{"id":2855,"date":"2022-03-20T12:00:59","date_gmt":"2022-03-20T12:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/?p=2855"},"modified":"2023-03-06T11:09:21","modified_gmt":"2023-03-06T11:09:21","slug":"trekday-014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/2022\/03\/20\/trekday-014\/","title":{"rendered":"Trekday 014: The Way to Eden, The Cloud Minders, The Savage Curtain, All Our Yesterdays, Turnabout Intruder"},"content":{"rendered":"

TOS S03E20 The Way to Eden <\/strong>(\"3) is the one with the space hippies, which obviously locks this into the late sixties in a pretty unhelpful way, but it also allows us a specific insight into what Star Trek<\/strong> is and how it works. This episode shows up the contradiction at the heart of Gene\u2019s vision \u2013 a military ship on a mission of peace. Humanitarians with a strict chain of command. Herberts with a heart. So, on the one hand, Roddenberry explicitly based Kirk and the Enterprise<\/em> on the Horatio Hornblower novels, and gave everybody naval ranks, but on the other hand, he got all bent out of shape when future creatives like Harve Bennett and Nicholas Meyer starting writing him and it like a military operation. Faced with actual hippies, Kirk\u2019s rigid militarism is plain to see.<\/p>\n

All that having been said, this is only passingly more interesting than recent episodes. There\u2019s lots of talk of Romulans but they never show up. There\u2019s yet another space plague sweeping the Enterprise<\/em> (why won\u2019t they wear their masks?) and at the end, they make it to a false Eden and someone name Adam dies after eating an apple \u2013 doyageddit? The landing party is powerless to stop the same fate from befalling another, standing still and crying out \u201cDon\u2019t bite into that! Stop!\u201d (Darn, if only the crew had a handy portable device which could harmlessly incapacitate someone from a distance\u2026)<\/p>\n

In the middle, when the space hippies try and hijack the Enterprise<\/em>, they become just another group of homicidal badguys who need to be outwitted \u2013 which is both a strength and a weakness, since it downplays the dated elements but removes the specificity. Spock of all people is the one sent into negotiate with them and they seem to respond to his laconic cool. Naturally, the crew has nothing to learn from these deadbeats \u2013 but we do get to see another one of those supposedly verboten female belly buttons.<\/p>\n

I know that in fandom, this is not well-liked and the hippies have undeniably aged badly, but as a science-fiction adventure story, it doesn\u2019t rely on the crew being overwhelmingly dumb, there aren\u2019t any gaping plot holes, it isn\u2019t egregiously padded (apart from a couple of musical numbers) and the guest cast is solid. Plus, any episode which makes use of the regular cast (Chekov went to the Academy with one of the women) gets bonus points from me.<\/p>\n

TOS S03E21 The Cloud Minders <\/strong>(\"3) brings us more plague and more unobtanium needed to cure it. The Federation feels like a hugely insanitary place to live, with pathogens around every corner. There\u2019s some dramatic camerawork early on which makes the most of the studio set (and the four shadows cast by all the actors) and that fits because this is setting up a dichotomy between the cloud city elites and the cave-dwelling troglytes in what I assume was some hint of social satire, but it\u2019s all too subtle for me.<\/p>\n

Easy low point of the episode is Diana Ewing as the vapid Droxine. Even by the misogynistic standards of TOS<\/strong>, her sub-Marilyn Monroe sexy baby princess act is incredibly irritating. When she announces at the end of the episode that she\u2019s going to start digging in the mines herself, all I could think was \u201cI wouldn\u2019t want to be your shift supervisor.\u201d Also \u2013 belly button alert! On full, flagrant display here and on Vanna.<\/p>\n

But the story is full of nonsense. Despite the urgent deadline, hardy Spock who barely needs any comforts eagerly seizes the opportunity to take a nap when it is offered and then starts referring to the stupidest woman in all creation as \u201cthe lovely Droxine.\u201d What\u2019s particularly confounding is that this planet is a member of the Federation, membership of which can apparently be gained by filling in a postcard, with no need to have anyone actually visit and see what kind of planet-wide society has been established.<\/p>\n

And then there\u2019s the matter of the maguffin: zenite, which is shipped all over the galaxy and yet Spock is completely unfamiliar with the dangers of it in its raw state and there isn\u2019t any other planet from which to obtain it. The people who mine and ship Zenite are also unfamiliar with its effects. So how do they know how to refine and package it safely?<\/p>\n

The actual climax with Captain, Beardy and Girl-trog all slowly losing their minds is quite exciting, but it can\u2019t redeem the rest of the episode. And another irritating trope is present too \u2013 the insanely precise countdown as if a natural event is an entirely predictable process like a timebomb, which is completely safe until the very last second, whereupon it becomes instantly fatal.<\/p>\n

TOS S03E22 The Savage Curtain <\/strong>(\"2) begins with Abraham Lincoln in space, marks time for fifteen or so minutes and then plods through a re-hash of Arena<\/em> yet again. Kirk\u2019s fanboyish attitude to \u201cLincoln\u201d is absurd. \u201cTell me the secrets of your ship.\u201d \u201cWhy of course, all-powerful and mysterious entity about whom I know nothing.\u201d There\u2019s not much more to be said about this one.<\/p>\n

TOS S03E23 All Our Yesterdays <\/strong>(\"4) even rips off the slow-motion effect used in Joan Collins Must Die<\/em> but it does in fact present our heroes with a well-defined and tricky problem \u2013 if anything a harder one than they faced in the earlier episode. And while Spock regressing to a more emotional state and getting the hots for a foxy cave-chick isn\u2019t quite in the same league as Kirk and Edith Keeler’s doomed love, it\u2019s more depth of characterisation than we\u2019re used to lately. Unexpectedly, this one isn’t half bad.<\/p>\n

TOS S03E24 Turnabout Intruder <\/strong>(\"3) begins with yet another colony with barely any (expensive) survivors, and it swiftly gives us another fake captain. I\u2019m a total sucker for TV episodes in which the regular cast play each other \/ impersonate each other \/ play different roles and Shatner has a ball here playing his catty ex-girlfriend. Sandra Smith doesn\u2019t play Kirk with quite as much playfulness as might be expected \u2013 she doesn\u2019t pick up on any of Shatner\u2019s tics or quirks, more\u2019s the pity.<\/p>\n

But notice that how foxy Janice is is never the issue! Progress!! She even gets to wear a pants suit. So I was quite surprised to discover that this is one I am supposed to hate, on the basis that Janice hating herself amounts to the show hating women, and that her line \u201cYour world of starship captains doesn\u2019t admit women\u201d is meant to imply that the Federation as a matter of policy doesn\u2019t promote any women to the rank of captain (and it\u2019s true that we don\u2019t see any female captains in the whole of TOS<\/strong>).<\/p>\n

But the line could equally well mean \u201cYou are in love with your ship and can\u2019t ever love a woman completely\u201d which we certainly know to be true of Kirk. And also, I don\u2019t think we are supposed to think that Janice\u2019s attitude towards women is meant to be the message of the episode, because Janice is\u2026 (checks notes) the bad guy. I think we\u2019re meant to think that she and her self-loathing are repugnant. I\u2019ve complained before about the patrician attitudes on display in these episodes and maybe the sexism has become a low-level background noise that I just don\u2019t notice any more, but I thought this was a strong story with fun performances, maybe up to the point that \u201cKirk\u201d starts demanding the death penalty, whereupon it all gets a bit silly, and after which the body swap just wears off because it\u2019s the end of the episode.<\/p>\n

This was the last one broadcast, and the last one shot. End of the line folks.<\/p>\n

Final thoughts <\/strong><\/p>\n