Star Trek - The Original Series

I finally watched all 79 episodes of the original series (ST/OS). Born in 1969, I was too young to have seen them when they were originally shown in prime time for the 1966, 1967 and 1968 seasons. From the introduction it’s apparent that the series was intended to run for 5 seasons, but NBC pulled the plug, due to low ratings (???) after only 3. I saw it as a child growing up in the US in the mid-70s in reruns, but never saw anywhere close to all 79 episodes until now. Even so, as a child 90% of the plots would have simply gone over my head. I recall my brother and I had the uniform shirts (yellow and blue), the action figures (!), and I had the phaser/communicator/tricorder toy set.

I never turned into a Trekker or Trekkie. When the Next Generation (ST/NG) debuted in 1985, at first I ignored it. Later on, after some anniversary special, I picked up on the Next Generation and got to enjoy it; I also watched Deep Space Nine and Voyager, but at some point my interest dropped off again. I have seen all the Original Series movies and the Next Generation movies as well.

Characters.
Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner). The man. Although he does have his charm with the ladies, he’s not the horndog all the commentators seem to make him out to be. And he can think or bluff his way out of a situation, if necessary. Picard (ST/NG) is somewhat more cerebral than Kirk; Kirk is who Trekkers WANT to be, Picard is who the Trekkers ARE.

Spock (Leonard Nimoy). Half human, half Vulcan, second in command of the Enterprise and Science Officer. Can be counted – in most cases – to have a logical view of things. He invariably kicks butt whenever circumstances put him in the Captain’s chair, yet even the evil (“Mirror, Mirror”) Spock doesn’t seek power. Drinking game: drink whenever Spock says “Fascinating….”

Dr Leonard “Bones” McCoy (DeForrest Kelley). Human, all too human, and somewhat contemptuous of Mr Spock’s Vulcan side. His favorite line: “He’s dead, Jim.”

Chief Engineer Scotty (James Doohan). Thick Scottish accent, gets the job done in less time than he predicts – because he was sandbagging all along. Like Spock, he kicks ass in command.

Lt Uhura (Nichelle Nichols). As Abraham Lincoln observed in “The Savage Curtain”, she’s a “fine negress”. Funny, I never considered her attractive when I was a kid, but as an adult I can’t help noticing her stellar legs.

Sulu (George Takei). Helmsman, I guess. Sulu is fairly reliable, except in “Naked Time” and “Return of the Archons”.

Pavel Chekov (Walter Koenig). Russian helmsman. I don’t see him drinking vodka – much less drinking Scotty under the table – or doing Cossack dances. And why wasn’t he speaking Russian to Irina in “Way to Eden”?

Clearly, reviewing all 79 episodes here would be impractical. Better, then, to observe certain trends, themes, and patterns (of force?) – some episodes qualify in multiple categories.

The Best. This is my humble analysis, which Trekkers may or may not agree with. “The Enemy Within”, “The Naked Time”, “Space Seed”, “City on the Edge of Forever” (w/Joan Collins), “Friday’s Child”, “Wolf in the Fold” (written by Robert “Psycho” Bloch, a horror writer influenced by, and good friends with, H.P. Lovecraft, who based the protagonist of his story “The Haunter of the Dark” on him); “Errand of Mercy”, “Mirror, Mirror”; “A Private Little War”; “A Piece of the Action”, “The Enterprise Incident”, “Requiem For Methuselah”, and “The Turnabout Intruder”, the last episode, loosely ripping off H.P. Lovecraft’s story “The Thing on the Doorstep”.

Humor. These episodes have some elements of humor or lighthearted plots. However, “humor” is relative here: you won’t be rolling on the floor laughing. “Mudd’s Women”, “Shore Leave”, “I, Mudd”, “The Trouble with Tribbles”, “A Piece of the Action”, and “The Way to Eden” (space hippies! - perhaps unintended humor...).

Arena. Superior (?) alien civilizations force Kirk and/or the Enterprise crew to participate in quasi-gladiatorial combat to satisfy their own perverse amusement. “Arena”, “The Gamesters of Triskelion”, “The Day of the Dove”, “The Savage Curtain”, with “Bread & Circuses” also qualifying, quite literally.

Romulans. The #2 bad guys after the Klingons, and closely related to Vulcans. “Balance of Terror”, “The Enterprise Incident” – in which Kirk is surgically altered in Romulan disguise, part of an elaborate Federation plot to steal cloaking technology from the Romulans. Spock’s job is to seduce the female Romulan commander. Note that Spock also had a role in the ST/NG episode where Picard impersonated a Romulan.

Klingons. The #1 bad guys. Here they look like badly dressed humans with goatees, unlike the “bumpy forehead” version which developed with the ST/OS movies and continued with ST/NG and Lt Worf. “Errand of Mercy”. “Trouble with Tribbles”, “Friday’s Child”, “A Private Little War”, and “Day of the Dove”. I don’t think I recall seeing any female Klingons in the original series.

Babe Alert. First off, I love the ST/OS uniform for female members – with its provocatively high skirt amply demonstrating the female form and the legs in particular, with spectacular effect for Lt Uhura and Yeoman Rand. In ST/NG they all get some formless unisex sack of a Hillary Clinton pantsuit, except for Deanna Troi, who gets her own version of the uniform, marginally more revealing. Apparently sex is obsolete in the ST/NG future. 

Second, certain episodes feature some amazing babes: “Mudd’s Women” (Mudd’s women, of course), “Conscience of the King” (Kodos’ daughter Lenore); “The Galileo 7” (a Yeoman), “Shore Leave” (Ensign Barrows), “A Taste of Armageddon” (Ensign Tamula); “Friday’s Child” (Julie Newmar, aka “Catwoman” from the original Batman series); “Wolf in the Fold” (no less than THREE babes, all murdered by Scotty!); “I, Mudd” (more of Mudd’s women – except for his wife!); “Mirror, Mirror” (Kirk’s mistress Marlena); “A Private Little War” (Nona, the #2 babe); “The Gamesters of Triskelion” (Shanha); “The Paradise Syndrome” (Minemanee, Native American babe – the TOP babe of all 79 episodes!); “Return to Tomorrow” and “Is There in Truth No Beauty” (a VERY YOUNG Diana Muldaur, aka Dr Pulaski from ST/NG); “Patterns of Force” (babacious Aryan babe); “Whom Gods Destroy” (Yvonne Craig as green Marta); “The Lights of Zetar” (Lt Mira Romaine, hooks up with Scotty); “The Cloud Minders” (Troglyte babe), “That Which Survives” (the “robot” woman), and “Requiem For Methuselah” (Rayna).

Evil Woman. Some misogyny shows up, with an Evil Woman every now and then – or else, she is not what she appears to be. “The Man Trap”, “The Menagerie” “A Private Little War” (Nona is the worst), “That Which Survives”, “Catspaw”, and “Turnabout Intruder”.

Romance Among the Stars. Kirk was a handsome devil, a ladies man, and the captain of a starship, so it’s not surprising that he – and some of the other characters – did hook up, though no one gets married or has a stable relationship. Rank has its privileges: Kirk gets the most stellar pussy. “Conscience of the King” (Lenore, Kodos’ daughter); “Shore Leave” (meets simulation of ex-girlfriend); “City on the Edge of Forever” (falls in love with Joan Collins); “Mirror, Mirror” (evil Kirk had a mistress); “Private Little War” (Nona tries to hook up with him); “Gamesters of Triskelion” (teaches Shanha about “love”); “By Any Other Name” (teaches alien woman, Kelinda, about “apologies” = kissing); “Eleen of Troysius” (Eleen tries to seduce Kirk); “The Paradise Syndrome” (actually “marries” Indian babe, who gets pregnant with his child); “Wink of an Eye” (hooks up with superfast alien woman); “Mark of Gideon” (alien woman seduces him to get sick); “Requiem for Methuselah” (hooks up with Flint’s girl Rayna).

Spock has his share of romance: “The Naked Time” (Chapel); “Amok Time” (his betrothed, T’Pring); “This Side of Paradise” (Leila); “All Our Yesterdays” (Zarabeth); and “The Cloud Minders” (Droxine).

Chekov has only two: Irina, who dropped out of Starfleet Academy to join the hippies ("Way to Eden") and the Clanton moll in “Spectre of the Gun”.

Scotty murders three women in “Wolf in the Fold” but has a true romance with the delicious Lt Mira Romaine in “Lights of Zetar”.

Finally, Bones gets Catwoman (Julie Newmar) in “Friday’s Child,” but has a more substantial relationship with Natira in “For The World is Hollow and I Have Touched The Sky”.

Spock vs. Bones. I love the running somewhat-friendly rivalry between Mr. Spock, the half-Vulcan science officer who ruthlessly represses his human side’s emotions, and Dr Leonard “Bones” McCoy, the ship’s medical officer, who embraces subjective emotions, almost an Apollo vs. Dionysus “reason vs. love” dichotomy. On ST/NG all the crewmembers get along as a big happy family, and even Data’s attempts to emulate humanity, rather than to embrace his machine identity, are patronizingly admired by his human comrades. There was no ship’s counselor on the original Enterprise, no Deanna Troi to sense our emotions and work out our issues. If you had a problem, you had to shut up and deal with it, however you could manage. Scotty had the recipe for the original counselor: ALCOHOL. (On the other hand, the ST/NG Enterprise also had Holodeks, which were as much for training and therapy as for sheer amusement). Although the rivalry shows itself in bits and pieces throughout the series, “The Galileo 7” and “The Ultimate Computer” are especially remarkable for putting it in full view.

Spock Goes Nuts. Somewhat related to the previous topic; for whatever reason, Spock loses control of himself and acts out of character, much to Bones’ amusement – or dismay. The top episode for this is “Amok Time”, in which Spock has to return to Vulcan to “mate”, but it also shows up in “This Side of Paradise” (zonked out by an indigenous plant), “Mirror, Mirror” (actually still logical, just evil), “Return to Tomorrow” (Spock possessed by evil alien), and “All Our Yesterdays” (Spock regressing 5,000 years into barbarian Vulcan). In “The Menagerie” he appears to go nuts and hijacks the Enterprise to Talos IV, but his motives are eventually exonerated.

Utopia is Not an Option. Despite the Prime Directive, which forbids Federation personnel from interfering with a foreign civilization, the Enterprise can, and does, find various planets which have a system which – as Spock notes, “works for them” – and for whatever reason, typically because the Enterprise itself is directly threatened, has to shut down the Utopia forever. “A Taste of Armageddon”, “This Side of Paradise”, and “The Apple”.

Imminent Destruction. A huge machine, a huge amoeba, or a paranoid space probe, threatens to destroy everything in its path, and it’s up to the Enterprise to figure a way out (at the very last moment, of course). “Operation – Annihilate”, “The Doomsday Machine”, “The Changeling”, and “The Immunity Syndrome”.

Alternate Earths. Earth-type planets far away from Earth itself are found which decided to pattern (!) themselves on certain interesting segments of Earth history. “Bread & Circuses” (based on Ancient Rome), “Patterns of Force” (based on Nazi Germany). and “A Piece of the Action” (1930s Chicago).

Greeks. Although science fiction, Star Trek gives us two episodes of Ancient Greeks: “Who Mourns for Adonis” and “Plato’s Stepchildren”.

Social Commentary. Gene Roddenberry couldn’t resist, from time to time, talking down to us and preaching some sort of deeper lesson. “A Taste of Armageddon” (bureaucratization of war); “A Private Little War” (mutual assured destruction), “The Omega Glory” (traditional US values); “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield” (racism), “The Mark of Gideon” (birth control/Malthus), and as heavy-handed communist Michael Moore propaganda in “The Cloud Minders” (Karl Marx).

But these are mild by comparison: ST/NG is 100x worse. I could go on about references Picard makes to contemporary society having solved all issues of material wealth, but the ultimate proof are these: FERENGI. The Ferengi are clearly the ST/NG writers’ attempts to externalize capitalist values into an alien race and then unfavorably depict them as greedy, dishonest, ambitious, etc. Their Rules of Acquisition are just one of many negative references. Every Ferengi who behaves characteristically for his race – notably Quark on Deep Space Nine – is held up as an unsavory character, like any thief, rogue, drug dealer or pimp. Only Quark’s nephew, whose business acumen is almost nil and behaves like a nonmaterialist human, is portrayed in an unequivocally good light. As Riker indicates, with some contempt, that Ferengi correspond to Earth development at a lawless, relatively primitive time, as if humans have evolved to a higher level, from capitalism to socialism (and they deny they’re Marxists?). Fair enough – if you’re willing to suspend disbelief and buy into teleporter technology, warp drive technology, time travel, etc. they can probably assume you have just as much necessary imagination to suppose that socialism somehow works in the future whereas it clearly does not work here in the early 21^st century. It’s science fiction, after all.

While I think of ST/NG as being far more "politically correct" than ST/OS - even to changing the intro from "where no MAN has gone before" to "where no ONE has gone before" (as if there may have been places where a WOMAN had been, but no MAN)(???) - even ST/OS has its own share. Look at the crew picture: we've got Uhura, a black woman, and Sulu, an Asian man. The white males are from Iowa (Kirk), Scotland (Scotty) and Russia (Chekov). An alien, Spock, is the 2nd in command and science officer. The scientist, the Federation's top computer expert, in "The Ultimate Computer" was a black man. The higher civilizations they encounter are typically androgynous aliens of dubious sexuality (aside from asexual energy beings, but even the "Metamorphosis" energy being turned out to be female!). We even have a disabled person, Captain Christopher Pike, in "The Menagerie" (Parts I & II, aka "The Cage"). Granted, the captain is still a white male (Kirk), the only female commander in any episode, that I can recall, was the Romulan in "The Enterprise Incident", and I don't recall any Jewish or Hispanic Federation personnel. But give them credit for being "PC" in 66-68 without being too over the top.

Kirk vs. The Machine. A somewhat luddite approach, technology is not always good – so Kirk has to come to the rescue, destroying a vicious computer by twisting its logic in on itself into an irresolvable contradiction which causes the computer to self-destruct in frustration. “Return of the Archons”, “The Changeling”, “I, Mudd”, “For The Earth is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky”, and “The Ultimate Computer”.

H.P. Lovecraft. I suppose it’s inevitable that some part of the horror writer’s ideas, which touch somewhat on science fiction, should find some expression in the Star Trek episodes, on rare occasions. It’s actually not in “Wolf in the Fold”, the Bloch-written episode, but the following: “Obsession” (star vampire-like being); “Is There in Truth No Beauty” (alien being whose horrible appearance causes insanity in any who view its true form); and “Turnabout Intruder” (evil woman trades bodies with Kirk).

Looking to the Future. Several episodes are either recycled or give basis for either the movies or the Next Generation, or have people later going on to better fame: “Where No Man Has Gone Before” (recycled to ST/NG with Dwight Schultz as Barkley); “Mudd’s Women” & “Eleen of Troysius” (Famke Jannsen ST/NG episode); “The Naked Time” (recycled to ST/NG, as the “Naked Now”); “Balance of Terror” (Mark Lenard as a Romulan, he later became Spock’s father, Sarek); “The Squire of Gothos” (Trelane = Q); “Tomorrow is Yesterday” (slingshot effect around sun re-used in STIV “The Voyage Home”); “Space Seed” (Ricardo Montalban as Khan, comes back for STII “The Wrath of Khan”); “City on the Edge of Forever” (Joan Collins); “The Apple” (young David “Hutch” Soul); “A Piece of the Action” (Victor Tayback, aka “Mel” from “Alice” and countless other TV shows); “Assignment Earth” (Teri Garr); “The Enterprise Incident” (recycled w/Picard in ST/NG); “The Wink of an Eye” (plot ripped off for a “Six Million Dollar Man” episode); “All Our Yesterdays” (Mariette Hartley); “Return of the Archons” (precursors to Borg collective). Also, Majel Barrett, aka Luxana Troi from ST/NG (and the voice of the computer), was Roddenberry’s girlfriend/wife and he got her the recurring role as Christine Chapel, Dr. Bones’ assistant. She had an unrequited crush on Mr. Spock.

The Worst. Of 79 episodes, I suppose they couldn’t get it right all the time: “Spock’s Brain” followed by “Charlie X”, “Miri”, and “The Alternative Factor” are some of the weaker ones.

I’ll be looking forward to the upcoming prequel movie, even though Nimoy and not Shatner will be involved – Bones and Scotty are dead, unfortunately. We’ll see how it works out. Finnegan (from "Shore Leave") and Irina (from "Way to Eden") should show up if the film takes place while the crew members were originally in Starfleet Academy.