Matt and Sean talk about knowing when to push! At least when it comes to Star Trek: The Original Series. Dr McCoy’s bed side manner needs a little work, but that aside … does this episode still hold up to today?
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Oochie woochie coochie coo Oochie woochie coochie coo Oochie woochie coochie coo Oochie woochie coochie coo
Oochie woochie coochie coo That’s right. Thank you, Sean. We’re talking about the original series, Friday’s Child. Originally aired on December 1st, 1962.
Episode number 32 in shooting order. 40th in broadcast order. 11th of the 2nd season. Welcome everybody to Trek in time. We’re watching every episode of Star Trek in chronological star date order. We’re also taking a look at the world at the time of original broadcast. So we’re going to talk a bit about late 1967 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 brother, Matt. He is that Matt behind Undecided with Matt Ferrell, which takes a look at emerging tech and its impact on our lives. Matt, how are you this fine day? Sean,
you do not disappoint.
Yeah.
I was Sean and I always joke that we’re brothers, um, and we know each other very well. Like, I, without even talking to Sean before we did this show, I thought, Sean’s gonna do oochie woochie goochie goo as some kind of intro to the show, so he did not, he did not disappoint. Um, I’m doing well.
I mean, if you have DeForest Kelly going as far into delivering that line as he did And I hope that during the editing of this conversation, your editor is able to pull that clip and just insert it willy nilly.
Like, I give them, I give them carte blanche to just throw in DeForest Kelly saying, as often as is necessary in this episode, have at it. Before we get into our conversation about that, we always like to revisit what you’ve had to say about our previous episode. So, Matt, what did you find in the mailbag for us this week?
Uh, we had a few good ones. Uh, this is about episode Metamorphosis that had that Oh, what do you want to call it? The, the, the, the commissioner that was trying to negotiate the peace and the horrible sexism around that character. Uh, we had some good comments about that. Rennie F4143 wrote, I always loved how commissioner Karen snapped at the enterprise crew, reminding them of how her presence was necessary at the so and so interplanetary conflict.
All delivered in a tone more likely to start wars rather than defuse them. Yeah, there is a bit of, you
jackasses, I have to start peace!
Yeah, exactly. And then Dan Sims wrote, My god, that last line about finding another woman to end a war, sheesh. Yes. Yes, big, yes, Steven Schwartzkopf, Schwartzoff wrote, you just blew by the fact when I read the description, the Wikipedia description, okay, this is what this is from.
You just blew by the fact that episode summary starts. Kirk bones Spock. I would not be so mature. It was Kirk comma bones comma Spock. But when you read it out loud, perfect time for Oochie woochie coochie coo. Oh my God. Okay. And then of course, now we have wrong answers only about Friday’s child from the great Mark Loveless, who’s back.
He actually said he did write one last week and thought he had posted it and something went wrong and it didn’t post. So I’m sorry I missed last week’s. But for Plot of Friday’s Child, Mark wrote, Sometimes on shore leave, Kirk used Space Tinder to hook up at outposts on various planets, and his alias on Space Tinder is Caruso Friday, inspired from the Daniel Defoe book.
One particular outpost, one particular outpost involved a lot of swiping right, to the point that on the next visit, Kirk is outed and has to contend with an angry alien mom and her baby that has a head and face that look exactly like Uhura, uh, it seems that the alien Kirk was with the tell, it seems that the alien Kirk was with was telepathic and the baby conceived is imprinted with the image in the father’s mind during coitus.
So Kirk has to explain to Uhura that he was thinking about, sorry. So he has to explain to Uhura what he was thinking about during the space Tinder hookup. Laughs all around.
Mark. Mark. Mark. Mark. Mark. Mark. Mark. Mark. Mark. Mark. Mark.
I don’t want to know what was going through your mind when you wrote that one, Mark, but
It’s still good for laugh.
That noise you hear and those lights you see, now you’re not having some kind of seizure. It is in fact the read alert, which means it’s time for Matt to Try and tackle the Wikipedia description and that a special twofer this week. I’ve given you the long form Wikipedia Description and also the short form because there are two different pages and one has old as a slightly Shorter version of description.
I thought they’re both worth taking a look at okay
I don’t like the way you set this up. The crew of the Enterprise become entangled in a planet’s tribal power struggle. Upon landing and seeing a Klingon, one crew member is killed by the tribe. In a problematic turn of events, the leader of the ten tribes is killed and Maab, who supports the Klingons, is the one who takes charge.
The woman, Eleen, along with the landing party of Kirk, Spock, and Bones, I want to make sure that appropriately this time. Managed to escape, but cannot contact the Enterprise, which has been tricked into leaving the planet’s orbit to follow a distress signal. Eleen and the others managed to hide out.
Sorry.
Just Ellen. Meanwhile, the queen Barbara
or just Barb.
Maab realizes the Klingon’s true intention and The Enterprise manages to return in time to help the landing party and get the deal with the tribes people get that deal. That’s right. Get that deal. And now for the short form. In the episode, the crew of the Enterprise become entangled in a planet’s tribal power struggle.
Adding to their difficulty is the presence of the Klingons and a woman, Julie Newmar, who does not want her unborn child. What? What?
That’s an horrible, that’s a horrible description. The first one wasn’t that great. That one’s horrible. It implies that Julie Newmar hates
her child. That’s right. Wow. Friday’s Child from the original series, season 2, episode 11. Directed by Joseph Pevney, written by DC Fontana. Yes, the great Dorothy C.
Fontana, who was responsible for many well written Star Trek episodes. She set about wanting to write this one. It did not originally include Klingons. Klingons were added at some point in the future. What she wanted to write about was a strong female character who did not care to be a mother. What did that original story look like?
Did it look like this? I’d be willing to guess not. I’d be willing to guess that a story about a strong woman who doesn’t want to be a mother doesn’t necessarily include a doctor slapping a pregnant woman and yelling, you’ve got to love this baby. But we’ll leave that to a different group of people to discuss who might actually be able to read the mind of DC Fontana.
The original air date of this episode, December 1st, 1967. We have, of course, our original series stars, we have William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelly, James Doohan, Nichelle Nichols, George Takei, and Walter Koenig is now a regular on the show as well. And the voice of the computer, as always, would be Majel Barrett, does not appear in this episode.
Guest appearances include Julie Newmar as Eleen, Michael Dante as Maab, Tige Andrews, Ben Gage, Cal Boulder, Robert Brav, Bravler, Kirk Raymond, Eddie Paskey Jr, William Blackburn, and Walker Edmiston also appear as guests in this episode. I wanted to point out Julie Newmar, for those of us who grew up in the 70s and saw reruns of not only Star Trek but of the original Batman TV series with Adam West, we of course recognize Newmar as Catwoman.
But to dig deeper into Newmar’s background, well she was quite an accomplished actress. She had won a Tony award in the fifties before she was ever on television in the 1970s, she was branching out in interesting ways. She received two S U S patents for pantyhose. And one for a brassiere, the pantyhose were described as having quote, cheeky derriere relief and promoted under the name of Nudemar you gotta respect somebody who loves a good pun.
And the brassiere was described as nearly invisible and it was in the style of Marilyn Monroe. Her personal life is also full of. Just it feels a little bit like somebody took all of pop culture and put it all in a bucket and shook it up and then dumped it out and saw what it looked like she had a broken engagement with the novelist Louie Lamour and she had a romance with comedian Mort Sahl.
Mort Sahl would be. What would be the closest at the time to what we would recognize now as what Jon Stewart does on the Daily Show? She married a Texan, moved to Texas, and lived in Texas from the late 70s into the mid 80s. At some point, she lived next door to, yes, Jim Belushi. Where she had a long running feud with him in the courts after a, the legal battle ended amicably Jim Belushi invited her to guest star on his sitcom in an episode titled the grumpy guy that poked fun at the feud.
She was also an avid gardener and actually initiated a temporary ban on leaf blowers in the city of Los Angeles. This is like a, just a woman who can’t be stopped from doing things all over the place. But I, I most importantly wanted to go into the Wayback Machine and ask Matt, Have you ever heard of the TV show, My Living Doll?
No. My Living Doll is an American science fiction sitcom starring Bob Cummings and Julie Newmar. The series aired on CBS from 1964 to 1965. It was produced by Jack Chertok and filmed at Desilu Studios. So, same parent company as Star Trek. The series starred Bob Cummings as Dr. Bob McDonald, a psychiatrist.
His friend, Dr. Carl Miller, a scientist with the U. S. Air Force, was being transferred to Pakistan. And he gave Bob his latest invention, a lifelike android in the form of a sexy Amazonian female. Oh, God. Miller gives the prototype robot, also called Rota, played by Julie Newmar, to Bob. Bob is initially reluctant, but soon becomes intrigued by the experiment of educating this, educating this sophisticated but naive robot.
The series episodes centered around Rota’s attempts to learn how human society works, and Bob’s attempt to teach Rota how to be, yes, You guessed it, quote, the perfect woman, which he defines as one who, yes, you guessed it, quote, does what she’s told and doesn’t talk back. He also strives to keep her identity secret by saying that she is her inventor’s niece.
Well, yeah, that wasn’t in reruns a lot when we were kids. So at this time in history, at the airing of Friday’s child, December 1st, 1967, the number one song in the country at the time, incense and peppermints by a strawberry alarm clock. Yes. A band name that sounds like a child was filling out a Mad Lib.
Incense and Peppermints is a well known song, Matt. You may want to sing a few bars to help everybody remember how it goes. I did not know this song. That sounded great. And yes, Matt, you do definitely know this song. If it was playing right now, you would recognize it.
Oh, okay.
Alright, I’ll try to stand. And at the movies, people were still lining up for Gone with the Wind.
No, it had not been in constant release since 1939. This was a re release. It would spend basically the last month and a half of 1967 at number one in the box office. So we will do this movie in this spot again. And on television, as always, we are trying to compare Nielsen ratings. The second season of star Trek averaged an 11. 6, a bit of a dip from its 12 in its first season, and it was going up against some heavy hitters, which in the past couple of weeks, we’ve seen the Andy Griffith show and the Lucy show, both with more than a 27 in the Nielsen’s and at number three for the year 1967 into 68 Gomer Pyle. Yes, we talked about this show previously as well.
This, of course, is the Jim neighbors led comedy about Gomer Pyle. Introduced in the Andrew Griffith show, having signed up for the U S Marine Corps and where he gets involved in all sorts of shenanigans and what’s not to love about a sitcom based in the U. S. Marine Corps while Vietnam is getting worse.
And in the news, as always the headlines, there is a lot to see here a lot to talk about. And amongst the headlines that we can see, well, there had been a snowstorm that had tied up the New York City Transportation Department. There was. The dollar being affected by U. S. expansion of credit, there was the Senate asking President Johnson to go to the U. N. to seek help with Vietnam, all of which speaks of a very interesting thing. International, uh, pressure on the president, but at home, there was a story about Eugene McCarthy, a senator from Minnesota, who is going to try and challenge, not the president in the entire national political democratic nomination process, but just several key states.
He was planning on priming the president in several key states in order to push back. On Vietnam and challenge the president’s position on some key issues. What I found interesting about this story is if, you know, history, you know, that it would be about three months later, president Johnson would announce he was choosing not to run for reelection.
McCarthy’s pressure probably played a role in that, but it was an ongoing buildup of the Vietnam war that would become the key to keeping the president from wanting to run again. He was reading the political tea leaves and amongst the names that were being floated by McCarthy at this time in December, when he was talking about possibly putting in a primary challenge in several key States, he was asked, how would you feel if the nomination went instead to Robert Kennedy?
And he was okay with that. We also, if you are a student of history, you know, Robert Kennedy Kennedy was in fact running for the presidency when he was assassinated. So here we see a very interesting, I think, series of, of timelines that are all coming, they’re all crossing at this moment where we can see what’s going to come for presidents
johnson’s presidency. What would come from the Kennedy assassination and how Vietnam was being perceived and how it was growing as a problem politically for the United States. It is an interesting turning point I think this December 1st newspaper headline. On now to our conversation about the episode.
What do you want to tackle first, Matt, the just Repugnant sexism or
we can almost say, or do you want to talk about the sexist prime
directive? Okay. So there was a lot of stuff about let’s start with the prime directives. I had a major issue with they’re dealing with this tribal group trying to negotiate so they can do basically mining rights, which the basic plot line is like.
Oh, we’re, we’re dealing with crap like this today, and they were definitely dealing with crap like this in the 1960s. So that’s obvious why that was kind of a thing, but at the same time, I was like, what, what about the prime directive? Like I thought we weren’t supposed to be making contact with people who weren’t spacefaring and yet here’s Starfleet on a planet of people who are not spacefaring and are deadly warriors with their nunchucks and they’re throwing star kind of stuff. It’s like, what is what, what their whistle? Everything out. Yeah. Yeah. I didn’t, I didn’t understand why they did it this way. I didn’t, I didn’t get it.
Yeah. It, it really pushes at this point. I’m trying to remember if the prime directive was described at any point up to this point in the original series.
What? It has not been. I, I don’t recall it being, I remember them talking about the first directive. I remember them talking about non interference in the development of a people, but I don’t think there has been yet a statement made of we are not allowed to go into a more primitive society. They haven’t I don’t think they’ve said that yet.
Not explicitly. No. And boy, did they need that! Because the storytelling, like, I kept thinking, take this story. Let’s let’s maybe not take the pregnant storyline in the direction they took it. But you take this setting and you do with it what next generation, uh, to a lesser degree, Deep Space Nine and Voyager, uh, enterprise certainly did it where it was, we’re gonna sneak in to this primitive society.
We’re gonna pretend we belong here. You saw it in the episode with the Organians where Kirk and Spock come down and say, like, we’re here to help. You’re about to meet the Klingons and they’re terrible. And the Organians are like, we don’t need your help, but we’ll help you hide. So they pretend to be Organians.
I kept thinking if this episode had been told. With that as the modality of they’re on the planet pretending that they are a part of the society. McCoy has coached them through what the society operates like, and they are trying to fake their way through it. It would have been a little more interesting, but as it is, it seems like such a on the nose metaphor yet again for cold war slash Vietnam.
Yeah, it is a proxy battle. Again, and it is just this weirdly tone deaf, pro colonial message of, look, you got to deal with one of us. So is it going to be the people who are going to try to change you? Or is it going to be the people who are going to accidentally change you? You get to pick and it’s this weird, very 1960s sort of story around a group of people who are described as fierce, proud warriors, and yet all they seem to do is struggle mightily with each other in really power grabby ways that made me think they were actually portrayed more like what we would later understand Klingon society to look like. And the Klingons here just look like Sneaky gusses who are just like,
I’m going to go in and
I’m going to steal your
stuff.
Yeah. This is my biggest complaint is that Klingons up until this point, obviously the Klingons at this point in the show are not the Klingons we know today, not even close, but even the Klingons we know up to this point have been portrayed as there are kind of
warlike,
they have a very cutthroat attitude.
They kind of take what they want and do what they want. So why is he on the planet negotiating with him? Even in this point in the series, it makes no sense as to why the Klingon is there trying to negotiate. And at the end, he’s like, screw this! Starts killing everybody, and says, you primitive screw ups, I’m gonna dislock!
It’s like, well, that’s what he would have done in the very beginning. It’s like the fact that he was negotiating made zero sense for how they’ve established Klingons in the show to this point. And one of my first notes was what you just hit on, which was the people on the planet, the tribal group on the planet is actually way closer to the Klingons we know today.
And it’s also rehashing Khan. And so when, when it, when it came up, I was like, Oh God, they’re, they’re hammering on this theme again. They already did this with Khan and they’re starting to do with the Klingons. Why are they doing it again with a third, a third group? It’s like, are they out of ideas? Like why, why are they doing this?
And when you went through the background of how DC Fontana originally wanted this to be about a strong woman and her child, it was like, As we did the intro to the show, it was like, Oh, yeah, that’s why this was a hot mess is because it was one script that got bastardized into something completely different.
I don’t
know what any script changes might have been. I didn’t find anything in my research that pointed to an alternate story that was that was presented. I just can’t help but think that. It wouldn’t surprise me if the original story was this woman is meant to be betrothed and become the mother of the heir of this group of people and she wants no part of it.
And she’s strong and she’s independent and that that was the story and that at some point somebody took that and said, well, let’s make it about her being pregnant and let’s make it about her not wanting the baby. And let’s not like it. I feel like there was probably a few steps away from what we see on the screen is what was on the page.
That is completely just like speculation on my part. So don’t take that and run with it and say like, oh, they changed DC Fontana story because. At the end of the day, she may in fact have written about a pregnant woman who was like, I don’t like this baby. The way the Klingons feel, they feel shoehorned in.
They feel very shoehorned in, yes. And the, like you said, this Klingon is more Ferengi than anything else. And the people on the planet are more Klingon than the Klingons. And the treatment of the people on the planet by both the Klingons and the Federation doesn’t make a lot of sense, logically, because like you said, the Klingons would have come in and said, this is ours now, and the Federation, if we were seeing a more evolved version, and this is what effectively I found myself calling for internally, as I watched the episode, I kept thinking like, boy, they really did need to evolve the prime directive in the direction they did.
It helped the storytelling. Storytelling becomes better when it operates within rules and right now this felt so mushy in the middle, it didn’t have any skeleton underneath it to provide structure and the prime directive is ultimately as a storytelling tool, a great skeletal structure for the interaction of anybody from Starfleet.
With anybody on any planet, they show up and immediately you’ve got the tension. Do we break this rule? We’re not supposed to. Here’s why we’re not supposed to foots around with the evolution of a more less sophisticated people. And if that was applied to this story, it would have built in tension. That would have been far more interesting than what we were provided.
What we were provided with. Was and again, I don’t want us to I don’t want this conversation to be what last week’s conversation was, which was. The sexism here is really rough. This is some bad stuff. And you have, I mean, just the lines coming out of DeForest Kelly, who’s doing like he and Julie Newmar have chemistry.
They work well together. They are well acted scenes, but the things that are coming out of his mouth are terrible. And from the perspective of a doctor, I will touch you when I want. Because I am a doctor, I will tell you what I want because I am a doctor. And it is this like, what, what, what, what, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
It’s rough stuff. You need to tell yourself the baby is mine and that you will love the baby. And you need to be made to love this baby. Cause this baby, like top to bottom, none of that is great. I feel like me saying that is all I want to say about that in this conversation. What I do want to rest on is some of the dynamics of the characters with each other.
You get, you get in this episode, you get the triumvirate of Spock, Bones and McCoy once again. Um, or sorry, I misspoke. Spock, Kirk and McCoy on the planet together again, the big three that we, that we want to see in negotiation with each other. We also get some triangulation aboard the ship. We get Uhura playing the role of effectively she is the caring figure of the crew.
She is the one who’s going to say, but are we all safe? So she’s content now this is the 2nd or 3rd episode I can think of where she goes to something that Scotty has said and says, but what about the captain? And Scotty is the, I am going to show that I am third in command, but I do a good job on my own.
Like, he’s effectively making a very good argument for Scotty should be a captain. He’s doing a great job.
Can we, can we talk about the, the plan, the B plot? Because for me in my notes, I was like, I’m actually liking the B plot more than the A plot. Everything you’d want. It’s got some intrigue. It’s a little tense.
Yeah, it’s tense. It’s the cat and mouse game in space. I love how the like. They find that there’s another ship in space, and then they all are basically like, that’s got to be a Klingon ship. Yeah, it’s a Klingon ship. And but Scotty’s like, let’s not worry about it. They’re not messing with us. They’re far enough away.
No problem. Let’s just keep doing our business. I was like, that’s awesome. You go, Scotty. And then the whole thing of they have a rescue mission that they get called away for from, and they very quickly realize, oh, this is a ruse. And then I like the way Scotty’s like, let’s keep playing into this ruse and not tip her hand yet.
Basically, like, he’s like, let’s keep going. But then we’ll go back and so it’s like I thought that was all great and then they get nose to nose that Klingon ship that gets in their way and then the show goes yada yada yada and they’re in the planet and I was like what are you doing it was like that was more interesting than what you were doing on the planet it’s like could they have shown what the What happened between the two ships?
Yeah, I don’t know why they yada, yada, yada that it was, it was maddening to me when it was like they’re on the planet and the captain and everything is like all chaotic and then income Scotty and all the red shirts for the rescue. And it was like, wait, what happened to you guys in space? Oh, we just. Yeah, we got past it.
No big deal. It was like, Oh my gosh. Can you not Scooby do?
Yeah.
Scooby do this. Can you just please, I would have rather seen it as old farmer Jenkins
and a rubber mask the whole time because we found these clues we didn’t bother to tell you about during the episode. Like, huh? Like what do you mean there was glow in the dark paint?
When did we, when did you show us that? Uh, yeah, it felt very much like that when Scotty shows up and just like, but they didn’t have a belly for it. And like, like, what does that mean? I want to, I want
to,
I want to see what you mean at them. Did you like, did you do something cool? Like, like, please give us a glimpse other than what Scotty says, the, the penultimate moment of that conflict.
He’s just like, well, we’re going to fly right down their maw and see if they got a belly for a fight. And it sounds like, oh, this is going to be good. Yeah. And then it’s just like, turns out they didn’t have much of an appetite for it. And just like. We do get Uchi Uchi Kuchiku though. Like that, that’s what we get.
We don’t get, we don’t get, uh, the space battle, but we get the birth of the baby. We get
McCoy getting what he wants to do.
You have Eleen holds the baby uncomfortably at first, because apparently, despite the fact that she is on a planet that treats women as not even really second class citizens. She apparently has never, ever been around a child before or held one or had anybody describe it to her until Dr. McCoy is just like, no, you got to hold it like this, support its head. And she immediately falls in love with it. And then McCoy proceeds with his oochie woochie coochie coo, again, please plant that in the episode as many times as you need to, editor. Like, have at it. oochie woochie coochie coo Again, I think that the acting from all of these Players, you have Chekhov in this one as well.
I like that they’ve introduced a character who right off the bat, they’re leaning into something similar. We talked about this previously where in the JJ Abrams movies, they basically said Chekhov is a savant. There’s something about this young kid that he’s wise beyond his years. And it’s something that they bungled a bit with Wesley Crusher.
And only now, at this point, do I look back on these Chekov episodes and realize they were, in fact, kind of doing that with him, just very, very quietly. He has described himself as, I’m not that green. He’s, he’s knowingly young, out of Starfleet. He is already serving on the bridge. And he is at Spock station and he’s the one who identifies this mysterious vessel that’s hunting the enterprise.
He is back and forth with everybody on the bridge as an equal and you get the first of what will be many like, Oh, yes, I’m familiar with this. It was invented in Russia, which will become a mainstay of the character, the humor, the writing, the relationships once again with Scotty in charge, it feels really, really natural and has a draw to it. That makes me feel like, yeah, can we leave those frisbees on the planet and just spend some more time with the crew demonstrating that they can function pretty well on their own. We also have, I want to talk about when they first get to the planet as Starfleet training.
Would prepare you for the moment you see a Klingon, you’re supposed to yell Klingon! And then pull your weapon and get rid of the kill them on sight. Yes, that is, that’s actually the prime directive at this point. Yes. Uh, so we quickly get the frisbee in the chest security guy. Red shirt goes down, uh, first in the line of many famous red shirts who will come down to the planet only to say Klingon, and then get killed immediately. And you have a series of scenes between Spock, Kirk, and McCoy, where there are various levels of tension between them. And Kirk is presented as really unfairly blaming McCoy for having not prepared them adequately for what was to happen and then apologizing later. I wanted to know what you thought about the sequences between the three of them.
Yeah. Did those and not just that one story arc, but all three of them, there’s a couple of comedic ones where Spock is witnessing the doctor talking to Julie Newmar in a way that’s just like. Your baby, like comedic stuff is brought in and how did you feel about the use of the three of them as the big triumvirate in the series?
And did you find their interactions with each other well crafted and performed? Or was there anything that made you say, like, oh, they were really kind of just like riffing for time because it doesn’t sit well.
For me no, I thought it was great. You may feel differently about it, but I thought it’s the only thing of the plot A that I liked was the interactions between them.
And I could have in my notes that whole sequence where Kirk is basically just like, he’s, he’s overly emotional and he’s basically lashing out at McCoy. And to me, it didn’t feel out of place because it was clear he was just lashing out. Like he was struggling with the fact that he just lost a crew member.
And he’s laying the blame on McCoy, not because he really believes it belongs there. He’s just lashing out and McCoy is taking it because McCoy recognizes he’s just slashing out. He’s got to let this out. Yeah. And I’m just gonna let him do it. And I love the fact that the performances, it came across loud and clear to me.
That’s what was happening. And the characters were recognizing what’s happening. And the fact that enough time goes by and then you have, you have Kirk kind of like standing there and he gives kind of a long look at McCoy. Yeah. I’m really sorry. Yeah, it was just like, to me, that was just like, Oh, I love that.
This is why these three are so great together and why people loved it. And so why they did more and more of it because they work so well together. And the dynamic between the three of them is so good. Um, Kirk, I mean, Spock’s constant, like. Like little raised eyebrows and everything McCoy is doing very funny and very on point, um, a little too Scooby Doo ish at the end when he’s like, Oh, God, just make that stop.
But, but other than that, I thought you would be of them together. Yeah, is the a plots kind of like only redeeming quality for me personally? Yeah.
Yeah, I found. McCoy’s moment of saying during the first dressing down, I know how much it affects you to lose a crewman that that little nugget dropped in that moment is perfect.
It’s the anchor that you as the viewer need in order to begin to orbit properly around that moment. And then the apology is terrific. I love in this episode that they used Spock a little bit more in background because when McCoy comes into the foreground more, somebody has to give some space and Spock steps into the background a bit in this episode and does it in a way where you get to see Nimoy’s acting prowess in how to present this subdued character.
When the subdued character is able to talk, you’re going to, it’s going to lift the lid a little bit on the inside of the character. If the character is not speaking, how do you do that? And he was making choices in the background where there was a great moment where it shows them. They’re all being held captive and he’s sitting there with his hands in front of him.
And he’s clearly He is thinking like he is running through permutations of of what’s happening through his head. And then a little bit later, after the apology, Kirk and Spock are sitting next to each other. McCoy is off to the side and Kirk very clearly is like, Oh, this is an interesting moment. Very clearly telegraphing, like, maybe we can jump the guards.
Yeah,
and says something in return. Look, well, that could be an interesting opportunity and Spock’s responsive. Yes, captain. Very interesting. Meaning. Yes. I’m on the same page with you. And in that moment, I flashed back to those moments. The very first episode with Kirk, where you see him beat Spock playing three dimensional chess.
And I flashed back to the episode in Strange New Worlds, where they show Kirk seeing Spock for the first time. When he says to Uhura, your Vulcan friend is about to lose his queen. Those moments jumped back into my head, because here we see the strategist of Kirk picking up on moments of opportunity.
And his number one is able to understand those cues without anything deeper having to be said just like, Oh, there’s an interesting moment. Like, yes, captain. It is very interesting. And then the fight sequence plays out exactly like you would think, Spock simply pinches. And Kirk is in the background, like, throwing fists for a good 20 seconds.
While Spock is just like, I’m going to leave this gentleman down on the ground. And
it but it wasn’t even just McCoy and Kirk. I mean, it wasn’t even just Spock and Kirk. It was McCoy. Yeah, he was part of that too. And I thought that was great that he understood he himself understood what was about to happen is he kind of got himself into a position and was he was ready for about what was to ensue.
So it’s like he wasn’t caught unaware. I just like the 3 of them together as a unit clearly understand each other and have subtext and like, Little knowing looks I, yeah, again, that’s part of the, a plot they’re dynamic.
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. It’s one of those things where it’s, this does strike the, this is Star Trek note.
Very clear. Like, you wouldn’t look at this and say, like, this is anything else. This is because it’s got the big three as having those moments because it has the enterprise in action. It has, uh, with the remastered special effects to seeing the enterprise, like flying through space the way it does. There are moments of that where it’s really fun to see like the spaceship in motion in that way, as opposed to just orbiting the planet. But it’s not for me one of those episodes that stood out is like, oh, I’m looking forward to rewatching this one. This is not one that ever stood out to me. I remember it from being a kid and like, oh, yeah, it’s the one with the pregnant woman and he slaps her
like. Well, it’s funny is my note to myself Sean was about 5 minutes in. I do not know this one. About 15 minutes in another note, I think I’m remembering this one. And then by the end, it was like, Oh. I remember this one, but the very end, I think it was the Uchi Uchi Kuchiku. It was like literally right near the end. I was like, Oh yeah, I have vague memories of seeing this.
I think that’s part of the reason. This is not a great episode. It’s not one that would be on reruns that I’d be like, Oh, I’m going to sit down and watch this. Yeah. So I probably saw it once when I was a kid and then just never saw it again until you forced me to watch it for this. And
just to encapsulate, I think the energy around this episode, I found a promotional photograph that we can embed in the video.
It is with William Shatner and Julie Newmar in a pose that doesn’t speak to the nature of either character or the tone of the show, nor does it even reflect a moment that actually happens in the show. And it’s when you take a close look at the photo, it also doesn’t seem to be well posed. So they’re looking in different directions, looking at different directions.
It’s just, it’s an interesting, weird artifact of the program that I think says everything you need to say about this episode, which is, yeah, it’s Star Trek, but yeah, skip it.
So the next original series episode that we will be talking about will be who mourns for Adonis. This is an episode I am looking forward to very much. This is 1 that stands out to me as a favorite from my childhood. So I’m looking forward to getting into that. But. This is your warning. We will not be talking about it next week.
We will be talking about it in two weeks. Why you ask, why will you not be talking about it next week, Sean? Well, I’ll tell you why, because next week we are going to talk about Section 31. Yes, Matt and I are going to take a look at the just recently released Paramount plus film Section 31, which will revisit the mirror universes, Georgiou, who is part of section 31 and the shenanigans that will take place in that storyline, based on some things I’ve heard viewers, listeners, maybe you want Matt and I’d take the bullet for you on this one, because I haven’t heard many great things.
So if you want to watch it so that you can engage with the conversation and a knowing manner, please feel free, watch it. And then we’ll all take a look at it and talk about it tomorrow or next week. But if you’re on the fence. Maybe just drop by for our conversation and we’ll try to avoid spoilers for the first few minutes and give a sense of our big take on the film before we get into the nitty gritty and really take it apart.
And then you can decide based on our early assessment, is this something you want to watch or not? So we hope you’ll be interested in joining us for that conversation next week. As always. Wrong answers only. Section 31. What is the movie about? Jump to the comments and let us know. And let us know about anything that you felt about this episode, this conversation.
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