MR. SPOCK LEARNS IMPORTANT LESSONS ON COMMAND, WHICH IS GOOD SEEING AS HE IS ALREADY THE FIRST OFFICER

Episode Title:  The Galileo Seven

Air Date: 1/5/1967

Written by Oliver Crawford and Shimon Wincelberg (under the pen name "S. Bar-David")

Directed by Robert Gist

Cast: William Shatner as Captain James T. Kirk    Leonard Nimoy as Lieutenant 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          Don Marshall as  Lieutenant Boma            Peter Marko as Lieutenant Gaetano            Rees Vaughn as Lieutenant Latimer                 Grant Woods as Lieutenant Kelowitz          Eddie Paskey as Lieutenant Leslie                 Bill Blackburn as Lieutenant Hadley     Frank Da Vinci as Lieutenant Brent                      Phyllis Douglas as Yeoman Second Class Mears       David Ross as the Transporter Chief         Ron Veto as Crewman          John Crawford as High Commissioner Ferris           Robert ‘Big Buck’ Maffei as the Creature of Taurus II          Majel Barrett as Enterprise Computer

  

Ships: USS Enterprise NCC-1701, Galileo NCC-1701/7, Columbus NCC-1701/2

Planets:  Taurus II

My Spoiler filled summary and review: The episode begins with the Enterprise on a mission to deliver much-needed medical supplies to Makus III.  However on their way there they discover a quasar-like formation identified as Murasaki 312.  Kirk, with standing orders to study such a phenomenon, decides to stop by and check it out.   This is extremely irritating to the Enterprise’s guest High Commissioner Ferris, who dresses like he just came out of one of the more modern Star Trek shows that take place in the past.  He does not like this delay and feels the primary mission should be more important.  Kirk explains they have five days to get there in the rendezvous point is only three days away therefore they have two days to study Murasaki 312.

Wants Captain Kirk to share his priorities. 

I have to say right from the start I actually agree with High Commissioner Ferris.  I mean shouldn’t the medical supplies receive top priority?  The quasar -like formation doesn’t look like is going anywhere and it also looks like they could spend a lot more time than just two days studying it.  So instead of doing a rushed research job why don’t they drop off the High Commissioner and the supplies then had back and take their sweet time looking over the formation?  I think I would be a great senior officer for Captain Kirk with my advice he can avoid all sorts of plot driven irrational decisions that might cause problems for him his crew.  Of course that might make for more boring TV show.

Crash landing everyone out of the boat!  Why aren't shuttlecraft called star boats?

Given that the formation would interfere with transporter signals they decide to use the shuttlecraft, which Lt. Sulu should remind them about the time they forgot about those helpful shuttles while he was stuck on a freezing planet waiting for Captain Kirk to put himself back together.  They send a team of seven led by Mr. Spock in the shuttlecraft Galileo to explore the Murasaki 312.  Mr. Spock’s team consists of Dr. McCoy, Mr. Scott, three lieutenants, and a yeoman.  How much must it stink to have to be that poor little Yeoman?  You’re the only enlisted personnel with three lieutenant commanders, and three lieutenants.  Talk about being a low person the totem pole.  I hope the ship doesn’t crash somewhere and she has a spend time as everyone’s personal servant seeing as everyone outranks her by several levels.

Crashing unfortunately is what they do as the Murasaki 312 causes them to lose control the shuttle and they end up crashing on the planet Taurus II.  On the ship High Commissioner Ferris is furious at the situation he reminds Captain Kirk that he is on a deadline that medical supplies need to be delivered.  Kirk understands that he is on a deadline but he swears he will use his full two days to try to find his missing crewmembers.  Kirk has his crew work double time to try to restore the ships functions so they can be adapted to be used in the quasar -like formation.  He sends out a second shuttlecraft, this one Columbus, to help search for their missing companions.  Throughout the rest of this episode we get cutbacks of the ship where High Commissioner Ferris is pointing at the clock to Kirk telling him that he needs to get a move on.

In between a rock and a hard place for Captain Kirk

On the planet surface the crew the shuttlecraft recovers from the crash.  Spock of has the two lieutenants in gold grab phasers and secure the area.  While he has the lieutenants searching he and Mr. Scott set about fixing the shuttle.  Unfortunately Scotty discovers that in order to lift off the shuttle is going to have to lose some weight about 500 pounds.  This means that three grown men will have to stay behind.  Lt. Boma wonders if they’re going to draw lots, to which Spock says that the final decision will be up to him.  I wonder if Mr. Spock now feels as judgmental as he did on our last adventure about Kodos the Executioner.

The two lieutenants are attacked by natives and one of them is killed.  In addition to that problem many in the shuttlecraft crew are starting to take issue with Mr. Spock’s rather cold handling of the matter.  Dr. McCoy at the start of this mission tried to give Spock a pep talk encouraging him about his first command, and tried to advise him on dealing with humans.  Spock at first is not intimidated by the situation of being in command he explains the McCoy that it just is. Spock is under the mistaken impression that he’s dealing professional Starfleet officers who can set aside emotion, follow their orders, and perform their duty with pure professionalism all the time.  Spock fails to appreciate that some people crack under pressure in fact in this case is everyone who is not a series star or a yeoman seems to break whenever the pressure gets tough.

When the times get tough break under pressure.

Spock in order to keep the natives away comes up with a more nonviolent plan of simply scaring the natives with their superior weapons, as opposed to more violent situation that his subordinates want him to do.  Spock’s plan doesn’t really work and the names will eventually come back and try to harm them.  In the fighting the other yellow shirted lieutenant is killed.  His death makes one thing a little easier: they no longer have to leave anyone behind.  They started needing to strain three but by ditching some equipment on the shuttle they could spare one.  With the death of two crew members it eliminates the problem of having to leave anyone behind.  They could have escaped sooner but the overly sentimental crew member, Lt. Boma, keeps insisting they need to risk their life in order to properly bury their comrades.

In attempting to repair the shuttle Scotty discovered that their fuel was completely drained when they accidentally tried to bypass it.  Later Scotty working his normal miracle skills of engineering is able to use the phasers’ energy recharge the engines.  The natives almost prevent them from escaping by climbing on to the shuttle but Scotty is able to electrify the surface of their shuttle causing them to back away without permanently hurting them.  The shuttle takes off and is heading into orbit.  Unfortunately the Enterprise has run out of time and High Commissioner Ferris has ordered Kirk to leave.  Kirk showing some passive aggressiveness decides to leave at the slow speed legally possible.

Repairing the shuttle

Spock now realizing the situation is desperate ignites the fuel which will light a flare he hopes the Enterprise will see.  This will speed up their deaths if it doesn’t work but to be fair they probably would die anyway if left to their own devices.  The gamble works and Kirk sees the flare he turns the Enterprise around to rescue his comrades.  The engineers who work under Scotty have done their jobs well and adjusted the ship’s equipment so that transporters will work even of the conditions of the phenomenon.  At the last moment the survivors of the party of the Galileo are beamed back aboard the Enterprise.

As the Enterprise is heading towards Makus III to deliver the medical supplies, the bridge crew led by Kirk confronts Spock about his decision to ignite the fuel.  Kirk asked Spock if this was a decision that was of the result of emotion.  Mr. Spock said it was not in fact he had simply carefully and analyzed the problem from all directions and concluded that the situation was hopeless.  Kirk then says that he logically concluded that it was time for an act of desperation.  The bridge crew has a laugh at the expense of the First Officer. 

Additional thoughts: The theme of this episode was supposed to be about Mr. Spock learning how to command amongst us illogical humans.  Unfortunately this is something that Mr. Spock should’ve learned of before now.  Mr. Spock is the first officer as such he should already have plenty of experience commanding others.  In fact in Mr. Spock’s very first appearance in “The Cage” he is giving orders to members of the bridge crew.  If you’re watching the series in air date order the first scene of “The Man Trap” has Mr. Spock sitting in the command chair.  I think a story such as this would work better if were presented in a series of flashbacks in an episode where Mr. Spock was recalling an early point in his career.

McCoy trying to talk with Spock

                Another place where this episode loses its point is the people in the shuttlecraft, or should I say primarily the lieutenants, come off as complete jerks.  They’re always hampering on Spock for the littlest of things.  Spock breathes incorrectly and they are ready to be down his throat about it. They’re always watching him to see if he screws up to so they can use it as an excuse to pounce on him.  The other three members are fine; Dr. McCoy picks on Spock a bit but Dr. McCoy’s always doing it from a good place.  McCoy is trying to help Spock lead the crew better with his goal being an improved situation for everyone, where the three lieutenants almost seem to take some particular joy in harassing him.
 

No, will not get away!

                This is not to say that Mr. Spock does not make some mistakes.  For example critiquing a weapon’s efficiency after it just killed a member of your crew is not exactly very tactful.  However the excessive second-guessing and questioning of loyalty from some of the shuttlecraft crew carries far beyond reason. When Mr. Spock says that three men may have to be left behind is there really a doubt on any of our minds that Mr. Spock would’ve chose himself as one of three? I knowledge my own personal bias after all I like Mr. Spock and I don’t like these one-off characters who won’t be here next episode.  Nevertheless the level of insubordination that is distributed by them seems to be way off base for Starfleet officers.  They’re constantly questioning his decisions; they often seem to forget that in these military type environments decisions aren’t made in a democratic fashion.  

The problem doesn’t seem to be Mr. Spock the problem seems to be these lieutenants.  It reminds me of the real life adventures of John Paul Jones he probably would’ve been much more successful if only had a crew that was equally committed to the tasks that he was.  Captain Jones had to deal with the crew were closer to pirates than they were the officers and men of the U.S. Navy.  Yet Mr. Spock is serving with Starfleet officers whose character should be of a higher ideal than what we saw.  Often they are more concerned about how they were burying their dead than they were with surviving.  Which I guess would’ve ultimately led to quite the conundrum when the last one died after all who is good to give him a proper burial?  Yet the episode shows this to be a problem of Mr. Spock failing to take the cause of corpses over living breathing people.

The Flare!

Another place the episode tried to critique Mr. Spock is a decision to try to be as gentle with the natives as he most possibly could.  It should be pointed out that the crew shuttlecraft Galileo crashed into their home and the strange creatures popped out of it.  Why shouldn’t they be scared?  Why shouldn’t they try to defend themselves?  Because Mr. Spock chose to try to scare them is implied that he made the wrong decision because they didn’t scare away so easily.  There is no guarantee that had Mr. Spock responded more violently then they would have stayed away.  Who knows, they may have come back with even greater numbers and more quickly if Mr. Spock a chosen to draw blood.  That point is never brought up, is simply implied that Mr. Spock for not listening to his crew caused people to die.  That is a load of crap.

On a brighter note, I did enjoy seeing Mr. Scott’s engineering skills given a chance to shine.  Mr. Scott had been missing from a number of episodes and to be fair there wasn’t much on those episodes for him to do anyway, no engineering miracles were needed.  The last time those skills were needed credit might’ve gotten more to Captain Kirk or Mr. Spock than Scotty.  It’s great that we get see Mr. Scott be the miracle worker.

FINAL GRADE 3 of 5

NEURAL NEUTRALIZER REALLY THAT BAD?

Episode Title:  Dagger of the Mind

Air Date: 11/3/1966

Written by Shimon Wincelberg (under the pen name "S. Bar-David")

Directed by Vincent McEveety

Cast: William Shatner as Captain James T. Kirk    Leonard Nimoy as Lieutenant Commander Spock             DeForest Kelley as Dr. Leonard H. McCoy AKA “Bones”             Nichelle Nichols as Lieutenant Nyota Uhura             Marianna Hill as Dr. Helen Noel    Eddie Paskey as Lieutenant Leslie              Frank da Vinci as Lieutenant Brent        Larry Anthony as Transportation Man              John Arndt  as  Frist Crewman             James Gregory as Dr. Tristan Adams          Morgan Woodward  as Dr. Simon Van Gelder         Larry Anthony as Mr. Berkley                       Susanne Wasson as Lethe              Ed McCready as Inmate        Eliezer Behar as Therapist          Walt Davis as Tantalus message

Ships: USS Enterprise NCC-1701

Planets:  Tantalus V

My Spoiler filled summary and review:  The Enterprise is dropping off supplies to and picking up official records from the colony Tantalus V.  The transporter crew almost fails in this simple assignment until Captain Kirk reminds them that they can’t beam through shields.  Turns out that they picked up something more than records, a man sneaks out of the box and shows the transporter crew that they’re just as bad at fighting as they are at transporting through shields.

                Kirk when speaking to Mr. Spock and Dr. McCoy goes on to explain how he admires Dr. Tristan Evans, the chief medical director at Tantalus V.  Dr. Evans has turned prisons into hospitals where sick minds can be treated as opposed to simply imprisoned.  McCoy has his suspicions, while Mr. Spock seems to agree.  They get emergency call from the planet explaining that they have had a prisoner escape.  When Kirk confirms that the prisoner is aboard a ship wide manhunt begins.  However the prisoner makes his way to the bridge the phaser.  He demands asylum from Captain Kirk to protect him from his tormentors on the planet, Kirk can’t promise anything at phaser-point and Spock disables him a Vulcan nerve pinch. 

Captain Kirk doesn't make for a good hostage.

When the prisoner wakes up in sick bay he says some wild things to Dr. McCoy.  He says his name is Dr. Simon Van Geller and he is the assistant of Dr. Adams.  He claims that Adams was torturing him using a device called a neural neutralizer.  This is why he appears so messed up.  The problem however is that these accusations that he makes are also made in the company of other random statements that he utters in between his claims.  It’s hard to tell if what any he says is actually real.

When Kirk confronts Dr. Adams over the ship’s communication system, Adams, speaking from his asylum on the surface, has all the right answers.  He identifies who Dr. Van Gelder is and claims that he was doing some experiments and he tested them on himself.  They went wrong and this is why he went mad.

Kirk seems satisfied with this explanation, but Dr. McCoy doesn’t buy it.  He tells Kirk he would note his doubts in in his medical log which requires Captain Kirk to write a response.  Kirk decides to investigate the matter and asked Dr. McCoy to assign him someone from his staff with a background in psychology.   He assigns Dr. Helen Noel, who has the required background not only in her field but may have had a minor fling with Captain Kirk.

Dr. Helen Noel has a history with Captain Kirk

The two beam down to the facility on the planet and they get a tour from Dr. Tristan Adams himself.  Dr. Adams seems friendly and cooperative but as he shows them the facility Captain Kirk starts to have doubts about the nature of it, although Dr. Noel finds the facility even more to her approval as she sees it.   Eventually they are taken to the room with the neural neutralizer; Dr. Adams reminds them that is what damaged Van Geller.  Adams calls it a failed idea that they only use sparingly to help the most dangerous of inmates.  Kirk communicates with Spock to let him know that he will be spending a few days there.  This destabilizes and already upset Van Geller who claims they are in danger.

Adams explaining his operation to his guests.

Later that evening Kirk is still not satisfied with Adams’s explanation of the neural neutralizer.  If it was a failure why do they still use it at all?  He decides that he and Noel will have a look at it in private.  When they get to the room with the neural neutralizer Kirk decides to test it on himself with Noel on the controls.  When she successfully erases his memory of the first test and implants a feeling of hunger in him.  Kirk is really impressed with the efficiency of a machine that Adams had labeled a failure.

Kirk and Noel decided on another test and Noel chooses to plant a romantic evening with the two of them as a memory from the Christmas party last year.  Before she can finish however Dr. Adams and his assistants arrive, capture Noel, and Adams begins to use the device to torture Captain Kirk.  He has Kirk give up his phaser and communicator and he convinces Kirk that he is madly in love with Noel and that he can’t live without her.  Then he tortures him by occasionally referring to her as being gone.

Kirk under Adams's torture

Kirk and Noel are confined to his arranged quarters at the facility.  At first Kirk tries to embrace her but she tells him that it was all a trick of the machine that Dr. Adams had done to him.  Kirk comes up with a plan he has Noel go through the ventilation shaft so she get to the engineering room where she can cut the power.

Going through the ventilation system years before Die Hard made it cool.

Onboard the Enterprise, Mr. Spock decides to take a risk.  Vulcans have the power to mind meld which means they can with touch establish a telepathic connection with whom they are touching.  Spock gets permission from Van Geller to use this technique on him.  It is a risk because Mr. Spock has never performed a mind meld with a non-Vulcan before.  Using the mind meld he’s able to get the truth about Dr. Adams and also repair Dr. Van Geller for the damage that was inflicted on him by mad scientist.

Mind Meld

Adams and his assistants take Captain Kirk back to the neural neutralizer for more torture.  For some reason they don't seem to notice that Noel is gone, Adams must have had an obsession with Kirk.  Adams is positively gleeful in his torture of Captain Kirk, he points out how much stronger Kirk is then Van Geller.  How he can resist longer and how Van Geller was already begging him for relief at this point.  Fortunately for Captain Kirk at this very moment Noel reaches the engineering room and is able to cut the power.  Adams and his men rush in to the neural neutralizer room to restrain Kirk but it is at this moment where Captain Kirk unleashes upon them his fierce fighting skills unparalleled anywhere this side of the galaxy.  He dispatches Adams and his assistant with ease leaving Adams wounded in the room with a torture device.

Some of facility's security try to get the power back on but it turns out Noel also has great fighting abilities as well and is able to shove one of them into the control panel electrocuting him.  Mr. Spock beams down ahead of his security team to help get control of the situation.  When power is restored Kirk realizes Adams is in the room with the neural neutralizer.  They go to it's location, shut the machine off, and enter the room but they find the Adams has died of loneliness.  Kirk explains how the machine empties you out and that by being alone in there without even a tormentor for company is itself a fatal mix.

He's dead, Jim.

Back on the Enterprise, the crew receives word that the recovered Dr. Van Geller has been able to disassemble the machine and get the facility back on track.  Dr. McCoy has a hard time believing that someone could die of loneliness and Kirk just lets him know that he had to have been in that room to understand.

Additional thoughts: It is interesting to note that when the script was originally written it was Yeoman Janice Rand who is going to be accompanying Captain Kirk down to the asylum.   This was rewritten because even though the idea of Yeoman Rand having a crush on Kirk has already been a little explored at this point, another member of the crew might have a crush on the Captain isn’t entirely out of bounds. Creating the character of Dr. Helen Noel was a much better direction.  She is much more qualified than Yeoman Rand to inspect an asylum and it’s also nice to see people who work in the departments on the Enterprise who are not the head of that department.  We get to meet a doctor who isn’t Dr. McCoy.  Also we saw helmsman who wasn't Mr. Sulu, apparently it Mr. Sulu didn't have a shift on this adventure.

Kirk and Noel

What I also thought was interesting about this episode was how it really didn’t need to be a Star Trek episode.   You could’ve taken the same script change some of the characters around and made an episode of The Adventures of Superman, Man from U.N.C.L.E, or even Get Smart and it would’ve worked.

As for Dr. Adams he wasn’t a very impressive villain.  He was just creepy good off on torture he kind of reminds me of Ramsey Bolton from Game of Thrones but without the blood.  I mean when he had Captain Kirk under his control all he had to do was tell Kirk forget all the bad things he saw and make him give a glowing report on his Captain’s Log.  Then do the same with Dr. Helen Noel.  But no, like Ramsey, he had to play his games. If he planned this right every time a Federation official stopped by he could turn them into one of his mind slaves in overtime take control of the entire Federation.  But no, you like to play torture games. 

I feel bad for all the people at Starfleet Medical; Dr. Adams was one of their foremost researchers in the field of corrective medicine.  Then it turns out that he is himself a mentally disturbed person who gets off on torture.  Now they have to go over all his research in painstaking detail to determine at what point he flipped and what part of his research is still useful or maybe it might all have to be thrown out. Remember how Kirk so admired him in the beginning?  I bet medical students are studying this case well into the 24^th century.

In the end of the day is the neural neutralizer really that bad of an idea?  I mean yes it can get abused but that doesn’t mean it cannot have any legitimate function.  Many things that have legitimate functions can be abused and one abused the result can be horrible.  Look at phasers, 20^th century ovens, and drugs in general.  Those are legitimate things that can be horribly abused.

We saw when Captain Kirk and Dr. Noel were experimenting with the neural neutralizer it seemed to work fine in a limited capacity to which it was designed for.  Couldn’t they use it to fix all the damage that Dr. Adams caused?  Did Mr. Spock give everyone in the asylum of mind meld?  It doesn’t seem very practical.  Think of all the good you could do with one of these things under your control.

Just imagine yourself with this device and a truly evil and despicable person like a real life Ramsey Bolton under the devices power.

Evil person: “Ah, what is this?”
You: “Murder is wrong.  When you think about murdering you become very sad and you want to go home without hurting anyone at all.”
Evil person: “Murder is wrong.”
You: “Maiming is wrong.  When you think about maiming a person you become very sad and you want to go home without hurting anyone at all
Evil person: “Maiming is wrong.”
You: “Rape is wrong.  When you think about raping a person you become very sad and you want to go home without hurting anyone at all.”
From this point you continue on getting the truly disturbed individual to stop the physical assault, theft, and damage to embrace decency. 

Oh well sometimes neither the good guys nor the bad guys have any imagination.

FINAL GRADE: 3 of 5