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

I, Mudd

A lot of the criticisms applied to Catspaw should also apply to I, Mudd. Another frothy undemanding episode involving familiar story elements; instead of playing hunt-the-power-source, the Enterprise crew play hunt-the-controlling-android, and at the end the superior androids are confused to death by a bunch of silly humans. There's no great secret to why I, Mudd works and Catspaw doesn't; I, Mudd is better.

The tone helps. I, Mudd is unambiguously a comedy. Not a genre Star Trek has attempted before. There's been funny lines, and funny scenes, and since Gene L. Coon arrived as producer a lot of episodes have ended with a joke but the closet Star Trek came to outright comedy was Tomorrow Is Yesterday. An episode with moments of farce as characters were unexpectedly beamed up to the Enterprise. Now suddenly, in production order, there are two comedy episodes in a row I, Mudd and The Trouble With Tribbles. Perhaps Gene Roddenberry took a couple of weeks holiday.

The lighter touch definitely helps. Catspaw is not a po-faced episode (Spock's line, “very bad poetry, Captain,” is a decent quip) but attempts to present Syliva and Korob as serious threats don't work. Suspension of disbelief is finally pushed to breaking point with the reveal of the pair's true forms. As a representation of, “a life form totally alien to our galaxy,” the cute puppets don't work. In the context of a Buffy The Vampire Slayer gag (the ending to Fear Itself where Grachnar the fear demon turns out to be tiny) they might have been more acceptable. However, comedy may cover a multitude of sins but it would still take more than a few jokes to make Catspaw work successfully as a story. Yes, I, Mudd has some laughs but at its core is a well constructed script.

Unlike Syliva and Korob the motivations of the androids are clearly laid out and easy to understand. They have decided the human race is too dangerous to have free run of the galaxy. They will take the hijacked Enterprise and use it to serve man, curbing humans most acquisitive instincts and subtly controlling them in the process. The plot puts a different spin on the androids plan by having them act out misguided good intentions. Like The Changeling, I, Mudd shows us a threat which keeps escalating. First android Norman hijacks the Enterprise. Then Harry Mudd is revealed to be the brains behind the plan. Then Mudd explains his goal is to take over the Enterprise and fly it round the galaxy with his own android crew. And then the androids play their joker, they have their own plan and Harry Mudd is as much a prisoner as Kirk. The plot of I, Mudd is actually a little more sophisticated than The Changeling. In The Changeling the plot is a series of pull-back and reveals with each pull-back showing a little more of the bigger picture; the threat to the Enterprise is a damaged space probe called Nomad; Kirk must keep Nomad friendly; even friendly Nomad is a danger; Nomad learns the location of Earth. It's a linear plot whereas the android double-cross means I, Mudd ends on a twist. The audience are expecting the last act to be Kirk and crew against Mudd and androids, when it actually becomes Kirk, and crew, and Mudd against the androids.

If this is beginning to make I, Mudd sound like Shakespeare it shouldn't. By Star Trek's standards this remains a lightweight story, but it clearly demonstrates the care that even lightweight stories require. I, Mudd is full of moments which show the script has been carefully thought through. Most notably when Uhura pretends to betray Kirk and exposes his fake escape attempt because the androids are alert for an attempt and will relax their guard once it has been thwarted. Another script might have skipped this scene and jumped straight to the real escape. It's a character moment, and is not essential to the plot, but because it shows the Enterprise crew thinking through the implications of their captivity it adds a little fine detail to the story. Gene L. Coon's fingerprints seem to be all over this script, all of the characters get something to do (with the exception of poor Mr Sulu who only gets lines in the teaser and then disappears from the story). It's tempting to wonder if there was some anxiety about doing a straight comedy, because extra work does seem to have been done to bolster the script and it withstands scrutiny much better than Catspaw or The Alternative Factor.

Opinions about the comedy will depend on the viewer. It's often quite broad, and much of it relies on Shatner and Nimoy's deadpan reactions to Roger C. Carmel blustering (“That, sir, is an outrageous assumption!”). There's some real fun with the use of language (“Next, we take the Alices on a trip through Wonderland.”) but the highlight is Spock's use of logic to confuse two of the Alice model androids. A sequence which pulls of the difficult trick of being funny, in character for Spock, and also weirdly logical. 

ALICE 27: Mister Spock, you have a remarkably logical and analytical mind.

SPOCK: Thank you. [Spock attempts a neck pinch on Alice 210, it has no effect.]

ALICE 210: Is there some significance to this action?

SPOCK: I love you [points at Alice 27]. However, I hate you. [looks at Alice 210]

ALICE 210: But I'm identical in every way with Alice Twenty Seven.

SPOCK: Yes, of course. That is exactly why I hate you. Because you are identical.

That exchange is part of the climax of the episode. An audacious ten minute scene of Kirk, Spock, Harry Mudd, and the rest of the bridge crew confusing the androids into shutting down. It's tempting to label this sequence as indescribable but that gives the impression I watched I, Mudd babbling, “no words... should have sent a poet,” like Jodi Foster in Contact. It's a ten minute absurdist segment, like a freeform surrealist play within the episode itself. The cast play invisible violins and dance to imaginary music, 'kill' Scotty by pointing their fingers at him and whistling, and mess around with non-existent explosives. I don't like it much but have to admire the simple fact it exists and was broadcast in primetime on NBC.

I'm not keen on the sequence because it pushes the limits of believability of Star Trek. I can buy Kirk being Starfleet's greatest Captain, and irresistible to any woman in a thirty light year radius, but here he, and the rest of the bridge crew, suddenly become expert actors and improvisers. Either their flawless routine is made up on the spot or they've spent time scripting and rehearsing it; neither explanation works for me. To be fair, someone at the time must have held similar concerns because there is an attempt to have Kirk direct the action, pointing at people and cueing their lines, but this just emphasises the play acting nature of the scene and leaves me wondering why the androids get so confused. And that's probably my biggest complaint. The androids can be shut down by playing let's pretend. Derek Griffiths pretending to be a jelly on Play School would blow their minds. Presumably the original creators never let their children near the androids or their brains would be fused by the sight of a six year old gallumphing around and telling everyone she was a ballet dancing princess.

Director Marc Daniels keeps the story grounded and someone, possibly assistant director Phil Rawlins, does excellent work keeping track of the extras used for the duplicate androids. A few split screen effects, most notably when Harry Mudd introduces the Alice series, sell the idea of identical androids but for the most part the androids are achieved with one set of twins, a lot of identical costumes and some wigs. The clever use of extras is demonstrated in the scene where the androids reveal their true plan.

[A wide shot of the throne room. Harry fusses around saying goodbye to the androids. The camera pushes forwards and Kirk enters the rear of the throne room set with Spock and the other Alice twin]

KIRK: Mudd, a few questions I want to ask you.

MUDD: Afraid I won't have time to answer them. My bags are all packed. The androids will take the Enterprise out of orbit in less than twenty four hours. But it's been a real pleasure having you here, Kirk. Is there anything I can get for you?

...Skipped the bit with Stella...
MUDD: Alice Number 2, my little love. Will you have my bags transported up to the ship? [During this line the camera pulls back at an angle favouring both the twins, until we can see four Alices. The two twins and the two extras]

ANDROIDS: No, my Lord Mudd.

MUDD: What?

NORMAN: We can no longer take your orders, Harry Mudd.

MUDD: Why not?

 NORMAN: Our makers were wise. They programmed us to serve.

MUDD: Yes, but that's what I'm saying. Put my bags on the ship.

KIRK: Harry, I think they have something else in mind.

NORMAN: You are correct, Captain. Harry Mudd is flawed, even for a human being...

 

NORMAN:[Continues over reaction shot] We recognised this from the beginning but used his knowledge to obtain more specimens....

 NORMAN:[Continues in close-up]Your species is self-destructive...

 NORMAN:[Continues over reaction shot] You need our help.

KIRK: We prefer to help ourselves. We make mistakes, but we're human. And maybe that's the word that best explains us.

NORMAN: We will not harm you, but we will take the starship...

NORMAN:[Continues] and you will remain on this planet.

MUDD: Now, look here. You can't do that! Now, listen. To serve us, you must obey us.

ANDROIDS: No, my Lord Mudd.

MUDD: Alice number One... [still the same shot, the camera pans showing Spock and one of the Alice twins at the back of the room, Harry walks towards her] 

MUDD: [Continues] obey me. Put my bags on that ship!

[Alice 1 gives him a push. Harry goes reeling backwards]

NORMAN: We cannot allow any race as greedy and corruptible as yours...
 

NORMAN:[Continues over reaction shot] to have free run of the galaxy.

SPOCK: [As Spock speaks he walks forwards and the camera pans with him. One of the Alice twins follows and moves to stand behind Spock] I'm curious, Norman. Just how do you intend to stop them?

NORMAN: We shall serve them. Their kind will be eager to accept our service....

NORMAN:[Continues over reaction shot] Soon they will become completely dependent upon us.

ALICE 99: Their aggressive and acquisitive instincts will be under our control.

NORMAN: We shall take care of them.

SPOCK: Eminently practical.

KIRK: The whole galaxy controlled by your kind?

NORMAN: Yes, Captain.... 

Norman: [Continues in close-up] And we shall serve them and you will be happy, and controlled.

If that seems confusing to read, it was even more complicated to write, and I suspect it was most complicated of all to film. Kudos to whoever staged the scene for keeping track of the geography and making sure the two twins were used as effectively as possible. They are moved between shots and positioned very carefully though the sequence to make sure they give the impression of a planet full of identical androids.

Enterprise crew deaths: None, True to his word Norman is very careful not to kill anyone.

Running total: 35

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.

A Taste Of Armageddon

Passage of time stops us from seeing some stories properly. Watching Space Seed without thinking of Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan is like trying not to think of blue elephants. Tomorrow Is Yesterday used to be a story about the Enterprise crew travelling back in time to the near present, now it's a story about them travelling back in time to a historical period. Likewise the gap between now and the 1967 broadcast of The City On The Edge Of Forever is larger than the gap between when that story aired, and when it was set in 1930 (some of the production team probably had memories of 1930, Gene Roddenberry was born in 1921, Robert Justman and Gene L. Coon in 1926).

So, time makes fools of us all. That's fairly obvious. Unfortunately for some Star Trek episodes what it also does is remove us from the original context. Breaking the connection between a then current event and a writer making it into a story. Maybe the reason Dagger Of The Mind feels so flat is because it refers back to some specific event or scandal in 1960s' psychiatry, and with the roots of the story forgotten by a modern audience the episode loses some of its meaning. 

A Taste Of Armageddon has been luckier. It works as a story on its own terms. You don't need to know the allegory to appreciate a story where Kirk visits a planet fighting an insane war, and decides to get both sides talking with his own personal brand of intervention. Other stories weren't so lucky (space hippies). According to David Gerrold in his book The World Of Star Trek it's an allegory of Vietnam body counts. These came about because the US was fighting to preserve the South Vietnamese government rather than invade the north. Measuring progress was difficult and so the idea was to count the number of enemy deaths. Kill enough of the enemy and the war could be won by simple attrition. Put in this context A Taste Of Armageddon snaps into focus. The relevance of computers calculating the numbers of dead on either side of the never ending war between the planets Eminiar VII and Vendikar, and the required population obediently marching into disintegration machines so reality matches the numbers, suddenly makes sense not only as a story but within a real world context.

A Taste Of Armageddon hits similar plot beats to The Return Of The Archons ; the Enterprise visits a planet to find out what happened to a vanished Federation ship; there's a computer which, in one way or another, controls the lives of the inhabitants; the Enterprise landing party is cut off from the ship when it comes under attack; Kirk destroys the computer forcing the inhabitants to take control of their lives. However, within that similar plot framework both episodes tell suitably different stories and of the two A Taste Of Armageddon is superior. Partly, this is because Kirk has to work harder in A Taste Of Armageddon. He makes decisions, and takes action, and argues his case to Anan 7, Mea 3, and the High Councillors; all of whom are quite happy to keep the 500 year status quo. Kirk's decision to destroy the war computers is more morally grey, and so more interesting, than when he confuses the Landru computer to death. Once Spock joins Kirk in the High Council chamber Kirk is in a position of strength. The landing party have reclaimed their communicators and phasers. Kirk could just leave. No one on Eminiar VII wants to go back to physical warfare. There is no underground movement like the one on Beta III. Kirk uses saving his crew as an excuse to intervene. As an outsider he can see the bigger picture. As he says, “Death, destruction, disease, horror. That's what war is all about, Anan. That's what makes it a thing to be avoided. You've made it neat and painless. So neat and painless, you've had no reason to stop it.” The war has lasted 500 years, it could go on forever. But is Kirk right to give these horrors of war back to people who have clearly expressed a desire not to see them return?

Although the population of Eminiar VII is represented by the standard dozen or so extras they've being given slightly different actions to perform. When Spock nerve pinches a guard, people mill around and rubberneck. Kirk has to tell them to get out of the way before he blows up one of the disintegration machines. Later, when Spock rescues Ambassador Fox, extras run as Spock's armed party approaches. This is more than just a society of leaders and security guards and as a result it feels like the most fully realised world we've seen so far in Star Trek.

A Taste Of Armageddon gives the audience a new Federation official to roll their eyes at, Ambassador Fox. Although not quite as one dimensional as Galactic High Commissioner Ferris from The Galileo Seven, his early actions are deliberately and unfavourably contrasted with Kirk's. 

UHURA: Captain, message coming in from Eminiar Seven. Sir, it's code seven-ten.

KIRK: Are you sure?

UHURA: Positive. It repeats over and over.

FOX: Is that supposed to mean something?

KIRK: Code seven-ten means under no circumstances are we to approach that planet. No circumstances what so ever.

FOX: You will disregard that signal, Captain.

KIRK: Mister Fox, it is their planet.

FOX: Captain, in the past twenty years, thousands of lives have been lost in this quadrant. Lives that could have been saved if the Federation had a treaty port here. We mean to have that port and I'm here to get it.

KIRK: By disregarding code seven-ten, you might well involve us in an interplanetary war.

FOX: I'm quite prepared to take that risk.

KIRK: You are. I'm thinking about this ship, my crew.

FOX: I have my orders, Captain, and now you have yours. You will proceed on course. Achieve orbit status and just leave the rest to me. You're well aware that my mission gives me the power of command. I now exercise it. You will proceed on course. That's a direct order.

The audience is meant to tut at the stupidity and inflexibility of Fox, and punch the air when Scotty refuses to obey his orders and lower the Enterprise shields. Later Fox does change his mind when he discovers the extent of Anan 7's duplicity but for large parts of the story he's there just to be wrong. Surely there needs to be a better reason for creating an irritating character beyond allowing the writer to nudge the audience in the ribs and go, “check out this dunce” In the end teleplay writers Robert Hamner and Gene L. Coon are so keen to get Fox into trouble they trip themselves up. Fox beams down while the Enterprise shields are still up; something Coon has forgotten he mentioned as impossible in his own script for Arena. The cumulative effect of characters like Ferris, and Fox, is not to make the Enterprise crew look good in comparison but to make the Federation look bad.

Something else which makes the Federation look bad is General Order 24. When Anan 7 contacts the Enterprise Kirk yells, “General Order Twenty Four. Two hours! In two hours!” Subsequent dialogue fills us in on what General Order 24 involves.

KIRK: ...You heard me give General Order Twenty Four. That means in two hours the Enterprise will destroy Eminiar Seven.

ANAN: Planetary defence System, open fire on the Enterprise!

SECURITY: I'm sorry, Councilman. The target has moved out of range.

ANAN: You wouldn't do this. Hundreds of millions of people.

KIRK: I didn't start it, Councilman, but I'm liable to finish it.

and

SCOTT: Open a channel, Lieutenant. This is the commander of the USS Enterprise. All cities and installations on Eminiar Seven have been located, identified, and fed into our fire-control system. In one hour and forty five minutes the entire inhabited surface of your planet will be destroyed.

It's clearly not a bluff. Once Kirk has recovered his communicator he contacts the Enterprise to reiterate his instructions and, once the war computers are destroyed, takes time to contact the Enterprise to cancel implementation of the order. While the audience is never told the exact wording of General Order 24 it must be a reasonably explicit instruction to destroy a civilisation or the infrastructure of a civilisation. How else could Scotty know to respond to Kirk's brief order by targeting all cities and installations on Eminiar VII? And, given that the Federation has written instructions to make sure their crews follow the correct procedure when destroying civilisations, how often does this happen?

Crew deaths: None, again. Nobody has died since Arena which was five episodes ago.
Running total: 25

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