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 1 Episode 4 (The Naked Time)

Bad things seem to happen all at once.  It’s bad enough that you get a flat tire.  It just so happens that you’re in a sketchy part of town, it’s raining and you’re on your way to an important meeting.  (It never happens on the way back.)  Oh, and your AAA membership ran out last week.

The Enterprise is sent to check up on a research facility on the planet Psi-2000.  The facility hasn’t been heard from for a while and the planet is breaking up.  Captain Kirk is told to get the crew off the planet and do some final scans as the planet breaks up.  When the ship arrives, the rooms are frozen, as are the people.  One poor guy is fully clothed in the shower.

First Officer Spock beams down with Lieutenant Tormolen, both in what would appear to be biohazard gear.  The thing with gear like that is that you have to be wearing it for it to work.  Tormolen takes off a glove and touches a surface, thus bringing back an infection.

It’s not really clear what the infection is.  Dr. McCoy describes it as something like water forming complex chains that act like alcohol or something.  It causes people to lose inhibitions.  Tormolen starts talking about man not belonging in space.  Sulu goes around waving a sword at everyone.  Riley locks himself in engineering and shuts down the main engines.

This leads Chief Engineer Scott to break the laws of physics for the first time.  He says the engines can’t be restarted, but there is some sort of antimatter formula that might just work.  And it does.  The ship is able to get out of harm’s way just in time.

The episode is early enough that I wonder if anyone was taking the science seriously.  McCoy is talking about water forming an alcohol-like substance.  Alcohol contains carbon, which water doesn’t.  I would assume that whatever’s doing this is grabbing carbon from the human body, as we are carbon based.  I think this is little more than sloppy writing.  Someone should have put a little more effort into coming up with a plausible explanation.

It’s also said that the planet’s mass is changing.  I’m assuming that it’s decreasing in mass.  However, there’s no explanation of how this is happening.  I suppose it’s possible.  Mass might be converted to energy by some process, but there’s no mention of any sort of hear emissions or anything like that.  Again, I think someone was looking for something that sounded dangerous, but just didn’t come up with a decent mechanism for it.

I got the impression that the planetary station didn’t have any means of escape.  It’s something I would think someone would have mentioned.  (No order was given to look for escape pods, for example.)  If I knew a planet was going to be breaking up, I would have asked for a shuttlecraft or something.  This is a minor point, though.

The one thing that I did find odd was that the suits were so easy to take off.  Tormolen was able to easily remove his glove and scratch his nose.  If the planet is that cold and dangerous, wouldn’t you want something that was sealed up?  It should not have been that easy for someone to be that careless.

The acting and story are both pretty good, otherwise.  We get to see the normally repressed Spock cry and agonize over the fact that he couldn’t show his mother love.  Vulcans aren’t necessarily emotionless; they’re just better at hiding them.  And Spock is half human, a fact that would come up in later episodes.   The bridge crew is also frantically trying to get things in order as McCoy tries to find a cure.  There is a sense of urgency without it being over the top.

The series does seem to be coming together in may respects.  From what I understand, this story was supposed to set up Tomorrow is Yesterday, so I think there is some forethought going into the episodes.  I don’t really remember the original series for continuity, though.  There were quite a number of episodes aired out of order with very little confusion.  Yes, there’s one episode where the uniforms look different.  And Sulu does seem to bounce around a little.  It does make the series more accessible in that you can catch one episode here and there.  However, I like my continuity.

IMDb page