{"id":2852,"date":"2022-03-15T12:00:54","date_gmt":"2022-03-15T12:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/?p=2852"},"modified":"2023-03-06T11:09:21","modified_gmt":"2023-03-06T11:09:21","slug":"trekaday-013","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/2022\/03\/15\/trekaday-013\/","title":{"rendered":"Trekaday 013: Whom Gods Destroy, Let That Be Your Last Battlefield, The Mark of Gideon, That Which Survives, The Lights of Zetar, Requiem for Methuselah"},"content":{"rendered":"

TOS S03E14 Whom Gods Destroy <\/strong>(\"3.5). The Enterprise visits Planet Arkham Asylum, and parades Clarice-like past various inhabitants including \u2013 hey! \u2013 Keye Luke who\u2019s meant to be running the place. Turns out that the biggest madman of them all, Garth, has been taught shapeshifting by\u2026 wait, what?<\/p>\n

Yes, apparently, metamorphosing all of the cells in your body into a perfect replica of another person is a skill which anyone can acquire with a little diligent study. Anyway, all he has to do now is impersonate Kirk and get himself beamed on board the Enterprise<\/em>, but \u2013 wouldn\u2019tchaknowit? \u2013 on this one occasion, Kirk and Scotty have figured out a code word, you know just in case<\/em> the facility they\u2019re beaming down to has been taken over by a shapeshifting lunatic without notice.<\/p>\n

So, this is all pretty dopey stuff \u2013 but, you know what, I had a good time with it. Steve Ihnat is suitably Batman<\/em>-villainous, and his green skinned alien slave girl sidekick is Yvonne Craig, aka Batgirl. They even kill her off, which I was genuinely shocked by. In the end, of course, Spock has to choose between two Kirks and fumbles this elementary task so badly that even Kirk has to point out his shortcomings. This was another one banned by the Beeb, but it\u2019s hard to understand why.<\/p>\n

TOS S03E15 Let That Be Your Last Battlefield <\/strong>(\"1) Alongside some quietly progressive casting when it comes to non-white actors, TOS<\/strong> has had a huge blind spot when it comes to the depiction of women. Some of its anti-war allegories have been pretty clumsy too. So\u2026 let\u2019s see what happens when they decide to tackle racism head on. Yikes.<\/p>\n

The Enterprise<\/em> rescues Lokai, a black-and-white refugee from a missing Federation shuttlecraft. Like all Americans, the Big Three are fascinated by skin colour. Blue skinned aliens, fine. Green skinned aliens, fine. Dark skinned aliens, fine. Light skinned aliens, fine. Half light and half dark \u2013 HOW CONFOUNDING IT MUST BE A MUTATION WHAT IS HAPPENING HERE? Later, one of these super-advanced aliens gets evolution wrong and Spock corrects him, getting it only slightly less wrong. Sigh.<\/p>\n

White Kirk then accuses Lokai of stealing the vehicle he was driving with no evidence. We\u2019re lucky he didn\u2019t put him in a chokehold, or just phaser him on the spot. (It is a white actor I guess.) Then another Cheronian turns up in a budget-saving invisible spacecraft. Cheron is in \u201cthe southern most part of the galaxy\u201d (lots of galaxies have a south).<\/p>\n

This second astoundingly piebald arrival is played by Frank “The Riddler” Gorshin, which is a bit of a treat. We even get some Batman<\/em>-style zooming in-and-out at one point. Gorshin has been pursuing Lokai for eleventy billion years because he is an escaped member of their subjugated class. Kirk and Spock can\u2019t see the difference, but Gorshin points out that his, dominant, race is dark on the right side and light on the left. The slave race is dark on the left and light on the right. Doyageddit? Following this, Kirk tells off Lokai for being uppity.<\/p>\n

There follows a famous self-destruct sequence which is adequately tense but feels like padding. We start with Kirk in charge and the Cheronians as docile passengers. Lokai takes control of the ship, Kirk threatens to blow it up, Lokai backs down. Kirk is back in charge and the Cheronians are now docile passengers \u2013 but we did use up ten whole minutes of screen time. Then it turns out that Bele could have burned out the self-destruct at will at any time.<\/p>\n

So, taken as a science-fiction adventure story, this is pretty dumb and pretty slack. It isn\u2019t clear whether both Bele and Lokai have extraordinary powers over matter. If only Bele has, then the master race actually is superior. Yikes! If not, then why don\u2019t we see Lokai use similar powers? And that\u2019s the other problem \u2013 as a parable about racism it makes some pretty nasty assumptions about what\u2019s actually been happening in 1960s America, because it basically blames both sides. Spock sardonically points out that by standing up against oppression, Lokai has got many of his followers killed. Better to just keep picking cotton then I guess.<\/p>\n

When they get back to Cheron, the planet is a burned cinder, both \u201csides\u201d having destroyed each other. Bele and Lokai leave the bridge and spend ages running up and down the Enterprise<\/em> corridors. \u201cLet them go,\u201d allows Kirk, \u201cWhat can they do? Except alter the entire substance of the ship at will. Where can they go? Except anywhere they wish using our transporters.\u201d<\/p>\n

This episode super-wants to be a plea for tolerance and understanding, (\u201cListen to me!\u201d pleads The Shat, emoting so hard he might burst a blood vessel) but it ends up saying black and white people are equally at fault for slavery, lynching, red-lining and so on. Racism is the systematic persecution of one group by another. That\u2019s not what\u2019s depicted here. And in the end, compassionate Kirk leaves Bele and Lokai to starve to death on their dead planet, because racism is everybody\u2019s<\/em> fault. Let\u2019s all think about then, eh, viewers?<\/p>\n

The decontamination plot is also pretty uninteresting. And crop-spraying an entire planet twice seemingly takes less than a minute. Nobody\u2019s paying close attention anymore, and when you\u2019re trying to use your hit show on primetime television to make an important and relevant statement about society, details matter.<\/p>\n

TOS S03E16 The Mark of Gideon <\/strong>(\"2.5). For much of this episode, Kirk roams around what appears to be the Enterprise<\/em> only it\u2019s entirely deserted, which is a neat enough way of taking standing sets and putting the captain into jeopardy with a mystery to solve \u2013 but it isn\u2019t terribly interesting.<\/p>\n

All of this turns out to be theatre designed to extract some of Kirk\u2019s blood (which following his brush with plague would have antibodies, not infectious agents) and use it to infect a woman. Their bonkers plan is to create a plague to thin out their population. Because, you know, that\u2019s better than just getting people to have fewer children (life is sacred in their culture, so mass murder is the only option they have left). Poor old Spock meanwhile can\u2019t get anyone from Star Fleet Command or the Federation to take him seriously, so is reduced to making uncharacteristically bitchy comments about the uselessness of diplomacy.<\/p>\n

This falls into the category of \u201coh, that\u2019s like the kind of thing they used to do on Star Trek<\/strong>\u201d. The right elements seem to be present, if you squint, but the ethical conundrums are trite, the proposed evil plan is ludicrous, the mystery dull and the character work almost non-existent.<\/p>\n

TOS S03E17 That Which Survives <\/strong>(\"3) Faced with a seemingly-insoluble scientific conundrum, Kirk assembles a landing party consisting of himself, the ship\u2019s physician, the helmsman and a disposable geologist, and leaves his science officer to sit in his chair. But wait! A foxy chick appears in the transporter room and tries to stop them beaming down. Quakes rock the ship and the planet. Spock has apparently forgotten how people communicate \u2013 and doesn\u2019t notice that the stars are wrong. An irrational, illogical, emotional woman has to point it out to him. He also disregards Scotty\u2019s insight about the feel of the ship.<\/p>\n

Despite the fact that each of the murder-bots announce who they are here to kill (and recite their CV at them) it takes the landing party ages to catch on to the fact that each is programmed to kill only one person. And it takes the murder bots ages to catch on to the fact that if they have three targets, they should send three murder bots \u2013 all played by the same person, because the purse strings are still straining (it\u2019s Lee Meriwether, continuing the recent trend of casting Batman<\/em> actors in guest roles).<\/p>\n

The battle to save the Enterprise<\/em> is okay, but it never feels as if the ship is racing out of control. And Spock has become a parody of himself, but this is a decent episode for Scotty fans and James Doohan makes the most of what he\u2019s given.<\/p>\n

TOS S03E18 The Lights of Zetar <\/strong>(\"2) gives us more Scotty material as today he has a schoolboy crush on the ship\u2019s latest foxy passenger and there\u2019s some pretty nauseating locker room talk from Sulu and Chekov as a result. But, before long, an alien force has taken control of the ship which makes people gurn uncontrollably. It\u2019s 50% ludicrous and 50% disturbing (the sound effects help).<\/p>\n

There\u2019s some fancy camerawork this week \u2013 an overhead shot of Kirk in the captain\u2019s chair, a zoom in to Lt Legsfordays eye \u2013 but the plot never makes a blind bit of sense and everyone \u2013 even Spock \u2013 keeps calling a fellow officer in distress \u201cthe girl\u201d. Plus Shatner\u2019s pep talk to her is him at his most hammy and staccato.<\/p>\n

TOS S03E19 Requiem for Methuselah <\/strong>(\"1.5) kicks off with a crackerjack display of brinkmanship (albeit sold with some pretty ropey marionetting) which then fizzles into absolutely nothing, so we escalate from megadeath from the skies to a lesson in how to play billiards. Spock wants to talk about Brahms and Kirk couldn\u2019t give a shit, so he leaves his science officer to his sheet music while he goes off to do some advanced bio-chemistry on the tainted unobtanium.<\/p>\n

Then, Kirk is suddenly completely in love with his host\u2019s female companion. The title of the episode having given away Flint\u2019s secret, the other revelation is that his \u201cdaughter\u201d is, ho-hum, an android. Kirk, who only a few episodes ago, shrugged off the effects of an actual love potion, is so crestfallen that Spock finds it necessary to rewrite his memories for him without his consent. Jesus.<\/span><\/p>\n

Stray observations<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n