The Way To Eden

Space hippies! Like Lazarus from The Alternative Factor, The Way To Eden is perceived as being locked in an eternal struggle with Spock's Brain over which is Star Trek's most notoriously bad episode. Actually watching both stories is an anticlimax because neither represents Star Trek at it's worst. The pair are not the most stupid episodes ever, or the most boring, or the ones which most completely fail to tell an ordered story. In the end they are just a pair of below average Star Trek episodes; and statistically 50% of all Star Trek episodes must be below average. Admittedly some episodes of Star Trek are more below average than others. Spock's Brain and The Way To Eden both stand out as representatives of everything which went wrong with Star Trek. The tone of Spock's Brain is the problem. For the first time the series seems to have taken on a Batman like self-mocking quality, and if the show is mocking itself then by extension it must also be mocking the viewer. "You actually like this stuff? But look how stupid it is!"

In the case of The Way To Eden the most obvious problem is the concept; Captain Kirk versus the space hippies. It's a symptom of the way Star Trek dumbed itself down that what used to be a strength of the series, its ability to comment on contemporary issues with allegory, has now become a weakness.

Star Trek always aspired to for stories to have a ripped-from-the-headlines element and given the events of 1968 an episode about youth in revolt becomes as inevitable as a story about overpopulation, or the loss of jobs to machines. It's a good technique for generating stories but it's not a guarantee of success. Mirror, Mirror one of Star Trek's best episodes isn't an allegory of anything. The Ultimate Computer worked at the time, and still works today, because, "we're all sorry for the other guy when he loses his job to a machine," but what lets the story down is some fuzzy characterisation. With the distance of history Star Trek's endorsement of the war in Vietnam in A Private Little War just seems muddle-headed, but it must have been actively offensive to any watching 18 year old worried about the imminent arrival of their draft card. "War isn't a good life, but it's life," indeed.

Where The Way To Eden stumbles is that its use of hippies is incredibly lazy. These space hippies are not an allegory they're just hippies. It's all to easy to imagine someone seized on the description of "23rd Century Flower Children," from D. C. Fontana's outline for a story called Joanna and expanded those four words into an episode which relied on a whiff of topicality to add freshness to what would otherwise be routine Star Trek. The creative process appears to have stopped right after some said, "hippies are in the news, we should do a story about them". The result is a compilation of 1968-style hippies greatest hits; they have crazy lingo that grups can't understand, they dress strangely, they sing constantly, they scorn authority figures, they have a sit-in in the transporter room, and the scene of them outside sickbay demanding to see Doctor Sevrin is meant to look like the protests outside of the 1968 Democratic National Convention/the American Embassy in Grosvenor Square/Paris (unfortunately being made at the fag-end of the third season means there's no money for extras so Doctor Sevrin's five followers are being held back by two security guards and Chekov, the scale of the protest is small enough to be laughable).

Significantly what these hippies don't do is is mess around with mind altering substances. Doctor Sevrin is probably meant to be an amalgam of various counter culture figures; Ken Kesey, or someone from the Yippies, or Timothy Leary; Sevrin is explicitly referred to as an academic Doctor. In one way or another they and the hippie movement are associated with the use of drugs although you'd never realise that from watching The Way To Eden. This is understandable considering NBC's Standards and Practices Department would never allow it, but it highlights the limited ambition of the script. No one involved in writing The Way To Eden has any interest in the counter culture movement or exploring why people attempt to drop out or rebel against the system, or imagining how this might happen in the future.

Phyllis Diller and Bob Hope: The Last Hippies on Earth... in 1997

They just want to do a story about hippies because hippies are in the news. In 1967 a television special called The Phyllis Diller Happening was broadcast which featured Phyllis Diller, Bob Hope, Sonny Bono, and Cher in a sketch called The Last Hippies on Earth…in 1997. Frustratingly the sketch isn't online but I'm willing to bet that if it ever becomes available it won't hit any different beats to The Way To Eden (slang, protests, sit-ins, etc) because the people responsible for The Way To Eden don't understand the difference between exploring a contemporary issue and lazily referencing something the viewers at home have heard about.

This sense of laziness and limited ambition runs right through the script. The initial set up is promising; Sevrin is insane, his followers are naive, the Enterprise crew resent the disruption to the smooth running of the ship, and Spock attempts to act as a bridge between the two camps but over the course of the episode nothing changes. Characters do things because the plot doesn't work if they don't. The Way To Eden apes the complexity of a story like Charlie X but doesn't seem to understand what this means for the characters. It means that when Irina, Chekov's ex girlfriend from Starfleet Academy, wants to help Sevrin take over the Enterprise she should feel guilty about manipulating the feelings he still clearly has for her. Choosing between Sevrin and Chekov should cause Irina emotional conflict but it doesn't. At the end of the episode she and Chekov have a reconciliation of sorts and her betrayal is never mentioned. Irina and Chekov's feelings for each other, and Irina's part in Sevrin's takeover of the ship are two separate plot strands and nobody involved in writing the episode saw any reason why these plots should intersect. In the same way there should be consequences for Rad when he tells Sevrin that he knows Sevrin's plan to use ultrasonics against the Enterprise crew will kill, and not stun. Sevrin has lied to his followers, and Rad acknowledges that lie and is complicit in the attempted murder 430 people. Yet the script continues to paint all Sevrin's followers as naive dupes led by a lunatic, as if Rad hadn't even spoken.

The problems with The Way To Eden ultimately come down to a sense that Star Trek has been massively simplified. In Charlie X the script and the actors work to make the audience realise that although Charlie is the antagonist of the episode he's not evil. What happens to Charlie is for the best but also a tragedy; and the audience is capable of realising this without having it pointed out to them directly. In Errand Of Mercy the script emphasises both the differences and similarities between Kirk and his Klingon opposite Kor as does the script for Balance Of Terror when comparing Kirk and the Romulan commander but no one feels the need to lecture the viewer. By contrast The Way To Eden steps on any potential moment of subtlety. "His name was Adam," says Spock in one of the most plonkingly awful lines of the script when the landing party find the body of one of Sevrin's followers; poisoned after eating deadly fruit. As in Let That Be Your Last Battlefield the Enterprise is reduced to a galactic taxi with Kirk and the crew unwilling spectators. There's no conflict for Kirk here, no decision for him to make. He just sits around unable to take any action.

Frustratingly The Way To Eden contains glimpses of a better story. When McCoy tells Kirk Sevrin is a carrier for Synthococcus novae, a lethal disease which evolved due to Star Trek's "aseptic, sterilised civilisations" we now think about antibiotic resistant diseases like MRSA. In writing about a charismatic leader who establishes himself as the manipulative guru to a group of hippies The Way To Eden prefigures Charles Manson and his Family. Film Editor Fabian Tordjmann does brilliant work at the end of act three. Adam starts singing as Sevrin's deadly ultrasonics incapacitate the Enterprise crew. "Steppin' into Eden. Yea, brother. Steppin' into Eden." As Adam grins and sings with two unnamed female hippies we cut to a tracking shot of the bridge with the crew lying on the floor and the song continues, slightly filtered to suggest we are hearing it through a speaker on the bridge. "No more trouble in my body or my mind. Gonna live like a king on whatever find. Eat all the fruit and throw away the rind. Yea, brother." Finally we cut to a big close up of Doctor Sevrin who says, "now we may leave." 

Enterprise crew deaths: None.

Running total: 56

Whom Gods Destroy

On 15th October 1968 Leonard Nimoy wrote a stinging memo to Gene Roddenberry and Doug Cramer, who had replaced Herbert Solow as Executive in Charge of Production. The memo complained about the script for Whom Gods Destroy describing it as,"re-doing a show we did during the first season... Dagger of the Mind." The memo is reprinted in Leonard Nimoy's biography I Am Spock and is critical the quality of the script and third season Star Trek but reserves most of its punches for the portrayal of Spock.

"[Spock] walks into a room, phaser in hand, and is confronted by two "Kirks"...can Spock handle the situation using his deductive logic, the phaser in his hand... or any other of the imaginative techniques that a smart ass Vulcan would normally use? The answer is: NO... My primary interest in contacting you gentlemen is my concern over my lack of experience in playing dummies... Maybe if I watched some "Blondie" episodes... Or better still, I could get right to the bottom line by wearing some braids and feathers and learning to grunt, "Ugh, Kimosabee"?"

The finished episode is the result of the rewrite to take Leonard Nimoy's comments into account. Spock still looks like an idiot but to be fair so does Kirk, who is also unable to come up with a way to confirm his identity, and Garth, who forgets he has a working phaser although where it goes when he shape shifts is anyone's guess, and the entire Enterprise bridge crew who spend the episode fretting about the situation on Elba II but fail to take the initiative when the security forcefield is dropped. Sloppy writing isn't unusual for Star Trek. The existence of The Alternative Factor is proof it was possible for everyone concerned to drop the ball. What's unusual here is the tag scene where Kirk talks to Spock after the fight.

KIRK: Tell me something. Why was it so impossible to tell the difference between us?

SPOCK: It was not impossible, Captain. Our presence here is proof of that.

KIRK: Yes, and congratulations. What took you so long?

SPOCK: The interval of uncertainty was actually fairly brief, Captain. It only seemed long to you. I was waiting for a victor in the hand to hand struggle, which I assumed would be Captain Garth. Because of your depleted condition. Failing a resolution to the struggle, I was forced to use other means to make my determination.

KIRK: I see. Mister Spock. Letting yourself be hit on the head, and I presume you let yourself be hit on the head, is not exactly a method King Solomon would have approved. Mister Scott, ready to beam up.

What makes this tag scene odd is the deliberate way it draws attention to Spock being stupid. Why write a character as an idiot, and then mock the character for actions the writer has imposed? Leonard Nimoy is pretty open in I Am Spock about being protective of the character. He gives examples of memos he wrote regarding Spectre Of The Gun, and a dispute over the IDIC medallion seen in Is There In Truth No Beauty? It's not impossible this is writers revenge. A warning shot to Leonard Nimoy from the production team that writers write and actors act. Then again it could just be bad writing. If the production team were utterly wedded to the two Kirks fight idea then short of drastic rewriting the easiest way to take the sting out of Spock's sudden inability to use his brain is to acknowledge it; to wink to the audience over the story and go 'we know this is silly, and we know you know this is silly' as noted in the review for Wink Of An Eye.

Apart from the tag scene there's little notable about Whom Gods Destroy. Garth and Marta are both insane but it's strictly television madness meaning they do little more than act like capricious children. In the end Garth is Trelane without the omnipotence; but in The Squire Of Gothos the danger develops as Trelane acquires a taste for the hunt, "but this is such sport. I must fetch all the others back to play," and Trelane has the power to carry out his threat. Without the countersign to the code "queen to queen's level three" Garth is trapped on Elba II. And although Kirk and Spock are trapped at a madman's whim nothing too bad can happen to them with NBC's Standards and Practices Department making sure the torture isn't too traumatic for viewers. The story is on hold from the moment Garth discovers he can't get up to the Enterprise until he's finally stunned into unconsciousness by Spock. In fact this is a pretty Spock light story. He's dragged off stunned at the beginning of act one, reappears for the banquet in act two, and then disappears until he's needed to end the episode. It's as if someone on the production team realised Spock's presence was potentially story breaking but also necessary for the scene where Garth disguises himself as Spock.

It's easy to see why Whom Gods Destroy was made. It has a limited number of sets, few speaking parts, not too many special effects requirements, and allows the chance to reuse some old costumes and props. It's a lot harder to believe anyone was passionate about making this episode. In Inside Star Trek Robert Justman writes of the third season. "By the time episodes were filmed, whatever excitement existed in the original stories and scripts had been diluted... it was now strictly budget driven. There were no highs and no lows -just a boring in-between. My never ending battle to cut costs without compromising quality had failed." Whom Gods Destroy was the first episode produced without co-producer Robert Justman, he'd resigned to go and work for Herbert Solow at MGM Television.

Enterprise crew deaths: None.
Running total: 50

Wink Of An Eye

Several Star Trek stories really grabbed me as a kid. The Galileo Seven was one. The idea of being trapped with hostile monsters who wanted to do nothing except kill you and all your friends gripped my imagination. Although probably not in the way Gene Roddenberry intended. He would have sat me down and given me a talking to about infinite diversity in infinite combinations if he'd seen me playing Enterprise crew vs hideous space monsters. That's the problem with coming back to programmes you watched as a child. Your quality criteria is totally different. The Alternative Factor was spooky, and the idea of spending eternity imprisoned, "with a madman at your throat," was something I didn't really understand but I found it haunting in a way I couldn't articulate. Now The Alternative Factor is just bad Star Trek.

Wink Of An Eye was another story that I loved and it's easy to see why. The idea of being speeded up to a point where your friends appear like statues, and you are moving too fast for them to see and hear, is irresistible. It was like the programmes you would sometimes see on television where people were speeded up until just doing something as basic as walking became funny, or things were slowed down until water appeared to flow like treacle. A sign that you've engaged with a programme is when you find yourself thinking about what you'd do if you were caught in the same situation. I remember wondering what I would do if I was speeded up like Captain Kirk and how I would try and contact my friends? I also remember not really understanding why Kirk couldn't just stand on one spot for a long time until someone else saw him. And, although I didn't get it at the time, that's the problem with Wink Of An Eye. Its plot is a cheat.

The whole idea of hyper-acceleration as presented in the script just doesn't work. The logic of the plot actually works against itself. Kirk is meant to be moving at a vastly increased speed compared to the Enterprise crew but Kirk's story line and that of the Enterprise crew run simultaneously, and we cut between them as if events are happening at the same time. When Kirk is first accelerated he meets Deela and leaves the bridge to investigate the mysterious device in Life Support. We cut back to the bridge crew reacting to Kirk's disappearance and then to Kirk arriving at Life Support as if the time it took for the bridge crew to react was also just enough time for Kirk to race through the ship.

For obvious plot logic reasons it's never clearly stated on screen exactly how much faster the Scalosians live. Phil Farrand in his book The Nitpicker's Guide For Classic Trekkers once calculated that one minute of real time equals at least 840 minutes of Scalosian time; that's one minute of our time equalling 14 hours of their time. That's pretty fast. The bridge crew's discussion of Kirk's disappearance lasts 20 seconds. Unless my maths is completely shot, which is not impossible, that's around four and a half hours in Scalosian time. The Enterprise is a big ship but it seems unlikely that it would take four and a half hours so get from one area to another, even if you couldn't use the turbo lifts (from Kirk's perspective they'd be moving too slowly to be practical, you could wait several hours just for one to arrive). Kirk's story line and the Enterprise crew's story line should very quickly drift out of sync but they can't because this episode is trying to tell a logical and ordered story.

[Actually all this works if you pretend being hyper-accelerated actually means the Scalosians are slightly out of phase with our universe. They could be in a dimension extremely close to ours which somehow allows them to interact with our dimension but in a way that makes our time seem impossibly slow and theirs impossibly fast. Unfortunately this goes against the intention of the script which clearly states the Scalosians are just moving very very quickly.]

Don't get me wrong. The story is fun, in the same way an episode like The Gamesters Of Triskelion is fun. It's made by a production team who are still putting in as much effort as they can. There are visually effective sequences like Deela dodging a phaser beam, or little moments like Kirk's hair being ruffled in sickbay, or the dutch camera angles used in the hyper-accelerated world to make it visually distinct from the regular Enterprise; watch the sequence where Spock drinks the Scalosian water and see the way the camera tilts as the water takes effect, and then untilts in a single shot to show McCoy and Nurse Chapel reacting to Spock's disappearance.

It's because of episodes like Wink Of An Eye that Star Trek often gets lumped in with 60's camp like Batman and Lost In Space. Individually episodes like this are fun, but cumulatively they distort the memory of the series. Deela's introduction seems deliberately designed to be as silly as possible. Kirk explores the frozen bridge when a voice behind him says, "Captain." Kirk turns to see Deela, and he walks towards her across the bridge.

KIRK: Would you mind explaining [she grabs him and kisses him passionately. Kirk pushes her away] Who are you?

DEELA: Deela. The enemy.

[Fade to adverts]

The whole aesthetic of the series has changed. Star Trek started dabbling with comedy when Gene L. Coon arrived as producer, but recently the tone has changed; and recently means since Spock's Brain. It's the difference between laughing with and laughing at something. It's now as if the production team are talking to us directly over the series going, "we know this is silly, and we know you know this is silly, so let's have some fun." The audience is presented with stories which involve a threat to the Enterprise and her crew, but that threat is made as frivolous as possible so the audience can laugh at the Enterprise crew for taking it so seriously. Maybe it's unfair to ascribe such cynical motives to the production team. Batman had just been cancelled by ABC but was offered a fourth season on NBC. If that deal had worked out the fourth season would have aired across 1968-69 with Star Trek's third season. Other programmes being made at the time include Lost In Space, Bewitched, and The Flying Nun. What we could be looking at is a production team doing their job of keeping Star Trek on the air by tweaking it to appeal to contemporary taste, and if contemporary taste leans towards self-mocking, frivolous and light-hearted then that's the direction the series will take. 

Enterprise crew deaths: Compton who is hyper-accelerated and then aged to death when he suffers "cell damage."

Running total: 49

And The Children Shall Lead

“We're writing radio shows. All the actors can do now is stand around and talk to each other.” Maybe no episode better demonstrates Robert Justman's complaint about season three Star Trek than And The Children Shall Lead where the script itself actively works to prevent Kirk from taking any meaningful action.

The central premise of writer Edward J. Lakso's script is that an evil alien called the Gorgan is using children as its agents of evil. Not a bad idea in itself. Creepy kids have a history in science fiction, The Twilight Zone episode It's A Good Life or the 1960 film Village Of The Damned, an adaptation of John Wyndham's book The Midwich Cuckoos. The problem is that here the children are used in such a way it becomes impossible for Kirk to take any substantial action against them without looking like a bully, or a monster. Kirk's standard operating procedures of fighting, or seduction, are certainly off limits. The whole plot could be wrapped up in five minutes if Kirk stunned the kids with a phaser, or got McCoy to sedate them, but that's something no network would be prepared to show. When McCoy also forbids Kirk from questioning the children on psychological grounds, Kirk is effectively unable to act or investigate. One of the reasons this story feels so static is that Kirk becomes a spectator. He's unable to do anything except react; react to the children taking over the Enterprise, react to footage from Professor Starnes' tapes, and react as he loses command.

There's also a production decision which adds to the inert feel of the story. The Gorgan is realised using special effects. On screen he is always semi transparent and covered with a glowing green special effect. This limits Marvin Belli's movement, and also stops him from interacting properly with the other characters. If Marvin Belli was the world's greatest actor he might be able to overcome the limitations of not being on the same set as the principle cast, and a costume which restricts his body language to the extent he is just a talking head, but he isn't the world's greatest actor; he's a celebrity lawyer who unsuccessfully defended Jack Ruby. It turns out stunt casting isn't a new development

Having written a script which actively works to prevent the lead characters from doing anything except watch footage from the doomed Starnes Exploration Party, Edward J. Lakso is then faced with several problems.

A) Kirk must learn why the children are behaving so strangely.

B )Kirk must learn about the true source of the children's power.
C) Kirk must learn how to summon the Gorgan.
D) Kirk must learn the Gorgan's plan.

Lasko's solution results in one of the silliest Star Trek scenes committed to film. It's certainly the laziest scripting since The Alternative Factor. In context the scene just about works, as does the whole episode thanks to director Marvin J. Chomsky and film editor Donald R. Rode (genuinely one of the unsung heroes of Star Trek his work lifts otherwise average episodes like Return To Tomorrow or A Private Little War), but out of context the scene where the children summon the Gorgan to the bridge of the Enterprise is ludicrous.

The problems with this scene are many. Firstly none of the crew react in an even slightly human way. When Kirk dashes onto the bridge, having discovered the Enterprise is no longer orbiting Triacus, the children are in the middle of the ritual to summon the Gorgan. Uhura is gazing placidly at them as if this is the most delightful thing she has ever seen, while Chekov is oblivious to the din going on just behind his right shoulder. Then when the Gorgan appears everyone looks surprised, but that's pretty much the minimum required level of reaction. There are two armed guards on the bridge what are they there for if not to point their phasers at intruders who materialise out of thin air?

Secondly, no one says anything. Not a, “kids please don't play in here,” as the children conduct their ritual, or a word from Kirk. It's genuinely ludicrous that Kirk doesn't try to engage with the Gorgan but instead stays silent for almost 90 seconds. William Shatner rightly gets a lot of criticism for his performance in this episode but frankly given the material he's working with it's not really a huge surprise he's given up and is apparently just trying to amuse himself. Watch this scene from the beginning of act three as the Gorgan appears, delivers a speech, and disappears again, before the children leave the bridge. Compare the silent statues who passively watch all this with the bridge crew we've seen over the previous 58 episodes; how do you think those characters would have reacted? By wondering how those characters would react, you've already put in more work than Edward J. Lakso. He needs a scene in which the Gorgan infodumps his entire plan in such a way that Kirk learns it, and so that's exactly what he writes. Only the Gorgan has information to pass on so none of the other characters are given any lines. We're back at the scripting level of The Alternative Factor where McCoy allows Lazarus to walk out of sickbay because the plot will grind to a halt if he doesn't.

Thirdly what dialogue there is, is terrible. “Friends we have reached a moment of crisis. The enemy have discovered our operation, but they are too late,” says the Gorgan, apparently misunderstanding his part to be the role of narrator. The enemy haven't discovered your operation, you've revealed yourself to them. The only reason you have reached “ a moment of crisis” is because your followers decided to conduct their secret ritual in public.

Fourthly, despite now knowing the Gorgan's plan no one makes use of the information. At the end of the Gorgan's speech three of the children are allowed to just walk off the bridge. One of the security guards even follows the children into the turbo elevator. Presumably he's following the captain's orders to the letter. “Post a guard on the children. They're to be kept under constant watch.” Obviously he's not going to intervene as the children take over the Enterprise, he's only been ordered to watch.

There is the core of an interesting premise in And The Children Shall Lead, but the finished episode never comes close to realising that potential. The script never makes it clear if the Gorgon is somehow one of the marauders who operated from Triacus surviving in psychic form, or the entity which inspired the marauders to their centuries long reign of terror pillaging the Epsilon Indi system. If it's the latter there's an intriguing H. P. Lovecraft aspect to the story. The idea that a cave on the planet Triacus is the home of an ancient corrupting evil, and that evil has now latched on to the children of the Starnes Exploration Party; corrupting them, turning them against their own parents, and ultimately encouraging the children to focus its power against their own parents and drive them to suicide. Unfortunately, something else the script never makes clear, is what exactly did happen to the parents of the Starnes Party. Did they kill themselves to escape the horrific illusions and tricks of the Gorgan, or did their own children summon up their parents darkest fears and drive them to suicide?

Enterprise crew deaths: Two security guards are accidentally beamed into space. The most unpleasant crew death since Yeoman Thompson.
Running total: 48.

The Gamesters of Triskelion

Written down The Gamesters Of Triskelion looks like it should be the worst ever episode of Star Trek. Kirk, Chekov, and Uhura are kidnapped, and forced to fight for the entertainment of multi-coloured brains. The story is painfully generic, change the character names and this could easily be Blake's 7, or Battlestar Galactica. The message is trite, “slavery is bad” (not good like you thought). The peril is reduced to the bare minimum, and no one is likely to be surprised when after 47 minutes the Enterprise crew do escape from their seemingly hopeless situation. Also, William Shatner spends far too much of the episode shirtless.  

If those reasons aren't enough to send The Gamesters Of Triskelion to the bottom of the quality pile then it's not difficult to supply more. The woodenness of Angelique Pettyjohn the actress playing Kirk's drill thrall Shahna. While there's something endearing about the way she always stands hands on hips, she has essentially mistaken being expressionless for being stoic; in fact her performance goes a long way towards demonstrating how unbearable Spock's lack of emotion could have been in the hands of a lesser actor. Then there is the moment when Lars tries to force himself on Uhura at the end of act one. Not the attempted rape itself which is a valid way to show the unpleasant brutality of life on Triskelion, but what tips the moment into exploitation is the way it is used to end act one. Will Uhura be raped? Stay tuned to find out! Then there's the awkward gear change into the comedy moment three minutes later when Chekov has to deal with the unwanted advances from Tamoon. Complete with ironic 'sexy music' as the yellow-skinned and deep voiced female tries to hit on him.

Characters have names like Galt, Tamoon, and Kloog. There are horrible made up sci-fi terms like master thrall, collars of obedience, and quatloos, the currency of the providers. There's a lengthy sequence where Kirk is whipped, and another where he seduces Shahna by talking to her about kissing and love, “the most important thing on Earth.” It's as if writer Margaret Armen was given a big book of science-fiction clichés and somehow mistook it for a to-do list.

Yet The Gamesters Of Triskelion is a long way from being the worst episode ever. It's certainly not good, but the end result is one of those episodes often described as a guilty pleasure, or so bad it's good; a useful critical shorthand for anyone who likes something but can't quite put their finger on why. It's easy to say why The Gamesters Of Triskelion isn't good. Any of the reasons listed above will do, and someone who hates the episode will be able to supply lots more. What's trickier is explaining why it isn't as bad as The Apple, or this blog's whipping boy The Alternative Factor.

“The strange thing about The Alternative Factor is that everybody concerned seems to have given up simultaneously. As if all the accumulated stress of making the whole Star Trek series was dumped on this one episode.” That's how this blog described The Alternative Factor. The Gamesters Of Triskelion and The Alternative Factor are made at roughly the same points in their respective seasons (The Gamesters Of Triskelion is the 17^th episode of the second season, The Alternative Factor is the 20^th episode of the first) but what separates the two is that The Gamesters Of Triskelion still has a spark of life. The Alternative Factor looks like an episode made by an exhausted production team. The Gamesters Of Triskelion is an episode made by a team who are still trying.

This is an episode packed with small details. Lars reaches over to Chekov's belt and grabs his phaser while Chekov is distracted by Galt, the master thrall, appearing out of thin air. Kirk, Chekov, and Uhura make an escape attempt when first taken to their cells. The attempt is thwarted by Galt and his telepathic activation of the collars of obedience the trio have been forced to wear. What's nice is the way none of the escorting thralls make any move to block the escape. They simply stand and wait for Galt to take care of it, which demonstrates how utterly conditioned the thralls are to their life on Triskelion, and also shows the lack of initiative which makes the providers sceptical about the thralls ability to govern themselves. Once Kirk has fought Kloog, and the providers start bidding on the new arrivals, Chekov walks over to stand next to Kirk. Tamoon, who was next to Chekov, does this weird, floating hand gesture. As if she now knows Chekov will not be “selected” for her, and is waving him goodbye. Best of all may be the moment when Galt appears just after Kirk has snogged Shahna. At the point where Galt appears she sits rigid with embarrassment, like a naughty schoolgirl caught doing something inappropriate by the headmaster. She uncrosses her legs, straightens her back, puts her hands flat on the floor, and looks down. Then when Galt says, “ there will be no punishment,” she looks up as if she can't believe what she is hearing.

Obviously small details are not enough to salvage a script. It takes more than some nice background action to do that. Still, the actors are thinking about their characters and how they should be reacting. The actors are putting in some effort, not just coming in to say their lines, and hit their marks. We are a long way from The Alternative Factor where McCoy's commitment to patient safety is so low he allows Lazarus to wander out of sickbay, and justifies his lack of care to Kirk with the line, “ I don't know, Jim. This is a big ship. I'm just a country doctor.”

New director Gene Nelson might be responsible for the attention paid to the actors' performances. He's certainly putting in a lot of effort elsewhere. He makes interesting use of a hand held camera, especially in the escape attempt sequence when the cameraman rushes from a close-up of Kirk's face, to Chekov in one unbroken shot. There's also a lovely moment of direction during this exchange.

MCCOY: ...It's still a fancy way of saying that you're playing a hunch. well, my hunch is that they're back on Gamma Two dead or alive and I still want another search.

SCOTT: Doctor McCoy speaks for me, too, sir.

SPOCK: I see. Gentlemen, I am in command of this vessel, and we shall continue on our present course. Unless it is your intention to declare a mutiny.

SCOTT: Mister Spock!

MCCOY: Who said anything about a mutiny, you stubborn, pointed-eared...

On screen the line appears like this

[A three shot, Spock seated in the captain's chair in the foreground, McCoy standing facing him in the middle, and Scotty standing at the back].
SPOCK: I see. [He pauses, stands, and walks to stand next to Scotty]. Gentlemen, I am in command of this vessel, and we shall continue on our present course. Unless [he lowers lowers his voice and leans forward, this action makes Scotty, and McCoy lean forwards as well; at the same time the camera zooms in] it is your intention to declare a mutiny.
SCOTT; Mister Spock! [the camera zooms out, and the three straighten up]

The simple act of zooming the shot, and getting Nimoy to lower his voice, makes the routine Spock/McCoy bickering appear conspiratorial, and intimate, as if the audience is eavesdropping. This exchange, in fact nearly the whole of the scene, is played as another unbroken hand held camera shot which starts with an interesting, and unusual, angle on the big yellow dial between the helmsman and navigator chairs. Sadly, this episode seems to have been Gene Nelson's only work on Star Trek, it would have been great to see what he could do with a different script.

Also working hard is James D. Ballas, the film editor, who drops a little humour into the editing via some jump cuts. Galt's line to Kirk, “I have been sent to welcome you,” is immediately followed by a shot of Shatner gurning as Kloog grips him by the throat, and forces him into a collar of obedience. Ballas also cuts together an excellent sequence of shots for Kirk, Chekov, and Uhura's abortive escape attempt. A quick cut sequence showing a big close-up of Kirk, then Chekov, then Kirk again pretending to walk into the cell before he wallops Kloog, and the three begin to run. Then we cut to Galt, whose eyes glow, and we immediately cut to another big close-up of Kirk clutching his throat, his eyes bulging, as Uhura screams, and the three fall to the floor.

Also worth praising is the simple ruin set used for Kirk and Shahna's training run. It would have been easy to cut this set to save money. The scene which takes place here could have played out largely unaltered on the main arena set. It's really pleasing that no one did cut the set, and Walter M. Jefferies was able to reuse the ruins from The Man Trap. Getting away from the other Triskelion sets, even for a little while, opens the whole episode up, and makes Triskelion feel a little more like a real world. Also helping with the world building is the use of an Andorian costume during the final fight. Like the ruin set it would have been easy to have replaced the Andorian with something requiring less time consuming make-up, but the production team put in that little extra effort, and used a familiar alien. The presence of the Andorian is never commented on, but just the fact that he is there implies the providers have been snatching races from across the Star Trek universe.

The Changeling feels like the closest relative to The Gamesters Of Triskelion. Both episodes have quite simple plots, and a single threat is used to push the narrative through to the finale; Nomad in The Changeling, and the threat to Kirk of spending the rest of his life as a thrall in The Gamesters Of Triskelion. Compared to some of the stories Star Trek has delivered recently The Changeling and The Gamesters Of Triskelion both feel narratively pared down. There are no parallel story lines as in The Trouble With Tribbles. No attempt to create new back story, as was done to Kirk in Obsession. There's not even an audacious plot twist like the Jack the Ripper reveal of Wolf In The Fold. John Meredyth Lucas who wrote The Changeling, and produced The Gamesters Of Triskelion, is the connection between the two stories.

Gene L. Coon's last story as producer will be the as yet unbroadcast Bread And Circuses. The Gamesters Of Triskelion is John Meredyth Lucas' second broadcast story as producer (the first was the Spock centred Journey To Babel which has much more the feel of a Gene L. Coon episode). From here on in there is a new producer in charge, and it remains to be seen how this new order will change things.

Enterprise crew deaths: None. After the events of Obsession, it's been a nice couple of quiet weeks for the Enterprise crew.

Running total: 43

The Trouble With Tribbles

The Trouble With Tribbles must be Star Trek's most well documented episode. Writer David Gerrold wrote a book covering the story's development from outline to revised final draft (at least from memory that's what the book does, my copy now starts on page 55 for some reason). In the book Gerrold discusses what works, and what doesn't, and is commendably honest about the accidental resemblance of tribbles to the Martian Flat Cats from the Robert Heinlein book The Rolling Stones.

Gerrold goes into such a level of detail it's actually a bit awkward to review the episode. There's not much left to mention. The book talks about everything from points of continuity to story logic; such as Klingon secret agent Darvin, and his inability to withstand even the most minor questioning. Even the editing gets mentioned, including a moment during Captain Koloth's line, “we Klingons are not as luxury-minded as you Earthers. We do not equip our ships with, how shall I say it, non-essentials.” As William Campbell says, “non-essentials,” he uses his hands to trace a womanly hourglass shape in front of him. The footage is edited to cut right through the unscripted gesture, and does a good job of making it almost indistinguishable on screen. David Gerrold puts this down to badly timed editing, but the choice of shots used seems so deliberate it's tempting to wonder if someone on the production team wanted to remove this action as much as possible from the final episode. William Shatner has Kirk react to the gesture by giving a little chuckle. With the gesture present Kirk is laughing with Koloth, as if he sympathises over the lack of feminine company, with the gesture obscured he's laughing at the Klingons and their spartan lifestyle. Could someone on the production team have not wanted Kirk to get too chummy with the enemy?

Something else Gerrold mentions is the reaction to the episode; both from the cast and the viewers. There is no false modesty here, understandable when your first professional sale is nominated for a Hugo award, but the book is laced with enough self-deprecating humour to avoid becoming unbearable. Unsurprisingly the cast loved the script. The results are there on screen. As with This Side Of Paradise, Amok Time, or Mirror, Mirror the cast are visibly enjoying coming to work and that enjoyment is reflected in their performances. William Campbell is back, after his season one performance as Trelane in The Squire Of Gothos. He joins Roger C. Carmel and Mark Leonard in the very small group of actors who have returned to the series. Campbell is great, it's a more reined in performance than Trelane but the energy and enthusiasm are still present. He puffs out his chest, and sticks out his chin, and often stands hands on hips. He's every inch the proud and arrogant Klingon so it's a surprise to see, in long shots, how skinny Campbell is; there's almost nothing to him.

So everybody likes The Trouble With Tribbles. Everybody except associate producer Robert Justman. He says, in the book Inside Star Trek, “although the concept was amusing, the story was just too cute. I feared that... it would lead to a loss of believability. Kirk, Spock, and the others were real people, and real people just did not behave that way; our finely drawn characters should never parody themselves.”

Justman's concerns about the characters are justified. Look at the moment when McCoy comes in at the end of the storage compartment scene. He says, “Jim, I think I've got it. All we have to do is quit feeding them. We quit feeding them, they stop breeding.” It's a great line, made better by Kirk's, “now he tells me,” response from the tribble pile, but it's a moment of pure sitcom. Apparently McCoy is bursting to tell Kirk the news of his discovery. It's so urgent he's come hot foot all the way from his lab on the Enterprise. He's in such a hurry that he's still carrying a tribble in each hand. He's so distracted by his discovery he doesn't even react to the sight of Kirk buried up to his chest in a pile of tribbles.

Why does McCoy enter the scene at that point? It's because it's the best place in the script for McCoy's joke, and he needs to be there with a medical scanner to instantly diagnose the tribbles as dying. This is what Justman means about the characters becoming parodies. They stop behaving like people and become articulate props, moving around the sets to make scenes work, and to keep the plot moving forwards. It's similar to a scene in Who Framed Roger Rabbit when Roger and Eddie are handcuffed together.

EDDIE VALIANT: You mean you could've taken your hand out of that cuff at any time?

ROGER RABBIT: No, not at any time, only when it was funny.

KIRK: Bones, couldn't you have told me about not feeding the tribbles at any time?
MCCOY: No Jim, not at any time, only when it was funny.

Fortunately audiences tend to be more tolerant of things like this in a comedy. So the moment with McCoy fits perfectly into the tone, and pace, of the story. That's not to say pitching a story as a comedy will give a writer a free pass, nothing will sour an audience more quickly than a bad comedy, but it stands out less than the moment in The Alternative Factor when the galaxy spanning scale of the, “cosmic winking out,” is dialled back to nothing because Kirk can't realise there is more than one Lazarus until act four. Or when Doctor Adams is suddenly revealed as the baddie in Dagger Of The Mind because it's the end of act three, and the story needs an antagonist, and Adams is the only suitable character.

Minor gripes aside this is a solid script. A lot of attention has been paid to the structure. The two plot lines, tribbles and Klingons, parallel each other nicely until the climax when the tribbles accidentally reveal Darvin's true nature. Seinfeld was renowned for the way separate story lines would converge at the end of an episode, and we see something very similar here. Sleight of hand by director Joseph Pevney means the expanding tribble population only seems like a problem on the Enterprise. Barely any tribbles are seen on space station K-7 until the big reveal at the end of act three; a few are held by humans in the bar, and there are none at all in Station Manager Lurry's office. On the Enterprise they are stuck to every possible surface.

The teaser is a good summary of the strengths of the episode. What looks mundane when written down, a knowledge check and performance review for Chekov, zips along when performed. Chekov comes across as a gauche young man, cracking jokes, and trying to impress his commanding officer. Spock does his best to step on those jokes, and delivers useful background information. Kirk asks relevant questions and does his best not to appear too amused as his first officer puts Chekov in his place. Bruce Schoengarth's editing gives pace to the teaser. As Spock talks about the history of the quadrant Schoengarth cuts in a reaction shot of Chekov nodding along in the way people do when they want to look knowledgeable. Reaction shots are a bog standard editing technique to break up what would otherwise be a succession of talking heads, but the choice of shot used here really adds to the sense we are eavesdropping on a conversation, and helps with the portrayal of Chekov as someone setting out to impress. Even Chekov's final line of the teaser makes sense in context, “code one emergency, that's a disaster call!” It's a classic example of someone telling other characters something they already know, but here it fits perfectly. Whether it's nerves or showing off, Chekov just can't keep his mouth shut.

Enterprise crew deaths: None but 1,771,561 tribbles die a horrible, horrible death by poisoning.

Running total: 43

Obsession

Obsession and The Doomsday Machine both tell the story of a man consumed by the need for revenge at all costs. Both are apparently based on Moby-Dick (or so the internet tells me, it's a book I haven't read) but both are very different. In Obsession the focus is on Captain Kirk and his determination to destroy the cloud vampire which 11 years ago attacked the USS Farragut killing 200 of Kirk's then shipmates including Captain Garrovick who Kirk describes as, “one of the finest men I ever knew”. In The Doomsday Machine the focus of the script is on Kirk and the Enterprise crew trying to deal with Commodore Decker and his determination to destroy the planet killer which, etc, etc.

Shifting the focus of a story from one character to another completely changes the way it plays out. Swap them over and Obsession is about the Enterprise meeting Commodore Decker whose entire crew has been wiped out by the cloud vampire and The Doomsday Machine is about Kirk's horror as he encounters the planet killer which 11 years before destroyed the USS Farragut. It works on other stories as well. Imagine a version of The Alternative Factor in which the focus of the story is on Kirk so that it is he, rather than Lazarus, who has an insane alternate universe duplicate. Or a version of The Deadly Years where Kirk is immune to the ageing effects and must watch as his friends get older and older.

Playing around like this is fun but it shows how narrow the line can be between a great story and an average one. Some stories might be improved by shifting the focus to Kirk (the version of The Alternative Factor with Kirk A and an insane alternate universe Kirk B at least sounds like it has potential) but personalising a story for the lead character doesn't guarantee success. Operation - - Annihilate! isn't any better for including the death of Kirk's brother, that's a story point which gets lost in the episode, and a version of The Doomsday Machine with Kirk out for revenge on the planet killer immediately suffers from the loss of Commodore Decker; both as the scripted character and William Windom's performance. 

There's another example bubbling away in the background of Obsession. The Enterprise needs to collect urgently needed perishable vaccines from the USS Yorktown and take them to the colony on Theta VII. This is a just a reprise of the plot from The Galileo Seven, where the Enterprise must make a rendezvous to get vaccines to the New Paris colonies where a plague is out of control. Both sub-plots are there to put an arbitrary time limit on the main story, and explain why Kirk cannot simply hang around until the cloud vampire is killed/the missing shuttle is found. Obsession is the more successful version because it distributes this plot strand among the Enterprise crew, rather than giving it to a stroppy Federation official, High Commissioner Ferris. The deadline feels more real and urgent when the reminders are coming from Spock, McCoy, Scotty, and Uhura rather than the Federation Bureaucrat Of The Week. Even though Kirk's deadline is equally artificial in both episodes the one in Obsession is more effective.

Elsewhere in the script, making Kirk the Captain Ahab of Obsession weakens the story. Effectively Obsession asks the audience to answer the question, “will Kirk sacrifice everything for vengeance?” Of course he won't. At the most basic level the audience knows there is another episode of Star Trek next week. By contrast The Doomsday Machine is asking the question, “will Commodore Decker sacrifice everything for vengeance?” and the answer is yes, because he's a guest character and he's not shackled by the need for everything to be back to normal next week. The Doomsday Machine gets a lot of excitement out of sequences where the planet killer threatens the Enterprise but those scenes are not asking, “will the Enterprise be destroyed” (audience: “no”) but “how will Spock and McCoy deal with Commodore Decker.” A good script avoids asking the audience questions with an obvious answer. So while The Alternative Factor asks “will the universe be destroyed?” (Magic 8-Ball: “Very doubtful” ) Charlie X doesn't ask “will Charlie destroy the Enterprise?” it asks “how will Captain Kirk deal with Charlie?” (Of course a great story will ask a question as a red herring, so The Devil In The Dark starts out by asking the audience, “can Captain Kirk defeat the horrible space monster?” and then completely subverts our expectations.)

So, although Obsession sells itself as being about Captain Kirk's desire for revenge no matter the cost, the audience goes into the story knowing that Kirk will not sacrifice his career or life. This can't help but lessen the dramatic tension. The script hits this problem during a scene when the Enterprise is chasing the cloud vampire at warp eight.

SCOTT: Captain, we can't do it. If we keep this speed, we'll blow up any minute now.
[Scott looks frantic, everyone else is worried. Kirk looks as if he might burst into tears of frustration.]
KIRK; Go to warp six.

Kirk decides to slow the Enterprise even though that will let the cloud vampire escape (he doesn't know it's going to turn and attack). He decides not to be Captain Ahab, and puts the safety of the ship before anything else. In the process Kirk demonstrates why he's a better commander than Matt Decker, and why Kirk, unlike Decker, never loses his ship. It's a lovely character moment but this story is about Kirk's obsessive need to kill the cloud vampire. A scene where the captain puts safety first doesn't fit. And Kirk is soon back to being determined to kill the cloud vampire once it turns and engages the Enterprise, before fleeing again. 

Enjoyable as Obsession is this sort of confusion over details is a problem. Kirk's plan to kill the cloud vampire involves detonating an ounce of anti-matter but the episode is unclear about the power of this explosion. Spock states, “a matter-antimatter blast will rip away half the planet's atmosphere,” but once on the surface Kirk delays detonating the anti-matter until the creature is right on top of the blast, as if the explosion is suddenly much more localised. When the vampire is feasting on the haemoplasm bought as bait it is all of 40 feet away but Kirk and Garrovick react as if the plan is wrecked unless they find new bait to lure the vampire right on to the anti-matter. The anti-matter is primed and ready to blow. Why can't they just detonate and get the hell out of Dodge? Likewise when beaming Kirk and Garrovick back to the ship the episode does its best to get tension of out that old Star Trek standby a last second beam out. However what we see on screen is Kirk and Garrovick start to appear on the pad before fading, and the transporter hum sound effect also fading out. Spock raises an eyebrow and tells Scotty, “reset, energise.” Where have Kirk and Garrovick gone? The editing, and sound effects, and character reactions suggest the transporter failed to grab the pair who are still on the planet until the second attempt, after the shockwave has rocked the Enterprise, when the transporter locks on and brings them back. Somehow the episode seems to be treating the anti-matter explosion as simultaneously planet devastating, and amazingly short lived and localised.

On the positive side Nurse Chapel gets a very good scene where she brings food to Garrovick's cabin and bluffs him over Doctor McCoy's order to eat. These scenes of her being competent and professional establish her character far more effectively than ones where she has nothing to do but moon over Spock. Also, at the end of the episode is a special effects shot which must have been technically complicated at the time but unfortunately now looks unremarkable. As the cloud vampire moves to feed on Kirk and Garrovick the pair beam out, and the anti-matter detonates. In a single shot the camera must pan to allow the cloud vampire to appear to move, and then stop for the transporter effect. On top of this there are three layers, for want of a better word, of animation; the transporter effect; the cloud vampire; and the explosion. 

Ralph Senesky directed Obsession, and his work seems less inspired compared to his earlier stories This Side Of Paradise and Metamorphosis. The Enterprise work is not terrible, in Garrovick's debriefing he sits in front of a solid green background which makes for a good contrast with his red shirt, but possibly the corridors and rooms of the Enterprise offered less opportunity for shot composition than the location filming and extensive planet set of his other stories.

On his website Ralph says,

“I can definitely say there was a drop in quality from THIS SIDE OF PARADISE and METAMORPHOSIS to the other episodes I directed the second season. And I ascribe the reason for this drop to the impossible expectation that episodes of STAR TREK could be filmed in five and a half days and maintain the standard of production excellence that had been established. “ 

The planet work is excellent. There's a striking overhead shot of the three dead security guards in the teaser, and after Garrovick's squad are attacked there is a hand-held camera shot to suggest a first person view as Kirk and Garrovick approach the bodies. On the cloud vampire's home world Senesky repeats a trick from Metamorphosis and has clouds, little puffs of smoke, added to the sky which brings the set to life, and also makes it look like the cloud vampire could be anywhere.

Actually Senesky repeats two tricks from Metamorphosis. The cloud vampire is realised as an animated overlay placed on top of the picture which allows the creature to stay stationary in the frame and move with the camera. This is how the Companion was realised in Metamorphosis and Senesky's familiarity with the technique may be one of the reasons he was asked to direct this story. 

Enterprise crew deaths: 5. Two of the initial survey team are killed outright while Ensign Rizzo survives for a while before dying. Then two of Garrovick's team are attacked and one dies outright while the other is reported as being in a critical condition. When the creature gets into the air conditioning vents on the Enterprise it attacks another two crewmen, again killing one and leaving the other barely alive.The fate of the injured crew is never revealed so let's assume they made a full recovery.
Running total: 42