Tom Salinsky

TOS S02E01 Amok Time () is another one where I know the James Blish version very well, but what Blish’s lucid prose can’t convey is the depth and detail of Leonard Nimoy’s acting. In the middle, on board the ship, fighting with the raging torrent within him, it’s just incredible, and luckily The Shat is nowhere to be seen this week. It’s a testament to the confidence of the series, that even after five months off the air, they trust that the audience knows the characters well enough that Spock refusing to eat his soup is a big enough climax to send us into the opening titles (which now include McCoy as well as Kirk and Spock).

Making his debut, with a gorgeous close-up, is Chekov, who’s made to seem like another member of the crew who’s just always been there (and who sits next to Sulu, which I believe is a rarity – normally episodes use one or the other).

The Kirk/Spock fight reminds me of something I saw about the making of Generations, where one of the writers (Ron Moore?) observed that their original vision for the poster was the two Enterprises firing on each other. But in the writing, they couldn’t figure out how to bring this about without one or other captain coming off like an asshole. Here, it’s Kirk vs Spock to the death and the plotting is seamlessly, ahem, logical. Even the ending makes sense, although you have to wonder what the therapeutic value is of whatever McCoy injected Kirk with. On the Blu-ray version, the hypo is very clearly non-functional, barely even touching Kirk’s uniform.

A blazing start to the second season and an all-time great episode. Spock’s delighted cry of “Jim!” when he sees Kirk alive is enough to make a grown man weep.

TOS S02E02 Who Mourns for Adonais () begins with three men sharking after one mini-skirted lieutenant who they ruefully surmise will quit the service when she finds a man. When she transports down, she’s magicked into one of Bill Theiss’s abdomen-and-shoulder-baring (but navel-concealing) silky gowns (which she proclaims to be beautiful) and immediately falls for the good-looking bad-guy. DC Fontana should hand in her feminist card.

In the latest (but not the last) iteration of Roddenberry’s go-to plot “the Enterprise meets God”, a glowing green hand looms in front of the ship and holds her in place. Very quickly, the Hulk hand is replaced by an NPR-sounding dude on the view screen who tells the crew that their long wait has ended. Chekov gets to join the landing party – on a sound stage rather than on location. And of course, this is another version of the trapped-in-paradise dilemma which goes all the way back to The Cage.

I love how flexible this series is (as I’ve said before) and I love seeing it go for broke. There’s certainly some fun to be had in the story trying to be a glorious fantasy riff on Greek mythology, while Kirk continues to insist that he’s in a science-fiction adventure drama, but this is all far too ridiculous for its own good and there are no saving graces in the character interactions – indefatigable Scotty is rendered here as a whining hormonal teenager. And here comes The Shat: “What if he… is… really… Apollo?” Like Gordon Ramsay, he appears to be able to stress every single word in a given line, which is arguably a talent, but is also a gift to impressionists.

With Chekov and Sulu both present, we have a complete set of seven in this episode (although Spock doesn’t get much, by his standards). Only Nurse Chapel fails to report for duty. Compared to Season One, this feels a lot more like – look it’s our regular family who you see every week (as opposed to – hey, haven’t we seen him before?).

TOS S02E03 The Changeling (). Right, stop me if you’ve heard this one. A hugely powerful alien cloud is approaching and destroying everything in its path. It treats the Enterprise as a valuable commodity and the humans on board as “units” which “infest it”. Kirk and Spock discover that it was an Earth probe sent out in the long distant past, but contact with an alien race has given it prodigious destructive powers. After some tense negotiating with its “creator”, the threat it presents is neutralised.

So, there’s no Decker and Ilia here, and the whole thing is wrapped up in 45 minutes, but despite all the Phase Two scripts knocking around, the Nomad probe from this episode is essentially recreated as Veejur for The Motion Picture a dozen or so years later. As far as the 1968 incarnation is concerned, Nomad is a mighty threat (and an implacable one) which manages to be a bit more interesting than the standard-issue quixotic alien being with god-like powers. But at the end, Kirk talks it to death which is a bit ho-hum (although his logic is nifty).

Building up a regular “family” of bridge crew has benefits and drawbacks. On the one hand, when Scotty is whammied (“he’s dead, Jim”) it counts for more than when a nameless red-shirt is offed. But it’s also hard to believe that he’s going to stay that way. Same goes for Uhura’s memory-wipe which is barely reset at the end of the episode. And note that Nomad’s assessment of her – “Its thinking is chaotic, a mass of conflicting impulses” – is put down to her being a woman. Sigh.

Speaking of nameless redshirts, four get offed here and are never referred to again – the credits roll as Kirk trades gags about being Nomad’s daddy with his senior officers. Ho ho ho.

TOS S02E04 Mirror, Mirror () begins in media res on the planet Purple Cyclorama with Kirk indulging in a little friendly diplomacy during an electrical storm. Lo! After beaming back to the ship, Kirk, Scotty, Bones and Uhura find themselves in a goatee universe of wrong ’uns.

Much has been written over the years about NBC’s Standards & Practices which oversaw everything which Roddenberry and co attempted to put on the air. Among their forbidden fruit was the infamous “open-mouthed kiss”, the depiction of hypnosis on camera (lest the audience be hypnotised in their living rooms) and a general dislike of violence and brutality (while of course, including as much “action” as possible). They were also squeamish about women’s belly buttons and so legend has it that once freed of this odd restriction (which required costume designer Bill Theiss to add little extra patches over women’s abdomens) Roddenberry showed them off wherever and whenever he could – notably on Denise Crosby in The Naked Now. However, this is one of those stories about Star Trek which can only be disproved by taking the extraordinary measure of watching Star Trek because – among other examples – here’s the shocking sight of Nichelle Nichols’ comely navel, on full naked display in scene-after-scene.

We’re in a parallel universe of course, where (despite all logic) every familiar detail is present, save for a handful of specific difference – which specific differences never amount to a wider divergence no matter how much time elapses. Quibbling aside, this is great fun and the mirror universe proved to be a wonderful playground for storytelling. Seeing our familiar characters as malevolent versions of themselves and/or pretending to be malevolent versions of themselves is hugely enjoyable. Evil Spock is a particular pleasure, but it’s also great to see George Takei and Walter Koenig flex their acting muscles a little.

Watching softie Kirk negotiate with Fascist Spock is great fun, so it’s shame that the situation is largely resolved with fisticuffs and not with an appeal to logic, decency or even curiosity. McCoy insisting on treating the injured Vulcan is a nice touch, and so is Sulu’s final move. The ending is deliciously open-ended too.

TOS S02E05 The Apple () gives us another paradise planet and another alien plant poofing spores into the face of a nameless red shirt, this time with fatal consequences (and in the studio instead of on location). This trope of offing anonymous crew members, which you might imagine to be the stuff of legend, is 100% real. Scotty and Kirk spend a moment regretting the loss and then start bantering away about whether or not the ship’s engineer will get any shore leave. You can either bump off crew members to raise the stakes and make the threat seem real and present – or you can retain a light tone of jolly japes, but you can’t do both. Kirk’s bitter speech of recrimination helps a little, but only a little.

It’s Chekov’s turn to crack on to the mini-skirted yeoman who beams down with the rest of the landing party. You can bet she a) lives to the end of the episode and b) we never see her again. Spock is the next to be struck down (and note that he gets tended to by McCoy with despatch). The repeated refrain of Star Fleet’s monetary investment in the crew returns, with Spock able to give a precise figure (although he’s cut off by Kirk before he gets to the units).

When our first inhabitant turns up, things take a definite turn for the silly. This is a crude and patronising depiction of a primitive tribe, who say things like “What is love?” and who look fairly ridiculous. “Nothing makes sense down here,” muses Kirk and I know what he means. The rest of the episode is basically vamping until Scotty nukes the planet from orbit. The fate of the “natives” is paid lip-service but never really addressed. This dreadful mess has been my least favourite episode so far. Even the nonsensical The Alternative Factor didn’t irritate me like this one did.

TOS S02E06 The Doomsday Machine () features a white blonde lady sitting in Uhura’s chair throughout the episode, for reasons I haven’t been able to determine. Not for the first time, the Enterprise arrives at a planet and discovers it’s no longer there – which still manages to amaze Kirk. A certain “Matt Decker” is in command of the USS Constellation, which we find adrift in space and so it’s our first time beaming our crew on to another Star Fleet ship – which looks an awful lot like the Enterprise – and Commodore Decker turns out to be the only survivor.

There’s some lovely lighting on board the wrecked Constellation which does much to disguise the reused sets and a lovely committed performance from William Windom. Whether Stephen Collins is playing his son is never made clear in The Motion Picture, but it’s certainly possible. Conceived as a cheapie episode, this is hugely high stakes adventure story, told with great vigour and energy. “There is no third planet.” “Don’t you think I know that!?”

Compared to Nomad a couple of episodes ago, this thing can’t be reasoned with which makes it a greater, even more implacable foe, but a less philosophically interesting one. Instead, the drama comes from the unhinged Commodore Decker attempting to take control of the Enterprise while Kirk is stranded on the crippled Constellation. Internal battles for the command of a vessel are a staple of naval dramas of all kinds and one to which versions of this show will return in future, but it’s the first time we’ve seen it here and it works gangbusters.

Scotty has just earned his pay for the week by charging up one phaser bank on the QT and the transporter effect this week is blue instead of yellow.

Thoughts and observations

• As we approach the mid-way point of TOS (The Doomsday Machine is episode 35 out of 79) the cracks are beginning to show a little. The series is still capable of superb highs, but the lows are getting lower and the tropes are getting tropier.
• Behind the scenes, things are getting tougher too. The cast got pay-rises but Desliu cut the budget which meant less money up on the screen every week.
• Looking ahead, there’s only one truly famous episode yet (albeit, one of the show’s most celebrated instalments of all time). Can the rest of Season Two keep up the quality of Season One?