Star Trek on the BBC: 1970

Click here for part one: 1969

Star Trek returned to BBC1 on 6 April 1970, one week after the Easter Bank Holiday Monday, and ran weekly until 24 August. In an odd scheduling move the series then took a one week break for the August Bank Holiday on 31 August, returned for one more episode on 7 September, and then took another four week break before returning again on 7 October.

The block of episodes from 6 April to 7 September appears to have been promoted as "series two" of Star Trek. The 1969 "series one" of 25 episodes had slotted neatly between series six and seven of Doctor Who but now the two programmes would run concurrently. Doctor Who was back on Saturdays at 5.20pm and Star Trek was scheduled for 7.10pm on Monday. The later start time might be due to Star Trek drawing a more adult audience than expected, or it might be because the stories were a little more intense than appropriate for the original 5.15pm start time, or it could just be that the series was a ratings success and the BBC wanted to bring Star Trek back as soon as possible and the 50 minute Monday evening slot vacated by The Andy Williams show was ideal.

The episodes shown were a random selection of season one and two stories. It's possible these were originally intended to fill an uninterrupted 22 week block ending on the Bank Holiday Monday. "Series three" would then begin in October 1970 following the September break. The slightly disjointed end to "series two" came about because the August Bank Holiday Monday evening slot was given over to a live rock climbing event from Wales; The Anglesey Climb The Spider's Web. These live outside broadcasts from around Great Britain were an occasional feature in the late 60s and early 70s. The most famous was the 1967 three day climb of The Old Man of Hoy, and there would be another in 1971 The Glencoe Climb. These live outside broadcasts seem to have been the inspiration for the Monty Python's Flying Circus sketch Climbing the North Face of the Uxbridge Road. 

In 1969 the successful Apollo 11 Moon landing had taken place between the first two episodes of Star Trek shown on BBC1. In an unfortunate echo of this the real life drama of Apollo 13 began on 14 April 1970 the day after The Enemy Within premièred. 

Towards the end of "series two" the Radio Times interviewed Gene Roddenberry.  The interview was published in the 25 June 1970 edition and was accompanied by this fantastic piece of Frank Bellamy art.

 
A "series three" of 16 episodes began on Wednesday 7 October 1970 and would continue until February 1971. The Ultimate Computer began this run and its broadcast was accompanied by a slightly confused Daily Mirror article which mixed up the BBC's invented "series three" with the actual last season three of Star Trek. In fact because of the way the BBC had divided up the stories they would be able to present a 14 episode "series four" in 1971. By the end of 1970 the BBC had showed all the episodes of season one and two, as well as a few from season three.

The Daily Mirror 7/10/1970
 

"Series three" was transmitted at 7.20pm. The start time had crept a little further forwards into the evening but it wasn't enough to head off some controversy when Miri was shown on 2 December 1970. Several viewers complained about the themes of the episode. The complaints have never been made public but the BBC took them seriously enough to review all unbroadcast episodes of Star Trek. Three more episodes were pulled; The Empath, Whom Gods Destroy, and Plato's Stepchildren. This must have been done at very short notice as The Empath was due to be shown on 16 December, two weeks after Miri, and remains on the BBC Genome site and in newspaper listings as being broadcast at 7.20pm. The BBC's institutional memory seems to have labelled all four episodes as utterly unsuitable for broadcast. As late as 1984 enquires to the BBC were being answered with the BBC line that, "we feel that [the episodes] all deal most unpleasantly with the already unpleasant subjects of madness,torture, sadism and disease. You will appreciate that account must betaken that out of Star Trek's large and enthusiastic following, many are juveniles who would watch the programme no matter what time of day the series is put into the programme schedules." These four episodes went unseen until 1993 when BBC2 began a full repeat season of Star Trek to fill the gap between their broadcast of season three and four of Star Trek: The Next Generation.  

Date             Time   Episode

1970-04-06: 19.10: Court Martial
1970-04-13: 19.10: The Enemy Within
1970-04-20: 19.10: Catspaw
1970-04-27: 19.10: Who Mourns for Adonais?
1970-05-04: 19.10: The Apple
1970-05-11: 19.10: Metamorphosis
1970-05-18: 19.10: Wolf In The Fold
1970-05-25: 18.15: The Changeling
1970-06-01: 19.10: The Trouble with Tribbles
1970-06-08: 19.10: Bread And Circuses
1970-06-15: 19.10: Mirror, Mirror scheduled but dropped for a World Cup repeat
1970-06-22: 19.10: Journey To Babel
1970-06-29: 19.10: The Deadly Years
1970-07-06: 19.10: A Private Little War
1970-07-13: 19.10: Obsession
1970-07-20: 19.10: By Any Other Name
1970-07-27: 19.10: I, Mudd
1970-08-03: 19.10: Patterns Of Force
1970-08-10: 19.10: The Immunity Syndrome
1970-08-17: 19.10: Return To Tomorrow
1970-08-24: 19.10: The Omega Glory
1970-09-07: 19.10: A Piece of the Action
1970-10-07: 19.20: The Ultimate Computer
1970-10-14: 19.20: Friday's Child
1970-11-04: 19.20: Assignment: Earth
1970-11-11: 19.20: Mirror, Mirror
1970-11-18: 19.20: The Gamesters of Triskelion
1970-11-25: 19.20: Amok Time
1970-12-02: 19.20: Miri
1970-12-09: 19.20: Operation -- Annihilate!
1970-12-16: 19.20: The Empath not shown, replaced by The Paradise Syndrome
1970-12-30: 19.20: Requiem for Methuselah

Notes

1) 1970-04-06. Court Martial was scheduled for broadcast on 1969-12-06 according to the BBC Genome site and The Daily Mirror, while Memory Alpha suggests The Alternative Factor. BBC Genome also lists Court Martial as starting the 1970 run of Star Trek. As do the Daily Mirror and the Daily Express. A repeat within the space of five months seems unlikely. The Daily Mirror listing specifically describes the 1970 broadcast as the start of a new series, as does the BBC Genome listing referring to "the new adventures of the Star Ship Enterprise." I think we can take this as confirmation that Court Martial was originally scheduled to be shown on 6 December 1969 but held back. A story in which Kirk must fight to keep control of the Enterprise might have been seen as a better hook to begin "series two."

2) 1970-05-25, a Whitsun Bank Holiday showing of Disney Time pushed The Changeling into the earlier 6.15pm slot.

The Radio Times 16 July 1970

3) 1970-06-15 and 1970-11-11. What's going on? According to the Radio Times Mirror, Mirror was scheduled twice on 15 June 1970 and then later in the year on 11 November. Memory Alpha opts for Mirror, Mirror on 15 June and The Doomsday Machine on 11 November. However this cannot be correct. One reason for consulting physical copies of the Radio Times themselves is they carry information not yet available online; like the great piece of Star Trek art by Frank Bellamy further up this page. The Radio Times letters page for the week 16 July 1970 carries a viewer's letter which refers to Star Trek being dropped for a World Cup replay. This replay can only be the notorious (if you're an England fan) 3-2 loss to West Germany (the team England had beaten 4-2 in 1966 to win the world cup) which took place on 14 June 1970. It looks as if Star Trek was cancelled for a repeat of that match. What a fun evening of television that must have been.

4) In the second half of 1970 several one off specials interrupt "series three" of  Star Trek.

1970-10-21 (19.20) Blackpool Tower Circus: An excerpt from the 1970 Show with The Svensons in their classical riding fantasy presenting a colourful Troika. Freddie Kenton and his beautiful partner, PETRONELLA, from Holland, in sophisticated juggling. David Rosaire with his family of perky pekes. Gerard Edon grace and electrifying thrills on the swinging trapeze. The Elwardos four young Danes hand-balancing on a staircase. Ruppert's Bears returning to Blackpool after a long engagement in Las Vegas. Charlie Cairoli with his son CHARLIE JUNIOR , his partner PAUL and the long suffering LITTLE JIMMY in trouble again - with the Circus plumbing. The Skating Sandras in the glittering water finale with The Tower Circusettes.

1970-10-28 (19.20) Remember, Remember... : Millions get innocent pleasure and amusement from firework displays, but we are still one of the few countries left that sells fireworks to children. The law says that they must be over 13 before they can buy - but those badly burned are frequently much younger. Every year fireworks are an annual hazard which injure and scar thousands of children.
Two years ago the Man Alive team reported on the cost, in human suffering, of Guy Fawkes night. Last year, when the programme was shown on BBC1, it caused an outcry. A National Campaign to Prevent Fireworks was formed. Others cried ' kill-joy ' - but 1,000 fewer children were injured. Moves were made in Parliament to change the law. But still nothing has been done. Tonight a programme introduced by DESMOND WILCOX examines the question afresh, investigates the need for safety, questions the law as it stands today, and asks-is the situation good enough?

1970-12-23 (18.35) Jesus: The story of His life through the eyes of the young generation Introduced by Kenneth More and featuring The Young Generation.
(19.20) Ace of Clubs: The Grand Final . Michael Aspel introduces a Gala Performance featuring artists competing in the Final of the 1970 Stage Awards from the City Varieties Theatre, Leeds. Of the 10 artists taking part, five will receive Golden Jesters, and the most outstanding act will be presented with the Bernard Delfont Special Award. 

5)  1970-12-16. What replaced The Empath? The Paradise Syndrome like The Doomsday Machine has no first-run date listed on BBC Genome. The first repeat takes place in 1973 scheduled between Operation -- Annihilate! and Requiem For Methuselah, a pattern also repeated in 1975. In 1980 something odd happens. The schedule goes I, Mudd, The Paradise Syndrome, then Requiem For Methuselah but as The Paradise Syndrome and Requiem For Methuselah are repeated back to back I think the point still holds. The Paradise Syndrome must have premièred the week before Requiem For Methuselah which makes it 16 December 1970; the date planned for The Empath before that story was cancelled in the wake of complaints about Miri.

Star Trek on the BBC: 1969

This is the first of what will probably be several long updates about Star Trek episodes and their repeats on the BBC. The recently launched BBC Genome project makes it easy to search BBC schedules and it is now possible to do from a computer what would otherwise have taken months in a library to complete. 

Star Trek was first used to fill the six month gap between series six and seven of Doctor Who. Patrick Troughton spun off into space at the end of The War Games on 21st June 1969 and three weeks later, after a break for Wimbledon, on 12 July 1969 Where No Man Has Gone Before started an unbroken 25 week run which ended on 27 December 1969.

Use the player below to listen to the 1969 trailer for Star Trek which aired on BBC1 as The War Games ended.

From the BBC's perspective Star Trek must have looked like an obvious replacement for Doctor Who. Both series were given the same start time of 5.15pm so there seems to have been an expectation that they would draw the same audience. Star Trek's optimistic view of humanity's future in space also chimed perfectly with real life events. Apollo 11 lifted off for the Moon on Wednesday 16th July, between the broadcast of Where No Man Has Gone Before and The Naked Time. In fact Apollo 11 passed behind the Moon and entered lunar orbit at around 6.20pm, just after The Naked Time finished at 6.05pm on Saturday 19 July. In addition to this real life outer space action, BBC1 was preparing for the launch of colour television on 15 November 1969; Arena, shown the same day, was the first episode broadcast in living colour.

Don't try to make sense of the order. Things start sensibly with Where No Man Has Gone Before, and following that with the character based The Naked Time makes some sense, but the BBC appears to be pulling episodes off the shelf at random. If you've ever argued with another fan about whether production order or NBC's broadcast order is the correct way to watch Star Trek then the BBC's schedule might reduce you to tears. In addition the observant among you will notice that the 25 week run is not long enough for Star Trek's first season. Five episodes have not yet been shown; The Enemy Within, Miri, Court Martial, The Alternative Factor, and Operation--Annihilate!

One small note before we get to the lists. Dates have been written backwards for ease of sorting so 1969-07-12 is 12 July 1969. Life may not be too short for me to go through the BBC Genome listings for 79 individual Star Trek episodes, but it turns out it is too short for me to go back and subsequently rewrite the dates into a more readable format. 

1969-07-12: Where No Man Has Gone Before
1969-07-19: The Naked Time
1969-07-26: The City On The Edge Of Forever
1969-08-02: A Taste Of Armageddon
1969-08-09: Mudd's Women
1969-08-16: Tomorrow Is Yesterday
1969-08-23: The Menagerie Part 1
1969-08-30: The Menagerie Part 2
1969-09-06: The Devil In The Dark
1969-09-13: Charlie X
1969-09-20: Shore Leave
1969-09-27: Space Seed
1969-10-04: The Man Trap
1969-10-11: Dagger Of The Mind
1969-10-18: The Corbomite Manoeuvre
1969-10-25: Balance Of Terror
1969-11-01: The Squire Of Gothos
1969-11-08: What Are Little Girls Made Of?
1969-11-15: Arena
1969-11-22: The Return Of The Archons
1969-11-29: This Side Of Paradise
1969-12-06: The Doomsday Machine
1969-12-13: Errand Of Mercy
1969-12-20: The Conscience Of The King
1969-12-27: The Galileo Seven

Notes
 
1) 1969-10-18: The Corbomite Maneuver. Memory Alpha lists this as being first broadcast on 16th December 1970. BBC Genome offers 18 October 1969, and both the Daily Mirror and the Daily Express agree; although the Daily Express does go a bit mad again by suggesting that this is a colour broadcast on what was then only a black and white channel (maybe they were trying to point out it was made in colour). In this case BBC Genome is almost certainly correct, although there are good reasons for thinking The Corbomite Maneuver was given an unscheduled repeat in December 1970 (again, something I'll get to in the next update). EDIT: 26/10/14: sorry, that was utterly wrong. The Corbomite Maneuver was almost certainly not repeated in December 1970.

2)1969-12-06: Memory Alpha lists The Alternative Factor as being broadcast on this date while the BBC Genome site opts for Court Martial. Going to newspaper listings for the day we find the Daily Mirror agrees with BBC Genome while the Daily Express opts for The Doomsday Machine. It may look like the Daily Express is randomly pulling episode titles from a hat but they actually appear to be the only newspaper with correct television listings. 1972 is the year The Doomsday Machine first appears in the Radio Times as repeat sandwiched between This Side Of Paradise and Errand Of Mercy. This also happens in 1974 and 1979. I'll keep banging on about the BBC's original transmission order because it is used as the template for subsequent repeats. At least until around 1984 which seems to be the first time the BBC repeated Star Trek in the original NBC order. Working backwards The Doomsday Machine must have premièred on BBC1 between the first-run dates for This Side Of Paradise and Errand Of Mercy; which is 6 December 1969. To find out what was actually broadcast on this date would require access to what the BBC called PasB (Programme as Broadcast) documentation, and that is locked away in the BBC's Written Archives at Caversham. I'm confident that The Doomsday Machine was shown 6 December 1969 but without access to the PasBs we may never know for sure.

The Daily Express 6 December 1969

Turnabout Intruder

JANICE: The year we were together at Starfleet is the only time in my life I was alive.
KIRK: I never stopped you from going on with your space work.
JANICE: Your world of starship captains doesn't admit women. It isn't fair.
KIRK: No, it isn't. And you punished and tortured me because of it.

How should that line from Janice Lester be read? Does the word your refer directly to Kirk or to Starfleet in general? If Lester is talking about Starfleet as a whole then it can only be taken literally. Women cannot become starship captains. Alternatively, if Lester is only talking about Kirk then maybe she blames Kirk for allowing their relationship to wither because he's so obsessed with being a starship captain that he can't allow anything else to matter, not even a relationship which clearly meant a huge amount to Lester.

Star Trek fans have spent a lot of time debating exactly what Janice Lester means. Ultimately everybody brings their own interpretation to the table. Personally I think Lester is speaking literally. Starfleet does not allow women to become starship captains. There's no evidence to contradict this in the previous 78 episodes (and consider the wider culture, it wasn't until 1998 that Lieutenant Commander Darlene Iskra became the first woman appointed to command a US Navy ship). It's possible to argue that Kirk is just humouring Lester. He knows she's wrong but he's mindful of her condition and doesn't want their first meeting in years, and potentially their last meeting if she really is dying, to end in another argument. However even if Kirk is just trying to be polite there are other hints that Starfleet's policy is to exclude women from the captain's chair. During the court martial Lester in Kirk's body has the line "....she would not be allowed to serve as the captain," implying that even if Starfleet agreed that the mind of Kirk was trapped in Lester's body they still wouldn't allow Kirk-as-Lester to resume command of the Enterprise. Muddying the waters further are Kirk's ,"no it isn't," response to Lester's claim that "it isn't fair," and his unfinished final line of the episode. "Her life could have been as rich as any woman's, if only. If only..." If only... what? If only she'd not been utterly insane, or if only she'd known her place?

It's interesting that 45 years after this episode was made it is still possible to debate exactly what Lester means. Could this ambiguity be deliberate? it would have been the easiest thing in the world to tidy up the language and clarify whether Starfleet has a problem with Lester or her gender. The script for Turnabout Intruder was finalised in December 1968. The fuss over the Kirk/Uhura kiss in Plato's Stepchildren would still have been fresh in everyone's memory. Is it possible that someone on the writing staff didn't want to rule out the idea of women commanding starships, but was also concerned that the contemporary audience would find the idea a step too far into crazy science fiction? Whatever the case the later series and films would be happy to clarify this point; in 1973 Star Trek: The Animated Series showed Uhura taking command in the episode The Lorelei Signal.

It is of course possible that the confusion caused by Lester's line is the result of bad writing. There are other examples on display elsewhere. It's never made clear what is wrong with Lester. Everyone just assumes that she's going to die of radiation poisoning before the subject is quietly dropped about halfway through the episode when everyone gets distracted by Kirk's behaviour. The portrayal of security on the Enterprise is also odd. At times the ship feels more like ISS Enterprise from Mirror, Mirror, with the Captain allowed to get away with any excessive behaviour as long as he keeps security onside. The biggest offender is the end of the episode when the story just stops. Suddenly the transfer is unstable and Kirk and Lester pop back into their proper bodies; the end. Janice Lester and doctor Arthur Coleman, who murdered their way through the staff of the Camus II expedition and were prepared to murder their way through the senior staff of a starship, are simply allowed to wander off after Coleman promises to look after Lester.

All that said there are a lot of points where the writing is really pleasing and subtle. Kirk in Lester's body quickly realises that trying to explain the truth just makes people think Lester is paranoid. There's a great moment when he plays off Nurse Chapel's emotions by asking her, "is a visit by that very kind Mister Spock to be allowed?" It's also good to see that it's Kirk's impulsiveness, and his preference for action, that gets him deeper into trouble. His escape from sickbay just gets him recaptured and confined in isolation, and is also what gets Spock into trouble when he disobeys Lester-as-Kirk's order that no one should talk to Kirk-as-Lester. The loyalty Spock feels for Kirk is made clear by his immediate acceptance of what has happened to Kirk, once it becomes impossible for there to be any other explanation. There is also a good demonstration of Spock's pragmatism when he points out that although he believes Kirk belief is not enough. They must have evidence. There's also a couple of nice lines which show Kirk and Lester have radically different ideas about why their relationship failed. Lester-as-Kirk tells McCoy, "I walked out on her when it became serious," while Kirk-as-Lester later tells the court martial, "her intense hatred of her own womanhood made life with her impossible."

William Shatner is all over the place. At times he works really hard to convince the audience that someone different is driving Kirk's body. When Lester-as-Kirk first calls the Enterprise Shatner puts in a tiny hesitation on his, "Captain Kirk to the Enterprise," line and then fractionally jerks his head in surprise when Scott replies. He stands differently and is visibly tense when he first walks on to the bridge for the first time before beginning to relax. He nervously brushes a hand across his hair on the, "I walked out on her when it became serious," line as if to imply that on an unconscious level Lester knows this isn't the exact truth. The problem is William Shatner can't resist going for the obvious laugh, and he enjoys himself just a bit too much; as was the case in A Piece Of The Action. The scene where Lester-as-Kirk talks to Doctor McCoy while filing his nails stands out as an obvious example. It probably got a big laugh on set but it undermines Lester because it's been established that she hates her own femininity so this prissy little action makes no sense.

Behind the camera Donald R. Rode does his usual fine work as film editor. He edits together a couple of very short flashback scenes to the mind swap which work as neat pieces of visual story telling. The editing during the mind meld scene is also effective. After Spock breaks the link the pacing is deliberately slow with two wordless close-ups of Kirk and Spock before the tension is broken with Spock's line, "I believe you." Donald R. Rode also works in some genuine humour when the mind transfer begins to fail. He cuts between a close-up of William Shatner gurning on the bridge and a four shot of Kirk-as-Lester, Spock, McCoy, and Scotty in their cell. This is followed by a shot of Lester-as-Kirk on the bridge, and the camera slowly pulls back to reveal Chekov and Sulu staring at Kirk as if he was the crazy person on the bus. A moment which manages to be funny and also underlines how Kirk-as-Lester has lost command of the crew. At the end of the episode there's also a lovely moment when the acting and editing combine to create a wordless demonstration of why Kirk is able to lead and Lester is reduced to bluster and shouting.

KIRK: Can you do anything for her?

COLEMAN: I'd like to take care of her.

MCCOY: Of course. Come with me.

Harry Landers makes brief eye contact with DeForest Kelley before delivering Coleman's line. This is followed by a reaction shot of William Shatner raising his head, as if Kirk is also looking at McCoy. Finally DeForest Kelley looks back at Harry Landers before delivering McCoy's line. The effect is of wordless communication between Kirk and McCoy. It's not necessary for Kirk to ask whether Coleman can care for Lester. Kirk knows a look is enough to convey his opinion because he instinctively understands how to build a consensus with his officers. Regardless of the story logic of allowing Coleman to take charge of his partner in murder it's a nice contrast to the earlier scene where Lester-as-Kirk fails to convince McCoy that Coleman should take responsibility for Kirk-as-Lester and is reduced to barking out an order.

It's easy to see why a lot of fans regret this being the last episode of Star Trek's run on NBC. At the most basic level this feels like an unsatisfactory goodbye because Uhura is missing. Nichelle Nichols had another engagement. In a script which otherwise features all of the regular cast, it's a shame she should couldn't be present. The suggestion that women cannot be starship captains also means that the series leaves on a sour note. It's a reminder for the modern audience that for all Star Trek's progressive ideals it was a sixties television series created by sixties men with sixties attitudes. For a series which did such good work challenging social attitudes it's disappointing to see it had such a blind spot when it came to its own treatment of women.

Turnabout Intruder is a disappointment compared to how seasons one and two ended. Season one ended with Operation - - Annihilate! a more confident episode than the first broadcast episode The Man Trap which shows clear growth and progress for the series. Season two ended with Assignment: Earth an ambitious, if flawed, attempted to launch a Star Trek spin-off series. Turnabout Intruder is virtually a bottle show. Seven minutes into the episode we're back on the Enterprise for the duration of the story. The story isn't even uniquely Star Trek. It's an attempt to fit a standard body swap story into the Star Trek format. The Prisoner episode Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling was broadcast on CBS on 3rd August 1968, and The Avengers episode Who's Who?? before that on ABC, 19th May 1967. Going back further to 11th November 1963 there is also an episode of The Outer Limits called The Human Factor. Still for all its faults it's good that Star Trek ends on a story which underlines the loyalty the Enterprise crew have for each other.

Enterprise crew deaths: None.

Running total: 56

All Our Yesterdays

It's easy to assume that the last few episodes of Star Trek were filmed with the knowledge that the series had been cancelled. This isn't necessarily the case. Presumably at the end of the third season the cast and crew were toiling away with the expectation that the series wasn't coming back, but also with the the memory of the extraordinary letter writing campaign which led directly to the renewing of the series. In The Making Of Star Trek Stephen E. Whitfield describes the mid-January second season wrap party as, "a mixture of party atmosphere and half-voiced despair."

Certainly All Our Yesterdays looks like the product of a team who are still holding out for a miracle, but they are not just sitting around and hoping that miracle will happen all by itself. All Our Yesterdays looks stunning. It's obviously been made by people determined to prove that there is still life in the Star Trek format. It's an episode designed to satisfy all of NBC's wants. An action adventure story set on an alien world, which begins on the planet and not on the Enterprise as NBC Network Production Manager Stan Robertson constantly nagged, with a good meaty story for Spock and McCoy, and lots of jeopardy for Kirk. As a production it's got an impressive scope. With no Enterprise sets needed the series goes to town bringing the planet Sarpeidon's history to life. In order we see a library set, a street scene (including what looks like night shooting on a backlot) an ice cliff, a cave interior, and a jail set. All of these sets are large, the library and the cave interior both contain several distinct areas, and it looks as if money for sets must have been diverted from Turnabout Intruder which takes place largely on the Enterprise. The story is also lit gorgeously. Director of Photography Al Francis produces some amazing work for this episode. Zarabeth's cave is filled with blues and oranges and deep reds which highlight the shadows. Kirk's jail cell is also filled with shadow and there's a lovely moment as Kirk overpowers the Prosecutor, who is pushed into shadow so only the edge of his hair is lit before Kirk grabs the man's chin and turns his face into the light.

The script makes an effort to give Sarpeidon's people different speech patterns.

WENCH: Oh, thank you, man. I thought I'd be limbered sure when that gull caught me cutting his purse.

KIRK: What's that? Are you all right?

WENCH: Oh, I took you to be an angler, but you're none of us, are ya? Well, you're a bully fine coe for all of that. What a handsome dish ya served them, the coxcombs.

Everyone in Kirk's storyline talks in a faux olde-English, except for the Prosecutor who turns out to also be from the future. Zarabeth has some nice understated and bitter humour ("my crime was in choosing my kinsmen unwisely") and care is taken to make sure that Mr Atoz can be distinguished from his duplicates. Unfortunately the story itself is derivative. Like The Savage Curtain it's another assembly of previously successful plot elements. The Spock/Zarabeth romance suffers from the same fault as the Kirk/Rayna story in Requiem For Methuselah. We've seen this plot before and it just feels like one time too many round the block for the [crewmember] falls in love story. Leonard Nimoy and Mariette Hartley work hard to give the romance some weight and make it seem of real significance to the characters but All Our Yesterdays is no This Side Of Paradise.

Spock's slow reversion to the brutal and savage ways of his ancestors allows the relationship to seem slightly less contrived. Presumably Vulcans share some sort of telepathic group mind. When Spock travels into Sarpeidon's past he unconsciously plugs into an earlier version of this telepathic network and it overwhelms his logical and rational side. Although Spock has travelled into the past in other stories the furthest back he went was 1930 New York in The City On The Edge Of Forever when Vulcans were still rational and logical beings. This telepathic link must also be what allows him to instantly sense the destruction of the Vulcan crewed starship Intrepid in The Immunity Syndrome. The near instantaneous nature of both suggests that telepathy in Star Trek travels faster than the speed of light. Maybe it's not limited by the normal laws of physics.

At first glance this story would seem to contradict the basic lesson of The City On The Edge Of Forever, that changes in the past cause changes in the present. The sheer number of people fleeing into Sarpeidon's past should reduce it to a mass of paradoxes and undo the future which they need to escape from the coming nova. Actually, the time travel aspect of this story makes sense; or at least as much sense as any time travel story can. The history of Sarpeidon is a closed loop. The library sits literally at the end of Sarpeidon's history and the records it contains have already been shaped by the actions of the refugees. They may have only left recently but as Spock puts it, they are dead now. "dead and buried. Long ago." 

Enterprise crew deaths: None.

Running total: 56

The Savage Curtain

Genghis Khan runs away. That's the moment which best illustrates the flawed and silly nature of this episode. It might seem an odd moment to pick in a story which begins with Enterprise meeting Abraham Lincoln floating in space (never has that stock footage of the bridge screen over Sulu's shoulder looked more inappropriate he just carries on driving the Enterprise as if Abraham Lincoln floating in space is something he sees every other day). A story where Kirk and Spock are fighting for the safety of the Enterprise and their lives in a philosophical death match between good and evil. A battle set up by the rock monster inhabitants of the planet to determine whether good or evil is stronger. A battle in which Kirk and Spock are joined on the side of good by Abraham Lincoln and Surak the Vulcan against Genghis Khan; Kahless the Unforgettable "the Klingon who set the pattern for his planet's tyrannies"; Zora of Tiburon "who experimented with the body chemistry of subject tribes on Tiburon"; and Colonel Green " who led a genocidal war early in the 21st century on Earth."

Following the death of Lincoln, Kirk and Spock are attacked by the opposing four. In a sparsely choreographed fight Kirk grapples with Genghis Khan for a bit before throwing him to the ground and Genghis Khan runs away. That's Genghis Khan, who united the Mongols, and founded the Mongol Empire which stretched from the Caspian Sea to the Sea of Japan. Does Genghis Khan sound like the sort of person who would run away after a scuffle? Follow that thought. Does Genghis Khan sound like the sort of person who would meekly follow the orders of a weasel like Colonel Green? In fact isn't there something annoyingly simplistic about applying labels like "good" and "evil" to historical individuals as complex as Abraham Lincoln and Genghis Khan?

Fans of The Simpsons sometimes use the term Zombie Simpsons to describe new episodes of the series which seem to lack the heart and spirit of earlier shows. The Savage Curtain is Zombie Star Trek. The Savage Curtain constantly gives the impression of a story assembled by people who don't understand Star Trek but have a list of elements which have been used successfully in the past. It explains the characterisation of Genghis Khan or rather the lack of characterisation. Genghis Khan and Zora of Tiburon don't get any lines because there isn't enough space in the story for eight characters, nine if you include the Excalbian. The script isn't interested in Genghis Khan, or how he might react as a person, but simply wants to use the name "Genghis Khan" as a shorthand for "this person is bad." It also explains the treatment of Surak's pacifism. This is no story like Day Of The Dove where Kirk must ironically fight for an end to violence. The script isn't interested in examining pacifism as a point of view, or seeing how people who believe in it might be tested. It's just a label to slap on Surak which allows him to be killed in a way that demonstrates the evil of the baddies.

Like Arena there's an alien with ambiguous god-like powers who forces Kirk into a fight. Gene Coon shuffled the Metrons on and off screen as quickly as possible to avoid the audience thinking about them too much, they're nothing more than a plot device to set up the fight between Kirk and the Gorn captain, but in The Savage Curtain the rock-like Excalbian sticks around for the whole story. Kirk even challenges the Excalbian's motives at the end of the story and there's a bizarre attempt to claim some sort of moral equivalence between the two.

KIRK: How many others have you done this to? What gives you the right to hand out life and death?

ROCK: The same right that brought you here. The need to know new things.

Arena tests Kirk. He's alone and must use his wits to beat the Gorn. In The Savage Curtain he's part of a larger team and it's just a case of good and evil punching each other until one side falls down. In fact in The Savage Curtain even the fight itself is pointless. It's a fight to the death in a series where Kirk and Spock cannot be seen to kill. This is partly because the pair are heroes who cannot do anything too unheroic but mostly because NBC's Standards and Practices won't allow anything too graphic. Arena makes Kirk not being allowed to kill into a strength by having him spare the Gorn when it is at his mercy. The Savage Curtain simply glosses over the fate of the evil side by making it unclear what has happened. At one point Kirk jabs Kahless in the stomach with a blunt stick and the Klingon folds up on the floor in a foetal position. Is he dead or just winded? Then Kirk judo throws Colonel Green to the ground and we cut to an angle where Green's body is concealed behind a rock. There's an ominous musical sting, and Kirk looks grim, but again it's not clear if Colonel Green is dead or unconscious. This casual attitude to violence, and the consequences of violence, actually ends up being more offensive than if we'd seen Kirk directly taking the lives of Kahless and Colonel Green.

Undoubtedly everyone who's ever watched The Savage Curtain has had more fun thinking up unlikely battles for the Excalbians to stage (The Beatles vs The Monkees, or science vs religion). In the end The Savage Curtain is just another story to toss on the pile of episodes to laugh at.

Enterprise crew deaths: None.

Running total: 56

The Cloud Minders

The ghost of Castles In The Sky haunts this episode. Castles In The Sky was David Gerrold's outline for the episode which became The Cloud Minders and David Gerrold considers Castles In The Sky to be superior to the episode which bears his name; probably not unreasonably. The circumstances of how The Cloud Minders came to be written are widely available on the internet but the short version is that producer Fred Freiberger disliked Castles In The Sky and teamed David Gerrold up with Oliver Crawford to write a revised story outline. Fred Freiberger then decided to start again from scratch by giving Margaret Armen a very broad outline of the story and asking her to produce a revised story treatment which was built up into the finished teleplay. Knowing about the existence of Castles In The Sky makes it difficult to see The Cloud Minders properly because it's too easy to start comparing the finished episode with its unmade precursor; The Way To Eden suffers from a similar problem once you know it is based on an outline from D.C. Fontana for a story called Joanna.

Actually the quality of The Cloud Minders surprises. In the sub-genre of Star Trek stories that David Gerrold called Mary Worth stories (the Enterprise meddles "her way across the Galaxy, solving problems as she goes," The World Of Star Trek) The Cloud Minders comes out very well. It's comparable to A Taste Of Armageddon but lacks that story's sense of place. In A Taste Of Armageddon we meet several representatives of the High Council of Eminiar VII, as well as assorted extras done up as guards and civilians. The Cloud Minders is a little more sparingly populated. Representing the population of Stratos the cloud city is Droxine and Plasus, Droxine's father, and that's it. Still, Stratos may have a low population density but it feels like a real place. Matt Jefferies' sets look lavish, and they are unusual in being split level with a balcony area up some stairs; director Jud Taylor makes good use of this layout. Stratos itself comes via Laputa the flying island from Gulliver's Travels. Margaret Armen ditches the satire of Jonathen Swift's novel for a more obvious metaphor of the ruling class living literally in the clouds, high above the working class they rely upon to sustain their lifestyle.

There may not be many characters but they are well defined. The characters in The Cloud Minders are some of the most interesting and complex we have seen in the third season. Droxine begins as one of Star Trek's more vapid characters, she is considerably less interesting than her costume which is one of William Ware Theiss' more extraordinary designs, but by the end of the story she has questioned her father's actions, expressed a desire to go to the mines, and realised the cost of her pampered lifestyle. Plasus has also changed but for the worse. Through the episode his diplomatic mask slips and by the end he's much more entrenched in his views and open in his bigotry against the Troglytes. Best character of all is Troglyte leader Vanna an angry revolutionary who sometimes even gets frustrated by the limited intelligence of her fellow Disruptors ("can you do nothing but argue?" she snaps at Midro when he suggests killing Kirk and is unable to grasp the value in keeping him alive). It's pleasing to note that at the end of the episode she is the least affected by exposure to the zenite gas. When Kirk and Plasus start brawling she's smart enough to work out what has happened and uses Kirk's communicator to call for help.

The Cloud Minders is also a good story for Kirk. He starts out understandably reluctant to get involved in the dispute with the Troglytes. Then he takes a stand against Plasus' use of torture to locate the missing zenite. Finally he makes a command decision to place the need for zenite above his duty not to interfere with the government of Ardana. His suggestion of masks to counter the effects of the gas is more pragmatic than altruistic and his impatience to get the urgently needed zenite to its destination leads him to mistakenly trust Vanna, who promptly takes him hostage. The scene where Kirk forces Plasus and Vanna to dig zenite with their bare hands is surprisingly shocking and works because it shows how the zenite gas brings out an ugly, cruel side to his personality. It's important to establish the effects of the gas to the viewers as well as Plasus and Vanna, and the best way to do that is to show Kirk behaving as he did in The Enemy Within; to show the gas bringing out the same side of his personality revealed by the transporter malfuction. By contrast Spock seems to get a week off. He's given a lengthy, and unusual, voice over to speculate about social inequality on Ardana but that's his most significant action. For most of the rest of the episode his involvement tends to be restricted to acting as the voice of conscience when debating with Plasus and Droxine about their treatment of the Troglytes.

The ending of The Cloud Minders is pleasantly mature. In A Taste Of Armageddon when Kirk destroys the war computer on Eminiar VII he instantly changes their society. His intervention has an immediate and noticeable effect and he changes their world for the better, although long term peace between Eminiar VII and Vendikar will still depend on the locals. The same is true of other Mary Worth stories like The Apple or The Return Of The Archons. At the end of the episode their respective societies are already visibly different. The Cloud Minders shows how long social change can take. Although Ardana can never be the same after the events of The Cloud Minders the world has not changed overnight. Plasus and Vanna have not become friends after their shared experience. They do not suddenly understand the other's point of view. If anything the lines separating the pair have become more clearly defined. Plasus and Vanna have both begun to realise that the masks will make all Troglytes articulate enough to argue the injustice of the current system and the case for fairer treatment. What's going to happen on Ardana is right, but right doesn't mean pleasant or nice or easy. As Plasus and Vanna argue and snipe at each other we see that the immediate future on Ardana is going to be difficult.

PLASUS: They will all be like her. Ungrateful, vindictive.
VANNA: Yes. Our demands have just begun. 

Enterprise crew deaths: None.

Running total: 56

The Way To Eden

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Enterprise crew deaths: None.

Running total: 56