fiasco

Synopsis

Remember back in "The Naked Time," the Enterprise was thrown back in time a bit by excessive warp speed. This was used (by my count) three more times: "Tomorrow Is Yesterday," "Assignment: Earth" (TOS 2x26), and The Voyage Home.

On this occasion, time travel was unintentional, and the Enterprise is spotted on Air Force radar. A jet is scrambled to investigate, and the Enterprise accidentally destroys it with its tractor. They beam the pilot aboard, and get caught in a conundrum: do they send USAF Captain John Christopher back to Earth, knowing he knows the future? Worse, it turns out Christopher's son will be an astronaut himself, so they can't bring Christopher back to the future.

They decide they need to destroy all physical evidence of their presence, so Kirk and Sulu snoop around an Air Force base looking for computer tapes and film negatives. They get caught by an MP, who also gets accidentally beamed up to the Enterprise. Then Kirk is captured by the base commander. That one's quickly resolved, as Christopher, Spock, and Sulu beam down and rescue him.

At this point the episode's logic gets a bit fuzzy. Spock decides they can use the high-warp slingshot business to go forward in time too, and while time traveling, they use the transporter to swap Christopher and the MP for their past selves. Maybe this is its own little time loop, but I can't quite figure how. Regardless, the Enterprise makes it back to their present and Starfleet still exists, so whatever.

Commentary

I'm actually glad Star Trek opened the time travel box by appreciating its absurdity. This episode doesn't hold a candle to "Time's Arrow" (TNG 5x26/6x01) or "Trials and Tribble-ations" (DS9 5x06)—or The Voyage Home for that matter—but I still liked it.

Time travel is a strange narrative conceit. We'll get to look at a lot of different angles on it, from the deadly serious ("The City on the Edge of Forever," TOS 1x28), to pointed social commentary ("Past Tense," DS9 3x11/3x12), to the fascinating ("Year of Hell," VOY 4x08/4x09), to the heart-wrenching ("The Visitor," DS9 4x03), to just taking a long look at the road before and the road beyond ("All Good Things," TNG 7x25/7x26).

But right now we're having fun. So sit back and revel in it.

I will pose one question for you, though: Would the average zoomer recognize cellulose tape as computer memory or photographic film? What about people two hundred years in the future?

Forgive me for what I'm about to do.

Synopsis

The universe experiences a dragon break while the Enterprise is in orbit around an arid planet. They beam down to find Todd Howard with a stringy goatee has crashed his concept car in the California desert.

They take the Toddhead back to the ship, where he oscillates between between being reasonable and crazy, and injuries keep appearing and disappearing on him. Yes, it's true: the Toddhead has divided himself into the primordial forces of Anu and Padomay. If they should ever meet, the universe will be destroyed.

Anu (good Todd) steals dilithium crystals in order to power his car back up. Padomay (evil Todd) also steals dilithium crystals, also to power his car back up. As far as I can tell through the messy storytelling, Padomay is from the normal universe, and Anu is from an anti-universe. Which means there's also a car and an anti-car, which really sucks for dilithium crystal mileage.

Kirk gets sent to the anti-universe, where Anu tells him his plan: for Kirk to send Padomay into the corridor between worlds where the two halves of the Toddhead can fight forever. After pushing Padomay into the corridor, they blow up his car, which also destroys Anu's car for some reason. Spock remarks that now the universe is safe, but Kirk wistfully asks, "What of the Toddhead? What of the Toddhead?"

Commentary

"Mirror, Mirror" is episode 2x10. Let's just, uh, hold out for that one.

Synopsis

The Enterprise is called to a far-flung colony on Cestus III. When they get there, the colony has already been destroyed. We learn that, in the future, mortar shells don't launch shrapnel. Also Starfleet seems to have continued that ludicrous US project to shoot nukes from artillery cannons. Happy Fourth of July everyone!

This episode is a two-for-one first contact. First we have the gorn, a race of people in clumsy green prosthetics, and second we have the metrons, a race of superpowered narcissists. The Enterprise chases the gorn (who destroyed the Federation colony) into metron space, and the metrons decide to have Kirk face the gorn captain in the most awkward one-on-one fight imaginable.

After Kirk and the gorn captain get tired of throwing big pieces of foam at each other, Kirk realizes the planet has all the materials to make a gun just sort of laying around. He picks up a section of bamboo; mixes sulfur, potassium nitrate, and carbon; puts chunks of diamonds into the barrel; and somehow or other gets a bit of fabric lit.

Standing over the diamond-impaled gorn captain, Kirk decides to spare him. The metrons teleport the gorn away, and one of them addresses Kirk. The metron says that humans are still half-savage, but maybe in a thousand years the metrons will have more to say to the Federation.

Given what the Federation looks like in a thousand years, I'm not so sure:

Commentary

This may be the most iconic original series episode. You've got everything: red-shirts being disintegrated, ridiculous alien costumes, a plot driven by escalating contrivance, and a deeply optimistic resolution.

Back in "Balance of Terror," Kirk made the right call: you absolutely cannot show the romulans weakness. You have to meet them toe to toe, eye for eye. They send one of yours to the hospital, you send one of theirs to the morgue.

He takes that same approach with the gorn, but—he was wrong. The gorn were defending their borders. The shoe gets put on the other foot in "Conspiracy" (TNG 1x25), and in that situation Picard has no trouble vaporizing aliens. Indeed, the Federation and Starfleet are the carrot and the stick, and when push comes to shove, Starfleet has little reservations beating the shit out of invaders.

Or maybe I should let Quark make my point for me (from "The Siege of AR-558," DS9 7x08):

"Let me tell you something about humans, nephew. They're a wonderful, friendly people—as long as their bellies are full and their holosuites are working. But take away their creature comforts... deprive them of food, sleep, sonic showers... put their lives in jeopardy over an extended period of time... and those same friendly, intelligent, wonderful people will become as nasty and violent as the most bloodthirsty klingon. You don't believe me? Look at those faces, look at their eyes..."

"Arena" lets us bask in the optimism, the potential for the future, even if we don't deserve to. After all, Kirk was fully prepared to blow the gorn out of the sky.

Okay, so "Daily Trek" means Weekday Trek. This is a nice way of coming down from the workday. By the weekend I just don't seem to have the energy for it.

Synopsis

In a stellar desert, the Enterprise encounters an uninhabited planet. They try to go around, but Kirk and Sulu vanish. Eventually the Enterprise finds a habitable zone on the planet, and McCoy beams down with two red-shirts. Shockingly, the red-shirts survive the entire episode.

They find an Eighteenth Century drawing room and a weirdo named General Trelane, retired, but you can call him the squire of Gothos. He didn't account for light delay, so he thinks his castle is contemporary. He's obsessed with militarism and honor, but it becomes very clear that those are just words.

Trelane says that he has matter-energy conversion technology, and Kirk reasons that it's being mediated by some device. Trelane's attentions are split between his playthings and his mirror, so Kirk challenges him to a pistol duel and uses his shot to blow up his—Trelane uses the word "instrumentality."

They beam back to ship and try to warp away, but the planet Gothos keeps getting in their way. Kirk beams down and Trelane is wearing a judge's costume. He sentences Kirk to death, but Kirk convinces him to play the most dangerous game. (I know, the story title meant "game" in the other sense.) Kirk and Trelane muck about with swords for a bit, then Trelane's parents show up and put him in time out. They tell Kirk they're sorry Trelane was such a bother, and the Enterprise continues on its way.

Commentary

I have mixed feelings about this episode, but it's only because of how it fits into the rest of Star Trek.

Thematically, I enjoyed "Charlie X" more. In terms of acting and production, "Gothos" is far superior, and it's a lot more fun. There's also a problem that, again speaking thematically, "Gothos" is completely redundant with "Charlie X." I mean, this is the third episode in eighteen that's about asshole gods, and the second one that ends with mommy and daddy showing up and setting things right.

The difference is that Charlie Evans was an adolescent, while Trelane is a child. There's just more going on with Charlie, which is why "Gothos" has so much spectacle—with how thin Trelane is as a character, they had to do something to fill out the runtime.

Then on the other side, "Encounter at Farpoint" (TNG 1x01/1x02) takes the aesthetics of this episode and does something interesting with it. Q's trial isn't just for show or for sport, and you get the sense that he's serious about it and he knows what he's doing.

I don't wanna get too far ahead of ourselves here, but it's absolutely the case that Q works so well because John de Lancie could pull off a disconcerting mixture of playful and threatening. William Campbell tried to do that, but looking back from the present he was drastically upstaged.

So I'm left seeing this episode more as the primordial ooze of the best Star Trek frenemy. Interesting in its own right, but still, why was this episode made?

Synopsis

The last sixteen episodes have taken their toll on the crew. They find an uninhabited planet that looks awfully similar to Southern California and send out scouting parties, in preparation for letting the crew take shore leave.

Everything is in order... until McCoy sees a giant, white rabbit being chased by an English girl. Kirk postpones shore leave until they figure out what's going on.

Kirk and McCoy talk about an obnoxious Irishman—and geez, this show sure is racist against the Irish—that bullied him at Starfleet Academy. Suddenly the bully appears and Kirk gets into a fight.

Similar events happen all over: a samurai attacks Sulu, the new Yeoman Barrows is accosted by Don Juan, and a couple of red-shirts hide from a tiger. Kirk runs into yet another old flame. Barrows discovers a princess dress, and randy old McCoy asks her to put it on. McCoy gets impaled by a jousting knight.

Anyway, the planet has mind-reading devices and replicators that fabricate anything anyone is thinking of, and advanced medical facilities to treat any injuries that may occur. I guess this is the premise of Westworld, but thankfully "Shore Leave" is okay with being silly.

An old guy calling himself the caretaker explains that the planet is an amusement park, and they should really just relax.

Commentary

My vague understanding is that Majel Barrett had eyes for Gene Roddenberry—and they would go on to get married—but Barrett was jealous of Grace Lee Whitney (Yeoman Rand) and somehow or other managed to get Whitney fired.

Anyway, I have a huge soft spot for the silly episodes. This episode doubly so, since its theme is that it's okay to be silly. Even for the serious James T Kirk. But maybe not for Spock.

But yeah, "Qpid" (TNG 4x20), "A Fistful of Datas" (TNG 6x08), "Badda-Bing, Badda-Bang" (DS9 7x15), "Bride of Chaotica" (VOY 5x12), they all give a refreshing break from the seriousness. They're all incredibly stupid, but who cares when you have Brent Spiner playing a staggering eighty-six roles?

Synopsis—The Cage

The Enterprise picks up a radio distress call, meaning it was sent decades ago. Spock points out that a ship, the Columbia, did crash on Talos IV eighteen years ago. Pike decides that, absent evidence of survivors, they'll stay on their current mission.

But then they get an interstellar fax saying there actually are survivors.

They find a camp of old men and one hot chick. Before they can beam anyone up, Pike is lured away by the hot chick and captured by big-brained aliens. The camp vanishes.

The aliens can make illusions, and they've trapped Pike in their menagerie. The hot chick, Vina, tells him that the Talosians destroyed the surface in a war, hid underground, and developed mind powers that let them create illusions. Pike wonders why he's talking to an illusion, though Vina tells him that the illusions can still make him feel pain, so he can't brush them off.

The Talosians manipulate the transporter control such that only Number One and Yeoman Colt beam into the cage. They want to create a colony of humans from Adam (Pike) and Eve (Pike's choice). The phasers Number One and Colt beamed down with appear dead, but of course everything is an illusion.

Pike captures a Talosian and offers to test his theory that the phasers actually work on his giant head. This gets them back to the surface. The Talosians want humans to rebuild their civilization for them, but instead find we're too dangerous for their tastes. Also Vina is a crippled old woman, so she decides to stay behind and bask in illusion. Pike remarks that he agrees with her decision.

Synopsis—The Menagerie

Okay look, I didn't watch the same episode twice. I'm going off memory, and to a lesser extent, Memory Alpha.

Years later, Pike is horribly disfigured by radiation and becomes the stuff of memes with a giant wheelchair that blinks once for yes and twice for no. Spock kidnaps him and hijacks the Enterprise, and sets course for Talos IV.

Spock kills time by showing Kirk and Commodore Mendez a clip show of "The Cage." By the time they get there, it's revealed that the clip show was itself a series of illusions being sent to them by the Talosians. Pike beams down, and lives the rest of his life in their pleasing illusions.

Commentary

One of the big Star Trek memes is that the holodeck would be the death of us all, because who would ever leave the holodeck? Especially considering they have food replicators by the time of The Next Generation.

Turns out Star Trek started out by asking that question. But in answering it fully, I'd like to leap way forward in time, to "Homefront" (DS9 4x11). One of the things I appreciate about that episode is that Joseph Sisko runs a restaurant in New Orleans. He doesn't have to: it's a postscarcity society. Sure, Eddington bitches about replicator food not tasting real, but he's not exactly a reliable narrator.

The Federation is a society of mutual obligation, and that's why Sisko still cooks and serves jambalaya. The Talosians are shown to be horrible narcissists; they only let Pike go because they're afraid of humans, not because they have a shred of decency.

The Talosians offer to let Pike stay and live in dreamland, and he refuses—with the caveat that dreamland is fine for the actually infirm, hence the ending of "The Menagerie" is less jarring than it might seem. But in "The Cage," Pike refuses.

The Talosians speculate that this is because humans hate imprisonment. Fair enough, but why? There are many answers, but one hopes it's because we're not prepared to give up on travel, building, and creating.

There's so much more to say, but I'll leave it with this thought: Star Trek has, in its own ways, followed the material conditions of society from "The Cage" to "These Are the Voyages." We live in a world that, for most of us, denies us the opportunities available to citizens of the Federation. If we lived in their world, would we act like they do? And what's necessary to get us there?

Ultimately, that's the question that lives in the heart of hearts of this wonderful franchise.

I hate it when Star Trek tries to do Perry Mason, with one exception. And the exception is not "The Measure of a Man."

Synopsis

An officer dies in an ion storm, and computer records show that Kirk caused his death through negligence. The man is the ship's records officer, Lieutenant Commander Ben Finney. This sends Kirk to a court martial, and an old flame is the prosecutor.

The prosecution's evidence hinges on this wacky control panel, where the only three usable buttons are yellow alert, red alert, and kill a guy. Video from the bridge shows Kirk sending Finney into a pod, signaling yellow alert, telling Finney to stand by to leave the pod, then ejecting the pod into the ion storm.

Years ago, Kirk and Finney were ensigns on the Republic. Finney left the engines in a dangerous state, then Kirk came on shift and logged the mistake. This put a black mark on Finney's career. The prosecutor latches onto a theory that Kirk reflected Finney's resentment back at him, and somehow that... caused Kirk to be negligent?

Spock decides that the computers are mechanically sound—in modern terms, this would mean, he can't find any hardware faults. It takes him until the end of the trial to realize that he should check for software faults. It was a different time, I guess.

Spock discovers that he can beat the computer at chess, which he doesn't think should be possible. This finally makes everyone consider the possibility that the computer's memory banks have been tampered with. They discover through a preposterous experiment that Finney faked his own death to get revenge on Kirk via court martial.

Commentary

Apparently the Federation has done away with the requirement that all evidence to be presented at court be made available to all parties prior to trial. And that evidence be subject to judicial review. And also that both sides have time to investigate the events in question prior to trial.

If we peel away all the Perry Mason shit, we're left with a drastically undeveloped theme: the dangers of having computers as arbiters of truth.

Now it was the 60s, so the extent to which computers would become unstable nightmares wasn't on many people's radars. Most of the contemporary criticism of computers was that they would be excessively perfect, and thereby erase the humanity from humanity.

They couldn't have known that computing would become dominated by asshole capitalists and mediocre technicians. Even The Book about how computing systems become byzantine and nigh-unusable wasn't published until 1975.

The thing that's contemptible about this episode is, the resolution sidesteps the question. It was forgery all along. Forgery doesn't require computers, and if it weren't falsified video logs in a computer system, it could just as easily be airbrushed photos or imitated signatures or replica wax seals or whatever else.

If you're curious about the only good trial in Star Trek, it's The Undiscovered Country. It's a farce because it's supposed to be a farce. This episode, unfortunately, takes itself seriously.

Edit: I'll clarify, I love "The Drumhead." I just don't think of it as a court episode. This may seem like splitting hairs, but I think there are important differences between it and the overtly legalistic stuff like this episode and "Dax."

Synopsis

The Enterprise is delivering medical supplies to Makus III, but they encounter a quasar. Kirk launches the shuttle Galileo to gather data. Unfortunately, the Galileo immediately loses control due to space stuff from the quasar and crash lands on a shit planet called Taurus II. Which leaves open the question of why they call it Earth rather than Sol III.

There's some stuffy Federation jerk pressing Kirk to abandon the crew of the Galileo, but Kirk insists on searching.

The main cast members on the Galileo are Spock, McCoy, and Scott, with Spock the ranking officer. McCoy points out to Spock that this is his first command, and Spock replies, "I realize that command does have its fascinations, even under circumstances such as these, but I neither enjoy the idea of command, nor am I frightened of it. It simply exists, and I will do whatever logically needs to be done."

Taurus II turns out to be inhabited by people in goofy yeti costumes who throw even goofier spears, killing two red-shirts (who are, anyway, wearing yellow shirts). Spock tries to logically deduce what the yetis will do, and of course he gets it wrong, since the yetis haven't developed the sort of slave-supported leisure class to have hammered out formal principles of logic.

Stuffy Federation man says they've run out of time, but Kirk engages in malicious compliance and leaves under impulse. Scotty gets the Galileo into orbit, and in an act of logical desperation, Spock jettisons their remaining fuel and ignites it. The Enterprise gets the signal and rescues them.

Commentary

The original series has four fundamental kinds of episodes: enthralling philosophical pieces like "The City on the Edge of Forever," fun episodes like "Shore Leave," monster episodes like "Catspaw," and then this kind: monster episodes with the thinnest veneer of intellectual complexity.

We learn once again why vulcans don't make great Starfleet captains. There is an interesting thread here, which the writers were not sophisticated enough to tug.

Spock's version of logic is one in which there are definite facts which, though the application of Definitely True Rules, can be used to derive other facts. Spock gets the facts wrong, and the yellow-shirts die. He makes relatively little allowance for this, until he chooses to make a desperate play to signal the Enterprise.

On the other hand, Kirk and McCoy end the episode making fun of Spock for saving the day with emotion. A more philosophically rigorous interpretation is that Spock, for a brief, fleeting moment, gained some appreciation for the nature of complexity—though he misses the deeper fact, that formal logic has nothing useful to say about complexity.

In a sense, it's less painful for me to look at this episode as one about yetis throwing spears at immature people wearing yellow Lycra shirts. Or put another way, and maybe you all will wheel out the pillory for this one, I vastly prefer Data to Spock as a Starfleet logician.

I'm sure you all know, we'll be revisiting the title quote, with far more feeling, in The Wrath of Khan.

This episode is the 60s at its best.

Synopsis

Is Anton Karidian, classical actor, in fact the aptly named Kodos the Executioner? Kirk's friend Thomas Leighton thinks so, and the water gets bloodier after Leighton turns up dead.

Anton's company performs Macbeth, and Leighton thinks he recognized the voice. Kirk seduces Anton's daughter Lenore who, of course, played Lady Macbeth. At this point you know everything that happens for the rest of the episode.

Kirk uses some connections and some wile to put Lenore into a position of asking him to transport the company to their next show. Kirk plays hard to get, but agrees to transport them when Lenore offers to perform for the crew.

Three very important things drive us to our conclusion:

First, Spock retraces Kirk's steps and logically concludes that Anton is Kodos. Kirk, Spock, and McCoy debate the issues. Kirk wants more than logic to accuse. McCoy wants to know if Kirk wants justice or vengeance. "Do you play God? Carry his head through the corridors in triumph?"

Second, Riley, the drunken Irishman from "The Naked Time," was also a witness to Kodos' butchery. Kodos killed his parents. Someone tries to kill Riley, but he's found in time. Recovering in sickbay, he overhears McCoy entering a log about the Anton/Kodos question. Riley goes out for blood, but Kirk stops him.

Third, someone tries to kill Kirk by planting a sabotaged phaser in his quarters. Kirk confronts Anton and takes a voice recording for spectral analysis. More importantly, Anton is a torrent of emotions, coming right to the edge of admitting his identity.

It comes to a head when Anton plays the ghost of Hamlet's father. Backstage, Anton is troubled by his past bubbling up, and Lenore says she murdered seven of nine witnesses. Only Kirk and Riley are left. Anton never wanted the blood on his hands to stain her. She manages to nab a phaser from a guard, but when she goes to shoot Kirk, Anton jumps in front of him.

Commentary

Arnold Moss (Anton Karidian) is one of those perfect character actors, who makes you forget about the hokey sets and costumes, and you get lost on the other side of the fourth wall.

I find the central question of this episode fascinating, because it's something authors like to bring up, but they never seem to have anything to say. What is it that differentiates vengeance from justice? Kirk approaches the Anton/Kodos question diligently, but is that because he believes in justice, or because he wants to be sure?

Is that what separates justice and vengeance—being sure? The question is answered by confession, first Lenore's then Anton's. This is the ultimate authorial cop-out. And back in the real world, confessions don't work like that; confessions are often made under duress or by trickery. Authors never seem to have any moral problem with the latter.

So the question remains unanswered. And, unfortunately, this is how it'll be for virtually every Star Trek legal mystery.

This episode is deeply uncomfortable.

Synopsis

The Enterprise receives a distress signal and tracks it to a duplicate Earth. They beam down to find decayed infrastructure, horrible incongruous architecture, diminishing food supplies, mass unemployment, vagrants roaming the streets... just as it was in the year 2023.

My only guess is that this episode is set on a duplicate Earth for budgetary reasons.

Anyway...

They discover that the people of 2023 were trying to build an immortality virus—though the virology lab seems to be in the US, so they missed that prediction—but instead it killed every adult. The children were blessed (?) with very long childhoods, but once they reach puberty they die.

Children, it turns out, are little assholes. The Enterprise crew who beam down (Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Rand, and two red-shirts) are infected, and the kids steal their communicators because why not?

Miri is a girl on the cusp of womanhood. I imagine that the script intended for Kirk to come across as a father figure, but instead he comes across as an Epstein tourist.

Nonetheless, McCoy manages to make a cure with limited equipment, and everyone lives happily ever after.

Commentary

That synopsis was less coherent than usual for me, because this is a deeply incoherent episode. I don't even know what to say. This is Star Trek does Peter Pan. Peter is an asshole, and Wendy is being used.

Growing up is necessary. It sucks.

Let's sweep this episode under the rug.