IT IS SO UGLY YOU CAN’T EVEN LOOK AT IT

 

Episode Title:  Is There in Truth No Beauty?

Air Date: 10/18/1968

Written by Jean Lisette Aroeste

Directed by Ralph Senensky

Cast: William Shatner as Captain James T. Kirk    Leonard Nimoy as Commander Spock             DeForest Kelley as Dr. Leonard H. McCoy AKA “Bones”              James Doohan  as Lieutenant Commander Montgomery Scott AKA “Scotty”        George Takei  as Lieutenant  Hikaru Sulu              Nichelle Nichols as Lieutenant Nyota Uhura          Eddie Paskey as Lieutenant Leslie                 Roger Holloway as Lieutenant Lemli   Frank da Vinci as Lieutenant Brent     Bill Blackburn as Lieutenant Hadley              Walter Koenig as Ensign Pavel Chekov                 Jeannie Malone as unnamed Yeoman          Bob Bralver as unnamed Yeoman               Vince Deadrick Sr. as unnamed engineer        Louie Elias as unnamed engineer         Dick Geary as unnamed security guard        Diana Muldaur as Dr. Miranda Jones         David Frankham as Larry Marvick                  

Ships: USS Enterprise NCC-1701, unnamed Medusan vessel

Planets:  unnamed planet

My Spoiler filled summary and review: The Enterprise is picking up Ambassador Kollos of Medusa from an unnamed world.  Their task is to transport him back to his people.  This seems simple enough except for one problem.   Medusans are not humanoid they have a form that is so ugly that if a human sees one of them that human will go insane.  Kollos travels in a silver box and has a companion in a human doctor named Miranda Jones.  Before those two come up to the Enterprise another individual a man named Larry Marvick is sent up first.  Scotty is excited because Marvick is one of the engineers who designed the Enterprise herself. 

Dr. Miranda Jones

When Marvick arrives, he reminds Kirk of the special conditions that Kollos needs.  He notes that Spock will be immune to the Medusan effect so long as he wears a pair of protective goggles.  The humans leave Spock by himself and when gets to the bridge Captain Kirk orders the corridors cleared from the transporter room to the Kollos’s quarters.  Spock operates the transporter and the Ambassador arrives in his box with Dr. Miranda Jones.  Jones is wearing the same goggles that Mr. Spock is.  She is a human but one born with telepathic abilities.  Her job is to form a mind link with Kollos allowing him to enhance his diplomatic opportunities. (I think that last part is mostly implied not outright stated.)  As Spock and Dr. Jones transport the Ambassador to his room their conversation allows the viewer to know that Spock was once considered for this assignment and turned it down because he likes his life on the Enterprise.  A fact that makes Dr. Jones burn with jealously.  Spock has an encounter with Kollos with his goggles on. 

Dr. Jones and Mr. Marvick are treated as guests of honor at dinner where the ship’s senior officers wear their dress uniforms.  Kirk points out how interesting it is that Dr. Jones’s twin works for him as part of the ship’s crew.  Actually, Kirk doesn’t point this out but it would be cool if he did.  The audience learns of Jones’s powers.  That she is a human born with full telepathic powers, since humans aren’t typically telepathic, she was sent Vulcan to learn how to control her abilities.  In honor of her upbringing Spock wore the scared Vulcan IDIC symbol.  IDIC stands for Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations.  However, Jones takes offense and asks if Mr. Spock did this to show his superiority to her.  Spock insists that this was not the case.  Most of the rest of the dinner talks about the beauty/ugly dynamic.  Why is beauty good and ugliness bad? Also why does a beautiful person like Dr. Jones want to spend her entire life surrounded by things so ugly they can drive you crazy?  Things at the dinner got really weird when Jones suddenly declared that someone was plotting murder.  The dinner ends tensely to say the least.

It turns out that our engineer Marvick and Jones use to date.  She dumped him for a career with Kollos.  He confronts her and attempts to win her back but fails.  So, he decides to murder the Ambassador.   His attempt fails when he sees Kollos and driven insane by the ugliness.  (Personally, I already think he was few cards short of deck going into it, but that is me.)  Now insane he heads down to the engineering room and Scotty welcomes him to engage a bet they had earlier about the Enterprise’s controls. By this point Kirk and the command crew have discovered what happened and issues and alert to the entire ship.  Unfortunately, Scotty and his engineers do not have the fighting skills that Captain Kirk has and they quickly defeated by Marvick.  He takes control the ship and send the Enterprise flying outside the galaxy. 

Mr. Spock and Dr. Jones taking Kollos to his quarters

It’s a good thing they didn’t have any Espers on board the ship that could have caused a problem.  However, they have another problem: they are so far outside the galaxy that they have no reference points and cannot find their way back to the Milky Way.  Spock proposes that Kollos might be able to help because of the navigation capabilities of the Medusans.  Spock explains that the two of them could form a mind meld and Kollos could pilot the ship using Spock’s own body.  The only problem is Spock is concerned that Dr. Jones won’t allow it due to her jealousy. 

Spock and Jones discuss telepathy

Kirk answer to this is turn up his sexy and distract Dr. Jones while Spock makes his appeal directly to the Ambassador.  This almost works but the Jones’s telepathic powers allows her to figure it out.  She then confronts Spock and McCoy and argues that she should be the one to make the telepathic connection and pilot the ship.  This leads McCoy to out her as being blind and incapable of flying the ship.  Dr. Jones’s dress is laced with sensors that allow her to navigate the world quite well.  However, she still would have to be able to see the controls to navigate the starship.  With that it is decided that Spock will make the connection.  

Kirk trying to flatter Dr. Jones

The mind meld is successful and Kollos requires some adjustment being in Spock’s body.  Nevertheless, the Spock/Kollos hybrid manages to pilot the Enterprise back to the Milky Way.  There is a momentary set back when they go to undo the link, they forget to put Mr. Spock’s protective goggles back on.  Spock sees the ugliness unshielded and loses his sanity.  Fortunately, Dr. Jones can use her powers to cure him.  Kirk thinks she might not want to because of her jealously. So, he goes into the room and yells at her for a minute and this convinces her to do a good job.

Kollos as Spock!

Spock is cured and he has a good final meeting with Dr. Jones as she and the Ambassador leave for their new ship.    

Additional thoughts: I have a number of questions after this episode.  The first is why is it every time we meet somebody who helped design the Enterprise, they turn out to be a compete creep?  I had a hard time excepting the general premise of the episode that something could be so ugly it would drive people insane.  How ugly does it have to be? Since Miranda Jones clearly has extra sensory perception why didn’t she develop god-like abilities when they went across the galactic barrier?   I also had a hard time accepting that they couldn’t find their way back to their galaxy.  They had been out here before; do they not remember? Why does Spock try to wave his hand in front of Jones’s face when we learn she is blind?  She just explained how her sensors work, she even moves her head as his hand comes forward.  Maybe Spock was focusing on her eyes?  Why is the Medusan ship an old Starfleet vessel?  I thought these guys were advanced.  Why are they using our hand-me downs? 

This one was a snoozer. It wasn’t unwatchable this cast rarely produces something that is but it needs the cast the story can’t stand on its own.

FINAL GRADE 2 of 5

CAPTAIN KIRK GIVES HIS BEST SPEECH AND AN ALIEN USES HIS BODY AS A TAXI

 

Episode Title:  Return to Tomorrow

Air Date: 2/9/1968

Written by John T. Dugan and Gene Roddenberry  

Directed by Ralph Senensky

Cast: William Shatner as Captain James T. Kirk and Sargon    Leonard Nimoy as Commander Spock and Henoch             DeForest Kelley as Dr. Leonard H. McCoy AKA “Bones”              James Doohan  as Lieutenant Commander Montgomery Scott AKA “Scotty” and the Voice of Sargon       Diana Muldaur as Dr. Ann Mulhall and  Thalassa                  George Takei  as Lieutenant  Hikaru Sulu              Nichelle Nichols as Lieutenant Nyota Uhura          Mike Howden as Lieutenant Rowe        Roger Holloway as Lieutenant Lemli                        Frank Da Vinci as Lieutenant Brent       Bill Blackburn as Lieutenant Hadley      Cindy Lou as unnamed Nurse       Majel Barrett as Nurse Christine Chapel      Jeannie Malone as unnamed Nurse       Eddie Paskey as unnamed security guard                

Ships: USS Enterprise NCC-1701

Planets:  Sargon’s unnamed Homeworld

My Spoiler filled summary and review: The Enterprise has received a strange message from an unknown source compelling them to head to a particular set of coordinates in space.  The information they needed was already entered into their systems without any of the bridge crew having to touch anything.  The whole thing is making the Captain quite a bit nervous.   As they arrive at their destination Mr. Spock observes that they have come across a planet that was once like Earth but its atmosphere was stripped away in nuclear war. 

At this point a booming voice is heard on the bridge.  According to Lt. Uhura it is not coming from any of the communication frequencies.  The voice identified himself as Sargon.  He explains that he is thousands of years old and has been waiting for someone to come along who he could communicate with.  He asks the Captain to come see him on the planet and gives the Enterprise coordinates that, according to Mr. Spock’s readings, is an underground cavern with air that humans could survive in.  Given their primary mission is exploring the unknown Kirk decides to lead a team but wants Spock to stay behind because he does not want to risk both of them.  (This is odd because that concern never stopped them before.)  However as soon as Kirk turns to leave the power of the ship goes out causing Kirk to reconsider this position and have Spock come along.  With that the power has been restored.

Kirk trying to explain the experience!

As Kirk and Spock enter the transporter room Mr. Scott and Dr. McCoy are waiting for them with the rest of the landing party.  The rest of the team consists of Dr. Mulhall and two security guards.  Dr. Mulhall doesn’t realize how she was assigned to the landing party just that she was, which Spock assumes is also the work Sargon.  Kirk doesn’t even know who Mulhall is.  (That is odd and I will talk about that more in the additional thoughts section.)  Scotty is not happy about a transporter seeming to program itself.  McCoy is naturally apprehensive as he doesn’t like transporters under normal circumstances.   The two red shirts are among the luckiest to wear that color because the transporter run by Sargon doesn’t take them at all.  

The four that made it down are fine and they find out that Sargon, who earlier claim to have been dead, is a bodiless consciousness whose entire essence is contained in an orb.  He explains that his species seeded the galaxy long ago and that they are Sargon’s people’s descendants.  Kirk and Mulhall somewhat doubt this and Sargon acknowledges he could be wrong but they should just agree to disagree.  Myself, I think gives a good explanation to why we keep finding duplicate Earths everywhere they go.  Kirk also points out that unlike Sargon’s people Earth never wiped itself out with nuclear weapons.  Sargon says they survived their early nuclear age as well but started to fight amongst themselves when they assumed the power of gods.

Kirk taken

Kirk’s body suddenly jerks and when he speaks he is speaking with an amplified voice like Sargon.  It becomes very apparent that it is now Sargon controlling Kirk’s body.  This causes McCoy to freak out and threaten Sargon/Kirk with a phaser.  Spock points out to him the uselessness of that action.   Sargon explains that it is now Kirk’s consciousness in the orb but Kirk’s mind hasn’t the power to communicate out.  He then leads them to a room with two more functioning orbs and a bunch of broken ones.  Sargon explains that these are the survivors of the final conflict 500,000 years ago.  Members of the both sides of the conflict were preserved but only two survivors besides himself.  The additional survivors are Sargon’s wife and a member of the other side.  Her name is Thalassa and his is Henoch.

Sargon explains that they just need to borrow three bodies for a temporary period of time while they use them to build android bodies that would act as more permanent vessels.  The three individuals Kirk, Spock, and Mulhall were selected because they are the most compatible.  However Sargon needs to get Kirk back into his body because McCoy points out to him that he is overheating Kirk’s physical self. When Kirk is restored he is rather philosophic about the whole experience which he thought was beautiful.  McCoy thinks that response is insane considering how Sargon pulled his mind out his body and placed it into a bottle while he used Kirk’s body and almost destroyed it.  However Kirk is fully convinced of Sargon’s sincerity and wants to help him.

Survivors of a forgotten war!

Kirk holds a senior officers meeting onboard ship and Scotty is just as much against this as Dr. McCoy.   The three people who are most in favor are the three selectees.  That is I suppose a good thing since it is going be their bodies.  Kirk announces that he doesn’t want to order he wants consensus.  So Kirk then gives the speech of his career that will be played on most Star Trek reunion shows, on Star Trek fan webpages, and few times on YouTube.  With Kirk’s great speech given it is decided to go ahead. To sweeten the deal Sargon will give Starfleet access to their technology that will cause them to leap frog ahead hundreds of thousands of years. 

They undergo the procedure which is quite painless.  Henoch wakes up in Spock’s body and immediately hits on Nurse Chapel, which must have made her very happy.  Thalassa wakes up and starts looking for Sargon who calls over to her in the body of Captain Kirk.   Henoch starts gloating about how awesome Spock’s body is with all its Vulcan abilities and wonders why the Vulcans haven’t conquered the humans long ago.  McCoy tells Henoch that the Vulcans are a people of peace.  Henoch brushes McCoy off and suggests to Sargon that he get to work on the sermon that will allow them to use these bodies for a longer period of time.  As the human bodies start to overheat again, Sargon agrees and Henoch gets to work with Nurse Chapel assisting him. 

Same old married couple with two new bodies

When Henoch prepares the hyprosprays with the formula to allow the entities to use the host bodies for a prolonged period of time, he hands each hyprospray to Nurse Chapel with instructions on who each was for.  Chapel notices that the one meant for Kirk/Sargon is the exact opposite of what he should be getting.  That is when Henoch pronounces that he has no intention of surrendering Spock’s body back to him and his attention to kill Kirk/Sargon.   Before Chapel can protest Henoch takes control of her using Spock’s mind meld abilities combined with his own powers.

Sargon and Thalassa are now back in their host bodies and getting to work.  Thalassa begins work on the artificial bodies they plan to live in and Scotty tries to pick her brain about their technology but is chased off when Henoch enters the room.  He teases her about how their new bodies would not be able to feel and he suggests to her that they should appeal to keep these bodies as a price for how they will advance the Federation’s technologically.  She rejects him but is clearly tempted. 

He is a bad man!

Sargon is more thinking in a half-glass full fashion.  Despite bodies that can’t feel they however are able to move among the living and that is something to look forward to.  While they are working he starts to feel sick as Henoch’s sabotaged formula is actually making him weaker.  Sargon tries to work through it but he collapses.  McCoy comes in only to find that the Captain has died and he no Jim to tell.  The Doctor does manage to revive the body however it is now seemingly mindless and they have no idea how to get Kirk back into it.   

An attempt of seduction 

Back in the lab Henoch torments Thalassa by showing her the android body that she will occupy.  The body is genderless but Henoch lets her know that they can add feminine features to the body once they get it working.  This causes Thalassa to snap and she comes to the conclusion that she wants to keep the body that she is in.  She confronts Dr. McCoy about it and tries to argue that she should be allowed to keep the body given all that she will do to help humanity.  McCoy, correctly guessing that Thalassa is trying to get him to give her his approval so she can relieve herself of some of the burden of stealing the form, proclaims to Thalassa that he doesn’t “pedal in flesh.”

Sargon?

Upon receiving McCoy’s objection Thalassa reacts with anger and uses her powers to cause pain on Dr. McCoy.  However she quickly feels guilty, relents, and asks for McCoy’s forgiveness as she lets him go.  With that she hears Sargon’s voice, he explains that he has developed powers that Henoch is not aware of.  He left Kirk's body and went into the Enterprise itself! He wanted to be sure that Thalassa would not give in to Henoch’s offer, seeing as they have been disembodied for so long he understood her temptation. 

Thalassa summons Nurse Chapel and dismisses Dr. McCoy letting him know that Sargon has a plan.  An explosion occurs in sick bay causing McCoy to come running back only to find Nurse Chapel leaving looking very determined.  When he enters he finds that the orbs have been destroyed and Kirk and Mulhall have been restored to their bodies.  McCoy then asks about Spock to which Kirk informs him that he is dead.  Now they have to kill Henoch in Spock’s body and Kirk orders Dr. McCoy’s whip up a batch of enough poison in one hyprospray to kill ten Vulcans. 

Powers are useful to cover up evil

As they enter the bridge Henochis now seems virtually unstoppable.  He shuts Kirk and McCoy down with his powers quickly but ignores Chapel assuming she is under his control.  She isn’t and she hits him with the hyprospray.  Henoch is angry and tries to escape from Spock’s body and into another but his escapes attempt is foiled by Sargon.  Henoch is now completely defeated and vanishes into oblivion. 

Seemingly unbeatable

It turns out it wasn’t poison but they were all tricked into thinking it was so Henoch wouldn’t read their minds and know that Spock’s body wasn’t dying and have no need to abandon it.  Spock’s consciousness was in Nurse Chapel’s body with her.  With Henoch chased out Spock is now himself again.  Sargon and Thalassa have decided to embrace oblivion but ask for one last moment together physically.  Kirk and Mulhall lend their bodies for the moment.  They then seem shocked when they discover themselves embracing when they wake up.  So ends a conflict that started 500,000 years before any of the crew of the Enterprise were born. 

All good in the end!

Additional thoughts: Last week we meet the Kelvans, advanced aliens from the Andromeda Galaxy that could freeze people in place with a touch of a button.  They claim to be our complete superiors but their ship broke up entering the Milky Way so they need to take ours so they can get home.  Today we meet Sargon and his people, who claim to be completely superior with powers we can barely comprehend.  However they can’t put things together in their present state so in order to build themselves a new home they need to borrow our bodies for a little while.  Last week the Enterprise needs to provide the taxi service and this week human and Vulcan bodies do.  What is it with aliens who think they are so damn superior but they always need to try to hitch a ride?  I think they should be a little more humble. 

We are superior! Can we have a lift? 

I don’t really why they needed the bodies to begin with.  If they can reprogram a transporter at will and give hypnotic suggestions to people light years away why can’t they find a way to use their powers to construct what they needed?  Maybe there is just some fine toning that requires a real steady hand and they don’t trust anyone but themselves?

It seems that the actual moral of this story is: “if you are in a nuclear war don’t invite anyone from the other side in to your survival chamber.”  Sargon says Henoch was one of those from “the other side” and look who turns out to be the bad guy!  In a half million years he still hasn’t learned anything.  If you are going to destroy your whole planet in a nasty war going out of your way to include those from the other side in your survival chamber seems to miss the point of the war to begin with.  Next time remember to be a little more selfish. 

So if they were unsatisfied with the artificial bodies that they are about to build seeing as they won’t be aesthetically pleasing and will lack ability to feel, why don’t Sargon and friends have the Enterprise bring them to the planet Mudd.   The androids there are remarkably good at building android bodies that can not only house a natural intelligence that are also beautiful and can experience the full spectrum of human senses.   They are also more practical with Sargon and company can only build an android to last a thousand years, while the androids of planet Mudd can go on for 500,000 years.  That is 499 less times you need to build a new body to transfer your intelligence into.  Now to be fair we only hear the three talk about their android building skills with themselves, so it might have been possible that the crew Enterprise was not aware of how much Sargon’s android-making skills suck in comparisons with those of planet Mudd.  Therefor they would have no reason to tell the strangers.  I had little bit of a hard time watching realizing that such an obvious solution was staring them right in the face.

Not that good at making androids!

We are good!

How did Kirk not know who Mulhall was?  I realize it’s a big ship and it’s unlikely that he has every single crew member memorized especially if they just joined at the last starbase.  However she is a lieutenant commander.  The same rank held by McCoy and Scotty.  That alone puts her very high on the ship’s hierarchy.  I thought it was odd when he didn’t know who Ensign Garrovick was but such a high ranking officer I find very improbable.  As Hitchcock says it is easier to believe the impossible than the improbable.     

Speaking of Mulhall what is the purpose of her character?  The show has plenty of characters who aren’t being over used.  Wouldn’t have been better to have the character’s actions be done by Lt. Uhura?  I find it odd when we get to meet members of the crew who are some cases are really interesting in other cases they are there to fill out a story plot point, but then we never see them again.  There was Dr. Helen Noel from interesting character from Dagger of the Mind that I wish we got to see more of.  Then there were characters such as Ensign Garrovick from Obsession, who has such a personal connection to Captain Kirk but then we never get to see him again.  Wouldn’t it have been better if instead of creating the character of Ensign Garrovick we learn instead that Kirk had served under Chekov’s father?  Then the regular actor that you already have in Ensign Chekov will have that personal connection to Captain Kirk that is ongoing.  In this episode you can have given the Mulhall role to Uhrua and give Nichelle Nichols something more interesting to do.  The interracial kiss could have come one year earlier and with a better reason. 

This has to be the best McCoy episode yet.  Deforest Kelley always said McCoy’s role was to be the normal person on the ship.  In this episode we see it.  I love how he needs to slap some sense into Captain Kirk and explain that “No, it’s not a good thing that an alien mind took of your body and nearly killed you."  His sarcastic “happens every day” to Kirk explaining what a normal thing mind transference is was priceless.

 FINAL GRADE  4 of 5

CAPTAIN KIRK FIGHTS A KILLER SPACE CLOUD THAT SUCKS BLOOD!

 

Episode Title:  Obsession

Air Date: 12/15/1967

Written by Art Wallace

Directed by Ralph Senensky

Cast: William Shatner as Captain James T. Kirk    Leonard Nimoy as Commander Spock             DeForest Kelley as Dr. Leonard H. McCoy AKA “Bones”              James Doohan  as Lieutenant Commander Montgomery Scott AKA “Scotty”        Nichelle Nichols as Lieutenant Nyota Uhura                 Roger Holloway as Lieutenant Lemli                        Frank Da Vinci as Lieutenant Brent       Bill Blackburn as Lieutenant Hadley           Majel Barrett as Nurse Christine Chapel      Walter Koenig as Ensign Pavel Chekov                Stephen Brooks as Ensign Garrovick                    Jerry Ayres as  Ensign Rizzo           Jeannie Malone as unnamed Yeoman   Basil Poledouris as unnamed Security Guard          Eddie Paskey as Crewman Leslie                

Ships: USS Enterprise NCC-1701

Planets:  Argus X, Tycho IV

My Spoiler filled summary and review: The episode begins with Kirk and Spock leading a survey expedition on the planet Argus X for the purpose of documenting its tritanium, a substance harder than diamonds, for a later mining expedition.  While conversing with his First Officer, the Captain notices an odd smell.  It is almost sweet like honey and at that moment, a horrified Captain Kirk knows exactly what it is he smells.  He quickly calls his security team over and orders them to adjust their tricorders to look for a substance called dikironium.  Spock states that this substance exists only in theory.  As the redshirts continue to search they think they find something and that is when they are attacked by the killer cloud. 

That is one big pile of...

Two men are dead and one is extremely injured.  The dead men were killed from being drained completely of blood.  McCoy says he has never seen such a thing to which Kirk then points him in the right direction.  Kirk mentions a case eleven years ago during a mission to a different planet, Tycho IV, that is a thousand light years away.  The starship on that mission was the USS Farragut and it had crew members suffer the exact same fatal injuries as these men.   Kirk has McCoy wake up Rizzo, the survivor, but he doesn’t get much out of him. 

Scotty informs the Captain that the ship is ready to leave orbit so they can rendezvous with the USS Yorktown in order to pick up a vaccine vital to Theta VII.   Despite the limited shelf-life of the vaccine Kirk isn’t leaving until he finds what is responsible for killing his men.  He orders sensor scans to be competed looking for more dikironium.

red shirts red shirted

We, the audience, learn through Dr. McCoy that a then Lt. Kirk served aboard the Farragut during his early years as a young officer.  (It must have been while serving on the Farragut that Kirk had gone to Neural and first met Tyree who we encountered just a few weeks ago.)  When the ship was attacked by this creature Kirk acted against it in a manner that the ship’s first officer wrote him a letter of commendation.  However Kirk himself did not feel that way.  In the mind of the Captain he had failed because he had hesitated to fire when first encountering the creature, a gaseous parasite.  Kirk feels that if he didn’t hesitate than he would have destroyed the creature instead it went to kill have the crew.  Among the causalities was Kirk’s mentor, Captain Garrovick.

Then as if fate were against our Captain or this is a work of fiction that needed a little more drama a new Ensign reports to the bridge.  The Ensign is named Garrovick and he is the son of Kirk’s former Captain.  Kirk, who apparently didn’t pay very close to attention to officer transfers this quarter, is shocked to meet the young man.  When they discover Rizzo has died Garrovick is visually disappointed because they were friends.  Captain Kirk offers the young Ensign an opportunity to have some revenge against the creature that killed Rizzo. 

Ensign Garrovick, what a coincidence 

Kirk goes down with Garrovick and others.  The cloud creature is formable it can alter its molecular structure at will.  The mission goes poorly and more red shirts are killed.  After it is over and they are debriefing Kirk is shocked Garrovick admits to hesitating before firing his phaser.  This enrages the Captain and he relieves the Ensign of all further duties and confines him to quarters. Kirk’s overly hard treatment of the young man combined with his refusal to go pick up the vaccine until he was finished with the cloud causes both Spock and McCoy to wonder about the Captain’s mental state.

Kirk in "the hunt"

Spock and McCoy basically pull an intervention on Captain Kirk. An intervention that goes remarkably well all things considered, Kirk doesn’t bite back or act with any anger at all.  At least he doesn’t once he realizes what Spock and McCoy are actually doing.  Once it begins Kirk calmly explains the level of threat that this vampire cloud seems to represent and how he has he has assessed that threat with the need to rendezvous with the USS Yorktown in order to pick up the vaccine.  I have more thoughts on this that I will save for the additional thoughts section.

Growing concern

While Captain Kirk is having his intervention with McCoy and Spock, Ensign Garrovick receives some tough love from Nurse Chapel.  She brings him some food because he wasn’t eating and when he tries to resist she tells him she has medical orders from McCoy that he eats or he will be forced feed.  This works and it turns out Chapel had no such orders and what she was using to pretend she had them was an information disk about an entirely different subject.

Things heat up when the vampire space cloud takes off out to space like a bat out of hell.  Kirk sends the Enterprise in swift pursuit.  It begins to look as if the Enterprise can’t keep up, but then the cloud stops and turns to fight.   Kirk is ready for battle he orders Chekov to fire phasers and photon torpedoes both proved useless against the creature.  In addition to fighting the creature Kirk also has to actively ignore Ensign Garrovick who, with timing on par with only Dr. McCoy, requests to be reinstated that moment. 

Space battle not going so well

The creature then heads directly toward the Enterprise and it manages to get past the shields and into the ship’s ventilation system.  It is at this time, after seeing Ensign Garrovick get on and off the bridge while being ignored the Captain throughout; Mr. Spock decides the Ensign needs a pep talk.  While trying to give the pep talk the creature attacks and Spock’s quick thinking saves the Ensign but he himself is now locked in there.  Garrovick calls for help and Captain Kirk heads down with a security team.  It turns out Spock is okay because his green blood has copper that the creature doesn’t like.  It’s not the first time being a Vulcan saved him from a vampire-like creature.  They managed to get the cloud vampire out by flooding with ventilation system with radioactive waste.  They can someone how do this without killing themselves but I can’t explain how.

Spock tires to pep talk Ensign

 As the vampire cloud flees the Enterprise, Kirk realizes where it is going.  It is retreating to a place where it last battled a Federation Starship: Tycho IV.  Kirk orders the Enterprise there and while he is at it he has a heart-to-heart talk with Garrovick.  The Ensign thought he was in trouble when Kirk brought up with the battle while they were on the bridge but what the Captain wanted to communicate was not the Ensign’s conduct but that the creature was invulnerable to conventional weaponry.  With that Kirk decides they can only fight it with antimatter.  Garrovick volunteers to go on a dangerous mission with Captain Kirk.  They transport down with a container that is filled with antimatter that if it were to get out could destroy a whole continent and strip the planet of its atmosphere.  It also has the side effect of interfering with the transporter.  They had a container full of blood to use as bait but the creature shows up and consumes it before they can set the trap.  Kirk decides that he will stand in as bait to which Garrovick tries to stop him because the thinks he is trying to sacrifice himself.   Garrovick is noble but flawed and since the Kirk is the greatest fighter in the galaxy his attempt to take over fails. As the creature comes for them Kirk then pulls an emergency transport and releases the antimatter.  It is close call but the Captain and the Ensign survive.  With the creature destroyed Kirk invites Gorrovick for some private time to talk about his dad.  

Additional thoughts: Earlier this season we got to see an obsessed starship captain transform into a modern Captain Ahab in Matt Decker who was chasing the Doomsday Machine.  There are times in this episode where Kirk reminds the audience of that with his smilingly singular focus of the vampire cloud damn all else.  However Kirk isn’t Decker, for Kirk never loses control the way Decker did.  Kirk is still conscious of his surroundings.   Kirk can see for example that a direct attack using conventional weapons isn’t working and he needs to come up with another plan.  Decker kept chasing after the Doomsday Machine firing phasers that clearly weren’t doing any damage.  More importantly when Kirk is confronted by both Spock and McCoy about his actions he can manage to rationally explain all of his actions without having to fall back on his rank and authority like Decker did.

Spock trying to fight cloud

Speaking of the intervention of McCoy and Spock I think that may have been my favorite part the episode.  Earlier in the series we saw those two try a Weekend at Bernie’s when Kirk had been split by the transporter.   They propped up the “good” half as so the crew wouldn’t lose confidence in him despite the fact he was clearly deficient.  In this episode they confront the Captain with legitimate concerns giving some of his orders.  There is no concern that the very existence of such an inquiry will ruin anyone.  A negative result could but not the practice of the procedure.  Kirk himself doesn’t even get angry about it but instead uses it as an opportunity not only to explain himself to his senior officers but as reflection on how his commands are being received.  Kirk did make some errors, not being more direct on how he knew about the vampire cloud and its threat was one.  Also not sharing his threat assessment early on with his command crew was another.  Seeing Kirk sit down and go over his thought process with his two officers was one of the best character moments in the series.

Kirk's intervention

On a lighter note, last I checked the USS Yorktown is another constitution-class starship.  So why are they not capable of delivering that vaccine themselves?  Why are they handing it off to the Enterprise like runners in a decathlon?  I think if that ship took a little more responsibly the Enterprise crew would not have that issue to deal with and could focus on space cloud vampire. 

Walking around with just a bit of antimatter 

Given how close Kirk was to Captain Gorrovick I have a hard time accepting that he didn’t know (1) that he had a son, (2) that said son was now old enough to be an officer in Starfleet, and (3) that he was now on his ship.  Doesn’t Kirk pay attention to who is assigned to where on his starship.  He seems to know just about everyone else.

Last but not least, Leslie dies. But we will later see Leslie despite his death later so how is this possible?  I think I have the answer.  The Leslie who has killed here was not Lt. Leslie who often see in the background but rather Crewman Leslie, who is the younger but very similar looking brother to the Lieutenant.  This makes sense when he dies under the leadership of an ensign.  If he was Lt. Leslie than he would have been in charge of that mission and survive it as he often does.

 FINAL  GRADE 5 of 5

THE CREW OF THE USS ENTERPRISE RUN INTO SOME 20TH CENTURY ROMANS ON A FAKE EARTH

 

Episode Title:  Bread and Circuses 

Air Date: 3/15/1967

Written by Gene Roddenberry and Gene L. Coon

Directed by Ralph Senensky

Cast: William Shatner as Captain James T. Kirk    Leonard Nimoy as Commander Spock             DeForest Kelley as Dr. Leonard H. McCoy AKA “Bones”              James Doohan  as Lieutenant Commander Montgomery Scott AKA “Scotty”        Nichelle Nichols as Lieutenant Nyota Uhura          Eddie Paskey as Lieutenant Leslie                 Roger Holloway as Lieutenant Lemli                        Frank Da Vinci as Lieutenant Brent       Bill Blackburn as Lieutenant Hadley    Walter Koenig as Ensign Pavel Chekov                 Jeannie Malone as unnamed Yeoman  and unnamed slave girl             Bob Orrison as unnamed Policeman                     Gil Perkins as unarmed  slave           Tom Steele as unnamed slave        Logan Ramsey as Proconsul Claudius Marcus   William Bramley as unnamed Policeman                     William Smithers as Captain R.M. Merik                   Ian Wolfe as Septimus                         Rhodes Reason as Flavius Maximus      Bart La Rue as unnamed Announcer                     Jack Perkins as unnamed Master of Games                             Max Kleven as Maximus           Lois Jewell as  Drusilla              Paul Baxley as unnamed Policeman                Shep Houghton as unnamed cameramen   

Ships: USS Enterprise NCC-1701, S.S Beagle

Planets:  892-IV (fake Earth)

My Spoiler filled summary and review:  The Enterprise comes across the wreckage of the SS Beagle.  The wrecked ship was a merchant vessel that was commanded by a friend of Kirk’s from the Academy, Captain R.M. Merik.  Captain Merik dropped out of Starfleet Academy his final year and then entered the merchant service.  They are able to trace the wreckage to a nearby planet.  

The Enterprise heads over to this planet.  When they get there the crew was surprised to discover that the planet they found is very earthlike.  There scanners reveal evidence of a sophisticated civilization on the surface.  Lt. Uhura is able to tap into their television signals and at Captain Kirk’s request displays the images on the viewscreen.  When the images come up they see a car commercial for a vehicle called the Jupiter 8.  Kirk and crew observed some news broadcasts featuring stories of runaway slaves and gladiator matches.  The broadcaster even gives the name of one of the slain gladiators:  William Harrison.  That also coincidently enough happens to be the name of the ninth US president; however that doesn’t become relevant in the story.  What is relevant to the story is William Harrison was the name of one of the Beagle’s crew.  Kirk feels that he is looking at, and it turns out he is correct, an Earth where the Roman Empire has survived into the 20^th century.

What to do with three strange prisoners? 

             The funny thing is they are neither shocked by the 20^th century Rome nor that they have run into another Earth again.  This is the second duplicate Earth they have discovered for certain, and there may have been a third.  In this episode we are given an explanation for that called “Hodgkin's Law of Parallel Planet Development.”  Basically the theory says that planets that evolve under certain conditions would have almost similar results with only slight variation. 

Kirk beams down to the planet with Spock and McCoy, because you always want to bring your most important offices with you on any away mission.  The three officers go over the Prime Directive discussing both its importance and what it takes to remain in compliance with it.  When they’re done discussing the Prime Directive and their commitment to comply McCoy does make a small joke about wishing he can proclaim himself to be the arch angel Gabriel.  McCoy’s joke annoys Spock before they can really get into it they’re suddenly surrounded by men with firearms.

"We're on your side!"

The group who is captured them consist of a number of runaway slaves.  Some of them have been slaves for life while others had is recently become slaves for converting to the wrong religion.  The entire group of runaways referred to themselves as “The Children of Sun.”  McCoy finds this odd because of his mistaken belief that Romans did not have sun worshipers.  Their leader is a man named Septimus, and his primary lieutenant is named Flavius Maximus.   Flavius Maximus is the more militant of the two and he wants to kill the Starfleet trio.  Fortunately Kirk convinces Septimus that they’re from overseas and he has technology from his ship that proves he is not a Roman.  Flavius is still suspicious but Septimus accepts them into their sanctuary.

While hanging out with the “Children of the Sun” Kirk learns a horrible truth: that his old friend that they came to rescue does not need to be rescued.  He needs to be stopped.  For the merchant captain has violated their most important law.  Merik has ignored the Prime Directive and installed himself as the “First Citizen.”

In the hands of modern Romans!

Kirk lets Septimus know that what Merik has done is in violation of their law and it is his intention to correct it.  Septimus agrees and allows Flavius Maximus to company the three men to the city in an attempt to capture Merik and return him to where he belongs.   While traveling Starfleet trio learns that Flavius Maximus was at one point one of the Empire’s greatest gladiators.  He gave all that up when he became attracted to the concept of universal brotherhood that was offered by the Children of the Sun.

Unfortunately the three of them don’t get very far and are captured by the Roman police.  After one failed escape attempt they finally come face-to-face with Captain Merik.  In Merik’s view he has not betrayed the Prime Directive at all.  In fact he’s was recruited by the Proconsul Claudius Marcus to prevent any interference by preventing any knowledge of their planet to the greater galaxy.  Merik agreed that he and all of his crew stay on this planet for the rest of their lives.  They now wanted Kirk to agree to the same with the Enterprise.  

A renegade captain and his boss

During this time they're trying to persuade Kirk there is some discussion about the parallels between this Earth and our Earth.  We had earlier learned from Flavius Maximus that although slavery still existed in this Roman Empire it had taken on a very different form than the slavery that we were used to.  Slaves in this world actually had recognized rights.  They were entitled to old-age pension and they were protected from extreme forms of abuse.  So long as they were not caught breaking the law or joining a group of religious renegades they were mostly okay.  However slavery still slavery in Dr. McCoy’s very much against what he sees in this Rome.  Mr. Spock, playing the devil’s advocate, points out that this modern world wide Roman Empire had ended war across the globe over four centuries ago.  While the real Earth at this point is development has suffered from a series of world wars leaving millions of people dead. 

Kirk refuses to cooperate.  At first he tries to threaten Marcus by saying he might beam a security team armed with phasers.  However Marcus calls Kirk’s bluff, he acknowledges that the security team could defeat the armies of their empire but he knows through his other guest limits of the Prime Directive.  The Proconsul even suggests that Kirk wouldn’t even need to call down a security team he could attack from space with phasers if the Prime Directive did not prevent him from doing so. He has guards bring Kirk’s communicator and with weapons surrounding demand Kirk bring down the crew.  Kirk calls Scotty on the Enterprise and tells him “condition green.”  This lets the crew know that the away team is in trouble, but prevents them from acting on it.  The whole subplot for the remaining of the episode is Scotty trying to figure out a way around this. Marcus is annoyed but he already broke one ship captain and he will find a way to break another.

Explaining how it is

Marcus decides his best bet is to force Spock and McCoy to fight as gladiators.  The 20^th century Romans don’t watch their gladiators from the Colosseum anymore but from the comfort of home.  All the fights take place in studio.  Forcing a captain to watch his own crewmen die this way is apparently how Marcus turned Merik.  Two gladiators come in to fight the two Starfleet officers.  One is Flavius Maximus who was captured with them earlier.  Now Maximus must fight or be made into a TV special, an inside joke the writers put in there about television production.  Spock is handing himself well but McCoy needs assistance with his opponent.  A hilarious scene occurs when Spock asks McCoy how he is doing and if he needs help.  McCoy responds by pointing out what ridiculous question that is. 

Submit or die

Marcus grows frustrated with Kirk not breaking, Merik points out that Kirk is a starship captain and that is quite a different thing from a regular spaceship captain.  Marcus doesn’t see a difference.  He does however notice the result of the gladiator match.  Spock knocks out his opponent with his shield and then performs a Vulcan nerve pinch on McCoy’s adversary.  Marcus orders them to be brought back to their cells and starts to make plans for Kirk’s execution. 

Scotty trying to figure out what to do!

In their prison cell Spock and McCoy continue to trade insults and bond over Kirk’s predicament.  It turns out Kirk is actually in a pretty good place.  He is brought to a room with a woman named Drusilla.  Drusilla tells Kirk she is going to be his slave tonight. Kirk refuses this, walks around, and demands to know where Marcus is.  Drusilla tries to tell him that it is no trick she is not trying to hurt him she just wants to make him happy.  The camera cut back to Spock and McCoy talking about their feelings or that Spock doesn’t have any.  Then we are back with Kirk and Drusilla and she has now worked her magic and successfully seduced him. 

She knows what to do!

When Kirk wakes up the lovely Drusilla was gone and Kirk was left with the Proconsul.  Marcus, despite his earlier comment, does see Kirk as a different man than Merik.  Marcus actually likes Kirk and wishes he was a Roman like him.  Unfortunately, this was precisely the reason Kirk was going to have to die.  Kirk was never going to knuckle under like Merik.   He wanted Kirk to have a fitting end that is why he set him up with Drusilla so he could experience “one last night as a man.” Kirk is stoic throughout his interview with Marcus.

Kirk continues to be stoic right up to the moment he is about to be executed with the execution being broadcast on live TV.   Kirk is saved by two things.  The first thing is Flavius Maximus rushes out and attacks the executioner.  A fight ensues in which Flavius is killed.  The second thing is Scotty on the Enterprise has Mr. Chekov cause a power outage in the city.  This allows Kirk to escape the artificial Colosseum and head to the prison where he can help Mr. Spock and Dr. McCoy. 

Romans with guns

After Kirk helps Spock and McCoy get out of their cell they are surrounded by Roman guards led by Marcus.  Feeling like being a sport Marcus orders the guards to use not firearms but their swords.  The trio— should I have been calling the trio the triumvirate—hold their own and Merik has an attack of conscience and uses a communicator that they took from one of the Starfleet officers  to call the Enterprise to beam them up.  Marcus kills Merik for this effort but to no avail the Enterprise’s transporter gets the three men out of there.

Backup on the bridge of the Enterprise, Kirk enters into his Captain’s log a formal accommodation for Mr. Montgomery Scott for aiding the landing party without violating the Prime Directive.  Since the planet did not want the greater universe to know of their existence they leave without a problem.  They do however wonder about that religious group they ran into as they falsely believe that Rome had no sun worshipers.  That is when Uhura speaks up.  The Lieutenant had been monitoring the communications of the planet and discovered the truth of the religion.  They were not worshiping the sun they were worshiping the Son.   The religious group they ran in to was this planet’s early Christians.  This pleases McCoy because that meant this world would learn of universal brotherhood and Mr. Spock predicted that it would in time help bring down the Imperial system.   

Additional thoughts: When I was reviewing “Catspaw” I pointed out since it was set to air on Halloween it was the only episode of Star Trek that had a theme which was set for a particular air date.  Well I was wrong and I do think the air date for this episode, March 15, was a nice touch.

Romans with cameras

It is a good thing that both Spock and McCoy are good at their respective occupations because if they were living in a capitalist society and they were trying to be historians they would starve.  Both of them were going on about how our Rome had no sun worshipers.  This is incorrect and embarrassing considering they themselves had run into Apollo earlier this year.  Mr. Spock when giving his casualty numbers for the world wars was factually wrong by millions on the first two and even fictionally wrong on the last one.   The numbers he gives are six million in Earth's World War I, eleven million in the World War II, and thirty seven million in the World War III.   The actual numbers are much higher World War I was fifteen million while World War II was fifty million.  The fictional World War III was supposed to have killed over six hundred million.  Also the presence of Christianity in Rome does not mean the Empire will fall in fact in real life Christianity had been the official religion of the Roman Empire for the last century and a half before Rome fell in the West and thousands of years before it fell in the east. 

Kirk is not one to break

The Roman Empire is my favorite ancient civilization, I enjoy reading about it, talking about it, and teaching about it.  So this is an episode that would naturally draw my interest but it also causes me to nit-pick it.  For example I found it odd that Merik’s title was that of “First Citizen.” First Citizen is a title that the Emperors called themselves.  However it is clear that Merik is not Emperor. In this episode the man who holds the power is Claudius Marcus, who holds the title of proconsul.  Proconsuls however did not have a lot of power during the Roman Imperial period.  Their heyday was more of the late Republic, when they govern territories with near absolute authority.  The Imperial system sets up the emperors to  send officials, who held the military rank of legate, to govern the provinces that had the largest percentage of the standing army in them.  Proconsuls were allowed to govern the provinces that were much quieter and did not require a large military force.  Now granted this was an fictional empire that for the previous 400 years had known absolute peace.  So the government structure might have evolved a little differently. 

Spock and McCoy get ready to fight

                If you have ever read Chester W Starr’s work on Rome you would know that although the most famous question about Roman history is “why did Rome fall” the more accurate question is “why did it last so long?”  The Roman Empire was extremely large and the fastest way anyone could communicate was by letters carried by horseback rider traveling along Imperial roads.  They had no locomotives nor had gunpowder so every inch of territory to be defended with swords, with shields, and with catapults.  During the winter time because the Mediterranean Sea was right in the middle of it the size of the Empire would seem to double.  When presented with an alternate Earth with a different history your first question is “why was this different” and “what changed?”  Did Commodus not follow his father Marcus Aurelius to the throne and did this lead to a stable succession preventing the crisis of the third century?  Who knows?  It is never explored and that is my biggest let down.

I'm a doctor not a gladiator 

               Lt. Uhura’s claim that people could not legitimately criticize Christianity is weird since people do it all the time.  There is a lot you can criticize about Christianity:  the doctrine of original sin, infinite punishment for finite crimes, by way of human/deity sacrifice, and much more.  Christianity is pretty good at criticizing itself which is why is been broken up to so many dominations.  Each domination can tell you exactly what is wrong with all the other dominations.

What is cooler than Spock with a sword?

Then there is how slavery is depicted in the episode.  In the real world slavery in the early 1600s became racialized, a way for white people to exploit people of color.  It was finally abolished in the Western Hemisphere by the late 1800s.  In this fictitious Earth however slavery never became racialized it seems to have evolved into a type of social class.  Slaves are still said to be owned but there is a clear limit on what that ownership means and the slaves have gotten some human rights and labor rights.  This would have been interesting to explore as we think of slavery ending is the natural evolution of things but that might not have been the case.  Slavery had existed in human society for thousands of years it is certainly possible that history could take another turn in a might have evolved along different forms and may have preserved into later time periods.  They talk about it in the episode and it would’ve been interesting to explore but they didn’t have the time to do that.

So not good at fighting!

Lastly, “English”?  They’re speaking English and Spock calls it a perfect equivalent?  How?  English was not a romance language; there was no Battle of Hastings on this Earth so how the hell did English develop?  I know story wise they needed it to be English to pull the whole sun/son line.  That would not have worked with Latin or French.  It was a low moment however.

FINAL GRADE 3 of 5