Matt and Sean talk about why straightforward, pulpy scifi is often the best, in Star Trek TOS Season 3, Episode 11, “Wink of an Eye.”
Chapters:
- 0:00: Intro
- 01:55: Viewer feedback
- 11:16: Today’s episode
- 11:30: This time in history
- 17:42: Episode discussion
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Sean Ferrell: In today’s episode of Trek in Time, we’re going to talk about doing a lot with a very simple premise. Welcome to Trek in Time, where we’re watching every episode of Star Trek in chronological stardate order. And we’re also taking a look at the world at the time of original broadcast. So today we’re talking about late November 1968 as we talk about Wink of an Eye. The 66th episode aired the 68th, produced the 11th of the third season of the original series. Welcome to Trek in Time. I’m Sean Ferrell. I’m an author. I write some sci fi, I write some horror, I write some stuff for kids. I have a book coming out next year, which I just found the actual date of, so we’ll talk about that more. There’s plenty of time to talk about that. You have until April. So yeah, we got time, but we’ll talk about that more. With me, as always, is my brother Matt. He’s that Matt behind Undecided with Matt Ferrell, which takes a look at emerging tech and its impact on our lives. Matt, how are you? When is your book coming out?
Matt Ferrell: I will say I got a sneak peek of the COVID that you shared with me and oh yeah, that’s a good cover. I really like it.
Sean Ferrell: It’s not ready for public consumption yet, so we’ll keep it under our hats for the time being. But when we can share it, we will. And I’ll share more details as they become available as far as like pre orders and stuff like that. So things are kicking into gear on the new book and I’m very excited about it. So as I mentioned, we’re going to be talking about Wink of an Eye. This one’s directed by Jud Taylor, story by Gene L. Kuhn, teleplay by Arthur Heineman, and originally broadcast on November 29, 1968. And before we get into our conversations around these episodes, we always like to take a look at the mailbag and see what you’ve had to say more recently about our previous episodes. So, Matt, what did you find for us this week?
Matt Ferrell: We have a bunch of good ones from Plato’s Stepchildren. We had Kay Collette chiming in, saying, I remember when I was first watching this, I thought, hey, that’s Dr. Loveless, a very different character from Alexander. And what she was referring to was the gentleman that played the dwarf, Alexander. He was in a TV show, little one, called Wild Wild west, where he
Sean Ferrell: was he a regular on that.
Matt Ferrell: He was a returning villain called Dr. Quixote Loveless. And appeared in 10 episodes. It’s a fictional character who appeared as the primary antagonist of ten episodes of the 1960s in the wild Wild West. Portrayed by Michael Dunn. He’s a brilliant mad scientist born with dwarfism. Throughout the television series, Dr. Loveless conceived numerous plots where. Which were always foiled by Secret Service agents James west and Artemis Gordon. I actually want to now go watch these.
Sean Ferrell: Very cool.
Matt Ferrell: I’ve never watched that show, but I want to see it just for him. I want to because he has a Wikipedia page where it lists all the episodes. So I’ll probably go back and try to watch some of those because I really liked him in the Star Trek episode.
Sean Ferrell: Very cool. While you’re mentioning watching stuff that we’ve talked about, other programs that were on the air at the time, you remember a few weeks ago I mentioned a show that I had no history, I had no memory of, called Callum. Do you remember that one?
Matt Ferrell: Yeah.
Sean Ferrell: Well, I discovered that Callum episodes are available on YouTube and so I went and I watched the, the. The pilot episode and it was clearly a British production done right around the time of the Doctor who. The older Doctor who episodes. So it’s that quality of recording where it looks like it’s not only black and white, but it’s kind of Rorschach test black and white where the contrast has been pushed so much, there’s very little gray and it’s a lot of like very stark. Like you either get no detail whatsoever. You can tell faces, you really can’t zero on too much detail, but you get a sense of what’s going on. And overall, I found it watchable. The quality of the episode was watchable. What I found really intriguing was how incredibly compelling it was. And for a show that was made in the 1960s, as effectively a precursor to the original Equalizer played by Edward Woodward, the character of Callum is, imagine the show Danger man or Secret Agent. It had two different titles. But take the precursor show to the Prisoner or a show like the Saint, and you take that world of spies and government intrigue and a world weary agent who’s involved in this intrigue now make that world weary agent an incredibly morally questionable individual. And that’s what this show was, which I found as I was watching, I was like, is this ahead of its time? Or did we simply forget how to tell stories like this for such a long period of time that as we reemerged into moral complexity in our heroes, we feel like we invented it? And I think it’s the latter, because what this guy was Dealing with was he’s pulled in by his British government agent handler to go in and determine if this doctor who’s visiting from this other country is in fact a Nazi war criminal.
And if he is, he’s got to nab him before the Israeli government gets a hold of him, because the Brits are like, he knows things that we could use. It’s very much a classic Cold War story. And then the moral conundrums that come out of this as this guy wrestles with his own. Callum’s experiences included a interior monologue throughout the episode where he’s constantly saying things like, I wish I could just end this experience. I wish I didn’t have to do it. He’s somewhat suicidal and reaches a point where, in capturing this Nazi war criminal who says, at a certain point does no amount of good that I do undo the evil that I did. And when faced with the reality of Callum basically shrugs that off. It’s just like, that’s above my pay grade. Like, how could you possibly undo the deaths of thousands of people at your hands by saving a few hundred? Like, do you hear what you’re saying? And then before Cap, before the guy is captured, he ends up giving him access to his own cyanide pills so that this war criminal can kill himself. The episode ends with him having failed his mission because he felt some kind of pity for a man who was like, I have worked the rest of my life since that moment. I’ve worked the rest of my life trying to make up for what I did, and I never will be able to do it. How do I possibly do that? And the only way to do it was to kill himself, which Callum allows him to do. And I sat there thinking, like, it’s on this kaleidoscope, like, vision of, like, the bad quality of the imagery. And I’m just like, if this show could have had any kind of reclamation for quality, it would be an incredibly well known program. But I think that it’s just lost to time because it’s hard to see what’s going on on screen. You kind of have to half treat it like a radio play almost. But it’s.
For me, it was suddenly right up there with Secret Agent, where I was just like, wow, this is really dealing with some heavy, heavy issues in a really compelling way. And Edward Woodward is effectively playing the same character from the Equalizer. It’s. It’s coming across as like. That may have been a soft sequel, but it was just like, I found it really, really engaging. So some of these programs that are the I remember the name, but I’ve never seen it. Like some of them are really worth going back and checking out.
Matt Ferrell: Yep, definitely. We also had comments from Pale Ghost 69 who wrote this one was meh, half baked philosophy and a lot of goofiness. Alexander saves it. And while I don’t typically want to judge a work of art based on its time, I’ll give points for the kiss about 21 more weeks until TNG. To which Dan Sims replied, 21 more. It can’t come fast enough. I am really excited for tng. I’ve only seen a handful of episodes when it aired as a kid and I’ve been holding off on watching it for this discussion podcast. Thanks Dan. Thanks for holding on. Thank you. Because I am literally Sean, almost counting the minutes. I cannot wait to get to the Next Generation. But at the same time I almost want to just hit the fast forward button on seasons one and two. There are good episodes, there are good episodes in there, but there’s some.
Sean Ferrell: I think it’s going to be. I think it’s going to be kind of. I feel like seasons one and two are going to be in are going to be an educational experience in the same way that this season three for me has been an educational experience. Because I realized in part watching this one, last week’s and the weeks before. Some of my favorite episodes are from season three. I just remember them being in season three. In my mind, season three was an also ran season of the original series where they were so strapped for cash they couldn’t really do anything. And there are certainly episodes like that. But for the most part I’m like, oh, this is a stronger season. And you really feel in some of them, I think that if they had had a season four and five, season three could have been a turning point for the original season, for the original series to actually figure out like better how do we hold the audience we’re looking for? And I feel like we’re going to see it in action in the Next Generation as well. Very clearly played out in very much the same way. And I am very much looking forward to getting there in part because I think it’s going to be a lot of fun as we enter Deep Space Nine and Voyager and start seeing them overlap and see how that chronology plays out. But also I am really looking forward to getting to the movies between this season and Next Generation. I hope everybody else is excited about that too, because while it may be a harder lift to actually watch a movie a week for a While I think some of the storytelling that we’re going to come up on in those movies is going to be a lot of fun to talk about, except for Star Trek V. Thank you everybody for your comments. We appreciate it as always. It really does help keep us on the state and narrow as we try to talk about these episodes. And now those noises you hear, those lights you see.
Yes, it’s the read alert. It’s time for Matt to tackle the Wikipedia description. Good luck, Matt. This is a long and heady one.
Matt Ferrell: Okay, Invisible time accelerated aliens take over the Enterprise and attempt to abduct the crew for use as genetic stock.
Sean Ferrell: Wasn’t as long or heady as I thought it was?
Matt Ferrell: No.
Sean Ferrell: So here we are, wink of an eye. As I mentioned at the beginning of the episode, 68th produced, 66th aired overall, 11th of the third season. We are almost halfway through season three, the original broadcast date on this one. I was a little surprised to see this November 29, 1968. I was surprised because I am long accustomed to networks treating the Thanksgiving week as a we’re not going to put anything new out. But here they are the day after Thanksgiving putting out this episode. Which I thought, well, that’s, that’s not fair. Turns out that the episode got an 8.72 in the Nielsen, so it’s a stronger episode than they have historically gotten around this time of year. So I thought, well, that’s unexpected, but good for them. So Matt, what were we singing along to when this episode came out? If you’re thinking I bet it rhymes with Shmood by the Shmeedles, you’re right, it was Jude by the Beatles. Take it away, Matt. Great as always. We won’t beat the dead horse. That is the fact that that song has been sitting at the number one spot for most of my life. And at theaters, yes, people were still lining up to see Funny Girl. Just like hey Jude. It was at the number one spot for more than two and a half months at the end of 1968. And on television. Can you believe it, Matt? We’ve talked about. That’s right, pretty much everything. The entire Friday night schedule. This being the final TV series that we have yet to speak about. This is the Saint. The Saint is the British crime drama that aired in the UK on ITV between 1962 and 1969. It would be in syndication in the US and in 1968, being in syndication and being as popular as it was would led NBC to offer ITV a deal to start co producing the show. Two things happened it started being broadcast to replace the Star Trek slot. So when Star Trek left, the Saint moved in. It also became a color television show.
I think that one of the fascinating things was US television producers were getting into the habit of working with British producers to start producing British shows and in color. The most famous one is probably the Avengers, which its final seasons famously not only did it go color, it went dago color and became a kaleidoscopic like people running around in multicolored giant bear costumes and things like that. That was all prior to the UK actually actually able being able to broadcast in color television. So the US was having them film and produce color television shows that people in the UK could only watch in black and white because it would still be a couple of years before the UK would start broadcasting in color. Couple of interesting tidbits. The Saint. I didn’t realize that this character was as old as it was. It was created as a character in novels by Leslie treteris in the 1920s. He was a character that. That Roger Moore wanted to play for a long time before getting the chance to. He actually offered on the novel collection to produce a TV series based on it multiple times before it actually finally took place. Also interesting is that while Roger Moore was doing the Saint, he was reportedly offered the role of James Bond twice and had to turn it down both times. I do know that the reason that On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is George Lazenby as Bond was because more was not available. But I did not know that there was potentially a second opportunity. There were even some jokes built into the Sait TV series where the character of Simon Templer was mistaken for James Bond on more than one occasion within the TV series. So I think that they were having a lot of fun with that. And in the news, here we are the day after Thanksgiving 1968. So of course the major headline of the day is about the nation’s first families giving thanks.
It is a large photo and an article about the Johnson family worshiping in Texas. There’s also an article about the Nixons visiting the Eisenhowers. And off to the right we see. Yes, that’s right, Vietnam lurking in the shadows as Vietnam fighting was gaining an intensity and the death toll rising. This is all after of course, a full year of 1968 with Johnson trying to make it look like Vietnam was de escalating as we headed toward the 1968 presidential elections trying to bolster the chances of Hubert Humphrey. It would not work and the fighting would continue for multiple more years. And in fact Expand into neighboring countries. Now, our discussion about wink of an eye. For me, Matt, this one stands out for being a fantastic use of the pulpiest of the pulp sci fi conceits. The simplicity of the premise and just letting things spiral out from it. So I’m just gonna. I’m gonna start with the premise. Beings that move faster than we do, it just trips them into some sort of quantum realm just above our own, where they can no longer be seen or heard except for light buzzing as if they’re insects. What do you think of that as a simple setup for this episode? And does it work for you as a pulp sci fi setup for a show? The third season of Star Trek? At this point, are you still buying into that kind of thing? Are you like, nope, not working.
Get it out of here.
Matt Ferrell: A little confession. This is one of my favorite episodes when I was a kid. So I’ve got that nostalgia going on with me. When I was rewatching this, I was like, oh, yeah, I remember, like, this one a lot. To me, it still scratches that itch. It’s complete pulp. It’s. If you think about it too hard, makes no sense. No sense. But at the same time, it’s still a hell of a lot of fun. So for me, I had no problem with the pulpiness of the conceit of. They’re moving so fast. They’re like on a different plane of existence where we can’t see them and interact with them. And they can kind of do whatever they want because they’re existing beyond us, which, again, makes no sense. You’d expect they’re moving that fast. Maybe their lifespan would be this long, you know? But don’t think about it too hard. Don’t think about it too hard. And imagine you’re moving really fast, but you stand still for a while. Like, you wouldn’t be seen. Don’t think about it too hard. Don’t think about it too hard. It’s. It doesn’t matter.
Sean Ferrell: See, I. I take all of that. I do. I hear exactly what you’re saying, but also the. There’s a part of my brain that’s able to say, like, you just make. It’s quantum. It’s quantum. It’s like. It’s about the movement of molecules. It’s not about the movement of the body. So it’s like, okay, something that’s vibrating at a much higher rate rate, existing on a different plane than what we can.
Matt Ferrell: But that’s not what they say, Sean, because they’re still existing on the same plane because they can still interact with everything because if they were in a different plane, they wouldn’t be able to interact with the computers and the things that they’re doing in the environment they’re in. They would be on a different plane. But yet they can.
Sean Ferrell: I will disagree with that, but I won’t argue
Matt Ferrell: the idea is stupid. It’s stupid, but it’s also awesome and it works. It’s like, to me, it doesn’t matter that it’s pulpy or has potential loopholes or kind of gaps in the logic. It doesn’t matter. It’s just, it’s a very simple concept to wrap your head around. Little 10 year old Matt was able to keep up with as a kid and as an adult, I was like, yeah, this is great. So I like it.
Sean Ferrell: Yeah, yeah. We’re, we’re given a couple of things that are literally just, oh, here’s a thing that you should expect will happen because we’re telling you it’s going to happen. And then it’s an opportunity for Kirk to just be Kirk. And it doesn’t happen simply because he’s Kirk. You’ll buy into this. Everybody always argues against this, but then when you buy in, you’ll believe in it completely and it won’t be a problem. And Kirk effectively fakes this so that he can then be like, but no, I never really believed any of that. And then he can still work to fight the good fight. And other than those elements, I felt like you end up with a bunch of characters that do feel a bit like archetypes at times and maybe not fully, fully fleshed out. Even just as archetypes. The actors are putting their best into having very little. And mainly I’m thinking about like the head scientist on the, on the. What is it? The solenites? Is that the name of the species?
Matt Ferrell: I’m blanking on their name, but it’s
Sean Ferrell: the, the main scientist. He’s supposed to be in love with his queen. Fine. Most of the time he just glowers and like really takes a kind of like antagonistic stance without there being much more to him than that. But you can tell the guy is really investing in like giving this guy some depth. He’s just like, he’s going to, he’s going to have that, that face, look, look like it’s been chiseled out of ice. And he’s going to glower at Kirk and he’s going to fight him in that one fight. And of course the danger for Kirk being if you even get scratched, which is A great threat. Like, as far as threats go, making it as simple as, like, any amount of damage to your cells creates a cascading failure that leads to rapid aging and death. What a great simple, like, it goes back to the like, are these actually horror stories question that you and I keep tripping over? It seems like every 10 episodes of this podcast or so, we’re like, they’re really telling horror stories. This one falls very much into that, with that element.
Matt Ferrell: Well, it’s the Scalosians, by the way.
Sean Ferrell: Scalosians. That’s what it is. I should have written that down.
Matt Ferrell: I agree with you. It’s the simplicity of all the motivations behind everything that make this work for me. It’s like, okay, yeah, there’s some weirdness with the sci fi concept, but they set the rules and they live by those rules the entire episode. They don’t break the rules. They set up. And so it’s logically holds together. And when it falls, when, when things start happening and the woman, the, the, the leader is coming on to Kirk really hard, like, let’s go. It’s one of those, oh, come on. How come every alien species woman wants just to screw Kirk, right? But they explain it away. Like, I love the fact that they even like, the motivation is they can’t procreate. They need people, they need basically livestock to keep going. And then the whole relationship, this guy’s very jealous, explains why he’s doing what he’s doing and how he’s acting. So it’s like everything is just very surface level, very simple. But because of that simplicity, it just, it clicks. Because it’s only a 45 minute episode, everything kind of comes together nicely. The one thing I was thinking about this time and watching it though, the whole idea that they can’t procreate so they have to get other species to procreate would mean they’re no longer Scalosians.
Sean Ferrell: I actually thought the exact same thing would have made for a great. If this was a two parter or it had more time. This episode doesn’t feel like it’s got a lot of room to give for backstory, but it does feel like it’s right there. I couldn’t help but think, was there an earlier version of this script where they did toy with. Does Kirk have an impassioned argument to say, like, you’re not even Scalosians anymore? What are you doing defending a way of life and defending your, your status as being worth saving because you are the Scalosians when You can’t be Scalosians anymore. You are all this mix of DNA from across the galaxy that you’ve tricked into coming to this place. Which is a fascinating, like, I can’t remember another Star Trek episode that actually deals with that same issue in quite that way.
Matt Ferrell: It’s also one of the conflicts though, in the storytelling. This is like one of the things where it does kind of fall. Fall apart a little bit. Because it’s like if they’re doing this, they’re no longer disclosures, but yet they say, why do you worry about them? They’re inferior. They’re making comments about the crew. It’s like. Then you’re commenting on yourself because it’s like every time you do this, your
Sean Ferrell: children will be us. Yeah.
Matt Ferrell: That comment of they’re inferior, it’s like, why are they inferior? It’s like that that comment kind of contradicts what they’re doing. And I agree with you. It’s like it’d been great if Kirk had raised that up of like throwing it back in their face of like, who do you think you actually are?
Sean Ferrell: Yeah. As far as the, the appearance of this one, this one stands out to me as one of the coolest of the alien effects. When you have them on the planet and they’re doing all their sciencey experiments, it’s like this is one that if you just watch the first five minutes of the episode, turn the sound completely down and put it on a loop, you’d be like, this is what science nerds look like when they explore space. This is just like the Doctor is measuring things and there’s a scientist in the back measuring things and Spock is measuring things and the Captain just kind of looking around and there’s the security guard and he. And he’s looking at things and it’s just like, wow. Looking at them all doing science and it was really great. I felt like this is what sent the Artemis crew around the moon. This is just like sciencers being sciency. And then the guy in the back, you see him very casually. I really loved how subtly done it was. He grabs some of the water, drinks some of it, rubs it on his face because he’s hot. Did you notice that in the first watch? I loved how subtle it was. And then when he phases out, it’s one of the coolest phase out things where it’s like, you know, the superimposing on his silhouette of what looks like film running too fast and it kind of like. And then wham, he’s gone and I’m just like, that’s just. It’s great pulpy fun. And then McCoy, of course, spins around just like he was there and then he was gone. And it’s just like, what’s around with old man McCoy?
Matt Ferrell: He was gone.
Sean Ferrell: And when that effect is used every time in this episode, that that effect is used. I loved it right up to the end when Spock has, you know, quickly repaired the entire ship and then plinks into. Back into normal time on the. On the bridge. And I was just like, yeah, give me that. Give me that simple pared down. It doesn’t have to look like CGI is being brought in. Like, I don’t care if occasionally in some of the frames, you can actually hand coming with scissors and cutting things and like a glue stick. Like, give me the basic, simple special effects, like this one. Even though these are remastered, I am watching the remastered version. So it is an updated version of that older effect. Yeah. But I still. I love it. I love that look. I love the feel of it. It’s. It’s great for the ongoing tension. There are so many moments where I want to. I wanted from your perspective as, like, your background in, like, filmmaking and studying film and directing and all of that. I really liked this. But what did you think about how they handled the transition between super fast time and normal time with people in the same space? I was really.
Matt Ferrell: Chef’s kiss. Sean. It was so great when Kirk is transitioning and everybody’s slowing down. And you can see at one point, it’s the actors moving slow. Like they’re acting slow, which is funny, but then they actually do slow the film down, and then they have the whole thing where it’s like, freeze framed. I thought that was great. I thought it was a wonderful way to show him transitioning and how he’s. He’s also shatnery. Yeah, but he’s getting a little shatnery. But he’s getting like. I feel woozy, almost like he’s acting kind of like something’s off here. It’s like. It was. It was a great transition sequence. And the fact they did that a couple of times, I never got. It never got old for me. Every time they were doing it, I was like, yeah, keep doing it. It’s like the. What’s the show that was just super popular where they go down the elevator and they do the severance. They do that effect where you move the camera backwards as you zoom at the same time, and it does the depth of field change without looking like you’re moving at all. I could just watch people go up and down that severance elevator all day. It’s like, this is how I felt about that transition effect for the time.
Sean Ferrell: And also the thing that stood out to me were the scenes where it would be two actors acting with actors pretending to be super slow. And then when the scene with the super fast actors would end and they would leave, the actors left behind would then be like, oh, my God, he’s gone. What happened? And I thought, it’s such a simple thing.
Matt Ferrell: Yeah.
Sean Ferrell: And it worked. And what’s funny to me though is this episode is a little bit like a really well done magic trick in its ability to say, you know, I’m going to pull your card out from somewhere. That’s not the question is not will I pull your card out? The question is, where will it come from? And will you have anticipated it when I do it? That’s what the trick is. And this episode feels like that because the point is not will people be moving at normal time in time enough to stop the super fast, or will the super fast be able to get away with what they’re trying to do because they’re super fast. That’s not the point. The point is like, how will Kirk manifest enough friction to delay the effort? So you end up with some moments that if you try to follow it through logically and pace things out and say, like, okay, if this was happening in normal time at this point, and then we see another scene later where something is happening in normal time, where those two things lining up properly. Yeah, it falls apart. The episode falls apart completely. Scotty spends most of the episode standing outside of the transporter room. If everything that they are showing in real time, normal time, was happening, people would have been like, what the fuck is up with Scotty? He’s just standing in the hallway outside the transporter because he spends most of the episode there. While the Doctor is conducting research and inventing a cure, Spock is talking to him about it. Like everybody else is going around doing stuff, but Scotty apparently is just hanging outside the transporter room.
To be realistic, it would have meant, like, thinking things through and saying, like, okay, we’re going to start with Scotty at one end of this hallway, and he’s going to move three feet forward every single time we see him in this hallway, slowly through the episode, so that we end with him just outside the transporter room. You don’t need that. This is. I’m going to pull your card out of somewhere. You don’t know where you’re going to be pleasantly surprised when I do it. So when it turns out to be, as you mentioned, does every woman want to bed Kirk in this one? Literally? Yes. And we get the heavy implication that it took place because we see him putting his boots back on.
Matt Ferrell: Oh, yeah.
Sean Ferrell: And then he’s doing all of this stuff where he’s just, like, playing with her hair and he’s holding her and he’s talking to her. And then he mimics the whole, like, I’ve bought in completely so that I can 23 skidoo the moment you’re not looking at me. And make it to the transport to break it in a way that he’s like, I know I can break this in a way that they won’t know what happened. And that’s all I need to do. I just need to keep them on this ship, because if we leave, everybody here is going to be frozen.
Matt Ferrell: But also, the dropping the clues, the way he was dropping the clue for Spock to find, I thought that was very clever, too. Of, you know, they never figured out in time. And it’s like, well, they don’t have Kirk slip and Spock a little clue as to what’s going on.
Sean Ferrell: I also love that.
Matt Ferrell: It’s great. Yeah.
Sean Ferrell: I also love that it’s everybody in normal time figured it out before Kirk told them what was going on.
Matt Ferrell: Yes. Yes.
Sean Ferrell: That was brilliant. The fact that Spock goes and is standing on the bridge and is like, give me that recording again. And he just plays with a dial, keeps speeding it up until finally it turns into the buzzing. And he’s just like, that’s what we’re dealing with here. He’s figured it out. And then it’s McCoy, like, I just found a recording. It sounds like that buzzing. And he’s like, get it up to me. The urgency in Spock’s voice, in that communication, where he’s just like, I found a recording that sounds like whining. And he’s like, bring it to me immediately. It’s the closest that Spock could be. Like, oh, my God, I think I need that. But it was a great moment of. And then also giving everybody their moment of brilliance of McCoy figuring out a cure and having that nice moment with him and Chapel and Spock, where the three of them are, okay, we figured this out. What do we do with it? And Spock is just like, we only have to do one thing. Gulp.
Matt Ferrell: So on the cure. Okay, so I do have questions about how this episode ends. And just to recap how it Basically ends they get away with. You know, they trick the Scalosians and they, you know, force them to back to their little planet and everybody takes the cure and Spock does his little fast repair of the ship, and then they go on their merry way. End of the episode, roll credits. Wait, you’re not going to give the cure to this collosion so they can stop doing this. You’re just going to kind of damn them to die because you’re going to do the thing where you drop the. The buoy and you let everybody know. Don’t come anywhere near here because there’s this people over here that will try to literally screw you. Literally screw you and then kill you. They’re basically putting them on a death sentence. I couldn’t square that circle. That never hit me as a kid, but as an adult, I was like, that doesn’t feel Star Trek doesn’t feel Starfleet to me that they would do that. It would be like, we have a cure here. It is. It’s up to you if you want to use it or not, but we’re going to prevent people from coming to this planet ever again.
Sean Ferrell: Yeah.
Matt Ferrell: You know what I mean? You have a choice. Live the way you are and die, or take the cure and you guys can go on your with your life. I don’t understand why they didn’t offer that.
Sean Ferrell: Yeah, it. The end, it does feel like it falls on your foot like a cinder block at the end, because it really is just like, who made what decisions. Now it feels a little bit like they were looking for an ending that had a moral high ground so that Herc and Spock and team could be on it as opposed to allowing for any kind of contextualizing to take place. I can’t help but wonder, like, what is that? Like you, I was wondering about it, and I was wondering, what is that born of? Because the only explanations are it was consciously landed on or it was kind of lazily quickly wrapped up just because they needed to end the episode and nobody thought any deeper about it. And I don’t know which one is more damning, because the episode invites for there to be a smart closing of the loop. The episode is good enough that these characters deserve to have a moment, like you said, of the simplicity of we have a cure, and you’ve also been guilty of doing terrible things. And there could be ramifications from that. But in the short term, your survival as a people is worth the cure. Like, having that be your moral high ground would have really worked well for the episode, but it ended with the, oh, they’re just leaving.
Matt Ferrell: There’s so many different ways they could have handled it. They could have had a simple thing of. The only reason this cure works was because they weren’t changed long enough.
Sean Ferrell: Right.
Matt Ferrell: So people who’ve been changed for their entire lives, it won’t work on. But it worked on Kirk because it only happened just recently. They could have said that, but they didn’t. The other thing they could have done was they could have, like, injected her with it and made her slow back down, and now she’s kind of permanently out of it. It’s like, your people are still fast. You’re now slow with the rest of us. Here’s the cure. Go to town. You know, I mean, like, they could have done something like that. So there’s all these different things they could have done, but the fact they did this, it felt to me like it wasn’t that they didn’t think about it. I think they didn’t care. It feels like they were. They told the story they wanted to tell in 45 minutes, and who cares? You know, let’s just move on. No, that’s how it kind of felt to me.
Sean Ferrell: It’s over.
Matt Ferrell: Because, like, all those other endings would have added five minutes to the show. And it’s like, well, then you have to cut some stuff out. And it’s like, I think they told the story they wanted to tell, and they just wanted to kind of roll credits. Let’s get out of here.
Sean Ferrell: Yeah, it certainly. It certainly felt that way to me as well. So it’s a little strange ending, which is, I mean, but also kind of appropriate for Pulp because that’s how pulp it was. Just like, the whole thing, top to bottom, just feels like it’s a perfect encapsulation of pulp sci fi, whether for good or for ill. Like, oh, the great parts of Pulp that I love. Oh, the parts of Pulp that I’m not so crazy about. They’re all on display here. But I’m curious, is there anything else, Matt, that you wanted to talk about in summation of this? So, viewers, listeners, do you agree about this one? Simple premise, pulpy action, but a lot of fun. Or was there something here that you were like, no, no, no. I really wanted more depth. I wanted them to go deeper on this thing or that thing. Let us know in the comments. We always look forward to hearing what you have to say. And as always, commenting, liking, subscribing, sharing with your friends. Those are all very easy ways for you to support the podcast. If you want to support us more directly, you can go to trekintime Show. Click the join button there, allows you to throw coins at our heads and it will automatically sign you up to become an Ensign. Which means you will be signed up for our out spin off program in which we talk about things that don’t fit within the confines of this program. As a matter of fact, Matt and I are about to record an episode of that right now which we’re going to talk about the most recent Star wars animated series. So we hope that those of you who are interested will check that out next time. We are going to be talking about that which survives. Don’t forget in the comments. Wrong answers only. What’s that one going to be about? I think that there’s so many possibilities there, so looking forward to hearing what you have to say.
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