Matt and Sean ask whether you should skip Star Trek TOS Season 3, Episode 22, "The Savage Curtain." Abraham Lincoln floats up to the Enterprise, and rock aliens make historical figures brawl to test good and evil. Shatner plays Kirk like a kid meeting his hero. The story still falls apart. Matt rates it below the animated series, and Sean explains why a costume from this episode ended up on Mork.
Remembering Patrick Stewart, Dropping Names Podcast: https://youtu.be/XAWaaClVPQI?si=q7_MtGf4ZV7O37nL
Order Sean’s next book, “In the Fields We Thirst” here: https://undecided.link/in-the-fields-we-thirst
Chapters
- 0:00 - Intro
- 01:38 - Mailbag
- 09:50 - Episode Description
- 10:48 - This Time in History
- 16:45 - Episode Discussion
Transcript
Intro
Sean Ferrell: In today's episode of Trek in Time, we're going to talk about what was on television four score and seven years ago. I haven't done the math. I have no idea if that is accurate. We'll get into that in a moment. Anyway, welcome to Trek in Time. This is the podcast that takes a look at Star Trek and chronological stardate order. We also talk about the world at the time original broadcast. So that means that we're talking about the 1960s because we're talking about the end of season three of the original series. And who are we? Well, I'm Sean Ferrell. I'm a writer. I write some sci fi. I write some horror. As a matter of fact, I have a new horror novel coming out in April of 2027. It's called In the Fields We Thirst. I hope you'll be interested in checking it out. There's a link in the notes below. With me, as always, is my brother Matt. He is that Matt behind Undecided with Matt Ferrell, which takes a look at emerging tech and its impact on our lives. Matt, how are you doing today?
Matt Ferrell: I'm doing pretty well. I'm. I would say I'm looking forward to talking about this episode, but to tip my hat, my Lincoln hat, I'm not. So it should be interesting.
Sean Ferrell: Today's episode is the 77th produced, the 77th aired overall. It's the 22nd of the third season. We are so, so close to finishing with the original series and moving on to the movies. We hope you'll be interested in joining us on that part of our trek. No pun intended, but we're talking about the Savage Curtain. Yes, that one where Abraham Lincoln flies through space as he was known to do in life. He also did on television. We'll be getting into that in a moment. This episode originally aired on March 7, 1969. But before we talk about that, we'd like to dip into the mailbag, see what you've had to say about our most recent episodes. Matt, what has the Telegraph been telling you this week?
Mailbag
Matt Ferrell: Well, this just in, Sean, from episode 246, Tomorrow's Enterprise, there was a lot of people that were chiming in with similar feelings about how we felt about the end of the series that didn't feel like a finale. We had Dr. J2U2 that wrote in. The showrunners thought that this was the end of the series. And while starting to film season four, they got the six episodes of season five. They changed things in episode 10 to not give away various Character arcs. I agree. Some very interesting things, but just an okay episode. It did make me want a year one. I agree. But it was kind of like the comments were all along the theme of, like, it felt tacked on, it felt rushed. It didn't feel like it concluded in a way that people would have expected. So there's a lot of people along those lines of thinking. Then we had one from Dan Sims, and I'm. You'll understand why I'm about to read this one, Sean, because we didn't have a chance to talk about this last week. Wow. That sure didn't feel like a finale episode. Dang. All I could think about was Sir Patrick Stewart, RIP Legend. And I just kind of wanted to say his loss. I don't know about you, Sean. It hit me in a pretty profound way when he passed, because for me, you can probably tell Sean and I are a little follically challenged. And this is gonna sound like a very superficial thing, but when I was a teenager and that show was on tv, it was the first bald man that I had seen on tv. As well as he was a sexy guy, he was in command. And he was one of the best characters on the show. And it was like, here's a leading guy that doesn't give a crap that he's bald. He's rocking that head. And so for me, it was like this, oh, it is okay to be bald. Because I knew this was going to be happening at some point in my life. So it was just kind of this role model of that leading into the X Men of him being like the perfect, perfect casting for that. And then of course, everything else he's done in his life. And then there's our. Our parents showed us lots of movies because we were a very movie centric theater centric family. And my dad would always, like, want to show us something that he saw in the 60s or the 70s.
And there was this one thing when I was in college, he kept saying to me, when you're home, do you want to watch? Do you want to watch Hedda? You wanna watch Hedda? And I was like, fine, we're gonna finally watch Hedda. And he's asking me, do you wanna watch Hedda? As he's pushing the VHS tape into the vcr. And I bring this up because Patrick Stewart was in Hedda. And again, this is one of the first times I saw him not in Star Trek, but I saw him in something where it's like, wow, this guy is crazy Shakespeare company, Just incredible actor. And on top of which just an amazing human being, he was just a well loved. He put things out in the world. Kind of like how Dolly Parton, when she passed, it was this whole. She put such good vibes out in the world, hoping that they would just kind of like push things forward. And he came from nothing, poor kid, horrible like childhood. And look what he did. And he kind of paid it forward trying to kind of put good vibes out in the world. So for me it's like, he's a great actor, he's a great man. He was a role model. And it really hit me that he's no longer with us, but he's still gonna be in a movie coming up. Evidently he's gonna be in the Avengers, Doomsday or something.
He's gonna be in some. Sean Ferrell: Yeah, Matt Ferrell: He's gonna be in an X Men movie coming up. So his stuff is still gonna be hitting us in the coming year or so. So it's gonna be interesting to see how that plays out.
Sean Ferrell: Yeah, it hit me pretty, pretty heavily as well. We. When the news came, I reached out to Matt and I was like, do you want to record something? Because we had just recorded last week's episode and I said, do you want to record something so we could put something out or maybe even attach it to the one we just recorded. And Matt's response was, I don't think I can. And I. And I read between the lines. He didn't say much more. He didn't say anything else other than that. But I was just like, yeah, okay, maybe it's going to be hard to get words out. And I think looking back, I would have had difficulty myself because it was. I found myself going through Instagram quite a bit and looking at all the posts from various celebrities who had worked with him and from non celebrities who just felt like they had been supported by him through his performances. And the kinds of. The impact reminded me, like you said, of Dolly Parton. It reminded me of David Bowie. People basically saying, like, this was our captain. Like it was this embracing of him at a level that I think for whatever reason, I just never quite recognized. I never quite recognized that he was that beloved beyond just Trektum. So I was very lucky to have seen him on stage here in New York City in two different plays over the years. Saw him on Broadway twice, bumped into him once on the street in front of my apartment building and my son and I were walking into our home and there was Patrick Stewart. And I was just like, of all the people, I don't like bothering celebrities, but I'm going to bother this one. So I was just like, hello. He was so kind, so gracious. He talked to me and my son for a moment, then we went inside and I was kind of numb with having just met him when my son walked up to me and said, I can't believe we just met Patrick Stewart.
And I was like, yeah, but, yeah, all the stories that were coming out from all the different celebrities, I don't know if, if you saw this map, but Marina, Marina Sirt response on Instagram was particularly heartbreaking because she was so completely devastated. But the number of stories coming out from people, the number of responses from people saying like, it just went beyond their, their fandom and it went beyond their professional relationships. It went deeper than that. And so I think it's, it's going to be particularly interesting. We're finishing up the original series, we've got the movies, which means we're just a few months from getting in the Next Generation. And it's going to feel interesting getting to those and talking about all of his performances in those particularly talking about the early days when he said of himself, I was challenged by over being over serious. He was trying too hard in certain ways. And I saw an interview that was on Instagram that had been shared where he was talking about his original approach to it was standoffish with the rest of the crew. And it ended up shaping the entire series where he portrayed Picard at sort of arm's length from a place of I need to be above the crew for them to have faith in me. And he inadvertently created that in the early days of his performance, that barrier broke down between him and the rest, but the performance maintained it. I find that fascinating. So we'll get into that.
Yeah, go ahead. Matt Ferrell: I'd also like to point out that if you want to get a great way to remember somebody is to hear the stories about them. And if you haven't watched the podcast on YouTube, it's also an audio form with Jonathan Frakes and Brent Spiner dropping names. They've been doing this now for a while. It's a, in the beginning it was a hard watch and now it's a fun watch. It's a really fun podcast. They cobbled together clearly rushed, but they put together a little Patrick Stewart preview tribute that was just clips of their guests talking about Patrick Stewart. So you get to see like a dozen or so different people telling little snippets and little stories. Like Nathan Fillion has a Patrick Stewart story that he told that is hysterical. So it's like all these different guests they've had on talking about Patrick Stewart from their own lives and how they intersected with him and what they thought about him and it's a really great way to remember him. And just like one little like half hour, 25 minute long clip show from dropping names of people talking Patrick Stewart. It's, it's, it's really a nice watch. Sean Ferrell: That's lovely. Maybe we can add the link to that in the show notes. So those sounds you hear, those lights you see, it is not us in mourning, it's us excited to share with you the description from Memory Alpha. Matt Ferrell: Kirk and Spock are forced to fight alongside such historical figures as Abraham Lincoln on Earth and Siroc of Vulcan by rock-like aliens. I'm sorry. Who want to understand the concepts of good and evil. What a ridiculous concept. I'm sorry.
Episode Description
Sean Ferrell: This episode, episode number 22 of the third season, directed by Hershel Dougherty and story by Gene Roddenberry. Teleplay by Gene Roddenberry and Arthur Heineman it's it. I'm sorry, but it just feels like either somebody was smoking something in the writer's room or Gene Roddenberry had just decided. I think I got something stuck to the bottom of my shoe. But, oh, it was an old idea for a script. Why don't we shoot this one? This episode originally broadcast on March 7, 1969. And I know what everybody's wondering. What is Matt going to be singing this week? Well, I'll tell you, it's something he's been singing before. We've talked about it previously. Everyday People by Sly and the Family Stone. Take it away, Matt. That's right, Matt. We are everyday people. And the movies, what were people lining up to see? Well, guess what, Matt? That's right. Funny girl again. And on television, we've been talking about the various programs that were at the top of the viewership for 1969. And we've worked through the list down to. I believe this is number 10. So it was the 10th most watched show in 1969. It's the Doris Day Show, a program that I have. I do know the name Doris Day. I am familiar with her work. I've seen her in things, had never seen the program. And Matt, I don't know about you, but when you hear about certain celebrities and you know that they were very popular and then you find out they had a regular TV show, we're of a generation where we grew up on reruns like the TV was on the background reruns were always on. So I found myself thinking, like, why haven't I seen this show? I've seen shows like That Girl and Mary Tyler Moore and Rhoda and All in the Family and Good Times.
Like so many of these shows from previous eras that I remember growing up with, including the Andrew Griffith show, which was another show from this era that I watched a lot of in repeat. So the Doris Day show is an American television sitcom that aired on CBS from September 24th of 68. So this is its first season to March 12th of 1973, remaining on the air for five seasons and 128 episodes. I really found myself thinking, 128 episodes, that's prime rerun. That's syndication money. Like, where was this show? So here we have a case of a show that, you know. You know how you have a show and it kind of like goes through rejiggering between season one and season two. And they're like, okay, this character leaves. We're going to add a new cousin. You know, a little bit of changes here, a little bit changes there as they try to figure out, like, how do we make this? How do we make this work? So here we have the 10th most popular show of 1969. It's in its first season. They rejiggered the show from. She was a single mother with two kids living on the family farm that she had returned to after having lived in the city. But after the death of her husband, she moves back to the family farm. Season two, they rejigger it so that she starts working in the city again and they add city characters.
Then they decide to do away with the kids in season three. Matt Ferrell: What? Sean Ferrell: In season four, she starts working. Instead of being a assistant in a publishing industry, she becomes an editor. And they add another couple of new characters. They kept pulling characters out and adding new characters and they kept moving the location. She lived outside San Francisco. She was working in San Francisco, and she's living in San Francisco. The show got retooled basically every single season. There was no consistency. There was no zero attempt to explain it, which is my favorite part of this. It would just. The new season would start. It's the Doris Day Show. And they would be like, it's a brand new setting. It's a brand. Like, the only consistency was Doris Day. Matt Ferrell: It's like American Horror Story.
Sean Ferrell: It's like American Horror Story, except it's her. But here it gets. As much fun as that is, it gets even weirder to me that this is the 10th most popular show, Star Trek tried to maintain its consistency as they cut its funding in half and then cut its funding in half again, and they moved it from night to night. But it tried to be Star Trek more or less for three seasons, and it couldn't, couldn't stay on the air. But they rejiggered this show every season. It was the number 10 in its first year. Here's the punchline. Doris Day didn't find out that this show was even going to be made until after her husband had passed. He had signed contracts to put her on the air in a television show, but she hadn't been informed. And it was literally just weeks before they were going to start shooting when she was contacted and told, oh, you're contracted to be on television. So Star Trek is like clawing, trying, trying to stay on the air. And Doris Day's like, I have a show, what? And then for five seasons they just reinvent it. Every time they started a new season, it's got a sting. And in the news on this day in 1969, well, this was a fun one. I opened up this, this newspaper and I found myself thinking, oh, right, 1969, the space race. Yep. Astronauts eating lunch and recording the mission's progress. I love that the photograph on the front page of the paper is two men eating lunch. Of course, they're doing it in space, but they're basically just eating lunch. And the day had been spent with a spacewalk that lasted 40 minutes, as the astronaut in question who went out had been suffering the day before from extreme nausea. So they didn't know if he'd be able to do the mission the next day. The next day he was able to get out there and was basically tied to a platform that was sticking out from the spacecraft. And he just stood out there for 40 minutes, testing the equipment and taking pictures of the Earth. What a way to spend an afternoon on. Now to our discussion of this episode. Matt Ferrell: Sean, Sean Ferrell: where do we start? Why don't we. Why? I mean, like, let's rip the band aid off. Not great. Matt Ferrell: This is an awful episode. Sean Ferrell: Not great. Matt Ferrell: This was so bad.
Episode Discussion
Sean Ferrell: No, not great. Yeah, it is. I mean, phoning it in doesn't seem too harsh at this point. This is an episode that, if you like Star Trek as much as I like Star Trek, you can still like. I like little moments of Spock meeting Surak. There's certain moments where I'm just like, it's kind of cool that, like, there's a certain portion of the beginning of the episode which is as odd as the setup is of spirit space Abraham Lincoln flying up to the ship, which is just a beautiful reveal. The only way it could have been better would have been if instead of it being the glowing lights that form into Lincoln, if it had literally just been him in that giant stone chair flying through space and flying right up to the like, I would have loved that. But there's a long sequence of just talking when they go down to the planet and they're hanging out with Abraham Lincoln and Surak. And I found myself thinking as the episode was coming to an end, like, if this had just been, I mean, if, if they had just gone full brainy Star Trek and made it be. These aliens wanted to understand Federation morality, so they set up a situation in which the captain and the first officer would have to discuss a moral conundrum of some sort with these major figures from their personal history and personal heroes. That would have been better if it had been like, here's a dilemma, whatever that dilemma is, here's a dilemma.
And you, you know, you make it like the, what is it the trolley car dilemma of something is going to happen and few people will die or something else going to happen and maybe more people will die or maybe nobody will die, but we don't know, what do we do? And then the four way debate of Kirk and Lincoln and Surak and Spock talking about, like, what is the appropriate response? Is it better to do nothing or is it better to do something? Is it better to take action? To be wrong is like. And have this debate turn into, you know, you've got Lincoln on one side perhaps saying like, no action meant the ongoing suffering of an entire race. And Surak saying, but you know, you, you can't stand in the way of actions that are beyond your control. So the logical approach is in some cases to step back and let what is going to happen happen and then recover from that. And, and then in between Kirk and Spock wrestling with them and with each other in how to solve this without even knowing. It's a test, it's an observation, it's an exploration by an alien group. I found myself just like, like, what is the, what is the combat supposed to do or prove? I couldn't figure out what any of, like, what is making people fight going to show anybody. It doesn't make any sense. This episode isn't even as smart as many of the animated episodes. It just, we're exploring good and evil, like what? Like, like we're exploring good and evil. So we've resurrected, you know, Muhammad Ali and Bruce Lee, and we're going to see how you respond. Like fisticuffs.
Really? Like, okay, like, if that's what we got, that's what we got. Matt Ferrell: It's like you're reading my notes because what I wrote was, this isn't even as good as the Animated Series. Sean Ferrell: Yeah,
Matt Ferrell: this is just a. Feels like it was written by a five year old playing with their toys. And then this happens because. And then this just be happens because it was like, there's no actual. Because there. It's just the kid wanted to see these two things fight and this thing happen. And here's this almost omnipotent alien that can make things appear like Lincoln in space and can do all this crazy stuff. And all they want to do is figure out will good or evil win. And they're doing this with random aliens that come through their area of space. How does this make any sense at all? It's like, there's no logic to it at all. It just came across as maybe he was high, but it's like when he wrote this episode, maybe it was just literally like, I think it'd be cool to have Kirk meet his hero. Let's make it Abraham Lincoln. And like, the ideas behind who they chose were interesting. I liked the acting. I thought Shatner did a good job. Almost like, you could almost tell he was almost like a little kid meeting his hero. Every time he was talking to Lincoln, you could tell he was genuinely excited. And even with Spock, you got a little bit of that sense of like, Spock was like, oh, like, this is Surak. This is kind of a big deal. So they did a good job acting and it was an interesting idea and it could have been the Next Generation's Measure of a Man episode, where it's just a bunch of people in a room talking to each other for the entire episode, which is one of the best episodes of Star Trek, they could have done that. But instead Roddenberry gave us this. And this really does come across to me as we're almost done. The show's getting canceled. We just have to create a handful of more episodes. What do we got? Here we go. Let's just do this. And it was just that formula of, well, people like things when they action on screen.
So let's make some people fight at one point and then let's have a big theological debate, you know, that we can have in here. So it was a little bit of like everything put into a blender and Then somebody hit the blender button and just let it go a little too long and then you get this crap. Because my last note, Sean, I don't swear, so I'm not going to swear on the show. But I wrote at the end. What the f was that? What was the point? I don't understand what the. We watched a 45 minute episode. the end, I was like, there was no reason for this episode to even exist. There was no purpose to it. There was nothing that you're taking away from it. The characters didn't evolve. It was. There was nothing about this. So for me, I don't think there's much of a, unfortunately, discussion around this other than saying this is one you should skip. If you, if you're watching repeats and you see space Lincoln come out, just go to the next show. Just, just walk away. Don't. Don't watch it.
Woof. Sean Ferrell: Yeah, I found myself. I found myself, like, I've already, like, I've already said it. It. If you're going to go with. If you're going to go gonzo, go. Go full gonzo. Like, they go into space and they find Abraham Lincoln. Matt Ferrell: Yeah. Sean Ferrell: Make it weird. Make it inexplicable. Make it like. And they've done that before with like, wait a minute, you think you're the God Apollo? Wait a minute. This is a planet covered with Roman, like, Roman architecture, but it's also got modern 20th century vibes in how it's operating. Wait a minute. This is a planet covered with gangsters. And this one seems to go out of its way right from the get go to say, like, here's the explanation of how these guys are here and we want to watch them wrestle. And I'm like, Matt Ferrell: it's like Roddenberry wanted to see Abraham Lincoln. Wouldn't it be cool to see Abraham Lincoln, like, throw some punches? Sean Ferrell: Yeah, Matt Ferrell: it was like, what? How. What the, dude? No, this is not. This is not it. Sean Ferrell: Also, the episode. The episode is the origin of one of my favorite recurring jokes from the many years of Mystery Science Theater, where occasionally at certain moments, for reasons that were only from Mike Nelson, when Mike Nelson would suddenly go, help me, Spock and like. So this episode alone is worth that reference. Another. Another little tidbit that stands out here. Did you find yourself thinking about Mork and Mindy while you watched this show, Matt? Matt Ferrell: No, I found myself not thinking at all during this episode, Sean.
Sean Ferrell: Okay. They did that to you. Colonel Green, a character who is referred to in other aspects of Trektum and is a character who made an appearance in an episode of Enterprise. He is considered a war criminal. So it's. He's got this, you know, very, very dark, dark past. But in this depiction, which I do like, this actor is doing a nice job. Again, the acting in this one is, is fine. You get Genghis Khan doesn't have a single word to say. So it's like, okay, they're not going to treat Genghis Khan well. And then this episode, more than any other depiction in the original series of Klingons, goes full. We're putting him in blackface. This is just straight up like, uh, oh, not great. So you get a Klingon who is in very questionable makeup. He gets to talk a few times, but mainly the main villain that we're given is Colonel Green. And I kept being distracted by the fact that he is wearing Mork's outfit from Mork and Mindy. Matt Ferrell: Okay, yes, yes, he is. Yes, he is. Sean Ferrell: And here's the thing, Matt, I'm not joking. That is literally the outfit that they put. I'm not surprised. They just pulled a triangle. They put a triangle on it and they sent him out there and they were like, go say nano, nano. And a career is born. So the legacy of this episode is, yeah, most people remember that Abraham Lincoln did appear in Star Trek. People probably, if they are deep into the geekdom, probably recognize the Help Me Spock reference. And Mork's costume came out of this one. Other than that, I'm co signing everything Matt just said. This is a skip. Matt Ferrell: We're almost done with the show Sean.
Sean Ferrell: So listeners. I hope you've enjoyed our discussion about Patrick Stewart and reminiscing about his impact on Trektum and people's lives. And I hope you aren't mad at us for making you watch this episode, but jump into the comments to two requests. First, jump into the comments. Let us know what did you think about this one? But also jump into the comments and let us know what you thought about Patrick Stewart and how you felt upon hearing about his passing. Both he and Walter Koenig going in just a matter of days from each other. Hard time for Trek fandom. It's. I find it remarkable that at this stage, it's just George Takei and William Shatner from the original series. Like, they won't be with us forever. Their work will be. It's not all the savage curtain. We have had better and we are headed toward better because I think the further we've gone in the rewatch of the original series, Matt, the more I've landed on this Star Trek as we know it was born as a result of the movies. Matt Ferrell: Yes,
Sean Ferrell: I am looking forward more and more to getting to the movies, especially as we get into the movies and we can talk about not only the movies with the original crew, but how they built such a bridge and were originally supposed to be a return to television for Trek. So it's a very I look forward to that greatly. I am enjoying this mainly because I enjoy the relationship we have with you, our viewers and listeners. And also I enjoy just hanging out with my brother and talking about Star Trek, even if it's bad. So let us know in the comments those two things How'd you feel about this episode? And what did you think when you heard the news about Patrick Stewart passing? Let us know. As always, liking, subscribing, sharing with your friends, commenting. Those are all easy ways for you to support the podcast. We appreciate all of that and if you'd like to support us more directly, you can go to trekintime.show, Click the Join button. It allows you to throw some coins at our heads and then we get down to the heavy, heavy business of saying, you know what? I don't think Abraham Lincoln could have fought a Klingon. Thank you so much everybody for taking the time to watch or listen, and we'll talk to you next time.
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