Star Trek: Start to Finish

Journey to Babel

Journey to Babel (Memory Alpha; SD Video) starts with the Enterprise picking up the Vulcan Ambassador to the Federation, Sarek. He comes on, is a little cold and a little rude to Spock, and then we learn that he’s Spock’s dad.

The Enterprise, you see, is picking up delegates to convene and decide if a new planet will be allowed to join the Federation. Everyone is traveling toward Babel, where the conference will take place. As such, this episode seems like part one of a two-parter, but the second part would have been more political and more challenging, and was never shot. I’m not sure if that’s because it would have been too political (which Trek mostly skirts) or because it would have been too challenging (involving lots of stuff Trek mostly skimps on, like big sets and nitty gritty details).

But in the course of talking a little bit about politics, we get this from Kirk:

Kirk: [In] Star Fleet force is used only as a last resort: we’re an instrument of civilization. And it’s a better opportunity for a scientist to study the universe than he could get at the Vulcan Science Academy.

This plays quite nicely into my view of the Federation as an interplanetary UN. It is also pretty much completely at odds with the series so far. The Enterprise does go on the occasional scientific expedition, but is just as often a warship looking for a fight. It fits very closely to what I would have told you about Star Trek before watching TOS closely, and it’s stated quite clearly in Next Generation, but I’m sorry to say that it’s not as explicit as it could be, or as obvious as I think Roddenberry thought it was.

This episode also goes to great lengths to make Spock a little more alien:

McCoy: [Spock, you had] a teddy bear!
Spock: Not exactly, Doctor. On Vulcan, the teddy bears are alive. And they have six inch fangs.

Seriously, that’s just bullshit. It would be incredibly illogical to give a youngster anything alive, let alone something with six inch fangs.

Also, this:

Telerek: There will be payment for your slander, Sarek!
Sarek: Threats are illogical.

Again, that’s just crazytalk. Threats are incredibly logical: they are a way of stating your position in such a way that the opposite party is aware of your intentions and the price you expect to exact for noncompliance. This could just be bluster, but Sarek is a freakin’ ambassador; he should know how threats work.

And why can’t they replicate blood?

Focus…

But we’re getting lost in the weeds, here. This episode is really rather good. It’s not as political as it first appears, which is disappointing but par for the course. It continues the trend of putting more moving parts into the picture than early episodes, which is great; the beginning of the show felt like it was trying too hard to fill airtime, but with the introduction of B-plots, layered mysteries, and progressive revelations the pacing has really gotten a thousand times better.

Grade

A

Amok Time

Amok Time (Memory Alpha; SD Video) is that one episode where Spock goes into heat and goes crazier than a Aldebran Shellmouth.

Spock needs to get back to Vulcan. And by “needs” I mean “orders the ship to redirect there behind Kirk’s back.” By “needs” I mean “can’t recall subverting the chain of command because he’s all crazy on the inside.”

Speaking of crazy, season two is crazy! They moved the writer and director credits to the opening credits. This makes perfect sense; the writing is the strongest part of this show. And they picked up dozens of props that now line all the walls, making the formerly utilitarian crew quarters look like something that people live in. And they got moodier lighting and weirder music.

They even bought an entire new cast member, Chekov! And they gave him some good lines:

Sulu: How do you figure it, Chekov? First we’re going to Vulcan. Then we’re going to Altair. Then we’re headed to Vulcan again, and now we’re headed back to Altair.
Chekov: I think I’m going to get space sick.

Another new thing they brought in is the Vulcan salute. We see it here when Spock finally gets to Vulcan and greets the others.

But they didn’t buy any acting lessons for Shatner. In the most glaring example of der haltingspreken yet, we get this beautiful line:

Kirk: Why…
must he die?
Why…
within eight days?
Explain!

However, amidst all this novelty is a pretty great story. Kirk, Spock, and McCoy are all established characters at this point, and this episode makes perfect use of them, really fleshing out the relationship that they share. This trio is what makes Trek approachable, and here they are in fine form at this task. It was perfect to slot this in as episode one of the new season; new viewers will have an easy in and old viewers will remember what they liked.

Grade

A

Operation — Annihilate!

With a name like Operation — Annihilate! (Memory Alpha; SD Video), how could this episode possibly be good? Still, it’s the season one closer for the original series, so… maybe it has some interesting ending?

Well, this hails from the time before seasons meant anything. Cliffhangers? Never heard of ‘em.

ANYWAY.

The Enterprise is headed for Deneva, chasing a line of planets that have all gone crazy and destroyed themselves. And it soon becomes clear that Deneva has already started down this road. To make matters worse, Kirk’s brother Sam is stationed on Deneva with his family.

The set for Deneva is some crazy university covered in art installations that look incredibly like mid-60s university art installations. This causes your brain to vomit distractingly every time the crew goes down to the surface.

Which they do with frighteningly little preparation. “Here’s a planet where people are going crazy for no apparent reason; let’s not take any precautions to avoid the same fate. No, we’ll just beam down and meander about.”

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Which is why it’s a good thing that the crazy spreads not via tiny microbes that infect your brain when you inhale them. No, instead it spreads when flying jellyfish that resemble fried eggs careen across the screen and sting you.

No, I’m serious.

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Now, the above might make you think that this episode is terrible. And from a technical standpoint, that’s pretty close to correct. But the contagious insanity and the family angle and the slow creep onto the Enterprise itself, and then the aching decisions of how to fight the menace are all handled well.

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Except that they don’t appear to consider a simple quarantine. You make sure no one leaves the planet, and you continue looking for solutions. This is not that tough, people.

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Grade

C+

The Devil in the Dark

The Devil in the Dark (Memory Alpha; SD Video) is your standard monster of the week episode: Janus VI is a sparsely-populated mining colony and the miners are dying, eaten alive by chemical spew. The Enterprise is called in, and searches for the monster. They find it, they hurt it. There’s a little twist that they foreshadow heavily, and the episode ends with gumdrops and rainbows. There is no content to discuss, and no subtext to plumb.

Grade

D; it does what it does well, it’s just that what it does is kind of lame.

Space Seed

KHAAAN!

The Enterprise stumbles across an old DY-100, which Spock claims comes from the 1990s. And on board is everyone’s favorite Star Trek baddie. Thus begins Space Seed (Memory Alpha; SD Video)

This episode is awesome.

We’ve got a little bit of future history, close enough that it would seem imminent and dangeous to the audience of the 1960s (even if it seems a bit ridiculous now). We’ve got a mysterious past that the crew can fill us in on, and we’ve got a genuine bad guy, who is all the more menacing because he is, to some extent, correct.

We’ve also got this incredibly smart scene, which I’m pretty much quoting in full:

Spock: Khan Noonien Singh.
McCoy: The last of the tyrants to be overthrown.
Scotty: I must confess, Gentlemen: I’ve always held a sneaking admiration for this one.
Kirk: He was the best of the tyrants, and the most dangerous. They were supermen in a sense: stronger, braver, certainly more ambitious, more daring.
Spock: Gentlemen, this romanticism about a ruthless dictator!
Kirk: Mr Spock, we humans have a streak of barbarism in us. Appalling, but there, nevertheless.
Scotty: There were no massacres under his rule.
Spock: And as little freedom!
McCoy: No wars… until he was attacked.
Spock: Gentlemen!
[Kirk, McCoy, and Scotty laugh]
Kirk: Mr. Spock, you misunderstand us. We can be against him and admire him all at the same time.
Spock: [Pause] Illogical.
Kirk: Totally.

And then, because McCoy gets all the best lines:

Kirk: Care to join the landing party, Doc?
McCoy: Well, if you’re actually giving me a choice… Kirk: I’m not.

Also awesome is the scene where Khan is running out of a room as it fills with knock-out gas. Scotty stands, runs toward the cloud of gas, punches one of the mooks out, and only then does he run out of the room, too.

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There are some minor issues. For instance, why doesn’t Spock just join Khan? It’d be the logical move, short-term. And he could always double back if Kirk finds a way to get the upper hand. The only reason not to is loyalty, which sounds emotional to me. But then again, I don’t think emotions and logic are really that separable (which is one of the reasons why the Vulcans are interesting; it’s an exploration of that idea).

The resolution is a little trite, as well, and comes very close to marking the episode down, but it really is one of the finest written, best plotted episodes so far.

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Grade

A+

The Corbomite Maneuver

When you’re being tormented by multihued geometric objects, you have to take drastic action. The only thing that can save you is… The Corbomite Maneuver! (Memory Alpha; HD Video)

Aside from the (somewhat intentional) silliness of being chased by shapes, this episode is actually pretty good. But CBS.com decided to be terribly laggy today; it took me about two and a half hours to get through this fifty minute episode. The fact that I still think it was good after that is an excellent indicator that it was.

This episode has a slew of awesome dialog:

• McCoy: [Talking to himself, after Kirk exits] If I jumped every time a light flashed around here I’d end up talking to myself.

• Bailey: Raising my voice back there doesn’t mean I was scared or could do my job; it means I happen to have a human thing called an adrenaline gland.
  Spock: Sounds most inconvenient. Consider having it removed.
  Sulu [chuckles]

• Kirk: What’s next, “they aren’t machines?”
  McCoy: They aren’t. After what these men have been through–
  Kirk: [Taking a drink from the good doctor] Doctor McCoy, I have heard you say that man is ultimately superior to any mechanical device.
  McCoy: No, I never say that either.
  Kirk: [Puzzled] I could have sworn I heard you say that.

• Kirk: When I get my hands on the headquarters genius that assigned me a female yeoman…
  McCoy: What’s the matter, Jim, don’t you trust yourself?
  Kirk: I’ve already got a female to worry about; her name’s the Enterprise.

This episode shows Kirk the tactician, which should be obvious from the title. But it also allows the crew, forced into a no-win situation, to demonstrate what they think matters. Spock almost admits that he’s sorry about not providing Kirk with options before revising it to “regret.” McCoy is badgering Kirk for being too hard on the crew. And Kirk is fighting like hell to get out of the sitaution.

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This episode also has a very nice plot twist or three: the overworked navigator who unexpectedly tries to make up for past mistakes, the gambit so silly it works, and the ending that reminded me quite strongly of Encounter at Farpoint/All Good Things.

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Grade

A-

Dagger of the Mind

Dagger of the Mind (Memory Alpha; HD Video) take our favorite crew to Tantalus Penal Colony, where they’re dropping off supplies and picking up a box full of records. Except that there’s actually an escaped prisoner in the box. Whoops!

This episode contains a couple of significant “firsts:” it’s the first time we’re told that the transporter can’t work through a “security force field” like the one used at the colony. This is a necessary plot point for this episode, and becomes an important plot point in many other episodes to come. I can’t recall if anyone ever does any transporter-that-works-through-shields experiments, but I’d be kind of surprised if there’s not an episode about it.

This is also the first time we see a Vulcan Mind Meld, except that it’s kind of totally different from what I’ve ever seen as a Vulcan Mind Meld before. Here, Spock performs accupressure and speaks in a hypnotic monotone, and asks questions that the other participant answers. Later, it’s just a few fingers on the face and scenes from the past play on the screen. I must say I like the later version better.

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There is one big plot twist in this episode, and it occurs about 5 minutes in. The prisoner on the ship asks for asylum; he’s terrified that they’ll send him back to the prison. So instead of the crazy-guy-on-the-ship episode I was expecting, we get a crazy-guy-on-the-planet instead.

There’s a little bit of intrigue on the planet, but it pretty much plays out exactly how you expect it to: Kirk (and the hottie he’s sent with) are wined and dined by the prison’s director, they don’t suspect anything, they are curious about something called a “neural neutralizer,” they sneak out to use it, the director finds them and tortures Kirk, he escapes, resolution.

Except… why does the director do this? Why is he experimenting with the neural neutralizer? Kirk says early on that this guy is a genius who’s completely revolutionized the penal system, and that everything it just swell, now. So what additional benefit does this machine have? Or are we supposed to believe that this is what makes the system work, and no one has noticed before? It’s all very vague.

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This episode isn’t that great. It’s got a weak story with no real surprises, and it ignores the two big issues it could address: how does the penal system of the future operate? and what good is this medical-experiment-cum-torture-device? Either of these could fill out a smart episode that dealt with something, but instead the plot just kind of drifts into the finish you expect at the beginning like a bad Bond movie but with fewer explosions and no naked women.

Awesome Dialog

• Spock: Interesting. You Earth people glorify organized violence for forty centuries, yet you imprison those who employ it privately.

• McCoy: If something unusual is going on down there-
  Kirk: An assumption, Doctor.
  McCoy: I’m required to enter any reasonable doubts in my medical log. That requires you to answer in your log. Sorry, Jim.
  [Spock gives a knowing look.]

• Kirk: One of the advantages of being a captain, doctor, is being able to ask for advice without necessarily having to take it.

Grade

C-

Miri

Miri (Wikipedia; HD Video) is an okay episode with one glaring flaw: the Enterprise finds an exact duplicate of Earth where the only survivors are children.

Wait, what? An exact duplicate of Earth? Why? Why would that exist? There’d better be a great explanation for this, some alien copy-ray or a race of crazed world-builder mice.

But there isn’t. It’s just a duplicate of Earth for no reason at all.

Oh, except that it’s an alternate Earth where everyone dies at puberty thanks to a crazy virus. Yes, a little Jeremiah there, but since this came first by a few decades I think we can give them a pass.

Except for this whole duplicate-Earth thing. I mean, really, there’s no reason why there couldn’t be a crazy adult-killing virus on some alien world, or an Earth colony, or whatever. The duplicate-Earth thing is just lame.

Oh, and Memory Alpha notes that the duplicate Earth bit was added after the fact and that has necessitated huge rafts of silliness to make it remotely canon.

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The crew doesn’t die on the planet.

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What this episode does do well, though, is the relationship of Kirk with Miri, a young girl just about to hit puberty (and thus die). She loves Kirk, and he knows it, but he also knows that it’s not ever ever ever gonna work. Up to this point, Kirk has been pretty much a completely different character than the stereotype would have it. He’s not a womanizer; he in fact goes to great lengths to give Yeoman Rand space, because he knows he’s attracted to her. He only gets into the occasional fist-fight. He’s apparently a scientific genius and a hard worker who did incredibly well at Starfleet Academy. But his shirt does come off a little too often.

Best Big of Dialog

Kirk: This is the vaccine?

McCoy: That’s what the computers will tell us.

Spock: Without them, it could be a beaker full of death.

[Ominous music]

Grade

D; would be a solid C+ if not for the stupid, stupid duplicate Earth thing.

The Naked Time

Without question, The Naked Time (Wikipedia; HD Video) is the best of the episodes I’ve seen so far.

Spock and Joey go down to an outpost to see why they aren’t responding, and they find that everyone died doing crazy things. Joey gets goo on him and brings the crazy back to the Enterprise.

The crazy removes inhibitions, so the actors get to explore their characters without having to filter them. This makes for some really awesome scenes (Spock, Kirk) and some hilarious ones (O’Reilly; Sulu).

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Although Nimoy has some trouble with his teary-eyed loss of control, the content is great: it’s almost verbatim what Kirk says to Spock in the JJ Abrams Star Trek movie to piss him off.

And Kirk’s ode to the ship is similarly smart. The Enterprise really is Kirk’s love, and the lines Shatner is given really do that relationship justice.

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It is also the birth of technobable (“water has become a complex chain of molecules”; “controlled implosion”) and the first time we see a replicator (although it has no name yet).

Also interesting: the captain’s log is told from a perspective after the episode ends, so Kirk can say things like “unknown to us, a totally new and unusual disease has been brought aboard.”

Spock uses a slide rule at one point. While he’s sitting at his computer console. Funny enough, this makes perfect sense given computing power in the 60s.

Best Ironic Quote

Kirk: “Don’t tell me that, Science Officer! It’s a theory; it’s possible!”

Grade

A+