Star Trek: Start to Finish

The Empath (Video; Memory Alpha) is terrible. It’s the old away-team-captured-by-aliens-on-a-planet-that-they-thought-was-abandoned schtick, complete with big-headed aliens performing a mysterious experiment.

Added to the boring retread is the fact that they use the term “empath” completely incorrectly. The titular empath doesn’t feel others’ emotions, but instead takes their injuries upon herself and heals them. She very literally “feels their pain,” but in so doing takes that pain from them, and then within seconds heals from it herself. That’s neat, but that’s not what an empath is.

And further, it undermines the entire episode. The big-headed aliens are trying to teach her to be self-sacrificing, and to do so they make Kirk, McCoy, and Spock offer their own lives or each other. But the crew is in actual danger when they do so; the Empath seems none the worse for wear after she does her injury-transferral trick. So the lesson should be “this is of no cost to you; do it all the time.”

And then there’s the terrible, terrible writing. The dialog is flat, and McCoy spends the entire time spouting expository technobabble that only barely makes sense. The aliens aren’t threatening or interesting or menacing, because they’re too busy being mysterious. And the twist ending is predictable and lame while also being more like a “keep left” than a real twist.

Favorites

This was DeForrest Kelley’s favorite episode. The Devil in the Dark was Shatner’s. The stars of the show pick the worst episodes to love.

Grade

D

For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky

For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky (HD Video; Memory Alpha) is an awesome name, and a nearly awesome episode.

It starts out, as is the show’s wont, in the middle of a crisis, with chemical missiles hurtling toward the Enterprise. Phasers make quick work of them, and they are traced back to a generation ship built inside of a massive asteroid, aboard which the last remnant of a long-dead race is blissfully unaware of their heritage.

The setup is nice, the pacing is good, the natives are interesting (if hilariously badly dressed).

But to tie the crew into the action the writers decided to give Bones Xenopolycythemia (which my latin translates to the actually sensible “alien multi-blood-cell-condition”), which will kill him in a year. In response, he decides to stay on the generation ship and live out his last year the happy husband of the high priestess. That’s… that’s just silly. Bones wouldn’t settle down to die quietly: Bones would be out looking for a cure (and, it should be noted, he comes around to this by the end).

The setup also lacks for a villain, what with the high priestess fulfilling her primary role as love interest, so we once again have to rely on a malfunctioning computer. Computers in Star Trek never work right, which is kind of a shame for such a forward-thinking, pro-progress show. But even if it’s well-trod territory, it’s not the focus of the episode, so it’s a minor weakness.

Even given those two drawbacks, this was a good episode in a season that’s been pretty bad. It’s no classic, but it’s more than worth watching.

Grade

B+

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 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

Patterns of Force

Programming Note

I’ve been away for a long, long time, and I apologize. But now it’s time to watch some campy old sci-fi and make up.

Patterns of Force (Video; Memory Alpha) is that one with the Nazis.

Kirk and crew are going to Ekos in search of John Gill, who like every other person of import in the entire galaxy was one of Kirk’s old teachers at Starfleet Academy (here just ‘the academy,’ but let’s assume that’s familiarity speaking and not just TOS’s ridiculously low level of consistency in these matters). Gill has not been responding to Earth’s communiques, and now they’re going to send Kirk and Spock down to search for him.

But before they can even get to the planet, the Ekosians launch a nuclear warhead at them, which is both unfriendly and far beyond what the Ekosians should be able to do technologically.

Spock: Perhaps they had help.

Well, Spock, let’s think about it. One: we’re going to establish in just a moment that the Ekosians are in regular contact with the Zeons, who live on another planet. Somehow interplanetary travel is fine, but nukes aren’t? And we’re also going to dwell rather a lot that the Ekosian’s technology is just around mid-twentieth-century Earth… which is exactly when we figured this stuff out. So maybe they just put E and MC² together on this one.

But anyway, now it’s time for Kirk and Spock to go down to the surface and see some guy get beat up, so that Spock can helpfully remind us all about the Prime Directive, here called “the non-interference directive,” which isn’t nearly as catchy.

But despite their efforts to blend in and be as non-interferencey as they can, it’s inevitable that they’ll fail due to Spock’s pointy ears. You’d think that eventually the crew would figure out that, even though the psychic powers and technical wizardry come in handy, Spock isn’t a good undercover agent, except on that one planet on the far side of the Alpha Quadrant where everyone has pointy ears, and where the Enterprise never seems to go.

But I’m losing the plot in all my snark. I’ve forgotten to even mention that the aforementioned guy being aforementionedly beaten up is being aforementionedly beaten up by the even-more-aforementioned Nazis. Upon seeing this, Kirk and Spock have a conversation which I will summarize thusly:

Mr. Exposition: How could they develop this same culture? They’d have to have some incredibly well-informed earth historian to lead them! Now, where is that incredibly well-informed earth historian we’re looking for?

Anyway, those ears get the pair landed in the jail cell next to the twice-now-aforementioned guy-getting-beaten-up, who has this conversation with Spock, who is played by a Jew, in a totally non-ironic manner:

Thrice-Now-Aforementioned Guy-Getting-Beaten-Up: [To Kirk] Why did they take you? You are not a Zeon, and he [Spock] is certainly not one. Why do the Nazis treat you as enemies?
Spock: Why do the Nazis hate Zeon?
Quatrice-Now-Aforementioned Guy-Getting-Beaten-Up: Why? Because without us the hate would be nothing to hold them together. So the party has built us into a threat; a disease to be wiped out.
Spock: Is Zeon a threat to them?
Penticlice-Now-Aforementioned Guy-Getting-Beaten-Up: Were did you come from? Our warlike period ended generations ago.

Then everyone gets free using the usual tricks, and Sextuple-Now-Aforementioned Guy-Getting-Beaten-Up leads Kirk and Spock to the underground where we learn that his name is Isak, and his brother is Abrom.

Yeah, really.

It’s at this point that Kirk and Spock introduce themselves and decide to do something about the whole situation. This is as close as Star Trek comes to “Taking Names and Deciding to At Some Future Junction Begin Kicking Ass.”

There’s some infiltration, some dress-up-as-a-Nazi, and some silliness, but overall this is a not-bad episode. It explores how society changes, and how power corrupts. It has a mystery that isn’t immediately obvious and works to guard its secrets with secondary and even tertiary mysteries.

But what it does very poorly is fail to tackle the central Zeons-as-Jews conceit it is built on. In this telling the Zeons are an external threat and not an internal one, which makes them a far less insidious-seeming scapegoat and a less powerful fear generator. The Final Solution in this telling is a bold attack on the peace-loving Zeons, and not a secret and ruthless extermination of their culture and population. By changing the basics they lose the grander point, and lose a powerful storyline along the way.

Grade

B

A Private Little War

The primitive peoples of Neural have never known violence against each other, but flintlocks have started A Private Little War (Memory Alpha; SD Video). The Enterprise is here on a scientific mission, and Kirk is saddened to see the world he surveyed thirteen year ago falling from the pacifist heights it had attained. Saddened and suspicious: did the village people invent the flintlocks, or did the Klingons provide them?

This episode has a great idea at its center, but it suffers from the same old problem of not enough going on, and it fills the space with crap. The basic dynamic of discovering if the Klingons are involved and the slow-motion ethical conundrum over what to do if they are is sound, and well done. But the episode flails about badly in the surrounding story of Kirk being attacked by a rubber suit monster and his healing by Nona, a hill people witch who wants weapons for her people, too.

Nona is not a bad character, but her costume and makeup make her look like a trailer queen and she’s terribly acted. But the really problem is that she is given such an important role while her husband Tyree, who resists the escalation, is given no real lines about his resistance or why he does so, and is left with just angst. This cripples the major story, which is a what-should-be-done about providing these people with weapons to defend themselves.

And what’s really interesting about the episode is this escalation conflict, which is a pretty obvious commentary on Vietnam. The Federation and the Klingons are the Cold War powers, and they are pushing arms into this poor little backwater to wage a proxy war with each other. McCoy is vocally against this strategy, but Kirk thinks it’s the only thing that will possibly keep both sides alive; mutually assured destruction for the black powder set. The end of the episode leaves the actual outcome uncertain, most likely because Kirk’s solution is the only real way out that can be shown onscreen, barring a silly deus ex machina. That the writers didn’t think of giving each side some nonmilitary technology that would foster trade (or somesuch diplomatic solution) is kind of sad.

Also, that rubber suit monster is really lame, as all rubber suit monsters are.

However, the above is a pretty negative view of the episode, and I actually rather enjoyed it. The central idea is sound, the writing is good, and the pacing hits at the right times, even if some of those hits are the lame surrounding story. This episode even has a C-plot involving Spock healing up in the Enterprise after getting shot in the cold open. It’s interesting even though it is in no way related to the main action, even on a thematic level. But this episode is saying something about the world it lived in, which was a brave and smart thing to do, even if they only point out a problem and don’t even offer a hint of a solution, or a direction in which a solution could be found.

Bottom line: a good episode, but it could have been great.

Grade

B-

A Piece of the Action

A Piece of the Action (Memory Alpha; SD Video) is incredibly silly. No, no, more than that. Incredibly silly.

The Enterprise arrives at a planet that was visited by a Federation ship a hundred years ago, “before the non-interferance directive went into effect.” In that time, the inhabitants have completely transformed their culture into an exact replica of 1920s mob controlled Chicago.

The crime bosses are the closest the world has to a government, so the Enterprise tries to negotiate with them… by going native. Kirk and Spock dress up in zoot suits, carry around tommy guns, and speak in fantastically bad accents.

Now, this is all very, very ridiculous. But it’s also hilarious. This episode is completely, over-the-top silly, and it just revels in it. We get the traditional figuring-out-how-to-drive scene, the transporting-unsuspecting-people scenes, the behold-our-awesome-magic scenes, but the best parts is the crazy mob talk:

Okmyx: The most cooperative man in this world is a dead man. And if you don’t keep your mouth shut you’re gonna be cooperating.

That’s gold.

Grade

A- for being hilarious

D for being as totally non-canonical as you could possibly hope to be.

The Return of the Archons

The Return of the Archons (Memory Alpha; SD Video) takes our favorite crew to Beta III, where the Archon disappeared a century ago. There they find a society without war, without fighting and populated by people with only happy thoughts. Kirk immediately sets out to destroy it.

Which is ironic, since this is the first time we hear about the “Prime Directive.” Spock doesn’t want to disrupt the society, despite them holding the landing party captive and threatening to kill them and destroy the Enterprise. And thus begins a long line where the Prime Directive is basically just something that gets mentioned before being ignored.

Begin Spoilers

I have no idea what this “Red Hour” “Festival” thing is in the beginning. How does that fit into anything, aside from giving the audience the heebie-jeebies?

End Spoilers

But aside from that one (large) loose end, this episode holds together nicely. It tells a simple story well, and explores how oppression happens, and how hard it is to rebel against what appears to be “The Good.”

Grade

A-