Category: Podcast

In this episode:

• A literary analysis of The Devil in the Dark

• Everyone’s favorite silicone-based lifefrom, the Horta

• Roddenberry and his producers believed this episode provided Stark Trek with its organizing thesis about how to treat aliens and “the other” and the show, but I argue this thesis was marbled through the first season back to the earliest episodes
  

Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed

Subscribe: RSS

In this episode:

This Side of Paradise

• a heavy sci-fi episode by TOS standards
• the third episode by Trek’s best woman writer, DC Fontana
• a counterpart to The Naked Time with strong Kirk and Spock character development
• A return to a major TOS theme: Life’s a bitch and you like it that way (ok, the Kirk speech is better)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed

Subscribe: RSS

In this episode: “A Taste of Armageddon”

• Another rare pure science-fiction Star Trek episode: a 500 year war waged by computers.
• While the Federation was first mentioned in “Arena” this episode is first to mention the full name: United Federation of Planets
• The message is not explicitly anti-war, but that if you are going to wage war do so honestly in a way that does not hide the costs. Also, the Kirk speech equates human tendency to kill to an addiction that can be overcome with an approach from a 12 Step program.   
• This episode’s Kirk speech serves as an expression of Star Trek thesis of the optimistic human future: it’s not that people will evolve beyond our flaws and brutality, but that we will learn how to better manage them. Coon wrote this speech, but Roddenberry expressed similar ideas in previous episodes including the second pilot “Where No Man…”. He did seem to forget it when he wrote early TNG, where humans were presented as thought their nature had been fundamentally changed, perfected. This was dropped in later seasons. DS9 explicitly returned the idea that humans were imperfect, always struggling to do right. And DSC has been even more explicit about this. But the message is deep in Trek’s DNA going back to the first season of TOS, as this episode makes clear.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed

Subscribe: RSS

Space Seed: an episode that is not as good, and more problematic (#MeToo) than I remember it. Still a classic, but not a masterpiece.

Excellent sci-fi elements:

Most extreme and detailed “future history” Trek has ever attempted: Mid 1990s Eugenics Wars; a dictator from Northern India region (possibly a Sheikh), leading a band of genetic mutants from all over the world  (Western, mid-European, Latin, Oriental) who were created by a pack of ambitious scientists; Earth on the verge of a dark ages, whole populations bombed out of existence.

We dispense with the notion that the 1990s depicted here has to be ret-coned with our actual reality. Interpreted as written (in the mid-1960s) this episode deepens our understanding of the Star Trek universe by showing us that the people we meet on the Enterprise are part of a society that learned a some very hard lessons in its relatively recent history.

Small nitpick of a plot hole I’ve never thought about until now: Kahn rules from 92 to 96; since he is clearly in his 40s at this time, he was likely born in the 1950s. So the Eugenics Wars had their beginnings in the fictional universe even before decade the show is being made in our actual universe.

The TOS message about the Eugenics Wars and genetic manipulation was not that you might create people with Terminator-like powers who will turn on you. It is a similar sci-fi theme as expressed in the Terminator movies, but with a different emphasis: not on the created product, but on the creators. The real villains are the scientists who designed them, and the message is one that Trek has made in many episodes going back to both pilots: there are no shortcuts; shortcuts of hard problems of human nature only cause more problems than you solve; using science and technology as a cureall *really* causes problems. (Listen to the analysis of McCoy’s speech about the Eugenics scientists.)   

Kahn is written as a product of ambitious scientists trying to design the perfect person: arrogant; self-assured; entitled to take what he wants; utter lack of empathy; sociopathic; he speaks with great arrogance. This makes him an unlikable character, even as a villain. Montalban’s performance elevates him.  

Marla McGivers: another problematic representation of a female character.

Kahn’s relationship with McGivers: Not only was it over the top misogyny (that some producers objected too even by 1966 standards), other parts were cliche and predictable. Too many of his scenes are devoted to portraying him as a virile sex object, the long scene pulling down her hair in the mirror being a prime example.

All that and more in the podcast.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed

Subscribe: RSS

In this episode, an analysis of the third quarter of Season 1 of Star Trek, where we cover the following episodes:

The Menagerie Parts I and II

Shore Leave

The Squire of Gothos

Arena

The Alternative Factor

Tomorrow is Yesterday

The Return of the Archons

We discuss narrative structure; science-fiction and technobabble elements; world building, including a tally of the new planets and aliens that are introduced; representation of diversity on screen, and the quality of female representation; common themes, and the overall ranking of episodes.   

Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed

Subscribe: RSS

In this podcast: The Return of the Archons

One of Season One’s more science-fiction-y episodes, with many great Trekian themes

Kirk talks a computer into frying its own circuits–not for the first or last time!

One of Roddenberry’s top 10 episodes (of course he wrote it).

Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed

Subscribe: RSS

In this podcast:

The Star Trek franchise’s very first time-travel romp; sets the precedent for Trek’s mix of time travel and fish-out-of-water comedy; thoughts on why TOS’s long lasting narrative tropes need to be retired in the era of Star Trek: Discovery.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed

Subscribe: RSS

In this episode:

The Alternative Factor, Star Trek’s first W.T.F episode. The plot is a mess, but it did give us one of TOS’s few strong female black guest roles, and that classic closing line… What of Lazarus…?

Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed

Subscribe: RSS