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Matt and Sean talk about feeling the vibes and torturous experiments, in Star Trek TOS Season 3, Episode 12, “The Empath.”
Matt and Sean talk about feeling the vibes and torturous experiments, in Star Trek TOS Season 3, Episode 12, “The Empath.”
- (00:00) - - Intro
- (01:12) - - Viewer feedback
- (05:18) - - Today's episode
- (06:00) - - This time in history
- (08:40) - - Episode discussion
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Creators and Guests
What is Trek In Time?
Join Sean and Matt as they rewatch all of Star Trek in order and in historical context.
Sean Ferrell: On this episode of Trek In Time, we're going to be talking about feelings. Welcome, everybody, to Trek In Time, where we're watching every episode of Star Trek in chronological stardate order. At this point, we've returned finally to the original series, season three, episode 12, the Empath. Welcome as we take a look not only at the episode, but what the world was like at the time of original broadcasts. We're going to talk about the show. We're going to talk about 1968, and right now, we're going to talk about who the hell we are. I am Sean Ferrell. I'm a writer. I write some sci fi, I write some horror. And with me, as always, is my brother Matt. He is that Matt behind Undecided with Matt Ferrell, which takes a look at emerging tech and its impact on our lives. Matt, how are you today?
Matt Ferrell: I'm doing great, Sean. I will say I'm looking more forward to talking about this episode than I was the last one. So there's that.
Sean Ferrell: I anticipated that would be true. I anticipated that would be true, although I didn't anticipate it would be true before I watched this episode. We'll get into that in a minute. Before we talk about the episode, we always like to take a look at the mailbag about what you've had to say about our previous episodes. So, Matt, what did you find for us this week?
Matt Ferrell: We have a few on the episode Rubincon. And by the way, we got some comments saying it's not Rubincon, it's Rubicon. And it's like, no, it's Rubincon in the show. Because it was. It was a thing. Yeah. Anyway, so from Rubincon, we had a comment from Dan Sims who said, yeah, so happy they got to show off how much of a badass Reno is under pressure, they become one of my favorite Star Trek characters. So sarcastic like Tig is, but also a genius and now a commander. I mean, that's one of the reasons I love Star Trek, Sean. Smart people doing smart things, competent people being competent. That's Tig. That's. That's. That's Reno. It's so much fun. Then we had Jason Dumb chiming in, saying, this episode really did not land with me. I recognized the political allegory, but did not think that they executed the grand ambition. Agreed. Reno is the best. Still disappointed they are canceling the show. I have many thoughts why modern Trek shows don't succeed. Too character driven, poor handling of inclusivity topics, disregard of fandom, short seasons, the mushroom drive, the burn, lots of bad writing. A general misunderstanding of what Star Trek and what Starfleet represents in the previous shows. I actually think they should retcon Star Trek Discovery and Star Starfleet Academy. Trek in Time is definitely canon though. You guys are great. Oh, thank you, thank you.
Sean Ferrell: That's very kind of you.
Matt Ferrell: And then we have two more. One from Babarudra, who wrote I've not been watching with you guys for the past few episodes. So not to spoil Starfleet Academy as we're still working through Discovery. I'm glad that Starfleet Academy has continued to be a good watch for you. It makes me hopeful for my future viewing. And then Babarudra had a wrong answers only for Is there in Truth no Beauty? With Beverly Crusher on hiatus due to a Federation contract dispute. Oh wait, never mind. And then finally, wrong answers only, Mark Loveless, plot of Is there no Truth in Beauty? While transferring a Starfleet ambassador to an outpost, there is a confrontation. The ambassador is named Beauty and she is apparently quite the handful, being rather demanding of everything from her accommodations to her food. It also turns out she is a pathological liar, which through a series of mishaps, the crew figures out. As McCoy asks, Is there no truth in Beauty? Spock states that with his logical mind he can get truth out of her. Yes, she is subtly tricked into agreeing to a mind mellow with Spock, who says very sloppily written dialogue. I am Truth and I will get inside Beauty. This line is somehow allowed on the air and it spawns not only racy fan fiction, but actually inspires a series of Star Trek themed porn movies with this leading off the series. Oddly, Roddenberry doesn't sue the porn filmmakers because they helped reruns, which led to eventually funding the Star Trek motion picture.
Sean Ferrell: Wow, Mark again, Mark.
Matt Ferrell: Making fiction and reality intertwine.
Sean Ferrell: It just. It's one big. It's one big knot. Thank you everybody for jumping in. We enjoy reading those. You guys are really part of the conversation for us. We really enjoy engaging with all of you. And Matt and I were just talking about how what this podcast is for us, for us is just an a labor of fun. So all of you jumping in in that spirit and engaging with the show that we all love, even when it's maybe a series or episodes that we're not crazy about jumping with wrong answers only Mark, our unofficial third co host, sitting on our shoulder is just like, hey, listen to what I thought of. Thank you everybody for taking the time for all that. That's really great. Thank you. So, coming up. Yes, those flashing lights yes, those klaxon alert sounds. It can only mean one thing, Matt. Are you ready for the Wikipedia description? These are blissfully short. These are blissfully short.
Matt Ferrell: While visiting a doomed planet, the landing party is subject to torturous experiments to test an empathic race. That's it. Nailed it.
Sean Ferrell: There you go. 63rd episode produced, 67th episode aired the 12th of the third season. So a bit of a jump forward. The Empath, directed by John Erman, written by Joyce Muskat, aired on December 6, 1968. And what was the world like at the time of broadcast? Well, I think we're all getting ready to buckle up and listen to Matt cover Lovechild by Diana Ross and the Supremes. That's right, that love child. Take it away, Matt. Mm. It's a little bit forbidden, but it's exciting. Thank you so much for that. And in the theaters, people were lining up to see Funny Girl. We've talked about this movie before. It stayed at number one for about two months, I believe, so we'll be talking about it again. This is the Barbara Streisand, Omar Sharif movie, which helped launch Barbara Streisand into the top graces of Hollywood. And on television, we've been talking about shows that were also on Friday nights. Uh, we've talked about everything from this is Tom Jones to Operation Entertainment, the Don Rickles show. And now we're talking about the show that was a summer fill in for ABC following Let's Make a Deal, the John Davidson Show. The John Davidson show was, was focused on John Davidson, a, a singer, an entertainer. He was eventually the host of everything from Hollywood Squares to that's Incredible, which is what I remember him from most. Matt, I don't remember if you remember that show from our childhood, but it included people coming out on stage and doing things like blowing smoke into bubbles. And we all said, that's incredible.
Matt Ferrell: It's YouTube.
Sean Ferrell: Yeah, it was YouTube. Yes, that's what I was searching for. How to describe him other than as watching vanilla ice cream melt? Describing him as the host of YouTube is the best way to describe him. So thank you, Matt, for that help. And in the news on this day, Friday, Dec. 13, 1968. Yep, it happened, folks. There was an election and guess who won. We've been talking about it for a while now as we've been heading from 1967 into 1968. We started talking about this in season two. Johnson had declared he was not going to run for reelection, and the country swung hard to the right and elected Richard Nixon as President. So at this point in early December, Nixon was in talks with Johnson as the transition was underway and said of a recent conversation he had with Johnson, Nixon again pays call on Johnson talk far ranging, saying that the work of transitioning into the presidency was going well. It is accompanied by a picture that, unfortunately for President Johnson, depicts him very much like Nosferatu. On now to our discussion of this episode, the Empath. We I was kinder to last week's episode than you were, so I'm going to start this conversation off this way. I went into this episode dreading it. Dreading it?
Matt Ferrell: Why?
Sean Ferrell: You'll say, why were you dreading it, Sean? I'll tell you why. Because my childhood memories of this episode focus so much on the indecipherable nature of what looks like modern dance that in my mind, this episode was overwhelmingly interpretive dance. I kid you not. When I saw that this episode was coming up, I thought, oh, this is the one where there's barely any dialogue.
Matt Ferrell: There's so much talking in this one, Sean.
Sean Ferrell: I watched this as an adult and I was suddenly struck by holy cow. I love this episode. This episode for me, really hit a spot where I was just like, this is what I think about when I think about Classic Trek. The action that takes place in this episode is effectively, it's interior. It's remarkable that it's interior action. The. The dynamics of the three, the big triumvirate here. You want to say, like, let's really nail what The Kirk, Spock, McCoy relationship is all about. This is the episode to watch because you're given so many instances of all three of them saying, no, you should take me instead of the other two. Let them go, take me instead. And it's just such a demonstration for me of the closeness of the relationship, their complete understanding of one another, their trust of one another, and their willingness to sacrifice themselves for one another, all for different purposes, with Kirk being the titular head, saying, like, it is my role, it is my duty to do this, and Spock doing it for all the logical reasons. I am the one who should go because it makes sense from a logical perspective, and McCoy leaning in with all heart, I cannot do harm. I cannot allow harm to come to others. So he puts himself in front of a hurdling train simply because that is his passion for life is brought to the fore through that kind of self sacrifice. So I found myself as an adult going into this episode and thinking like, oh, boy, this one. And then I sat down and I was just like, Holy cow, did 10 and 12 year old Sean not get it because how late in the series are what they. For them to be writing an episode that's this heady? I'm like, wow, they waited until it was on at 10pm on a Friday night to put in an episode that's all about like, what does self sacrifice mean? And then with all of that I found all the other elements around can this.
Can this life form be taught that kind of self sacrifice is this. They don't say, oh, that's a. Effectively an uncivilized being. But that's essentially the argument we're trying to see if this being is of a race that will potentially turn into something beneficial for the galaxy. That's what they're examining and the actions of the aliens who are doing the investigation. The argument that Kirk makes toward the end about you've lost your compassion because you've leaned so heavily into reason, you've lost what it means to live. All of that felt to me like that's the underlying structure, that's the architecture that's holding up the real point. Point of the show. The real point of the show is the demonstration of the relationships and the philosophical concepts at play. The relationship to the woman and the aliens and the test is a little cartoonish at times. I completely forgave it because to me it's this architecture that's holding up this bigger point. So that's my love letter to this episode. I went into this episode thinking, oh boy, I'm dreading this. And I came out of it saying, holy cow, I really, really liked it.
So have at it.
Matt Ferrell: I went into this episode with no memory of this. I know I've seen it at some point, Sean, I've seen it at some point. But I was drawing a blank for most of the episode. Glimpses of like. I think I remember that part. My take on this is not that different from yours in the sense of I loved the triangle character development between McCoy, Kirk and Spock. This episode is so focused on that and it's so wonderful to see how they react with each other. But there were. The main plot of this story though was again kind of like last week, dumb, like handled. It's fairly simplistic. Yeah, it's handled with no, just like last week where I said it's like a 5 year old wrote it. It's like this felt like a very simplistic, unsophisticated exploration of empathy is essential for having a compassionate society and all that kind of stuff. Empathy is strength, all that kind of stuff. When you get into brass tacks, it's like, she's a species that don’t have vocal cords. How do they communicate? How do they communicate? Like, just does that at its face value. Just kept bothering me. And then. And when she healed Kirk and McCoy's like, she's an empath. It's like an empath is not a healer. What are you. What. What are you doing? That's not the meaning of the word there, buddy. How did you jump to she's an empath because she healed your forehead? It was stuff like that that was just making me frustrated and a little angry. But if I put that to the side. The simplistic, kind of juvenile storyline, the show, the episode was very enjoyable. And one of the things that struck me was this episode is like a ship in a bottle episode where it's. They're trying. They have no budget in this season and. Oh, boy, how do you get around that? Well, here's one. Let's just go into a big black void. We don't have to build a set. It's just a big black void.
And we'll just take some couple set pieces we already had, put them in the middle of the floor and have people act around it. And it looked like, you know, a black box theater, you know, like where you go in and there's no sets, just the actors on the stage. And I kind of loved it. Like, that aspect of it I loved because it puts the focus completely on the actors. They have to carry everything. And everybody in this episode was carrying their weight. Like Jem, the woman who doesn't speak. Her interpretive dance movements were a little like, why? But okay, you move like that, it's fine. She was compelling when she was looking at the camera and they had the close ups and the emoting that she was doing and Kirk's emoting and like, everybody's. The way they. Everybody was talking and interacting was very engaging. And you completely forget you're just watching a bunch of actors in a big black void. It's like, it doesn't feel cheap. It feels. That's the magic trick for me of this episode was it didn't feel like they were doing this to save money. It felt like a deliberate choice that they were in this nether region that these. The species is. It shows how advanced they are, that it's like the upside down, you know, in Stranger Things. It's like some kind of weird nether realm that they're existing in at the moment. And that was pretty cool. So it kind of felt sci-fi. It felt like you're being controlled by these super advanced aliens in this weird place. Where are we? Well, we're under the surface, but what is going on here? That was really cool. So it's like, there was a lot of cool elements that I enjoyed about this episode. So I didn't get angry or bored like I did in the last one.
This one, I got moments of anger, but the good acting, the character development is the thing that carried me through the most for the entire episode.
Sean Ferrell: Yeah, I felt like, I agree with everything you've had to say. And I felt like there were moments of it where it struck me as if this was a movie. It would be. It could be something close to like ET crossed with enemy mine. Sort of like, here's this thing and we don't quite understand it. And we discovered that we're here to kind of like, work with it in a. In a way we don't quite comprehend. And I like that at certain points, the big three kind of ignored the fact that she was there and had this capacity because they really, all three of them were just like, we need to take care of her. This is not her problem to solve. We need to figure ways out, because she's not going to. And so it stopped being the, how do we manipulate or use her as a tool? And when then that element resurfaces as, oh, could she heal him? When McCoy is near death, it feels like the last straw. Kirk doesn't want to go there, but he feels compelled to grab for that last straw. I liked the fact that when McCoy was effectively tortured to death, when they find him, it's harrowing. And they did a neat trick with the focus where they turned the focus off and pushed the camera right up against him so that he's filling the screen at that point and it's all bruised eyes. And like, this is not. Yeah, they. They managed to. I have a feeling there may have been, like, a TV sensor concern that they were probably like, if we stay focused on this bloody face, the sensors are going to have a problem with that. So why don't we just soft focus it, push in really hard. And that made it worse. It was like.
Matt Ferrell: Yes. It's like your imagination fills in the blanks. Yeah.
Sean Ferrell: And then him on the bed is there trying to help him. For me, the acting that's coming out of Nimoy at that moment is palpable because as Spock, he's doing all this raiding and you can see he touches McCoy's face at one point and it's just like, this is killing him. This is. He's looking down, he wants to say, like, my friend, I can't let you go. But he can't say that. So it's this moment of tension in Spock and when the aliens show up and are. So the new one you mentioned, the acting across the board is good. The two guys playing the alien investigators do a great job because they have this semi apologetic. Well, this is what the. Yeah, this is what we have to do. We're really sorry, but somebody's gonna have to bear the brunt of this.
Matt Ferrell: Can we talk about that for a second though? The aliens, sure, I agree with you. The acting was fine. Acting was really good. The way they conveyed themselves, it fit the purpose really well. But can I just say how stupid their experiment is? Like, I had trouble grasping why they were doing what they were doing for the entire episode. And it wasn't clear until the final five minutes where Kirk has that conversation with them. And it comes to that resolution super quickly, which is one of Star Trek's faults. A lot of times where they'll string
Sean Ferrell: out some wrap up. Yeah.
Matt Ferrell: And then there's like this rapid fire wrap up. That's how this episode felt to me. And it. That's a fault of the writing because they should have done a better job starting to solve the riddle in the halfway point, not in the final five minutes. Because that came across as the stupidest thing. Like, no, she's got to learn to do this on her own. She's learning our lesson from you guys. Wait, she's not learning the lesson from you guys torturing these dudes for no apparent reason. That's not teaching her a lesson. It's like, that's the part I don't get. It's like, this is where it comes back to that simplistic storytelling. If you're a scientist doing an experiment, you're going to do your best to stay out of the picture so that people aren't aware that you're pulling the strings to make stuff happen. But they're coming in going, okay, time to torture him and almost kill him again. And it's like, she's watching this. What do you think she's learning from you? And that's the part that never even gets addressed in the episode and was kind of making me like really frustrated of like, did anybody think about this logically when they were writing this episode that you have no answer for this? And did you not ask yourself this question?
Sean Ferrell: Can I play devil's advocate?
Matt Ferrell: Yeah. Oh, boy. Sean, I'm talking about. I'm reading the text of the actual episode they gave us.
Sean Ferrell: I understand that what I am going to say is part of the context of this program is looking at it within the context of the era when it was made. And I can't help but wonder if this is a. You're only about 25 years post the horrors of World War II, which included terrible medical experimentation on people. You're in the midst of a. You're barely towing your way into post colonialism at this point. And the idea of the superior being that can go in and determine who's valuable and who's not, who lives and who dies based on criteria that are completely subjective to that superior race, I think that's what's on display here. So I think. I don't disagree that from our current perspective, looking at it, all of that rings very strange. But I can't help but wonder if this was intended to be a cultural critique of an era that the makers of this program had been living through. And at this point, with everything from the civil rights movement and the burgeoning women's movement taking place, the idea of two individuals coldly judging and coming in and saying we get to decide based on doing terrible things who's right and who's wrong to survive seems to me to be a. An intentional choice on the part of the writer. So I don't disagree. It ages strangely.
Matt Ferrell: I don't think it ages strangely, though, because I agree with everything you just said. The problem I'm having is when Kirk is talking to them at the end and he says, you're so logical and so advanced, you've lost all forms of empathy, and you can't understand, you know, like, what's happening here. And they're both. And they have that reaction of, like, I think he's right. The fact that Kirk never even said, and what do you think she's learning from you? Like, that's all he would have had to have said is like, you've lost your empathy. And what do you think she's learning from you? It's like, if. If. If they had just said that one sentence, I would have forgiven some of it. But the fact that it's not even raised as a question is like, I can't fathom it. And it's not a time difference. I think that's causing my disconnect with that. It's just, you're torturing people in front of this woman. And, like, how is nobody. Here's Kirk bringing that up. Like, why are you doing that?
Sean Ferrell: Yeah, I get what you're saying. I do think that even that element is part of the. I think it's born of the blindness of the moment again. I think it goes back to the era of production that they, in that moment, may not have. May not themselves, even if they're trying to critique the culture they're in, may not have picked up on that very element that you're pointing out. So I think it's. It feels very 1960s to me to say, like, the culture is shifting, but we still have blindness about what that culture is. And the last thing I wanted to say about this one, to go back to something you'd said about the black box setting of all of it, I agree with you completely. I think it benefits the show. I think it has some also unintentional camp elements to it that actually added to the fun. Like McCoy is up in these chains and he's been tortured. And they had a really interesting effect going when they were up in the chains where they're not hanging vertically with their arms above them. It doesn't look like they're supporting their weight. And their arms. They are somehow their arms are out and they look suspended in some other way. So it creates this kind of, like the idea of, like, power and energy at work and doing all of this. And then Kirk says, get him down. And Spock goes over and pulls. It's literally a rope. I loved. It was just like, yoink. He pulls a rope and that somehow is releasing a mechanism to get him down off of this thing. And they've got these other space age looking things that are clearly from other episodes just staged around to be like, these are future doohickeys. They just exist here without understanding what they're about. But if we went back through other episodes, I'm sure we would see them in other shows.
Matt Ferrell: Yep, yep.
Sean Ferrell: But the thing I kept going around is what you said about, like, how it pushes the characters and actors right into the foreground and it makes you really pay attention to what's coming out of their mouths. And the show that it reminded me of the most was the Prisoner, where this kind of, like, hyper realism of everything pushed into the foreground because everything around them is so either nonsensical or doesn't really matter. It's just a backdrop and it really worked. So it kind of goes back again. It's interpretive dance. It's the Black box theater. It's very 1960s. This one feels very of its era. And it feels like when you watch it. At least when I did, I was thinking like this really feels like watching from the 60s, but it feels like watching something from the 60s that I found really compelling today. So I found myself really enjoying it from that angle. So viewers, listeners, what did you think about this one? Did you lean into the black box and enjoy it as much as I did? Did you find yourself scratching your head around why lessons weren't learned by more of the characters? It's only a handful of characters in this one, but was there an opportunity for a different lesson to come out of it, like Matt seems to be hoping for? Let us know in the comments. We look forward to hearing what you have to say. As always, commenting, liking, subscribing, sharing with your friends. Those are easy ways for you to support this podcast. If you'd like to support us more directly, you can go to trekintime.show. Click the join button there. It allows you to throw coins at our heads. We appreciate the welts, thankfully not as severe as what Dr. McCoy suffered from. And then we get down to the the heavy, heavy business of talking about what you can do without any props in the show behind you. Thank you so much. I say that while I've got this stupid thing.
Anyway, thank you so much everybody for taking the time to watch or listen and we'll talk to you next time.