Star Trek -- Season 2 Episode 22 (By Any Other Name)

I’ve been watching a lot of the original Star Trek episodes so that I might review them for this blog.  It’s amazing how little I seem to have forgotten about the episodes.  Then again, there are a lot of factors that contribute to that.  I’ve seen most of them numerous times.  I had also reviewed a lot of the episodes when I was writing on Epinions.  One might say that the episodes were well-written, but I suspect that it has more to do with how straightforward the writing was.

Take “By Any Other Name”.  The Enterprise responds to a distress call from an uncharted planet, only to discover several humanoid aliens.  The landing party is quickly captured and told that the aliens, who call themselves the Kelvans, require the ship to return to The Andromeda Galaxy.  (Their ship was destroyed by an energy barrier surrounding The Milky Way.)

It will take approximately 300 years to get back to the Kelvans’ home, which will require a generational ship.  It’s discovered that the Kelvans are actually and advanced species with hundreds of tentacles and the ability to control each independently.  They took human form for convenience and have accepted that the return trip will be generational.  Their mission is to find planets suitable for colonization, as the Kelvins need to conquer.

Because of the Kelvan’s technology, the crew of the Enterprise is easily subdued, but Kirk, Spock, McCoy and Scotty are able to turn the tables and incapacitate the Kelvans.  By taking on human form, the Kelvans have also taken on human weaknesses, which the four officers can exploit.

It’s a bit of an odd episode.  I don’t want to say that it’s simplistic, but it had me asking a lot of questions.  First, the 300-year trip means that the Enterprise would get back at least 600 years after the Kelvans first left.  It would take another 300 years for a colonization ship to return to the Milky Way.

Add to this the fact that the Kelvans didn’t really look around much.  Granted, they have Starfleet’s flagship, which would likely contain more than enough information to get the Kelvan government started, but you’d think they’d want to look around first.  At least check to see how accurate the information is.  It took them three centuries to get here.  They could at least spend a few days to check things out and fill in a few gaps.

Also, as humans, there would likely be ten or so generations of humans.  Even if the Kelvans reproduce as humans, their descendants will have no loyalty to the Kelvan government.  What’s to stop the second or third generation down the line from turning the ship around?  The entire plan doesn’t seem to be that robust.

There are some memorable scenes and the acting is good, but it wasn’t one of the better episodes, in my opinion.  It could have done with some more detail.  I get some of the constraints, like making the Kelvans human.  It would have been difficult to present them as hundred-tentacled creatures.  But you’d think they’d be able to build a faster ship.

The biggest shame is that we never find out what happened to The Kelvans.  Those that took human form are left on that original planet.  They present as perfect humans, but it’s still a limited population.  Also, a probe is launched back to Andromeda.  It will take 300 years, presumably, so we’ll never know what becomes of those waiting for the would-be invasion party.  Perhaps with all the new Star Trek series on Paramount+, we’ll get some answers.

 

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Star Trek -- Season 2 Episode 20 (Return to Tomorrow)

There were a few Star Trek episodes where I wondered about the implications.  It’s easy enough to write a scenario into a script, but it’s another thing to have actually gone through it or to have to carry it out. As they say, it looks good on paper.  One has to wonder what it actually means to have been implemented.

The Enterprise comes across a planet that’s lifeless and barren.  Except that the crew is greeted by the voice of Sargon, who invites them to a subterranean chamber where he and two others are stored in several orbs.  (The other two are his wife, Thalassa, and his former rival, Henoch.)  The three of them want to use the bodies of Kirk, Spock and a third crewmember to build permanent android bodies for them to live in.

Yes, it’s a risk.  In fact, there’s no good reason why the ship’s top two officers have to volunteer.  There are plenty of security officers onboard.  But, Kirk eventually agrees to let the survivors build their androids.  The androids could last for thousands of years, but will be limited in sensation.  This leads to Henoch wanting to keep Spock’s body.  In the end, the survivors realize that their time has passed.  They agree to depart their respective bodies in peace.

It’s hard to imagine that their consciousnesses were stored in orbs for however many centuries.  It must have been a boring existence.  I can hardly take being trapped indoors for 18 months with COVID.  I can’t imagine what it would be like to be contained in such a small space.

You’d think that they would have just gone ahead and built the android bodies.  True, that would have required resources.  The android bodies would require power and they could have been trapped underground anyway.  But, you’d think they’d maybe build a few anyway just to have them ready when a ship came along.

For that matter, it’s stated that their race seeded several other planets elsewhere.  This would mean that they had their own ships, or at least the capability of building them.  Why not build a ship and leave the planet themselves?  Even if they didn’t have warning that their planet would die, they could build enough android bodies to build a ship.  (There were originally more survivors.  Only three orbs made it to the episode’s present day.)

Ultimately, it’s a shame for the race to die out like that.  To spend all those countless years underground in orbs only to give up.  The tantalizing thing is that this is the first real mention of a race that seeded the galaxy.  There were other episodes that alluded to this, although there’s no mention if this is the same race that was seen in The Chase.  Just to have the three survivors pass on some information would have been nice.

I don’t really dwell on this episode, but I often wonder why more wasn’t done to preserve the last of that race.  I also wonder how the three survivors survived for so long and what actually happened to the others.  It would have been nice to know.

 

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Star Trek -- Season 2 Episode 19 (A Private Little War)

Many of the stories in Star Trek were allegories.  The problem with this is that sometimes, the meaning is lost.  Take, for instance, A Private Little War.  The Enterprise visits a planet Captain Kirk had visited years before.  The inhabitants are relatively primitive.  They shouldn’t have weapons at all, which makes it surprising when one of the tribes has guns.

Kirk is good friends with a member of another tribe, The Hill People, who doesn’t have weapons.  Kirk’s friend is a member of The Hill People, which allows Kirk to get some information.  The other villagers started using weapons a while back and it was assumed that they were making them.  It turns out that the Klingons are supplying the weapons, which created an imbalance in power.

Now, the Klingons aren’t bound by The Prime Directive, but Kirk is.  He can’t use phasers in front of The Hill People.  He really shouldn’t be giving weapons to them, either, but he feels the best thing for The Hill People is to be put on equal footing. 

The episode was supposed to be a commentary on the Vietnam War.  A lot of that is lost on me, as I’m not very familiar with the context, but some things do come through.  The most notable is that there really isn’t any good option for Kirk.  He can’t stop the Klingons from supplying one tribe.  Even if they seemed to agree, they could turn around and go right back to supplying weapons.

Supplying The Hill People with weapons does seem like it would at least be fair, but more weapons would necessarily balance power.  It could just lead to more violence.  There’s nothing preventing one tribe from stealing the other’s weapons or just killing everyone.  And the Klingons could just as easily supply better weapons.

Escalation solves nothing, but doing nothing isn’t the right answer, either.  I suppose Kirk could call it in.  The Federation and Starfleet must have someone who would be better equipped to handle it.  Still, there is no real good answer to the problem.  The options are to let one group kill the other or make it so both sides could kill each other and hope that neither does.

This is one of those episodes where I would have liked to see some follow up.  There were a few cases where it was a shame we never get to see the consequences of what happened.  This is one of them.

 

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Star Trek -- Season 2 Episode 18 (The Immunity Syndrome)

Thinking of movies and television of today, I’m sure there are certain things future generations will look back on and will think were strange.  People fly back when being hit by a bullet.  Explosions in space are still somehow fireballs.  But looking back at some of the original Star Trek episodes, I’m forced to wonder who, exactly, was approving the scripts.

Suppose I told you that one episode was about the Enterprise encountering a miles-long amoeba in space.  Oh, and it’s in this area of void space that they can’t see past or get out of right away.  Plus, something about the amoeba and/or the space is draining the ship’s systems and causing the ship to work in reverse.  (Forward thrust makes the ship go backwards, for instance.)  To make matters more confusing, the episode is called The Immunity Syndrome.  I’m not sure where it comes from or what it means, either, but that describes the entire episode for me.

There does seem to be more of a fantasy angle in many of the episodes of The Original Series.  I’m not sure if that was intended or if that’s just what audiences expected.  The entire plot seems to be one where it puts the ship in a dangerous situation.  What makes it suspenseful is that much of it is new and unknown.  Everything is backwards and not as it should be, requiring the crew to think outside the box.

It’s difficult to imagine the crew being in any real danger.  Spock, who goes out in a shuttlecraft, might have to make a sacrifice.  It’s conceivable that one crewmember would be lost.  However, the crew is being affected, as well.  The show can’t maintain the situation forever.

What gets me, mostly, is that The Giant Space Amoeba is dividing.  This means that there are probably more of them out there.  It’s not clear if any more are ever encountered.  If they’re not, it would mean that they might one day fill up the galaxy.  (It’s not clear how long the reproductive cycle is.  They could divide once every few millennia, for all I know.)  Still, I would think that someone, somewhere, would have seen one and gotten away.

To an extent, I could almost see space being the exact opposite of what I’d expect.  There’s no reason to think that space would be within the realm of what I (or anyone else) could imagine.  I’m sure there are all sorts of wild and crazy things out there that no one would be able to explain.

The amoeba is simple and threatening.  It’s fairly clear what has to be done.  It’s a biological invasion on a galactic scale.  The amoeba is big, so you’d think it would be difficult to miss.  It’s possible that the amoebas have eaten every ship it came in contact with.  To that end, you’d think there would be some mention in one of the subsequent series.

Many of the episodes in the original series were one off, meaning you could watch them out of order or skip them entirely.  I’m kind of in the middle on this one.  It is one of the odder episodes from the franchise.  It might be interesting for newcomers to watch just to see how odd it is.  Then again, I wouldn’t recommend making this the first episode you watch.  It might prove too much for a first-time viewer.

 

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Star Trek -- Season 2 Episode 13 (Obsession)

I’ve come to realize that Star Trek had a lot of contrivances that the subsequent series didn’t have.  For instance, The Enterprise encountered a lot of one-of-a-kind creatures.  There were also a lot of emergencies that could have easily been handled by some other means.  Add to this reused plot devices and you have an episode of Star Trek.

In Obsession, The Enterprise is due to pick up some perishable medical supplies from the USS Yorktown.  For some reason, they’re doing a planetary survey first.  On that planet is a gaseous life form that can drain a person of hemoglobin.  Kirk recognizes this as the same creature that killed half the crew of the USS Farragut, Kirk’s first assignment out of Starfleet Academy.  Kirk is determined to kill the thing before it manages to spawn thousands more like itself.

Ok, so how do they know that there’s one of this thing?  If it goes back to its home planet to reproduce, it’s conceivable that there are thousands or even millions of these cloud creatures draining the hemoglobin out of unsuspecting people.  For that matter, how does it survive like that?  There are plenty of life forms that don’t have iron-based blood.  The Enterprise’s first officer is one such life form.

So, Kirk puts off meeting with The Yorktown.  Why can’t the Yorktown deliver the supplies if it’s so important?  Why schedule two ships to meet up in the first place?  It’s to give Kirk a deadline.  That’s why.

The entire episode seems built around Kirk getting revenge.  You’d think at least one other Starfleet officer would have the same concerns.  Half of the crew of The Farragut survived.  Isn’t there someone Kirk could talk to who would understand?  I’d think Kirk would call one of the surviving crewmates or the relatives of the fallen crewmates to let them know what happened.  Even a passing comment in a later episode would have been nice.

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Star Trek -- Season 2 Episode 12 (The Deadly Years)

Some of the episodes from the original Star Trek were memorable.  A few even hit it out of the park.  They didn’t have a huge budget, but the writing and acting were pretty decent.  There was enough of a fan base to spawn a sizeable franchise.  Unfortunately, most of the episodes weren’t that great.  Those like The Deadly Years were actually pretty thin.

A landing party beams down to a colony site only to find everyone dead of old age.  This includes people who were in their twenties.  Checkov is the one who initially makes the horrifying discovery.  When they beam back up, everyone in the landing party starts to age rapidly…except Checkov.

It’s not passed on to other crew members, which is good.  The bad news is that those affected don’t have long to live.  If McCoy, in his elderly state, can’t find a cure, that’s it.

To make matters worse, the ship is transporting Commodore Stocker to his new post.  Stocker is one in a long line of powerful people who are ust itching to get somewhere.  Stocker uses Kirk’s condition to commandeer the vessel and take it through The Neutral Zone.

When the Romulans catch them, they take this as an act of war and attack the Enterprise.  It’s fortunate that McCoy is able to save the day and allow Kirk to return to work immediately.

I could see this being a way of showcasing the hardships that elderly people have.  Instead, it’s almost a way of poking fun of those crotchety geezers.  (Kirk is the only one to have forgetfulness, for instance.)  I’m surprised that they didn’t have some kids on the bridge so that someone could yell, “Get off my lawn!”

Also, I’ve noticed that the names of planets seem to be a Greek letter, some word from Latin and a number.  Here, it’s Gamma Hydra IV.  I could just see some chart in the writers’ room for generating names.  (Take the first letter of your pet’s name and use the corresponding Greek letter…)

The episode comes off as unnecessarily campy.  I wonder if there was some rush to get an episode produced.  It looks like the kind of script that either wasn’t written well enough or went through way too many rewrites.  I don’t know that there would be an ideal way to handle old age except maybe to tone it down a little.

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Star Trek -- Season 2 Episode 10 (Journey to Babel)

Star Trek tended to focus mostly on the stories.  The crew of the Enterprise is made up of people that presumably have families.  Very little is said about these families  We’ve seen that Kirk had a brother.  But we never see Uhura’s family.  I think there was mention of Dr. McCoy being married.  The only notable exception is meeting Spock’s parents, Sarek and Amanda.  This would be their only appearance in the TV show.  In fact, we’d be surprised to learn in one of the movies that Sarek had another son.  In Star Trek: Discovery, we’d learn that he has a stepsister.  This is how little character development there was.

The episode revolves around the Babel Conference.  The Enterprise is escorting various Federation ambassadors to the location, including Spock’s father.  The purpose is to discuss admission of a system to the Federation.  There’s all sorts of infighting as the various member planets don’t always get along.  When they get to Vulcan, Kirk suggests that Spock beam down to see his parents.  Kirk is surprised to learn that Sarek and his wife are Spock’s parents.  You’d think that Spock would have mentioned who his father was, given that he was supposed to be married at the beginning of the season.  (Spock’s family was curiously absent.)

Well, this planet that they’re discussing is important.  It’s so important that there’s a ship following them.  Kirk is stabbed and Sarek suffers an episode due to heart problems.  This leaves Spock in command when his father suddenly needs a blood transfusion.  Spock could be a donor, but it would be difficult.  Just moments before the operation is to begin, the ship is attacked.  Spock refuses to turn command over to Scotty, saying that he’s not experienced enough to handle the situation.  It seems like a run of bad luck, but there it is.  Kirk has to trick Spock to go down to sickbay and help his father.

I have to wonder if this was done just to get the character development.  I get that Vulcans are logical and all, but the entire thing seemed forced.  To have Spock refuse to go to sickbay to retain command made him seem spiteful.  Kirk thought Scotty could take command.  Why wouldn’t Spock?  Is this his way of spiting his father?

There also seemed to be a lot of fighting among the ambassadors.  One even turns up dead, with Sarek as the likely suspect.  I looked up the definition of federation.   It‘s a group of states with a central government, but still have independence in terms of their own affairs.  This is why they have ambassadors in the first place.  Still, you’d think they’d get along better.  You don’t hear of ambassadors to the UN killing each other.

It’s a shame that the series didn’t have better continuity.  I was never really clear on the structure of The United Federation of Planets.  This was the only episode to give any sort of real insight into that.  We‘d also have to wait for the movies to see Sarek again.

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Star Trek -- Season 2 Episode 3 (The Changeling)

I’ve never made it any secret that I hate an unstoppable force versus mere mortals.  You have movies like The Terminator, where there’s one strong force with limited range and power.  It’s another thing altogether to have a god-like creature.  In fact, the episode to air before this one literally had a Greek God as an antagonist.  Now, we have an Earth probe that was presumed destroyed only to have it turn up with some amazing modifications.

When the Enterprise first encounters it, Nomad had just finished wiping out over four billion people.   Yes.  This tiny little probe destroyed the entire population of a solar system.  Why?  Because they were imperfect biological creatures.  Nomad is about to do the same to the Enterprise until it hears the name James T. Kirk.  Nomad takes this to be the name of its creator, Dr. Jackson Roykirk, and spares the ship.

This puts Kirk in a difficult position.  He’s in no position to deny Nomad anything.  The probe thinks nothing of killing anyone wearing a red shirt.  At least four security guards get vaporized.  Nomad even kills Scotty and wipes Uhura’s memory.  (Nomad is able to resurrect Scotty, but can do nothing for Uhura.)  On the other hand, Kirk can’t show Nomad the way to Earth.  That’s billions more imperfect beings that would be slaughtered.  Kirk is able to save the day at the last minute by outthinking the probe.

There are several things that bothered me about the episode, starting with the fact that this is the second week in a row that the Enterprise squared off and defeated a powerful being.  Kirk and crew are spared only by the similarity of two names.  For that matter, why did Nomad spare the crew?  It had no problem killing security guards, even given orders by Kirk not to do so.  It could just as easily destroyed everyone except Kirk and maybe Spock.

My second issue is Uhura’s memory loss.  Her memory is wiped, presumably completely.  She’s left with only a knowledge of Swahili, and yet they bring her back up to speed in a week?  It’s not entirely clear, but it’s implied that she loses all her memories, including those of friends, family and her fellow crewmembers.  This is never brought up again.  She just goes about being Uhura, as if it never happened.  Uhura is so easy to disposable that she’s effectively replaced by…Uhura?

And the episode could have done so much more with the concept.  This is proven by the fact that they reused the basic plot in Star Trek: The Motion Picture.  They took a concept that had no business using up a full hour and made it into a feature-length film that actually worked a little better.  (Granted, the movie still wasn’t great, but it was better than this episode.)

I think, if anything, this episode demonstrates how much more the series could have done.  We didn’t learn much about the crew outside of the ship.  Most details, like Sulu’s fencing or Kirk‘s brother, generally come up when it’s necessary for the plot of the episode.  Uhura’s memory loss is something that should have been a terrible trauma and it’s used as a way to show Nomad’s power.  Uhura deserves better than that.

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Star Trek -- Season 2 Episode 1 (Amok Time)

During the first season of Star Trek, the Vulcans were established as being very logical.  Everything about their race and culture was done logically.  Their reproductive habits weren’t talked about much, though.  As Kirk put it in this episode, everyone just assumed it was done logically.  But, Vulcans do mate and it’s not a very logical time for them.

The episode starts with Dr. McCoy telling Captain Kirk that something about their resident Vulcan is off.  If it were anyone else, they might be described as temperamental.  But, this is Spock we’re talking about.  Something is off.  He even requests to be taken back to Vulcan.  He won’t give any details other than that he has to go there immediately.

Kirk agrees.  The only catch is that they have to go to an important ceremony that can’t be delayed.  There’s no way that Kirk can drop Spock off at Vulcan and still make the engagement at Altair VI.  When Kirk diverts course, Spock diverts back to Vulcan.  Why?  It turns out that Vulcans have an uncontrollable urge to mate every seven years upon reaching adulthood.  Spock was bonded to a woman years ago and it’s now time for him to marry her.

Of course, it’s not that simple.  His bride challenges the marriage and has Kirk fight Spock…to the death.  No, they’re not going to have the first officer kill the captain this early in the second season.  (McCoy has a trick up his sleeve.)  I must admit that it’s an interesting way to start a new year.

The big plus for this episode is that we get to see some development for Spock and Vulcans in general.  I must admit that his parents are suspiciously absent.  You’d think they’d make the time for his son’s wedding.  For that matter, it would seem that neither side has any family present.  I can see that it might have been short notice, considering that the wedding takes place literally when the urge hits them.  You’d still think that they’d be on call.

It’s also curious that other Federation worlds don’t know anything about the Pon Farr.   It’s said that Vulcans are secretive about it, which is understandable.  It’s not clear what percentage of Starfleet officers are Vulcan, so it’s plausible that most were able to discreetly request personal time when the occasion presented itself.  Also, in The Immunity Syndrome, it’s stated that there was a ship staffed solely by Vulcans.  I’d think that at least a few officers would be gone at any given time.  In any event, it was great episode to lead off the second season.

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