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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

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

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Better Than Perry Mason


by Jessica Dickinson Goodman

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

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


A nice cross-section of ethnicity, if not gender

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

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


The Supreme Court, in 1962

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


Perry Mason, in the courtroom

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

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

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


Two absolutely convincing stunt doubles fighting in Engineering

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

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

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

Rating: 4 Stars.

Wrong Way Street


by Abigail Beaman

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

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


Computers–who needs 'em?

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

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

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


by Andrea Castaneda

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

Three stars.

Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics


by Lorelei Marcus

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

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


"Computers. I know all about them."

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

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

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

Four stars.

The measure of a man


by Tam Phan (Secret Asian Man)

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

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


Captain material?

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

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

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

4 Stars

The Little Black Box


by Janice L. Newman

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

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


A Soviet flight recorder – a "red box"?

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

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

The Return of Shirtless Kirk


by Erica Frank

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

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

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


Kirk's wraparound green uniform


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

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


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

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


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


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

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

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

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

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

Here's the invitation!



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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

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

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by Elijah Sauder

A time to laugh, a time to weep

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

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

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


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

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


It's a sharp right past Mercury.

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


Flying Kirk Attack!

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


"UFO? What UFO?"

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

Get me to the Church on Time


by Abigail Beaman

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


Mr. Abigail Beaman

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


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

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


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

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


by Lorelei Marcus

Tragic Predictions

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

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

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

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

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

Four stars.


by Andrea Castaneda

A dimension too far

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

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


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

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

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


Time travel fixes everything!

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

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

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

Three stars.

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


"Captain Kirk, This is Your Life!"

Come join us!



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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

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

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by Lorelei Marcus

The incomprehensible versus the inconceivable

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

I can't stand fluffy science fiction.

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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


"Oh hi, mom, dad."

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

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


DeSalle won't stand for Trelane's bigotry.

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

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

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

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


by Gideon Marcus

All the old, familiar faces

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


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

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

Three stars.


by Elijah Sauder

Through the eyes of a child

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

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

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

Again? That Trick Never Works


by Erica Frank

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

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

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

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

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

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

Diplomacy, Even When It’s Hard


by Jessica Dickinson Goodman

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Three stars.

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

Come join us!



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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[November 14, 1966] Star Trek: "The Corbomite Maneuver"

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A Strange Step Backward


by Gideon Marcus

With the round robin review format we've set up for Star Trek, everyone's obligations are pretty small, with the exception of the person assigned the head: the first, summarizing piece of the article.  I drew the short straw this week, possibly the most challenging week in the history of this new show.

Because a summary's job is to explain what happened.  And in "The Corbomite Maneuver", virtually nothing happened. 

Repeatedly.

The episode boils down to this: The Enterprise travels into an unexplored area of space. An alien ship intercepts the Earth ship, traps it, and threatens to destroy it.  The alien ship takes many guises — first a multicolored cube, then a giant globe of incandescent lights, then a set of glowing soap bubbles (admittedly gorgeous effects), but the scenario is always the same.  The Enterprise tries to break free, dramatic music plays, people fall out of their chairs or bounce around in hallways. The navigator-of-the-week, this time a ‘Lieutenant Bailey’ (anxious, overeager, promoted too early) occasionally has a breakdown. Lieutenant Uhura says "Hailing Frequencies open" a half dozen times, looking rather bored.


"I should have stayed with Ma Bell…"

Eventually, we learn that the whole thing was a test. The alien, Balok of the First Federation (Ron Howard's little brother), never planned to destroy the Enterprise. On the one hand, I appreciate an episode without a villain, one that challenges the hubris that we are the most powerful or the kindest race in the galaxy.

On the other hand, once we know that Kirk and his crew were never in danger, everything becomes a cheat.  The tension, the clever attempts to outmaneuver Balok (with warp engines or poker metaphors), all of it is meaningless.

Add to that a certain unevenness of the episode.  It is pretty clear this episode was filmed before the others we've seen in the series. Spock is yelling again, is wearing his old uniform, and his haircut is more severe.  Shatner has less of a grip on the Kirk character, playing him on a short fuse. As with "Where No Man has Gone Before", everything feels rawer, cheaper, more like an episode of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea.  Perhaps it was the consciously military mien of the scenario and character interactions.

All this kvetching suggests I didn't like the episode.  That's not quite right. There are some great exchanges, particularly any involving DeForest Kelley (Dr. McCoy). George Takei's Sulu is a delight, with a lot of great subtle expressions. Yeoman Rand got an entire episode free of assault (though Kirk resents her existence as a woman). The special effects are really excellent, and probably the reason the episode got delayed. 


That's a really big Christmas ornament…

But for the most part, I was just kind of bored. That's a new experience for me with Star Trek, which has hitherto been either great or problematic. However, if "Maneuver" really is an early episode, that means we're actually on an upward rather than a downward trend. Plus, next week's episode, which looks like it will incorporate the terrific first pilot, is very promising.

So, three stars, but I won't hold it against the show.

Zero-Sum Game


by Janice L. Newman

As Gideon notes, The Corbomite Maneuver was a, shall we say, uneven episode. The first time the ship was ‘about to be destroyed’ it was exciting. By the third time, it was definitely less impactful. On the other hand, the story had plenty of great moments. The problem was, these ended up undermining each other.

For example, Captain Kirk pulls off a wonderful bluff where he apparently convinces the enemy that destroying their ship will result in the destruction of their own vessel – the bluff being the titular ‘Corbomite Maneuver’. It’s a desperate, brilliant moment that would have made a fantastic climax for the episode. Everything, from Spock saying that it was ‘well-played’, to Bailey returning to the bridge, to Kirk’s sigh of relief when the ship is not destroyed (not to mention McCoy’s overeager offer to teach Spock the game of poker) makes for a great piece of television.


The gambit pays off.

Unfortunately, it’s not the climax of the episode – or rather, it’s the climax, but not the end. And then, when we do reach the end of the story, we learn something which by itself would have made for a clever plot twist. It turns out that the entire set of encounters were orchestrated by a single entity, a powerful being who claims that it was ‘all a test’.

This is something we haven’t seen before. Yes, in Where No Man Has Gone Before and Charlie X we had immensely powerful beings, be they humans or aliens. And in The Cage we did see powerful alien minds manipulating humans to try to get something from them. But we’ve never seen (presumably benevolent) aliens simply ‘testing’ humans to learn their ‘real intentions’. It would have been a great reversal, if only it hadn’t undermined everything which had come before. The clever parts of the story, rather than building on each other, unfortunately canceled each other out.


"Just kidding!"

Lieutenant Bailey's interactions with the captain rang an odd note in the episode. Kirk's "tough love" attitude toward him reminded me strongly of the captain in "The Bedford Incident", and I kept half-expecting Bailey to fire the ship's 'phasers' when he wasn't supposed to (instead he did the opposite, freezing in the moment of crisis).

I do want to make several notes about special effects. First, the lights making up alien ships were extremely effective (and I understand these effects were so involved that they delayed the release of this episode, which was meant to be much earlier in the line up). Second, the figure of Commander Balock that appeared on the Enterprise’s screen was an unconvincing one, yet it was plausible enough for our generation — after all, we were raised on puppet shows and other primitive special effects. The fact that the episode’s writer subverted these expectations and made the figure an actual puppet was absolutely ingenious. And third, the best special effect in the entire show had to be the dubbing of little Clint Howard with an adult’s voice.


"You Have Two Minutes Until Howdy Doody Time!"

3 stars, for the special effects, the cleverness, and the banter.

Off Kilter


by Lorelei Marcus

I enjoyed the overall message of "The Corbomite Maneuver", but I felt the episode had to make some sacrifices to get there.  In particular, the atmosphere of the ship and everyone's characterizations were severely altered from what we've seen thus far.  Captain Kirk seemed forced into the role of the hard-edged, authoritarian Captain.  The women of the crew were more stereotypically portrayed, pushed aside even, so that the men could have their dramatic moments.  Uhura looks bored.  Yeoman Rand exists to make coffee and salad and annoy Captain Kirk by being a woman.  All in all, the Enterprise felt much more current-day Navy in portrayal, and more militaristic in character.


"Did I say 'at ease', mister?"

The special effects were, as has been noted, a cut above.  But I would have liked to have seen this story told with the same Enterprise we're coming to know and love, rather than this odd, warped one, seemingly created to fit the plot's needs. 

With a mid-tier story, great visuals, and inconsistent characterization, I give "Corbomite" three stars.


by Jessica Dickinson Goodman

A Different Kind of Man Behind the Curtain

When I first heard Balok speak in this week’s episode, his voice reminded me of Frank Morgan’s booming performance in The Wizard of Oz (1939). The imagery and tactics reminded me of it as well: flowing curtains of light cascaded over Balok’s alien face, the crew of the Enterprise scrambling to bargain and trick their way out of the crisis as a seemingly all-powerful wizard holding hapless visitors to arbitrary and impossible rules.

When we found that, like The Great and Powerful Oz, Balok was a small man, pulling puppet strings to intimidate and test those around him, the twist felt familiar. But that moment was also where these two fantasies diverged: where the Wizard is venal and greedy, Balok is confident and curious. He is not a huckster, but a representative of a technologically-advanced society, able to control a vast space edifice from his tiny ship, and interested in learning the truth about the crew of the Enterprise.

While Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Lion, and the Tin Man beg the Wizard to make them whole and take them home, Kirk, McCoy and Bailey don’t need any such boons from Balok. But he offers them anyway, opening up the possibility of cultural exchange between his First Federation and Kirk’s crew. Bailey, who had spent most of the episode as a cowardly lion, gracefully agrees to the exchange as the episode closes.


"We're off to see the Wizard!"

The parallels are not perfect — though if Mr.Spock had filled out the boarding party in the role of the Tin Man seeking a heart he already has, it might have been — but they are productive. Like the friends of Dorothy, Bailey, McCoy, and Spock spend the episode trying to free themselves from traps and get what they think they need. And like the Scarecrow, the Lion, and the Tin Man, in the end, the powers they were seeking to work around were not what they seemed.

I liked that, in this case, the powers were greater. Perhaps, if Balok had been behind the curtain in Oz, Dorothy and company would have gotten more than toys, but the true connection and understanding they needed in their journeys. I hope that future episodes are more even in tone, but also that they continue to expand our views of the universe the way Balok will for Bailey.

Three stars.



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TV

[October 26, 1966] Star Trek: "What are Little Girls Made of?")

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Fun with Binary!


by Lorelei Marcus

I'm loving this new show called Star Trek.  From innovative effects to nuanced plots to interesting characters, Star Trek has often been raising the bar for television's best from week to week.  Sadly, I missed the past two episodes due to scheduling conflicts (catching up through our fanzine's weekly episode recap and review).  But this week, I ensured that my sacred viewing time would not be overtaken by any babysitting jobs or midterm study sessions.

I sat down in anticipation, the dark viewing room hushed despite the several people who had joined me to watch.  Excitement thrummed through me as the thrilling, other-worldly theme started to play…

And in the end, "What are Little Girls Made of?", the seventh episode of the new show Star Trek, was a complete DISASTER!

…but I liked it anyway.

If you happened to miss the broadcast, I will do my best to recount the episode's plot for you, even though it is already rapidly receding from my memory:

Opening on the bridge of the Enterprise, Captain Kirk and Nurse Chapel (Majel Barrett), whom we first saw in Naked Time, stare worriedly at a blue planet.  We are informed that Dr. Roger Korby (Michael Strong), Chapel's fiancé, has been trapped on the planet for the past five years, presumed dead because the planet's surface has become too cold to sustain life (the system's sun is dying).

Shortly after this remark is made, Korby's voice comes over the radio, requesting that Captain Kirk beam down to the planet, alone, to witness an amazing discovery he's made!  Who could have foreseen this?


"Can Nurse Chapel come too?"  "Christine?  Oh sure.  She's a recurring character; that should be fine."

Kirk and Chapel are beamed down into an underground tunnel system where Korby has apparently been living.  Yet Korby is nowhere to be found, so Kirk orders down two security guards and heads off with Nurse Chapel to find her fiancé.


"Hey Matthews, you think anything bad will happen to us?"  "How could it?  My retirement's next week!"

Before long, they run into Korby's assistant, Dr. Brown, who decides that the most effective way of introducing himself is by standing in front of a giant stadium light.  This is one of the many instances of odd editing.  Brown turns off his giant headlight, Chapel recognizes him (now that she can see again) and Brown offers to take Kirk and Chapel to see Dr. Korby.  Oh, and Guard #1 (Matthews) mysteriously falls off a cliff in the hall and dies.  Who could have foreseen this?


Dr. Brown in front of the Bat Signal.

After a brief interlude where security guard #2 dies to a hulking alien creature (that looks like it just finished washing dishes at the Addam's house), we finally get to meet the man of the hour, Dr. Korby.  What proceeds is a grueling back and forth that consists of Korby rambling about how he must show and explain his discovery to Kirk, followed by continuous worried glances exchanged between Kirk and Nurse Chapel.

So what is Korby's amazing discovery that the whole episode has been building up to?

Completely lifelike androids!


Meet Andrea, one of Korby's androids, whose purpose is a complete mystery and not at all obvious.


For someone who has an important point he wants to explain, he sure takes a long time getting to it.

It turns out Korby's assistant has been an android all this time.  (Maybe he was standing in front of the headlight to recharge?) In a sudden scuffle with Kirk, he is shot by a phaser, exposing his circuits.

Korby doesn't seem too perturbed at the loss of his assistant, though.  He has Ruk instead (played by Ted Cassidy).  Ruk is an even more advanced android built by the old aliens who left the android-making machinery Korby's been studying and using for the past five years.  And not just to make sexy secretaries.  He can even entirely replicate a human being!  And he's going to show Captain Kirk how it's done.

Cut to Shatner lying completely naked strapped to a turntable.


"Good thing I wore my tear-off uniform today.  It made this transition much faster!"

If my summarization seems a bit disjointed or abrupt, it's because this is an absolutely faithful rendition of the pacing of the episode.  Anyway, Korby's experiment succeeds, creating an exact copy of Kirk, one that obeys Korby's orders.  Copy-Kirk beams up to the Enterprise to take control of the ship.

At this, you may gape.  What?  The kind, not-suspicious-at-all Korby had ill intentions all along?

The plot runs deeper.  Korby explains to Kirk that he has the technology not just to copy a person, but to transfer their soul into an immortal mechanized shell.  A shell that can be programmed and controlled to perfection, Kirk points out, refusing to help Korby with his plan.  Korby's plans rapidly fizzle out anyway.  When Kirk's mind was being transferred into copy-Kirk, he'd recited to himself a message he would never say: "Mind your own business, Mr. Spock — I'm tired of your half-breed interference, do you hear?"  It is delivered at the first encounter between copy-captain and First Officer.

Spock, a veteran of dealing with duplicate captains at this point, gets the message loud and clear and beams down to the planet's surface…with armed escort.


Ah, there's an evil duplicate of the captain on the ship?  It must be Tuesday."

Finally, we hit the climax.  After seemingly failing to win Andrea as an ally with a kiss, Kirk convinces Ruk to disobey his programming and attack Korby.  The doctor, without a second thought, zaps his thousand year old android with a phaser, poofing him from existence.  Then Andrea zaps copy-Kirk because he won't kiss her like real-Kirk did, and he disappears.  Then Kirk tries to wrestle the phaser from Korby and accidentally shoots Dr. Korby's hand, revealing him to be…an android all along!  Who could have foreseen this??!

Andrea walks in and kisses Korby.  The doctor, horrified that he has become more machine than man, and that Andrea has become more woman than machine, zaps both of them from existence. 

The end.

Well, that was an experience.  The editing, pacing, and writing for the episode were a complete mess.  Still, there were elements that I absolutely loved. The costuming and sets were gorgeous.  An expert combination of clever camera angles, colorful pink and purple lighting, and creatively designed walls really made you feel that the characters were in an otherworldly cave. 

Everyone on the planet's surface shared an interesting motif in their clothes, and Andrea's outfit was so daring, I wouldn't be surprised if they needed a censor on set while filming!  Still, my favorite costume was Ted Cassidy's — between his ominous makeup and his puffy sleeves and high collar, he really felt like something alien.

I also appreciated the acting, even if the actors didn't have much to work with.  All of the android characters had a slightly flat affect to their deliveries that made them seem not quite human.  Cassidy, as always, did a fantastic job.  Shatner was weaker without any of his crew members to play off of, but he still did well differentiating between real Kirk and android Kirk.

Finally, the special effects were topnotch as always.  We got the transporter effect and a few phaser beams, which never fail to amaze me, but we also got some incredibly effective split screens which actually made me forget the two Kirks were played by the same person!

So overall, I would say that this episode wasn't just bad, but hardly really felt like an episode at all.  The premise and logic were completely internally inconsistent, and the main plot points don't hang together at all.  However, I still enjoyed the show, because though the parts refused to fit together properly, they still had a lot of value on their own.

Three stars.

Wasted Potential


by Janice L. Newman

This episode was all over the place in terms of pacing. First, the mad scientist teases Kirk (and the audience) with some grand revelation, then the episode cuts directly to Kirk spinning naked on a giant turntable. Kirk’s message to Spock is cleverly done (and one of the best parts of the episode), but in the end, it makes no difference: Kirk convinces the androids with ‘logic’ and they mostly destroy each other after that point before Spock and his team can even arrive.

It’s a shame, because robot stories have a lot of potential. Between Asimov’s Robot stories, the recent deconstruction of same in Lester Del Rey’s A Code For Sam, and the use of robots in one of the current Space Patrol Orion episodes, metal men are a hot topic right now. Some of the nuanced takes from the early Star Trek episodes would have been interesting and welcome. For example, are the androids capable of independent thought and emotion? What are the moral implications of killing the androids, especially Ruk, who has been on the planet for centuries and is the last representative of a dead race? The androids’ plan to replace humans was obviously not desirable, but could the technology have been repurposed and used to better humankind?

Unfortunately, we didn’t get any thoughtful questions like these. Instead, we got a story in a traditional pulp mold with a newish villain: no bug-eyed aliens, but instead sinister machine-men. I can’t help but hope that the writers go back to storytelling that focuses on the gray areas instead of slam-bang black and white.

Two and a half stars.

Same ol', same ol'


by Gideon Marcus

I think my biggest problem with this episode is that we've seen so much of it before.  Eccentric scientist on a remote planet shacked up with an alien being who doesn't want to be found?  Check.  Two Kirks?  Check.  A bleak, frigid planet festooned with styrofoam rocks?  Check.  Even the score seemed largely recycled from previous episodes.  Added to that, the clunky pacing and the shallow treatment of potentially thought-provoking topics really dragged this episode into the lower tiers.  It's not offensive, it's just not very good.

Kudos where they are deserved: lovely costume design (though I kept expecting Hoss Allen to come out and host The Beat!!! what with the blue and green motif.

The split-screen effects were particularly good, especially with the slanted table.  Patty Duke could learn a thing or two (oh wait — she's been canceled). 

Ted Cassidy was quite effective as Ruk, easily the most interesting part of the episode.  Though I did keep expecting him to give his signature, "You raaang?" when he appeared. And I appreciated how quickly Spock deduced an imposter was on board.  Coming on the heels of "The Enemy Within", there really would be no excuse otherwise.

So, better than "Mudd's Women", which I would have rated two stars.  Let's call it two and a half, on par with "Where No Man Has Gone Before".

Distinguishing Features


by Erica Frank

In this episode, we see alien fashion disasters, two crewmember deaths, and a return of Shirtless Kirk. (Hurray!) We also get android love (or at least android emotions; it's all very confusing) and the continuation of the " barren landscape; underground dwelling with lumpy stone walls" motif for alien planets.


Let's make sure we cover the important parts of the episode.

My observations from this episode: Nurse Chapel seems like an open-minded, free-love kind of woman. Just a few episodes ago, she was declaring her deep and sincere love for Mr. Spock, and now we discover she's been engaged — and searching for her fiancé — this whole time! If Spock had been part of the landing party, she might've had some very interesting conversations with the both of them.

We did, however, get double shirtless Kirk. Double naked Kirk, in fact, when Doctor Korby throws him into the Carbon-Copy-o-Matic android machine and makes a copy of him, right down to his thoughts and memories.


Which one is the android? Spock will need to know; I'm not sure I care.

Other people have spoken about the plot, the characters, the pacing… which leaves me to mention the lighting, which was excellent, and the fashion choices, of which I have already provided the best in the show.

The lighting and scene direction was clear, showed faces well without obscuring the underground facilities, and made it very easy to follow what was happening. This is a nice change from episodes where it's either pulled back so far that you can't tell where the action is, or focused on two heads that might be anywhere, or dim and shadowed so you can't tell what's going on. The cinematography was excellent in this episode.

The costuming, though… Now I know why the crew members' uniforms change all the time. (Uhura's in red this week.) Obviously, the Terran government is trying to avoid whatever pitfalls destroyed the long-extinct alien races, and while they can't be certain that the aliens' taste in fashion was part of their destruction, they are taking no chances.


This, THIS, is supposed to be a representative of a race that conquered the very building blocks of matter and thought? They could create a whole society of whatever skills, talents, and physical abilities they needed, and this is how they chose to dress them?

Ruk's outfit isn't the only problematic one on the planet. Andrea-the-android was presumably clad to appeal to Dr. Korby. She wears a blue-and-black dress (if that's the word) that barely covers enough body parts to be legal to show on television. Really, this should've been the Enterprise crew's first clue that something was very wrong: unless they were sweltering in their uniforms, she should've been uncomfortable with that much skin showing.


Since it turned out the Korby we met was an android who cannot feel love or baser human urges, this must've been a remnant of the original Korby's interests.

Once we're all done reeling from the… interesting… clothing, we get to deal with the rest of the plot: they're all androids; Korby's gone mad and wants to take over the universe with more androids; Andrea's developing an unseemly level of emotions; Ruk is chasing Kirk through the caverns with intent to kill him, as he did with the two unsuspecting red-shirted crewmembers at the beginning of the episode.


Kirk hids from Ruk while holding a makeshift, err, weapon he's found in the caverns.

In the end, Kirk charms Andrea into turning on her associates; the power of Kirk Kisses is apparently stronger than android programming. Spock, of course, quickly identifies Robot Kirk and incapacitates him. By the end of the episode, all the androids are gone, and for reasons unknown, the Enterprise leaves with no mention of either acquiring or deliberately avoiding the amazing copy-android technology.

I would expect them to report the discovery to Earth to be studied by people less prone to become megalomaniacs. Even if the process cannot create a "soul," I would expect many people in similar circumstances to Korby — near death, badly injured or disabled — to have an interest in technology that could give extended life to their thoughts and memories. If nothing else, it would allow people to record their memoirs, complete their research projects, give messages to loved ones, and so on. I was surprised Kirk abandoned the machinery; I can imagine many good uses for such a device, and I expect that's exactly the kind of thing his "five-year mission" is intended to discover. Perhaps it was reported, and another crew, more scientifically oriented than set on exploration, will return to the planet to find out if it can be used without succumbing to the temptation to take over planets.

I agree with the comments above that say the episode was scattered. The action scenes were well-done, but the overall story and pacing jumped around too much. However, it was visually stunning, didn't involve evil mind-control, and brought up some interesting questions about the nature of humanity and the mind. Four stars: Three for the plot, characters, and direction, plus half a star for each naked Kirk.

(Join us tomorrow at 8:30 PM (Pacific AND Eastern — two showings) for the next exciting episode of Star Trek!)

Here's the invitation!



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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[September 20, 1966] In the hands of an adolescent (Star Trek's "Charlie X")

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A New Tradition


by Janice L. Newman

It’s official, we now have a “Star Trek” night at our house each week, when we gather our friends and watch the latest episode. Though we’ve only watched two episodes so far, the show is off to an interesting start! This week we saw “Charlie X”, which had thematic similarities to both of the pilots we saw at Tricon.

The Enterprise has picked up a refugee, seventeen-year-old Charlie, who is the only survivor of a colony that died years ago. He was found by another ship, Antares, whose crew is only too happy to be rid of him.

There’s immediately something fishy about the boy. This is emphasized by strong musical cues, which are nicely integrated into the score. Since I watched “The Cage” (the first pilot) only a couple of weeks ago, I wondered at first whether the Antares crew were actually aliens in disguise, or an illusion.

The boy is extremely awkward in his interactions. He’s fascinated by Yeoman Janice Rand, the first ‘girl’ he’s ever met, and follows Captain Kirk around like a lost puppy. No one seems to know quite what to do with him, and I felt bad for the kid at first.

However, strange things start happening aboard the ship, initially benign, or at least not damaging long-term. Charlie produces a ‘gift’ for Yeoman Rand and won’t say how he obtained it, even though she notes that there shouldn’t have been any in the ship’s stores. All of the synthetic meatloaf in the ship’s ovens are turned into cooked real turkey. Uhura temporarily loses her voice.

It’s clear to the viewer from the beginning that Charlie is making these strange things happen, but it’s not until he begins to take far more sinister actions that the crew become suspicious. The Antares attempts to contact the Enterprise at extreme range, saying that they need to warn them, but they’re cut off when their ship explodes without warning. Finally, Charlie makes a crewman disappear directly in front of Captain Kirk.

The entire story shifts at this point, and Charlie goes from being sympathetic to terrifying. He’s immature and impulsive, greedy and lonely. He’s got the power of a god and the conscience of a small child. He goes after Janice Rand, coming into her quarters and offering her a flower. She firmly and repeatedly tells him, “No,” but he continues to press his attentions on her until the Captain and Mr. Spock show up to help. When he casually tosses them aside, Yeoman Rand slaps him – so he makes her disappear, too.

There are echoes of “Where No Man” in this plot: a human obtains absolute power, which corrupts absolutely. It’s also reminiscent of the Twilight Zone episode, "It's a good life", which similarly features an omnipotent, frightening child. The ending to "Charlie", however, is unexpected. The aliens who gave Charlie the power in the first place, allowing him to survive in the lost colony, return to take him back. Charlie begs the humans to allow him to stay, saying he’ll be alone with aliens who cannot touch him and who cannot love.

This is an interesting turnabout; the audience is once again compelled to sympathize with Charlie. Despite all the terrible things he’s done, the viewer can’t help but feel sorry for the young man, trapped all alone with aliens. His situation is an interesting parallel to Vina’s in “The Cage”, but Vina stays behind by choice, and she is offered a rich fantasy life by the Talosians, whereas Charlie wants nothing more than to escape, and despite his powers, is apparently offered a sterile and empty life by his alien jailors. The nuanced story is far more sophisticated than typical television sci-fi fare.

However, there were a few elements that I felt rang false.  Would Captain Kirk really be so awkward talking about ‘the birds and the bees’ with a teenager? Would Doctor McCoy really be so resistant to doing the same? This is the future, for heaven’s sake, and Doctor McCoy is a doctor. It felt like character and realism was sacrificed for cheap laughs.

On the other hand, I absolutely loved the way Charlie’s interactions with Yeoman Rand were handled. Charlie comes on strong and is increasingly pushy with Rand throughout the story. It’s a familiar kind of interaction in media. We often see a man persist in his attentions to a woman who resists at first but eventually gives in and falls in love with him. What made this story unusual was that his actions are never framed as being in any way romantic, or even acceptable. Rand is supported by the Captain himself, and never, ever told that she’s being hysterical or overreacting. When Charlie presses her, she stands firm, repeatedly telling him in no uncertain terms, “no!” and “get out of my room, I can’t make it any clearer than that!”

I appreciated how strong she was, and that Charlie’s actions were portrayed as creepy, unwanted, and wrong. It’s different from a lot of what I grew up with, and makes me wonder about the gender of the script writer, a mysterious “D.C. Fontana”.

Three stars.

A faltering step


by Gideon Marcus

Together with "The Man Trap", we are starting to get the first real understanding of the characters who inhabit the Enterprise.  Dr. McCoy is back, marking the first time the ship's doctor role has been the same character.  Moreover, he interacts substantially not only with Kirk, with whom he has a friendly, if perhaps arms length, relationship, but also Mr. Spock.  Their bickering on the bridge presages what could be a fun running bit, where the science officer approaches things logically in contrast to the more emotional doctor.

On the other hand, Spock displays genuine emotion, both in his bashful smiles and irritation when performing with Lt. Uhura in the lounge (a nice scene — Nichelle Nichols has a lovely voice!), and also when playing chess with Captain Kirk and Charlie.  This is the second episode that we have seen Spock and Kirk matching wits over the 3D version of the game of kings.  I expect this is a motif we'll see more of.

While I enjoyed this outing, I found its execution more pedestrian than that of "The Man Trap".  As fellow traveler Ginevra noted in our after-watch kibbitz, the use of camera pans, cuts, and focus are less adroit.  The differently colored corridors we saw in "The Man Trap" have been replaced with ones of uniform reddish hue.  It leaves the impression of a cheaper, less interesting show.  Not to the degree of the second pilot (which will be aired next week), but it's definitely noticeable.

If I had to pick a stand-out scene, it is when Charlie zaps a crewman into oblivion, particularly Kirk's reaction thereto.  You can see the character fitting all the pieces together about Charlie in stunning realization.  I also appreciated Kirk's shyness in talking about women, and the relation of men thereto.  He was established in the second pilot as "a stack of books with legs", and I appreciate a leading man who is not a ladies' man.

Perhaps that role will be taken up by Mr. Spock. Lord knows a certain communications officer seems to fancy him…

Three stars.

What makes Charlie X so frightening?


by Jessica Dickinson Goodman

With last year’s founding of The Autism Society, many people are reconsidering the roles that disabled people can access in our shared world. Science fiction is an excellent place to stretch our imaginations and explore new worlds and futures.

In this week’s Star Trek episode, "Charlie X" Robert Walker plays the titular 17-year-old, progressing from awkwardness to outright violence; viewers moved with him from discomfort to horror to pathos. What made us react so strongly to Charlie? Charlie speaks too quickly or too slowly; interrupts Captain Kirk; stands too close; touches people in unexpected ways; has exaggerated expressions or a flat affect; makes uneven eye-contact; has sudden and overwhelming emotions he struggles to express in ways the crew can grok.

In the show, this is attributed to Charlie’s lack of socialization and education. But Charlie isn’t an illiterate boy; he’s a fictional character on TV, a representation of the actor, writer, director, and viewers' ideas of a monster, drawn from the shared fears of our society. The trouble is, not all of us fear the same monsters. In the world I live in, Charlie’s mannerisms reminded me of my family members who are autistic, who face violence from people taught to be afraid of them. Until he started hurting people, Charlie’s behaviors didn’t disturb me, but I could tell the actor and writer wanted them to.

This disconnect is what made the end of the episode so satisfying to me. My heart began to race in the final scene when first Lieutenant Uhura, then Captain Kirk, then the re-materialized Yeoman Rand pushed back against the Thasian leader. Fought to protect Charlie. Captain Kirk’s line, “The boy belongs with his own kind,” felt profound.

As readers know, the 1964 Civil Rights Act did not include protections for disabled people. In the future, perhaps another law will. Watching shows like Star Trek requires us to flex the same science fictional muscles that activists use to imagine new ways for our real world to be. Perhaps, to viewers in the future, Charlie’s mannerisms won’t evoke horror, but will be just one more way of being one of our own kind.

Three stars.

Of Gods and Magic

by Robin Rose Graves

When it comes to Sci-Fi I am easy going on believability. Give me a simple (though sometimes far fetched) explanation for how or why something works and I’ll play along. But I am a stickler when it comes to “magic” (in Clarke's sense of the word). If I don't know how it works, I at least want to know its extent and cost.

My biggest problem with the episode is that Charlie’s powers are never defined in either category. Charlie is seen doing everything from procuring an object from thin air, to aging a character within seconds. Many of his abilities appear to be unrelated, yet exceptionally unlimited.

I almost wish Charlie’s powers had been to manipulate perception, like the alien in “The Cage.” This would have explained the variety of tricks Charlie executes during the episode: silencing Uhara, making crew members disappear – none of these things are really gone, just no longer perceivable under Charlie’s illusion. Even the change of beef to turkey could have been a simple trick of the senses.

Then again, there is a cost to Charlie's use of his "magic." It is, of course, that Charlie can never relate to other humans, and as a result, is exiled to emotional prison, living out his days with the Thasians. And while this isn't the kind of "cost" I was describing above, it does make for a compelling — and ultimately unsatisfying — episode.

Does he deserve to be condemned? I am hesitant to convict a character like Charlie of such a fate. After all, I believe his corruption was not from his powers alone. He endured some fifteen years of solitude. It is obvious Charlie lacks the socialization he needed during his formative years. I think in different circumstances, Charlie could have been more empathic, more willing to learn cooperation and patience in exchange for the social interaction and praise he so clearly desires. I think under proper care he could have been rehabilitated. Rather than thrown onto a large ship of strangers, better had he been given one on one time with a professional who could teach him what to expect once reintroduced to society. The Enterprise could really use a ship's psychologist. Failing that, Bones should have taken on the job.

While I’m happy the solution wasn’t to kill Charlie off, as the conclusion has been for menaces in episodes prior, I felt that Charlie was unjustifiably written off. It makes me wonder, what is the point of this episode? Charlie shows no character development or revelations. The Captain and crew feel badly for Charlie, but will they learn from their missteps that led to the crisis in the first place? I think this idea was ripe with potential left unexplored.

Three stars.

The Silent Treatment


by Tam Phan (Secret Asian Man)

Between the strange glares, close-ups, and whining monologues, we have the smatterings of a story about an awkward teenager playing grab-ass on the starship Enterprise. Much like “Where No Man” we’re often left staring at the characters staring at other characters waiting for someone to say something. Anything. Silence can be powerful, but sometimes silence is just silence. If I had wanted to watch a silent film, I would have chosen something a little more exciting.

Charlie really had his eyes set on Yeoman Rand, which is understandable. Any man with a good pair of eyes would, but she made it abundantly clear early on that she wasn’t as interested in Charlie as he was in her. The episode made sure to portray his advances as juvenile and unwelcome, which is a refreshing take on the overly aggressive pursuer getting the girl cliché. I appreciate seeing the consequences when “no” isn’t taken seriously. Charlie had powers that allowed him to do as he pleased, but it just goes to show that power isn’t everything.

I can appreciate that there was a deeper story here, but it wasn’t very well executed. I might have been sympathetic if Charlie was more likeable, but he just wasn’t. Nobody made an effort to improve Charlie’s experience in this episode. Not even the writers.

Two stars

From the Young Traveler


by Lorelei Marcus

"Charlie X" had an interesting premise that didn't quite match its execution. Charlie is meant to be a boy who has been raised in a completely alien context, his only reference to humanity being records and memory tapes. Yet aboard the Enterprise, his alienness is manifested in, at most, a lack of maturity and recognition of social cues. The difference should have been far more severe.

I believe the two main elements of "Charlie X" could have been better served as two different stories. One would be about an alien-raised human learning to assimilate with humanity. The other about an adolescent with ESP and the problems he causes.

We essentially got the second story, which after the mismatched premise, I have to admit was executed fairly well.  Three stars.

Space Fashion


by Erica Frank

Obviously the most powerful organization in the future depicted in Star Trek is the fashion union. Changing starship uniforms every few weeks takes a lot of political swing!

Kirk appears in three different types of uniform in this episode: his command outfit, which he wears on the bridge, a gold shirt that looks more like what the other officers are wearing, and an exercise outfit that consists of tight red pants and little else.


Kirk's very fashionable command jacket, which looks easy to remove. This seems to be an important trait for the captain.

When he goes to teach Charlie the basics of combat, Charlie wears a red gi top (which must be standard sports outfit, since it's got the Federation patch near the shoulder), and Kirk wears… well…


Sulu(?) and another man are battling behind them with some kind of padded pole weapons.

That's certainly an interesting choice. It almost makes up for this being the fourth episode (out of four) with dangerous psychic powers.

Things I didn't like about this episode: Destructive mental powers (again). The crew leaving a rescued teenager to wander around the ship unescorted. Not assigning the teenager a guide, mentor, or other assistant to adapt to life in human society.

The ending felt a bit rushed; I'd like to see the Enterprise (or some other ship) visit the area again, and volunteer someone to live wherever Charlie's stuck with the aliens. Let them give another human — an adult — the same powers, and see if that person can teach Charlie how to live among humans without resorting to murder when his whims are thwarted.

Things I did like: The musical interlude was lovely; I enjoyed Mister Spock's Vulcan instrument and Uhura's spontaneous singing. Also, Charlie was sympathetic: we could feel his confusion and understand his petulance. The story made sense, even if I sometimes wanted to throttle the captain for not assigning someone to pay attention to Charlie sooner. Also, I will forgive quite a few plot sins if it means I get to see half-naked men tumbling around the screen on prime-time television. 4 stars.

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TV

[September 12, 1966] Boldly Going (Star Trek's "The Man Trap")

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[For this exciting occasion, we've put together the reactions of several of the Journey team as well as a new phace…er…face!  Come join us as we recount our experiences with this exciting new science fiction epic called Star Trek…]


by Gideon Marcus

Where No Show Has Gone Before

Last night marked an exciting new day in science fiction: the debut of a new science fiction anthology.

Science fiction on television has always been kind of a backwards sibling to science fiction in print.  While there have been entertaining and even thoughtful episodes of The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits, for the most part TV SF has been some of the worst schlock.  Stories that wouldn't have been accepted in third-rate mags in the 50s.  Shows like Lost in Space, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, and My Favorite Martian — kiddified frivolity with zap guns and giant monsters.  Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon serials with inserts for soap commercials.

We fans had an inkling this new show would be something different pretty early on.  Its producer, Gene Roddenberry, previously put out an interesting, mature show about a Marine Lieutenant called…The Lieutenant.  At Westercon, one of the Star Trek pilots was previewed over the 4th of July weekend to much acclaim (we missed it as we had planned a birthday celebration at our house just 20 miles away from the convention!) There have been promo spots on NBC pitching the show, plus promotional pictures and coverage in both conventional newspapers and news 'zines.  They were all quite compelling.

At Tricon, I got my first direct glimpse of the beast.  The last two days of the convention, Roddenberry showed the two pilots to the show.  I left the convention both hopeful and concerned.

You see, the first pilot, "The Cage", was a masterpiece.  Without hyperbole, it was probably the best science fiction made for a screen (of any size) as of 1964.  Brilliantly written, scored, special-effected, and directed (if just competently acted), it was also daringly progressive.  Women were on equal footing with men, something I rarely see even in written science fiction these days.  There were no villains, per se, merely beings resorting to desperate measures to save themselves.  Call it Forbidden Planet but done right.

"The Cage" was rejected, I don't know why.  Too expensive, perhaps, or maybe too cerebral.  But it was liked enough that a second pilot was greenlit.  "Where No Man Has Gone Before" was the result.

It was a disappointment.

The beautiful sets and cinematography were gone, the cheap result looking like an episode of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea.  We had a new actor in the role of captain, and while I didn't think Jeffrey Hunter stretched himself much in "The Cage", William Shatner, on the other hand, was a contortionist, playing every scene to the maximum.  To be fair, he was new to the character, and the script did him few favors, shedding little insight into the character.  John Hoyt, who did a lovely job as the ship's doctor in "The Cage", was replaced by a non-entity.  Indeed, the only consistent cast member was Leonard Nimoy as the oddly strident "Mr. Spock", who in the second pilot, was reduced to something of a "wise Indian" role.

With pacing issues and a rather thin story, "Where No Man” augured poorly for the show, especially since it seemed more indicative of what we were going to get.

Still, a dozen or so of us gathered around our 25" color Admiral for the TV premiere of the show, set for 8:30 PM on September 8.  We'd set up a signal with our friends on the East Coast, since they got to watch it three hours before us: If the show was a stinker, at 6:30 our time, they'd phone us, letting the line ring once.  If the show was good, they'd ring twice.  (We wouldn't actually pick up the phone — long distance calls, especially during prime time, are prohibitively expensive).

As we ate our dinner, the jangle of the telephone made us jump.  What would be the verdict?  The bells chimed once.  We waited with bated breath.  Then a second ring.  Then silence.  We grinned at each other. 

And so, we sat through the latter half of Tarzan (also debuting on NBC that night).  At 8:30 PM, the main event began.

In brief: the spaceship Enterprise is paying a visit to the planet M113 to conduct an annual medical check-up of scientific personnel based there.  The only residents of the barren world are an archaeologist man-and-wife pair, the latter of whom was the old flame of the Enterprise's third medical officer in as many episodes.  Said woman appears to each member of the ship's landing party in a different form, some kind of telepathic camouflage.

Said woman is also a killer, stalking humans individually and then draining them of their salt.  She ends up aboard the Enterprise, changing forms and continuing her deadly hunt. 

On the face of it, it's a stupid plot.  The biology seems nonsensical, and Lord knows we've had enough monster plots on Voyage and The Outer Limits.  And yet…

"The Man Trap" is beautifully put together.  It's not quite "The Cage", but it's definitely not "Where No Man".  The Enterprise is a somberly lit, "lived-in" vessel with hundreds of crew.  For the first time, I had the impression of a real space-going vessel.  I appreciated that the Enterprise appears to be the equivalent of a Hornblower-era frigate, a second-line vessel doing routine business around the galaxy.  I quite like Forester's series, and given the youth of the ship's captain, the Hornblower analogy might be extended.

The three main actors, Shatner, Nimoy, and newcomer DeForest Kelley, were excellent, settled, and even understated in their roles.  The supporting cast was quite good, too.  George Takei, who I'd just seen in the Cary Grant flick, Walk, Don't Run, and in a couple of episodes of I, Spy, turns in a particularly pleasant, if brief, performance.  Gone was the powerful woman first officer of "The Cage", but we did get a Black woman bridge officer named Lt. Uhura.  So daring was this casting choice that there was some fear that she would be one of the victims of the episode's monster!

The special effects are quite masterful, from the superb optical effects of the ship orbiting the planet, to the shimmering fade out/in of the "transporter" (which beams people from the Enterprise to planetary destinations), to the blast of the phaser (no longer laser) guns. 

Verdict: Star Trek is back on course.  With two out of three episodes being excellent, I've got confidence that this is a show that will reward consistent viewing.  You can bet we'll all gather together again next Thursday.

Rating for "The Cage": 5 stars.
Rating for "Where No Man has Gone Before": 2.5 stars.
Rating for "The Man Trap": 4 stars.

Thoughts from Galactic Journey’s editor:


by Janice L. Newman

The traveler has already said most of what I would have written about (I was the one saying, “I hope they don’t kill her off!” when Lt. Uhura was being menaced by the creature). A few additional thoughts about last night’s episode:

The cinematography was impressive. When the crew encounter the creature in the first act and each crewmember sees it as a different woman, this was done so smoothly and seamlessly that there was never any question which person’s POV we were following.

The story was nuanced. Though this was a ‘kill the monster’ story, the morality of killing a creature that is ‘the last of its kind’ is called into question, with comparisons being made to the American buffalo and the passenger pigeon. It adds to the story’s poignancy, and the viewer is left wondering whether it might have been possible to resolve the situation without deaths on either side.

Particularly exciting was seeing women in interesting roles, though their ‘uniforms’ were VERY short! I wonder why the men don’t wear short tunic and pantyhose combinations like that?

Rating for "The Cage": 4.5 stars.
Rating for "Where No Man has Gone Before": 2.5 stars.
Rating for "The Man Trap": 4 stars.

A Hippie's Opinion


by Erica Frank

Star Trek has certainly been interesting so far — even "fascinating," as Mr. Spock might say. The ship's controls seem complex but plausible: none of the "three dials and a lever" that plague cheap movie productions, and yet each console seems within the range of a trained technician's skills. Lt. Uhura even mentions being momentarily fed up with her desk work, a nice bit of "office life" banter as she tries — unsuccessfully — to flirt with Mr. Spock.

However, the Star Trek universe is showing signs of predictability. None of it is bad, so far, but if it's going to last, it'll need more variety in its settings and plots. It won't take long for these themes to become clichés.

Three rocky, dusty desert planets.
Three hostile encounters with beings with psychic powers.
Three doctors. The Enterprise seems to go through them like some rock bands go through drummers.

The psychic elements of the creature in "The Man Trap" were minimized; the focus was (understandably) on the creature's murderous habits. However, its "shape-shifting" was actually a kind of mental illusion, although more limited than we saw in "The Cage." And the fact that its victims could not rally themselves to escape, even when called, showed some kind of mind control ability that the Talosians and Mitchell both lacked.

My favorite scene in the episode: Professor Crater showed Kirk and McCoy his dwindling supply of salt, and said, "Nancy and I started with 25 pounds. This is what we have left." McCoy took a few tablets from the nearly-empty vase and tasted one. "Salt," he declared.


Dr. McCoy tastes the "salt"

This is exactly how hippies get cops to take LSD, although they normally put it on sugar cubes, not salt tablets. (LSD has no color or flavor; the active elements are too small for people to taste.) I spent the next several minutes waiting for the hallucinations to kick in.

The producers could've given us a wild psychedelic color extravaganza instead of four more murders. I think we've been cheated.

I don't mind "psychic powers can make people callous or predatory" stories; they're a science fiction staple. I'm hoping we also get some episodes where extra-sensory perceptions lead to more harmonious communities or solve problems instead of creating them.

I enjoyed the episode despite a bit of hand-waving past some plot details. (For example, tasting the salt instead of using a science lab to confirm its identity. The result would've been the same, and this saved time.) The acting was great; I believed these were starship personnel facing a citizen who'd allied himself with a hostile alien. I'm looking forward to more of the series.

4 stars.

Who the %&@$ is Captain Kirk?

by Robin Rose Graves

This first episode didn't give me a good idea of who Kirk is or what his past is, even though I'm pretty sure Kirk is supposed to be the main character of the show. (This is something I also felt was an issue with "Where No Man Has Gone Before".) "The Man Trap" centered more around McCoy, which is fine – I like the implication that with each new episode, a different member of the crew will be at the center of the plot – but for a first episode of a show, I wish they'd spent a little more time getting the audience acquainted with Kirk. When Kirk's life was threatened, I didn't feel any tension since I knew they weren't going to kill him off in the first episode, and his being captain isn't enough for me to root for him.

Pike, the captain in “The Cage”, was better established as a character in the first 20 minutes of his episode than Kirk was in both his pilot and the first episode combined. We know Pike is tired. We know he’s considering retiring. We know he’s from Earth. Kirk? I don’t know anything about him besides his pretty face.

I am left more frustrated than intrigued about his character. Why should I care about the success of this man if I don’t know who he is or what he’s about?

The good story alone in “The Man Trap” convinces me to give this new captain a chance, though I hope the lack of Kirk’s background is something that is remedied sooner rather than later.

This is a great episode, but not a good introduction. 5 stars, despite my complaints.

Home Town Hero

by Tam Phan (Secret Asian Man)

“The Man Trap” is a refreshing debut after the whiplash that resulted from starting with “The Cage” and going straight to “Where No Man Has Gone Before”. In the first few minutes of the episode, we’ve already seen clever camera work, stunning special effects, and a pleasantly paced plot.

It’s a bit concerning that we, yet again, have a new doctor, though I did like his friendship with Kirk, echoing the relationship of Pike and Boyce from "The Cage". The two recurring characters, Kirk and Spock, seem to be the only staple in the show thus far, but perhaps the continued diversity of the cast will prove to be an asset. This is an anthology show, after all.

Seeing Lieutenant Sulu, played by Asian actor George Takei, is nothing short of inspiring. He didn’t contribute much to the plot, but he was an officer with clear officer duties and that is not inconsequential. With at least as many scenes as any of the other supporting actors, I suspect that means the “green thumbed” lieutenant will be a highlight of the show in the upcoming episodes.

Hopefully this show continues to impress. It would be a shame to fall back down after such a great start, but we won’t know until next week.

Rating for “The Cage”: 5 stars
Rating for “Where No Man Has Gone Before”: 2 stars
Rating for “The Man Trap”: 4 stars

From the Young Traveler


by Lorelei Marcus

"Man Trap", though a moodier tale than what I usually prefer, executes every piece of the episode in a superb manner: the acting, direction, and production are all 5-star quality.

Rarely have I seen such a diverse, well-written, and interesting show on television — Star Trek is truly the I, Spy of the science fiction genre (is it any surprise both are Desilu productions?)

It's definitely getting HI-LITED in my TV Guide!

5 stars for this episodes, and high hopes for what's to come.

(And don't forget to tune in in three days at 8:30 PM (Pacific AND Eastern — two showings) for the next episode of Star Trek!)

Come join us!

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Movies, TV

[March 24, 1966] Dark Comedy and Birthday Wishes (a Tony Randall double feature)

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by Lorelei Marcus

Spring is here

The month of spring is upon us, and with it comes the withdrawal of the frigid cold, swaths of buds peeking from their branches, and the boisterous emergence of new life. It's a wonderful time of year, warming the earth until "California Dreaming" is no longer necessary, and promising renewal in general. Yet the most important part of March is not the spring equinox, or another green-centric holiday, or good weather, or flowers, or the fresh start of life.

The most important part of March is the fact that it contains my birthday.

And it just so happened that my special day fell right between two old movie reruns, each of them starring the love of my life, Tony Randall.

I couldn't have asked for a better gift.

Many Happy Buryings

Of course my obligation to consume every piece of media Randall has ever been in is what drove me to watch an obscure TV special of Arsenic and Old Lace . It took that initial incentive, because I have been wary of Arsenic and Old Lace since I'd previously had to watch it (the 1944 film with Cary Grant) in my drama class. Needless to say, the experience was both exasperating and unpleasant. Luckily, this version was neither of the above, and had me hooting with laughter throughout the program.

For those who are unfamiliar with the show, Arsenic and Old Lace is a dark comedy about two sweet old ladies who murder for fun, and their poor nephew, Mortimer Brewster, who discovers their nasty habit and tries to clean up the whole mess. Further conflict arises when Boris Karloff- I mean Jonathan Brewster, Mortimer's brother and a notably malicious murderer, returns home to hide out for a while. As you might imagine, insanity ensues.


The Brewster sisters

I was pleasantly surprised by just how funny this rendition of the classic chaotic plot was. I have to credit the sublimity of the production to three main parts: the acting, the script, and the pacing. I would round off my praise with compliments to the set design as well, but my TV sadly went on the fritz that evening, and I could hardly see what was happening through the snow. Apparently there are still problems the magic of color television cannot fix.


(Not) Boris Karloff and his associate, Dr. Einstein

Yet I still managed to enjoy the show, thanks to some excellent casting choices. Dorothy Stickney and Mildred Natwick play Aunt Abby and Martha Brewster perfectly, with just the right amount of sweetness and charm to build sympathy for these lovely old women, despite their homicidal tendencies. Their banter with each other and their nephews is hysterical, and the contrast of their outwardly harmless appearance with their dark secret is very fun.


Our hero

Boris Karloff is, of course, excellent in his dark, monstrous role. He plays a great foil to the aunts, defining the line between true evil and simply misunderstood. The ladies murder for the claimed benefit of their victims, and they take great delight in their charity work. Jonathan, instead, clearly murders out of spite and has no redeeming qualities whatsoever. The difference is key in establishing who the audience should root for; the homicidal aunties seem a touch less bad and un-relatable when compared with a literal scourge of the Earth.


Sibling rivalry

Though the rest of the cast is marvelous, I'd have to say Tony Randall gives the best performance as Mortimer Brewster, the straightman nephew. You may believe I have a slight bias in favor of Randall at this point, and that's probably true, but I think it's also fair to say that his execution of Mortimer ties the whole show together. Mortimer is a complex balance of a character, always in between being both capable and yet on the edge of a nervous breakdown. If he falls too far in either direction he's either unfunny, annoying, or both. This was the downfall of the first version of Arsenic and Old Lace that I'd watched. That Mortimer was too excitable to get anything done, and spent the entire show whining and floundering around insufferably. Randall was the complete opposite.

He struck the perfect equilibrium of distressed yet productive that made his character both likable and hilarious. The scene where he tries to call his boss to alert him that he can't come into work had me rolling with laughter. I may be severely biased, but here, Randall is deserving of the praise.


Tom Bosley has a humorous turn as Teddy Roosevelt.

The other two great aspects of the show go hand in hand. The dialogue is witty, fun, and delightfully self-aware. I found all the jokes about Jonathan looking like Boris Karloff particularly funny and ironic (given that they got Karloff to play Jonathan!) Alongside the script was the masterful direction, which ensured that the jokes never fell flat and the pacing never dragged. The presentation was very tight and complemented the other positive aspects perfectly. Overall, this version of Arsenic and Old Lace was a splendid time watching the wild antics of the nutty but charming Brewster family. There's not a single flaw that I can find, just a great time, therefore I give it five stars.

Down to New Orleans

The second film, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn , aired a week later as the local Saturday night movie. It kept in keeping with the theme of dark yet funny classics. Based on the 1884 novel of the same name, the film follows a young Huckleberry Finn as he runs away from his abusive father and takes a raft down the Mississippi with his friend and runaway slave, Jim. Finn and Jim encounter a variety of obstacles on their journey, including a feuding family, slave hunters, and a couple of cunning swindlers who rope them into their con. Eventually, they get through it all thanks in part to Finn's ability to lie through his teeth, and the story ends bittersweetly as the traveling pair must seperate and pursue their own paths.


A pensive Huck contemplates a world without shoes

I definitely enjoyed the movie, though I think I would rather read the novel if I would ever consume the story of Huck Finn again. The pacing drags at the beginning, probably due to some poor direction choices and Eddie Hodges' (Huck Finn) stiff acting. Both improve as the show goes on, but the first hour could benefit from being about 20% shorter.


Jim convinces Huck to board his raft

This also may have been a case where Tony Randall's superb acting skills actually hurt the production. Randall plays "The King of France," the brains of the two grifters who force Finn to play along in one of their plots. Unfortunately, he gives the role such charisma and personality that it took me nearly the whole movie to realize his character was supposed to be the villain! Perhaps in hindsight the child-threatening and attempted gold theft should have tipped me off, but truly, who can hate a man that competent at what he does? (Especially one that looks like Tony Randall)


The villain?

My favorite part of the movie was the nuanced way it conveyed its abolitionist themes. Despite explicitly stating several times how "freeing slaves is wrong," the story develops Jim just enough that we empathize with him and hope that he acquires his freedom. Archie Moore's lovable performance also aids in building rapport and getting the audience to root for Jim, especially in heart-wrenching scenes like when he tearfully describes regret at hitting his daughter. This subtle antiracism is a bit new to me, compared all the (justified) current protests and riots that are explicitly denouncing unequal treatment of the black community. It gives me hope that perhaps art like this can be used to bridge the gap of understanding to those who insist on marching in white sheets.


Poignant stuff — who can but wince when seeing a man in chains?

The film is also fairly amusing, with a few solid jokes, and some good physical comedy and dialogue. The funnest part was seeing all the crazy tall tales Finn comes up with to get out of tight situations. I found it very funny that Finn ultimately never gets punished for any of his fibs, subtly implying that the only way to successfully get through life is to flat out lie all the time. I personally haven't read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn , so I don't know if this theme is an artifact of Mark Twain's writing, or just some poor script and direction choices. Despite its flaws, the movie successfully told the story and conveyed the messages it was trying to, all while being fairly entertaining along the way. I give it three stars.


Bittersweet parting

Seventeen candles

And with that, my birthday festivities have come to a close. I think it's time I step away from the silver screen and instead take a walk outside and appreciate the dawning spring. The experience of another year has granted me new wisdom, and I'd like to see what life has to offer outside the artificial television set.

At least, until the next Tony Randall movie comes along.

This is the Young traveler, signing out.




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Movies

[November 14, 1965] A Teenage Dream (The Mating Game)

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by Lorelei Marcus

With the announcement of TV game show Password's hiatus, so were my glimpses of my favorite actor in his best form put on hold.  Left with only the occasional episodes of What's My Line where I could hope to expect maybe two minutes of his handsome face on my screen, and the schlock reruns of his stardom in the 50's that even the projectionists didn't care to watch, my chances of seeing my crush seemed bleak and scarce.

Last Sunday was a cold, dreary day that I'd spent staring at my signed photograph of Tony Randall, contemplating my dark fate, when hope burst through my door.  Hope in the form of my father and a cramped drive-in schedule that included, wedged into the afternoon slot, a movie starring the object of my dreams.

Never have I gotten into a car so fast.

The Mating Game

I went in with low expectations.  The horrid experiences of The Brass Bottle and Fluffy only furthered the trend of Randall's name in the credits being a bad omen for the quality of the movie.  That's why it was such a pleasant surprise when the film opened on a sprawling "Maryland" landscape, settling in on the hustle and bustle of the Larkin family farm.  Pa Larkin (Paul Douglas) and his children are introduced trying to sneak their neighbor's boar onto their truck after "borrowing" it for stud services.  The farm is cluttered with knicknacks, appliances, and an abundance of farm animals, all fundamental parts of Pa's "trading" business, with which he earns his living.


Paradise.

An aspiring self-sufficient homesteader myself, I liked this setup quite a bit. 

Of course, conflict quickly arises when Pa tries to return the boar to Mr. Burnshaw, who's a longtime enemy of the Larkin family.  Finally fed up with their antics, Burnshaw calls up the Internal Revenue Service and demands an income tax investigation.  It turns out that the Larkins have never paid income tax, never even filed a return.  A federal agent is assigned to the case.

Enter our leading man, Mr. Tony Randall, himself.  Luckily, contained as I was in our car, I was able to squeal to my utmost ability, only to the detriment of my father's hearing.

Randall, as the improbably named "Lorenzo Charlton", fares about as well on the assignment as you might expect any respectable government worker trying to apply law and order to an old fashioned farm.  That is to say utter chaos ensues as the whole Larkin family takes every opportunity to make Charlton feel at home when all he wants to do is get the job done.

Worse still for his work is Pa's beautiful, fun-loving daugher, Mariette (Debbie Reynolds) who takes an aggressive liking to Charlton.  (If there were ever an accurate representation of the Young Traveler on the silver screen, tomboyish, hellraising, Tony-Randall loving Mariette is it!)


Love at first sight.


Lorenzo's heart starts to thaw on the set of Forbidden Planet.

All sorts of high jinks ensue, ranging from the theft of Charlton's motor by Pa's two boys (ostensibly to keep it from burning oil; in reality, to keep the taxman in the house long enough to fall for Mariette) to a scene featuring a very drunk Charlton dancing around in his underwear.  It's an absolute romping delight to witness.


Tony Randall in his underwear.  That's all I needed to know.

Unfortunately, the fun doesn't last, as unfriendly neighbor Burnshaw calls up Charlton's boss and demands to know why the Larkins haven't been completely ruined yet.  The future looks dim as Charlton's boss comes to the farm himself, threatens to fire Charlton if he doesn't leave, and then determines that the Larkins, in fact, owe Uncle Sam $50,000!

The newly budding love between Charlton and Mariette cut off a the root, the Larkin family property on the block…whatever shall our heroes do?


Lorenzo is sent on his way.


Mariette plans to take on the IRS single-handedly.

Well, to give it away, the movie has a happy ending.  And it comes in an unpaid Civil War era government contract worth considerably more than what the Larkins owe.  In an act of heroism, Charlton convinces no less a personage than the Treasury Department's Inspector General to go to the farm and make good on the debt. 


Charlton takes on the IRS single-fingeredly.

The Larkins are happy not to owe but resistant to the idea of being millionaires, or as Pa repeatedly says:

"We eat good, sleep good, feel good. What more do we need?"

Charlton makes the brilliant suggestion of allocating the government debt to the Larkins to cover any current and future tax obligation, to which the IG gladly agrees. 

Charlton (now universally called "Charlie") and Mariette run off to roll in the haybales together, and everyone lives happily ever after.

The Mating Game is an unexpected delight with a fun premise carried by fine acting.  Paul Douglas (in his last role) and Una Merkel have wonderful chemistry as Pa and Ma, warming every scene they're in.  Debbie Reynolds does an excellent job capturing the wild charm of a young farmgirl, especially when she's dashing up and down, being chased around the barn by suitors, or riding her horse over path and fence.  Even the child actors, all four of them, are good, adding just the right punch lines to already hysterical scenes.

And of course, as always, Tony Randall is superb.  His delivery is crisp, his growing exasperation appears genuine, and his "bad" inebriated dancing is still incredibly impressive.  It is such a relief that, for once, he was able to play a competent and likable character.  To the girls I overheard in the car next over saying that "they should have gotten a more handsome leading man," I ask, "ARE YOU BLIND?"  The fastidious but charming Charlton couldn't possibly have been played better by anyone else!

But in the end, I was bound to love this movie.  It is my dream set to celluloid: living on a farm with Tony Randall.  And though the story is quite silly at times, and the ending a little too good to be true, The Mating Game serves its purpose as a sweet escape from reality.  If the tumultuous year of 1965 has gotten to be too much for you, then I strongly advise (check local cinema and TV listings of course) a trip to green Maryland with Tony Randall on your arm.

Just be sure to give him back when you're done — I do have a big fat crush on him, after all.

Until then, this is the Young Traveler, signing off.




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Movies

[September 18, 1965] Disastrous! (The Day the Earth Stood Still and When Worlds Collide)

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by Lorelei Marcus

Dark Age for the Boob Tube

Mop-tops and Munsters are on the rise, replacing the theoretical with the fantastical.  With the end of pioneering anthology shows like The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits, television has transformed into a wasteland for science fiction.  Gone are the prospective and predictive contents depicting the wonders of space, sea, and air.  Instead, we have spies, saIlors, and sorceresses clogging our TV screens – with mixed results.

But there is hope for the science fiction aficionados of the world.  Upcoming productions like Lost in Space and Star Trek hold promise for the revitalization of the genre on TV.  My father and I are both eagerly awaiting this new dawn.  However, Lost in Space is just starting, and Star Trek is at least four months away (there is rumor of it being a mid-season replacement starting in January 1966). 

Luckily, there is a plethora of now-classic science fiction movies that came out in the last decade that we missed the first time around, but which are occasionally revived at theaters and drive-ins.  These shows allow us to sate our viewing appetite while we wait for the TV crop to come in.

That's how we ended up in a dingy old theater on the edge of town watching a double feature billed as "They Came from 1951!" – The Day the Earth Stood Still and When Worlds Collide shown back to back.  It was an interesting experience, to say the least.

The Day the Earth Stood Still

The story of The Day the Earth Stood Still is probably well known to everyone.  However, since my dad and I managed to go in completely unaware of anything about the movie, other than what we could discern from the poster, here's a brief summary:

The Day the Earth Stood Still is a black and white film about an alien named Klaatu who comes to Earth in a flying saucer (those being all the rage in 1951) to deliver a momentous message to humanity.  He looks just like us despite having traveled more than 250 million miles to get to the Earth.


To be fair, Klaatu could have picked a less menacing gesture to start with.


It's a good thing that tank crew had pistols!

After a hostile reception, Klaatu refuses to convey his message to anyone but an assemblage of all the world's leaders.  When this proves impossible for primitive Earth to manage, Klaatu escapes military custody and tries to assimilate with human society so as to find an alternate solution.


Wow!  Bill aids owner on foreclosure!


"Land sakes!  There's an alien among us!  Better not tell Opie – it'll give him nightmares…"

Hysteria ensues as the media report on the unleashing of a twisted, horrific alien monster on the streets of D.C.  With the aid of a boy, his mother, and a scientist, Klaatu must find a way to connect with all of humanity, while dodging the agents of the U.S. Government, to prevent the destruction of our world – which will happen one way or another if Earth does not cease its warlike ways.


"I'd like to meet all of your assembled leaders." "Oh, you mean like a United Nations?" "Sure." "Nah.  Too much trouble."

Ultimately, the film is a cautionary tale which left me with two overriding messages: "Don't shoot on sight" and "Listen to children, women, and scientists" (scientists can be of any gender). 


"Are you a scientist?"  "What gave it away?"

I actually appreciate what this movie was trying to say, but its execution was so heavy-handed, populated with more straw men than Iowa, it weakened the message.  The US military is portrayed as so hilariously incompetent, it creates inconsistencies in the plot.  I'm left wondering how the army can afford to send every jeep and tank in its arsenal to capture Klaatu but only leaves two men to guard his spaceship.  What could have been a nuanced social commentary on the moral ambiguity of the U.S. Government's policies turns into a laughable mess. 


"Night, Tom…Jerry.  I'm sure you two will be just fine guarding that spaceship next to the big robot!"


There's the rest of the army.  A bit too late…

The science is slightly better, though the idea there could be advanced life on other planets in our solar system feels incredibly old fashioned in light of the recent Mariner mission. [The distance he traveled suggests he came from Mars, but he may not be a Martian – there may simply be an alien outpost on Mars (ed.)]

However, the movie did get the special effects and set design right.  I was particularly impressed by the slick interior of the spaceship.  The glowing buttons and glass instruments are both beautiful and the embodiment of the science fiction aesthetic. 


The latest in blinky light and glass chic!

I was also entertained by the design of Gort, Klaatu's all-powerful robot.  While silver mittens and underwear over a metallic motorcycle suit would not have been my first fashion choice, it's charming none the less.


"I'd like to say it's been a pleasure, but…"

The acting and pacing were fine.  I especially enjoyed the performance of Patricia Neal, the tough mother character, and also Michael Rennie (clearly inspired by Robert Oppenheimer).  Young Billy Gray is good too, more remiscent of Kurt Russell than Ron Howard. 


You know that awkward moment when you're stuck in an elevator with a stranger?


"I like this guy.  He seems like a good guy.  Find me more like him."

In total, the movie was a thoroughly OK experience.  It could have done a lot better in many places, but in the end, it did make an effort, which is more than can be said for many SF films these days.

Three stars

When Worlds Collide

When Worlds Collide's title literally exploded across the movie screen with tongues of flames blazing in glorious color accompanied by a screeching score.  No five year olds were wriggling in their seats anymore.  With an intro like that, and with producer George Pal's name in big print, this move held real promise…

…and then the camera zoomed on a giant Bible, which flipped to a passage from the tale of Noah's Ark, to keep us from missing the theme of the movie. 


Apparently, subtlety wasn't a widely known concept in the early '50s.

But I still had hope.  After the dramatic introduction, the story began in a South African observatory in which an astromer glances through a telescope and realizes that, by God, he's confirmed the end of the world!


"You see it too, right, old chap?"

Dave Randall, professional aviator and the movie's protagonist, is ordered to deliver these findings in complete secrecy to an astronomer in the United States.  Upon doing so, and meeting said astronomer's lovely daughter, he is let in on the secret: Bellus, a "star" (just twelve times more massive than the Earth) and its lone Earthlike planet, Zyra, are on a direct collision course with our world.  We have only eight months to prepare.


"My, you are dull!"

I turned to my father, who is much more knowledgeable of orbital mechanics than I am, and asked, "Is that even possible?"  To which he responded, "No."  And then all the five year olds turned around and shushed us.

This was only the first of many such instances in this movie.  Willy Ley, it isn't.

The astronomer presents this information to the United Nations and claims the only hope is building a spacecraft to fly to Zyra before Bellus destroys the Earth.  The UN quite literally laughs in the astronomer's face, and thus he turns instead to private investors to make the Modern Noah's Ark a reality.


"Sit down, Mr. Addison!  And shut that talking horse up while you're at it!"


New at Walt Disney's Tomorrowland!

Some of the investors provide their funds freely, but one rich man only backs the project after securing the promise of passage on the ark.  The ensuing scenes of candidate selection for the engineering team and the commencement of ark construction are intertwined with a typical love triangle between Randall, the astronomer's colorless daughter, and her fiancee, Tony.  These bits fall flat; indeed, by the end of the movie, Tony and Randall have far more chemistry with each other than the daughter.  And you can imagine the dismay I felt at hearing the names "Tony" and "Randall," yet knowing that the person bearing both of those names was nowhere to be seen.


Tony & Randall: the sparks fly.

And that isn't the worst part of the movie!  The story is progressively more convoluted and unbelievable (and worse, rather dull).  The selection of the Ark's passengers becomes increasingly arbitrary despite the earlier emphasis given on relying on a random lottery.  The science is atrocious, the characters shallow, the dialogue lousy. 


"Sure, space is at a premium, but let's take this tyke and his dog!


"And this couple! I mean, they're in love and all!


"But this guy?  I know he paid for all of this, but he's a jerk.  He needs to die."


"Mein Fuhrer!  I can walk!"

But the film's biggest fault, out of everything, is its lack of vision.  If The Day the Earth Stood Still is a progressive film, When World's Collide is reactionary.  The women passengers/technicians and the all-male engineer corps are always segregated.  All of the passengers are strapping young college students.  All seem to be of a similar class.  And they are all white.


The audience at this point in the film.

I can understand wanting young candidates to weather the harshness of space travel, but to exclusively choose young colonists discounts the immense wisdom and knowledge held by the old.  The men and women colonists are equal in number, but that has nothing to do with the scientific prowess of the women; rather, this is just to ensure that every man has a wife.

And even setting aside the morality of excluding all but the lily white from the candidate pool, it's a fatal mistake biologically.  If a colony can only start with 40 people, it needs as diverse a gene pool as possible to prevent the perils of inbreeding.

Never mind that.  What's important is that a small cadre of white, rich, Christian youngsters inherits the mantle of humanity.

When Worlds Collide is a celebration of the worst parts of society in the 1950s.  I can look past the bad acting.  I can look past the gratuitous religious imagery.  And I can even ignore the fact that the completely alien world has perfectly breathable air.  But I cannot excuse the lazy and offensive message this film chose to convey.

The only thing that keeps this movie from getting a one-star rank is its production values.  The special effects are incredible, with some of the best painted backgrounds I have ever seen in a movie.  The Earth's destruction sequences are also good, what little we get of them.  For a movie about the end of our entire world, George Pal spent an awful long time filming the inside of a shaking office set… Nevertheless, judged on visuals alone, When Worlds Collide is impressive.


What we paid to see.

If only it weren't so terrible everywhere else.

Two stars.

Emerging into the Light

Kvetching aside, I don't regret watching either of these two movies.  It gave me a great perspective on the history of science fiction on the silver screen, and it was interesting noting the impact of these two blockbusters on subsequent stories, both on television and in the movies.  I'm particularly keen to see if any elements of these movies live on in upcoming releases, from Roddenberry's Star Trek to Kubrick's upcoming 2001 (formerly Journey Beyond the Stars).  Only time will tell.  Until then,

This is the Young Traveler, signing off.

We'll be discussing these movies and more at our next Journey Show: At the Movies!

DON'T MISS IT!




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