war that their game avoids? Either way, Eminiar must have a booming business in last-minute video recordings left at the disintegration center for loved ones to pick up later.

However, I suspect the people are not so controlled as all that. While some people—like the High Council—might walk quietly to their own deaths for the sake of society, the general populace may not be so compliant.


"All those in favor of marching to your death, please remain seated."

What terrors must their death guardians commit on the populace, to convince millions of people to leave their families to die?

What do anti-war protests on Eminiar look like? Perhaps they hang around the death centers, handing out flyers that say "You Still Live! Reject the Computer and Reclaim Your Life!" Of course, the High Council would have the Enterprise crew believe that nobody protests, that everyone follows orders. But if that's true… why do their guards carry guns?

Eminiar seems to be a technologically advanced society. Surely a society that is at peace except for the cold calculations of the war itself, has little experience with interpersonal violence. But their guards are armed and well-trained. If people go to their deaths without complaint, why would their guards be so combat-ready that they are able to take down Kirk and his team? Who are they trained to fight when Federation agents aren't visiting?

I think we only got to see a tiny slice of Eminian life, filtered through the biases of the council that calmly declares millions of deaths and then makes sure that number comes true. We saw "Ministry of Peace" propaganda, not what life is actually like for most people.

Four stars. The more I think about this episode, the more chilling implications I find.

Mutually Assured Accounting


by Lorelei Marcus

How often can someone confidently say they are living through an historic event?  The kind of world-altering occurrence or period that will go down in the textbooks, that kids will memorize for years to come. 

I think everyone lives through three or four.  I narrowly missed World War II, but the bulk of my life has been spent in the conflict that has succeeded it.  Indeed, this one may be even more global in character than the last, because we all are living in its shadow: The Cold War.

I know the Cold War is a big deal, beyond the news items, the Duck and Cover drills, the Ban the Bomb protests, because it is everywhere in my entertainment.  In songs like Barry MacGuire's Eve of Destruction.  In movies like Dr. Strangelove, Failsafe, On the Beach, Panic in Year Zero.  On the small screen in shows like Twilight Zone and Britain's The War Game.  Books like Alas, Babylon and Farnham's Freehold.

These cautionary tales are so omnipresent that they've almost become cliché.  Sure, we're all afraid of the Bomb.  Using it is clearly senseless.  What else can/need be said?

So you can imagine my surprise (and not a little delight) at Star Trek's complete inversion of this theme with its latest episode, "A Taste of Armageddon".

Rather than the typical structure of two equally matched parties tensely avoiding conflict because of mutually assured destruction, instead the episode plunges us right into a Hot War.  A hot but clean war with no real weapons, but innumerable calculated casualties.


"G-4" "It's a hit!"

To stave off the possibility of total annihilation from an ever-escalating conflict, the two superpowers (planets in this case) chose to guarantee destruction, but only of people.  What a clever, callous twist!  Not only is it a comment on how nations might paradoxically value their existence over their constituents (what is a country if not the people living in it?) but it also highlights that no matter how efficiently one conducts a war, the result is still death and ruin.

The only answer is peace.  Five stars.

Getting to Know You


by Gideon Marcus

My colleagues have done an excellent job discussing the content of the episode, so I just want to note a few nifty things about its production.

One of the things that endears Star Trek to me is its ensemble nature.  This was a particularly balanced episode that saw many of its principals shining (though Uhura still remains underused, and Sulu was absent this week).  I was particularly impressed with Chief Engineer Scott's first televised turn at the helm, at which I thought he did just fine.  It seems a little strange to have the engineers in line for the bridge's center seat, but the "Starfleet" of the "United Federation of Planets" (terms of art we're starting to hear more and more) seems a lot looser on branch distinctions than the U.S. Navy.  Viz. Kevin Riley (is he still around?) moving from Engineering, to Navigation, to Communications–a path Lt. Uhura also seems to have traveled.


"I'll nae lower th' screens!"

This is the second time we've had a special Federation commissioner on board.  While I did not appreciate Mr. Fox most of the time, I do appreciate that the Enterprise is often a courier as well as a scientific vessel and sometimes warship.  The jack-of-all-trades cruiser-like nature of the ship allows for a wide variety of interesting stories.

Joe Pevney has returned to take up the director's megaphone.  He and Marc Daniels appear to have most put their imprimatur on this fledgling show, and they have yet to really disappoint (sometimes scripts let them down, of course).  A name I am seeing more is Gene L. Coon, usually in co-writing credits.  I've seen him all over television, particularly on Laredo, COMBAT!, and Wagon Train.  I'm sure there are others I've missed/forgotten.  Along with his arrival, I'm noticing a minor change in tone.  Trek feels less like an anthology show that happens to have consistent characters, and more like its own entity–a lived-in universe.

I suppose it was inevitable that, as the world of Trek became established, folks not attached to the show would want to become part of the phenomenon, particularly in light of the big "Save Star Trek" campaign we saw at the end of last year.  So it is no surprise that we are seeing our first Trek-specific clubs and even club 'zines.

Trek has been guaranteed at least one more season.  I look forward not only to more great episodes like this one (I give it a solid four stars), but also to learning more about the inhabitants and worlds that populate it!

Something WEIRD is going on. Join us tonight at 8:30 PM (Eastern and Pacific) for what looks like it will be a very strange episode of Star Trek:

Here's the invitation!



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TV

[February 22, 1967] Where some (super)men had gone before (Star Trek's: "Space Seed")

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The Best of Tyrants, The Worst of Tyrants


by Janice L. Newman

Eugenics—the idea that people can be ‘bred’ to emphasize certain desirable traits the way breeders do with animals or botanists do with plants—is an interesting concept in a science fiction setting. So it’s not surprising to encounter an episode of Star Trek built around the concept. What is a little surprising is that the narrative doesn’t do more to condemn either the concept or the practice.

Space Seed begins with the Enterprise finding an ancient Earth vessel with no crew except a group of men and women in cold sleep, their bodies held in stasis. The arrival of the away team triggers the ship, which is suggestively named the “S.S. Botany Bay”, to awaken one of the sleepers.


Sleeping Beauty

After nearly dying during the revival process, the man is brought aboard the Enterprise. He proceeds to threaten Dr. McCoy (who responds with such chutzpah that I think it’s my new favorite scene with him). McCoy neglects to mention the threat to Captain Kirk, who gives “Khan” access to the ship’s libraries and implicit access to his crew. Khan takes full advantage of both, reading up on the ship’s structure and defenses as well as aggressively seducing and manipulating the ship’s historian, Lieutenant Marla McGivers.

Eventually research reveals that “Khan” is “Khan Noonien Singh”, who was, as Mr. Spock says, “From 1992 through 1996, absolute ruler of more than a quarter of your world. From Asia through the Middle East.” Khan and the rest of his crew were the product of eugenics experiments that succeeded in making men and women who were stronger, faster, and smarter than the average human. A group who were, or at least who were raised to think they were, the next Caesars, Alexanders, or Napoleons.

The conversation between Mr. Scott, Doctor McCoy, Captain Kirk, and Mr. Spock that follows this revelation is…odd, to say the least. Scotty admits to a secret admiration for Kahn. Kirk calls him “the best of the tyrants” (WHAT?) Even McCoy notes that there were no wars under him unless others attacked first. Only Mr. Spock expresses shock and repugnance at “this romanticism about a ruthless dictator”. There is some suggestion that the others are teasing Spock, trying to get an emotional reaction out of him, but there’s also a note of sincerity in their words that made me intensely uncomfortable.


"C'mon, Spock.  We're just pulling your ears!  You do have to admit, though, that the Nazis had some spiffy uniforms."

Captain Kirk puts a guard on Khan’s quarters, but Khan easily breaks out and, making use of McGivers, he revives the rest of his own crew and easily takes control of the Enterprise. When he enacts a brutal rule, first suffocating the bridge crew when they refuse to give up the vessel to him, then threatening to kill them one by one unless they work for him, McGivers turns on him and saves Captain Kirk’s life. Together, Kirk and Spock take back the Enterprise.


"Who's the superman now, huh?"

Kirk chooses to leave the “supermen” alone on a harsh planet, to try to carve out a colony of their own. McGivers chooses to go with them. I suspect her life with a group of people who believe that she is too inferior even to be good breeding stock will not be a happy one.

As with several other episodes where an arrogant or violent man has gone after a woman, Khan’s relationship with McGivers isn’t particularly romanticized, which I appreciated. He’s shown to be brutal, controlling, and extremely manipulative, which had the majority of the audience in our group revulsed, shouting to McGivers that he wasn’t worth it.


To be fair, Khan is an excellent hairdresser.

On the other hand, the narrative does romanticize eugenics to a distressing degree. Even the concept that the eugenics experiments were actually successful in breeding a group of superhumans is one that is both scientifically implausible and morally disgusting. The very existence of Kahn and his group within the context of the story says that such experiments are not only possible, but that they could work. But even those with only the most basic understanding of dog breeding, for example, know that emphasizing one trait can often lead to other, undesirable ones. [It might be possible to control "breeding" at the cellular level, as is done in Herbert's The Eyes of Heisenberg; that seems a more plausible explanation (ed.)]

Add to this the fact that most of the leadership of the Enterprise seem enamored of the idea of these faster, stronger, better men and women, with only Mr. Spock being the (derided) voice of reason. Even at the end, Kirk says, “What a waste to put them in a reorientation center.” And so they are explicitly sent to the planet not because they are too dangerous to house on a penal colony, but because it would be a “waste” of their strength and potential to do so. This group repeatedly said they were superior to humans. They were arrogant, cruel, condescending, and incredibly dangerous. Yet it would be a “waste” to try to retrain them and to teach them empathy? Wouldn’t attempting to make them productive members of society who don’t believe that they’re superior to everyone else be a better use of their potential?

Space Seed was a well-made episode, and Ricardo Montalbán was excellent as Khan. But the inclusion of genetically-created “supermen”, and the framing of them as anything other than the tyrants and dictators they were, knocked my rating down a little. I give the episode three and a half stars.

Not My Superman


by Jessica Dickinson Goodman

When Mr. Spock (or any Vulcanian) sees a Romulan, he can safely think, there but for the grace of logic go I. In "Balance of Terror", he describes the relationship between his homeworld and the people of Romulus:

Spock: And if Romulans are an offshoot of my Vulcan blood, and I think this likely, then attack becomes even more imperative.
McCoy: War is never imperative, Mister Spock.
Spock: It is for them, Doctor. Vulcan, like Earth, had its aggressive colonizing period. Savage, even by Earth standards. And if Romulans retain this martial philosophy, then weakness is something we dare not show.


Spock's distant cousins, the ones we don't talk about

Warfaring, brutal, brilliant, manipulative, brave, self-superior, male-dominated – that describes both Khan Noonien Singh's comrades and the Romulans we have met. In both episodes, we had the pleasure of viewing the crew of the Enterprise meeting their match; struggling, failing, and ultimately overcoming the putatively superior foe. Even the temporary betrayal of Dr. McGivers – under deeply disturbing coercion by Singh – resolves when she frees Captain Kirk.


The historian's equivalent of "the Spock pinch"

Perhaps this comparison is why Spock reacts so quickly and so strongly to the maybe-teasing of the crew about Singh and his comrades. As Janice notes, that scene was uncomfortable, particularly when it immediately followed the brutal conversion of Dr. McGivers to Singh's way of thinking. Just as there was no romance in that scene, like Spock and like Janice, I would have preferred less romanticization about the Eugenics Wars.

But where Spock seems secure in his people's relationship to Romulans as well as confident that unmodified humanity is superior to overbred and overweening demi-tyrants, there is an insecurity humming under the interactions between the humans on the ship and Singh's cadre. Perhaps that is why Kirk does not even try to hold them accountable for their violence against the crew of the Enterprise or integrate them into their society.

I prefer Spock's dismissiveness to Kirk's initial admiration; aside from pretty looks, I didn't find much to recommend Singh as a leader or a "superman."


Not my Clark Kent

Since long before Nietzshe set quaking pen down to yellowing paper, a certain style of man has yearned for the emergence of what have been called übermensch, or supermen. One of my favorite innovations of our century has been the re-working of that concept in comic books like Captain America and of course, Superman. In those, sure, the title characters are as Kirk describes "[s]tronger, braver, certainly more ambitious, more daring." But they are made heroic not by those differences of species and medical intervention, but by Steve Roger's commitment to fighting for the little guy, for defending democracy and freedom, and Clark Kent's dedication to doing anonymous good. Values I cannot see Singh being guided by. Likewise, I cannot imagine Clark Kent – who would easily best any of Singh's cohort in a fist fight with his laser eyes blindfolded and one bullet-proof hand tied behind his back – taking over entire continents of people as Singh did in the far-off 1990s.


A real Superman

A humble reporter; an artist and friend. These are the übermensch I grew-up with. Like Spock, I do not see the value in men like Singh.

But I did value the chance to see this corner of future history so thoroughly explored. I hope, if we ever see Singh again, he will be singing a different tune – maybe something about "truth, justice, and the American way."

Four stars.


by Andrea Castaneda

We all love a good villain. They neither ask permission nor forgiveness as they break the rules, challenging the hero in an effortlessly charming way. Khan is such a villain. And in his short time aboard the ship, he was able to seduce, manipulate, and deceive his way into controlling the Enterprise. This feat, combined with Ricardo Montalbán's phenomenal performance, is what made him such a compelling character. In fact, it would appear that his magnetism not only affected the crew, but also the writers themselves. 

There’s a scene midway through the episode that illustrates this point. When we learn this 20th century guest was actually a former tyrant from his original time, Scotty admits– in an almost giddy way– that he admires him on some level. Kirk echoes this, saying he was in fact the best, though he adds it's what makes him dangerous. It’s a very human sentiment. And I think many of us have fantasized about what it is like to relinquish the restraints of civilized society, taking what’s “ours” as we please.

With that said, I was relieved to see Spock’s shock and horror at how his colleagues romanticized the autocrat. A part of me wonders if Leonard Nimoy’s Jewish heritage played a role in how his character reacted. After all, the very real tyrants from our time, who terrorized the world and sought to wipe out the Jewish community, are not ghosts from very long ago.

It seems that with the buffer of time, we as a society tend to sanitize the actions of bad men from yesteryear. We still acknowledge that a man like Attila the Hun was ruthless. Yet we saw Anthony Quinn play him in 1954, alongside the beautiful Sophia Loren, portraying him as an alluring leader and formidable foe against the Romans. Then we have men like Blackbeard, once considered a dreaded and despicable outlaw of the high seas. Yet today, the pirate has been rehabilitated for family consumption, via Disneyland’s upcoming attraction “Pirates of the Caribbean” (opening next month).


The nicer pirate

I’m not trying to be a party pooper and say people aren't allowed to enjoy those things. Nor am I saying villains should be bland and one dimensional. But it does make me wonder if we will treat the villains from our time, such as Adolf Hitler or Joseph Stalin, with the same sanitized view. It’s a paradoxical standard we seem to return to, where we condemn them for their merciless ways, yet admire them all the same for it. As Kirk put it, “We can be against him and admire him all at the same time.” But it’s important to ask ourselves if we’d feel the same way if those very tyrants placed a boot upon our neck, not once letting up.

Despite my philosophical quandaries, I give this episode four stars. It had its imperfections, but it captivated me all the way through. The audience loves a good villain, and Khan is a great one. I only ask, both to the writers and ourselves, do we condemn these men for the harm they’ve caused or condemn them because they– in the end– lost?


by Gideon Marcus

On the Third Hand

Kirk ended "Space Seed" looking awfully generous.  After all, Khan had just tried to turn him inside out in the vacuum chamber, threatened his true love (the Enterprise), and didn't even thank the captain for sharing his limited stock of Windex.  Yet, instead of sending Khan and his troupe of Hollywood Palace acrobats to Tantalus for rehabilitation, or kicking the problem upstairs to Commodores "Mendez or Stone, Kirk exercises his broad authority to maroon the "supermen" on a rude, backwoods planet.


"We've got this bell; we gotta get some use out of it!"

I don't think this was done as a courtesy or an amelioration of sentence, however prettily Kirk puts this to his prisoners.  The fact is, Khan and his people are dangerous.  They can't be killed–there's only one death penalty on the books.  They probably can't be rehabilitated–Khan's nature is clearly deeply ingrained–and given his magnetic effect (on women and men), chances are they'd just launch a revolution from wherever they were stashed.

So Kirk, instead, used his discretion (and McCoy notes that it's a rather extreme interpretation of his powers), to sweep Khan (and McGivers) under the rug where they can't do any harm.  No muss, no fuss!  It's actually rather brilliant.

However much I admire this creative thinking on Kirk's part, I can't say "Space Seed" was my favorite of episodes.  I quickly grew fatigued of Khan and his imperious nature (not helped by seeing Mr. Montalbán just two days later as a heavy on Mission: Impossible).  I enjoyed Mr. Spock and the 1990s history lesson, but beyond that, the episode left me curiously cold.

Three stars.

It looks like Kirk is traveling to modern Babylonia this week. Join us tomorrow at 8:30 PM (Eastern and Pacific),

Here's the invitation!



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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[February 16, 1967] The People's Choice (Star Trek: "Return of the Archons")

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by Gideon Marcus

Last minute reprieve

If you're just an average, everyday stf-loving citizen, you've probably been feeling pretty secure about the new show, Star Trek.  After all, it's leaps and bounds better than any other SFnal show on TV (e.g. Voyage to the Bottom of the Aquarium, It's About Time (this show got canceled), Time Sink, Lost in Spoof, The Invasive, etc.) Surely if Irwin Allen can get his shows renewed, Gene Roddenberry can, right?

Well, maybe not.  Late last year, the fanzines and club meetings were abuzz.  Seems Harlan Ellison had sent out a written plea, letterheaded by more than half a dozen Big Names in the SF screenwriting biz (self-importantly dubbed 'The Committee') begging trufans to write their local stations, NBC, Desilu, the Pope, etc. voicing their support of the show.  Otherwise, it might not finish out the season and certainly won't get renewed.

This call was met mostly with enthusiasm, though there were cynics.  Thousands of letters were sent (one over-enthusiastic fan conjectured the number was "around a million").  It now appears that Trek will run another season after this one is done. 

There is something of a preemptive quality about all of this.  Talking to astute newspaper-clippers and folks in the know, I learned that Trek was greenlit for a full season back in October, before the alarm was sounded.  Now, I don't think it's a bad idea to tell the powers-that-be how much you like a show to make sure it stays on longer than the usual crud, but I worry that this may have been a bit of crying wolf.  If the network really does plan to axe this lovely new SF show in the future, will they take us seriously then?  Tune in next winter, I guess.

An Orgy of Destruction

Speaking of last-minute reprieves, this week's Trek episode, "Return of the Archons", was full of 'em. 

Investigating the loss of the starship Archon decades before, the Enterprise visits Beta 3, an uncharted world.  The episode begins quite effectively with a cold open: Lieutenants Sulu and O'Neill, in Western garb, are being chased through a nameless 19th Century-style city, completely unadorned with signs or other decoration.  Before Sulu can be beamed aboard to safety, he is zapped by goons in monk robes.  Once aboard the ship, the vivacious helmsman is reduced to a grinning imbecile, now one with "the body".

In perhaps the greatest disregard for sense I've yet seen on the show, three of the most senior crew transport down to investigate.  There, they find a world of zombie people, placid, without will.  Except that night is "Festival", an uncommon but periodic occurrence when the muzzle is removed and people give in to their urge to lust and rapine.  All of this, the mindlessness and the maelstrom, is the will of "Landru", some sort of omnipotent, telepathic God.


Landru.

Some of the Betans are resistant to being "absorbed" into the body, however.  They do their best to help Kirk and co., though they fail to prevent Dr. McCoy (who the captain jarringly keeps calling "Doc" rather than "Bones" in this episode) from losing his mind to Landru.  It is determined that this status quo has existed for 6,000 years, a reaction to a period of world-threatening savagery.  Landru was a real fellow who set up this completely (except for Festival) peaceful and static society to save the people of Beta 3.

It worked, but only at the cost of the human soul.  And, as Kirk and Spock correctly guess, only a soulless entity could create such an order: in this case, a computer of Landru's construction.  When directly confronted, the computer quickly gives up the ghost, and Beta 3 is left rudderless.  A team of sociologists (the Enterprise conveniently has them on hand) stays behind to provide better guidance than LANDRUVAC.

My colleagues will discuss the various elements of this episode in subsequent sections so I'll keep my comments narrow.  "Return" is quite a good episode, utilizing existing costumes and sets (for other Desilu shows, presumably) to get more bang for the budget (though if the Enterprise had a panoply of outfits they got from Bonanza, you'd think they'd have them for other eras, too – would have been useful when they visited modern day in Tomorrow is Yesterday! There are inconsistencies and some areas underdeveloped due to lack of time, but the show flows pretty well.


If only they'd had access to this wardrobe in earlier episodes…

There are lots of messages one can divine from "Return", notably the "computer-driven society is bad" message we've gotten a few times before.  Going deeper, particularly tying in with Spock's noting that the peace and tranquility of Beta 3 is that of the factory, the machine, I discern an indictment of Communism.  "From each according to their ability, to each according to their need" sounds like a good idea in theory, but it robs humans of their individual dignity, placing power solely at the venal top.  Landru's projected image, with his robes and cult of personality, calls to mind Mao and Confucius, with inflexible dogma and inescapable "justice".

Such a society clearly cannot stand.  I wonder, however, if simply toppling the big boss and (mostly) leaving the wrecked culture to fend for itself, is the best way to ensure a future of democratic enlightenment.

Four stars.  It's solid entertainment for all its stumbles.

Silicon life?


by Abigail Beaman

If something does not feel, only does what it is told, and shows no creativity, is it alive? That’s what this week's episode titled, "Return of the Archons", was about. A computer-run colony of people with a very stagnant culture that seemed to be more destructive than helpful. This episode, despite having some flaws, is probably one of my favorite episodes, not only because Mr. Spock looks very dashing in his cloak, but because it digs into what makes a human being alive.


Dashing Mr. Spock.

Society, by definition, is the aggregate of people living together in a more or less ordered community, and from what we know, Landru has not allowed the Betans’ society to thrive. Instead, he has allowed it to stay in this linear pattern, which is nothing more than the same routine every day. Well, that is except for one day, of course, during the Festival, where it seems you are allowed to do whatever (and whomever) you want, without Landru's instruction. But why is the culture so stagnant? That’s simply because Landru is a machine.


Our first glimpse of "Landru".

Throughout the episode, it is suggested multiple times that Landru is not human by Mr. Spock, and as someone who isn’t fully human, he should know. And by the end of the episode, Mr. Spock is right but also somewhat wrong. Landru was a human many years ago, but now he no longer exists as a living creature but is instead a computer, who may have his knowledge but not Landru’s wisdom. While Landru tried to save his people from the ruins of war, by having a machine input and output peace and tranquility above all, he created a machine that prohibited all human creativity and advancements. To put it simply, these Betans are not thinking for themselves as they have a machine telling them what to do and probably how to feel non-stop. It’s even stated by Mr. Spock, after Kirk causes the Landru machine to self-destruct:


“They have no guidance. Possibly for the first time in their lives.”

Free will is the basis of all of humanity. Without free will, we are nothing more than just robots. We are nothing more than what Landru was, awaiting the next input from a human. If you cannot think for yourself and rely on someone to tell you what to do, are you truly alive? That point was underscored by the confrontation between Landru and Kirk talked: Landru could ordered its men to kill Kirk or simply stop talking, but instead, Landru allowed Kirk to tell it what to do. Landru does not have free will, therefore relies on someone to tell it what to do.

Yes, a programmed society IS a dead society, for it contains no individuals. It can not grow from human mistakes. It will stay the same, because that is what it is programmed to do. It is programmed to give you the same result each time. A human can never give you the same result all the time, no matter what you tell them.

That’s why, to me this episode kept me thinking, even in the slower parts of the episode. And just for that, I give it my good old rating of 4.5 out of 5 stars.

But also for Mr. Spock in a smock.

Everything Old is New Again


by Janice L. Newman

“Return of the Archons” was a fun episode, but one that doesn’t hold together well if you look at it too closely. I had to wonder if the story was written to make use of sets and costumes Desilu had on-hand. If so, they did a decent job, making the transitions from Western Town to what looked like Castle Dungeon fairly convincing. Plus, it was fun to see the crew dressed in period costume even if, as The Traveler noted, this was inconsistent with prior episodes.

Garb and scenery weren’t the only things we’d encountered before. From music, to actors, to the very theme of the story, all of these were recycled from other episodes.

Setting aside the Enterprise crewmember regulars, at least one of the townspeople appeared in a prior episode: the old man Tamar, who dies at the hands of Landru’s enforcers, appeared as the illusory leader of the colonists in The Cage (or as most people will remember it, The Menagerie). Re-using actors is common practice, of course, but it’s always fun when one can identify someone that’s been seen before.


“Aren't you Vina's father?” “Of course not! Vina's parents are dead…I mean…Vina who?”

As for music, Star Trek commonly reuses themes written for the first few episodes of the show. I thought it particularly cleverly done this time, with the driving ‘encounter with the Fesarius’ music from the The Corbomite Maneuver used to back the violent ‘Festival’ scenes juxtaposed effectively against the eerie, wailing piece that begins with a descending half step that was first introduced in The Cage/The Menagerie (though viewers not privileged to see The Cage may have first encountered it in other episodes). Themes from several other episodes were interwoven throughout, but those two in particular stood out to me as interesting choices. I especially liked that the piece from The Cage, which has usually been used to introduce beautiful women who are viewed through a soft-focus lens, was instead used to underline how oddly the people of the planet were behaving.

And then there’s the thematic recycling. While it’s not a one-to-one match, there are definite resonances between Return of the Archons and What Are Little Girls Made Of?, the episode where Kirk encountered (and ultimately destroyed) multiple androids. Doctor Korby, or at least his android version, had envisioned a society where all people were turned into androids like himself. When confronted, he cried, “I'm the same! A direct transfer. All of me, human, rational, and without a flaw.” Contrast this with computer-Landru’s words: “I am Landru. I am he. All that he was, I am. His experience, his knowledge.” Consider, too, that computer-Landru built a ‘rational’ society of people who were little more than robots, fulfilling a similar vision to Korby’s dream.

Reusing and recycling can be good if it’s done with cleverness. Just as a skilled tailor can take an old dress and disguise it as a new one with a few alterations, changing the context can make costumes, sets, actors, music, and even themes feel like new and different choices. It’s a good cost-saving measure and an efficient use of what one already has on hand.

But like a dress that’s been altered too many times, sometimes the seams start to show. There were too many questions left unanswered in Return of the Archons for me to enjoy it as much as I’ve enjoyed other episodes. What exactly was the purpose of “The Festival” and how often did it occur? How wide was Landru’s influence – for example, were the people of “the valley” also under his control? (And if not, why did they not seek to free their neighbors from it?) Why were some people immune to Landru’s influence? Why was it so easy for Kirk to break Landru at the end (another parallel with What Are Little Girls Made Of?), despite the fact that his logic didn’t make much sense?


Dialectic at thirty paces

I can come up with answers to all of these questions, and I’m sure you can as well. Sometimes that’s the fun of shows like these: filling in the holes. But leave too many holes and a garment falls apart. I’m afraid that under closer scrutiny, Return of the Archons does just that, which is why I can only give it three stars.

Computer Dating


by Lorelei Marcus

There are many issues that come from a society run by a computer. Of course, there's the lack of will of its inhabitants, as Abby points out. But beyond that, there are serious logistical concerns. Landru's utmost priority is to "preserve the good of the body" or protect the community he is in charge of. He does this by assimilating every one of his citizens into a state of compliance, and then has them walk around all day greeting each other. "A simpler time" indeed.

Assuming there is no labor in this society, and all the infrastructure is produced and controlled by machines (perhaps using energy to matter food converters like we've seen on the Enterprise), then the biggest logistical issue in Landru's society is the production of more people.

(Note: the beings we see are not actually humans but aliens on their own planet with a coincidentally similar biology to us. Despite this, those from the Enterprise frequently refer to them as humans and rejoice in the destruction of Landru because it makes the society more human. Now who's doing the assimilating?)

I believe Landru's solution to the (need for) population issue is Festival Day, one of the great mysteries of the episode. A time when the young adults of the town (the elderly are excused) riot in the streets, breaking windows, setting fires, and generally committing acts of lust and violence alike. It's a horrific display, and one that contrasts jarringly with the normal tranquility.


Kirk's hotel overlooks the Sunset Strip.

There are two explanations for Festival, one being that, while Landru has an immense capability to pressure human minds into subservience, inevitably there will be some, over time, whose suppressed emotions boil over and cause outbursts (or perhaps even turn them into resisters). The Festival allows them to get these out of their system in a directed fashion.

The second explanation: as far as I can tell, there are no interpersonal relationships in this culture, which would lead to a distinct lack of intimate sexual encounters.This would lead to extinction. So Landru kills two birds with one stone, allowing its people to indulge their baser desires on Festival, and nine months later, producing the next generation for Landru to influence. An elegant solution to an inelegant problem. Something that could only be conceived by a machine.

I personally have no opinion on the rightness of Landru's programmed culture, but I do feel the concept had and has a lot of potential for a science fiction setting. I wish Captain Kirk had taken a little more time to explore and understand his surroundings before deciding that destroying them was the only option. Perhaps this episode will inspire more stories with a similar premise, but more fleshed-out worlds. We can but hope.

Three stars.

When you assume…


by Erica Frank

Sigh. Once again: An entity with godlike abilities controls a society where a veneer of peacefulness hides an underbelly of fear and violence. This time it's a soulless computer, not an "evolved" being—but it still treats humans as playthings. Two clichés for the price of one!

I suppose it's difficult to write about benign beings with godlike powers; if they exist, wouldn't they be out helping people and making the galaxy a better place? How would the Enterprise even encounter them, except in a setting like Shore Leave – "here's our vacation resort; enjoy?" But I am so very tired of the variations on "actually, ESP stands for Evil Supremacy Powers."

Setting aside the hackneyed science fiction elements and focusing on the story itself, I thought Kirk missed his mark, and more than once.

When he spoke to Reger and Marplon, trying to convince them to help him fight Landru, he tells them to set aside their fears and "start acting like men!"…as if they were actually humans who grew up in a human culture. Instead, they are aliens who just look like humans, raised in a culture where, for thousands of years, people who show any resistance have their memories and personalities wiped, and become "of the body"—forever lost to their loved ones.

They don't have a context for bravery. They have no stories of heroes to inspire them. They have a whispered legend: Someday, the "Archons" will return to save us. But they have no plan for assisting. Defiance, for them, is secrets and stealth, not confrontation. Yet Kirk expects them to act like human men from a culture that values heroism.


“Did we say 'resistors'? We meant 'rejoicers!' We love Landru!”

Later, Kirk told Landru that the society he'd built wasn't peaceful, but stagnant, that people need creativity and free will. That's true—but he failed to mention the "Festival" of violence and destruction. Why didn't he mention Tula's injuries, the rubble in the streets, the terror and carnage of the twelve hours of Festival? Those seem like much stronger counterpoints to Landru's claim of a "perfect and tranquil" society.

However, even though I sighed at the mind control, and may have yelled at the screen during Kirk's talk with Landru, I enjoyed most of the episode. The blend of an apparent 19th-century culture with "lawgivers" who look like medieval monks was delightful, and I'm fond of "religious kook" language, even when it's obviously forced. Maybe especially then—I did like Kirk's pretense of being "of the body" near the end of the episode.

Three and a half stars. Fun to watch; even more fun to critique.

A Perfect Society—for Whom?


by Jessica Dickinson Goodman

The "Festival" scenes from "Return of the Archons" reminded me of a piece by Miriam Allen deFord in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction back in 1956. She was responding to a Saturday Review column by Dr. Robert S. Richardson, where he argued women should absolutely be included on future missions to Mars – as sex toys for the male astronauts. Ms. Allen DeFord deftly picks apart Mr. Richardson's argument, redolent with "subconscious male arrogance," piece by piece, in an article I have laid out in my feminist scrapbook; but it was her successful shredding of his argument that women are emotionally unsuitable for space travel that I thought of most during this week's Star Trek episode.


Women. So emotional.

Ms. Allen deFord writes:

"The notion that women are inherently more emotional and excitable than men is a hoary myth that belongs back in the days of the 18th century 'vapors' and Victorian swoonings. Actually, the convention that induces men to repress every indication of emotion makes neurosis more prevalent among them than among women."


Men. The picture of mental stability.

That see-sawing between repression and violent emotional excitement formed the core of Landru's unbalanced world. But the near-total invisibility of women on Beta Three – with the exception of Tula, the daughter of a saloon-keeper who seems to only have existed to be brutalized during the Festival – was exactly the kind of society that Dr. Richardson had envisioned humanity creating on Mars. One where women's only roles are to be carried off by men, screaming.


Landru takes Beta 3 back to a simpler time: the Neolithic.

I like Ms. Allen deFord's vision better, because it reminds me of the world we are usually treated to on the Enterprise. One which is composed of, as she says: "a bisexual instead of monosexual staff of prioneer observers, investigators, and technicians." It is a future where women are not toys or victims, but living people who sing, study, lead, organize, and live. Where: "Women are not walking sex organs. They are human beings. People, just like men."

Landru's major failure in this episode wasn't just assuming that the best world for his descendents would be one characterized by dull emotional repression, punctuated by scarlet periods of neurotic violence; it was designing a world where women held no meaningful power and were confined to roles which profoundly limited their human potential far below the men in their society.

Here's hoping in the next episode, Lieutenant Uhura gets more than one line and we go back to having fully human women alongside us on our journeys to the stars.


If you squint, you can almost see Uhura in this episode.

Three stars.

PS: I wish some brave soul would collect and republish Ms. Allen deFord's essay and other pieces from her era so more people could enjoy her incisive wit and colorful prose; maybe pair it with some women-centered fiction by Mari Wolf, Alice Eleanor Jones, or Evelyn E. Smith.

Tonight at 8:30 PM (Eastern and Pacific), Hollywood Palace presents Ricardo Montalban and his Amazing Supermen!

Come join us – here's the invitation!



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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[February 8, 1967] Hung Jury (Star Trek: "Court Martial")

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Better Than Perry Mason


by Jessica Dickinson Goodman

In Court Martial, we see Star Trek trying on a new genre: courtroom drama. Like a good Perry Mason episode, we have twists, turns, dramatic monologues on the subject of rights, stodgy courtroom pedantry, and a wicked villain who gets his comeuppance before the hour is up.

But it being Star Trek, it added some important layers to the genre. Our Perry Mason – a stolid Luddite named Samuel T. Cogley (Elisha Cook Jr.) – is less dapper and more dogged in his defense of Captain Kirk. Unlike any Perry Mason I can remember, the prosecutor is a woman (Joan Marshall as Areel Shaw), and the four judge panel is played by actors who can trace their family trees to nearly every continent on Earth, including Commodore Stone (played by the excellent Percy Rodriguez), Starship Captain Chandra (Reginald Lal Singh), Starship Captain Krasnovsky (Bart Conrad), and Space Command Representative Lindstrom (William Meader).


A nice cross-section of ethnicity, if not gender

Percy Rodriguez was born in Montreal and is of Afro-Portuguese descent (that gets us three continents right there). Reginald Lal Singh was born to Indian parents in what was then the mainland of the British West Indies and is, as of May 26, 1966 the independent state of Guyana (which gets us two more continents, plus a second count in Europe’s column for the British passport). Then add in the unnamed Ensign who appeared to be of East Asian descent, and we don’t even need to count real-life U.S. Army Colonel Bart Conrad, who as it happens, also worked in several episodes of Perry Mason.

I don’t list these actor’s family histories to distract from their professional credits, but to note that Star Trek manages to reflect our world in ways that many theoretically more realistic shows do not. Afterall, we are a country which first elected Dalip Singh Saund to the U.S. Congress in 1955, and seven years later, appointed Thurgood Marshall to the Second Circuit Federal Court of Appeals, the brave lawyer who argued Brown v. Board of Education before the still all white, all male U.S. Supreme Court. (Perhaps 1967 will be the year at least one of those descriptors changes).


The Supreme Court, in 1962

Today, there are dozens of Black judges serving on the federal, state, and municipal bench – including Vince Townsend, a municipal judge in Los Angeles County who played a judge in the 1963 Perry Mason episode “The Case of the Skeleton's Closet” (and, because the world is tiny, I have heard that Judge Vince Townsend used to be roommates with Judge Thurgood Marshall). So why do we need to look hundreds of years into the future to see judges and captains and prosecutors who reflect our real world?


Perry Mason, in the courtroom

As interesting as the casting was for this episode, the plot itself also held my attention. First, we think we’re about to follow a routine investigation into the tragic death of a crewman. Then his daughter appears, wild with grief and accusatory in speech. Things begin to shift for Captain Kirk, his colleagues turning their shoulders at him, an old flame warning him of impending disgrace, and a trial which forces his nearest and dearest officers to testify fairly damningly against him.

But then in hops our very own Perry Mason, with clever words about rights and the flaws of technology. Cogley convinces the judges to return to the Enterprise where my very favorite moment of the episode happens: a luscious soundscape of heartbeats that is slowly narrowed down to a single, unknown body, stowed away belowdecks.

Well, second favorite; as I am sure Erica will concur, watching Captain Kirk roll around on the floor and tear his shirt on the carpet isn’t a bad use of screen time either (another common Star Trek cliché that Perry Mason never included).


Two absolutely convincing stunt doubles fighting in Engineering

The episode lost most of its tension at this point, as we waited for an increasingly barechested Captain Kirk to corral the previously-thought-dead Lieutenant Commander Finney and stop him from crashing the Enterprise into the planet’s surface.

The little twist at the end, where we discover Cogley has now agreed to represent Lieutenant Commander Finney, was a nice touch.

This episode gave meaty, well-developed roles to Areel Shaw and Percy Rodriguez, giving them space to explore courtroom theatrics and protocols in roles many drama’s casting directors would have given only to white men. Though parts of this episode flagged, that delightful choice carried it through for me.

Rating: 4 Stars.

Wrong Way Street


by Abigail Beaman

While I know a majority of my peers rated this episode highly, I was let down by the ending of the episode. I feel that Trek has worked best when it left me with some warning or moral, and to have it just devolve to fisticuffs and Kirk half naked at the end just seemed to disappoint. And believe me, I like when the cast gets half naked.

Perhaps I was just expecting a different story. "Court Martial" opens up with what we believe will be a man versus machine parable, with Kirk versus the computer of the Enterprise. Instead we end up with man versus man: Kirk versus Finney. I feel like if Marc Daniels had followed through with the theme "don’t trust machines on everything", I would have happily rated this episode above a four.


Computers–who needs 'em?

My biggest issue is with Finney being alive. It raises many unanswered questions. What was Finney’s plan after Kirk got indicted? How did Finney manage to change the computer without being spotted? How did Finney even get out of the pod before it was sent off? How did messing with the data stored in the computer also mess up Spock’s chess programming?

In the end, I was just disappointed and annoyed. While the story started off strong, it ended up crashing in the climax, leaving a sour taste in my mouth. That’s why I rate it 2.5 stars.

Our Perception: what can and can’t we trust?


by Andrea Castaneda

I agree with my colleague, Abby, though perhaps the premise saves this episode a little more for me. “Court Martial” was, to me, one of the more intriguing episodes in the show of the series. We’re presented with high emotional stakes, see a more vulnerable side to Captain Kirk, and take a deeper look into how StarFleet operates. But what I liked most about this episode was how it analyzes man’s perception in contrast to the cold hard evidence of the machine.

The courtroom scene reminded me a lot of Sidney Lumet’s “Twelve Angry Men”. In that film, eleven men of a jury believe a man guilty of murder, but one juror still wants to discuss how there can be doubt. The film goes on to dissect how one’s perception can be warped by emotion, physical limitations, personal beliefs, etc. In the end, they conclude the provided evidence is insufficient, and the defendant is spared from the electric chair.


Twelve Angry Men, perhaps the seminal courtroom drama of the last decade.

This episode shared similar themes. Kirk starts out unwavering in his confidence. But when presented with seemingly damning evidence, he’s shaken. With a defeated tone, he says to himself “but that’s not the way it happened.”

But unlike “Twelve Angry Men”, Spock subverts the idea that man’s memory is inherently flawed. When the prosecution asks him how he could know Kirk did the right thing if he didn’t see him, he states that one doesn’t need to observe him at all times to know he did. Just as one doesn’t need to see a dropped hammer fall to know it has in fact fallen. And while he does concede that this is– at the end of the day– his opinion, his confidence in Kirk is what prompts him to prove the computer is wrong. And of course, he tests the system via chess.

Where the episode missed an opportunity, however, was how they chose to end it. I was hoping that once Spock proved the computer was faulty, it would lead the court to reevaluate the evidence and/or rule that the man’s death was due to a programming glitch. But instead, it’s revealed that the dead man was alive the whole time, and that this was all part of a half-baked revenge plot. He and Kirk wrestle while the Enterprise is set to crash, but Kirk once again saves the day. And with that, what started out as a sober courtroom drama winds up as a James Bond movie.

Ridiculous as that ending was, I still thoroughly enjoyed the mental analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of one’s perception. It gives me as a viewer something to think about once the episode ends. Unfortunately, the conclusion of events– including Kirk’s unprofessional kiss with the prosecution lawyer– compels me to declare “Court Martial” a mistrial.

Three stars.

Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics


by Lorelei Marcus

"Court Martial" is the second trial-centered episode we've seen on Star Trek, though unlike "The Menagerie" (and many other episodes) there are no God-like aliens or other fantastical features. Which is why "Court Martial" is one of my favorite episodes: because of its focus on technology and its ability to straddle the line between implausibility and familiarity.

The source of conflict in this episode is the malfunction of the ship's "computer". The show portrays this computer as a piece of machinery so complex it can recognize verbal commands, act as an archive of all human knowledge, and even play chess! Yet it's so small that it can fit into a panel console [I think those are just the teletype terminals. Cogley's law computer seems self-contained, though. (Ed.)] This is far more advanced than anything we have today, or anything that could conceivably be developed in the next 50 years.


"Computers. I know all about them."

However, the audience is not totally disconnected from this incomprehensible device because the computer represents more than itself. When Kirk first meets his defense lawyer, he is startled by the lawyer's reliance on paper books over computer banks. In the Star Trek future, physical books are an antiquated and nearly extinct form of information storage. While this is a rather extreme (and grim) prediction, the situation does reflect a trend toward a reliance on technology over physical media happening in our society today.

Rather than read the paper or a novel, we increasingly watch the news or a Western on television. We've long since switched computation work at NASA from "computers" (actual human beings doing calculations) to IBM's metal monsters. It isn't a stretch to see a future where the development of computers alters the very way society operates and exists, eschewing personal bonds of trust and the evidence of the human eye. Someday, we may even leave justice to the computers themselves – after all, they cannot lie, can they?

Except, of course, they can. Because people can, and computers are still, even in the far future, servants of people. That, I think, was the point of the episode, and a good one.

Four stars.

The measure of a man


by Tam Phan (Secret Asian Man)

It doesn’t always feel good to do the right thing, but there’s something to be said about having complete confidence in your integrity when it’s under scrutiny. Kirk walks confidently into most situations as if he always has the right answers. Ben Finney is not Jim Kirk. Without even getting to know him that well, it’s still abundantly clear that the infraction that he received wasn’t the real reason he wasn’t a senior officer.

As the records officer, Finney seemed to be doing just fine. After all, he was an officer aboard the Starship Enterprise. It’s not clear if there are many other starships, but as far as we know, the Enterprise is a very important one. [Last episode, it was revealed "there are only twelve like it in the fleet" (ed.)] If Spock’s and McCoy’s commendations aren't enough to tell us how much prestige is represented in the ship's crew, Kirk’s commendations practically flaunt it. I assume that Finney’s service record must be relatively strong to serve on such a ship, but his actions in “Court Martial” tell us everything we need to know about why he’s not captain of his own starship.


Captain material?

Finney’s ability to sabotage the ship shows us that he’s clearly competent, but his plan lacked any forethought; a trait that is expected in leadership. What did he think was going to happen once Kirk was court martialed? Life couldn’t go back to normal for Benjamin Finney. He was on record as being jettisoned and presumed to be dead. It’s not as if he could return to being Enterprise’s records officer. At the very least, he’d have to escape the Enterprise and go into Richard Kimble-style exile. He didn't even manage to do that!

In short, he didn’t have the fortitude to move on from a decade-old perceived personal slight, instead developing a grudge. He didn’t have the integrity to own his mistakes, and so he blamed Kirk. He failed to weigh the possible consequences of his actions, either in the past or of his current half-baked scheme. But I don't condemn Finney for this. For all of his flaws, Finney is a perfectly understandable character, a human character. I get him, even if I don't grok him, and his relationship with Kirk was poignant and interesting.

In the end, no one is perfect: not the records officer nor the computer he works on.

4 Stars

The Little Black Box


by Janice L. Newman

As a fan of mysteries, I really enjoyed Court Martial. The episode did a good job of building tension throughout, even making the audience second-guess ourselves. One thing that I thought was an interesting touch was the recordings made of the events on the bridge and played back later for the purposes of the trial. We saw something similar in "The Menagerie", but in that case the playback was facilitated by the aliens. In Court Martial the implication is that the recordings are done automatically, presumably for circumstances like those in the episode.

This year (1967) regulations are going into effect that state that all planes must have a ‘black box’ installed—that is, a flight recorder that can help explain the cause of a crash after the fact. Having cameras on the bridge that record everything is a natural extrapolation of this new technology and makes perfect sense. And when the audience ‘sees’ Captain Kirk push the wrong button at the wrong time, even many of us are fooled for a moment, wondering, ‘Maybe he just made a mistake?’


A Soviet flight recorder – a "red box"?

It’s not a perfect episode. The denouement, where Captain Kirk is permitted to face the man who has a personal vendetta against him and engage in fisticuffs, didn’t make much sense. Nor did Finney’s plan: did he plan to hide out for the rest of his life? Was he going to get Harry Mudd to make him a false identity? What about his daughter?

Despite these caveats, I liked the mystery and the story overall, and particularly found the dramatic scene where each person’s heartbeat was screened out to be nail-bitingly effective. It was also refreshing not to be dealing with godlike aliens. I give this episode four stars.

The Return of Shirtless Kirk


by Erica Frank

Other viewers have covered the plot, the characters, and the nuances of the legal system. I'm going to focus on something more fun: The clothing, and occasional lack thereof.

We never meet the people who design Starfleet's uniforms, but they must be very influential. There's so much variety! You'd think people living on a spaceship would have limited resources, but no: everyone has uniforms in several colors and styles.

A trial is a formal event, which calls for formal apparel. Naturally, Starfleet's fashion designers rise to the occasion. First, we get Kirk in his side-wrap shirt, while he meets with Commodore Stone to discuss the accusations against him. This seems to be more formal than the normal pullover uniform.


Kirk's wraparound green uniform


The Commodore's outfit is similar to the Enterprise crew's standard ones, but his insignia is a sparkling flower brooch. Very nice.

Kirk changes back to his gold pullover to meet with an old friend; she's in a wild pink-and-green paisley gown. Later, in the courtroom, she wears a red minidress, very similar to Uhura's outfit, only with another flower brooch. I might have mistaken it for mere jewelry if I hadn't seen the same on the Commodore earlier.


This is what lawyers in Starfleet wear when they're not in court.

Dress uniforms—which is what I assume the officers are wearing in court—are satin, with gold trim, and the insignia is an array of triangular gemstones. They seem to open down the front; I approve of Starfleet's apparent policy that the more formal the outfit, the easier it should be to remove. (I'm glad someone in Starfleet is focused on practical issues.) As one would expect, the Commodore has more sparkles than a mere captain, even considering Kirk's impressive record.


Which of Kirk's triangles is the Grankite Order of Tactics? Is the thing on the side the Prantares Ribbon of Commendation? (Do enlisted personnel just have one or two little triangles?)


He can fight a Gorn on a planet full of gemstone rocks and not lose a thread, but when he's up against anyone he knew at the Academy, he loses clothing. He must have been terrible at strip poker.

This episode raised some questions, like: Why must Spock win at chess to prove that computer records can be altered? But I am willing to look past quite a few loopholes to see Kirk half-undressed and on his knees.

I'm not quite as shallow as that sounds. I'm just aware that we viewers often put more thought into the worlds and societies than TV writers have time to develop. I watch this show to have fun; I enjoy the science fiction elements as best I can, but when they're a bit weak, I am happy to be distracted by petty pleasures.

Three and a half stars. I know too much about the law to give it four.

Week before last, it was I Dream of Jeannie.  Now, it looks like the Enterprise crew will be on Wild, Wild West!  Come join us tomorrow at 8:30 PM (Eastern and Pacific).

Here's the invitation!



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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[February 6, 1967] Nothing In The World Can Stop Me Now! (Doctor Who: The Underwater Menace)

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By Jessica Holmes

Geoffrey Orme’s ‘The Underwater Menace’ is technically not very good. The plot is very silly, the costumes are sillier, and the acting has to be seen to be believed.

And yet, I was grinning all the way through.

EPISODE ONE

With new companion Jamie, the TARDIS arrives on an island south of the Azores, and the crew soon run into trouble. Captured and whisked underground by a load of weirdos with conch shells on their heads, they soon find themselves about to be offered up to the sea goddess Amdo. Things are going about as well as they usually do, in short.

It turns out that they’ve stumbled upon the long-lost city of Atlantis. Yes, really.

Oh, and there’s a Russian scientist living down beneath the waves. Not sure how he got down there, but he’s been feeding the Atlanteans with…plankton. Tasty, tasty plankton. Mmm.

I’m not sure how they were eating before he arrived. They’ve supposedly been down there for thousands of years but are relying on plankton farmed by fish-people with surgically implanted plastic gills, all thanks to Professor Zaroff (Joseph Furst).

This serial is a lot more fun if you don’t mind the inconsistencies.

Luckily for the Doctor and his chums, Zaroff arrives in time to save them from becoming shark food. Zaroff and the Doctor hit it off, and the younger folks go off to make themselves useful (not that they get a choice in the matter). Ben and Jamie are off to the mines, and Polly soon ends up being prepared for surgery–They’re going to turn her into a fish!


“Polly, you speak foreign, go talk to him and ask him where we are.” Ah yes, the two languages: English and Foreign.

EPISODE TWO

Fortunately for Polly, a servant girl called Ara (Catherine Howe) comes along just as all the lights go off (thanks to the Doctor’s inability to leave electrical equipment alone) and whisks her to safety.

The Doctor flatters Zaroff as the scientist of dubious mental stability explains just what he’s doing here in Atlantis. The priesthood has come to think of him as some sort of messiah, since Zaroff has promised to raise the city from beneath the waves. Tiny little problem: he can’t actually do that. What he can do, however, is dig through the Earth’s crust and drain the Atlantic ocean until the sea level is lower than the city.

This triggers a fear in the Doctor that by digging a hundred miles down to the Earth’s core, he’ll flash-boil the ocean to steam and crack the crust of the Earth, blowing the planet apart.


“Just one small question. Why do you want to blow up the world?”

There is so much wrong here I’m not sure it's worth debunking it point by point.

Let’s just say: The crust is thinner than that, but even so you still can’t dig through it, and you’d still be nowhere near the inner core of the Earth even if you did. As to Earth blowing up? No. Just…no.

But let’s pretend that this is how the Earth works, because a mad scientist hell-bent on blowing up the world just because he can is a lot of fun. I guess he got tired of waiting for certain nations to stop playing nuclear chicken.

Down in the mines, the boys make the acquaintance of sailors-turned-miners Sean (P.G. Stephens) and Jacko (Paul Anil), who have a compass and a plan to escape.

Meanwhile, Polly hides in the temple, and the Doctor slips away from the lab by doing what he does best: messing around with stuff until he causes enough chaos that nobody notices him leave.

While snooping around the place, the Doctor learns that the priest who almost threw him to the sharks earlier, Ramo (Tom Watson), has no great fondness for Zaroff. He steals a moment to talk to him in the temple, and tells him about the coming destruction of Atlantis. Naturally horrified, Ramo asks the Doctor if there’s anything that can be done to stop Zaroff.

Perhaps there is, but they’ll need the help of the ruler of Atlantis, Thous (Noel Johnson). The priest agrees to help the Doctor, lending him a disguise so they can sneak through the city.

Jamie, Sean and Jacko escape the mines through the tunnel network, emerging in the temple, where they reunite with Polly.

The Doctor and Ramo bring their case before King Thous, but don’t get to explain much before he makes his decision:

Zaroff can do with them as he will.

EPISODE THREE

Zaroff gets a solid eight out of ten on the dramatic entrance as he waltzes into the episode, and he’s not best pleased with the Doctor. The pair are sent to the temple for sacrifice, and instead of the shark tank, they’re to be beheaded. Perhaps the sharks had already eaten.

However, before they get the chop, the voice of Amdo rings throughout the temple, commanding her followers to avert their eyes. I think you can see where this is going.

The Doctor and the priest slip out of the temple and into the tunnel behind the statue of the goddess, where Ben is hiding.

The other priests delightedly tell Zaroff and Thous of the miraculous disapparition, but Zaroff is no fool. He knows there was nothing miraculous about it. Thous, on the other hand…

Meanwhile, the Doctor fills the others in on what’s been going on, and comes up with a plan: starting a union. No, really. He sends Sean and Jacko to go and encourage the fish people to go on strike. The Atlanteans have no food stores, given how quickly their seafood spoils, so it won’t take long at all for them to cave into whatever demands the fish people make of them.

As for him and his companions, they’re going to kidnap Zaroff.

In disguise, the Doctor and his pals attract Zaroff’s attention at the market, leading him on a merry chase to the temple, where the gang corner and subdue him.

While they’re doing that, Sean and Jacko rile up the fish people, and there’s a long, long, LONG sequence of them slowly ‘swimming’ about (you can see the wires) and spreading the word about the strike. I think perhaps the script came up a little too short, and boy does it drag.

There’s also something deeply creepy about the fish people. I think it’s the way their mouths gape underwater. They look like they’re screaming all the time!

Zaroff claims that the Doctor is too late to stop his plans, but of course the Doctor won’t take his word for it. Things take a turn when Zaroff suddenly collapses. The Doctor can’t risk Zaroff’s plan coming to fruition, so he takes off with Ben and Jamie, leaving Polly and Ramo to watch over Zaroff–a fatal mistake.

No sooner has the Doctor left than does Zaroff stab the poor priest and abduct Polly. He can’t get far however, as the Doctor realises he needs the priest to help him navigate the city, and doubles back–just in time for Ramo to shuffle off this mortal coil. The lads are quick to act, catching up to Zaroff and forcing him to flee without Polly. She doesn’t have much to do in this serial, so being briefly kidnapped will have to do.

With the fish people now in revolt and the ruler willing to listen to their demands, it looks like it’s all coming undone for Zaroff–or is it?

When Thous finally sees Zaroff for the madman he really is and tries to arrest him, Zaroff whips out a pistol and guns him down, with his minions dispatching the royal guards.

And then this serial truly embraces its B-movie sensibilities with a line so hammy, so cheesy, that it would make a delicious toastie.

“NOTHING IN THE WORLD CAN STOP ME NOW!!!”

EPISODE FOUR

The Doctor and Ben find Thous moments after Zaroff leaves, hurt but still alive. They bring him to the rest of the group, and the Doctor decides on a last-ditch plan of action: destroy the sea wall, flood the lower levels of Atlantis, and destroy the lab.

He sneaks down to the lab with Ben, and with no real idea what they’re doing they get to work on sabotaging the reactor.

Meanwhile, Polly and Jamie, separated from the rest of the group, soon find themselves hopelessly lost–and the walls are starting to glow.

Drowning or radiation sickness, which will get them first, do you reckon?

The sea wall crumbles (because… oh, I don’t know, and I’m pretty sure nobody in the story does either. Magic radiation?) and everyone starts heading for higher ground, with Jamie and Polly beginning to doubt they’ll ever find a way out. Fortunately, Polly is a champion for women everywhere–by which I mean she pouts and whines and needs Jamie to help her walk along a corridor.

I can excuse all the B-Movie shoddiness in the world as long as it’s fun, but the sidelining of Polly does actually irk me.

I can’t help but think that this plan has an awful lot of collateral damage given that all they really needed to do was keep Zaroff away from the great big plunger that blows the Earth’s crust open. How many people were down there, and how many made it out? Nobody thinks twice about anyone outside the little group, but I have to wonder.

The Doctor and Ben manage to trick Zaroff into leaving the lab, and then lock him out and flee from the rising water. Zaroff is not wise enough to follow them, and the water overwhelms him, still reaching for the plunger.

Everyone makes it to the surface, but not all together. Thinking that the Doctor has perished, the Atlanteans swear to build a new temple and raise a stone in his honour–prompting an odd rant from a minor character about religion being the source of all their problems in the first place. Well sure, but their society was extremely reliant on Zaroff in other ways too. He’d have had enormous influence with or without the support of the temple.

Then again they were feeding people to sharks with regularity, so maybe the new Atlantis would be better off without them.

And without the fish people, too. It’s not clear what happened to them. Presumably they’re fine, given they breathe underwater.

The Doctor and his companions reunite, with Jamie having settled into the gang quite nicely. He needs a bit more time to shine on his own, but I like him so far. Once back inside the TARDIS, the kids tease the Doctor that he can’t actually steer the ship–to which the Doctor strongly protests. Of course he CAN steer the ship, it’s just a lot less fun that way.

Nobody let the Doctor get behind the wheel of a car. He’d drive blindfolded the wrong way down the M6 just to have a laugh.

To prove his point, the Doctor decides to take everyone to Mars.

And to prove him wrong, the TARDIS veers wildly out of control.

I wonder where they’ll end up next?

Final Thoughts

So, this serial is stupid, and bonkers, and absolutely has the soul of a B-Movie…and it’s great!

There have been plenty of higher-quality serials that I haven’t enjoyed half as much as this one, because the greatest sin Doctor Who can commit isn’t badness; it’s dullness. Bad can be good. Bad can be bizarre, fun, entertaining to poke fun at and talk about. The costumes may be shoddy, acting hammy and the script an outright disaster, but it succeeds in the way that matters most. It entertains. Boring is just boring. Trying to wring entertainment out of a dull serial is like drawing blood from a stone.

This is technically bad…but that’s why it’s good.

I am a simple woman; I enjoy a mad scientist and a silly end-the-world plot. Did the plot entirely make sense? Well, no. Look at any one element too hard and the whole thing dissolves like wet tissue paper.

The acting’s pretty much par for the course. Troughton continues to delight, as expected, and our lead villain doesn’t disappoint when it comes to chewing the scenery. I was surprised there was any left by the time he was finished. A serial this silly hinges on the villain, and Zaroff is just plain fun to watch–and “NOTHING IN THE WORLD CAN STOP ME NOW!” has become a household phrase. Well, it has in my household. Well, it has for me, personally. Everyone else is begging me to stop.

This is not hard, serious science fiction, and I don’t think it was ever meant to be.

And that’s just the way I like it.

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars.




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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[February 2, 1967] It's About Time (Star Trek: "Tomorrow is Yesterday")

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by Elijah Sauder

A time to laugh, a time to weep

Before I discuss the latest episode of Star Trek, I feel it would be remiss of me to not acknowledge the loss that we experienced on the 27th with the deaths of Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger B. Chaffee in the mishap during the Apollo 1 rehearsal test. It is in times like these, times when our dreams of reaching the stars seem to be shaken, that we are reminded of the danger involved in such dreams. However, though the stark reality and harshness of the danger can make the dream seem unattainable, we should stand and support the astronauts that choose to risk their lives, and follow the footsteps of those who have gone on without us, follow their dream and see it to fruition.  This mighty loss deserves remembering, let us remember these brave three and carry their dreams with us.

It feels weird to transition to summarizing an episode of a fictional TV show about space after remembering the events of the 27th, but “Tomorrow is Yesterday”, one of my favorite episodes so far, provides an eerily appropriate counterpoint to the Apollo 1 disaster.

We find the crew of the Enterprise in the late 1960s, stranded in the past after a brush with a "dark star", which renders the ship largely inoperable. While they are trying to figure out how to get the ship operational and get back to their own time, the Air Force detects them and sends fighters to investigate. This results in one of the pilots, Captain John Christopher, being beamed aboard. All well and good, Captain Kirk thinks. But the pilot had taken and transmitted recordings of the sighting. The crew beams down to try and destroy the recordings and set history to rights.


"You're coming with me to see Colonel Bellows!"

During all sorts of amusing antics, another non-crew member gets beamed aboard and Kirk gets captured. Spock, Sulu, and the pilot, go down to rescue Kirk and despite some duplicity, manage to retrieve him and beam back to the ship with everything they went to acquire. The episode ends with Scotty and his crew getting the ship running again (though still in need of more thorough repairs) and then using Spock’s idea to try and repeat the maneuver that got them to the past but in reverse by using the sun to 'slingshot' the ship forward in time. Through this process they go back in time a bit, which allows them to return the pilot to the past before the Enterprise beamed him up. They then continue forward, making it back to their own time and communicate to Starfleet that they have returned.


It's a sharp right past Mercury.

I absolutely loved this episode. It felt lighthearted and didn’t take itself too seriously. And whether it was meant or not, the fights in the show were quite humorous. But those things alone do not make a good episode. All the actors did a wonderful job this episode really selling the characters. I also appreciated the more science fictional premise. The previous couple of episodes have involved highly advanced species that border on gods and while I feel those stories have their place in science fiction, I much prefer premises like this episode’s.


Flying Kirk Attack!

Of course, "Tomorrow is Yesterday" was not without its flaws. The most glaring ones were at the end where the Enterprise beamed the pilot down to a location his past self already was, and that the timeline seemed to be rewritten after doing that; no trace of the Enterprise or its Earth-based gamboling. I personally didn’t mind these too much as I felt the fun of the rest of the show made up for them, but they may turn some people off.


"UFO? What UFO?"

Overall, for me this episode was a solid 4.5/5.

Get me to the Church on Time


by Abigail Beaman

Since this is my first time contributing to The Galactic Journey, I thought I would introduce myself. My name is Abigail Beaman or Abby for short. I started watching Star Trek during its 11th episode, "The Menagerie (Part One)", and to date, my favorite episode is "The Galileo Seven". I may or may not have created a wedding certificate for me and Mr. Spock–a girl's got to prepare for the future.


Mr. Abigail Beaman

Star Trek as a whole is a very interesting and wild concept that I support, but I feel that most episodes suffer from slow plots or the crew feeling out of place. That’s how I originally thought "Tomorrow is Yesterday" would have played out. While I normally dislike time-traveling episodes for their bad writing and forced narratives, this episode has helped change my opinion. With that being said I wholeheartedly believe that this episode wasn’t interesting because of the time travel, but rather how the characters interacted with said travel.


"And this is how you make a warp engine!" "That's enough, Lieutenant…"

In past episodes, there have been moments where I thought a character acted strangely or dumb just to continue the story. However I feel proud to say, not once did I question any of the characters' actions in this episode. Mr. Lieutenant Commander Spock was probably my favorite example of this episode. While yes, he was already my most beloved and favorite character, the sheer number of witty, very logical, and utterly Spockish retorts made the episode even better. I found the scene when Captain Christopher pulls a gun on Sulu and Kirk to be my favorite. Spock is already expecting this, so he beams up to the ship and then beams back down to knock out Captain Christopher. A nice application of logic and technology.


Funny. That's now how I look when he does that to me…

At the end of the line, I am going to rate "Tomorrow is Yesterday" very highly, as it was altogether a silly episode that made my day. However, I understand not everyone likes silly time travel episodes and their usually unaddressed ramifications. It’s all up to personal opinion, and with that said I rate this episode 4.5/5.


by Lorelei Marcus

Tragic Predictions

I had originally intended to write about my thoughts on the episode's predictions of when we will be launching our first manned moonshot. With ten Gemini missions rapidly successfully flown, and the Apollo program just around the corner, I felt "the late '60s" was a perfectly reasonable estimate. The Moon was practically in our grasp. Or so I thought.

On January 27, at 6:31 PM, three astronauts were killed in a freak accident fire on the Apollo One spacecraft. Experts think it was caused by faulty wiring which sparked with the 100% oxygen atmosphere of the cockpit.

I was numb when I first heard Mike Wallace report on the disaster. The dread and realization mounted over the course of the CBS Special Report, but the reality of what had occurred didn't really hit me until Walter Cronkite, a face I associate strongly with another world-shifting tragedy, came on the screen.  To paraphrase his words, "This may shift our plans back from 1967 to 1968, from '68 to '69, from '69 to even 1970.  But we must have courage…no, the guts to continue forward with this space program."

I'm glad "Tomorrow is Yesterday" writer D.C. Fontana never explicitly named the three men who will be on the Apollo flight to the Moon.  While an author could never have predicted something like the Apollo 1 fire, not hearing Grissom or White's names mentioned in the episode allows it to remain plausibly our future and the Enterprise's past.

Maybe "the late 60s" won't be a far off guess after all.

Four stars.


by Andrea Castaneda

A dimension too far

Star Trek already has a grandiose premise, which I love and appreciate. It leads to many possible scenarios for adventure, conflict, and character development. But when time travel gets added, it takes it a dimension too far and exponentially expands the potential for plot holes and inconsistencies.

The episode started out strong. I liked seeing how our 1967 perspective would process seeing a starship suddenly appear. I also liked the high stakes of a small event altering the future irrevocably.


The Enterprise as seen from Captain Christopher's F-104. This is one of the more effective shots in the show.

However, the setting of outer space has fixed rules, whereas the logic of time travel seems too flimsy to be consistent. We're given a brief explanation of Trekian physics. One needs massive amounts of energy and velocity to propel oneself through space and time. Therefore it makes sense that stars with their immense gravities are necessary to do so, and that the crew would repeat this process to go home. But then the logic starts to bend to fit the narrative. They conveniently go back a day in time before they arrived, returning their 20th century guests.

Yet despite how inexperienced they are with time travel, they manage to know the precise moment they were beamed up and can seamlessly beam them back to that exact moment. Which somehow removes their memories of everything ensuing. And because the Enterprise has gone back in time, it now could never exist in our time, making the entire second act pointless. Everyone goes home, the crew of the Enterprise cheer, and they continue to go boldly where no man's gone before.


Time travel fixes everything!

This end frustrates me not only because of the paradox it creates (how is the Enterprise no longer in the past? Shouldn't it exist twice?) but because the character development in Captain Christopher is now rendered moot. He was, to me, the strongest aspect about this episode. Through him and Kirk, we see what past and future can learn about each other and how despite the centuries between them, they're both still human.

I think a scenario where things ended in a time loop would have been far more interesting. Christopher could have returned home, had his son destined to explore Saturn, and raised him to keep looking to the stars– all inspired from his day-long romp in space, making the end of this episode feel less hollow. Certainly, it would have been a less problematic presentation of the time travel cliché.

Still, this "Tomorrow is Yesterday" was overall enjoyable to watch. It allowed much of the ensemble to shine, offered up hilarious gags and an interesting perspective about humanity's advancement. I just hope that going forward, the writers keep this time travel plot device to a minimum.

Three stars.

Well, at least it's unlikely this week's episode will involve time travel.  Join us tonight at 8:30 PM (Eastern and Pacific)!


"Captain Kirk, This is Your Life!"

Come join us!



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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[January 26, 1967] Cold-blooded murder (Star Trek: "Arena")

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Before we dive in, here's a couple of photos we just got back from the Fotomat, taken right before we watched the episode!

Captain Kirk and the Myth of Empty Land


by Jessica Dickinson Goodman

This week’s episode opens with Captain Kirk and Dr. McCoy happily discussing the promise of a lush dinner for the crew of the Enterprise on the Cestus 3 colony, “out of the edge of nowhere,” after they were invited to a sumptuous visit by the local human Commodore.

When the team beams down they find destruction, death, scorched earth, and a lone and bloodied survivor. The crew takes fire from unseen enemies who Mr. Spock determines are sophisticated, cold-blooded, humanoid creatures.

Captain Kirk brings the survivor aboard the Enterprise before ordering the delightfully competent Lieutenant Sulu to follow the “alien” ship they believe is responsible for the massacre. Then follows a chase, like we saw in The Balance of Terror, during which the survivor explains to Captain Kirk that the the colony was suddenly attacked several days before, unable to defend itself.

Again and again, he asks Captain Kirk, voice rising in panic and distress: “Why did they do it? Why?”

Kirk decides the unnamed, unidentified enemy’s motivation was “invasion” and convinces Spock that the only option they have is to destroy the “alien” ship.

Eventually, a godlike species ("The Metron", yet another in a long series on this show) intervenes in the hunt, identifying the “alien” enemy ship as the "Gorn" and forcing Captain Kirk into a mano a mano fight with the alien captain on a planet where they must make their weapons off the land. Captain Kirk finds heaps of diamonds, sulfur, potassium nitrate, coal, and sturdy wood. As he freely takes of them to build a hand cannon to kill the Gorn captain, the formerly voiceless alien speaks. He explains to Captain Kirk that his ship attacked Cestus 3 because:

Gorn Captain: “You were intruding! You established an outpost in our space!”
Captain Kirk: “You butchered helpless humans –”
Gorn Captain: “We destroyed invaders!”

Observing this exchange through the magic of Metron, Spock and McCoy realize perhaps “[w]e were in the wrong” and “[t]he Gorn simply might have been trying to protect themselves.”

The makeshift gun works. Crouching over the Gorn with the alien's own chipped obsidian blade, Kirk decides to spare his life, thus surprising and delighting this week’s all powerful watcher species. Back on his ship, Captain Kirk feels proud of himself for declining to kill the Gorn captain, ending the episode with a warm smile.

The plot of "Arena" hinges on the myth of empty land, the 19th and 20th century colonialist theory that whole sections of our human world were uninhabited before Europeans arrived. Many of us descended from Europeans learned this myth in our homes and schools. Many people who lived in those lands since time immemorial learned of this myth at the muzzle of European guns.

To give a specific example, let’s consider a childhood book of my mother’s: American First: One Hundred Stories from Our Own History by Lawton B. Evans (1920). The first chapter (“Leif, The Lucky”) tells the story of Leif Erickson arriving and finding a land full of bounty, the kind of place a sensualist like Dr McCoy would enjoy: it is full of grapes and food and sturdy wood. It continues to tell the story of his brother, Thorwald, who arrives expecting a lush and welcoming land but instead, “Indians attacked his party one night, and killed Thorwald with a poisoned arrow.”

I can almost imagine Thorwald asking his crew: “Why did they do it? Why?”

Because, as the Gorn captain said, Leif and his Norsemen were the invaders. The land they came to was not empty, just as Cestus 3 was not empty. And just as Captain Kirk explained to (if he did not quite convince) his first officer, sometimes people protect themselves by cutting invaders off at the pass; in both this week’s episode and America First's first chapter, that tactic worked. At least for a time.

The stories in America First continue, from “Daniel Boone” and his handmade weapons to “Dewey At Manila Bay” and his hoards of coal. They share elements of this week’s episode: an initial erasure of indigenous people; coveting of resources; exploitation of those resources; horror at violence done to invaders (while remaining silent on violence done to those invaded); and finally, a pat ending that makes the reader feel good about his and her ancestors’ role in the story.

I read and watch science fiction to be given more than patness and comfort. I want us not only to reach for the stars, but reach into our own hearts, to give us tools to understand our complex histories, and sit with the realities of the violence that underpins many of our histories. I want to see our heroes do more than fight their way out of problems.

I am glad the episode takes a stab at addressing the "empty land" myth, and at the same time disappointed that its hero does not. In the end, Captain Kirk seems to have some realization of the Gorn captain’s perspective, but the episode ended before we saw any true change of heart. I want to see real attempts at understanding the “alien” perspective for longer than the time it takes to put down a knife.

Three stars.

A Weak Echo


by Erica Frank

This episode was obviously inspired by Frederick Brown’s 1944 story, “Arena.” In both stories, aliens have attacked human settlements and space battles follow. In both, a near-omnipotent being interferes, reducing the conflicts to a single contest: One representative of each, placed on a barren world, instructed to fight. The godlike entity will then remove the loser’s contingent.

The two stories have some crucial differences, however.

Most importantly: In the original, the human is naked. (The alien probably is, but it looks like a giant red beach ball.) In the Star Trek episode, Kirk is not only not naked, his shirt doesn’t even get torn. (Despite fighting an alien with fangs and claws! Did the budget department object to constantly replacing his uniforms?)

In the original, the stakes were much larger: The nameless cosmic entity will eliminate the loser’s entire species; in Trek, “the Metron” only says he will destroy the loser’s ship. (He seems annoyed that they’ve brought their petty squabble to his region of space.) Brown’s “Arena” mentioned prior battles, skirmishes leading toward a full-scale war. In Trek, this is the first time they’ve met, which makes Kirk’s instant hostility seem arbitrary and contrived.

Just last week, Kirk insisted they were peaceful explorers, not warriors. Now he’s jumped to “alien invaders seeking conquest—kill them all” without considering any other options. He chases the alien ship, ignoring Spock’s requests for diplomacy, pushing the Enterprise nearly to breaking… until the Metron stops both ships and places both captains in their arena.

Brown’s human protagonist—Carson—and his alien are separated by an invisible force field, unable to attack each other directly. Their battle involves wits and endurance, not brute strength. Kirk throws rocks.

Unlike Kirk, Carson attempts to negotiate peace with his enemy; it “replies” with a mental wave of hatred and bloodlust. Unlike the Gorn, there will be no diplomatic relations in the future. Instead, Carson must find a way to kill his enemy—with the entire human race as the stakes of the battle.

I won’t ruin the story for you, but the result is predictable. The question is not “who wins,” but “how?” In this, it is again much like the Star Trek episode: We do not wonder whether Kirk (and his ship) will be destroyed, but how they will prevail.

The original is much more satisfying than the Trek episode. Carson’s explorations and growing understanding of his situation make sense; Kirk has more resources but ignores technological options (including fire) until his rocks fail to kill.

However, this episode of Trek was not without points of interest: the Gorn was an intriguing alien, and the Metrons use their immense powers to enforce peace in their area; they don’t treat “less advanced” species like toys for their amusement. I hope to see both of them again.

Three stars, even though Kirk remained fully clothed throughout.

Will the real civilization please stand up.


by Andrea Castaneda

This episode exemplifies what happens when a good idea isn’t executed well. I appreciated how this "Arena" explored the idea of barbarism vs civilization. But the way the storyline unfolded left me with some conflicting messages.

Throughout the episode, we’re presented with three different tiers of civilized society: the allegedly barbaric Gorns, the more rational Humans, and highly advanced Metrons.

When the Gorns are introduced, they're framed as violent aliens who attacked Cestus III unprovoked and showed no mercy. Then we have the humans of the Starship Enterprise, who we can identify as the more rational species. But as Captain Kirk's desire for vengeance shows, we can be prone to our own bloodthirsty tendencies. Then we have the Metrons, a species so advanced, they command the laws of physics at will. And while they claim to be the epitome of what a truly civilized world looks like, they still deemed a trial by combat the best course of action rather than, say, a civil trial (even Trelane offered a trial!) But then again, had they chosen that option, we'd have been robbed the spectacle of Bill Shatner fighting a man in a rubber lizard suit.

I was particularly struck when, after much rock throwing, a brief chemistry lesson, and lots of underwhelming stunt choreography, Kirk finally defeats his opponent. The impressed Metron suddenly shows up (dressed as if a cherub from a renaissance painting appeared on the cover of Vogue) to commend Kirk on his display of mercy, yet in the same breath offers to destroy the Gorns anyway!

At this point, I wondered whether the Metrons were really as advanced as they claimed. After all, by declaring the crews of both ships guilty by association, they could have potentially killed many innocent lives. At least with Captain Kirk, who had much more emotional investment in the outcome, he realized when to hold back.

I suppose the moral this episode left me with is that no society, no matter how advanced, is immune to the perils of barbarism.

Three stars.

Fight or Flight


by Tam Phan (Secret Asian Man)

I have to say that I’m really enjoying Star Trek so far. “Arena” isn’t the best episode for reasons that others have already expressed, but the last few episodes of Star Trek have left me with questions of what the Enterprise’s goals are in seeking out new life and civilizations.

We’ve seen that Kirk takes exploration seriously in “The Galileo Seven”. He stops to explore a quasar while transporting lifesaving medicine to a waypoint for a colony in need. He’s battled and bluffed his way through confrontations in space and has also shown prowess in hand-to-hand combat, but are humans exploring the galaxy just to get into fights? It’s understandable that conflicts are sometimes unavoidable, but at times, it seems as though Kirk is just looking for a reason to arm his photon torpedoes. I’m not saying that it’s unheard of for explorers to be capable of defending themselves, but it does seem a bit odd that Kirk’s approach to alien life tends to be confrontational and aggressive.

Kirk goes boldly where no man has gone before, but when does bold become brash? Seeking out new life seems dishonest when it often results in unnecessary conflict. He’s almost immediately opposed to General Trelane’s behavior in “The Squire of Gothos” and now, without asking any questions, he immediately chases after a fleeing ship with the intent to destroy it. To be fair, they did destroy a colony full of seemingly innocent people, but if Enterprise’s role is mainly to explore the galaxy, it’s not clear based on Kirk’s actions. At no point did the Enterprise's captain even try to communicate with the Gorn. Initiative was left to the other party, who reached out to him, explained his viewpoint, even offered his version of mercy.

I think Kirk just got lucky in the end. It made no sense for him to spare the Gorn and there was little indication that he should. What bothers me is that it’s yet another arbitrary standard enforced by a supposedly morally superior alien. Kirk’s mettle was subjectively assessed to be passable using a lousy test that was barely passable in its own right. This would have been a more interesting episode if Kirk’s mercy was rewarded with peace between humans and Gorn rather than a heavy-handed pat on the head by an almighty alien. Good boy, Kirk. You’ve shown mercy. If only there was another way a superior alien could coax a human into showing mercy than a gladiatorial contest.

3 Stars

Ineffective effects


by Janice L. Newman

Thus far, Star Trek has proven itself a cut above just about all other science fiction shows currently playing in the USA. The stories are often sophisticated, the alien menaces sympathetic, there are questions of morality and nuanced plotlines that you simply do not get in, say, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. The special effects, too, are often innovative and surprisingly convincing. The ship made of lights in "The Corbomite Maneuver" stands out, but even effects used across multiple episodes like the glitter of the transporter or the beam of a phaser just work, never jarring the viewer out of the story with how fake they seem. The salt monster in "The Man Trap", despite being the quintessential ‘man in a suit’, managed to be scary rather than ridiculous, and the bulbous-headed alien in "The Corbomite Maneuver" looked fake because, in a brilliant twist, it was.

"Arena" proved to be a disappointment in this, well, arena.

The first half of the episode is interesting. The ‘warzone’ that Captain Kirk and several of his crew find themselves in works well enough, using explosions combined with clever light effects similar to those used for the phasers. However, when Kirk is sent to confront the ‘Gorn’, we encounter one of the first special effects that threw me out of the story entirely.

The Gorn is a man in a suit. It’s a very good suit: well-designed and detailed. It’s clearly meant to be intimidating, with lots of teeth, faceted eyes, and big muscles. Unfortunately, it’s painfully obvious that the poor person inside the suit can barely move. The Gorn is slow, lumbering, and stiff. I can handwave some of this away. Maybe the Gorn’s planet has different gravity, or properties that give its particular bodily development an evolutionary advantage. Yet when Kirk fights the Gorn almost in slow-motion, giving time for the Gorn to swing back, I couldn’t help but immediately be reminded of every cheesy children’s sci-fi show and every low-budget sci-fi movie where a man in a suit tries to be convincingly scary.

They did their best. Kirk uses his speed to his advantage, darting around the rocks while the Gorn plods after him, convinced its superior strength will win in the end. It should be compelling, but as much as I wanted to, I couldn’t engage with it. I just couldn’t see the Gorn as anything but a man-in-a-suit.

There’s also the point that a supposedly advanced race that ostensibly values mercy and peace set up this “Arena” with the components of gunpowder and other tools available such that the two leaders can brutally kill each other, with the lives of their respective crews hanging in the balance. But others have already made that point.

Three stars.

Nothing if not consistent


by Gideon Marcus

I'm going to be the contrary one today.  Everyone else, for various reasons, has given "Arena" some flavor of three stars.  I'm going to give it a lot more.

Jessica makes a valid point.  The episode neatly brings up the "empty land" myth.  But unlike Jessica, I feel the showrunners did their job.  Indeed, they did it twice.  For it is not just Gorn land that was trespassed, but that of the Metrons.  If the Gorns (and by extension, the Skraelings of Vinland) are justified, then surely the Metrons are also justified in whatever actions they want to take to rid their space of the noisome invaders.  That their morals don't necessarily match ours is not surprising; "advanced" is a loaded term.  Kirk and the Gorn were the equivalent of two roly-polies unwanted in a garden.  The Metrons simply put the two of them in a little dish to see what would happen.

Personally, I don't believe the Metrons ever intended to kill anyone (or let anyone die), similar to Balok in "The Corbomite Maneuver".  They were just having fun and teaching us a lesson at the same time: Don't barge into unknown space without knocking.

As for Kirk being a lousy diplomat, point conceded.  But his actions are nothing if not consistent.  In "Balance of Terror", he dithered over engaging the Romulans despite a crystal clear course of action.  In "Arena" he is determined not to make that same mistake again even though, as Mr. Spock points out, the circumstances are not necessarily the same. 

And Mr. Spock, what a gem you are.  In "The Galileo Seven", he consistently finds solutions that result in the least loss of intelligent life, regardless of species.  Here he tries repeatedly to do so again, to the point that he is curtly silenced on the bridge by the captain.

We are frequently given to believe that Kirk is a brilliant commanding officer, someone to be admired.  But more and more, Star Trek is showing us who we really should root for.  Not the headstrong captain who is starting to favor his guns to his communicator, certainly not the overemotional McCoy, who seems to exist only to tease Spock about being an alien.  No, it is the cool, rational (if not always "logical" in the way Jessica would define the term!) Mr. Spock.  And maybe Mr. Sulu.  He was pretty nifty this episode, too. 

And Uhura.  That officer's got some good pipes on her.

Four and a half stars.

It looks like the Enterprise is going to meet Major Nelson this week!

Come join us tonight at 8:30 PM (Eastern and Pacific).  Here's the invitation!



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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

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

7 Comments


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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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[January 12, 1967] Most illogical (Star Trek: "The Galileo Seven")

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Zero sum game


by Janice L. Newman

Ever since his masterful performance in “The Naked Time”, I’ve been eager to see more episodes featuring Leonard Nimoy’s half-Vulcanian, half-human character, “Spock”. This episode revolves around Spock, but it unfortunately does a poor job of what it sets out to do.

The Enterprise is on a mission to bring much-needed medical supplies to a planet suffering from plague. En route, they encounter a quasar, and since they have a couple of extra days before their rendezvous, they follow another directive: to investigate all quasars and quasar-like phenomena.

A shuttle is sent out crewed by seven people. Three are familiar to us: Spock, Scotty, and Doctor McCoy (why the ship’s engineer and ship’s doctor were sent on this scientific mission is never explained). The rest of the shuttle crew are unknowns which, given the episodes we’ve already seen, likely means that one or more of them will die.

The quasar interferes with the instruments of both the shuttlecraft and the Enterprise, causing the shuttle to crash land on a planet in the center of the quasar and the Enterprise crew to be unable to find them and pick them up. They’re racing against time, as Galactic High Commissioner Ferris, who is overseeing the delivery of the critical medical supplies, constantly and obnoxiously reminds them. If they can’t find the missing crew members within two days, they will have to leave them stranded, and probably to their deaths.


Commissioner Smarmiface

On the planet Spock takes command, only to find his orders questioned and challenged at every turn. McCoy’s needling is typical, though it feels inappropriate in the midst of the crisis. In fact, he starts the whole thing off by prodding Spock and saying that “you've always thought that logic was the best basis on which to build command”. This assertion is already suspect, given that Spock has reacted to Kirk’s more inspired gambles (see: “The Corbomite Maneuver” and “The Menagerie”) with respect and acknowledgement that they were clever, even if they were unorthodox or unexpected.

Perhaps following McCoy’s lead, several of the other crew members react with increasing disbelief, anger, frustration and disgust every time Spock tells them to do something, or even speaks. The conflict is meant to have at its heart the idea of pitting reason against emotion, but frankly, it’s poorly done. The crew mostly come across as insubordinate bullies, irrational to an outrageous degree. When Spock is helping Scotty attempt to repair the shuttle and Boma insists that Spock stop what he’s doing and ‘say a few words’ for one of the crewmembers who has, as expected, been killed by the planet’s native lifeforms, Spock’s refusal seems like the only reasonable course given the time constraints they are working under. The only really questionable choice he makes is ordering one of the crewmembers to stay outside as a scout in a dangerous area, which leads to the crewmember’s death—though as a fellow watcher noted, if the scout had been better at his job he may well have survived.


"If only I had some way to call for help!"

When they finally manage to get the shuttlecraft into orbit, Spock jettisons the fuel in a last-ditch attempt at a distress signal. It works, but only because Captain Kirk has disobeyed his own orders and started towards his rendezvous at ‘space normal’ speed instead of ‘warp speed’, and is therefore still in the vicinity. The episode ends with the entire bridge crew laughing mockingly at Spock when he denies that his final choice was an impulsive, “purely human, emotional act”.

Thus ends a story that was by turns exciting, even riveting, and enormously frustrating. The introduction of a ship’s shuttlecraft, the crew’s attempts to get the shuttlecraft into orbit, the Enterprise’s increasing desperation as they hunt for the lost crew were great. I got goosebumps when Spock chose to jettison the fuel. But the way the people under Spock undermined and questioned his authority was irritating and felt contrived. I couldn’t help but think that even if Kirk were giving the same orders, he would never have been challenged the way Spock was. Commissioner Ferris’ continual reminders that there wasn’t much time left were also annoying, although more understandable, as his mission was to prevent unnecessary loss of life in a planetwide plague—a mission which Kirk seems to treat very cavalierly at the end.

With all the good and bad, I can’t give this episode more—or less—than three stars.


by Gideon Marcus

Keep cool, man

In a crisis situation, the most valuable asset is a leader who keeps a level head.  While everyone else is flailing about, the boss makes calm, rational decisions.  With the exception of the laughable babbling scene two thirds through the episode (which single-handedly dropped the Young Traveler's appraisal of the episode from four to three stars), Mr. Spock was completely unflappable, and his decisions, for the most part, excellent.  In an episode not filled with straw men composed of irrationality, Spock's demeanor would have shored up flagging morale, not stoked anger and resentment.

"But two men died!" some might cry, girding an argument against Spock's ability to command.  I submit that, in fact, Spock's actions preserved the most people overall—you just have to see the beings on the planet as people.  While Mssrs. Boma and Gaetano were urging for a demonstration of murder, Spock argued restraint, insisting on terrorizing the aborigines rather than killing them.  He knew that a demonstration of power was likely to be useless, having deduced that their culture was too primitive to sustain the tribal social structure that would respect such a display.  But knowing his men were keen on violence, he channeled it into a less destructive option.


Spock trying to keep everyone alive.

When the indigenous sophont began whacking on the shuttlecraft with a rock, Spock didn't suggest blasting it with a phaser (fuel concerns may have been tight, but they probably could have afforded that shot based on prior consumption).  He gave it a painful shock instead.  Effective and non-lethal. 

In the end, Spock's actions were far more respectful of intelligent life, regardless of the form, than the path advocated by Doctor McCoy, a man whose profession is centered on the preservation of life.

Quasi-scientific

There were several points in the episode where a little bit of explanatory dialogue could have made things much more plausible.  Why does the Enterprise spend so much time searching the class M planet?  There's no indication that's where the shuttle went.  I would have liked there to have been some intimation that Latimer deliberately aimed the Galileo toward the habitable world so they'd have some chance.

Also, for those who don't know what a quasar is, they really are quite interesting, and probably nothing like the phenomenon depicted in the show (which is more like some kind of nebula).  Quasars are actually cutting-edge astronomical science.  When humanity first started turning their radio telescopes to the stars, they discovered sources of radiation that had hitherto been invisible.  But they blazed like beacons in low frequency radio waves. 

They seemed no bigger than stars, but they clearly were not stars.  So they were called "quasi-stellar radio sources" – quasars for short.  No one knew if they were extremely small, close-by entities, or extremely powerful far away ones.  A few years back, it was noted that every quasar had an immensely red-shifted spectrum.  That is to say that all of the light coming from any quasar, every single wavelength of color, was stretched, as if the body were receding from us at great speed.  You've probably heard of this phenomenon before: the Doppler effect you hear when a train whistle is heading away from you.

This red-shift indicated that the quasars were actually very far away, billions of light years.  They also offered proof that the early universe (since if the quasars are far away, they must be quite old – the light took billions of years to reach our eyes, after all) was different from the current universe since there are no nearby quasars.  Thus, final conclusive proof that the universe arose from some kind of Big Bang, as opposed to always existing, as Fred Hoyle and many other prominent cosmologists suggested.

What this all means is that Kirk and co. could not have investigated a quasar, for there are none close enough to Earth for his starship to reach!  He did cover up with the possibility of it being a "quasar-like" object, whatever that means (a quasi-quasi-stellar source?!)


A quasasar?

I can usually squint my ears and forgive this scientificish wishiwash, but it drives the Young Traveler crazy.

Anyway, I guess I give the episode three stars.  I can't decide if it's a terrible episode with great bits or a great episode with terrible bits…

What’s the Folsom Point


by Tam Phan (Secret Asian Man)

We’ve seen a handful of leaders throughout the series, but this is the first time that we get to experience an alien leading a team that is not of their species. Leaders have a critical role to play in every organization, and few would contest that, but what happens when we are led by someone that’s different from us?

The Enterprise’s resident alien, Spock, is no stranger to leadership. He wouldn’t be First Officer if he was. He has proven to be level headed and capable in stressful situations, and in my opinion, he conducts himself no differently in “The Galileo Seven”. He’s a sound decision maker. Yet, Gaetano and Boma seemed intent on defying Spock’s every decision no matter how reasonable. None of Spock’s orders were followed without some comment about his logic as if emotions and irrationality were the greater tools for the situation. The overt hostility toward him at every turn seemed out of place for a crew that should be trained and fully capable of following orders. It’s hard to imagine their actions were motivated by anything other than an irrational hatred or fear of the other. Would the crew have treated Kirk the same way if he had made the same decisions?

Spock’s experience reflects my own. As an Asian, an obviously "different" person (no matter how much people say America is a melting pot) it’s not out of the ordinary for my opinion to be dismissed in favor of the same opinion expressed by someone less different.

I don’t know exactly what the message was in this episode. In the end, Spock made the correct decision and saved the investigation team. Spock received no commendations for actions that not only prevented the death of several crew members, but, as Gideon mentioned, also a number of natives. Yet his decision was credited to human emotionality rather than Vulcanian rationality. It's a haha moment. The good part of Spock is the human one, not the alien one.

I’ll give the episode credit for demonstrating how a seemingly capable crew might turn on someone because he’s different, but I already know what that looks like. And in the end, if the episode was trying to show the foolishness of bigotry, it undercut its own message with the insulting ending.


Nothing better for morale and discipline than laughing at the Exec for being an alien.

One Star

The needs of the many


by Andrea Castaneda

Andi Castaneda here, photojournalist extraordinaire.

I had a lot of mixed feelings watching this episode. On one hand, I liked the setup for the conflict and seeing Spock in a leadership role. But I was ultimately left frustrated by McCoy’s and Boma’s behavior, who seemed too selfish and immature to be crewmembers of the Starship Enterprise.

This episode focuses a lot on “emotion vs logic”. But I think this conflict goes deeper than that. I think this can also be framed as “the individual vs the collective”. Now, I’m still getting to know the characters of Star Trek. But I’m told the Vulcanian culture places much more value in the community over the individual–the latter being too emotional. Spock is consistent with that philosophy, focusing more on saving the majority even at the expense of the few. He includes himself in these calculations.

However, the other crew members–specifically Boma and McCoy–seem to resent this. Perhaps this can be explained as simply as a culture clash. But one would think that after working with Spock for so long, they can understand why he has different customs and world views. Instead, they insult him, calling him a machine and implying he has no heart.


Perhaps these expressions can be entered into the log for use at their disciplinary hearing.

When other crew members are killed by the planet’s native species, they insist on giving the deceased proper burials despite the mounting danger. Granted, I say this from the comfort of my own home far removed from their situation, but it seems to me that their insistence on having their emotional needs met–despite how it jeopardizes the crew’s safety–shows a much more selfish side to them. Yes, I can understand their grief and rage, something that Spock perhaps should have taken into account. But they seemed to lack the foresight to see how it would affect others. Gaetano and Latimer were dead, yet they insisted on putting the rescue attempt in jeopardy to prioritize their own feelings.

At last, they make it off the surface of the planet, but not before they’re attacked again by the native species. The two rescue Spock from the attack–despite his protests- but it costs precious time and fuel. He confronts them on this, but what’s done is done. Their chance of survival is now even slimmer. Luckily, the show runners need another episode next week, and they are saved thanks to Spock’s quick thinking.

Overall, I enjoyed watching Spock taking on a leadership role and how he resolved conflicts. However, I wish the show had acknowledged how McCoy’s and Boma’s actions nearly cost them all their lives. It seems odd that people this erratic managed to be part of such a prestigious fleet. I'll give the show the benefit of the doubt and chalk this up to mediocre writing rather than a fundamental flaw.

For now.

Three stars.

An Illogical Logic


by Jessica Dickinson Goodman

Mr. Spock uses the word "logical" to describe his command decisions, but what he seems to mean is "passionless." It's a subtle difference, but since it was one central to the conflict of this story, I think it is worth diving into.

Here on Earth, in 350 B.C.E. Aristotle famously defined the rhetorical device of logos in his Rhetoric: “αἱ δὲ ἐν αὐτῷ τῷ λόγῳ διὰ τοῦ δεικνύναι ἢ φαίνεσθαι δεικνύναι,” that is, as the third of three methods of persuasion, one which relies “upon the speech itself, in so far as it proves or seems to prove.” (Aristotle in 23 Volumes, translated by J. H. Freese, 1926).

Aristotle meant to inform his students about how to balance three methods of convincing people to change their minds. As anyone with a Classics background will remember, Aristotle breaks all argument down into pathos (arguments designed to stir emotions), ethos (arguments which rely on the speaker’s character), and logos (arguments which rely on the proof they contain). Like a single crewman or crewwoman stranded on a hostile planet, these forms of address are not designed to be used in isolation. Nearly any given speech by Captain Kirk to his crew employs all three of these, often to stirring effect.

Yet the central tension of "The Galileo Seven" lies around Mr. Spock’s stubborn insistence on ignoring the reality of emotions and social standing to focus solely on what he calls “logic,” but which often seems to be his own good ideas, framed in declarative sentences (do any readers have loved ones who “argue” like this?) Sometimes, yes, as Gideon says, Mr. Spock’s “logic” does seem to be the actions most likely to result in the survival of the most sentient beings possible.

But in the over two-dozen times the word “logic” was uttered in this past episode, very few of them refer to moments where the speaker has provided clear proof about the rightness of a course of action. For example, when Dr. McCoy notes that Spock must be pleased to be in command, he replies:

“I neither enjoy the idea of command, nor am I frightened of it. It simply exists. And I will do whatever logically needs to be done. Excuse me.”

Claiming an action is logical, at least as Aristotle taught it and as most of us use it today, is not a short-cut to declaring a perfect, top-down, universally-understood course of correct action. It is instead a way to try to convince people your idea is best; one of several ways, all of which are stronger when braided together. It seems like whatever Mr. Spock is terming “logic” is really more about self-discipline than persuasion, which is all well-and-good, but as a commander, part of his job is to motivate people to carry out his orders. Over and over again throughout this episode, Mr. Spock fails to do so, in part because he insists on misusing both logic and rhetoric.


Logic fails Mr. Spock, or perhaps he fails logic?

There is hope for him yet, however. When all seems lost for the shuttle crew, Mr. Spock vents their fuel, sending up a flare big enough for the Enterprise to see it. It is a decision he could have verbalized, arrived at and proved logically, using either inductive or deductive reasoning, and brought the crew along with him. Though he did not, it is a decision which required him to not only analyze what he thinks the correct actions of Enterprise should have been, but to take into account who was serving as her Captain at the time: his friend, Captain Kirk. I think Mr. Spock knew that Captain Kirk would blend his own moral authority with his crew, his emotional connection to the stranded shuttlecraft, and his own keen grasp of reasoning to extend his search as long as he could. I think Mr. Spock risked all of the surviving shuttle crew’s lives on it – and he was right.

Three stars.

Come join us watching the next episode tonight at 8:30 PM (Eastern and Pacific), apparently starring Liberace!

Here's the invitation!



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