Matt and Sean talk about the release of all stakes in Star Trek TOS Season 3, Episode 14, “Whom Gods Destroy.”

Sean’s comic collection goes on sale July 3rd. Details here: https://www.whatnot.com/s/VMjS3uri

Chapters

• 0:00: Intro
• 3:26: Today's episode
• 5:12: This time in history
• 7:51: Episode discussion

Transcript

Sean Ferrell: Welcome, everybody, to Trek in Time, where we're taking a look at all of Star Trek in chronological stardate order. Yes, we started way back at Enterprise, and here we are, 232 episodes later. We're almost done with the original series. Matt, I don't know about you, but things aren't working out the way I thought they would. Let's do a podcast. It's about Star Trek.

Matt Ferrell: It'll be fun. Will it?

Sean Ferrell: Will it? It's been fun. I joke. We are watching all of Star Trek in chronological stardate order and we're taking a look at the world at the time of original broadcast. So we've been talking lately about the 60s, and as we finish up with the original series, which, as by my count, is just a few episodes away, it looks like maybe a month and a half, we'll suddenly find ourselves in the movies and we'll be skyrocketing through the 70s, 80s, 90s and beyond until we're finally, guess what, Matt? Gonna land in the Next Generation. I know that Matt's looking forward to that, and I am as well, and I'm sure a lot of people in our audience are, too. And who am I? Well, I'm Sean Ferrell. I'm a writer. I write some sci fi and I write some horrors. As a matter of fact, I have a horror novel coming out next year, 2027. For anybody who's watching or listening, this in 2028. 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. And, Matt, how are you doing? You've been enjoying for the past two weeks a lovely head and chest cold.

Matt Ferrell: So, oh, yeah, it's been a lot of fun. You might notice me muting my mic every once in a while as we talk today, because I'll be having a coughing fit. But, Sean, before we move on, what

Sean Ferrell: is the title of your book?

Matt Ferrell: You did not tell us the title of your book.

Sean Ferrell: Oh, the title of my book is in the Fields We Thirst. It is a horror story set in World War I and more. As we move forward in time, it's going to be a while before it's out. It will be out in April of 2020, so there's plenty of time for me to talk about it. Right now I am literally eyeball deep in edits, and I'm at that stage of edits which basically can be summed up as, oh, my God, what have I done? This shall pass. I know it will. It will all be great. It will all be fine. I will get through this. I've done this before. But in this moment, it really is. Oh, my God. I need a writer. I need a writer's dad. Today we're going to be talking about the episode Whom Gods Destroy. This is the 69th episode of the original series produced. The 71st aired overall, the 14th of the third season. It's a lot of numbers. And it aired originally on January 3, 1969. That's right, Matt. We cannot get closer to the beginning of 1969 than this very episode. I haven't looked ahead. I haven't looked at dates. I cannot guarantee we're not going to dip back into 1968 for an episode or two. I'm hoping we don't, because if we do, we're going to be talking about hey Jude and I don't want to do that. So let us now talk about whom God's destroyed. That noise you hear those lights? You see? That's the read alert. It's time for Matt to tackle the Wikipedia description. Matt, don't be too confused if this sounds somewhat familiar.

Matt Ferrell: Captain Kirk visits a mental health facility and confronts an insane starship captain who believes he is destined to control the universe. I see what you mean, John. We've seen that before.

Sean Ferrell: We've seen this before. So here we are, January 3, 1969. Strangely just a year and a half removed from the start of the series in which an episode that basically had the same plot existed, but a very different world. 1968 changed so much from presidential elections to the attempt to de escalate the Vietnam War. The escalation of the Vietnam War, the assassination of a presidential hopeful and a civil rights leader. So very different era and only two years after the original series began. But what were some of the details about this early days of 1969? Well, Matt, you may have heard this through the grapevine. The number one song was I Heard it through the Grapevine. Take it away, Matt. As always, if I close my eyes, I would swear Marvin Gaye was singing through my earphones. And the number one film this week, just like last week, this would be a two week number one spot. Good grief, it's candy. Yes. This is the movie that Matt and I talked about last week. A film that neither of us had ever heard of before. Written by Buck Henry, one of my favorite comedy writers of the late 60s, responsible for what's Up Doc? Which is one of the funniest movies ever made. As far as I'm Concerned. And this one being a sex farce that included a cast that includes Marlon Brando, Richard Burton, James Coburn, John Huston, Walter Mattho, Ringer, Ringo Starr, John Astin and Sugar Ray Robinson. Yes, you wondered if there was a party game you might play in which you had to name name six people who've probably been in a room together. You wouldn't have thought Sugar Ray Robinson would be in that list, but you'd be wrong. On television, we've been taking a look at 1969's top programming. Last week we talked about Gunsmoke. Yes, of course, Gunsmoke is going to be up there the week before that, Ronan Martin's Laugh in and the Number Three show for 1969.

It's not too much of a surprise either. It's Bonanza. We have many of the programs that we've talked about over the past 60 odd episodes of this podcast as we've been talking about the original series. It's no surprise that we're going to see these shows when we talk about what was popular at the time and in the news on this day in 1969. From the New York Times, a bunch of local news around school board work, the superintendent, relationship to city government. This is something that, as a New Yorker, I can tell you they didn't solve any of these problems in 1969. How do I know that? Because they're still talking about all these problems in 2026. But the headline I wanted to point out was US offers plans to End Deadlock in Vietnam Talks. Spoiler. It won't work on now to our discussion about this episode, Whom Gods Destroy. I know what I want to talk about in this conversation, Matt, but I'm going to throw it your way because I started last week's conversation.

So why don't you lead us off about your feelings about an episode in which Kirk and Spock find themselves at a mental institution which is attempting to solve mental illness once and for all, and they find themselves trapped by a madman.

Matt Ferrell: Well, Sean, my feelings about this episode are complicated because there was a big picture. There was a little bit of a flashback to last week where we talked about how the show technically was fine. It's fine. But it felt like it went on too long for me. It just felt like they were doing the same thing, the same exact thing, through three acts. It didn't feel like there was a real strong progression of tension being built, all those kind of things happening. We can't get in the details, but one of my big pet peeves was they blew up a girl on camera in a fairly besetting way.

Sean Ferrell: Yeah.

Matt Ferrell: Yeah. But they waited to do that until like, literally, like six minutes before the end of the episode. And it was like that, if you had done that 20 minutes in, would have ratcheted up the tension and then made everything after that way more tense. But they didn't. So my big complaint about this one was the structure and the storytelling just felt very repetitive. You joked about it with the description of what this is about. Yeah, the exact plot we have seen before. So it's a plot we know. And then it was like a plot script that felt like it would have been 20 minutes of an episode, but they took the same kind of sequence and just kept repeating it three times and then blew up the girl. So it's kind of like. It makes it sound like I'm saying you need to blow up girls to make it exciting. I'm not saying that, but there's a.

Sean Ferrell: There's a book on screenwriting called Save the Cat. You should write a screenwriting book called Blow up the Girl.

Matt Ferrell: It's Blow up the Girl.

Sean Ferrell: Blow up the Girl. It is, Yeah. I completely agree. And I love the summary of it just repeated three times and then they blew up the girl. I couldn't agree more with. I mean, we've seen this setting and Star Trek is going to repeat itself all the time. I mean, we see it like every series does their version of X, and that's fine. Bottle episodes will sometimes feel repetitive. Like. And I'm fine with. I'm fine with repetition. If there's a specific newness of flavor, it's a little bit like chicken is always going to be chicken. This chicken has saffron, this chicken has black pepper. So there's your newness. So it's like very similar cooking techniques, but a different flavor. This one edges up against things, but choices are made and the script is written in a way. And this is something that came up last week for us. I really feel like they knew it was over. They gave up and they had a list of plots. They just turned to a group of writers and said, okay, you do this one, you do this one, you do this one, you do that one. And then when the first draft was done, they shot it. And in this episode, I also feel like they may have cast people in this episode based on let's get this person some work so that they maybe can get some other jobs as opposed to casting people in a way that makes sense. The woman that they blow up is Yvonne Craig, she was Batgirl, the Batman TV show. We should give her her due because Batgirl effectively started in. In the TV show and then was brought into the comic books later and is considered a pivotal character for DC Comics. So that's in no small part due to Yvonne Craig. She is extremely charismatic. She's likable on screen. She does a great job in this episode with what they gave her, which was not a lot, but she really kind of like, chews the scenery in some interesting ways. There's a lot of scenery chewing from everybody.

Matt Ferrell: You're telling me two episodes in a row we have Batman actors?

Sean Ferrell: Yes.

Matt Ferrell: We had the Riddler last week.

Sean Ferrell: We had the Riddler followed by Batwoman this week. Yes, yes.

Matt Ferrell: Okay, so. All right. Just want to make clear. I just want to make that clear.

Sean Ferrell: Yeah, yeah. So there's a definite. There's. There's like a. There's like a bat pole from the Batman soundstage right down to the Star Trek soundstage. They don't give her a lot to do, but what they do give her is memorable. I like the aspects of her saying, I wrote a poem and then she reads Shakespeare. You didn't write that. Like. Like, did you know? The fact that it was written hundreds of years ago doesn't change the fact that I wrote it this morning. I love that line. But mainly Steve Innat as Captain Garth. The actor himself, I find very charismatic. Matt, are you familiar with Rick Mayall, the British comedian? He died young. He was. He was a. He was not that old when he passed. He was 56. So he was rather young when he passed. But he was in the Young Ones, and he was in Drop Dead Fred, and he had a quality that was strangely similar to Inet. And so I found myself kind of captivated by this performer for his kind of stature and the way he kind of carries himself. And I found myself thinking, like, what happened to him? And it turns out, in a strange twist of fate, Steve Innatt also died as an even younger man. He would pass away in 1972 at the age of 37. I found myself thinking, like, what. What an odd coincidence between him and Male, who he reminds me of. Male was a comic actor as opposed to being more like in. At with being a dramatic actor. But there's a kind of cadence to the delivery, a kind of way of carrying themselves and a kind of. In Inat's performance in this one, I like the way that he had that kind of wildness in the eye that spoke more than the lines he was saying, because the Lines he's saying are largely at certain points, he's petulant and immature. And it doesn't come across as. As the kind of deep, troubling villain that I think that the story kind of wanted it to be. It's not. Yeah, it's not grounded in a place.

And I found myself thinking, wow, what a missed opportunity for them to have created a character. My first thought was like, this could have been a con like character. And then I thought, what if it had been kind of the. From Starfleet Academy, the villain from that who plays a kind of madman, his background, his tortured childhood, the kind of neurotic psychotic take he has on responsibility. This role here could have been like that. And I found myself thinking, if this didn't feel like such a first draft, what might a third or a fourth draft have felt like? If they had crafted out a character who was. He's. They kept saying, your illness made you mad. Your illness has affected you. You got this injury, this illness did this to you. What if instead it was simply ptsd? They refer to him as being the winner of a war. The Battle of Axanar is still taught at the Academy. What if the presentation here had been in a very 1969 way, about the horrors of war and what it does to those we send to fight on our behalf. There's a Next Generation episode which I believe is in the first or second season about that very topic. Like, there is this storyline about like, they sent us away, we won their war, and then they don't want us to come back. And I found myself looking at this and thinking what an amazing episode this could have been if Captain Kirk was coming with the cure for mental illness. To find a man who had taken over an asylum and had a moral and just argument to make, as opposed to, this is effectively just a Batman villain, kind of goofy, and he's. And he's bad to be bad. And he blows up a girl in the third act.

And it's just like I found myself thinking, missed opportunity, missed opportunity, missed opportunity more than anything else.

Matt Ferrell: I mean, that ties into one of my notes about this episode, which was, boy, the portrayal of mental illness. Kind of questionable in this entire episode because they were playing it like Saturday morning cartoon of like, these people have a mental illness, so they're crazy. And everybody is chewing scenery and acting crazy. And it's that over the top cartoonish portrayal of somebody who's insane. And that, as we know today, is not remotely accurate to the different various, like being bipolar, ptsd, all these different mental. Mental challenges and illnesses people might have. There's so much nuance to this. I keep thinking of like One who Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest. Yeah. It's like you could have had multiple styles of insanity and portrayal, but everybody was just walking around chewing scenery. Everybody was just doing the same thing. This one note, over the top, screaming at the top of your lungs, being wild with the wild look in your eye. And it made me think about the same thing of. This guy could have been terrifying if he vacillated between this a little bit of more a mania moments and then other moments just quiet, just directness where he seems completely rational but terrifying and then flipping into mania and then flipping back. So if they had done that with him, it would have been a little more scary. It could have been a con like villain. Yeah, that would have carried more weight. But the fact that he was just this cartoonish, insane guy, it just cut the legs out from underneath the entire episode. There was no real tension in anything until the girl blew up. So.

Sean Ferrell: Yeah, until the girl blew up. And I think to dive a little bit more into like the first draft, itis of this and it doesn't have tension, it doesn't have stakes. One of the things about this episode that I do love is the okay, beam me up. Queen to queen's level three. And he's just like, what the fuck is that supposed to mean? It doesn't have a. He's like, what? Why are you talking about that now? Well, this is what we agreed upon. And like, he throws a tantrum. Now you give me a villain who maybe has said to Kirk in a dismissive way, you consider yourself a Starfleet captain. I am the one who invented what a Starfleet captain has to be. I am the one who had to go in and win that war. I am the one who defined all the rules that you operate under. But you get to do it without any hardship. And I didn't have that luxury. So I am going to take back my opportunity to have fun in the galaxy and I'm going to do it with your ship and I'm going to do it with your face. And nobody's going to see it coming. And then to go and be told, queens to Queens Level 3, and have him throw a tantrum would have shown. Okay, this guy is conniving. He maybe even has some legitimate arguments to make, but he's also out of control. And that tantrum, I like the tantrum. I like what Scotty and Sulu are doing with Uhura. Is constantly in the background. She's like, I'm trying to get them up on the. Up on the con and. Or up on the radio. And Sulu is probing the shield and trying to figure out the weakest point. And Scotty and McCoy are having very clearly. All of that was shot in about 15 minutes. They're all. Yeah, they're all on the bridge. You know, the director was just like, okay, you guys are done filming that other episode. Okay, everybody get in front of the camera, and we're gonna run through this. 1, 2, 3, go. And they just say these things, and they never leave the bridge.

And it is all super quick. It was probably shot 20 minutes. But the problem is, where the girl blew up should have been at the beginning. And where Queen's Gambit 3 was planted should have been toward the end. Because the moment Scotty says, we have a passcode and it was your idea, we know he's never getting aboard the Enterprise. It removes all the tension. And I was just like, why would you do that? They do it, like, 15 minutes into the episode. And then I'm like, if you hadn't had that. If the entire episode is the cat and mouse game inside the asylum, and who can be trusted and who can't be, and is this person a patient? Or are they actually threatening me? And it culminates with him turning himself into Kirk and going and getting on the radio and saying, beam me up. And we're all like, oh, no. And then Scotty pulls that out. It's going to be like, ha, ha. They did it. But instead, they do it in the first act, and we're left there like, they're never getting off that planet. Scotty keeps saying, what if they're already dead? We as an audience know they're not. If the entire episode took place aboard the Enterprise, and it's just like, oh, my gosh, what happened to them? We don't know even know if they're alive. He didn't know the passcode. That is a pitch for a really great other episode. Imagine an episode completely aboard the Enterprise with Scotty in command, and he sees Captain Kirk say, beam me up. And he's like, give me the passcode. And he's like, I don't know what you're talking about. And. And then you have an episode where they're on the ship and they're like, what happened to our captain? Like, that wasn't him. What happened to Spock? Where are they? Are they safe? That would have been a great episode.

Like, this is A first draft.

Matt Ferrell: The thing I liked the most about this entire episode, and you're gonna laugh when I say this, but was the ending. But I liked when it was over. Sean. I liked my favorite part of this entire episode was the Kirk on Kirk action. It's like once we got into the Kirk on Kirk fight, when Spock comes busting in and it's Kirk and Kirk who's the real Kirk. Whole sequence to the end, I freaking loved. It's like I thought it was really fun. They actually had a stunt double that kind of sort of passed.

Sean Ferrell: It looked like Shatner. Right. So it was good.

Matt Ferrell: Yeah, it was. They didn't have a redhead fighting him. So it like, it like you could

Sean Ferrell: tell who weighed 50 pounds.

Matt Ferrell: It felt like, yes, exactly. Somebody who's half his weight and half his age. It was clearly somebody that kind of the same. Similar body type, everything like that. So it was really well done. The fight was pretty cool. And then the whole trying to get Spock to figure it out was a little ham fisted. But it led to my favorite moment at the end when Kirk says yes and congratulations. What. What took you so long about the, like, what took you so long to figure out who was the real cap that could be real captain? And Spock's reaction to that. What he says back about like the. Oh, well, he's. I was waiting for him to just beat you. Cause I knew he would beat you. Yeah. Which I thought was the best response. The character development and the jokes and the humor between characters we love at the end. And that fight, I thought was actually probably the highlight of the entire episode for me. So I might be slightly forgiving on this episode because it ended on kind of a nice, kind of like palate cleanser after the lack of tension and 40 minutes of just really nothing happening.

Sean Ferrell: Yeah. I find myself in the same territory as last week where I'm like, I don't hate it, but it wasn't good. Yeah, it's just, it's just like maybe this would have been. If you gave me a fourth draft of the same story. I bet it would have been really great. And if you'd had different casting, mainly of the main villain. I didn't even mention this. Like, this actor was three years younger than Shatner and Shatner is saying, they still teach your maneuvers at the Academy. I'm like, yes. You couldn't find in all of Hollywood there was not a 50 year old actor available. Give me a seasoned actor who is playing this as I am grounded and I am dangerous and I am angry at how I was treated. I've been locked up here because I turned into who needed me to be to win that war. And that war, as I mentioned, was Axanar. Matt, does the name Axanar mean anything to you?

Matt Ferrell: Nope.

Sean Ferrell: Okay. Would it surprise you if I told you that Axanar is responsible for Paramount's shutdown of fan fiction and fan made film around Star Trek? How there was at the beginning of this century a Kickstarter where an individual was raised money in order to make a prequel story based on this episode. It proved very successful and it gained more and more steam. And over the multiple years it reached a point where another Kickstarter was done and more money than was anticipated was raised. And they were filming, they were writing and they were able to use special effects techniques. I would, I would say like Babylon 5, but a bit better. Pretty compelling special effects. It finally reached a point where Paramount went from, oh, it's, we don't really bother people who make their own things. Because of course people who make their own things are doing it with late 20th century. It looks not so great, the acting is not going to be so great. Like they're keeping Star Trek alive. But who, you know, we don't really bother with it. But this was becoming a moneymaker and it was becoming a moneymaker in a way that Paramount woke up to and it turned into a major lawsuit that ended up changing how Paramount responds to fan based projects like this. Axanar as a thing still exists. Axanar was basically as part of the negotiations of closing out, the lawsuit was given the ability to finish their project. There has been a lot of fan grumbling around the fact that a lot of what was promised in the Kickstarters never manifested. But I think it was due to a lot of hobbling by the lawsuit itself. But a lot of stuff was shot, a lot. There was a plan to make a feature length film that would then be self released. And they ended up being given the authorization to be able to take what was supposed to be a feature film, release it in two segments, two smaller segments.

They had from the first Kickstarter completed what was basically a fake documentary about the battle of Axanar in which the filmmaker himself played the character of the villain in this episode. So it is supposed to be 20 years prior to the original series. It is supposed to be the Four Years War, as it was known between the Federation and the Klingon Empire. And the war is not going well for the Federation and it speeds up development of The Constellation class starship, which is, of course, what the Enterprise is. So it's the Federation trying to build this new class of starship. And one is built in time to enter the war. And on the other side, the Klingons are relying on their D6 style Klingon cruiser. And when the Constellation class comes in, they have to speed up their development of the D7, which is the type of Klingon cruiser we see in the original series. So it's this prequel which is about this conflict. The Klingons have no respect for the Federation. They're basically steamrolling them. And it's about the growing respect within the Klingons toward a Federation that's actually able to defend itself. Some of the stuff that you can find if you go to the Axanar YouTube page includes, you can watch the original fake documentary. They are releasing stuff out of curiosity. I went to it today. They're releasing stuff as of, like, the past couple of weeks. So there's still stuff coming out. And the stuff that's coming out, I ended up watching a few minutes of one particular thing, which was a brief film where it was the character of Saval, Ambassador Saval, who was a character on Star Trek Enterprise. He was the Vulcan ambassador who was so contentious with the humans in that series. It's him talking to an aide and they are having effectively a little debate about whether or not Vulcan should leave the Federation.

And he is making the argument, well, if we leave, others will as well and it will be the beginning of the end. The Klingons will roll over all of us individually, but if we stay together, we're stronger. Really good special effects. Long opening sequence showing a starship coming toward Vulcan, a shuttle swooping over the desert, moving toward the main city. Like it was. I was watching and I was just like, this is really pretty good. And the character of Seval is played by Gary Graham, who was the actor who played Saval in Enterprise. So among the actors who were a part of the Axanar project included Gary Graham as Ambassador Saval, J.G. hertzler as Captain Samuel Travis, Kate Vernon as Captain Sonia Alexander. And then these two were the names that really kind of like popped out at me. Richard Hatch, who was, of course, in the original Battlestar Galactica TV show. He played Klingon Supreme Commander Karn, and Tony Todd, who was. Yes, that Tony Todd, who played Worf's brother, who was Candyman. Yeah, who sadly just passed away, what, a year ago? Two years ago. He plays Admiral Marcus Ramirez. This was a fan Started project. They raised enough money to get the attention of these actors to be in this thing. The second Kickstarter really took off, they were shooting for $100,000. They ended up getting 600,000 because of one, let's see, what was his name again? George Takei, who found out about and liked the project and went to. Yes, he went to the Twitter machine and was just like, I like this. And everybody ran to Kickstarter and threw money at it. Part of the negotiations with Paramount around what to do with this was no actors can be paid to be in it. That was part of the hobbling of like, you keep it, you. It has to be fan service. It can't be sold. You can't have paid professional actors. It has to be a passion project.

So, Matt, if you and I decided we were going to run around in my backyard with toy phasers and pretend that we were, you know, in Starfleet and then released it on YouTube, it would be 1 embarrassing and 2 allowed. But if we tried to hire actors to do that and then put it on YouTube and charge a fee for it, that is not allowed. So this was the beginning of the end of Paramount, CBS effectively letting the fandom do their own thing, which was part of what kept Star Trek alive for all those decades. So it's, it's a, it's, it's sad. It's, you know, I understand the corporate need to like, we need to have some sort of limits about what we do and don't allow. From what I've seen, if these people had actually produced a feature length movie that was up on YouTube, first of all, nobody was going to confuse it with official CBS films.

Matt Ferrell: It has nothing to do with that though. It has nothing to do with that. If they did, if they allowed this to happen, they would lose control of their ip. There's legal reasons why they would have to do this. I'm not taking the side of the corporation, but they have to do that or they lose it.

Sean Ferrell: But I'm like, isn't there a middle ground where it could have been maybe, okay, you can do this with our blessing. If we have a stake, if we have crediting, if we like you go through an official process of review in order to get the endorsement and then that allows you to do some of the things you might want to do with it. Like you can't pay your actors unless we give you approval and then you can pay them like it. Maybe there's middle ground there, but I don't know. I end up looking at this thing online and I was like, this is. This is kind of cool. Like watching a scene that's not from an official show in which Saval is making an argument about why Vulcan needs to stay in the Federation as a part of the character arc. For my headcanon from Enterprise, I found it really kind of fun. So I don't know if anybody in our audience is familiar with Axanar. If you are, jump into the comments. Let us know what you think about it. If you have any suggestions of, like, where to start with it, because I came to it, I had heard about it over the years but never really paid close attention to it. So if anybody in our audience is like, oh no, here's what you should watch first and here's some other things, drop into the comments. I'd love to see what you have to say. So having said all of that, next week we are going to be talking about Mark of Gideon. Please jump in the comments. Wrong answers only. What is Mark of Gideon about? Here's a starter for some of you. It's about a guy named Mark. You know where he's from? Matt?

Matt Ferrell: Gideon.

Sean Ferrell: He's from Gideon. So take it from there. As always, jump into the comments. Let us know what you thought about this episode that we just talked about. Do you agree with Matt and I that it's a lot of samey Samy? Or is there something about this one that stands out to you that makes you really enjoy it? We look forward to hearing what you have to say and as always, liking subscribing, sharing with your friends. Those are all very easy ways for you to support the podcast. If you want to support us directly, you can go to trekintime show. Click the button that says Join. It'll make you an ensign. You'll get to throw some coins at our heads and you'll be subscribed for our spin off program out of Time, in which we talk about things that don't fit within the confines of this program. We hope you'll be interested in checking that out. Also, quick plug for my my comic book collection back here. Down below in the show notes, there's going to be a link. A friend of mine is helping me sell these comics through whatnot, which is like a live auction site, sort of like ebay with a streaming aspect to it. Check out that link, keep an eye on it and you can see what comics I am selling. If anybody is interested in comics, I hope you'll check out the show. Anyway, thank you so much everybody for taking the time to watch or listen, we'll talk to you next time.

Matt and Sean talk about the never-ending battle for good storytelling in Star Trek TOS Season 3, Episode 15, “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield.”

Sean’s comic collection goes on sale July 3rd. Details here: https://www.whatnot.com/s/VMjS3uri

Chapters

• 00:00: Intro
• 00:53: Listener Feedback
• 03:16: This Time in History
• 09:58: Today’s Conversation

Transcript

Sean Ferrell: In today's episode of Trek in Time, we're going to be talking about whether anything is really ever completely black or white. Welcome, everybody, to Trek in Time, where we're taking a look at all of Star Trek in chronological stardate order. We are happily making our way through the original series. In fact, we're right about at the halfway point. That's right, Matt. The movies are almost within reach. They're so close. They're right there. Today, we're going to be talking about the original series, season three, episode 15, Let That Be Your Last Battlefield. This episode originally aired on January 10, 1969, so barely into the final year of its broadcast. It's a story by Gene L. Coon, teleplay by Oliver Crawford, and directed by Jud Taylor. Before we get into our conversation about this week's episode, we always like to take a look at what you've had to say about our previous episode. So, Matt, what did you find in the mailbag for us this week?

Matt Ferrell: Well, from the last episode, which was that which survives, we had a comment from Happy Flappy Farm, who wrote, Seeing Dr. M’Benga was one of our favorite parts of this episode. The bickering between Scotty and Spock was distracting and the dialogue in general was lacking. It feels like the writers this season are less skilled than previous seasons. Yes, yes, I would agree with that. But at the same time, there's more episodes this season that are like the iconic Trek episodes I think of when I think of the original series, which is really weird. Then we had a comment from AJ Chan who wrote, wait, which witch survives? W I T C H? PaleGhost69 responded, no. Which witch is on third. What witch survived. Hat tip to both of you.

Sean Ferrell: Tip, yes. Third base, yes.

Matt Ferrell: And then Dan Sims wrote a comment about really enjoyed this episode and really missed you guys last week. We missed you too, Dan. Scheduling has been really, really weird with Sean traveling, me traveling, now me getting sick. There's been a whole bunch of stuff happening recently that's been kind of knocking us off. But finally, wrong answers only from Mark Loveless. Plot of Let that be your last battlefield. A new red shirt and a new lower deck person are looking for buried corbomites since they are being hazed by Sulu and Chekov, who find it hilarious. By some miracle, they find a time capsule from the 20th century which contains many weird items, including the board game Battlefield. After finding out that the hazing incident resulted in something being dug up as Sulu and Chekov let them know, they open the time capsule. Sulu and Chekov are stunned and wildly excited as the game Battlefield only now existed in crappy modern versions. But this was an original. The red shirt sees how excited they are, but is angry. So he takes out his phaser and zaps Battlefield into dust. One guess what the red shirt says, Mark. I'm going to guess it's let that be your last battlefield.

Sean Ferrell: Thank you, Mark. And thank you everybody for your comments. They really do entertain us and help drive the show forward. So those flashing lights you see, those klaxon sounds you hear. Yes, it's the read alert. It's time for Matt to tackle, you guessed it, the Wikipedia description.

Matt Ferrell: The Enterprise picks up the last two survivors of a war torn planet who are still committed to destroying each other aboard the ship.

Sean Ferrell: Very accurate. Not bad, not bad. So here we are halfway through season three and we finally made it into 1969. We were in 1969 last week as well, but this one feels like it's just by the skin of our teeth. What was the world like at the time of broadcast, January 10, 1969? Well, Matt, you were still listening to that grapevine. That's right. Marvin Gaye's I Heard it through the Grapevine was the number one song. Take it away, Matt. Why am I craving raisins? And in theaters? Well, Matt, one of the things I've enjoyed about this podcast is finding those things that seem to be from another dimension. And this week's number one film is just one of those things. Yes, number one film of the week, Candy, which according to the poster, I think the name of the film is Candy, but the poster has the tagline good grief, it's Candy. And I don't know if you've read the show notes to know what this is about. Do you have any sense or did you peek at the show notes? Okay, if you had to take a guess, like based on. You're a film buff, you're very knowledgeable. This is an era in 1969 that you have experience with as far as film going is concerned. If you were to look at this and just say like, what kind of movie do you think this is?

Matt Ferrell: It looks like it's trying to be Dr. Strangelove to me. Just from the poster, Like a zany comedy.

Sean Ferrell: Candy. Is it released in 1968? It must have been like a Christmas week release. It is a sex farce directed by Christian Marquand from a screenplay by Buck Henry. Buck Henry is responsible for one of my all time favorite movies. This is What's up Doc. Yeah, he wrote that. So I'm immediately, I'm intrigued. I'm like, okay, this is possibly something up my alley. It's based on a 1958 novel of the same name by Terry Southern and Mason Hovenberg. And the film satirizes pornographic stories through the adventures of its naive heroine, Candy Christian, played by Ewa Aulin. Never heard of Ewa Aulin. So I'm like, okay, did it work out? Well, did it work out, Matt? That's the question you should be asking for yourself. When you look at the movie poster, if you squint the right way, do you recognize any faces? Because the cast includes Ewa Aulin, as already mentioned, Charles Aznavour, a name I do not recognize. Marlon Brando, Richard Burton, James Coburn, John Huston, Walter Matthau, Ringo Starr, John Astin, Elsa Martinelli, Sugar Ray Robinson, Anita Pallenberg and Florinda Bolkan. You mentioned zany comedy. You mentioned, like, this is a, it's a mad, mad, mad, mad world style cast. This is based on a novel that had run from the 50s. This is Buck Henry. This is a cast that is just kind of a murderer's row. Marlon Brando in a sex farce comedy in the late 60s. This is just a couple of years removed from him doing Apocalypse Now.

Matt Ferrell: Woo.

Sean Ferrell: I find myself intrigued. So I have not yet gone to the Google machine to see if it is available anywhere on the YouTubes, but I will be looking and I will report back. And very, very briefly, because we have talked about TV of this era, I feel like in great detail, do you agree with me on that? That we have like really, really kind of like pulled apart the seams of the scheduling. So I'm going to rely on kind of a brief summary of 1969's top programming. And it's a lot of the shows that we've already talked about. So we won't dive too deeply into these from this point forward. As we finish out season three of the original series, we talked about last week, the number one show of 1969, Rowan and Martin's Laugh in, which is of course a progenitor of shows like Saturday Night live, the number two show for 1969 with a 25.9 rating. To put that in perspective with Trek, at this point, Star Trek is pulling in about a 10. It's. It's about a 10.8 compared to season one where it was getting a 12 and then it went down to 11.6 for season two. Now it's down at a 10.8. So here we are at a 25.9 with the number two show of 1969, Gunsmoke. Yes, that Gunsmoke. And in the news, just barely into 1969, we see some headlines regarding, well, here comes President Nixon. We wonder how that's going to turn out. No spoilers, please. But there is also a photograph with a headline, capitol hails history's boldest explorers. I will admit I saw that headline and I thought to myself, what could that be a reference to? And then I did the old palm to the forehead as I realized, yes, it was the crew of Apollo 8 returned to Earth and being saluted in Congress. This is, of course, this is the equivalent of what we've just had here with the return of the Artemis mission and everybody looking at these people and saying they went further than anybody's ever gone in our solar system before.

Hooray. And just yesterday, NASA announced the next four person crew for the next Artemis mission, Artemis 3, which will of course be testing out, going into space, detaching the lunar lander module and reconnecting before returning to Earth. So baby steps, baby steps, baby steps. We've gone through this before, but when did we do that? Yes, the late 60s. 1969. On now to our conversation about this week's episode. Let that be your last battlefield. I feel like, Matt, this is the one. There's a part of me that feels like, we did it, we finished the original series. Because this is the one I think we were both waiting for. Because how do you talk about the battle between the moon pies? How do you take the black and white cookie versus the moon pie and say it, only one can survive. What is it like when you take an Oreo cookie and separate it in half and then say, only one of you can be right? I find myself watching this one and thinking, okay, here we are, we're watching it now. This is happening and we're going to talk about it. And I think this may be our shortest episode of this podcast because I am going to lead off our conversation with this. There's really nothing wrong with this episode. It's just not enough material to be an episode. This felt to me like, wow, did they look for places to add padding? And wow, did they come up with some intriguing ways to pad. Some of my highlights from this episode include, oh, God, I wish I could recreate it. Maybe it can be recreated in editing, I don't know. But the klaxon, the zoom, I was like, I was like, I remember this from childhood. I remember it very clearly. And in every episode where the red alert has gone off. I thought, did I make that up in my head? Why do I like every time the red alert goes off, it's just like there's a klaxon. Sometimes they show the red light. Why do I remember a zoom, zoom, zoom.

Now here we are, this is where. And we got it more than once in this episode.

Matt Ferrell: So I'm like, okay, it was like four times. I think it was.

Sean Ferrell: There's a little bit of padding. That's a lot. A sequence which I laughingly cannot believe. Not only did they do it in this episode, they steal it almost whole cloth and recreate it in Next Generation when it's like, oh really? Watch me blow up my ship. And it is a five minute long sequence of I am going to give my code to the ship and then my first officer is going to give their code to the ship and then my second in command is going to give their code to the ship. Something that never happened before and never happens again. Whenever self destruct is utilized at any other point in the series and the exact same thing happened in the next gen. I'm looking forward to the next gen version, which is Picard giving his Picard Alpha 1 Alpha Beta, Beta 1 Alpha 00, Beta 1 Alpha. It goes on for so long. And in this one it's we get Kirk, we get Spock, we get Scotty. But unlike the next gen, this one has something that that did not have, which is. Can you guess what I'm going to refer to?

Matt Ferrell: I have no idea, Sean.

Sean Ferrell: Intense dental zooms.

Matt Ferrell: Yeah, the zoom, the zoom.

Sean Ferrell: Scotty, you got to stop.

Matt Ferrell: And Scotty's eyes.

Sean Ferrell: Scotty, you got to stop smoking. It's just like when you like Spock's eyes down to Spock's mouth. Scotty's eyes down to Scotty's mouth. Like, what were they thinking? What was going on through everybody's heads? It's just there's so much padding in this. Because I go back to my earlier statement, there's nothing wrong with this story as a premise. They just didn't write enough for there to be a story. It also feels thin in the form of the initial idea seems to be what if we had members of a Greek chorus show up on the ship? Because these are just archetypes and playing with the black and white or the white and black and looking very much like Matt and I grew up in a household with two people who were theater people and our father in particular had a collection of masks in his den from all sorts of cultures all over the world, and including masks that were representative of theater. And I look at this episode and I can't see anything other than the dramatis personae, smiling face, frowning face, and the idea behind, like they're two sides of the same coin. Like your idea can't stop at that.

Matt Ferrell: But it did.

Sean Ferrell: And it did. And it goes back to the comment that you raised at the beginning of this episode, which is the writing seems a little thin. And I think that they were at certain points just kind of. They probably at this point knew that the show was over. And somebody on the writing team, they're taking ideas from Gene L. Coon, who's executive producer on the show, and his name is at the top of a lot of these episodes now. And I think he had a napkin that had a bunch of ideas scribbled on it and he'd hand it off to the writers and the writers would write these things and they would go with it. Feels very first drafty. And this one has in particular a strange structure because if you follow the structure of the story, it reaches a conclusion multiple times before. Like you keep repeating the I'm going to take over your ship. And why do you do that? Because they had to get to that end. They had to get to the end where two people chase each other through a ship to get to the transporter to beam themselves down to be the last two people battling on a dead world, just so that that could be the end. And it's. This whole point is summarized. This is something you've said previously, Matt, and I didn't always agree with it a whole cloth. But this one I do like. This is an episode of the Animated series and a 20 minute episode, this would have been fine and I might even like it. But in a 40 minute episode where it seems like they're treading water and it's all for that final moment where there are some compelling images. In this one, they shoot that conversation that Spock overhears in an interesting way. I really like the sequence where the two men are chasing each other through the ship and they're superimposing images which are clearly from World War II, where it's like you're.

They're running through the ship and they're seeing in their memory, in their imagination, their world burning. And I'm like this. The message here is very on the nose, very clear, impossible to miss. But it's not a story.

Matt Ferrell: So let me tell you a short little story. This, as a kid, was an episode I loved but even then I knew that's kind of on the nose, but I still like it. Rewatching it now as an adult, I'm like, wow, that's really on the nose. But I kind of don't like it as much. But it's not that bad. I'm gonna be a little more forgiving than you again. I don't think there's anything wrong.

Sean Ferrell: They were new with it. It just right.

Matt Ferrell: But they're definitely padding. 100%. They were padding. Oh my God, were they padding? They were padding like I've never seen them pad before.

Sean Ferrell: Yeah, they boldly padded where nobody padded before.

Matt Ferrell: Yeah, they're bold five year mission. There was an effort in some of that padding I admired, even though it didn't execute well. And one of the sequences was the one you brought up of them threatening to detonate the ship to regain control of the ship, to basically prove to them we will kill ourselves rather than let you take the ship. And that whole sequence was like, oh my God, how many? Oh, they're gonna do Scotty now too. It wasn't just enough to have the first officer, now you gotta go to the chief engineer. There was a little bit of that going through my head, but at the same time it reminded me of a lot of films from this era which were to call them plotting would be polite. There was a different tone where you build tension and you ratchet it really slowly and you let it build and you let it build and you let it build. And that sequence, I saw them trying to do that with what they were doing. So they were trying to make it not feel like padding. They were trying to probably evoke some of that tension through the dramatic. All three of these guys are like, yes, it's not just the captain playing poker, it's everybody. And they kept coming to Sulu. They kept cutting to Uhura on the bridge. And you could see everybody's like, we're scared. But they were all like, we gotta

Sean Ferrell: do what we gotta do.

Matt Ferrell: Like, they're all showing that they're willing to die for the cause. And that I thought was really cool. I thought that was a really cool thing that we're evoking. It just was done in a clumsy way. It wasn't done as well as those movies I just referenced. It's kind of sad. It's like, okay, I can see what you're trying to do, but your abilities, it's like what you want is not what you can actually achieve. And it's kind of sad to see you kind of stumble a little bit. The on the nose nature of the racism is bad and hate is bad and like all that kind of stuff with the black and white and the white and black. Silly Greek tragedy. You're right. The Greek, like, you know, the mask thing 100%. But the message and the idea, I do agree, is a very Saturday morning cartoon presentation of this idea. But it's a good idea for them to tackle with. It was just done in a very kind of hacky. Yeah, just a hacky way. And you said your one of your favorite parts was the running sequence at the end. That was my least favorite part. I forgot about the running sequence. It is so damn goofy. So goofy. These two guys start chasing each other to the ship and what does the captain do? Let him do it. Yeah, like he doesn't. He says, he's just. He literally says, nah, let him go. Yeah, they want. They're gonna do what they're gonna do.

Sean Ferrell: Yeah.

Matt Ferrell: He doesn't even try to stop them. And the whole sequence of them running takes for one forever.

Sean Ferrell: It's a form of padding.

Matt Ferrell: Yeah, they get, they get so winded so fast.

Sean Ferrell: Yeah.

Matt Ferrell: It was like they talked in the beginning about how like the doctor says if like you are a fine specimen, if you hadn't been, we found you almost dead on the ship. You're one hell of a specimen. Basically saying this is like peak fitness, peak strength, peak everything. This is like a real specimen.

Sean Ferrell: It runs for 30 seconds.

Matt Ferrell: And they both of them run for 30 seconds and they're like winded. And I'm like, hey, Doc, I think you need to reevaluate your assumption before. And the second thing was, is I can't remember the character's name, but the one that was doing the chasing. Yeah, there's one clip. I don't know what he was doing, but he was running with T Rex arms. Yeah, he came around the corner and his arms were doing this as.

Sean Ferrell: He's called the Riddler from Batman. He is. And I've always loved Frank Gorshin because his performance as the Riddler. He was. If William Shatner had not become the stereotypical like, oh, this is our bad actor parody and we're going to do a Shatner. Gorshin is the stand in for that because Gorshin and Batman was just like everything was twisted and weird and everything was. And then there's a hint of that in this in particular in the running sequence. And there's a moment in the running sequence where There was a student film made by Steven Spielberg which included, like, this is one of those things where people in Hollywood began to talk about Steven Spielberg when he was just coming out of film school because word got out like the. There's this kid who's doing things already as a 22 year old that more seasoned directors aren't doing. And there was this student film that he did in which it included a sequence where the. A young woman is walking through. Down some stairs and across a sidewalk and down a street. And the camera rotates around her, keeping her in center frame. And it's always the same distance from her. And it is a very compelling, very well done shot. And you watch it and you're like, this is the 60s, early 70s. How did he accomplish a shot? When you look at filmmaking today and they've got rigs and they've got the whole. Everything's, you know, like a camera person kind of looks like RoboCop inside a rig that allows the camera to stay steady and keep it the same distance and all those sorts of things. And Spielberg, in an interview was asked a question about that shot, and he's like, I tied a rope around her waist and around my waist so that I could keep moving around her. And I always knew I was at the right distance. Simplicity.

The chase sequence in this, there's a moment where I would bet any amount of money Frank Gorshin is holding onto a rope.

Matt Ferrell: He is.

Sean Ferrell: You can see, you can see, you can see.

Matt Ferrell: There's. What his hand comes to shot.

Sean Ferrell: His hand is like.

Matt Ferrell: You can see the rope. And I was like, oh, my God, they're doing a rope for distance. So he stays a constant distance from the camera in.

Sean Ferrell: Yeah, I was like. And he just. And he really. And his hand is too in the middle. And then every other sequence, I think he's running like this so he can hide that he's doing this. I think it's. Yeah, like, why are you running with T. Rex? Why does he look like a kangaroo when he comes around that corner? Oh, I'm so tired and I'm having nightmare visions. It's very funny.

Matt Ferrell: The other thing about the chase sequence that was killing me, I was laughing out loud was Spock's running commentary.

Sean Ferrell: It was.

Matt Ferrell: Not only was the running sequence weird and too long, but Spock going, they just entered deck nine. Like, it's like, who cares, Spock? I don't need to. He just entered this room. I don't care. Spock, shut up. It's like, it's like, why is he narrating what they're doing when they keep showing us that, you know, like show in television and film. It's like, show, don't tell. Show, don't tell. And we got both. They were showing us. And then they had Spock going. So running down the hallway to room nine, it's like, okay, Spock, shut up. They just entered the transporter. I know Spock. I just watched him go in the transporter room.

Sean Ferrell: That reminded me of a bit from Seinfeld when Elaine has gotten into an office tiff with, played by Molly Shannon, the woman who walks without moving her arms. And oh, yeah, there's this tiff between the two of them. And Molly Shannon leaves a voicemail message on Elaine's phone which says, I will confront you in the kitchen area or the board room or the copy room. And Elaine hangs up the phone and says, what does she have a blueprint of the office? Like, she's just naming these things in order as they are in the hallway. Like that sequence reminded me of. Of that Elaine scene because, yeah, it's this running commentary. And as it was going on, I thought the logic of levels and where. Deck three, Room nine. Like, he's naming all these things. I'm like, if you listen to all of it, it doesn't make any logical sense because he seems to name rooms and levels out of order in a way that implies somebody's looping backward. There's a moment where somebody's on deck three and then they're on five and then they're back on three. And I'm like, there's no concern here. There's no. There's no overriding concern. There's just like, we're just making a TV show. Let's get it done. It feels a little without showing exhaustion. It feels tired. It feels like they're tired of making the show. And I agree with you completely. There are efforts to do things in new ways that I do find compelling. I did find the self destruct sequence a great scene from the perspective that you mentioned. You're showing Uhura, you're showing Chekov, you're showing Sulu. Chekov is sweating. Uhura has concern in her eyes. But nobody is saying, you can't kill me. Don't do this. Nobody is screaming, nobody is panicking. Everybody is just like, I want there to be a better result, but I'm ready to go if I have to. Yep.

The other thing that this episode is doing, and I think season three is doing it constantly, because at this point, season three, they're like, oh, we know who the fan favorites are. We know who our main people are. All the extras that we have been accustomed to seeing in hallways and stuff like that, we're seeing fewer and fewer of that and we're just seeing the main bridge crew almost constantly altogether. And I find it like, for me, this is the imprint in my brain of what the bridge looks like. And I found myself in this episode thinking about, yeah, when we were watching the first season and the second season, there were a lot of moments where I was kind of surprised to like, oh, Sulu wasn't in this one at all. Oh, Chekhov wasn't even part of the show yet. Oh, Scotty is only in the engineering room. Scotty is now on the bridge. On the bridge almost constantly. And he goes down and he'll come back up because Scotty was a fan favorite. Uhura's a fan favorite at this point. Nichelle Nichols had thought about leaving the show and was convinced by Martin Luther King Jr. No, it's too important. You're too important to the culture. You need to stay on that program. And she stayed and is on camera in ways that are different from the first two seasons. So, like, this is where that image comes from is these episodes, which I find fascinating in a way that you, that you pointed out. These episodes have a kind of exhaustion. It feels like there's not the same level of care going into them from a writing perspective. The actors are doing their best with very little. And yet some of the most iconic images, including are happening right now.

The battle between two guys in black and white face painting with an on the nose story where I could have summarized this entire episode without watching it because I remembered thematically what was important in it to such a degree that it's. The episode itself was almost superfluous. It's interesting that this is the season. This is the stage where real imagery and the iconic presentation of what Star Trek is is finally in front of us. And it's just I find myself in that position of what if they'd gotten a fourth season? You know, what if, what if, what if? Just one more season. What if they'd gotten to the point where they got the full five year mission? And I sadly find myself going through that with New Trek right now, considering we're in the midst of. Paramount has decided to tear itself apart and there's no what is happening with these shows that have a fandom that have, well, no, we've moved on. And what does that mean? And I find myself in a similar position of like, oh, how, how sad. You know, it's disappointing.

Is there anything else that you wanted to pull out in your commentary about this one?

Matt Ferrell: No. It's a thin episode. It is what it is. It's so on the nose.

Sean Ferrell: Yeah. So thank you to everybody for joining us in this conversation. If there's anything about this episode that you think we missed, please jump into the comments and let us know. And while you're there, don't forget Wrong answers only. Next week we'll be talking about Whom Gods Destroy. What is that one about? But wrong answers only, please. As always, liking commenting, subscribing, sharing with friends. Those are all very easy ways for you to support the podcast and we do appreciate each and every one of those from all of you. But if you want to support us more directly, you can go to trekintime.show. Click the join button there. It allows you to throw coins at our heads and it also makes you an Ensign, which means you'll be signed up for our spin off show out of Time, which we talk about things that don't fit within the confines of this program. Usually it's other movies and TV shows that we are enjoying, usually with a horror or sci fi bent, sometimes both. So we hope you'll be interested checking that out. Thank you so much everybody for taking the time to watch or listen and we'll talk to you next time.

Matt and Sean talk about more pulp, but not as well aged, in Star Trek TOS Season 3, Episode 17, “That Which Survives.”

Chapters

• 00:00: Time Code and Chapters
• 03:13: Today’s Episode
• 03:38: This time in History
• 08:53: Today’s Discusion

Transcript

Sean Ferrell: Today on Trek in Time, we're going to be talking about another big pulpy premise. We're going to talk about a fast forward button on character relationships and also how stuck in sexism one of the show's feet seems to be a little sad. Anyway, today on Trek in Time, we're going to be talking about that which survives from the original series, season three. Welcome everybody to Trek in Time. This is the podcast that takes a look at all of Star Trek in chronological stardate order. And here we are just about halfway through season three, which means we are a mere couple of months probably away from taking a look at the movies and then moving forward into. That's right, Matt. I know you can't wait. Next Generation.

Matt Ferrell: I'm very excited.

Sean Ferrell: Yeah. And who are we? Well, I'm Sean Ferrell. I'm a writer. I write some sci fi, I write some horror, I write some stuff for kids. And with me, as always, is my brother Matt. He is that Matt behind Undecided with Matt Ferrell, which takes a look at emerging tech and its impact in our lives. And Matt, how are you today?

Matt Ferrell: I'm good, but I gotta say, Sean little behind the scenes here. We've been recording for a while and my studio is getting hot. It is hot in here.

Sean Ferrell: That explains why you're looking a little bit like Scotty from today'. Little. Little trapped, a little wired, a little

Matt Ferrell: angry, a little jumpy.

Sean Ferrell: Little jumpy, yeah. We'll get into that in a moment when we talk about that which survives. But first we're going to take a look at some other things. Normally we'd be talking about comments, wouldn't we, Matt? But not today. Normally we'd be like, I'd be throwing to Matt saying like, hey, we like to go to the mailbag and see what you had to say. I will not pretend to understand what is happening. Matt gave me a kind of like thumbnail version. He's like, hey, when we talk, talk to the audience about this in this way. I'm not going to do that. I nodded as he said all of that. I was just like, that makes sense. Okay. Yep, I'll do that. Yep. Here's what I know. Matt and I have a recording schedule that has been thrown off recently by. I was very sick for about a two week period. There's travel arrangements. Matt's going to be traveling, I'm going to be traveling. Somehow this has thrown the schedule into a place where videos are dropping and we are recording, but we don't yet have comments because what you're going to see in your future. Our past are somehow overlapping each other. Dr. All of that is to say we have timey wimey problems. We don't have any comments for you this week. So that's not to say we're moving away from sharing comments, it's just that right now we don't have any comments to share. So with all of that exhaustion behind us, we will move now back into our usual programming track. Yes, those flashing lights. Yes, those klaxon alarms, they can only mean one thing. It is time for Matt to tackle the Wikipedia description. Take it away, Matt.

Matt Ferrell: The crew of the Enterprise visits an abandoned outpost guarded by a mysterious computer.

Sean Ferrell: If that sounds like a half dozen Star Trek the Original Series episodes, you're not wrong. Yes, here we are on January 24th. Matt, we did it. 1969. Woo. The future. This episode dropped. This is the 69th episode produced. The 72nd aired overall. The 17th episode of the third season. That which Survives Directed by Herb Wallace Wallerstein Story by DC Fontana Teleplay by by John Meredith Lucas originally broadcast on January 24, 1969 and the world at the time of original broadcast well, I've in our show notes, Matt and I have a document of show notes. I have kept hey Jude and Funny Girl in the show notes despite the fact they are not involved this week simply because I know we are going to be traveling back in time, back into 1968 in the future where those two things still lurk. So they're still in the show notes, Matt. But don't be confused. The number one song this week in early 1969, I heard it through the Grapevine by Marvin Gaye. This is of course his cover of a song that has been covered multiple times by different artists, but he held the number one spot for a couple of weeks in early January of 69. And Matt, I will admit to becoming strangely giddily happy when I saw the number one film bullet with Steve McQueen, one of my all time favorite films. We just had a conversation in which I referenced oh, films where they used to show people shopping for broccoli. This was the movie I was thinking about. Love this movie. Love Steve McQueen. That's all I'll say about it.

And on television because we've visited the Friday night lineup and we've talked about all of the programs that aired on Friday nights in and around the Star Trek window when they held the 10 o' clock slot on Friday evenings, I, for the entry into 1969 decided that we would look big picture at the top programs of the year 1969, as opposed to drilling down into specific evenings or time slots. And what that means is the number one program for 1969, the most popular program of that year was Roan and Martin's Laugh. And this is a program that remained in the top slot for a number of years. And it, of course, is the sketch comedy program, which was effectively a major precursor, along with programs like the Smothers Brothers and the and other programming of the era that led to the emergence of Saturday Night Live. So the DNA of laughing is very similar to the DNA of SNL as we know it today. And in the news, here we are, 1969. We've left the elections of 1968 behind us. We've actually had the inauguration so that we have a little man named Richard Nixon as president. The headlines on this day included a couple of stories about a shooting in Moscow, a number of changes in the US Government as far as, like, Senate confirmations and putting together the cabinet. And on the far left column, a little article. Nothing really like major headline grabbing on the newspaper on this day, but a headline, Nixon Names Aid to help oversee domestic affairs, Nixon had selected Dr. Arthur F. Burns of Columbia as a counselor, a post of cabinet rank. How nice for Arthur F. Burns. And just in case anybody was curious why, yes, as a matter of fact, there was a Watergate connection.

It was that eventually this gentleman, yeah, he would go on to become the head of the Fed and in that role, as there were questions about where was the money that the Nixon Election Committee was getting to pay off people and bribes and the slush fund that they had. One of the clues in the Watergate scandal was that all of the bills had sequential serial numbers, meaning that they were packets of money that would have come directly from a bank. And so there was an investigation, Part of the congressional investigation into this included what was the source of this money and this gentleman, Mr. Burns, Dr. Burns. I don't want to take away his position, Dr. Burns, in his role at the head of the Fed, well, he would help stonewall the investigation a bit. It tarnished his reputation, and eventually he would step down in some disgrace. So, yeah, early 1969, brand new presidency. But I thought it would be fun to look through the looking glass at what the future would hold only about four years later on. Now to our discussion about this episode, that which survives. We talked last week, Matt, about pulpiness in Star Trek and a kind of like, I really appreciated last week's episode for its pulpiness. I liked the fact that it was Reminiscent of some of those, like, Big Idea Sci Fi, where it was somewhat absurd. Kind of like the point was the idea as opposed to something else underlying the characters or deeper explanations of science. And I found as I was watching this one, I found myself very much in similar terrain. There's a little bit of a difference. There's a nuance here that I do want to explore later, having to do with characterization.

But did you find yourself similarly, like, reminiscing about the same things where, as you were watching this, when were you finding yourself thinking like, oh, this is kind of of a theme with last week's episode?

Matt Ferrell: It is. But for me, there's something a little different. This one didn't feel as like you talk about pulp. How last week was kind of like a pulpy theme. This didn't feel like a pulpy theme to me. This just felt like classic Trek. And I forgot that this was written by D.C. fontana. And that's when I was like, oh, oh. That's why this episode is one of my favorites. I don't know if you liked it as much as I did. I don't remember watching this the last time I saw this. I know I've seen it before, but a lot of it felt very fresh to me. I remembered little pieces here and there, but clearly this is an episode I've only seen maybe once or twice in my life. I loved this episode, Sean. I loved. I. I loved this episode. It was so good for the character development. It was so good for, like, the sci fi aspect was just enough to wet my sci fi whistle of, like, I want them to talk technobabble to me. Oh, yeah, keep going, keep going. They did enough technobabble, but not too much. They had this really cool effect of the woman folding in like that. Like some kind of parallel universey thing going on where she could teleport all over the place. Eating it up.

Sean Ferrell: Loving it.

Matt Ferrell: Yeah, more of this. So for me, Sean, this episode was a slam dunk. And it does feel like a theme from last week in the sense of, I don't remember season three having so many good episodes in it, but this season has some really bad ones. But it also has some of the ones I would have said to you, oh, that's gotta be a first season, or that's gotta be a second season. I'm really shocked that they're in the third season.

Sean Ferrell: Yeah. I found myself in similar terrain where it was. I can't help but think if some of the energy of an episode like this one hooks into me as A oh, it must be earlier in the series because it's effectively more polished. Which is then it's an irony that like, oh, it's because that this isn't their first go at doing this. They're in season three. They all know their characters. There's a little bit more looseness in the acting around this one in particular, for me, I agree with you. The pulp of the sci fi concept is where the pulp lives in this one. It's this. It's a super sophisticated computer that is trying to do a thing that no longer logically makes sense. It's going through motions that it doesn't even quite understand. The idea that the computer did such a good job of replicating this actual person and that she's even conflicted. Great. Like all of that. I love it. That's so pulpy. And I loved all of that. As you mentioned, the sci fi ness of it. They go to this planet because it shouldn't be. The sci fi ness of the hard tech of the planet isn't old enough. It doesn't have the right mass. This kind of planet shouldn't have generated in the way it did. And we are uncertain of how it could be and everything they do on the planet of it. It was like last week's where I was like, I love the scene where you just have nerds being nerds on the planet doing nerd things. They do that here where it's just like, I'm gonna walk around with my thing and I'm gonna measure the atmosphere. Felt bad for Sulu at the beginning because every idea as Shatner's Kirk is basically shut up. It's just left and right. Like Sulu, stop it. And Sulu. Yeah, but Sulu's out doing the science y thing. Dr. McCoy's out there doing the science Y thing. You end up with a non red shirt. I find myself on this. Watch through with you.

Like, where did the mythology of the red shirt always dies come from? Because it doesn't happen all that many times. It really doesn't. Like there's not that many red shirts. And in this one you get a nice. Like, I'm a science guy. I'm a middle aged science guy and I can't wait to go down to this planet and do some science because cool. And nothing's adding up. They shoot the phasers at the, at the rock. And like that shouldn't have done what it did. Like how's. What is this rock? This is not rock. And Sulu having to be like, it's a polymer that's been created and they create, like, could it be hollow? Like, all these questions. Really cool, hard sci fi mixed with a pulpy kind of actiony drama. I agree with you. The special effect of the woman folding is one of my favorite, favorite memories of Star Trek, similar to last week when they phased into the faster timeline. I loved the effect of that. So. And in this one, you get also the advantage of just great singing, the choral music that accompanies it. It's so weird. It's so spooky. But for me, the standout here, this felt like somebody in the back. It feels like DC Fontana walked in and was just like, did anybody bother pushing this? Move the characterization button? And everybody's like, I forgot we had that. And she went, boop.

And suddenly Spock is outspoking Spock from the previous two and a half seasons.

Matt Ferrell: Suddenly it felt like Scotty is out Scottying people.

Sean Ferrell: Scotty is out Scottying. Kirk is out Kirking Sulu Uhura. It's. Suddenly Uhura's walking around just being like, hey, Spock, can we talk a bit about what's going on? Because she's the only main character on the bridge other than Spock. So they give her all these great scenes where it's just. She's like, hey, Spock, I think we got to talk about what's going on. The fact that Spock is left and right being like, you humans and your logic, but he's doing it with a kind of wink at them. And they are all taking it full on the chin and grinding their teeth and just being like, oh, Spock, am I right? And I'm like, this is fantastic, everybody. Everything about that, the characterization feels like it's from a season six that never existed. It felt like a late Next Generation episode to me. They all know each other and know their characters so well, and it really just keeps coming through. I loved it. I loved it.

Matt Ferrell: Not even just that, Sean. There was the characters that barely spoke a word. There was the woman at the helm.

Sean Ferrell: Yes.

Matt Ferrell: The black engineer. And, like, it was like, Dr. Mimbenga. It's like the show almost forgot for two seasons. Yes.

Sean Ferrell: It. It's like the.

Matt Ferrell: It's like. It's like the show forgot. Oh, we're trying to push the society forward. This utopian ideal where color and race and all that stuff doesn't matter where. For a long time, it was like, anytime Sulu wasn't on the bridge, it was some white dude, you know, I mean, it was always as a white dude that was always, like, on the bridge. This is the most diverse the bridges looks like in a long time. This is the most diverse the engineering section has looked. And it really, like, ever. It was just D.C. fontana comes in and suddenly it's like, yeah, this. This is Star Trek. The characters out, charactering themselves.

Sean Ferrell: Yeah.

Matt Ferrell: And, like, you're right. It was them pushing themselves forward. And in my notes, I had great character interactions. I had Bones, Kirk, Sulu, Spock, Scotty Uhura.

Sean Ferrell: Yeah.

Matt Ferrell: It's like what they did with all those characters was just wonderful. Especially Scotty. Like, Scotty. The whole dialogue between Scotty and Spock, where he's in the. Like, it's not the Jeffries, too, but he's in that thing where he's doing his stuff with a little wrench and he's describing what he's seeing. And Spock's like, just do it. Like, stop painting a picture and just do it. I thought it was so funny to have Spock doing that. Getting irritated that Scotty's. You got no time, man. Why are you blathering about. About this stuff? But Scotty, as he's talking, is doing stuff.

Sean Ferrell: Yeah.

Matt Ferrell: So it's just funny to see these two characters who clearly know each other so well, the way they react to each other, know how to push each other's buttons and do things in certain ways. Just a wonderful character dynamic that we know from the movies super well, but has been, like, absent in the show up until this point.

Sean Ferrell: It's like, in that sequence, every conversation leading up to that point is when Spock first proposes, well, what if we go into that tube and we can cut off the fuel supply at that junction? And Scotty is just like, you're insane. Like, you go in there, you're gonna. You. You're gonna blow up the ship. You're at least gonna kill the person who tries to do that. And, like, what lunatic are you gonna get to send in there? And Spock says, well, I'll do it. And Scotty immediately is like, no, no, I'll do it. And does it in a kind of eye rolling, like, no, no, no, I'll do it. I'm familiar with it. Like, I'll go take care of it. I will do that. And it's all because logic dictates that we do what has to be done. That Spock, throughout the entire episode, logic is dictating what has to be done. And without anybody saying a single word, when it comes to the final, logic is dictating what has to be done. Spock doesn't do it. Scotty is like, eject me into space. Get me out of here. I'm like, the tool is stuck. I'm not going to be able to do this. You got to eject everything into space, otherwise you're all going to die. You got to let me go. The countdown is over. The woman at the helm is just like. And zero. They all look at Spock and Spock is just like, he's not going to do it. He's not going to do it. He's like, when the helms. The helms woman says, I will eject it as soon as it hits the countdown. And he's like, no, you'll wait till my signal. He's not going to do it. He's going to blow up the ship instead of ejecting Scotty. It's that moment of his. Humanity doesn't even get a sentence. Nobody says, like, oh, Spock, you held on even though you knew it might cost the ship. It didn't have that kind of boop a doop a doo ending at all. It was just like, we did what we had to do and it was like, I thought it was brilliant. I thought it was brilliant.

And Scotty's, like, muttering under his breath when he's in that tube and he's just like, I don't need a bloody countdown. Like, like all the little asides, there's this constant, like, commentary from people. When you get the. The scientist, the. The geologist who goes down to the planet, he's given an opportunity to show, like, he knows his stuff. He's a hero because he knows his stuff. The engineer who's working with Scotty, who, when he finds a strange woman and she asks, like, could you tell me about this panel? And he gives an answer and she's like, wise of you to lie to me. I know you're lying to me. That's not what this actually is. I was just like, you go, guy. He's a hero, too. He's like. When he starts to answer what it is, I thought, I'm like, come on, Guy, you don't know who this woman is. Why are you doing this? Oh, my God, he lied to her. Fantastic. Everybody's given a chance. Everybody's given a chance.

Matt Ferrell: Competent, competent people being competent. That's my favorite Star Trek. It's just like, Next Generation does this in spades. It's like, there'll be some story going on, and every character that has a moment shows why they're there. Like, they have a reason for being. They're the best at what they do for that specific role. And you see this in this episode, even with these tiny characters, these know nothing characters even have those moments of competence and brilliance. I thought this, Sean, this episode, I'm serious, is one of my favorite Star Trek episodes of the original series that we've watched.

Sean Ferrell: Completely agree. The one nitpick for me was the sexism stuff. I was just like, oh, you almost had a perfect home run. You almost had. And it just, the ball just died. Barely hits the outside fence and bounces back into play. It's just barely. It's the smallest amount, but it is literally like, how can such evil exist in such beauty? And like, oh my God, really?

Matt Ferrell: The actual quote, the actual quote, I, I wrote it down was Sulu saying, how can she be so evil? She's so beautiful. And then it cuts to Kirk and he goes, I know, like, what's, what is happening?

Sean Ferrell: Like, what is happening? And at the end, entire takeaway, the literal title, that which survives is beauty a reference to her beauty. No, Spock, I think you're wrong because beauty survives. And just like, dude, like, this is. This is Captain, Captain Zapp Brannigan territory Gift tell the men I've had sex with a woman. Like, come on, dudes. Like, you were almost there. You were almost there.

Matt Ferrell: Like, how could she, when he said that?

Sean Ferrell: Like, they're not saying things like, how can she keep returning and disappearing so quickly? There must be a location of, of some sort of teleportation device or a projector in some way that is helping her do this. No, they're just like, how can she possibly be that hot and dangerous?

Matt Ferrell: Like, okay, at the end when, when they said was like, she was remarkable and beautiful and beauty survives, I in my head heard a sad TR playing in the background.

Sean Ferrell: Yeah, yeah. It's a little bit like the, the sad trombone combines with the Star Trek theme at that moment. But I still give it an A. I still like, I like.

Matt Ferrell: It is.

Sean Ferrell: It is a minor thing in a really good episode. The way I can digest it is to say, like, it is a program from 1969. It is.

Matt Ferrell: Yeah.

Sean Ferrell: Like it's 1969. Yeah. Beat it with a stick until it doesn't move anymore. Like, get that kind of, get that kind of reference out of our programs in general, but get it out of Star Trek in particular. Like, come on, you're trying to be progressive. Be progressive. Yeah.

Matt Ferrell: So the one last character, Sean, I gotta call out, he didn't have a line, but he was a hero in my Heart. And when he did his action, I was like, you go, buddy. It was when Kirk And Sulu and McCoy are getting cornered by the three versions and Spock and this no name guy come in.

Sean Ferrell: Yeah.

Matt Ferrell: And Kirk yells out, spock, destroy the computer. And the guy with that missing beat just goes, pew. That was like. You go, he was talking to Spock, not you. But you did it. You had the gun. You went and did it.

Sean Ferrell: Yeah.

Matt Ferrell: And then.

Sean Ferrell: And then after he shoots it, they cut back to Spock and that guy. And that guy is standing there holding the gun like he's never held a phaser before in his life. And he turns to look over at where Kirk is supposed to be, just like, did I do it? Like, whose brother in law was on stage that day where they were just like, hey, Gary, do you want to be in the episode? He was just like, okay, he's a

Matt Ferrell: little out of shape. He's just kind of like, yes, boo.

Sean Ferrell: And then he stands and just like, did I win it? Did I win Star Trek? Yeah, he was great too. Make an action figure of that guy.

Matt Ferrell: He's just in that pose. It's him shooting his guy.

Sean Ferrell: Have a button on his back that you push the button and he just goes, loved it. Yeah, good episode. Like, I keep wanting to go back and just talk more about like, everybody gets their moments. Lots of good Sulu conversations in this one. It's unfortunate that he does kind of get like multiple times. It's a little bit like Kirk is just like whipping him in the forehead when he talks. Just like, what if it was this? And he's just like, shut up with your speculating. It's like, let the man talk. But even with that, at least he's like, he's in it. He's in the mix of everything. And he gets that nice moment where he confronts the projection of the woman. When she shows up, he's like, nobody gets stupidly tricked. It is like a nice point of this one that there is none of the illogic of, wait a minute, somebody shows up who shouldn't be here. And the response is somebody doing something that makes no sense just so that there can be a death or a threat. This one, everybody, when they're confronted with a threat, responds appropriately. Especially when it's like, hold on, how are you even here? It's like, I'm trying to keep my distance from that. Sulu does a great job with that. I like McCoy's involvement in the sciencing around and trying to figure out like all I'm seeing is toxicity here. I'm seeing toxicity in these things and one microbial organism. But there's nothing else that's at work here. You get some nice moments with him, especially when Sulu is injured and he's able to help doctor him back into action. And Shatner does like. We're seeing the emergence of the cliched Kirk at this point. We're seeing a lot of the sudden, enthusiastic reactions to threat and pain.

The episode does have a rather jarring and funny moment around the earthquake, which feels a little bit like they were like, okay, everybody get onto the waterbed and we're gonna film you having an earthquake. And then they were just moving the waterbed up and down because everybody's just kind of like. And the. The walls are literally waving. But even with that, I'm just like, everybody's getting their moment. And I just really, really wanted to call that out as, like, that it's such a polish to it that, like I said, it feels like a later episode, later season Next Generation episode to me. Which makes sense, considering DC Fontana helps shape Next Gen at the beginning of its run. So, viewers, listeners, how do you feel about this one? Did you enjoy it as much as Matt and I did? I feel like all we did was gush about it, like, yeah, we did. This was terrific. But, like, did you all enjoy it as much as we did? Jump into the comments. Let us know. As always, commenting, liking subscribing, sharing with your friends, easy ways for you to support the podcast. You want to support us more directly. Trekintime show, click the join button there. Not only does that allow you to throw coins at our heads, it will sign you up as an Ensign, which means you'll be signed up for our spin off program, out of Time, in which we talk about things that don't fit within the confines of this program. We hope you'll be interested in checking that out.

Thank you, everybody, as always, for taking the time to watch or listen, and we'll talk to you next time.

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

Transcript

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.

As always, thank you everybody for taking the time to watch or listen and we'll talk to you next time.

Matt and Sean talk about one of the most historic episodes of Trek (for multiple reasons), Star Trek TOS Season 3, Episode 10, “Plato’s Stepchildren.”

Chapters

• 00:00 - Intro
• 01:47 - Viewer Feedback
• 07:22 - Today’s Episode
• 08:01 - This Time in History
• 19:44 - Episode Discussion

Transcript

Sean Ferrell: In this episode of Trek in Time, we talk about one of the most historic episodes for a number of reasons. One of them I'm sure we would all quickly agree upon and know without having to really talk about it. But a couple of the others, well, maybe you won't be expecting what I'm going to point out. Anyway, welcome to Trek in Time. This is the podcast that takes a look at all of Star Trek in chronological star date order, which means we've been watching the original series, but we preceded that with Enterprise and Strange New Worlds and, well, we also interrupted it for some of the newer shows. So if you are interested in watching, jump back, try and catch up. Good luck. We're going to be doing this for approximately seven years, so you only have that much time to catch up. Who are we? Well, I'm Sean Ferrell. I'm a writer. I wrote some sci fi, I write some horror, I write some stuff for kids. And with me, as always, is my brother Matt. He is that Matt behind Undecided with Matt Ferrell, which takes a look at emerging tech and its impact in our lives. And Matthew, how are you today?

Matt Ferrell: I'm good, Sean, how are you doing?

Sean Ferrell: That's a lie. Matt and I were just talking about basically just about being middle aged and spoilers. It's. It feels like a lot sometimes.

Matt Ferrell: I was like, yeah, it's like a

Sean Ferrell: lot's happening a little bit and like, wow, I didn't expect this. But yeah. Anyway, today we're going to be talking about Plato's stepchildren. This is the 67th episode produced, the 65th aired the 10th of the third season. It is directed by David Alexander, written by Meyer Dolinsky and aired originally on November 22, 1968. Before we get into our chat about this, we always like to take a look in the mailbag and see what you had to say about our previous episode. So, Matt, what did you find for us recently?

Matt Ferrell: So a few interesting comments to touch on. This is from the episode for the World Is Hollow and I have Touched the Sky. We had old Trekkie chiming in Great

Sean Ferrell: Bird of the Galaxy.

Matt Ferrell: I truly enjoyed listening to y' all discuss my favorite TV show. This episode always has a special place in my heart. Also probably the title. As the discussion dwelled on its simultaneous merits and failings, I was struck by the notion that this episode should have been a two parter. Then, as Matt started talking about serialization, that made so much sense. Suddenly I had the thought, what if we could not change anything about the original series, but simply rewrite it, restructure it to be serialized. Wouldn't that be awesome? Thanks once again for a wonderful Friday morning. Live long and prosper. I love this because it would be fun to kind of go back. Don't change the order of the episodes, don't change what they're about. Just restructure it so it's serialized and things continuity wise, continue. It would give the show such a radically different feel. It could be a lot of fun.

Sean Ferrell: It would be a lot of fun. And it would be, I don't know. There's all sorts of rumors spilling out of Paramount right now because of the new owners of the network and end of the contract for Kurtzman to be at the helm. They auctioned off all the pieces of the sets for Strange New Worlds and it's, you know, it all looks like, well, that's it. There were rumors about, could there be a after Strange New Worlds, a spinoff of a new Trek show that would precede the original series with Kirk at the helm? And it doesn't look like that's in the cards now. And there's talk about, well, no, they're going to do movies. That's what they're going to do. They're going to turn it back into a movie franchise. But they're not going to go back to the J.J. abrams universe. It's going to be a whole new thing. And yeah, there's that part of me that's like, yeah, why not just go back to the original series? And literally, as you just said, like, wouldn't that be the way to introduce people who do not know the show? Because at this point, the show is old. Old. Old.

Matt Ferrell: Very. Yes.

Sean Ferrell: And the argument, I think, from people within the network is there's a whole world out there of people who do not know the show in any way, shape or form because they're in their 20s or 30s and they did not grow up watching this thing. And I understand that, but there is something appealing to me to say, yeah, if you want it to stay with the right D DNA, do what you just suggested. Serialize the best of the best of original series episodes. What of a season was 12 episodes, which was four of the original episodes serialized into the three parters each. So you have 12 episodes with three part story arcs. Follow the andor model, which worked so beautifully and so brilliantly. I think a neat three parter built around for the World is Hollow. A neat three parter for the Corba might maneuver the neat three parter for the Tholian Web. And like, you could do all sorts of really cool stuff and. Yeah, and you'd be keeping the DNA. You'd be keeping those characters. Oh, make a note of that, Matt, for when you and I are in charge. Because when you.

Matt Ferrell: That's right.

Sean Ferrell: In charge, we'll do that. Okay.

Matt Ferrell: That's right.

Sean Ferrell: Yeah. Thank you, old Trekkie. That's a great, great suggestion.

Matt Ferrell: We also had Dan Sims chiming in on the your truth part. So timely, especially with today's algorithms and news feeds. Neighbors see completely different media info and truths. Tribalism on the rise. Not good.

Sean Ferrell: Pretty good episode, though.

Matt Ferrell: I enjoyed it. Twitch. Happy Flappy Farm responded, good point. I hadn't thought of it that way. Yeah, thought that was a really nice comment from Dan. Thanks for that one.

Sean Ferrell: Yeah, thank you.

Matt Ferrell: And then getting into the silly territory, Sean got a couple. We got Baba Rudra chiming in for the World Is Hollow and I have Touched the Sky. Or the One Where Bones get some. To which Mark Lovelace responded, bow chicka bow wow. And then Baba Rudra responded, Had me laughing, guys, thank you for that one. And then Mark Loveless had a post for plot of Day of the Dove, originally called Day of the Jackal and rather violent. The network encouraged Roddenberry and team to tone it down with Dave the Dove, a very pathetic attempt to completely reverse the original plot with a rogue ambassador of peace instead of the original idea of a violent intergalactic assassin. Generally, Day of the Dove has been deemed a failure and. And one of the worst episodes of the entire original series. The show Wild Wild west saw this and decided to double down on violence. And we all know how that turned out. Oddly, the Day of the Jackal was revamped and made into that 1971 popular movie, which eventually spawned the recent Peacock series starring Eddie Redmayne. And then following that, he also then responded to himself saying, sean, how dare you think this would involve pigeon shit. I mean, you know that toilet humor is beneath me.

Sean Ferrell: Technically, all toilet humor is beneath everybody.

Matt Ferrell: Oh, Sean. Oh, my God.

Sean Ferrell: Thank you, everybody. Thank you, Mark. Thank you, Babarudra. Thank you, Dan. And now, that noise you hear, those flashing lights you see, that's the read alert. It's time for Matt to tackle the Wikipedia description. And, Matt, I think if you're like me, you'll note something interesting about this one.

Matt Ferrell: The crew of the Enterprise encounters an ageless and mischievous race of psychic humanoids who claim to have organized their society around ancient Greek ideals.

Sean Ferrell: Do you notice what I noticed?

Matt Ferrell: No, I did not notice what you noticed. What did you notice, Sean?

Sean Ferrell: That's a summary of the first five minutes.

Matt Ferrell: That's a very good point.

Sean Ferrell: It doesn't have anything to do with the main plot of the episode and it's.

Matt Ferrell: That's a very good point.

Sean Ferrell: It's a little weird to me. So here we are, traveling back in time to Plato's Stepchildren. Originally broadcast on November 22, 1968. Guess what, Matt? That's right. You get to sing it yet again. Take it away. Hey Jude by the Beatles. Good. And not only were people dancing along to that still again, it held the number one spot for about two and a half months. So that's why it's the only song I've been referencing. Lining up to see the number one film at the box office. Matt. Well, guess what you're gonna see. If you say Funny Girl starring Barbra Streisand, you are right. Yes, it also held the number one spot for about two and a half months. Apparently the presidential election kind of made everything else stop in late 1968. And on television, we've been looking at the other programs that aired on Friday nights on the networks. Those that were either lead ins to or competition for Star Trek. And guess what, Matt?

Matt Ferrell: What Sean?

Sean Ferrell: This will be the last week that we do that because. Yep, we've talked about everything on the Friday night schedule after we talk about this final program. So we've been talking about Friday nights and this the lead in show that would have been leading into Star Trek at 10 o'.

Matt Ferrell: Clock.

Sean Ferrell: We've talked a number of times about Star Trek. Got a lot of support, a lot of really powerful and somewhat surprising support at the beginning of its broadcast. Lucille Ball helped push for it. She helped it get a second pilot which had never happened before. It had a prime slot on earlier on Fridays which was better for it arguably in its first season, but then it was moved to the 10pm Friday night slot which is effectively the death slot. It is for a program like Star Trek that would have been appealing to a younger demographic. A Friday night when those people would have been out and not watching television is. Is what helped undermine the program. They also dealt with budget cuts. But mainly I want to talk about the scheduling because when I read the name of this show, I had another one of those head scratch moments where I'm like, I've never heard of this. What is this? And why would this be the lead in to what at the time would have been an attempt to do costly special effects action and philosophical sci fi? The network. It just feels like the network legitimately was like let's kill Star Trek because the lead in program for 1968 on Friday nights was the Name of the Game. The Name of the Game is an American television series starring Tony Frenchcosa in Barry Robert Stack which aired from 1968, this being its first season to 1971 on NBC. Totaling 76 episodes of 90 minutes each. The show was a wheel series setting the stage for the Bold Ones and the NBC Mystery movie. In the 70s the program had the largest budget of any television series at the time I was not familiar with the term a wheel series. Are you familiar with that?

Matt Ferrell: Nope.

Sean Ferrell: It is a series that holds a single slot and is a single show, but it has multiple main characters that take turns in a rotation to tell stories. So this series was Based on a 1966 television movie, Fame is the Name of the Game, which was directed by Stuart Rosenberg and starred Tony Francosha. The Name of the Game rotated among three characters working at Howard Publications, a large magazine publishing company. There was Jeff Dillon, who was Frank Hosha, a crusading reporter with People magazine. What's interesting about that People magazine in the show was not based on People magazine that we know in the world that didn't start publishing until 1974. So just a coincidental name. Second character was Glenn Howard played by Gene Berry, taking over for George McCready who played the role in the earlier film. He's a sophisticated, well connected publisher. And the final character is Daniel Dan Ferrell RobertStack, the editor of Crime magazine. So they would have these rotating focuses on one character one week and then follow with the next and follow with the next. It reminds me of, you know, they, they mentioned in the Wikipedia article about this. It paved the way for the Friday night mystery movie which would be the home of things like this is the model that Columbo would follow where you'd have a Columbo one week and then the next week would be a different mystery with a different detective and they would go back around to Colombo once a month or so. It's that kind of thing. So to me this reeks of we don't like Star Trek. If this is your lead in show, I do not see a connective thread between the types of stories you're going to tell about magazine publishers lining up with okay, now get ready to see these aliens try to take over the bodies of the Enterprise crew members. So it just really sort of speaks of not believing in Star Trek as a program.

Matt Ferrell: Yes.

Sean Ferrell: What you were going to say.

Matt Ferrell: Yeah, it's like this. I'm just Picturing a smash cut to this episode we're about to talk about.

Sean Ferrell: Yeah.

Matt Ferrell: With Shatner on the ground doing the winning.

Sean Ferrell: Yeah.

Matt Ferrell: From Name of the Game to that.

Sean Ferrell: Yeah. So it's the fact that I had never ever heard of this show. I was like, I, I look into the name and I'm like, what could this possibly be? But here's a, here's some fun facts for you that I think will make your eyebrows go up like they did mine. The Name of the Game was one of the first places that Steve Bochco got a writing credit. So, okay. It's the birthplace of Steven Bochco, who would go on to basically write Hill Street Blues, most things revolving around Cops for about two and a half to three decades. It was also the first place that a young director named Steven Spielberg got an opportunity to direct a long form story. So this precedes the episode of Columbo that was Spielberg's, another of Spielberg's first directorial jobs, but this is the very first one. What's fun about this, it is called LA 2017 and it is an episode of this show that is considered a dystopic sci fi episode because within it, the character of Glenn Howard, played by Robert Stack, is hunted down in a lethally polluted Los Angeles in the future where a fascist government is ruled by psychiatrists and the populace lives underground to survive the pollution. And it turns out to be a fever induced dream story. So it is this sci fi plot that turns out to just be an hallucinatory dream. So like, as far as writing goes, that's kind of like, that's really kind of pulpy garbage writing to say like, oh, but it was all a dream. But it's Steven Spielberg's first directorial debut. I love the fact that it's first of all, 2017. Like, okay, kind of. You almost got it right, guys. We aren't really living underground, but so close. You were so close. And if anybody is interested, I don't recommend watching it on a television because the quality is not that great. This episode is actually available for free on YouTube.

It will look okay on a computer screen, a smaller screen, but on a television it looks pretty grainy. But the thing that stood out to me, and of course he's too much of a gentleman, he's too much of a professional. He would never ever say this, but I would love to know what Spielberg thought about working with Robert Stack, because the man is, his name is appropriate. He is about as dynamic as a stack of wood. And he of course does an Amazing self parody in the movie Airplane.

Matt Ferrell: Yeah.

Sean Ferrell: But I don't think he could avoid that because he doesn't have a lot. He's always unsolved mysteries. He is always like, let me read these words on the card in this way. And it's just. You're gonna get that in every line. And I watched a good portion of this episode. Cause I was curious. I'm like, do you see any of the proto Spielberg? I don't think you do.

Matt Ferrell: It feels you do in Columbo.

Sean Ferrell: You do in the Columbo episode. I have a feeling that in the Columbo episode, first of all, I think Spielberg was a little more mature. That episode is probably a couple of years later. When was that one produced? 72, 73.

Matt Ferrell: I think it was. It was in the early 70s.

Sean Ferrell: So at that point, he's probably five years into having done other things. He's going to have done a lot of different TV series. Didn't he work on Streets of San Francisco, if I remember correctly?

Matt Ferrell: I think so.

Sean Ferrell: So he was. Yeah, and he was probably. He was probably feeling a little more confident. It wouldn't surprise me also if working with Peter Falk, it wouldn't surprise me at all if Falk was the sort of performer who'd be like, do what you want. Like, yeah, to really kind of like. Because Falk had a friendship with John Cassavetes, they did guerrilla filmmaking. They made small independent films with no money just for the hell of it. It was like he was into improvisational acting. And I completely imagine him talking to a young Steven Spielberg and saying, go with it, kid. Do what you want. Let's really tell a compelling story here. This feels very by the numbers. It feels a little bit like a guy who's a little bit afraid to rock the boat. And it's just like I'm putting the camera where it needs to be. I'm getting the actors on their marks, they're saying their words, and then we're moving on. So in what I watched, it didn't really feel like I was watching Spielberg, but that episode of Columbo, it absolutely feels like Spielberg. So there's a little bit of a. Of a growth there that I think is evident. But still, if anybody is interested in watching it, I was able to find it on YouTube. Have at it. If you do watch it and you want to let us know what you thought about it, jump into the comments and let us know. I'd love to hear what everybody had to say. And in the news. This is, of course, a few weeks after the elections. But I think that for the most part, the media had digested the election of Richard Nixon. They were getting ready for the holiday. And so it's a fairly standard. Oh, there are strikes in New York City schools, the Soviets are having meetings trying to figure out what the future of communism would look like. And there are talks about the German mark. Nothing of particularly striking note in the news on this day. On now to our discussion of the.

This episode, Plato's Stepchildren, as I mentioned at the top, a what feels like historic episode for me. Everybody cites this, of course, as the first interracial kiss. It is, we'll get to that a little bit deeper into the episode. It is, of course, a very important and I think, very impactful moment for the series. There are also some other firsts. The first time that we see Captain Kirk winnieing on his hands and knees. The first time we see Spock flamenco dance. And the first time that we see Shatner get Leonard Nimoy's boot put gently on his nose. So a bunch of firsts in this one. I think last week and the week before, I think I let off in the discussion around my take on what was going on. So I'm going to encourage you, Matt, this time, like, why don't you lead us off? Are you okay?

Matt Ferrell: Just strap yourself in, Sean.

Sean Ferrell: I'm all strapped. Do you want to jump into. Why don't we do it this way? Why don't we jump into the wackadoo? So jump into the wackadoo. And just what's the most, the biggest whack of the wackadoo for you was

Matt Ferrell: what the entire sequence you just referenced there at the beginning. The entire sequence where they're being controlled. And the, the. My favorite part, Sean, this is ingrained into my head from when I was a kid was the Spock flamenco dance around Kirk where it's so clearly not Leonard dmoy in any way, shape or form. The wide shots, it's like, who's that?

Sean Ferrell: Oh, there's, there's, there's Spock.

Matt Ferrell: And then wide shot. That's so not him.

Sean Ferrell: Yeah, the wide child is like, who is that man who is five foot six dancing in front of William Shatner? And then it cuts back to Namoy. He's like, is this very tall Vulcan. And then back to a 5 foot 6 man who's dancing around William Shatner.

Matt Ferrell: So the whole idea that here is a race of aliens that has based themselves on ancient Greece, but yet they know what A flamenco dance is what?

Sean Ferrell: Huh?

Matt Ferrell: How is this happening? Why is this happening? And then the whole questionable stuff with the little person and like the whole riding Shatner like a horse and the whinnying and the cutaways to the people looking disturbed at what's happening. And all I kept thinking was, this isn't disturbing. This is like an acid trip.

Sean Ferrell: Somebody.

Matt Ferrell: Somebody took something heavy and wrote the script out and nobody thought to say, don't do this.

Sean Ferrell: So serious question here. Very serious question. Thumbs down on this one for you.

Matt Ferrell: This one is a thumb sideways because it's. Because the wacko ness of all of it is just so over the top. And just. I can see why this show got canceled and was losing viewers. It was just. There was so much in this that was just. We've talked about this before. The Saturday morning cartoon, the skin deep storytelling, and it starts to feel like a Hanna Barbera cartoon versus an actual thoughtful drama that is on full display here. But there's still some interesting ideas being tackled, there's still some interesting points they're making and there's still some good acting in there that's happening. So there's still elements that I enjoy for the characters and the dynamics. So it's kind of like a thumb sideways, but it's like teetering on the thumbs down. I don't want to watch this one ever again kind of territory.

Sean Ferrell: Okay. Interesting for me, this one. I completely agree with what you're identifying, but I have a different reaction to it because I think there's kind of a, you know, like a word cloud. Like, yeah, I think that there is an episode cloud and it would be interesting. It'd be an interesting exercise to put together an episode cloud because some of them lean pretty heavily into the 60s of the moment. We have the episodes where it's like, oh, this is clearly a reference to the anti war movement, or these are supposed to be hippies. And then you get the 1960s in the form not of who are the characters they're interacting with, but what is the overall tone of the episode. And this one lands for me in that area. It feels akin to Specter of the Gun, where it's the fantasy Western. Suddenly it looks and feels like the one we talked about a few weeks ago, the Empath, where it's almost Theater in the Round. It's spare in its sets. And this one goes into similar territory with more sets and definitely more extras and the. The overall full feeling of the environment of the place that they go to. But it does have all of those wacky elements, which feels almost. Almost improvisational by nature. Almost. Like you said, it's such weird, bizarre Alice in Wonderlandism that you literally have a Tweedledee and Tweedledum moment. And it does have those anachronistic moments of these are. They call themselves the Platonics because they loved Plato so much. And then after the fall of the Greek civilization, they fled and they ended up on another planet to create the Platonic ideal utopia of flamenco dancing and Tweedledee and Tweedleda. And it doesn't hold together in that way. And I think that there. I don't disagree that there are elements here where you're like, you shouldn't do that, but you could do a thing like that that would still be within the realms.

And I think maybe they ran out and didn't want to do more research on what. What would be some Greek things they could do in order to have this kind of experience. Because you get the. Another historic moment. Bitter Dregs. I mean, there you go. That song haunts my childhood. I remember being a kid and occasionally thinking to myself, what am I humming? To myself? Oh, it's Bitter Dregs by Spock. That feels more akin to the. The Grecian elements of it than the Tweedledee and Tweedledum dum or the flamenco dancing. And it feels a bit more like if they had tried to do a bit more of what they did in the earlier episode in which they met Apollo. Yes, keep it Greek and just keep doubling down on the Grecian impetus and the desire to have this utopia. Because I think, for me, you said this is a sideways episode. I like this episode in spite of itself, because the stumblings it has, I don't think, for me, are enough to derail what I think is a very compelling fight against authoritarianism. As goofy as this authoritarianism is, it is. Once again, we have an episode similar to last week where it's this idea of the thing with the most power calling all the shots, cannot declare that it is a democracy.

And here is.

Matt Ferrell: I love that. Yeah, that's one of the things I did love about this was the whole comment of, like, we live in a democracy. Well, then why are you in charge? Because I'm the strongest.

Sean Ferrell: Right.

Matt Ferrell: It's like, that's not how democracy works. I love that, that take on all of this. But at the same time, they were very on the nose where there was the scene where Shatner's talking to Alexander and says, size, shape and color doesn't matter.

Sean Ferrell: Yeah.

Matt Ferrell: It was like, okay, on the nose, bam. But, okay, I get what you're doing here. But it's so. It's. It's the lack of subtlety that kind of, like, I find jarring. But the message is good message, and it's an interesting exploration, especially around the authoritarianism.

Sean Ferrell: I just.

Matt Ferrell: I love that part of it, for sure.

Sean Ferrell: What I think is interesting about that line is I think they almost. I don't disagree that it does feel on the nose, but I feel like there may have been a very conscious decision to say that if you're going to have this also be the episode where you have the first interracial kiss, because it kind of like. It's kind of like challenging the audience, who might be curling their toes at that moment. We told you. We told you that where we come from, this doesn't matter. And it's almost like a wink at the audience of, where we come from, this doesn't matter in the show. But also where we come from, philosophically, as the makers of this show, this does not matter. And of course, there's also the stories that. The mythology of the filming of this episode where Shatner has said that when he was told he needed to do two takes because they wanted to make sure they had one in case Southern audiences had a problem. And when he did the second take, in which it would just be holding her, not kissing her, he made sure to cross his eyes so they could not actually use the footage. So this is. For me, this is one of those episodes where I lean into the Shatnerism of it. Like, him being a good guy in this one, in the making of this one, making sure that it was the story that it needed to be, I think is worth pointing out. And also another historic moment for me, this is the episode where I feel like the parody of Shatner takes full its center stage.

Matt Ferrell: Yeah, it's there. My wife walked through the room as I'm watching this episode, and she said, he is so bad. Has he been like this the entire show? And it was like, no, he's just. He's coming into his own here. He's really dialing it up. But, Sean, I will. Here's where I'm gonna pay him a compliment at this point in the series with how ridiculous this is. This episode is. He and Nimoy are giving it their all.

Sean Ferrell: Yep, they are in it.

Matt Ferrell: It doesn't matter what they're being asked to do. They're gonna be good soldiers. They're gonna. Yeah, they're in it, Bones. I don't know about you if you pick on this. Bones felt like he was fun at an end. Bones felt like he didn't want to be doing this. Bones every time he was being controlled, looked like, I'm doing this because it's what I'm supposed to do, but there's not going to be any kind of like actual fear or emotion on my face. I'm just going to go through the motions because we're doing this show. It felt like that to me and I thought that was so funny. Of here's these two guys, Winnie's and like all that stuff. It's like all in and then Bones. I don't know.

Sean Ferrell: I think DeForest Kelly gave. I think maybe when he knows that it's part of a. Of a wide shot, maybe he drops a little bit. But he's also a little bit more of a reserved actor in a lot of that to begin with because there are the sequences where he's sitting next to the platonic leader as Spock and Kirk are being tortured. And I thought he was doing some really good work in show. He was gritting his teeth, he had been given his orders and he was desperate to make it stop. The one moment for me that stands out is when he's. When Spock is being forced to laugh and he's like, he's a Vulcan. You're killing him. And the follow up scene when Kirk is trying to check Jon Spock and McCoy calls out at a moment of Jim, like, you gotta give him space. You gotta like back off. There's some nice moments there in which he's. He's depicting his understanding not just from. He's supposed to be a doctor, he's also supposed to be an extra expert in xenopsychology. So it's this moment of him kind of demonstrating he gets the Vulcann ness of all of this, but also his friend. And so there's this. I love that sequence after the torture where they are sitting in the room and it's the question of, are you angry with them? Yes, I'm angry and I hate them. And Spock says, I am so filled with hatred, it suddenly turns into flames. Flames burning at the sides of my head. And then he is in that moment of I. He is so perfect with his steepled fingers and saying, I hate them so much. I need to reset. And I'm just. You get that nice moment of Vulcan power and Vulcan rage that comes out in every series ever since where they're like, anytime anybody gets to tap into the Vulcan mind. And the Vulcan is just like, oh, you want to see what we've got inside? I'll show you. Like, that moment is here, and it's so quiet and it's so good.

Matt Ferrell: That's why I was saying this is like a thumb sideways. Because those scenes I loved.

Sean Ferrell: Yeah.

Matt Ferrell: Like, the dynamic between the three of them, again, give me all of that. I love it. The other thing I would want to call out is the actor who plays Alexander was, I think, fantastic. Yeah, he was the best actor that wasn't part of the core crew. I thought the platonic. All the other platonic people were just kind of. I don't know, little hammy. And he was one that was, like, giving a very nuanced performance. And it kind of made me sad of, like, here's a guy who happens to be a little person who's a really good actor. He's got a good singing voice, and he's doing a really great job. He probably had the hardest time ever getting jobs because he's a little person.

Sean Ferrell: Yeah, it really.

Matt Ferrell: I found it frustrating. Cause he was, for me, a highlight of this episode.

Sean Ferrell: He really was. And I think that. I mean, there's always the question about how in other eras of television, there's always the moment where we look back to the past and we say, oh, they were doing a thing, and they were doing it insultingly. A storyline around race or a storyline that's focused on gender or sexuality and how, you know, the bad decision making. There's. There are. My. My wife and I often have funny conversations around the show. Saved by the Bell, which she grew up with and she loves and she. And she tells me about plot lines from that show which sound completely made up. Including in. In one episode when Mario Lopez's character discovers in the episode that he is Mexican and it is treated by the other characters as if he has just been outed as a communist. It is just. It is depicted as, no, that can't. His friends say to him, that can't be true. It's Mario Lopez. And it is treated as if, like, I can't believe this. His father is played by, I think, Cheech Marin. It is like, what is going on here? Like, what is the decision making around this kind of storytelling? So that's always something that goes on in. When we look back at the past. And people in the future, 20 years from now will look back at TV shows that are being made now and say, I can't believe they made those decisions. But in this one, I look back at how they refer to his character, talk about his character. I think that they were rather progressive. There are sequences where he's riding Kirk's back. That feels born of the moment as opposed to done to belittle anybody or to do anything awkward. It is the way they talk to him. He is self deprecating. And Kirk and company are quick to say, we didn't say that and that's not what we think. And this is one of the few times in the series that I can remember. And we see it in Next Generation.

And there's actually pushback in Next Generation when this happens where somebody says, when you go, take me with you. And I forgot that that's how the episode ends with, guess what, Scott am bringing up a little surprise. It's this. Yeah, we're going to take you with you. Take you with us, because these people suck. It's full blown. This is not an episode where Kirk teaches the people on the planet a lesson. And they say, oh, we've been waiting for somebody to teach us the right way. And finally you did. Thank you so much for saving us and teaching us what it really means to be ethical. This one ends with like, we know you're screwing around. We know you're lying to us. We are going to keep an eye on you. Don't screw this up. And we're also taking the only one of you who doesn't have powers so you don't have him to push around anymore. You guys are jerks. It fully ends on finger pointing, jabbing him in the ribs. I don't trust you. I don't like you. And I liked that it ended that way. I liked that there was no if Picard was on this planet. I kept thinking, if Picard was on this planet, the first sequence would be. There would have been so much Picard diplomacy in his response to the actions of the Platonics. Kirk was having none of it. Kirk was very quick to read them as like, you guys are jerks and we're gonna help you out, but I want my doctor back. And we're gonna go, we're gonna get out of here. He reads the room immediately. He's like, we gotta get the hell out of this place because these guys are crazy.

It's a very interesting tone to this one.

Matt Ferrell: Well, it also ends in a way where it's a statement against authoritarians.

Sean Ferrell: Yeah.

Matt Ferrell: As soon as there's somebody stronger in the room, he immediately buckles.

Sean Ferrell: Buckles.

Matt Ferrell: And he starts placating and saying all the things he needs to say. Be Smarmy and get out of the situation. Sound familiar to what's going on right now? Don't know about you, but it's one

Sean Ferrell: of those ringing a bell.

Matt Ferrell: Him basically like you are who you. We can't trust you. Let's get the hell out of here. These guys are jerks. I thought that was the perfect way to end an episode like this. I've completely forgot, just like you, that this is how it wrapped up.

Sean Ferrell: Finally, let's talk a brief moment about the expanded. I think of it as the expanded torture scene when suddenly Christine Chapel and Uhura beam down and there's the. We were forced to walk into the transporter room and now we're here and we don't know why. And then we get the Using everybody as puppets and mixing up the couplings and playing a kind of farcical sexual sexuality, charged game with them. I think for the time I'm. One of the things that really strikes me is that for 1968, it's rather charged. It is a charged moment of depicting a kind of. It's ultimately sexual assault. If they. If they're, you know, what they're. What they're depicting, it's going to lead to torture because it ends with the whips and the hot irons. And in between, they create these two moments, which to me, we keep talking about the recontextualizing of the show, thanks to strange new worlds. We end up with Christine holding Spock's face and saying, I've wanted to be able to hold you for so long, but now I just want to crawl away. And them having that moment where it's this forced and prolonged kiss that's just like a static thing in the background. Then going to Uhura and Kirk with what I think is arguably one of my favorite moments in the entire series. Uhura's speech, I think, is so powerful and so well done in her. I wish I could stop shaking. And he's trying to reassure her. And then she comes back with, no, no, no, no, I'm not shaking because I'm scared. I'm shaking because they're making me. When I'm with you, I'm not scared. And it's a very, very powerful moment ending in the kiss in that speech.

Matt Ferrell: I also took that speech as her saying to him, I was reading between the lines of, I know this isn't you. Whatever they make us do, because the sexual assault aspect of all this, what's going on, it took it as. I trust you. This is not us. This is which I Thought was a very artful way.

Sean Ferrell: Yeah.

Matt Ferrell: Which is frustrating, Sean, because you have that speech and then you have the other, like, on the nose stuff that's happened. It felt like there were two different writers. Who knows?

Sean Ferrell: Maybe there were. But it's like it really does land in these places where it's. Yeah, she's reassuring him in that moment as much as he's reassuring her. And I. One of the things I most completely liked about it is it wasn't in any way an attempt to open a door to any kind of romantic situation. It's not being pushed in any way to resemble what Spock and Chapel have had in previous episodes where it's been the whole, oh, she's in love with him and he's actively suppressing feelings toward her. None of that here. This is like, you're my captain, I trust you, and I feel better when I know you're around. This moment will pass. We'll get through this. I'm not scared. And so it's this kind of. It's almost a call to arms more than anything else. And I found it, really, as a kid. I remember it as an adult. I love it. It's one of those speeches from the show that when I think about, feels fully Trek to me. So I really like that she had that opportunity, that moment. So to wrap up, we have this. It feels very 60s. It feels very of the moment. It also feels very of the moment of a show that was. Like you said, it feels like the show knows it's not going well. I don't know at what point during season three they would have found out, oh, yeah, this is it. But given the number of bottle episodes we've already watched, this is the 10th, if I can recall correctly from my notes, I believe this was the tenth episode of the. Yeah, tenth episode of the season. So we're almost to the halfway mark, and we've watched a number of bottle episodes, some of which would be filmed after this. This one is being broadcast later. But it does feel like, yeah, they must know by this point that it's not going well for the future of the show. So a little bit of a sadness in the air, I think, as they're putting this together.

But I still think this is, for me, one of the best of season three, because it has these moments that stand up not just in my memory, but also the message of the show itself. The message of this episode stands up as being one of the strongest for me. Would you say for you, up to this point of season three, does it land with higher marks than some of the other ones? Or do you think that season three feels overall as a stumbling block for the for the rewatch?

Matt Ferrell: To me, season three is a stumbling block overall, but there are other episodes I think are better than this one that we've watched. But again, I don't think this is the worst one we've watched. There's aspects I like, but this is pretty weak in my opinion.

Sean Ferrell: So viewers, listeners, what did you think? Jump into the comments. We'd love to hear from you. Let us know if this one rises above the others for you in season three. Or does this one sink back into the group of yeah, some interesting ideas, but what were they thinking? Overall, we'd love to hear from you. As always, liking subscribing, commenting, sharing with your friends. Those are all very easy ways for you to support the podcast. And if you want to support us more directly, you can go to trekintime show. Click the Join button there. It allows you to throw coins at our heads. And you will also be signed up as an Ensign, which means you'll be signed up for our spin off program out of Time, in which we talk about things that don't fit within the confines of this program. Matt and I will be be filming one. Not this week, but probably next week. And we'll probably be talking about a little show called Mall takes place in a different universe, but one that I love just as much as I do the Star Trek one. So I hope you'll be interested in checking that out. Thank you so much everybody for taking the time to watch or listen. We'll talk to you next time.

Matt and Sean talk about a simple yet timely message, in Star Trek TOS Season 3, Episode 7, “Day of the Dove.”

Chapters

• 00:00: Intro
• 02:34: Viewer feedback
• 04:48: Today's episode
• 05:16: This time in history
• 09:56: Episode discussion

Transcript

Sean Ferrell: Today in Trek in Time, we're talking about being prepared. We'll get to that in a moment. Welcome, everybody, to Trek in Time, where we're watching every episode of Star Trek in chronological stardate order. We're also taking a look at the world at the time of original broadcast. So we are currently talking about the Original series, season three. So we're talking about 1968. Not much happened in 1968, did it, Matt?

Matt Ferrell: No, nothing.

Sean Ferrell: No, no, no, no. We'll get into that in a minute. But first, who am I? Well, I'm Sean Ferrell. I'm a writer. I write some sci fi, I write some horror. And with me, as always, is my brother Matt. He is that Matt behind Undecided with Matt Ferrell, which takes a look at emerging tech and its impact on our lives. Matt, how have you been this fine week?

Matt Ferrell: It's doing great. Up until we were about to hit record on this episode. Sean. Oh, boy.

Sean Ferrell: Yes, we were about to hit record and talk about this episode when Matt had a realization he hadn't watched this episode. I will not ride Matt very hard about this. Yes, it was an error. Nope, we adjusted. But I will not tease him about it. For one simple reason. Hours earlier, I locked myself out of my home. We're the Ferrell Boys.

Matt Ferrell: It's been a good day.

Sean Ferrell: We're ready to go. And for anybody wondering, yes, I was not wearing shoes at the time. Do with that what you will. Anyway, we're going to be talking today about Day of the Dove. This is the episode that was released on November 1, 1968. It is season three, episode seven. It is. We have a weird pattern going right now where it feels like we're hopping forward and backward at the same time. This is the second. This is the 66th episode produced. The 62nd aired, the seventh of the third season. The previous episode that we talked about would be broadcast after this one. And the one that we talked about two weeks ago, I believe would be broadcast after that one. So we're, like, doing this timey wimey. I don't really get it, but Day of the Dove, directed by Marvin Chomsky, directed by Jerome Bixby and aired on November 1, 1968. Before we get into our conversation about this, we always like to visit the mailbag and see what you've had to say. So, Matt, what have you found for us in the mailbag this week?

Matt Ferrell: There's a couple that I wanted to bring up. One of them from the Tholian Web was from Dan Sims, who wrote, because we were talking about the Oregon Trail, Sean, Oregon Trail. Sorry. The Oregon Trail was my first school computer memory. I saw a video from an intermediate teacher who showed it to the students and mentioned that one of them asked what a wagon wheel was after already knowing what a horse drawn wagon was and how cooked we are as a species and because them not putting two and two together like that was a very common occurrence.

Sean Ferrell: Sigh. Okay, I was going to say try describing a dial tone to somebody sometime.

Matt Ferrell: Oh, I know, yeah, episode of TV I was watching John that was from the early 2000s and somebody was in their kitchen talking on a phone with like an extra long cord to the wall. And I was like, show that to any kid today and they'll be like, what the hell is that?

Sean Ferrell: Why is her phone on a leash? Yeah, yeah. Somebody posted on Bluesky recently an image I just found. This image had a flashback and now I can't stop laughing. And it was an image from a cartoon. A little strangely shaped round figure wearing cowboy boots and a cowboy hat standing next to an ice tray with orange juice in it, with toothpicks in the orange juice and Saran Wrap over the top. And the number of people in the comments who are like, well, now I've got a hankering for a wagon wheel. Viewers of a certain age will know what we're speaking of. Everybody else will think I just had some sort of miniature stroke. We'll leave it at that and move forward. Next comment please.

Matt Ferrell: This is a wrong answers only, super short from Babarudra. The World is Hollow and I have Touched the Sky. A lecture on Edmund Halley's Hollow Earth theories at CPAC this year.

Sean Ferrell: There you go. Yes, sadly, yes. Thank you Babarudra. And now that alarm you hear, those lights you see, can mean only one thing. It's time for Matt to tackle the Wikipedia description. A rather short one, I believe this week. Matt, take it away.

Matt Ferrell: An alien energy based life form that feeds on negative emotions such as fear, anger and hatred, drives the crew of the Enterprise into brutal conflict with the Klingons.

Sean Ferrell: Doesn't get more concise than that and actually pretty good when it comes down to it. Here we are, November 1, 1968. What was going on? Matt? Well, I. I don't have to tell you what song you're gonna have to sing. That's right, it's Hey Jude by the Beatles. Take it away, Matt. Good. And at the movies I don't have to tell you what you're lining up to see. Take it away, Matt. Yes, it was Funny Girl. And on television I don't have to tell you what you're sitting down to watch. Yes, it was the High Chaparral. That's right, Matt. The High Chaparral.

Matt Ferrell: What is that?

Sean Ferrell: Well, Matt, funny you should ask. The High Chaparral was an American western action adventure drama television series that aired on NBC from 1967 to 1971. It was on at the 7:30 slot, so prime time started a little bit earlier for the networks at that point. So it starred Leif Erickson and Cameron Mitchell, and the series was created by David Dortort, who had previously created Bonanza. So they also got the theme song written by the composer and conductor who did the Bonanza theme song. And of course, the Bonanza theme song is. Let's not call it. It's not challenging. Let's put it that way. When it comes down to it, it's not the most challenging of songs. So the idea that you would go out and say to the High Chaparral team, like, we're getting the same people behind Bonanza, and yet I've never ever heard of this show, I think is proof that you can't catch lightning in a bottle twice. So from what I read online and what I could see, a lot of the actors were actors that you would recognize from other TV shows, a lot of people who had been in soap operas. And it feels to me like this was a program that has effectively been recreated in recent years, particularly on Paramount, where they have that new wave of Westerns that are all like Yellowstone and, you know, diving into family drama around land and control of land. High Chaparral focused on a rancher whose wife died, and he marries a much younger woman, and she becomes very enamored of helping him and protecting him in his defense of the homestead from, unfortunately, Apache Indians. So it was probably a very culturally insensitive program, but it lasted for four years and then disappeared on the wind. So maybe it's just a rumor. Maybe I made the whole thing up. The High Chaparral. Has anybody out there actually seen one? I don't know. And in the news November 1, 1968.

Did anything important happen, Matt? Well, funny you should ask. Attacks on North Vietnam halt today. Johnson says WIDER Talks begin November 6th. That's right. They stopped bombing Vietnam on November 1st. You're wondering why, Matt? Why would they stop doing that? Well, President Lyndon B. Johnson halted bombing operations against North Vietnam on November 1st prime to foster progress in the Paris peace talks. That sounds great, right? It was also just very shortly before the US election. So guess what he was doing? He was trying to help Hubert Humphrey. Did not work. Spoiler. It did not work. And the response and responding at the same time to the intense domestic anti war pressure. This is November 1, 1968. This. Those of you who've been following the show will remember that at the beginning of 1968 we were talking about the Tet offensive. So it had been a long year of problematic fighting and intense bombing from the US with very little to show for it. So Johnson was basically in a position of trying to help sway the electorate toward Humphrey. Spoiler. It would not work. Double spoiler. The war would continue for six more years. Triple spoiler. When Nixon is elected, the bombing will return, it will resume and it will spread, much of which is considered illegal according to the acts of war. And the US would conduct that bombing into Cambodia and Laos for years to come. It is a strangely timely headline and topic considering this episode, which has a very strong anti war, but also more than just anti war. I took this one, Matt, and I'm interested to see if you landed in the same terrain. Has a strangely prescient and very smart takedown of authoritarianism. Yeah, I found myself thinking like, wow, they really just kind of like hit the nail on the head. But the way they hit the nail on the head is again and again and again. And it feels like this episode.

I, I, is it strange that I felt bad for this episode? When Matt revealed to me earlier today that he had not watched the episode by mistake, he was like, my scheduling is out of whack and I normally watch the episode in this morning before we record. And somehow I completely forgot to do that. And we were like, well, should we do it now? Anyway, let's, you know, you could watch it and then we could get it done. And Matt said, well, how long will it take us to record the episode? And I said, not long. Because at the end of the day, Matt, there's not a lot of meat on this one. This one is all bone. It is hitting the, it's hitting the head on the nail of the head. The head on the nail again and again and again. It has no deeper resonance. I don't feel like it's doing much to challenge anybody. It feels it might as well. The title of the episode might as well be Bottle episode. And I don't disagree with the message and I kind of understand why it is as, let me just call it, kind of lazily done. It just feels like they were like, let's just make an episode to put in to the schedule as Opposed to, let's. Like, I've got a good story to tell. And I find myself watching this one and thinking, boy, everybody is really just kind of like, hitting their marks, getting it done. You got a lot of people wearing brown face, which is a really unfortunate, historic element of this episode. You've got Chekhov in a attempted rape scene, which is really problematic and unfortunate. But it's all in the service of. They're feeding us racist lies so that we will hate each other. They are manufacturing untruths so that we will hate each other. We are using weapons of war that are immoral, like rape and the brutality of war. It doesn't matter if it's a gun or a knife. If you're standing close enough to just keep slicing up your opponent without purpose and without goal.

What are you doing? They want us to do this because they want to feed on our anger and our fear and our hatred. And here we are. I'm just like. I found myself watching this one and just kind of like, nodding and thinking, when is it gonna be over? So. Oh, really strange one to land on for you. When you said, oh, I forgot to watch it. I almost said, let's talk about it anyway, I'll take the bullet. You don't need to watch it. But what, like, what did you take out of it? If anything other than what I've described? Because my experience of watching this was like, when I was a kid, I remember liking this. Now I'm like, I get the message. Good message to broadcast.

Matt Ferrell: Let me reframe the question you just asked me, because I don't agree with the framing of the question. My take on this is definitely better than yours. I'll say that I enjoyed this one better. I did not think, is it over yet? At once, at all. Like, I literally just finished watching it before we hit record. But there was never one moment where I was like, ah, this is dragging. Never felt like that. I don't think it's a good episode because it feels very Saturday morning cartoon. Like, I agree with you that it's skin deep. Like, there's no subtext here. They don't even try. There's no subtext. It's on the face. They even say at one point where Spock saying, I apologize. You know, like, I felt a moment of racial bigotry. It's the most distasteful. It was like. It was so surface level of racial bigotry is bad. You know, authoritarianism. All the stuff. All the stuff was just like, on the nose, on the Nose on the nose the entire time. But it. What. For me, that didn't make it a bad episode. It was. There was enough. I don't want to call it intrigue, but enough, like, of the mystery they were stringing along of like, how are they going to get out of it? How are they going to convince the Klingons to get on board that it kept me interested, watching. I wasn't bored. I was enjoying what was happening to a certain extent. But this felt like I was watching. We tried watching the Animated Series at one point.

Sean Ferrell: Yeah.

Matt Ferrell: And it reminded me of watching that. It felt like a lesser than Star Trek because it was being so simplified. Which makes sense because they were in the Friday night purgatory. They seemed to be kind of dumbing down a lot of the episodes. So it still felt very Star Trek. I did like what they were doing with some of the characters because the hints they were dropping of the manipulation that was happening started with Chekhov, him getting a little more wound up than you'd expect Chekhov to get wound up. And then when McCoy's losing his mind at, you know, Kirk.

Sean Ferrell: Yeah.

Matt Ferrell: Saying you gotta fix this, and he's losing his mind. It's like, of all the people here to basically be calling a war cry, it's McCoy. I thought that was kind of a clever way to use a character like that to do it. And then, of course, Spock stuff, which is like, okay, now something's definitely wrong. Cause even Spock's getting in on the action. Right. So I thought there was some fun. They were playing with the dynamics of the characters that we know and love to start to drop these hints that there's something else going on emotionally. Something's charging this. It's not just somebody turning a phaser into the sword. It's. They're also manipulating people's emotions. So that aspect of it I was enjoying a little bit. So I'm definitely not as harsh on this one as you are. You clearly. It hit you in a way that clearly like, ah. So for me, as a kid, when I remember seeing this as a kid, I like this one as an adult. I think it's okay. I think it's fine. The only thing that was driving me nuts, Sean, and it's a very personal thing. It's gonna make sense to probably nobody watching this. I felt like I was having a migraine the entire time I was watching the episode. Cause every time they showed the little alien, it looks like the. I get migraines and I get a visual aura. And it Looks like the visual aura is floating around the ship. And I was like, oh, am I getting a migraine? Oh, no, it's just the alien again.

Sean Ferrell: I have a feel that if you and I could swap brains for just a moment, we would realize we are saying exactly the same thing. I don't think that. I don't think we're separated really in much of anything. I had the exact same thought. This feels like a Saturday morning cartoon. I like the message. I like. If anything, what I wanted was. I felt a little bit like this one treads water a bit. Where it could have expanded. I thought it would have been very interesting if. And of course, this is 21st century viewer looking at a 1960s show and saying, oh, in the 60 years since then, we've done all these interesting things with the Klingons. But we've seen things in other shows where they've said, like, the science clans of the Klingons are considered second tier. There's a kind of caste system, and they have this kind of way of hierarchy that is very subtle to the outsider. And I felt like there was a little bit of a missed opportunity because they introduced the wife Klingon, and they'd never done that before. And then they didn't really do much except make her a target of a sexual attack. And I thought, okay, they had her there for that. And that's unfortunate because it. You know, it just is. So it boils it down in a way that just doesn't serve her as a character. And there was an opportunity. I felt like, okay, you're showing the humans being manipulated. The Klingons are also being manipulated. But it's so hard to tell because everything the Klingons are doing is basically presented to us, the viewer, as. And the Klingons are just being Klingons. And it would have been interesting if there had been some sort of private communication between the husband and wife where one of them is doing effectively a McCoy and is playing up a. Like, we gotta go. We gotta wipe them out. And the other one is saying, like, that's not. That's not like you. You aren't.

You aren't normally that rash. And I thought it would have been interesting to have, you know, you have the Klingon leader, the. The cap. The commander of the Klingon vessel. Wouldn't have been interesting if his wife had been becoming bloodthirsty. And he was just like, this is not you. You're a woman of science. You don't. You've never ever expressed this kind of Attitude.

Matt Ferrell: Yep.

Sean Ferrell: And. And have it. Have him. Show him being in a role, because at the end, it really is. Kirk makes his appeal to that commander, and that commander does respond in kind. And they do manage to then stand next to each other and have that moment of just like, you can't manipulate us. We know better now. And wouldn't it have been neat to have a couple of scenes where she is presented as pushing him to recognize we are not behaving normally in the same way that Kirk is recognizing on the other side? I thought a little bit of balance there would have provided a little bit more meat on the bone. I completely agree with what you're saying about the nuance of Chekhov's. The most fascinating thing that is in the show is the fact that Chekhov is running around saying, they killed my brother Peter, until Sulu says he's an only child. Who the hell are you talking about? And I was like, that's. Like, that's cool. Like, that's neat. And I like that. For me, it didn't feel like there was enough of that. There wasn't enough. Even though McCoy comes in and he's, like, rattling the saber and he's just like, you got to go kill him, because they're monsters. And then Spock has his turn. I would have appreciated a little bit more of. Especially with Kirk being portrayed as he is somehow able to keep himself on just barely the right side of the line. And I found myself thinking, how fascinating would it have been if he had been saying things like, why do I keep seeing violent images in my imagination? Why do I keep thinking about people I've lost and wanting to blame the Klingons for it, especially considering we know Kirk's future with the Klingons. This is an interesting episode from that perspective, too. So I was going to say about,

Matt Ferrell: like, the woman, Kang's wife.

Sean Ferrell: Yeah.

Matt Ferrell: I'm not gonna rewrite the episode. I mean, you've given some good suggestions that would've made the show way better. But I do wanna kind of push back a little bit. My comments around the acting in the episode. I think Shatner did a very good job in this episode. I don't think he was. I think he was doing the best he could with what he was given. And there's the scene where he's finally kind of trying to grapple back control of himself. And as he's thinking through what this thing and explaining it to Spock and McCoy and getting them on board to go, oh, you're right, it is doing that. That whole scene I thought was really well done with the trio, but that the woman that was playing Kang's wife, I'm not gonna blame her. Not gonna blame her. I'm gonna blame directing. So what we're given with her, she is so placid. Every close up of her during that sequence, it's like, it's like the Mona Lisa. It's like whatever you put next to it, it's like, oh, she's smiling. Oh, no, she's angry, or no, she's sad. It's like, you can't tell. She's this enigma of like, wait, are you on board with what they're doing? So as I'm watching that sequence, I'm like, oh, maybe she's cheesing. It looks like she's getting it. She's getting it. And then he, she, she, Kirk goes to call Kang and she's like, it's a trap. And it was like, wait, what? What? What?

Sean Ferrell: You were just.

Matt Ferrell: Every closeup made me feel like she's getting it. But it was. I realized after the fact it was like a montage where you can. You can change the emotional resonance of the same exact shot just by what you pair next to it. And so I imposed, oh, she's getting it. Because all them are getting it. So clearly she's getting it. But it was like the actress was doing nothing. She was just vacant. And then when they were on the the bridge and they're continuing the conversation and he's trying to get Kang on board and threatens to kill her, she's still like placid and vacant. And then after Kang says, casualties of war, go ahead and kill her.

Sean Ferrell: Yeah.

Matt Ferrell: Only then does it like, oh, she's clocked in. She gets it now. And it was because she was verbally saying it. So I don't know if it was bad acting on her part or just bad directing or both, but it was not a rewrite of what the show was giving us. If she had just had a better performance and there was more of a dynamic of her slowly coming along and you could start to see her go from I don't trust you to maybe I can trust them, then it would have been a stronger overall thread that they were pulling.

Sean Ferrell: Yeah, I had the exact same thoughts. When she jumps forward and yells, it's a trap into the comm unit. It's just like, where did that come from? Like, you were literally hearing everything that they said and did you think that they were play acting? It doesn't make any sense within the context of the story from that point forward. If she was immediately like, you guys are awesome, and I agree with everything you just said, you could have had the exact same episode from that point forward. Her yelling at him through the comm didn't affect anything. It was just a demonstration of, like, okay, is this bad writing or bad directing or bad acting or just all of it. And I land on the third option because I look at this and it just feels like they didn't bother revising, they didn't bother thinking things through. They were just putting together an episode because they had a slot to fill and they wanted to do as cheaply as possible. All these costumes already existed. All the sets already existed. They're not pushing anything. And the migraine visual effect is just about the weakest visual effect they could possibly do. It looks. I did zero research to look this up, but it looks like a child's pinwheel was filmed in a dark room. And they don't do anything interesting with it. They make it shrink and they make it disappear at various times, but they're not doing anything particular with it. And I found myself thinking, if you've seen clips of a Pink Floyd concert from the 1970s where they would use an overhead projector with oil, I found myself thinking, what if they had simply used something like that as a projector into corners of rooms so that light would look weird and warbly in a certain corner and make it very subtle so that you end up drawing out the fact that these characters look around and they're like, wait a minute.

What is that? And then finally you see the shimmery thing moving on its own, as opposed to what they did because they let the cat out of the bag so early for the viewer. Like, if this episode was re-edited to remove the shimmering light, it would be a lot more intriguing. They go down to a planet, everybody's been killed. We take them at their word. The reality is, I think there was never a colony there to begin with. That's one of the things about, like, the mind alteration for this that's not really well pushed forward. So it's like they go to the planet, they think there's a. The colony is gone. We take them at their word because these are our heroes. Then the Klingons show up. The Klingons are to blame. Yes, we agree with that, because that's what we're presented with. The episode gives us the lights right from the beginning so we know something weird is happening. How much more interesting would it have been if there's no Lights. We're given conflict, we're given capture. We're giving teleporter. We're given them on the Enterprise, we're given. Weird things start happening. Things. The Klingons are released somehow, weapons magically change. Nobody knows what's going on. And then suddenly it's like, oh, wait a minute. There's this thing that's been in the background of the episode all this time. It turns out it's an alien entity that was on the planet. I'm like, that would be compelling. But this one is right out of the gate. Weird stuff is happening. It's the light's fault, and it just feels phoned in. From the very beginning, I found myself wishing there was more of a question mark over some of this stuff. And when the one thing that provided that question mark was the Chekhov, they killed my brother. Turning out to be, he doesn't have a brother.

And I'm like, why couldn't more of the episode have been like that? It reminds me of the episode of Next Generation where Geordi's old teammates are disappearing one after another. They're dying mysteriously one after another. And it goes through this whole sequence of him going into the holodeck and looking at the old recordings of the mission where they all had a weird experience and discovering there's a shadow that doesn't connect to anything. And the creepy as we get out, that is amazing. And it's because it sets it all up as there's something happening that's not adding up. But we can't really put our finger on it yet. We haven't told the characters, haven't figured it out, and we're not telling you, the viewer, until the characters figure it out. And I wish this one had followed that model a little bit more because it just. I think by telling us right at the beginning, it's a little bit like a Scooby Doo episode. We know that they're going to pull the rubber mask off. And it was. It was the migraine lights the whole time trying to get a hold of Old Man Jenkins Farm.

So little disappointing.

Matt Ferrell: I was thinking of barbaric cartoons when I was watching this as well. It's like, it felt like, you know where you see that same hallway go by over and over again.

Sean Ferrell: Yeah, yeah. It's all in the hallways of the Enterprise. There's just one hallway. They do a lot in that hallway in this way.

Matt Ferrell: Over and over again, over and over again.

Sean Ferrell: So I found myself frustrated because, like, the headline is they're stopping the bombing in Vietnam and it was done for political gain. And then this episode is literally about manipulation of the public, using racism, hatred and misinformation in order to profit from the control of your population. And I was just like, how sad that that message in this episode wasn't done with more craft, I think is what I was looking for more than anything else. But maybe that's just me. Viewers, listeners, what do you think? Jump into the comments. As always, we want to hear what you have to say. This feels like it's an abbreviated episode to me because, I mean, I guess it is. So jump into the comments. Let us know. Yeah, did you do you agree that this one is just feels a little on the nose and doesn't provide much challenge? Or do you like this one for whatever reason you think it sends the perfect message in the perfect way or it's got a lot of nostalgia for you? Let us know in the comments. We look forward to hearing from you. As always, commenting, liking, subscribing, sharing with your friends. Those are all very easy ways for you to support the podcast. If you'd like to support us more directly, go to trekintime.Show. Click the Join button there. It'll allow you to throw coins at our heads and it will also sign you up as an Ensign, which means you'll be signed up for our spin off show Out of Time, in which we talk about things that don't fit within the confines of this program. We hope you'll be interested in checking that out. Thank you everybody for taking the time to watch or listen. We'll talk to you next time.

Matt and Sean talk about Oracles, Asteroids and Marriage, in Star Trek TOS Season 3, Episode 8, “For the World is Hollow, and I Have Touched the Sky” 

Chapters

• (00:00) - - Intro
• (02:16) - - Viewer Feedback
• (04:28) - - Today's Episode
• (05:13) - - This Time in History
• (15:47) - - Episode Discussion

Matt and Sean talk about rips in space, space madness, and Tholians, in Star Trek TOS Season 3, Episode 9, “The Tholian Web.” 

Chapters

• (00:00) - - Intro
• (01:23) - - Viewer feedback
• (04:53) - - Today's episode
• (06:00) - - This time in history
• (10:14) - - Episode discussion

Matt and Sean talk about feeling the vibes and torturous experiments, in Star Trek TOS Season 3, Episode 12, “The Empath.”

Chapters

• (00:00) - - Intro
• (01:12) - - Viewer feedback
• (05:18) - - Today's episode
• (06:00) - - This time in history
• (08:40) - - Episode discussion

Matt and Sean talk about where ugliness truly dwells, in Star Trek TOS Season 3, Episode 5, “Is There No Truth in Beauty.” 

Chapters

• (00:00) - - Intro
• (01:34) - - Viewer Feedback
• (04:28) - - Today's Episode
• (04:57) - - This Time in History
• (09:42) - - Episode Discussion

Matt and Sean talk about doubling down on empathy in the season finale of Starfleet Academy Season 1, Episode 10, “Rubincon.” 

Chapters

• (00:00) - - Intro
• (01:40) - - Viewer Feedback
• (04:33) - - Today's Episode
• (05:05) - - This Time in History
• (07:18) - - Episode Discussion

Matt and Sean talk about end of year celebration turning dark in Starfleet Academy Season 1, Episode 9, “300th Night.” 

Chapters

• (00:00) - - Intro
• (01:58) - - Viewer Feedback
• (04:57) - - Today's Episode
• (06:37) - - This Time in History
• (07:53) - - Episode Discussion

Matt and Sean talk about the cadets continued recovery in Starfleet Academy Season 1, Episode 8, “The Life of the Stars.” 

Chapters

• (00:00) - - Intro
• (02:33) - - Viewer Feedback
• (05:58) - - Today's Episode
• (07:25) - - This Time in History
• (09:42) - - Episode Discussion