By Any Other Name

When talking about Star Trek it's easy to get hung up on big name stories like The Trouble With Tribbles. While these episodes have come to define the series the real joy often comes from discovering (or rediscovering) the stories which don't persistently hang around in top ten lists. By Any Other Name is one of those episodes and it turns out to be a little gem. 

By Any Other Name has a script which constantly wrong foots the viewer about exactly what kind of story they should expect. The episode starts out looking as if it will be I, Mudd with aliens. The teaser, and act one, focus on the Kelvans plot to take over the Enterprise. Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and two other Enterprise crew, are kept hostage to ensure the good behaviour of everyone else while the Enterprise is converted for the 300 year journey back to the Kelvan's home in the Andromeda galaxy. This episode being another addition to the list of stories suggesting the universe outside our galaxy is full of hideous monsters. Spock describes the Kelvans in their native form as, “immense beings [with] a hundred limbs which resemble tentacles."

The Kelvan's main weapon is a nifty little belt device which neutralises nerve impulses to the voluntary muscles leaving the target paralysed. All the elements are in place for this to be a generic Star Trek episode. The conversion of the Enterprise for its intergalactic voyage looks as if is there to add an arbitrary deadline to the story; forcing Kirk to save the day before the Enterprise departs. The aliens main advantage is technological, the belt paralyser, and when head alien Rojan mentions the neural field radiates from a central projector the episode looks set to turn into a game of hunt the power source; like Catspaw. It's easy to imagine how the next three acts will play out. A sequence of captures and escapes as Kirk tries to get hold of a paralysis projector, locate the central unit, and then turn the tables on the aliens by paralysing them until they have learned their lesson.

Still, even at this early stage it's clear the story is more interesting than average. There's an unusual amount of continuity. Spock's prison break technique from A Taste Of Armageddon (using the Vulcan mind meld to trick a guard into believing the Enterprise crew had escaped) is mentioned along with the energy barrier around the galaxy from Where No Man Has Gone Before. We also get to see the Kelvans take over the Enterprise, something which happened entirely off screen in I, Mudd. The takeover is a brisk little 60 second sequence of Kelvans appearing in key sections of the ship and paralysing the crew. It nicely demonstrates the Kelvan's technical superiority and ruthless efficiency. Plus, someone has found some money to give the Kelvans a signature effect. A blue twinkling visual when people are paralysed. This effect is completely unnecessary from a storytelling perspective. It's obvious when the the belt paralyser is used. There's a sound effect and everyone freezes (usually in some exaggerated “oh I can't move” pose, I particularly like Deforest Kelly's finger pointing, opened mouthed, position when McCoy is frozen while turning to say something to Spock). Still it's great that someone found the cash for the effect. It really adds visual interest to the scenes where it features, and its use is positively lavish considering Star Trek's normal frugal use of effects. Where you might see phasers fired once or twice in an episode, the Kelvan's belt paralyser is used twice in the teaser, and then another five times in act one.

The first real indication that events are not going to run as expected comes after the first escape attempt when Rojan tells Kirk, “this cannot go unpunished.” It turns out the Kelvans can reduce humans to small three dimensional objects, “the flesh and brain and what you call the personality, distilled down into these compact shapes.” People distilled down can be restored, but if the shape is crushed the person dies. Rojan demonstrates this on Lieutenant Shea and Yeoman Thompson, crushing Yeoman Thompson's distilled essence and killing her.

Yeoman Thompson's death may be the most disturbing seen on Star Trek. All we see on screen is a three dimensional shape being crushed to powder but somehow it's a weirdly graphic moment. What makes this killing so gruesome? It's hard to describe exactly but it's a combination of causes. There's the demonstration of Rojan's ruthlessness in forcing Kirk to watch a crew member being killed, and his killing of Thompson is literally more hands on than if he had shot her with a phaser, or zapped her with a bolt of lightning. There's the demonstration of Kirk's powerlessness, he cannot do anything except stand and watch. There's also an illogical attachment between Yeoman Thompson and the crushed shape. We've seen Thompson reduced, and we've been told the shape represents her very essence, so it feels as if we are watching Rojan's hand squeezing not just her body but somehow her brain and thoughts as well. On a more physical level crushing the object is not easy. Rojan squeezes once, twice, three times. Each time breaking the object into smaller chunks. Thompson's death would not seem nearly so prolonged or brutal if the shape had immediately exploded into a puff of power, or if Rojan just squeezed it once before dropping the remains on the floor. Lastly it's all too easy to start trying to imagine what the ruin of Thompson's body would look like. Rojan says Thompson cannot be restored to life, but presumably her body could be reconverted back into flesh and blood.

Yeoman Thompson's death is one of those moments which grips the imagination. As the story heads into act two it surprises again when the Enterprise warps out of orbit, and what had looked as if it would be a largely planet based story instead transfers completely to the Enterprise. It rapidly becomes clear that talk of the energy barrier around the galaxy wasn't just to set up the plot. We will actually see the ship attempt to do what it could not in Where No Man Has Gone Before, breach the barrier and head out into intergalactic space. At the same time Spock and Scotty have come up with a suicide plan. The barrier is composed of negative energy. On Kirk's order Scotty will flood the matter-anti-matter nacelles with positive energy and the ship will be destroyed. The result is a tense sequence as Kirk agonises over his decision. It's well edited by film editor James D. Ballas, and made more exciting by simple but effective use of the standard Enterprise control panel beeping noise as Scotty waits for Kirk's order, and by reusing part of Sol Kaplan's score for The Doomsday Machine. The whole sequence is capped cleverly by splitting Chekov's line, “we... made it,” around a shot of the Enterprise zooming towards Andromeda.

Obviously in the end Kirk decides not to blow up the ship, and it's a matter of personal taste as to whether you think his decision was correct or not for the character. As Kirk says in Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan, “I don't believe in the no-win scenario.” Sacrificing the crew and ship would feel like Kirk was admitting there are no other possibilities. It solves the short term problem of what to do with this Kelvan scouting party, but for all Kirk knows there could be others. Or the failure of Rojan's group to report in could prompt the Kelvans to send another scouting party which the Federation don't know about, or worse a full scale invasion fleet. Plus at this point Kirk still has a full compliment of crew, he doesn't know Rojan plans to reduce them, so the humans outnumber the Kelvans, and the odds are in his favour. 

The scope of the story narrows in the later part of act three, and act four. With only four Enterprise crew remaining, Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and Scotty, the solution to the problem of defeating the Kelvans turns out to be tempting them with the pleasures of the flesh. Scotty gets Tomar drunk, Kirk seduces Kelinda, Spock expertly plays on Rojan's jealousy of Kirk and Kelinda, and McCoy starts injecting Hanar with stimulants while pretending to give vitamins to the alien. Amusingly no one seems to remember there's a fifth Kelvan on the bridge, Drea. While Tomar gets drunk, Kelinda gets snogged, Rojan gets furious, and McCoy gets Hanar hepped up on goofballs, Drea sits on the bridge patiently steering the ship on its 300 year journey towards Andromeda. She must be baffled to receive Rojan's order to reverse course. These scenes allow for some very good comedy, especially Scotty's drinking contest with Tomar, but there's something disappointing about By Any Other Name ending up as another story in which clever humans outwit superior beings. It's also not helped by repeating similar themes from Return To Tomorrow, although By Any Other Name was made first and is the superior episode of the two.

If the solution to beating the Kelvans is disappointing By Any Other Name does deserve praise for ultimately being resolved by diplomacy and an offer of assistance; admittedly after a fist fight in one of the recreation rooms. A lesser story might have ended with Kirk hoisting the Kelvans on their own petard, maybe paralysing them, or reducing them to cubes and leaving the problem for the future to deal with. One genuinely nice touch about the ending is that the much sought after neural paralysers end up being a Macguffin, and irrelevant to the resolution, to the extent that Scotty passes out just after getting hold of one. Which is probably just as well. The Enterprise corridors are littered with the shapes of the reduced crew. Imagine Scotty trying to deliver the projector while drunk. Kicking a shape here, tripping on one there, knocking off a corner, cracking another, and then probably falling over and crushing a whole load of them at once. 

Enterprise crew deaths: Just one, poor Yeoman Thompson. 
Running total: 44

Misc: More messing around with the closing credits. This time we have a still not from an episode, or a makeup test but a blooper. As William Blackburn peels the Return To Tomorrow android makeup from his head someone, possibly makeup artist Fred Phillips, says, "well, son, you wanted show business. Goddammit, you got it!" and then walks into shot and helps Blackburn pull off some of the latex."

Wolf In The Fold

One week after Obsession asked the audience to consider the question “will Kirk sacrifice everything for vengeance?” To which the only answer can be no. Wolf In The Fold asks the audience, “has Scotty suddenly become a murderer?”

How much does this matter? The audience goes into Obsession knowing Kirk's desire for revenge at all costs will take place within strictly defined boundaries. He's not going to strap himself to the anti-matter as bait and shriek, “from hell's heart I stab at thee,” before detonating. The episode succeeds or fails not on the strength of the ending, but on the way the story is told, and Obsession works because it is packed with incident. When the Enterprise crew discover the cloud vampire can travel through space it opens up the story. Kirk is no longer trying to track down a single monster skulking on a planet. Suddenly there's a high speed pursuit. Then the creature turns to attack and invades the ship becoming only the second foe to directly breach the sanctity of the Enterprise under its own power; Trelane was the first; others like Nomad are brought on board.

By contrast Dagger Of The Mind asks the audience, “is there something rotten in the Tantalus penal colony?” The episode fails because the script fills the next three acts with Kirk investigating, and finding that everything in the colony is good, before the reveal at the end of act three that there is something nasty going on after all. The episode doesn't attempt to make the investigation itself interesting or different (the one exception being the introduction of the Vulcan mind meld). There's no acknowledgement that setting up a place as nice, and then revealing it to have a dark secret, is an antique piece of storytelling. The script plods on as if the viewer has never encountered this type of story before and expects us to be amazed at the twist that Doctor Adams, the only other major character in the story, is actually the villain.

So is Wolf In The Fold like Obsession or Dagger Of The Mind? At the start it does look like Wolf In The Fold expects the audience to sit through 48 minutes of seeing Scotty accused of murder, before the surprise reveal of his innocence in the last act. In the teaser, even before the first murder is committed, the script heaps on unconvincing psychobabble to try and make the viewer believe something is wrong with Scotty.

MCCOY: ... Don't forget, the explosion that threw Scotty against a bulkhead was caused by a woman.

KIRK: Physically he's all right. Am I right in assuming that?

MCCOY: Oh, yes, yes. As a matter of fact, considerable psychological damage could have been caused. For example, his total resentment toward women.

But having set up the plot Robert Bloch's script seems to realise it's a narrative dead end to wring drama out of Scotty's predicament. Instead the story takes a turn towards farce, trapping Scotty in more unlikely and implausible situations. There are three murders, and each one makes Scotty look increasingly guilty. One of the problems for a writer is that the audience is often ahead of you in terms of plot development. The script does seem to acknowledge it knows the watching audience are waiting for Kirk and Spock to pull some technological rabbit out of a hat and clear Mr. Scott's name. At least, the watching adult audience knows Scotty can't be the killer. It's important to make the distinction between the way children and adults watch television. I can remember being a much more innocent viewer and essentially taking it on trust that what was shown was really happening.* If I saw Wolf In The Fold when I was younger I would have been horrified at what Scotty was doing.

There is certainly plenty of incident along the way. Aside from the murders we have a planet of prostitutes. “A completely hedonistic society,” as McCoy tells Scotty. Obviously the script can't come flat out and say it, but there are enough hints for dirty minded people like myself. Lines of dialogue trail off into meaningful ellipsis. Looking around the club Scotty asks, “you mean to tell me all these women, that all this is..?” Shortly afterwards Kirk tells McCoy, “I know a little place across town where the women...” Jealousy is disapproved of on Argelius II and men there should not get upset when they see the woman they love flirting with other men. In act two there's a séance, and in act three a courtroom scene. Two weeks after a similar one in The Deadly Years. The courtroom scene here is shorter, and has a better mix of characters. It does spend some time rehashing the plot from acts one and two, but generally it does a better job of moving the story on than the competency hearing in The Deadly Years.

It's worth taking stock of the plot at the end of act two when all three murders have been committed, and trying to work out how the viewer at home might expect the story to develop. Heroes falsely accused of murder are not a new development. Richard Kimble was on the run in The Fugitive from 1963 to August 1967. Obviously Scotty will be proved innocent, and if the murderer isn't a regular it has to be one of the guest cast.

Tark: 10-1. He's the father to Kara the first victim and appears to have no connection or motive for the second and third deaths. He's also not present for the killing of Lieutenant Tracy.

Morla: 5-1. Kara's fiancé. He has a motive for killing Kara, jealousy. Maybe killing her gave him a taste for murder? Like Tark he's not present when Lieutenant Tracy is murdered, but this is a science fiction show so he could have some unlikely gimmick which allows him to be the killer.

Mr. Hengist: evens. He's a petty bureaucrat more concerned about procedure and stopping Kirk muscling in on the investigation than finding out the truth. Like the first two suspects he's not present for the death of Lieutenant Tracy but before leaving he does see her beam down. He also seems too keen to railroad Scotty for the murder. However, in television drama the more suspicious a character the more likely they are to be innocent. He's the person you might expect to apologise to Kirk at the end of the episode by saying something like, “I may not agree with your methods but you get results.”

Prefect Jaris: 2-1 (favourite). Highest official on the planet Argelius II. Two murders take place in his house. His wife Sybo is the third victim. Jaris is also the last person to have the knife before it disappears prior to the murder of Lieutenant Tracy. He suggests Lieutenant Tracy use the “small chamber below this room” where she is killed. Could he have staged the first two murders to divert suspicion when he kills his wife? Jaris chides Kirk with the line, “you're behaving very much like a man who is desperately trying anything to save his friend. Would you be as desperate to save Argelius as a space port for your Starfleet?” Is there a political motive there? Later he mentions “I have already heard talk of closing Argelius to space vehicles.” Blaming three brutal murders on an off-worlder could allow him to consolidate power, and dispose of a troublesome wife at the same time. He is on screen with Kirk, McCoy, Scotty, and his wife at the time of the second murder (a solid alibi) but this is a science fiction show so we could be dealing with clones, or evil duplicates.

Find someone who hasn't seen Wolf In The Fold. Sit them down in front of the DVD and pause at the end of act two. Ask them who they think is the murderer. I'm quietly confident Jaris will be the main suspect.

Of course, none of the above suspects are guilty of murder. The revelation Robert Bloch has up his sleeve is unique. It is simultaneously brilliant and utterly stupid, like a scriptwriting version of Schrödinger’s cat. The murders were actually committed by Jack the Ripper. An immortal, non-corporeal killer, who feeds on the fear of his victims, is capable of possessing people, and is currently animating Mr. Hengist. Probably no one saw that coming. The reveal of the true murderer is mad but actually quite clever. Two clues have been hiding in plain sight for quite some time. First is the location of the story on Argelius II, the planet of the prostitutes. Where else might you expect Jack the Ripper to strike? Secondly there is Sybo's use of the name Redjac. Corrupting Jack's nickname of Red Jack like this is doubly clever. It conceals the identity of the killer from any viewer familiar with Ripper history, and it also makes sense for an empath on another world to be unsure about the precise pronunciation of an unfamiliar name.

From this point on the plot takes a turn towards the endearingly bonkers as Jack possesses the Enterprise computer and threatens everyone with a horrible death. He is finally driven back into Hengist's body and beamed into deep space. To stop Jack's threats making the crew scared, and allowing Jack to feed on their fear, Kirk orders the crew to be tranquillized. Frankly the crew don't look tranquillized, they all look stoned so who knows what McCoy is pumping into them. Certainly Mr. Sulu is in no condition to steer the ship, and the scenes of the happy crew look a lot like those with the orb from the Woody Allen film Sleeper.

Two elements of the plot are left unclear. Firstly, was Mr Scott's hand on the dagger? This is understandably underplayed, the production team wouldn't want any hint that Scotty was involved in the killings. Jack's ability to move from person to person would seem to make it easier for him to possess someone close to the victim rather than try to do the deed as Hengist, and then cloud any witnesses' minds. Scotty's memory loss would then be explained by his mind being overwhelmed by Jack's presence rather than any induced amnesia. In the case of the first two killings the script seems to lean towards implicating Jack in Scotty's body. For the murder of Sybo it's not so clear. Scotty talks about standing up to help Sybo and finding something in the way. “Cold, it was, like a stinking draught out of a slaughterhouse, but it wasn't really there.” This sounds like Jack in his true form. Possibly killing Sybo in panic when it hears her shouting out his names.

Secondly, when does Hengist die? Is it when Kirk punches him, or has he been a corpse animated by Jack all along? It looks as if Jack has been using Hengist's body for years, possibly since he came to Argelius from Rigel. Jack/Hengist tries to escape when accused of being the killer so he knows he is guilty, there's no amnesia, which suggests that whatever did the killing is also the driving force in Hengist's body. It might be possible to argue that Jack leaving Hengist's body is what kills him, except that Jack is later driven out of Jaris with no ill effects. Then when Jack repossess Hengist the body leaps back into life as if nothing had happened. The idea of a walking corpse fits well with the way Bloch played with concepts like possession in Catspaw. There's a degree of gruesome appeal to the idea of Jack finding a good place to store Hengist's body, then leaving to possess someone else, then killing, and then returning to reanimate Hengist once more.

One weakness of Wolf In The Fold is its attitude to women. Bloch presents us with a world where all the women are apparently available to any man who wants them, and no man should be jealous about sharing his woman with any number of other men. Kirk and McCoy have brought Scotty to Argelius II so he can learn to like women again by leering at them, and it is implied having sex with them. Spock says that Jack kills women to feed on their fear because, “women are more easily and more deeply terrified, generating more sheer horror than the male of the species,” a statement crying out for a [CITATION NEEDED]. The women of Wolf In The Fold are to be lusted after, killed, or protected.

One last question. Why choose Scotty? For Kirk to be involved story logic dictates it has to be one of the Enterprise crew, but it's unsatisfying to imagine Robert Bloch picking Scotty at random. Like the joke at the end of The Simpsons episode Das Bus where the children are marooned on an island, “...and eventually they were rescued by, oh, let's say... Moe.” If anyone can be the suspect then choose Sulu. The poor guy's been underexposed this year. His character is turning into a chair with a helmsman attached. It's only going to get worse with George Takei's nine week absence for reshoots on the John Wayne film The Green Berets.

Bloch must have put some thought into the decision. Kirk can't be the suspect, otherwise the show becomes Kirk on trial, and Bloch has accidentally rewritten Court Martial. It can't be Spock because he's never going to be a candidate for a brutal, frenzied crime. McCoy could have been the suspect, and it would have paralleled the original Jack the Ripper crimes where the murderer appears to have had some anatomical knowledge. However, going into too much medical detail about the Ripper crimes would probably be too much for NBC. One way or another Scotty has become the go to character for physical and mental trauma. Apollo beats him up in Who Mourns For Adonais and he's put through the emotional wringer by Lieutenant Palamas; he's killed in The Changeling (he gets better); possessed in Catspaw; aged in The Deadly Years; and now this. Truly he's the Timex of Star Trek characters; he takes a licking and keeps on ticking. 

Enterprise crew deaths: 1. Lieutenant Tracy the penultimate victim of Jack the Ripper. 
Running total: 43

*to the extent that I remember watching an animated version of Rikki-Tikki-Tavi (quite possibly this Chuck Jones version from 1975) and bursting into tears when it looked as if Rikki-Tikki-Tavi hadn't survived the climactic fight. Months later, I saw a repeat of the same cartoon and burst into tears at the same point, because I was convinced that this time Rikki-Tikki-Tavi must have died. Of course it's possible I was just a very dull child.

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

Catspaw

“Star Trek obviously solicits all-out suspension of disbelief but it won't work. It was an incredible mess of dreary complexities and confusion at the kick-off... By a generous stretch of the imagination it could lure a small coterie of the smallfry, though not happily time slotted in that direction. It's better suited to the Saturday morning kidvid bloc.”

Robert Justman and Herbert Solow quote from the The Weekly Variety's stinker of a review of The Man Trap in their book Inside Star Trek. It never gets any kinder than the section quoted above, also describing Shatner and Nimoy as, “wooden” and wondering, “how this lowercase fantasy broke into the sked.” Frustratingly the complete review doesn't appear online but the sections in Justman and Solow's book suggest the review reserves much of its criticism for surface details (“[Mr Spock] socalled chief science officer whose bizarre hairdo (etc.) is a dilly”) rather than anything much of substance. Having said that, the quoted section is very perceptive about Star Trek's scheduling. It may not have ended up on Saturday mornings but the series only achieved mass popularity in syndication after it was bought by Kaiser Broadcasting who targeted young males by putting Star Trek on at 6pm opposite their competitor's news broadcasts.

The Weekly Variety's review may be off target for The Man Trap but it sums up Catspaw very well because it does look look like, “lowercase fantasy suitable for smallfry”.

There's a lack of depth to Robert Bloch's script. It is very superficial, in a way no other Star Trek script has been before. Even a flawed episode like The Apple contains a Garden of Eden metaphor; Kirk gets some maudlin reflection about the weight of command; McCoy and Spock have an ongoing debate about the right way to treat the feeders of Vaal; there's some “nudge nudge, wink wink,” talk about sex; and the suggestion that humans stagnate in paradise and need to suffer to achieve their potential (a recurring theme in Star Trek). The Weekly Variety's favourite episode The Man Trap uses the extinct buffalo as a metaphor for the salt vampire; McCoy must kill a creature which looks like the love of his life; there's the disturbing question of Crater's relationship with the salt vampire (he appears to have fallen in love with the creature which killed his wife because it can make itself look like the woman it killed- to quote Homer Simpson “who's gonna pay for that wedding?”); and even the title is a pun, like a real man trap the salt vampire is a snare for the unwary.

Viewers can watch both stories on one of several levels. They can question the motivation of characters and decide who is right and who is wrong. They can pick up hints of themes too risky for network television to talk about in any detail. They can draw parallels with other stories. Or, they can watch them purely as the exciting space adventures of Captain Kirk and his fight against Vaal, or the salt vampire.

However, it's not just lashings of subtext which make a story work. The Apple's discussion of sex among the feeders of Vaal is handled in such a juvenile way (Spock is embarrassed by the subject: why?) the script would probably be marginally better if it was removed. The weakest part of The Doomsday Machine is the planet killer/nuclear weapons parallel; if only because Kirk unambiguously spells out the message to the audience. Mirror, Mirror makes no attempt at allegory and the cast are driven by the desire to escape; one of the most basic motives possible.

Why then do Mirror, Mirror and The Doomsday Machine feel more sophisticated than Catspaw? Both episodes give us something different. The Doomsday Machine works because the threat to the Enterprise is doubled; externally from the planet killer and internally from the obsessed Commodore Decker. Mirror, Mirror shows us a world where friends are enemies and everything familiar seems dangerous and new.

In contrast Catspaw has nothing new to offer except the set dressing. Scrape away the skeletons, black cats, and torch lit dungeons and there's a familiar stew of ideas the audience has already been presented with too many times. In Bloch's earlier script What Are Little Girls Made Of? the android Andrea goes mad after being kissed by Kirk. Here Sylvia is driven insane by the rush of sensations in her new human body. Sylvia mentions a transmuter and we're off on a game of hunt-the-power source as seen in The Squire Of Gothos. As in The Return Of The Archons members of the Enterprise crew become zombie puppets under external control. Kirk attempts to seduce Sylvia as he did with Karidian's daughter Lenore in The Conscience Of The King. Catspaw ends up feeling juvenile because it's problems are threefold. The story has no depth, the setting is just about the only original element, and the motivations of Korob and Sylvia, the two aliens who drive the plot by accidentally tapping into the human collective unconsciousness and creating a planet of witches and haunted castles (another concept done before in The Squire Of Gothos where Trelane accidentally builds his world based on outdated images from Earth), are too vague and undefined to be of any real interest.

One of the few moments of real interest comes when Korob reminds Sylvia, “We have a duty to the old ones.” Bloch was a H.P. Lovecraft fan so it seems likely he intended the reference to refer to Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos. Lovecraft described Cthulhu as, “a monster of vaguely anthropoid outline, but with an octopus-like head whose face was a mass of feelers,” which does slightly match the otherwise terrible puppets which represent the true forms of Korob and Sylvia at the end of the story. Also, if you are equipped with a dirty sense of humour, there's unintentional comedy in the moment Sylvia declares, “I am a woman. I am all women,” before kneeling before Kirk and placing her hands on his hips. It looks as if she is about to commit a most indecorous act. Sylvia may be all women but she's clearly no lady.

Given this script director Joseph Pevney does his best but, as with The Apple, he's clearly struggling to engage with the material. Korob gets an unusual close-up when he argues with Sylvia. There's a terrific tracking shot as Kirk, Spock, and McCoy search the planet at the beginning of the episode; the trio walk down a shallow gulley which allows rocks to move in the foreground and background. The jump cut from the dungeon to throne room, as Kirk, Spock, and McCoy struggle with Sulu and Scotty, is effective and momentarily disorientating but weirdly the most effective piece of editing isn't in the episode itself. The Next Voyage advert for Catspaw includes the sequence where Sylvia demonstrates her ability to change between different female forms. As she changes someone, probably film editor Bruce Shoengarth, inserts short shots of the cat snarling as a transition between the different forms. It's more creepy and effective than anything in the episode.

Enterprise crew deaths: One, Lieutenant Jackson who does a spectacular belly flop onto the transporter pad after beaming up dead.

Running total: 35

Misc:

Journey Into Terror a 1965 episode of Doctor Who features the TARDIS crew landing in what appears to be the collective human unconscious while on the run from the Daleks. As in Catspaw, spooky haunted house imagery is the order of the day (along with Dracula and Frankenstein).
There must have been something in the air, or possibly the collective unconscious, during the mid sixties for two series on both sides of the Atlantic to reference Jung's theories in such similar ways, and so close together. Jung died in 1961 but his last book Man And His Symbols was published in 1964. Possibly it was this which raised awareness of his work.