171: Star Trek TOS Season 2, “Catspaw”

Matt and Sean talk about another omnipotent being who can’t help but play games with the Star Trek: The Original Series crew.  This is another Kirk making the ladies swoon. Does this trope work or does it need to stop?

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 In this episode of Trek in Time, we’re talking about having omnipotence, but losing the battle due to getting turned on by Kirk. That’s right everybody, we’re talking about Star Trek, the original series, Catspaw, originally broadcast on October 27th, 1967. This is episode number one of season two, but 30th in production order.

And it was seventh in broadcast order in season two. And I’ve already given away why, Matt, can you figure out why? Why Sean? October 27th. They basically broadcast it as a Halloween episode. Which I thought was a neat little nugget. As I was watching this one, I was like, I was like, I can’t help but wonder, was this intentional?

It wasn’t super intentional, but it did make for a nice little spooky Halloween episode for the kids. Welcome everybody to Trek in Time. We’re watching every episode of Star Trek in chronological order. We’re also taking a look at the world at the time of original broadcast. So as I mentioned before, October 27th, 1967 is the day in history we’re going to be diving into as we talk about Catspaw.

And who are we? Well, I’m Sean Ferrell. I’m a writer. I write some sci fi. I write some stuff for kids. And with me as always is my younger brother. Yes, younger. I get to boss him around.

That would be Matt. He’s that Matt behind Undecided with Matt Ferrell, which takes a look at emerging tech and its impact in our lives. And Matt, how are you today?

I’m doing well. I finally have gotten over my jet lag from CES, Sean. It’s very good. Feeling normal again. Very good.

And before you got over your jet lag from CES, you had to get over your jet lag from Germany.

And before that you had to get over your jet lag from Mexico. So here’s to hoping that you don’t have to get over jet lag anytime again soon. Before we get into our conversation about this episode, we always like to revisit the mailbag and see what you said about our previous one. So the previous one,

Yes.

It was about some animated stories and I invited people to jump in and let us know what do you think about doing any of the animated. I was a big advocate for visiting them, but Matt, I don’t know the results. Please let me know if anybody took me up on my question and told me, yeah, get out of Dodge.

Oh, they did.

And it was interesting, because guess what? It was split about 50 50. Oh, good. Just like you and me, we’re split about 50 50. So it didn’t give us a clear winner. But the comments that we got, one from Mark Loveless, he wrote, I’ll be blunt, not a fan of Star Trek, the animated series. Growing up, I experienced better animation, for example, shows like Johnny Quest.

In the animated series, this Uh, this is a lot of cut and paste storyboarding basic animation that should have been an example for real animators to draw something cool, decent ideas for stories that aren’t fleshed out, and readings of the actors are all done in one or two takes without hearing the tone of the other actors.

Team Matt on this one. Painful to watch. I’d rather watch T. J. Hooker, And trust me, that is saying a lot. And then PaleGhost69 doubled down on that saying, I second this. The art was so distracting, I felt like I was watching some crappy adult swim show. That’s definitely Mark and PaleGhost on the no. But on the flip side, Sean.

We have RyuuKageDesu , I hope I said that right, uh, who said, Due to limited time, I tend to spot watch the episodes here on Trek in Time. I never watch the animated series, so I would be more interested than many fans might otherwise be. Still, it did bring in my extra view and extra interaction. So, Team yes.

And then Dan Sims wrote, I would love for animated episodes to be random additional content whenever you guys have enough time along with the regular program. So again, a team yes. So it’s like there were other comments as well, but like it all broke down along this 50 50 kind of split of there’s definitely a team Matt, woof attitude.

And then there’s also a, hey, this is kind of fun, uh, attitude as well. So. Sounds to me like we should probably just stay the course, do, what is it, two more episodes after season

two? We currently have planned is to do two episodes after season two and two episodes after season three. We’ve got plenty of time to revisit that plan.

And if it seems to work out better that maybe, maybe what I’ll do is take a look at the animated episodes and see if there’s not an organic way to maybe latch one or two of them onto original series episodes, and then we can just kind of like have a bigger episode where we talk about the original series and then also have bonus content in the form of discussing the animated one.

Uh, and I say all of that largely because there are a couple of the animated episodes that I really do enjoy. And one of them in particular is, stands out as, as a terrific episode. So I would really love to be able to talk about that, but, um, I continue to invite. Viewers who maybe didn’t weigh in earlier, let us, you know, continue to let us know what do you like about these discussions versus the animated series?

Is there a way for us to do that? If that would be pleasing for everybody, um, cause we can continue to chew on it because we’ve got a full season two to think about it before we get to when we’re supposed to do the next ones.

And we had a couple, uh, remaining ones. We also talked in that episode last week about socialism and communism and all that kind of stuff.

And PaperclipBike wrote, the discussion on socialist Star Trek and capitalist Star Wars was brilliantly well timed for me when I watched the penultimate episode of the skeleton crew with the family later in the day, seeing Jod’s awe and out of control glee in avoiding spoilers, the place where they arrive at, are there no Star Trek episodes of a similar nature?

There seems to be greed for power and control amongst villains, but not for money per se. And I’m trying to think of, in Star Trek, I can’t think of a single Episode where it’s about money, but in Deep Space Nine, there’s a lot of the Ferengi and it’s all about greed, but it’s never villainous and it’s never like the central theme of the show.

It’s just kind of like this. It’s almost for like laughs that the way it’s done. Yeah. Um, I can’t think of any Star Trek that’s really about the villains about profit. It

tends

to

be about Dark, if you take the angle that the humans are effectively the villains, Because the Horta is just defending its territory and its children.

That’s kind of for greed. The motive of the mining company, they say, like, we’re going to be rich if we get to this stuff. This place is a gold mine, literally. That’s a good point. Um, so there’s greed there, but it’s not, Mustache twirling. And I think that’s the big difference is in a lot of the things that this commenter shared.

It seems like villainy in the form of mustache twirling, I’m clearly the bad guy. Whereas Devil in the Dark is trying to play it as, like, these humans have their motives. They aren’t inherently evil. They’re just in conflict with the motives of this other creature. And in Next Generation, when the Ferengi are first introduced, they are literally like, we will sell this ship.

We’ll steal the Enterprise and sell it. It’s not necessarily mustache twirling villainy as much as it is cartoonish. The first introduction of the Ferengi is terrible. We’ll get there. It’s horrendous. We’ll get there in a couple of years. It’s gonna, it’s like there are some of the early introductions of them is just absolutely horrendous.

The character of Vosh. Yes. She’s about greed. Next generation. She’s not a villain. She’s about greed. She wants to sell things. Uh, there is the episode where Data is stolen by a collector. He is clearly a capitalist. He is a smuggler and a criminal from that perspective, and he wants to hold Data because of his preciousness.

That is kind of mustache twirly, but it’s less about money than it is about uniqueness.

That’s kind of what, that’s kind of what I’m getting at, it’s like most of it’s not about like cash, most of it’s about this thing is rare, so it’s kind of a valuable thing because of its rareness. It’s not about the money.

So there is greed, there absolutely is greed in the show, but it’s not about like dollars and cents.

Yeah, it’s an interesting thing for us to keep in mind as we move through episodes and to look for those, because, because when you talk about capitalist greed as a villain, you’re talking about cultural critique, you’re talking, and, and that does exist clearly in Star Trek.

They do that all the time when they’re like, you know, Spock will casually say like, this is something the humans did in the 20th century, but you grew out of it, thankfully. And they use that all the time in Star Trek to say like, Oh, you 20th century viewers. are monsters compared to the world that you’re supposedly peeking in on. Uh, but it’s not quite so much a on the nose, like, oh, if you want to make money, you’re twirling your mustache while you’re tying the children to the train track.

Yeah. Finally, in the comments, I’m gonna give you one guess, Sean. It’s Mark Loveless with, oh, is it wrong answers. Wrong answers only. Wrong answers only. So if today’s episode cat’s paw, the wrong answer only is a mystery Alien shows up on the enterprise and no one can figure out who the shapely lady in a furry cat suit is.

She has human hands, but actual cat’s paws instead of feet, sexy and flirty. All of the males in the ship find her attractive except Kirk, who is apparently put off by purple fur. In fact, he said, even says now maybe if she was green. The male stopped flirting with her when she can’t find any cat litter.

Let’s just say there’s the gift she’s left in the mess hall. Uhura, Now, now it is a mess hall. When she very unsexually starts a cat bath after said mess that, let me say this again, when she very unsexually starts a cat bath after said mess, That is it. She is beamed off the ship to a planet with sandy beaches to solve that problem.

Side note, the episode is heralded as a breakthrough show by the modern day furry community, often played at furry convention. This is a comment.

Wow. He covered not just the in show reality, but also our reality. That is remarkable. The alternate, the mirror universe that Mark is from sounds like a weird and wild place.

Yes, it is. Thank you for that. That noise in the background. Is that me responding to that comment? No, that noise in the background and the lights you see flashing behind Matt. That is the read alert, which means it’s time for Matt to talk to the Wikipedia description. Matt, season two, for whatever reason has much longer Wikipedia descriptions. Good luck!

Oh boy. Two powerful aliens threaten the well being of the Enterprise and her crew with their magical powers. Scotty, Sulu, and Jackson from the landing party go missing on a planet known to be uninhabited. Upon returning, Jackson dies, giving Kirk a warning to leave the system.

Kirk, Spock, and Bones beam down to find a mysterious castle. A man and a woman, Korob and Sylvia meet them and they find that Korob and Sylvia are not from this system, but have moved here with the intention of learning more about the humans. Korob, I called him Korob before, Korob has good intentions, but Sylvia is determined to learn about humans and captures Sulu, Scotty, and Bones completely by mind control.

Kirk uses seductive tricks to, I have so many comments about this part, Kirk uses seductive tricks on Sylvia to get the truth and destroys their Transmuter power source to free the entire landing party and end the illusions. My favorite part about this description, Sean, is they put Transmuter in quotes.

Yes.

Season 2, episode 7, directed by Joseph Pevney, written by Robert Bloch, with guest appearances by Antoinette Bower as Sylvia, Theo Marcuse as Korob, Michael Barrier, Eddie Paskey, and William Blackburn, Jimmy Jones, Rhodie Cogan, Gail Bonney, Maryesther Denver, and John Winston also appear as various crewmen. I also want to mention specifically Michael Barrier as Assistant Chief Engineer DeSalle, who is shown in command of the Enterprise.

I liked his turn at command here. I thought he did an interesting job. For poor Mr. Michael Barrier, this is his fifth, I think, appearance as DeSalle in the series. And he has changed his uniforms twice. He started off in a red shirt. He went to a gold shirt, which is a command uniform in the original series.

And then he’s returned now to a red shirt. So either the guy can’t stay in one department for very long, or he can’t make up his mind. Like what’s going on with poor Mr. DeSalle. We also have our main cast. We have, of course, William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelly, James Doohan, Nichelle Nichols, George Takei.

The time of original broadcast, October 27th, 1967. And what was the world like when this episode aired? Well, Matt, I don’t have to tell you what you were singing along to in 1967, which was approximately seven years before you were born. That’s right. You were singing along to, to Sir With Love by Lulu.

Take it away, Matt. Off key as always, but still very enjoyable. And at the box office, people were lining up to see, and Matt, this is another one of those special treasures. I actually enjoy it when this is what happens. A movie I’ve not heard of appears, but it is a movie that actually sounds like something I would enjoy watching.

Reflections in a Golden Eye is a 1967 American drama directed by John Huston, love him as a director, based on a 1941 novel of the same name by Carson McCullers. The film stars Elizabeth Taylor and Marlon Brando. And I was like, they were in a movie together. Remarkable. They star as an unhappily married couple on a U. S. Army base in Georgia during the 1940s. Brian Keith, Julie Harris, Robert Forrester, and Zorro David were featured in major supporting roles. The film deals with the elements of repressed sexuality, both homosexual and heterosexual, as well as mental illness, voyeurism, and murder. I found myself reading this and thinking, I think I have to go find Reflections in a Golden Eye.

Cause this sounds actually really, really good. And on television 1966 to 1967 is behind us, Matt. You gotta let it go. We’re now in 1967 to 1968. That’s right. Season two of the original series in which ratings sadly for the series dip a bit. Season two averages a 11. 6, whereas season one averaged a 12.

Part of the reason for that? Well, if you look at the graphic that Matthew is happily sharing on the screen, what night was, Star Trek airing, it was airing on Friday nights, and that’s not a great night if you want to get television viewers. It’s an okay night if you’re just aiming for people who are under the age of 14, but if you’re aiming for an adult audience, Thursday night is the night to go to, not Friday.

So here at 8. 30, opposite Gomer Pile and Man in a Suitcase. Yes, you heard that right. That was the name of a show. Another name, equally entertaining, Operation Entertainment. Oh boy. Yes. But amongst the programs that were airing in 1967 to 1968, well, the number one program is the Andrew Griffith show. At this time, the Andrew Griffith show was in its final season.

It aired originally from October 3rd, 1960 to April 1st, 1968, with a total of 249 half hour episodes, which was. 159 of them in black and white and 90 of them in color. So this would be the final season for the Andy Griffith show. And it was ruling the ratings in 1967 into 68 with a 27. 6 in the Nielsen’s.

So that gives you a sense of the gap between that and little old Star Trek way down in the 11s. And in the news on this date, Friday, October 27th, 1967. Well, fun little news story. About the coronation of a modern monarch and his queen in Iran is marked by pomp of old Persia. I can’t wait to find out how long they ruled.

Oh, boy. Yes, I know. It’s a dark take on history, but it’s also very true. Yeah. Other headlines at the time, the Congress, the U. S. Congress, was looking at changing military pay and also the rents that were charged for the military personnel on bases. There was also a bombing of a power plant in Hanoi. Yes, Matt.

I hate to break it to you. Vietnam was continuing to rage. On now to our discussion about this episode, Catspaw. Matt, you may have noticed that the name of the writer of this episode, one Mr. Robert Bloch is a name that seemed familiar. Do you remember where we’ve seen his work before? I don’t. He wrote what little girls are made of the episode in which they found professor Corby on a planet.

And it was a planet that was had the technology to manufacture Androids. And it turned out Corby was not Corby. And we had the presence of a large Android who referred to the old ones. The old ones were the ones who used to inhabit the planet, and the old ones had to be turned against by their Android creations.

And in this episode, there is another reference to the old ones. And what I find interesting is Robert Bloch was a protege, and he was mentored by H. P. Lovecraft. Who, of course, was the originator of all the Cthulhu mythos, and the Cthulhu were referenced as the Old Ones. He used to write about this cosmic sci fi horror of otherworldly strength that was so old as to be forgotten, and the Old Ones were sleeping, and they would come back and do terrible things to people.

I found this episode with Robert Bloch basing the screenplay on a short story of his own, which was clearly a horror story because the original title of his short story referred to brooms. It was like, It had a witchcraft reference to it. And that’s clearly at play in this, but the, the setup of this one and the reception of this one, this, this episode is referred to as being when polls are done by various magazines and fan bases, looking at categorizing Star Trek episodes.

This one gets high marks usually for being one of the scariest, one of the creepiest episodes, which I find maybe kind of passe at this point, because the original series can’t bring the kind of creepy quality that you would have with some of the episodes from like Strange New Worlds where there were legitimately Creepy episodes.

Like I’m thinking about the episodes where they confront the Gorn and you see humans in tunnels where they’re hearing the sounds of things in the background, and it’s clearly evocative of a movie like Alien, where it’s pushing a horror aspect that’s modern horror, as opposed to just creep, creepy horror or spooky atmosphere, which is what this feels like to me.

But what this does have is a very fun house feel. Once again, reminding me of the Trelane episode, where it’s basically saying, Oh, there are aliens who are misinterpreting what humanity is like. So they are doing what they think humanity is like, and they’re surprised to find out that humanity’s response is like, What are you doing?

And that’s on display in this one as well. Did you find yourself watching this one thinking it’s kind of samey? Or did you think that this one did enough to create an imprint of its being its own thing, because there are elements of this that do feel samey to me, but it has a couple of moments that feel like it’s just enough to make it feel like, okay, Trelane is kind of a Goofy Baby Q, whereas these two are representative of something other, And it’s a little confusing as what the motivations are, but ultimately, I feel like this one kind of separates itself just enough to not feel like, okay, this is just Trelane point two.

It’s not like I’m hedging. It’s both. It’s like, I found myself a little bored by, oh, another seemingly, um, omnipotent, you know, force that can put the Enterprise into a magical force field with what ability? Like, none of it’s ever explained. It’s just this magical, they can do whatever they want, Q like thing. And I found that part of it very samey. What was different was the motivations, because by the end of the episode, to me at least, it became clear that Korob and Sylvia. Yeah, they’re, they’re, Korob is a good guy in one way, like, you know what I mean? He’s like, we should stop screwing around here. And then the other one is, I have feelings! And she’s, she’s clearly experiencing life in a way that she doesn’t experience in her own reality. And so it’s like, almost like a drug.

She’s kind of like overtaken and just doesn’t want to give up on it and has no, I don’t know, morals, no empathy. So it’s like, I got it. It was different motivations from what Trelane was versus this one, but what they’re actually doing was just very samey. So for me, it didn’t like completely separate it from those two episodes.

Can I just talk about the whole motivation of the sexual attraction part?

If you want to, if you want to rush to that part instead of awkwardly lumbering toward it, absolutely. Go ahead.

Yeah, I did not. Overall, I did not like this episode, and part of the reason I think I didn’t like this episode was for this theme.

And I didn’t realize it was written by Robert Bloch, who did the same exact theme in his last episode, where the android woman gets overtaken smitten by Kirk, and a poor woman has no, like, emotions get the best of her, and like, That very misogynist, sexist view of women is in this episode again. And so for me, the fact that it’s Robert Bloch, when you said that at the beginning of the episode, I was like, Oh, that explains a hell of a lot while we’re seeing this exact same trope again.

Freaking ridiculous. My wife was half watching this and she was walking around the kitchen and she went, Oh, so women can’t control their emotions. An attractive man, suddenly she’s just like all smitten and can’t control herself anymore. And it was, to me, that, that part of the episode was like such like, you know, you’re playing a song on a piano and you hit a wrong key.

It wasn’t just like hitting a wrong key. It was like your face planting on the keyboard. It was just, to me, it just totally kind of ruined the rest of what was there. And if they hadn’t had that, it may have been a little more enjoyable to me, but it was just. I couldn’t get past the sexist kind of view of women.

Yeah, it’s a little bit like, um. Because she’s not a woman. That’s the other thing is like, she’s not a freaking woman. Yeah. You know what I mean? It’s like, how are you, she has a human shape and you’re making her, it’s, I don’t know. There was just so much wrong with that, Sean.

So they’ve done it in a number of times in Star Trek and in sci fi in general of the idea of like the alien inhabits a body and immediately it’s just like, I like having a body.

And it’s just like that. Really? Like, and I find myself like the perfect counterpoint to all of that. It’s almost like when they wrote the episode where Q’s powers are removed and he’s like, I was I was Sitting there and suddenly overcome by dizziness and felt myself losing consciousness. And suddenly everything was just black.

And Picard’s response is, you fell asleep, Q. Like that side of it is far more entertaining than the, I love having a body. There’s a

second part, but there’s another problem with it, Sean, is they establish throughout the episode that, you know, I’m sensing things. I’m feeling things I’ve never had before. And so it gives you the sense, at least this is modern Matt with 50 years of Star Trek, it’s making me think, because I’d forgotten this episode, it’s making me think she’s like a Q.

Like she’s, she doesn’t have a body. She’s some kind of like being that’s just kind of out there. But then she does have one. That’s what I thought. Yeah. And the end of the episode, it’s a freaking Muppet puppet thing at the end that like starts smoking for some reason. Which I always loved. I always loved it. It’s so goofy,

Sean.

It’s so goofy. I love the ending of this. As a kid, I always did. I always loved that it was just like, these are clearly marionettes, and they’re like,

bleh. They’re

laying them down, and you can see them like, bleh, I’m going down. And they start to smoke, and I loved it. I loved it. But they have bodies. Yes.

Yes.

It’s like, so they would have had feelings and senses and all that kind of stuff. It’s like, it did, it kind of undercut everything they did in the video, the episode before. It’s like, why? Yeah. Why would they? It’s completely undercuts the entire message. So, it’s like, it made no sense. They had a corporeal body in the first place, which means they’d be eating and pooping and living and sensing things.

Yeah, that’s the thing is,

the idea of the incorporeal being being corporeal, I, like, I don’t want graphic detail, but the first time that one of them’s just like, this came out of my body. I,

I don’t know what I did to deserve this, but this came out of my body. How do you do this? What is that? How do you build your lives around this?

If you can, for a moment, pull back from, as you said, Modern Day Matt, which is a TV show that’s starting this fall on NBC. Check it out. Um, If you can pull away from being modern day Matt and take yourself back to being 1970s Matt. I remember watching this episode when I was a kid. You just said you don’t recall it.

You didn’t recall it.

I know I’ve seen it,

I just don’t recall it. I remembered this episode when I was a kid, legitimately creeping me out at a couple of moments. I was always a little intimidated by the cat shadow on the wall. I was intimidated by the idea of the cat being enormous. The three witches when they showed up, I remember when I was First watching this episode, I couldn’t watch that scene.

I legitimately like left the room during the floating head saying like, Captain Kirk, you’ve got to go or you will die. Uh, so for a young viewer, I feel like this works in a kind of Vincent Price horror movie way. Yeah. Like it’s very broad, it’s very colorful, but it’s, it’s like, oh, here’s a thing covered in cobwebs and here’s a dark hallway and here’s the pit that they fall into.

Do you feel like? All of that aspect, like the fun house aspect, where, how did that hit you? I know that you’re saying like modern day, Matt was looking at this and I’m like, I’m kind of bored and everything like that. But as far as the putting that kind of thing together, how did you feel that worked?

I thought that was the only part of the episode that worked.

Honestly, I mean, obviously not for today’s standards, but for the time, it’s like, I think, I think it would have worked very well at the time for what they did with the cat stuff and all that kind of aspect of it, uh, the, them being chained up, the way the guy dies at the beginning that sets the stakes for the rest of the episode where he just like shows up in the transfer pad and that stunt fall he does, He lands right on his face.

I hope he got a bonus because the way he fell, it looked like it would have really hurt. So it’s like, it’s one of those that set the stage of like, okay, there’s stakes here that people can die from whatever’s happening down there. So it’s like, it makes it feel tense. That aspect of this episode, I have no complaints about.

It’s really just the really crappy storytelling that Robert Bloch did with the sexism and like the undercutting his own message at the end by making them feel incorporeal and they’re corporeal. It’s like, wait, what? Yeah.

Yeah. There’s aspects of that. They’re little carrot faces. Yeah. They’re like little, like you said, Muppets.

They look like Ratso Rizzo with his fur removed. Yeah. Yeah, I, I like, like you mentioned the guy coming on the transporter and just falling and he’s dead that I thought was a very effective opening. I liked. Uh, one thing we haven’t talked about yet and let’s dive into this. Um, this This is Walter Koenig’s first episode.

Hey, Chekhov. Yep. So this is the first time filming, here comes Chekhov. And he is wearing the worst wig ever seen on national television. They wanted him to look like a beetle. They wanted, they were going for a Davy Jones look. It didn’t work because the monkeys were hot and Davy Jones was popular and the Beatles were popular.

And so they were like, okay, let’s, we need a younger character to get the kids involved, to get the kids interested. And so they create the character of Chekhov and they put him in that wig and watching it with the understanding that this is the first introduction of him. And this is, this is one of the things that stands out to me as being fascinating.

We’ve talked about before how. Season one, sometimes Uhura would be in the background. Sometimes she wouldn’t. Sometimes you’d see McCoy or Scottie and sometimes you wouldn’t. And then as the show was figuring itself out, they pulled things in and put them more in the foreground more and more and figured out how to use these different pieces.

But my consumption of the show was through reruns. And it was never clear to me, like when In a series, I was. I’d be watching these things on rerun over and over and over again. So am I watching a season one episode or a season three? I don’t know. So Chekov’s there or he’s not there. Like, okay, the show is just kind of like the people come in and they leave.

So From my childhood perspective, Chekhov was always in the show. So, seeing it now with the introduction of a character, how did you feel looking at this as this is the first introduction of this character? What do you think they’ve done that puts this character into different terrain than The commanding officer on the bridge, LaSalle at this point is somebody we’ve seen multiple times, but he’s not going to be a main character.

He’s not going to be even a recurring character. He’s just a guy who sometimes is in a security outfit. Sometimes he’s in a command outfit. Sometimes he’s an engineer. He’s wherever they need him to be just for an episode, as opposed to let’s plant a character to do a thing. What did you think about the introduction of Chekov here?

Well, the introduction really wasn’t an introduction. It was just kind of like, you’re dropped in the deep end of the pool of like, who the hell is this dude? Oh, he’s a science officer, but who the hell is this dude? And the only kind of reference we get to him being new other than us not recognizing him is his comment of, um, I’m not that green.

Like when the, when Sal makes that comment to him of like, did you do this? And he’s like, I’m not that green. Of course I did. So it’s like, that was the only. That insubordinate response is the only clue of the show saying we’re introducing this new character. Um, so on that mark, I think they did a bad job introducing him as what would be considered a regular.

At this point, it feels like he’s just a rando, a rando showing up and we may never see him again.

I, I disagree a little bit from the perspective of they mentioned that he’s green. He says, I’m not that green. So we know he’s young. He also looks young compared to the other people on the bridge. I think for me, one of the things that stands out though, is that he is performing at Spock’s station.

Yes. And to me, I think that sends a subtle message of, yeah, he’s young, but he’s got some sort of skill set that puts him in special territory.

Yes. Yeah.

It’s something that they leaned on much, much heavier when the J. J. Abrams movies were put forth. They literally said he was a savant. Like he, he was portrayed as being talented beyond his years, which is similar to what they did with Uhura in the Strange New Worlds, where they said, okay, this is a cadet, but she’s, she gets her pick of position on the ship because she’s good at everything.

And I feel like this is, I agree with you. It’s not a great launch for a character. There’s not a lot of messaging like this is going to be a regular character, but like Short of showing him arriving on the ship, short of showing a shuttlecraft bringing him and him being introduced and walking around and saying, hello, I’m your new ensign.

Short of doing all of that, I felt like there were subtle clues here that were like, this guy is supposed to be something special compared to another background person. He’s not like the guy standing behind the transporter controls. He’s not LaSalle who’s appeared in the background in a number of different episodes.

So I found myself a little on the fence about how effective it was as a launching off of a character, but I did feel like, okay, it’s, it’s interesting to see how they implemented bringing in this new guy. And it does explain why when I was rewatching episodes, there are earlier episodes in the season where he has legitimately normal hair.

And then there’s this episode where it looks like he broke into his aunt’s wig boxes and was trying different things on just like, Hey, how’s this one look? Because not a good look. Oh boy. Uh, kind of big picture. How do you feel about the, um, Kirk’s decision to have the top four officers on the ship all go down to a planet?

We’ve talked about this but we’ve talked about this before of this show is like Notoriously bad about like this this would never happen and my favorite part is next generation It makes it a point that this can’t happen. Like it’s Riker going down. It’s never Riker and Picard going down.

And if it does happen, it happens in a handful of episodes and every time it does, Riker is just like, you should not be going down.

And Picard is just like, I have to for very specific reasons and you’re, and he says things like you’re, Your feelings are noted. Like, I am paying attention to your thoughts on this. I understand your perspective, and I will make a note in the record that you told me not to go, but it’s just like, in this, he has already sent down his number three and his number four down to the planet, and they’ve disappeared, and his immediate response is like, not only do I have to go, I gotta take Spock with me.

I love it. Yeah. It’s so wild. It’s like, this

is clearly a dangerous situation. Let’s take the entire senior staff and just like, send them all down there. Yeah. And then you’re left with a bridge of like, basically also Rands. Yeah. But the one thing I will say, that they did well with that. is it shows the people that are left that you’re as a viewer i’m going like these are all these are all the guys that are like like the leftovers but they’re good like they’re good at their jobs they’re figuring out like how to get out of this like trap that is set for them and it’s working and it’s like okay you’re making these people Very competent, which kind of explains why Kirk would have been comfortable leaving the ship in their hands because they’re really good at their job.

So it’s like, it does, it does kinda, kinda work,

they explain it, but not completely. Yeah, but it is, it is pretty funny to me, but I completely agree with you. I think you get the opportunity to have LaSalle say, like, here’s the course of action. Here’s what we’re going to do. I need you to go back. I need you to scan.

There’s got to be a weakness. You’ve got to figure something out. And he’s talking to Uhura about, like, you’ve got to get them on the horn. You’ve got to, you can’t let them stay down there without communication. And as things start to work, we’re even told point blank by, uh, Korob, who says your people would have escaped her trap soon enough.

That when I removed it, it wasn’t, it was, I wasn’t doing anything that they weren’t going to be able to do on their own. They were already on their way to being able to do that. And like you said, you got the B team up there and like, okay, that’s showing competence across the board, but to get there through the lunacy of saying like, all right, we don’t know what happened to our people down on this planet.

We aren’t able to reach to them. And we know the third one is dead. I know what I’ll do. How many people on the ship? 420. All right. I’m going to take 395 of them down to the planet with

me. So the other thing, while I complimented him of like, okay, you got a competent crew, which shows why Kirk would have been comfortable leaving them behind, it also shows he has no confidence in them because the only people that can do it right on the surface are the senior crew.

So it’s like, it’s both a compliment and a back, it’s like a backhanded compliment to his crew. It’s like, come on, you’re not the only guy that can do it right. It’s, it’s the unfortunate

reality of a TV show like this, where the producers are like, we’d like there to be a kind of reality. We’re basing it on like military protocol, naval protocol.

Here’s how the ship would work. If it’s like a naval ship, here’s how it would work. And then the fans are like, we like Spock. Yeah. So Spock’s got to go. And Kirk is clearly the hero. So well, Kirk’s got to be there. And McCoy has, when they realized like the repartee that he has with Kirk and Spock, and they began to realize like, Oh, this is our big three.

We have a triumvirate. This is the dynamic. This is where the tension within the ship comes from. Well, he’s got to go along too. And people, they added Scotty in more and more because the fandom liked him. So now you got to have Scotty there. And well, the show is also like Sulu has shown competence. So suddenly you’ve got everybody.

I love the fact that they come to a planet that they quote, know is uninhabited. For some reason, they never explain why, why did they beam anybody down? Yeah. Never explained. But who did they beam down? A guy we don’t know whose job it was, the chief engineer and the pilot of the ship. Really? Like not a geologist, not a

archaeologist.

But Sean, this is, this, this is where I come, this is where I come back to, this is the lazy writing side of this, of Star Trek in the late sixties. It was clearly they were trying to have their cake and eat it too with, it’s how a Navy ship is run. Well, the captain would never be doing what Kirk is doing on a Navy ship, but he’s the popular guy and you got to put Spock with him and you’re, you’re making all the explanations as to why they did what they did as writers.

But let’s fast forward to Next Generation, which I will objectively make many people angry when I say this, is one of the best Star Trek series ever made and is better than the original series. I said it, it’s out there, Picard’s the best captain. Anyway, Next Generation does lean into the Navy structure, as we talked about.

And they have amazing episodes where Picard is still in the thick of it. They have amazing episodes where, you know, Riker is in the thick of it. They did a good job of integrating the key characters that we all know and love in really interesting ways, where this show, it was just kind of like a Saturday morning cartoon where it was like, let’s just send all the main characters down and have the adventures on the planet every week.

And there’s no logic behind why they’re doing what they’re doing. They’re just taking the popular characters and throwing them into the mix. Um, so yeah, I said it.

You said it and you’re not going to take it back and you’re not going to apologize. Nope. Yeah. It’s, it’s, I, I’m not going to debate whether or not this is the better or the worse show. I don’t think that that’s necessary to,

excuse me. I don’t think it’s necessary to try and, I’m not saying it’s a bad show.

I’m just saying Next Generation does it better. The, the U. S. Navy, the way the captain should work. It works better on Next Generation than the way they’re doing it on this.

Yeah, and there’s this gap of, there’s a gap in what is your goal in the show? And it’s not, they were not looking for realism. You know, they were looking for things that would make sense in the moment, but they were not looking for realism.

And um, like I said, they were crafting the program to get to a point where the people that fans liked were on screen the most. And when you design it that way, and you’ve already said like, here’s who these people are. You end up having to take a little logic and realism and put them to the side. Whereas Next Generation had the benefit of being able to say, okay, we’re crafting The show in this way with the intention of demonstrating the realism.

So it learned some mistake. It learned from some earlier mistakes, I think, and was able to move forward into like, Oh, if we want the dashing younger man to be the action guy. He can’t be the captain. He’ll be the number one. If we want, like, we’re going to craft out the roles in a way that says like, this is why these people went.

And I know that next generation does a much better job of, well, when Geordi is there on the planet, it’s because the chief engineer needed to be on the planet. Yep. It does a much better job of that than like, why is he here? Because he’s one of the bigger names on the show.

Well, it’s not just learning from mistakes.

It’s also a different time because that show was made in the eighties and nineties. And so there was a different mentality to how storytelling was being done in television at that point. So that is another reason.

Yeah. And we also end up with at a certain point just the, almost through a kind of attrition by the time you get to the fourth Star Trek movie and they are no longer even on the Enterprise, they’re on a stolen Klingon vessel.

And it’s just like, who do we have here? Oh, only the main characters, how interesting stroke of genius, like just, yeah, who needs the rest of the crew? Who even needs the enterprise? These are the people you cared about. So, yep. So viewers, listeners, what do you think about all this? Did this one land in a spooky spot for you or do you land in the terrain of like a little bit too much time has passed and when you get to the marionettes at the end, it’s a little too late to be creeped out.

Let us know, jump into the comments. Next time we’re going to be talking about the episode Metamorphosis. Please jump to the comments. Wrong answers only. What do you think that episode is going to be about? Metamorphosis. Yes, I’m already grossed out by what Mark is going to leave in the comments.

Game on Mark.

Thank you everybody for taking the time to watch or listen. We look forward to reading your comments. Don’t forget to like, subscribe and share with your friends. Those are three very easy ways for you to support the channel. And if you’d like to support us more directly, you can go to trekintime. show. Click the join button there. It allows you not only to throw coins at our heads, but it makes you an Ensign, which means you will be signed up for our spinoff program, Out of Time, which is for supporters only. I believe we shared an episode of that last week. I hope those of you who checked it out enjoyed it.

It’s basically Matt and I talking about anything that doesn’t fit within the confines of this program, and we hope you’d be interested in checking that out. Thank you everybody for taking the time to watch or listen. We’ll talk to you next time.

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