As we close in on the end of the final year of the 60s, it seems the lengthening nights are seeping into my psyche more than usual. I find myself wishing I were more hopeful for the coming of a new decade, and maybe if I paid less attention to politics or the state of the world I could retain more resistance to the gloomy morale of our divided and unrested country. Thankfully, a timely distraction arose: just think how pleasantly surprised I was to discover that there was to be a diverting new work from Rod Sterling to grace our airwaves November 8, 1969!
I was a step beyond devastated when Twilight Zone left the air, as it remains one of my all-time favorite science fiction pieces to date. To know that Rod Sterling would once again be on my television just before the dawn of a new decade sparked a hope in me that’s just enough to disrupt the gloom I’m feeling at the end of this one.
Rod Serling's "Night Gallery", shown on NBC Saturday Night at the Movies
Given the climate of our cultural atmosphere, however, I am not surprised that although the work that Rod Sterling chose to create is star-studded in cast, it is otherwise physically and emotionally dark. The macabre tone sets in right away as an eerie opening theme tinnily whines from the upper register of a harpsichord. The audience is led down a black and white drawing of a hallway, interrupted regularly by the chalky outlines of featured actors, not unlike how it would feel if one were to walk through a series of taped off crime scenes with final resting places similarly marked in each. This tense opening sequence maintains stress on the audience as the illustration gives way to the darkly enshrouded silhouette of the show’s host and final name featured in the credit sequence, Rod Serling.
Serling returns to the small screen, six years after he left it, in the resolute and deliberate fashion we’ve come to expect from him. Ever our guide through the mysterious and strange, he acts as curator of the mysterious in a black void of a presentation room featuring nothing but three portraits, their faces glamorously shrouded in red velvet curtains. He describes each of these covered works of art as suspended “in time and space, a frozen moment of a nightmare.”
Entering the scene associated with the first painting, "The Cemetery," this description is immediately validated as we are confronted with a room occupied by a once wealthy patriarch, bound both by a wheelchair and the living death that is the cognitive and physical decline of age. The elderly man, Mr. Hendrix, is waited on with care by famed film and TV veteran Ossie Davis (Mr. Ruby Dee), playing the sharply dressed and precise butler Osmond Portifoy. In a heartbreakingly relatable way, the rich and ailing painter is depicted as incapable of speaking, walking, or even holding a paint brush as he barely clings to life in his old-monied estate home. By contrast, we are confronted by his shiftless rapscallion of a nephew downstairs, who we are made to immediately dislike as he twitters about the house, disrespectfully upsetting its previous order and chirping our patient butler’s name in mockery as he puts his cigarettes out on the tray of discarded food he is carrying away from Mr. Hendrix’s room.
Portifoy is not amused
The obnoxious youth wastes no time in murdering his uncle once he has confirmed his inheritance of his estate, brazenly directing his uncle’s view to the window overlooking the family cemetery so the poor man can ‘view his future residence’ as he is slowly poisoned by the cold air from the purposely opened window that his frail body is unable to withstand. The greedy nephew makes no attempt to hide his disrespectful glee when the man dies, and he rudely directs the responding home-doctor and estate manager to hastily clear away as many traces as possible of the deceased man’s control over his wealthy home. Condescendingly, he allows Butler Portifoy to stay on staff, despite their obvious and open distaste for one another. However, Portifoy finds it almost more curse than blessing that he is allowed to continue to serve the Hendrix Estate under new management.
Just when it appears nothing could stop the young man’s wonton disrespect for all things dignified, his drunken carrying on hitches on a disturbing detail he notices in one of his uncle’s paintings hanging over the hallway stairs. When his uncle is interred in the family cemetery, it appears that the estate painting changes to depict an open grave in the corresponding area of the portrait. At first, he tries to brush off this change as a trick of the light, or his faulty memory, but the more time he spends in the home, the more fixated he becomes on the painting. When his paranoia grows to the point of inducing sleeplessness, he lashes out, ripping it off the wall and throwing it into the fireplace, only to find it back on the wall where it was before. He responds with violence to Portifoy’s insistence that there is nothing wrong with the painting and burns the man, finally breaking the man’s tolerance for his behavior. Portifoy quits on the spot, leaving the younger man to continue swiftly losing his mind alone in this apparently haunted house.
A rather satisfyingly contentious dynamic
In predictable fashion, the man fares poorly on his own, and he eventually succumbs to the battle with the paranormal forces at play, launching himself off the staircase entangled in the canvas of his dead uncle’s likeness. To my surprise, however, this is not where the story ends, and it appears that the doomed youth was not the only man in the house compelled by greed and willing to play with paranormal forces he did not understand. It's a twist too good to spoil here.
The second story, “Eyes,” features the fascinating combination of a winning performance by storied actress Joan Crawford and the professional debut of a young director named Steven Spielberg. Although it was rumored that this segment’s veteran star was originally reluctant to take a chance working with the inexperienced director, it appears her fears were unfounded. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that the direction of this segment was Rod Serling’s best choice of the featured three. From the elevator door closing on Joan’s character’s disgruntled employee as we open the scene, to the acrobatic shots we get from the ceiling looking through chandelier crystals, the cinematography and dynamic story telling are movie-quality.
An ambitious shot that inverts the surgeon as he has inverted his moral code.
The story in question revolves around the aging debutant Miss Claudia Menlo, played by Joan Crawford, whose nightmare appears to be the life-long curse of blindness. It seems as if the finery she surrounds herself with and the technology with which she’s been able to make her life self-sufficient has steadily transformed into bars of a gilded cage. She has become so obsessed with the idea of the sight that she has been robbed of, that she interprets it as a cruelty that she must turn into a weapon to settle the score. It is from this space that she discovers an opportunity to right the universal wrong, and she stops at nothing to seize it.
Through the perspective of the conscripted surgeon, we discover that Miss Menlo has bribed, extorted and blackmailed enough professionals and poor slobs to direct a procedure to take place where one man will lose his vision forever to give her but twelve hours of precious sight. It’s clear we are meant to condemn Joan Crawford's character’s actions, and to be sure her victim is pathetic enough to deserve all of one’s compassion, but I cannot help but understand her desperation. Yes, her vanity, decadence and aggressive way of tearing through everything that gets in her way is indefensible, but it’s hard to say if given the same circumstances I wouldn’t make similar choices. As a senescent ice queen of an empty decaying palace, the woman that life has made of her is twisted into an unlovable shape now, but I cannot help but imagine what torture it must have been to live a whole life of such beauty without the ability to see any of it.
No matter how thoroughly we are meant to have shut her out, I cannot help but feel a pang of ache when she screams about color, while decorated in such fine examples of the same. I understand the bad intentions she paved to her own destruction, but when the irony she earned comes to call, I cannot fully say it would have been a doom I could have avoided myself.
I am always hesitant to call a woman a nightmare, but when the shoe fits…
The last story for me is the weakest of the three. “Escape Route” features an ex Nazi officer from a concentration camp hiding out in Buenos Aires after the end of World War II. As many men with this description did (do?) in real life, he is haunted by paranoia of being found and held responsible for his cruelty and past actions as he lives a life of poverty and insignificance in a foreign country he does not seem to enjoy any aspect of. I felt like this had the least compelling premise because even if he wasn’t a war criminal, the protagonist seems to be a completely irredeemable, unlikable nightmare. While he is haunted, he appears remorseless and even defensive of his past behavior. It also seems to have turned him into a miserable, belligerent drunk who verbally abuses the only person in his life that knows his secret: his consistently drunk, lady-of-the-night neighbor. Even though she is the only one who seems to tolerate him, she still uses his secret to twist the knife of insults she slings right back at him.
A well-deserved haunting
One day, in hiding from the detectives attempting to get him to answer for his crimes, he seeks refuge inside a closing museum and is unexpectedly moved by a painting of a fisherman who he hallucinates as having his face. It is here that his personal moment is interrupted by an elderly Jewish man emotionally connecting with another painting that expresses the agony of a holocaust victim. Based on how often he is drunk and/or hallucinating, I am not entirely convinced that the other man, Herr Bleum, isn’t a physical manifestation of the ex-Nazi’s guilty conscience.
In fighting against the web of his own weaving, he predictably hangs himself, using the thread of magic he has discovered in his story to yoke himself to a punishment far worse than any he could have received at the hands of real-life avengers.
Rod Serling, in all his glory
Whatever unevenness exists in this trio of stories is overwhelmed by the sheer quality of production, and also the joy at having an old master back at the game. The gilded tapestry Rod Serling has woven with The Night Gallery is a welcome masterpiece capable of warming my heart in these cold and dark winter months. The papers say that Serling is uninterested in serialized television work after Twilight Zone, and that these three episodes were a one-off set. However, after turning out such well-crafted, well-acted and well-directed gems as these, I cannot imagine this vignette not inspiring a sequel or two in the coming decade, either penned by Serling or a successor he designates. That hope alone gives me something to look forward to as the curtain draws this year to a close.
5 stars
[New to the Journey? Read this for a brief introduction!]
The Corrosive Threat of Antidisestablishmentarianism
by Amber Dubin
US-world relations have been growing increasingly concerning as we venture cautiously into the first couple of months of 1969. From never having quite gotten back on the right foot since last year's Tet offensive (and with this year's edition currently ongoing) to the aftermath of the Pueblo incident, to the newly renewed Moon Race, it sometimes feels like America is standing on the world stage with shaky legs. It is easy to react to these uncertain times by pining for a prelapsarian epoch in human history.
It’s rather apropos, then, that Star Trek writers have once again turned to the often-referenced biblical Garden of Eden. Here, however, I'd argue that “The Way to Eden” approaches this subject in an unique way by suggesting, as Spock does here, that all advanced societies “hunger for an Eden, where spring comes.”
What happens when you set transporter coordinates for Haight/Ashbury
The episode opens on a familiar scenario where the Enterprise is hotly pursuing a stolen vessel that is overheating its engines to alarming levels. They manage to beam over the occupants just before the fleeing vessel explodes, and the crew of the Enterprise is confronted by a motley crew of ragamuffins. Kirk greets the strangely dressed, wild, love-and-peace-preaching, anti-authoritarian naturalists by informing them that they were only spared consequences for stealing and destroying a Federation ship because the wayward son of a political figure is among them.
"Don't trust the Fuzz, man!"
They respond to Kirk’s mercy without gratitude, disrespectfully requesting that the Enterprise act as a ferry in their quest to reach a planetary Eden and relocating to sickbay with extreme reluctance.
Meanwhile, Ensign Chekov discovers that a lovely dark-haired Russian beauty from his Starfleet Academy days is among the band of miscreants. Irina Galiulian and Chekov lost touch when she dropped out of Starfleet to chase nebulous and flighty pursuits, a choice that Chekov deeply disapproves of. They have an angry, yet charged, discussion which resolves nothing before she returns to her more amiable family of choice.
Is Chekov going through captain's training? Because I thought it was Kirk's job to be so enamored of the pretty lady that he forgets to protect the ship.
Back in sickbay, the situation has descended into chaos. The group’s leader, ex-research engineer Dr. Sevrin, has been determined to be a carrier for a superbug that is both incurable and created by the advanced sterilization techniques used to sustain Federation environments. He is thus quarantined and isolated from his flock, an action against which the rest of the group protests heavily.
Acting as both the snake and the snake charmer, the now deemed insane Dr. Sevrin spurs on the rest of his group to break him out of isolation and seize control of the Enterprise, knowing their musical seductions and rapscallion ways will cause the crew to lower their defenses and underestimate any hidden, nefarious intentions.
Tonight on Hullabaloo!
Furthering this goal, Irina isolates Chekov and effortlessly steps into the role of femme-fatale, doing little else other than batting her lashes and breathing lightly on Chekov’s lips to get him to spill his guts about every single operating mechanism of the ship’s security and navigational systems. Next, the group minstrel, Adam, begins a pied piper act, strumming and singing his way through the whole ship. He even convinces Spock to display his instrumental talents in a seemingly impromptu concert that gets broadcast over the ship’s speakers, in a very effective misdirection campaign that covers for his comrades as they disable ship security and free their leader.
Now in control of the Enterprise, the group barrels into Romulan space towards a planet that ship’s scanners have defined as Eden, setting a trap to disable the crew and allow them time to escape. There is a brief pause where members of the group try and fail to dissuade the power-mad Dr. Sevrin from making this trap fatal for the Enterprise crew, but thankfully this is the one part of their plan that the crew is able to disrupt before succumbing to those permanent consequences.
Asleep on the job
The band briefly appears victorious in the acquisition of their fabled garden, but find the paradise hostile to humanoid life, and the bare-footed hippies literally get burned by the acid-coated plants growing in an Eden that was supposed to welcome them. Faced with the devastating failure of his quest, Dr. Sevrin willfully consumes the deadly fruit, very plainly demonstrating that the insanity brought on by his dual lust for anarchy and power was fatal.
The metaphorical apple (still much better than "The Apple")
I think boiling this episode down to “the one about beatniks in space” is both simplistic and disrespectful to the subtlety of the message it’s trying to convey. I see how, on its face, it could appear that the plot of this episode is a ham-fisted attempt to judge the reactions of the Enterprise crew when introduced to hippies from our time, but I’d argue their role here is to demonstrate the corrosive nature of antidisestablishmentarianism. I think the fact that such a small group of humanoids, with no greater powers of intelligence or manipulation than any other aliens we’ve met so far, was able to so swiftly and effortlessly take control of the ship, speaks to the power of hiding in plain sight.
Rather than the loudly chanting overtones that kindness can be fatal, the more subtle message here is that these intruders merely awakened seeds that were pre-sown into the mind of every being in known society. The unspoken fear that our zeitgeist whispers, is that every established system only functions as long as the seeds of hedonism, anarchy and sedition do not grow to destroy it. It is the reason power fears the rhetoric of communists, cultists and anarchists; why it tries to silence the rabble-rousers, quell the mobs, round up and isolate the dissenters, and burn the witches.
The wolf is efficiently hidden in sheep's clothing when love-drunk, starry-eyed hippies prove themselves not to be peaceniks –but weapons. Weapons so effective that, in a matter of hours, they reduce an advanced, peaceful, orderly, military vessel to the plaything of a handful of gleeful, half-naked, singing fools.
If only they let Bob Hope tour the Enterprise, the crew wouldn't be so starved for entertainment. Then again, they might…
This episode very effectively warns against the dangers of what can happen when a charismatic, silver-tongued leader sinks his fangs into the impressionable minds of restless sycophants. It demonstrates how powerful that sharp-witted leader can become when he knows how to wield such universally disarming weapons as pleasant music, a righteous and honorable cause, and the promise of affection and approval from smiling, scantily-clad, untamed youths.
Despite its disarming façade, this episode is not a light romp. It is a cautionary tale; and in my opinion a particularly well-woven yarn.
5 stars.
Space Hippies
by Erica Frank
We only see six of the Edenites, but they must be part of a larger movement: Spock knows their greeting and their philosophy, and "reaches" them well enough to be the ship's liaison with them. Either they are very numerous, or very influential, or both.
Clockwise from center: Dr. Sevrin, a brilliant engineer; Adam, a musician; Tong Rad, son of the Catullan ambassador, who plays drums; nameless blonde musician who plays the stringed wheel; nameless brunette woman; Irina Galliulin, Chekov's former girlfriend.
Spock respects their goals even when he recognizes that Sevrin is manipulative and deceitful. At least three of them are well-educated, talented, and lauded in their fields; we have no reason to suspect the others are random dropouts. These aren't people who have failed at mainstream society and are chasing myths to make up for their inadequacy–rather, they have judged the Federation and found it wanting in soul and harmony. As Spock says, "They regard themselves as aliens in their own worlds… a condition with which I am somewhat familiar."
They have lost their leader and their Eden, but four of them remain, and they need not give up their quest for a peaceful community, away from a technological, regimented society.
We've seen at least two places they could go: One where people can live a mellow and gentle life, but slowly lose their drive for creativity. And one where they could have fantastic adventures, but none of it would be real. Or they can keep searching for a tropical paradise planet that's not full of acid and poison, although any of those in Federation space are likely to be populated ("exploited," I'm sure they'd say) unless there's some reason not to go there.
…Maybe paradise planet is being used as a retirement facility now, and is too commercialized for the hippies. Maybe the Shore Leave planet is restricted – the aliens who run it don't want the Federation trying to figure out their technology. So perhaps they need to look for somewhere else. But on their quest, they can visit other planets and find people looking for a simpler, gentler life.
They'll need to find a new lead guitarist.
Five stars (but I'm probably very biased). I loved the music, and that the ending, although touched with tragedy, wasn't "it's all ruined." There's room for hope that someday, they will find their Eden.
Back to the Beginning
by Gideon Marcus
Remember first season Star Trek? When Kirk was a "a stack of books with legs", stiff and Hornblower-like? When Spock was cold on the outside, hot on the inside? When other members of the cast had lines? When the Enterprise halls were filled with crew members and guests? When music was a fundamental part of the show? (viz. Uhura singing in "Charlie X" and "The Conscience of the King")
There are many reasons to like "A Way to Eden", and they are well-represented in the above entries by my colleagues. But what I loved about the episode the most was that it felt like a return to the Trek I liked best. After so many episodes in which the characters acted contrary to their nature, when plots were half-baked, when technology was inconsistent, when our favorite vessel seemed sterile and incomplete—finally, the Enterprise feels alive again.
You can even see the relief in the crew. The fellow guarding the brig was mesmerized listening to that (quite excellent) jam between Spock and the exquisite and talented Deborah Downey. He must have been just parched for entertainment. No wonder they all were so susceptible to the influence of One.
I'd watch this episode of Jazz Casual any day…
Spock's heart-wrenching expression of support of the Edenites' quest, his solidarity with their feeling of alienation within utopia, was worth the price of admission all on its own. The space hippies weren't characterized as naive, pampered rich kids who didn't know what was good for them. They are the free spirits for whom middle class American values just don't wash. A key message of this episode: surely, the Federation must be big enough for them, too. Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combination, ¿qué no?
And finally, if Charles Napier and Deborah Downey ever release an album of their performances on this show (I can absolutely buy that Adam's space guitar provides perfect acoustics and amplification for his voice), I will be the first in line. Also, if anyone's started a Deborah Downey fan club, I want to be a charter member. Otherwise, I might have to make one myself…
Four stars.
[Come join us tonight (February 28th) for the next thrilling episode of Star Trek! KGJ is broadcasting the show live with commercials and accompanied by trekzine readings at 8pm Eastern and Pacific. You won't want to miss it…]
This is the episode that fully cemented season 3 in my mind as the highest quality season so far. The special effects were impressive, the costumes were simply spiffy and the pacing and audio were smooth and well-balanced. My only frustration is that it lacked one major connecting thread in the plot, which left it with inconsistencies great enough to turn this otherwise seamless Tholian web into a loose and fraying net.
In a masterful opener, we are dropped in the thick of the action from the very beginning, with the crew staring in concern at all the viewscreens, as they are informed that they have entered a region of space "that appears to be breaking apart." I would have loved an explanation as to what readings led Spock to that conclusion, but everyone else seems to take Spock’s assessment with no further elaboration. Their attention is swiftly caught by the appearance of a marooned Federation Starship, one that Captain Kirk identifies on sight as the U.S.S. Defiant. Wasting no time, he rushes to beam onto it with nearly all the highest ranking officers (you’d think he’d learn that effectively decapitating the chain of command before even assessing the nature of the fate that befell an adrift starship is something he should be a bit more cautious about doing, but it seems he prefers learning the hard way yet again). When Kirk, Spock, McCoy and Chekov beam over to the other starship, we see that they have at least learned to take the small precaution of contamination reduction suits this time.
But they don't decontaminate them when they come back to the Enterprise—well, perhaps that's part of the transporter beaming now.
In a sequence of events that should surprise no one at this point, the danger that annihilated the Defiant's crew begins to affect the away team right away. Just as we saw just two weeks ago in “Day of the Dove,” Chekov starts being influenced by a violent murderous madness, and just as the ensign did in “The Naked Time,” he tells no one of his symptoms before bringing a contagion back to the ship with him. Meanwhile in the Defiant’s sickbay, Dr. McCoy makes an immediate and even more disturbing observation when crewmen and objects on the ship phase out of existence as he tries to touch them. Thankfully, Kirk at least treats this threat with the appropriate level of alarm, and immediately orders a retreat to the Enterprise, but it appears to be too late, as whatever forces seem to be affecting the dissolution of the Defiant cause the ship to disappear while the captain is separated from the away team, mid beaming sequence.
The chicken-soup dispenser has become a tricorder device.
The focus now shifts to the delicate dance of keeping the ship in close enough proximity to the Defiant to make another attempt at retrieving the captain while managing to keep the ship in one piece as it withstands the conditions of this volatile section of space. Confusingly, Spock attempts to explain what's happening with vague multiphasic pseudo-science. He says the computer can calculate the pattern in which our universe and the Defiant's overlap with enough regularity that he speculates that the defunct ship will reappear in two hours. Here, he muddies the waters by throwing in noncommittal statements like “the dimensions are totally dissimilar and any use of power disturbs it,” that made me so frustrated with his vagueness that I agreed with Chekov's violent outburst that interrupted it.
"The science in this episode is too confusing!"
The writers decide here that the episode needs even more tension, choosing this moment for the Tholians to zoom into view. Seeking, too late, to guard this unstable portion of space, an alien ship containing beings calling themselves the Tholians hails the Enterprise demanding an explanation for their trespassing and requesting they leave the area immediately. Spock negotiates the calculated amount of time he requires to interact with the Defiant again. When Spock’s calculations prove erroneous, the Tholians swiftly open fire on the Enterprise, feeling as if they were maliciously deceived. Following a brief fire-fight, the Enterprise and the Tholians end up disabling each other, and the Tholians retreat and enact a new strategy to defeat the Enterprise, gathering reinforcements and using several ships to slowly build a web of energy beams.
As if there wasn't enough going on with this intergalactic battle, at the same time, McCoy is engaged in a battle of his own against the interphasic space madness affecting Chekov and the crew. He sets about the monumental task of medically creating an internal shield to barely comprehensible degradative forces, much as we've seen him do in “Miri” and “The Deadly Years.”
"Physician, heal thyself!"
Spock takes this lull in the immediate external danger to officially declare Captain Kirk dead, and he holds a brief, ship-wide funeral service for him. Dr. McCoy drags Spock very reluctantly to an audience with Kirk’s recorded Will and rather unnecessarily takes an opportunity to try to bully, insult, and squeeze an emotional reaction out of Spock. It seems as if this is another one of their typical disputes, but when Kirk’s voice rings out through his tapes, counseling them to stop bickering, it feels as if he’s reaching out from beyond the grave to bring home the gravity of the situation they are in. McCoy immediately apologizes, noting, "It hurts, doesn't it?" In the tense silence where Spock replies softly "What would you have me say, Doctor?" The scene is suddenly imbued with a surprisingly beautiful tenderness that only the shared grief that the loss of a captain and dear, true friend could elicit.
"I can't leave you two alone for five minutes!"
In yet another tonal shift, we find that it's Uhura who helps solve the mystery of their still interdimensionally traveling Captain, as she is first to see his “shadow” phasing in her mirror. One by one, the crew begins sharing in what Uhura had thought to be her own personal hallucination, and they realize Kirk is still alive on a plane of existence that is erratically phasing with ours. Here, the plot seems to completely unravel for me. Apparently a phaser beam punched a hole through the dimensional veil and Kirk got through and somehow also another hole is about to open in the Tholian Web that the Enterprise can slip through while also scooping up Captain Kirk in one fluid movement. Also McCoy discovers the cure for the rabid space sickness (which, truly, why does that matter if they are all about to leave this space in 20 minutes?) and Scotty takes it to his quarters to drink it down like it’s a cocktail mixer rather than an anti-interdimensional-radiation medicine.
"Subtle, yet bold!"
The rest of the episode rushes to a “just because” conclusion, only necessary because they had loaded the story up too much in the beginning. If the SFnal concepts had been more simplistic like “colliding space eddies,” and they hadn’t re-used the space madness subplot so soon, or even if they had taken another moment to acknowledge how emotionally compassionate it was of Spock to make time for a memorial service in the midst of a crisis out of deference to his human subordinates, the episode could have come to a more settled conclusion. Instead, the final scenes collide and coalesce into a sudden messy slop.
The Enterprise escapes the Tholian web 'with a mighty leap.'
In total, the quality of this episode's elements was excellent, but could have stood to benefit from a couple more minutes of editing. Maybe a few more threads woven into web of this plot would have been enough to ensnare my full endorsement of it
4 stars.
Tangled up in Interspace
by Trini Stewart
“The Tholian Web” completely enveloped me in its tense atmosphere this week, largely because I had to watch helplessly as my favorite character, our dearly beloved Spock, faced nearly insurmountable challenges as captain. Spock had to defuse so many high-pressure situations simultaneously that were overwhelming just to imagine, and each aspect of Kirk’s complicated rescue was painfully resolved on the thinnest of ice (to no fault of Spock’s careful guidance).
Other than the strain of having to hinge everyone’s lives on multiple close calls, perhaps the most problematic facet of Spock’s predicament was McCoy’s aggressive response to Spock’s leadership. Acting as a foil to Spock’s calm and focused responses, McCoy persistently questioned and blamed their dire straits on Spock, who had to spend precious time defending his decisions as he urged that they press on. I’ll be the first to admit that, if it were anyone else besides Spock in charge of weighing the risks of Kirk’s rescue, I too would insist that we save the crew while the ship could still leave.
Spock—the best man for the job.
Still, I couldn’t tell if McCoy was just completely distraught by Kirk’s being lost, or if he was influenced by the interspace deterioration to some degree, but I was hurt to see Spock at odds with a partner he can usually trust when he needed him most. My bias will ultimately lie with Spock’s reliability to make the best decision available in any given situation, and I wish that despite the intense circumstances, McCoy had at least conceded to work together with Spock once the ship was down. It was a pretty low blow to assume Spock meant to endanger everyone to secure his captain status, especially after Spock explained his reasoning perfectly.
Thankfully for everyone, Kirk had predicted exactly how the two officers would interact, and he gave them just the sobering insight they needed to cooperate peacefully. I loved that Spock was reminded that McCoy was there to help when matters couldn’t be resolved by his best judgment alone. It was equally sweet (and satisfying) to see Kirk remind McCoy that Spock could make human mistakes too, right after McCoy made a rude remark about Spock’s Vulcan half.
All in all, I loved this entire episode with its suspenseful atmosphere, satisfying characterization, and well-earned resolution. I can only imagine how long-time fans must have enjoyed this episode knowing the characters’ history with one another!
4.5 stars.
Our Little Vulcan’s Growing Up
by Andrea Castaneda
It has been a while since I've caught an episode of Star Trek. In fact, the last episode I watched was “Amok Time”, in which we saw a glimpse of Mr. Spock’s vulnerable side. So I'm glad the show I finally found time for was “The Tholian Web”, featuring our favorite Vulcan in a leadership role. I was happy to see another glimpse of this stoic character. And indeed, compared to how he was in season one (which I got to see fairly regularly), we’ve seen a lot of character growth in how he leads a mission and communicates with his crew.
We first saw Spock’s role as a leader in season one’s “Galileo Seven”. In it, he and other crew members were sent to scout a newly discovered planet. Through twists of fate, they are left stranded, alone, and facing a hostile native species.
When one crew member dies, Spock insists they spare no time to respect their fallen comrade, focusing on finding a way home. It’s logical to him, but it sparks ire amongst the crew members, thus sowing seeds of discontent. As they search for a way back, the crew continues to be uncooperative and critical of his orders, save for Scotty. Here, it’s Spock’s lack of understanding human emotion that jeopardizes their mission. Despite the “illogical” nature of the situation, his crew members want their grief respected. And while we, the audience, understand Spock does what he thinks is best, one can understand why the crew sees him as “cold”.
By season three, he seems to have learned from this experience. In “The Tholian Web”, while he remains calm and collected when faced with Kirk's death, he chooses to spend a moment to hold a brief but effective memorial service. It is done very much in Spock's way, but it shows how the Vulcan first officer is able to empathize with his crew. And the gesture pays off. Despite one crewmember going mad during the service, it seems to solidify Spock's position as new leader. The members of the Enterprise— save for McCoy– respect his orders, call him "Captain", and do not question him, showing how much he’s earned their trust.
Spock, having learned from experience, foregoes the traditional comedy monologue.
Another stark contrast is how his attitude shifts from “saving the village above all” to “no man left behind”. In “The Galileo Seven”, after scrimping together repairs to get their shuttle into orbit, Spock states that the crew should go on without him if he is compromised. And inevitably, Spock is incapacitated right as the shuttle lifts off. The surviving crew members rescue him despite his insistence to go on. It’s a heroic act, but one that costs them their window of opportunity to leave. Because of that, he scolds them for it and they respond with frustration. (But worry not; they make it to the Enterprise in the end.)
In “The Tholian Web”, Spock seems to take the opposite approach. When faced with the prospect of losing Kirk, he risks the Enterprise’s escape window for the chance to save Kirk. I should note that one can interpret this as Spock making a special exception for their captain. But I choose to believe Kirk’s ideals have rubbed off on him. Right on cue, he receives much criticism from McCoy, who is being particularly prickly even for him. Their banter serves as a good vocalization for what the audience might be thinking. But it was interesting seeing the logical Vulcan take the riskier approach. I will say, Spock’s choice does endanger the rest of the crew–the very thing he was trying to avoid in “Galileo Seven”. But once again, I think it shows how much Kirk has influenced him.
In the end, the gamble pays off. Kirk is rescued, the Enterprise escapes, and everyone goes on to explore another day.
Indeed, this episode can be interpreted as a better evolved version of the “Galileo Seven”. The stakes were higher, there were more plot elements in play, and the alien species they faced was more threatening. The story kept me guessing and didn’t have predictable moments (despite the ending being a tad bit convenient.) It was a delight to see how Spock not only survived but thrived as a leader. I very much look forward to seeing how Spock will continue to develop, both as a leader and as a true friend to the Enterprise.
Five stars
Behind the scenes
by Gideon Marcus
Back in the first season, the Enterprise was a living, breathing entity with 430 varied souls on board. Over the course of the show, the focus has shifted sharply onto The Big Three (viz. last episode, in which the starship might as well have been the personal vehicle of Kirk, Spock, and McCoy a la Peter's woody in The Mod Squad).
This week, we saw a bit of the old Enterprise, the kind we haven't seen since "Balance of Terror", really. There were some 30-40 people at Kirk's (premature) funeral, lots of people in engineering, McCoy's lab, on the bridge. There were enough people that department heads could, rightly, not spend all of their moments doing hands-on work. Uhura got to take a few minutes off, which we haven't seen since her impromptu concert with Spock in "The Conscience of the King" (the enforced hiatus in "The Changeling" doesn't count).
Interestingly, this actually turned Lorelei off a bit, so used is she to the more-than-one-braid-on-their-sleeves stars and co-stars doing all the work. But I'll never criticize a show for getting things right. Now if they can just get some trained Marines to beam ashore instead of the ship's senior complement…
A Tholian spins its web. Note: not to scale (this is supposed to be "out of phaser range".)
Anyway, I loved this episode, from beginning to end. It took a bunch of somewhat familiar elements, mixed them with some new ones, and tied them all together with the thread of Spock's first real command. It reminded me a bit of a second-season Burke's Law episode where Captain Amos Burke goes on vacation, and the rest of his team have to solve a case without him. Kirk's absence gives "The Tholian Web" room to breathe (even as he suffocates). This enhances the poignancy of his taped final orders to Spock and Bones.
I loved getting to see Sulu cradle Chekov's head after the navigator goes mad (they do love to hear him scream). I loved seeing Uhura mourn for the Captain, seeing her in her quarters! And we see Spock's quarters again, too. Scotty, McCoy, and Spock enjoy a drink together before the engineer takes the bottle of cure away to share it with someone else—probably Kevin Riley.
And I always love getting to see another starship, even if they are inevitably in distress. Somehow, each has its own unique flavor, even though they always use the same sets. Finally, I loved meeting the Tholians, an attempt at a true alien race.
In Communist Red, no less…
Never mind the brilliant special effects, the superlative acting, the real tension, even knowing Kirk was going to live (as he must, and as we saw in the preview; this was a negative point for Lorelei, too).
Thus, I can give this episode no less than five stars. Frankly, Season 3 has been, so far, my favorite season yet.
[Come join us tonight (November 22nd) for the next thrilling episode of Star Trek! KGJ is broadcasting the show live with commercials and accompanied by trekzine readings at 8pm Eastern and Pacific. You won't want to miss it…]
After several weeks in science fiction's New Wave, Star Trek returned last week to its roots—specifically, the pages of Astounding Science Fiction. Those who read Robert Heinlein's Universe when it was serialized in the 1940s or the novelized version, Orphans in the Sky in the early '50s, will be thoroughly familiar with the plot of the latest Trek episode.
We start in medias res: the Enterprise is under fire by a cluster of missiles. After dispatching them with phasers, Captain Kirk orders the ship to investigate the source. On the way, Dr. McCoy gives Kirk a bombshell announcement—McCoy is dying from a terminal disease and has one year to live.
"I'm (about to be) dead, Jim."
In short order, the Enterprise arrives at the missiles' point of origin, which turns out to be a large asteroid. It looks just like the one "The Paradise Syndrome", and the parallels do not stop there. For the asteroid is actually hollow and has engines. It's a generation ship (a sort of slower-than-light space ark on which people will live and die for centuries) called Yonada, and the people onboard have lapsed to primitivism, unaware that they are even on a mobile vessel. The ship is on a collision course with the highly inhabited world, Darin 5. Impact date: about a year hence.
For the walnut is hollow, and I have eaten the pith.
Kirk, Mr. Spock, and McCoy beam down to investigate, because, of course, it's always those three these days. They are taken prisoner by a bunch of mooks in parti-color sheets led by the beautiful Priestess/Queen Natira, and presented to The Oracle. This is a black monolith with a camera eye and a menacing voice (pretty sure it's the versatile Jimmy Doohan, once again) who zaps the Federation trio to let them know what he's capable of.
The Yonadan handshake.
When the three awaken, McCoy is the most affected thanks to his illness. Upon learning about McCoy's condition Spock grips Bones' shoulder with an intensity that belies his stoic demeanor. They are clearly very close friends, bickering aside.
"Put your hand on my shoooouldeeer…."
Queen Natira is quite taken with Bones and candidly asks if he'll be her mate. It's all very sudden, but if you reverse the sexes, it's actually not unusual for the screen—after all, James Bond seduces even more quickly. Anyway, since Bones digs Natira and he only has a year left, why not? Meanwhile, Kirk and Spock monkey around in the Oracle's room and get sentenced to death for blasphemy. They are saved by McCoy's intervention and beam back to the ship, leaving McCoy behind at his request. As part of his citizenship rite, Bones is implanted with The Instrument of Obedience, a subcutaneous pain inducer installed in a person's left temple.
Kirk and co. are about to warp away from Yonada on the direct orders of an Admiral, when Bones calls the ship on his communicator. In the Oracle room, McCoy has seen a book that contains all the knowledge of the folks who built Yonada, a super-advanced race called The Fabrini. He thinks it has the key to getting the ship back on course so it won't hit Darin 5. But as he relays this information, his Instrument begins to glow, and Bones collapses.
"Chicago Mobs of the 1920s?"
Excedrin headache #1701
Kirk and Spock beam back to Yonada, the latter extracting McCoy's Instrument, the former convincing Natira of the truth of her situation. They all confront the Oracle, who is displeased, but as we've all guessed, he's just a computer and easily deactivated. Kirk and Spock get the asteroid back on course (but the destination is still, apparently, Darin 5) and the day is saved. Natira asserts that, much as she loves Bones after the 38 minutes they've spent together, she must stay behind with her people and guide them, now that she knows the truth. But McCoy can catch up with her in a year when they reach their goal.
There's not too much to say here. I enjoyed the return to classic SFnal fare, and I particularly liked Natira, who is bold but reasonable, and there's no "a woman?" reaction to her leading her people. I guess Kirk learned his lesson from "Spock's Brain." It's a pretty episode, particularly this great through-the-stairs shot as our heroes descent into the ark proper (which, as a watcher pointed out, also saved a lot of money since the rest of the set didn't have to be shown).
But the episode sort of plods. There is a bit of padding, which the show can ill afford given how much it tries to do in 60 minutes. My biggest issue is Kirk deducing that Yonada is somehow broken. How can he tell the Oracle doesn't plan to decelerate once the ship gets to Darin 5? And, of course, the Fabrini data tapes coincidentally having the cure to McCoy's illness, cheapening the whole "Bones is dying" plot.
Three stars.
Eve's Bitten Apple is a Hollow Fruit
by Amber Dubin
With a title including the words “I have touched the sky,” I expected the the writing quality in this episode to reach a bit higher in metaphorical heights. Unfortunately, the intellectual peak of this episode is the lofty language of the title. I say this because the plot appears to be a sex-reversed version of Adam and Eve.
At first blush, Natira seems to be an original character. A strong-willed priestess/queen who is a decisive and effective leader and emissary for the authoritative voice of the Ancients. However, this illusion of originality quickly fades when she is viewed through a biblical lens as Adam, the founder of humanity and the only one entrusted with hearing the Voice of God. While it is a slightly interesting spin to cast McCoy as Eve offering her the apple of knowledge, it’s a frustratingly over-done concept. I may be biased, as I also take issue with the biblical moral being that seeking knowledge is worthy of punishment, but I don’t see why this story needs to keep being told ad nauseum. And, more importantly, how is it that even though the woman is playing Adam this time, she’s still being punished?
Adam famously pointed the finger at Eve to avoid being branded with the title of ‘original sinner,’ and yet when Natira doesn’t pluck the apple herself, she is still painted with the same brush as McCoy. Also, I am not a fan of the fact that the Ancient Ones are once again an all-powerful race with the forethought to sustain their people for 10,000 years (a la the Eye-Morgs in “Spock’s Brain” or the Creators of “The Paradise Syndrome”) and yet their grand plan to support their people is an authoritarian, theocratic government with shock collars to keep their subjects in line? Again? Can all these ancient, powerful, alien races truly be that intellectually evolved when not one so far has established a system whose fabric doesn’t completely unravel at the slightest pull on a thread tugged by a single dynamic thinker? Did they truly expect to be able to exterminate every single person who ever suggested climbing the incredibly accessible fence posts on their containment unit? Did that actually work for 10,000 years? Is a species so devoid of curiosity even worth saving at that point? I’d argue no, but that’s speaking as someone who would have been eliminated from the gene pool immediately under those parameters.
For the world's a set, and I have touched the walls.
I did like that McCoy got his moment in this episode. I’m always refreshed when Kirk isn’t seducing every woman on screen with the power of being the main character. I also enjoyed seeing a woman maintaining strong leadership when she chooses duty and responsibility to her people over love of a stranger. The love at first sight concept was slightly more tolerable being presented from the perspective of a female pursuer, and it may only have raised my hackles since I'm a bitter old maid myself.
Overall I didn’t love this episode but it wasn’t horrible. I may be harping on it so because of the motif fatigue I’m experiencing after it followed such other innovative and unique episodes in this season. Though I do think that the poetic title earned it an extra half star above average.
3.5 Stars
Why to Try Touching the Sky
by Trini Stewart
Hello, my name is Trini Stewart, and I showed up to the Star Trek party in a similar fashion to how I arrive at most parties- unreasonably late, and with no idea what’s going on at the moment. My journey with Star Trek began recently with “Is There in Truth No Beauty?,” and now I am happy to be strapped in for the ride.
As the title of this week’s episode implies, “For the World is Hollow and I have Touched the Sky” tells a story of questioning and exploring one’s reality, and does so effectively through the frame of a conflicted leader’s pursuit of objective truth.
The Priestess and Queen of the hollow world Yonada, Natira, is introduced with no clue that Yonada was actually a vessel. Natira clearly has no intention of questioning the stern punishments and vague promises of the Oracle, that is, until the Enterprise officers challenge the queen’s understanding of her world and its fate. The initial cracks in Natira’s worldview can be attributed to lowering her guard around Bones, as she is earnestly smitten with him the moment she sees him captured, and she dares to hope that “men of…other worlds hold truth as dear as (Yonadans) do.” Subsequently, Natira seems to be more receptive to questions about the Oracle from the foreigners, and, in a show of trusting McCoy’s testimony for Kirk and Spock, she openly defies the will of the Oracle to pardon them from a death sentence.
These subtle changes within the queen are suddenly imperative when she later faces Kirk, who insists he has a warning regarding the fate of her world. For Natira to acknowledge that her world is in peril is to reject that the Oracle knows what is best, let alone how merely listening to a truth that is not “Yonada’s truth” is precarious heresy in itself. In contrast to the Oracle’s mysterious promises, Kirk’s transparency and willingness to reason appeals to Natira, and though it is incredibly difficult for the queen to withstand the Oracle’s threats, she is convinced to confront her authority for the sake of her home. Natira pleads that she listened to the outsiders because they spoke the truth, and remarks her new understanding of truth, exclaiming, “Is truth not truth for all?” Even willing to die for the safety of her people, the queen exhibits her newfound reverence for objective truth in one last, defiant plea, “I must know the truth of the world!” before collapsing at the behest of the Oracle.
The truth will set your teeth on edge…
Ultimately, Natira’s new understanding of what is true shifts her relationship with McCoy; formerly enamored by McCoy to the point of locking him into a hefty vow of obedience, she opts to honor the intended course of the Generation ship and to hope for a fulfilling life for the doctor, even when he resists. It is Natira’s receptiveness to new ideas that reveals the state of her world and saves billions of people, thus revealing the importance of both appreciating different perspectives and reforming one’s own comprehension of the world around them.
On that note, I as a viewer can truly appreciate this episode’s call to challenge ourselves, to challenge authority, and to even challenge "truth". Now, more than ever, that "Law and Order" Nixon is about to be our next President.
At the very least, I can hope that between this week’s message and the pacifist musings of “Day of the Dove,” Star Trek watchers will reflect on how we react to political discontent in our personal lives. 3.5 stars.
Short Shrift
by Janice L. Newman
The scriptwriter crammed a lot into this week’s episode, and unfortunately the episode suffered for it. While the ideas introduced were intriguing and potentially poignant, the rate at which the story had to be told to fit within the time slot left me frustrated and unsatisfied. The pacing of the episode itself was fine, that is, it didn't hit the story beats too fast. But by its very nature, the story had too much to do and not enough space to do it in, which left the beats themselves feeling shallow or curtailed.
McCoy’s illness could have been a wonderfully dramatic plot point if it had been introduced in a prior episode or at the beginning of a two or three-part story. Instead, it falls flat. The illness feels like a contrivance and the solution feels horribly pat.
The romance between Natira and McCoy feels similarly forced. The scriptwriter did their best to make it plausible. One can say that McCoy’s knowledge of the limited time he has left to live drives his choices, or that he’s mostly manipulating Natira to save his friends’ lives, just as Kirk has done on many occasions. Yet the whirlwind ‘romance’ between Spock and the Romulan Commander in The Enterprise Incident had far more emotional impact, even when we knew or guessed that Spock was ‘faking’. McCoy’s and Natira’s romance just feels weird, almost a developing relationship shown in quick cuts.
"Goodbye, sweet what's-your-name…"
The background of Natira’s race could have been fascinating, if the author had been able to do more with it than the barest sketch. A ten thousand year-old race that sent a generation ship to the stars when its sun went nova is a compelling concept deserving of some screen time. The fact that they had medical advancements sufficient to cure Dr. McCoy’s illness but that their weapons weren’t advanced enough to hurt the Enterprise is suggestive and interesting.
I imagine multi-part stories are not what a network or syndicator wants. Being forced to show certain episodes in a certain order, all the while risking pre-emption or cancellation if a sports game runs long or a political speech comes on, must be anathema to broadcasters. They must want neat, tidy stories that fit within their time slot and don’t have any connection or major changes from episode to episode; in other words, interchangeable, truly episodic pieces that they can fit into whichever slot they want without worrying about audience retaliation. (Batman and soap operas seem to be the exception to this.)
Unfortunately, limiting the story to a tidy 50-something minute block means that no matter how good the acting and direction, no matter how hard the scriptwriter tries, some kinds of stories are going to get short shrift.
This was one of those stories. Or to put it another way, great ideas, mediocre execution.
Three stars.
Spring of Hope
by Joe Reid
“For the World is Hollow and I have Touched the Sky” was the title of this week’s episode of Star Trek. The title is a mouthful but does a decent job of giving us a feel for what we saw in this entry. The title is one that evokes hope out of despair. This episode was a tale filled with many hopeful outcomes springing out of situations heading towards tragedy. In fact, despair and hope were so perfectly bookended by this airing that it would make your local librarian proud. Let’s examine a few ways that this was accomplished.
The opening shot was that of missiles flying through space heading for the Enterprise. Granted these missiles barely caused a concern for the crew of the powerful starship as they were dispatched with a quick command from Captain Kirk. No, the real despair inducing news came in the following scene where we learned that our beloved Doctor McCoy was inflicted with an illness that would kill him within a year. That he would die a lonely bachelor. This caused a tonal shift in every scene we saw McCoy in, giving a gravity to this scene, it perhaps being the last time that we might see our favorite TV doctor.
If that wasn’t bad enough, Bones, Kirk, and Spock were soon violently attacked by a mob, electrocuted and imprisoned. After that they were scheduled for execution due to committing crimes against the creators. Shortly after that they were forced off the alien world one crewmember short as greater than 2 billion lives hung in the balance. With so many worry inducing elements coming forth in an episode, it’s a wonder that any one of these tragedies didn’t become the focus of the entire episode. No, the beauty of this episode was that no desperate situation was left without hope for very long.
After being attacked and mistreated on the alien world the inhabitants quickly changed to welcoming them as friends, granting them free access to the entirety of their world. The lonely doctor found love on the alien world, meeting and marrying the priestess and leader of the people. He was then able to save Kirk and Spock from execution, getting their lives as a gift from his new wife. The ultimate hope-filled outcome is that not only do the billions of people find salvation, but also our favorite doctor is cured from the illness plaguing him at the start of the episode.
Sadly as the episode drew to a close we witnessed the parting of McCoy and his wife as she chose to stay with her people as they were finally heading to a new homeworld for themselves. Even this scene was given a happy ending as we soon learned that the Enterprise would be present as the people found their new world and that he would be reunited with his wife.
“For the World is Hollow and I have Touched the Sky” was a well-acted episode, with great wardrobe, and a plot that felt original. It was refreshing to see McCoy be the object of feminine attention and DeForest Kelly's performance was the standout of the show.
Next year, Natira will get to wake up to this handsome face every morning!
Four stars.
[Come join us tomorrow (November 15th) for the next thrilling episode of Star Trek! KGJ is broadcasting the show live with commercials and accompanied by trekzine readings at 8pm Eastern and Pacific. You won't want to miss it…]
As a Captain, James T. Kirk has always been known more as a soldier than a diplomat. In the same way that Captain Kirk was forced to move past his initial, violent, problem-solving instincts in "Spectre of a Gun," here, yet another great and powerful alien species drops the crew of the Enterprise into direct contact with a combative, unreasonable opponent, making him take a "diplomatic tiger by the tail" that Captain Kirk must use every tool in his skill set to tame.
The setup is masterfully crafted from the very beginning by what appears to be a solitary alien made of pure energy that presents as a wheel of twinkling lights. Twinkling alien energy, who I will refer to from now on as TAE, is not invisible, but takes pains to silently hover just out of direct line of sight from every group of combatants it takes interest in. The Enterprise does not notice TAE on its first appearance when they beam down to an uninhabited planet, searching for what was supposed to be the ruins of a recently destroyed colony described in a distress signal. Chekov remarks, in confusion, that his readings indicate that there was no evidence of a colony nor an attack. Before the crew has time to process this information, Sulu chimes in over the communicator, warning him that a Klingon ship is approaching. Said ship immediately starts showing signs of distress, quickly becoming disabled by internal explosions to which the Enterprise made no contribution.
Commander Kang, the Klingon starship captain, makes no attempt to understand his situation; he beams down and decks Captain Kirk, yelling that since the federation has committed an act of war against the Klingons by killing 400 of his crew and disabling his ship, he is owed command of the Enterprise. TAE glows a menacing red color, apparently delighted with the increase in hostility. Thus the stage is set before the first credits roll of this episode.
The episode's opening salvo
Captain Kirk displays his newfound diplomatic skills, engaging in dialogue with someone whose assault just knocked him flat on his back. When Kang again demands that Kirk cede control of the Enterprise, our captain calmly replies, “go to the Devil.” Kang smoothly retorts “We have no Devil, Kirk, but we understand the habits of yours,“ whom he intends to emulate by torturing crewmen until Kirk hands over control of his ship.
Suddenly, a strange look comes over Chekov’s face and he jumps at the Klingon commander, practically volunteering to be first on the torture block, incoherently yelling about needing revenge for his brother, Pyotr, who had been killed on the colony they never found. In another clever manipulation, Captain Kirk gets Kang to agree to cease torturing Chekov by promising to beam the Klingons aboard the Enterprise, assuring him that there will be no tricks once they are on the ship. Of course, phrasing it like this left a loophole where he wouldn’t be lying if beaming the Klingons up was the trick—they are stuck in stasis until guards can round them up. Back on the Enterprise, Kirk quarantines the angry Klingon landing party with their distressed ship's remaining crewmen stranded.
A gaggle of steaming-mad Klingons
Before our heroes can figure out what’s going, the Enterprise crewmen start falling one by one under the same spell of violent madness that seized Chekov down on the colony site. Unlike with the Klingon crewmen, this wave of violence is very out of character for the Enterprise crew, and they turn on each other using racist, species-ist and otherwise highly offensive rhetoric against each other, the likes of which hasn’t been used on earth in centuries at this point. Chekov even goes on a slathering rampage where he outright defies Captain Kirk and goes to attack the Klingons to avenge his slain brother. This strangeness becomes particularly significant when Sulu declares that Chekov doesn’t even have a brother, as he's an only child.
Chekov disobeys a direct order.
Captain Kirk does the best job of fighting through the madness in order to refocus each crewman one by one towards finding out the root of the issue at hand. It is eventually surmised that TAE is on board, spurring the crewmen to fight and feeding off the negative emotions when its manipulations work and they get at each other’s throats. It is soon discovered that TAE is even more dangerous than originally feared, as it not only can influence the memories and emotions of its victims, but it also has the ability to warp reality itself, healing the scars of the wounded and turning nearly every object at everyone’s disposal into swords, deliberately making every weapon just inefficient enough to prolong conflict and minimize potential fatalities.
Bread and circuses, redux.
In typical Kirk fashion, the seriousness of TAE’s threat doesn’t fully hit him until a female is affected; Kang’s wife, his ship's Science Officer, gets separated from the rest of the group and is set-upon by a completely rabid Chekov. He rips her clothes, but thankfully is interrupted by Kirk and the bridge crew before he can go further. Kirk is justifiably horrified that TAE would be more than willing to push his crew towards that kind of violence. After incapacitating Chekov, Kirk entreats Kang’s wife to join him in uniting her husband and the rest of the Klingons against the real enemy; and it is with great difficulty that he does finally change Kang’s mind and get him to call the rest of the Klingons to a truce. In the end, it’s Kang’s words that finally eject TAE from the ship, as he taunts ”we need no urging to hate humans… only a fool fights in a burning house”
United in defiance.
While it is obvious to see that this episode is once again making a political commentary of our time, this one doesn't rub me the wrong way because the character foils have been fleshed out enough to be likable. Straw men have a tendency to be hollow and weak, but Kang and his wife Mara are anything but that. The Klingons may be violent and aggressive on their face, but they justify their actions with a strong moral backbone and end up proving themselves capable of being reasoned with. Michael Ansara's tremendous presence of voice and body does a phenomenal job of making Commander Kang a formidable yet worthy foe. No slouch herself, Mara shows that she is a leader in her own right, making Kirk work almost as hard to change her mind as her husband's, along the way making some very solid points about Klingon foreign policy. If anything, the Klingons are made to be anti-heroes rather than villains, and in constantly having to take their side against his own men, Kirk shows us the value of humanizing one's enemy, even when that enemy is not human at all.
5 stars.
by Janice L. Newman
When entertainment takes a stance on politics or morality, it’s often a recipe for a bad story. There are plenty of classic parables and fables, of course, but when popular television gets involved in such things sometimes the lesson feels shoehorned in or the plot feels warped around the ‘message’ the writer wanted to send. For example, The Omega Glory and A Private Little War were both attempts to make a point about current political situations, and both were subpar episodes.
“Day of the Dove”, on the other hand, does it right.
This is not a subtle story, yet it maintains a clever mystery plot and dramatic tension right up to the end. The denouement carries a powerful message that I found both shocking and welcome. Shocking, because I didn’t expect to see such blatant anti-war sentiments expressed on prime-time TV. [Janice doesn't watch the Smothers Bros. (ed)] Welcome, because I feel the same way.
There are plenty of intense moments throughout the episode, but the message can be summed up in a few lines of dialogue:
KIRK: All right. All right. In the heart. In the head. I won't stay dead. Next time I'll do the same to you. I'll kill you. And it goes on, the good old game of war, pawn against pawn! Stopping the bad guys. While somewhere, something sits back and laughs and starts it all over again.
MCCOY: Let's jump him.
SPOCK: Those who hate and fight must stop themselves, Doctor. Otherwise, it is not stopped.
MARA: Kang, I am your wife. I'm a Klingon. Would I lie for them? Listen to Kirk. He is telling the truth.
KIRK: Be a pawn, be a toy, be a good soldier that never questions orders.
(Kang looks at the weird light, then throws down his sword.)
KANG: Klingons kill for their own purposes.
There is so much conveyed within these few lines. In the context of the rest of the episode, they inspire all sorts of thoughts and questions:
“Question orders.” “Is it wrong to participate in unjust wars?” “Who is benefitting from our wars?” “Who stands to profit and has a vested interest in keeping a war going?” “Are the people with a vested interest also in authority? Do they have control over those in authority?” “Refuse to fight if a war is wrong.” “War may always be wrong.” “Total pacifism may be a possible path.” “If we do not stop hating and fighting, the hating and fighting will not stop.”
These are messages which, if spelled out clearly in almost any other kind of television show, would be unlikely to be allowed on the air. At a time when young men who choose to flee the country rather than accept being drafted are being convicted of treason, telling people to question orders and refuse to fight is risky. Yet the futuristic setting provided by science fiction makes it possible to convey these ideas without the hidebound network pulling the plug or insisting that it be changed. I’m just stunned that Gene Roddenberry let it through, especially after his reputed heavy influence on the script for A Private Little War. I’m not saying I want Star Trek to turn into a ‘message’ show, but I wouldn’t mind a few more episodes like this.
Five stars.
A Third Party
by Lorelei Marcus
As Janice put it, “Day of the Dove” is a ‘message episode’. It’s there to tell you something about life today under the guise of the possible future. Yet unlike my compatriots who saw a cautionary tale of ceaseless fighting in Vietnam and the larger Cold War behind it, I saw a different war entirely.
Star Trek has rarely shown racial tensions between humans and aliens of the Federation. When it is done, it’s for a very specific purpose, like Kirk aggravating Spock in This Side of Paradise. Even the Federation’s disdain for the Romulans and Klingons has less to do with xenophobia and more the fact that neither will agree to reasonable peace terms. Hence why the blatant hatred between not only human and Klingon, but also human and Vulcan, is so jarringly effective in this episode.
Star Trek is the ideal, bigotry-free future—Uhura and Sulu and even Chekov on the bridge are proof of that—but “Day of the Dove” is the closest it gets to reflecting the ugliness of racial tensions in our own world. Cloaked in the veneer of alien and human terms, I saw the hostility and lack of compromise inherent to the Democratic Convention this year, the hatred from man to man over superficial traits.
A scene from the Democratic convention—taken from the Nixon ad that aired during the episode.
Most of all, I saw small prejudices being stoked and inflamed by an outside force, turning anger boiling hot until it nearly exploded into bloody violence. I know that too well. Every step towards peace and equality we take gets slid back when another Wallace or Nixon comes along. Every injustice we commit against the Black man is another reason for him to take a rifle to the streets. Every school that fails to integrate is a generation of Whites who can’t see past the color of skin. And yet, that’s just how Wallace and his ilk want it. They benefit from it.
Wallace preaching hatred from the pulpit.
Perhaps that’s the scariest part: at least in the show, the alien seems to be fomenting hatred out of a need to feed, a necessity. Our politicians do it in the complete service of self-interest. And with the results of the election, tragically, we seem to be dancing right in the palms of their hands.
I often see shades of our world reflected in Star Trek, but never so viscerally. 4 stars.
Go to the Devil
by Joe Reid
“Day of the Dove” was this week’s episode of Star Trek. On first reading that title it evoked religious themes in my mind. I wondered if Star Trek was getting preachy again, the dove being the Christian representation of the Holy Spirit. Like in “Bread and Circuses” where the crew was jubilant that the people of the planet worshiped the son of God. When TV shows try to pass on spiritual virtues, they tend to do it in a ham-fisted way. “Day of the Dove”, although not perfect, does a decent job passing on two themes that I learned in my own religious training. One from the book of Ephesians, chapter 6, verse 12. The other from First Peter, chapter 5, verse 8. So permit me to put on my chaplain's robes as I explore the religious themes I saw in “Day of the Dove”.
Ephesians 6:12 says, “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” The crew of the Enterprise and that of the Klingon ship were made to think that they were enemies. Expertly manipulated and set upon by another, with the intent to have them fight. The real enemy was the outside force. A powerful alien entity that understood the fears, thoughts, emotions, and technology of each side to create opportunities for conflict. This scripture I quoted explains that no flesh and blood human is your enemy; we are all victims of outside forces that use us against one another. As hard as it was for Kirk and Kang to see that they were being used, it is so much harder for all of us to see that we are literally killing ourselves when we raise arms to harm others. All that does is satisfy the real enemy, that of our very souls.
The second verse that came to mind in this episode, 1 Peter 5:8 says, “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour”. At the start of the episode, Kirk told Kang to “Go to the devil!” when Kang slapped Kirk, accusing him of crimes, claiming the Enterprise. As they left that planet, we saw that Kang didn’t have to go to the devil, because a space devil went back to the ship with them. The alien, always near the action, remained just out of sight. It stalked the crew, looking for minds to twist to meet its ends. Kirk displayed powerful sobriety, breaking free from the influence of the alien. Although he could not see the alien, he was able to know of its presence and resist its influence. The message for us is that it takes sober vigilance to prevent wrong actions that may damage other’s lives. It was awareness of the enemy that helped Kirk stay disaster; it may be awareness that people are not the enemy that may help us.
Kirk prepares to preach to the choir.
This episode read like a sermon. One that encouraged brotherhood over bitterness. Which brings us to the close of the episode and yet another verse that came to my mind watching it. That was James 4:7. “Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.” This was the method Kirk and Kang used to get rid of the unwanted alien influence. They stopped giving it what it wanted, stopped seeing each other as the enemy and told their dancehall mirror ball devil to leave the ship. With both Kirk and Kang saying GO to their devil.
In conclusion, “Day of the Dove” was well acted. It had great costumes and good characterizations of all characters. Sadly, the dialogue at one point was filled with exposition, explaining to the audience what the alien was even though no one explained it to them, which I never love. It caused me to knock the score down a couple of points, but that is to be expected when TV shows—and reviewers—get preachy.
Three stars
Only in the movies
by Gideon Marcus
Despite being a show set in the far future of the 22nd Century, Star Trek has always employed themes from our current era. This has never been truer than in episodes involving the Klingons, the chief adversary of the Federation for which Kirk's Enterprise is employed.
In Errand of Mercy, we saw Commander Kor and Captain Kirk stand shoulder to shoulder, united in their defiance of the superpowerful Organians, who had the temerity to deprive them of their "right" to fight. The threat of the Organians to demolish both adversaries should they escalate their conflict to a general war, was very much a metaphor for the atomic bomb—specifically the newly minted concept of "Mutual Assured Destruction."
Thus, "The Trouble with Tribbles", "Friday's Child", and "A Private Little War"—the Klingons and Federation now fight proxy wars, engage in cloak and dagger exploits, and occasionally skirmish one-on-one. That last title was very much a product of last year, when it looked like we might "win" in Vietnam. Kirk asserted that the only way to prosecute the conflict on the planet of Neural was to arm the hill people so they remain at parity with the Klingon-aided townsfolks.
Contrast that to "Day of the Dove". Kirk and the Klingon commander (beautifully portrayed by "Mr. Barbara Eden", Michael Ansara) once more stand back to back, but they are resisting the urge to fight. It is a beautiful bit of synchronicity that LBJ the night before airdate announced a full bombing pause on Vietnam after three years of incessance. I watched the episode with tears in my eyes: for once, the hope matched the reality. Maybe we were going to stop the cycle of violence after all.
Would that it could always be this easy.
But Trek is science fiction, and we still live in the real world. Dick Nixon won the election this week, South Vietnam has retracted its willingness to participate in the Paris peace talks, and the beat goes on.
This is the second episode in a row (the first being "Spectre of the Gun") that has featured a new Kirk, a diplomat first and a soldier second. I like this new Kirk. I worry that he will run afoul of his superiors, increasingly conflicted, as John Drake was when working for MI6, ultimately becoming The Prisoner. But at least he's fighting for peace, a fight I can 100% get behind.
It's not a perfect episode, a little heavy-handed in parts, but boy did it resonate.
Four stars.
[Come join us tonight (November 8th) for the next thrilling episode of Star Trek! KGJ is broadcasting the show live with commercials and accompanied by trekzine readings at 8pm Eastern and Pacific. You won't want to miss it…]
Star Trek continues to surf the New Wave in this week’s episode, Spectre of the Gun. While the plot incorporated many things we’ve seen before (both in and outside of Star Trek) it combined and presented these elements in new and innovative ways.
The story opens with the ship encountering a strange object floating in space. All of the crew receive a message, ‘hearing’ it in the language they are most familiar with: Vulcan for Spock, Russian for Chekov, and in a nice call back to earlier episodes, Swahili for Uhura. The message warns them to stay away from the area. The crew, under orders to make contact with the Melkotians (the race who left the warning) choose to disregard it and beam down to the planet. Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scotty, and Chekov make up the team.
The Melkotian buoy—to Trek's credit, they didn't simply reuse the music from The Corbomite Maneuver
Shortly after they arrive on the planet, a threatening figure appears. It’s one of the aliens, a Melkot. It tells them that they will be punished for disregarding their warning. Since Captain Kirk is in charge, their deaths will be ‘patterned’ on him.
Aliens can be difficult to render convincingly on television, but I was impressed at how effective the Melkot is. The image is of two glowing eyes piercing through a surrounding haze and the suggestion of a bulbous, hairless head on a stalk-like, armless body. Since it’s surrounded by mist and weird lighting, we don’t get a close look at it, which adds to the menacing quality and keeps it from feeling fake or cheesy.
No sooner does the Melkot pronounce judgment, than the five men find themselves in the middle of a western town. Except, it’s not a fully-realized town. It’s made up of pieces of scenery, just enough to suggest a town in broad strokes. It puts one in mind of a theatrical production, where a facade is used to represent a building and one can see inside a shop or house. It’s unsettling in this context: signs and clocks hang on empty air, and unlike the actors in a musical, the crew are well-aware that the buildings are unfinished.
Open air bar
It takes a few minutes and an interaction with one of the ‘locals’ to jog his memory, but Captain Kirk puts the pieces together to deduce that the setup represents the shootout at the O.K. Corral. He and his men are the Clanton brothers, destined to die to bullets shot by the Earps and Doc Holiday. Bullets that will kill them, as they discover when Chekov is shot down in the street.
Our heroes try to avoid their fate through diplomacy, trickery, and ‘the better part of valor’. Nothing works, not even the sleeping gas bomb that McCoy and Spock build together. But the fact that it doesn’t work when it should have worked convinces Spock that none of what they are experiencing is real. The bullets cannot hurt them, he tells the others, unless they believe they will.
In order to make sure the humans are all as convinced that the bullets are harmless as Spock is, he mind melds with each of them in turn. Then they stand, unworried, as they’re shot at. The fence behind them is filled with holes, but they, as Spock promised, are unharmed. Afterward Kirk has the opportunity to kill the Earps and Holiday, but chooses not to, even though he badly wants revenge for Chekov. The Melkotians, surprised at Kirk’s choice, agree to open diplomatic relations with the Federation.
A touching moment
We’ve seen a lot of these bits and pieces before. Westerns are ubiquitous, and the story of the shootout at Tombstone is an oft-visited well for modern-day storytellers. But how many of them cast the Clantons as the good guys? We’ve seen the Vulcan mind meld before, but never on multiple people in turn, and never to convince them of the unreality of their senses. We’ve seen powerful, telepathic aliens before. But unlike many of the others, the Melkotians aren’t messing around with the humans for their own amusement, or to protect us from ourselves, or to ‘test’ us. It’s clear that they don’t expect the humans to survive the punishment, and that they’re shocked that Kirk chooses not to kill the aggressors in the end. Whether the form of punishment was meant to be humane, giving the humans a familiar setting to die in, or whether it was supposed to remove the weight of responsibility from the Melkotians by forcing the humans into a ‘kill or be killed’ situation, or whether it was for some other reason entirely, we cannot know.
What we do know is that these familiar pieces fit together to make an entirely new kind of story, one that’s clever, compelling, and up there with the best of the Star Trek episodes we’ve seen.
Five stars.
Best Western
by Amber Dubin
I was pleasantly surprised that this episode marked another in the inspiring trend of season 3 episodes that absolutely knocked my socks off. The overarching premise is nothing special on its face: a shadowy, menacing entity issues an ominous warning a-la-Dante's-Inferno "abandon all hope, ye who enter here." Kirk promptly ignores the warning buoy, charging head-first into danger like the reckless adventurer we know him to be, and at first we appear to be treated to another "Catspaw"-like simulation with a western twist. This is where the similarities end between the season 2 and season 3 Halloween episodes, because this time around, the simulated world is much more intricate, meaningful and all around well-crafted.
Starting with the aliens' motivation for submerging the crew in this simulation, they explain that "you bring violence like a disease." This is a very valid threat and makes a lot of sense that the Melkotians would want to have this simulation in place to protect their planet from approaching unknown cultural contaminants.The crewmen have already refused to heed the initial warning, so it could hardly be called an escalation to issue this execution edict as judgment for their trespass. They prove themselves to be much more fair judges than some of the other alien species we've encountered, because they essentially allow a loophole in their trial, wherein the participants have one final chance to prove themselves worthy of access to their planet. It is fair too, that they design the interactive tribunal from details found within Kirk's mind, as it was Kirk that chose to disobey their warning and therefore Kirk should bear the bulk of the responsibility for their punishment.
Here come the Judge(s)
This is the first time, in my opinion, that they have found a valid reason to recreate ancient American history, as Captain Kirk has always been a stand-in for the audience's 1960's perspective, and one of the points in our history that Americans enjoy recreating most in film and fiction at this time is the Wild West. This time, incorporating our perspective is neatly explained by saying that Kirk has both the genetic memories of ancient North Americans from this era, and memories from his fan-crazed obsession with all things historical and fictional from American History. I even found it radically creative that the director manages to elegantly justify the half-finished western set pieces, as it was not only necessary that the crew know that the simulation was false, but also it was encouraged that they use that to their advantage to beat the system.
I also love that the trial that the crew endures this time is branded not as a trial but as an execution, further setting up the crew to fail as they would be inclined to see it as an inescapable punishment rather than an simulation whose outcome they could influence. The Melkotians may well have hoped the humans would fail. Certainly, they were surprised when they didn't.
I'm particularly impressed that this episode got me to do something I previously thought unthinkable: enjoy western-themed television.
5 stars
Unexpected Diplomacy
by Lorelei Marcus
Captain Kirk took an unexpectedly persistent talk-before-phasers approach to interacting with the Melkotians and their executioner puppets. At the beginning of the episode, he mentions the importance of contacting the Melkotians and implies the goal of peacefully adding them to the Federation. Given the importance of the mission, and our Enterprise captain's previous track record handling aliens, I can only imagine the training exercise Star Fleet put Kirk through to prepare him for his task:
"Alright, Captain. On the table, you will see a phaser and a communicator. The scenario is you are attempting to make contact with a peaceful alien species. Please choose the object you feel is best suited for this situation."
(Kirk reaches for the phaser and is shocked with an electric buzzer.)
"Ouch!"
"Please choose again."
(Rubbing at his wrist, Kirk reaches for the communicator this time. A green light turns on and a pleasant song starts playing.)
"Very good, Captain. Onto the next task…"
"I can't just kill them! I won't get any candy!"
In any case, I found this episode to be quite fun, particularly our new, diplomatic captain. Four stars.
We Come in Peace
by Erica Frank
"We come in peace," said Kirk… as he raised his phaser. No wonder the Melkot didn't believe him.
The Melkotians were clear that they wanted no part of the Federation. When the Enterprise decided to visit anyway –"establish contact at all costs"–the Melkotians were ready for them. (Kirk, you did establish contact; you met and conversed, and their response was No. If you meant "establish regular communications and diplomatic negotiations," well, that dance takes two willing partners.)
Kirk and his team wound up somewhere that looked more like a movie set or a stage play than an actual town. They thought this was "the Melkotians' idea of a town" rather than "a construct taking place in our own minds," despite having substantial experience with powerful telepaths who can make them experience entire landscapes that don't actually exist.
Why did it take them half the episode to attempt to leave town and discover the force field blocking their exit?
They spent most of their time trying to figure out how to get out of the impending gunfight, instead of looking for loopholes in the "reality" that they should recognize as false. However, even as they accepted the storyline they're stuck in, Kirk looked for ways to avoid the ending.
I don't know if he insisted on not fighting the Earps because he honestly believes it's wrong, or because he recognized that, in this story, once the shooting starts, his entire team will be killed.
They passed the Melkotians' test by refusing to shoot. (…Spock's getting awfully free with the mind-melds, recently.) I'm not sure I'd accept the results: Kirk knew that there was no way to win a shoot-out. Perhaps that was the point–not, "prove you are a non-violent species" (obviously not true), but "prove to us that you can find other ways to solve problems."
I like the Melkotians. They're only the third near-omnipotent aliens we've met that aren't petty tyrants. The Metron had a similar test, making Kirk fight the Gorn–they, too, were pleasantly surprised that Kirk found a way around killing. And we never learned the name of the race that built the Shore Leave planet.
Four stars.
I suppose he is the "Spectre of the Guns."
A Near-Shakespearean Paen for Nonviolence
by Jessica Dickinson Goodman
With death served up on the doorstep with the morning paper, I needed this episode this week. Bracketed by political campaign ads crowing about violence in various cities and jungles, I found Kirk's passionate nonviolence struck a powerful chord. The episode's overall contrast with the morning death toll was satisfying but somehow it was Commander Spock's cool lines that I loved the most.
"A radical alteration of our thought patterns must be in order."
In that moment, the episode twists reality to reach the profound fantasies of those of us whose loved ones are – or tomorrow will – lay in the grave, or in the mud, waiting for a G.I. sniper or Viet Cong fighter to take what life they have lived and in all their future lives. To restate it, Spock's idea is that in the constructed world of this week's impossibly powerful alien, if you know you cannot be killed by bullets, you cannot. "Know" because "believe" requires the acknowledgment of the potential for doubt, but knowing requires a perfect certainty. In Spock's psychic certainty there is physical safety and real, true resurrection for the marooned crew.
This is what I love about science fiction, the fantasies that science fiction allows us, fantasies that give us enough breathing room to imagine a better world. Sometimes that world has to be far simpler for the conceit to play out. The world of this episode is much simpler than our own, which is why this trick of Commander Spock's is so intuitively effective. It felt in many moments like a stage play, and made me wonder how the Bard would have set the prologue:
Two families, both alike in indignity,
in fair Tombstone Arizona is where we lay our scene,
from lukewarm grudge break to new mutiny,
where uncivil blood makes uncivil hands unclean.
There is a little bit of a sweet Romeo and Juliet going on with Chekov in this episode, though it doesn’t entirely play out, ending up more of a joke than driving the narrative.
It really is our dynamic trio who make the episode, in their debates as to how to avoid furthering the cycle of violence the alien of the week has thrown them into. Kirk's attempt to explain was so satisfying to watch as he shouted and fought not to fight. His framing of his own family's history added a depth of character for me, as many of the passing references in this season do.
While we can understand that his ancestors were part of the genocide against the Native Americans of the American West, I like to think if Kirk was alive right now and his draft number came due, he would hike over the border to Canada. Draft dodging in this way would be a key way to keep his hands and mind and blood from being complicit in killing, whether of one man or entire families, entire communities. If no one fought, there would be no wars, and we see how that can start with someone like Kirk refusing to fight. In this case, there are no deadly consequences for the draft dodgers, as Spock's science fictional defense is perfectly effective.
In our more complicated reality, it is not so easy. There is no curtain call on the battlefield, and no alien to blame for the violence that engulfs us. So many occupied graves may make draftees feel obligated to fill in a few more before they punch their final ticket. But I do fervently hope that those who are conscripts or reservists or draftees called to slaughter can watch this episode before they board their planes and tanks, before they load up their all-too-lethal guns with human-killing bullets. I hope it inspires them as only science fiction can to consider another path, the all-too-human journey of nonviolence.
5 stars.
The Greatest Show off Earth!
by Gideon Marcus
Most of my colleagues were impressed by the story, the message, and so forth. Those are all laudable topics, and I'm glad they've covered them more eloquently than I would have. However, I just want to comment on how much I've been enjoying the third season of Star Trek, how far this show has come.
1968 is an interesting moment. Laugh-In has infected all other media. Psychedelia is de rigeur It's a time of experimentation and irreverence. As I noted in my last review, the New Wave has made it to Trek. Indeed, my friend, part-time Journeyer Brian Collins said that, if he didn't know better, he'd have thought Phillip K. Dick wrote this episode!
So it's no surprise we get all sorts of neat stuff, visually, aurally, literarily. According to my friend Maurice, the partial "limbo" that comprises the setting actually borrows a lot from the 1953 musical comedy Red Garters. However, "Spectre" uses the setting to unsettle, to connote things unfinished, and also because it's just cool and weird!
The score is once again brand new. That makes it the fourth or fifth new score we've had this season, and as usual, it is excellent and fitting. Trek has the best music this side of Hollywood Palace.
Vince McEevety's direction is, once again, excellent. I don't think it's a coincidence that his episodes ("Balance of Terror", "Miri", to some degree "Patterns of Force") have not only been innovative in their execution, but have also wrung out good performances from its actors. Shatner, in particular, has had a tendency to ham things up (very unkosher!) since the end of the 1st season. There's none of that in this episode. His encounter with Sheriff Behan, when he plaintively yells that he can't kill the Earps, his mourning over Chekov's death, his subtle reactions to his crew, particularly in the gas testing scene…all terrific. Chekov finally gets a role he can chew on, and he's great. Scotty as well. The Big Three are thoroughly in character, up to and including McCoy arguing both sides of the fence—"Cheer up, Jim!" followed by "Shut up, Spock! We're grieving!")
"I am not someone you can marry, although marriage was inwented in Russia."
And the guest stars, particularly the Earps/Doc Holliday, turn in performances that are nearly robotic, but highly emotive nevertheless. It's a hard needle to thread, but they manage it.
I find my esteem for this episode rising in the glow of the morning after, and in the conversations it has sparked with my comrades. I was going to give it 4 stars, but I think it moves up to 4.5 now.
Hot off the heels of Danger: Diabolik, producer Dino De Laurentis is at it again with another comic book adaptation, this time Jean-Claude Forest’s Barbarella. The French-Italian co-production is based on the sexy French comic book and directed by Roger Vadim (1956’s And God Created Woman). The movie’s title character is played by the none other than Vadim’s wife, the gorgeous Jane Fonda, who since her breakout role in 1965’s Cat Ballou, has been making name for herself in Hollywood, beyond just benefiting from her already famous last name.
[Make love, not war]
As the film’s heroine, a “5-star double-rated astronavigatrix”, she is contacted by Dianthus, the President of the Republic of Earth (French actor Claude Dauphin) at the beginning of the film, requesting that she set out in search of a supposedly young scientist by the name of Doctor Durand Durand, who reportedly vanished into “the uncharted regions of Tau Ceti” after creating a weapon known as the positronic ray. The device is so powerful that it threatens “to shatter the loving union of the universe”, which had “been pacified for centuries.” Barbarella is the president’s last hope to bring the doctor to justice and prevent possible bloodshed, because he has “no armies or police.” That said, she is armed with some weapons from the Museum of Conflict for “self-preservation” and urged to use all of her “incomparable talents” during her mission.
[Barbarella at the controls of her groovy spacecraft]
Shortly after beginning her journey, Barbarella gets caught in a magnetic storm, which results in her crashing her spaceship into Planet 16, located in the system of Tau Ceti. While stranded there, she meets 2 “marvelous little girls” who knock her out with a snowball, I kid you not. After taking her captive, they bring her to what she recognizes as Doctor Durand Durand’s wrecked spacecraft, but he is nowhere in sight. In fact, most of the inhabitants of the planet appear to be children. Barbarella threatens them with, “untie me or I’m going to call your parents!” Unfazed, the kids sic a pack of creepy dolls with razor-sharp teeth on her, leaving her with some abrasions and badly torn clothes. Luckily for Barbarella, a man draped in furs, known as Mark Hand the Catchman (Italian actor, Ugo Tognazzi), comes to her rescue. He and the authorities capture the children in nets.
[What nightmares are made of]
Afterwards, Mark Hand takes her back to his vehicle, which is basically a cabin on wheels with sails. There, he suggests she repay him for coming to her rescue by making love to him the old-fashioned way, something apparently that has not been done in centuries on Earth, because there is a newer and more civilized way to do the deed, involving individuals taking a pill and pressing the palms of their hands together. Ever the adventurous type, Barbarella agrees, forgetting all about her recent injuries. He fixes her spaceship, offers her some clothing and a tip on the doctor’s possible location, Sogo.
[Barbarella with Mark Hand after he saves her from the children and the dolls]
Barbarella tries to flee Planet 16, but shortly after takeoff, her spacecraft crashes yet again, this time near Sogo, in the Labyrinth of the City of Night on a planet called Lythion. There, she meets a blind angel named Pygar, played by John Phillip Law of 1967’s Death Rides a Horse and more recently Mario Bava’s Danger: Diabolik. He tells her he has lost “the will to fly.” Pygar introduces her to a wise old man named Professor Ping. Here, French mime Marcel Marceau plays Professor Ping, who offers to help her fix her spaceship so she does not get stuck in the Labyrinth, a very frightening place, filled with those exiled from Sogo, City of Night. While Professor Ping works on her spacecraft, Pygar defends Barbarella against the Great Tyrant of Sogo’s guards. Later, one thing leads to another and they sleep together. Almost immediately after their encounter, Pygar miraculously regains his will to fly. He flies her to Sogo, but things take a turn for the worse when the guards to the Great Tyrant, also known as the Black Queen (and little one-eyed wench), spot them.
[Barbarella and her "fine-feathered friend" on their way to Sogo]
Barbarella and Pygar are taken in by the Black Queen’s guards. Model, actress and rock music muse, Anita Pallenberg, stars as the Black Queen. The earthling and the angel find themselves in the Chamber of Ultimate Solution, where they have to choose between 3 different types of death. Just as Barbarella and Pygar are about to choose, they are stopped by concierge to the Great Tyrant, played by Irish actor Milo O’Shea. Pygar and Barbarella end up being separated.
[Her Majesty The Black Queen]
The Black Queen gives orders for Barbarella to be thrown into a giant cage filled with birds, who peck at her and tear her clothes, again. She falls down a secret escape chute, which leads Barbarella into another room, where she meets Dildano, head of the revolutionary forces, played by David Hemmings (of Michelangelo Antonioni's Blow Up). They get to know each other better. Afterwards, they devise a plan to capture the Black Queen while she is asleep in her Chamber of Dreams, so she can “divulge the whereabouts of Doctor Durand Durand.”
[Barbarella in the cage filled with "darling" birds]
I would imagine for the more sophisticated filmgoer, Barbarella’s plot and characters leave much to be desired. Barbarella hardly grows over the course of the film. In fact, no matter what happens to her, she maintains a certain level of naïveté through the entire picture. The same can be said for most of the characters in the film, who tend to be very one-dimensional and are often pretty silly.
[Speaking of silly characters, here are Stomoxys and Glossina with Barbarella after they kidnap her]
Turns out the movie posters sum up what Barbarella is all about with the line, “See Barbarella Do Her Thing!” When the movie’s protagonist is not taking up a tryst with someone new, she quite literally has killer dolls and birds tear what little clothing she does wear to shreds. Barbarella also seems to be irresistible to both men and women. And while it is nice to see a female protagonist, especially one that does not conform often outdated and puritanical views around sexuality, she is clearly some sort of male fantasy. One thing that does make her and the film more complicated is that she sure seems to find herself being tortured a lot.
[Her name isn't pretty pretty, it's Barbarella]
The movie’s opening sequence, involves the main character stripping in zero gravity, before even one word of dialogue is uttered. This alone should tell the viewer exactly what lies ahead. In addition, Barbarella does not bother putting on a stitch of clothing in order to speak to, of all people, the president. Another scene involves the concierge to the Great Tyrant putting Barbarella in his machine, which will cause her to “die of pleasure.” But it turns out that his machine is no match for Barbarella! What I am getting at is that part the film’s charm is that it is pure fluff. Entertaining fluff, sure, but fluff nevertheless.
[Barbarella in the Excessive Machine]
To top things off, Barbarella drives what else but a pink spaceship that has an interior decked out with iconic paintings on the walls, gaudy statues, and floor to ceiling orange shag carpeting. Even if Barbarella is guilty of being an absolute spectacle of style over substance, it does feature some incredibly creative costumes by Paco Rabanne, decent special effects and impressively psychedelic set design. Also, the movie’s theme song had me singing “Barbarella, Bar, Barbarella” for days after watching the film.
[Barbarella inside the Black Queens's psychedelic Chamber of Dreams]
Barbarella probably will not be nominated for any of the major awards anytime soon, but it is still a fun ride. More serious SF fans may want to steer clear of the movie, but I would recommend it to viewers with camp sensibilities. Three stars.
[Will Barbarella and Dildano be successful in carrying out their plan?]
Ice Station Zero: Ice Station Zebra
by Tonya R. Moore
Ice Station Zebra is a paltry film for which, apparently, little expense was spared. The production is elaborate. The special effects and visual details are impressive. The actors’ performances are mostly convincing. The plot of this film, however, leaves a great deal to be desired.
First, some background:
The story of the Russian satellite in Ice Station Zebra is loosely based on real-life technology and events. Discover 2 was an American satellite, a prototype of the optical reconnaissance Discoverer series, launched in early April 1959. It was cylindrical in shape and its film return vehicle, the capsule, was manufactured by General Electric.
Though it neither carried film nor conducted surveillance, Discover 2 was the first satellite equipped with a re-entry capsule and was the first to send a payload back to Earth. As depicted in the movie, mission control did lose track of the capsule when a timing error caused it to land in the vicinity of Spitsbergen, Norway instead of Hawaii. Attempts to recover the capsule were unsuccessful and some suspect it may currently be in the possession of the Soviet Union.
The standout star of the film for SF fans is probably Patrick McGoohan (David Jones in Ice Station Zebra), who is famously known for his role as John Drake in the British television series, Danger Man (Secret Agent in the U.S.) and more recently, The Prisoner. McGoohan is actually an Irish-American who was born in Queens, New York and spent his childhood years in Ireland. The actor is based in England where he has performed in several notable film and television roles over the past decade. Sadly, his performance is not enough to elevate the film beyond mediocrity…
In the first scene of Ice Station Zebra, men in uniform sit in a cramped room equipped with sophisticated machinery, looking very serious.
This is followed by footage of a small object separating from an inexplicably phallic Russian satellite orbiting the earth.
The focus shifts to the main character. Rock Hudson stars as Cdr. James Ferraday, Commander of USN nuclear submarine, USS Tigerfish.
While visiting a drinking bar, Ferraday gets a call on the establishment’s phone.
He promptly leaves to go to another bar. At the second bar, he goes upstairs to a private room where he meets Admiral Garvey.
The admiral gives him a sketchy summary of some potentially disastrous incident at Ice Station Zebra, located at or somewhere in the vicinity of the North Pole.
Garvey issues an urgent order sending Ferraday and his submarine crew on an investigative rescue mission to Ice Station Zebra. They are to escort a certain David Jones to Ice Station Zebra, a man whose background they do not know. It is made clear that David Jones has some super-secret agenda pertaining to Russian military intelligence. His true objective for going to Ice Station Zebra is not to be divulged to Ferraday or crew.
David Jones, a paranoid Englishman of Russian origin with a noticeable dependence on hard liquor, isaccompanied by a platoon of marines led by Lt. Jonathan Hansen. Later, the Russian defector (?) Boris Vaslov…
… and Capt. Leslie Anders–The Token Black Man (played by Cleveland Brown and activist Jim Brown), are airlifted by helicopter to board the USS Tigerfish.
After a brief display of the requisite male posturing, the mission goes underway. (eg. Hansen is disrespectful. Anders puts him in his place.)
Upon reaching the North Pole, the USS Tigerfish attempts to breach the surface ice. The first few attempts fail so Ferraday decides to fire a torpedo at the ice.
Disaster strikes when the torpedo shaft/channel (?) suddenly opens. A deluge of freezing Arctic seawater comes pouring in and the USS Tigerfish starts sinking fast. The panicked crew and guests work together to get the situation under control and somehow, the number of casualties are limited to one.
Signs of sabotage are confirmed. Despite the presence of a born-Russian with questionable motives, Jones immediately suspects the Token Black Man of being the culprit instead. His reasoning? Anders comes with impeccable credentials and that just can’t be believable.
The USS Tigerfish successfully breaches thinner ice and surfaces. Ferraday leads Jones, Anders, Vaslov, the marines and a team handpicked from his own crew across treacherous the ice-scape, leaving someone else in charge of the submarine and its operations.
Following a near-death mishap on the way…
… the contingent arrives at the partially burnt out remains of Ice Station Zebra.
They locate some survivors while Jones begins frantically searching for the very secret, very mysterious object. Vaslov joins the search. Ferraday reveals that he actually knows that Jones is searching for a certain 8mm (?) / video tape (?) with highly classified spy intel containing footage and the locations of all of the US nuclear bases.
Reports of incoming fighter airplanes from opposing armies ramp up the urgency of the mission.
The Token Black Man is framed for someone else’s (Vaslov) treasonous act and shot multiple times (by Jones), to death. Naturally.
Disgusted by the stereotypical inevitability of this outcome, I took this opportunity to take a long bathroom break, returning in time for…
A transmission/press release is broadcasted reporting the successful rescue of Ice Station Zebra’s survivors.
– and all’s well that ends well, apparently.
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
A Shambling Mess: Night of the Living Dead
by Amber Dubin
I was so pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed the first horror movie that I reviewed (Rosemary's Baby) that I thought I had been too quick to dismiss the horror genre entirely. Thus, with a freshly opened mind, I decided to celebrate the Halloween season with a bag of popcorn and a screening of what was promised to be another horror classic. I'll admit that the bar was maybe set too high, so I tried very hard to be kind in my assessment of The Night of The Living Dead. In this, I summarily failed. This film had many never-before-seen, innovative elements and a rather bold story-telling style, but I simply did not see it fit for a major motion picture screen. I could not help but feel like I was being led down a garden path with the promise of the type of character development and storyline that could support this decently to moderately talented cast, only to be jilted at the altar by the loosely shambled together pile of scene changes that make up this film.
Night of the Living Dead shambled into theaters October 1st, 1968
Night of the Living Dead does exactly this when it gets my hopes up in the opening scene. There is something to be said for tension built through hair-raising music played over shots of a lone Pontiac driving over rolling hills in a set of old-fashioned grainy black and white landscape shots. By the time we get to the first lines of the movie, I was already on edge in a subtle way that I was hoping would bode well for the types of thrills would continue throughout. This was my first disappointment, and just like the protracted winding trip that Pontiac took around turn after promising turn, this film alternately dilly dallied, rambled, and ultimately fell flat at a dead end.
The most grounded character in the movie
The opening lines of the movie are delivered by a couple of youngsters named Johnny and Barbra who are visiting the gravesite of their deceased father. They disrespectfully bicker over the obligation the whole time, carelessly switching the radio off right in the middle of an ominous "all points bulletin" and ignoring the slow approach of a shambling figure in the distance. Mocking his sister over her healthy fear of graveyards, Johnny practically tosses Barbra in front of the approaching stranger, only to instantly regret it when the man grabs her by the throat. Johnny comes to Barbra's defense but is overcome rather awkwardly by the man slowly wrestling him to the ground and smooshing the glasses off of his face. Barbra, ever the loyal sister, doesn't bother checking if Johnny is ok before running to the car by herself, losing her shoe and falling to the ground, because it's just not scary enough if the fleeing woman isn't both helpless and unlikeable.
Shoes have always been a woman's greatest weakness
She finds shelter in her locked car for a moment before the man manages to break the window with a brick. Suddenly, she realizes the key is in the ignition and she slowly rolls the Pontiac down the hill. Even though her path is unobstructed, she drives distractedly enough to veer off the road and ding her side mirror slightly on a tree. This mirror seems to be so vital to her escape, that she decides that it'd be safer to abandon the car entirely and run barefoot through the woods away from her attacker (utter genius, this one).
Mind you, the limping man in the graveyard had no special makeup on, so for all we know she just abandoned her brother to be assaulted by a partially disabled, demented, old man. Literally the only way I can assume the strange congregants outside are "living dead" people is because that's title of the movie.
Maybe he's just lost and looking to borrow a cup of sugar
I expected the film to fall into a "poor decision-making blonde flees from monster" formula at this point, but when Barbra seeks refuge in an abandoned house, this film abruptly loses the plot for me. Barbara's actions have made precious little sense up until now, but after entering this house, her cognitive abilities fall to absolute bits. The first illogical decision comes when she is startled by the corpse of the homeowner and decides to rush outside to take her chances with her pursuer, running directly into the headlights of an arriving car. She stands bathed in the blinding lights, confused and wincing as if bracing herself to be struck; instead a complete stranger emerges, grabs her up and rushes her back inside. Unlike I, who was shouting "who are you and where did you come from?" at the screen, Barbra offers no greeting or introduction to this stranger and immediately falls in line behind his frantic attempts to create safety and figure out what's going on.
Ben may cut a dashing profile, but it makes no sense why Barbra would trust him implicitly and make no attempt to ask or help him figure out what's going on
It is here that the stranger, whom we eventually come to know as Ben, takes the torch (sometimes literally) of the protagonist of the story. While Barbra dissolves into quiet hysteria, Ben violently dispatches several of the mindless congregants around the house, dragging their corpses to the lawn and setting them on fire to warn off the others. Once he's mostly boarded up the whole house by himself, Barbra launches into an awkward re-telling of everything we've seen her do in the film so far. Suddenly, she remembers she had a brother. She jumps up and throws herself at the newly sealed door, insisting "we must find Johnny now!" slapping Ben when he refuses. He immediately slaps her back, which normally would appall me, but here seems the only logical way to get the hysterical woman to stop throwing herself in front of monsters and cars.
Ben continues to secure the house, finding food and a weapon, hooking up a radio, and even bringing Barbra shoes as an apology for slapping her. When the radio crackles to life, we settle in with the now catatonic Barbra for our long-awaited first taste of an explanation of what on earth is going on in this world. We are offered the laughably pathetic explanation that the world is being seized by "an epidemic of homicide." We don't even get a chance to finish rolling our eyes at this when we are surprised by Barbra's scream as she witnesses people emerge from the basement.
Suddenly, basement people!
There's absolutely no logical explanation as to why four able-bodied people and a child would remain hidden in the cellar of a house with distressed survivors upstairs, only to emerge and be suddenly invested in those additional survivors coming back downstairs with them. Harry, the obnoxious, stubborn patriarch of the Cooper family, offers such a poor explanation for his motives that I wonder whether this scene had less of a script and more of a general direction to the actors to come up with their own dialog. The teenaged couple, Tom and Judy, are convinced by this awkward exchange to come up and help Ben, while Harry's wife and sick child remain downstairs. Here we are introduced to Helen Cooper, played by Marilyn Eastman, who is a strikingly beautiful, classy and sharp-witted woman. She's responsible for nearly every cogent argument in the film and is such a mismatch for her husband that we are left to wonder why such a talented actress is filling that role and not that of the protagonist.
The stakes are now raised by the fact that there are three women and a sick child to defend. This emboldens Ben to make a plan to escape that involves Ben and Tom getting to the gas pump and truck outside by the barn. It is here that a schism appears in the group, and Harry quietly makes it his mission to undermine Ben's authority for every decision Ben makes (in much the same way I expect he is accustomed to undermining all his wife's opinions).
Behind every bullheaded man, a long-suffering wife bonded to him by poor writing
In another jarring turn, the focus shifts once again to the teen couple, Tom and Judy. Judy begs Tom not to go outside with Ben. She offers little in the way of verbal persuasion, but the scene is suddenly charged with so much of a different type of tension that one wonders if their mutual attraction isn't based in real life. They're clearly not meant to make it out of this movie alive, but knowing this didn't soften the blow for me when their escape plan literally goes up in flames, and Judy's caught jacket condemns them to a particularly gruesome and fiery death.
A romance doomed to go down in flames
From here the rest of the film devolves into a fairly predictable series of disasters: Ben is forced to shoot an increasingly paranoid, maniacal and erratic Harry Cooper in self-defense, Barbara opens a door in order to be eaten by her now undead brother, and the survivors retreat to barricade the cellar. Karen, the little girl who's been lying prone and feverish suffering from an undead bite wound this whole time, suddenly springs to life as a crazed, cannibalistic creature. Her mother is just as shocked as the audience at this development, and she falls back, helplessly paralyzed in fear. To everyone's genuine horror, the child discards the bits of her father's flesh from her teeth as she advances on her mother, violently tearing her apart with a gardening spade.
Ben is set with the unenviable task of destroying the now undead nuclear family and he does so, huddling up next to the barricade afterwards and falling into a fitful sleep as the beleaguered lone survivor of this ordeal. The next day he emerges into the now silent and destroyed house. He is greeted with a swift bullet between the eyes from a sharp-shooting member of the crisis response team tasked with cleaning up the invasion of undead; thus rendering all the heroism and hard-fought survivalism of the entire film moot.
Karen picks up some unusual eating habits
Though I was disappointed in this film as a whole, there were several things I did enjoy about it. I found it added a layer of realism to have the story background delivered by inter-cut scenes of a TV broadcast filled with busy scientists and professors on Capitol Hill trying to say as little as possible to the microphones being shoved in their faces. I thought it was a creative, bold take to explain how their situation was caused when the "unburied dead" were exposed to radiation from a destroyed Venusian satellite. I even found it authentically frightening when the teen couple immolates themselves and Ben is left to fight through the darkness and the silently encroaching hoard with nothing but a chair leg torch, all the while having to listen to the unnerving gnashing and chewing sounds of the undead dining on the burnt flesh of the unfortunate couples' bodies.
Extra! Extra! No one Knows What's Going On!
While I recognize that the film is making an innovative attempt to enhance the drama with bold lighting choices, I see this attempt as a failure because the lighting is so severe that the audience is unable to see what's going on. A particularly disappointing example of this comes in the authentically scary moment where Karen is committing matricide, and she is darkened in such deep shadow that you can barely see her at all. I was also disappointed that the score was absolutely all over the place. The beginning crescendo of appropriate music only serves to make the rest of the sound in the film feel poorly balanced by proving that at least one member of the staff knows how to smoothly score at least one scene. Cymbals crash and trumpets blast when stationary objects are meant to surprise the viewers, cricket noises get played very loudly in a bizarre attempt to make the approach of the undead hoards eerie, and yet the sound suddenly dies when the situation takes an actual dire turn; In a genuinely scary moment when undead break the window open, they do so noiselessly and a grasping, attacking undead hand gets dismembered in frustrating silence.
What made me feel this film was not of high enough quality to be released in theaters was the unforgivably sloppy pacing and direction. The Barbra-centered, awkward, choppy scenes at the beginning felt padded for runtime, and yet we are rushed through a systematic slaughter of the entire cast at the end. The script of each scene varies in quality so wildly that there are tonal shifts fast enough to give me whiplash. I felt volleyed between at least one writer who understood how couples banter, and one that decided to put a group of actors in a room and suggest that they improvise. The end result makes the film feel like a loosely connected collection of scenes, rather than a cogent story that supports character development or enhances the performances of some of the cast's talented actors.
Ben, the tragic hero who couldn't defeat racism(?)
While I appreciated the idea that Ben's death at the end implies that his race makes him just as worthless to society as the monsters getting burned in the fields, it's a poorly executed and shoe-horned-in concept. If that was going to be the message in the end, the least that could have been done is that he be attacked or singled out based on his race; but even Harry's prejudice against him was not clearly race-related and could have purely stemmed from him being an overbearing, control-obsessed, vile man.
Next time I decide to watch a film with an open mind, I'll make sure to look out for brain eaters first.
With two episodes under its belt, the third season of Star Trek has both disappointed and elated. The general reaction to "Spock's Brain" amongst the fan population (beyond the Journey) was universally negative. Buck Coulson of Yandro has even called for this season's producer Fred Freiberger to be ridden out on a rail. On the other hand, "The Enterprise Incident" wowed everyone. And so, we waited eagerly for Trek at 9:59 PM on a Friday night, a night when we could have been out drinking and carousing (who are we kidding—we're probably the only group for whom the Friday night "death slot" is actually perfect timing).
What we got was…well, closer to "Spock's Brain" in terms of quality. In brief:
Kirk, Spock, and McCoy beam down to a remarkably Earthlike planet, complete with pine trees, honeysuckle, and orange blossom (Spock must feel left out; when's the last time they visited a world just like Vulcan?) They are on a tight deadline: a moon-massed asteroid is making its inexorable way toward a collision with the planet. While it will take two months to reach its target, the Enterprise must deflect the body now, or the ship will not be able to sufficiently perturb the colossus from its present orbit.
Why they don't do this first is not explained. Perhaps they wanted to make sure there was something to protect on the planet before they went through all the trouble.
"I guess we do need to save this planet."
There is: a race of humans on the planet. These are also familiar, exhibiting traits of the Navaho, Cherokee, and Delaware tribes in ancient America (which sounds as plausible as a mix of French, Turkish, and Finnish cultures to me, but what do I know?) Beyond this, they discover an alien obelisk, clearly not made by the present inhabitants. A door to its interior is inadvertently opened, and Kirk falls in. After an encounter with some mind-numbing equipment inside, the captain loses all of his memory. Spock and McCoy, unable to find him, reluctantly abandon him to shift the asteroid.
Kirk emerges from the obelisk and is immediately accepted as a god. It helps that he saves a drowned child with artificial respiration and has a profound knowledge of primitive agriculture and lighting techniques. Conflict arises when he is given the Medicine Man's badge of office literally from the head of the former bearer. Worse still, in his new role he is expected to man the obelisk, which is actually a deflector station, when the asteroid approaches. Of course, Kirk doesn't know how to do this. Well, let's hope the Enterprise can stop it.
"Oy. I feel like the whole Sioux Nation is tap-dancing on my head."
They can't. They burn out every circuit on the ship trying to repel the asteroid, then to destroy it. (We do learn that the Enterprise has four forward-facing phasers, which is a nice bit of trivia.) Their warp drive destroyed, the starship must limp back to the planet on impulse power, just four hours ahead of the asteroid, and try to find a way to activate the obelisk. Spock spends two months on the problem, concluding only at the last minute that the strange glyphs decorating the structure are musical notes. When recited in proper sequence, they will open the thing up.
Spock, staying up to figure out the glyphs…or perhaps he's watching Johnny Carson.
Cut to Kirk (now known as "Kirok") atop the obelisk, the trees swaying and thunder rolling from the tidal force of the approaching moon. Beside him is Miramanee, the native princess to whom he has been wed and who bears his child. And there are lots of rocks. A whole bunch of rocks. Not tossed by the wind but by angry tribesmen who are angry that the false god can't figure out the obelisk.
"Oooo, that smarts!"
Spock and McCoy arrive in the nick-o-time to save the day. Kirk's memory is restored. He gets them in the obelisk. Spock works the machine (pressing a single button), and everything is fine. Except Miramanee. Her internal injuries are too great, and she and the unborn child are doomed. Kirk is sad. FINIS.
"Your star medicine man can save me, right?" "Um…"
Boy. The biggest problem with this episode is its contrived nature. This asteroid must be in the planet's solar system, yet the Enterprise has to go Warp NINE to reach it in time, straining its engines. Last episode, Warp Nine took the starship through the entire Romulan Neutral Zone in about a minute. Then, on impulse, it takes two months to come back. In Where No Man Has Gone Before, The Doomsday Machine, Balance of Terror, and The Menagerie, it's established that impulse may be slower than warp, but it's still faster than light. Get your technologies straight!
"Whatever you do, Mr. Sulu, don't take us out of Reverse!"
I also have trouble with the length of time it takes for Spock to decode the glyphs. In prior episodes, particularly "Wolf in the Fold" and "Conscience of the King", it's been shown that the ship's computer is extremely knowledgeable and very good at coordinating facts. This should have been a trivial problem for it to solve. Moreover, why didn't Spock enlist help? After all, it's not as if there isn't anyone else on the vessel skilled at communications, foreign tongues, and music…
Did Uhura have any lines this episode? Or was it just this quick cutaway?
The episode isn't terrible. It's reasonably paced (except when scenes are padded, like when Kirk, in voiceover, tells us exactly what he just told Miramanee in person about the shipboard dreams he's been having). The score is mostly new. The special effects are tremendous. The on-location shooting is lovely, especially since we're not at the usual Vasquez Rocks location (q.v. "Arena", "Friday's Child", etc. etc. etc.)
But it could have been more. A real exploration of Kirk finally getting a beach to walk on, away from the burdens of command. Instead, between the contrived plot, director Jud Taylor's inability to restrain Shatner's innate desire to chew scenery, and the tired white-man-as-savior-to-red-savages cliché (and couldn't the show have followed the trend set by High Chapparal and cast actual Native Americans?), I can't give this tale more than 2.5 stars.
That's better than Margaret Armen's first essay into Trekdom, "Gamesters of Triskelion", but that's damning with faint praise…
Cosmic Implications
by Lorelei Marcus
I cannot deny that this episode is severely flawed in many aspects, and I think that is important to highlight. But I would rather devote my piece to the interesting universal implications brought on by the existence of "The Preservers".
As Spock explains in the latter half of the episode, the Earth ecology and Indian tribes appear to have been seeded on the planet (rather than having evolved there) by the same advanced race that left the obelisk. His theory is that this alien race sought out dying civilizations and relocated them to inhabitable planets to preserve them.
A relic of the empire
Per McCoy's following off-hand observation, this becomes an easy explanation for many, if not all, of the humanoids scattered across the galaxy.
Previously, I theorized that the Star Trek universe actually comprised many alternate Earths in a sort of condensed multiverse, leading to a vast array of inhabitable planets and human-like aliens. With the addition of the Preservers, I think this theory is still viable, but now under the assumption that the many Earths were created to seed human communities. Indeed, perhaps even the moon-massed asteroid was placed around the planet to simulate our own moon.
This raises the question whether all the Earthlike worlds, from the one in "Miri" to pre-contaminated Sigma Iota 2 to the Roman world of "Bread and Circuses", were Preserver colonies. The over-controlling computer in "Return of the Archons" may have been a Preserver artifact left to regulate the colony. "Patterns of Force" even has two planets of humanoids next to each other. Maybe the Zeons were originally rescued Jews from 1940's Europe, explaining their overly apt names so similar to Isaac and Abram.
Theorizing aside, two major questions remain surrounding the Preservers. First, who are they? We've thus far encountered quite a few super powerful races who could fit the bill, but I think the technology level and the musical basis for communications suggests a less advanced level than, say the Organians (who presumably are beyond such things).
My first thought was the Greek Gods in "Who Mourns for Adonais", but the implication is that Apollo and the other Gods were stranded on their planet after one trip to Earth, making it impossible for them to seed multiple colonies. A more likely candidate is Trelane's race. The obsession with and research of human cultures, the machine that can turn a hostile world into a clement one, and even the knowledge of music—Trelane has a harpsichord in his living room—all make the adults of Trelane's race a leading candidate. Trelane himself may have been studying an old human civilization to locate and preserve future ones.
After all, who wouldn't want to save this fellow?
This leads me to my second question: why are the Preservers obsessed with humans in particular? We have seen there are more intelligent aliens than just humans, with their own rich civilizations and history. The Vulcans are the prime example of this. Could the Romulans have originated from a Preserver colony seeded from Vulcan? It seems quite likely, particularly if the colonists were obtained during or shortly after Vulcan's warring period.
Could this mean there are also rogue Klingon colonies evolved separately from the main empire? Did they exist once but were subsequently captured and incorporated? If the Preservers did not single out humans for preservation, perhaps the reason human settlements are so often found by the Enterprise is that the Preservers seeded them close to Earth for Terrans to find.
As my compatriots and I have mentioned, this was not a great episode. However, it kept me entertained nearly to the end, and its premises create vast implications about the Star Trek universe. For that, at least, I give it three stars.
Pilgrim's Regress
by Amber Dubin
After fans fought tooth and nail to prevent the series's cancellation, you'd think the episodes in season 3 would reflect the very best writing Star Trek has to offer. Instead, for episode 3, we have writer Margaret Armen, author of "Gamesters of Triskellion," who has not yet proven herself to be the show's best and brightest. I can't imagine the way this episode turned out was entirely her fault, however. I sense the pitch for this episode went somewhat like this: "Hey Margaret, we have this leftover set from a Western near a lake that we can use for this episode. We can only spare a couple regular staff members for the field shots so make sure at least half of the episode takes place on the ship. Oh, and Shatner's been complaining he hasn't had enough space to spread his wings so make sure this one's especially Kirk-focused. Make it happen."
I imagine the resulting scramble was: "uh, ok.. Western themes.. uh, Pocahontas.. and the rest of the crew was separated by .. uh.. an asteroid! and it's Star Trek because of.. ancient alien technology! Phew, I did it!" The resulting episode feels rushed, uninspired, and at times as frustratingly offensive as I find nearly all Westerns.
They get all the creativity out of the way at the beginning of the episode when they describe the planet as earth-like but entirely crater-free, and an advanced alien obelisk is introduced that Kirk accidentally opens with a series of tones. The fact that he gets amnesia by accidentally activating a booby trap, I found pretty creative as well, even though Shatner's delivery of the moment of shock leaves much to be desired.
It's all downhill from there, however, as the very premise for why the three bridge officers are exploring the planet is completely absurd. It's ridiculous that they would be casually exploring an imperiled planet, 30 minutes before their last opportunity to deviate the oncoming asteroid's path. It's silly that Kirk wanders off by himself without telling anyone what he's doing, and even more absurd that Spock has to explain to McCoy with rocks why they have run out of time to recover their captain when he gets lost. The resulting tension on the ship is painfully contrived, as not only is it revealed that they're so far from the asteroid that they have to speed at warp 9 for so long that they burn out the engines, but they also are immediately out of options when two rounds of phaser fire seems to have no effect. It's also silly that Spock would make the decision to limp back to the planet on impulse power, directly in the path of the asteroid and it's sillier that it takes him almost that entire two months to decode the music-based glyphs on the obelisk, when it has been well-established how well-versed the half-Vulcan is in musical pursuits.
The plot on the planet is not much more cogent than on the ship. The brain-damaged Kirk immediately woos and falls in love with the chief's daughter, because all red roads lead to Pocahontas. I cannot even bother getting offended by how many times the Native Americans are referred to as "primitive," even though it's more than infuriating that the longer Kirk spends with the tribe, the more broken and rudimentary his speech becomes (although this could have been Shatner more than enthusiastically taking advantage of an opportunity to talk more slowly). The part I get most offended by is a white savior bringing with him the innovative concepts of food preservation and lamps. Native American tribes were famous for their food preservation techniques! Moreover, the concept that indoor lighting had to be introduced to Native Americans is beyond insulting. Even cavemen brought torches into their caves! How primitive are they claiming this tribe to be? Also, I simply cannot abide the idea that an entire space-faring medical team could not heal Kirk's wife's mortal wound that could only have been inflicted by a maximum of two rocks. It was obvious the character had to die so that Kirk didn't look like a monster for abandoning his family on a backwater planet, but I think it's a mark of bad writing when I can so blatantly see the intention behind weak plot points.
Overall, this episode plays very much like a holiday special. It's the type of episode to be watched when you're stuffed as a tick after thanksgiving dinner and don't feel like getting up to change the channel. It's not particularly exhausting, but it's also neither memorable nor good. Someone did spend quite a lot of time making that cloak and obelisk look beautiful, though, so for that I give the episode..
2 stars.
"We can fly! We can fly! We can fly!"
[Come join us tomorrow night (October 11th) for the next thrilling episode of Star Trek! KGJ is broadcasting the show live with commercials and accompanied by trekzine readings. You won't want to miss it…]
[Star Trek is back for its third season! Accordingly, we've devoted a great many inches to this rather uneven debut….]
by Janice L. Newman
This week we gathered all our friends together to start off a new season of Star Trek. We served dinner, then put our little portable color set outside and everyone enjoyed the lovely late summer night.
Well, everyone except me, that is. I was stuck inside with a VERY nasty cold that, oddly enough, no one else wanted to share with me. It made watching Spock’s Brain a lonely experience, but it did give me space to focus on the episode without being distracted by gasps, groans, or laughter—except my own, that is.
With the recent threats of cancelation and huge fan response, I expected NBC to put their best foot forward starting the new season. For Season 2 they knocked it out of the park with Amok Time. Could they do it again?
In a word, no.
Spock’s Brain had a lot of good elements. The set up was interesting, if fairly typical by now. An unknown alien vessel confronts the Enterprise. An alien woman appears on the bridge and knocks everyone out with a gadget worn on her wrist. When the crew awakens again, they are horrified to discover that Spock is missing. Then, in a twist I could not have predicted, they find that Spock’s body is in Sick Bay, but his brain has been carefully removed!
Kirk's brain doesn't pass muster…
Somehow Spock’s “incredible Vulcan physique” (McCoy’s words, not mine) allows him to survive without a brain until McCoy can get him on futuristic life support. However, they must get back Spock’s brain within 24 hours, McCoy tells Kirk, or they won’t be able to reconnect it.
Kirk, furious and terrified, orders the navigator to follow the trail of the other ship. When it dead ends in a known system, they must determine which of the three planets has Spock’s brain. Playing a hunch that the audience knows will be correct, Kirk chooses the one that seems the least likely.
The surface of the world is cold and barren, populated by all-male tribes of primitive humans. Beneath the ground, women live in luxury and comfort. But both groups are strangely childlike. Neither understand what Kirk wants when he demands “Spock’s Brain”.
The away team consists of Kirk, McCoy, Scotty, and Mr. Spock—or rather, his body, controlled remotely by McCoy with a little gadget. He is even more inexpressive than usual, and little ticking sounds are heard whenever he moves. If it sounds ridiculous, that’s because it is.
Own your own clockwork Spock!
The team is captured, escape, and eventually make their way to where Spock’s brain has been hooked up to the machine controlling the entire complex. His autonomic functions have been repurposed to control the air, water, heating, and so on. It’s not a new idea in SF—Anne McCaffrey’s The Ship Who Sang did something similar if I recall correctly—but it was one of the more interesting plot points in the episode.
Spock's brain after getting the Sargon treatment
The team learns that the childlike people occasionally get temporary boosts to their knowledge by wearing a funny helmet with pins sticking out of it. This is how their leader was able to remove Spock’s brain. When they force her to again partake of the forbidden knowledge, however, she refuses to help them. If Spock’s brain is removed, the machines will cease to function and her people will die.
McCoy, left with no other choice, dons the helmet himself, receives a temporary boost in knowledge and skill, and proceeds to reattach Spock’s brain. The knowledge runs out before he can finish, but fortunately he’s able to connect Spock’s vocal cords, and the Vulcan is then able to guide him through reattaching the rest.
Kirk, meanwhile, tells the leader not to worry her pretty little head, because soon the women and men will be living together like they should have been all along, and the Federation will ‘help’ them.
Spock is unusually garrulous as the episode ends, lecturing them all on Ancient Rome as the theme swells triumphantly.
Spock is all better now—he didn't even muss his hair!
The frustrating thing about Spock’s Brain is that there’s so much good in it. The acting is very good. Kelley, Shatner, and Nimoy feel like they’ve really started to slot together as a team. Their banter is smoother than ever, Kirk’s over-acting is kept to a minimum, and they deliver the most nonsensical lines with absolute sincerity and straight faces. For that alone, they all deserve Emmys.
Added to that is Marc Daniels’ excellent direction, with interesting angles and innovative camera work. The music, too, was new.
Yet none of it mattered, because the fundamental plot was such schlock that it was impossible to take seriously. Every time McCoy screamed out, “Where are we going to look for Spock’s brain?” or Nimoy robotically walked across the screen as little ticking sounds followed along in the background, I was thrown right out of the world of Star Trek and into a bad B-movie. It was funny. It just wasn’t Star Trek.
Hopefully next week the studio will have something better to offer us.
Two stars.
A Sow's Ear from a Silk Purse
by Amber Dubin
This episode started with promise, the way the scantily clad, mysteriously powerful alien women that smoothly and silently dispatches the entire crew harkens back to the hostile takeovers we’ve seen in other episodes like Norman from “I, Mudd” or the Kelvans from “By any other name.” We expect, then, the plot to follow a similarly cerebral path where this new species of alien demonstrates how their improvements upon humanoid society have allowed them to surpass us in power while sacrificing one very human trait whose immense value they’ve forgotten. That would be following a tried and true formula of an episode that, while banal, can still be entertaining. It is seemingly from this scaffold that this episode attempts to reach to higher heights, without recognizing that it never truly took the time to support itself beforehand.
This reach is visible in the beautifully presented viewscreens, the dramatic "behind the captain's chair" camera angle they debut in this episode, the smooth score, matchless acting and the shiny new svelte uniforms they've adorned the cast with. They took a step backwards with Scottie's new haircut, which is so devastatingly unflattering that it makes Chekov's Monkees wig look tolerable, but it's a small misstep when compared to the unforgivable sin of completely forgetting to attach these shiny tassels to an intelligible script or plot.
For once, Chekov's hair looks better than Scotty's…
The most obvious problem with the plot is the concept of removing Spock's brain. Spock has had his body hijacked countless other times but the insistence of using the removal of his physical cerebral organ this time, instead of just his consciousness, makes all the subsequent actions ridiculous. Also, the fact that none of the Imorgs even seem to know what a brain is is absurd. This leads me to my second biggest problem with the episode, and that is that the alien societal structure is incredibly poorly designed. Ostensibly, the species is segregated across gender lines with the females (the Imorgs) living underground, most likely for their own protection as the males (the Morgs) seem to have descended into violent, brainless savages. The most interesting implication I find with this structure is that Imorgs are described by the Morgs as “bringers of pain and delight.” This implies, to me, that their society must survive by the Imorgs periodically returning to the surface, not just to discipline the Morgs, but also to.. ahem.. milk them of their genetic material for reproductive purposes.
While this is a comical concept, the explanation for this setup makes no sense. It is explained that they became so advanced and so comfortable that their species' intelligence gradually atrophied like an unused muscle, thus requiring the externalization of said intelligence in the archival brain-training headset that certain members of society can put on to receive the combined knowledge of the ancients at their intellectual peak. Yet this raises the question: how did their loss of intelligence happen so slowly that it was unavoidable and yet so quickly that they were able to see it coming in order to store it externally to be used later? Perhaps there was a brain-eating disease that only spared the less intelligent? Yet this does not explain how McCoy's readings picked up evidence of a gradual degradation and does not explain how the best solution that these highly intelligent beings could come up with is to turn their habitat into a body controlled by a physical cerebral organ sustained for 10,000 year periods; meanwhile the remnants of their species are left to crawl around said body mindlessly like ants in a glass-bound ant hill.
As absurd as this premise makes the episode, it introduces what I see as its most redemptive quality: the positive sexism. As often as this show strives for portraying women as valued members of an advanced society, it's my personal opinion that it falls short too many times. This episode seeks to bend the needle at least a little bit in favor of a 'women being smarter than men' narrative, and I am a fan. The Imorgs, while dumb, are no more dumb than the Morgs, and I am quite fond of the fact that their highly intelligent ancestors chose the females as the more reliable receptacles into which to download the collective knowledge of their species. I also enjoyed that, while graced with the knowledge and basically the consciousness of the ancients, the Imorg priestess is successfully able to out-smart Kirk and is completely immune to his powers of persuasion. I find it infinitely refreshing that Captain Kirk doesn’t once again save the day by aggressively teaching the femme-fatale the value of love. Although when said woman decries that they can’t control the men without systems of punishment and reward, Kirk does sneak in a snide “there are other ways.” I could be reading too far into it, but the way he delivered the line made me think he was more than willing to provide instructions as to techniques that women can use to get men to do what they want (maybe he’d even suggest a hands on approach to the milking process).
"How about some lessons in healthy sexual relations?"
Despite this episode's obvious flaws, which there are many, I wouldn't overall say this is a bad episode. It's a testament to the commitment of the actors that they're willing to deliver solid performances of the sometimes silly lines with depth and sometimes deadly seriousness (Nurse Chapel’s 10 second fall alone is Oscar-worthy). In general, the characters appear much more polished than we've seen in some other episodes; and the lighting, which I think is a little too severe for Shatner's face in a couple of scenes, was an interesting departure and a bold choice. What the episode lacked in structural continuity, it tried to make up for in fluid pacing, an exceptional score, and special effects opticals that I believe have vastly improved from even the last season. Ultimately, however, the failure of editors to cut the obvious silliness out of the script makes all the high quality elements feel like lipstick on a pig.
They say you can’t make a silk purse from a sow’s ear but apparently you can make a sow’s ear from a silk purse. This episode makes for one very stylish pig, but if it’s just going to dunk its head in the mud, I don’t see the point of the wasted effort.
Three stars.
The Mental Divide
by Joe Reid
Star Trek has returned for a 3rd season! I've missed our weekly sneak peek into the future as well as that regular glance into the mirror of our present. “Spock's Brain” is the name of this entry. Spock's brain is the apparent focus of this episode, at least on the surface. As I stated before, Star Trek is sometimes a mirror to show us who we are or may become. In “Spock's Brain”, we don't look good.
Watching shows like Star Trek, we see ourselves as the heroes. We picture ourselves as Kirk. We are Uhura. We are Chekov. From a narrative standpoint, we are actually the silly characters that the crew of the Enterprise are fighting, kissing, lying to, or helping each week. This week, we are the inhabitants of Sigma Draconis 6. What do the people of this planet tell us about ourselves?
The people of Sigma Draconis 6, which I will call Sixers from here forward, were divided by sex. The Sixer males were ignorant of relationships with the females outside of knowing them as the ones that bring pain and pleasure. Similarly, many men in our world don’t understand women. We sometimes reduce women to being instruments of pleasure, which if not handled correctly might lead to intense pain. Of course, it doesn’t help at all if men are uneducated and uncultured. Such men are reduced to seeing women in the context of either, “Heavens! She makes me feel good!”, or “Dammit! She is a pain in the neck!”
Women gain the upper hand in the battle of the sexes.
The Sixer women, being physically weaker than the men, and as ignorant as them, defaulted to using instruments of pain and pleasure to get what they wanted from men. Although the episode didn’t offer what pleasures were given to the men, I myself am intimately aware of the pleasures that today’s women use to get their way from a man and of the pain some of them inflict when they are not satisfied. Bill Shakespeare wrote about the fury of a woman’s scorn. I find myself questioning which is better—the long deep pain caused by a woman who hurts your soul or the short and intense pain of this episode’s futuristic torture device. Both seem equally bad ways of dealing with the opposite sex, based on an utter lack of compassion.
This portrayed male/female struggle, although interesting, was not a perfect mirror to our culture in that it gave no example to the pain that men have caused women today and throughout history. Also giving no notion that men could bring pleasure to women outside of what they can physically provide through their labor. In the end, "Spock's Brain" shows us that there must be more to successful human relations than simple Pavlovian techniques.
Another key lesson of the episode involves Spock’s brain and how it was to be used on Sigma Draconis 6. Sixers females could only continue their way of life if a controller was there to run their world. Without a controller, the females and males would have to rely on each other in a different way. This may seem far from reality, but I think this lesson should be taken as a warning rather than an indictment of our society. We should be wary of any leader, religion, philosophy, or machine that promises to take care of our needs or manage our lives to such a degree that it reduces our interdependence with those around us. Women and men need each other to survive, but all are better served through understanding and love over pain and pleasure. Families need each other in the same way. As do neighbors. Coworkers. Citizens of a country. People of a planet. Dependence on a solitary thing to care for us may lead to retardation of how we relate to one another.
Why think for yourself when you can just be force-fed knowledge?
For this exciting and thought-provoking episode of Star Trek, I offer 4 of 5 stars. It told a compelling and suspenseful yarn laced with relevant social commentary and caution—exactly what one wants from science fiction.
Four stars
Third Season Drinking Game
by Erica Frank
Take a drink every time you spot bad science, male chauvinism, Federation cultural supremacy, or the Enterprise crew pretending that an alien culture has human needs, interests, and abilities. …For this episode, make them small drinks. Sips only. Optionally, take long drinks; you may bypass a few others while you're raising your glass.
I'm leaving it to others to discuss the computer technology (take a drink), the womens' clothing (take a drink), and Kirk's ethics (take another drink), so as to focus on the split communities: Women living underground in the warm, computer-controlled facility; men living without technology on the frozen surface.
How are they making their clothes with "no sign of industrial development?" Those are awfully straight seams for hand-worked leather!
They have lived this way for thousands of years, long enough to have long forgotten why, even if they had attempted to keep records. They seem mostly content (or at least resigned): The men fear the women, but they do not band together to attack them; the women see no reason to change anything until they need a new "Controller."
(I have no idea how children happen. They're aliens. Maybe they lay eggs and the Controller keeps them in an incubator.)
But we are probably supposed to believe they are human-like, just split into communities so separate they don't even have words for sex or gender. Are we to believe these people, human-like enough to prefer buildings that are well-suited for our crew, wearing clothing that seems designed for human cultures, have no concept of human-like relationships? Of course not!
We have plenty of examples of what kind of relationships humans have, if you segregate them by sex: sailors, military forces, and even nunneries have a long history of homosexual behavior.
Of course, the residents of Sigma Draconis 6 won't have "gay" relationships that look like modern human ones: They have no notion of "husband and wife." They don't raise children together, don't have one employed partner and one housekeeper. (The men probably need every able-bodied person working for survival; the women's physical needs are all met by the Controller.) So their relationships – which may not be limited to pair-bonding the way that child-raising couples tend to be – would be mostly invisible to casual, short-term visitors like Kirk and his crew.
When the Morg realize that Spock is Kirk's oath-bonded partner, his assault on the women's complex will make so much more sense to them!
Two stars – mostly for the fascination of "how does that work?"; bump it to three if you've been drinking enough to put yourself in a pleasant fog.
Anything but Star Trek
by Lorelei Marcus
I think we're entering a new era. The music feels different, as if it's finally finding its groove after many years of experimentation. The politics are different, too, with black delegates trying to sit at the convention (and a young Julian Bond making a plausible run for Vice President!), and a weird match-up between two Vice Presidents.
Most of all, the TV is different. It's all in color, and there's just so many shows, most of them new. From Julia to The Mod Squad, everyone's jumping to be the fresh, hip thing.
Except, apparently, Star Trek.
It's ironic that this show, which broke new ground on television in not just science fiction but ethnic diversity chose to take such a step back into the past for its Season 3 debut. "Spock's Brain" felt like a plot straight out of the '50s. The society separated by men and women, the spooky science beyond our understanding, and even the new, tighter-fitting uniforms made the episode feel right at home next to Forbidden Planet.
What's worse, this quaint exploration of an alien society clashed sharply with the actual Enterprise and crew. For instance, the (excellent!) scene in which the bridge crew decide which of the three Sigma Draconis planets to investigate in search of Spock's brain feels like a scene from another show—and might as well be: the sentient races on the other planets never become relevant to the episode.
The bridge becomes the briefing room in one of the best scenes of the episode.
I didn't actually have much problem with the whole "brain removal" element of the plot, just how it was executed. A lot of the lines felt forced and corny, particularly Spock's indifferent voice-overs. His dialogue should have been the highlight of the episode, not the drag. Also, the surgery montage at the end of the episode was cheap, taken straight from Ben Casey or maybe even General Hospital. I was laughing too hard at that point to care whether or not the brain restoration surgery was a success.
Don't get me wrong. I did enjoy the episode at the time, and the actors salvaged what they could with the lines they were given, but it ultimately left a bad taste in my mouth. I'm disappointed that "Spock's Brain" was chosen to be the debut of Season 3. Perhaps a tongue in cheek episode like this (assuming the camp is deliberate) could have been fine midseason, but putting it front and center feels disrespectful to the show and characters, not to mention the audience. I don't regret writing all those letters to Mort Werner to keep Star Trek alive, but I fear the result may be a degraded, less sophisticated program.
Let's hope this episode is a fluke and not representative of the rest of the season.
Three stars
Minority Report
by Gideon Marcus
I'm going to go out on a limb here. I enjoyed this episode. Perhaps it was the endless summer over which I was starved for new Trek. Maybe it was the terrific giggles I got out of every time one of the gifted cast had to seriously pronounce the words "Spock's Brain" (usually preceded by variations of "Where are we going to look for…" and "Give back…")
The story didn't bother me. Was it rushed with intriguing concepts left undeveloped? Sure, but that's par for the course. There are only 50 minutes each week with which to introduce a plot and resolve it. The rest must be done with shorthand. Indeed, the episode wastes little time, clanging into action with a red-alert signal. And while Kirk does destroy a 10,000 year old society with no compunctions, he's done so before, under similar conditions ("Return of the Archons" and "The Apple"), and the Federation has specialists to help clean up the ensuing mess. Plus, in this case, it was personal—they'd taken (chortle) Spock's Brain!
Speaking of plots we've seen before, Spock's Brain (guffaw) is really just the inverse of "Return to Tomorrow". In that episode, three disembodied brains want Spock's Body (and those of Kirk and Dr. Ann Mulhall).
Of course, in the cold light of day, when I can't be swept along by the superb pacing, the new scoring, the slick new uniforms, the beautiful Daniels-shot bridge (how about those lovely viewscreen shots?!), getting to see all of the B-team doing their jobs, Scotty's disaster of a new hair style (did Jimmy's new wife Anita approve of this?), I can see there are issues with the episode. For instance, the idea of snatching a brain to power a society is fine. The notion of finding the best brain for the job makes sense. But Sigma Draconis had three class M planets in it. Surely there were scholars on Planet 3 or scientists on Planet 4 who could have done the job. (Also, Planet 4, with a technology grade of "G" or 2030 A.D. presumably has space travel and perhaps even warp drive—why hadn't they settled/explored Planet 6?)
Also, all this gas about "ion propulsion" being the cat's meow made no sense. Ion propulsion is something we use today, which I talked about in my article on the (failed) satellite ATS 4. It is a low thrust , economical drive that uses the constant ejection of cesium atoms to propel a spacecraft. Maybe Scotty's "ion propulsion" means something different, but it sounds goofy without further explanation. It's why Trek moved from "lasers", which are new but well known, to "phasers", which are made up but sound cool. Call it "muon" propulsion or better yet (to make up a word) "buon" or something.
"She's steam-powered, Cap'n! Far beyond what we can do with antimatter…"
All that said, I want to think that this rather silly script was Trek's essay at deliberate camp, sort of how The Trouble with Tribbles and A Piece of the Action were deliberate comedy and Catspaw was deliberate Halloween creepiness. In any event, the episode accomplished the main goal, which is that I'm eager to see what's on next week…even if it means I have to stay up past my bedtime to watch the furshlugginer thing, now that they've moved the air time to 10 P.M.!
It seems appropriate to mention expectations when discussing a film with such a pregnant subject matter (pun intended). Mine were fairly low to start because I am not a fan of horror movies. This is because the scares from horror films usually suffer two major foibles: the ridiculous and the cliché. Outside of Halloween festivities, I have little patience for silly looking, poorly costumed monsters. I also dislike when a film relies too heavily on violent/grotesque imagery to get a rise out of its audience. It was through this biased lens that I viewed Rosemary's Baby; though I went in expecting disappointment, predictability and lack of inspiration or fear, I was proven wrong on all counts. Rosemary's Baby has a spine chilling relatability that creeped into my psyche and won me over, despite my pessimistic attitude toward it. It has the uniqueness and incontrovertibly high quality writing that give it all the makings of a timeless horror classic.
The slow boil of discomfort begins as we open to an off-putting lullaby, mournfully serenading the viewer as we zoom into a gloomy, dismal, old city skyline. The first couple of scenes increase the viewer's sense of unease by limping along at a clunky and awkward pace into a world that just barely makes sense. The young newlywed couple at the center of the story, Rosemary (Mia Farrow) and Guy Woodhouse (John Cassavetes), are introduced as they enthusiastically acquire an apartment even though it's clearly run down, overstuffed and not move-in ready at all. Their reactions continue to be disjointed from reality in the subsequent scenes as we are introduced to their old and new friends. They proceed to have very awkward and/or inappropriate conversations with each of them, starting with Hutch (the family friend who brings up some very odd subjects over dinner) and ending with a first meeting with their neighbor Terry (who wastes absolutely no time launching into her sordid past of drug abuse with someone she has not even known for a full hour over laundry with Rosemary). The couple proves to have similar lack of social grace around each other, when their first night they spend at their creepy new apartment, they are eating off a blanket on the floor because they have no curtains or furniture and Rosemary awkwardly declares, "Say! Let's make love" completely apropos of nothing. Personally, I think the subsequent silent disrobing and intertwining of bodies to be not only shocking, but (and deliberately) decidedly un-sexy.
Not the models for marital bliss
It comes to pass that all this awkwardness is by design, as it serves to innure the viewer for strangeness that piles on with every scene and every new character introduced. Like the proverbial frog that gets cooked alive in slowly boiling water, both Rosemary and the viewer are slowly made comfortable with painfully uncomfortable circumstances, and we don't realize what's happening until it's too late.
In the first shock of the movie, the couple go on a late night stroll in order to avoid over-hearing what sounds like chanting coming through the paper-thin walls. As they return from their ramble, they are shocked to find a crowd surrounding the bloody corpse of Terry, the overly chatty girl Rosemary met earlier at the laundry. The elderly couple that Terry was living with react normally to her sudden "suicide" at first: expressing shock and grief when they introduce themselves to the Woodhouses as their neighbors, the Casavets. The next day, however, when Mrs. Casavet appears at Rosemary's door, her behavior is anything but normal. The older woman barges into Rosemary's place and goes through it like she owns it, speaking in nonsensical run-on sentences that are off putting and yet Rosemary doesn't react at all. Yet most unnerving is when she casually mentions having Terry cremated and bequeaths Rosemary with Terry's foul-smelling "good luck charm" that must not have been lucky enough because Terry was still wearing it when she died.
Dead women's necklaces make great house-warming gifts
It is with this bizarre house-warming gift that the Casavets begin their campaign to integrate themselves into every waking moment of Rosemary and Guy Woodhouse's lives. Guy is initially reluctant to even meet them, but once he and Mr. Casavet bond over cigars they become fast friends. Bizarrely, Guy becomes so close with the septuagenarian at one point that he begins going over their neighbor's house even without Rosemary with him. It is important to note here that, for me, the most upsetting part about this movie is the way the Woodhouses talk to each other. Like many couples, they at first appear to be hopelessly in love, but as you get to know them throughout the film, their relationship is rotten to its core. Guy proves himself to be a selfish, mean, horrible man. Rosemary, in her desperate attempt to justify her continued adoration of him, consistently makes excuses for his bad behavior. The most egregious example of this dynamic comes when they decide to start trying for a baby (basically so that Rosemary will have something to do when Guy is off auditioning for roles). By apparent coincidence, the first night they are set to start trying, Rosemary's neighbor gives her a homemade dessert that makes her almost collapse afterwards.
If you ever find yourself waking up like this, it's time for a divorce
The following night Rosemary is in a fitful sleep where she dreams of being assaulted by the devil while all of her neighbors stand around her naked and chanting. She wakes up naked and sore with her back scratched up and when questioned, her husband says he 'didn't want to miss the baby-making night.' I had an almost identical level of revulsion as Rosemary when faced with the realization that her husband would take such liberties over her body without her knowledge or consent. It turns out that night marked the conception of a very difficult pregnancy, one which not only sees the steep decline in their marriage, but also Rosemary's sanity and health, while she slowly becomes completely subjugated by the incessant presence of the Casavets in her life. Bounced between her husband and her intrusive neighbor, her self-esteem is whittled down to nothing as she is constantly insulted and isolated from her own family and friends. Her husband refuses to look her in the eye for weeks, and when she gets an adorable haircut to feel more fashionable, the first thing out of his mouth is "You look horrible! This is the worst decision you've made." Ever the non-supportive, selfish man she married, Guy uses her new "hideous" hairstyle to ignore her even more as her pregnancy progresses, throwing himself into his acting career as if nothing else matters.
Despite being thoroughly mod, this look deeply displeased Rosemary's husband
Rosemary's husband and neighbors add insult to injury when they convince her to change the doctor she goes to for regular check ups, and he repeatedly ignores her pleas for help when she has unusual pains, telling her every concern she has is in her head. At one point, she rebels, throwing a huge house party with friends she hasn't seen in years, against the wishes of her oppressors. Her friends are appropriately horrified to see what she looks like, seeing how pale she is and how sunken her eyes. Breaking down into tears, she confesses that she's been in horrible pain since the beginning of her pregnancy and can't believe this level of agony is normal.
Her friends literally lock her husband out of the room and validate all of her fears, telling her how her husband and Doctor are treating her is not at all normal and she needs to get out of there as soon as possible. It appears to already be too late, however, as when the pain lessens the next day, she second-guesses her friends and settles into the routine set by everyone else in her life. The way this party resolves reveals itself to be the first in a trend of stranger and stranger happenings in the background of Rosemary's pregnancy. Little by little, every contradictory voice in her life is silenced, beginning with the party go-ers and ending with Hutch the family friend from the beginning.
A desperate call for help that goes unanswered
Hutch's re-entry into Rosemary's life triggers a headlong fall down a rabbit hole of conspiratorial theories and occult explanations for the increasingly bizarre behavior of Rosemary's doctor, neighbors and husband. Within hours of his visit to Rosemary's house, he vows to do research on her neighbors and then almost immediately falls into a coma he never wakes up from. Speaking from beyond the grave, he wills her a book about witches, filled with secret messages implying that the Casavets belong to a well established coven that's been in the area for ages. Thus ensues a Rosemary's frantic bout of research, which leaves the viewer wondering whether she's actually figuring out what's going on or completely losing her mind.
The moment of truth comes when she finally presents her findings to a new doctor, only for him to turn her over to the custody of her original doctor and her husband, as a raving lunatic. She is instantly proven right in her suspicions, though when she gets home and the entire coven is in her apartment and descends upon her, pinning her to her own bed by sheer force of numbers. Horrifyingly, she is induced into a coma by her mad-scientist doctor, and when she wakes again she is told she birthed and lost the baby. Because she rightfully believes no one around her at this point, she starts deceiving her captors by pretending to take the "medicine" they feed her and feigning ignorance as to why they take her breast milk "to be thrown in the trash." After days of placating them, she arms herself with a huge kitchen knife and follows the crying noises she's been overhearing sporadically through the walls. She finds an entrance to the neighbor's apartment in the back of one of her closets and stumbles into a room full of people gathered for a baby shower that she wasn't invited to.
Mia Farrow out-doing herself
In the performance of a lifetime, Mia Farrow approaches the black curtained bassinet adorned with an upside down cross in the center of the room. Leaning over its side, her eyes absolutely bulge out of their sockets in an expression of pure, abject terror. Recoiling, she screams, "what did you do to its eyes?!" The gathered crowd enthusiastically exclaim that her child has its father's eyes and erupt into a cacophony of "Hail Satan"s. Dazed, Rosemary stumbles around the room, receiving no comfort from the callous scheming coven as they alternatively mock and jeer at her. Her husband even has the nerve to come up to her and tell her why he signed them up to this whole situation, explaining that "it'll just be as if you lost the baby" and "this will be so good for my career." I believe Rosemary speaks for all of us by promptly spitting in the man's face and shutting him up. In the end, she tentatively approaches the bassinet again because one of the other party guests is shaking it too hard and causing the infant within to cry. You can see the heartbreaking mixture of confusion, fear and motherly love play across Rosemary's face as she resigns herself to some level of acceptance of this situation and the same creepy lullaby that began the film croons over us as we fade to black.
A movie for the ages
This film had so many iconic moments and scenes. If this isn't Mia Farrow's break-out role, then I know nothing of quality acting. I expect great things from her in the future. The script, score and plot were also a cut above. I began my viewing thinking it bizarre and ungrounded and within 15 minutes, I was enthralled, on the edge of my seat and just as anxious to find out what fresh Hell Rosemary was going to be subjected to, even as I was disgusted and disturbed by what she had already endured. Rosemary's Baby is a true tribute to the horror genre and made a believer out of this skeptical critic.
![[December 10, 1969] Night Gallery: A Frightening Tableau](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/NightGallery-553x372.png)
![[February 28, 1969] We Reach (<i>Star Trek</i>: "The Way to Eden")](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/690301title-1-672x372.jpg)
![[Nov. 22, 1968] Bound to thrill (<i>Star Trek</i>: "The Tholian Web")](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/681122title-672x372.jpg)
![[November 14, 1968] "'S'cuse me while I touch the sky!" (<i>Star Trek</i>: "For the World is Hollow and I have Touched the Sky")](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/681114title-672x372.jpg)
![[November 8, 1968] A Diplomatic Tiger by the Tail ("Day of the Dove")](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/681108title-672x372.jpg)
![[October 31, 1968] How the Western was won (<i>Star Trek</i>: "Spectre of the Gun")](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/681031title-672x372.jpg)
![[October 16, 1968] Cinemascope: <i>Barbarella</i>, <i>Ice Station Zebra</i>, and <i>Night of the Living Dead</i>](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/681016movies-672x372.jpg)
![[October 10, 1968] Going Native (<i>Star Trek</i>: "The Paradise Syndrome")](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/681010title-672x372.jpg)
![[September 26, 1968] Brain drain: (<i>Star Trek</i>: "Spock's Brain")](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/680926title-672x372.jpg)
![[June 22, 1968] The Devil, you say (<i>Rosemary's Baby</i>)](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/RosemarysBaby-672x372.jpg)
