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[December 18, 1967] God Out Of The Machine (Doctor Who: The Ice Warriors [Part 2])

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By Jessica Holmes

Another year draws to a close, and so does this serial. Let’s take a closer look at the ending of The Ice Warriors.

EPISODE FOUR

As the Ice Warriors train their cannon on Victoria, I have to wonder: how do they do anything with those great big digger-game claws of theirs?

While I’m pondering this, the Ice Warriors decide that Victoria is more useful as live bait than dead meat, and refrain from killing her. At the Doctor’s urging, Victoria makes a run for it, with an Ice Warrior in…  lukewarm pursuit.

Waddling like people from a Fisher Price set.

Desiring to find out what kind of reactor the Ice Warrior ship has (as Victoria had no idea what she was looking at), the Doctor decides to go have a look for himself, taking a vial of ammonium sulphide with him for protection.


The Doctor invents a new drinking game: take a shot every time Victoria gets captured.

I enjoy how blasé he is about the idea of getting deliberately captured. After the billionth time being taken captive by the baddie of the week, it probably gets a bit dull. Still, at least he probably has his recorder to keep him amused.

Meanwhile, Victoria continues to run from the Ice Warrior. Perhaps she would move faster if she wasted less oxygen screaming her lungs out. It’s not doing her much good, and it’s not making the already unstable glacier any safer.

Not for the Ice Warrior, anyway. Just as it catches up to her, a well-timed avalanche buries the pair of them, killing the Warrior and trapping Victoria.

Jamie meanwhile starts to recover from his injury, but to his distress discovers that the alien weapon has left him paralysed from the waist down. Penley and Storr, concerned for the lad, debate how best to help him. Storr has the bright idea of befriending the aliens and asking for their help—‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’ and all that. Well, I can’t fault a chap for wanting to see the best in people. Even when those people are eight feet tall and have a violent streak.


Nice pants.

Storr heads out onto the ice with Penley chasing after him, and both find something unexpected. Storr finds Victoria, and Penley finds the Doctor. Upon learning from Victoria that the aliens want to destroy the scientists’ base, Storr is even more eager to make their acquaintance.

Unfortunately, the Ice Warriors do not share his eagerness to work together. Already angry with Victoria for running away and costing him one of his warriors, Varga sees no use for Storr, and kills him before he even gets a chance to ask about some help for Jamie. Not that Varga would have given it.

To amend my previous statement: I can’t fault a man for being trusting, but I can fault him for trying to conspire to blow up a load of people because he doesn’t like them.

And it looks like Victoria is back at square one. I think of plot threads like this as a walk around the block. It might look like you’re going places and doing things, but you just end up back where you started with sore feet.

Meanwhile, the Doctor has a look at Jamie, and assures him that he will regain the use of his legs—as long as he gets some proper medical care and supervision. A reluctant Penley agrees to take Jamie back to the base while the Doctor goes ahead to meet with the Warriors.

Things get off to a rocky start on that front. The Ice Warriors are good enough to open the exterior airlock at the Doctor’s knock, but then seal him inside, demanding to know who he is… under threat of explosive decompression!

EPISODE FIVE

In true Doctor fashion, he gets out of the situation by giving the Ice Warriors an absolute non-answer. He’s a ‘scientist’.

I wouldn't count that as a valid response, but apparently it's good enough for the Ice Warriors, who let him in.

Meanwhile, Penley and Jamie run into trouble as they traverse the wilderness, as they hear the not-so-distant howl of wolves…before coming face to face with a bear.

Awwww.

Oh, I mean ‘oh no, how scary!’

Luckily, Penley manages to stun it.

The Ice Warriors start asking the Doctor tricky questions, beginning to realise that he’s not really here to offer help, but to spy, and confiscate his communication device.. The Doctor warns them that sooner or later the base will have to use the Ioniser, whatever the consequences. Back at base, Clent takes his meaning. But what if the Ioniser makes the alien ship blow up? The contamination could be disastrous. But if he doesn’t use the ioniser, the glacier will advance and Europe will be consumed by ice.

Unsure of what to do, he puts the question to the computer. And the computer doesn’t know. Being purely logical, it’s risk-averse, and tells him to wait for more information. Realising the computer is no help, Clent decides to… uh… do as it says and wait around.

I thought he was gearing up for a big impressive leadership moment, but it looks like he was just being pompous.

Threatening to kill Victoria, the Ice Warriors start asking what the base’s power source is. Though she protests not to tell them, the Doctor says they’ll find what they need at the base.

These Ice Warriors are extremely accepting of evasive answers, aren’t they?

Satisfied, the Ice Warriors immediately begin planning to attack the base, to which Victoria protests ‘you can’t be so inhuman!’

Gee, what gave it away, Victoria? Was it the hissing, the scales, or the fact they’re literally from Mars?

Penley and Jamie make it to the base, where Clent is not exactly pleased to see his ex-colleague. The dynamic between Clent and Penley is actually my favourite part of this entire serial. There’s a real sense of mutual resentment, betrayal, and a heaping helping of bitterness.

They’re like a couple of divorcees.

It doesn’t take long before they’re at each others’ throats, and a heated argument quickly devolves into a scuffle, resulting in Penley and Jamie getting stunned and locked away in a recovery room.

Honestly, the human dynamics in this serial are more interesting to me than the alien threat. It’s a while since we’ve had a serial without any aliens or robots or whatnot. Perhaps we could do with a few more from time to time?

The Ice Warriors prepare to assault the base, and Victoria’s incessant wailing for once comes in useful, providing a cover for the Doctor to whisper his plan to her.

Of course, it doesn’t really help that she keeps halting her sobs to whisper back to him.

Somehow, their guard doesn’t notice.

The Doctor’s plan more or less consists of throwing his vial of ammonium sulphide at the floor and hoping the alien likes it less than he and Victoria will. See, ammonium sulphide is better known…as a stink-bomb. Because it stinks.

Also it’s highly flammable, corrosive, and toxic.

Probably not the best thing to be dropping in a confined space.

Silly ideas like this are what happen if you get all your escape tactics from the Beano.

He who smelt it dealt it.

EPISODE SIX

The Ice Warriors fire on the base, but show restraint, offering Clent the opportunity to surrender. Clent, of course, is defiant, but not stupid. Not in this circumstance, anyway. He offers to speak with Varga, promising no traps or conditions.

Unaware that the Doctor and Victoria are on the cusp of escaping, Varga agrees, taking his remaining warriors with him.

Clent’s command begins to slip, however, as I’m not the only one frustrated with his lack of direct action and insistence on obeying the computer. One of the scientists even tries to destroy it, though it doesn’t go well for him. Not about to give up, he tries to attack the Ice Warriors when they arrive, resulting in a swift death. Alas, poor guy-whose-name-I-didn’t-pay-attention-to.

Varga demands the base’s mercury isotopes. One problem. The base doesn’t have mercury isotopes. Varga decides to power down the reactor (and with it, the Ioniser) and take a look for himself.  Clent continues to impotently protest, but given that he’s about as much use to Varga as a chocolate teapot, it’s only Varga’s mercy keeping him alive right now. He’d better stop testing him.

As for the Doctor, he’s doing mischief as usual, tampering with the Warriors’ sonic cannon to make it resonate with water more. He assumes (and I’d love to know what made him come to this conclusion) that the Ice Warriors have a higher water content in their bodies. He reckons that it should knock the Warriors out and give the humans a nasty headache.

Or it might kill them.

Penley has his own idea for dealing with the Ice Warriors, turning up the heating to the point that it becomes very uncomfortable for them, and the Doctor risks using the cannon. The Ice Warriors certainly don’t enjoy that. Oddly enough, they remain conscious, while the humans are knocked out.

And yet the aliens still retreat, with the humans entirely at their mercy.

Am I just tired, or does this not make sense?

The Doctor and Victoria hurry back to the base, finding the inhabitants unconscious but otherwise unharmed by the look of it. Meanwhile, Varga and his crew return to their ship.

The scientists start powering the ioniser back up again, but Clent is fearful of using it on what he now knows (thanks to the Doctor) is the alien ship’s ion reactor.

The computer of course tells him not to do it. It’s time for a human to make a decision around here—but Clent isn’t up to the task, nor is his second-in-command, who is even more fanatically devoted to the computer than he is.

If you listen closely, you can hear the writer screaming at you that overreliance on technology is bad.

You might have noticed I haven’t mentioned Victoria in a while. That’s because she simply disappears from the plot after she and the Doctor leave the ship.

With Clent going to pieces, Penley takes over, coolly directing the scientists to increase the Ioniser to full strength. When questioned about the possibility of the Ice Warriors breaking free of the ice, he simply replies that at full power, the Ioniser can melt rock.

Not realising that their number is up, the Ice Warriors frantically try to find a little bit of power for their ship to take off. It looks like they might manage it as their control panels start to light up…and then to their horror they realise that it’s not power that’s making them do that. It’s heat.

A small explosion spares them a terribly drawn-out death by roasting, which would be rather dark for teatime television.

With the scientists very relieved to find that Penley’s risk paid off and that they’re not dead, Clent admits a grudging respect for him. It looks like they might reconcile their differences after all.

Not that the Doctor will be around to see it. In typical fashion, he and Jamie (now back on his own two feet) slink off to the TARDIS while everyone else is distracted, off to the next adventure.

Final Thoughts

So, that was The Ice Warriors! Is it just another ‘base-under-siege’ plot or is it something more? Hmm… yes and no. It certainly has ambitions to be something more.

I’ll start with the Ice Warriors themselves.

They were fine, but there’s nothing about them that I can extrapolate into a philosophical ramble. They’re just quite standard and not especially interesting. As I said, the humans in this are a lot more interesting, particularly Penley and Clent—especially when you put them in a room together. The actors have great chemistry, and I have no doubt the characters have a long and storied past.

As I said, they are just like a divorced couple.

Now, onto something a bit meatier.

It’s ever so subtle, but there’s a recurring theme of overreliance on computers for decision-making being a bad thing. Subtle… as a sonic cannon to the face.

“We trust the computer. It is our strength and our guide.”

You might forget they’re talking about a machine and not a deity.

Technological reliance and religious fanaticism, in this future, seem one and the same. That’s a pretty interesting notion, and I see where the writer is coming from. There’s a definite decline in mainstream religion these days, but that’s not to say that people are turning away from belief itself– quite the opposite, really. They’re just turning to other avenues in their search for an elusive higher power. Who’s to say that one day we won’t make our own?

Ultimately, it’s a Humanist fable. Nothing magically changed to enable the resolution of the plot. The dilemma presented didn’t suddenly offer a simple solution. The humans survived through faith in themselves—not in a Deus Ex Machina.

3.75 stars out of 5.




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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[December 14, 1967] What a Drag it is Getting Old (Star Trek: "The Deadly Years")

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by Janice L. Newman

Will You Still Need Me, Will You Still Feed Me?

Different cultures often have profoundly different ways of dealing with the basics of life: whether or not it is traditional to bury or cremate a corpse, for example, or the ‘proper’ way to discipline a child. One aspect of life that we all have to face (if we live long enough), is aging. In the USA, aging is treated almost as an illness, as though those who begin to show gray in their hair (or, heaven forbid, to lose it) are suffering from a progressive malady that will eventually destroy their bodies and minds. (This is particularly true for women, of course. As the lyrics in “I Do, I Do” say, “Men of forty go to town. Women go to pot”.) Contrast this with Asian cultures, many of which traditionally treat their elderly with a deep respect that borders on reverence.

This week’s Star Trek episode, The Deadly Years, wasn’t exactly a true exploration of aging and its effects. It mostly seemed an excuse to have an ‘elderly’ Kirk, Spock, and McCoy make sarcastic and biting remarks at each other, and in this it succeeded. It did not, however, do much to challenge the traditional view of aging in Western countries, and the episode as a whole did not hang together as well as one might have hoped.

When a group of Star Trek officers consisting of Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scotty, Chekov, and Lt. Galway beams down to check the progress of a scientific expedition, they are shocked to find that most of the members of the colony have died of old age—despite the fact that none of them were supposed to be over the age of thirty.


"I said, we owe our youthfulness to clean living and lots of B12!"

After returning to the ship, the members of the team soon begin to show signs of rapid aging themselves. This part of the episode is particularly well-handled: the age makeup is subtle, and the characters have minor aches and pains, slight forgetfulness and moments of confusion. It’s chilling, because anyone who has either dealt with an elderly person or been one recognizes at least some of the signs. The deterioration continues, becoming more obvious (as does the age makeup): loss of hearing and vision, increasing trouble remembering things, and on McCoy’s part, an exaggeration of his Southern accent! It’s explained that the mental decline caused by the condition is actually faster than the physical decline, leading to early senility. Only Chekov has escaped the effects, and no one can explain why.


"Keep pumping those young legs back there, Mr. Chekov!"

There is a love interest of sorts for Captain Kirk, but she adds nothing to the story and serves no purpose except to hover in the background and make sorrowful faces. More interesting is Commodore Stocker, who follows his conscience and convenes a mental competency hearing for Captain Kirk. Under almost any other circumstances, doing so would have been the right choice. Unfortunately, once Stocker gains control of the ship he takes it directly into the neutral zone in an attempt to get to the nearest Starbase as quickly as possible. Predictably, the Enterprise is attacked by the Romulans. While I appreciated Stocker as a character who was following his conscience, it was clear that he was there primarily to put the Enterprise in danger and increase the drama, as if the fear of losing most of the main cast and fan favorites to old age wasn’t enough.


Who could have foreseen this turn of events?

Between the trial and the Romulans, there isn’t much time to wrap things up. McCoy discovers the solution in the nick of time, and they inject it into the captain, who screams and writhes. For some reason, the adrenaline they use not only counteracts the radiation that caused the artificial aging, it actually reverses it, allowing Kirk to sweep onto the bridge, make a nice callback to The Corbomite Maneuver, and save the day. The bridge crew is young again, or at least young enough that they don’t have to worry for a while.

All in all the episode was in the ‘fun’ category: a story that didn’t make much sense when you look at it closely, but enjoyable enough to watch for the interactions between “old” Spock, Kirk, and extra-grumpy McCoy. It took no risks and did nothing to challenge deeply-ingrained beliefs of its Western audience about aging and the desirability thereof. I hope that the remaining episodes of the second season will be a little more willing to push the boundaries, or at least have a more convincing scientific foundation.

Three stars.

Grow Old Along with Me


by Gideon Marcus

Every so often, a Trek writer eschews plot, common sense, and scientific accuracy to put forth a pet proposal.  "Let's have a spooky Halloween episode!" ("Catspaw").  "Let's have the Enterprise traipse around in the modern day!" ("Tomorrow is Yesterday").  "Let's make everyone on the Enterprise drunk! ("The Naked Time").  Let's make an evil Enterprise ("Mirror, Mirror").

Mind you, the results aren't always bad.  Indeed, these last two are among my favorite episodes.  But their fundamental premises are silly.  The premise of "The Deadly Years" is similarly simple…and silly: "What if all the senior officers got really old?"

Of course, aging doesn't work as we saw in the show, and it certainly doesn't tint hair (reversibly or otherwise).  What the crew really contracted was a deadly form of radiation poisoning, and I'm surprised none of them acted accordingly.  They should have all remained in sick bay, under quarantine (how do they know it's not contagious?) Much was made of the lack of senior officers who could sit in the center seat, but haven't we twice seen Sulu do that (in battle, no less)?  Wasn't Mr. DeSalle at the conn just a few episodes ago?


Wrong man for the job.

Left without comment was the fact that the Romulans now appear to have warp drive and can keep up with the Enterprise at all but the highest speeds.  I wonder if this presages a new war…especially with the recent and casual Neutral Zone violation.

Don't get me wrong.  As an opportunity to watch the show's stars do their best Walter Brennan impressions, it was a delight.  It was a glimpse of what the retired crew will be like when they all settle down at the Starfleet retirement home: McCoy and Kirk will irritably play cards, each trying to sneak a snort of Saurian Brandy, while Nurse Chapel's kid (following in the family tradition) tries to confiscate the flask.  Scotty will be asleep on the couch, a copy of Popular Mechanics over one knee and the latest Playboy on the other.  Spock, of course, will still be hale at that point.  Maybe he will teach a class for flag officers on why supply clerks can't run starships.


"If you have any questions, please see the historical entry marked Stardate 3478.2"

Also, count me among the very few who enjoyed the appearance of Janet Wallace (the mom in my favorite Twilight Zone episode, "Little Girl Lost"!) I enjoy learning more about Kirk's history, and the couple seemed to have had a sweet, if somewhat doomed, relationship.  I wish she'd had more to do in the episode (why was she even on the ship?  Is she stationed on Starbase 10?), but at least she and Kirk didn't have time to smooch on the bridge a la Areel Shaw in "Court Martial."


"I must say, Jim… middle-age looks very sexy on you."

Finally, I thought Charles Drake did a great job as Stocker.  He usually plays a heavy when I see him on other shows, so it was nice to see him as a good guy for a change.  Since Joe is going to talk a lot about the commodore, I will leave things off here.

Three stars.

19th Nervous Breakdown

by Joe Reid

This week’s episode of Star Trek demonstrated a clever duality.  An inverse duality of two men.  The first man started perfectly in his depth, then nearly drowned as he lost the ability to stay afloat.  The second man started out like a swimmer looking for safe purchase who ended up diving way over his head.  The first man was Kirk.  As the aging sickness got worse, he failed to realize that he was sinking.  His journey of loss and eventual re-empowerment was great in this story.

The second man was Commodore Stocker.

He was among those in the briefing room to discuss the strange happenings on Gamma Hydra IV.  The first thing that we learned about Stocker was that he was an administrator, and this planet was in his administrative area.  The next thing that we learned was that he had a new job: As a flag officer and a man of authority he was very anxious to get to his new post at Starbase 10.

As the senior crew members started to show signs of deterioration due to rapid aging, Stocker was concerned and wanted to help.  His only solution was for the ship to get to Starbase 10, so that he could use its resources to save everyone.  He felt so helpless on a starship and all he could think of was to get to a place where he could feel empowered.  He felt it so strongly that he asked Kirk three times to get him to Starbase 10.

Soon Stocker became a character that would just hang around in the background watching Kirk as he continued to age and started to make mistake after mistake.  Always nearby standing there with a concerned and helpless look on his face.


"Stop making that face, Commodore.  I'm fine."

In a position of powerlessness, desperately desiring to get to a place where he could feel useful, Stocker finally decided to act.  Act as an administrator, an ominpresent one at that.  He appeared out of nowhere and cornered Spock as he was walking.  Then Stocker used the power of Starfleet regulations to strongarm Spock into convening an Extraordinary Competency Hearing in order to remove the ailing Kirk from command.  This action showed Stocker coming into his own depth and exercising his power.

After the hearing, where Kirk met with failure, Stocker was able to step even further into his depths and power by taking command of the Enterprise himself.  Sadly, taking command of a starship soon proved a step too far, plunging him way over his depth.  This was made obvious by his very first command: “Set a course for Starbase 10,” even though the course took the ship into the Romulan neutral zone.

Stocker was so desperate to get to safety that he ignored the safety of the crew.  That desire led straight to danger, evident when the Romulans immediately attacked as they entered the neutral zone.  He then fell further out of his depth when the only skill he possessed, negotiation, failed him as the Romulans would not even talk to him.  Hitting an all time low as he contemplated surrendering the Enterprise to the Romulans–people notorious for taking no prisoners.


"I did say this was a bad idea."

Salvation came for Stocker as a revived Kirk stepped on the bridge.  As Kirk pranced in, Stocker leapt out of the command chair, relieved that Kirk had arrived.  After Kirk cleverly saved the crew from the Romulans, along with the aging sickness being cured, Stocker was finally able to relax as a man who was saved from drowning in waters too deep for him to survive.  Not a bad episode.  Not a bad character.

Three stars

I have no idea what to make of tomorrow night's episode, but it certainly looks action packed.

Here's the invitation. Come join us!




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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[December 8, 1967] You're a Big Girl Now (Star Trek: "Friday's Child")

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"Episodus Interruptus"


by Amber Dubin

Every episode of Star Trek is 51 minutes long, with nine minutes left over for ads and bumpers.  And while this week's episode, "Friday's Child", doesn't clock in any shorter than usual, you may finish the hour feeling like you've missed something.  It's a show very much in a hurry, and it cuts a lot of corners to get where it's going.

We open on a bridge crew meeting in which they are discussing the best way to approach mining treaty negotiations with the 7 foot tall, war-like, tribal people of Capella IV. This routine excursion immediately goes off script when Kirk, Spock, McCoy and Officer Grant greet the Capellan representatives. A Klingon accompanies the Capellas. Before anyone can stop him, Officer Grant draws his weapon on the Klingon, forcing a Capellan to neutralize the threat. Grant collapses into Kirk's arms, a weapon buried in his chest. Thus, the first death of the episode occurs before the opening credits can even run.


Trigger-happy Grant, we hardly knew ye.

When the landing party finally gains an audience with the king (Ti-er), it becomes clear that there is unrest in the royal tent over who should be given mining rights between the Federation and the Klingons. The current Ti-er, Aka-ar, seems to side with the Federation, due to their honesty and respect for the Capellan planetary autonomy. On the other hand, Ma-ab, who claims to "speak for many" favors Kras the Klingon, whom he thinks has values that more easily align with his macho, Darwinian survivalist, Capellan traditions. Aka-ar offers to fight it out, but Ma-ab retreats, claiming it should be the choice of the Ti-er.

Meanwhile, in space, a ship claiming to be a Federation freighter lures the Enterprise, Scottie in command, away from the planet. That Scottie does so without alerting the landing party, nor determining why they do not answer his hails, I find suspect…to say the least!


"Let's go, lads. After we answer the phony distress call, maybe we can do some last minute Christmas shopping."

In one of the wildest cuts of the episode, we find ourselves back on the planet, the entire village erupted into civil war. In short order, Ma-ab emerges victorious and claims the throne. The issue at hand soon becomes removing the threat posed by the previous Ti-er's pregnant wife, Eleen. All agree that she must be executed to prevent the birth of her child, except Captain Kirk, who snatches her away from the blade about to plunge into her body. The pregnant widow then declares her right to see Kirk executed, as "no man may lay hands on the wife of the Ti-er." The condemned are taken to a tent, from which they promptly escape, dragging the reluctant widow with them.

The landing party retreats into the mountains, using clever traps and inhospitable terrain to keep the Cappellan pursuers at bay. McCoy exercises his prerogative as a doctor, tending to Eleen's arm and checking on the progress of her pregnancy. The Ti-er's widow takes poorly to this, and a slapping match ensues. Rather than becoming upset, Eleen is impressed with McCoy's cheek, tenderly taking his offending hand in hers. Spock witnesses this part of the exchange. McCoy snatches his hand back, but not before receiving a raised eyebrow from the Vulcan.


To be fair, this is about the only acting Nimoy gets to do this episode.

With this permission to touch her thus established, McCoy is able to help deliver her son, but in trying to get her to want the child she hates, McKCoy inadvertently claims ownership of the child. Logically, she then knocks McCoy unconscious and leaves him with 'their' infant to rejoin the Cappellan pursuer. It turns out this is actually to save their lives; she tells her countrymen that she killed them.

But the Klingon is dubious. He demands to see the bodies of the Earthmen himself. When Ma-ab expresses affront at Kras' doubting the word of a Ti-er's wife, Kras goes berserk, slaughtering his former allies. Ma-ab sees he was wrong to trust this Klingon and relinquishes his right to the throne, staying the widow's execution in exchange. He then offers his life to the Klingon to distract him while Ma-ab's second in command gets in position to finally strike the Klingon down.


"Klingon!  I challenge you to a jumping jacks contest!"

Extremely late to the party, Scottie and a huge troop of security officers emerge from the shadows, revealing that after he determined the distress signal to be a Klingon deception, he bypassed a conflict with a Klingon vessel offscreen and beamed down an entire party–without contacting Kirk first or getting any idea what kind of situation he'd be beaming his troop down into. Bolstered by this show of force, McCoy reveals the newborn Ti-er. He instructs the infant's new mother how to care for her child and the hastily settled coup somehow doesn't cause any hindrance to the mining treaty that is quickly signed off screen. Cue a final laugh line (the child is named Leonard James Aka-ar) and finis.

My biggest problem with this episode is how poorly the pacing of the two storylines blends together. With the intricate culture of the planet and the cat-and-mouse game in space, there's simply too much for just one episode. It's as though "Friday's Child" was planned as two episodes, but allotted just one. The editing required to fit results in two thirds of a story–or perhaps a whole story, but with vital scenes missing almost at random. Hence, we get endless scenes of Scotty and the bridge crew figuring out the Klingon deception, but no depiction of its resolution. What's left remains solely to break up action on the planet's surface.

The storyline on land isn't without inconsistencies either, the first of which lies in the quick acceptance of Grant's death. When Kirk drops his body to the ground, Doctor McCoy makes no move to dislodge the weapon or check his life signs or make any attempt to revive him. Kirk then laments that Grant was "young and inexperienced" in order to distance himself from the fallen officer's behavior. But why bring a young, inexperienced, trigger-happy security officer to a delicate diplomatic situation? It's also never made explicit why the widow hates her child, and her subsequent about face is similarly mysterious. And while I'm glad to see a woman in charge (Eleen is made regent off screen), I find it hard to believe that such an unstable political situation could have been resolved so quickly. But they needed a quick, happy ending.

There's a lot here to like: a second brush with the Klingons, a challenging diplomatic situation, some excellent interactions both on the planet and the Enterprise. Had the episode been fully developed, it could have reached five stars, but whatever was left on the cutting room floor took my full endorsement with it.

Four stars.

The Cultural Aspect


by J.M. North

This episode impressed me in a number of ways, primarily with the writers’ ability to create a deep and unique, primitive culture at the core of a dispute between two galactic superpowers, and secondarily with the Federation and the Kling-on’s dedication to their rivalry with one another. Even after the Enterprise is briefed about the peace accord in place on this planet and the sensitive nature of this delegation, the action begins after a Federation red-shirted mook instinctively goes to shoot at a Kling-on on sight.

The 10 Tribes society that governs the planet Capella, like the Corridians in the episode prior "Journey to Babel", are an adolescent race not yet introduced to advanced technology, much less even to bows and arrows. They are mostly decentralized, but still elect a representative ‘Teer-akar’ that acts as king but who can be lawfully challenged and usurped at any time. Theirs is a culture that values strength and victory alone; we can see evident parallels to the Freemen from Dune in aspects like their native sovereignty, tribal structure, and in their cultural behavior; honor and ordeal by combat.


Tuesday on Capella.

With the speed that civil war breaks out after the sitting Teer-akar is challenged to single combat, one could assume that these tribal wars are not uncommon on Capella. It is difficult to ignore the covetous and self-advantageous nature of the Kling-on and the Federation who, embroiled in their own cause to gain advantage over one another, precipitate this civil war among Capella’s natives and end up killing a large number of them, and in no shy way at the end does the Federation celebrate getting to conveniently install a puppet-Teer-akar who will deal in favor of them for its lifetime after defeating the pro-kling-on Teer Maab in the final fight.

One sequence I most enjoyed was how Julie Newmar’s character Eleen struggled with her own perceptions of reality, culture and duty. She burns her arm early in the episode and spends a long time conflicted over allowing McCoy to treat it. She is immediately and convincingly impressed by modern medicine but evidently still nervous about it. Later when McCoy suggests that he can save her life, despite her constant protesting, she concedes briefly that “It is always preferable to live..”; after she delivers the baby, her dedication to her duty and to tribal society leads her to attack McCoy and abandon the Earthmen she fled with. It appeared to me that her decision to spare them by telling Maab she had already killed them was only convenient for her and not really her original intention when she abandoned her child with McCoy.

Overall, 4 stars–minus one only because of the number of short-cuts in the plot.

A chance to shine


by Gideon Marcus

In a newspaper clipping I was mailed over the summer, DeForest Kelley talked about how pleased he was to have been given an "also starring" credit in the second season credits.  He noted mildly that it was sometimes difficult to stand out when playing opposite such scene stealers as Nimoy and Shatner.  We've seen Dr. McCoy take center stage before: "The Man Trap" was definitely his first season standout.  But it was also the first episode of last season, and since then, while he has certainly had plenty of prominence, he's never been the star of the show.

Well, "Friday's Child" was a 'Bones' episode, through and through.  From his first briefing to the officers of the Enterprise, to his delivery of Eleen's daughter, to his literal upstaging of Kirk when the captain threatens to make a hash (yet again) of diplomacy, McCoy is at the hub of the story.  Kelley's chemistry with Newmar is excellent, particularly the slapping scene and the "the child is mine" scene.  One can really see that the actor is an old pro, effortlessly selling each moment without mugging or scenery chewing.


"Definitely a ten-pin ball in there…"

To his credit, Shatner isn't bad either.  He doesn't inject so much of himself into Kirk this time, though he does keep his hands raised after the security guard dies from a case of trigger-happy-itis for about ten minutes.  He also does that characteristic "sauntering into a monologue" thing at least once.  But at least he's consistent.  He broods over the loss of a crewman; he's a soldier, not a diplomat; and when he chews McCoy out, he later apologizes.

Left on the cutting room floor are all of Nimoy's great moments.  I don't think he even speaks until fifteen minutes in, and then he doesn't get very much (though his silent exchange with McCoy on the hilltop speaks volumes).  We do get a number of scenes involving the B-list on the Enterprise, reminiscent of "Metamorphosis", but with a bit more purpose.  It makes me wonder if we shouldn't just have two shows–one starring Scotty and co., and the other involving the Big Three going on intragalactic adventures.

Anyway, while the show suffers for its skeletal form, it does hang together.  Three and a half stars.

A giant among women


by Lorelei Marcus

If there's anything I love, it's babies. I could watch babies do their funny little baby things all day long, and I certainly want a few of my own someday. I was pleasantly surprised that this week's episode featured a newborn, and while most of the time it was played by a bundle of cloth, every so often we got an adorable shot of its sleeping, slightly frog-like face. I was also pleasantly surprised to see Julie Newmar grace the Star Trek stage as a featured guest this episode. Considering Newmar's previous roles, I think it was a good fit.

I'm a bit of a Julie Newmar fan, which is unusual because I don't much care for her acting. In whatever role she plays, she always has a very flat affect that makes her portrayal of the characters feel a little "off". She also has a subtle accent and often stilted delivery which made me wonder if she might have struggled with a hearing impairment growing up. All of this was actually to her benefit as the humanoid robot in My Living Doll, but it didn't serve her as well in the Monkees, or even Batman. What she is good at, though, is physical comedy. Her background as a trained dancer (and perhaps also her experience as a concert pianist) has given Julie Newmar expert bodily control, which she excels at using to emphasize the humor of a moment.


"Don't get fresh with me, Mac-Koy!"

This is where she truly shone in today's Star Trek episode. Her massive height alone made her the perfect choice for a seven-foot tall alien, and she does a very convincing job of appearing encumbered by the weight of a pregnant stomach. The way she avoided being touched by people was also very funny, between her petulant delivery of lines and her slapping at people's hands or even McCoy's face! In a way, her unusual speech patterns also aided in her appearance as an alien, or at least a humanoid used to a different language. Her intentional butchering of McCoy's name always got a laugh, and her misunderstanding of who her baby belonged to also seemed very plausible.

Overall, I think Newmar did a wonderful job in this episode. Despite her shortcomings as an actress, there's something very endearing about the giant beauty who keeps much of her brilliance just below the surface. Whether it be another guest star role or perhaps her own show, I will definitely be looking out for her name in the TV guides again.

In addition to Newmar, everyone else did a great job of acting in this episode. The premise was fascinating, and the new alien culture very interesting; it would have been a five-star episode if (as Amber notes) the editor hadn't left half of it on the cutting room floor.

Three stars.

The next episode of Trek is tonight!  Plus, a little before-the show treat.

Come join us at 4:30 PM Pacific (7:30 Eastern) or at 6:30 PM Pacific (9:30 Eastern)!



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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[November 28, 1967] Aliens On Ice (Doctor Who: The Ice Warriors [Part 1])

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By Jessica Holmes

After their run in with a bunch of snowmen, the TARDIS team are gonna have to keep their cool—this time, they’re up against The Ice Warriors. This story comes from Brian Hayles, who previously gave us The Celestial Toymaker.

EPISODE ONE

The episode opens on a glacier. We can immediately tell we’re in the far future by the music that opens up the episode. It’s either a theremin (the most futuristic of instruments) or a woman doing a really good impression of one. In the future, all music will sound like this: oooOOOooo

Amidst all the ‘oo’ing, we have Earth caught in the grip of a second ice age. Keeping the advancing glaciers at bay is a network of scientific bases manning ‘ioniser’ devices. However, one of those bases is about to fail–and about to lose Europe to the ice.

The Doctor makes a bumpy landing when he first arrives, with the TARDIS toppling over on an ice floe. So, he can’t steer and he can’t park. Does the Doctor even have a licence to drive this thing? Well, he might take a bit more care in future, as getting OUT of the toppled TARDIS proves a painful (but funny) endeavour.

His companions are amazed by, of all things, the plastic dome protecting the base from the elements. There’s plenty of plastic inside the TARDIS, I don’t know what’s so special about more of it. Shinier, I suppose.

They couldn’t have chosen a better time to pop in, as the Doctor immediately realises how close the equipment is to failing. A timely bit of gung-ho meddling (the Doctor’s specialty) saves the base’s ioniser from going kaput, and gives us a chance to meet a few characters. Inside the base, we’ve got the leader, Clent (Peter Barkworth), a man whose ambition and overreliance on the computer to tell him what to do outstrips his actual ability to lead. Under him is a very enthusiastic senior scientist/amateur archaeologist Arden (George Waring), who at this moment is leading an expedition on the ice, and he’s made a discovery that might rewrite human history: an ancient warrior, long buried in the ice!

He’s not alone on the ice, though. Out in the cold we’ve also got Penley (Peter Sallis), a maverick scientist who defected from the base for whatever reason, and his pal Storr (Angus Lennie), who is…there to give Penley someone to talk to, I suppose. They don’t do much at the moment other than skulk around and discuss the other characters, providing helpful (if a bit transparent) plot explanation.

Clent recruits the Doctor as his new head scientist (to replace Penley), and we soon learn that a sudden drop of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere brought on this wee cold snap. And we have nobody to blame but ourselves. We went and made plants obsolete by making artificial food to feed the rapidly expanding population, which for some reason caused a drop in carbon dioxide levels. It wasn’t until later that I suddenly realised this does not actually make sense. Plants breathe IN carbon dioxide and breathe OUT oxygen.

This is primary school stuff.

Oh, and if the base fails and the glaciers advance over Europe, not only will people die but it will upset the balance of power! However will the world cope without we Europeans to boss them around?!

Arden brings his ice warrior in from the cold, and the Doctor soon notices that the warrior’s helmet has some sort of electrical wiring on it. This is no ancient Earth warrior, not with that level of technology. He goes to warn the base’s leaders, leaving Jamie and Victoria alone to banter about the scandalously skimpy (by Victorian standards) outfits the base’s ladies are wearing. Jamie approves (typical bloke), while Victoria is appalled (typical Victorian). And she certainly has no intention of wearing anything like that, much to Jamie’s disappointment. It’s a fun little moment, rudely interrupted by a frosty fighter waking up from his nap.

We’re off to a fun start here! The chemistry between the TARDIS crew is bubbling nicely, and the setting is pretty interesting.

EPISODES TWO AND THREE

Unfortunately we had some bad weather the couple of weeks these episodes were on, and my reception was so spotty I ended up missing a lot of them. However, I’ve managed to piece together a fairly cohesive overview from my own notes and the notes some friends made. Bearing that in mind, let’s continue.

The Ice Warrior’s got up on the wrong side of bed for sure.  The first thing he does upon waking up is knock Jamie out and abscond with Victoria.

Meanwhile, the Doctor is trying to sell the base’s commanders on his ‘alien astronaut’ theory about the warrior’s origins. They’re prepared to accept the idea, and become eager to continue excavating. Where there’s an astronaut, there’s a spaceship, and where there’s a spaceship, there might be a reactor that could restore their ioniser to full power.

Elsewhere in the base, the Warrior asks Victoria how long he was buried in the ice. The Warrior, Varga (Bernard Bresslaw, who you might know from the Carry On… films), explains that he’s from Mars. His ship crashed, and he and his crew were buried in an avalanche. He tells her that he intends to retrieve them and return to the red planet.

Pretty reasonable I’d say, Jamie-clobbering aside. Then again, if I was knocked out in an avalanche and woke up in an unfamiliar location a few millenia later, I might panic and do something silly like that too.

It’s quite annoying trying to understand him, though. He has this rather grating habit of hissing between (hiss) every (hiss) word (hisssss…).

Which he delivers in a hoarse whisper.

Someone should offer him something to drink.

Having woken up from his involuntary nap, Jamie accompanies Arden onto the glacier to search for the Warrior’s craft. There’s a bit of pointless meandering as they go back and forth to retrieve excavation equipment.

Meanwhile, Varga makes Victoria help him find a power pack, so that he can wake his buddies up with a little electric shock.

Clent walks in on the pair of them, so Varga knocks him out and runs off with Victoria. He doesn’t have much of an excuse this time. That’s just rude.

Taking Victoria out onto the ice, Varga immediately sets about thawing out the rest of his crew. Soon one Ice Warrior becomes five. Rather than saying thank you to the nice lady and jetting off back to Mars (it’s a bit chilly this time of eon), the Ice Warriors start talking about setting a trap. It’s like an asthma convention with all this rasping.

And Jamie and Arden walk straight into the Ice Warriors' ambush. Arden takes the brunt of the blast, killing him, and knocking Jamie unconscious (again).

Poor Jamie’s brain can’t be doing well from all these knockouts.

Watching all this from a distance, the runaway scientist Penley decides to intervene. Waiting for the Ice Warriors to retreat with a hysterical Victoria, he drags Jamie back to his base in a plant museum (of all things).

Taking a break from acting all damsel-in-distress-ish, Victoria finds her initiative and sneaks away from her captors. She retrieves Arden’s communication device and manages to contact the Doctor, who is aghast to learn of Arden’s death and Jamie’s uncertain fate. However, the Ice Warriors have noticed her absence…and are about to use her for target practice.

Final Thoughts

So far, I’m enjoying The Ice Warriors…in between the dull bits, at least. Once again we have this issue of scenes being egregiously padded out in order to stretch the length of the episodes. The plot becomes like butter scraped over too much bread.

As far as the general overarching structure of the plot, it looks like we’ve got another of those serials where a small group of people in an isolated location are under attack from the Big Bad Monsters outside. A base-under-siege, basically. It’s a solid standard plot, though I hope it doesn’t become too overused. There have been a few Doctor Who serials (especially under Troughton) that use this as the basis of their story. Just swap out the setting and the monster, and they begin to look suspiciously similar.

Still, I’m looking forward to seeing how this wraps up. I’ll check in with you all again next month to conclude The Ice Warriors.




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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[November 24, 1967] Guess who's coming to dinner? (Star Trek: "Journey to Babel")

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by Gideon Marcus

At the World Science Fiction Convention in New York this year, Spock was the man of the hour.  There were no fewer than seven Vulcan costumers at the Ball, and the premiere of the episode "Amok Time" was a much-attended event.  Rumors abounded that there were more Vulcanian surprises in store this season.  It was whispered that one of the upcoming episodes would feature Spock's parents!  Thus, we have been greatly anticipating a second return to Vulcan for the last ten weeks.

Well, Spock's Mom and Pop have shown up, but not quite the way we expected.

D.C. (Dorothy) Fontana has been attached to Star Trek for some time, and her pen has been felt on a number of scripts.  "Journey to Babel", however, is the first one solely credited to her…and it does her credit!

In brief: The Enterprise is transporting one hundred delegates from dozens of Federation worlds to the planetoid Babel, where they will discuss and vote on the admission of Corridan.  Corridan is a low-population, defenseless world that possesses tremendous reserves of dilithium crystals, making it an appealing target for raiders and wildcat mining operations.  Membership in the Federation would offer a stepped up level of protection.


The Enterprise's rec room has become something of a babel, itself

The Vulcan delegation is led by Sarek, a 102-year old pulled out of retirement for this mission.  Accompanying him are two anonymous aides and a handsome middle aged Earth woman, who is introduced as Sarek's wife, Amanda.  Kirk had three guesses as to who the mixed couple might be, and he blew them all.  Of course, they're actually Spock's parents (though the dashing Vulcan ambassador does not look anything like Balok, Spock's comment in "The Corbomite Maneuver" notwithstanding.)


Maybe the resemblance is in personalities…

Sarek and Spock are estranged, for Spock chose a career in Starfleet over one in the Vulcan Science Academy.  And, Vulcans being the super-logical creatures they are, they have mastered the art of snubbery and pouting.

However, events quickly overcome petty family squabbles.  One of the delegates, the abrasive Tellarite named Gav, is murdered, and Sarek is the prime suspect.  This slaying may have something to do with the mysterious super ship that is tailing the Enterprise, capable of an astonishing Warp 10.  Finally, Sarek himself succumbs to a heart attack, and only surgery facilitated by a transfusion from his son's blood can save him.  But Spock cannot leave his post, for Kirk has been stabbed by one of the Andorian delegation, and he can't take the center seat.  Cue dramatic music.


"Dear diary.  I finally get to run the ship.  I hope Jim takes a long time to recover so I don't have to save my mean ol' dad!"

There is a lot to like about this episode.  Mark Lenard, whom we last saw as a Romulan commander in "Balance of Terror" (as well as two Mission: Impossible roles as a "Latin"), gives a fine turn as a reserved but not emotionless Vulcan.  We get a little more breadth to Nimoy's performance with his more relaxed interactions with his mother.  DeForest Kelley is a real stand-out this episode, even getting the last line of the show.


"I finally get the last word.  Take that, Bill and Leonard, you primadonnas!"

The tense battle scenes on the bridge are excellent, and it was a delight seeing all the alien races.  I was particularly impressed with the Andorian ambassador; the blue-skinned aliens appear to be a tonic to the Vulcans, prioritizing violence, passion, and pecunious aims.  Chekov, Uhura, Chapel all get relatively meaty roles (though Sulu and Scotty are completely absent).  And Shatner manages to turn in a more first-seasoned performance…minus the flying posterior attack he uses to dispatch his Andorian assailant.


The captain suffers a grievous wound after using his "flying posterior attack" on his assailant

On the other hand, the episode has rough bits.  The editing is particularly choppy, with the aforementioned Andorian/Kirk attack coming out of nowhere and some dialogue scenes being cut abruptly.  The musical score is almost entirely from the library.  This could be fine, except the musical pieces are all highly evocative of their origin.  I kept expecting the attacking vessel to be a giant cornucopia, and when Sarek arrived, I expected they were about to enter a parallel dimension.

I've come to get a feel for my Star Trek directors.  This season, Joseph Pevney and Marc Daniels have essentially alternated the past dozen episodes.  I much prefer the avante garde latter to the staid former.  Whenever Pevney is at the helm, I know I'm going to see a more stagey, less dynamic episode.  It may be him to blame for Miss Jane Wyatt's particularly flat performance as Spock's mother.


"I'm just here for the free drinks and blue fruit…"

Nevertheless, I have a largely favorable impression.  Two concurrent plots were resolved nicely, many characters got to shine, and the scope of the Trek universe was expanded tremendously.

Four stars.


by Joe Reid

How Do You Say Love in Vulcan?

We have come to regard Vulcans as stoic and emotionless.  Star Trek so far has provided two examples of what feelings of love, and emotions in general, exist in the complex Vulcan heart.  The first was from season one’s “This Side of Paradise”, where we saw Spock expressing love and, dare I say, happiness as his emotional walls were toppled by a mind-altering spore.  The second example being this season’s “Amok Time”, when Spock was driven mad by his Pon Farr.  Showing intense emotional outburst, deceit, anger, and violence from Spock in his efforts to get to Vulcan to marry and mate driven by the intense hormonal assault.  This week’s episode gave us our first untainted look at Vulcan emotions.

If we have learned anything from Star Trek it’s that Vulcan are quick to point out that emotional responses are a human failing.  That Vulcans do not experience such things, because they are guided by logic.  “Journey to Babel” painted a different picture, showing that Vulcans can hold long grudges, feel pride, display tenderness, love deeply, express frustration, and even engage in humor.  They do indeed experience emotions, though usually filter responses to their feelings through a rubric of logic.

During introductions, Sarek completely ignored Spock.  Kirk asked Spock to give them a tour, and Sarek’s response towards Spock bordered on contempt, asking Kirk for a different guide.  It was later revealed by Amanda that Sarek disapproved of Spock’s choice to join Starfleet over the Vulcan Science Academy.  Sarek not only scornfully held a long grudge when Spock didn’t meet his expectations, but rudely expressed that disappointment at the introductions.  His behavior was clearly an emotional response.


"Son?  I have no son."

Spock’s mother was a standout character this episode.  She was unapologetically human, while showing full acceptance of her Vulcan husband and his role as a planet’s ambassador.  Amanda was full of mirth, caring, prudence, tenderness, and above all loyalty, demonstrating an almost perfect example of the best of human qualities.  Through his interactions with Amanda, we saw Sarek’s love.  Humans show togetherness by holding hands.  The Vulcan version is a gentle touch using only the index and middle fingers.  A connection held up at the level of their hearts, not buried at the level of their loins, as is the case with humans.  In almost every scene we were graced with this passionate and public, yet tender, expression of love and commitment from Sarek and Amanda.

Although guided by logic, Vulcans are easily as emotionally complex as humans.  Though Sarek disagreed with Spock’s Starfleet decision, he said to his wife that Spock deserved to be shown the respect of a Starfleet officer and that she shouldn’t embarrass him, showing both Sarek’s pride in Spock and acknowledgement that Spock can feel embarrassment.  Regardless of Sarek's brusqueness, Spock devotedly argued with Amanda and McCoy for the operation to save Sarek’s life.  Even though Spock and Sarek shared few words during the episode, the final scene had them joking about why Sarek would marry such an emotional woman.  An exchange followed by two fingers touching between Spock’s loving parents.

What stood out in this cloak and dagger episode filled with alien faces were the loving emotions of a Vulcan-Human family.  A tender flower rooted amid a warzone, and I found it most acceptable.

Five stars

And introducing Mr. J. North, our new resident menace…

The Religious Subtext


by J.M. North

My scope of the Star Trek universe has been so far limited, having started watching in the middle of season 2. This episode, regardless, seems like it would be exceptionally revealing even for those who are caught up in the series. What I have verified is that this is the first appearance of the Corridians, Andorians and the Orions, as well as of Spock’s mother and father and a number of other alien races. There is dialogue throughout indicative of The Federation and Star Fleet’s domain throughout the galaxy, and revealing of its ultimate alignment with the Vulcan ideals of scientific discovery, peace and fair interplanetary-cooperation. In the episode prior, Captain Kirk reveals in a discussion with Zefram Cochrane that mankind has settled up to 1,000 extraterrestrial bodies besides Earth, my own first indication to the extent of humanity's advancement as a species. This episode provides my first indication of the influence of the Federation and its true purpose as a diplomatic conference, as well as its relative advancement compared to other species–notably the Orions with whom Kirk is impressed for using the same phasers as Star Fleet.


The Orion strikes!

In the episode prior there is a possible, easily dismissed reference to the bible when Zefram Cochrane considers planting a fig tree after his conflict with the Companion is resolved, symbolic perhaps of forgiveness, love or peace, or something abstract as the fig is mentioned in all sorts of contexts in the bible, which I would indeed dismiss if not for the much more evident reference to Christian canon in this episode. Journey to Babel, the title of which is unmistakably an allusion to the Tower of Babel story from Genesis, and the plot no doubt a representation of God’s subsequent punishment for man: the confounding of language and onset of war before the great flood. I find the thematic parallels to be quite compelling.

It is poetic how the sci-fi context is used to discuss biblical themes; well-written inter-stellar geopolitics provide the basis for a potential war between the adolescent Corridian race, the advanced planet-mining race of Tellarites and the provocative, warlike Orions, conveying the ultimate theme of division and conflict among races from the namesake parable. Rather than the confounding of language (thanks to universal translation), conflict arises by the confounding of ideas for how to treat the Corridians. The Tellarites are forward about their lack of support for Coridan’s admission to the Federation, and their desire to poach the planet clean, while the Orions seek to promote this conflict between them into an all out war that they could profit off of by selling to both sides.

Further compelling to me regarding this biblical theme is the discussion of the genesis of a new primitive race; the Corridians, and their comparison to other civilizations, and further their advancement by joining the Federation. Consider biblical canon; genesis of the human race in Eden, enslavement of the Israelites by the Egyptians (poaching of Corridan by the Tellarites?), following the advancement of society into the time of Rome. What I’d like to watch for now is if this religious subtext prevails throughout the show, or if it is just these two episodes that happen to have been inspired by biblical themes.

Five stars for good writing, a rich galaxy, and savvy biblical adaptation.




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TV

[November 16, 1967] Star Trek: "Metamorphosis"

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by Lorelei Marcus

What Ever Happened to Commissioner Nancy?

The tomfoolery of "I, Mudd" was a delight, but I'm personally more of a fan of the serious episodes that delve deeply into the drama and science. The preview for this week's episode presented a new planet, mystery, and even new characters–how exciting!

"Metamorphosis" begins with Kirk, Spock, and McCoy on a Galileo shuttle craft, escorting a civilian woman back to the Enterprise. The woman is Nancy Hedford, Commissioner for the Federation, who was acting as a diplomat to prevent war between two colonies before she was pulled from her task after contracting a rare but deadly disease. She must be treated within the next twenty-four hours or she'll die.


Commissioner Hedford, after her promotion from the city council of Mayberry

I'm always pleased to see new competent female characters on Star Trek, and here's one that isn't set up to be a love interest for Kirk. Unfortunately it doesn't seem like her character is going to last long. Almost immediately, the shuttle craft is hit by a strange energy beam and is pulled towards an asteroid with its own atmosphere, almost exactly like that of Earth's. Spock theorizes that the planetoid is a fragment from a larger planet that's been split apart. That still doesn't explain how such a small celestial body could retain its own atmosphere, but perhaps there's some supernatural reason for it that they will explain later.

Hedford understandably begins panicking and orders Kirk to put the craft back on course. It's a fascinating contrast to see her civilian reaction compared to the coolheaded and seasoned Enterprise crew. Unfortunately, despite Kirk's best efforts, the craft is still forced to land on the asteroid, and thanks to a powerful dampening field, cannot take off again.


The Galileo Four

Soon after they land, something – or someone – calls to the party and begins to approach them. It turns out to be a young man in a jumpsuit, reminiscent of the Federation uniform, but clearly older in style. The man is amiable, and he seems relieved to see other people again. He recognizes Spock as a Vulcan, but he takes particular interest in Hedford because she is a "beautiful woman". Hedford, twenty-three hours away from death and stuck on an asteroid in the middle of nowhere, brushes off the advance irritably.


Disdain at first sight

The man takes the party to his home, a building he apparently built with the scraps of his ship which was pulled to this planetoid like the Galileo craft. Except, it's revealed, that his ship crashed 150 years ago and he's actually Zefram Cochrane, the original inventor of warp drive! Cochrane explains that at age 87 he took a ship into space to die, but he was discovered by an alien being which drew him to this asteroid and forced him to live there with it. The alien, which he calls the Companion, restored his youth and stopped him from aging, and he's since built a life here with his newfound immortality. (And he was able to grow crops to sustain himself, despite the asteroid's soil comprising almost entirely nickel and iron, but perhaps the Companion had something to do with that).

Kirk's craft was brought here because Cochrane told the Companion he would die of loneliness without other humans in the hopes of being freed. Instead the Companion brought the humans to him, and now refuses to let them leave. Hedford's fever worsens, and she breaks down hysterically, disgusted by the idea of being trapped and forced to be someone's consort.


I wouldn't be too happy, either.

Forced into action by Hedford's deteriorating condition, Kirk begins to think of a plan. The Companion is intelligent and can communicate with Cochrane fairly fluently. It also appears to be composed of raw electricity, and possesses great healing properties if Cochrane's de-aging is any example. Of course the only way to deal with a one-of-a-kind, sentient, all-powerful creature like that… is to kill it! (What is that speech that Kirk gives in the intro? Something about seeking out and exterminating new life and new civilizations? I can never remember.)

Spock conveniently pulls out his electric impulse scrambler (I can only guess where he keeps it), and their attack on the Companion goes about as well as you might expect. Kirk and Spock almost die and are saved only by Cochrane's intervention. McCoy gently suggests to Kirk that perhaps they could try negotiating with the alien instead of hurting it. Kirk agrees that the negotiation sounds like a good idea, and he orders Spock to adjust their universal translator to work on incorporeal beings.


Yes, maybe talking is the better option.

One cut later, and Spock's magically gotten the translator to work. Kirk explains that the alien's voice from the translator will be interpreted as however the creature perceives itself; what a surprise when the voice that comes out is female. Cochrane is dumbfounded, "how can that be possible?"

Kirk makes the point that male and female are universal concepts that apply to all living creatures, and obviously this creature is just female. (I guess he forgot about his basic biological studies and the numerous asexually reproducing living creatures: single celled organisms, plants, certain lizards, Talosians…)

Anyway, because of the Companion's newly discovered sex, Kirk makes the completely baseless assumption that the creature is romantically in love with Cochrane and that is why it sustains him. Cochrane, despite having the wisdom of two entire lifetimes, and living the better part of that time with this creature, finds the possibility of being loved by an alien absolutely disgusting, and he completely rejects the Companion.

Just then, Hedford cries out, and everyone remembers that she exists. On the verge of death, she makes a moving speech lamenting that though she lived an accomplished life with a successful career, she will never get the chance to love romantically or be loved. How selfish Cochrane is, for receiving such a pure form of love and then rejecting it because of his own biases.


I never had time for love because I stop wars for a living.  What's his excuse?

Kirk tries to negotiate with the Companion one last time, in the hopes that it might possibly free them to save Hedford's life. Except, instead of actually discussing a deal and offering the Companion literally anything, Kirk pulls his Kirk logic on the alien and convinces it that the only way for the Companion's love and Cochrane to coexist is for the Companion to be human. I think it would've been simpler to ask if the Companion could just let McCoy and Hedford go so they could save her life, and then he and Spock would stay behind to keep Cochrane company until the Enterprise could return and sort things out. Just me?


The Garden of Zephrem.

Of course the Companion disappears, and then shortly after a completely healed Hedford appears, restored by the Companion who has now occupied her body. Hedford walks towards Cochrane and explains with the Companion's voice that if not for the alien's intervention, Hedford would have ceased, but now they coexist inside her body and are both there, and are both in love with Cochrane. Cochrane instantly gets over his xenophobia now that his lover has a female body, and they decide to stay on the asteroid and live happily ever after together. Oh yeah, and by possessing Hedford's body, the Companion gave up her immortality and Cochrane's with it, and also she can't leave the asteroid because it's the source of her life force, so they are actually stuck there for the rest of their lives. But now they can spend the next 100 years planting fig trees and having sex, so it all works out.

And what about the intergalactic war that Hedford was supposed to stop? Well, in the words of Captain Kirk, "I'm sure the Federation will find some woman, somewhere to stop it."

This episode was so frustrating because it started with so much promise, and then failed in every regard at the ending. I was intrigued to see how they would handle the psyche of a 200-year-old man, and also the relationship between a human and a non-humanoid alien. The writer and Glenn Corbett's performance did neither of these subjects justice. Shatner's performance was particularly stilted, to the point where I had trouble following what he was saying at many points. The pacing started off sharp, but began to meander as the characters made stupider and stupider decisions, and the focus jumped to fun but unnecessary scenes on the Enterprise. But what bothers me most of all is the tragedy of Hedford's character framed as a happy ending.


Not necessarily a happy ending.

The companion speaks for Hedford at the end, and while it claims that both of them are there in consciousness, there is no evidence to justify it. All of Hedford's personality, her tenacity, her drive to complete her duty, and her anxiousness to return to her very pressing work, are gone after she is possessed. Presumably, she really did die on that asteroid, and all that remains are her body and her memories, which the companion takes advantage of to its own end. Or perhaps more horrifyingly, Hedford is still there, but so overpowered by the Companion that she is imprisoned in her own body, doomed to be the slave of this alien and its lover.

I can only hope that this type of story is a fluke, and will not become a standard for Star Trek.

Two stars.


by Joe Reid

Who’s Fooling Who?

It is often the case that at the end of an episode you are left with all of the answers to the questions that were posed in the show and a reasonable conclusion to the adventure of the week.  The intelligent heroes are drawn to a place.  In that place they discover a mystery.  They use the powers and abilities at their disposal to solve that mystery and are rewarded.  The rewards are treasure, or freedom, or their own safety, or that of the ship.  It’s been a reliable formula that I’ve never had reason to doubt, until this week’s episode.

We never doubt what we have seen, because Kirk and Spock directly tell us exactly what is or has happened.  In “Mirror, Mirror”, Kirk told us that the crew has traveled to a parallel universe.  In “The Changeling”, Spock told us the origins of the space robot named Nomad.  “The Doomsday Machine” had Kirk telling us that the giant space funnel was an ancient planet killing weapon that got out of control and destroyed its creators.  How in space did he know that?  More importantly, what if Kirk was wrong in some of his musings?

We ascribe superior intelligence to characters in sci-fi: they are smarter than us, and smarter than whatever baddy they face.  What if this time, instead of our heroes understanding, and outsmarting the baddy, it was the creature who outsmarted the members of the crew?


One smart lady.

“Metamorphosis” featured a powerful entity.  “The Companion” finds an 87-year-old man, Zefram Cochrane, who may or may not have been dead when she found him.  She rejuvenates him to the prime of youthful manhood, feeds him, and keeps him from going insane for 150 years.  She communicates with him in a physical way, enmeshing herself among his very cells.  She must have been pretty advanced to do that.

When the Companion discovered that “the man”, Cochrane, needed female companionship, she reached millions of miles into space and located a vessel containing a dying human woman which would provide the means for her to personally meet the needs of the man.  She grabbed the moving shuttle craft, and by power of force drew it several millions of miles to be stranded on her little asteroid.  If that wasn’t powerful enough, when the Enterprise started to search for the lost shuttle, they discovered a trail from the shuttle to follow.  The Companion, millions of miles away, made the trail vanish.  This creature possessed the ability to manipulate living and inanimate matter on a cellular level from a vast distance. 

As our heroes attempted to communicate with the companion, we thought we were shown a creature that demonstrated the intelligence of a child in her understanding of humans.  A creature that they had to guide to an understanding of humanity using their superior intellect.  What we really saw was a creature so smart that it guided the heroes down a path where they felt accomplished, but it met its own agenda.  All without threatening the Enterprise or killing anyone.

In the end the Companion was able to convince a 230 year old man to love her, everyone else that she was not a threat, and she convinced a dying, love-starved woman to allow her to possess her body.  This episode posed a challenge to the assumption that we understand the story as it is portrayed on the screen.  “Metamorphosis” gave me the satisfaction of doubt at the conclusion.  I liked it.

Four stars.

Boring Sex(es)


by Jessica Dickinson Goodman

As I watched "Metamorphosis," I found myself thinking of fig wasps. In my evenings and weekends, I run a small community garden on a church campus; a volunteer fig tree grows long and tall between the fence and the tool shed. When Mr. Cochrane mentioned wanting to plant a fig tree, I figured he was referencing this line:

"But they shall sit every man under
his vine and under his fig-tree;
And none shall make them afraid;"
(Micah 4:4, Tanakh, New Jewish Publication Society of America; a similar quote can be found in 2 Kings 18:31-32 Christian Bible, Revised Standard Version)

The thing about fig trees is they require pollinators. Trees can't ask other trees on dates – or kidnap them for 150 years to flirt with them in incomprehensible energy being ways – so they rely on wind or other species for reproduction. Many trees are self-fertile, meaning the adventuring pollinator need only traipse from one blossom to the next on the same branch, finding different reproductive parts at every turn in a complex mosaic. A few dioecious trees segregate these roles tree-by-tree, but most are self-fertile and don't break into easy categories like "male" or "female."

In general I find, the more I know about plants and pollinators, the less concepts like "male" and "female" mean anything at all.


"Yes. The matter of gender could change the entire situation."

Take figs, as Mr. Cochrane so clearly wants to. Figs can only be pollinated by a tiny wasp who crawls through their fleshy outsides to get to tiny flowers inside, sometimes ripping its wings off in the exercise because the fit is so tight, and spreading pollen as it goes. You see, the fruity flesh we love to eat on toast or in jams is not actually a fruit, botanically speaking, but mushy flowers. The wasp repeats this journey from flower to flower until, exhausted, it lays its eggs and dies inside the fig, to be consumed by those flowers. One portion of the baby wasps – once they metamorphosize from eggs to adults and mate with their own siblings – will live and die without ever leaving that fruit, spending their entire lives carving tunnels for the other portion to escape and continue the cycle.

I don't know about you, but very little of the above sounds like human sex to me, whether the act or the category.


"The idea of male and female are universal constants."  Really?

Still, human scientists often slap labels like "female" on the wasps that climb into figs and "male" onto those who never leave them. They even do so for other pollinators for whose societies those categories fit even less well, like European honeybees, who have at least three clear reproductive roles, and for whom scientists have weirdly assigned "male" to two of (drones and workers) and "female" to the third (queen). The nature I work with every day is vastly more creative and varied than "male" and "female" – a fact which Jewish scholars know well, as the Talmud references up to eight sexes (zachar, nekevah, androgynos, tumtum, aylonit hamah, aylonit adam, saris hamah, and saris adam).

What about an alien society with three sexes, or eight, or none at all, or one who relies on star-blown space ships for their own reproduction? What if Hedford's death had been framed as part of the life-cycle needs of the energy being and not the pale nothing it was?

Now that is science fiction I would love to watch.

As Lorelei points out, this episode had so much promise. While I don't expect television writers to love the complex realities of Earth's natural world in the way that most gardeners do, I do expect them to do even the most basic of research about the world we all share every day, rather than slapping labels on alien life in ways that limit our imaginations rather than expanding them.

Two stars.

The next episode of Trek is tomorrow! Apparently, we're going to meet Spock's parents…

Come join us!



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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[November 10, 1967] Mudd in the computer (Star Trek: "I, Mudd")

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"And Thereby Hangs a Tale"


by Amber Dubin

"I, Mudd" follows the tradition set by three other episodes we've seen so far, in which the crew of the Enterprise has to out-logic a robot ("What are little girls made of," "Return of the Archons," "Changeling"). Even though this episode recycles many of the same themes we've seen in those episodes, it offers enough unique elements to make it my favorite of its kind.

We open on a hallway conversation between the ship's doctor and chief science officer where the ever-cynical medico's instincts lead him to correctly identify an interloper on the ship in the form of the newest crewmember, Lieutenant Norman.


"What did he call me?"

Unfortunately, Spock rebuffs Dr. McCoy's theory (logically) because his reasoning points out Norman's inhuman behaviors, many of which overlap with those of Spock himself. McCoy insists that "the ears make all the difference" but the damage is clearly done as the supposedly unemotional Spock abruptly extricates himself from the conversation with an acerbic retort.


"I mean, you're one of the good ones."

McCoy is immediately vindicated when Norman's next move is to hijack the ship. He single handedly dispatches two security teams, all of engineering including Scotty, rigs the controls to blow if the ship deviates from the course he assigns it, and barges straight onto the bridge to explain the now-captive crew's new situation. Norman presents Captain Kirk a "choice" to either go on a four day voyage to an unknown destination or face the immediate destruction of the Enterprise. Ever cool under pressure, Kirk demands to know the nature of his attacker. Norman responds only by peeling back a panel under his shirt to reveal an android abdomen full of wires.


An android's navel–note that these robots don't use integrated circuits…

Further inquiries over who sent him are met with "I am not programmed to respond in that area" before he immediately shuts himself off. So confident is he in his power play (pun intended) that Norman leaves his unconscious body standing in the middle of the doorway to the bridge. Apparently no one disturbs him for four days as the crew seems startled from their normal activities when Norman abruptly awakes and makes further demands. He acts as if he's giving the crew another choice as he requests a set of personnel to accompany him on the planet they're now orbiting, but again refusal means certain death. At least he said “please” this time.

It soon becomes clear why Norman was reluctant to reveal who sent him, because we next open up to a throne room centered around none other than the illustrious Harcourt Fenton Mudd. Undeterred by Mudd's declaration of newfound sovereignty, Kirk charges at him and commences a delightful volley of banter where Mudd catches the crew up on what he's been up to since they last left him in custody for his transgressions. Surprising no one, Harry's made a mess of every situation he's been involved in and has found himself marooned on this planet of 200,000 androids while fleeing the consequences of his actions. Through much childish bickering on Harry's part, Kirk manages to wrench the truth out of the scoundrel, soon discovering that Mudd is just as much a prisoner of the androids as the Enterprise crew is.


"They won't let me go!"

A strange detail comes into play when the crew is being led away and stumbles upon the shrine to Stella, Mudd's wife. It seems odd that Harry would be so sentimental as to make an exact replica of the nagging shrew he gratefully abandoned galaxies away. It must follow that either the loneliness of being the only human on an android planet compelled Mudd to seek security in the familiar or he is such an adversarial man that the ability to make a version of a nemesis he could program with an off button proved to be an irresistible temptation. The most ironic element of that situation is that Stella may be shrill and harping but with a husband like Harcourt, the audience can't help but be squarely on her side.

Unsurprisingly, the androids reject Mudd the second they have any other humans to compare him to, and devote themselves to providing everything the crew wants so they can better serve humanity. They explain that serving humans gives the androids renewed purpose and protects humans by taking care of their every need to save them from themselves. Elements of the gilded cage they're presented with tempt each of the crew members in turn, but whenever a wish contradicts the terms of their captivity, the crew begins to notice that the androids balk at the paradox by freezing in place, their ID necklaces flashing until the conflict is resolved. It is subsequently discovered that the androids are part of a partial hive-mind directed by Norman and that they defer to him to avoid overloading individual units when logical computation is stalled. Thus ensues a campaign to confuse and overload as many androids by whatever means possible. Fake music, subterfuge, logical fallacies, play acting and flat-out lies become weaponized against the unsuspecting computers; each crewman performs their ridiculous acts admirably, especially Spock, who befuddles several androids all by himself.


"Sorry, ladies.  I'm just too good for you."

The episode reaches a delightful climax as the crew's play-acting for Norman finally causes literal steam to billow out of his ears and he admits humans are too complex to be managed by anyone but other humans. In the even more satisfying conclusion, after reaching a peaceful solution to coexist with the androids, Mudd's punishment is revealed to be exile on the android planet so they can help him rehabilitate his nefarious ways. Mudd initially rejoices in this reward of a punishment, until the crew unveils his personal attendants: 500 copies of Stella, this time without her off switch.

Not one line of the script is superfluous and every crewman is at their most efficient and capable as they execute every plan flawlessly. The script, plot, performances and design of this episode click together as seamlessly as the gears powering a well-constructed android.

I am a self-confessed, dyed-in-the-wool robot-a-phile. It is thus inevitable that I give this episode…

5 stars

The Shrew in the Ointment


by Janice L. Newman

I’ll admit, the preview for this episode had me worried. “Mudd’s Women” had some good elements, but was overall one of the weaker episodes of the first season. Happily, this episode was much better than that first one starring Mudd. There was just one problem that took it down a star for me – a fly in the ointment, if you will.

It was an old, old, joke even when Shakespeare did it: the harridan wife and her ne’er-do-well husband. Despite the fact that the audience knows that Harry Mudd’s perspective is unreliable, and thus his version of his wife may not represent the real woman, upon seeing the cartoonishly-awful “Stella” android we can’t help but be repelled and thus sympathize with the charismatic Mudd. Yet a moment’s thought makes one realize how nonsensical it is in the context of Star Trek. This is the future. Is it really so hard to get a divorce if one is unhappy with one’s spouse? If two people are so miserable together, is it truly necessary for one of them to flee into outer space? And sure, another moment’s thought is all it takes to realize that Mudd likely married his wife to gain some kind of monetary benefit, and that if we were in her place, we might be shrill, too. Still, Stella isn’t particularly funny, and for me, even Mudd’s comeuppance was poisoned by her sour, nagging presence.


If Harry Mudd put you in a closet, you'd make this face, too.

The rest of the episode is great, though; one of the best “break the computer” ones we’ve seen. Four stars.

A little bit of Vaudeville


by Gideon Marcus

Something I love about the stellar anthology show, Star Trek, is how versatile it is.  One week, we're getting political commentary, with ramifications right from the headlines of today (e.g. "A Taste of Armageddon"), another we're getting a Halloween-themed piece ("Catspaw").  An episode might be a rendition of a classic war movie ("Balance of Terror") or a retelling of Hamlet ("Conscience of the King").

"I, Mudd" takes place almost entirely on a spartan subterranean set, and largely features entertaining characters conversing with each other.  It's like an extended Hollywood Palace sketch.  It really shouldn't work, but it does.

From Kirk's masterful exchanges with Mudd (with Kirk displaying just the right mix of exasperation, anger, and amusement) to Chekov's lively Cossack dances, to the halting…yet endearing…cadence of…the androids, to Uhura's silky mock betrayal (she really is getting a chance to shine this season!), to the grand finale filled with pantomimed absurdity–it's a stage-bound pageant of comedy.  Interestingly, the avante garde Marc Daniels was tapped to direct rather than the more stagey Joe Pevney.  You see his surrealistic influences particularly during the dance scenes.


No caption required.

That the story is actually pretty good is a bonus.  If the show doesn't quite reach five star status for me, it's because while I enjoyed the show thoroughly, it was a bit too frivolous to feel like "real" Star Trek–essentially the same complaint I had about "Catspaw", but with an execution that makes me all but forgive the lapse.

Four stars.

Tonight's episode seems like it will be more of a serious affair.  At least we'll find out what happened to Glenn Corbett after he left Route 66…

Here's the invitation! Come join us.

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




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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[November 6, 1967] Reaching the Peak (Doctor Who: The Abominable Snowmen [Part 2])

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By Jessica Holmes

It took a long time—far longer than it really should have—but The Abominable Snowman finally lurched towards a pretty good conclusion. Let’s take a look at the second half of the latest Doctor Who serial.

Credit: BBC Photonovels

EPISODE FOUR

As Victoria flees from the Yeti in the monastery, the Doctor and Jamie find another guarding the TARDIS—but neither of these perils pans out as you might expect. The monastery Yeti simply walks out the door (despite the monks’ attempts to stop it), and the one lurking by the TARDIS is apparently unaware of its surroundings, leaving the Doctor free to disable it. However, there is a very real danger on the mountain: whatever the Abbot is doing with the pyramid in the cave. Travers watches him curiously, but has no choice but to flee when the pyramid activates, producing a very unpleasant hum and a blinding light.

Credit: BBC Photonovels

As the pyramid activates, the disabled Yeti’s control sphere attempts to reconnect with its Yeti, prompting the Doctor and Jamie to realise that the missing orb in the monastery wasn't stolen…it moved by itself. They've left Victoria with a potentially active Yeti!

For her part, Victoria finds herself accused of resurrecting the Yeti herself. Unable to provide a good excuse for why she was hiding in the room with the Yeti, and with Thomni trying to protect her, Khrisong orders the pair of them to be locked up.

While in the cell together, the pair discuss how the Doctor came by the holy Ghanta in the first place, as he was under the impression that it was given to a stranger 300 years ago for safekeeping. Victoria braces herself for a tricky explanation of how the Doctor can travel through time and space, only for Thomni to be entirely unfazed by the idea. After all, with years of meditation, Padmasambhava himself learned to detach himself from his earthly body and travel great distances.

Astral travelling sounds pretty great. Shame I don’t have 300 years to dedicate myself to meditation. Or the patience. Or the capacity to sit still and quietly without anything to amuse me for longer than five minutes.

Credit: BBC Photonovels

Having completed his task, the Abbot returns to the monastery, where Padmasambhava tells him to prepare the monks to leave, as the Great Intelligence is starting to take on material form.

Now, I’ve seen episodes padded out in a lot of ways before. Sometimes there’s long establishing shots, sometimes there’s a filler scene, or perhaps a long fight sequence…or a musical number. By far the most annoying however is the technique used here. Every scene with Padmasambhava takes an absolute eternity to complete. Why?

Becaaaaaauuuuuse… heeeeeee… taaaaaalkssss… liiiiiiike… thiiiiiis.

I could go into the kitchen, stick the kettle on, make a cup of tea and drink it in the time it takes him to finish a sentence. (Indeed, I may have…)

On their way down the mountain, a group of Yeti corner the Doctor and Jamie, but like a pack of big potato-shaped dogs, they’re only interested in the ball. You’d think an entity called the Great Intelligence would create servants a little less mindless. Maybe he should be called the Mildly Smart.

Credit: BBC Photonovels

Victoria escapes from her cell by feigning sickness before the Doctor and Jamie make it back, which is unfortunate as it was apparently the Doctor’s idea for Khrisong to lock her up out of harm’s way in the first place (because we have to treat her like a delicate little flower, apparently), and now nobody knows where she is. At the same time, Travers makes it back to the monastery, ragged and babbling about the pyramid before fainting.

Although Khrisong is willing to hear the Doctor out, the rest of the monks still answer to the Abbot, and when the Abbot orders the Doctor, Travers and Jamie to be arrested, the monks see no reason not to comply.

And what of Victoria? She’s headed straight back to the inner sanctum, like a moth to a flame.

This time, Padmasambhava invites her inside.

Credit: BBC Photonovels

EPISODE FIVE

Padmasambhava takes this opportunity to hypnotise Victoria, before placing four Yeti (what is the plural of Yeti? Yetis? Yeti? Yetii?) in the courtyard. The monks are taking too long to leave.

Travers comes around from his fainting spell, but although he can remember the bright light and the noise (and the pain that came with them), he can’t remember anything he saw in his brief time away from the monastery. Before anyone can press him further, the monks learn that the Yeti have broken in, and most fall back. However, one insists on continuing to search for Victoria…and ends up squished by the Buddha statue for his troubles.

Well, if that’s not a sign, I don’t know what is.

Admittedly, it was the Yeti who pushed it over. But still. A sign’s a sign.

Credit: BBC Photonovels

The monks don’t need any more encouragement to leave, but the Doctor is not so easily dissuaded. This is where Victoria comes in. She comes to the monks with the holy ghanta, speaking with the voice of Padmasambhava, and tells them that they must all leave. It seems redundant.

Realising that Padmasambhava is the same monk who was at this monastery the last time he visited, the Doctor figures it would be a good idea to check in on his old friend.

Padmasambhava is not enjoying his old age, it’s safe to say. Most people don’t have ‘bring an evil disembodied intelligence to life and end the world’ in their retirement plans, and neither did he. He was just trying to do some astral travelling when he came upon the Great Intelligence. He decided to help it gain corporeal form, which was kind of him…until it took over his mind and body. Now it won’t let him die. He begs for the Doctor’s help, but passes out before he can reveal where the signal controlling the Yeti is coming from. The Great Intelligence presumably keeps him on a short leash.

Quite a nightmarish existence, really. He’s almost a parody of old age. His mind is slipping away from him, with it his body. He must have seen everyone he cares about die before him. It’s a cruel fate indeed. I wish there was a bit more focus given to this aspect of Padmasambhava. It’s an untapped well of horror and interesting character potential.

Credit: BBC Photonovels

Having run into a dead end here, the Doctor returns to the others. Victoria is still under Padmasambhava’s hypnotic influence, stuck begging the Doctor to go back to the TARDIS. To save her from losing her mind (or perhaps because her repeated pleas are quite annoying), the Doctor reveals his own skill in the art of hypnosis. He puts her to sleep, then makes her forget everything that happened since she escaped from her prison cell. It seems to do the trick.

I might normally say something about hypnosis being nonsense but this is a story about robot Yeti so maybe I’ll give the sarcasm a miss.

The Doctor and Travers then head back up the mountain to try and trace the signal again, only to realise to their horror that the signal was coming from inside the monastery the whole time.

Well, yes. We know. It’s played as some kind of revelation, but we were already in on the secret. Dramatic irony can be good, but there’s a lack of the necessary tension in this story to make it work. The Yeti don’t really feel all that threatening, so it doesn’t feel particularly urgent to work out how they’re being controlled. The Great Intelligence is the root of the threat, but everyone’s still fixated on the Yeti.

Credit: BBC Photonovels

As if to underscore my point, it’s here that the Great Intelligence’s rapidly expanding corporeal form bursts out from the cave and spills onto the mountainside. If I were an incorporeal entity, my choice for a physical form wouldn’t be ‘gigantic glowing blob thing’, but who am I to judge?

The Doctor and Travers rush back down the mountain and warn the others that Padmasambhava is controlling the Yeti from his sanctum. Khrisong, realising that the Abbot is alone with the master and fearing for his safety, immediately runs off to look for him. It’s then that Travers remembers–just moments too late–what he saw in the cave. Khrisong is running to his doom.

See, that’s some good dramatic irony.

Credit: BBC Photonovels

EPISODE SIX

The Doctor rushes to the sanctuary too late to save Khrisong, who dies of a stab wound inflicted by the Abbot moments after his arrival. Padmasambhava/the Great Intelligence’s immensely unsettling laugh echoes across the monastery as the monks come to investigate the commotion. The Doctor and Thomni stick up for the Abbot, recognising that he was hypnotised and not responsible for his own actions. He tells the monks to go, remaining behind with Jamie, Thomni and Victoria.

Travers, for his part, is convinced that the mysterious pyramid in the cave must be destroyed, and heads up the mountain.

The Doctor takes advantage of the Abbot’s trance state to interrogate him, and learns that there’s a room behind the master’s throne where the controls for the Yeti are hidden.

Credit: BBC Photonovels

Meanwhile, Travers finds that the Great Intelligence’s light is spreading all over the mountain. Before long, it’ll engulf the monastery. However, the Yeti are behind him, and he’s trapped up on the mountain.

The Doctor confronts Padmasambhava, and demands entrance to the sanctum. As he struggles across the room against a howling wind (courtesy of the master’s incredible psychic powers), Jamie and Thomni come in behind him to start smashing up the controls, finding another pyramid in the hidden room. However, Padmasambhava still has the Yeti figures, and starts bringing reinforcements into the monastery. Though Victoria tries to stop him, she can’t shake off his psychic influence, even with a mantra ('Om Mani Padme Hum', one of the most popular mantras in Tibetan Buddhism) to help her.

Credit: BBC Photonovels

Calling the Yeti back to the monastery leaves Travers free to come back down the mountain. Finding the dire predicament that the others are in, he takes out his gun, aims at Padmasambhava, and fires. But the old man catches the bullet in his hand, which is undeniably very cool.

Jamie then smashes the pyramid in the control room, which simultaneously (for some reason) causes the pyramid in the cave to explode–along with the top of the mountain. With that, the Great Intelligence is destroyed, assuming it’s even possible to truly destroy an incorporeal disembodied mind. It’s all jolly exciting, but it’s a shame that it took five episodes before it started getting good.

Credit: BBC Photonovels

Free at last from the Great Intelligence, Padmasambhava thanks the Doctor before finally shuffling off this mortal coil.  With the evil finally purged from the monastery, the monks can return to their peaceful life, and the Doctor and company can return to the TARDIS.

There’s one last surprise as they head up to the ship, though. The group, with Travers, spot a hairy, shaggy creature out on the mountain. But it’s not one of the Great Intelligence’s robots. Could it be… a real Yeti?

Travers runs off to search for it, and the Doctor and company head into the TARDIS, hoping for warmer climes.

Credit: BBC Photonovels

Final Thoughts

It’s a shame, really. After a long slog to the last episode, we finally get to see something good happen—and then it’s all over. I shan’t beat the authentic casting dead horse any more than I already have, though I can’t really comment on the authenticity of the religious practices shown. Nothing sticks out as glaringly wrong, as far as I can tell, so that’s encouraging. I think the writers did do their due diligence to get things right and it at least appears that they’re trying to respect Buddhist beliefs. They’ve definitely done at least some research. Padmasambhava is the name of an Indian Buddhist master who is still revered in many Buddhist traditions to this very day. However, I don’t think our Padmasambhava is meant to be the same person (the real one lived over a thousand years ago) which is for the best, I think. Turning a revered religious figure into a villain possessed by an alien ghost would be a bad idea indeed. I don’t know why they picked that name specifically, but I found it quite interesting when I looked him up.

The last episode was good, I will give it that much. Other than that, this serial doesn’t do much for me. I didn’t feel enough threat from the Yeti to really engage with them, and they serve only to distract from the more interesting Great Intelligence. However, there’s not enough information to go on there. Where did it come from? What did it want, once it had a body? Some mystery is good, but with too many unanswered questions, there aren’t enough clues to ponder.

3 out of 5 for The Abominable Snowmen



 

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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

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

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Such stuff as dreams are made of


by Joe Reid

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

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

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


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

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


"Hail Captain Kirk, Thane of Cawdor!"

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


"There's my litter box!"

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


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

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


Korob and Sylvia–a tale of two coiffures

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

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


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

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

3 stars.

A fool thinks himself to be wise


by Janice L. Newman

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

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

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

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


"I am acting!"

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

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

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

Signifying Nothing


by Amber Dubin

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

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


Though you must admit: the camera loves him!

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

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

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


Jim Henson presents: rejected muppets!

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

Ridiculous. Two stars.


by Gideon Marcus

The Play's the Thing

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

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


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

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

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

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

Two stars.

Something Wicked this way Comes


by Jessica Dickinson Goodman

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

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

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

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


I think the Captain is starting to enjoy it…

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

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

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

Three stars.

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

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

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




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Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[October 26, 1967] Duet in G(ray) (Star Trek: "The Doomsday Machine")

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by Gideon Marcus

Remember, thou are but a mortal

For the past year and a half, we've thrilled to the sight of the Enterprise, a graceful vessel that calls to mind the spindly beauty of tall ships and the blunt power of a battleship.  We've seen her proudly sailing the ether, shaken about by time streams, canted oddly after an attack.

But until last week's episode, we never saw one of her class utterly wrecked.

In the opening scenes of "The Doomsday Machine", when the Enterprise comes across the wrecked Constellation, accompanied by a most effective dirge, it is a gut punch.  The misaligned warp pods.  The charred saucer.  It calls to mind visions of Pearl Harbor, of kamikaze-ravaged ships.  A starship is mortal, we realize.

So, too, is its captain.  The sight of Commodore Decker, mute with shock when Kirk first beams aboard the Constellation, is all too believable.  This is a man we can believe has been stunned out of his mind first by the wreck of his ship by an enormous, extragalactic planet-wrecker, and then by the destruction of his helpless crew by the same implacable menace.  That he alone should be the sole survivor of this disaster is all the more painful–to him, and to us.

If we sympathize with poor Decker, ably played by the ubiquitous character actor William Windom, we can feel little but revulsion for the planet killer, a cross between Saberhagen's berzerkers and Marvel's Galactus.  Plated with impenetrable armor and self-regenerating, the juggernaut has the power of Nomad, but with none of the human-induced fallibility.  It is simply a mindless killing machine.

In the battle that ensues, we root for the crippled Constellation, helmed by Captain Kirk and held together by Scotty, Washburn, and two unnamed crewmen.  We root for the Enterprise, crippled by the presence of a maniacally driven Matt Decker, who assumes command over vociferous and constant objections by Mr. Spock.  If the three-cornered fight is occasionally hindered by inconsistent special effects, it is immeasurably helped by fine acting and an incomparable, Emmy-deserving score.

The drama that takes place on the bridge of the Enterprise is no less compelling, drawing strongly from The Caine Mutiny, complete with Decker fondling tape cartridges like Queeg's ball-bearings.  And unlike in that tremendous book (and less successful movie), Spock has no stomach for mutiny. Deliverance of the Enterprise must wait until Kirk can reestablish command.

"The Doomsday Machine" sees the death of Commodore Decker and the near death of Captain Kirk, both vital to the destruction of the planet killer.  Decker's suicide run with a shuttlecraft establishes the enemy's weakness; Kirk's determination to ram the Constellation inside the machine proves the strongest weapon against it.  But it is really the loss of the Constellation, sacrificed to immolate the destroyer from inside, that impacts the most.  One of the Enterprise's 12 sisters is dead.  Its skipper and complement of 400 will have no thrilling adventures, no end-of-the-episode laugh line.  And if one starship can die, any of them can.

While credit must be given both to the regular cast and this episode’s guest star, and I have already praised the music, there are yet laurels to pass out.  Marc Daniels has consistently impressed with his tight and creative direction, especially in contrast to the competent but rather staid work of the fellow he seems to alternate episodes with, Joe Pevney.  Whomever edited this episode also did a terrific job, often cutting seamlessly between two dialogues to ratchet up the pace.  And, of course, writer Norm Spinrad is no stranger to good science fiction, having been writing it since 1962.  It is probably him we can thank for the "hardness" and plausibility of this episode.

There are a few quibbles, a few scientific gaffes, and my comrades may discuss them.  But for my money, this was perhaps science fiction's finest hour on television.

Five stars.

Call him Ishmael


by Amber Dubin

The tale this episode follows is a well-worn one in sea-faring lore, but I was nevertheless pleasantly surprised to see Star Trek take on the classic story of Moby Dick. Commodore Decker is cast as Ahab, a shipwreck of a captain on a wrecked ship maddened by the obsession with the entity that took everything from him. His illogical pursuit of his white whale is just as turbulent as the protagonist of the famous novel, but what sets this retelling apart from the rest is the gracefulness with which the crew of the Enterprise strike a delicate balance between adherence to duty and survival.

This is on full display in the way Spock does his best to ignore the commodore's obvious madness in order to follow the rules of his station. I found myself shouting, "just nerve pinch him!" as I was forced to watch Decker spit on every opportunity Spock offered him to choose a logical path. Kirk, on the other hand, ever the space cowboy, immediately undermines all the subtlety of the crew's struggles by exclaiming "blast the rules" and outright calling the commodore a ship-stealing tyrant. I found this to be a refreshing deviation to the plot, because Kirk was very much speaking my mind and I was grateful to see the crew rally behind him in exhausted, fearful relief.


A happier crew

While I wasn't thrilled about the spacial reasoning behind the climactic battles, it's incontestable that the score and cinematography in this episode were phenomenal. The last scene, when the transporter kept malfunctioning up until the last seconds before the explosion, had me literally biting my nails with suspense. Likewise, the pulsating droning of the music that started when the crew boarded the shipwrecked vessel left me authentically unsettled and made me wonder what horrors they would stumble upon. This thematic wariness provided the perfect backdrop to introduce the commodore, as he was essentially a discarded shell of himself, a dead man cursed to haunt the abandoned halls of his once mighty and powerful ship.

The place where this episode lost points for me was the forced simile Kirk kept pushing about the killer robot being a doomsday device like an H-bomb. It felt like a ham-fisted attempt to force relevance to our times, which I found unnecessary when a story of a powerful man driven mad by failure was timeless in itself. Moreover, stating that this robot must have been used as doomsday device is a view as limited as the potential usages the H-bomb, or the power behind it. True, the mahine has the destructive power of a powerful bomb but the robot could just as easily have been once used to convert inert material into energy to feed a planet, not destroy it. I'm most disappointed that there's a gaping hole in Kirk's logic over the origin of this device and Spock isn't even tempted to close it. Possibly Spock doesn't challenge his captain's theory because he has been burnt out from challenging illogical authority figures all day, but I have to stretch to make this explanation fit.

Four Stars

There but for the grace of God…


by Janice L. Newman

The Traveler nicely summed up how painful it was to see a sister-ship of the Enterprise fatally wounded. But what held my attention was Commander Decker’s plight and performance. Though some of my companions gently mocked his scenery-chewing tendencies, I found his first appearance and his explanation of what had happened to his ship to be compelling. This was a man at the end of his rope, who had endured the greatest loss any starship captain could imagine: the loss of his ship and crew.

If Captain Kirk should ever live through such a nightmare, I firmly believe he would behave in much the same way. Starfleet must choose captains who have a certain, shall we say, obsessive streak when it comes to their ships and crews. We’ve seen Kirk become aggressive and irrational when his ship is threatened. We’ve also seen him brought back from mind-altered states more than once when giving in would have meant the loss of his ship. For Kirk, the Enterprise and its complement mean everything to him. It’s all too easy to picture him in Decker’s place, a broken, desperate, suicidal, and vengeful man.


Would Kirk face the death of his own ship so calmly?

Four stars.

By the way, we're just burning to see what happens in the next episode of Star Trek, coming out tomorrow night!

Here's the invitation! Come join us.

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




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