#50 (2-22): By Any Other Name

THE PLOT

The Enterprise responds to a distress call... and falls right into a trap set by the Kelvens, aliens from the Andromeda galaxy. The ship is quickly taken by the aliens' superior technology, with Kirk given an ultimatum to cooperate in taking his captors back to Andromeda (a 300-year voyage, even with the aliens' technology) to prepare the way for an invasion of the Milky Way galaxy!

Kirk's efforts to turn the tables on his captors by force fail, resulting in the death of a crew member. Scotty and Spock attempt to rig a self-destruct mechanism in Engineering. Kirk, however, refuses to use the device, which is detected by the Kelvens anyway. With the Enterprise crew reduced to balls of matter, the only crew members left are Kirk, Spock, Scotty, and McCoy - and it is up to them try one last, desperate gamble to retake control!


CHARACTERS

Capt. Kirk: This episode again sees Kirk outmatched, left to get by solely on his wits. We do see him lean perhaps a touch too heavily on his appeal to the opposite sex.  If Kelinda didn't find him attractive, his entire plan would go up in a puff of deflated ego.  Still, he does resist - and keeps resisting - with any means at his disposal. I was not pleased by the writers' decision to have Kirk reject Scotty's self-destruct mechanism, however. Given the potential stakes, Kirk should have been willing to use it. Since we later find out that the device had been detected anyway, Kirk using it and having it fail would have been both more in-character and more interesting than the script choice made here.

Spock: Repeats his psychic trick from A Taste of Armageddon, to substantially less successful effect. However, he is able to sort through the impressions he received to identify the clue that leads Kirk to his last gamble. He also displays a dry wit throughout, acting as a particularly calm Iago to Rojan (the head Kelvin)'s Othello in the last portion of the episode.

Scotty: Asked to "stimulate" the Kelvens, he falls back on his most tried-and-true mode of stimulation: alcohol! It's not necessarily great character work, but the scenes with Scotty and Random Kelvin #2 are hilarious, jointly drinking their way through Scotty's entire, quite prodigious, stock. "What is it?" the Kelvin asks at one point of the latest bottle Scotty has produced. "It's... erm..." Scotty scrutinizes the bottle. "It's green." And then pours.

Hot Alien Space Babe of the Week: Barbara Bouchet is Kelinda, the second-in-command of the Andromedans. She shows no acting ability whatsoever, mostly standing around stiffly or being kissed by William Shatner or Warren Stevens. Then again, who cares? A gorgeous woman, whose flat line deliveries are at least well-served by playing a clinical, unemotional alien. And did I mention? Gorgeous.

Villain of the Week: Warren Stevens gives a quite strong performance as Rojan. He is calm and reasonable through msot of the episode. He fully understands and sympathizes with Kirk's devotion to duty and determination to escape. And he cannot tolerate it, as discussed below:


ZAP THE REDSHIRT!

Redshirt Count: One. But what a one! In one of the most chilling scenes of the series, Rojan doesn't even blink an eye as he pulls aside two redshirts, transforms them to balls of matter, then crushes one in a demonstration of his power. He kills the young crew member not out of malice, but to demonstrate to Kirk that rebellion will have consequences. It's a simple effect: a cutaway to a fragile ball, which is then crushed to powder in Rojan's hand.  It is also one of the most memorable death scenes in all Trek.

This particular death scene also plays with the redshirt conventions that had built up in the series by this point. Two redshirts accompany the Away Team: a fairly flat, almost anonymous black security man who wants to get out of the situation through violence, and a very appealing, frightened (but not annoyingly useless) young yeoman. Both are reduced to balls of matter, one is killed, the other restored. Expectations of viewers of previous episodes are upturned by the yeoman being the one killed, when most episodes would save "the girl" and kill "random security guy."

Her character, while hardly memorable, is both appealing and likable.  She is frightened, yet still does her duty, even when separated from the team to await her fate (with a single, memorably plaintive, "Captain!").  These combine to make for a very simple scene that nevertheless I remember from my first viewing, back in my childhood, to the present. Strong direction from Marc Daniels, and good casting of the young actress (you just instinctively want to protect her) aid a scene that is, on its own, already well-scripted.

A redshirt masterpiece, and by far the most memorable moment in this episode.


THOUGHTS

The episode sees a peculiar movement from being very tense and suspenseful in its first half, to being largely comedic in its second half. It could almost be argued that this is two 25-minute episodes in one: a planet-bound thriller, followed by a ship-bound comedy. To the script's credit, the transition to humor is done gradually enough, and with sufficient consistency in tone, as to not feel jarring. Kirk's solution to the problem is ingenious, but  also quite dangerous. If Rojan figures out what Kirk is doing at any point prior to it actually being effective, all he needs to do to put Kirk in his place is start crushing more reduced crew members.

One problem is that the "redshirt death" is so good, and so memorable, that I couldn't quite manage to forget it in the more comedic second half. As a result, I wanted to see Rojan punished - which ultimately doesn't happen. Perhaps it's a case of one very good scene overshadowing the rest of the episode, but it does end up seeming like Rojan and company escape justice.  Still, given the level of their technology, I'd be hard-pressed to come up with any way for Kirk to have administered any kind of justice on them!


Rating: 8/10. Hugely entertaining.

Previous Episode: A Piece of the Action
Next Episode: Return to Tomorrow

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#45 (2-19): A Private Little War

THE PLOT

When the Enterprise is given a scientific mission to a primitive planet, Kirk is enthusiastic about returning to the site of his very first planetary survey, 13 years earlier. He remembers a peaceful world, where the inhabitants use their very basic weapons only for hunting and never for fighting. But he soon discovers that this ideal world has changed over the past decade. The people from the village are now armed with flint-locks, which should be impossible. When Kirk sees the villagers preparing to ambush a party of the Native American-like hill people, led by Kirk's old friend Tyree (Michael Witney), he intervenes - and Spock is shot.

While Spock is treated on Enterprise, Kirk and McCoy learn that the villagers have been supplied these weapons by Klingons, who hope to install the villagers as puppet rulers of the planet. Tyree refuses to fight under any circumstances, while his ambitious wife Nona (Nancy Kovack) wants the advanced Starfleet weapons that Kirk has access to in order to claim absolute power over the villagers.  Kirk now must find a way to re-establish an equal technological footing among the planet's people, hopefully while keeping his old friend alive!


CHARACTERS

Capt. Kirk: Though not immune to Nona's influence, the extent to which he prizes the Prime Directive keeps him from agreeing to her demands, even under the influence of her "spells." He does agree to provide weapons once he realizes that the Klingons are behind the villagers' development of flint-locks. But his solution is one that appalls McCoy, as his plan is to match the Klingons' weapons advances for the villagers exactly, and to continue exactly matching weapons development. In effect, Kirk creates an ongoing civil war. He counters McCoy's outrage by observing that this maintains the spirit of the Prime Directive, with Starfleet interfering only to exactly balance out the Klingon interference.  He adds that while "war isn't much of a life... (at least) it's a life," as opposed to the slaughter the hill people will suffer otherwise.

That Vulcan Voodoo You Do: Shot by a primitive flintlock, Spock is in very serious condition, with the ship suffering from a lack of Vulcan biological stores to treat him. Fortunately, one of the ship's doctors, Dr. M'Benga (Booker Bradshaw) has experience treating Vulcans. When Spock orders Nurse Chapel to strike him repeatedly, using the pain to return himself to full consciousness, M'Benga recognizes that this is actually appropriate and acts to forestall interference from Scotty. Once Spock has regained full consciousness, he allows himself no time for recuperation, immediately returning to the bridge to see the situation to its conclusion.

Dr. McCoy: When Kirk is attacked by a Mugatu, a native creature with poisonous fangs, McCoy uses his medical knowledge to keep Kirk alive until Tyree's wife can cure him. He gets a particularly strong scene in which he argues against Kirk's solution to the Klingon interference. McCoy observes that Kirk's idea of supplying Tyree's people with the same weaponry as the villagers, and advancing those weapons to match every advance the Klingons provide, will result in a civil war that will go on for "year after year, massacre after massacre!" DeForest Kelly excels at playing McCoy's outrage at the thought of such a protracted and bloody war.

Hot Alien Space Babe of the Week: Nona (Nancy Kovacks) is ambitious and ruthless. What she wants most is power for herself. She probably married Tyree in the first place because she saw his status among the Hill People as her best path to power. When she sees McCoy using his phaser to heat the rocks to keep Kirk warm, she pounces on the idea of Tyree's men having those weapons. As Kirk persists in refusing to give her what she wants, she eventually abandons the idea of loyalty to Tyree.  She first attempts to seduce Kirk into doing as she wishes, then steals his phaser and offers it (and, presumably, herself) to the leader of the villagers so that she can rule once they win the conflict. Kovacks provides a very good performance, emphasizing both the character's sensual nature and her ruthlessness. She effectively is Lady Macbeth, only with more sex and less conscience.

The Klingons: In Errand of Mercy, the Klingons were simply conquerors, fighting their enemies directly while ruling their conquered lands with brutality. Here, we see a refinement of the (ineffective) use they were put to in Friday's Child. They are working covertly to set up puppet governments, picking a side in a civil war and making sure that their side wins, while not giving their side a level of technology that would actually make them troublesome to the Klingons. The Klingons actually aren't much seen, they are more memorable here than they were with "Inept Klingon!" in Friday's Child.

THOUGHTS

OK, Nona's "cure" for Kirk has to be commented upon. With her undoing his shirt, then thrashing around over him while moaning out her incantations, it was impossible for me to keep a straight face during that scene. As close to a sex scene as 1960's Trek could have come, complete with Nona having an apparent orgasm at the end of the "treatment."

A few adolescent giggles aside, this is a thoughtful and interesting episode. The parallels with the then-escalating Vietnam War are quite obvious, but Kirk states his case for matching one puppet army with another - essentially fighting a human/Klingon war by proxy - in such a way that it's persuasive. Of course, the situation is deliberately loaded. The Klingons have clearly interfered before Kirk ever got here, and the hill people are obviously doomed without assistance. But it's still a compelling presentation of a situation not dissimilar to that which would come to dominate too much of foreign policy (for East and West alike) for far too long a time.

Tyree, the pacificist who must be made to see the necessity of war, could be a compelling character. Unfortunately, the actor is bland and he is given very little interesting material. His final scene, in which he picks up the gun and determines to use it, renders his pacifism a fairly shallow value, a position to be abandoned the instant someone dear to him is killed. Making him into a true, Gandhi-like figure might make his story more tragic and compelling, if even at the end he refuses to fight and is clearly doomed to be an early casualty. As it stands, he's a straw man, arguing foolishly against a necessary conflict, his arguments there only to be toppled by The Wisdom of Kirk.

The blandness of Tyree keeps the episode from being all it could be. But there are some truly memorable scenes: the Spock/Chapel slapping scene, the Kirk/McCoy argument, and Kirk's sadness at a solution that he knows is far from perfect, all make this an episode that lingers in the mind. Marc Daniels proves again why he was Trek's best director, and the script is well-paced and intelligent. Not one of Trek's greats, as it might have been, but still very good.


Rating: 8/10.

Previous Episode: Journey to Babel
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#33 (2-2): Who Mourns for Adonais?

THE PLOT

The Enterprise is trapped when a huge green hand made of energy materializes in space and grabs hold. A man appears on the scanner, threatening to crush the ship and extending an "invitation" for Kirk and members of his crew to beam down. Kirk beams down with McCoy, Scotty, and the pretty young Lieutenant Palamas, an anthropologist. When they meet the man in person, he claims to be the ancient god Apollo. He is offering the Enterprise crew a life of simple pleasures, in exchange for their unquestioning worship of him. But he also offers the vengeance of a god if they refuse him!


CHARACTERS

Capt. Kirk: Unable to abide captivity, he sets about trying to find a way to free his crew from Apollo's grip from pretty much the instant the hand appears. He is not foolhardy. He recognizes Apollo's powers, and urges the others to behave cautiously and courteously, retaining courtesy even in his own direct defiance. But he also remains keenly observant, probing constantly for weaknesses and using the resources of his crew and his ship to find a way to break Apollo's grip on them.

Spock: Completely in sync with his captain, and operating - like Kirk - from the starting point of Apollo not being a god, but simply an alien with an energy source. He uses the ship's sensors to find that source, while directing Uhura to work around Apollo's interference to restore communications.

Scotty: This is the first of a couple of "Scotty in Love" episodes. For Scotty, this means that his common sense, and the bulk of his IQ, trickle down out of his ears in gray, gooey lumps.  From a sensible officer, he becomes generally useless, putting himself repeatedly in jeopardy. Kirk finally has enough of his middle-aged engineer behaving like a mooney 16-year-old, and gives him an appropriate dressing down. Still, even with Kirk finally snapping at him to "do (his) job" and even with James Doohan's best efforts, there is nothing in any episode to date to suggest that Scotty is prone to the level of unprofessionalism, even outright idiocy, on display here. I might also idly suggest that he find a more age-appropriate object for his amorous pursuits.  Somehow, even though I had absolutely no problem with the even less age-appropriate McCoy relationship in Shore Leave, I was able to believe that pairing while I was unable to believe this one.  Perhaps it's because McCoy actually remained McCoy in that episode, instead of turning into a pod-person.

Hot Space Babe of the Week: Leslie Parrish is Carolyn Palamas, the anthropologist who is pursued by both Scotty and Apollo. Palamas' choice near the climax turns out to be the key to the crew's escape. The Scotty/Palamas relationship isn't convincing for a second, save perhaps as a middle-aged man's unrequited midlife crush, but the Apollo/Palamas one works far better. Palamas' background, and Apollo's approaches to her, make it convincing that she would be attracted, and Parrish plays the rejection scene quite well.

Villain of the Week: Michael Forest does a solid job as Apollo, capturing the mix of the powerful and the pathetic the episode requires very well. He's a bit stiff in the person-to-person interactions on the planet's surface. Then again, I suppose a god would be used to one-way conversations. He plays well opposite Parrish, adequately opposite Shatner, and manages to extract just enough sympathy to be something other than a black-and-white baddie.


THOUGHTS

As with a few Season One episodes, I liked Who Mourns for Adonis? significantly better as an adult than I did as a child. The episode's musings on what was gained when ancient superstitions was abandoned, and what was lost at the same time, hold a distinct appeal to me. I enjoyed the presentation of Apollo as a being who is past his time and unable to accept that he no longer fits in the modern age. In the late 1960's, with technology starting to run away with itself, more than a few slightly older viewers of the time could probably relate to that on some level.

The episode is very well-directed. Marc Daniels was almost certainly Trek's best director, and his confident hand lends a peaceful and pastoral air to the forest during early scenes, and a very menacing atmosphere to the same setting later. Daniels does a particularly strong job with what had to have been a problematic scene, by late 1960's standards. After Palamas rejects Apollo - on Kirk's orders, and against her own desires - Apollo takes his revenge. We get the usual storm effects, and see her mounting fear. Then we see Apollo's form appear, his face pushing forward toward a screaming Palamas in a series of quick, close shots. The staging of the scene suggests a rape, but does so in a way that some viewers (particularly younger viewers) won't catch the suggestion at all, thus sidestepping potential censorship issues. At the same time, it's extremely effectively executed, both eerie and disturbing.

The episode did apparently have two alterations imposed on it by the networks. One was the removal of a tag which would have revealed that Palamas was pregnant with Apollo's child. I have mixed feelings on the alteration. On the one hand, the cut scene certainly backs up my reading of the scene in which Apollo assaults Palamas. On the other hand, it was clearly a jokey tag scene... and I'm just as happy not to have Trek be among the late '60's/early '70's shows that were happy to find humor in rape scenes or rape threats.

The other change was a slight addition to a line in which Kirk offers his initial dismissal of Apollo, telling him, "We have no use for gods." The network asked for a slight follow-up, so in the televised episode he adds: "The one is quite sufficient." This is a change I wholeheartedly favor. It may work against Gene Roddenberry's vision of a future in which humanity has discarded all of its superstitions. But, much like J. Michael Straczynski and Babylon 5, I never can quite buy that utopian future in which humanity is free of crime and conflict, let alone religion. Besides which, the addition is just a better line, snappier and more quotable than what would otherwise be a throwaway. And in drama, one should never let one's worldview get in the way of a good one-liner.


Rating: 7/10.

Previous Episode: Friday's Child
Next Episode: Amok Time


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#15 (1-20): Court Martial.

Lawyer Samuel T. Cogley (Elisha Cook) defends Kirk!

Original Air Date: Feb. 2, 1967. Teleplay by: Don M. Mankiewicz, Steven W. Carabatsos. Story by: Don M. Mankiewicz. Directed by: Marc Daniels.

It's Perry Mason... in space!!!


THE PLOT

After taking damage in an ion storm, the Enterprise stops at Starbase 11 for repairs... only for Kirk to find himself accused of criminal negligence in the death of a crew member during the storm.

Records Officer Benjamin Finney had been in the ion pod during the storm, and he failed to get out of the pod before it had to be ejected. Kirk insists that he followed all the proper protocols, and that he gave Finney plenty of time to escape. But when the computer is checked, it shows that Kirk ejected the pod while the ship was still at yellow alert.

Put on trial by a skilled prosecutor, Kirk must rely on the battered, computer-phobic attorney Samuel T. Cogley (guest star Elisha Cook) to defend him. But as the evidence against Kirk mounts, even he begins to wonder if he may have made a mistake that cost a crewman his life!


CHARACTERS

Capt. Kirk: He is fiercely defensive of both his command and his reputation. When his actions are questioned by a commodore, he avoids a "get-out" offer that would evade prosecution, actively insisting on a court martial to clear his name. He's shaken by the accusations of Finney's young daughter; and as the evidence mounts, he has a brief moment of self-doubt. In the end, though, he stands by his judgment.

Spock: It falls to Spock to save the day. As Kirk's case goes very badly, Spock follows his own avenue of investigation, checking the only truly damning witness against Kirk: the ship's computer. McCoy flares up when he sees Spock apparently wasting time playing chess against the computer - but the results of those chess games end up being the key to saving the captain.

Hot Space Babe of the Week: Joan Marshall is Areel Shaw, Kirk's old flame, who is assigned to prosecute him. This is staggeringly unlikely even by TV drama standards, but we'll just roll with that plot contrivance. She clearly still has feelings for Kirk, which doesn't stop her from putting on the strongest case that she can. Marshall gives a reasonable performance, though this is hardly one of the more memorable guest roles of the series.

Washed-Up Space Lawyer of the Week: Elisha Cook Jr. is Samuel Cogley.  In a classic case of "tell, don't show," we are repeatedly told how brilliant he is. What we see on screen is an old man who's losing, who lets key witnesses testify with no cross-examination, and who rests his case without offering a defense - only to badger the judges into waiving the rules afterward. Thank God for Spock, because Cogley's effectiveness as a defense attorney, as portrayed here, would turn the most liberal justice of the peace into Judge Roy Bean.


THOUGHTS

Court Martial is a bizarre episode. The concept is basically "Perry Mason in Space," and as long as it sticks to that structure, it works. By the same token, once it abandons that structure, it more or less falls apart.

The first 35 - 40 minutes of this episode are generally pretty good. The background involving Kirk and Finney is laid out efficiently; the evidence against Kirk is damning enough to make us wonder how he's going to get out of this; Elisha Cook, as the curmudgeonly lawyer, brings the right mix of eccentricity and urgency to the courtroom scenes; and the solution found by Spock ties in with the overall story. I could wish for even one moment to show Cogley's supposed brilliance, but it generally works as a courtroom drama.

Unfortunately, the writers don't stick with the courtroom the whole way through.  In the final ten minutes, this previously talky, stagey piece suddenly becomes an action story. The Enterprise is put in danger due to an intruder, a situation quickly resolved by Kirk getting into one of his acrobatic fistfights with an insane baddie.

I'm guessing the episode was overruning, because crucial scenes go unseen, replaced by voice-over narration.  Not even "Captain's Logs," but outright narration. Meanwhile, other bits set up by existing footage end up having no payoff. Memory Alpha reports that at least one scene, involving Finney's daughter, ended up being cut for time. This leaves the episode with a vaguely unfinished feel.

The real problem, and likely the source of the overruns, is the episode's switching gears from one story structure to an entirely separate story structure 3/4 of the way through. If the script had been rewritten so that the final revelations and confrontations came more or less within the courtroom setting, then this would have remained a solid, if second-tier, episode. As it stands, the near transition-free genre change is also accompanied by a sharp drop in quality.

In keeping with this being a bizarre episode, this courtroom "bottle show" ends up being the most comprehensive yet with regard to remastered effects. There is a new view of the damage to the Enterprise, shots of multiple ships coming and going from Starbase 11, and assorted other visual garnishes. Some purists may object, but I found it helped to bring this a little more to life.

On initial review, I had awarded this a "6" because the courtroom drama does mostly work. I'm reconsidering, though. The first forty minutes is entertaining, but it was never on track to earn more than a "6" - and then it falls apart in the final Act. I enjoy the episode, but it's flaws are glaringly obvious, leaving me downgrading my score to...


Rating: 5/10.

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