Matt and Sean talk about one of the most historic episodes of Trek (for multiple reasons), Star Trek TOS Season 3, Episode 10, “Plato’s Stepchildren.”
Chapters:
- 00:00 – Intro
- 01:47 – Viewer Feedback
- 07:22 – Today’s Episode
- 08:01 – This Time in History
- 19:44 – Episode Discussion
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Transcript
Speaker A: In this episode of Trek in Time, we talk about one of the most historic episodes for a number of reasons. One of them I’m sure we would all quickly agree upon and know without having to really talk about it. But a couple of the others, well, maybe you won’t be expecting what I’m going to point out. Anyway, welcome to Trek in Time. This is the podcast that takes a look at all of Star Trek in chronological star date order, which means we’ve been watching the original series, but we preceded that with Enterprise and Strange New Worlds and, well, we also interrupted it for some of the newer shows. So if you are interested in watching, jump back, try and catch up. Good luck. We’re going to be doing this for approximately seven years, so you only have that much time to catch up. Who are we? Well, I’m Sean Ferrell. I’m a writer. I wrote some sci fi, I write some horror, 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 in our lives. And Matthew, how are you today?
Speaker B: I’m good, Sean, how are you doing?
Speaker A: That’s a lie. Matt and I were just talking about basically just about being middle aged and spoilers. It’s. It feels like a lot sometimes.
Speaker B: I was like, yeah, it’s like a
Speaker A: lot’s happening a little bit and like, wow, I didn’t expect this. But yeah. Anyway, today we’re going to be talking about Plato’s stepchildren. This is the 67th episode produced, the 65th aired the 10th of the third season. It is directed by David Alexander, written by Meyer Dolinsky and aired originally on November 22, 1968. Before we get into our chat about this, we always like to take a look in the mailbag and see what you had to say about our previous episode. So, Matt, what did you find for us recently?
Speaker B: So a few interesting comments to touch on. This is from the episode for the World Is Hollow and I have Touched the Sky. We had old Trekkie chiming in Great
Speaker A: Bird of the Galaxy.
Speaker B: I truly enjoyed listening to y’ all discuss my favorite TV show. This episode always has a special place in my heart. Also probably the title. As the discussion dwelled on its simultaneous merits and failings, I was struck by the notion that this episode should have been a two parter. Then, as Matt started talking about serialization, that made so much sense. Suddenly I had the thought, what if we could not change anything about the original series, but simply rewrite it, restructure it to be serialized. Wouldn’t that be awesome? Thanks once again for a wonderful Friday morning. Live long and prosper. I love this because it would be fun to kind of go back. Don’t change the order of the episodes, don’t change what they’re about. Just restructure it so it’s serialized and things continuity wise, continue. It would give the show such a radically different feel. It could be a lot of fun.
Speaker A: It would be a lot of fun. And it would be, I don’t know. There’s all sorts of rumors spilling out of Paramount right now because of the new owners of the network and end of the contract for Kurtzman to be at the helm. They auctioned off all the pieces of the sets for Strange New Worlds and it’s, you know, it all looks like, well, that’s it. There were rumors about, could there be a after Strange New Worlds, a spinoff of a new Trek show that would precede the original series with Kirk at the helm? And it doesn’t look like that’s in the cards now. And there’s talk about, well, no, they’re going to do movies. That’s what they’re going to do. They’re going to turn it back into a movie franchise. But they’re not going to go back to the J.J. abrams universe. It’s going to be a whole new thing. And yeah, there’s that part of me that’s like, yeah, why not just go back to the original series? And literally, as you just said, like, wouldn’t that be the way to introduce people who do not know the show? Because at this point, the show is old. Old. Old.
Speaker B: Very. Yes.
Speaker A: And the argument, I think, from people within the network is there’s a whole world out there of people who do not know the show in any way, shape or form because they’re in their 20s or 30s and they did not grow up watching this thing. And I understand that, but there is something appealing to me to say, yeah, if you want it to stay with the right D DNA, do what you just suggested. Serialize the best of the best of original series episodes. What of a season was 12 episodes, which was four of the original episodes serialized into the three parters each. So you have 12 episodes with three part story arcs. Follow the andor model, which worked so beautifully and so brilliantly. I think a neat three parter built around for the World is Hollow. A neat three parter for the Corba might maneuver the neat three parter for the Tholian Web. And like, you could do all sorts of really cool stuff and. Yeah, and you’d be keeping the DNA. You’d be keeping those characters. Oh, make a note of that, Matt, for when you and I are in charge. Because when you.
Speaker B: That’s right.
Speaker A: In charge, we’ll do that. Okay.
Speaker B: That’s right.
Speaker A: Yeah. Thank you, old Trekkie. That’s a great, great suggestion.
Speaker B: We also had Dan Sims chiming in on the your truth part. So timely, especially with today’s algorithms and news feeds. Neighbors see completely different media info and truths. Tribalism on the rise. Not good.
Speaker A: Pretty good episode, though.
Speaker B: I enjoyed it. Twitch. Happy Flappy Farm responded, good point. I hadn’t thought of it that way. Yeah, thought that was a really nice comment from Dan. Thanks for that one.
Speaker A: Yeah, thank you.
Speaker B: And then getting into the silly territory, Sean got a couple. We got Baba Rudra chiming in for the World Is Hollow and I have Touched the Sky. Or the One Where Bones get some. To which Mark Lovelace responded, bow chicka bow wow. And then Baba Rudra responded, Had me laughing, guys, thank you for that one. And then Mark Loveless had a post for plot of Day of the Dove, originally called Day of the Jackal and rather violent. The network encouraged Roddenberry and team to tone it down with Dave the Dove, a very pathetic attempt to completely reverse the original plot with a rogue ambassador of peace instead of the original idea of a violent intergalactic assassin. Generally, Day of the Dove has been deemed a failure and. And one of the worst episodes of the entire original series. The show Wild Wild west saw this and decided to double down on violence. And we all know how that turned out. Oddly, the Day of the Jackal was revamped and made into that 1971 popular movie, which eventually spawned the recent Peacock series starring Eddie Redmayne. And then following that, he also then responded to himself saying, sean, how dare you think this would involve pigeon shit. I mean, you know that toilet humor is beneath me.
Speaker A: Technically, all toilet humor is beneath everybody.
Speaker B: Oh, Sean. Oh, my God.
Speaker A: Thank you, everybody. Thank you, Mark. Thank you, Babarudra. Thank you, Dan. And now, that noise you hear, those flashing lights you see, that’s the read alert. It’s time for Matt to tackle the Wikipedia description. And, Matt, I think if you’re like me, you’ll note something interesting about this one.
Speaker B: The crew of the Enterprise encounters an ageless and mischievous race of psychic humanoids who claim to have organized their society around ancient Greek ideals.
Speaker A: Do you notice what I noticed?
Speaker B: No, I did not notice what you noticed. What did you notice, Sean?
Speaker A: That’s a summary of the first five minutes.
Speaker B: That’s a very good point.
Speaker A: It doesn’t have anything to do with the main plot of the episode and it’s.
Speaker B: That’s a very good point.
Speaker A: It’s a little weird to me. So here we are, traveling back in time to Plato’s Stepchildren. Originally broadcast on November 22, 1968. Guess what, Matt? That’s right. You get to sing it yet again. Take it away. Hey Jude by the Beatles. Good. And not only were people dancing along to that still again, it held the number one spot for about two and a half months. So that’s why it’s the only song I’ve been referencing. Lining up to see the number one film at the box office. Matt. Well, guess what you’re gonna see. If you say Funny Girl starring Barbra Streisand, you are right. Yes, it also held the number one spot for about two and a half months. Apparently the presidential election kind of made everything else stop in late 1968. And on television, we’ve been looking at the other programs that aired on Friday nights on the networks. Those that were either lead ins to or competition for Star Trek. And guess what, Matt?
Speaker B: What Sean?
Speaker A: This will be the last week that we do that because. Yep, we’ve talked about everything on the Friday night schedule after we talk about this final program. So we’ve been talking about Friday nights and this the lead in show that would have been leading into Star Trek at 10 o’.
Speaker B: Clock.
Speaker A: We’ve talked a number of times about Star Trek. Got a lot of support, a lot of really powerful and somewhat surprising support at the beginning of its broadcast. Lucille Ball helped push for it. She helped it get a second pilot which had never happened before. It had a prime slot on earlier on Fridays which was better for it arguably in its first season, but then it was moved to the 10pm Friday night slot which is effectively the death slot. It is for a program like Star Trek that would have been appealing to a younger demographic. A Friday night when those people would have been out and not watching television is. Is what helped undermine the program. They also dealt with budget cuts. But mainly I want to talk about the scheduling because when I read the name of this show, I had another one of those head scratch moments where I’m like, I’ve never heard of this. What is this? And why would this be the lead in to what at the time would have been an attempt to do costly special effects action and philosophical sci fi? The network. It just feels like the network legitimately was like let’s kill Star Trek because the lead in program for 1968 on Friday nights was the Name of the Game. The Name of the Game is an American television series starring Tony Frenchcosa in Barry Robert Stack which aired from 1968, this being its first season to 1971 on NBC. Totaling 76 episodes of 90 minutes each. The show was a wheel series setting the stage for the Bold Ones and the NBC Mystery movie. In the 70s the program had the largest budget of any television series at the time I was not familiar with the term a wheel series. Are you familiar with that?
Speaker B: Nope.
Speaker A: It is a series that holds a single slot and is a single show, but it has multiple main characters that take turns in a rotation to tell stories. So this series was Based on a 1966 television movie, Fame is the Name of the Game, which was directed by Stuart Rosenberg and starred Tony Francosha. The Name of the Game rotated among three characters working at Howard Publications, a large magazine publishing company. There was Jeff Dillon, who was Frank Hosha, a crusading reporter with People magazine. What’s interesting about that People magazine in the show was not based on People magazine that we know in the world that didn’t start publishing until 1974. So just a coincidental name. Second character was Glenn Howard played by Gene Berry, taking over for George McCready who played the role in the earlier film. He’s a sophisticated, well connected publisher. And the final character is Daniel Dan Ferrell RobertStack, the editor of Crime magazine. So they would have these rotating focuses on one character one week and then follow with the next and follow with the next. It reminds me of, you know, they, they mentioned in the Wikipedia article about this. It paved the way for the Friday night mystery movie which would be the home of things like this is the model that Columbo would follow where you’d have a Columbo one week and then the next week would be a different mystery with a different detective and they would go back around to Colombo once a month or so. It’s that kind of thing. So to me this reeks of we don’t like Star Trek. If this is your lead in show, I do not see a connective thread between the types of stories you’re going to tell about magazine publishers lining up with okay, now get ready to see these aliens try to take over the bodies of the Enterprise crew members. So it just really sort of speaks of not believing in Star Trek as a program.
Speaker B: Yes.
Speaker A: What you were going to say.
Speaker B: Yeah, it’s like this. I’m just Picturing a smash cut to this episode we’re about to talk about.
Speaker A: Yeah.
Speaker B: With Shatner on the ground doing the winning.
Speaker A: Yeah.
Speaker B: From Name of the Game to that.
Speaker A: Yeah. So it’s the fact that I had never ever heard of this show. I was like, I, I look into the name and I’m like, what could this possibly be? But here’s a, here’s some fun facts for you that I think will make your eyebrows go up like they did mine. The Name of the Game was one of the first places that Steve Bochco got a writing credit. So, okay. It’s the birthplace of Steven Bochco, who would go on to basically write Hill Street Blues, most things revolving around Cops for about two and a half to three decades. It was also the first place that a young director named Steven Spielberg got an opportunity to direct a long form story. So this precedes the episode of Columbo that was Spielberg’s, another of Spielberg’s first directorial jobs, but this is the very first one. What’s fun about this, it is called LA 2017 and it is an episode of this show that is considered a dystopic sci fi episode because within it, the character of Glenn Howard, played by Robert Stack, is hunted down in a lethally polluted Los Angeles in the future where a fascist government is ruled by psychiatrists and the populace lives underground to survive the pollution. And it turns out to be a fever induced dream story. So it is this sci fi plot that turns out to just be an hallucinatory dream. So like, as far as writing goes, that’s kind of like, that’s really kind of pulpy garbage writing to say like, oh, but it was all a dream. But it’s Steven Spielberg’s first directorial debut. I love the fact that it’s first of all, 2017. Like, okay, kind of. You almost got it right, guys. We aren’t really living underground, but so close. You were so close. And if anybody is interested, I don’t recommend watching it on a television because the quality is not that great. This episode is actually available for free on YouTube.
It will look okay on a computer screen, a smaller screen, but on a television it looks pretty grainy. But the thing that stood out to me, and of course he’s too much of a gentleman, he’s too much of a professional. He would never ever say this, but I would love to know what Spielberg thought about working with Robert Stack, because the man is, his name is appropriate. He is about as dynamic as a stack of wood. And he of course does an Amazing self parody in the movie Airplane.
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker A: But I don’t think he could avoid that because he doesn’t have a lot. He’s always unsolved mysteries. He is always like, let me read these words on the card in this way. And it’s just. You’re gonna get that in every line. And I watched a good portion of this episode. Cause I was curious. I’m like, do you see any of the proto Spielberg? I don’t think you do.
Speaker B: It feels you do in Columbo.
Speaker A: You do in the Columbo episode. I have a feeling that in the Columbo episode, first of all, I think Spielberg was a little more mature. That episode is probably a couple of years later. When was that one produced? 72, 73.
Speaker B: I think it was. It was in the early 70s.
Speaker A: So at that point, he’s probably five years into having done other things. He’s going to have done a lot of different TV series. Didn’t he work on Streets of San Francisco, if I remember correctly?
Speaker B: I think so.
Speaker A: So he was. Yeah, and he was probably. He was probably feeling a little more confident. It wouldn’t surprise me also if working with Peter Falk, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if Falk was the sort of performer who’d be like, do what you want. Like, yeah, to really kind of like. Because Falk had a friendship with John Cassavetes, they did guerrilla filmmaking. They made small independent films with no money just for the hell of it. It was like he was into improvisational acting. And I completely imagine him talking to a young Steven Spielberg and saying, go with it, kid. Do what you want. Let’s really tell a compelling story here. This feels very by the numbers. It feels a little bit like a guy who’s a little bit afraid to rock the boat. And it’s just like I’m putting the camera where it needs to be. I’m getting the actors on their marks, they’re saying their words, and then we’re moving on. So in what I watched, it didn’t really feel like I was watching Spielberg, but that episode of Columbo, it absolutely feels like Spielberg. So there’s a little bit of a. Of a growth there that I think is evident. But still, if anybody is interested in watching it, I was able to find it on YouTube. Have at it. If you do watch it and you want to let us know what you thought about it, jump into the comments and let us know. I’d love to hear what everybody had to say. And in the news. This is, of course, a few weeks after the elections. But I think that for the most part, the media had digested the election of Richard Nixon. They were getting ready for the holiday. And so it’s a fairly standard. Oh, there are strikes in New York City schools, the Soviets are having meetings trying to figure out what the future of communism would look like. And there are talks about the German mark. Nothing of particularly striking note in the news on this day. On now to our discussion of the.
This episode, Plato’s Stepchildren, as I mentioned at the top, a what feels like historic episode for me. Everybody cites this, of course, as the first interracial kiss. It is, we’ll get to that a little bit deeper into the episode. It is, of course, a very important and I think, very impactful moment for the series. There are also some other firsts. The first time that we see Captain Kirk winnieing on his hands and knees. The first time we see Spock flamenco dance. And the first time that we see Shatner get Leonard Nimoy’s boot put gently on his nose. So a bunch of firsts in this one. I think last week and the week before, I think I let off in the discussion around my take on what was going on. So I’m going to encourage you, Matt, this time, like, why don’t you lead us off? Are you okay?
Speaker B: Just strap yourself in, Sean.
Speaker A: I’m all strapped. Do you want to jump into. Why don’t we do it this way? Why don’t we jump into the wackadoo? So jump into the wackadoo. And just what’s the most, the biggest whack of the wackadoo for you was
Speaker B: what the entire sequence you just referenced there at the beginning. The entire sequence where they’re being controlled. And the, the. My favorite part, Sean, this is ingrained into my head from when I was a kid was the Spock flamenco dance around Kirk where it’s so clearly not Leonard dmoy in any way, shape or form. The wide shots, it’s like, who’s that?
Speaker A: Oh, there’s, there’s, there’s Spock.
Speaker B: And then wide shot. That’s so not him.
Speaker A: Yeah, the wide child is like, who is that man who is five foot six dancing in front of William Shatner? And then it cuts back to Namoy. He’s like, is this very tall Vulcan. And then back to a 5 foot 6 man who’s dancing around William Shatner.
Speaker B: So the whole idea that here is a race of aliens that has based themselves on ancient Greece, but yet they know what A flamenco dance is what?
Speaker A: Huh?
Speaker B: How is this happening? Why is this happening? And then the whole questionable stuff with the little person and like the whole riding Shatner like a horse and the whinnying and the cutaways to the people looking disturbed at what’s happening. And all I kept thinking was, this isn’t disturbing. This is like an acid trip.
Speaker A: Somebody.
Speaker B: Somebody took something heavy and wrote the script out and nobody thought to say, don’t do this.
Speaker A: So serious question here. Very serious question. Thumbs down on this one for you.
Speaker B: This one is a thumb sideways because it’s. Because the wacko ness of all of it is just so over the top. And just. I can see why this show got canceled and was losing viewers. It was just. There was so much in this that was just. We’ve talked about this before. The Saturday morning cartoon, the skin deep storytelling, and it starts to feel like a Hanna Barbera cartoon versus an actual thoughtful drama that is on full display here. But there’s still some interesting ideas being tackled, there’s still some interesting points they’re making and there’s still some good acting in there that’s happening. So there’s still elements that I enjoy for the characters and the dynamics. So it’s kind of like a thumb sideways, but it’s like teetering on the thumbs down. I don’t want to watch this one ever again kind of territory.
Speaker A: Okay. Interesting for me, this one. I completely agree with what you’re identifying, but I have a different reaction to it because I think there’s kind of a, you know, like a word cloud. Like, yeah, I think that there is an episode cloud and it would be interesting. It’d be an interesting exercise to put together an episode cloud because some of them lean pretty heavily into the 60s of the moment. We have the episodes where it’s like, oh, this is clearly a reference to the anti war movement, or these are supposed to be hippies. And then you get the 1960s in the form not of who are the characters they’re interacting with, but what is the overall tone of the episode. And this one lands for me in that area. It feels akin to Specter of the Gun, where it’s the fantasy Western. Suddenly it looks and feels like the one we talked about a few weeks ago, the Empath, where it’s almost Theater in the Round. It’s spare in its sets. And this one goes into similar territory with more sets and definitely more extras and the. The overall full feeling of the environment of the place that they go to. But it does have all of those wacky elements, which feels almost. Almost improvisational by nature. Almost. Like you said, it’s such weird, bizarre Alice in Wonderlandism that you literally have a Tweedledee and Tweedledum moment. And it does have those anachronistic moments of these are. They call themselves the Platonics because they loved Plato so much. And then after the fall of the Greek civilization, they fled and they ended up on another planet to create the Platonic ideal utopia of flamenco dancing and Tweedledee and Tweedleda. And it doesn’t hold together in that way. And I think that there. I don’t disagree that there are elements here where you’re like, you shouldn’t do that, but you could do a thing like that that would still be within the realms.
And I think maybe they ran out and didn’t want to do more research on what. What would be some Greek things they could do in order to have this kind of experience. Because you get the. Another historic moment. Bitter Dregs. I mean, there you go. That song haunts my childhood. I remember being a kid and occasionally thinking to myself, what am I humming? To myself? Oh, it’s Bitter Dregs by Spock. That feels more akin to the. The Grecian elements of it than the Tweedledee and Tweedledum dum or the flamenco dancing. And it feels a bit more like if they had tried to do a bit more of what they did in the earlier episode in which they met Apollo. Yes, keep it Greek and just keep doubling down on the Grecian impetus and the desire to have this utopia. Because I think, for me, you said this is a sideways episode. I like this episode in spite of itself, because the stumblings it has, I don’t think, for me, are enough to derail what I think is a very compelling fight against authoritarianism. As goofy as this authoritarianism is, it is. Once again, we have an episode similar to last week where it’s this idea of the thing with the most power calling all the shots, cannot declare that it is a democracy.
And here is.
Speaker B: I love that. Yeah, that’s one of the things I did love about this was the whole comment of, like, we live in a democracy. Well, then why are you in charge? Because I’m the strongest.
Speaker A: Right.
Speaker B: It’s like, that’s not how democracy works. I love that, that take on all of this. But at the same time, they were very on the nose where there was the scene where Shatner’s talking to Alexander and says, size, shape and color doesn’t matter.
Speaker A: Yeah.
Speaker B: It was like, okay, on the nose, bam. But, okay, I get what you’re doing here. But it’s so. It’s. It’s the lack of subtlety that kind of, like, I find jarring. But the message is good message, and it’s an interesting exploration, especially around the authoritarianism.
Speaker A: I just.
Speaker B: I love that part of it, for sure.
Speaker A: What I think is interesting about that line is I think they almost. I don’t disagree that it does feel on the nose, but I feel like there may have been a very conscious decision to say that if you’re going to have this also be the episode where you have the first interracial kiss, because it kind of like. It’s kind of like challenging the audience, who might be curling their toes at that moment. We told you. We told you that where we come from, this doesn’t matter. And it’s almost like a wink at the audience of, where we come from, this doesn’t matter in the show. But also where we come from, philosophically, as the makers of this show, this does not matter. And of course, there’s also the stories that. The mythology of the filming of this episode where Shatner has said that when he was told he needed to do two takes because they wanted to make sure they had one in case Southern audiences had a problem. And when he did the second take, in which it would just be holding her, not kissing her, he made sure to cross his eyes so they could not actually use the footage. So this is. For me, this is one of those episodes where I lean into the Shatnerism of it. Like, him being a good guy in this one, in the making of this one, making sure that it was the story that it needed to be, I think is worth pointing out. And also another historic moment for me, this is the episode where I feel like the parody of Shatner takes full its center stage.
Speaker B: Yeah, it’s there. My wife walked through the room as I’m watching this episode, and she said, he is so bad. Has he been like this the entire show? And it was like, no, he’s just. He’s coming into his own here. He’s really dialing it up. But, Sean, I will. Here’s where I’m gonna pay him a compliment at this point in the series with how ridiculous this is. This episode is. He and Nimoy are giving it their all.
Speaker A: Yep, they are in it.
Speaker B: It doesn’t matter what they’re being asked to do. They’re gonna be good soldiers. They’re gonna. Yeah, they’re in it, Bones. I don’t know about you if you pick on this. Bones felt like he was fun at an end. Bones felt like he didn’t want to be doing this. Bones every time he was being controlled, looked like, I’m doing this because it’s what I’m supposed to do, but there’s not going to be any kind of like actual fear or emotion on my face. I’m just going to go through the motions because we’re doing this show. It felt like that to me and I thought that was so funny. Of here’s these two guys, Winnie’s and like all that stuff. It’s like all in and then Bones. I don’t know.
Speaker A: I think DeForest Kelly gave. I think maybe when he knows that it’s part of a. Of a wide shot, maybe he drops a little bit. But he’s also a little bit more of a reserved actor in a lot of that to begin with because there are the sequences where he’s sitting next to the platonic leader as Spock and Kirk are being tortured. And I thought he was doing some really good work in show. He was gritting his teeth, he had been given his orders and he was desperate to make it stop. The one moment for me that stands out is when he’s. When Spock is being forced to laugh and he’s like, he’s a Vulcan. You’re killing him. And the follow up scene when Kirk is trying to check Jon Spock and McCoy calls out at a moment of Jim, like, you gotta give him space. You gotta like back off. There’s some nice moments there in which he’s. He’s depicting his understanding not just from. He’s supposed to be a doctor, he’s also supposed to be an extra expert in xenopsychology. So it’s this moment of him kind of demonstrating he gets the Vulcann ness of all of this, but also his friend. And so there’s this. I love that sequence after the torture where they are sitting in the room and it’s the question of, are you angry with them? Yes, I’m angry and I hate them. And Spock says, I am so filled with hatred, it suddenly turns into flames. Flames burning at the sides of my head. And then he is in that moment of I. He is so perfect with his steepled fingers and saying, I hate them so much. I need to reset. And I’m just. You get that nice moment of Vulcan power and Vulcan rage that comes out in every series ever since where they’re like, anytime anybody gets to tap into the Vulcan mind. And the Vulcan is just like, oh, you want to see what we’ve got inside? I’ll show you. Like, that moment is here, and it’s so quiet and it’s so good.
Speaker B: That’s why I was saying this is like a thumb sideways. Because those scenes I loved.
Speaker A: Yeah.
Speaker B: Like, the dynamic between the three of them, again, give me all of that. I love it. The other thing I would want to call out is the actor who plays Alexander was, I think, fantastic. Yeah, he was the best actor that wasn’t part of the core crew. I thought the platonic. All the other platonic people were just kind of. I don’t know, little hammy. And he was one that was, like, giving a very nuanced performance. And it kind of made me sad of, like, here’s a guy who happens to be a little person who’s a really good actor. He’s got a good singing voice, and he’s doing a really great job. He probably had the hardest time ever getting jobs because he’s a little person.
Speaker A: Yeah, it really.
Speaker B: I found it frustrating. Cause he was, for me, a highlight of this episode.
Speaker A: He really was. And I think that. I mean, there’s always the question about how in other eras of television, there’s always the moment where we look back to the past and we say, oh, they were doing a thing, and they were doing it insultingly. A storyline around race or a storyline that’s focused on gender or sexuality and how, you know, the bad decision making. There’s. There are. My. My wife and I often have funny conversations around the show. Saved by the Bell, which she grew up with and she loves and she. And she tells me about plot lines from that show which sound completely made up. Including in. In one episode when Mario Lopez’s character discovers in the episode that he is Mexican and it is treated by the other characters as if he has just been outed as a communist. It is just. It is depicted as, no, that can’t. His friends say to him, that can’t be true. It’s Mario Lopez. And it is treated as if, like, I can’t believe this. His father is played by, I think, Cheech Marin. It is like, what is going on here? Like, what is the decision making around this kind of storytelling? So that’s always something that goes on in. When we look back at the past. And people in the future, 20 years from now will look back at TV shows that are being made now and say, I can’t believe they made those decisions. But in this one, I look back at how they refer to his character, talk about his character. I think that they were rather progressive. There are sequences where he’s riding Kirk’s back. That feels born of the moment as opposed to done to belittle anybody or to do anything awkward. It is the way they talk to him. He is self deprecating. And Kirk and company are quick to say, we didn’t say that and that’s not what we think. And this is one of the few times in the series that I can remember. And we see it in Next Generation.
And there’s actually pushback in Next Generation when this happens where somebody says, when you go, take me with you. And I forgot that that’s how the episode ends with, guess what, Scott am bringing up a little surprise. It’s this. Yeah, we’re going to take you with you. Take you with us, because these people suck. It’s full blown. This is not an episode where Kirk teaches the people on the planet a lesson. And they say, oh, we’ve been waiting for somebody to teach us the right way. And finally you did. Thank you so much for saving us and teaching us what it really means to be ethical. This one ends with like, we know you’re screwing around. We know you’re lying to us. We are going to keep an eye on you. Don’t screw this up. And we’re also taking the only one of you who doesn’t have powers so you don’t have him to push around anymore. You guys are jerks. It fully ends on finger pointing, jabbing him in the ribs. I don’t trust you. I don’t like you. And I liked that it ended that way. I liked that there was no if Picard was on this planet. I kept thinking, if Picard was on this planet, the first sequence would be. There would have been so much Picard diplomacy in his response to the actions of the Platonics. Kirk was having none of it. Kirk was very quick to read them as like, you guys are jerks and we’re gonna help you out, but I want my doctor back. And we’re gonna go, we’re gonna get out of here. He reads the room immediately. He’s like, we gotta get the hell out of this place because these guys are crazy.
It’s a very interesting tone to this one.
Speaker B: Well, it also ends in a way where it’s a statement against authoritarians.
Speaker A: Yeah.
Speaker B: As soon as there’s somebody stronger in the room, he immediately buckles.
Speaker A: Buckles.
Speaker B: And he starts placating and saying all the things he needs to say. Be Smarmy and get out of the situation. Sound familiar to what’s going on right now? Don’t know about you, but it’s one
Speaker A: of those ringing a bell.
Speaker B: Him basically like you are who you. We can’t trust you. Let’s get the hell out of here. These guys are jerks. I thought that was the perfect way to end an episode like this. I’ve completely forgot, just like you, that this is how it wrapped up.
Speaker A: Finally, let’s talk a brief moment about the expanded. I think of it as the expanded torture scene when suddenly Christine Chapel and Uhura beam down and there’s the. We were forced to walk into the transporter room and now we’re here and we don’t know why. And then we get the Using everybody as puppets and mixing up the couplings and playing a kind of farcical sexual sexuality, charged game with them. I think for the time I’m. One of the things that really strikes me is that for 1968, it’s rather charged. It is a charged moment of depicting a kind of. It’s ultimately sexual assault. If they. If they’re, you know, what they’re. What they’re depicting, it’s going to lead to torture because it ends with the whips and the hot irons. And in between, they create these two moments, which to me, we keep talking about the recontextualizing of the show, thanks to strange new worlds. We end up with Christine holding Spock’s face and saying, I’ve wanted to be able to hold you for so long, but now I just want to crawl away. And them having that moment where it’s this forced and prolonged kiss that’s just like a static thing in the background. Then going to Uhura and Kirk with what I think is arguably one of my favorite moments in the entire series. Uhura’s speech, I think, is so powerful and so well done in her. I wish I could stop shaking. And he’s trying to reassure her. And then she comes back with, no, no, no, no, I’m not shaking because I’m scared. I’m shaking because they’re making me. When I’m with you, I’m not scared. And it’s a very, very powerful moment ending in the kiss in that speech.
Speaker B: I also took that speech as her saying to him, I was reading between the lines of, I know this isn’t you. Whatever they make us do, because the sexual assault aspect of all this, what’s going on, it took it as. I trust you. This is not us. This is which I Thought was a very artful way.
Speaker A: Yeah.
Speaker B: Which is frustrating, Sean, because you have that speech and then you have the other, like, on the nose stuff that’s happened. It felt like there were two different writers. Who knows?
Speaker A: Maybe there were. But it’s like it really does land in these places where it’s. Yeah, she’s reassuring him in that moment as much as he’s reassuring her. And I. One of the things I most completely liked about it is it wasn’t in any way an attempt to open a door to any kind of romantic situation. It’s not being pushed in any way to resemble what Spock and Chapel have had in previous episodes where it’s been the whole, oh, she’s in love with him and he’s actively suppressing feelings toward her. None of that here. This is like, you’re my captain, I trust you, and I feel better when I know you’re around. This moment will pass. We’ll get through this. I’m not scared. And so it’s this kind of. It’s almost a call to arms more than anything else. And I found it, really, as a kid. I remember it as an adult. I love it. It’s one of those speeches from the show that when I think about, feels fully Trek to me. So I really like that she had that opportunity, that moment. So to wrap up, we have this. It feels very 60s. It feels very of the moment. It also feels very of the moment of a show that was. Like you said, it feels like the show knows it’s not going well. I don’t know at what point during season three they would have found out, oh, yeah, this is it. But given the number of bottle episodes we’ve already watched, this is the 10th, if I can recall correctly from my notes, I believe this was the tenth episode of the. Yeah, tenth episode of the season. So we’re almost to the halfway mark, and we’ve watched a number of bottle episodes, some of which would be filmed after this. This one is being broadcast later. But it does feel like, yeah, they must know by this point that it’s not going well for the future of the show. So a little bit of a sadness in the air, I think, as they’re putting this together.
But I still think this is, for me, one of the best of season three, because it has these moments that stand up not just in my memory, but also the message of the show itself. The message of this episode stands up as being one of the strongest for me. Would you say for you, up to this point of season three, does it land with higher marks than some of the other ones? Or do you think that season three feels overall as a stumbling block for the for the rewatch?
Speaker B: To me, season three is a stumbling block overall, but there are other episodes I think are better than this one that we’ve watched. But again, I don’t think this is the worst one we’ve watched. There’s aspects I like, but this is pretty weak in my opinion.
Speaker A: So viewers, listeners, what did you think? Jump into the comments. We’d love to hear from you. Let us know if this one rises above the others for you in season three. Or does this one sink back into the group of yeah, some interesting ideas, but what were they thinking? Overall, we’d love to hear from you. As always, liking subscribing, commenting, sharing with your friends. Those are all very easy ways for you to support the podcast. And if you want to support us more directly, you can go to trekintime show. Click the Join button there. It allows you to throw coins at our heads. And you will also be signed up as an Ensign, which means you’ll be signed up for our spin off program out of Time, in which we talk about things that don’t fit within the confines of this program. Matt and I will be be filming one. Not this week, but probably next week. And we’ll probably be talking about a little show called Mall takes place in a different universe, but one that I love just as much as I do the Star Trek one. So I hope you’ll be interested in checking that out. Thank you so much everybody for taking the time to watch or listen. We’ll talk to you next time.