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

March 12, 2024 Erica Frank 6 Comments

by Erica Frank

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

"Welcome to Washington, Captain Kirk!"

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

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

Your host for the evening: an Excalbian rock creature that can read minds, terraform parts of a lava world, and shapeshift.

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

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

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

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

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

The villain line-up, from left to right: Genghis Khan, who needs (or at least gets) no introduction; Colonel Green, a genocidal war leader from 21st century Earth; Zora, a mad scientist from Tiburon; Kahless the Unforgettable, the Klingon tyrant.

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

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

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

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

Colonel Green, the only white man on the "villain" team, watches from behind a rock while his companions fight for their lives. Maybe their lack of unity did matter.

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

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

Fair to Middlin’

by Janice L. Newman

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

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

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

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

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

The bit with Uhura explaining that race relations had progressed so far that words were no big deal was nice, though.

Three stars.

By What Right

by Mx. Blue Cathey-Thiele

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

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

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

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

This amoral broadcast brought to you in living color on NBC!

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

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

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

2 stars

Truly Alien

by Joe Reid

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

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

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

"Don't look so stone-faced, Captain. Haha. That's an alien joke."

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

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

4 stars

Eclipse Glasses for War

by Jessica Dickinson Goodman

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

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

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

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

A poor man's Hanoi Hilton

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

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

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

Three stars.

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

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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[March 6, 1969] Different points of view (Star Trek: "The Cloud Minders")

March 6, 2024 Janice L. Newman 3 Comments

Just Bad

by Janice L. Newman

Star Trek has given us some amazing episodes over the past three seasons, episodes that made us think, made us gasp, made our hearts bleed for the characters and made us laugh out loud. Unfortunately, we’ve also had many kinds of bad episodes, from ridiculously, gloriously bad, to offensively, teeth-grindingly bad, to bizarrely bad, to pathetically bad. Yet somehow, The Cloudminders manages to be a different kind of bad than any we’ve seen before.

The story opens, as it so often does, on the Enterprise. A plague has affected a planetary member of the Federation, and the cure requires a substance found in only one place in the galaxy, the planet Ardana. (Is it just me, or have there been a lot of plagues recently?) When Kirk and Spock beam down to Ardana, however, instead of finding the precious shipment of zenite waiting for them, they are attacked.

In the heat of the moment, Mr. Spock has forgotten how to do a Vulcan Neck Pinch

The attack is interrupted by Plasus, the High Advisor of the planetary council. He brings the two of them to Stratos, a city in the clouds, where they meet Droxine, his daughter. Kirk and Spock go to the quarters prepared for them.

"Don't fret, my dear. We only have two more scenes like this where we tell each other things we already know for the benefit of the audience."

Once they’re gone, two guards bring in a “Troglyte”, a member of the underclass who work in the mines. Plasus starts to interrogate him, but he breaks free and throws himself over the balcony.

"Anything to get out of this picture!"

There follows one of the strangest and clumsiest bits I’ve ever seen in a Star Trek episode. Spock has a voiceover where he talks about the split between the haves and have-nots on the planet, overlaid atop flashbacks to scenes we just watched. He also has some highly un-Spocklike thoughts about Droxine’s charm, purity, and sweetness.

And speak of the devil, Droxine appears and proceeds to flirt with him. Having watched nearly three seasons of Star Trek we expected him to politely brush her off. Defying everything we have ever seen and learned about the Vulcan, Spock responds in-kind, flirting back and using what Gideon calls, “the boyfriend voice”. The dialog would have been eye-rollingly bad enough if Shatner had been spouting the lines, but it was unbearable with Spock doing it.

Speaking of Shatner, the scene (thankfully) cuts to where he’s taking a nap. A woman creeps up to him, a weapon in her hand, but he grabs her and immobilizes her before she can do anything. He tells her he’ll release her if she’ll answer his questions, and she agrees.

Yvonne Craig returns to reprise her role in "Whom Gods Destroy" sans green paint…

Unfortunately, the scene now returns to Spock and Droxine, where they are discussing (groan) the Vulcan mating cycle, and whether anything might ‘disturb’ it. Spock actually says, “Extreme feminine beauty is always disturbing, madam.” If this were a ploy, like The Enterprise Incident, maybe I could forgive it (though the writing in that episode was far better than this one). If Spock were intentionally seducing Droxine to get the much-needed zenite, taking a page out of Kirk’s book, maybe I could believe that he would say these words. But there is never any indication that Spock’s words are anything but sincere.

"Can't I do anything? Perhaps some Plomeek soup…or some Tranya?" (or) "Mrs. Droxine, you are trying to seduce me…"

Kirk calls out for Spock and Spock hurries to respond, so I guess at least one thing is still right with the universe. Droxine, Vanna, and Kirk argue politics for a while, and then Vanna is taken away to be tortured for the names of her associates. At her scream, Kirk and Spock come running. Kirk and Plasus argue about whether torture is an effective way to get information until Plasus orders them to return to their ship.

Back on the Enterprise, McCoy helpfully explains that zenite gives off a gas which makes people stupid and violent, but that the effects can be nullified with a face mask or removal from exposure. Kirk tries to explain this to Plasus, who unsurprisingly refuses to listen. Kirk then sneaks back down to the planet, getting beamed directly to Vanna’s cell. He makes a deal with her to trade masks for zenite, but she betrays him as soon as they’re beamed down to the mines. Snatching off his mask, she forces him to start digging. She gets too close to him with her stolen phaser, though, and he overpowers her and triggers a cave-in, sealing them in. Determined to prove to Vanna that the gas makes people stupid and violent (something which her own experiences should probably have convinced her was true, given that she went between the floating city and the mines regularly) Kirk has Plasus beamed in with them and makes him start digging.

"Hear that, Plasus? That's… the sound of… the men… working on the… chain… gang."

Plasus and Kirk, overcome by the gas, start fighting. Vanna gets a hold of Kirk’s communicator and calls the Enterprise for help. Vanna screams that the gas is affecting them as the crew beam to their rescue.

The final act takes place in Stratos once more, the city in the clouds. Vanna has agreed to supply the zenite, and Kirk will give the Troglytes the masks. Spock and Droxine have one final, nauseating moment, Kirk and Plasus snipe at each other unpleasantly, and then the crew leaves with just three hours to spare to save a dying planet.

"That's all for now. Tata!"

Well. That was an episode.

It’s hard to explain just why this episode was so bad. The writing was clunky, with every conversation going on three times longer than necessary. The guest characters felt like childish caricatures, while our beloved crewmembers (especially Spock) felt nothing like themselves. The pacing was bad, the acting not good, the directing clumsy. It was just…bad. In every way. There was no good episode inside trying to get out this time.

If I thought that NBC were the evil masterminds that some believe, I would say that they saved this episode for late in the season deliberately. Really, who’s going to complain about Star Trek’s cancellation after seeing this garbage? But I’m guessing that the sub-par script, sub-par direction, and sub-par acting were actually due to budget cuts, as NBC has shown they don’t much care what the fans think or want or say, no matter how many postcards we send them.

One star.

Not Bad

by "Greenygal"

I have mixed feelings about "Cloudminders", mostly relating to the xenite gas. It's a terribly convenient plot device; it means that I have to sit and listen to McCoy–McCoy!–talk about how the lower class really are mentally inferior to the upper class, which is such an ugly idea and is particularly jarring in this episode about bigotry and social inequality; and even though the stuff is "shipped all over the galaxy" (did no one do any testing on unprocessed xenite?) and the Troglytes mine it all their lives, apparently McCoy is the only one who's ever noticed that raw xenite can affect people's brains.

On the other hand, the Stratos sets and outfits are lovely. I thought the actors for Plasus, Droxine, and especially Vanna put in excellent performances. I really appreciated that Kirk is just not a part of Vanna's emotional story; she's not romantically or sexually interested in him and she doesn't learn love or mercy or responsibility or anything like that from him. Eventually she is convinced that he's telling the truth about the masks and that's as far as it goes. Bonus points for her ending the episode looking at Droxine, the other metaphorical half of the planet's future, instead of Kirk.

And oh, the message. Yeah, yeah, the xenite is clumsy, but it doesn't stop this episode from being sharp and fierce and clear about what it's portraying. Plasus and Droxine are pleasant and intelligent and educated, and they're also terrible bigots who talk so reasonably about how of course it's just natural for the Troglytes to do all the work and have no rights while the Stratosians get everything. Everything Plasus says is awful, but Droxine expressing the same horrible ideas in sweet, reasonable tones is chilling, and emphasizes both that this is a societal problem and that it doesn't matter how nicely you express your bigotry, it's still bigotry.

Also, we've got the Troglyte in the beginning being willing to throw himself off Cloud City rather than be taken, and Vanna being strapped to the torture pillar, as a clear show-not-just-tell for how bad things are under the surface.

Not as fun as Barbarella's torture…

And as a counterpoint to all this awfulness, we've got Kirk and Spock saying in no uncertain terms "What? They do all the work and they don't get the same advantages? They don't get light? That's awful. That's unthinkable. What do you mean they don't understand things like loyalty and justice? Obviously they do, if you're the one behaving like violence is the only option that's your problem, Jack, and also you're not going to lay a hand on her unless you go through me." Our Heroes absolutely refused to tolerate a single bigoted statement, and it just made me so happy to hear. (And in particular I appreciated it in contrast to Last Battlefield's "well, really, when you think about it, aren't both sides equally to blame for racial conflict?")

And what I think really saves the xenite gas from sabotaging the message is that fixing it does not suddenly fix everything. The Troglytes are still working in the mines, and Vanna says they're still going to be fighting for their rights, and Plasus is still talking about how awful they are. (And how "ungrateful"; I really enjoyed seeing Vanna flatly deny that she owes him anything for her training.) The masks will make things better for the Troglytes, and Droxine shows that the Stratosians can change. But there's still a real conflict here that didn't get an easy science-fictional solution, and I appreciate that.

I think 3.5 stars is fair. It's a flawed episode, no question, but the things that I like about it, I really like.

Skin Deep Rationale

by Joe Reid

The notion that a presumed higher group gets to benefit from the labor of a presumed lesser group while giving no thought to the lives and wellbeing of that lesser group is premise of this week’s episode of Star Trek. “The Cloud Minders” is a funny title for this episode, seeing as how the title itself even ignores the existence of that lesser group. This episode wasn’t named “The Dirt Miners”. It was those in the clouds who held the authority, and those under the surface who challenged that authority. At first glance this premise sounded compelling. On review the whole premise fell apart due to one simple fact—the Troglites really didn’t need the Stratosians for anything.

The episode began with Starfleet in need. They needed the mineral, zenite, to save people on another world. The Stratosians, who somehow had authority to represent all Ardana to Startfleet, promised that they would provide the mineral that they themselves would not take part in gathering. The loathsome long haired Troglites were tasked with collecting the zenite. The complete lack of anyone being compensated for anything was the real head scratcher here. The Federation was giving the people of Ardana nothing for their zenite. The Stratosians appeared to offer the Troglites nothing for their labor in mining the zenite. From what I gleaned, the Troglites seemed as if they were entirely self-sufficient and had no need of anything from the Stratosians. Granted, they did come up with a plan for capturing Starfleet officers in order to ransom them for weapons to fight the cloud people for the sins of talking down to them. Outside of emotional slights, the Troglites didn’t appear to require food, clothing, or shelter from the Stratosians. Why bother with fighting them?

"We need nothing from you—certainly not these stupid-looking masks!"

Looking at the Stratosians themselves: people with time to pursue art, learning, and leisure, but utterly lacking the ability to do labor or automate labor. If they were truly learned, they would have had a method to keep the people that they depend on happy.

The reason that this episode logically fell apart for me, outside of the fact that any real motive for conflict was absent, was that the conflict was resolved by the Enterprise crew, by forcing both sides to learn of a problem that neither side even knew existed. The knowledge that zenite poisoning caused the retardation of the Troglites didn’t truly change the circumstances on the planet. It didn’t even remove the bigotry of the Stratosian leader. It just made Kirk and the Troglites happy, and that fixed everything.

Setting aside the flawed logic and lack of rationale in this episode, the costumes and sets felt very original. The premise of the story was worthwhile as an ideal, but its shallow execution detracts from the weight that this episode could have carried. I would like more from my science fiction.

2 stars

[Come join us tonight (March 6th) for the next thrilling episode of Star Trek! KGJ is broadcasting the show live with commercials and accompanied by trekzine readings at 8pm Eastern and Pacific. You won't want to miss it…]

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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

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

February 20, 2024 Joe Reid 4 Comments

by Joe Reid

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

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

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

"You are the Kirk? The Creator?"

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

"What else can I get you? A bag of reds? Keys to my Mercedes? An original copy of the U.S. Constitution?

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

"I do so love that Johnny Carson!"

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

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

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

Rayna teaches Kirk how to hold his stick

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

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

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

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

Four stars

What Could Have Been

by Janice L. Newman

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

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

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

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

Flint watches his home-made stag film; good thing his peep show has a good cinematographer!

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

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

Just Another Pretty Face

by Lorelei Marcus

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

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

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

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

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

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

by Erica Frank

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

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

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

Did he invent the paper-thin large-screen television as well? Can I get one of those?

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

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

Flint despairs that Rayna might care for someone other than him.

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

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

The current Rayna is 17. One more and she's legal!

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

Too Many Beaches to Walk On

by Gideon Marcus

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

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

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

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

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

These three really look like they're worried about the imminent death of the Enterprise crew…

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

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

1.5 stars.

[Come join us tomorrow (February 21st) for the next thrilling episode of Star Trek! KGJ is broadcasting the show live with commercials and accompanied by trekzine readings at 8pm Eastern and Pacific. You won't want to miss it…]

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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[February 14, 1969] Like a circle in a spiral; like a wheel within a wheel (Star Trek: "The Lights of Zetar")

February 14, 2024 Joe Reid 4 Comments

A Light Storm

by Joe Reid

This week’s episode of Star Trek had me asking myself two questions; the first: will that girl be a woman soon? The second question is how many ghosts does it take to reach escape velocity on the planet Zetar? My answers to those questions: not soon enough (apologies to Neil Diamond) and one hundred respectively. To check my answers and my impeccable math, I urge you to read on.

The Enterprise was en route to a planetoid called Memory Alpha, a place analogous to an outer space branch of the Library of Alexandria. Any foreshadowing on my part for this analogy is intentional.

The captain’s log started with an explanation of the mission to Memory Alpha and then went into the love life of ship’s engineer Mongomery Scott, and how queer it was that he had found a girlfriend at his age.

Lieutenant Mira Romaine was her name. A womanly girl-woman on whom Scotty smoothly spread sugary compliments as if he were frosting a cake. And boy was she ever eating up those sweet nothings, showing the feelings were mutual.

"Do you think it would cause a complete breakdown of discipline if a lowly lieutenant kissed a Starship Chief Engineer on the bridge of his ship?"

While the crew was amusing themselves with the affectionate antics of the elder engineer, the Enterprise encountered what appeared to be a multicolored storm of twinkling lights in outer space. This twinkle-storm, which could move faster than the speed of light, quickly overtook the Enterprise and entered the bridge. The lights then incapacitated everyone in mysteriously different ways, but eerily entered the eyeball of Lieutenant Mira Romaine, causing her to faint on the bridge.

"Blast it, Scotty—you kissed her too hard!"

After the crew recovered and the light storm flitted away, Dr. McCoy examined Lt. Romaine, who at this time was getting agitated by the attention on her and wished to be left alone by everyone except Scotty. Weirdly, this is when the crew took to calling her a girl, but I digress. The chase was on for the twinkle-storm that was soon discovered to be heading directly toward Memory Alpha. The undefended library couldn’t be reached in time and the storm poured out over it, sapping all life signs from the planetoid. While this dreadful situation unfolded, Lt. Romaine was given a vision of a dead humanoid splayed in a chair.

Memory Alpha is known for its wild frat parties

After the lights left Memory Alpha, Kirk, Spock, McCoy and Scott beamed down to offer help to the staff. All the inhabitants truly had died save for one woman who was still dying and showing similar signs as Lt. Romaine after her encounter with the lights. Kirk summoned “the girl” down to Memory Alpha, and soon Lt. Romaine materialized nearby. To her horror, she found the dead body from her vision and understood that they were all in danger. She also knew that the storm would soon return. The men present didn’t believe the grown woman Lieutenant until Sulu reported that they were indeed about to be overtaken by the deadly light show, which had changed course to return to the outpost. This established that the space lights were not a natural phenomenon as previously believed. Also, that “the girl” was connected to it in some way. The rest of the episode took the crew and “the girl” into mortal danger to discover the true nature of the space lights. That, along with more honeyed proclamations of love from Scotty.

"Lass, I'm not patronizing you because of your sex. I'm patronizing you because of your rank."

Suffice it to say, I found this episode annoying. Not because of Scotty’s antics, which only mildly skirted the line between comedic and pitiful for me. It was the crew constantly referring to this lovely grown woman as a “girl”. Although commonplace in some circles, it has never sat well with me, just as grown men being called “boy” is unpleasant to my ear. The second annoyance of this episode was regarding the revealed nature of the lights of Zetar, and the contrived way that the crew overcame the threat posed by them. The solution to the dilemma seemed to be cut from whole cloth. It was another case of expedient writing to quickly end an episode to fit the hour. This happens more than I would like for this show. “The Lights of Zetar” was lacking due to its character treatment of a trained officer and it could have benefited from better pacing. If they revealed the nature of the threat sooner in the story it would allow the crew to demonstrate their brilliance, finding better ways to solve their problems. Lastly, regarding the 100 ghosts mentioned earlier: watch the episode to find out. Check your local listings.

It's either Trek or reruns of Gunsmoke…"Good night, Marshall Dillon. And you too, Lucy!"

It may sound like I hated the episode, I didn't. It's like pizza or sex. Even when it is not great, you are still glad that you got some. Star Trek is that way in my mind. I thought "Zetar" was worth watching even though it was not great. The performance by the actress that played Romaine was well done. She came off as a good match for Scott. The effects were successful in giving the episode an eerie feeling, and the direction was unique. Despite my personal hang ups, it’s worth a watch.

Three stars

by Jessica Dickinson Goodman

A Woman Worth Watching

Like Joe, I found the infantilization of Lt. Romaine irritating. As he said, like the use of the term “boy” for grown men, calling an adult woman “girl” scores of times in under an hour is disrespectful, makes our favorite characters sound painfully bigoted, and is beneath the theoretically evolved culture of the Federation.

But like many women demeaned by men around her, Lt. Romaine is far more interesting than what is done to her or said about her. Her struggle to retain her identity in the face of a force which murdered anywhere from dozens to hundreds to thousands of people — and her success — were profoundly moving.

It was a beautiful example of science fiction how ugly she and the technician allowed themselves to become. The hoarse, reverberating glottal-moan of the Zetarian’s early attempts at control was one of the most eerie and memorable parts of this episode. But what really clinched it for me was her back-against-the-wall death struggle to remain herself in the face of life forms claiming she was their only chance of a second shot at corporeal life.

"I said 'NO VACANCY'"

The abortion metaphor felt both subtle and powerful to me. Two years ago, I wrote a short story for this community’s zine, The Tricorder, about Yeoman Rand getting a futuristic abortion via transporter, storing the fetal life pattern in a computer cluster much like Memory Alpha. The experience of writing that fiction as a fan made me enjoy this episode more I think, though it did make the violent ending feel, as Joe implied, truncated and cheap.

Couldn’t a world like Memory Alpha hold the patterns of the ghosts of Zetar? As transporter beams, as recognized objects of study, perhaps even as medical patients, awaiting an android or sufficiently intelligent dog to take them on one last real-world ride? Why did the crew of the Enterprise need to crush them to death?

Enjoying while not enjoying, seeing what is there and imagining what could be, reveling in the glimpses of true human strength and courage that infantilized women on TV are sometimes allowed to show, these are the voyages of a star story fan, whose enduring mission is to see her sex treated as equals not just in pretty words, but in the world. This episode had its flaws but Lt. Romaine’s performance was a full meal for this woman watcher. I hope to see her on my screen again.

I can’t help but think the woman co-writer of the episode, Shari Lewis, had something to do with Lt. Romaine’s increasingly and incredibly layered character. I also very much hope to see more parity behind the camera on this and other productions. This was a good start.

Four stars.

A Sinking Ship (and a Sinking Heart)

by Janice L. Newman

It’s only been a few days since I watched “The Lights of Zetar”, but already I found myself struggling to remember what happened in it, even needing a reminder from my co-writers. Recent Star Trek episodes have committed the sin, not of being bad, exactly (though I am hard-pressed to call this episode “good”), but being forgettable. I still vividly recall “The Trouble With Tribbles”, “Is There in Truth No Beauty”, “A Piece of the Action”, and many of the other great episodes we’ve watched over the past seasons. Even the early “Naked Time” left a strong impression. Yet somehow, I found myself saying, “Wait, was this the episode with the impractically-dressed outpost commander, or…?” Considering that only a month ago we had the sublime and memorable “Whom Gods Destroy”, it’s amazing how quickly and how far Star Trek has fallen. Hopefully next week’s episode will stop the plunge into mediocrity or worse.

That being said, what really made this episode frustrating was the sharp left turn the plot made three-quarters of the way through. Narratively, a certain resolution was set up from early on. Lt. Romaine (“the girl”) was being taken over mentally by the aliens. Kirk suggested using this connection against them, a logical and clever solution. I had guessed that the connection would be used to predict the aliens’ actions and counter them accordingly, but there were lots of ways the connection could have been used to stop the aliens. The connection gave the crew the option to communicate and potentially influence the beings, after all.

Instead, out of nowhere, Lt. Romaine is put into a pressure chamber with an unrealistic number of Gs pushing on her and…squeezing the aliens out? Which somehow kills them?

"Pressure, Spock. PRESSURE!"

I don’t mind fantastical technology or far-fetched explanations, but I would like some explanation of what’s going on. Why was the relatively interesting thread of “we will use Lt. Romaine’s connection against them” dropped almost entirely for a solution that made no sense?

My theory is that the original script had Lt. Romaine die, and the producer or someone with authority decided he didn’t like that at the last minute, thus requiring a hasty re-write. This is just a guess, though: speculation without data. Mr. Spock would be disappointed in me!

Regardless of the reason why, the poorly-done narrative solution to the story brought the entire thing down. As with last episode, some interesting new special effects were employed, and again, effects alone were not enough to save the story. The clever set up would have netted three or more stars if it had been competently carried through. Instead, it was dragged down to two.

by Gideon Marcus

Return to "Return to Tomorrow"

We've seen the plot where disembodied aliens take over human bodies and then find them too irresistible to relinquish. What's frustrating about this one is that Kirk, who makes a living trying to convince aliens/computers to take alternate, less destructive courses, does not make much of an effort to dissuade the Zetarians.

Which is a shame. These are beings who can travel Warp 10 with ease, evade shields, and communicate telepathically. As friends, they would be tremendous allies. Couldn't they be happy with android bodies? And if not, could we not grow biological bodies for them, or find suicidal volunteers to offer their corporeal forms?

We don't even learn who the Zetarians are, other than that it's a planet where all life had died. There are so many holes in the episode, which suggests on-the-day rewrites or significant edits, as I understand happened in "The Alternative Factor".

Memory Alpha, a repository for all the Federation's knowledge, is a neat idea. While its defenselessness is explained and justified, boy, does that seem like an invitation for a hit and run raid from a hostile race. Of course, now the station is damaged, and most of that information lost. I wish the Enterprise crew had been a little sadder about it than we saw.

Plot holes aside, the biggest problem with this episode is that it's a bit dull. Even when things happening on the screen should have held interest, I found my mind wandering. Again, this points to editing issues and the need to pad.

By the way, I have it on good authority (thanks, Ruth Berman!) that writer Shari Lewis is the Shari Lewis who played Lamb Chop on Captain Kangaroo some years back. And from another authority, apparently Lewis and husband Jeremy Tarcher are currently…shall we say…following in the steps of Dr. Timothy Leary. That explains a bit of the trippiness of the episode.

Shari Lewis and two puppets from Captain Kangaroo: Lamb Chop and Charlie Horse

Two stars.

[Come join us tonight (February 14th) for the next thrilling episode of Star Trek! KGJ is broadcasting the show live with commercials and accompanied by trekzine readings at 8pm Eastern and Pacific. You won't want to miss it…]

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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

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

January 31, 2024 Lorelei Marcus 3 Comments

by Lorelei Marcus

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

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

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

And "That Which Survives" is no exception.

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

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

"Wait! Let's shake hands, first!"

Spock is more concerned about rounding errors than the ship's current predicament, chastising Lt. Rahda for describing the distance as "1000 light years".

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

Arthur Batanides is both delighted not to be cast as a mook this week, and dismayed that he's about to die

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

"Wait! Maybe I can talk it to death. It's worked with every computer before…"

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

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

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

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

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

"I've found the leak, Mr. Spock! I canna change the laws of plumbing!"

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

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

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

by Gideon Marcus

Full reverse!

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

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

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

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

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

"Is it already time to harass someone else? Goodie!"

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

Blech.

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

2.5 stars.

by Janice L. Newman

Slivers of Silver

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

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

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

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

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

Are There Men on This Planet?

by Mx. Blue Cathey-Thiele

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

(sings) "What intrigues a man about a woman is elusive…"

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

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

3.5 stars

[Come join us tonight (January 31st) for the next thrilling episode of Star Trek! KGJ is broadcasting the show live with commercials and accompanied by trekzine readings at 8pm Eastern and Pacific. You won't want to miss it…]

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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[January 16, 1969] Mixed messages (Star Trek: "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield")

January 16, 2024 Janice L. Newman 6 Comments

by Janice L. Newman

Star Trek has given us some great episodes this season. Sadly, Let That Be Your Last Battlefield was not one of them. It was ineptly written, poorly directed, and both ham- and heavy-handed in its delivery.

The story opens with the Enterprise coming across a stolen shuttlecraft on the way to Ariannus, a planet which urgently needs ‘decontamination’ else millions will die. The shuttlecraft is in distress, and the crew bring the vehicle aboard and treat its lone passenger. The scene with the shuttle bay opening and closing is a good effect…but would have been even more so if they had edited out the “1701” across its side.

The latest rage: All Federation shuttlecraft have the Enterprise's serial number

The scriptwriter here makes the first of a number of blunders. Over-eager to ‘explain’ the strange black-white coloration of the alien, the author penned an awkward conversation between Doctor McCoy, Captain Kirk, and Mr. Spock about how such a being might have come to exist. The problem is that this explanation is unnecessary and feels forced. The audience has seen plenty of strange aliens thus far and almost never has there been a need to ‘explain’ how they came about. Furthermore, the explanation doesn’t explain anything. Spock and McCoy write off the divided coloration as being a totally unique mutation, while Kirk nonsensically opines that “…he is the result of a very dramatic conflict.”

They got blue people and green people but this guy looks weird? And no one suspects it's not a cosmetic affectation?

The alien’s name is Lokai. He takes umbrage at the assertion that he ‘stole’ the shuttlecraft, both implying that he was only borrowing it and outright stating that his great need justified taking it. When Kirk attempts to interrogate him further, he becomes uncooperative and refuses to answer any more questions.

Kirk is called back to the bridge when an alien ship shows up—or doesn’t show up, as the case may be. The sensors are picking it up, but it doesn’t show up on any of the screens. It’s on a collision course with the Enterprise and ends by disintegrating against the hull and depositing one alien onto the bridge in the process.

This entire scene was awful. It’s a little tricky to put into words what made it so bad, but it had me groaning and hitting my head against a pillow repeatedly, so I will try.

First, the camera repeatedly did an extra-dramatic zoom in and out and shake effect on the red alert light. It drew laughs from the watching crowd, feeling more like something out of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea than Star Trek. The entire sequence is contrived and unnatural, existing only to get the characters where the writer wanted them. Efforts to ‘explain’ the ship and its fate, like the prior conversation about mutation, serve only to highlight how silly it all is.

The new alien is named Bele, and in direct contradiction to the previous conversation about one-of-a-kind mutations, has the same half-black and half-white coloration as Lokai. He states that he’s “chief officer of the Commission on Political Traitors” on his planet, and has come to claim Lokai. Kirk challenges him, but agrees to let him see the other prisoner.

"Riddle me this, Captain: what's black and white and insufferable all over?"

Bele and Lokai proceed to react to each other with pure vitriol. Lokai claims that he is a revolutionary, fighting for the rights of his people. Bele calls him a loathsome murderer. Lokai turns to Kirk and demands political asylum, while Bele demands to be taken to their home planted, Cheron, immediately. Kirk tells them both that Starfleet will sort it out after the Enterprise finishes their decontamination mission, as millions of lives are at stake. Bele states that this is unacceptable, just before the Enterprise takes a new heading, seemingly all by itself.

Maddeningly, Kirk doesn’t connect the misbehavior of his ship with the presence of the aliens aboard until just before Bele outright claims responsibility. Lokai and Bele have another confrontation on the bridge, both of them ignoring the fact that “millions of lives” on Ariannus are at stake. Kirk orders both of them to the brig, then shot at with phasers set on stun, neither of which are effective against the aliens’ “personal shields”.

The rarely seen "tickle" setting of the phaser

Contrived, contrived, contrived. I felt the hand of the scriptwriter turning and moving the ship like a child with a toy. The scriptwriter didn’t want Bele or Lokai thrown in the brig or knocked out, so they were given invincibility. The creator of the story wanted certain things to happen, and so forced them to happen in the bluntest and most direct ways possible.

However, Kirk’s response to Bele did lead to a scene I actually liked. Kirk tells Bele that the ship will fulfill its mission to Ariannus or he will destroy it. Bele tries to call his bluff, and Kirk initiates the self-destruct sequence. This was perhaps a little drawn out, and the codes for self-destruct could have been more complex than variations of, “one, code one, one A”. Still, Kirk’s defiance and unwillingness to surrender his ship is great, very in-character, and the scene actually managed some genuine tension.

"This starship will self-destruct in five seconds…"

Kirk’s never tolerated threats to his ship well, so it’s a little jarring that he chooses to give them free run of the ship after that. On the other hand, how could he stop them? They’ve been shown to be invincible and Bele is both able and willing to take over the ship, even at the cost of “millions of lives”. Kirk has exactly one possible counter-move, and it’s one that would lead to a Pyrrhic victory indeed.

Lokai begins making friends among the crew, making his case to them. He says something interesting here that could have been great if the writer had bothered to follow up on it: “Do you know what it would be like to be dragged out of your hovel into a war on another planet? A battle that will serve your oppressor and bring death to you and your brothers?”

This tantalizing hint of actual background is once again casually ignored by the rest of the story. We cut to Bele, drinking with the Captain and trying to win him to his side much the same way that Lokai is doing with the crewmembers. It is in this conversation that we come to the crux of the episode, a point delivered with a sledgehammer. Bele is amazed that the captain and Spock can’t see his superiority. He is, after all, black on the right side, while Lokai is white on the right side.

Wow, this racial metaphor is so nuanced and clever!

A punchline not worth waiting for

Well, perhaps in more skilled hands, it might have been. There is certainly a simplicity to the message, to the point where even a child could understand it. We the viewers are shocked by what appears to us to be such bizarre and extreme racism over a minor difference. We are meant to take it to heart, to apply it to our own lives and question our own prejudices.

The problem is, the message becomes muddled despite itself. I will leave going into detail as to why the portrayal of the two aliens undermines and even contradicts the episode’s theme to the other writers on this piece. Suffice it to say that the “revelation” of the source of the racial differences elicited more groans than gasps from the watchers in my house.

Ariannus is successfully decontaminated, and Bele takes control of the Enterprise again, this time burning out the directional and self-destruct circuits first. (In other words, the scriptwriter’s hand once again descended upon the ship and turned its course to Cheron.)

The ship arrives at Cheron and finds that the people on it have destroyed each other (presumably fairly recently, since there are still bodies on the planet). Bele chases Lokai through the corridors of the Enterprise, with Kirk doing nothing to stop them. Pursued and pursuer beam themselves down to the dead planet, presumably to try to kill each other. Kirk leaves them there, and we are spoon-fed the other Important Message of the episode:

SPOCK: To expect sense from two mentalities of such extreme viewpoints is not logical.
SULU: But their planet's dead. Does it matter now which one's right?
SPOCK: Not to Lokai and Bele. All that matters to them is their hate.
UHURA: Do you suppose that's all they ever had, sir?

The ashes of Detroit still smolder after 50,000 years

Well. That was a mess of poor writing, inept directing, and Shatner’s own particular brand of scenery chewing. And as much as I appreciated the messages the writer so desperately wanted to convey, it would have been more effective if the plot could have settled on one of them instead of trying to cram in both. If you want to watch a good episode about the dangers of racism, irrational hatred, and unchecked violence, wait for a re-run of Day of the Dove.

One and a half stars (the half almost entirely for the self-destruct sequence.)

Bones beneath the fat

by Lorelei Marcus

At a sacrifice in Ancient Greece, Prometheus once slaughtered an ox and offered up two piles for Zeus to choose from. One contained the meat and much of the fat. The other was a pile of bones artfully arranged under a layer of glistening juices so as to look like the more appetizing pick. Zeus chose the latter, and was so angered by this deception that he withheld fire from humanity.

From the unsubtle makeup to Lokai's stirring speech against Bele in Sick Bay, "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield" presents itself as a racial narrative in favor of Black rights. Yet, somewhere along the way, it loses that thread and ultimately concludes with a different message: If we continue to hate one another, we will only destroy ourselves.

This is quite a turn which clashes spectacularly with Lokai's initial characterization. Of course, Lokai is bound to hate the group which subjugates and ghettoizes his people. His revolutionary vigor seems justified when he is fighting for "basic dignity", a trait Kirk has often associated with humanity's freedom when dealing with alien enslavers and oppressors.

However, the finale would have you believe that Lokai's hatred is unjustified, or at least, excessive. Therein lies the true sin of the episode, because to achieve the dramatic final theme, it must gut its initial framing of racial injustice and the characters that metaphorically represent it.

Lokai is consistently unlikable. He arrives as a suspected criminal, refuses to communicate or cooperate, and he is quick to anger. Regardless of how noble his initial goals, or how genuine his pleas for amnesty, he is never truly taken seriously by the Enterprise crew and therefore, we also see no reason to sympathize. Throughout the episode, he is termed a firebrand, a troublemaker, and even a murderer, with no redeeming actions to prove otherwise. He also reveals a prejudice, not just against his oppressors, but also the monocolored humans and audience, further alienating him and his cause.

Bele's character, in contrast, while evil by default, is treated with respect, making Lokai look worse still. Bele is quickly established as the oppressive, bigoted, authority. He also commits heinous acts like hijacking the Enterprise from a critical, planet-saving mission for his own selfish purposes. But isn't he justified because he has toiled for nearly 50,000 years to capture his criminal, a mass-murdering fanatic? And after all, he does eventually allow the Enterprise to finish her mission, so can he really be so bad?

Well, yes, and the ending would even like to remind us of that: even with his whole planet destroyed, Bele is doomed by his own hatred to forever chase Lokai across their barren world. But first, he is allowed to roam the ship like an esteemed guest and even dine finely with the Captain. Even certain emissaries have not had so high an honor, but I suppose there are special treatment regulations for starship hijackers.

"Well, in compensation for our not immediately flying you to Havana, have some brandy."

While Bele's motives are prejudiced and unsympathetic, this kid-glove treatment affords him some respectability, furthering Lokai's appearance as irrational in comparison.

This brings me to my conclusion. Lokai and Bele both ultimately come across as incomprehensible extremists. Lokai is logical in motive, but not in action; Bele is logical in action, but not motive. Tragically, their extreme hatred seems to be a microcosm for their whole planet's struggle—they appear as figureheads of the two sides. Thus, the episode becomes a cautionary tale against extremism.

Yet, the shroud of the race-relations narrative remains, literally expressed by the ever-present alien makeup. So the two themes join, linking extremism with the race struggle and its leaders. This, in turn, undermines both causes. If Lokai's genuine issues can be disregarded with the justification that he is unlikeable and dangerous, then what implication does that have for the black man? Did the riots not begin because pacifist pleas for change fall time and time again on deaf ears?

The episode is so self-righteous about stopping hatred that it sours the positive social message it could have had, and instead, vilifies the struggle it claims to represent.

And so, some of the fire in my passion for Star Trek diminishes. To describe the episode in a word, I'll quote Mr. Scott: "Disgusting."

One star.

An end to war

by Jessica Dickinson Goodman

24 men died on the USS Enterprise yesterday, another 85 injured as a rocket exploded onboard; 11 planes were also destroyed. Those young men were on that ship in service of a war many had no right to vote for just seven short months ago. The Enterprise herself has touched many conflicts — Vietnam, Cuba, Japan, the Middle East — and was preparing for her fourth deployment to Vietnam. This is the fourth time a U.S. aircraft carrier had caught fire in 15 years, accidents that killed 537 sailors in total according to The New York Times; of the four, only one involved enemy fire.

I was thinking about the ways in which war destroys the people who wage it while watching “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield.” Rather than an atom-powered football field-sized carrier ferrying fighter jets to bomb a country that barely has an air force, the war in this episode is reduced to two men; a binary pair. Their hatred is made irrational, and while other reviewers found it ham-handed, I found it operatic.

We have the sense of scale conveyed by a few terse lines — millions in danger; 50,000 years of pursuit! We have the stentorian arias given by Kirk, Spock, and our two representative combatants — where Kirk and Spock could have been Purcell tenor roles with their clear, short, decisive words, Lokai and Bele were all Mozart at his muddiest and most secretive, all Sarastro lecturing Pamina in coded Masonic lessons about how the world works with none of the delicacy or lightness of the Queen of the Night’s aria to lift us up again afterwards. We also have the oversized tragic ending — not just these two men killing each other, as they've been trying to do all episode long, but their entire world dead, corpses left on the ground unburied, and them doomed to chase and haunt each other amongst the moldering wreckage of their hatred forever more, like the ending of a Noh Play written for Tom and Jerry.

But what of Lazarus?

With the bright light of the teleporter and the offstage decision makers driving the plot, it reminded me of nothing so much as the end of Puccini’s Suor Angelica, where the former-aristocrat-and-current-nun learns her child out of wedlock has died and she kills herself. Obviously the plot is not the main parallel; Suor Angelica is mostly women’s roles, making it a favorite of mixed gender opera programs around the world, and Star Trek is sometimes pressed to include 2 speaking women per episode, much less a dozen. It is the feeling of the ending as an audience member that is the same. In my favorite productions of Suor Angelica, as she sings her final aria, begging Mother Mary to save her after she’s poisoned herself — “Madonna! Madonna! Salve me, salve me!” complete with its glorious high A's — a bright light floods down on center stage, a transporter beam from the Madonna herself, bringing Suor Angelica up with her to heaven to reunite with her child.

For me, there is something likewise satisfying about the ending of “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield.” These two men have wreaked havoc across the galaxy for centuries, trailing their hatred like plague corpses, disrupting societies, destroying lives as they whirl and swirl and clash against each other. And as of the end of the episode, they cannot. They are planet-bound, returned to the home they both thought they were fighting for, deprived of the tools to hurt anyone but themselves. Trapped, forever, in a Hell of their own making, reunited and secure in their hatred.

Real war is nothing like opera or science fiction. It is famously boring until it’s not, and mostly kills people who had no say in its arrival or its leaving. Many who die in war and no small number who fight in it fervently wish that each clash would be their “last battlefield”; after all the useless deaths of sailors the real life Enterprise and of families who are Vietnamese, Nigerian, Palestinian, Eritrean, Guatemalan, Rhodesian, Laotian, Irish, and so many more who are suffering war today. It was nice, for a little less than an hour, to see a world on my screen where no matter how bloody, some wars end.

Three stars.

You've Come a Long Way, Baby

by Mx. Blue Cathey-Thiele

Ads for Virginia Slims cigarettes have been playing over the past several episodes. Women sneaking away to smoke and getting caught, with an emphasis on how outdated the idea is. Thanks to the suffragettes we see, women won their rights in 1920. Modern women can vote and smoke! It's fashionable to applaud that movement, and from this side of history, relatively easy. None of the ads have mentioned the much more recent Voting Rights Act, though, which passed among significant backlash just a few years ago.

Part of Star Trek's appeal is that it offers a future that upholds ideals of equality. Most of the time.

The most important scene, to me, is not the final moments of pursuit against a backdrop of destruction. It is instead, a conversation held almost off-camera as Spock listens from behind a door.

LOKAI: I act the madman out of the anger and frustration he forces upon me, and thereby prove his point that I am a madman. [….] How can you understand my fear, my apprehension, my degradation, my suffering?
CHEKOV: There was persecution on Earth once. I remember reading about it in my history class.
SULU: Yes, but it happened way back in the twentieth century. There's no such primitive thinking today.

Except, prejudice is there when McCoy casually insults Spock for his biology and culture, or when crew members disregard his authority after he acts in accordance with Vulcan philosophy.

"Preach it, Lokai."

The message is tucked away from the rest of the ship and the rest of the episode. It's easy enough to make broad statements decrying hate. It is harder to face up to the part that we ourselves might play, to confront the systems that allow hate to act with authority. As fans of science fiction, many of us like to think of ourselves as more open-minded, more accepting. It's only logical. The true test is when those standards are challenged, when equality extends “too far”. Yes, yes, rights for women – but not too many. Freedom of religious expression – for some.

How many people today will support the cause of the oppressed, and yet sit and break bread with the oppressors under the guise of “civility”? Bele admitted his people's culpability in the crimes Lokai accused him of, and still was treated better than some of the diplomats the Enterprise has been charged with carrying.

Kirk tells Bele, “I cannot take sides.” He can, and by his own moral standards, he should. He may have limited power against an alien who can take control of the ship with his mind, but that has never stopped him from speaking his piece before.

Lokai is loud and angry, he insults the crew even as he asks for help and asylum. Nothing about his behavior is particularly endearing to his cause. And that, whether the rest of the episode discusses it or not, is important. The Federation, represented by the Enterprise, has standards of justice, and none of those standards are based on being well-mannered. What is right does not depend on what is easy or palatable. The meanest, rudest individual still deserves rights, because rights do not depend on being likable.

3 stars

Rich Tale to Poor Tale

by Joe Reid

“Let That Be Your Last Battlefield”, the second episode of Star Trek for the new year, drew out of me thoughts both praise and derision, with feelings of familiarity and futility. This episode at first took a simple message and elevated it with meaningful layered acting, only to become so utterly absurd, undermining said message.

The Enterprise encountered a stolen shuttle with a man in need of help. Aid was rendered by the crew to ensure that the alien man survived to answer questions. Things quickly went downhill as the half white half black alien, named Lokai, awoke in the infirmary with a suspicion on his face as was accused by Kirk of theft. Lokai objected only to being further pressed by Kirk on the matter, which led to no questions being answered by the two-tone alien as he refused to continue being interrogated. The brief exchange revealed that Lokai had a purpose for “using” the ship, which he was willing to face consequences for. Also, that he had been disappointed by “monotone humans” in the past.

This scene to me felt different than others on TV—the difference being that the character with the hidden cause in custody is often Negro or some other race. I felt a familiarity with Lokai’s circumstances. To be thought of as a criminal before trial. To be frustrated by a lack of or even willingness by some to understand my situation. Lokai served up a lot in this short scene. I found it interesting that the performance was carried out by a white actor portraying an alien who was neither black nor white. If the character were black like me, I might’ve identified with his plight and sympathized with his frustration at authority and the evasiveness it brought about. Since Lokai was not black, his position as a victim required proof, and the frustration that he expressed required justification to be seen as righteous. There is an old proverb that says, “Hope deferred makes the heart grow sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.” (Pro 13:10). Lokai clearly had a sickness of the heart making him unpleasant. We are willing to forgive sickness in others only if we identify with their hopes. Lokai appearing as he does, made that challenging and interesting.

Later we were introduced to another alien man who’d been pursuing Lokai for fifty thousand years. Bele, also two-toned half black and white, appeared on the bridge of the Enterprise without warning. Unlike Lokai, Bele was not accused of anything although he invaded the bridge in what could’ve been seen as an attack. He demanded the “cargo”, Lokai, be handed over to him. Not frustrated in his interactions with Kirk as Lokai was, Bele was mildly irritated to have to defer to Kirk and challenged the captain’s authority repeatedly. His interaction with Lokai established that they were at odds for reasons of class and privilege.

The role of Bele was played by another white actor. Though two-toned himself, the duo considered themselves different based on which side of their bodies were black or white. Black on the right side was dominant and Bele was domineering in every way. Taking control of the Enterprise twice. Although Bele’s actions were resisted, he was never held accountable by Kirk. He was even allowed a pleasant social dinner with the captain after his first hijacking attempt.

Bele and Lokai obviously represent the color-based stratification of the U.S. Choices that were made by casting and the actors themselves in how they personified those roles, took an American reality and obfuscated it to detach it from our world. I was pleased by this execution, until the third act.

Then the Enterprise arrived at the home of the dual-toned men, the planet Cheron, devoid of life due to war. The episode was saying that we could be doomed to suffer the same fate due to our own hatred. The final act featured interlaced footage of burning buildings, possibly from the riots after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Happy memories of traipsing through the streets of Dresden

Social messages, especially simple ones, are better delivered if you don’t break the obfuscation in the telling of the story. Allow the message to speak through the story, and not scream over it. The ending displayed poor choices for what could have been a meaningful tale. It cheapened the emotional depth witnessed in the early part of the story and replaced it with shallow visual exposition just in case the audience was too simple to understand nuance. It was a poor choice.

Two stars

[Come join us tomorrow night (January 17th) for the next thrilling episode of Star Trek! KGJ is broadcasting the show live with commercials and accompanied by trekzine readings at 8pm Eastern and Pacific. You won't want to miss it…]

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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[January 10, 1969] Mad for this show (Star Trek: "Whom Gods Destroy")

January 10, 2024 Joe Reid 3 Comments

The Cure for Schizophrenic Storytelling

by Joe Reid

Happy New Year to everyone! 1969 is upon us and the first new episode of Star Trek for this year is come! “Whom Gods Destroy” is the episode of the new year and although it was a smaller story, it was well crafted and concise.

It started off with the Enterprise arriving at a poisonous planet named Elba 2: a planet for the criminally insane. Kirk and Spock beamed down with an unnamed medicine that cured all incurable mental illness. As the curable ones have all already been cured throughout the galaxy, the asylum only had about a dozen patients in it.

Upon arrival they meet Governor Donald Corey, a very jovial man, who informs them that the asylum recently welcomed its 15th patient, Garth of Izar, a former captain that Kirk revered.

On the way to visit Garth, Marta, a green skinned Orion woman, says that Corey is not who he says he is. Corey laughs it off and takes them to Garth's cell, only to find that Corey, the real Donald Corey, is in the cell.

"Also, I'm Batgirl—why won't anybody believe me?"

Garth had tricked them, changing from Corey into his true form before their eyes, and freeing the inmates in the surrounding cells, bringing them to his side. Kirk and Spock are trapped on the planet. As Spock is dragged away unconscious, Kirk is put into the cell with the real Corey.

Lord Garth, leader of the future masters of the universe, as he now demands to be called, transforms into Kirk as a part of his plan to take the Enterprise and pursue vengeance against his former crew that mutinied against him.

As Garth contacts the Enterprise in the guise of Kirk, he is foiled in his attempt to gain access to the ship by Commander Scott. “Queen to queen’s level 3”, says Scotty. It's a passcode that the real Kirk set up as an increased security measure. Garth blows a gasket after this occurrs.

Garth then decides that he should change tactics. He goes back to Kirk, bringing Spock back and inviting them for dinner.

All the free asylum inmates, now Garth’s crew and subjects, are present and entertaining each other. We are even treated to a dance by the lovely, jade-colored Marta.

"Dessert, Captain?"

At this point I considered this episode, written by Lee Erwin, to be fully set up.

What came next was an expertly written tale of misdirection and subterfuge, by all parties. Kirk as the hostage trying to use his intelligence and wits to find a way out. Scotty, as a commander seeking to find a way to rescue his captain without causing him harm. Garth, as a brilliant, but insane, changeling able to match wits and brawn with Kirk to achieve his aim of universal domination.

Several times throughout the episode I had my assumptions challenged and my expectations subverted.

Again, I give credit to Mr. Erwin for crafting a tale with fleshed-out characters and subtle nods to history. Garth, wearing his coat with this left arm in the sleeve and the other draped over his shoulder, hinted at him being a futuristic Napoleon Bonaparte. Marta was a complex character who was as insane as the other inmates, yet lived within some rational rules and boundaries, never lying to anyone about anything.

Kirk, and the rest of the crew made no mistakes in the episode that a less skilled writer might employ to increase tension.

In the end this small, self-contained story did many interesting things, but didn’t try to do too much. There were many paths that this story could have meandered down, but Mr. Erwin skillfully kept the main thing the main thing. A great start for 1969 Star Trek in my opinion.

Five stars

by Janice L. Newman

The Little Captain

I was very much impressed by “Lord Garth’s” performance. He took a role which would have been terribly easy to overplay and made it his own. Thanks to movies, TV, and comic books, we’re all familiar with the idea of the inmate of an asylum who ‘thinks he’s Napoleon’. Often such roles are treated as one-note portrayals: usually for laughs, occasionally to be creepy or frightening, sometimes to be pathetic. Brilliantly, Steve Ihnat manages to infuse his performance as Garth with all of these, smoothly transitioning from menacing and cruel, to throwing a tantrum like a small child, to being unintentionally funny even as one tries not to laugh.

One of the most interesting and subtle aspects was Garth’s furred, gold-lined coat. Throughout the episode, except when he is disguised as someone else, he is never seen without it. He’s constantly fidgeting with the coat, swinging it around him like a cloak (with one sleeve hanging ridiculously off the back), slinging it over one shoulder like a toga, or even cuddling it like a child with a security blanket. The coat becomes a physical representation of his delusion, and it’s not until the very end of the episode, when he’s beginning to respond to the treatment of his mental illness, that we see him without it at last.

"Don't tell me how to wear my clothes…"

There were many other things I liked in the episode, but the one that stayed with me, and which I suspect will stay with me for some time to come, was “Lord Garth”.

Five stars.

by Gideon Marcus

Birth of a Dream

As is tradition, before we tuned into Trek Friday night, we all gathered 'round the dinner table for a fanzine read. Trekzines are a land office business these days, and my mailbox sees a good half dozen amateur publications in it each month devoted just to Trek (not counting the half dozen or so others that cover science fiction in general). This time around, it was the near-pro quality Triskelion issue #2.

The first piece in the fan-mag is by none other than Hal Clement, the famed hard science fiction author and professor, writing about the Enterprise and its basis in real science. Abstruse stuff, but interesting. It just goes to show how engaging the universe of Star Trek is, above and beyond the weekly drama and our favorite characters.

In addition to being a fine piece of writing and a showcase for some quite good acting, "Whom Gods Destroy" was compelling for how much it told us about the setting of the show. For though the episode takes place in the claustrophobic confines of Stage 10 on the Paramount lot, redressed to look like the prison colony of Elba, the dialogue fills in details about the show that seem to address the very beginning of the entire Federation.

When Kirk was put on trial in the episode "Court Martial", we learned that he had an award for "the Axanar peace mission". No other details were given at the time. In "Whom Gods Destroy", it turns out Axanar was the site of a terrific battle, one in which Fleet Captain Garth's participation was essential to victory. Kirk recounts that he was a "newly fledged cadet" when he went on the subsequent peace mission (in a role that could not have been too momentous given his inexperience). If Kirk is 35, which makes sense since last year he was 34, then he was a cadet probably 17 years ago, when he was 18.

And just last episode (well, last rerun), Spock related he'd been serving in Star Fleet for 17 years.

Hmm.

Add to that the fact that the Axanar accords resulted in Kirk and Spock being "brothers", and the significance of the event becomes pretty clear.

Kirk, Spock, Garth, red boa-cloak, and piggy-face: brothers, thanks to Axanar

In the first half of the first season of Trek, there were no references to the Federation. The Enterprise was an "Earth ship" reporting to the "United Earth Space Probe Agency". Only gradually did the words "Star Fleet" and "Federation" get bandied around with frequency. That suggests that the United Federation of Planets is a fairly new nation.

I deduce that Axanar was some sort of titanic conflict between what would be the major races of the Federation: the humans, the Vulcans, the Andorians, the Tellarites, the Orionids, and all the rest. It might even have resulted in a defeat for the Vulcanians—the "conquering" to which McCoy refers in "Conscience of the King". But now, the UFP is like a United Nations with teeth, ensuring harmony among the myriad worlds that have banded together in the name of peace.

Garth, a soldier's soldier, and maddened by a grievous injury, could not stomach this clemency, so he tried to incite an insurrection on Antos IV. Happily, the Antosians were having none of it, lest the shaky foundations of the Federation be toppled even as they were laid.

After Axanar, Kirk became an explorer first, and a soldier second. Now that Garth is on the way to recovery, perhaps he can join Kirk on that noble expedition to the stars.

About face

by Lorelei Marcus

It is not often that our Captain Kirk submits readily to another person. He gives his respect to direct Starfleet superiors, but to an esteemed alien passenger or important civilian escort, he shows only the required amount of deference, and sometimes less. Even when he or his ship is threatened with mortal danger, he refuses to buckle to the whims of any supposedly all-powerful being, often to his own detriment.

Yet, in "Whom Gods Destroy", Kirk not only lacks hostility towards his captor, but in fact follows Garth's orders and tries to reach an understanding with him through exclusively nonviolent means. One could argue this was merely Kirk acting out of self-preservation, as Garth could have killed him with a phaser at any time. However, in a similar episode, "Plato's Stepchildren" Kirk relentlessly resisted the physical control of the Platonians, almost to his death. He is not one to give in easily, if at all.

Then why the change in temperament with Garth? I postulate two reasons. First, Garth is a former starship captain and Federation hero. Kirk grew up reading of his exploits and admires Garth as a man of greater rank and accomplishment. Even in his delusional state, Garth still invokes an awe that commands obedience, even from Kirk.

Second, Kirk understands that Garth is mentally ill and doesn't hold him accountable for his actions. When dealing with other enemies, Kirk is unyielding from his position of righteousness. Other foes act horrendously, with full intent and cognizance, justifying Kirk's equally stubborn resistance.

But Garth does not truly know what he's doing, at least not the Garth Kirk worships and admires, and he's better dealt with using a soft hand. Ironically, this ends up being the wrong choice. On multiple occasions, Kirk tries to reason with Garth and talk him down. However, his diplomacy never works—as it shouldn't, given Garth's insanity is incurable. If not for Spock's clever ruse and confidence with his phaser, they might never have escaped the prison.

Kirk gives diplomacy the old college try

Between the acting and the development of Federation history, "Whom Gods Destroy" makes for an excellent bottle-esque episode.

5 stars.

by Mx. Blue Cathey-Thiele

Second Verse, Same as the First

GARTH: You wrote that?
MARTA: Yesterday, as a matter of fact.
GARTH: It was written by an Earth man named Shakespeare a long time ago!
MARTA: Which does not alter the fact that I wrote it again yesterday! I think it's one of my best poems, don't you?

Kirk seems destined to watch his heroes fail. Professors and peers from the Academy, fellow officers, esteemed scientists. Time and time again, he expects better from his fellow humans, and is met instead by (mostly) men who think that the only issue with ultimate authority and unchecked ambition is the personal failings of previous tyrants.

“It has been said that history repeats itself. This is perhaps not quite correct; it merely rhymes.” -Theodor Reik

Even with all the horrors he has encountered, perhaps even in spite of them, he is quick to declare a paradise, to look for the best in others. The rank of Starship Captain must demand a degree of ego, surely, to be capable of commanding over 400 persons, making life-or-death decisions, and being the first to approach previously unknown species and planets. Setting the stage for humanity and the Federation is a doozy of a first impression! A sense of confidence is a must, then.

We have seen Kirk mishandle situations, fall prey to his own weaknesses. But he also relies on Spock and McCoy to check him. Is it enough? After peers and mentors keep making the same mistakes with catastrophic repercussions… is it telling of the system, of the people, or both? Just what sort of curriculum does the Academy promote, that so many graduates have gone on to lose perspective, take over planets, view tyrants from history as inspiration, reconstruct fascist regimes? To repeat the mistakes and tragedy of history, thinking that this time they can do things right.

Starfleet: molding megalomaniacs for more than 20 years!

Consider Dr. Daystrom's desperate need to achieve again, at the cost of lives in war games with his M5. Or Lt. McGivers, so enamored with how men “used to be” that even as a historian who knew of Khan, she was easily swayed. Remember Dr. Adams who used a neural neutralizer to gain complete control of Tantalus, or Gary Mitchell declaring himself a god upon gaining psychic powers? And of course we can't forget John Gill, a historian and teacher so sure of his ability to do it the 'right way' that he recreated the Nazi regime. Kirk and his colleagues have stumbled to different degrees over the Great Man theory, the notion that history hinges on exceptional individuals.

More importantly, on dismissing those who aren't Great Men. Only the fact that his crew mutinied saved the planet of Antos 4 when Captain Garth was unable to handle the rejection. And yet, without his crew, he could do nothing. (Mutiny! As recently as in The Tholian Web, there is no recorded instance of such on a starship.) The story was written before, it will be written again. Abuse finds home in authority. Once one thinks of people as something less than human (or in Trek, alien), it is possible to justify any number of injustices.

Much of this episode was a re-wording of what has been said before, and usually said better. It wasn't terrible, but I'd like a key-change, at least.

3 stars

[Come join us tonight (January 10th) for the next thrilling episode of Star Trek! KGJ is broadcasting the show live with commercials and accompanied by trekzine readings at 8pm Eastern and Pacific. You won't want to miss it…]

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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[January 2, 1969] Blood, Sweat, and Tears (Star Trek: "Elaan of Troyius")

January 2, 2024 GalacticJourney 9 Comments

by Janice L. Newman

On December 23rd, 1968, exactly eleven months after they were captured by North Korea, the crew of the USS Pueblo was finally released, and the world breathed a collective sigh of relief. The USA would not be starting World War III over the incident, and our boys, though they’ve been starved and tortured, are coming home alive for Christmas.

It is thus appropriate that this week’s Star Trek episode revolved around choosing peace instead of war.

Bill Theiss, you've done it again!

In the episode opener, we learn that the Enterprise has been sent to support Petri, Ambassador of Troyius, in his mission to “train” the Dohlman of Elas to be a suitable wife for the Troyian leader. The Dohlman turns out to be a beautiful woman played by France Nuyen, made up to look like Cleopatra in a bathing suit. Her name is Elaan, and she is imperious and demanding, while Petri is servile but contemptuous. They are intractable in their dislike of each other. Kirk quickly becomes exasperated with both of them, telling Petri, “Stop trying to kill each other. Then worry about being friendly.”

"And maybe try wearing a bikini…"

In the meantime, the Enterprise is being followed by a “ghost” ship, which eventually materializes and proves to be a Klingon warship. This is a nice callback to Balance of Terror, where the Enterprise played the part of the “ghost ship”, and the recent Enterprise Incident, where we learned that the Klingons now have cloaking technology.

"Follow that starship!"

No sooner does the ship reveal itself than Kirk is called away from the bridge again. Elaan has stabbed Petri, who declares that he will have nothing more to do with her. He also explains to Nurse Chapel that the mysterious “allure” of Elasian women is merely biochemical: “A man whose flesh is once touched by the tears of a woman of Elas has his heart enslaved forever.”

Back in Elaan’s quarters, Kirk is fed up and declares that he will be Elaan’s new teacher. He tells her she is, “an uncivilized savage, a vicious child in a woman's body, an arrogant monster!”

"I said, 'Gimme five'—you've got to learn modern courtesy."

I must admit, my sympathies were thoroughly with Elaan. Despite her imperious attitude in the beginning, it becomes increasingly clear that she has no choice in the political marriage and no desire to be married. At one point she says, “I will not go to Troyius, I will not be mated to a Troyian, and I will not be humiliated, and I will not be given to a green pig as a bribe to stop a war!” And yet, the Enterprise continues on its way to Troyius, regardless of her behavior, her orders, or her protests. It seems she has no true power, but is merely a pawn to be traded, and probably one the Elasians don’t actually care much about.

In fact, I had to wonder if the Elasians didn’t want peace at all, but sent their “Dohlman” to be married as a sop to the Federation. That way they could say they’d tried, and if the Troyians couldn’t handle the Dohlman, well that just proved that peace wasn’t possible between them.

This also nicely sets up the question of why the Federation cares so much about stopping the war between these two planets, to the point of bringing diplomatic pressure and sending one of their best starships to ensure that the wedding and negotiations go well. Scotty blatantly asks the same question in the episode opener, leaving it to rest in the back of our minds as we watch.

The next day, Kryton, one of the Elasian guards, sneaks into Engineering and sabotages the Enterprise. Kirk forces his way into Elaan’s quarters and again begins trying to “teach” her, which mostly consists of wrestling with her and threatening to spank her. She starts to weep, and he wipes away her tears. The effect is immediate, with Kirk’s ire evaporating and transforming into passion.

"Say, you didn't just hear a kind of snake rattle sound, did you?"

Kryton is caught, and kills himself rather than allow himself to be subjected to a Vulcan mind meld. Kirk orders Scotty to figure out what Kryton did, then returns to Elaan’s quarters. Elaan tries to convince Kirk to work with the Klingons, but he tells her there are more important things than love: “Elaan, two planets, an entire star system's stability depends on it. We have a duty to forget what happened.”

At this point, those of us who have been watching Star Trek since the beginning already know what’s going to happen: Kirk will always choose the Enterprise over everything else. And indeed, when Spock and McCoy come to roust the captain out of Elaan’s quarters, all it takes for him to leave Elaan behind is to hear that the Klingon ship has changed course and is approaching at warp speed.

"Don't mind me. I always walk this stiffly when my friends are watching…"

Once Kirk gets to the bridge, we’re treated to one of the best combat sequences we’ve seen yet on Star Trek. Kryton’s sabotage, Kirk learns at the last possible moment, was rigging the matter-antimatter unit to blow if the ship went into warp. The Klingon ship therefore starts by trying to bait the Enterprise into going into warp, and that doesn’t work, just firing on them.

The captain sends Elaan to Sickbay because it’s the safest part of the ship. Petri speaks to her there, finally treating her with a modicum of graciousness and respect, and asks her to wear the necklace gifted her by the Troyians, “as a token of respect for the desperate wishes of your people and mine for peace”. She seems genuinely affected by the words and gesture, perhaps realizing that Kirk will truly never sacrifice duty for love.

"Please put these on. The Emperor paid retail."

Back on the bridge, the crew struggles to keep the Klingon ship’s hits to its best shield (Kirk doing a bit of back seat driving as he leans over Sulu and gives him his orders). An impulse-power driven ship is no match for warp, though, and all seems lost.

Elaan appears on the bridge, wearing the Troyian wedding dress and necklace. Spock immediately notes that there are strange readings coming from the necklace. It turns out that the stones, which Elaan says are “common”, are dilithium crystals! (No wonder the Federation and the Klingons are both so interested in this system!) She gives them to the Captain, who has Spock hurry them down to Engineering, where he and Scotty start installing them. Kirk does his best to stall, but the Klingons are unwilling to discuss terms (I imagine that after “The Enterprise Incident” and The Deadly Years, the Klingons have been instructed not to listen to anything the Federation says—or at least nothing that Kirk says.)

This fellow is no Michael Ansara. He's not even a William Campbell…

The crystals are ready in the nick of time. A photon torpedo at close range leaves the Klingon ship damaged and limping. The Enterprise leaves it behind to fulfill its original mission.

Pow! Right in the kisser.

Kirk says farewell to Elaan, who asks him not to forget her. He tells her he has no choice. Nor does she, she replies, only duty and responsibility. It’s clear that she’s come to accept her role, though whether it’s because she realized that her last desperate play to manipulate the captain failed or because her near-death experience made her decide that peace was more important than her personal feelings, we do not know. It is also worth noting that while she goes on to marry into a culture she despises and where she will likely be surrounded by people who hate, fear, and ridicule her (if Petri’s behavior is any indication), Kirk will simply continue doing what he loves. Her choice of “duty” over all else is thus, in my estimation, a far more difficult and admirable one.

"Oh, this knife? I was just going to pare my nails. Not kill the Emperor or anything like that, why do you ask?"

McCoy, unsurprisingly (given his track record) discovers an antidote to the Elasian tears. Spock tells him the captain has no need of it, as he’s already found his antidote: the Enterprise.

There were many things to love in this episode, and many things that frustrated me. The “Taming of the Shrew” sequences early on were grating, but the combat was excellent, and to the scriptwriter’s credit, the story did not end with Elaan being “tamed”. In the end, she makes a choice to accept her fate, but she does so with dignity.

The things I liked and didn’t like balanced out pretty well, leaving this a three star episode for me.

by Gideon Marcus

The Sum of its Parts

What I found so gratifying about "Elaan of Troyius" was its continuity with the Trek history we've encountered thus far. Once again, as in "Journey to Babel", the Enterprise is host to a diplomatic mission (though how the ship could house several dozen delegates to the Babel Conference, but Uhura had to give up her room for Elaan, is never explained). Once again, Kirk shows irritation at having to play nursemaid to a bunch of civilians. I would find his flip treatment of Elaan demeaning, but it's no worse than he displays to Commissioner Ferris or Commissioner Fox.

I particularly loved the galactopolitical situation depicted in the episode. Here we have a fairly new Federation system with two hostile planets, abundant with dilithium crystals, perched right at the edge of the Klingon Empire. What a fraught situation Kirk must navigate!

At first, it was difficult for me to glean the plot behind the plot, but by the end of the episode, the setup was pretty clear. The Federation, upon learning of the rich deposits on Elaas (and Troyius?) placed a clamp on all dispatches coming out of the system. Not good enough, though, as the Klingons clearly want the worlds badly, too. The Feds then explained to the two worlds in the system that they must work things out. Elaas grudgingly agrees—and then effects two simultaneous plans to queer the deal.

The first is Kryton's sabotage. By handing the Enterprise over to the Klingons, they get in their good graces (if, indeed, the Klingons have good graces). Obviously, the savage Klingons are a better fit for for the militaristic Elaasians anyway.

"Of course I want to be a Klingon—you think I want to keep wearing this outfit?"

The second is Elaan. She clearly doesn't want to be there. Indeed, she does everything she can to get out of it, despite orders from the Elaasian council. Elaan goes so far as to try to murder the Troyian ambassador and seduce the captain of the Enterprise. And yet, that scheme fails when Elaan takes a page from Kirk's book, and indeed the example of the whole crew, that duty and the preservation of life trumps all else. It's a quick, undershown change, but it's there, and I appreciated it.

The episode reminds me a bit of the parable of the peasant woman who shelters a starving prince. The royal promises to give a gold coin for every fat bubble in the soup she serves. Greedily, she dumps a huge pat of butter in the soup, which results in one big bubble rather than a myriad of little ones. Similarly, if the Elaasians had stuck to just one plan, they might have succeeded. Instead, they double hedged and lost all.

And was the Klingon commander operating with Imperial sanction? Or was he a rogue skipper with notions of glory? After all, taking on a starship seems pretty bold given the ever-watchful Organians.

It's not a perfect episode, but it's certainly an engaging one, and I always enjoy seeing Mrs. Robert Culp on the small screen. Plus, her appearance alongside Shatner is something of a reunion—they starred together in the Broadway version of The World of Suzie Wong. Plus, I dug both the Klingon ship (which we saw a bit of in "The Enterprise Incident" and "Day of the Dove") and the score for the episode.

Four stars.

Twixt Scylla and Charybdis

by Trini Stewart

The beginning of this week's episode did not seem promising to start, mostly because of the guest characters' first impressions on me. Petri the ambassador seemed childish and reckless in his peacemaking, and Elaan was almost comically uncooperative for royalty sent as a hospitable offering. Looking back, Elaan was possibly playing to her strengths to some end with her antagonistic reactions, and her development with Kirk ultimately became a gripping trial for our captain.

Kirk was the shining star of this episode, which is not something I feel about him often. He was impressively quick-witted against biochemical and psychological manipulation, which really sold his captain qualities for me more than his usual speeches or fights. The way Kirk kept his priorities in check while thinking on his feet reminded me of how Spock left me feeling in "The Tholian Web" when he held the ship together without Kirk. In the short time I have known Kirk, he has struck me as the type to always know what to say and fight when there is no other choice. Kirk managed to unravel the layers of the princess's antics even with serious disadvantages, revealing what his problem solving is like when he is out of sorts. Tension was well-built in this episode on several levels, and the challenges Kirk faced were arguably more dynamic and interesting than Spock's in "The Tholian Web".

"What's a case of tight trousers when the Enterprise is at stake?"

Kirk transitioned from acting as a respectful host to a firm authority with Elaan, and his initial responses to her rude behavior were tastefully poised. Once Elaan had seduced Kirk, he still managed to expertly dismantle the Elaisians’ schemes without falling for the Dohlman or her subordinates’ clever tricks. Shatner did a great job conveying how difficult it was for Kirk to maintain his composure, so it was riveting to see just how he would escape the Klingons, prepare the guileful Elaan for her marriage, and get the Enterprise back in ship shape under that level of duress. His allegiance to the Enterprise evidently sobered Kirk; his articulate maneuvering reflected his symbiotic relationship with the ship and her crew. In the end, even Elaan was humbled by our captain, finally submitting to the responsibilities her title bore. I was quite pleasantly surprised by Kirk this week, and the adversities threatening the crew were positively captivating. 4 stars!

Be Our Guest, Do As You Please

by Joe Reid

“Elaan of Troyius” was this week’s episode of Star Trek. “Taming of the Shrew” storyline aside, there is one thing that the writers of Star Trek keep doing to twist my britches, and this episode was another example of it. The Enterprise, powerful symbol of human achievement, has the laziest security imaginable. Episode after episode, people that wish to do harm to the ship and its crew need only to walk into what should be the most secure areas of a ship to do as they please practically unchallenged. Areas that on large ships, not all members of the crew are even allowed to enter. So, let’s delve into some of areas of a ship that guests should not enter.

Let’s begin with the command center of the ship. The bridge. The seat of command, where the captain steers the destiny of a ship to complete its missions. Obviously, a perfect place for a teenage princess to casually enter whenever she chooses. Elaan pierced the bridge and interrupted the ship’s captain, while he was in the middle of a combat situation. Good on the writers for making the captain, thanks to Spock’s urging, send her away from the bridge, only to have her show up on the bridge again after a change of clothes. For an area holding some of the most senior members of the crew, it seems unusual that it wasn’t better protected. Past episodes showcased singing children, enemy androids, and furry tribbles having free access to the brain trust of the Enterprise. I anticipate that 15% of Kirk’s problems could be solved by securing access to the bridge to “Bridge Crew Only”.

The next ludicrous pattern that we witnessed in this episode was the open and unguarded access that guests on the Enterprise had to Engineering, the area of the ship that provides all the power, without which the Enterprise couldn’t move, fight, or support human life. Why did Elaan’s former suitor have a free ticket to stroll into this most vital part of the ship and sabotage systems? Again, good on the writers for allowing him to be discovered, be it many minutes later, only to allow the discoverer to be summarily executed for his weak efforts to question someone he'd found messing with the thing that keeps the ship alive. If only this random trespass in Engineering were rare. Previous episodes sported children again, along with genetically advanced conquerors, self-aware talking space probes, and Klingons traipsing merrily into the bowels of Engineering.

Where before I said that 15% of Kirk’s problems could be solved by securing the Bridge, 99% of problems could go away if Engineering had a couple guards working shifts to protect the very heart of this starship.

If only Kevin Riley were on duty, none of this would have happened. So long as he's sober…

Historically there have been some areas of the ship that have been kept secure week after week. Areas that no one can casually walk into without permission (unless you are a floating cloud of space gas that is). Those would be crew quarters. Even in this week’s episode, crew quarters were better guarded, and their doors are better respected, than what should have been the most sensitive areas of the ship. Not even Spock and McCoy could casually walk into the room where the captain was passionately kissing Elaan.

Perhaps future episodes will take the security of the most critical parts of the ship more seriously. That, or have the crew consider moving the engines and bridge staff to crew quarters, where doors are respected.

For continuing to overlook this easily solvable problem, I offer only 2 stars for “Elaan of Troyius”. Ignoring the fact that the episode did display some interesting makeup and costumes, and featured a few well-acted scenes, the continued stupidity of the security of the ship is as untenable as its “secure” areas.

Two stars

[Come join us tomorrow night (January 3rd) for the next thrilling episode of Star Trek! KGJ is broadcasting the show live with commercials and accompanied by trekzine readings at 8pm Eastern and Pacific. You won't want to miss it…]

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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[December 20, 1968] A failure to communicate (Star Trek: "The Empath")

December 20, 2023 Trinity Stewart 6 Comments

by Trini Stewart

This week's episode, “The Empath”, gave Star Trek fans some wonderful interactions from our crew on a rescue mission, but also had them running on a vaguely-guided track throughout the episode.

At the start, the Enterprise is tasked with evacuating a research station before the star it was studying goes nova, but when Kirk, Spock and McCoy arrive at the station, there is no one left to rescue. An enormous solar flare threatens the Enterprise during the search, so the ship leaves to safety just before a record tape reveals where the former inhabitants went. Kirk, Spock, and McCoy watch as the station researchers suddenly disappear while a strange noise shrills on tape, and the three distressed crew members are almost immediately teleported away by the same noise.

Where Kirk was…a very effective effect!

They find themselves in a dark area with a mysteriously mute woman, whom they nickname Gem. While the crew attempts to ask Gem about how they got there, two large-headed figures, the Vians, bluntly introduce themselves and refuse to tell Kirk what is going on. The crew is easily overpowered, the Vians collect data from Gem, and they vanish with the crew’s weapons. A small cut on Kirk’s head is suddenly healed when he checks on Gem, and McCoy realizes that Gem communicates through her highly responsive nervous system; all of Kirk’s feelings and ailments can become hers from just a touch.

The healing power of interpretive dance

Spock then locates a sophisticated lab, where they discover the Vians preparing large perspex tubes for the crew members, and the missing inhabitants of the station dead in tubes of their own. The three officers learn that they are meant to be subjected to deadly tests for reasons unknown, and they flee with Gem through a cave mouth. The Vians trick the escapees with a mirage of a search party to test their wills, and capture Kirk once they observe the crew’s perseverance. Kirk sacrifices himself by insisting he be the one specimen the Vians want for their cruel torture, after which Gem reluctantly heals his potentially deadly wounds at McCoy’s behest.

Shatner is devastated that he's not in the spotlight…

While Spock works out how to attune the Vians’ instrument to allow their escape, the aliens come back to reveal that they plan to gravely injure either Spock or McCoy next, and that the trio must choose the victim when they return. This leads to one of the most endearing displays of the crew’s dynamic I have seen in the show: both officers insist they be the test subject without hesitation, and antics ensue. The two begin to argue that the other is more valuable to leave with the captain, but Kirk insists he will be the one to decide, only to be rendered unconscious by McCoy’s treatment. Spock then notes his approval of the treatment, as it relieved Kirk of a rough decision and put Spock in charge as second-in-command. McCoy punctuates that sentiment by ambush-sedating Spock, saving the critical Vulcan the only way he could. Gem sheds a single tear as McCoy is taken away, since she has now emotionally connected with both Kirk and Spock and feels the depth of their affinity for him.

A single tear—Gem's race has not had time to be acquainted with clichés

The two remaining officers eventually awaken and begin to configure the Vians’ device, acknowledging that the aliens likely wanted them to escape and leave McCoy behind. Instead, Spock transports Gem and them to the lab, where McCoy is found with multiple fatal injuries, and he tries to make light for everyone’s sake. The two realize their only hope for McCoy is for Gem to help him despite the risk, and the Vians restrict them in their force field to prevent their interference. The aliens begin to explain that they must see how Gem reacts on her own, because she is being judged of her worth on behalf of her whole species; Gem’s choice to save McCoy would determine whether the Vians use their limited resources to save Gem’s species. Spock and Kirk escape the force field, and Kirk indicates that the Vians do not know the value of the compassion they claim to idolize. The aliens, humbled all too quickly, mend McCoy and whisk Gem away with a short farewell. The episode ends with the crew appreciating Gem as an entity, and Spock delivering a fun riposte to Scotty in response to his joke at the Vulcan's expense.

"There. All better. No hard feelings?"

The episode did a great job at highlighting the main characters, but left the intentions of the new ones blurry in execution. It is unclear why the Vians specifically found compassion to be the only trait worth preserving, especially when they didn’t practice it. It is generally accepted that self sacrifice is the ultimate show of love, but the weight that carries as a theme is undermined by how dubious the whole experiment is.

The crew’s interactions give a good taste of what the impact should have been, but the incomplete understanding of the threat ultimately caused the intense stakes built up for the captives to fall flat. Moreover, the Vians were presented as an overwhelming force, yet they hardly understood why they were conducting experiments, to the extent that insults from Kirk immediately caused them to question their motives. Not to mention that they conveniently and inexplicably had the means to save one of the races in the solar system. The crew’s roles in this episode outshone the disappointing parts, so I still consider this a good episode as far as enjoyment goes.

3.5 stars.

Amateur work

by Gideon Marcus

Joyce Muskat's name is probably new to you. It wasn't to me—she's a N3FFer (member of the National Fantasy Fan Federation. Also, a few months ago, her name was mentioned in one of the Trekzines. I can't remember which one it was, but the author was pleased that her fan friend, Joyce Muskat, had sold a script to Trek on the slush pile. This was remarkable since Trek officially doesn't take unsolicited manuscripts. So, good for her. I love that Trek has opened the door to new talent, particularly women.

I'd really like to know if the inconsistencies in the episode were the result of a spotty understanding of the material or revisions after submission. I suspect the latter. No true fan (he said hopefully) would write the Federation as inhuman monsters who would let the sundry races of Minar die when the sun went nova. No sf aficionado would make the boner mistake of having a planet's atmosphere protect the surface from cosmic rays, but not the Enterprise's shields, not to mention having cosmic rays cause earthquakes.

It's never even made clear whether or not Gem (Jem?) comes from a race of empaths or if she was unique among them. The latter seems more likely; I find it hard to believe that a race of empaths could fail to feel compassion. I could see telepaths walling themselves off to avoid a confusion of the psyches ("where do I stop and you begin?") but given that Gem cannot verbally communicate at all, an empathic race would have to rely on its mental powers to relate. And as Heinlein pointed out, no beings have more compassion than those who "grok" each other.

There's much to like about the episode, from the performances of the leads to the creative use of set and costume (the Vians have excellent Outer Limits-style make-up, though it is strange seeing such in color). On the other hand, the unremitting score, the odd pacing (Shatner slo-mo-ing to the ground for about a minute springs to mind), the nonsensical motivations for the Vians' experiment, and frankly, the directorial decision to keep focusing on Gem's facial expressions, which made her look somewhat clownish, all drag the episode down to average territory.

If only Harlan Ellison had written this episode of Outer Limits…

Three stars.

Substitutionary Theology

by Joe Reid

“The Empath” is this week’s episode of Star Trek. In it the crew of the Enterprise explore another strange new world. Yet again they face forces that are overwhelming. Yet again they find a way to pull their fat out of the fire and yet again the writers of this show chose to lace in overt theology into their story. Not only were these salutes to God and the Bible poorly executed, they sought to teach biblical morals without delivering the substance of the message through the narrative of the story, but through imagery and exposition only. This practice proved to be utter folly.

In one of the opening scenes we witnessed a recording of two missing scientists going about their work when a quake happened. This prompted the scientist named Ozaba to quote the first part of Psalm 95, verse 4, “In his hand are the deep places of the earth;…” A verse that when looked at by itself means nothing, but surrounded by the other verses in Psalm 95 that speak of the grandeur and majesty of God. Ozaba quoting this added nothing to the scene nor did it make his sudden disappearance meaningful. It was as if the writers desired to open the episode with a random scripture and blindly opened a Bible and picked the first verse they saw.

At the very end of the episode this time Scotty delivered the references to scripture, without quoting it this time. It was Mathew 13:45-46, where Jesus speaks about the kingdom of heaven being like a pearl of great price—it being worth selling everything that one has in order to obtain it. Although closer related to the something in the story, (Gem) this scripture like the previous one was a bad fit for the message that the story was attempting to deliver: sacrificing oneself for the benefit of another.

Strange use of scripture aside, the troubling part for me was in the main story of the episode: the imagery of Kirk as he was tortured by the aliens. His hands were bound and his arms were stretched wide as if he were on a cross. A nearly impossible position to hold as his wrists were bound with two ropes. It was done intentionally so as to place Kirk in a crucified posture. Conversely when McCoy was bound in a similar way his hands were above him.

Shatner's double is dying for the episode's sins

The combination of the out of place scriptural references and imagery used for both Kirk and the girl (in particular, the Pietà at the end as she is draped in a Vian's arms) muddy the waters of what this episode is attempting to say. A much more effective method would be to keep the moral message and the story only based in the environment of an alien world and deliver the message without the forced and uninspired asides to scripture. I’m fine with teaching morality tales using other mediums. I’m not fine with the poor application of scripture. It has the potential to cause more harm than good if misused—as we’ve seen done throughout the centuries.

Lest I be misunderstood, it's not so much that I found the episode offensive; rather it was too shallow and ineffective to deliver its message faithfully and respectfully.

One star

Staging a Comeback

by Janice L. Newman

When movies and television became widespread, early directors and producers treated them much like stage plays. There’s a static quality to shows, noticeable all the way up through the fifties and early sixties.

Eventually creators began to innovate, finally realizing that they could do things that weren’t possible on a stage. We began to see more creativity in how things were filmed, and particularly in how things were staged. In Star Trek we’ve seen both styles. Some episodes have had more traditional, static staging with actors carefully lined up in staggered and visible rows, while other episodes have pushed the boundaries of what can be done with a camera (the moving shots from Nomad’s point-of-view in Changeling come to mind).

“The Empath” is an interesting hybrid. There are a few scenes on the surface of the planet, and a couple on the Enterprise, but most of it is shot in a dark, empty space with minimal props. This makes it feel like a stage play, but more like a modern production than a traditional play. Gem’s interpretive dance-style form of communication strengthens this impression as well. It’s interesting to see how we’ve come full circle, from techniques drawn from the stage, to more dynamic shots made possible by modern filmmaking techniques, and now returning to a stage play, this time deliberately, to get a particular tone and feeling.

Filming in limbo—next door to Tombstone

There was much I liked in this episode: the interactions between Spock, McCoy, and Kirk were excellent, and I loved the idea of Gem’s special ability. Unfortunately, rest of the story made no sense, with important or dramatic information revealed late and then ignored in ways that were entirely uncharacteristic. I found myself wondering, as Gideon did, how many of the inconsistencies were due to the original script and how much to modifications made by others (certainly Roddenberry never hesitated to cut up or re-write a script, as Harlan Ellison will bitterly tell you). The bright spots and dark spots canceled each other out, leaving me with a somewhat disappointing three star episode and a lot of questions.

A Familiar Song

by Mx. Blue Cathey-Thiele

The Talosians are back! Oh wait, these are different beings with bulbous skulls, silver robes, illusory abilities, and a penchant for experimenting on humanoids. Supposedly the Vians have the power to save an entire planet (but only one!) from the imminent nova, and are deciding the fate of said planet by coercing an empath to absorb injuries to the point of death. Are there representatives from other planets being tested elsewhere? If Gem “fails" will the Vians save their own planet? Why does an entire world need to reach a certain standard of “compassion” to deserve being rescued from annihilation? Pay too much attention and you will start to wonder if the Vians are making it up as they go along. Note the dead scientists stored in macabre tube displays! Nothing says good intentions like having three more tubes ready and labeled for when the landing party eventually dies!

"The Red Cross is getting overambitious with their blood drives…"

The Talosians- sorry, the Vians pay strangely little attention to Gem, for all their claims. It's hard to tell if Gem was left on the sidelines more from being a woman, or from what translated in human terms as a disability. Captain Pike is one of the few men who have been equally dismissed by an episode at large, and it's very clear that his role in The Menagerie was impacted by his limited means of communication. Despite clearly being able to comprehend what was happening, his binary Yes/No indicator left him largely out of the conversation. Even when he did express an opinion, it wasn't always respected. Gem had a more interpretive means of communication, but she too was often overlooked. In a future with translators that can talk to glowing clouds, and in the company of Spock, a touch telepath who has expressed a growing willingness to meld with aliens he encounters, it's beyond me how the crew ever opts not to try to communicate.

Upon first finding Gem, Kirk wants to know what is wrong, why she won't speak. Most aliens they've met have compatible languages, after all. McCoy's analysis: “She appears to be perfectly healthy. As for the other, her lack of vocal cords could be physiologically normal for her species, whatever that is,” provides a good reminder about human norms and poses the question, is a being “mute” if their species doesn't speak to start with? If her entire civilization uses empathy to connect, then the landing party likely seems just as restricted to Gem as she does to them. Being an alien, she doesn't nod or shake her head, but she does press McCoy's tricorder into Kirk's hands when the question of where to go arises. Given the option of escape, she votes to rescue the doctor.

Katheryn Hays brought a lot to her role as Gem, when the episode remembered she was there at all. Her performance, the set, and some choice scenes between the landing party couldn't make up for the surrounding episode, though.

3 stars

[Come join us tonight (December 20th) 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… Plus early coverage of the Apollo 8 launch!]

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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[November 14, 1968] "'S'cuse me while I touch the sky!" (Star Trek: "For the World is Hollow and I have Touched the Sky")

November 14, 2023 Gideon Marcus 3 Comments

by Gideon Marcus

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…]

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Galactic Journey

Tag Archives: janice l newman

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

[March 6, 1969] Different points of view (Star Trek: "The Cloud Minders")

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

[February 14, 1969] Like a circle in a spiral; like a wheel within a wheel (Star Trek: "The Lights of Zetar")

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

[January 16, 1969] Mixed messages (Star Trek: "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield")

[January 10, 1969] Mad for this show (Star Trek: "Whom Gods Destroy")

[January 2, 1969] Blood, Sweat, and Tears (Star Trek: "Elaan of Troyius")

[December 20, 1968] A failure to communicate (Star Trek: "The Empath")

[November 14, 1968] "'S'cuse me while I touch the sky!" (Star Trek: "For the World is Hollow and I have Touched the Sky")

55 years ago: Science Fact and Fiction