Review of Star Trek (1966)

• Episode: “The Man Trap” (1966)
• Episode: “Charlie X” (1966)
• Episode: “Where No Man Has Gone Before” (1966)
• Episode: “The Naked Time” (1966)
• Episode: “The Enemy Within” (1966)
• Episode: “Mudd’s Women” (1966)
• Episode: “What Are Little Girls Made Of?” (1966)
• Episode: “Miri” (1966)
• Episode: “Dagger of the Mind” (1966)
• Episode: “The Corbomite Maneuver” (1966)
• Episode: “The Menagerie: Part I” (1966)
• Episode: “The Menagerie: Part II” (1966)
• Episode: “The Conscience of the King” (1966)
• Episode: “Balance of Terror” (1966)
• Episode: “Shore Leave” (1966)
• Episode: “The Galileo Seven” (1967)
• Episode: “The Squire of Gothos” (1967)
• Episode: “Arena” (1967)
• Episode: “Tomorrow Is Yesterday” (1967)
• Episode: “Court Martial” (1967)
• Episode: “The Return of the Archons” (1967)
• Episode: “Space Seed” (1967)
• Episode: “A Taste of Armageddon” (1967)
• Episode: “This Side of Paradise” (1967)
• Episode: “The Devil in the Dark” (1967)
• Episode: “Errand of Mercy” (1967)
• Episode: “The Alternative Factor” (1967)
• Episode: “The City on the Edge of Forever” (1967)
• Episode: “Operation Annihilate” (1967)
• Episode: “Amok Time” (1967)
• Episode: “Who Mourns for Adonais?” (1967)
• Episode: “The Changeling” (1967)
• Episode: “Mirror, Mirror” (1967)
• Episode: “The Apple” (1967)
• Episode: “The Doomsday Machine” (1967)
• Episode: “Catspaw” (1967)
• Episode: “I, Mudd” (1967)
• Episode: “Metamorphosis” (1967)
• Episode: “Journey to Babel” (1967)
• Episode: “Friday’s Child” (1967)
• Episode: “The Deadly Years” (1967)
• Episode: “Obsession” (1967)
• Episode: “Wolf in the Fold” (1967)
• Episode: “The Trouble with Tribbles” (1967)
• Episode: “The Gamesters of Triskelion” (1968)
• Episode: “A Piece of the Action” (1968)
• Episode: “The Immunity Syndrome” (1968)
• Episode: “A Private Little War” (1968)
• Episode: “Return to Tomorrow” (1968)
• Episode: “Patterns of Force” (1968)
• Episode: “By Any Other Name” (1968)
• Episode: “The Omega Glory” (1968)
• Episode: “The Ultimate Computer” (1968)
• Episode: “Bread and Circuses” (1968)
• Episode: “Assignment: Earth” (1968)
• Episode: “Spock’s Brain” (1968)
• Episode: “The Enterprise Incident” (1968)
• Episode: “The Paradise Syndrome” (1968)
• Episode: “And the Children Shall Lead” (1968)
• Episode: “Is There in Truth No Beauty?” (1968)
• Episode: “Spectre of the Gun” (1968)
• Episode: “Day of the Dove” (1968)
• Episode: “For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky” (1968)
• Episode: “The Tholian Web” (1968)
• Episode: “Plato’s Stepchildren” (1968)
• Episode: “Wink of an Eye” (1968)
• Episode: “The Empath” (1968)
• Episode: “Elaan of Troyius” (1968)
• Episode: “Whom Gods Destroy” (1969)
• Episode: “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield” (1969)
• Episode: “The Mark of Gideon” (1969)
• Episode: “That Which Survives” (1969)
• Episode: “The Lights of Zetar” (1969)
• Episode: “Requiem for Methuselah” (1969)
• Episode: “The Way to Eden” (1969)
• Episode: “The Cloud Minders” (1969)
• Episode: “The Savage Curtain” (1969)
• Episode: “All Our Yesterdays” (1969)
• Episode: “Turnabout Intruder” (1969)

‣ “The Man Trap” (1966)

Seen in 2017.

Most notable for the alien plant played by a human actor’s hand.

References here: Worldbuilding for television production, “The Most Toys” (1990), “New Ground” (1992).

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‣ “Charlie X” (1966)

Seen in 2017.

References here: “Journey’s End” (1994).

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‣ “Where No Man Has Gone Before” (1966)

Rewatching this in 2017 I found that my strongest memories of it from childhood were the ebook reader and the matt-painted terrain. Just three regular episodes into the series, the instrument panels are already inexplicably catching fire.

References here: “2036: Nexus Dawn” (2017).

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‣ “The Naked Time” (1966)

Seen in 2018.

This is where the formula comes together. The Cartesian reason-emotion dichotomy is painfully foregrounded, there is thankfully no villain or monster, Scotty “cannae change the laws of physics” but it’s fine to bet everything on a never-before-attempted cold matter-anti-matter fusion technology, with the side effect that time travel is discovered and filed away for a future use largely forbidden by the episodic nature of the series. It’s fine kitsch. This is also Spock’s first Vulcan sleep touch or “nerve pinch”, invented by Nimoy, who is starting to associate his real-world Jewish heritage with the character’s Vulcan heritage.

References here: “Assignment: Earth” (1968), “The Naked Now” (1987), “Haven” (1987).

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‣ “The Enemy Within” (1966)

Richard Matheson (writer).

Seen in 2018.

The first “He’s dead, Jim” and a Mathesonian teleporter malfunction ominously in line with the idea that the teleporter is copying and destroying matter, not moving it. This malfunction is tied both to the emotion-reason false dichotomy and a moral false dichotomy: remarkably thoughtless writing. The small dog playing an extraterrestrial creature adds levity.

References here: Internal contradiction by omission, Worldbuilding for television production, “Mirror, Mirror” (1967), “Turnabout Intruder” (1969), “The Schizoid Man” (1989), “Brothers” (1990), “Second Chances” (1993).

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‣ “Mudd’s Women” (1966)

Seen in 2018.

TOS had a decent track record on sexism for its time, but it is far from clean. Throughout the show there are constant “sexy” audio cues, gender-biased soft-focus close-ups and other authorial attempts to objectify women. There it not a whole lot else going on here.

References here: “I, Mudd” (1967).

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‣ “What Are Little Girls Made Of?” (1966)

Robert Bloch (writer).

Seen in 2018.

References here: Internal contradiction by omission.

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‣ “Miri” (1966)

Seen in 2018.

A bad case of writing for the backlot. The idea of a planet almost exactly like 1960s Earth is dropped on the floor: No hypotheses, no tests, no conclusions, no follow-up, not science fiction.

References here: “A Piece of the Action” (1968), “The Paradise Syndrome” (1968), “Past Tense: Part 1” (1995).

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‣ “Dagger of the Mind” (1966)

Seen in 2018.

The first Vulcan mind meld. The idea of a planet effectively devoted to a lunatic asylum is anachronistic for 1966, besides being a bad idea. The blank slate theory of mental development was less dated at the time.

References here: “Whom Gods Destroy” (1969), “The Death of Doctor Island” (1973), “Statistical Probabilities” (1997).

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‣ “The Corbomite Maneuver” (1966)

Seen in 2018.

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‣ “The Menagerie: Part I” (1966)

Seen in 2018.

Given what is revealed in part II, the kidnapping and hijacking don’t make sense. It is a weak cliffhanger conceit for reusing parts of The Cage. I find poor Pike’s wheelchair an amusing bit of kitsch: It is vastly less capable than Stephen Hawking’s chair, so much less so that it can only be explained as a necessity for the plot to hold.

References here: Star Trek: The Unseen Pilot (1965/1986).

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‣ “The Menagerie: Part II” (1966)

Seen in 2018.

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‣ “The Conscience of the King” (1966)

Seen in 2018.

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‣ “Balance of Terror” (1966)

Seen in 2018.

The Milky Way is approximately 10000 light years thick. A two-dimensional DMZ in it does not work.

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‣ “Shore Leave” (1966)

Theodore Sturgeon (writer).

Seen in 2018.

It starts out as a campy supernatural sitcom and ends up in far more bizarre territory. The human chauvinism of the show goes so far here that the entire crew of the Enterprise uses a pleasure planet designed for some unknown species identical to humanity, with no apparent cost or drawbacks. They take advantage of various sex kittens and other artificial people manufactured by this planet without ever considering how complicated those people might be or how they might feel about being destroyed when the crew leaves. Even McCoy’s death in this episode is simply undone. It doesn’t turn out to be faked; it’s actually undone. Conclusion: Take what you can, do not look beneath the surface, lives don’t matter in Star Trek.

References here: Sutter’s Cloud, “Once Upon a Planet” (1973), “Justice” (1987), “Captain’s Holiday” (1990), “Ethics” (1992), “The Inner Light” (1992).

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‣ “The Galileo Seven” (1967)

Seen in 2018.

Spock’s breakdown, flawed in its foundations, leads only to sitcom laugh-track shenanigans. Painful. The imperious commissioner won’t ever leave the bridge, making him representative of the negative portrayal of all authority figures above Kirk.

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‣ “The Squire of Gothos” (1967)

Seen in 2018.

References here: “Who Mourns for Adonais?” (1967).

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‣ “Arena” (1967)

Iconically shitty writing and special effects.

References here: Highlights of Star Trek TV, “Darmok” (1991), Starship Troopers (1997).

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‣ “Tomorrow Is Yesterday” (1967)

Seen in 2018.

Inane. Christopher’s interceptor has nuclear-tipped air-to-air missiles for some reason; I can’t tell whether it’s supposed to be the really late 1960s, or an alternate reality, or whether the writer simply did not care about anything. The final restoration is bullshit.

References here: “The City on the Edge of Forever” (1967), “Assignment: Earth” (1968), “First Contact” (1991).

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‣ “Court Martial” (1967)

Seen in 2018.

The gloves come off. Here it’s simply stated outright that Kirk is no ordinary human being. Apparently he’s a man of destiny like Hitler or Lawrence of Arabia (1962) but you know, good or something. That is some offhanded contempt for ordinary human beings like Gene Roddenberry.

I guess Kirk is supposed to be somebody like Fred Staples, Van Heflin’s character in Patterns (1956): Highly competitive, highly competent, and thirsty for power, as if all of these things went naturally together with compassion.

References here: Internal contradiction by omission, “The City on the Edge of Forever” (1967), “Obsession” (1967), “Pen Pals” (1989), “Who Watches the Watchers” (1989), “The Drumhead” (1991).

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‣ “The Return of the Archons” (1967)

Seen in 2018.

Another one that could easily have been very good. Any kind of wardrobe budget would have helped. This is both the first time the “prime directive” is mentioned and the first time its usefully vague concept of “living and growing” is contrasted against AI. The conclusion is technophobic: Since the machine can see that it has failed, after 6000 years of running a stable civilization, it must also be possible for the machine to correct itself, but it does not. Kirk, by author fiat, is smarter than this machine. By author fiat, it simply destroys itself.

As in Eric Greene’s interpretation, this all seems to be a metaphor for the Vietnam War. The entire society with its massive sexual violence, its lifeless thought police, its weird communal sentiments touching Sulu, and its computer cult, is a hypertechnological caricature of communism. It has not aged well.

References here: “The Changeling” (1967), “The Apple” (1967).

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‣ “Space Seed” (1967)

Seen in 2018.

Montalban is fun here but the big point of interest is how the heroes of the show all admire the psychopathic tyrant and give him massive leeway. The writers seem to do this with a wink and a nod, but it’s still authoritarian.

References here: “Whom Gods Destroy” (1969), “The Infinite Vulcan” (1973), Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982), “Datalore” (1988), “Unnatural Selection” (1989), “The Hunted” (1990), “The Masterpiece Society” (1992), “Power Play” (1992), “The Passenger” (1993), “Gambit: Part 1” (1993), “Past Tense: Part 1” (1995), “Doctor Bashir, I Presume” (1997), “Statistical Probabilities” (1997).

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‣ “A Taste of Armageddon” (1967)

Seen in 2018.

I see this as a comment both on the Pentagon’s obsession with body count in Vietnam (because they couldn’t hold territory) and on the mental disconnect that still existed between US daily life and the war, roughly until the mass protests in ‘68. It doesn’t come off the ground.

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‣ “This Side of Paradise” (1967)

Seen in 2018.

The franchise’s clearest attack—among many—on Homer’s lotus eaters. The point of interest here is the writers’ Lutheran disgust with contentment. Also, DeForest Kelley always seems to do well playing warped versions of McCoy. This is the first time he does it, suddenly transforming into a Southern good old boy with a mint julep.

References here: “The Apple” (1967), “The Neutral Zone” (1988), “The Game” (1991), Star Trek: Generations (1994).

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‣ “The Devil in the Dark” (1967) – previously

Seen in 2018.

Pleasant kitsch, with McCoy’s first “I’m a doctor, not a «whatever»!” In this case he’s not a bricklayer. He should have said xenobiologist. The Enterprise should obviously have a good dozen xenobiologists beaming down in place of the usual too-important bozos. If the deadly attacks had been believable, the special effects decent, the ecology sane, the pump MacGuffinery less idiotic and the conclusion even a little less mindlessly capitalist, this would have been the best episode. It does actually try to deal naturalistically with alien endoliths.

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‣ “Errand of Mercy” (1967)

Seen in 2018.

The original Mongol-horde human Klingons, before they got the bumps. I wonder whether the fantasy grass-roots pacifism here is another reaction to Vietnam.

References here: Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987), “Transfigurations” (1990), “Blood Oath” (1994).

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‣ “The Alternative Factor” (1967)

Seen in 2018.

Quantum woo. Easily the worst episode of season 1, but I rather like the facile idea that the dilithium MacGuffins are safe to handle without special precautions. Given that the Federation crews are nearly always wearing their pajama uniforms, it makes sense that they would favour chemically stable, mechanically robust and radiologically safe technologies like that. Compare Citizen of the Galaxy (1957) where ship’s-drive engineers are prohibited from having children because they will get irradiated sooner or later.

References here: “The Terratin Incident” (1973), “Starship Mine” (1993).

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‣ “The City on the Edge of Forever” (1967)

Harlan Ellison (writer).

Seen in 2018.

At the 50th anniversary convention in Las Vegas in August 2016, fans voted this the best episode of the franchise. It’s certainly one of the better episodes, but it is ironic just how much the fans love it given that it contradicts the tenets of the show. Specifically, Keeler’s apparently hopeless situation realistically contradicts Thomas Carlyle’s improductive great man theory, the form of hero worship that underpins Kirk’s central position.

The realistic disappearance of the Enterprise when McCoy enters the portal is an important part of that contradiction. In Ellison’s original version of the script, the Enterprise is replaced with a pirate ship, and in “Tomorrow Is Yesterday” (1967) history is perfectly restored by conservative magic, but in this episode, the (re)writers unexpectedly take the logical and dramaturgically correct approach of the butterfly effect: Given that history has changed in the loss of a relative nobody, there is no reason why any spaceship would be in orbit around the planet. Only the transtemporal “Guardian” keeps the people around it insulated from the ripple effects.

I suppose the fans love this because they know the tenets of the show are critically flawed. Here they got a brief taste of the future: The relative pragmatism, realism and dramatic stakes that would make serialized SF shows so much better than Star Trek. Reinforcing the irony, the dissatisfied Ellison wanted to be credited under a pseudonym, but—according to an unsourced IMDb trivia entry—Roddenberry forbade it because “It would have meant that Star Trek (1966) was no different than all the other ‘science fiction’ shows in mistreating quality writers, and could have resulted in prose science fiction writers avoiding contributing to the program.” In other words, Roddenberry mistreated a serious writer like other producers did and he refused to take responsibility for it. Instead, he later lied about the contents of Ellison’s version. A bit of an asshole, that Roddenberry.

DeForest Kelley playing a psychotic is delicious and the unusually high budget is very nice. Alas, the sexism is pretty bad and Spock’s miraculous reader of possible futures, as if on microfilm, is equally silly.

References here: “Yesteryear” (1973), “The Neutral Zone” (1988), “Yesterday’s Enterprise” (1990), “The Outcast” (1992), “The Inner Light” (1992), “Time’s Arrow: Part 1” (1992), “Gambit: Part 1” (1993).

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‣ “Operation Annihilate” (1967)

Seen in 2018.

Another bad communist metaphor with bad special effects.

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‣ “Amok Time” (1967)

Seen in 2018.

A complete waste of the idea that the Vulcans would have to fall temporarily from their Cartesian reason to get interested in their own reproduction. They’re mostly a funny-looking fantasy version of humans, like the Thals of Dr. Who and the Daleks (1965).

References here: “Manhunt” (1989), “Sarek” (1990).

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‣ “Who Mourns for Adonais?” (1967)

Seen in 2018.

Quoth Apollo, “Look upon my muffin top, ye mighty, and despair!” This is the first time the series comes close to genuinely good writing on its usual turf. Although the writer lands on the side of (mono)theism and condescension to women, he does at least come out against polytheism and shows some ambiguous support for second-wave feminism. It would have taken very little work to correct his mistakes: Showing Scotty for a lecher, not having Carolyn warm up so easily to sexist insults, not having Kirk tutor Carolyn on how to reject Apollo, and spilling white-out all over Kirk’s line that he’s got one god.

References here: “Plato’s Stepchildren” (1968).

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‣ “The Changeling” (1967)

Seen in 2018.

Good kitsch, including Uhura’s dark fate (she loses all of her memories in this episode and it is implied she never gets them back; this is discussed with reference to her being a woman, as if that could reasonably matter), the Jewish Shatner’s Kirk’s Jewish-mother-stereotype line about “My son, the doctor”, the dumb redshirts acting according to the later misconception that redshirts in general had especially high mortality rates, and the crappy practical effects work. Another “He’s dead, Jim”, another core-cast crewman sadly resurrected. This mixes seamlessly with relatively good ideas. It is unfortunate that the resolution is copied from “The Return of the Archons” (1967). I wonder if perhaps the name “Nomad” came from The Stars My Destination (1956).

References here: Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979), “Conundrum” (1992).

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‣ “Mirror, Mirror” (1967)

Seen in 2018.

Filed under “transporter malfunctions”, extending the moral polarization of “The Enemy Within” (1966) to the polity. For this purpose the writers make up a parallel universe—later confirmed to be persistent and special as opposed to one of quantum physics’ hypothetical infinitely many worlds—where the Federation (“Empire”) behaves like the Romulan and Klingon empires with more backstabbing. The writers waste this idea on a love story and a series of fist fights. I like evil Sulu, but it is distractingly absurd to think that the entire crew of the Enterprise would still exist and have basically the same jobs on the same ship in the same place at the same time if the culture had been radically different for centuries.

References here: “The Counter-Clock Incident” (1974), “Realm of Fear” (1992), “Crossover” (1994), “Facets” (1995).

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‣ “The Apple” (1967)

Seen in 2018.

A mashup of “The Return of the Archons” (1967) with “This Side of Paradise” (1967), but the lotus is innocence rather than a drug, and the computer controlling a human society doesn’t get to talk to Kirk before he kills it.

The theological parallel has a curious aspect to it. The name Vaal alludes to Baal. There are several gods named Baal in The Old Testament (ca. 164 BCE). The Baal closest to the writers’ intentions with Vaal is probably Hadad, a god of storms and fertility. Its “access point” temple is snake-shaped, yet its worshippers are forbidden—not lured—by Vaal to eat “the apple”. The apple consists of blank-slate psychology bullshit. Apparently these immortals have no sexual impulses whatsoever until they see Chekhov cop a feel. This means that Vaal, in line with the gradual reversal of the word “baal”’s meaning in the Hebrew Bible, represents both the god who created Adam and Eve as innocents in the second Genesis creation myth, and a false god, as in the Jewish authors’ opinion of Hadad. That’s the Baal of the heresy of Peor in Numbers, or the plain Baal of Judges. This is more likely to be an accident than a deliberate satire.

References here: “Devil’s Due” (1991).

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‣ “The Doomsday Machine” (1967)

Norman Spinrad (writer).

Seen in 2018.

Star Trek pays tribute to Moby-Dick (1851). Surprisingly, the end result is one of the least risible episodes in the original series, which is itself quite an achievement. Spock’s scenes with Commodore Decker are actually good. The ending, where Decker is killed and status quo ante is restored, is a letdown, but Spinrad’s twist to Decker’s madness is welcome.

References here: “Tin Man” (1990).

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‣ “Catspaw” (1967)

Robert Bloch (writer).

Seen in 2018.

A typical bottle episode, this one for Halloween; hard to believe it was Bloch.

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‣ “I, Mudd” (1967)

Seen in 2018.

The first direct plot serialization in the franchise. They blow it on that vile idiot, Mudd. This is the campiest, most wilfully stupid episode in the series, but it’s too theatrical to be funny.

As usual, the Enterprise is easily overpowered by the threat of the week. The writers again demonstrate that they don’t actually know the difference between a galaxy and a multiplanetary system; the 100% humanoid threat springs from Andromeda for no reason. Most foolishly, Spock assumes that every computer system has a bottlenecked centralized architecture and the humans disable the threat by simply contradicting themselves within earshot of the server. That’s less sophisticated than earlier anti-computer schlock like “Two Plus Two Makes Crazy” (1954), and it makes less sense in context. Apparently, the androids have existed with hyperintelligence and cornucopia machines—more lotus eaters—for tens of thousands of years, observing decentralized biological networks, without encountering or predicting contradictory language or implementing a decentralized network.

References here: Internal contradiction by omission, “Metamorphosis” (1967), “More Tribbles, More Troubles” (1973).

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‣ “Metamorphosis” (1967) – previously

Seen in 2018.

It bears the marks of bad writing: A cloud of “ionized hydrogen” would not be called by that name; it is false that anything that can generate a difference in electrical potential can be short-circuited; it is ridiculous to suppose, as Kirk does, that “male and female are universal constants” with universal attraction; the reference to a “maker of all things” takes the place of critical thinking; the way Sulu describes asteroids by size as “types A to M” instead of stating their mass is typical of SF writing in ignorance of the subject matter; etc. Though such flaws are normal in Star Trek, I was surprised to see the episode was written by Gene L. Coon, a formative regular on the show. It is his best work, comparable to the episodes written by recognized SF authors, though perhaps the quality is mainly down to execution. I do not refer to the poor special effects.

In place of the lotus eater motif, the plot comes from Odysseus in the arms of Calypso, an interesting love story greatly aided by Glenn Corbett as Cochrane and by the purple-lit asteroid with artificial Earth-like gravity. The mood is radically more somber and appealing than in the preceding “I, Mudd” (1967). The usual Trek pitfall of getting what you want without paying a price is rejected, as are the usual Trek fears of satisfaction and the unknown.

References here: “The Royale” (1989), “The Loss” (1990), “First Contact” (1991), “Past Tense: Part 1” (1995), Star Trek: First Contact (1996).

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‣ “Journey to Babel” (1967)

Seen in 2018.

More of the sitcom that is Vulcan culture.

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‣ “Friday’s Child” (1967)

Seen in 2018.

More Klingons and a new low for the costume department.

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‣ “The Deadly Years” (1967)

Seen in 2018.

I assume the hearing scene, where Kirk’s command is challenged on the grounds of senility, was intended to be the emotional core of the episode. It requires investment in the idea of Kirk as a special man of destiny who effectively owns the ship. The science fiction aspects of the episode are the thinnest possible veneer needed to sell the challenge to his command. As usual, a commodore fucks up. Unusually, there are plot callbacks both to Romulans and to corbomite.

References here: “Obsession” (1967), “Sarek” (1990).

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‣ “Obsession” (1967)

Seen in 2018.

A sharp contrast: Here, Kirk is moody. He suddenly has depth, shadow and history, with a mild hint of Moby-Dick (1851). This radical inconsistency of character is used quite intelligently to build dramatic tension. His command is questioned yet again and this challenge finally has the emotional weight missing from “Court Martial” (1967) and “The Deadly Years” (1967). It is not predicated on some ridiculous notion that Kirk is born to rule. Briefly, he’s human.

Antimatter in portable electromagnetic containment is used as a bomb, which is a cut above the usual level of science fiction on the show, and there is some doubt over whether the villain is sentient (hence moral), which is likewise a welcome change of pace and an actual thought experiment. Star Trek could have been like this if it had been planned as a serial drama from the beginning. “Obsession” was written by Art Wallace, best known for working on the contemporary soap opera Dark Shadows (1966), which was both Gothic and serialized. Alas the episode is merely a flash in the pan.

References here: “The Enterprise Incident” (1968), “Time Squared” (1989), “Tin Man” (1990), “Night Terrors” (1991), “Duet” (1993).

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‣ “Wolf in the Fold” (1967)

Robert Bloch (writer).

Seen in 2018.

A risible mixture of Bloch’s Freudian preoccupations—misogyny, serial killers, a “psychotricorder” and “regressive” memory scanning technology—with a sleezy, sexually charged orientalism and a trial scene where the crew makes unusually heavy use of computers to negotiate a path between Occam’s-razor realism and a scenario of inelegant fantasy with “precedent” standing in for a priori worldbuilding plausibility.

Given that Star Trek was pitched as Wagon Train (1957) “to the stars”, it bears noting that Jack the Ripper similarly appeared in Cimarron Strip (1967), an actual Western of the same year. Having been reimagined as a personification of some elemental evil close to 80 years after the real murders, the random London serial killer became eligible to appear anywhere.

References here: “Booby Trap” (1989), “A Matter of Perspective” (1990).

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‣ “The Trouble with Tribbles” (1967)

Seen in 2018.

The Klingons are more Caucasian-looking for some reason, and the word is sometimes pronounced “klin gon”. They go on shore leave on a Federation space station, notably softening their image.

References here: “The Enterprise Incident” (1968), “More Tribbles, More Troubles” (1973), “The Time Trap” (1973), “New Ground” (1992), “Blood Oath” (1994), “Penumbra” (1999).

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‣ “The Gamesters of Triskelion” (1968)

Seen in 2018.

Chekov’s “drill thrall” is ambiguously gendered and therefore portrayed as a clown.

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‣ “A Piece of the Action” (1968)

Seen in 2018.

Better than “Miri” (1966) but based on the same economic impetus to write for the backlot. Beyond establishing that the mobs handle laundry services there is no thinking about how society would work. Indeed, when pressured, one mobster claims he’s “got rights”, implying there is a system of law and order that permits mob violence. This would be a kleptocracy more like early colonial America than 1920s Chicago. The intended attraction is the comical cosplay, not the thought experiment. The best bits are the very beginning, talking about communication speed, and the very end, making first mention of the “transtator” as an essential technology.

References here: “The Paradise Syndrome” (1968), “The Royale” (1989), “Prophet Motive” (1995), “Rejoined” (1995).

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‣ “The Immunity Syndrome” (1968)

Seen in 2018.

Slow decline in the face of an impersonal, largely incomprehensible enemy, with Kirk taking heavy doses of a stimulant to cope; a relatively good premise undermined by third-act heroics.

References here: Encounter at Farpoint (1987), Gunbuster: Aim for the Top! (1988), “A Matter of Honor” (1989).

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‣ “A Private Little War” (1968)

Seen in 2018.

More Vietnam allegory.

References here: “Attached” (1993).

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‣ “Return to Tomorrow” (1968)

Seen in 2018.

Gaping plot holes. On the other hand, it does have the show’s first astrobiologist, a shockingly late arrival.

References here: Internal contradiction by omission, “The Child” (1988), “The Assignment” (1996).

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‣ “Patterns of Force” (1968)

Seen in 2018.

For an episode of shouting “Heil Führer”, the sudden lack of fist fights is conspicuous. In a dungeon, a half-naked Spock climbs on top of a half-naked Kirk, feeding slash-fiction fantasies. In the end, Kirk accurately concludes that the main problem with Nazi Germany was not some “evil” but “the leader principle”, i.e. the concentration of power, which McCoy agrees will corrupt a leader “even with the best intentions”. They stop just short of lampshading Star Trek’s fawning over its charismatic, superhuman captains. Instead, they all agree that the interwar recovery of Germany was a windfall of the ideology, which brought people together so wonderfully. It appears nobody thought this one through.

References here: “The Paradise Syndrome” (1968), “The Magicks of Megas-Tu” (1973), Mobile Suit Gundam (1979), Castle in the Sky (1986).

moving picture episode fiction

‣ “By Any Other Name” (1968)

Kitsch. The plot would not have been out of place in a 1940s serial. It is predicated upon and chafes against mind-body dualism, reaching no insights. The idea of the barrier could have come from This Island Earth (1955). As part of the crew’s plot to seduce the Kelvans with sensations, we get the first good look at the “food synthesizers”, later to be termed replicators. Spock can suddenly mind-meld through a cave wall. Absurdly, the Kelvans come to the conclusion that the most senior officers are the most suited to maintaining the basic functions of the ship on a 300-year journey. The Kelvans themselves teleport with special effects as primitive as the work of Georges Méliès.

References here: “Is There in Truth No Beauty?” (1968), “The Practical Joker” (1974), “One Little Ship” (1998).

moving picture episode fiction

‣ “The Omega Glory” (1968)

A nanar which posits that an early human colony contained both US citizens and Asian communists who, like their compatriots on Earth, fought a biological war around the 1990s. This resulted in a society of barbarous “Yangs” who idolize the US Constitution and the flag. They exterminate the “Kohms”, long-lived but sedentary descendants of the communists. Kirk gets to lecture these people on the meaning of freedom. Another blunt Cold War allegory with far too many fist fights.

The mood is unusually serious, perhaps because Gene Roddenberry wrote it himself. Notice the purple lighting in the Kohms’ beige dungeon, presumably intended mainly to make the Western set appear suitably alien; it’s quite pretty. It seems at first that this seriousness and uncommonly tasteful design work might be devoted to the idea of buying a long life at the cost of the Prime Directive, but that turns out to be a melodramatic chimaera. At this point in the franchise, transhumanist progress is not possible.

References here: “Spectre of the Gun” (1968), Alien III (1988), “Past Tense: Part 1” (1995).

moving picture episode fiction

‣ “The Ultimate Computer” (1968)

Seen in 2018.

As usual, Kirk’s superiors are all assholes, anything is evil when it threatens Kirk’s job and any computer can be destroyed by sophistry, even a computer patterned after a human mind. It follows that this story is only interesting if you believe Kirk has a divine right to command hundreds of people on the excuse of teething troubles in a remarkably careless early test of a revolutionary technology with obvious merits. Indeed, even the computer itself makes a reference to divine right, indicating it is a theist. That would be a real bug! Needless to say, it is not explored. I was more amused by the show’s second reference to John W. Campbell’s old idol, Finagle: When they’re out of a job, Kirk and McCoy drink “Finagle’s Folly”.

References here: “Where No One Has Gone Before” (1987), “New Ground” (1992), “Statistical Probabilities” (1997).

moving picture episode fiction

‣ “Bread and Circuses” (1968)

Seen in 2018.

For once, the errant, traitorous Starfleet captain is neither Kirk’s superior nor the main villain, and the satirical use of the television medium is quite clever. Hodgkin’s law enshrines painfully lazy writing.

References here: Worldbuilding for television production, “Wink of an Eye” (1968), “Who Watches the Watchers” (1989), “Transfigurations” (1990), “Unification: Part 1” (1991), “The Chase” (1993), “The Wire” (1994), “Through the Looking Glass” (1995).

moving picture episode fiction

‣ “Assignment: Earth” (1968)

Seen in 2018.

A remarkably bold effort. The opening scene alone, which paints time travel as routine in the absence of a yet-to-be-added “Temporal Prime Directive”, suggests a world of intricate plots resembling The End of Eternity (1955), an impossibly high standard for this episodic TV series. There is no reference to the invention of time travel in “The Naked Time” (1966) but you could charitably view its presence here as plot continuity. The script continues apace, predicting one of the assassinations of 1968, using the as-yet unacknowledged NSA and Saturn V footage, alluding to the Soviet Fractional Orbital Bombardment System, and sticking in a bare-bellied Playboy Playmate catgirl complete with 猫耳 at the last minute, like something out of “The Ballad of Lost C’mell” (1962).

A fractional-orbit nuke had in fact been demonstrated in 1967, and the 8K69 entered service in 1968. However, fully orbital weapons of mass destruction had already been banned by the Outer Space Treaty of 1967. Positing a US plan to escalate, and a spectacular failure, the writers show a rare willingness to date themselves in Bond-like territory. Compare “Tomorrow Is Yesterday” (1967), which nonsensically had nukes in AA missiles, but no nuclear detonation. Alas, it is easy for the crew to determine how events in history are “supposed to” play out; a conservative vision.

Strangely, all of these daring choices apparently served only to launch a pirate copy of Doctor Who (1963) with a sonic screwdriver, a concealed storage closet with a teleporter, and a young female human companion to a man from an advanced alien race, albeit a man merely bred for the purpose, as opposed to being an alien himself. Fortuitously the launch of this spin-off failed. We learned only that Spock likes cats.

References here: “Yesteryear” (1973), “Once Upon a Planet” (1973), “Time Squared” (1989), “Yesterday’s Enterprise” (1990), “In Theory” (1991), “A Matter of Time” (1991), “Sub Rosa” (1994), “Past Tense: Part 2” (1995), “Visionary” (1995), “The Visitor” (1995).

moving picture episode fiction

‣ “Spock’s Brain” (1968)

Seen in 2018.

Some strong Kirk/Spock vibes in this bizarre commentary on sexual politics. For once, the writers do a relatively good job dodging mind-body dualism.

References here: “Yesteryear” (1973).

moving picture episode fiction

‣ “The Enterprise Incident” (1968)

Seen in 2018.

For a few scenes, it looks like a second “Obsession” (1967). The acting is a notch above the norm because the usual sitcom crap is cut. As expected, Kirk’s fitness for command is questioned yet again, this time on the basis of seeking glory, which must be perfectly accurate. Alas, it’s all a ruse of idiotic proportions. There is no reason why Kirk is selected to undergo the hasty surgery—which seems more extensive than Davin’s in “The Trouble with Tribbles” (1967)—or perform this teleportation himself. His mission is predicated upon the foolish notion that the Romulans’ most prized military technology is both portable and totally insecure against immediate hostile use. As soon as the cloaking device is activated, Kirk orders red alert cancelled, as if there’s no possibility that the Romulans could think of a countermeasure to their own technology. The plot is thin, as if the audience is expected to care primarily about Spock’s threat to defect from Starfleet and cheat on Kirk.

References here: Internal contradiction by omission, “A Matter of Honor” (1989), “Unification: Part 1” (1991), “Face of the Enemy” (1993), “Penumbra” (1999).

moving picture episode fiction

‣ “The Paradise Syndrome” (1968)

The idea that aliens have sampled various civilizations on old Earth to preserve some cultural diversity is interesting. If the writers had sense, they would have used this single premise to account for all the isolated human societies the crew meets, or at least the ones that seem to have split off from civilization more than 250 years ago: “Miri” (1966), “A Piece of the Action” (1968), “Patterns of Force” (1968) and more. This is far more useful and less lazy than Hodgkin’s Law of Parallel Planetary Development. Instead of aiming for such elegance, they go straight for the ethnic stereotypes: Hollywood Indians, unchanging in their isolation, stuck in a generic primitive paradise. Noble savages. Wagon Train (1957) to the fucking stars.

From seeing this in childhood, I remembered the mysterious monument with its glyphs, its hidden room and hidden protective power.

References here: “Spectre of the Gun” (1968), “The Chase” (1993), “Homeward” (1994), “Thine Own Self” (1994), “Journey’s End” (1994).

moving picture episode fiction

‣ “And the Children Shall Lead” (1968)

Melodrama with creepy-child stereotypes. Notice Kirk and Spock’s intimacy in the elevator, inviting slash fiction, and Kirk’s greatest fear: No longer being in command.

moving picture episode fiction

‣ “Is There in Truth No Beauty?” (1968)

Seen in 2018.

Dense with weirdness. For example, as in “By Any Other Name” (1968) there is a barrier at the edge of the galaxy, and if you hit it fast enough you end up in limbo, unable even to see the galaxy behind you. The only fun part is the temporary merging of Spock with Kollos, where Nimoy gets to break character and throw some poetry around. Spock’s medallion was intended as product placement by Roddenberry himself, but to his credit, Nimoy refused to give the scripted spiel. The directorial style is unusual: Lots of subjective camera work and unusually wide angles on the interiors of the ship, including the left side of the bridge set.

References here: “Day of the Dove” (1968), “Where No One Has Gone Before” (1987).

moving picture episode fiction

‣ “Spectre of the Gun” (1968)

Seen in 2018.

This finally goes all out with the Western genre crossover, where “The Omega Glory” (1968) and “The Paradise Syndrome” (1968) merely teased it. This is “most pernicious” according to the Turkey City lexicon, and as expected, the episode is no good. I do like the French-New-Wave/arthouse quality in the choice to show partial sets, but it’s a cost-cutting measure because this is a bottle episode for the studio floor. The script thus anticipates the hated holodeck episodes of future series, and yet again, one of the main members of the bridge crew is killed and then brought back. This time, the excuse is telepathic manipulation. It could have been a neat trick to have the entire episode take place in a split second, but it is nonsensical for this to involve only the usual higher officers, and such a bizarre scenario instead of more direct probing.

References here: “The Empath” (1968), “The Royale” (1989), “Up the Long Ladder” (1989).

moving picture episode fiction

‣ “Day of the Dove” (1968)

Seen in 2018.

Aside from the nonsensical careening through space, which repeats “Is There in Truth No Beauty?” (1968) and adds a dull ticking clock, this is good stuff. Easily TOS’s finest Vietnam allegory, down to the ending, with its taste of “The Colour Out of Space” (1927).

References here: “The Emissary” (1989), “Blood Oath” (1994).

moving picture episode fiction

‣ “For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky” (1968)

Seen in 2018.

Though the treatment is superficial, the thought experiment shows unusual promise, and there is only one fist fight.

References here: “The Masterpiece Society” (1992).

moving picture episode fiction

‣ “The Tholian Web” (1968)

Seen in 2018.

A ghost story crowbarred into the series. The space suits are ugly, but at least the boarding party is wearing space suits for once.

References here: Worldbuilding for television production, “Beyond the Farthest Star” (1973), “Night Terrors” (1991).

moving picture episode fiction

‣ “Plato’s Stepchildren” (1968)

Seen in 2018.

Best known for Kirk and Uhura kissing under mind control. The first documented specifically African/Caucasian pairing in a kiss on American TV as of 2018 was Movin’ With Nancy (1967), predating the Uhura/Kirk kiss, in which his head blocks their faces. There is some controversy over whether the actors kissed at all. Anyway, British TV was a decade ahead.

Alexander’s awakening to his circumstances is a lot more interesting than anything else that goes on in this episode. Apart from cruel slavery and sexism, which do make sense, the writers fail to extrapolate anything interesting from the idea of millennia-old psychic genius supermen inspired by ancient Greece. Tellingly, they mention Hippocrates in an episode where Bones violates the Hippocratic oath by violently shaking a seriously ill patient, but there is no comment on the connection. I presume the writers weren’t familiar with any of the source material, having made no advances since “Who Mourns for Adonais?” (1967).

References here: Internal contradiction by omission, Highlights of Star Trek TV, “Rejoined” (1995).

moving picture episode fiction

‣ “Wink of an Eye” (1968)

Seen in 2018.

The premise that the Scalosians (no relation to scallions) are simply moving quickly is treated poorly. Under this premise, the accelerated would be able to communicate with a pencil. Several unnecessary secondary premises are added in a failed effort to control for this and add greater tension: “cell damage”, rapid ageing, docility. Better writers would have used “From Beyond” (1934), not “The New Accelerator” (1901), or not so poorly. Aside from this central weakness, the episode is very good by the standards of the show. The Scalosians are varied and morally grey, Kirk is entertainingly objectified, the sex scene is a little more daring than “Bread and Circuses” (1968), and the coffee scene, simple as it is, provides a tantalizing glimpse of what the show could have been with genuine attention to human behaviour: habits, flaws and comforts.

References here: “Unnatural Selection” (1989), “The Next Phase” (1992), “Timescape” (1993).

moving picture episode fiction

‣ “The Empath” (1968)

For some reason, of all the Star Trek episodes I saw in childhood, this is the one I remembered best, especially the scene of Kirk’s head injury disappearing from his own head, appearing on the mute empath, and then disappearing altogether. It’s an appealing form of fantasy healing, sharing its basic logic and emotional underpinnings with the Christ myth. Hence both Kirk and McCoy are suspended in the air as if crucified. It’s not the usual consequence-free miracle cure.

The bare and dark studio setting is a better experiment in Brechtian modernism than the half-finished sets of “Spectre of the Gun” (1968). The Vians are ultimately shown as largely rational, working on a scientific experiment that will condemn their own planet in favour of Gem’s. Thus, in picking her species to survive, they demonstrate that they have the selflessness they are trying to build in her, and so their sacrifice is noble. It’s clever, even if Kirk’s last monologue reasserts the silly emotion-reason dichotomy.

References here: “Tin Man” (1990).

moving picture episode fiction

‣ “Elaan of Troyius” (1968)

Seen in 2018.

Good potential: Diplomatic mission, alien cultures attempting to come to terms peacefully (another Cold War metaphor), subterfuge on established technological premises, and the title of “Dohlman” applied to a woman. Alas, the combination is wasted on sexism (women literally using their tears as a love potion to mind-control men, with very little cultural reaction) and a terrible Klingon battle sequence where the Enterprise cannot even pivot on its axis without using its warp drive. The ending is especially poor: Cure in hand, McCoy chooses not to apply it, letting Kirk mourn another lost love forever, for no sane reason.

References here: “Relics” (1992).

moving picture episode fiction

‣ “Whom Gods Destroy” (1969)

Seen in 2018.

This is not the last episode of TOS, but it is the ultimate episode of TOS. It’s got a purportedly positive social vision, undermined by the existence of an entire planet devoted to a lunatic asylum. It is the second such planet, after the one in “Dagger of the Mind” (1966). This new asylum is also a prison—a penal colony—and its inmates are goddamned supervillains, representing a variety of species, all of them humanoid. There is only one woman, and of course she’s green, with rouge on top of her green cheeks. Being a woman, she is sexually objectified, her murderousness hooks right into sex, and she herself is stuffed in the fridge (by being blown up!) to illustrate the evil of Captain/Lord Garth, a version and hero of Kirk who can physically transform into Kirk. The necessary outcome is a prolonged Kirk-on-Kirk fist fight, the apotheosis of gratuitous violence and archism in Trek.

Clearly the script doesn’t work. Garth’s metamorphosis is just magic, the usual mind over matter. McCoy, who should be present to deliver the cure, is stuck on the ship with Scotty, getting a few scenes doing nothing just because Kelley’s a starring actor. The cure, inexplicably delivered by the two most senior officers in McCoy’s place, is principally a MacGuffin. Its consequences for society are unexplored and that’s probably a good thing, since the writers tip their hand and imply that insanity in all species is caused by vascular and brain damage! At least it’s material. The whole driving force of the script is the same as always: Gene Roddenberry’s obsession with admiration, control and power. Garth is not a Shakespearean father figure, not a Lear but a simple straw-man caricature of Kirk, defeated by the true superman to assert the validity of great personal power.

This is topped off with Shakespeare, a reference to the mythical Solomon from 1 Kings (ca. 620–530 BCE), and surprisingly sane philosophical debate, more mature than “Space Seed” (1967), which had the better premise. The whole thing is a nanar.

References here: “The Dauphin” (1989), “Allegiance” (1990), “Statistical Probabilities” (1997).

moving picture episode fiction

‣ “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield” (1969)

Seen in 2018.

The concept is not terrible, but the script is too thin and the director tries some new tricks, notably cyclical rapid zooming, without success. It’s just a heavy-handed metaphor for race hatred, foolishly implying that both sides in any ethnic conflict are equally at fault. In particular, the closing scenes blend images of burning buildings with a frantic chase through the corridors of the ship. These buildings nominally represent the apocalypse of the alien home world but were surely meant to suggest the Washington, D.C. riots of 1968.

References here: “Lonely Among Us” (1987), “Loud as a Whisper” (1989), “The High Ground” (1990), “The Drumhead” (1991), “The Outcast” (1992), “Battle Lines” (1993), “Rules of Engagement” (1996).

moving picture episode fiction

‣ “The Mark of Gideon” (1969)

Seen in 2018.

The plot is broken on several levels: Evolution does not work that way (the word “evolution” is not even pronounced right!), there is no reason for the Gideonites to build a fake ship, the plot of love and disease makes no sense, and there’s the usual non-sequitur fisticuffs to save the day. Still, it’s an unusually successful string of evocative mysteries by the standards of the show, touching briefly on good solipsistic SF and the theme of overpopulation. It would have been very good if, dodging the plot holes, Kirk’s loneliness had been used to indicate his dependence on his crew.

moving picture episode fiction

‣ “That Which Survives” (1969)

Seen in 2018.

Another ghost story. Spock is in command for most of the episode, with doctors M’Benga and Sanchez manning sick bay, yet it’s still boring.

moving picture episode fiction

‣ “The Lights of Zetar” (1969)

Seen in 2018.

The idea of an open repository of knowledge is completely wasted. Eventually the ghosts are exorcised with high pressure, which is nonsense. This episode also has some especially poor examples of user interfaces, including McCoy staring at multi-coloured LEDs to read Mira’s medical history.

References here: “The Assignment” (1996).

moving picture episode fiction

‣ “Requiem for Methuselah” (1969)

Seen in 2018.

The MacGuffinery is really bad here. Supposedly, some large part of the crew is suffering a disease like the bubonic plague, but this is never shown and no named characters are affected in any way. The cure involves several forms of bullshit unobtainium without reference to any real substance or process. It’s just an excuse to bring in yet another overpowered threat and yet another exotic woman for Kirk to fall in love with. There are some apparently sincere references to biblical fiction as historical reality, but the writers do not go full creationist, settling for a Mesopotamian origin similar to that of the Emperor in 40K.

The resolution of the romantic drama is another good slash-fiction moment: Spock quietly touches the broken Kirk, mind-melding with him to say “Forget."

References here: “Hollow Pursuits” (1990).

moving picture episode fiction

‣ “The Way to Eden” (1969)

Seen in 2018.

Hilarious kitsch. It seems strongly influenced by Stranger in a Strange Land (1961), dividing the traits of Heinlein’s Smith between Spock (the enlightened stranger) and Sevrin (the cult leader). Sevrin’s madness and villainy, and the ironic twist to his quest for the biblically inspired “Eden”, prefigure Jim Jones and the “Peoples Temple”.

References here: “Paradise” (1994).

moving picture episode fiction

‣ “The Cloud Minders” (1969)

Seen in 2018.

The MacGuffin is a little better than average in that it actually has a property relevant to the story, but the script needed more work. Spock’s dialogue with Droxine is remarkably poor and it is not credible that the city-dwellers would have failed to detect the gas, but it is still a clever bit of worldbuilding to posit that the “troglytes” are indeed stupid, yet deserve humane treatment. Permanent effects would have made the thought experiment more interesting.

moving picture episode fiction

‣ “The Savage Curtain” (1969)

Seen in 2019.

Stupid. The dismissal of Ghenghis Khan as a mere rock-throwing killer, slavishly acting out an “evil” philosophy articulated only as seeking “gain”, is particularly insulting to a student of history. Also, Lincoln the “backwoodsman” makes a “spear” no thicker than a proper arrow; no wonder he gets killed. At least the writers themselves understood that a violent “spectacle” is not an effective philosophical contest, but while they were going against their own better judgement to have the aliens present it as such, they took the opportunity to say that words are harmless. Specifically, they used Nichelle Nichols’s mouth to defend careless use of the word “Negress”.

This is yet another one of those episodes where a technologically superior civilization overpowers the entire Enterprise to enable the fist fight of the day. In this particular case, Scotty and Sulu seem almost eager to forget the gaping hole in their security. In the final scene they express no desire to find out what happened to the generator, and of course the writers never gave the matter a moment’s thought. That being said, this episode does offer TOS’s clearest definition of what a transporter does: At this point in the franchise it is movement, not copying.

References here: Highlights of Star Trek TV, “Second Chances” (1993), “Our Man Bashir” (1995), Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World (2004).

moving picture episode fiction

‣ “All Our Yesterdays” (1969)

Seen in 2019.

An interesting premise, poorly implemented. This is one case where it would have made a lot more sense, dramaturgically, to start in medias res and not send the two highest officers down to a doomed planet.

References here: “Half a Life” (1991), “The Inner Light” (1992).

moving picture episode fiction

‣ “Turnabout Intruder” (1969)

Seen in 2019.

The final episode of the original series. A suitably double-edged finale. On the one hand, it’s a negative stereotype of 1960s feminists as overreaching, callous, evil and incompetent, with mind-body dualism and the usual inane focus on the threat to Kirk’s power trumping every other concern. On the other hand, it is moody in a good way. There’s even a moment where Kirk, diagnosed as mad, actually seems to consider the possibility that he is mad. Star Trek isn’t normally that smart.

The swap is not elegant but at least it’s a thought experiment. It doesn’t require the bizarre engineering defects of “The Enemy Within” (1966), and the addition of gender to the scenario of “The Enemy Within” is an interesting touch. I’d like to call it progressive despite the writers’ bad intentions with it, simply because it’s intimately transgressive. It’s too bad William “The Shat” Shatner doesn’t pull off the role, but this episode does not deserve its reputation as one of the worst.

The court drama isn’t good but it’s fun to see the entire core cast doing stuff that is both important and reasonable for their characters to do. All of them, that is, except poor Nichelle Nichols, who is absent without explanation.

References here: “The Battle” (1987), “The Schizoid Man” (1989), “Frame of Mind” (1993).

moving picture episode fiction