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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

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

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by Janice L. Newman

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

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

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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

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

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by Erica Frank

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fair to Middlin’


by Janice L. Newman

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

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

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

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

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

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

Three stars.

By What Right

by Mx. Blue Cathey-Thiele

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2 stars

Truly Alien


by Joe Reid

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

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

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

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

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

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

4 stars

Eclipse Glasses for War


by Jessica Dickinson Goodman

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Three stars.

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





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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

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

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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.

title card for the episode projected over a rear view of the Enterprise in front of a cloud of shimmering lights of Zetar

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.

Mira Romaine, an attractive Lieutenant in a blue tunic, gazes into the eyes of Scotty, wearing a red tunic, both in front of the engineering station on the bridge
"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.

Mira Romaine stares blankly, collapsed on the floor of the bridge, Kirk and Scotty rushed to her aid
"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.

Image of a collapsed Tellarite in his chair superimposed on a close-up of Mira's eye
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.

Image of a smiling Scotty looking down at, and trying to comfort, Mira, both in the extension to engineering first seen in the episode, Mirror, Mirror
"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.

Clipping of a newspaper showing the television listings for January 31, 1969, including Star Trek at 10:00 pm
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.

Mira, her blue eyes under a wrinkled forehead, strains to retain her own identity. She is on the floor of the room with the pressure chamber.
"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?

Mira floats in the pressure tank with glowy lights surrounding her
"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
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 24, 1969] Make rheum, make rheum (Star Trek: "The Mark of Gideon")

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by Gideon Marcus

"Gideon"—the very name connotes greatness.  Grandeur.  Brilliance.  Romance.  Surely, any world with that namesake must be a living paradise.  So it is no wonder that the Federation bought the reports sent from planet Gideon declaring it to be just that.  No wonder that the Federation would tie itself in knots so as not to jeopardize the chances of welcoming Gideon to the Federation.

Unfortunately, Gideon has other plans.

Title over Kirk wandering lost through the corridors of a fake Enterprise

From the moment Captain Kirk, the sole allowed representative of the Federation, beams down to Gideon, "The Mark of Gideon" catches your attention.  We've seen Kirk on an empty Enterprise before—in "This Side of Paradise", "By Any Other Name", and (sort of) "Wink of an Eye", but it's no less effective for its repetition.  Sure, it's just a re-use of the standing sets on Stage 9, but then so was "The Tholian Web", "The Omega Glory" and "Mirror, Mirror".  Indeed, because we have seen the sets used to represent other ships and other dimensions, the audience has already been trained to think in terms of historical precedents rather than the true situation.

That true situation, of course, is that Kirk is actually in a fantastically detailed replica of the Enterprise, so good that it takes him a (credulity-stretching given how quickly Spock figures things out) long time to figure out that he's not on his beloved ship.  But fairly quickly, the episode's focus returns to the real Enterprise and Spock doing his usual sterling job in command, the "Mark of Gideon" becomes less "Where is Everybody?" and more "Stopover in a Quiet Town" (respectively, the first episode of The Twilight Zone, and one of the very last).

The plot is quite simple: Gideon was once Heaven-on-Earth, but it has since become a Malthusian nightmare due to the one-two punch of no native diseases and a fanatical reverence for life.  Only the very privileged get a few square meters of space to themselves (Holy Shades of the Soviet Union, Batman!) So, the Gideon council hatches a plan to capture Kirk, withdraw some of his blood, and use the lingering, though harmless, remnants of Vegan Meningitis therein to infect Odona, the council chair's daughter.  She will then serve as an example and a vector to infect the rest of the population of Gideon, which presumably will be devastated before natural immunity kicks in (or enough Gideonites stop wanting to be sick).

Chairman Hodin looks over his sick daughter, Odona, on a bed
"Father, could I have a Bayer?  No other aspirin works better."

The real problem with this episode is not the story, nor the effective bits with Kirk and Odona on the empty ship, nor the entertaining segments featuring Spock sparring with Chairman Hodin.  It's that the plot and the events don't match up.

Regarding the disease: it's not stated what happens if mortality turns out to be 100%, or what the Gideonites will do once the disease loses its lethality.

It's never explicitly stated, either, why (or how) the Gideonites went through the trouble of building a replica of a starship on their surface for the purpose of letting Kirk wander around in it.  If all they need is his blood, he could have been kept unconscious for the nine minutes required to take his blood and then sent back to the Enterprise with some kind of cover story.  Did the plan really require that Odona join Kirk in the simulated halls of the starship?  Did she really need to fake falling for him?

Kirk grips Odona by her shoulders passionately on the empty bridge of the fake Enterprise
"I have.  to.  kiss you.  Odona.  It's in…the script."

I really want this episode to work.  Not just because it bears an absolutely terrific name, but because it is genuinely entertaining to watch from beginning to end.  Our crowd advanced a few hypotheses that I like.  The best was that the ship was Odona's idea, and like the Dolman from "Elaan of Troyius", she could be refused nothing.  Moreover, there was an intense voyeuristic desire on the part of the Gideonites to see beings in a truly open space, so this plan killed two birds with one stone.  Another is simply that Kirk was drugged when he woke up, and the mock-up didn't need to be perfect (a la last year's Assignment: Moon Girl).

As for the idea that it is hypocrisy for the Gideonites to value life yet hatch a scheme to indirectly kill billions (trillions?), I am reminded of the orthodox Jew who could not turn on a light switch himself on the Sabbath, so he cannily lifted his infant son (too young to be bound by mitzvot) to within flicking range of the switch.  And religion is, indeed, in the crosshairs of this episode, for did not Pope Paul VI this summer enjoin Catholics from using The Pill, humanity's main hope of stopping the population boom?

I'm writing this piece in the cold light of day, when I should be more inclined to savage the episode in light of its inconsistencies and absurdities.  But I find myself feeling charitable—perhaps it's because director Jud Taylor finally seems to be finding his sea legs (even if Shatner. did. employ many. unnecessary pauses. last week).

Three stars.

Deeply Creepy


by Jessica Dickinson Goodman

Maybe it was the feral cats yowling over my fence in the middle of the episode, but this is for my money the creepiest episode we've seen yet. Something about those yearning, horrifying disembodied faces just got me right in the shivvers.

It also had me thinking about ferality, about what happens when something once tamed becomes unruly. Consider pigeons. Tamed and bred by humans for 10,000 years as messenger birds, companions, and beauties, only to themselves over the course of a bare century transition back to a wild world that they had never been prepared for.

The people of Gideon likewise seem to be at the devastating mercy of a too-too civilized society whose very progress towards perfection endangers their lives. Yes, I felt the storytelling placed too heavy a burden on just telling us that they love sex too much to prevent vicious overcrowding — a cultural quirk that felt too big to swallow. But the feeling of confinement, of encroachment and enclosure came through loud and clear.

In a way, their whole society had become feral: bred and evolved for specific purposes and suddenly set adrift with all of that breeding and evolution still in place, but none of the supports and expectations which allowed it to happen in the first place. The individuals seemed civilized enough, grading on a curve of aliens we've seen thus far, but the entire concept of a society so desperately, brutally crowded seemed fundamentally wild to me.

Let's get to the criticism. As beautifully creepy as the premise was, the synthetic bodysuits and wobbling crowded walks outside the windows were closer to funny than horrifying. The question of where they got space to build a 1:1 model of the Enterprise also beggared belief. Some science fiction and fantasy writers believe you get one big lie, a total of one shocking premise that the audience will just go with you on because, hey, it's a genre story, them's table stakes. But you only get one.

For me, the Big Lie of this episode was that Kirk was lost and wandering around a completely empty Enterprise. That was disturbing enough. But then it turns out many of the assumptions we'd taken on faith as an audience were false and that just felt like being crudely manipulated. I watch shows to be manipulated, but I like it to feel earned, not like I'm being rushed from plot point to plot point, each more giddily hideous than the next. She's not just a fake damsel in distress, she's the weirdo ruler's daughter! And a national hero! And dying of some exotic disease! That she wanted! So they could cull their society like a dairyman shrinks his herd when the price of milk is down!

That's just too many additional premises in one story for me.

A beautifully staged shot of, from left to right, Lieutenant Brent, Dr. McCoy, Mr. Spock, Lieutenant Uhura, Ensign Chekov, and Mr. Scott, on the bridge of the Enterprise, as Spock parlays with Hodin
Even Spock is incredulous of this episode

I wish we'd kept the lens tightly on Kirk and the crew and the mysterious woman. I wish the weirdo ruler's throne room had given us a hint that claustrophobia was going to be the enemy of the day. And I wish we'd gotten more of the woman actress, she was doing so much with so little. I hope we see more of her.

Overall, this piece will be memorable for its premise and a few fine lines, but the execution was lacking.

2 stars.

How Crowded Is This Place?


by Erica Frank

Odona says, "There is no place, no street, no house, no garden, no beach, no mountain that is not filled with people." This sounds like the Earth of Harrison's Make Room! Make Room!: an overcrowded world, very little privacy, and extreme government measures to cope with the seemingly infinite population. (Can you imagine living on a planet with seven billion people, as we're expected to have on this planet by the year 2000?)

However, we get glimpses that imply it's worse than that. We are led to infer, from the masses of people in plain bodysuits visible behind the High Council room, that the planet is literally so crowded that they don't have space for a few rooms for office work. That aside from their fake Enterprise, there is no empty 20'-by-20' room on the planet.

Kirk looks sternly at Ambassador Hodin offscreen. In the background, we see the people of Gideon milling around aimlessly.
The real question isn't "are there really that many people" but "why do they have a viewing window into the High Council room?"

I reject this notion. I believe Gideon is crowded, yes, but not that it's so packed that most adults spend their waking hours packed like sardines, slowly bumbling around in huge crowds.

If that were so, how would they even find space to make the fake Enterprise? What happened to the people displaced by it? No, while I can accept that Gideon is "full of people," I cannot believe they are literally shoulder-to-shoulder across the planet, nor even "…except for special cases" like childbirth and whatever space is needed to design and sew the High Council's uniforms.

Ambassador Hodin wearing a suit mostly made of brown velvet hexagons with some kind of wide ribbon between them, and a shiny metallic blue row down the front. He is flanked by two assistants in all-black hooded bodysuits.
Perhaps they're made of hexagons because they can be assembled by hand — no space for a sewing machine necessary.

Do the people have jobs? Families? How are children raised? How do they maintain a culture focused on the "love of life" if they are just walking around staring at nothing all day?

My answer: The people we see are probably tourists — visitors to the Capitol, hoping for a rare view of the Council chambers, which is separated by one-way glass. They may be required to keep moving; that gives everyone a chance to see the Council when the glass is raised, perhaps a few times a day.

This is a ridiculous conclusion, but the whole episode is ridiculous. A culture that refuses birth control on ethical grounds will use a fatal disease to cull their populace? How will they decide who to infect — will they be selected by computer and told to line up for it, as in A Taste of Armageddon? Or will they volunteer to die, these miserable people who reject diaphragms, IUDs, and condoms because life is too sacred to prevent?

The individual scenes of this episode were fascinating but the underlying story just doesn't add up. Two stars.

Old Fools


by Joe Reid

The story this week was about a people claiming to love life so much that they couldn't harm one another, and so long-lived that they developed an overpopulation problem.  Overpopulation so severe as to cause them to lure a Starfleet captain who survived a deadly space disease to their planet to infect them with the pox.  Why?  Perhaps this seemed like the most interesting way to die?  For people who love life their treatment of every life seemed to be just the opposite.

Let’s start off on the grand scale.  Unlike most of the technically advanced races in the galaxy, the Gideonites lacked the most basic imagination when it came to needing more space.  If there isn’t enough space where you are, go somewhere else and find some.  Am I to believe that a people who could perfectly reproduce a spaceship as a ruse weren’t able to produce their own ships to take them to other planets to spread out?  What weak imaginations these advanced humanoids must have had to not consider that most basic of solutions.  During his career Kirk had been to dozens if not hundreds of worlds where a hardy race like the Gideonites could expand.

The next charge affirming the utter hypocrisy of the Gideonites had to do with how freely they lied. Although it might not be fair to lay this charge at the feet of all the people, their leaders certainly were not honest Abes.  They lied about transport coordinates. The location of the captain. The girl lied about her origins, claiming to know nothing about Gideon.  The entire fake ship was a lie.  They only ever resorted to the truth after each specific lie was uncovered, and not a minute sooner.  It might explain how these leaders came to power.  Even in our world, you don’t come to power by telling the truth.  It makes me wonder if the planet was even named Gideon, although saying, “welcome to the planet Marcus”, doesn’t quite roll off the tongue.

[Au contraire, mon ami.  We've already had a planet Marcus 12 in "And the Children Shall Lead".  If Odona emigrated from planet Gideon to planet Marcus 12, she'd be "Odona Gideon Marcus 12" (ed.)]

Hodin, flanked by two council members, harangues Kirk in the council chambers
"Not only have we no space, but I am using the planet's only hairpiece!"

If they really did love life, it must only have been the lives of their own people.  These Gideonites showed a complete lack of basic empathy for anyone who wasn’t them, for example, concocting a plan that lured an alien captain to their world to kidnap, imprison him, and bleed him dry.  These actions sure sound out of character for the "lovers of life" they purport to be.  In truth, the Gideonites were unimaginative in every sense of the word.  Trapping their own people on a planet that can’t support them is evil for an advanced technical society.  Using misdirection and bad faith negotiation tactics to carry out their shortsighted plan was contemptible.  Making the incarceration and blood letting of an unsuspecting victim their plan to save a planet was morally bankrupt. Attempts by the leader's daughter to redeem their reputation by choosing to sacrifice herself in the end fell flat for me.  There wasn’t enough good in the episode to salvage it from the bottom.

One star

[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")

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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.

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[October 31, 1968] How the Western was won (Star Trek: "Spectre of the Gun")

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by Janice L. Newman

This is Not a Test

Star Trek continues to surf the New Wave in this week’s episode, Spectre of the Gun. While the plot incorporated many things we’ve seen before (both in and outside of Star Trek) it combined and presented these elements in new and innovative ways.

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[October 18, 1968] Little monsters (Star Trek: "And the Children Shall Lead")

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by Janice L. Newman

Star Trek is, first and foremost, a science fiction show. But science fiction is a special genre in that it need not be constrained by the same rules as other genres. A story that’s science fiction can also be a Western, a romance, a mystery…or a horror story, such as Wolf in the Fold and Catspaw attempted to be. On the first Friday in October, we gathered our friends in our backyard and watched on our portable 13" one of the scariest episodes of Star Trek I’ve seen yet.

Continue reading [October 18, 1968] Little monsters (Star Trek: "And the Children Shall Lead") →

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Fashion, music, politics, sports

[April 6, 1968] The mountain of despair (the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.)

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by Dana Pellebon

On April 4, 1968, my world changed and I wasn’t even aware of how much. My day was as any other. Go to work, come home, make dinner, do a little reading, and go to bed. Yet, on April 5th, the horror of opening my newspaper made my world stop. Front Page. Dr. King Murdered. As the paper slipped from my hands, gravity took my body and the tears now flowing to the floor. Who? How? I tried to read the words on the now wet pages, but I couldn’t escape the feeling of intense pain and sadness. When you’ve lived through a man shepherding you and the world through progress, what does it mean when he’s not here? I ached for his wife and children. I dreaded the moment I had to move my body to figure out what was next.


Civil rights leader Andrew Young (L) and others on balcony of Lorraine motel pointing in direction of assailant after a shot mortally wounded Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  Photograph by Joseph Louw

Somehow I got off the floor to ready myself for work. The bus there was filled with other Negroes like me silently crying. At the next to last stop downtown, a small group of men came on the bus and were very loud about ridding the world of another one of “them”.  I straightened my head, methodically dried my tears, and looked right in their direction. My steel gaze was met with some chagrin on their part and blessed silence. It was in that moment that I knew I would never let another one of them see me cry ever again.

I hear there is a work strike coming up. Already people are mobilizing. There’s rumblings on the radio about the riot in Memphis and DC. I read the words of Robert Kennedy talking about his brother’s death and how he too was killed by a white man. How we should not take this time for violence but instead for compassion. I want to take in these words of reconciliation but my heart is cold and distant from such talk. 

I believed in the dream of Dr. King. Nonviolence begets understanding and peace. He may be targeted but he was special. Malcom X was killed because of who he was. Dr. King would stay alive because of who he was. Or, so I thought. My naïveté was on full display as I realized that him dying was the only inevitable outcome for whites who hated his message. My new understanding that peace and conflict are natural bedmates. As I step into this world without Dr. King, I must ask myself, what is next?

This is the question for the Negro. Without our great Shepherd, how does this flock move through the pasture? Who leads the next part of the movement? What legacy of his can we grab of our own to continue to shape the world into a just and equitable future? I don’t know what the path forward is and how to get there, but I think of the last words Dr. King said the night before he was murdered and I know in this moment and the next and the next, every thing I do will be to realize the vision of our collective promised land. 

“Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. And I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”


Dr. King, giving his last speech at Mason Temple, Memphis, on April 3.


by Jessica Dickinson Goodman

When morning finds me, I read the newspaper. Earlier and earlier these days, as my newborn moves towards infancy and begins to make his own dawn schedule.

It was one of Will Roger’s favorite lines: “All I know is just what I read in the papers.” As a Cherokee man born in land that was treaty promised and greed taken, he knew better than most how wrong the press can be. But still, it’s the only first draft of history many of us are privileged to see.

Which is what makes reading it while nursing my baby so strange some days. Like a few weeks ago, when, on a single page, these were the headlines:

  • "Policeman Admits He’s a Klansman"
  • "‘Oakland in 1983: Over Half Negro’"
  • "Commission Warns: Spend Billions or Face Rebellion"
  • "‘Had To Tell It Like It Is’ — Riot Report Jolts Congress"
  • "Policeman’s Lot Not a Happy One"

On mornings like this when decency weeps, a page like that perhaps only has one or two truly true things in it. One, I suspect, is from the "Commission" report breathlessly exaggerated in the headlines, whose full and proper title is “Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders;” that commission includes the former Illinois governor Otto Kerner Jr., leading Congressmen from both parties, and Atlanta Police Chief Herbert Jenkins. The paper says of the report:

“For instance, the commission said, belief is widely held that riot cities were paralyzed by sniper fire. Of 23 cities surveyed, there were reports of sniping in 14. And probably there was some sniping, the commission said, but: “According to the best information available to the commission, most reported sniping incidents were demonstrated to be gunfire by either police or National Guardsmen.’”

There’s a lot of passive voice in there, unfortunately common with newspapers’ coddling of police officers’ egos (see the unsourced and useless sob piece in the bottom left hand corner). But those “sniping incidents” included a mother shot in the back and murdered inside her own home during a riot as she tried to pull her 2 year old to safety, away from the glass window.

I hold my baby tighter as I read that.

In another powerful moment, the paper says:

"Asked why the panel made such a hard-hitting report, Harris said: 'We all knew these things intellectually – but we didn't feel it in the pit of our stomachs.

'We want people to see this as we did. We thought we had to tell it like it is.'

Another commissioner returned from a ghetto inspection tour and switched his position on one issue, remarking:

'I'll be a son-of-a-gun. You might be 99 miles further to the left than I thought I would be.'"'

Another bit of truth came from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, as it so often does. He called the report “a monumental revelation of what we had seen since the burning fires of Watts.”

The report laid the blame for the riots on centuries of white racism and systemic lack of funding in Black communities. It prescribed deep and meaningful investment in those communities to try to make back some of the time that was stolen (the “billions” listed in the third headline, as if we don’t spend “billions” in Vietnam every year).

Reports of commissions like that are the second, or even third drafts of history. I suspect they get it right more often than they do not.

I heard on the radio last night that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was shot and murdered in Memphis. The radio report wasn’t even the first draft of history, maybe just the notes for a future draft. Later, Bobby Kennedy came on, said something like:

“My favorite poet was Aeschylus. He wrote: ‘In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.’”


Robert F. Kennedy, speaking in Indianapolis, April 4.

I don’t know what the headlines will read today or tomorrow or when the killer is caught, if he is caught. A lot of people hate Dr. King, blame him for the riots. God knows the newspapers did in their first drafts. But reports like the Kerner Commission, they tell us the true causes, lay blame at the right doors.

Until then, until we know more about what happened than we read in the newspapers, I’ll stick with Senator Kennedy, who knows at least something about surviving deaths by violence. I'll try to find some wisdom in the awful grace of God. I’ll try to think about one of Will Roger’s other great quotes, “It's not what we don't know that hurts. It’s what we know that ain’t so.”

I’ll keep trying to teach that to my baby, the things I thought I knew from the papers that I now know aren’t so. I'll try to tell it like it is, as much as I can for someone of his small size. And I'll hold him just a little tighter.


by Mona Jones

My husband calls me from the living room. Any other day, I might think him or Big Mama needed a drink of water. But something about his voice sends a shiver down my spine. He calls me again.

“Mona, you better get in here.”

I walk into the living room just in time to hear a recording of Robert Kennedy over the radio say, “Some very sad news for all of you and, I think, sad news for all of our fellow citizens and people who love peace all over the world. And that is that Martin Luther King was shot and was killed tonight in Memphis. . .”

The rest of his words are drowned by the deafening cries of those in attendance of his last-minute press conference. Mabel must sense a change in the air because she leaves her uncle in the kitchen to come wrap her skinny little arms around my waist. “Mama, what’s wrong? Did something bad happen?”

She’s looking up at me for answers and I have no idea what to say. Even if the cries of the people on the air hadn’t drowned on Mr. Kennedy’s voice, I’m sure the blood rushing in my ears would’ve done the same. Thomas walks up to stand in the archway with me as Mr. Kennedy keeps talking.

“Martin Luther King dedicated his life to love and to justice between fellow human beings. He died in the cause for that effort.”

Even from our little home in Indianapolis, I can already imagine the streets of my hometown in D.C. filling with people with a whole lot of rage and hurt with nowhere to direct it but at themselves. I clutch my little girl closer to my side.

“On this difficult day and in this difficult time for the United States, it’s perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are and what direction we want to move in.”

Hasn’t this country already chosen? A great man was killed tonight, I think as my lips tremble and my eyes well up with hot tears. I don’t feel like a mother or a wife or even a sister right now. I feel like a child clinging to another child trying to figure out what’s gonna happen now that the one person who was allowed to care isn’t allowed to care anymore.

“For those of you who are Black – considering the evidence evidently is that there were White people who were responsible – you can be filled with bitterness and with hatred and a desire for revenge.”

Sounds of people yelling and crying echoes around the neighborhood. I fear it's only gonna get worse. I only hope that Thomas doesn’t get any ideas about running out there to help or hurt. He may not have agreed with the Reverend’s methods, but I could see it on his face that he was feeling it, too, plus all the anger that rushes out from inside of him whenever the position of Black people in this country comes up.

“We can move in that direction as a country. . .”

Easy for him to say. He’ll wake up tomorrow and still be a White man. We’ll wake up tomorrow and be Black people without a leader. We’ll wake up not knowing what tomorrow is gonna bring. If the Reverend Martin Luther King was killed, what’s gonna happen to us if we speak out? I can’t tell where this country is headed, and neither can Mr. Kennedy. But I have a feeling it’s nowhere good. Nowhere good at all if a man like that can be taken from us so very, very soon.


by Victoria Lucas

Mel and I grieve that Martin Luther King, Jr. has been taken from us. The turmoil of the day only underscored the tragic events.

It’s not like NYC where mimeographed newsletters were hurried out to the streets with the hour’s news—it takes time for the Berkeley Barb or other newspapers to be ready to distribute. What a difference a Gestetner makes.

Thus, it’s quite possible to drive into something unexpected, as we did on the day of the assassination. People glared at us, yelled at us, even threw things until we stopped and asked someone what was going on. It seems we were supposed to have known to place a black ribbon on our radio antenna or someplace else on our car, as a memorial to Dr. King. We had no idea. We hurriedly found a ribbon and attached it.


Berkeley during the Free Speech Movement a few years ago.

The lack of timely information and the increasing violence here are driving us out. Not only are the police getting more violent, but the Panthers are violent, the protests are getting violent; I cannot pass UC Berkeley's Sather Gate without seeing and hearing a male speaker getting purple in the face about “the pigs” (which now includes both the police and the UC Berkeley administration). What’s more, we're finding we cannot drive or walk around Berkeley at all and feel safe.

And so, we shall soon be leaving tumultuous Berkeley for points north. Our family member is staying, so we will be back to check on him and see friends. But living here has become too scary.

Maybe everywhere has gotten a little more scary.


by Joe Reid

Dr. King was loved by many for what he did with his life.  I thought I loved Dr. King for what he did, but I think that I really must not have.  For the thing I called love was ineffective and unhelpful.  It was empty in that it let another carry a burden alone, without me stepping forward to help.  While this man was walking around doing for others; walking around with a bullseye painted on his back, I only looked out for myself and mine.  It was good that Dr. King was doing the work of leading protests.  Organizing folks.  Giving speeches to inspire others.  Writing books so that others might understand our struggles.  All that I did was say that I loved his work, but I did nothing to help.  I worked and took care of my family and had the nerve to call another man brother when I didn’t lift a finger to try to make that man’s life better.

Dr. King was clearly not like me.  When he called you sister, it was because he cared about what happened to you.  If he called you brother, it was because he saw you as family.  He was able to see another man’s struggles as his own and was willing to use what talents he was given to do something about it.  When I see another man’s struggles, I see it as that man’s struggles.  How does that make me any different than most white folks?  People that might not hate me; might not call me a nigger, but who don’t see themselves in me.  They don’t see my struggles as their own.  Dr. Martin Luther King Jr was not that the kind of man that I have found myself to be.  He clearly possessed something that I lack.


Dr. King, flanked (from left) Hosea Williams, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, and the Rev. Ralph Abernathy on the Lorraine Motel balcony in Memphis on April 3.  Photo by Charles Kelly.

I think that my problem is that I don’t love God.  How could I say that I love God, if I don’t love those who God loves?  Like how if you love your friend, you will help your friend's family because of that love.  That I am not willing to step away from my own life to take up the cause of another shows me how fruitless my love is.  It shows that I don’t love my neighbor, I don’t love my coworker, I don’t love my family, I don’t even love myself.  If another man is fighting a battle for me that I won’t fight for myself, then I must not love myself.  I really don’t love myself, if I haven’t walked with the man.  My inaction proves the point that I must not love God.

Dr. King was not only fighting for negroes in this country, but also for poor folk of all stripes.  This man truly loved others.  His actions showed that.  He loved his children.  His speeches showed that.  He loved his brother.  His hands demonstrated that.  Lastly, it is now obvious to me that Dr. King really and truly loved God.  His life was a testament to that.

So, if I am going to claim to love God, as this man clearly did, I need to stop seeing people as separate from myself; realizing the truth that if anyone is being denied participation, representation, opportunity, or even their very life, I am being denied those things as well.  It was very unloving of me to let others fight on my behalf without me.  It’s time for me to start loving God and those who He loves.  Dr. King, thank you for your example of how to love.  You will be missed, but you will never be forgotten.


by Tom Purdom

I was doing the dishes and listening to our local all-news station, KYW, when the news came over the radio.  The first thing that leaped into my mind was Carl Sandburg’s poem Upstream:

The strong men keep coming on.
They go down, shot, hanged, sick, broken.
They live on, fighting, singing, lucky as plungers,
The strong mothers pulling them on,
The strong mothers pulling them from a dark sea, a
great prairie, a long mountain.
Call Hallelujah, call Amen,
The strong men keep coming on.




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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[February 28, 1968] Zero for the Price of Two (Star Trek: "By Any Other Name")

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by Janice L. Newman

This week’s Star Trek episode starts in one genre and ends up in another, ultimately making a promise it just can't deliver on.

The story opens with the Enterprise responding to a distress signal and landing on an out-of-the-way planet. They encounter aliens that appear human, who immediately commandeer the ship. When the landing party attempts to resist, the aliens make a chilling example: they turn two members of the landing party (both garbed in red) into small, strangely-shaped objects, apparently by removing all the water from their bodies and leaving the concentrated essential salts and minerals. One of these objects is crushed before Captain Kirk’s eyes, while the other is restored to his normal human state.

I want to take a moment to note how compelling this part is. It could have been corny in a different kind of show. Yet it’s unexpectedly effective as Kirk crouches over the powdery remains of one of his crewmembers, shocked. There’s no gore or blood, yet it is genuinely horrific.

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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[November 2, 1967] Trouble and Toil (Star Trek: Catspaw)

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Such stuff as dreams are made of


by Joe Reid

For the first several episodes, this second season of Star Trek was solidly impressive.  We got to attend a Vulcan wedding.  We saw a mythological deity from human antiquity in a sci-fi setting.  We saw a transistorized deity faced and defeated.  Then a dark alternate universe, followed by a giant cornucopia of doom!  I regret that I must mention the episode with the red colored rock lizard worshippers, since that was undoubtedly the low point of this season.  Sadly, this week’s episode, titled “Catspaw” comes very close to hitting the low that “The Apple” achieved.

Dear readers, in my opinion, futuristic sci-fi shows should avoid doing holiday themed episodes.  I have no desire to watch sci-fi episodes about Christmas or Thanksgiving.  Nor Easter, the 4th of July, Passover, Saint Patrick’s Day, or Columbus Day.  So, watching what clearly stood out as "made for Halloween" was disappointing.  Especially since I do not feel that the episode was served by the inclusion of said theme.

We started this seventh episode of the second season on the bridge of the Enterprise as our heroes awaited a report from the landing party composed of Scotty, Sulu, and a Crewman Jackson.  A message came in from Jackson, with no word about the others.  As Jackson beamed up to the ship, he arrived on the transport circle dead on arrival.  Then from the non-moving mouth of the dead man came a ghostly warning to leave the planets and that the Enterprise was cursed.


"There is a curse on you!  Also, you've left the oven on"!

Determined to find out the fates of Scotty and Sulu, Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, and Dr. McCoy beam down to the planet to find their people.  Arriving on the surface they find that it was a dark and foggy night.  What comes next, I was not expecting: As the trio begin their search, they are confronted by three ugly witch apparitions, and wouldn’t you know it they have a poem to share.  “Winds shall rise, and fog descend, so leave here all, or meet your end.” Poetry so bad that it even garners a negative review from Spock.


"Hail Captain Kirk, Thane of Cawdor!"

If that isn’t a blatant enough holiday reference, Kirk and the others soon find themselves at a dark and eerie castle.  Upon entering they are startled by a black cat which leads Kirk to make the first explicit Halloween reference of the night about trick or treat.  They follow the cat hoping to see where it would lead them only to be knocked unconscious as the floor collapsed below their feet.


"There's my litter box!"

They awaken to find themselves chained to the walls of a dungeon next to a skeleton that looks exactly like what it is: a Halloween decoration, or maybe a model skeleton from my kid’s science classroom.  As the doors to their cell open, we get our first looks at Scotty and Sulu as they enter the dungeon.  Both are under some sort of magic spell and can’t speak but make it clear that they will take Kirk and the others to the people in charge.


I hope they weren't paid by the line for this one…

They meet two aliens that have taken the forms of a wand-sporting wizard named Korob, and the beautiful witch, Sylvia.  Kirk, Spock, and McCoy find themselves at the mercy of powers that could endanger the Enterprise in orbit, conjure items out of thin air, and mind control their crewmembers.


Korob and Sylvia–a tale of two coiffures

It is here that the spooky themes began to subside as the magicians reveal themselves as truly alien, with little understanding of humans or even having physical bodies.  They need humans and our minds to allow them more of the new experiences that they had created.  An interesting premise, but since this is Halloween, it is drowned in hocus pocus.

In the end, Kirk is able to learn about and destroy the magic wand…er…transmuter, the item that allowed their powers to work.  The defeated aliens returned to their original forms and promptly die.  The conclusion of the episode comes fast with virtually no transition, save for a brief explanation from Kirk to his newly liberated crew.


"The missing pages of the script are right there."

Outside of the unnecessary holiday theme, this episode managed to stay true to the elements of what makes Star Trek good.  The characters' behaviors were consistent with what we have come to expect.  Kirk was smart and brave.  Spock was insightful, and others, so long as they were not mind controlled, behaved as they should.  Also the aliens had actual, explained reasons for their actions. All this combined made this episode passable and not the absolute debacle that “The Apple” was.

3 stars.

A fool thinks himself to be wise


by Janice L. Newman

It wasn’t a surprise to learn that the same author who wrote "What Are Little Girls Made Of?", one of the worst episodes of the first season, also wrote "Catspaw". Robert Bloch is famous for his horror writing, particularly the movie Psycho. But his horror fantasy scripts simply do not translate well to the grounded science fiction of Star Trek.

"Catspaw" was a frustrating experience. Not just because it didn’t feel at all like a Star Trek episode (and naysayers in the fanzines will no doubt comment, as they did with "Miri" in the first season, that they happened to catch this episode and weren’t impressed), but also because it had the potential to be an interesting episode but simply couldn’t make it work.

Firstly, the idea that the ‘collective unconscious fears’ of our species would be reflected in a gothic castle, Shakespearian witches, and black cats, is simply ridiculous. If there is some kind of collective unconscious for humanity, the reflection of it must necessarily be both much more chaotic and universal to the human experience. This flaw could have been overcome either by saying that the aliens drew their ideas of us from our popular culture, or perhaps that they drew on one particular crewmember’s unconscious fears. Alternatively, rather than using the traditional gothic symbolism, the show could have tried something more innovative, imagining what might frighten any human anywhere throughout all of history.

Another flaw was the pacing. The scene of Sulu unlocking everyone’s chains took far too long, for example, while the final scene felt rushed. The scenes on the bridge were dull, especially with the wooden DeSalle in charge.


"I am acting!"

A particularly annoying problem with the episode was that it set up situations to be resolved and then didn’t follow through. The most egregious example of this occurs when the bridge crew finally manage to ‘dent’ the forcefield around them—only to have the forcefield lifted by one of the aliens before they can escape it on their own. While I would have been mildly irritated at the similarity to "Who Mourns for Adonais?" if the crew had cleverly managed to escape, I was far more irritated that the crew was set up to escape and then not given the opportunity to do. What was the point of those scenes on the bridge, then?

The ‘horrific’ aspects to the story often came across as comedic instead. Perhaps the ugly witches might scare a young child watching the show, but the room full of adults I was watching with chuckled at their appearance and their sung proclamations. One of the saddest pieces of wasted potential was the aliens’ true appearance. They looked like little birds made of pipe cleaners, and when they came on the screen they got the loudest laugh of the evening. A scene which could have and should have been poignant or grotesque was again turned comedic by poor writing, pacing, and framing.

I’m torn as to what rating to give this episode. On one hand, it didn’t even feel like an episode of Star Trek. On the other, there were some interesting elements, and it wasn’t confusing like "The Alternative Factor" or dully exasperating like "The Apple". Plus, there was a cat. Still, when all is said and done, the wince-inducing scenes between Kirk and the Sorceress canceled out what good there could have been. I can’t give it more than one star.

Signifying Nothing


by Amber Dubin

It's ironic that this episode is called "catspaw" because the plot is about as cohesive as a heavily pawed ball of yarn; a tangle of threads that don't hold together or go anywhere.

The acting quality of the episode peaks early with the deeply convincing collapse of ensign Jackson off the transporter pad. Yet the fact that he is the only non-essential crewman sent down to this clearly hostile planet makes less than no sense. Continuing the madness, after Jackson's corpse is used to deliver a message of warning that's immediately ignored, Kirk, Spock and McCoy are subjected to another gratuitous display from disembodied witch heads spouting Shakespearian-esque poetry. You would think this theme of theater-obsessed eccentric illusion-projectors would continue, but you would be wrong, as the only further theatrical implications come in the form of the heavily made up and costumed Korob, whose appearance is given no explanation.


Though you must admit: the camera loves him!

In further defiance of explanation, the crew wakes up chained to the walls of a dungeon after the floor of the castle they enter haphazardly collapses beneath them. Next ensues an absolutely mystifying scene where a zombified Sulu painstakingly unlocks their restraints cuff by cuff. This gesture is immediately made unnecessary when they are teleported into a throne room with Korob, one of their captors. As we've seen in "Squire of Gothos" or "Who Mourns for Adonais?" Korob reveals himself to be overpowered alien attempting to understand the nature of man. He doesn't get too far in his speech, however, before he is upstaged by the real star of the play, the necklace-wearing black cat that transforms into Sylvia, a beautiful woman.

I was hoping Sylvia's introduction would lead to a McCoy-centered episode, as Bones seems to be unable to take his eyes off her.. necklace.. from the moment she enters. That theory is immediately banished as they are all teleported back to the dungeon and McCoy re-enters as a zombie (a role to which he is well-suited). The task of seducing the femme-fatale then predictably falls on Kirk, who delivers his clunkiest and least believable performance in the series so far as he outright fails in his attempt to make her feel too pretty to harm them any longer.

Despite this entirely nonsensical plot, somehow the biggest disappointment of the episode is yet to come as the aliens descend into madness. Korob is killed by a giant door, which is as easily avoidable as it is imaginary, making it therefore harmless to a being capable of casting such illusions. Even more absurdly, these magical beings, who are said to be powerful conjurors with no abilities of sensory perception, are suddenly revealed to resemble tiny, delicate bundles of exposed nerves.


Jim Henson presents: rejected muppets!

The episode abruptly ends, nothing is resolved, no one understands anything better and I'm baffled by the fact that a simple framing device of a crewman explaining Halloween to Spock at the beginning of the episode could have cleared up where these aliens got material for all the imagery in the episode. Instead, we spent more time watching Sulu unlock imaginary restraints than we do deciphering the nature or motivations of crusty blue pipe-cleaner puppet-gods.

Ridiculous. Two stars.


by Gideon Marcus

The Play's the Thing

I must confess–I did not hate this episode.  Not because it was good; heavens no!  It wasn't even Star Trek.  Just our favorite characters having a Halloween lark.  In fact, in my mind, I've completely disregarded it as a Star Trek episode.  Just as Spock and Uhura sometimes jam together in the lounge (why haven't we seen that this season?), and just as Kirk insists that real turkey be served on Thanksgiving, I've concluded that it is an Enterprise tradition that Halloween is celebrated with a big todo.

I can see Sylvia actually being Lt. McGivers' replacement, and with a minor in theatrics.  Once aboard the Enterprise, she began penning her magnum opus: a play involving all of the senior officers of the ship.  Suddenly, all the nonsensical bits make sense.  The beaming down of Scotty and Sulu as a landing party, the spooky settings and effects, the endless kissing scenes ("Oh, but Captain, these are vital to the plot!  Really, it won't breach protocol at all…")


"Did I hear a door slam?  Darn.  We'll have to do the whole take over!"

Taken as such, suddenly the episode is palatable.  It does move pretty well. Theo Marcuse is always a delight (and a genuine war hero, and he has a great last name; he's probably my cousin).  The score was nifty, particularly in the fight scene.  Less so in the five minute bit when Sulu unlocked Kirk's fetters.

And there was abundant display of a cat.  That, alone, is worth a star.

So, again, "Catspaw" isn't a good episode.  But I would watch it in reruns three times before I suffered through "The Apple" again…

Two stars.

Something Wicked this way Comes


by Jessica Dickinson Goodman

I rather enjoyed this episode. As Amber said, it wasn't good. But it was fun. Maybe it's because I enjoy camp. I liked Theo Marcuse's silks and jewels and perfectly shaved eyebrows. I liked the kitschy sets – perhaps borrowed from a recent vampire flick? – and as other writers have noted, the cat was a special treat.

I was less impressed by how many of the so-called ‘collective unconscious fears' involved woman-hating. Crones and seductresses, liars and cheats, the non-crewwomen in this episode were like something from Jesse Helms' fever dreams, no collective I'm a part of.

Janice's proposition that the episode would have been better if it had featured truly universal fears sparks my imagination far more than anything in the episode itself. What truly scares everyone? In a world with apocalypse-worshiping churchgoers, can we say everyone is afraid of death? I would say that many, many of us are afraid of a nuclear attack from our friends across the Bering Strait, but people living outside of the blast zones could be reasonably excused from the universality of that fear.

Stepping away from the philosophical mindtwister Janice gives us and back to this rather silly episode, I am looking forward to seeing this one in reruns. There's just something so fun about our heroes getting tied up – several times – like maidens in a gothic novel.


I think the Captain is starting to enjoy it…

Watching Captain Kirk once again try to kiss his way out of trouble was made all the more fun when his captor/target caught him at his game and refused to play anymore. Despite Sylvia's embodiment of a mushy handful of cruel gender stereotypes, I found myself enjoying her time on screen more than almost anyone aside from the core cast. Cheers to Antoinette Bower for taking a two-dimensional role and turning it into something fun and memorable.

There were many, many, many ways this episode could have been improved. I would be disappointed if next week's episode shared in the same nasty stereotypes of women. I fear it will, as it centers on one of my least favorite characters in this series, Mr. Mudd.

Perhaps Sylvia will make a guest appearance and turn him into a toad before he hurts more women.

Three stars.

I don't know how likely it is that Mudd will get his comeuppance, but we can certainly hope!

The episode airs tomorrow night.  Here's the invitation! Come join us.

Also, copies of The Tricorder are still available — drop us a line for details!




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