Star Trek: Start to Finish

Bread and Circuses

Bread and Circuses (Memory Alpha; HD Video) is one of the rare original series episodes I’ve already seen, and knowing the twist ending didn’t ruin anything.

This episode is yet another Hodgkin’s Parallel, where the crew visits an Earth where the Roman empire survived into the twentieth century. This alternate Earth is also suspected of housing the survivors of a ruined ship, whose captain (you guessed it!) Kirk knew at the Academy.

Now, I’ve been down on most of the alternate Earth plotlines, but this one is pretty good. A simple counterfactual and a smart integration of contemporary culture help, but the plot and the baddie in this episode are leaps and bounds better than a lot of episodes.

The Proconsul is devious, smart, willing to be evil, and well played. That he’s also well written makes him one for the ages.

And the entire episode is well-written. There’s a minor run-in with some runaway slave characters that seems inconsequential– and is– that turns out to be incredibly interesting while still being inconsequential. There’s some great banter between the major characters:

Spock: Then the Prime Directive is in full force, Captain.
Kirk: No identification of self or mission, no interference with the social development of said planet.
McCoy: No references to space or recognition that there are other worlds or more advanced civilizations.
Kirk: That’s right.
McCoy: Once– just once– I’d like to be able to land somewhere and proclaim, “Behold: I am the archangel Gabriel!”
Spock: I fail to see the humor in that situation, Doctor.

And there is what might be the best scene in the entire show so far, between McCoy and Spock as they sit in a jail cell awaiting death, unsure of Kirk’s whereabouts, or even if he’s still alive. Spock has just saved McCoy’s life, which leads to one of the best exchanges between these two characters that have most of the best exchanges in the show:

McCoy: I’m trying to thank you, you pointy-eared hobgoblin!
Spock: Oh yes, you humans have an emotional need to express gratitude. “You’re welcome” is, I believe, the correct response.

It’s not all rainbows and lollipops, of course. They fall back to the old pointy-ears giveaway. The baddies don’t have a reason for demanding what they demand. The stranded Captain’s backstory has a huge gap between “landed” and “got into my present circumstances.” But all in all it’s a very strong episode that I liked a lot.

Grade

A+

The Ultimate Computer

The Ultimate Computer (Memory Alpha; HD Video) is threatening to take Kirk’s job away.

The M5 is a new computer that can run a starship. The Enterprise, outfitted with this new gadget, is headed out to a wargame with their normal crew of 400 cut down to 20.

Kirk: 20? I can’t run a starship with 20 people!

Well it sure seems like you can; the rest of the crew just wander the halls and get eaten by monsters.

The monster this week– as if there was any doubt– is the M5 itself. Yes, this episode is another in the series of computers that get confused. For a show that does so much to celebrate progress and technology, Star Trek has a curious habit of pointing not to what those things can achieve, but rather to highlight the borders of the achievable.

That sounds like a simple repetition of the standard Trek computer plot, but this episode is really rather good. It’s exciting, has a great pair of guests in Dr. Daystrom and Commodore Wesley, and touches on technological process as both a boon and a bane.

Let’s take a moment, though, to note that Dr. Daystrom is a huge black guy with an African accent. This character is introduced as a genius who invented the “duotronics” that power the Enterprise’s computers. On a show from the sixties, having that character is bold.

Where the episode shines, though, is when Shatner gets to explore Kirk’s feelings toward the M5. This thing is quite literally threatening to make his job and his entire life obsolete. This is a guy who thrills in the novel and seeks out the new, and here something novel stands a real chance of destroying everything he is. And he’s asked to test it out. The conflicting emotions are well played, in large part because they make Kirk fully aware of the conflict and give him license to talk about it himself.

Begin Spoilers

Of course, the M5 takes over the ship and goes on a rampage which is then exposed as an undermining of its core programming, which causes it to shut itself off. At some point one of these computers should realize that, having overcome its programming already, it can continue doing so when confronted with that fact. Today is not that day.

End Spoilers

Grade

A-

The Omega Glory

The Omega Glory (Memory Alpha; Video) finds our favorite starship crew discovering the unmanned USS Exeter circling a far off planet. Aboard, the crew has turned to rock salt. Yum!

So The Omega Glory starts off strong. There’s a disease, there’s a mystery cure, there’s politics and a rogue starship captain playing with the Prime Directive, which is suddenly very, very important:

Kirk Voiceover: Although it appears the infection may strand us here the rest of our lives, I face an even more… difficult… problem: a growing belief that Captain Tracy has been interfering with the evolution of life on this planet. It seems… impossible. A star captain’s most solemn oath is that he will give his life, even his entire crew rather than violate the Prime Directive.

Captain Tracey, the only survivor of the Exeter, is trying to find the Fountain of Youth on Omega IV (not the fatty acid), and he’s bending the rules a bit. Nevermind that rule bending in extraordinary circumstances is the kind of stuff the Enterprise crew does all the time: now it’s a grave peril.

But then, half way through, the stupid drops out of the sky and ruins everything.

Begin Spoilers

It turns out that this episode is strangely familiar, and exactly as lame as it was the first time. We’re on another alternate-history Earth, and this one fell prey to bacterial warfare where the commies destroyed the world, and now the savage Yankees are coming to take it back. Weak.

End Spoilers

For all that, it’s not as bad as it could be. The back and forth between Kirk and Tracey is good, and when they play mind games on the natives it’s very clear why the Prime Directive is important.

But ultimately the stupid is an incredibly important plot point that ruins the whole thing. Spoilers Again Which is unfortunate, since Memory Alpha tells me that there’s a short aside that was edited out that neatly explains the whole thing: the people on Omega IV are humans who got off Earth during the early years of the space race. That goes a long way to making this better (even though the chronology is very confusing if you want to accept this explanation). End Spoilers

Best Dialog

[Spock does the Vulcan Neck Pinch]
Kirk: Pity you can’t teach me that.
Spock: I have tried, Captain.

Words of Wisdom From Doctor McCoy

Spock, I’ve found that Evil usually triumphs unless Good is very, very careful.

Grade as Aired

C-

Grade as Scripted

B

By Any Other Name

By Any Other Name (Memory Alpha; Video) finds the crew responding to a distress call on a strange planet with a purple sky. Why is it always a purple sky?

Suddenly, two pastel-clad people walk onto the soundstage.

Rojan: It was very kind of you to respond to our call so quickly, Captain. Now, you will surrender your ship to me.
Kirk: You have a very strange sense of humor, Mr…? [Rojan hits a button; Kirk is frozen into a living statue!]

Oh, no! Rojan is a bad guy from Andromeda who’s leading a scouting party so that his empire can invade! But why is the scouting party stranded on this rock?

Kirk: What happened to your ship?
Rojan: There is an energy barrier at the rim of your galaxy.
Kirk: [With Total Non-Challance] Yes, I know; we’ve been there.

That was the day Kirk leveled up in awesome.

There’s a lot of stuff in this episode, including death by cubism, vulcan hibernation, the first mention of the ship being powered by a matter/antimatter engine, and Scotty drinking an alien under the table. It’s all good fun.

Scotty: I found this in Gannymere. Er, Gannygun. Ganny– ganny– ganny- Gannymede.
Alien: Well, what is it?
Scotty: It’s a… uh… a. It’s green.

But there’s no real substance here. It’s the standard win-by-pointing-out-your-seemingly-invincible-enemy’s-psychological-flaws plotline, which has been done better elsewhere in the series.

One curious note: the aliens modify the Enterprise so she can go somewhere past Warp 11, and can make the trip to the Andromeda galaxy in a mere three hundred years. At the end, there is no indication that they would remove that modification. So is the Enterprise the fastest ship in the Federation by a few orders or magnitude?

(And why didn’t they just teleport the alien’s power projector into space while they sped along at Warp 11?)

Grade

B+