Assignment: Earth

A sneaky pilot for a series starring Robert Lansing as Gary Seven, and Teri Garr as Roberta Lincoln. Assignment: Earth is unable to demonstrate the strengths of the proposed new series or Star Trek.

As a Star Trek episode, Assignment: Earth ends up being Tomorrow Is Yesterday stripped of all the concepts which made Tomorrow Is Yesterday the better episode. Gone is the clever near future setting of Tomorrow Is Yesterday, broadcast in January 1967 but set in a then undefined future just before the first mission to the moon. Instead the opening Captain's log immediately tells us Assignment: Earth is intended to be contemporary, “...in the year 1968.” Gone too are D. C. Fontana's carefully worked out solutions for getting the Enterprise crew in and out of the story. The Enterprise has been in 1968 for some time at the start of Assignment: Earth, and the story ends before the Enterprise heads home. Also gone is much of the incident from Tomorrow Is Yesterday, the increasing complications of a plot in which the Enterprise crew know they cannot interact with 20^th century Earth, but must in order to try and resolve problems caused by earlier interactions, which causes more problems, and so on. In Assignment: Earth Kirk never gets to take the lead, he and Spock spend most of the story following Gary Seven from New York, to McKinley Rocket Base, and back to New York.

As the first episode of a series called Assignment: Earth, the viewer is left with no idea of how that show would work on a weekly basis. The concept is clearly laid out when Gary Seven describes his mission as, “to prevent Earth's civilisation from destroying itself before it can mature into a peaceful society,” but what does that mean over 26 weeks? There is no antagonist in Assignment: Earth. The plot, such as it is, runs entirely on Kirk, and Spock not knowing if they can trust Gary Seven, and Roberta not knowing if she can trust Gary Seven, or Kirk and Spock. Earlier non Star Trek drafts of the pilot featured an evil alien race called Omegans but in the broadcast story there is no hint of any malevolent external threat. From the pilot it seems the audience is meant to assume Gary and Roberta will work as a team, but what we are shown on screen is a script which keeps the pair apart. Gary Seven goes off and sabotages the rocket while Roberta stays in New York being a quirky klutz, and saving the day by accidentally twiddling the right knobs. There's very little opportunity to see if the pair have any chemistry together, Gary Seven spends more screen time with Isis the cat. Based on the episode, Assignment: Earth the series would involve Gary Seven and Isis the cat infiltrating a different military or scientific facility each week, and committing a little light sabotage to highlight the danger caused by whatever activity the facility conducted. There's also a fundamental problem caused by the series being a Star Trek spin off. If Gary Seven's mission is to neutralise threats to the future then it's hard to generate jeopardy around the concept when we have already seen that future in Star Trek.

A big problem with the episode is that the pace of the storytelling is glacial. In act three the following story points are covered; Gary Seven has to sabotage the rocket; Kirk and Spock must follow Seven to McKinley Rocket Base; Scotty must use the resources of the Enterprise in the hunt for Seven; and Roberta must discover Gary Seven's transporter. Covering these story points takes 14 minutes. Worse, many of these story points are simply delaying tactics for the plot. Kirk and Spock follow Gary Seven to McKinley, where they are instantly arrested and made to stand in the corner of the control room set until they can discretely beam back to his New York apartment. The audience was shown Gary Seven's hidden transporter in act two, so when Roberta discovers it we are watching Roberta learn something we already know. Even worse, four of act three's 14 minutes are NASA stock footage. That's stock footage used as visual material in it's own right (for example the rocket launch which takes up about a minute of screen time), edited into viewing screens, treated with voice-overs (there's lots of grainy film of mission control with public address style announcements played over the picture), or featuring characters wordlessly interacting with the footage (Gary Seven in the gantry lift, Scotty using the transporter room viewscreen).

Some fun can be had with the ideas behind the episode. It's difficult not to feel sorry for John D. F. Black. All the way back in The Naked Time he proposed a model for time travel (antimatter implosion) and the series constantly ignores it. The second time they travel in time, Tomorrow Is Yesterday, is an accident using the slingshot method, the third time in The City On The Edge Of Forever it's the Guardian of Forever, and for Assignment: Earth they're back to using the slingshot method. Actually one point in the episode's favour is the stylish way it starts by essentially saying, "yeah we've travelled in time, deal with it."

It's also difficult to understand what Starfleet thinks it can learn from the Enterprise's mission. Surely there are more interesting periods for the ship to visit? The mission might make sense if Assignement: Earth is a trial run for time travel history research and the plan was to go to a historically insignificant time to minimise the risk of disruption, but the script is clear that 1968 is a big deal in Earth history. Spock has a line, “there will be an important assassination today, an equally dangerous government coup in Asia...” but 1963 had a more historically significant assassination and a coup in South Vietnam. Obviously in the real world this is to flatter the viewer, “hey kids what we're doing now matters,” but in story terms why investigate 1968 in a series which has established the Eugenics Wars will start in the 1990s. On a more nitpicking note, when Spock complies his historical report for Kirk at the beginning of the episode he describes the launch of the orbital nuclear warhead platform as, “highly critical,” but does not mention, as Kirk does at the end of the episode, “our record tapes show, although not generally revealed, that on this date, a malfunctioning suborbital warhead was exploded exactly one hundred and four miles above the Earth.” It seems odd for Spock to miss that important point out of the briefing he gives to Kirk. Perhaps we can write this off as history changing around the events of the episode but the big lesson of The City On The Edge Of Forever is that even the tiniest change can have unforeseen consequences.

Another unsolved mystery is what is Spock doing with Scotty in the transporter room at the beginning of the episode? Kirk says the Enterprise's mission is, “monitoring Earth communications,” so why would Spock be anywhere other than the bridge? Is monitoring communications actually a cover story? For their historical research are the Enterprise crew secretly beaming people on board, interrogating them, and then using a Vulcan mind meld to erase all memories of the experience?

One real mystery of Assignment: Earth is that this episode turns out to be the most expensive Star Trek story made. According to a post at the Trek BBS website the final cost of Assignment: Earth was $288,049.00, easily beating the final $250,396.71 cost of The City On The Edge Of Forever. To put it bluntly, the episode doesn't look that expensive. The City On The Edge Of Forever had night location filming on the Desilu backlot with vehicles and extras dressed appropriately for the period, as well as some large studio sets, and a big one-off piece of scenery in the form of the Guardian. By comparison Assignment: Earth has a couple of ambitious effects shots which add a rocket to location footage filmed on the Paramount lot, but there's very little else which would seem to account for the money bar some location filming with a lot of extras to look like New York crowds. Maybe there were a lot of additional behind the scenes costs to do with making a pilot as part of an ongoing series?

Enterprise crew deaths: None again
Running total: 46

Top Ten

The Doomsday Machine

Mirror, Mirror

The Corbomite Manouver
Arena
Amok Time

Balance Of Terror
This Side Of Paradise

The Naked Time
The Devil In The Dark
The Trouble With Tribbles

The Trouble With Tribbles comes in at number ten but apart from that there are no changes from last time. For anyone interested, lurking all the way down the bottom of the list is The Apple.

Top Ten

The Doomsday Machine

Mirror, Mirror

The Corbomite Manouver
Arena
Amok Time

Balance Of Terror
This Side Of Paradise

The Naked Time
The Devil In The Dark

The Galileo Seven

The impossible has happened. Not just one, but two episodes swoop in to displace The Corbomite Manouver from the position it has occupied since virtually the beginning of this blog. Even for the internet it would be too woefully self-indulgent to go into any detail about the unnecessary soul searching and doubt caused by this decision, but there you go; The Corbomite Manouver finally gets knocked off the number one spot.

Mirror, Mirror

Mirror, Mirror, like The Alternative Factor, involves parallel universes. It would be a clever, if slightly smug, critical device to compare the two and demonstrate that one story is actually the mirror image of the other. But they are not, except that Mirror, Mirror is really good and The Alternative Factor is terrible (and in Mirror, Mirror Spock has a better and more convincing beard than The Alternative Factor's Lazarus). Mirror, Mirror isn't really about parallel universes anyway. The world of the Terran Empire is just a backdrop for Kirk, McCoy, Scotty, and Uhura to have an adventure in which their friends and colleagues are the baddies. This is the source for those television programmes in which characters meet different versions of themselves. That's not to say Star Trek invented the idea of parallel universes, or dopplegangers, but when most series reference either idea it will be Mirror, Mirror the writer is thinking of rather than John Wyndham's 1961 short story Random Quest, or Philip K. Dick's 1962 The Man In The High Castle, or Superman's Bizarro.

There is one crucial difference between Mirror, Mirror and the television programmes which reference it; Kirk, McCoy, Scotty, and Uhura never meet their other selves. With the exception of one short scene, we are left to infer what their mirror alternates are like from looking at the universe they live in and imagining how different their characters would have to be in order to survive. In the Buffy The Vampire Slayer episode Dopplegangland the script gets a huge amount of mileage from Willow meeting her alternate world double. “I’m so evil and skanky, and I think I’m kind of gay.” Even in the early versions of Mirror, Mirror this was never a story about Kirk meeting a different version of himself, possibly because The Enemy Within was still fresh in everyone's minds. The story was always about Kirk in a different world (in Jerome Bixby's first storyline the transporter malfunction shunted Kirk into a universe where the Federation was losing a war because phasers hadn't been invented). In this respect its closest relative is the 1970 Doctor Who story Inferno in which the Doctor is bumped sideways into a fascist England, a world he never visited, and must deal with different versions of his friends.

When the transporter malfunctions (sweetly the magnetic storm which causes the problem is visualised on-screen with lightning and thunder suggesting either the production team misunderstood the nature of a magnetic storm or they didn't know how to sell the idea to the viewer) it's tempting to describe the universe the landing party arrive in as evil. It isn't. Well, not completely. Because of the title it's easy to assume this new universe is a mirror image of the Star Trek one. That what's good is bad, and vice versa; so while the Terran Empire is nasty, the Romulans and Klingons, who we never see, must be nice, and so on. That's clearly not the case. In both universes the Halkans, who live on a planet rich in dilithium crystals, are deeply committed pacifists. In a true mirror universe they would presumably have been war crazy hawks. And while the Terran Empire is obviously not nice, it's not completely evil either. At best it can be described as ruthlessly pragmatic. When Kirk arrives on the mirror-Enterprise his double is returning from the Halkan homeworld. Whether he was negotiating with the Halkans, or just threatening them, is not clear but he was talking to them. If the Terran Empire was completely evil they'd just roll up and take what they wanted. For mirror-Kirk to engage with the Halkans shows the Empire recognises the need for diplomacy, or at least recognises the need for the appearance of diplomacy. Likewise, despite what the presence of mirror-Sulu might suggest, the ISS Enterprise is not just a crew of sadists in space flying around being dastardly. Lieutenant Kyle is not evil, he's just doing his job to the best of his ability. Within the Empire the acceptance of promotion by assassination seems to have resulted in a crew where the most ruthless people end up on the bridge; resulting in a ship commanded by those best equipped to survive while killing their way to the top rather than those who are actively evil.

We don't get any hint of what the mirror versions of Uhura and Scotty must be like. Mirror-McCoy's personality is suggested by a single line from McCoy. “And my Sickbay is a chamber of horrors. My assistants were betting on the tolerance of an injured man. How long it would take him to pass out from the pain.” We do see mirror-Kirk and he comes across as a thug. He shouts, he bellows, he struggles futilely, and he makes threats he is in no position to carry out. He thinks he's being really clever in offering Spock credits, and power, but actually he's being obviously manipulative. Mirror-Kirk seems too stupid to have risen to the position of Captain, until we discover later about the Tantalus field in his cabin. Mirror-Chekov is out of his league. He's smart enough to have joined the bridge crew, and smart enough to pick a good time for an attempt on Kirk's life, but he's not smart enough to realise he's already been betrayed and that one of his guards is working for Kirk; mirror-Chekov's ultimate destination is the agony booth.

As in The Naked Time George Takei is given a visually memorable role; possibly the most memorable depending on how you think Spock looks with a beard. Here he plays mirror-Sulu in a way that brings to mind Major Toht, the sinister Gestapo Officer from Raiders Of The Lost Ark. Sulu is a sadist who abuses his authority but he's also smart; smarter than Chekov. He guesses the nature of Spock's orders. He also works out a plan which will allow him to eliminate Spock and Kirk at the same time and nearly gets away with it. He's also surprisingly brave. When Lieutenant Marlena Moreau uses the Tantalus field to remove his party of security guards Sulu doesn't run even though the odds suddenly shift against him. Sulu still takes on Kirk, not that he puts up much of a fight.

The character we see most is mirror-Spock. In the teaser his different appearance is the main visual used to establish that something weird has happened to the landing party. Bruce Shoengarth, the film editor gives us two big close-ups of Spock with beard, and one tracking shot from Kirk's point of view showing Spock armed with a dagger and phaser. When Spock uses the agoniser on Lieutenant Kyle it establishes that not only does this Spock look different, but he acts differently as well. The difference extends beyond Spock simply being a Vulcan who has decided it is logical to match the humans' brutality. When Spock tells Kirk, “I have found you to be an excellent officer. Our missions together have been both successful and profitable,” it's more than just simple flattery. As he says, “I do not desire the captaincy. I much prefer my scientific duties. I am frankly content to be a lesser target.” It's tempting to wonder if Spock protected mirror-Kirk, foiling assassination attempts against his commander to avoid becoming Captain himself. Interestingly one of Spock's guards is a Vulcan, suggesting the entire race is less isolationist than they appear to be in the main Star Trek universe.

So, what's the history of the Terran Empire? It's more than just a simple inversion of the Federation. There are plenty of hints it might be that parallel history regular, a world where Rome never fell. We have the Roman-esque salute. The Terran Empire's logo, a Gladius like short sword impaling the Earth. Advancement by assassination. And, most obviously, Marlena Moreau's comment, “if I'm to be the woman of a Caesar.” Also, though probably coincidentally, the costume department have armed the bridge crew in the style of Roman soldiers with a primary weapon, the phaser, and a dagger (in a nice touch the phaser is worn on the left continuing the mirror image theme).

What really pleases about Mirror, Mirror is its subtlety. That might seem an odd word to use for an episode which features the leering scarred face of Mr Sulu, or William Shatner seizing the opportunity to go over the top as he's dragged down a corridor bellowing, “I order you, Let me go! Traitors! Spock, get these men off me!” but this is a story packed with small moments among the equally enjoyable over the top scenes. Look at the disdainful way mirror-Spock drops Mr. Kyle's agoniser after use, rather than handing it back. And how agonisers are for enlisted men only, not bridge officers. And, having said the Terran Empire is not pointlessly sadistic there is something aptly unpleasant in the way the crew have to wear their own agonisers. It's not sufficient for the Empire to punish failure with extreme pain, each man has to deal with the humiliation of carrying the source of their pain as personal equipment.

Look also at how the turncoat guard phasers Chekov's men while defending Kirk. Life is cheap on the ISS Enterprise, and their phasers don't stun; or if they do it's not the default setting. In the same scene Kirk has a terrific reproachful line to his guards when they appear after the fight is over.

CHEKOV'S GUARD: Easy, Farrell. I did your job. Ask the captain.

FARRELL: Sir?

KIRK: Yes, he did your job.

“He did your job,” if that was the real mirror-Kirk Farrell would be on the way to the agony booth himself. All through the episode the actors are taking the time to think about how their characters would react to events, and director Marc Daniels is making time to film these reactions. As a result we have lovely background bits of business like Uhura approaching Scotty in the transporter room and making a confused gesture to her changed uniform, while at the same time Scotty silently signals, “not now,” to her. Or Kirk's reaction as he realises the standard procedure he has agreed to is a phaser barrage on Halkan cities. Or the two security guards on the bridge guarding the turbo elevator doors as Uhura distracts Sulu; in the absence of senior officers one of them lounges and leers like a dime store hood while the other checks out Uhura.

To be really picky there is one scripting oddity at the end of the episode when Kirk asks Spock, “how long before the Halkan prediction of galactic revolt is realised?” and Spock responds as if this is something the pair have discussed during the course of the episode. Presumably this line refers back to something removed at the scripting, or film editing stage, and it stands out precisely because this sort of error is very unusual. Apart from that line, this is a flawless episode and it's easy to see why 45 years later Mirror, Mirror remains a touchstone for television writers.

Enterprise crew deaths: None. Deaths on the ISS Enterprise don't count (although I'm sure their loved ones miss them very much).
Running total: 30

Misc:

The similarities between the Doctor Who story Inferno and Mirror, Mirror are remarkable. It's easy to assume Inferno borrows the parallel universe concept from Mirror, Mirror as Star Trek becomes an obvious influence on Doctor Who as the series moves through the early 70s. Which makes it all the more odd that the dates don't quite match. Mirror, Mirror was first shown on BBC1 on 15^th June 1970. That's the Monday before the last episode of the seven part Inferno was broadcast on Saturday 20^th. The first storyline for Inferno, which included the parallel universe idea suggested by producer Barry Letts and script editor Terrance Dicks, was requested on 27^th November 1969 (while BBC1 was still showing the first series of Star Trek). Obviously the BBC must have held a copy of Mirror, Mirror by November 1969 and it's not impossible Letts and Dicks watched it, but why would they do this? It would open them up to being accused of plagiarism. It's more likely Terrance Dicks and Jerome Bixby both read The Man In The High Castle, or that Dicks saw Out Of The Unknown's adaptation of Random Quest which was broadcast on 11^th February 1969.

Who Mourns For Adonais?

Most obviously Who Mourns For Adonais? is very much of its time. At the top of the episode McCoy has a line about Lieutenant Carolyn Palamas, “one day she'll find the right man and off she'll go, out of the service.” A line which could be taken to mean married women cannot serve in Starfleet, or that once Palamas has found the right man she'll have no interest in a career. In a better episode this line might just provoke a shrug at the different values of 45 years ago but there are other problems with the script.

For starters Lieutenant Palamas doesn't have much in the way of a character. She fills the same role as Lieutenant McGivers in Space Seed; to be seduced by the guest villain until reminded of where her real loyalties lie. However McGivers had a reason to fall for Khan. She's a historian fascinated by strong men from history, she doesn't seem to fit in on board the Enterprise and her skills are under appreciated by Kirk. Palamas on the other hand doesn't have any comparable motive for falling for Apollo. At the start of the episode she's in a relationship with Scotty, then she beams down with the landing party and when Apollo starts putting his 5000 year old moves on her she's his. Passed from one member of the cast to another without any say in the matter like a football.

One minute Palamas is arguing with Apollo. “But why? What you've said so far makes no sense at all!” Then when Apollo invites her to frolic like the Greeks of old, “you will know what it is to be a goddess,” and Scotty objects and is zapped while drawing his phaser she doesn't really react. She might at least be expected to run over to Scotty and see if he's injured but Kirk does that. Next Apollo magics her into a new dress and takes her for a walk. “Come,” says Apollo and when Scotty intervenes he is thrown backwards across a table, in a well set up stunt, and knocked unconscious. Palamas isn't really that bothered, she doesn't attempt to leave Apollo's side, and goes off with him into the forest. She doesn't even ask if Scotty's all right. She saw the man she's been dating struck under the chin by a massively powerful being who claims to be the Greek god Apollo. She saw him thrown backwards with a crash of thunder to lie still on the ground. McCoy's diagnosis of Scotty as stunned doesn't occur until after Palamas has gone off with Apollo. Scotty could be dead for all Palamas knows. Now try watching her next scene which starts with Palamas' line, “oh it's lovely,” and ends with Apollo kissing her, and try to make sense of it from her perspective. This is not a complaint about 45 year old sexism. It's simply bad writing.

To be fair to Leslie Parrish, the actress who plays Palamas, she seems to be aware of this problem. She makes Palamas look afraid when all this is going on, but the end result is a character who appears to be frightened by the violence itself rather than showing any concern for Scotty. As if Apollo and Scotty were fighting over Palamas in a nightclub. That said Palamas does get to play an essential role in distracting Apollo at the end of the story, and she gets one of the script's best lines when she has to pretend to be studying Apollo to see how he copies human behaviour.

APOLLO: I am Apollo. I've chosen you.

CAROLYN: I'm sure that's very flattering, but I must get on with my work now.

Much more difficult is the scene towards the end where Apollo calls down a storm after he is angered by Palamas rejection. This can be read as a rape scene. Palamas is alone, and afraid. As the winds blow around her she clutches her dress and holds it down as if to protect herself. Apollo, semi-transparent, appears superimposed over storm clouds as if he is either riding the wind, or actually the storm itself. Then Lieutenant Palamas falls to the ground and shouts, “no,” before we see an extreme close-up of Apollo's face still superimposed over the storm, and then the image cuts to a slow zoom towards Palamas as if the audience is seeing her from Apollo's point of view. Obviously the storm could just be Apollo's anger but there is a precedent within Greek mythology, and even specific myths relating to Apollo himself, to suggest this scene could have a much darker symbolic meaning. Technically it's impressive work. Well edited and well scored, in fact the music throughout this episode is consistently excellent. It also works dramatically within the context of the story, but it's steering the programme into waters it is not really equipped to navigate. If it is intended to suggest Apollo raping Lieutenant Palamas, then it gives the ending of the episode, where the audience are invited to feel sympathy for Apollo, a completely inappropriate tone.

Scotty is subject to some very odd characterisation. He's not acting out of character because Scotty has tended to be written according to the needs of each script, and generally it's left to James Doohan to pull the disparate threads together and make Scotty seem like a person. We've seen him be quietly professional in The Naked Time and The Galileo Seven, distracted in Mudd's Women, and gung ho in A Taste Of Armageddon. In Who Mourns For Adonais? Scotty is written as a lovesick teenager. He cannot keep his eyes off Palamas. And when Apollo takes Palamas from him, his instinct is to lash out. Scotty attacks Apollo three times in the course of this episode. Each time to no effect and each time sustaining more and more damage. In Futurama's Star Trek spoof Where No Fan Has Gone Before there is a running joke about Welshy (Scotty's replacement after James Doohan declined to appear) being killed by Melllvar, and his corpse being electrocuted again and again whenever Melllvar becomes angry. Who Mourns For Adonais? could well be the source for that joke.

It's difficult not to feel that writer Gilbert Ralston is just being lazy. Scotty's madly in love with Palamas because it's simply the easiest way to jam a bit of conflict and peril into the second and third act, not because it's a story the writer wants to tell. If Ralston really wanted to write a story about Scotty in love he would have actually put some effort into making it look like Scotty and Palamas were in a relationship. As it is, it's all one way. Scotty can't keep his eyes of Palamas whereas she never really reciprocates. “Oh all right,” is her response to being invited for coffee, and while he calls her Carolyn she calls him Scotty. He fights and risks his life for a woman who never even puts her arm round him. It actually looks less like love and more like obsession; which is worrying considering Wolf In The Fold is coming up.

Ultimately this all affects suspension of disbelief. The triumph of Amok Time is it makes the audience believe Vulcan exists beyond the confines of the television screen. A strong and enjoyable script makes the audience willing to overlook the implausible elements which might otherwise remind them they are watching a story filmed on a soundstage on Gower Street in Hollywood. It's why Joseph Pevney's occasionally clumsy handling of the Gorn in Arena doesn't affect the overall episode; beyond some good natured ribbing about the quality of the costumes. Likewise it's why the obviously fake spore plants in This Side Of Paradise don't matter. If that episode had been filmed on a soundstage planet filled with equally weird looking alien vegetation they could have passed without notice. Filmed on location and contrasted with real plants and trees they might have wrecked the episode. In fact This Side Of Paradise is so confident it makes the plant's appearance the subject of a joke. “What exactly are we looking for anyway, sir?” asks Kelowitz. “Whatever doesn't look right, whatever that is,” replies Sulu (who worked in the botany department in The Man Trap) oblivious to the bizarre plant slightly to his left.

In Who Mourns For Adonais? the absence of believable reactions from Palamas and Scotty means the episode never gels. Michael Forest puts in very good work as Apollo, and makes some very wordy dialogue sound like actual speech. Walter Koenig makes the most of limited scenes as Chekov.

APOLLO: I am Apollo.
[Kirk reacts]
[McCoy reacts]
[MUSIC: dramatic chord!]
CHEKOV: And I am the tsar of all the Russias.

Not the funniest response in the world but it's an interesting way to puncture the mood by introducing a character prepared to give backchat to the antagonist. Star Trek has not really gone in for sending up the baddies before so this is an interesting direction for the series, and the new character.

Matt Jefferies works miracles on a story which requires Apollo to have his own temple. It's fun-sized in comparison to real temples but it's an impressive set element; possibly the biggest the series has used so far.

Also impressive is the shot which ends act one, Apollo tripling in size and towering over the landing party booming, “welcome to Olympus”. It may be Star Trek's most ambitious effects shot so far. The first effects shot, I think, combining two live action elements rather than using overlaid animation, like phasers, or a glass painting. It's made more complicated by being layered so Apollo stands in front of the temple, and then he himself is partially obscured by a marble table in the foreground (a process Wikipedia tells me is a called a travelling matte which means I know what it's called even if I don't really understand how it works). The contrast is a little bit wonky, and the lighting not quite right but it's impressive given the budget and time limitations Star Trek always faced. Another memorable, and bizarre, image is the shot of the hand gripping the Enterprise. In fact judged purely on the visual side, this is a strong episode. The one oddity is the editing decision which means the shot of the hand holding the Enterprise is not used to bookend the opening titles. It begins act one, but it also seems like the ideal shot to end the teaser.

Enterprise crew deaths: None, again. Apollo throws a lot of electricity around but there are no fatalities. Nobody gets Westinghoused. 
Running total: 26

Top Ten

Before getting started on Star Trek's second year, this is how my top ten list of episodes currently shapes up.

The Corbomite Manouver
Arena

Balance Of Terror
This Side Of Paradise

The Naked Time
The Devil In The Dark

The Galileo Seven

City On The Edge Of Forever

The Squire Of Gothos
Errand Of Mercy

The top three are unchanged from last time but This Side Of Paradise sneaks in at number four. I've completely revised my opinion of the episode and so far that has been the biggest surprise of my rewatch. I don't think there can be any doubt I prefer Gene L. Coon's flavour of Star Trek. Arena, The Devil In The Dark, and Errand Of Mercy were all written by him. This Side Of Paradise, The Galileo Seven, City On The Edge Of Forever, and The Squire Of Gothos were all produced by him.

This Side Of Paradise

Confession time. When I last watched the Star Trek DVDs I skipped episodes. Not often. Just occasionally. Only the episodes I already knew I didn't like. Miri and The Conscience Of The King both went unwatched. There were others but it's probably not wise to name them as the list includes at least one second series stone-cold fan favourite. I haven't changed my opinions on any episode so far. Miri and The Conscience Of The King still both sit pretty far down my list of favourites, and I don't hold much hope for The Alternative Factor when I get there in three episodes.

It's pretty obvious where this is going. One of the skipped episodes was This Side Of Paradise. It sat in my memory labelled as boring. The one where Spock falls in love. Bleugh. Who wants to see that? Spock's babe will be backlit and shot through a vaseline smeared lens, to make her look “beautiful”. The episode will be dubbed with that sappy lurve music. Skip it! Jump straight from A Taste Of Armageddon to The Devil In The Dark.

Fine, so I'm an idiot. But on a broader scale, This Side Of Paradise seems to be one of the more overlooked Star Trek episodes. When it was rewritten writer Jerry Sohl had his name removed because he was unhappy with the result. Director Ralph Senensky has a website where he talks about being booked to direct The Devil In The Dark and being disappointed when he was sent the script for This Side Of Paradise along with a note telling him the episodes had been switched. As he says, “THE DEVIL IN THE DARK was a strange, eerie script, totally different from anything I had directed, while THIS SIDE OF PARADISE, although it was science fiction, was not really new territory for me.” Maybe Senensky nails the problem right there. This Side Of Paradise is a love story between Spock and Leila Kalomi. Star Trek is an action-adventure science fiction series. The whole ethos of Star Trek is, “to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations.” Why is the series telling a love story? Any show can tell a love story.

Worse, it's a love story for Mr. Spock. If a writer is stuck for a story one easy solution is to break an element of the series. What happens when the transporter breaks down? What happens if the warp drive malfunctions at a critical moment? What happens if the shuttle crashes? In the case of Spock the easiest way to break the character is to force him to experience emotions. "Spock falls in love," seems like the most obvious story someone could pitch. Even worse, Spock doesn't fall in love unaided, he gets high on spores which break down his emotional barriers. So we have a science fiction show doing a story you can find in any television series, with the most obvious character, a script the original writer disliked enough to want to use a pseudonym, and it's a rip off of The Naked Time. Not the most inspiring combination.

You would think everyone would have more faith in D. C. Fontana; who rewrote Jerry Sohl's story. She has a proven track record for making stories work. Charlie X is an intelligent, thoughtful story. Tomorrow Is Yesterday makes workable the second most obvious pitch, “hey, what if the Enterprise turned out to be one of those UFOs we keep reading about.” This Side Of Paradise is her best script so far. Spot on pacing means each of the four acts tells a different part of the story. Act one is the mystery. Why are the colonists alive when they should be dead? Act two is the complication. The bulk of Spock's love story is here, and Kirk has to deal with his command falling apart. Act three is Kirk's lowest point, stalking the empty Enterprise and being infected himself, and the turnaround when he discovers the cure. Finally act four is the resolution. Not only must the colonists be cured of the bliss giving spores, but Spock must deal with the fallout of his relationship with Leila. And if the pacing is good the structure is better. This Side Of Paradise tells two stories simultaneously; one about Spock's love story the other about Kirk dealing with the loss of his command. Although this is remembered as Spock's love story it's Kirk who keeps the plot moving forwards. It's actually a surprise to see how little romance this love story contains. This Side Of Paradise turns out to be a textbook example of how a story should be shaped around the lead actor, while also giving memorable scenes to the supporting leads.

Small moments of dialogue are used to tell us about the characters. Leila uses McCoy's communicator to call Spock, unaware that he has broken the spore's influence.  

LEILA: You are all right, aren't you?

SPOCK: Yes. Yes. I'm quite well.

There are whole worlds of meaning in Spock's simple line. His awkward attempt to recreate the easy way he spoke to Leila previously. Embarrassment at having to talk about emotion. Regret. A desire not to let Leila suspect he is no longer affected by the spores. He is also attempting not to hurt or worry her, and put off the difficult emotional confrontation he knows is coming.

These small moments alternate with bigger scenes. Most memorably Kirk's attempt to drive Spock into a fury which contains some surprisingly brutal lines. 

KIRK: All right, you mutinous, disloyal, computerised, half-breed, we'll see about you deserting my ship.

SPOCK: The term half-breed is somewhat applicable, but computerised is inaccurate. A machine can be computerised, not a man.

KIRK: What makes you think you're a man? You're an overgrown jackrabbit, an elf with a hyperactive thyroid.

SPOCK: Jim, I don't understand.

KIRK: Of course you don't understand. You don't have the brains to understand. All you have is printed circuits.

SPOCK: Captain, if you'll excuse me.

KIRK: What can you expect from a simpering, devil-eared freak whose father was a computer and his mother an encyclopedia?

SPOCK: My mother was a teacher. My father an ambassador.

KIRK: Your father was a computer, like his son. An ambassador from a planet of traitors. A Vulcan never lived who had an ounce of integrity.

SPOCK: Captain, please don't

KIRK: You're a traitor from a race of traitors. Disloyal to the core, rotten like the rest of your subhuman race, and you've got the gall to make love to that girl.

SPOCK: That's enough.

KIRK: Does she know what she's getting, Spock? A carcass full of memory banks who should be squatting in a mushroom, instead of passing himself off as a man? You belong in a circus, Spock, not a starship. Right next to the dog-faced boy. 

William Shatner, as you'd expect, eats up the screen during this scene. He's having a whale of a time. His best moment comes after the, “right next to the dog faced boy” line when his expression in close-up is a perfect mixture of hope and fear; hope that he's made Spock angry enough to counter the spores, and fear that he's gone too far. But it's not just Shatner who has raised his game. While William Shatner has the charisma to be a leading man Leonard Nimoy is the better actor, and teamed with Jill Ireland as Leila the result is brilliant. The work they do in the act two romance scenes makes them believable. Nimoy plays his scenes carefully, and the result is recognisably Spock in love; the same character, but different. Another actor might have just started smiling and looking all dewy-eyed. When the romance plot drops out of sight in act three it stays in the memory, allowing it to be picked up again in act four, and for Spock to end the episode by dropping the series' most devastating line, “I have little to say about it, Captain, except that for the first time in my life I was happy.”

The scene between Spock and Leila in the transporter room may be the best in the series so far. As Leila realises she has lost Spock she turns away, and begins crying, and Ralph Senensky shoots much of the scene with Leila facing away from Spock so we can see both of their faces with a minimum of cutting between camera angles. This allows the scene to play out as a single take so Nimoy and Ireland can both respond to the others performance. Wisely, Leila does not appear in the episode after this scene is finished. It would cheapen the story to see her hanging around in the background red-eyed, or to have a goodbye scene going over the same emotional territory. Also, in the transporter room scene there is something poetic about Leila being the only person to lose the spores through despair, rather than anger as everyone else does. Especially as despair is the same emotion which leads Kirk to become infected on the empty Enterprise bridge after he stops being angry at his crew's behaviour and despairs over his failure and absent crew.

The bridge scene shows the thought Jerry Finnerman, director of photography, is putting into the episode. As Kirk is infected Shatner turns towards the camera and, as the spores take effect, the lighting is subtly brightened to make Kirk's face glow. Likewise as Kirk struggles against their effect in the transporter room and becomes angry the lighting is turned down until Kirk is in silhouette; then Kirk switches on the transporter control panel illuminating his face with a harsh blue light. At the same time Ralph Senensky is telling much of the story visually. Once Kirk is free of the spores the camera swings round to show us Kirk's suitcase on the transporter pad, subtly emphasising how Kirk's anger was a result of preparing to leave. Likewise the spore spraying plants are often foregrounded in shots, most notably when Leila leads Spock to be infected and the early part of the scene is filmed through the leaves of a plant. Senensky, like Joesph Pevney, the director of Arena, is always looking for ways to make shots more interesting. As Kirk and Spock build the transmitter they are filmed through the machinery of the communications console. And as Spock takes the awkward call from Leila mentioned above, where she asks to come up and see the Enterprise, Spock is foregrounded and Kirk stands in the background listening embarrassedly. Once the call has finished the camera swings round and the conversation continues with Kirk in the foreground and Spock in the background. 

This Side Of Paradise seems to have a sense of excitement about it. As if the cast and crew all know they are dealing with a good script and all want to deliver the best work possible. With Nimoy and Ireland responding to an excellent script, Shatner raises his game. With a first time director excited to be working on Star Trek and looking for ways to make the episode interesting, Jerry Finnerman uses lighting to visualise the emotional state of the crew. And the actors respond to a production team concerned with more than just getting the episode in the can, and in turn the production team respond to the enthusiasm of the actors, and the whole episode is lifted as a result. And all this from an episode I thought I remembered as boring. Maybe there is hope for The Alternative Factor.

Enterprise crew deaths: None, again. Six episodes without anyone dying.

Running total: 25

Misc

Associate Producer Robert Justman and Assistant Film Editor Don Rode were in charge of the next episode previews. The preview for This Side Of Paradise contains a fantastically filthy innuendo. To the point I'm almost surprised it was broadcast.

Basically, Justman and Rode edit together two similar shots of Spock and Leila; one of the camera zooming in on Spock, the other on Leila. The two shots are intercut with increasing speed and followed by an abrupt cut to a plant shooting its cloud of white spores all over Spock. Disgusting. NBC's Standards and Practises department must have been distracted elsewhere.

Space Seed

What made Khan Noonien Singh so appealing to Harve Bennett when he was developing the second Star Trek film? One answer comes from listing all the obstacles (people, aliens, concepts) Kirk has overcome in the episodes aired up to Space Seed. Take out all the ones obviously unsuitable as movie baddies (space drunkeness, the children on Miri's planet, the world where imagination becomes reality, etc), and the ones who end their episode dead (salt vampire we hardly knew ye), and you are left with Charlie, Harry Mudd, Balok, the Talosians, off-screen Romulans, Trelane, the Gorn and the Metrons, and Khan. Eight individuals from the 22 episodes aired. Anyone who crosses Kirk doesn't often survive.

By the time Turnabout Intruder airs this list will be longer but a story in which Janice Lester teams up with the brains from The Gamesters of Triskelion to make Kirk, Harry Mudd, and Balok compete in a tranya drinking match is almost certainly not going to make a great film. More seriously, someone like Charlie could return but it would take a lot of care to avoid writing a script which did not simply rehash that episode. A lot of characters are one shot concepts designed to illuminate a specific theme the writer wants to discuss. Fear of the unknown in The Corbomite Maneuver, or the painfulness of adolescence in Charlie X. Take these characters out of the context of their story and they don't work, or have to be changed so much it negates the point of bringing them back. Others, like specific Klingon or Romulan officers, could come back as part of their military regime but simply going, “let's do a film with Klingons or Romulans” won't move the film development process forwards.

Harry Mudd is an exception because his character is written so broadly; effectively a prototype for what the Ferenghi will become. He could just keep coming back. All that's required is a con or caper to involve him. It's even possible to imagine slotting him into existing episodes, The Trouble With Tribbles, wouldn't be massively different if he replaced trader Cyrano Jones. However, just because it's easy to shape a story around Harry Mudd that doesn't make him a character you could use at the dramatic heart of a story.

Khan is another exception. (Trelane may be a third. The similar character Q shows the concept of a god-like alien tormenting the Enterprise D crew can support a lot of different stories. Still I'm not completely certain Trelane, as originally imagined as child god, would work. He doesn't easily fit into a story which doesn't involve him playing games with the Enterprise crew until Kirk outwits him. How many times could Kirk do this before the god-like alien starts to look ineffective?). Khan genuinely has built in sequel potential. At the most basic level his massive arrogance means his defeat by Kirk will rankle, and he'll always be looking for a chance to even the score. Plus, Kirk leaves him on a planet to build a civilisation in his own image. Spock even speculates about returning to Ceti Alpha V in 100 years to see what Khan has done. Both Khan's character, and the situation he finishes the episode in are open ended. In fact his sequel potential is so obvious I can't help wondering if one of the writers, Gene L. Coon and Carey Wilber, was thinking along these lines at the time and, rather like the time travel ending of The Naked Time, was discretely setting events up for a second story which never happened.

It also helps that Khan is expertly played by Ricardo Montalban. As in Charlie X, and The Squire Of Gothos, we have an actor taking a part and running with it. Montalban brings an already well written character to life, and gives him the power, charisma, and magnetism the role needs. And the script needs Montalban's input. Not because it's bad, it isn't, but because it's incredibly wordy. One of the unusual things about Space Seed is the lack of action. A story about a genetic superman taking over the Enterprise could reasonably be expected to be very physical, full of fist fights and action sequences, but it isn't. Anyone could make the part of Khan work if it was a Darth Vader-like role involving picking people up by the neck and flinging bodies around but Montalban has to sell us on both Khan's physicality and intellect, and he does it so well it's easy to see why Harve Bennett wanted Khan for the second film.

Slightly less successful is Lieutenant Marla McGivers, who falls for Khan in a big way, and helps him in his attempt to take over the Enterprise. The problem is she's a bit of a wet fish. Her character is nicely established as someone who fantasises about strong historical figures -Napoleon, Richard the Lionheart, Leif Ericson- but it's harder to spot what Khan sees in her. She mainly seems to spend her time looking doe-eyed at Khan as he psychologically bullies her. Perhaps this is what Khan wants? Presumably the female genetic superwomen in his group would share Khan's arrogance so maybe he's on the lookout for someone he can dominate rather than to have children. Kirk also seems to have very little time for McGivers, and isn't worried about criticising her in front of the bridge crew, “here's a chance for that historian to do something for a change,” he says as he prepares an away team to board the SS Botany Bay. It's not clear exactly when McGiver's recognises Khan although after he storms out of a formal dinner she goes to his quarters and worries him by saying, “I know who you are,” but he's been on board for hours by this point. McGivers seems to be a pretty solid historian. She's studied great men of history. She identifies the sleeper ship, knows when it was in use, and knows how the revival process resuscitates the leader first. Either she knows who Khan is from more or less the moment she first sees him, or at least that's the point where she begins to hope this mystery man might be Khan. Put it this way, if you were a historian who discovered an 200 year old ice packed figure, wearing a bicorne hat, with his hand tucked into his jacket, frozen alive on a French Frigate called the Elba wouldn't you at least wonder if he might be Napoleon?

The first 30 minutes of the story pass quickly. It's a surprise to get to Khan's takeover of the Enterprise and realise the episode is already more than half over. The hijacking of the Enterprise is a good example of how to write an exciting sequence which contains no action. The whole scene is set on the bridge and begins with security alerting Kirk to Khan's escape. One by one Kirk's orders to the crew fail because Khan has already anticipated them; communication channels are jammed, atmospheric controls are cut off, neural gas cannot be used to knock out the hijackers, and the turbo elevators are inoperative. Kirk comes to a surprised halt as the elevator door fails to open, and it's surprising how effective this one simple visual is to an audience who have got used to doors swishing open automatically. Several things impress about this scene. Firstly we get a sense of the effectiveness of the bridge crew as they switch from relaxed routine to dealing with the emergency. Secondly, although the scene is short it sells the idea that hijacking the Enterprise is really difficult. And, thirdly, it's confirmation of everything Khan has been saying through the episode. The bridge crew are good, but he's better.

While the script is enjoyable it's not perfect. The climax particularly disappoints. Up to now the dialogue has been really good, with Kirk and Khan jabbing at each other with words, so it's more of let down when the stunt doubles run in and begin exchanging punches. Worse this fight comes after a whole episode of being told Khan is superior to regular humans, including an awesome scene in which Khan first pulls open the locked door to his quarters by hand and then knocks a stuntman flying (Montalban sells the scene where he pulls the door open, and the stuntman does a fantastic backflip as Khan catches him under the chin). The idea Kirk could go toe to toe with Khan just doesn't work. Especially not with Kirk fresh out of a decompression chamber. Still, the ending does provide a character point. Kirk wins by cheating, he clubs Khan with some sort of tool he pulls out of the engineering panel. It must grate with Khan that the superior man was beaten in an unfair fight. Two episodes ago Court Martial ended in engineering with Kirk fighting Finney in a race against time to prevent Finney's sabotage from destroying the Enterprise. Now, Space Seed ends in engineering with Kirk fighting Khan in a race against time to prevent Khan's sabotage from destroying the Enterprise. Court Martial was made as episode 14, and Space Seed as episode 24, so it's unfortunate that when aired only one episode separates two stories which end so similarly.

When Khan is revived he wants to know how long he has been asleep, “two centuries we estimate,” Kirk tells him. Along with the “I am going to lock you up for two hundred years”/ “That ought to be just about right” joke from Tomorrow Is Yesterday this pretty much confirms that, whatever the consensus now, the sixties production team thought Star Trek was set in the 22^nd Century rather than the 23^rd. It's also odd to hear characters talking so glibly about the terrible history of the 1990s. “A strange, violent period in your history,” Spock says. “Your Earth was on the verge of a dark ages. Whole populations were being bombed out of existence.” It's difficult to believe these dates were chosen at random. If Gene L. Coon and Carey Wilbur wanted a more futuristic feel they would either have been less specific about the years Khan ruled, 1992 to 1996 as Spock tells us, or they would probably have gone for a date after the millennium. The 1990's represent a time the Star Trek target audience could reasonably expect to see, Carey Wilbur died in 1998 aged 81. These dates have the double advantage of allowing the audience to hear the characters talk about their personal future as if it was the ancient past, and giving the audience a frisson of excitement in much the same way James Cameron gives the date of Judgement Day as August 29^th 1997 in 1991's Terminator 2: Judgment Day.

Crew deaths: None, again. Assuming the security guard Khan hits is just knocked unconscious.
Running total: 25

Top Ten

Twenty episodes into the first series. Here's how my ranking of the top ten episodes has changed since I got to episode ten.

The Corbomite Manouver
Arena

Balance Of Terror
The Naked Time
The Galileo Seven

The Squire Of Gothos
Charlie X

Tomorrow Is Yesterday

Shore Leave

The Enemy Within

The last time I did this, the top four were The Corbomite Manouver, The Naked Time, Charlie X, and The Enemy Within. Everything else has been pushed out from that first top ten . Still languishing at the very bottom of the list is What Are Little Girls Made Of?

Court Martial

Isaac Asimov had a book published in 1968 called Asimov's Mysteries. A collection of science fiction stories which worked according to the rules of the mystery genre. Asimov wrote in his introduction to the book,

“I was told that 'by its very nature' science fiction would not play fair with the reader. In a science fiction story, the detective could say, 'But as you know, Watson, ever since 2175, when all Spaniards learned to speak French, Spanish has been a dead language. How came Juan Lopez, then, to speak those significant words in Spanish'. Or else, he could have his detective whip out an odd device and say, 'as you know, Watson, my pocket-frannistan is perfectly capable of detecting the hidden jewel in a trice.'
You don't spring new devices on the reader and solve the mystery with them. You don't take

advantage of future history to introduce ad hoc phenomena. In fact, you carefully explain all facets of the future background well in advance so the reader may have a decent chance to see the solution. The fictional detective can make use only of facts known to the reader in the present or of 'facts' of the fictional future, which will be carefully explained beforehand.”

Asimov became firm friends with Roddenberry, and a supporter of Star Trek. Would he have approved of Court Martial? The story certainly fits the criteria Asimov gives in the above quote.

Inside the trial format is a straightforward mystery. Is Kirk lying, or is the infallible computer wrong? Kirk says he followed procedure during an ion storm and went to red alert before jettisoning a research pod which was endangering the ship. Kirk admits he killed the pod's occupant Ben Finney, but he says Finney was too slow in leaving the pod after Kirk went to red alert. The computer says Kirk jettisoned the pod before going to red alert, and is therefore either lying or incompetent. The script doesn't cheat by relying on made-up devices like Asimov's fantastically named pocket-frannistan. Instead Spock makes a logical deduction from the available evidence. He programmed the computer, and now he can beat it at chess whereas previously the best he could hope for was a draw. Therefore someone has tampered with the computer to change the records it holds.

The closest the episode gets to gimmickry is the ending where the trial moves to the Enterprise bridge after the ship has been evacuated. The Enterprise's internal microphones are massively amplified allowing the people involved in the trial to hear the heartbeats of everyone on board. One by one, McCoy uses a noise cancelling microphone on the trial personnel to remove their heartbeats until only one can still be heard; Finney's. The man Kirk supposedly killed is still alive. He faked his own death, and the evidence against Kirk, and is still hiding on the Enterprise. Even here the story plays fair. Finney's presence on the Enterprise could have been presented by showing an inch by inch bow to stern search of the Enterprise, or by using the ship's sensors. The whole sequence with the microphone is simply a more visually, and audibly, interesting solution.

The major cast all put in good performances. In one short scene William Shatner is brilliant when Kirk is asked to explain in his own words what happened. Shatner plays the scene quietly with very little movement, or expression, and his voice stays clipped and level. Kirk starts out subdued and you can visibly see his confidence grow as he begins to hope he might turn this situation round. It's a performance helped by the directors decision to shoot the scene as a slow zoom into a close-up of Shatner's face, and the editor's decision to play the scene with a minimum of cutting to reaction shots. For a second it's possible to believe Kirk has won the court round by sheer force of personality before the inevitable crushing blow as Areel Shaw shows Finney's faked visual extract from the Enterprise logs.

Unfortunately the story comes with a massive side order of melodrama. Heightened emotions and situations are the order of the day. The tone is set when Finney's daughter bursts into Commodore Stone's office and hysterically accuses Kirk of killing her father. Then we get Cogley the computer hating lawyer. Kirk's old flame Areel Shaw being forced to prosecute him (“Because, Jim Kirk, my dear old love, I am the prosecution, and I have to do my very best to have you slapped down hard. Broken out of the service, in disgrace.”). Lots of courtroom action with people shouting “objection” and “sustained”. And finally poor old Ben Finney.

In the review of The Corbomite Maneuver I talked about television's need to compress maximum information into the minimum time. There we had Navigator Bailey the world's worst bridge officer. Here we have rambling Ben Finney. Cacking, paranoid, bug-eyed, unshaven Ben Finney who, talks about himself in the third person; the ultimate sign of TV madness. “Except for Finney, and his one mistake a long time ago, but they don't forget.” Finney's one mistake was to leave a circuit open to the atomic pile on the USS Republic. Ensign Kirk found and logged the mistake which could have destroyed the ship, and Finney went to the bottom of the promotion pile where he nursed a grudge against Kirk which turned into hate.

It's not that Finney's revenge plan against Kirk lacks sense, it's that Finney as he appears on screen doesn't seem to be the person to carry it out. If this was a spur of the moment idea he comes across as someone who no longer possesses the skills for the fast but detailed work we must assume is required to reprogramme a computer before records are accessed, and leave no obvious traces. Alternatively, if this is a plan which has been maturing for some time it seems unlikely no one has noticed just how mad Finney has become while he waits for the exact combination of circumstances necessary for his plan. It's ironic that in the episode where we first see the Enterprise personnel officer we also see Finney, her greatest failure. 

Bubbling away in the background of Court Martial are a couple of odd moments regarding the planet Vulcan. During the courtroom scenes Spock is referred to, and describes himself, as Vulcanian. Nothing odd about that, although it sounds a little clumsy. Except, in the opening moments of act one Kirk goes to the M11 Starbase club where he greets one of his ex-Academy classmates with the line, “I haven't seen you since the Vulcanian expedition.” Expedition in this case sounds like it is being used in the military sense of the word, which is strange, but also reminded me of this exchange from The Conscience Of The King.

SPOCK: My father's race was spared the dubious benefits of alcohol.

MCCOY: Now I know why they were conquered.

The Conscience Of The King was filmed 12^th, Court Martial 14^th, and in the middle was The Galileo Seven where the stranded crew display hostility to Spock which is out of keeping with their status as Starfleet Officers, if not completely inappropriate. Could these be remnants of unused backstory for Spock or the planet Vulcan? Was someone on the production team toying with the idea, or under the impression, that Vulcan had been at war with, and conquered by, Earth? These are still early days for the series. New ideas are always being tried out, and sometimes rejected. Having set up a model for time travel in The Naked Time a different one was used in Tomorrow Is Yesterday. Or look at the way Sulu is shuffled from  astrosciences to helmsman. Even concepts like the Federation, or photon torpedoes, which today are core parts of Star Trek, didn't appear until Arena. 

Kirk also gets a couple of moments which shine an odd light on his backstory. None of the old classmates Kirk meets in the M11 Starbase club seem happy to see him again. One, Timothy, all but accuses Kirk of murdering Finney, and appears to speak for the others when he says, “Ben was a friend of ours.” This scene has a very real story purpose to get the episode off to a good dramatic start, and to contrast Kirk's casual attitude with the very real danger to his career. However it seems odd in the light of Kirk's service record. Think of all the things we've seen him do. It's easy to understand why Commodore Stone starts the investigation into Kirk's actions. He has no choice. It's harder to understand the response of the other Captains but it ties in with information from earlier episodes. In Where No Man Has Gone Before, Mitchell talks about Kirk at the Academy, “A stack of books with legs. The first thing I ever heard from upperclassmen was, Watch out for Lieutenant Kirk. In his class, you either think or sink.” Then in Shore Leave Kirk describes himself as, “absolutely grim.” Their dislike here makes it easy to imagine Kirk as a bookish little prig who was hated by his fellow students. The incident on the USS Republic probably confirmed their bad opinion of Kirk as a nasty little cheeser who wouldn't even give his friend a break.

Crew deaths: None, although if Kirk really is that disliked in Starfleet, it's funny to imagine all the other dead crewmen have faked their own deaths and are also hiding on the Enterprise hoping to get Kirk charged with murder.
Running total: 25