Star Trek: Start to Finish

The Gamesters of Triskelion

The Gamesters of Triskelion (Memory Alpha; SD Video) is another episode where the crew gets kidnapped and must escape their cage.

It all starts with the familiar BOING of alien transporters in action.

Then Kirk, Chekov, and Uhura are surrounded by four warriors.

Naturally, Kirk and Chekov take one guy each, leaving Uhura to take the two pike-weilding women.

Once subdued, the crew learns their fate: they are to stay here and fight for the amusement of the Providers, who will bet quatloos on the outcomes.

Yes, quatloos!

Kirk does his normal people-want-to-be-free schtick, kisses a girl, and ends up in a fight against three warriors with the fate of the whole crew hanging in the balance.

Begin Spoilers

Kirk wins.

End Spoilers

There are a few things interesting about this episode. The relationship between Kirk and Shahna is the primary one. Kirk, pulling his freedom-is-great move, tries to convince her to help foment rebellion, or at least give him enough information that he can do so. She just doesn’t understand. She knows the fighting culture and nothing else; in a very real way, she’s like a child who has no understanding of the world outside the screwed up game she lives in. So what does Kirk do? He convinces her that she should love him.

That’s pretty close to abuse, I think. Here’s an innocent with no understanding of the consequences of her actions (because she has no agency; they aren’t really her actions), and no understanding that actions have consequences. And Kirk plays with her trust.

Can we talk about slavery?

The other interesting bit is the very obvious parallel with slavery here, and the complete lack of engagement this episode has with the topic. In a lot of episodes the crew is enslaved in some way, but there has yet to be a case where narrative is more than just “let’s get free because we like freedom.” Slavery in Star Trek is a short-term annoyance overcome by clever talk, and the only impact it has is to mess up those other people who’ve been denied the sweet nectar of freedom. The slavers are never dealt with. The corruption of that power structure is assumed but never examined. The long-term after effects are never even thought about. For an issue that we return to so often, how do we avoid talking about it so much?

Grade

C; mostly for the saccharine sweet ending, and the treacly lead up to it

Catspaw

Catspaw (Memory Alpha; SD Video) is kind of a neat idea that’s badly done. A landing party that doesn’t include Kirk, McCoy, or Spock is missing. Kirk, McCoy, and Spock promptly beam down to rescue them.

Begin Spoilers

What they find are aliens pretending to be wizards who can control everything. They do nothing interesting. They’re here trying to understand sensation. But it turns out that everything they can do is just an illusion. This tourists-looking-for-sensation thing is interesting, but not developed in any way and really serves as pretext instead of being what the whole plot is about.

On the other hand, this is a kind of lame idea, done better than it should be. They come from a land without sensation, but their powers are all about creating illusions, which are pure sensation?

End Spoilers

However, it does have this amazing bit of dialog:

[Disembodied heads warn of danger]
Kirk: Spock, comment.
Spock: Really bad poetry, Captain.
Kirk: A more useful comment, Spock.

Grade

D+; it was sort of interesting, but was pretty thin gruel.

The Changeling

The Changeling (Memory Alpha; SD Video) is a thoroughly mediocre robot-of-doom episode.

It’s remarkable only because it happens right after I talked about Uhura lacking substantive roles, and here she gets something approaching an actual part. She still plays the damsel-in-distress, and she’s still a second-tier character, but it’s more than her usual fare. She gets a little drama, and we learn a little about her, and that’s more than we’ve gotten up to now.

Grade

B

Who Mourns for Adonais?

Who Mourns for Adonais? (Memory Alpha; SD Video) is a rather smart little episode where the Enterprise stumbles upon the hiding place of the Greek God Apollo.

To fulfill the corny quota, he stops them with his giant green space-hand. Then he requests the officers to join him on his planet. Kirk and friends oblige. Chekov, who as far as I know isn’t an officer, gets to come along for his first on-screen away mission.

Apollo wants the crew to stay and worship him, to be his servants and he their protector. Pretty standard stuff.

But this episode gets at a few deeper points. Gene Roddenberry was a staunch atheist, and held fast to the idea that in his future, humanity had progressed beyond a belief in gods. This episode tilts heavily toward this viewpoint, but at one point, Kirk quips that “mankind has no need for gods. We find the one quite adequate.” So it appears that there’s still at least a monotheistic view still surviving.

Begin Spoilers

And in the final line of the episode, Kirk wonders aloud if they had tried to learn a bit from Apollo by behaving for a while, as thanks for services rendered five thousand years ago. Kirk and Bones obviously acknowledge that Apollo was an important part of their racial history, and they know that they should respect that more than they do.

This episode also waxes poetic about another of Roddenberry’s favorites, how humanity must stick together. It’s well known that before he died Roddenberry decreed that no Trek would feature wars among the humans. And here, we have Kirk talk at length– and rather well– about what connects the Earthlings.

Kirk: Give me your hand. Your hand! Now feel that. Human flesh against human flesh. We’re the same: we share the same history, the same heritage, the same lives. We’re tied together beyond any untying. Man or woman, it makes no difference: we’re human, we couldn’t escape from one another even if we wanted to. That’s how you do it, lieutenant: by remembering who and what you are, a bit of flesh and blood afloat in a universe without end and the only thing that’s truly yours is the rest of humanity. That’s where our duty lies.

End Spoilers

But a side plot of this episode is just bizarre. It starts out in the cold open with this dialog:

McCoy: Lieutenant, you look a bit tired this morning.
Pretty Young Thing: Well I was up all night working on this report, sir.
Scotty: Well in that case there’s nothing like a wee bit of coffee to get you back in shape. Join me, Caroline?
Pretty Young Thing: All right, Scotty. Just let me give this to Mr. Spock.
Kirk: Bones, could you get that excited about a cup of coffee?
McCoy: Well even from here I can tell his pulse rate’s up.
Scotty: Gentlemen!
Scotty: [To the Pretty Young Thing] Come along, my dear.
McCoy: I’m not sure I like that, Jim.
Kirk: Why, Bones? Scotty’s a Good Man.
McCoy: And he thinks he’s the right man for her. But I’m not sure she thinks he’s the right man. On the other hand, she’s a woman. All woman. One day she’ll find the right man; off she’ll go. Out of the service.
Kirk: Um-hm. I like to think of it not so much as losing an officer as gaining a… [Beat] Actually, I’m losing an officer.

All alone, this is just a bit of banter. But in the full context of the series, it’s a tipping point. This show treats women terribly. There are no strong female characters. Yeoman Rand was the closest they came, and they axed her character midway through the first season. When a woman appears, she’s inevitably a love interest for someone, and she often has some special skillset that the crew needs but that she neglects because she’s smitten.

Begin Spoilers

This episode fits this formula perfectly, and then at the end throws in a surprising strength on the woman’s part. On the one hand it’s admirable that she gets to be the one who saves the entire crew, but on the other hand the audience is led to believe that you can’t trust her to do her job, because she’s a girl.

End Spoilers

In spite of it’s shortcomings, however, this is a well-done episode that manages to talk about multiple topics while keeping an interesting plot aloft. Good job.

Grade

A-

Errand of Mercy

Errand of Mercy (Memory Alpha; SD Video) is a fun little episode. War breaks out between the Federation and the until-now-unseen Klingon Empire. The flashpoint is a little planet in the disputed zone called Organia, and both sides send ships to try to hold it. But nothing goes right, and the Organians are none too happy to be in the middle of this violence.

This episode does a pretty good job of keeping you guessing as to what’s going on, while still meting out enough action and information to keep you interested. The mysterious Organians and their bizarre actions provide a backdrop, and the Klingon Military Governor a superb villain.

In fact, he’s so good that he deserves his own paragraph. This is the guy who defines what the Klingons are. He’s the first Klingon we see, and he makes them brusque but smart, fierce but not foolhardy, and calculating in the best way. He is in microcosm the Klingon Empire that becomes such a big component of the Trek universe; you can see him as the originator of the entire genre. He’s terribly well written and superbly played, even if his Fu Manchu mustache and olive makeup look a little ridiculous.

Grade

A-

Arena

Arena (Memory Alpha; SD Video) is that episode where Kirk fights the big green lizard-suited guy. And it’s both just as bad as you think it is, and not at all.

The command staff is about to beam down to the outpost on Cestus III, and are looking forward to a nice welcome from the commodore, who’s got a reputation for hospitality:

McCoy: I, for one, could use a non-reconstituted meal!
Spock: Doctor, you are a sensualist.
McCoy: You bet your pointed ears I am.

But the outpost is destroyed! Oh noes!

Begin Spoilers

There’s a little fight on the ground, then the Enterprise gives chase to the unknown attackers. But suddenly both ships stop; held in place by… something.

Spock: “We’re being held in place, sir… apparently from that solar system.”
Kirk: “This far out? That’s impossible!”
Spock: “We are being held, sir.”
Kirk: “Tractor beam?”
Spock: “No; an unidentifiable power”

Aside from having their terminology wrong (it’s just a star system; it’s just an unidentified power), it’s clear that the ship is in trouble. The Metrons ring up and inform Kirk and company that, dubious of these two violent ships, they’ve set up a planet that the captains can fight on. And [boing] the captains disappear from their respective bridges.

End Spoilers

At which point, Uhura screams. Really, Uhura? You’re not used to people mysteriously disappearing and reappearing on the bridge? Really? Because that happens just about every episode.

This is the first episode with Photon Torpedos. They’re not very helpful. Also on the technical front, we hear that “a sustained Warp 7 Speed will be dangerous” and that at that speed the Enterprise will “either catch them or… blow up.” That’s a new limitation, and it seems a bit bizarre next to Captain Pike flying about in Hyperspace at Warp 7 all the time. This really shows that in the early days there was a lot less attention to this sort of detail. (see also Sulu mentioning that “All of a sudden we’re clear across the galaxy! 500 parsecs from where we are… were.”)

Also strange coming from my TNG-marinated memory is the seat-of-your-pants decision-making that Kirk seems to use all the time. He can chase unknown people with the intent of starting (or ending) a war without talking to anybody. Contrast with next gen, where admirals are always calling on some subspace frequency to order the Enterprise to stop doing such-and-such. When does that change come about, I wonder?

All that said, though, this episode is pretty bad. It’s okay until the part with the arena, and it’s okay at the very end of the arena, but in the big murky middle it’s just Kirk doing badly-coreographed fist fights and running around Vasquez Rocks forever. There’s a nice-but-predictable moral at the end, but other than that it’s only passable.

Grade

C+

The Squire of Gothos

One of the few episodes I remember in it’s entirety, The Squire of Gothos (Memory Alpha; SD Video) brings our fearless crew to a rogue planet that isn’t on any of the maps. And when they get close enough to investigate, Sulu and Kirk disappear from the bridge.

Begin Spoilers

It soon becomes apparent that they’ve been captured by a man on the planet that has been studying Earth, but (due to his being 900 light years from Earth) has made a slight miscalculation about how advanced humans are.

He’s also kind of petulant. He has the power to create and destroy things at will, and can stop the crew in their tracks if they attempt anything. It’s up to Kirk to outsmart him. Which they do, two or three times. This could be repetitive, but instead has a nice ever-rising stakes feel to it.

End Spoilers

Indeed, a recurring problem with TOS is that a lot of episodes don’t have enough content to keep a brisk pace. This episode (along with The Balance of Terror) manages to fill the time with escalation, which works well. Others don’t pull it off.

Grade

B+

Shore Leave

This episode is just plain silly. The crew is tired, so McCoy and some other officers are exploring an idyllic, uninhabited world to see if it’s a good place to take some Shore Leave (Memory Alpha; HD Video). But this world is neither idyllic not uninhabited. That much is clear as soon as McCoy sees a White Rabbit, followed along by Alice.

Yes, really.

Begin Spoilers

Other crewmen are attacked by a tiger. Kirk’s new yeoman gets her bodice ripped by Don Juan, and replaces it with a princess dress. Kirk meets an old bully and an old flame. And McCoy stands his ground when a knight in shining armor is barreling down on him with a lance (this, it turns out, is not McCoy’s best idea).

It’s best described with this choice bit of dialog:

Sulu: Captain, take cover! There’s a samurai after me!
Kirk: A what?
Sulu: A samu- [glances back; sees no Samurai] Captain, you’ve got to believe me.
Kirk: I do; I’ve met some interesting personalities myself.

It takes our heroes startlingly long to figure out that this world is being manufactured in real time as a means of amusement for the crew, by means uncertain. And no sooner do they figure that out then said means comes by and explains it all.

End Spoilers

As a fun-filled romp, this episode is actually pretty good. But it’s another reminder that the original series is much “soft”er science fiction than what came later.

Grade

B+

The Menagerie, Part II

The Menagerie, Part II (Memory Alpha; HD Video; Review of Part I) starts with a ‘previously on’ for the first time.

Begin Spoilers

Pike is trying to escape from the Talosians, and the Talosians are using their mind powers to show him pleasant lies in hopes that he’ll stay and be in their zoo to teach them how to live, since they’ve forgotten. The crew try to rescue him, but only get stuck themselves. In the end, the Talosians decide that humans are more trouble than they’re worth, and it’ll be easier if the entire Talosian race just slowly fades away.

End Spoilers

The most interesting parts are the what-might-have-beens from the flashbacks to the original pilot.

Pike: My name is Christopher Pike. Commander of the space vessel Enterprise from a star group at the other end of this galaxy.

But of course, in canon Star Trek they’re only in the Alpha Quadrant, and Voyager gets in real trouble when they end up on the other end of the galaxy.

Random Enterprise Crewman: Now that entryway might have stood up against hand lasers, but we can transmit the ships’ power against it. Enough energy to blast half a continent!

Aside from being a neat excuse to trot out a laser canon, this kind of goes against everything I remember about the military capabilities of the Enterprise. Star Destroyers slag planets with turbolasers and Centauri Battlecruisers fling asteroids down on helpless people, but the Enterprise is a science vessel made for science missions, and it doesn’t have the capability to destroy planets.

Spock: All Decks prepare for hyperdrive!

Mr. Spock, don’t you mean “Warp Factor 7,” like you said in Part I? I mean, at least be consistent in the episode. 7 is already way higher than the Enterprise goes in any other episode.

Grade

B+; I liked it in spite of myself, and I did actually forget one of the plot twists, which was a nice surprise.

Where No Man Has Gone Before

Where No Man Has Gone Before (Wikipedia; HD Video) was the second pilot, after The Cage was rejected by CBS’s execs. And there are a slew of little oddities that make it stand out as different.

Let’s start with the weird turtleneck costumes the Starfleet officers wear. The color coding is established and consistent (with the exception of Spock, who wears the command colors in this episode), but the material and style is off.

Spock, by the way, also wears yellow makeup throughout, which makes him look like an actor in one of those old yellow peril movies. His yellow face and yellow turtleneck blend terribly, of course.

McCoy, meanwhile, is just missing. There’s an old guy in charge of “Life Sciences” instead. Sulu is head of “Astral Sciences,” as if it’s a college department. And Scotty’s there making his first appearance in as-aired order. His bowl-cut emphasizes his big ears nicely.

Begin Spoilers

The Enterprise is heading past the edge of the galaxy, and they pick up the flight recorder of a ship that tried the same trip 200 years ago. As revealed in the log, that trip ended (predictably) badly. Kirk (predictably) tries it anyway, and random members of the crew (predictably) die.

Except for Kirk’s old pal Mitchell (wakka-chikka wakka-chikka), whose eyes turn silver. And he becomes telepathic. And telekenetic. And decides to take over the ship, since he’s a god now.

Kirk isn’t so keen on that idea. So he stops Mitchell.

End Spoilers

This is the first episode where I noticed some truly terrible acting from the main characters. Shatner delivers some lines in that trademark halting overemphasis, and Nimoy delivers some very bad lines in a very bad way.

Something else to look for: close-ups of Kirk where the focus is apparently set to make his ear crystal-clear.

But it’s not hard to see why this works as a pilot. The characters show who they are, and the Kirk/Spock debate regarding what to do with Mitchell exposes the obvious depth to the logic-versus-feeling rift that is one of the primary drivers of the entire franchise, up to and including the latest movie. Add a good dose of action and a dash of comedy (and pastel outfits) and you’re greelighted for a 60s TV series that will change sci-fi forever.

Grade: B-