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Matt and Sean talk about a murder mystery, the return of Mark Lenard, and how the Federation conducts business in Star Trek: The Original Series’, “Journey to Babel.” Is this episode gibberish or pure Star Trek?
Matt and Sean talk about a murder mystery, the return of Mark Lenard, and how the Federation conducts business in Star Trek: The Original Series’, “Journey to Babel.” Is this episode gibberish or pure Star Trek?
- (00:00) - - Intro
- (01:42) - - Viewer Feedback
- (02:43) - - Today's Episode
- (05:08) - - This Time in History
- (09:20) - - 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.
In this episode of Trek In Time, we're gonna babble. I know a lot of you are thinking like, like usual. Yes. How is that different from usual, Sean? You're saying right now. You anonymous person driving in your car or doing dishes or mowing the lawn? Well, when I say babble, I don't mean babble. I mean. Babel Ba, Babel B.
How did they pronounce it in the show? Anyway, we're talking about Journey to Babel, the original series episode. Hello everybody. Welcome to Trek in Time. This is of course, the podcast where we're taking a look at all of Star Trek in chronological star date order. We're also taking a look at the world at the time of original broadcast, so we're talking about 1967.
We're talking about the original series. Welcome one and all as always. I'm Sean Ferrell, I'm a writer. I write some sci-fi. I write some stuff for kids. And with me as usual is my younger 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 doing this fine day?
I'm doing pretty well. Uh, just before we jump into it. What I've been watching, I gotta tell you to a show that you might wanna watch. It's on Britbox, Sean. It's called Passenger. Okay. It's kind of a quirky small town where something weird is happening and it's got this nice XFiles vibe that it's scratching for me.
Oh, very cool. Really enjoying it. So check out passenger.
Will do. Sounds good. Now, here on Trek in Time, we have a order of operations. We do things a certain way. Our viewers and listeners have come to learn the patterns and rhythms of the podcast. So now of course it is time for the mailbag. You know what?
You don't get one this week? Yes. Yep. There's one reason why. There's actually two. The first reason is Matt is sick and tired of your crap.
The second is we're not recording this on the day we normally record it. So the newest episode for all of you is actually dropping tomorrow for us. Yes. Time Wimy. Yes, which means we don't actually have your comments on last week's episode for this week's episode, so you don't get to say what you think about what you haven't seen yet.
As a result, we're moving on. That noise you hear in the background, those flashing lights. That's not the TARDIS kicking into operation. No, no, no. That is the read alert. It's time for Matt to tackle the Wikipedia description. Matt, good luck saying Babel. Babel be, be,
be, be. While transporting dignitaries to an important peace conference on the planet
Babel, the enterprise is pursued by a mysterious vessel. And after a quarrel between the Vulcan Ambassador, Sarek, Spock's father, and the Wow, that was a parenthetical inside of a parenthetical there.
Yes, it was. It was neat, wasn't it?
Yeah. I don't know if we're gonna find our way out. No. And the Tellarite ambassador, the latter is killed with Sarek as the main suspect.
Kirk is then attacked and badly injured by the assassin exonerating Sarek, but requiring that Spock take charge of the Enterprise. An ethical dilemma arises when Sarek falls ill and needs Spock's blood for a risky lifesaving operation. To his mother's distress, Spock puts his duty ahead of his father's life.
Kirk and Bones find a way to allow Spock to assist in the operation while a still injured Kirk tries to uncover the assassin's plan and engages the attacking Starship.
Season two, episode 10 in broadcast order. This was originally broadcast on, no se November 17th, 1967. Everybody who is a regular viewer and listener will remember from last week that we were celebrating that we'd moved forward in time into 1968.
It gave us a breath of fresh air. It moved on from the songs and movies that we've been talking about ad infinitum. Well, we've gone backward in time now, folks, so it's November 17th, 1967. Guess what that means? That's right. We're back to some old standbys. Amongst the guest stars in this episode includes Mark Lenard.
A nice return for him. We've seen him previously playing a Romulan. I wonder how much of his casting was just, well, we've got ears that will fit him. Also in the episode Jane Wyatt as Spock's mother Amanda, John Wheeler, Reggie Nalder, William O'Connell, Billy Curtis, James Mitchell, Frank DaVinci, and William Blackburn.
And with the original cast we see pretty much everybody except for George Takei as Sulu, but we do get Majel Barrett as Christine Chapel. What was the world like November 17th, 1967? I've already let the cat out of the proverbial bag. That's right, Matt. It was the number one song that everybody was singing, To sir with Love by Lulu.
You know what I'm talking about. We've all missed talking about it. Take it away, Matt.
Thanks. That was terrific as always. Although I will admit, since we've talked about this song for what feels like most of my life, I am getting a little tired of it. And at the movies, what were people lining up to see? Why, Matt, if you were saying, I bet it was Gone with the Wind, you were right again, it's again, Gone with the Wind.
It was in re-release and it spent a solid two months at the number one spot in theaters. This is of course Gone with the Wind. I'm not gonna synopsize Gone with the Wind. If you don't know what it is, just go to Wikipedia. And on television we've been talking about shows using the Nielsen ratings in order to compare apples to apples.
Star Trek season two, earned about an 11.6. A little bit of a dip from their first season. The trajectory of the Nielsen's for Star Trek was not terrific. It went down every season. So here we are, season two, 11.6. How does that compare to the other shows that were on television at the time? Well, we're gonna drop down in the list of television shows being broadcast in the 1967 season, all the way down to number 29 on the list.
That's right. The 29th show, the 29th most popular show in 1967 was earning a 20 in the Nielsen's. So soundly beating Star Trek and that show. If you were thinking it was about a frontiersman, well, you were right. It's Daniel Boone. Daniel Boone is the American Action Adventure Television series starring Fest Parker as the Frontiersman.
Jason Schwartz. No, Daniel Boone. And it aired from September 24th, 1964 to May 7th, 1970. He was on NBC for a total of 165 episodes. If only Star Trek could have gotten the same sort of strong treatment for a solid six years, think of what might have happened. And in the news on this day, Friday, November 17th, 1967, we see some headlines revolving around the Senate asking Congress to actually have a hand in sending troops to Vietnam.
We see the governor of New York, governor Rockefeller, trying to use Mayor Lindsay as a linchpin in his push to become president of the United States as Rockefeller was trying to get the GOP nod, which of course would eventually go to Richard Nixon. There's also a program that is intended to aid low income families in getting support for low income families.
Unfortunately, the headline is framed as 63 cities chosen to get slum aid. Mm oh boy. But for me, the standout of this day's newspaper is the photograph of a President Johnson and General William Westmoreland giving the Medal of Honor to Sergeant Charles B. Morris. In what I can only describe as the most photoshopped looking photo that is actually a real photo ever because it, not only do the three gentlemen at the front of the photo look like they are photoshopped into some sort of weird background, there's a mysterious man between the president and a general who looks like it's a very, very poorly constructed attempt to create an impression that somebody was doing time travel or something like that.
So thank you New York Times for providing me with completely accidental comedic relief. On we go to our description, our responses to this episode, Journey to Babel. Word will never come out of my mouth easily. It requires too much thought. So if I slip into saying Babel, please, please forgive me. Matt, we've taken turns going back and forth about our thoughts on episodes recently.
You've done one. I've done one. I've lost track. I lose track every week as to who's talked most recently first. So I'm going to encourage you to give your thoughts about this one. This one is a bit of a departure from the ones we've watched recently, and it was broadcast at 10th in the season, basically a week before Thanksgiving.
So I don't see this as one that they thought was ready to be pushed early in the season to capture the imagination. I also don't see it as one that they thought they needed to put somewhere on a holiday week where it would just be allowed to die quietly. I found it interesting to see that it was landing in November and quite different from the ones we've talked about recently, which were produced earlier, where there was a lot of cartoonish shenanigans, action oriented stuff. Going to something that looks like Rome, gladiatorial combat, all that kind of stuff. And then here you have what appears to be a combination of diplomatic faux pas', a bit of a murder mystery, some cat and mouse with an alien vessel. Did all of that add up to an episode for you, or did you find yourself scratching your head about what is this episode?
Okay, so when I saw. Joseph Pevney's name come up as the director, and then, uh, who's the writer on this one? It was, oh, it's DC Fontana. DC Fontana. I forgot to
read that at the beginning. Yes, right. When it's Joseph Pevney is director and DC Fontana is the writer.
Yeah. When I saw Fontana and Pevney's name come up, I thought my first reaction was, oh, this might be a good one.
I just kind of like exciting. Uh, story, not by Gene Roddenberry. Thank you. Uh, I was very excited to see that. And I will tell you, Sean, I really like this episode. I really, really genuinely almost love this episode. This, to me is quintessential Star Trek. This is adult. It didn't feel like a Saturday morning cartoon.
It was refreshing. It was like, oh yeah, they did know how to go do good dramatic television on the original series, it wasn't all a cartoon show. Um, for me it was like a cold drink of water in hell, you know what I mean? Like, it was just like very refreshing for me. Uh, and part of the reason for that was there, there was nothing in this episode.
I mean, it wasn't perfect, but there was every plot line and there were multiple plot lines, like lots of plot lines. But they all worked together to create a cohesive whole for a story that for me, clicked together super well. I was constantly engaged. There was always like another like shoe dropping that kept you like on the edge of your seat, and it was like kind of a, it was a thriller.
This was a thriller. It wasn't action. It was thrilling. And it was this murder mystery. It was the who's doing it? What the hell is this ship that is just like dogging us that we don't know who the hell it is. Yeah. Like there was so much around this that was just, I thought. Very cool. Kept me engaged. So much character development as well.
Uh, like the whole, like the opening with Spock's parents showing up and he's like, Hey, do you wanna go down? Kirk's? Like, do you wanna go down and visit your parents? These are my parents. Yeah. And I was like, oh, come on. He would know that. He would, he would know that. Yeah. It's like, that's for the audience.
Audience file. That's for the audience. For the audience. Yeah. So for that it was kind of like, oh, come on. But at the same time, nice little dramatic twist for the viewer. Yeah. Um. It was like the whole relationship between Spock's mom and Spock's dad and the history between them all. And then for me, again, this is all recontextualized by modern Trek because you have Star Trek Discovery and Strange in New Worlds that have completely changed how I view Spock.
Yeah. Forever. And his whole storyline, his whole backstory, and it gives so much more weight to what we see in this show between him and his mom and him and his dad. And I just, I was just eating it up and I just love the fact that these new shows are doing such a great job, weaving in things in a way that doesn't contradict what came before, but builds on it in a way that makes it more profound.
Yeah, so I just love the relationship of like what you're seeing between Bones and Spock and Spock and Kirk and Spock and Bones. It's like all of the relationships, everything that unfolds just at a high level. I'm not gonna get into specifics right now, but just like I thought the storytelling on this was fantastic.
It kept me engaged. I was never bored. I never rolled my eyes. I just had a good time. And I would watch this one again.
Yeah.
It, I found myself when this one was on the list. I'll be honest, like it's an interesting rewatch because I'm revisiting how childhood Sean watched these. Yeah, yeah. And childhood sean recognized this episode as one that he did not like. And it's not a Saturday morning cartoon and it's not a Saturday morning cartoon. So here I was watching this one. I was just like, oh, this one, it's full of all these like scenes of people having drinks and the weird fight with the Tellarites.
And then I was watching it and I was just like, oh, this is actually brilliant writing. It was like a very different experience than what nostalgia Sean was visiting. So I find myself like yet again, like, oh, I'm excited about the Trouble with Tribbles. Oh child Sean really enjoys that, but adult Sean is like, Ooh.
And here we have the exact opposite experience of like, oh child Sean's not super excited, but look at the writing on this. DC Fontana does a fantastic job.
I was gonna say, this is like, there was a couple episodes ago where I kind of got on a little rant where I was angry. Yeah. Roddenberry and the original team of like how badly they were screwing up the show.
'cause it seemed like they didn't know what they wanted to do. Yeah. This episode is, is like a clear sign of that they didn't know who their audience was. Yeah. They didn't know who audience was. So it's like they were, are you targeting kids or are you targeting adults? Yeah. If you're targeting adults, more of this, please.
If you're only targeting kids more of the other stuff. Yeah. So it's like the fact that they kept vacillating back and forth. It showed they, they didn't know what they were doing. Yeah. Like they didn't know who their audience was. They were just making a show and just struggling to figure it out.
Well, I think that that's a symptom of, it wasn't Star Trek yet, if you know what I mean.
Yeah. It's like they, like a Star Trek show being made now knows where the bar is. They're like, oh, we have to do X. We have to get this high. And then the audience can buy in. And we talked recently, just a few months ago about the Section 31 movie. Which didn't reach that bar. So it doesn't feel like Star Trek and it, and like we've had that experience now with some of these original episodes that we've been watching recently where it's like, as you point out, very uneven and it flashes of what Star Trek could be and will become, but not quite hitting it, even though it's the original series.
And then you see this one, and I watched this one, DC Fontana. This episode, the episode Yesteryear of the animated series, which is I think one of the best Star Trek stories they've ever done, which involves Spock going back in time to visit his childhood self. And here we have in this episode mentioning his pets lot.
That pets lot plays a critical role in that episode of the animated series. As do his parents. The relationships here, the Vulcan ness of all of this, DC Fontana effectively created Vulcan culture.
Mm-hmm.
In the episodes in which she wrote about Spock. And I don't, I mean, I know she gets credit, but I don't think she gets enough credit, doesn't she?
Frigging, doesn't created the culture that we look at now as if the Vulcans don't do a certain set of things, it won't be Vulcan. And here we have this brilliant episode in which Sarek is constantly hammering on the logic, the logic, the logic, and can't even let down his guard enough to admit that he's proud of his son and they never have that conversation.
They never have Spock and Sarek never sit down with one another and let Sarek say like, look, I am proud of you. You don't get that until you get to the Next Generation episode with Sarek, where he's having his emotional breakdown through Picard who is experiencing the like, did you know that I loved you? Did you know that is saved for a series that nobody was thinking about yet?
So it's like this episode charges the characters in such a way that things are brought to a boil. They don't boil over, but they aren't resolved either, and that adds to the fullness of the storytelling. When you get that moment of Amanda and Sarek having a scene by themselves. And think about this, how often do we see characters who are not primary Trek characters in long emotional character revealing conversations with each other?
That has nothing to do with planning a plot against the main characters. Stealing something, hurting somebody, killing somebody, doing something nefarious. How often do you get that? You don't? I can think of episodes like the Khan episode where he's like, you know, bend to my will, be with me and wooing the woman that he's falling in love with to join his side.
This is not what this is. This is literally just two people who are married, talking to each other and the, and the wife saying, you love our son. I know you do. And their argument ending with him. In the one scene where he's, she's like, why did you marry me? And he said, at the time, it seemed logical. Like the humor of that.
Yeah. The beautiful humor of that Is DC Fontana just like, is writing a thing that's better than the thing it's going to be? And yes. Like good for her. Like I just have so much respect for her as a writer and for her to, was this
the, was this the first. I don't
think this was the first time that that happened, because I believe that Nimoy had introduced that earlier in.
Okay. Um, it may have been in Amok Time, but I believe it was introduced earlier and Nimoy brought it out from, um, a hand signal that's used in the Jewish ceremonial process where he was as a child, not supposed to look at the priest and saw the priest doing this and thought, oh, that's a symbol of power.
So he incorporated that in his depiction of Spock. But yeah, the whole, the humor in McCoy, the pairing of McCoy and Spock in this episode. We don't get the normal bickering. We don't get the bickering that we had in last week's episode, which was terrific and revealed a lot about their relationship. Mm-hmm.
They don't do that here, but what you get here is the idea, like, I couldn't help but think throughout this entire thing. Spock is absolutely silent on the question of whether McCoy can do this procedure. He has absolute faith. McCoy. Yeah. Yep. I love that. I love that. It's never like, oh, you're gonna be pulling out your stones and, and your cleaver and you're gonna be boggling.
You're gonna be, you know, bungling it the way you, you usually do. Spock holds back on any kind of critique and instead is, you need to conduct this surgery, you need to do this, and I can be the blood donor. No hesitation like you're it. I love that support. I love the scene between Amanda and Kirk where she says, I'm glad he has a friend like you.
Yes. The moment that she says that every time, ugh. Right in the gut. Like the idea that she's looking at her son's friend and saying, I'm glad he has a friend like you, because he didn't always have that. It was hard for him growing up and the the back and forth around like, oh, these are your parents. It is.
It doesn't make sense, but it's fine because it's there. It's there as a surprise twist for the audience. You get that freeze frame, the Dun, and you get the like, what do you mean it's your parents? Well, of course Kirk would know that. It would be, like you said, it would be in Spock's personnel file, but also everybody would be taught, everybody did talk about Spock.
Everybody knew who Spock was. Spock was kind of like. A big deal. A Vulcan who did not go to the science academy, a Vulcan who went to Star Fleet, a Vulcan who became the first officer on the enterprise, a Vulcan who was a half human. Everybody would know like, oh, his father is Sarek. Like this is a big deal.
Yeah. So the idea that he is just like, do you wanna go visit your parents? Like
it's for the audience, but that's, I get it. That's the only, and it's fine. That's the only eye rolling moment for me in the entire episode. The rest of it like that. You mentioned the Amanda and Kirk dialogue. That was one of my favorite scenes in the entire show.
Yeah, it was just like it. It was great to get to learn so much about Spock in a conversation, conversation when he's not in the room. And you're hearing the difficulties he had and how she's happy that he has a friend. And it was just like, like, same thing for me, Sean. It was just like, oh Spock, I feel so bad for you, man.
It's like, it, it, it does a great job making you care more about the characters that are in the show. And so that's one of the reasons why this, this episode to me is like on that top tier, top five episodes, kind of like, for me, it's just like, it, it's a slam dunk. I just wish we had more of this in show.
Yeah. It's disappointing that they didn't recognize what they had. Maybe it was a production standpoint. I don't know how expensive this episode would've been, but we have a good number of costumes. We have a lot of makeup. We have Andorians for the first time. We have a bunch of Vulcans. We have Tellarites.
The Tellarites. The Tellarite masks are not great. We won't, they're awful sugarcoat that they're awful, but that's an audacious attempt. Yeah, it is like they're trying to do a thing. I don't know, maybe if this was just an expensive episode. Just from that perspective, from another perspective, I'm like, it's almost a bottle episode.
They stay on the ship the entire time. So like, yeah, but you also
have a lot of special effects. What was standing ship of chasing them and stuff like that? There was all that
as well. And it it, but it does raise the question like, what was it about this one that made them say, we can't do more like that?
And I don't know what it might have been because at the end of the day I found a lot of moments that just were stand out terrific. There is one thing that I wanted to mention, which is cartoonishly bad and I think it was probably something was cut for time. Normally you have, here comes the captain of the ship, whatever show you're talking about, the cop, whomever, walking down a hallway and you see a nefarious figure hiding in the shadows, who jumps out and tries to kill them.
We don't get that here. What we get is suddenly a cut to a fight scene that's already underway. We have no idea what's going on. Sean, this is, did you do what I did and wonder if something happened to the playback?
No. No, what I, what I did, Sean, was I loved that cut. I loved it. I absolutely loved the fact that they did this.
It was, I, it wasn't meant to be funny. I thought it was one of the funniest things in the episode. It is just like the scene that happens before is like a conversation and it's like meanwhile, somewhere in the ship Kirk is fighting for his life, and it was like, is desperate. When did this happen? Yeah. Where did this guy come from?
Who is he? It was just out of nowhere, outta left field, but at the same time. It worked. It was just like, for me, it worked. It was ridiculous and it shouldn't have been done that way, but I'm glad they did.
What I wish is that it was, I wish that there was like a super cut of people in different locations around the ship just having normal conversations and that you would keep cutting back to Kirk still fighting for his life, like really draw the fight scene out.
So it's like cut down to engineering and Scotty is like. Like, these reports that you've put together are really, really good. I appreciate the hard work you're putting in. Thank you, sir. Just trying to do my best. Well keep it up. You're, you're doing great. And said, cut back to Kirk fighting for his life.
Go to the bridge. Chekov is talking to Uhura. So anything from that weird ship, any signals that you've been noticing that maybe there's a connection to this weird ship that's ghosting us? No, I haven't found anything yet. Cut back to Kirk still fighting for his life, getting stabbed in the lung. Like I wish it was.
I wish the fight scene had been 10 minutes long with nobody on the ship. And then I love the, the wrap up of the fight where he gets to the, he gets to the, and he collapses to the, to the wall mic, and he's like, I just got attacked by an Andorian. Please.
Uh, so to, to go, to go back to the, the inconsistency of the show and what they were doing.
I can't remember what day of the week it's being aired at, at this point. Friday is it? It's Fridays. Yeah. My hunch is gotta get down on Friday. If my hunch is, I wonder if at this point, since they were put into Friday. Fridays tends to be things that are more kid oriented, not adult oriented. Yes, absolutely.
And so it's like, I bet that that's probably part of the reason why they started to kinda like, well, crap, they moved us into a time zone that changes who our potential audience is. So we might have to start shifting things up. So my hunch is that's the reason I think that that played a part. So maybe it's not completely Roddenberry's fault, maybe it's more of a, he was just making the best out a bad situation.
They had also lost the support of Desi Lou. Yeah, Desi Li had been sold at this point, so Lucille Ball, who had been key in getting them on the air in the first place by negotiating a second pilot, which had never been done before. At the beginning of the first season, she was now no longer in charge, and so it was, they no longer had the studio backing them in the same way.
They had been moved to Friday nights, which was the death slot because it's kid friendly, fair only on a Friday night. And they also had their budget cut in half every season they were on the air. When they premiered in the first season they were one of the most expensive shows on television that was slashed in half for the second season and slashed again for the third.
So the third season, like we've already seen it where. We've had the episode about the Roman gladiatorial combat. Well, that's a great way to use costumes that exist. Yeah. You know, you go into the studio shop and you've got gladiatorial outfits. We haven't yet seen the, we found a planet that looks like Chicago and it's filled with gangsters, but that's a common, yeah.
We haven't yet landed on the planet where for some reason they all look like Native Americans. But that's a common, like we're gonna get to the, oh, it's an old West episode. We're like, these things are on their way, where it's going to be, what do we have already on hand that we can use without much need for explanation? Figure out a way to make it work. Make the dollar stretch. This episode though, has has lots of people in heavy makeup, face paint, costumes that are really kind of weird. Um, trying to push the idea that this is a wide array of figures. We get the Andorians. I appreciated the depiction of the Andorians.
I couldn't help but miss Pink Skin. I like.
Mm-hmm.
There is that aspect of the presentation of, or Andorians during enterprise, which really does kinda like, oh wow. They like, they should all be like that. But we do get some nice moments of showing Kirk diplomacy and his ability to descalate a situation which is getting out of hand.
Even though Sarek is involved, things are clearly escalating and the Tellarites are combative as always. So you end up with some nice moments of Kirk demonstrating his, his ability to handle that kind of thing. What did you think about the, both the diplomatic setup of the show, like the tensions of what could happen if peace is not maintained?
What could happen if the new system is not brought into the federation and the murder mystery aspect? 'cause those two things are interwoven in a really intense way.
I thought it was, like I said, fantastic. The way that they constructed this, it was very, in the beginning, it felt like when I was watching it, it felt like, oh God, they're introducing another thread, another thing.
And it felt like at one point it was kinda like, how is this all gonna come together? So, but it was, like I said, by the end, it's so massively woven together. It it at the end, it's like, oh no, that wasn't too many things. It had to be done that way. It was perfect. So I, I did it. This is one of those, it's the first time as viewers, we've really seen the Federation Yeah.
Kind of in action. Yeah. With actual, we've seen at this point, but we haven't seen the Federation. Yeah. So this, this is kind of like the first introduction to that, including that really cool first shot. Shot from very cleverly shot from the hallway. So you ca don't have to see in a full set of where the shuttle lands.
Yeah. But it still gives a sense of scale of how big the ship is and all these ambassadors and representatives coming out. I, it was great to see that aspect of the federation and build it up bigger. And this is to kind of tie back to what you were saying before about DC Fontana kind of building out a lot of the lore and kind of shaping.
Starfleet, not Starfleet, but like the Vulcan race. Yeah. I get the impression that she's more responsible for the Star Trek ness of Star Trek than Roddenberry. Yeah. So Roddenberry certainly feels that up, doesn't it? Yeah. Yeah. He set up the Bible and the whole kind of universe, but it feels like she's the one that actually breathed life into it, where.
We get lip service from the Roddenberry stuff and we actually get meat and potatoes of here's how it actually functions from, from her, which is super cool. I just, I just love that.
Yeah. I also wanted to wrap up our conversation by visiting the plot line of Kirk tricking Spock into, I'm perfectly fine, so I.
I wanted to bring this up. I wanted to bring this up as well because again, how we've seen Scotty. Again, and again, and again and again. Like, oh, some cool Scotty action. He's actually a really good commander. He is very ingenious in how he leads people. I love the fact we really don't ever see Scotty do anything in this episode.
No, no. But he has brought up again and again of Yeah. The captain's injured, so Spock's in command. Well just give it to Scotty. Just give it to Scotty. Well, that'd be irresponsible. And then it's like, yeah, oh no, we got a trick Spock to go do this thing and Kirk can barely stand. He's like, okay, yeah, I can't do my job right now, but I can do it long enough to fake out Spock.
And that whole, that whole storyline I adored because here's this guy with so much bravado and so much like. I'm the guy. Yeah. Even he's recognizing I, I can't, like, this is, yeah. This is too much. I can't do it. And his whole stiffness on the bridge when the Yeah. Whole thing's like unfolding. There's a very, very subtle
Yeah, he did, he did a great job.
I, we, we keep going back to this, like Shatner knew what he was doing. Shatner's a good actor. Yes. Yes he is. Shatner didn't evolve with the times. The times turned into a different type of acting style, but this type of acting style, which was a semi theatrical to the last row sort of delivery, he's very good at it.
He's very good at subtle. He's very good at subtle humor. But in this one, the subtlety of when he comes to the bridge and people know he was attacked, nearly murdered. People know that. So he comes onto the bridge, Uhura turns around and she's about to say something. She puts her hands up, like to reach out and touch him and is going to say something, and he looks at her side eye and gives her a little hand wave.
He's just like, don't like. No, and and she immediately stops. She stops and she pulls back, and then she just watches as he goes down and does the, he only has enough energy to try and trick Spock. He doesn't have time to try and explain to everybody like, I'm fine. He goes directly to the chair and is like, alright, Mr.
Outta my chair with a lot of swagger, a lot of winks. Like, don't worry about it Spock, I got this. You go save your dad's life. Then the moments that the doors are closing, get me Scott. Scotty, get Scotty. He's sitting. Get Scotty and then, oh no, you can't get Scotty belay that like, I gotta take care of this first.
I first, I have to destroy this ship. I part of me wishes for. And if this is me directing, this is what I would've done at the very end. He does get up from the chair. I would've added blood. To his, to his, to his shirt in the back. It would've, it would've added to the dilemma of like, oh, he's legitimately like, this is not good.
And then you get to the, the nice moment at, in Sick Bay where it's, he's refusing to sit down even still. And it's like, you gotta get in his bed if you don't, 10 days. If you do two, like, I am the doctor, I can do it. I can keep you here. Yeah. Yeah. And I even like the, like the comical end of McCoy, like, everybody shut up.
Oh, they're finally listening to me. This kind of like, like kind of funky, funny family fair works in that moment. It, the episode earned a lot of nice moments of lightness and comradery. Other episodes that have aspired to do the same thing, just have missed where you get the things that are like in the Trouble with Tribbles or with Harcourt Fenton Mudd in the episode with all the Androids. Like those are clearly built to be the lighthearted fun, but they don't feel like they've earned those moments in the same way that this moment really shines in an episode where it's like, I don't know if I can do this surgery. And I even like the surgical scene for its reminiscence back to next generation.
It looked similar to the way Next Gen did it where it was, I forgot they had the whole thing of the, the panel that is above the person's body and the illumination from the decontamination shielding and the way it's all depicted and when the power goes down, the simplicity of like, get on the call to engineering, tell them they have to prioritize us and get me that old device that we used to use.
And Chapel is like helping him pull this stuff together. The one thing that, similar to the, and now we in a different part of the ship, cut to a fight already in progress. Similar to that, I did laugh at Spock, sits up and says, I need to talk to the captain. And they're like, yes, put him asleep. Yeah, there's, there's no, there's no, like, you have to stay here.
What do you want us to tell him? Yeah, we can, we can tell him, or we can give you a communicator device and you can talk to him while you're lying down. But it's the whole thing of like, I've got to go. It's, and he goes to sleep and Chapel just goes back and just like throws the, the hypo spray on the table and just like goes back to helping.
Like they could the first opposite of the ship, he had information. Yeah,
they could, they could have very easily just flipped that to make it more dramatic of like they give him the injection to knock him out and he's like, wait, I gotta tell the captain, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. And then both of them go, oh shit.
You know what I mean? They could have both reacted like, oh, crap's, too late.
It could have been, this procedure is gonna be easier on you if you're unconscious, so we're gonna have to put you to sleep. Okay. Spray and then as you said, have the like count back work for 10. Holy cow. I just figured out who those guys are.
Oh. Um, and then the final fight sequence between the enemy ship that they can't figure out how it can be so fast and it's so powerful and dangerous. I even thought, I mean, DC Fontana seems to be thinking in three dimensional chess builds into the fact that this ship is so incredibly dangerous, but is a suicide mission.
Yeah. So you're not gonna run into ships like that all the time. Yeah. So it's like, oh, this ship could take out the enterprise, but only because they built it without any intention of ever being able to get back. I like that as a, how did a ship like this exist and we didn't see it used again and again. I like the fact that it's the Orion's.
I had forgotten that. Yep. I spent the episode like, is this a Romulan plot? Who's behind this? Turns out it's the Orion's, and I'm like, that's fantastic. Make the Orion slavers really, really threatening in a way that I had forgotten they ever had been portrayed in the original series. We saw more of them in strange new worlds and Enterprise where it's like depicted as like, these are really scummy operators, but here we have them operating as a, as a non-governmental entity.
They don't belong to any sort of cohesive thing, right? Yeah. But they're a threat. They're a real threat. I really, really like that. Yep, me too. So, viewers, listeners, I think we've clearly shown our cards at this point. We both really like this one. A lot of fun for me and for Matt. But how do you feel about it?
Let us know in the comments. Jump into the comments, let us know if there was anything about this one that stood out as a diamond, or if you felt like there were weak points that we had not discussed, we'd look forward to hearing what you have to say. Don't forget your comments, your likes, your subscribes, you're sharing with your friends.
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