Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
https://youtu.be/N9EABv_yPHg
Matt and Sean talk about androids, immortality, and scant clothing on this episode of Star Trek: The Original Series. How many androids does it take to stitch together a full shirt?
YouTube version of the podcast: https://www.youtube.com/trekintime
Matt and Sean talk about androids, immortality, and scant clothing on this episode of Star Trek: The Original Series. How many androids does it take to stitch together a full shirt?
YouTube version of the podcast: https://www.youtube.com/trekintime
Follow us on X: @byseanferrell @mattferrell or @undecidedmf
★ Support this podcast ★
Creators & Guests
What is Trek In Time?
Join Sean and Matt as they rewatch all of Star Trek in order and in historical context.
Hi everybody, in this episode of Trek in Time, we're talking about androids, trust, and learning what it means to kiss. That's right, we're talking about Star Trek Season 1, what are little girls made of, an unnecessarily gross title for what is one of my favorite episodes. So, let's get into it now. Welcome everybody to Trek in Time, where we talk about Star Trek in chronological star date order.
And we also take a look at the world at the time of original broadcast. So we are talking about the original series, which means we are talking about Kirk, Spock, and everyone else in the original crew, which is tons of fun. And we're also talking about the 1960s, which is rather interesting. I am Sean Ferrell.
I'm a writer. I write some sci fi. I write some stuff for kids. And with me, as always, is my brother Matt. He's that Matt behind Undecided with Matt Ferrell. Which takes a look at emerging tech and its impact on our lives. And Matt, how are you today?
Hot, stuffy. Can't wait to get out of this room. How about you?
It is a little balmy here in New York City, where I'm recording from a basement, which is typically the coolest, the most easily cool, cooled room in our home because it is a basement, but it is also the most humid room because the cool tile floor at times, as I'm walking around in bare feet, I will realize, Hmm, floor is a little clammy.
Floor is a little slippery. Floor is a little gross. And yes, right now the floor, she's gross. As I mentioned at the top of the episode, we're talking about the Episode, What Are Little Girls Of? But before we get into that, we always like to visit the mailbag and see what it is that you've been saying about our previous episodes.
So, Matt, what did you find for us this week? So, so
last week we talked about The Balance of Terror and there was a lot of interesting comments on that episode. Uh, the first one was from Steven C. Photos. So many good performances here, but I love how Nimoy played it with his facial expressions when Stiles goes on his first racist rant on the bridge.
He almost looked like his feelings were hurt. But I think seeing what the Romulans looked like for the first time had Spock mentally unpacking Vulcan history and their potential connection to the Romulans. He was strategizing. This then comes out in the conference room as Spock says, it's likely their two races may have had common lineage and why he was so adamant about not showing weakness.
Also, Kirk sent Uhura to the navigation station while Stiles went to help out on weapons. Imagine the TV visual of having a competent woman of color in 1966 taken out of her role and put into a very difficult position when the stakes are at the highest. I'll criticize the original series for its misogyny all day, but this, I think, was a super badass moment.
It showed Uhura's abilities and the confidence that the captain had in her, and she didn't show an ounce of hesitation. I agree. I mean, it was such a small moment. But it, it, it probably carried a lot of weight at the time. And in fact, it's kind of still reverberating now because Steve brought that up.
It is. And Matt and I, in talking about the original series, we keep revisiting. Like there are moments of misogyny. There are moments of attitudes of the era where clearly there was need for growth, but the show was also at the time trying to be progressive. So we need to give it credit where credit is due, while also being critical when criticism is due.
And to do one is not to expunge the other from our response to it. So I completely agree with this comment. I love that moment, and I do think that it does feed into the history of the show. We know that Martin Luther King Junior, uh, urged Nichelle Nichols to stay on the show because she felt like it was a limiting role and she wanted to move on to something else.
And he urged her to stay on the program because in his words, you are the first face of our kind to be in a role like this. It's important for you to stay there. So I don't disagree at all. That moment does stand out. There are lots of moments like that in the series where it stands out that the, the captain turns immediately without hesitation and says, you're the communications officer, but can you come over here and help fly the ship?
And there's not a better way. Batting of an eye amongst anybody, so, and they picked up that thread and ran with it in Strange New Worlds in such a beautiful way of basically saying she was kind of of a savant and could have had her pick of roles. on the bridge. And I love that for the, for the character background.
Next comment was from NumaTrekkie. Discovered the podcast a few months back, already an undecided viewer, and binged my way to now. I gotta say the bit where Sean asks Matt to sing a few bars. Great. Get to me every time. One little thing that is missing since Enterprise ended, I am no longer reminded with every episode what the registration number was of the ship.
I miss it. That's right. This is easily one of, if not my favorite original series episodes. Fantastic tension, Vulcans, one of the first episodes to really hint at a much larger galaxy that we will get to know over the next few decades. I agree. It is kind of the first one where they started to kind of open that door.
We started to see more of a broader universe than we had. Yeah. And then we had a comment about wrong answers only. What's the next episode about? Which is the one we're talking about today. What are little girls made of? AJ Chan wrote this little script in the style of Jeopardy. Alex, the answer.
Carbohydrates, proteins, some fats and DNA comprised of elements, hydrogen, carbon. Oxygen, Nitrogen, Spock. What are little girls made of? Alex. Correct! Spock is now in the lead with $1, 701.
Nice score.
Yes. And then finally, I just want to kind of bring these up. There was also a lot of comments like this. Could part of why this episode is so good be that Roddenberry experienced something like this in the Navy?
This is, this and the Strange New World's version are just the best. And then Mark Loveless wrote, like Matt, this is a cert, this is certainly my favorite episode of the original series. Every submarine movie, every sci fi film where they are in a ship that's isolated and in under some kind of threat. I remember this episode.
I agree. It's like, there's something interesting about the trappings of the plot of this that creates such wonderful suspense and tension. that it's been used in Das Boot, Hunt for October, this episode, all over the place. And even though it's the same plot, it's like, Each one's unique because of the characters and the tension of what's happening in the moment with the characters that you're getting to know.
I love it. Yeah. It always creates riveting kind of entertainment.
Well, it taps into something primal. I think there is an aspect to this that you could tell the same story about a group of. Hunters in a dark forest and there's a creature on the loose that is hunting them using sound and that they figured out sound is the issue and that when they hear certain noises coming in the forest that they know they need to huddle down and be quiet and there's something visceral in that and I am always reminded in episodes like this of
the simplicity of the game hide and seek when you're a kid and you get that tickle in your stomach as you're hiding and you know the person who is seeking you is just on the other side of the door. You're doing it for fun, but there is something in our DNA that is triggered in that. And as a storytelling device, it is very, very effective.
And it happens again and again and again in storytelling. So when I see something about submarines, or The Dark Hunter in the Woods, a movie like Predator has a certain amount of submarine like quality to it that I think we see it again and again and again because it is so visceral to us. So I absolutely love it as well and, uh, that's why that episode is amongst the best of Star Trek, but also one of my favorites, one of my personal favorites as well.
On now to our discussion about the current episode, What Are Little Girls Made Of? And as always, that noise in the background is, of course, the read alert, which means it's time for Matt to tackle the Wikipedia description. Yes, this is a straight up Wikipedia description, but Matt, I think you'll be pleased.
Okay. In search of Nurse Chapel's fiancé, renowned exobiologist Roger Korby, the Enterprise visits the icy planet Exo 3, where Korby has discovered an ancient machine that allows him to duplicate any living person with an android replacement. Korby plans to use the machine to spread controlled androids throughout the Federation, and replaces Captain Kirk with such a duplicate in an effort to take over the Enterprise.
Which says just about everything it needs to say, in my opinion. This episode directed by James Goldstone, who, interesting side note, had directed the second pilot for Star Trek's original series. That went so well that people on the crew and the cast advocated for his return. And then this episode required rewrites while they were shooting it.
As a result, this episode's shooting was delayed by eight shooting days. And as a result of that Goldstone would never be asked back to direct again. It seems a little unfair, seems a little bit like somebody got thrown under the bus because when you're dealing with rewrites, the rewrites will be done by Roddenberry.
I wonder how much of this was Roddenberry potentially saying to the network, yeah, we've had unnecessary shooting delays. I'm not bringing this director back. But it was actually because the script was being rewritten. I think maybe somebody got blamed for something that wasn't their direct fault.
The episode is written by Robert Bloch and its original air date is October 20th 1966. Quick note about Robert Bloch, he is, He's one of the gold standards when it comes to pulp fiction of the 1960s. He was a very prolific and talented writer. He was born in 1917. He passed away in 1994. He was an American fiction writer, primarily of crime, psychological horror, and fantasy, much of which has been dramatized in radio, cinema, and television.
He also wrote a relatively small amount of science fiction. His writing career lasted 60 years, including more than 30 years in television and film. He began his professional writing career immediately after graduation from high school at the age of 17. He's best known as the writer of Psycho in 1959, which was the basis for the Hitchcock film.
Bloch wrote hundreds of short stories and over 30 novels, and he was a protege of H. P. Lovecraft, who is, of course, the originator of Cthulhu, Cosmic Horror, Dark Psychological horror, and Bloch included in this episode a nice throwback to H. P. Lovecraftian Horror. And I do love this as a little Easter egg, when Rock mentions the old ones.
The Old Ones is an H. P. Lovecraft reference to essentially the gods and monsters that existed before humanity could be aware of them. So the Old Ones was a reference to demonic, dark beings of cosmic power that haunted humanity. So I love the inclusion of the Old Ones within this script, and a very sci fi, and a very, uh, um, almost pragmatic way.
The old ones are simply the people who built these machines. Yet, it's a throwback to an H. P. Lovecraft reference. This episode, as always, has the original crew, William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, we don't see McCoy, we don't see Scotty, we see Nichelle Nichols very, very briefly on the bridge, but I do want to make a note about that moment that we see her, we do not see Sulu, we see a lot of of Nurse Christine Chappell, played by Majel Barrett.
And it is pointed out in the trivia of this episode that this is basically the only episode of the original series that focuses heavily on her as a character. And I'm sure Matt and I will reference the introduction of Strange New World, a deeper backstory of Christine Chappell and how it informs this episode.
Amongst the extras, the guest stars in this episode, we have Michael Strong as Dr. Roger Korby. Interesting note about Strong, he was one of the charter members of the Actors Studio, which is considered one of the premier schools in which actors study method acting. So he was in a very keen circle of talent
in the fifties, who were establishing that school at the very, very beginning. And there was a performance that Strong did of a Chekhov one man play, which Paul Newman saw, and my notes point out that Paul Newman was so impressed by Strong's performance of this one act Anton Chekhov play that he created a short film in which
he had this 25 minute film, which focused completely on Strong as the main character. And the film was shown briefly in theaters around New York City. And it is now lost to time. Nobody has a copy of this. And it is considered It was written about in the New York Times in which his performance was called Top Flight A One Man Tour De Force by Michael Strong.
It is considered a lost masterpiece. I find myself really, really sad that it doesn't exist. I would love to see that piece of work. Uh, Michael Strong was a character actor. He was in a lot of TV shows, a lot of movies. He was one of those original that guys who, when you see him, you know, you're going to get competent work.
And I love him in this episode. I think he brings a lot of humanity to a role that is intended to challenge the very idea of whether he is in fact human. We also have Sherry Jackson as Andrea. We'll talk about more more about her in a bit. Ted Cassidy as Ruk, who is of course Lurch from The Addams Family.
There's also Harry Basch as Dr. Brown, Vince Deadrick as Security Guard Matthews, and Budd Albright as Security Guard Rayburn. Fun fact about Security Guard Matthews and Rayburn. To my memory, Matt, these are our first red shirts. These are our first gentlemen who beamed down to the planet only to be dispatched.
So we have a number of firsts in this episode because another first that I noticed we're watching these, of course, in stardate order, which is production order. This is the first time that I can recall where a woman is challenged with her understanding of humanity simply by kissing Captain Kirk. Yep.
Yep. On now to some notes about Sherry Jackson. I referenced that kiss. Well, Sherry Jackson is. At this point in her career, she's not doing a whole lot. She's in this episode. She's in a couple of other episodes of TV shows like Perry Mason. She was most known though, as a child actress. She was in the Danny Thomas show.
She played the oldest child in that show for five years until she reached about the age of 18 when they had the character leave to ostensibly go off to school. And. She plays this android character in this episode in an outfit that, little fun fact, this episode, at the time, I couldn't have put what I'm about to say into words, but looking back on it now, I think that this episode is the episode when a young Sean Ferrell realized that he was heterosexual.
Because this episode, as I would watch this, ho boy, ho boy, Sherry Jackson. Yes. Uh. Uh, fun fact about her outfit, it, she apparently wore it to the commissary on the studio lot. Oh boy. And brought the commissary to a complete halt and complete silence when she walked in. She also, the costume was worn at a Star Trek convention years later, and they had a model wearing the outfit kind of like
as a nostalgic, like remember this outfit and apparently the model was approached by all sorts of smarmy gentlemen at the convention who were all trying to get her phone number. And Sherry Jackson had to say about the costume that they had a person, a costumer on set during the entire shooting of the episode, just to make sure that she didn't accidentally fall out of the costume or reveal too much from the side.
So yeah, they were aware of what they were doing in this episode in the filming of it. On now to taking a look at what was the world like at the time of original broadcast. We're talking about October 20th, 1966. And at the top of the pops, we have The Four Tops singing, Reach Out, I'll Be There. A very, very well known and classic song, which I know Matt knows all the words to, but let's just get a few bars, not the whole thing, Matt, please.
Great. And at the movies, we're back with Dr. Zhivago. This is a film that spent six weeks at this time of year at number one. And this is right in the middle of those six weeks. We've talked about Zhivago before, and we'll talk about it again because we haven't reviewed all the episodes that were a part of that time period.
And on television, we've talked about shows that would have been competing with Star Trek. Not only in the evening that it was airing, which would have included shows like Bewitched, which we talked about last week, but other programs like Bonanza, Red Skelton, Lucy's, The Lucy Show, The Jackie Gleason Show, uh, Green Acres, and this week we're talking about a little show called The Beverly Hillbillies.
That's right. The Beverly Hillbillies was amongst the shows like Bewitched, which was earning roughly twice as much in viewership as Star Trek would. Star Trek was getting about a 12 on average for the first season. Beverly Hillbillies along with Bewitched was getting just under 24 on the Nielsen ratings.
The Beverly Hillbillies is of course the franchise about the Clampetts who accidentally find oil on their property and then end up moving, as you would, Beverly Hills, where you would continue to live as if you needed to hunt possums to survive. A very, very dated program if you have to get down to it.
And in the news, lots of articles in the New York Times about race riots, ongoing conflict in Vietnam, in which the president of the United States, president Johnson at the time was advocating for Vietnam to end a war it quote, can't win, which I think we all know how that turns out. It would be a slow slog for the next six years until the U S would finally pull out with any clear victory.
So on now to our discussion about this week's episode, we have a number of things to talk about within the episode, Matt, but I was hoping we could possibly start with some backstory that when they made this wouldn't even have been the backstory. I'm talking, of course, about Strange New Worlds. There are two things, two points of connection that I wanted to talk about, and I'm hoping you'll be interested in jumping in from this angle as well.
The big one is Chapel. The smaller one is Uhura. And I think I'd like to start with a small one first. I don't know if you picked up on this. There is a moment in this episode where they're on the bridge and Chapel is shown to be extremely relieved to hear the voice of her fiance, Roger Korby, but there is some confusion about his response to Chapel even being there, there seems to be almost a disconnect of emotional response.
And so Chapell seems moved, but also a little upset and leaves the bridge. And in the background, we see Uhura look like for a split second, like she wants to go to Chapell in some kind of way to support her and then stops and puts her finger to her teeth as she kind of bites her finger. I don't know if you picked up on that, Matt.
All of that for me was immediately like Strange New Worlds. I was looking at that and I was like, this is a relationship that is demonstrated to be a friendly one where the two of them are very close in Strange New Worlds. And even more subtly, I feel like they directed the actress in Strange New Worlds to do that move of biting her finger occasionally in a way that was reminiscent of Nichelle Nichols,
very probably her instinctive choice to show tension by saying like, as a, as an actress, she probably just decided to bite her finger as a way of demonstrating that she was emotionally caught up in a moment. I find moments like that. I can't help but think we talked about this last week, the depth of studying the original series that they have obviously done in order to craft
these spaces for what would have been considered second tier characters to really flesh them out in a marvelous way. I love that little moment for Uhura. Was that a moment that caught your eye or am I the only one who was, who was seeing
that? I totally did not pick up on that. at all. But now you describe it.
I'm remembering that scene. It just didn't click for me, but you're right. It's like they did the little, that little bit. It makes you realize how much care they put into Strange New Worlds to make sure that things tied. The thing that caught my attention was when Nurse Chapel says to Spock on the bridge, have you ever been engaged, Mr.
Spock? And I was like, Nurse Chapel knows he's been engaged, but I thought that I was like, wait, no, that's because of Strange New Worlds at the time this episode was made they, he wasn't engaged. So it was kind of like this weird, it's been retconned. And when she said that, my first thought was, that's a dig.
Like she was digging at Spock by saying that, but she was only digging at Spock because of Strange New Worlds. And so it's like, my mind started to break of like, I feel like we're in some kind of weird time loop alternate reality because of that show.
Yeah. I had the exact same response, which was, At the time, it would have been a subtle tease of, if you've never been in love, Mr.
Spock, then I can't, I don't know what to tell you, but it changes entirely with Strange New Worlds into a, I know you've been engaged, and I am teasing you in a way that maybe Kirk isn't even picking up on, and Spock's response of like, I'm, he's calling her nurse through the entire thing. He's not calling her Christine.
So again, with Strange New Worlds, it builds up this backstory of he is still dealing with like, this relationship is complex for me. I am trying to be as professional as possible in order not to struggle with it. This is also Roger Korby, again, Strange New Worlds has inserted the backstory of Korby is the person that she gains a fellowship with to go study and she is thrilled about that.
And in Strange New Worlds, that's the tension of what breaks her and Spock up. And we now know that her fellowship leads to romance, which leads to a, a betrothal with Korby. So here we now have her coming back to find her fiancé. And Kirk makes a reference to, I understand you forg You gave up on a path of research in order to serve aboard a starship just so you could be out here looking for him.
That's, at the time, would have just been a throwaway explanation of like, why is the nurse so concerned about finding this guy? They built an entire backstory. They built an entire like conflict arc between her and Spock and the tension here and her relationship to Korby being one that basically supplanted her romantic relationship with Spock and the conflict that she feels between these two men.
So I found all of that really, really terrific and enjoyable. So I'm, I'm finding strange new worlds, informing a new way of enjoying this What is it now? 60 year old program, which I really didn't go into this rewatch of the original series, anticipating that it would inform it and the degree that it does.
But I really, really find it working. So we have Nurse Chapel and I wanted to stay with her for a brief moment. It's interesting that I mentioned before the rewrite that was required, the original series, original script for this episode as written by Bloch, was a wealthy woman has hired the enterprise to go looking for Roger Korby, not even out of a romantic relationship, but out of some kind of personal concern, or maybe she was invested in his research in some way.
And Roddenberry, we, we take a lot of shots at Roddenberry occasionally where we're like, he was a guy with grand ideas, but when it came to the nuts and bolts, he wasn't always the most helpful in crafting out the series. But here's a case where I think Roddenberry's instincts were really, really spot on.
So I want to give him credit where credit is due. His response to that in the script, the reason for the rewriting was to basically say it doesn't make any sense that somebody wealthy would be able to hire the Enterprise. That can't happen. And there needs to be a personal relationship here. So Roddenberry's rewrites were to put Chapell in as the primary focus of the episode with a personal relationship, a loving romantic relationship with Korby.
And all of that feeds far better than what would have been in place before when she meets Andrea, Chappell's the tension between Chapel and Andrea, her belief that Korby has been having an affair. All of that is born of Roddenberry's restructuring of the episode. So I think all of that, I really can't envision this episode working to the level it does
without this as the primary focus. How do you feel about Chappell's relationship and what it does to become the hub of this episode? Do you feel like it works, even though she's not a main character of the show, even though we will have her as a background character only from here on out? Do you feel like this is time well spent with this character and how do you feel about it focusing around her for the storytelling here?
I think my answer might depend on when I watch this episode, because Strange New Worlds, Sean, has changed my view of Chapel forever. And so for me, I loved it. I loved her being the focus of this, spending time with her, seeing how it related to the Strange New Worlds episodes, how this character's evolved, what it means for all that kind of stuff.
But then when I was trying to put myself back into, I don't know, teenage Matt, When I first saw this episode, uh, I did, I've always liked this episode. It's never been one of my favorite, one of my favorites, but I do like it. It's, I don't know. It's like, it's, it's kind of weird that it's a background character used just for this one time, but it does kind of hold together.
And I do, I didn't know that backstory of why it was rewritten the way it was, but I can't imagine this episode working without Chapel as the through line.
Yeah, I can't imagine, I mean, unless you used Uhura or somebody else, I don't understand where you would get any kind of emotional connection. without it being a romantic one.
And if it's a romantic one, I can't imagine you getting away with saying, well, the enterprise is doing a favor to a wealthy woman, or she's been, she's hired the Federation to go find, like, none of that makes any kind of sense logically within the structure of the show, which up to this point, we are seeing them develop what the Federation is in very clear ways as it's quasi military science exploration.
That is something that would become fully fledged as we move forward through decades of storytelling in this universe. I can't imagine saying like, yeah, they're kind of like guns for hire occasionally. Like none of that makes sense within the, what we know of Star Trek. So for me, they had to create this kind of relationship and it only makes, it can only work if it's somebody on the crew.
And if it's not going to be Chapel, it's got to be one of the other women on the show. And So, yeah, it made sense to me in isolation. I always appreciated this episode and with Strange New Worlds, it just adds a whole new dimension that I think really, really works. So this is also where we get introduced to Dr.
Korby and of course, we're going to be looking at Korby from two different angles. We have, I think you can look at this and say, let's look at Korby the man. Let's take a look at the Korby that Chappell would have been in a relationship with. And the reason why I suggest that is I find it really interesting that Korby, I don't know, I kept thinking about Data while I was watching this episode.
And thinking in terms of is it strange that when they put together Next Generation, that they effectively created a whole backstory of a line of research into Android technology without pulling in Roger Korby as an element of that, because I kept thinking they planted a seed here without knowing it was a seed that really could have borne fruit
in the next generation and I, like you've got Ruk, who's this massive Android that is introduced as he's been on this planet by himself to the point where he doesn't even recall the past. He's been there so long that his memory banks, he has hard time accessing it until current events with his conversation with Captain Kirk.
Leads him to be able to reawaken the, Oh, that's right. We destroyed the old ones because they were going to turn us off. And I kept thinking like, wow, it really feels like somebody in the writer's room at Next Generation should have said, we've got this Android character, why don't we link him to all of that?
Somebody in the writer's room? Do you feel that way as well? You mean, you mean Roddenberry? Yeah. Yeah, maybe. He, I mean, he was, he was very instrumental in the setup of the Next, next generation. So it is a little surprising that nobody made reference to this ever. And I was thinking the same exact thing. I kept thinking of like Android and Dr.
Soong and all that kind of stuff. And I was like, why, why did they do a whole new thing for him, but never referenced this? It would have been a clear tie, uh, tie to this, on top of which many of the same ideas are explored with Android, I presume. Yeah. Especially as the shows go on, the new Picard shows, the whole thing of Androids just want to be allowed to exist and they're Yeah.
People are afraid of them because of change and, and they want to become independent and they look down upon humanity. It's like, that's a common trope that they were exploring. And it's like, I don't, I couldn't put two and two together, Sean. Other than either they just forgot about this episode and didn't care about it.
Again, how are you going to
forget about this episode?
Yeah. Or they had ideas around, um, for like Data of like, you know, how Dr. Soong looks like Data. They may have thought about this whole thing of we want somebody more current. Because the old ones, they may have not wanted to deal with the old ones, which is why they may have distanced themselves from it.
But it is funny. It's the same exact from, it's just a different take on it.
I feel like if I was in that writer's room, I would have proposed like, okay, you want Dr. Soong, how about making him a protégé of Korby. He was somebody who had stumbled upon this planet and actually worked with Korby, the android Korby, for a certain amount of time and then managed to escape before they converted him into an android.
So he was taking some of this design work from the old ones and You really could have introduced some really fascinating, deep history for the technology that Data is based on. It could have been really, really different. And I'm not complaining about Soong and what they do with Data. It just strikes me as I, maybe it's the, the writer side of me where I'm like, I want to connect these things because what about the cool factor here that could have come out of this, especially connecting directly back to it?
A pinnacle episode of the original series. This is such a good episode. So strongly written and performed. So Korby as a man, I found him, first of all, I've already talked about the performance. I think the performance here is terrific. And as a character, I find him so he's such a touching character. He comes across with such humanity and compassion while also having this dark fantasy of what this could mean for humanity of like, the good news is we could actually replace everybody.
And that's so like, when that is expressed, it's really a bum, bum, bum moment. But up to that point, he's really just like, he's impassioned to see Chapel when he finally sees her face to face. I love the directorial choices around when the androids are asked questions that they don't quite yet know how to respond to, and they just kind of give a placid smile.
And you can almost see when you find out later, like, oh, these are androids, like that's them searching memory banks to figure out what their response should be. I love the touches of that. How did you feel about the performances between the humanity of these characters and then the android nature of who they actually are?
I'm having trouble divorcing some things like you clearly are doing. Um, if I do what you're talking about. And just look at the humanity of it. I thought it was great. I thought the performances were great. I thought everybody did a really good job with this. Part of the problem I'm having is there's aspects to the way this is written that come across as, is it written this way because of the time?
This was written because there's some, the whole, we're going to get to this, but the whole, the kiss, like,
yeah,
uh, where Korby's talking to them and Chappell's feeling very vulnerable and is accusing Korby of making a geisha. And he says, Oh, there's no feelings here. And the way he proves that to her, is to have her act like a geisha.
It was like, what, what, what are you doing? How, how would, what? Yeah. I don't understand how this logic fits. And yeah, by the end of the episode, it turns out he's an android, even though his consciousness has been put into that android, but it's still like, the logic, the circle doesn't square there. It's like, it's like, I'm just like, I don't understand why this would be the, the, the, the proof that it's, I don't know.
So for me, that's why I'm having trouble kind of divorcing Korby the man, because Korby the man did that. And it was kind of like, what the WTF was basically what was going through my head, the entire, entire scene. And so it's like, for me, I'm having trouble disconnecting those two things. Like you are.
Yeah. I feel like that you mentioned it yourself. You said, I wonder if it's because of the time. I think it is. I think for me, that's one of the elements of this episode that stands up as don't forget, this is 1966. So we're going to have her kiss Kirk and then slap Kirk because that will be slightly titillating for the audience.
It will be a little bit of an unexpected, like, but having her kiss Kirk, Ooh, that's exciting. And then having her slap him, that's unexpected. And you're right. It doesn't quite. Do anything to debate, like, Christine, I swear, there's nothing between me and her. I've never even touched her. We have never had any kind of physical sexual relationship.
But look, I can make her kiss people. But look, I can make her kiss people. And she has zero response to any of this because she does exactly what she's told. And like, like you're pointing out, like, you're not making the right argument. But I, I watch that and I'm like, Oh, it's 1966.
Right. But here's where my problem is.
By the end of the episode, when you find out he's an Android, his consciousness has been put in there, but clearly something probably got lost in translation and he's not completely, you know, thinking straight. And so it's like, by the end of the episode, it's kind of like, Okay, well, maybe that explains why he did the weird demonstrations and why he said, I'm not looking to replace you, Kirk.
Yeah, you are. It's like, like, there's so much things that he so many things he does that come across as really schlocky 1966 TV writing and trying to be titillating at the time and just the misogyny at the time. But at the same time, by the end of the episode, it's kind of like, well, no, it kind of makes sense that he did that because he's broken.
He's an android. And so it's like, he would. Yeah. So, That's why I'm like, I'm not sure if it was 1966 writing or if it was actually deliberate.
I think it was deliberate and I also, I also think that within his Android logic, and of course we know that he, by the end, we know that Korby is an Android, but we also know that he considers himself Korby.
And I think that the logic that he is making, and it's very, for me, it's very, very subtle, but I, I think that it is there to say, I'm not looking to replace you, Kirk, because I'm looking to actually upgrade you. That I think is the unspoken. I am looking to put your full consciousness into play. So you will continue.
You need not be fearful of your physical being here dying because you, Kirk, will continue in the form of this Android. And that logic is dark. And is ultimately shown to be a lie when the revelation of this is not Korby, this is an Android is made. And it becomes this kind of, for me, this isn't a poorly written episode because it wrestles with what does it mean to be human?
What does it mean to have individuality? If you could copy an individual entirely top to bottom, including psychologically. Is that, in fact, the same person? Is that a version of immortality? These are big sci fi questions, and I think the episode touches on all of them and does it in a way that I find engaging and very Trek.
And I don't think, for me, the wrestling at the end, I, I love the depiction of Korby at the end when it is revealed his android nature and he gives the backstory. Like when they found me, I, my legs were gone, I was dying. There was nothing that was going to come out of there alive. They made this and now I will live forever.
And as you're pointing out, Something got lost in translation, and the idea of individuality was not lost. So he continues to believe, I am Korby, the impassioned shout at the end. I love that shout. I am Roger Korby. It's so, it's so meaningful to him to be accepted as Roger Korby. And it presents a lot of the ideas that the series of Star Trek and the world of Star Trek, as we move to the next generation with Data, continues to wrestle with, right up to the episode of, is Data a life form?
Does he have free will? This feeds directly into all of that. And I, and I really appreciate the subtlety with which a lot of that is given. It sounds like some of that subtlety stands out to you as maybe some blank spaces where. It feels a little looser.
No, no. I picked, I picked up on all that subtlety and I do like it.
For me, it was the not subtle parts that were kind of rubbing me the wrong way. It was like that, like I said, the, you made a geisha kiss the captain. There you go. There's proof. Yeah. It's like, no, you're, you're just making it look like a geisha. So it's, that's the stuff for me. It was the in your face stuff that I thought was not as well done where it was the subtle stuff that you just talked about that I thought was fantastic.
So it's like. When they spoke softly in the writing, I thought it was really strong. And then when they did the titillating stuff, it was like,
ah,
God, dial it down a little bit.
Let's leave the titillation to the end. We'll, we'll revisit like the ideas of like the kiss and stuff like that toward the end.
I'm more interested right now in talking about the, uh, The tone of the episode, I find a lot of, again, it's Bloch. There's a certain horror aspect to this, the idea of, of replacements, the idea of simulants that are, whether it is a horror story where the creature from the other world has emerged into this reality as masquerading as a human, or whether it's a Android that's been built to look identical to a human.
I think that horror does that, sci fi does that, it's the same storytelling, it just has a different drapery to it. This episode has that in a kind of sci fi way, but it also touches a kind of horror aspect, especially with the dispatching of the redshirts in this. We talked at the beginning, like, this is, as far as I can recall, our first redshirts where they come down to die, they actually benefit from more dialogue, a little bit more of a personality, where we get to see these guys kind of, like, Being good at their job, and then they get killed by Ruk, um, and the way that they're killed, one guy is thrown down a pit that they are told, like, it's effectively bottomless.
Like, whether he hit a ledge or not is pointless because it's so deep. He's dead. And the other guys, uh, effectively, it looks like his neck is snapped or he's smothered by Ruk. So he's dead up at the top. So how did you feel about the, the storytelling here around the murderous android, the programming that says protect, and when that's not given guardrails, it turns into outright murder.
How did you feel about the, the horror side of this episode?
This is my favorite aspect of the show. The invasion of the body snatchers aspect of this and the androids is a life form thinking that you can control them, but you can't thinking that you have guardrails in place, but those guardrails can be like logic'd out of so easily.
That's again, a trope that we've seen a thousand times. There's a bad, you may remember this Sean.. I was like 13 and on HBO, there was this movie called Android that was on, like, it felt like every day. And I watched it every day. And it was A really bad, it's a bad B movie. It's really bad. If you go, if you find it, it's horrible.
But what I loved about it as a kid was the ideas it was tackling. I knew the acting was bad. I knew the writing was bad, but the ideas were so cool. And that's the episode Measure of a Man on Next Generation. It's this one. It's like, I love, I love this concept um, so much. Um, I even did a Masters project that was
around this
idea.
So it's like, Yeah, so I, I, this is right up my alley. I love the, the body horror aspect of it, the invasion of the body snatchers aspect of it, the replacement simulant kind of thing. I thought they did it extremely well. Um, the Ruk stuff. Um, can you smell what's cooking, Sean? The Ruk stuff. I can. Yeah. Uh, it, it, this, it, it, it suffers a little bit because of the, the time.
It's got that Doctor Who quality where he's walking around clearly with pillows shoved in for big arms.
Yeah.
And it looks ridiculous. Um, that is kind of laughable, but if you can look past, correct, but if you look past the Doctor Who ness cheapness of it. It's really good. Like that actor does a great job as Ruk and he's horrifying whenever he comes, you know, slinking around the thing.
And even though he's got kind of weird makeup on, it's like, he's terrifying. Yeah. He's really kind of scary. And they, they set it up really, really well. I thought it was well done.
I thought that the Revelation that it was androids was also deftly handled. It wasn't like they beamed down, met somebody who attacked them.
They shot them and shot their arm off. And it turned out it was android. It was far more subtle. It was building to like, why are these people so protective? Why are they so demonstrably uninterested in interacting with people that they supposedly know. And it's this drip, drip, drip of like, something's not right.
Something's not working the way it's supposed to. When finally it's revealed what the assistant is. And then we have the tumbling down of like, Oh yeah, Andrea's an android. You don't need to worry about her. I have no feelings for her because of this. And Ruk, who is this enormous monstrosity of a thing.
He's literally like, there are moments where he steps through doorways where he's effectively the door. He fills every corner of the shape and the sequence where he's hunting Kirk through the tunnels. I think that that's marvelously well shot for a show that at this point, this is the seventh episode in production or it's the 10th episode in production, but it's the seventh aired.
And the set for this one feels like there are a couple of moments where you can tell they've reused an arch. They've reused a stairway, but they've moved the camera and they've changed the lighting to get a different effect. Well done. So that they're giving the impression. But that set would have been expensive to build.
It's multi story. And so you get dramatic angles when Kirk is fleeing and you get that great shot of Kirk hiding behind the rocks and the doorway beyond him is lower than him. And you see Ruk come through and the creepiness of it mimicking Nurse Chapel of this large figure sounding like Majel Roddenberry saying, Captain Kirk, let me help you.
Unnerving. Well, here's my
problem with Ruk, here's my problem with Ruk's size though. I mentioned how he has the puffy things. I actually find it scarier for like an android. Somebody being like me, somebody who's like just a normal skinny looking dude that literally can pick up a massive dude and chuck him across the room.
There's something scarier about that versus somebody who looks like a pro wrestler that's twice your size. That to me would have been more horrifying. And by making him this gargantuan thing. I think they kind of like undercut it a little bit because he's visually imposing where it would have been scarier if he was just very kind of meek looking but then like holy crap he's like tossing people around the room and that that to me would be scarier but on that note I don't know how you felt about him tossing there's multiple scenes where he picks Kirk up and like is throwing heaving him around and I thought I was shocked how well they did that for the time because he was clearly being hoisted by maybe a wire or something for some of that stuff but you could not tell it was really I was like I wonder how many times they rehearsed that to get that just right because it was exceptionally well done I was very surprised at how effortless they made it look like him tossing somebody around without it looking like Kirk was like dangling from a wire
Yeah, there is a blooper that is from the original series in which during the shooting of another episode, uh, that actor, Cassidy,
was filming something nearby and came to the set of Star Trek in his full costume and ran in during shooting and grabbed Shatner and runs through the set with him carrying him. And it looks very much like a full grown man carrying a child because Cassidy was such a large man. It's a very funny image.
Uh, I agree with you. I think the physicality here, I do agree that a skinnier, like normal looking humanoid compared to like, when you see moments of Data picking people up with one hand, it has a certain impression that is just like, poof. It's a reminder of like, that's what this guy is capable of. But I also, you mentioned it yourself.
The Dr. Who ness here, I think it's a 1960s, like, we're keeping the kids engaged. This figure is imposing and otherworldly. So they're going with that in this case. Um, I like this depiction of the android. I think it works. I love the makeup. And, I think it's also to give an otherworldly quality to the old ones, to the fact that like, if humans build humanoid robots that look like humans, then I think they're hinting at this is what the old ones would have looked like.
And so it gives it that otherworldly, deep history quality that I think they were looking for in the episode. To get to that technology now, let's talk briefly about the replacement technology, the sequence where it is. Again, 1966, they're like, how about a spinning turntable? But I actually love this. I think it works for me in a way that is like the way it spins and it's ridiculous nature, the physicality of it.
Um, there's something effective about the spinning table and you see what is clearly fleshy Shatner followed by doughy white figure. And then eventually they're both the same. I found it very effective. And I like the turntable. Well, how did you feel about the turntable? And also follow up question, how did you feel about the fact that the episode ends with them apparently just leaving all that technology behind?
They don't do anything to say like, and we've unplugged it. Nobody will do this again.
So for me watching, I had, I had forgotten this episode, Sean, when we were watching it. And I was like, I know I've seen this, but it's not clicking. And then they got to the room. with a little spinny thing. And I went, Oh yeah, this, this ridiculous thing.
It makes no sense. The spinning turntable is just so stupid, but visually it works, especially when the camera's zooming in. And then, like you said, that sequence, it's fantastic because it's basically a shell game. It's like, well, which one's the real Kirk? Cause we've been moving them around so much. You don't know which one's which.
That aspect of it was great from a visual point of view, but from a, why the hell would they be spinning to make an Android? It, no, that, no, what? No, no. So for me, I, it's, I'm of two minds. It's a ridiculous concept, but visually it does a good job of making the viewer confused as to which one's the real Kirk and which one's not.
Yeah. So I liked it for that and leaving it behind. Yeah. Uh, what? Why wouldn't it be like, before we leave, let's throw a photon torpedo down there, or let's take that thing with us. It's like, I don't understand why they just hand waved that. But again, the time, 1966, they were monster of the week episodes.
They weren't thinking long term. They were just telling a little story. So it's like, I can kind of forgive them, but they would never do that today. They would, they would have to have some answer to it before they left.
Yeah. Again, I can't help it. The writer in me is just like, Okay. During next generation, make Dr.
Soong a part of a federation team that was sent to the planet to study the technology and he did what all the other researchers agreed they could never do, which is turn it back on and use it. Like you could have the same Dr. Soong show up and just be like, look, this is, why wouldn't we do this? Like, let's figure out how this all works and let's figure out how to do it in a way that makes sense.
And you could have the exact same backstory with data. Like he's. Use this thing, despite the fact that he was supposed to be there ethically to just study it, but never ever turn it on. Uh, so, but you're like, nail on the head, Monsters of the Week. That's what we're looking at. We're looking at a show that was not intended to say like, longevity, deeper storytelling, everything has to be logical.
No, it was just, these were, these were creatures that were meant to be dispatched and then left behind. Uh, So we're left with one final tidbit I gave at the beginning of this episode. Uh, credit to Roddenberry for his ability to like recognize what's going to tighten up the script and put in some elements that upped the emotional content and the ties to the crew.
Uh, but there is one little tidbit about this episode that I find fascinating. They shaved Shatner's chest when filming this. That's why he's so kissably smooth. Uh, yep. And the reason they did that is because Roddenberry didn't think Captain Kirk would be hairy. Why? What? Exactly. Yeah.
Like, what? What? Yeah. What? What is Gene envisioning? Like, what is, like, this is how Gene's spending his time? Like, no, I've, I've created the character of Captain Kirk. Let me tell you, this is not a hairy man. Like, what?
Okay, Gene. The best captains have no chest hair.
We'll grab the razor. And of course, this is the same man who years later when, uh, Jonathan Frakes would show up on set between seasons one and two.
He came back with a beard and everybody expected, well, Gene's going to want that gone. And Gene was just like, ah, Horatio Hornblower. So, um, apparently hair is something that Gene Roddenberry was just thinking about a lot. So very briefly, the kiss, let's talk about this. My sense of the kiss, this, as I said, with the red shirts, it feels like the first time we're seeing Captain Kirk derail the Machiavellian machinations of the villain
by kissing a woman, which throws her into ethical conundrum of, well, I'm supposed to be following these orders, but I feel human love now or passion or lust. So I need to engage with that. So the kiss becomes now a thing that is a tool to disrupt the androids. Um, it is as Matt pointed out, somehow proof that Roger Korby has not been sleeping with Andrea because Andrea will kiss Kirk.
It is then Kirk making this Android question its programming by kissing her. It then becomes her test of humanity when she meets the Android Kirk and says, I'll kiss you. And he says, no, that is illogical. So she, Destroys him thinking that it is this invasive Kirk instead of it being the real Kirk. A bunch of logical assumptions that don't really add up, but that is how the story is told.
So the kiss, the kiss in general and the kiss in specifics. What did you think about the kiss? Gross?
Yeah. It's that, it's that 60s, 70s, 80s, the woman's reluctant. The man just doesn't care that the woman's basically body language is saying no, you do it anyway. It's great. That's great, Sean. That's great.
It's icky. It's very icky. It's
icky. Gross. It's, it's not great. And, um, I mean, you mentioned sixties, seventies, eighties and beyond. It is a element of, well, if only the man could force himself on the woman, then she would understand the error of her ways. It is something she really wants. She doesn't know what she really wants.
It's, it's an element of James Bond again and again. Um, there's not a villainess that James Bond can't turn to the good side if he could only bed her. Um, and in one of my favorite movies of all time, it is an element of Blade Runner that has a very well done scene, which is effectively terrible because it is sexual assault where you have the character of Deckard
effectively force himself upon the android Rachel and awaken in her, her humanity by forcing himself on her. It's the same thing. It's depicted in the same way and it is as Ugi there as it is here. And it's an element of, I mean, we talk about the progressiveness of the show at the beginning, but we also talk about elements like this.
It's hard to, it's hard to watch, even though it is filmed here in Dayglo colors. It is brightly depicted. It has like, there's nothing about it that's presented as like, this is a bad thing. But if you just stop and take a step back and look at what they're saying, it's, it's not the greatest. So interested to find out what all of you think.
Yes. Matt, do you have one more thing you want to share? Before
we move on. There's something in your notes that you have in there that was also in my notes that you haven't brought up. Okay, I didn't know if we wanted to
talk about this or not.
Yes. Do you want to introduce the idea? The scene where he's running away from Ruk and he goes up that, like, rock staircase and he's like, the camera's looking down and Ruk comes out there and he's doing the voice of Chapel.
Captain Kirk looks up and sees a stalactite and grabs it and breaks it off. And it is the most phallic, it looks like he's holding a three foot dildo and waiting to whack Ruk with a three foot dildo when he comes. It is distracting.
Yes, it is. It is distracting and it bears no resemblance to the stalactite that he grabs and breaks off, which makes me think one of two things.
When he breaks off the stalactite, he's breaking off a styrofoam prop. Yes. From the ceiling. Yeah. Which then has an end to it that looks like raw styrofoam. So the prop people are like, well, you'll break this off and then the scene will cut. And then when it comes back to you, you'll hold this other prop, which looks like a solid stalactite instead of that.
Fine. The other alternative, and I think this is equally as plausible is that the prop department intentionally designed a three foot dildo to say like, let's see if we can get this on the air. And they somehow got it past the censors. This is the same episode in which they had a costumer on set to make sure that Sherry Jackson's breasts didn't fall out the sides of her costume.
And yet we are given a shot at Captain Kirk proudly holding this 3ft stone dildo as he's waiting for Ruk to come so he can hit him in the face with it, uh, which ultimately doesn't even work. So, but it is also,
there's
also the
thing, it has this styrofoam, it's like those things where you see in a show where people have coffee cups and they're holding them and drinking out of them. And it's clear that that's an empty coffee cup.
It's like this thing. It clearly weighs probably like six ounces. And it looks like a man holding a giant three foot dildo that weighs six ounces. There's no weight or heft to it. So when he's standing there waiting for him to it on one finger. Yeah. It's distracting on every level.
So viewers, those are our thoughts about this episode and all the way to the styrofoam thing at the end, uh, let us know, what did you think about this episode? And don't forget, you can also drop into the comments. If you don't have any thoughts about this particular episode, you could let us know what you think the next episode is about.
Wrong answers only. It is Dagger of the Mind. Good luck with that one. As for us, Matt, do you have anything coming up in your main channel that you're interested in sharing with our viewers and listeners?
Uh, this week's episode is all about five plastic alternatives that are kind of like slowly coming to market and are coming out there to kind of address our plastic problem that are, I find fascinating.
So just some of them are updates from previous videos and some of them are new, but it's kind of a hodgepodge of kind of like the five things I've, I find most fascinating around plastics.
Sounds great. As for me, you can check out my website, seanferrell. com. You can also go directly to your local bookstore, Amazon, Barnes Noble, or your public library, ask for my books there.
They're available everywhere. And that includes my adult novels like Numb and Man in the Empty Suit, all the way down to my picture books, The Snurch and I Don't Like Koala, and, uh, my most recently released The Sinister Secrets of the Fabulous Nothings, which is part two of a middle grade adventure about robots, smugglers, and all sorts of fun stuff like that.
If you'd like to support the show, please don't forget the easiest ways, which are to leave some comments, subscribe, and share it with your friends. And if you'd like to more directly support us, you can go to trekintime. show. Click the Become a Supporter button. It allows you to throw some coins at our heads and it makes you an Ensign, which means you'll be signed up for our Spinoff Cut Podcast
Out Of TIme, in which we talk about things that don't fit within the confines of this program. Thank you so much, everyone, for taking the time to watch or listen. We look forward to talking to you next time.