The Lights Of Zetar

The last hundred survivors of the dead planet Zetar survive through sheer force of will in a non-corporeal form. They have travelled through space for over a thousand years looking for a body which they can take over and live out the remainder of their lives. In the course of their search they killed everyone on Memory Alpha; a planetoid set up by the Federation as a central library containing the total cultural history and scientific knowledge of all Federation members. The lens through which writers Jeremy Tarcher and Shari Lewis focus this story is a romance between Scotty and Lieutenant Mira Romaine a Starfleet specialist supervising the transfer of equipment to Memory Alpha.

A Scotty love story! Has no one learned anything from Who Mourns For Adonais? The answer is yes. A little. This time Scotty is at least involved in a relationship which seems mutual. Unlike the loveless relationship in Who Mourns For Adonais? where Scotty was willing to sacrifice his life for a woman who barely seemed to recognise that he existed; the height of her passion was a reluctant, "all right," when he invited her for coffee.

Apart from that there's very much the sense that The Lights Of Zetar could be Who Mourns For Adonais? with the Apollo plot taken out and the Zetar survivors plot slotted into its place. In both stories Scotty acts utterly obsessed to the extent of disobeying direct orders from Kirk. In both stories there is also the sense that someone on the production team simply looked down a list of episodes and saw there had already been a recent Kirk love story, a Spock love story, a McCoy love story, and a Chekov love story; the only two regular cast not to get a love story are Uhura and Sulu who are both rarely asked to do anything interesting. It's the generic nature of the love plot which really grates; Scotty could be Sulu or Chekov or Lieutenant Kyle. It's like the joke at the end of The Simpsons episode Das Bus where the children are marooned on an island and the narrator says “... eventually they were rescued by, oh, let's say... Moe.”

Star Trek is great at telling unique emotional stories for Kirk and Spock. The City On The Edge Of Forever couldn't be about another character falling for Edith Keeler, and there's something endearing about Kirk's reluctance to talk about Ruth in Shore Leave; as if he is embarrassed by the unexpected reappearance of this ghost from his past. Unfortunately when it comes to other characters the scripting suddenly becomes utterly interchangable. "McCoy falls in love...Chekov falls in love...Scotty falls in love." Anyone could have caught a terminal disease and fallen in love in For The World Is Hollow And I Have Touched The Sky. Still this might simply be a reflection of how television worked at the time; maybe carefully worked out character stories were strictly for the lead actors. For all I know on Gunsmoke Chester Goode, Festus Haggen, and Doc Adams were all having interchangeable romances on a weekly basis. At the end of the episode Scotty gazes moon-eyed at Lieutenant Romaine and says, "now we have all the time in the world". We never hear about Lieutenant Romaine again.

It's frustrating that Jeremy Tarcher and Shari Lewis have foregrounded the Scotty love story. The other concepts are really interesting. There's a spiritual element to the Zetarians who drift around the universe as disembodied minds, possessing people, forcing them to speak in tongues, and giving Lieutenant Romaine the power of second sight. Their psychedelic colours and appearance in extreme close-ups of Lieutenant Romaine's eye probably springs more from Dave Bowman's trip beyond the infinite in 2001: A Space Odyssey which premièred in Los Angeles on 4th April 1968.

Memory Alpha is the Library of Alexandria for the Federation. It is destroyed because, "when the library complex was assembled, shielding was considered inappropriate to its totally academic purpose. Since the information on the Memory planet is available to everyone, special protection was deemed unnecessary. " The line is probably a quick story fix; like M-5's unexpected and never again mentioned ability to generate a force field in The Ultimate Computer. During story development someone probably wondered why everyone on the Enterprise survived their encounter with the Zetarians unlike the people on Memory Alpha. It makes the Federation seem sweetly naive, as if they never expected anyone to attack a library. The line implies that Memory Alpha has no shielding whatsoever, not even against natural radiation which is strange considering cosmic radiation was a known hazard of space travel by 1968. Apparently anyone using Memory Alpha will be sterilized whenever a nearby star coughs. There's also an odd line from Spock about the loss of Memory Alpha being "a disaster for the galaxy," and "irretrievable," because the memory core is burned out. The script seems to be suggesting that Memory Alpha holds its information in an electronic format which is not backed up. It's easy to watch The Lights Of Zetar today and assume Memory Alpha is like the internet but it's not. It's a genuine space library and Spock's line is a relic of days when information was harder to duplicate.

Enterprise crew deaths: None.

Running total: 53

The Tholian Web

There's been a significant departure from the Star Trek production team. This is the first episode filmed without Jerry Finnerman as director of photography. The complications of production order versus broadcast order mean we've already seen a couple of episodes shot by Jerry Finnerman's replacement Al Francis, Day Of The Dove and ForThe World Is Hollow And I Have Touched The Sky, and Finnerman's last story The Empath is still to come. Jerry Finnerman's loss is significant because he was responsible for the look of the show. The bright slabs of colour, the use of lenses to add depth to sets, and the use of lighting to help tell the story. Go back and watch This Side Of Paradise and the scene where Kirk fights the effect of the spores. The lighting in the transporter room is used to represent Kirk's internal emotional struggle as Kirk goes from being lit normally, to silhouetted, and then, when he leans forward, his face is lit a harsh electric blue. No disrespect to Al Francis but his lighting on Day Of The Dove and For The World Is Hollow And I Have Touched The Sky and of course here on The Tholian Web is flatter and less interesting.

The Tholian Web also sees the departure from Star Trek of Ralph Senensky who was replaced after the third day of shooting by Herb Wallerstein who takes the directing credit on this episode. Ralph Senensky's input is obvious. Most notably in the use of a 9mm lens to show Chekov's distorted point of view when he is driven mad by this strange area of space. Ralph Senensky used the same visual trick in his other third season episode Is There In Truth No Beauty? The script's suggestion that the dimensional structure of the overlapping universe can drive people insane because it is utterly alien is reminiscent of H. P. Lovecraft's stories about monstrous geometries which cause everything from a sense of dread to full blown madness.

Judy Burns and Chet Richards' script is unusually structured. Instead of a big central crisis there are several little problems. Kirk is lost in the other universe and will not reappear for two hours. The area of overlap is fragile and any energy use from the Enterprise could damage it, resulting in Kirk being lost forever. The overlapping universe is gradually driving the Enterprise crew insane. Then the Tholians arrive. Individually any one of these problems would be simple to resolve, but they start coming one immediately after another and the crisis keeps building as the episode progresses. Compare this to For The World Is Hollow And I Have Touched The Sky, a story with two main strands; McCoy's terminal illness and the badly off course asteroid/world Yonada. Both these plots are set up in act one and everything which occurs is just filler until Yonada's course is corrected in act four, and Spock finds the cure to McCoy's disease and the episode ends.

The other unusual aspect of Judy Burns and Chet Richards' script is that it is largely Kirk free. Although it is a credit to the writers that his presence hangs over the story even when the character is apparently lost. According to Judy Burns in the original story outline, called In Essence – Nothing, it was Spock who was lost but this was changed following a memo from Robert Justman. It was a smart change to make. Losing Kirk strengthens the story. McCoy would never challenge Kirk in the way he does Spock. Unfortunately it turns out that McCoy goes a little too overboard when he challenges Spock's decision making.

MCCOY: ... I really came here to find out why you stayed and fought.
SPOCK: The Captain would have remained to recover a crew member at the risk of his own life or even his own ship.
MCCOY: Yes, he would, Mister Spock, but you didn't have that decision to make. What would you gain by fighting the Tholians? You could have assured yourself of a captaincy by leaving the area. But you chose to stay. Why?
SPOCK: I need not explain my rationale to you or any other member of this crew. There is a margin of variation in any experiment. While there was a chance, I was bound legally and morally to ascertain the Captain's status.
MCCOY: You mean to be sure if he was dead. Well, you made certain of that.

That's McCoy virtually accusing Spock of murdering Kirk. Granted McCoy is grieving the loss of his friend and he doesn't understand that Spock feels the same pain, he's just better at concealing it. Yes, he backs down later and apologises after hearing Kirk's last message. And, yes the moment is very well played by both Deforest Kelly and Leonard Nimoy, but it feels like a step too far for the character. There are moments in The Tholian Web when Doctor McCoy feels like a new character who has just joined the Enterprise crew, rather than someone who has served with Spock for almost three years.

Enterprise crew deaths: Despite the mass outbreak of insanity nobody dies.
Running total: 48
Misc:

The closing credits feature a make-up shot of an aged Uhura from And The Children Shall Lead, when this was used in the episode the image was cropped and inserted into a mirror.

For The World Is Hollow And I Have Touched The Sky

This is just bland. It's a story which exists purely to fill its scheduled 48 minutes of airtime. Star Trek has done worse episodes, and sillier episodes, and more misconceived episodes, but it's difficult to think of a story which shows less ambition.

This is an episode full of generic moments which happen simply because they always happen in an action adventure series. The most original element of the story is Yonada a closed world sealed inside an asteroid while the descendants of a doomed race travel to a new planet. Original is of course a relative term. This is original for Star Trek but generation ships are something of a hoary cliché in science fiction and, as always, the residents of Yonada don't know they are in a generation ship. In 1966 David Gerrold submitted a two part outline called Tomorrow Was Yesterday about a generation ship on a collision course with a star, again the inhabitants of the ship thought it was a world; this is mentioned not to suggest anyone plagiarised David Gerrold's idea but to show how it was simply one of those ideas which floated around.

Beyond that everything is Star Trek by numbers. Yonada is run by a computer called the Oracle who uses instruments of obedience to monitor what the inhabitants say and think. The Oracle is the worst kind of mixed messages ruler doing 180 degree mood changes when required by the script. When Kirk, Spock, and McCoy first arrive it punishes the landing party, “learn what it means to be our enemy before you learn what it means to be our friend,” then welcomes them, “it is the will of the Oracle that you now be treated as honoured guests.” Later when Kirk and Spock go back into the Oracle room it sentences them to death. Despite this exchange earlier.

KIRK: Thank you, Mister Spock. To our good friends of Yonada.

SPOCK: We are very interested in your world.

NATIRA: That pleases us.

KIRK: Good. Then you wouldn't mind if we looked around?

NATIRA: Not at all. The people know of you now. [to McCoy] Are you well enough to go about?

MCCOY: Perhaps not.

NATIRA: Then why not remain here? Rest. We will talk.

MCCOY: You are very kind.

NATIRA: You are free to go about and meet our people.

Would it have hurt Natira to add that the Oracle room was off limits? It's never clear if the computer is malfunctioning. Spock makes a throwaway reference to “a weakness in one of the eight tubes,” but this is in the context of correcting Yonada's navigational error so could just refer to a problem with the engines. The Oracle appears to be functioning normally. It seems the Fabrini just wanted their descendants to be bossed around by a computer with the nature of a fickle two year old. It doesn't really matter. The Oracle is switched off towards the end of the story and plays no further part in the proceedings.

Worshiping the Oracle is Natira, high priestess of the people. Doctor McCoy falls in love with her. When D. C. Fontana wrote Friday's Child she used the situation on Capella to examine McCoy's character, his compassion and his determination to help people even at the cost of his own life. Here McCoy falls in love simply because one of the characters needs to stay on Yonada and learn its secrets. The choice of McCoy makes no difference to the character or the story. It is utterly arbitrary, apparently made simply on the basis that this season Kirk and Spock have already have had love stories. It doesn't matter. The person wandering around Yonada called Doctor McCoy doesn't bear any relation to the character of the same name who appears in other Star Trek episodes. This Doctor McCoy discovers a world whose inhabitants are kept in deliberate ignorance of their true place in the universe. This Doctor McCoy witnesses a man killed for talking about something he did in his childhood. This Doctor McCoy discovers the ruling planetary computer monitors the thoughts and speech of the woman he loves, and can inflict pain on her should she say or think something forbidden. Does he rail against the system of Yonada and try to bring it down? No. He chooses to join this world and has the instrument of obedience implanted in his head, and seems to take seriously Natira's offer, “you can share that world with me, rule it by my side.” That fatal disease he's caught must really be messing with his brain.

Because that's the other big idea of the episode. Doctor McCoy is dying of space-plague. Except he isn't. At the end of the story Spock finds the Fabrini have a cure, so McCoy's incurable fatal disease goes away with no long term effects on his character.

Those are the big problems with the story, but there are plenty of little ones. The Enterprise finds Yonada because the Oracle (presumably) fires missiles at the ship. So, this secret closed world disguised as an asteroid is flying through space and drawing attention by launching attacks at anyone who comes near? And it's not only McCoy who is acting out of character. After McCoy tells Kirk about his illness he says, “I'll be most effective on the job in the time left, if you'll keep this to yourself.” Kirk's first line after the opening titles is, “Captain's log, stardate 5476.3. I have just had the sad duty of informing Starfleet about Doctor McCoy's condition and have requested an immediate replacement.” It takes Kirk the length of the Star Trek theme to decide not to keep McCoy in his job, and tell everyone at Starfleet about McCoy's illness. No wonder McCoy is so keen to leave the Enterprise if that's how Kirk is behaving. And, while we're nitpicking, it sure is lucky that when Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and Natira are trapped in the Oracle room looking for the Book of the People the Oracle decides to slowly cook them instead of using the electric shock which proved so effective on the other two occasions it was used.

Cross out some names and this is Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea. The Seaview encounters a strange floating island containing survivors from Atlantis who are drifting across the ocean to a new home. Richard Basehart, David Hedison, and this week's guest star, travel to neo-Atlantis where this week's guest star (who is dying from a disease which is incurable but not distressing to any watching viewer) falls in love with a priestess of the God of Atlantis. Neo-Atlantis is in danger of being washed into a giant whirlpool, and this week's guest star works out how to steer the island to safety. Out of gratitude the priestess of the God of Atlantis uses her arcane knowledge to cure the disease which is incurable but not distressing to any watching viewer, and neo-Atlantis resumes its journey across the ocean while this week's guest star returns to the Seaview.

Oddly, in the middle of all this is one of Star Trek's few sensible debates about the Prime Directive.

SPOCK: Captain, informing these people they're on a ship may be in violation of the Prime Directive of Starfleet Command.

KIRK: No. The people of Yonada may be changed by the knowledge, but it's better than exterminating them.

SPOCK: Logical, Captain.

KIRK: And the three billion on Daran Five.

SPOCK: Also logical, Captain.

One of the worst aspects of the Prime Directive was the way later Star Trek series treated it as a force of galactic natural selection. As if the highest expression of Federation morality was to stand around watching less advanced races suffer or die. Here it takes Kirk and Spock five lines to cut through that nonsense.

Enterprise crew deaths: None again.
Running total: 48.