Matt and Sean talk about what killed Star Trek in Star Trek TOS Season 3, Episode 16, “The Mark of Gideon.”

Chapters

• 0:00: Intro
• 2:12: Viewer feedback
• 3:42: Today's episode
• 7:40: This time in history
• 14:22: Episode discussion

Transcript

Sean Ferrell: In today's episode of Trek In Time, we're talking about what really killed Star Trek and left episodes that made people think it was super silly. Welcome, everybody, to Trek in Time, where we're watching every episode of Star Trek in chronological stardate order. So we're looking at right now the original series. We're in the third season. That's right. These are the dog days. I mean that both in the fact that we are recording this in an incredibly hot summer day here in the US and in the fact that the latter part of the original series, season three, it's getting kind of rough. It's a slog. It's a slog. But then after that, we'll move through the original series movies and on to Next Generation. And we hope you'll be up to joining us for that. And who are we? Well, I'm Sean Ferrell. I'm an author. I write some sci fi. I write some horror. As a matter of fact, I have a book coming out in April of 2027, a horror novel entitled In The Fields We Thirst. It's a Little World War I horror ditty I hope people would be interested in checking out. More information is. More information can be shared. 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, people don't like it when we talk about the weather, but how are you?

Matt Ferrell: I'm hot.

Sean Ferrell: Yeah.

Matt Ferrell: I sent Sean a photo earlier of my dog. Had been outside for like half an hour, and my wife noticed that the dog was chasing the shade. And so she opened the door, called the dog back in. Dog came inside and immediately just laid flat, just collapsed on the laundry room floor. Cause it was cool and the dog was hot and was just like, I can't take it.

Sean Ferrell: Neither can I.

Matt Ferrell: It's hot.

Sean Ferrell: Neither can I. So before we get into our conversation about today's episode, which is the Mark of Gideon, originally broadcast on January 17, 1969, we'll talk about both the show and that day in history in a few minutes. We always like to get into the mailbag and see what you've said about previous episodes. So what have you found for us this week, Matt?

Matt Ferrell: Well, we have one from Babarudra, who wrote this is on the Whom Gods Destroy episode. I'm not from Gideon. Is that even in Rhode Island? And wow. I remember seeing something about the Axnar thing years ago. I didn't even know they made any on YouTube's I'll have to check that out. And there was other comments from, like, the old Trekkie who commented on the Axnar thing and supporting it. So there was a lot of people that didn't either know it was a thing or didn't realize that some stuff had been released. And so it sounds like some people are gonna go check that stuff out. I still have to check it out myself, but. But I've been distracted recently, so I haven't been able to do it quite yet. Then we had a comment from Wayouts. Imagine if they turned the bad guy into Colonel Walter E. Kurtz. The Kurtz that came home.

Sean Ferrell: Yeah.

Matt Ferrell: And I was like, wow, Apocalypse Now. Like, that is who that should have been. Like this former great leader that has just gone completely bonkers. The Kurtz of it all would have been so much better than what we got.

Sean Ferrell: Yeah.

Matt Ferrell: And then we had wrong answers. Only not Mark Loveless this time, but from Paleghost69. Mark of Gideon. After stumbling on a Commerce planet, the Enterprise has been disabled due to a parking violation, an unpaid fee they were never warned of, and have to work through the economy's multiple currency systems to trade for a simple parking pass. A Mark of Gideon decal on the ship.

Sean Ferrell: There you go. That's pretty perfect and better than the

Matt Ferrell: episode we just watched.

Sean Ferrell: We'll get into that in a moment. Those lights you see, those sounds you hear, it's the read alert. It's time for Matt to tackle the Wikipedia description. Take it away, Matt.

Matt Ferrell: This is a long one, so strap yourself in.

Sean Ferrell: Yeah, get ready.

Matt Ferrell: An overpopulated race of aliens abduct Kirk to solve their problem.

Sean Ferrell: That was it. That was it. That's the episode in a nutshell, everybody. The 71st produced, the 72nd aired overall, 16th of the third season. The mark of Gideon, directed by Jud Taylor, written by George F. Slavin and Stanley Adams. And that may explain, Stanley Adams involvement, may explain why this one had some tribble during production. Oh, do you know why I said that, Matt? Sean, any idea? Yes, that's right. Stanley Adams is the actor who played the gentleman who provided all those tribbles in that episode. So many episodes ago, during the filming of the Trouble With Tribbles, Stanley was speaking with Roddenberry about overpopulation. He was very, very committed to the attempts to slow population growth. And he said to Roddenberry, you should do an episode about that because it's thematically very important. Roddenberry apparently challenged him to write the episode himself, which he did, and then it would later be rewritten by George F. Slavin and produced into this show. Upon seeing this episode, Stanley Adams, well, he, at an interview years later, would say, there's a rule in television. Take the money and run. He was not pleased with what they did to his script. We will get into that at the end of the episode, but for right now, let's just take a look at what was going on. January 17, 1969, the day of original broadcast. Well, Matt, I don't have to tell you. That's right. You heard it through the grapevine yet again. This song stayed at number one for a good two months. Take it away, Matt. They say that Marvin Gaye is gone. I beg to differ. And at the movies, we've talked about this one before because it spent one previous week and then we've done the timey wimey stuff. The order of the episodes that we're watching them is not the order of broadcast. It's the order of largely production, but stardate order.

So Bullet was number one for the second week in a row this week. Yes, it's the Steve McQueen film. And in this film, Stephen McQueen is all man. I won't say any more than that. We've also been taking a look at the shows that were running in 1969, those programs that were at the top of the slot. This episode of the original series will not be the full, complete start of the slide into the obscurity of the ending, but it's not a good sign. January returning after the holiday. This one gets about a 6.5 in the Nielsen ratings, 4 points below what the average was for this season. So this is like, these are the days where they knew their days were numbered. But what were the other programs that were at the top? Well, at the very top in 1969 was Rowan Martin's Laugh In. The SNL precursor was getting a 26. So that gives you a sense of the scale that we're looking at. Other programs we've already talked about so far included Gunsmoke and Bonanza. But this week at number four, with a 24 in the ratings, which is interesting. Mayberry RFD. Matt, are you familiar with Mayberry RFD? No.

Matt Ferrell: Is this some kind of spinoff of Andy Griffith?

Sean Ferrell: It is, in fact a spinoff, and do not confuse it with a SVU or a CSI. RFD stands for Rural Free Delivery. It was an American sitcom that was a spinoff from the Andy Griffith Show. It aired on CBS from 1968 to 1971. The Andrew Griffith show ended in 68. So this was the attempt to continue on with storytelling in that world. It was created by Bob Ross and It ran for three seasons, 78 episodes total. And it centered around Sam Jones, played by Ken Berry. If you have seen Ken Berry's face, we'll provide an image from the show. He's a. That guy. You've seen him in a thousand things. And there were all sorts of attempts to get him to be the lead in his own show. And he would be in things that would be okay. It lasted a few years, but he would never have that runaway hit that would keep him in people's televisions for long term. So here he is playing a widowed farmer. Yes, in the 1960s and well into the 80s and 90s, it was very popular to say, let's make a family sitcom, but kill the mom. So here he is a widowed farmer. He's a town council president, and his son Mike and he are living with Aunt Bee, who's serving as a housekeeper. Yes, that Aunt Bee. And amongst the various characters that would visit the show included Goober Pyle, who of course was the replacement for Gomer, who went on to have his own spin off prior to the end of the Andrew Griffith Show. And a number of other characters from the original Andrew Griffith show would appear occasionally. The show was popular and consistently ranked in the top 10 of the Nielsens. But it was canceled in 1971 because of CBS's rural purge, a term which is as hard to say as rural juror. The rural purge was CBS's decision to move away from programming. The image was that their programming was all was rural. They wanted to move to a more urban look.

So they did away with programming that was doing well simply because it no longer fit the suit. And in the news on this day in 1969, January 17th. Well, yes, we see there are some headlines like, Johnson offers plan to check inflation in 1969. That was sweet of him, considering there had been a presidential election in November, he hadn't even run, and he was literally days away from leaving office. So he's kind of just like, hey, by the way, like, let's do something about inflation. I gotta go. But the news story I wanted to talk about was something that I feel is kind of topical given the point of and the manifestation of this episode, which was about the attempts for peace in Vietnam. I've said this before, probably say it again as we move through the final episodes of the original series. Spoiler. None of this would work. The war will continue on for years. But why, you ask? Why will the war continue for years? Headline, Expanded Vietnam Talks Begin in Paris tomorrow. Round Table agreed upon. Yes, yes, you heard that right from the article. The accord broke a 10 week deadlock on procedural matters that had blocked negotiations on substantive issues by the participants in the conflict. Under the terms of the agreement, representatives of the United States, South Vietnam, North Vietnam and the National Liberation Front, or Viet Cong, will sit at a circular table without nameplates, flags or markings. Two rectangular tables measuring about 3ft by 4 and a half feet will be placed 18 inches from the circular table at opposite sides. The seating arrangements were the main stumbling block to the the expanded talks. I will read that sentence again. The seating arrangements were the main stumbling block to the expanded talks.

The Saigon regime and Washington contended that the roundtable proposal would give the front the same status as South Vietnam and insisted on some device to indicate the existence of only two sides. This would buttress their contention that the Viet Cong guerrillas were only agents of North Vietnam. Today's agreement provided a seating formula elastic enough for the Allies to speak of two sides and for the enemy to speak of a four sided affair. This ambiguity permits all participants to claim victory in the protocol dispute.

Matt Ferrell: So no words, Sean, There are no words.

Sean Ferrell: There are no words. Peace in our time, right? Um, that's right.

Matt Ferrell: That's right.

Sean Ferrell: I've read some other commentary about this episode that I completely agree with, which is the first six or seven minutes of this episode are really quite riveting. And then it trips into logic gaps and weird decision making for image repurposes or shock value or just some strange sort of like, well, let's just make them kiss so that people at least have somebody to look at and it falls apart completely. I found myself thinking this is the kind of episode that made people say Star Trek is kind of silly. People who might not have appreciated it from its earlier episodes or the cornerstone episodes. Matt and I have been talking about the strange experience we're going through right now. Where so many of season three's episodes are, are the ones that live rent free in our heads, images or moments, and yet we don't connect them to season three. So it's that kind of weird confluence of, well, the writers and producers and actors really were hitting their stride and knowing who these characters were and how to put them on tv. But unfortunately all the good ammo had been used in the first two seasons and what we're left with are things like this. Now, Matt, I will leave it up to you. Do you want me to share what the original screenplay was going to be now. Or would you like me to save that till after our discussion?

Matt Ferrell: No, no, let's talk about it now. Let's talk about it now.

Sean Ferrell: The original title of this episode as it was written by Stanley Adams was no Place to Die. The plot was originally intended as a sci fi heist involving a deceptive overpopulated planet that plotted to conquer the USS Enterprise to enslave their own people. Instead of inviting only Captain Kirk as is portrayed in the show, the Gideonites were petitioning for membership and asked for a diplomatic meeting. And when one of the diplomats at this meeting reveals to McCoy that he has an incredibly fast regenerating hand, it piques McCoy's interest. There is then an attempt by Gideonites to get on board the Enterprise. They use this regeneration ability that they have to convince the members of the Enterprise that it's worth going to the ship and studying them. Once they're there, they take over the ship and their plan is to introduce death through viruses to their overcrowded world with the help of Dr. McCoy. Their goal is to introduce death and create effectively a slave class, keeping the current controlling faction in charge of the planet and safe from the virus, but introducing the virus into the general population and thereby creating a slave class that would have to work under the control of that smaller group if they wanted to avoid dying as a result of the virus. The resolution is that Kirk gets the diplomat who reveals all of this. He then gets some of the Gideon guards to join the fight and they turn against the the council that was trying to manifest this kind of atrocity, this horror. So it's almost akin to introduction of a almost holocaust setting the terror of taking an entire planet over through the use of a virus and creating a slave class underneath. A very small select few would have been the story.

But what was going on in Star Trek at this time is the budgets have been slashed in season two and, and they've been slashed in half again in season three. How do you put together an episode that is supposed to be an overpopulated planet with army factions taking over the Enterprise? It would have included fight sequences on the Enterprise full of extras. It would have included fight sequences on the planet full of extras, no budget. So they end up chopping up the story so that it can be effectively a bottle episode. They're using one pre existing set for the shots of the diplomatic council and then the rest of it takes place on the Enterprise without even much of the the rest of the crew present. Except for those sections where it's Spock and crew talking to the diplomats. So this is all clearly cost saving measures and it creates this weird storyline. Like when I read the original script outline, Matt, I was like, that would have been a great episode. But what we're left with, it doesn't even feel like it's a story. It feels like a bunch of colors on the screen. I found myself just watching this with kind of my mouth open of like, I can't believe they did these. They did this. This is just.

None of it makes any sense.

Matt Ferrell: I have nothing good to say about this episode except for the first five minutes. Show started. Don't remember this episode at all. Don't remember a lick of it. It's starting. Kirk ends up the beam down. He's on this fake ship and all you have is the hum of the ship he's wandering around. And it reminded me a lot of these Next Generation episode with the Doctor when she gets in this warp bubble. Reality, the warp bubble. I was eating it up. There was interesting camera moves, interesting camera locations that created this. Just ultra wide shots of him on the bridge that created just the isolation. It was so well done. The sound effects and the sound design. I was like, wow, how come I don't remember this episode? How can I not remember this episode? This is incredible. This is such a great way to start a show. Then minute six hit Sean, then seven, and then eight. And each minute I watched this show felt like it took five extra minutes. So by the end of the episode, I felt like I'd been watching this episode for three hours and I wanted to jump off a roof. This episode was such a train wreck. There was no logic at all. It's like, okay, here's this planet that's so advanced they can make a full scale replica of the Enterprise underground. But it's overcrowded.

Sean Ferrell: Remember, they're overcrowded where there's not enough room for people.

Matt Ferrell: Yeah, there's not enough room, but we can build a full freaking replica of your spaceship. Okay, so why do you need a full replica? Because we want to trick you into falling in love with my daughter so you kiss her. You couldn't have just done that in a random room? Like, just. No, there's like, there's no sense and there's no. For you and I. There is no point in trying to make sense of it. The script is just fricking stupid. It is just so stupid, it was almost offensive to me. I got angry by the end of the episode and my notes were like, great. Beam down the. The coordinates. They kept saying verbally I was like, it's weird that they're having them read out the coordinates. They've never done that before. Yeah, that's weird. Oh. Oh. They just were using it as a plot device.

Sean Ferrell: It was Chekhov. That's why they were doing it.

Matt Ferrell: Yeah, right. And then it was just the. Oh, I like the camera moves, and I like that what they're doing for the execution of all this kind of stuff. And then it turns into just a litany of comments that are just like, basically just wtf, wtf? In all caps, wtf and all bold WTF in the biggest font I could find. It was just. It just got weirder and weirder. And for me, this is an episode nobody should watch. And if you listening to this episode of Sean, I talking about this, watched it. I am so sorry. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. That's all I'll say.

Sean Ferrell: Yeah.

Matt Ferrell: Yeah.

Sean Ferrell: The one thing that kept occurring to me was like, I think that what the script has is a little bit of probably unprocessed emotional hangover from the era because of what Spock is saying about diplomacy and bureaucrats. That's the one thing that, as I was watching, I'm like, this is really. This feels like it is of the era. Marry those statements to the news article I just read. I think the American public at this moment was going through this. What is their job if they're fighting over tables? And for Spock. And this is a moment where I say, there's for me a connective line between what's going on in the script that did get filmed and what was going on in the world. For me, that's very much like, this is 1969 anger. This is dissatisfaction. This is confusion. But the fact that it's coming out of the mouth of Spock was like, this is just bad because it doesn't make sense for him as a character. Because for him as a character, he'd be like, diplomacy is the proper way. And as a Vulcan, he would be like, diplomacy is the proper way. And it can be very difficult. And this episode is largely looking at Leonard Nimoy acting as a frustrated Vulcan. And it doesn't, like. Even the characterization feels like it's being chipped away in this episode so that Spock isn't Spock and Spock's father is a diplomat. And I'm just like, he would not say these things. They don't tie it into any greater character arc. It is literally, we are watching people get frustrated with the moment and not demonstrating who they are as characters, but really in any way, shape or form. And when people are demonstrating who they are as characters, they don't make any sense. The leader of this people is just like my. My daughter is going to become a symbol because she's doing this. Doing what? Becoming Typhoid Mary. Like turning that into a calling. Young people will.

He says the line, young people will respond to this. And I thought, once again, inadvertent. It's setting up the idea of, yeah, the people who are older, well, they won't make a sacrifice. And what was going on with Vietnam at that point? The average age of the soldiers in Vietnam was 19. Like, who's making the sacrifice here? Young people, usually minorities, the poor, the people with the power. My daughter will be a symbol so that young people will willingly kill themselves through this disease. Through a disease. There are other episodes of Star Trek where they introduce things like willingly committing yourself to death because a fictional war is underway. This overpopulated planet is so desperate for people to volunteer to kill themselves that they decide, you know, what would be a great way to do that? Really painful disease. That makes a lot of sense. Like. Like Matt just said, we can't analyze this. This is unanalyzable.

Matt Ferrell: I know. Because, Sean, first problem, are planets overcrowded? You're a space faring species. What could you possibly do about this? Like, there's no episode. There's no episode. You could literally put people on ships and go populate another planet. Like, there is no reason for this to even happen. No, it's so bonkers. Stupid. I agree with you. There is definite. The tone of the news of The ERA is 100% in here. And I was reading it, I was feeling it through the episode, but it was so incoherent in the story. It was just completely lost. They could have done something that was really impactful, but instead they gave us this slop. And then there were parts of the show, Sean, that were just, I thought were either unintentionally funny or just outright just funny funny. And you brought up the whole Spock thing. Bones says to Spock, just when I thought you had a future in diplomacy.

Sean Ferrell: Yeah.

Matt Ferrell: And I thought that was the funniest thing for him to say, considering his father's a diplomat and considering he turns into a diplomat by the end of his life, that we find out from the shows he is a diplomat. And so I thought that was pretty funny. Unintentionally funny. I rewound and watch this several times, Sean. When Kirk is basically. When they Initially, like, capture him. And the head guy, head diplomat, is like. Says his. What are you just gonna say? And he goes into the room and out of the room come two dudes in all black with the hoods up. Those two guys, I don't know what cue the director gave them, but they got this like, what you gonna do, dude? Look on their face. They look so proud of themselves. Like, we got you. It was the weirdest acting. And I keep watching it over and over again.

Sean Ferrell: It's a little bit in that moment, like, he's arrested by Moomin johns. And if anybody. People don't know what I'm referring to, Google Moomin johns. Yeah, you'll enjoy it. I also just want to end on this note. There are two things that I remember from my childhood about this episode that I was enjoying watching. You just mentioned you liked that scene. Two things that I enjoyed, I remember from my childhood. Just the weird creepiness of when for whatever reason, the faces of all those people illuminated in green, appearing on the screen, appearing at the window, disappearing just before anybody looks, with a kind of, is this a ghost story? Sort of vibe. But it's not. It's literally in. Yeah, it's in.

MatFerrellt : It's.

Sean Ferrell: They make the claim there are so many people pressed against the hull of the ship that we're hearing their heartbeats. Okay, so when they go to a window, if something happens to the screen, we actually see people, but they're not climbing all over each other and trying to survive. They're all just standing there like a choir. And then the better version is when we were with the leaders of the planet, we see in the background, through what's supposed to be a window, like a cage, we see what effectively looks like a bunch of Teletubbies just awkwardly bumping into each other for no reason. It's like, okay, if it's overpopulated, why do they walk like that if it's overpopulated? Everybody's walking like their hands are glued to their thighs. Like, when I walk through a crowded room, I'm not waddling. And these are a bunch of Teletubbies just bouncing off each other.

Matt Ferrell: I like that you call them Teletubbies because to me, they were more like non playable characters from, like video games just walking down the street, bumping into objects that they weren't supposed to bump into. Yeah, so stupid.

Sean Ferrell: There's nothing. There's nothing about this episode that is worth holding on to. I feel like this is the.

Matt Ferrell: It's sad, it's the.

Sean Ferrell: It's. And it's the first that I can recall where you and I were both like, this is really pretty unforgivable. This was. This was just bad, bad, bad. Yeah. If anybody out there disagrees with us, I would love to hear how you connected to this one. Like, is. Is there a nostalgia viewing of this where you're able to reclaim that earlier viewing mentality and you're just able to say, like, yeah, it's. It's fun for me for that reason? Or did you agree with us? Like, this is. This is rough. This is rough. Jump into the comments. As always, the comments are an easy way for you to support the podcast as our liking, subscribing, sharing with your friends. If you want to support us more directly, you can go to trekintime.Show. Click the join button. Not only will that allow you to throw coins at our heads, but you'll be signed up for out of Time, our spinoff program in which we talk about things that don't fit within the confines of this show. Next week, we're going to be talking about Lights of Zetar. Please, wrong answers only. What's that one about? Don't say it's about this one because I don't want to hear it. As always, we appreciate your watching or you're listening. We hope you're enjoying our rewatch. We are so close to ending the original series, getting into the movies, which means we're super, super close to Next Generation. And for me, that's going to feel like a breath of fresh air. Thank you everybody for taking the time to watch or listen. We'll talk to you next time.