“The Lights of Zetar”
Written by Jeremy Tarscher and Shari Lewis
Directed by Herb Kenwith
Season 3, Episode 18
Production episode: 3×18
Original air date: January 31, 1969
Star date: 5725.3
Mission summary
The Enterprise has some newly designed hardware for Memory Alpha, the central repository for all Federation knowledge both cultural and scientific. To help with the installation is Lieutenant Mira Romaine, a beautiful young specialist that Scotty has taken quite a liking to. This concerns Kirk:
KIRK: When a man of Scotty’s years falls in love, the loneliness of his life is suddenly revealed to him. His whole heart once throbbed only to the ship’s engines. He could talk only to the ship. Now he can see nothing but the woman.
Good thing he’s archiving that thought in a log for the bureaucrats back home!
But before they can give him any dating advice, a series of strobe lights flashes across the viewscreen. It seems at first to be some kind of storm, but the speed and precision with which it moves betrays a kind of intelligence. It closes in on the Enterprise and engulfs the bridge and her crew in sparkly lights.
The sparklies seem to find Lt. Romaine appealing, so they enter her body, demonic possession-style. In her eyes we see the same shiny-eye effect from “Where No Man Has Gone Before“–never a good sign. She collapses. When the sparklies disappear, everyone has a different complaint: Uhura could not use her arm; Sulu could not speak; Chekov could not see. It seems that the lights affected a different part of everyone’s brain–all except Romaine, who instead emitted a terrifying, open-mouthed noise as she came to and doesn’t remember a thing.
Fluency in the Black Speech is, of course, run-of-the-mill space acclimation behavior. No cause for alarm.
McCoy takes her to sickbay but they can’t seem to find anything wrong with her. He snaps at her for being “uncooperative” and not having answers, but Romaine seems frightened by the experience. Scotty (who has abandoned his station to be with her) reassures her that it’s just “space legs,” or adjusting to her first deep space voyage. Nothing to be concerned about!
Meanwhile the sparklies are headed right for Memory Alpha, which has absolutely no defense network in place.
KIRK: No shields?
SPOCK: None, Captain. When the library complex was assembled, shielding was considered inappropriate to its totally academic purpose. Since the information on the Memory planet is available to everyone, special protection was deemed unnecessary.
KIRK: Wonderful. I hope the storm is aware of that rationale.
At least Kirk can see the plot holes. The sparklies, however, don’t give a damn–they head straight for Memory Alpha, hover around a bit, and then head away. At that very moment Lt. Romaine sees a vision of dead aliens on Memory Alpha. Must be a coincidence. You know. Space legs.
When the Enterprise arrives at Memory Alpha, Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and Scotty beam down to the surface, where they find that the entire Memory Alpha computer bank is fried–“a disaster for the galaxy”–and all the men and women stationed there are dead. Except one: a faint life reading reveals one woman, barely alive, speaking in the same garbled tongues that Romaine spoke on the bridge when the sparklies attacked. She collapses dead soon after.
KIRK: What did she die of?
MCCOY: Severe brain hemorrhaging due to distortion of all neural systems, dissolution of autonomic nervous system. All basic personality factors, Captain.
They really like the word “autonomic,” don’t they. Also, what’s a “personality factor?”
Kirk orders Romaine to beam down with them. Confronted with the death she had foreseen, Romaine becomes extremely agitated. She begs the captain to get them all out of there because the sparklies are returning, but no one believes her. (If only there were some way to check…) Finally Sulu hails them to let them know that yes, the sparklies are coming back for seconds, and they need to get off the planet. They all beam up just fine except Romaine, who gets stuck in transit. Scotty is able to finesse the transporter system and get her back with them just in time. She is visibly shaken by the episode, though, and confides in Scotty how terrified she is of what’s happening to her. Scotty patronizingly explains that it’s just the “weird tricks” of space, and she didn’t actually see the dead, it’s all just a fabrication of the mind. There there, little lady. Nothing to be worried about at all, everyone sees visions of the dead on long space voyages.
As they leave Memory Alpha the sparklies start to follow them. No matter how they change course, the sparklies change course with them. It is then that Spock realizes that this “storm” isn’t even one life form–it’s ten distinct life forms, all traveling closely together. Kirk tries to contact them and offer a message of peace, but the sparklies are clearly made of pure evil. Kirk fires a warning shot, which doesn’t deter them at all. So with no other choice, he fires the phasers directly at them–and the sparklies halt their approach. But at the same moment Romaine crumples and collapses to the ground. Scotty frantically tells Kirk not to fire the ship’s phasers again, or they could kill Romaine! Man, that routine space sickness is touchy.
Kirk convenes an interrogation investigation to find out what the sexy lady/sparkly connection is, with McCoy, Spock, Scotty, and Romaine herself. They publicly go over her psychological profile (again, where are the HIPAA laws?) and McCoy informs us that while she has no history of ESP or visions, she is known to be especially “pliant” when learning new things or being in new situations. While it might make her a fun date it doesn’t especially reveal anything about the sparkly connection–until McCoy whips out her “hyperencephalogram.” And you can’t argue with that many syllables! Somehow, her brain wave pattern has been altered, and Spock recognizes the change right away: her new brain wave pattern exactly matches that of the sparklies!
Romaine confesses her visions to the group, the most recent of which was one of Scotty dying. Kirk has an idea, though:
KIRK: They’ll be here very soon. They may destroy you and us as they did Memory Alpha. You are especially susceptible to their will. But we have one chance to survive. Don’t resist. Let them begin to function through you. If we can control that moment, we have a chance. Will you try?
MIRA: Tell me what to do.
The group heads to the medical lab’s anti-grav chamber just as the ship is penetrated by the sparklies. Kirk, Scotty, McCoy, and Spock watch as the aliens slowly take over her body. She is able to resist at first:
MIRA: I am Mira Romaine. I will be who I choose to be. I will.
But soon a creepy voice uses her to communicate with Kirk. It explains that they are from the planet Zetar.
KIRK: You can’t be from Zetar. All life was destroyed there long ago.
ZETAR: Yes, all corporeal life was destroyed.
KIRK: Then what are you?
ZETAR: The desires, the hopes, the mind and the will of the last hundred of Zetar. The force of our life could not be wiped out.
KIRK: All things die.
ZETAR: At the proper time. Our planet was dying. We were determined to live on. At the peak of our plans to go, a sudden final disaster struck us down. But the force of our lives survived. At last we have found someone through whom we can live it out.
Kirk attempts to explain that, hey, you get one life to live, and even if it’s cut short by unexplained widescale planetary catastrophe, you don’t suddenly get the right to take someone else’s life for your own. But the Zetarians are real sticklers for this one point and threaten to kill them all if they don’t give up Romaine to them. Kirk’s not going to give up that easily, though, and decides it’s time for her to get into the decompression chamber to force the nasty Zetars out. Scotty volunteers, because he knows that Romaine can’t kill him. He picks her up and places her into the chamber and is thrown across the room–but he’s still alive.
Once she’s in there, they turn on the anti-gravitation device, to enhance the cool factor, and then slowly increase the pressure in the chamber. It might kill Romaine, but it’s a risk they’re willing to take. Slowly but surely the demons are forced out of her, and the day is once again saved.
Later, the men decide to pat themselves on the back for another job well done, while discussing whether love had anything to do with Romaine’s ability to fight off the aliens and preserve her own identity. This is generally accepted to be a possibility, and all present agree that her work on Memory Alpha will be beneficial to her health.
KIRK: Well, this is an Enterprise first. Doctor McCoy, Mister Spock and Engineer Scott find themselves in complete agreement. Can I stand the strain?
Analysis
No one told me Star Trek had a Pink Floyd laser show! You guys.
Despite the strong horror elements and serviceable cast, the episode falls short, as so many of this season’s do. The plot’s as translucent as the sparklies. Why would the Federation hold all its knowledge in one place and not have a back-up? I’m surprised it wasn’t planet Eminiar Alexandria. (Also, an entire planet and all it has is a digital library? What’s on the rest of the world, generators?) The whole anti-gravitation-oh-wait-we-changed-our-mind-decompression-sounds-cooler solution made no sense to me. These sparklies can clearly move both in the vacuum of space and through the hull and interior of the Enterprise. Why would pressurization exorcise them? Or, even if it could, why couldn’t they just pass through the wall the same way they got into the ship? But really, my favorite part was the ending, where everyone congratulates each other on strengthening Romaine’s “ego structure,” and then decides that the best thing to do is send her, presumably alone, down to the planet where she had visions of everyone dying horribly (which she failed to stop in time). At least we know if she starts to go crazy no one one will waste resources believing her.
Mira Romaine is an odd character. On the one hand, she’s got some chutzpah (talking back to McCoy!) and takes a pretty big risk at the end, putting her self-control and personality on the line for one of Kirk’s gambles. She’s brave, that’s for sure: while the rest of the bridge cowers in fear before the mighty sparklies, she confronts them and even steps closer, curious. (Kirk has his hands over his eyes like a big baby.) And yet everyone she meets talks down to her, dismisses her abilities and strengths, and regards anything she says with skepticism if not outright disbelief. Scotty says she’s got “space sickness”; McCoy treats her like a recalcitrant child; and Kirk continues to refer to her as “the girl” even after she saves all their asses. The worst moment was Sulu’s remark that Scotty probably hasn’t “noticed she has a brain.” Really, Sulu? The first line we get from Scotty, he says she’s the smartest woman that has ever come on the ship. The sexism here didn’t even make internal sense. Romaine herself, though, felt genuine–frightened by the events that surrounded her but remaining more or less courageous throughout. I wish she had more lines, for god’s sake, to at least hide the fact she was clearly window dressing.
Scotty’s attachment to her seems fairly innocent (if sudden and inexplicable), but I did like watching her warm up to him as the episode went on. In the beginning she smiles politely a lot, which is behavior most women have performed at some point or another; but by the time freaky things start to go down, she turns to Scotty for strength and their attachment feels less arbitrary. As silly as it was, I liked Kirk’s speech about love that opened the episode–I only wish it had come at the end, when it wouldn’t have seemed so forced by the hand of exposition. I still would never in a million years buy that as “love,” and I wish they hadn’t tried to force that down our throats with the little epilogue about how it was Big!Magical!Love! that saved her and not her own willpower and strength.
“Zetar” did tackle one of my favorite tropes, though: identity. The Enterprise‘s only hope is for Romaine to give up who she is long enough to coax out the Zetarians, while still maintaining enough of a grip on herself to anchor her in reality. She’s terrified, and who wouldn’t be? Would you put your personality on the line? Not your life or your body, but your awareness of self and everything that makes you the person that you are? Watching the Zetarians speak through her was creepy. Not well-it-was-the-’60s-creepy, but this-is-really-creepy-right–now. And given the show’s insistence on hitting the reset button, I was actually worried that the Lt. Romaine we knew wouldn’t make it. It was kind of incredible to watch her struggle against these forces, and repeat to herself: “I am Mira Romaine. I will be who I choose to be.” It’s exactly what the Zetarians want, of course–the ability to live out the lives they were denied. But like all super-evolved energy sparkles, they’ve become so distant from their humanoid existence they don’t even recognize the horror of what they’re asking:
KIRK: The body of the one you inhabit has its own life to lead.
ZETAR: She will accept ours.
KIRK: She will not. She is fighting for her own identity.
ZETAR: Her mind will accept our thoughts. Our lives will be fulfilled.
KIRK: Will she learn the way people on Memory Alpha learned?
ZETAR: We did not wish to kill.
KIRK: But you did kill!
ZETAR: No. Resisting us killed those people. We did not kill them.
KIRK: The price of your survival is too high.
ZETAR: We only want the girl.
KIRK: You can’t have her. You’re entitled to your own life, but not another’s.
You can’t have immortality. You can march to the ends of the earth, but it will not save you–everyone must die, as unfair as the circumstances may be. Accepting that fate is part of being human, tragedy and all. That the Zetarians are incapable of confronting that reality shows just how far they’ve drifted from the people they once were. It’s a theme that deserves a better episode than this.
Torie’s Rating: Warp 3 (on a scale of 1-6)
Eugene Myers: This episode has all the elements of brilliant Star Trek, including first contact with a new civilization, a threat to the Enterprise, and unexplained deaths. There’s also some excellent dialogue and character interactions, an attractive guest star, and simple but effective visual effects. So why isn’t it one of the better stories? Well, the episode also inherits many of the problems that often trip up the writers, primarily sloppy plotting, slow pacing, and inelegant exposition. And in the end, perhaps drawing on all these familiar threads from previous episodes only makes it less memorable; I certainly had little recollection of this one, another casualty of the third season.
Perhaps the oddest aspect of “The Lights of Zetar” is Scotty’s forced romance with Mira. By now, viewers know that when Scotty finds love, trouble soon follows–and he’ll probably end up being thrown across the room. There are some touching moments, and Scotty’s infatuation is kind of cute to watch, but it’s also a bit uncomfortable, like watching your parents flirt with each other. This isn’t helped by the fact that everyone on the ship notices it and comments on it, turning the whole situation into comedy relief. I couldn’t believe it when I heard Kirk’s log entry:
When a man of Scotty’s years falls in love, the loneliness of his life is suddenly revealed to him. His whole heart once throbbed only to the ship’s engines. He could talk only to the ship. Now he can see nothing but the woman.
That doesn’t belong in a log entry, Captain. And if you’re just thinking it, then why can we hear you?
I was disappointed that Scotty became so distracted by Mira, like a pubescent teen with his first girlfriend. Perhaps I was even more bothered that Mira didn’t seem to feel quite so strongly for him, making him look a bit obsessive. He’s usually so competent and together, it seems out of character for anything to make him care about Enterprise less. It’s kind of like we’re witnessing a seedy affair in progress. It also would have been nice if this relationship could have been explored over the course of several episodes–unheard of in most episodic television of the Sixties–or at least this episode. Ultimately, we didn’t really need it, except to sell the idea that the power of Scotty’s love is what saves her, as opposed to her own strength of will.
Most troubling of all is the overall attitude toward Mira. Despite her status as a professional officer, she’s mainly treated as Scotty’s girlfriend and an inexperienced, “pliant” woman. In fact, at some point early on they start referring to her as “the girl,” and that sticks right to the end. Even worse, they start talking about her instead of to her when she’s in the same room, and even Scotty makes excuses for her and patronizes her like a child. When she sticks up for herself, perhaps a bit too strongly, she’s criticized for being rude and uncooperative. If she’s really so poorly suited for space travel, why is she in Starfleet and on Enterprise? (Of course, given their track record, it sounds like she’d be perfect for command since she’ll break down at the slightest provocation–exactly who you want in charge of over 400 lives and an expensive ship.)
Then there are the Zetarians, who don’t really amount to much when all is said and done. They are the remnants of a race that for some reason have to kill people in search of a potential host. There’s no real explanation for why Mira makes a good vessel for their incorporeal consciousness, except perhaps for her fabled “pliancy.” They say that “resisting us killed” the scholars on Memory Alpha, so she survived because she didn’t fight their control? Great. (In fact, though many people die, we only see the Zetarians affect the minds of women. What’s up with that?) And finally, the Zetarians literally just go away… Or are they destroyed? Not really clear on that. The end drops very quickly and their antigravity/depressurization plan comes out of nowhere and doesn’t make a lot of sense.
I think the best read of “The Lights of Zetar” is as a horror story. This is a classic possession tale, with the young woman occupied by malicious spirits. The creepy moaning sounds, yawning mouths and wide eyes, and green-tinged faces would fit right into a ghost story, and Mira even floats in mid-air a la The Exorcist. The whole procedure to purge the aliens from her body in the antigravity chamber is akin to exorcising demons, with scientific technobabble instead of Latin prayers and holy water.
Despite its flaws, I enjoyed many things in this episode. The idea of a library planet is terrific, and it’s great that Mira is given the awesome responsibility of rebuilding it. Kirk’s attempts to communicate with the Zetans and then warn them off with a shot across the bow is textbook first contact procedure, a rarity given his tendency to shoot first and ask questions later. Even the tedious briefing room scene was fascinating, as they worked out what was happening to Mira (and somehow reading flashing lights on a computer console…), and there were some terrific lines, including the episode’s punchline. I most appreciated one moment in particular, where Mira is berating the doctor in Sickbay.
MIRA: I want to know why too. You’re the doctor, you tell me. This is a new experience for me.
MCCOY: This whole thing is a new experience for all of us.
MIRA: All of you are accustomed to new experiences. It’s part of your work. I’m not.
All of this is a reminder that space is freaking scary, and not everyone should be out there facing the unknown. There’s no shame in that, even if they think less of her for it.
Eugene’s Rating: Warp 2
Best Line: CHAPEL (in her best Scottish brogue): With a bedside manner like that, Scotty, you’re in the wrong business.
Syndication Edits: None
Trivia: In the original outline, Lt. Romaine was Scotty’s new engineering assistant and she was as much enamored of the ship and its workings as he was. She had also always had visions and some form of ESP. Memory Alpha was “Memory Seven,” and Scotty’s defensiveness of Romaine extended to him punching Spock when he seemed to berate her with questions. The sparklies cancelled out gravity and sound and shocked the crewmembers as if through an electrical charge. In the end, Romaine was placed in a cryogenic chamber, not a decompression chamber.
Other notes: Shari Lewis, who co-wrote this episode with her husband, was a huge Star Trek fan and considered it a dream come true to be able to write for the show. Ms. Lewis was of course a brilliant puppeteer and children’s television host, most famous as the star of The Shari Lewis Show and, much later, Lamb Chop’s Play-Along. She wanted to play Mira Romaine herself, but they went with Jan Shutan instead.
Previous episode: Season 3, Episode 17 – “That Which Survives.”
Next episode: Season 3, Episode 19 – “Requiem for Methuselah.” US residents can watch it for free at the CBS website.
First. Having a planet set aside for archival and research purposes is an interesting idea but having nothing in place to protect it didn’t make sense – even back then. Even if they could be sure that no one would try to attack it, space is still a dangerous place – they knew that back then as all they had to do was tune to CBS to see that Cosmic Storms were an almost continuous threat. But that was the 60s – a time when things could exist to be a target of the main plot threat without regard to continuity or common sense.
Second. When seeing this one as a kid, I thought it was neat that Scotty got to show some romantic interest. Today that interest troubles me and I think I know part of the why. While Lt. Romaine is presented as having some degree of intelligence, she is still young and beginning her career compared to Scotty. The romance was too far out of character for him and it has the creepy factor that was known even then. Cary Grant had been hesitant to do Charade because of the age difference between himself and Audrey Hepburn. They ended up appeasing his concern by letting his character express his concern and discomfort over that age difference. This in turn strengthened the movie as it allowed the viewer to watch the feelings grow between them. Back to Scotty and Mira. Even if their ages had been closer, the attraction still would be flawed because there would have been little of common interest. Let me offer the following bit of dialogue between Chief Mechanic’s Mate Tosin and Major Edna Heywood RN. from the movie Operation Petticoat.
“You know, I spent a lot of years disliking women. But I don’t dislike you.”
“Oh?”
“You’re not a woman. You’re more than a woman. You’re a *mechanic*”
(Above taken from the IMDB pages for the movie.)
A scene like this but tailored to the character could have given Scotty some growth but instead we saw a creepy one-shot bout of infatuation.
I guess the best thing about this episode is that it gave us an interesting name for a Star Trek trivia repository.
Another weak, but not horrible episode. I was really annoyed by the constant use of The Girl instead referring to her by name or for god’s sake at least her rank. I wanted someone to scream out ‘She has a name use it!’ (Though that did have the side effect of making me feel better about my prose.) It’s been pointed out that the ‘plan’ to deal with the space fry toys really was not plan at all. I mean they are in-freaking-corporal why would a couple of atmospheres of pressure make any difference at all? (and yes Dr McCoy Scotty had better bring that pressure down slowly — cause you know the bends.)
Another example of poor writing in my not so humble opinion is the lack of specificity. At the peak of our plans to go, a sudden final disaster struck us down. Really? That’s not I think anyone would ever recount such a story. It’s be like, I was about to leave San Diego and the the final big quake hit. Or I was getting to the airport and the hurricane smashed everything. People refer to specific events, place, things, and people. They rarely talk in ill-defined generalities.
And the Zetard survived because they wanted to? They were just too stubborn to die? oh please I have a hard time with that in ghost stories and I like ghost stories, but keep this sort of talk out of my SF.
This is one of those episodes that was rarely shown in syndication in the 70s, so I don’t remember that much about it. It seems pretty forgettable, though there does at least seem to be some consistency in Scotty’s character development. He’s another lonely figure, like McCoy, but he seems more inclined to struggle against it. Of course, it always winds up with him getting thrown across the room, so he may be a bit slow on the uptake.
Shari Lewis was a decent puppeteer, but she was a terrible ventriloquist. I preferred Paul Winchell. He was also the voice of Tigger and invented a biomechanical heart. Shari Lewis cowrote this episode. ‘Nuff said.
Next week, the birth of slashfic!
@1 Ludon
Oh yeah, that whole, “This planet is for everyone” excuse for not having defenses was unbelievably naive, though it was cool to see it in practice with the multiple alien races found dead inside the library. Even Kirk seemed exasperated at the idea that they couldn’t protect themselves.
Oddly, I never really think of Scotty as all that old on the show, but Kirk stated that he was older. This does add a bit of creepiness to their relationship–for all we know, she only appeared to reciprocate his feelings, but it could have been a case of sexual harassment. And she must have been pretty young, especially with all those references to her as being a girl.
Also, Charade is a great movie, and I love that exchange you quoted from Operation Pettycoat, which I haven’t seen.
Yeah, meh.
It’s occurred to me that perhaps the Rewatch series would have been enhanced — particularly when dealing with third-season episodes, which are notoriously poorly written — by comparing them to the James Blish adaptations, which at least had the benefit of, you know, a writer writing them. I seem to recall that he did his best to iron out a lot of the problems in the various episodes, perhaps even working off the original draughts of the stories, which I think were often a lot better — at least potentially better, anyway — than what actually got filmed. Not having my Blish collection to hand, I don’t know what he did with ‘The Lights of Zetar’, but it had to have been better than the episode as shot.
I found the constant use of ‘the girl’ annoying even when I was a kid watching this episode, and that was in the days when I’m not even sure the word ‘sexism’ had been invented. Even today, when I’m expecting to hear it, it just rankles. Didn’t anyone notice this when they were doing a read-through?
Stupid hyperbaric chamber fix, ditto. I never believed that whole thing for a second.
They did do a reasonable job of making Romaine float inside the chamber, at least.
And, once again, Scotty does go flying. Kirk rips his shirt, Scotty goes flying. I’m hard-pressed to think of anyone else who has a signature damage theme.
And, of course, Romaine completely disappears in subsequent episodes, so I guess she and Scotty broke up somewhere between here and ‘Requiem for Methuselah’. Love ’em and leave ’em, that’s our Scotty!
Eugene: Trust me, it’s not just pubescent teens who get distracted by their girlfriends.
Also: ‘Kirk’s […] tendency to shoot first and ask questions later’? What? Come on, Eugeue, we’ve been watching (or recalling) almost three seasons worth of Trek together here, and you still have the impression that Kirk shoots first and asks questions later? Next you’ll be telling us about how he does nothing but chase space bimbos.
Ludon@1: I agree that the Scotty-Romaine romance seems forced. But, then, almost all of Scotty’s romances seem forced, don’t they? He just never seems comfortable around women. Hm. Maybe if one were a mechanic!
And, you know, I do get tired of people constantly talking about how ‘creeped out’ they are by various romantic pairings, in this case an old man with a younger woman. They used to call these May-September romances. I haven’t had one myself, but I know people who do, they’re not at all uncommon, and some of them actually work. People fall in love at all ages, with all kinds of other people, for all sorts of reasons. Get over it.
@5 NomadUK
Actually, I was thinking about all the times they encountered new life and Kirk wanted to kill it before studying it, thus the whole “Spock-blocking” thing. There are plenty of occasions where he follows the proper protocol and plenty where he decides to just react with force first.
And generally I am not creeped out by big age discrepancies, except when the feelings are a) mostly one-sided, b) the person giving the attention has more power, and c) the person giving the attention treats the other person like a child. Otherwise, love conquers all!
I still don’t know why that chamber worked, or what it even did to the Zetans, if anything. Maybe they took her over anyway and just pretended to leave.
@5 NomadUK
We’re closer to agreement than you seem to think. As I tried to suggest with my mention of Charade, an older/younger romance doesn’t have to be creepy if you can see areas of common interest or attraction. (In fiction or in real life.) I didn’t see much, if anything, to suggest areas of common interest between Scotty and Lt. Romaine. Additionally, his response to Kirk’s call on her condition suggests to me a sexual infatuation and a relationship founded on a sexual infatuation is usually doomed to failure. Somewhere, in one of my writing exercises, I had a character comment that “The thrill of sex may fade but a good friendship can last a lifetime.”
Another one I had to re-watch. Mostly notable for giving us “Memory Alpha.” Terrible writing and plot holes you could pilot a shuttle through.
I generally like Scotty-centric episodes, but this one is off. He’s just oddly over-the-top with ‘the girl.’ I guess even engineers get a mid-life crisis. One thing I do appreciate, though, is that even the sexy guest star still looks like an actual person in the sixtes.
The defenselessness of Memory Alpha seems to be a comment on the anti-military stance common at universities at the time, so it never struck me as odd.
@3 DemetriosX I suspect “Patterns of Force” was the birth of slashfic, but I’m willing to read anything written about Louise Sorel.
I agree with Torie’s comment that the ending, which maroons this lone woman on a rock, destroyed by alien attack, with ESP visions of their horrible deaths still fresh in her head, seems an odd command decision. Her strengthened psyche not withstanding.
This woman is a lieutenant, which means she has some experience in Starfleet. In fact, I don’t know if a woman is ever shown in TOS with a rank higher than lieutenant. It’s an interesting trivia challenge.
What I begin to see in Season 3 is the move of focus off the Captain toward secondary characters. Scotty gets fleshed out in Season 3, even if that flesh is ungainly. And you can even see potential for a character like Mira Romaine as being added to the cast, as was Chekhov. The script certainly spends a lot of time developing her, only to cast her away in the end (we know a heck of a lot more about her than we ever learn about Uhura, say).
You’ll see this even more prominently in the “Cloud Minders,” where Spock draws a romance for no reason that’s integral to the plot and even has a “log entry/interior monologue” that is unique to the series. McCoy got his shining moment in “The World is Hollow.” Now here’s Scotty.
I think if we’d seen a Season 4, we’d have seen a lot more development of these secondary characters.
Eugene@6, Ludon@7: Your points are perfectly reasonable. My apologies. I’m being a cranky old man, I think; much less tolerant of intolerance as I get older, and likely to be a bit snippy.
I think the lack of defence of Memory Alpha is not unlike the lack of defence around hospitals and other medical facilities in war zones.
Whoops! Meeting… must dash!
NomadUK@10, The Library at Alexandria does come shatteringly to mind, though.
Good thing they have Spock around as a backup database of universal knowledge. And he knows how to defend himself.
You know, at first I was mystified as to how the lights’ willpower and unwillingness to die somehow kept them around — like that’s never been tried before in human history. But hearing you describe it as a horror/ghost possession story, that made much more sense — that’s why there are ghosts, isn’t it? (er, in The Mythos. Ghosts aren’t real.) They’re unwilling to leave the world due to something or another, usually unfinished business of some kind.
What still mystifies me, though, is why there’s 10 of them. Was there a 10-to-1 ratio of Zetaran survivors to spirit entities? Were 90% of the last of the dying race willing to give up and expire? And if there’s 10 entities, why are there so many sparkly lights?
As for the defenseless nature of Memory Alpha, I mean c’mon even in the ’60s we knew it was smart to have backups. And space has, y’know, rocks and dust and meteors and stuff, wouldn’t they want shields even from that?? But it was the ’60s, maybe they were worried about SDS building takeovers or something. . .
@ 1 Ludon
Yeah, the lack of planetary defense is just absurd. I mean, not even a shield??
The romance didn’t creep me out, but if they had gone with the original draft where she was a subordinate, that would have been weird and possibly inappropriate.
@ 2 bobsandiego
If all it took to become immortal was to not want to die, I think we’d see a lot more sparklies around.
@ 3 DemetriosX
I loved Shari Lewis as a kid. I make no apologies.
@ 4 Eugene
I thought that was weird, too! What makes Scotty so old? He doesn’t seem significantly older than Kirk, and certainly not more than McCoy (who gets the girl more often than he does…).
@ 5 NomadUK
It’s only creepy if there’s a weird power dynamic going on (like, say, him being her direct report, as in the original draft), or something familial. Though I really enjoyed the Sabrina remake with Harrison Ford, it got awkward when they reminisced about him babysitting her… (Is that in the original, too?)
@ 6 Eugene
Spock seemed unusually bloodthirsty in this one. Forget Spock-blocking, he didn’t even seem compelled to try and protect Romaine.
@ 8 ChurchHatesTucker
Even a university would want protection if it were alone on a backwards planet.
She does look like an actual person, doesn’t she? I remember in “That Which Survives” noting how disturbingly skinny Lee Meriwether was.
@ 9 Lemnoc
That just seemed crazy to me. If she didn’t have serious trauma/PTSD before, I’m sure she would be a mess by the end of that assignment.
We only see women as lieutenants and yeoman, as far as I can remember, until the movies. Can anyone think of any exceptions? (Interesting that the Romulans had a female commander long before Starfleet did…)
@ 11 Lemnoc
And the best part is he can just mind meld his entire personhood if he needs to! Just think, if he had been attacked by the sparklies instead of Romaine, they probably could’ve put him on standby in McCoy until they got his body back.
@ 13 Torie
…and ensigns. On the subject of which, Lt. Romaine outranks Chekhov—ie, has more experience—although you’d never know that from the way the boys talk about “the girl.”
Areel Shaw from “Court Martial” strikes me as the most “command rank” woman in the series, as far as Starfleet women strongly flexing their braid goes, but she’s still only a lieutenant. Given she was a senior JAG officer at a Starbase, her rank probably should have been higher… maybe if she’d been a better prosecutor….
One thing that’s bugged me about Star Trek, though, is their grade inflation. You see this a lot on TNG, with 30-year-old captains, or captains commanding little better than shuttlecraft. They give high ranks away like Pez.
For an amusing comparison, study ranks in the U.S. Navy prior to the Civil War. There was no admiralty to retire into, so ships were commanded by graybeards hobbling around from the War of 1812. The entire U.S. Exploring Expedition squadron was commanded by a lowly navy lieutenant who could not climb in rank.
The croaking demon voice effect creeped me out so badly as a kid that I’m actually a little reluctant to try watching this one again. Things that were scary 30 years ago are bound to seem less scary now, right? Less. Not more scary. Right???
Before I even read your post and comments – when I was a kid, this episode creeped me the fcuk out. Like, seriously. Every time she goes all catatonic and that creepy noise and the face changing colour and…*shudder*.
Now I’m gonna go read the post…I’m a little afraid to re-watch this one, in deference both to the possibility that it’ll take all the delicious terror out of my memories (for the same reason I don’t rewatch old Who serials), and the possibility that it won’t.
I don’t really have much to add to the conversation other than that; it’s an episode I quite liked when I was a kid, so I don’t want to spoil that rare feeling about a 3rd season ep by going and actually watching it. :)
@ 14 Lemnoc
I always assumed the “grade inflation” was a relic of old-school (British) navy ranks. You could easily be a captain by 30 because you entered the service at, say, age 7.
Before getting distracted with other books I was reading the Aubrey-Maturin series, and while there was no admiralty to retire into, once you made post-captain you were kind of set for life. I don’t know much about U.S. naval history, though.*
*Except that their official publication is called All Hands magazine, which makes me snicker like nothing else.
@ 15 Eli B
It’s less scary, but it’s still really, really creepy.
@ 16 CatieCat
The face changing color bits look silly now, but the voice overdub is still seriously creepy.
The possessed woman on Memory Alpha croaking her last seriously creeped me out as a preteen. I remember actual nightmares afterward, and recalling them can give me the shivers. But watching it now does nothing.
Does Number One from “The Cage” count as a >Lt.?
Some of the headdesk moments could be prevented so easily. Planetoid with normal space environment shields vs starship- type combat capable shields, I could accept. Even picking pressure or gravity and sticking with it would be better. Agh!
“The girl”- Somebody was trying, but this was still the 60s. Female officers in combat/ unrestricted line classifications did not exist in the US, and equipment installation project heads were almost as rare. I respect them for trying, though.
Actor age differences- James Doohan was 48, Jan Shutan 36. Technical specialist officers are IRL promoted more slowly than others, and are often “direct inputs” to junior ranks, mostly to fit them into a hierarchy where they have enough authority to do their job without being dealt scutwork by random asshats (I’m sure Starfleet hasn’t gotten rid of every jerk that ever joined), so age isn’t a concern for me, and wasn’t when I watched before researching ages on IMDB.
Torie- Watch “That Which Survives” again, but set your TV to whatever shows the picture a bit too wide (Everybody has a digital flatscreen now, right?)
Torie@17, et al.: I think the ‘grade inflation’ was more the result of the decision made at the beginning of the series that everybody on the ship was an astronaut, and astronauts were always officers, ergo, everyone had to be an officer.
And, yes, I know, they often had crew members referred to as ‘chief’, and there were a lot of guys walking around in coveralls, who sure didn’t look like officers. So they weren’t terribly consistent about it.
sps49 will, I’m sure, correct me if I’m wrong, but my understanding is that most members of a ship’s crew are enlisted and petty officers — and this is not a US versus Royal Navy thing; there are a handful of officers aboard to basically manage things, but the ratings do the bulk of the interesting work. So Star Trek‘s problem is that it’s taken all the tasks that would have been spread across a much wider range of pay grades and squeezed them into half-a-dozen, starting at ensign. That’s why almost everyone is a lieutenant.
Roddenberry was Army Air Force, but it’s the same principle, and he surely knew this, but the stupid idea that everyone had to be an officer — just because that’s what NASA had decreed — screwed it up.
@NomadUK et al.
Regarding rank in Starfleet, I always got the impression that we’re really only seeing the tippy-top of the ship’s staff. To the extent that I know about matters naval, it’s from the Aubrey-Maturin series (like with Torie); and there we’re mostly concerned with a fairly large stable of ranked officers, plus warrant officers like the gunner, the bosun, the carpenter, etc. But there were quite a few officers aboard a Royal Navy ship, and they’d have included the Master (Sulu), the Surgeon (McCoy), First Mate (Spock), warrant-officer master-carpenter/bosun (Scotty — though from memory alpha, apparently he’s supposed to be second officer?? Why does nobody ever call him by rank, then??), and whatever Uhura and Chekov are (Uhura’s probably just a junior lieutenant in charge of signalling, and Chekov is like a pilot but plausible as just a junior lieutenant/officer of the watch). Er, so it doesn’t necessarily work on Napoleonic RN terms, but it’s not implausible that a ship would have this many officers.
Thinking about it, it’s kind of weird that Starfleet ships never seemed to have gunners. I suppose this was notionally Worf’s job in TNG, but Starfleet officers are pretty much generalists.
Starfleet does have non-officer ranks; Chief O’Brien actually makes a deal out of this in DS9 because he’ll have to call a younger character “Sir” after that person attends the Academy. I had actually remembered the TNG episode “Lower Decks” as dealing with this, but on looking it up, those characters were all junior lieutenants, they’d been to the Academy. And besides, there’s all those yeomen running around; they’re probably rated.
On the other hand, if you think about it, it makes sense for an unusually large number of the staff on board to be some kind of officer, because graduating from Starfleet Academy earns you a commission, and space ships are technological and complicated and stuff. You’d want the people crewing them to have that education that warrants (har har) a commission. Besides, the seamen usually did pretty physical work, and there doesn’t seem to be too much of that left in Starfleet, so no need for the rated spacemen.
Speaking of “Officer of the Watch,” have you ever noticed how nothing *ever* seems to happen when the main crew is off-duty? It isn’t until TNG that we actually see anybody other than the Captain standing watch for any reason other than the Captain being on an away mission. . . and then it’s Data, who DOESN’T SLEEP.
It’s like they’re on a teevee show or something. : )
sps49 @ 18
Eep. I had completely forgotten about Number One from the pilot! You know, they **started** out trying.
Roddenberry was Army Air Corps, early Air Force, and I think the experience gave him a wacky sense of ranks. Hence you get things like fleet captains and commodores. I think the latter were mostly around to command other ships while slightly outranking Kirk so they might occasionally give him fits… Stone, Stocker, Decker, Wesley they were all there to vex him in various ways.
But, the rank inflation thing really gets ridiculous. Kirk in command of 400 personnel probably wouldn’t rank higher than Lt. Commander in a sane system… not as sexy, I know. Then you get later insanities like the Enterprise having four or five captains aboard in the later films. Guess Starfleet was a little short of ships to disperse is upper assets.
** Waving His hand** USN veteran here, so I can speak a little bit about this from that perspective. Generally you get a ratio of something like 1 officer critter to 10 enlisted men. (it varies so this is not a hard and fast rule) For a ship like ENTERPRISE 440 crew it is unlikely a full captain would command, so that comment is spot on. Howvere I remember interviews w Roddenberry during the 70s (after the show before the movie) where he stated his vision was that the crew was all officers and everyone had their own cabin. (I suspect his liberal nature dislike the sharp division between enlisted and officer in the real military.) The epsisodes however did occasionally refer to a ‘chief’ like Kyle, so continutity was not their strong suit. In the real world — at least as far as the USN goes — the enlisted are the people who know how the machines work. Your engineering officer is unlikely to know a spanner from spam. (On my ship the engineering officer had a degree in history, but he could of just as easily been a theater arts major.) Fiction focuses on officer because what officers do is make decisions and decisions drive plots not just following orders.
as to women in star fleet – NBC wanted no women on the ship, Roddenberry had to fight for 25% women and even then was restricted from showing them in command. Hence the upcoming drek “Turnabout Intruder.”
bobsandiego @ 22
Good stuff. I’ll just point out that we did see a crewman or three in the series, esp in the first season. “Man Trap” featured a couple of them. I *think,* without referencing it, Kirk beat the tar out of one in “Enemy Within.”
Enterprise might be small for a full captain in the modern Navy, but aren’t the Constellation class ships among the largest Starfleet has? You can’t argue that he should a ship with a larger crew if there aren’t any. We also have to remember that the real model here is the Royal Navy of the 18th and early 19th centuries. Communications are often somewhat dicey and Kirk bears a lot more responsibility than would normally be found for a naval commander below flag rank today. That could also justify a higher rank. The RN of the period also granted a commanding officer below the rank of captain a courtesy rank. William Bligh was only a lieutenant when he commanded the Bounty, but he was called captain because he had a ship.
Of course, it’s also possible that the Old Boy network gave the young punk the smallest ship they could get away with, because he didn’t have enough years under his belt.
@24 DemetriosX
Ahh being called ‘Captain’ and having the Rank of Captain are two different things. The Commanding officer of a ship is always referred to as Captain aboard the ship no matter what he actual rank happens to be. So a Lt. in command of ship is called Captain aboard and in reference to that ship. This rule does not apply to temporary commands such as Spock and the Galieo 7. When a Captain visits another Captain aboard a ship the visiting captain is generally referred to as ‘Commodore’ as a courtsey and to avoid confusion. Thhought Decker appeared to be a full Commodore on ‘The Doomsday Machine.’
bobsandiego@22: Thanks for the perspective. I agree with the lack of continuity; clearly there were people writing for the show that had knowledge of the navy, and so they had ‘chief’ and other crew, when Roddenberry clearly hadn’t made provision for it.
As far as fiction and officers, I don’t think that’s necessarily so. One of the finest science-fiction novels written, The Mote in God’s Eye, is an excellent translation of the Royal Navy to interstellar space opera, and many of the characters are ratings (though there are a trio of midshipmen who do carry the plot along, and the hero is, well, yes, an officer and a member of the aristocracy). Tom Clancy’s The Hunt for Red October — the only decent book he ever wrote — also concentrates quite a bit on the ratings. So it’s possible to do it, it just requires a bit more imagination and effort — which may explain why it doesn’t happen more often.
DemetriosX@24: You are, of course, spot on with the analysis of Kirk’s responsibilities and the way in which he is much more like an old Royal Navy captain — with diplomatic powers commensurate with someone who has almost no contact with base — than a modern US naval officer, who is under constant monitoring by Washington.
Really, the closest thing to Kirk’s position in modern naval forces is probably a ballistic missile submarine commander — long periods of duty out of range of base, and great responsibility. Not much in the way of diplomacy, mind you. I’ve always thought that space travel would eventually require the kind of protocols and personnel that currently are suited to submarine duty.
bobsandiego@25: Note, of course, that in the Royal Navy, the rank of commodore is still in use. I understand that in the US Navy, the equivalent is now referred to as rear admiral (lower half), which strikes me as simply bizarre.
Horatio Hornblower was cited as an inspiration for Kirk, so the RN comparison is apt.
@27 NomadUK The funny thing is that commodore was considered a job description in the RN originally. The early US navy made it a rank (there’s even a snide comment in one of the later Aubrey books about that.) Fast forward two hundred years and the USN considers it a job description and the RN has a formal rank of commodore.
@22 BobSanDiego NBC wanted no women on the ship, Roddenberry had to fight for 25% women and even then was restricted from showing them in command. Hence the upcoming drek “Turnabout Intruder.”
OMG. After all these years I think I finally get Turnabout.
bobsandiego@25:Kirk certainly seems to carry the rank as well as the title, but I thought I’d toss that out there anyway. (Army captains also get bumped up to major when they’re aboard a naval vessel; I suppose that applies to marines, as well.) I think the real justification is the poor communications and responsibilities, both military and diplomatic, that fell to Kirk and other commanders of Constitution-class vessels (I got that wrong in my last post).
Also note that Decker, whether another captain or a full commodore, was commanding a ship of the same class and, presumably, the same crew size. There may not have been any larger vessels in Starfleet at the time. Somebody Trekkier than I will have to answer that one. By the time of TNG, Picard had a crew 2 to 2.5 times larger, but was still a captain.
ChurchHatesTucker@28: Not just Hornblower, but James Cook. That’s where Kirk got his name originally.
@DemetriosX
Oh, Kirk is certianly a ‘full bird’ Captain as we used to say in the Navy. In “Court Martial” he is Idenitified as a Captain, not a lesser rank, Commanding Officer of the USS Enterprise. Howvere we should avoid pushing reality too far into our fictional fun. A real cpatain would never dash to the planet again and again without getting in hot water for abandoning his post. It’s point like this I just let slide rather than be too much of a stickler for ‘accuracy.’
@28 ChurchHatesTucker
Kirk is very much a Hornblower in Space character. (I’ve read the Hornblower novels several times, but not the Aubrey ones yet.) I really liked the original concept that there was no speed of communication faster than a ship. No signalling starfleet for instructions and it is shame they quickly lost that. (Something I kept in my Honrblower inspired MilSF novel)
In my mind it’s not so outlandish Kirk is a full braid Captain in TOS, for all the reasons described. And we don’t see a lot of commands in TOS. Where it gets crazy is in TNG, where commanders of little buckets are “full bird,” as bobsandiego describes, buckets that are a heck of a lot less isolated than TOS era. Presumably that’s because the writers didn’t quite get that lesser ranks are always captains aboard the vessels they command, even if they’re just plywood PT boats.
Again, getting back to my example that a lowly lieutenant could command an entire squadron exploring the far side of the world in the 1830s…
No doubt about it now my Sunday Night Movie this week is going to have to be “Master and Commander.”
You know I really dig out discussions here. It’s the only onle community I really take part in.
@29 DemetriosX Huh. James Cook. James Kirk. The things I learn here.
@33 BobSanDiego I can’t recommend M&C enough. It’s a a mashup of several of the Aubrey books, with the French substituted for the Yanks for marketing reasons, and it really shouldn’t work, but it somehow manages to shine.
@34 ChurchHatesTucker
Oh I know. I saw it in the theaters and got the DVD the moment is came out. *le Sigh* I want the blu-ray, but there’s hte sweetie-wife to consider.
I leave for five minutes and you guys discuss Royal Navy hierarchy and Patrick O’Brien without me?! Damn!! Worse, now I want to watch Horatio Hornblower…
Everyone else has pointed out the only addition I had, which was that even if you’re an ensign commanding a raft everyone still has to call you el capitan. But you guys are obviously way ahead of me on that one.
The movie M&C really shouldn’t work, but like ChurchHatesTucker says, it does. They get the characters (and, perhaps just as importantly, the humor) right, and even if the plot is kind of a hodgepodge it maintains both the thrill of the adventure and the grim realism of the books. I know it was Russell Crowe’s pet project and he wanted to do more, but it wasn’t enough of a success to warrant a sequel. (Yet you can throw a bunch of lensflare shit onto some previous known property and hey, you get a trilogy. Grumble…)
@ bobsandiego
I had no idea you were a Navy man! Awesome, thank you for your service. And if it weren’t obvious you guys are my favorite (and at this point, only) online community, but that should surprise no one. (Thanks for the kind words, is what I mean.) I wish you all had been around tonight when I was at a bar defending my favorite Star Trek movie…
Another book series dealing with a Royal Navy extended into a space force is David Weber’s Honor Harrington Series. I’ve only read On Basilisk Station and while it was a fun read, I really don’t remember much about it. I do remember commenting to a friend after finishing it that the book is proof that even a flawed manuscript (gender and right/left side mistakes) can become a Best-Seller.
While we are sending up single ships at a time, the aviation mode of crew ranking works. When (in fiction or in the future) we deal with many ships the navy model does make sense.
Since the navy guys have run with a discussion, I have a question for them. What is (or was) the proper use of Skipper? (If I’m spelling it right.) I remember that address being used all the time in McHale’s Navy and I think I remember it being used in PT-109.
I don’t have much to add to the discussion, except to say that I’m fascinated with all the military details that have been unearthed and the corresponding dissection of Starfleet’s own officer structure. I’m particularly intrigued by the idea that Kirk’s planetside missions could be interpreted as “leaving his post.” I always thought it was inadvisable only because it was dangerous, so taking your top two or three ranking officers into an unknown situation was obviously a bad idea.
I do wonder what his reputation in the fleet is. Do people say, “That Kirk, he’s pretty cool, but he hogs all the good missions”? Or are people worried because statistics indicate that 75% of the crewmembers that beam down with the captain end up dead? Those are disturbing numbers, I’d think, even to Command. Does anyone accuse him of favoring the senior bridge crew and not giving junior officers opportunities to advance or reap the advantages of exploring strange new worlds?
Torie’s second “Where are the HIPAA laws?” question got me thinking. I’m old enough to remember the 60’s (barely), and the answer is “years in the future”.
We spot the sexism right away, but I think a lot of younger viewers probably have no idea just how different things were back then. The whole notion of “privacy rights” wasn’t even an issue yet, outside of academic legal circles. The Privacy Act, which requires federal agencies to describe the information on individuals that they collect and how they use it, and prohibits giving it out to just anyone without the permission of the individual in question, didn’t arrive until 1974. The only successful “privacy” actions up to that point were civil suits, and were generally only successful if they proved defamation, or involved sexual/reproductive privacy.
So, good catch — that’s an anachronism I hadn’t even noticed.
@38 Eugene
Oh yes in the real militaries Kirk would be in insane amount of trouble. Let’s take the episode ‘That Which Survives’ as an example. Kirk leaves the ship and the ship is brought into danger. Should the ship be lost in a real world inquest the question would be ‘why were you away from your post?’ Kirk’s post is commanding the Enterprise. On the planet he can make the snap command decisions about the chip that he has been trained to do. Of course what we are watching is television and you do not pay William Shatner star wages and NOT use him. So for TV C.O.s are forever leaving their post because the shows are about them. Personally I would love to see a series either TV or prose where the main characters are lower level characters, not department heads and such. The Captain or commanding officer is some spoken of and rarely seen demi-god and it’s the poor junior officers and enlisted tasked with making the order work and succeed.
@37 Ludon Skipper is slang for commanding officer of a boat. If you have a small crew and one that is informal you may call him skipper to his face, but in general it is used between crew members to refer to the Captain. I do not know the origin of the term.
@36 Torie
You and Eugene have created a very cool community here. I am happy to have found it. What is your favorite Star Trek film? For me, hands down, it the The Wrath of Khan. A near perfect trek movie.
I once had a girl ask me as a conversation started what five films would I save if all other films were going to be lost and Star Trek The Wrath of Khan was on my list as the SF movie I would save. (Citizen Kane was my drama, High Noon my western. She she intrigued because apparently I was the only person who answered by selecting films from categories to save.
bobsandiego@40: Personally I would love to see a series either TV or prose where the main characters are lower level characters, not department heads and such.
I remember thinking, ‘way back when the serious rumours of a new Star Trek series were starting up, that exactly this would be perfect. I remember thinking of all the things I would do to make Trek so much better: more accurate physics, better special effects, more real science-fiction authors writing scripts, and a more realistic crew profile, with the junior officers and ratings having most of the adventures, with multi-week story arcs, subplots, and the occasional killing off of major characters to keep things interesting.
I thought of all these things well before Babylon 5 or Battlestar: Galactica or any of that; it was probably around the time of Hill Street Blues or some such show, and I recall thinking ‘That’s how they should do the next Trek.’
Instead, we got … well. What we got. Blech.
DrDave@39: Another factor here is that this is information Kirk needs to know. It appears to be relevant to the safety of the ship and that trumps Romaine’s privacy rights.
bobsandiego@40:
The best SF example I can think of for this is the unfortunately short-lived Space: Above and Beyond. We got an occasional look at higher-ranking officers, but the real focus was on the grunts.
Can’t give you a sf version, bobsandiego, but there’s an Australian series (in five seasons now) called Sea Patrol, about an Australian navy patrol boat. They got exceptional cooperation from the Navy, including shooting on two actual patrol boats every year. There are only three officers shown, ever: the captain, the ex, and the nav. The other characters are the bosun (Buffer), coxswain (Swaino, the medic and helmsman), the chef (first Chefo, then Bomber), the electronics tech (ET), rad-op (RO), chief engineer (Charge-o), and Able Seaman Webb (Spider). Being an Aussie show, of course, everyone’s GORGEOUS, but the captain doesn’t often leave the ship, and when he does, the ex calls him on it every time, pointing out it’s her job to lead boarding parties (and she does). There are a couple of side characters, like an Admiral they have to report to and his equerry, but basically it’s all about the crew, not the officers.
It’s all a bit cheesy, but it’s a fun show. The only major realism complaint I’ve heard from Aussie Navy vets is that there’s WAY too much sexy goings-on, but that’s an allowable thing for a TV show, I reckon.
@43 DemetriosX
Sorry, I switched off the pilot to Space: Above and Beyond When the briefing explained that the enemy fighters — in freakin space — had a better rate of climb but the allies had better a dive. After that I referred to the show as Space: Abort and Begone.
@ DrDave
Heh, I’m just kidding. I’m sure those privacy laws don’t apply to military in even remotely the same way anyhow, when your body and your health are so critical to your job performance.
@ bobsandiego
Favorite film: RAFO! And you listed 3 movies but what were the other 2 favorites? I don’t think I could choose based on genre.
I don’t know that I buy the leaving his post thing as problematic. His mission is to explore new worlds and civilizations, so I’d guess it’s part of the job description to constantly jaunt off and initiate first contact. (I’m not saying it makes sense, just that it strikes me as fairly internally consistent in the show).
They tried to back-peddle with that on TNG, of course. Picard was supposed to sit there all stately-like while the Kirk-like Riker lead the landing parties. They obviously underestimated how much Patrick Stewart’s awesomeness overshadowed the mostly lame Riker.
@ NomadUK
The high point of the one TNG episode on this, “Lower Decks,” was that the lowly crewmen had no idea what the hell was going on. I loved that. The officers are like, playing war games with Cardassians and setting up elaborate diplomatic ruses, and of course no one else on the ship has a clue what the hell is happening.
@ 43 DemetriosX
Wow, I had forgotten about that show. I was so excited for the premiere because it was created by my two favorite X-Files writers, Morgan & Wong, and then the show flopped. I remember enjoying what I saw, though.
@ 44 CatieCat
I’m surprised we haven’t seen a sexy submarine show in the U.S., now that women are allowed to serve aboard them as of last year.
bobsandiego @40: Agreed, that would be a pretty nifty show. The same thing occurred to me not because of any military experience, but because I used to work in hospitals, and the way I saw just a small group of people at the nursing station every day while unseen people were busy making things happen in dozens of other departments in this massive structure– not to mention all the going up & down in elevators– felt very Trek-like.
Eugene @38: In the new Battlestar Galactica, I appreciated that even though the show was still mostly about officers, it at least kept most of them at their posts instead of Kirking around on dangerous expeditions (mostly; the few times that Adama insisted on tagging along somewhere for no good reason were noticeably weird). They still tended to reward general recklessness for the sake of drama, but there was a nice bit where Admiral Cain sits Adama down and goes through his ship’s log, summarizing the plots of various past episodes and basically saying “What the hell were you thinking? All of you people should’ve been court-martialed 100 times over”… and despite being a ruthless villain, she’s pretty clearly right about most of it.
Eugene Myers @ 38
You get a glimpse of that in the “Court Martial” bar scene when some of Kirk’s academy pals (but none of his rank or status) start giving him guff about Ben Finney. You get the sense he’s considered a bit of a Boy Wonder by those not directly under his command.
That episode is a gem, BTW, for a giving a glimpse into the Star Service as a quasi-military institution, with a wealth of trivia about actual ranks, commands, serial IDs, decorations and even a little JAG jurisprudence.
@ 46 Torie “I don’t know that I buy the leaving his post thing as problematic. His mission is to explore new worlds and civilizations, so I’d guess it’s part of the job description to constantly jaunt off and initiate first contact. (I’m not saying it makes sense, just that it strikes me as fairly internally consistent in the show).”
I was just comparing and contrasting with actual military issues. The real military is very unforgiving to commanding officers. Run your ship aground on a sand bar, your career is finished. Ina real military Kirk’s post and job – except as directed by mission – is to be on the ship directing it so that the mission can be fulfilled. The executive officer’s job is to make sure the captain has a ship that is fit and ready for the mission. The poor X.O. actually deals with tons of paperwork and all the minutia of issues the plague running a large operation. If a ship related thing comes to the captain’s attention it either very major or the XO has fallen down on the job. (my writing partner and I back during the run of TNG wanted to craft a script entirly from Riker’s point of view. Poor Riker running back and forth dealing all manner of minor crisis keep Enterprise ready for Picard. We’d end the episode w Picard noting in his log not much occurred today.
The New Voyages guys were planning on doing a ‘below decks’ series called First Voyages that would have followed the junior crewmen, including Kirk’s nephew. Sadly the idea appears to be abandoned.
@ 47 Eli B
This conversation had me thinking about BSG, too, mostly in terms of class stratification. There was an interesting plot thread where the Chief lead a revolt about the fact that this catastrophe had in effect created a strict class system with no mobility–the demands of people with certain skills meant you could never leave those positions, and with no educational system to speak of your kids were likely going to be stuck in the same position you were in. I remember Callie talking about how she had just enlisted to pay for dental school, which was out of the question now. It was interesting to see that side of the fleet.
@ 48 Lemnoc
Not to mention his neat court martial outfit.
@ 49 bobsandiego
Ha! Nice idea.
@ 50 ChurchHatesTucker
Too bad, that. There’s such a wealth of story unexplored in Star Trek…
@ 49 bobsandiego: That would have been an excellent episode.
@ 51 Torie:
I never saw BSG (well, the reboot) because it would have meant watching it in German, and that’s almost always a mistake. From what I know of the ending, I probably never will. Anyway, what you describe there is very much the end of the Roman empire and the beginning of the Dark Ages. Interesting.
@ 51 Torie
So what did you think of the ending of BSG? I’m asking because you seem to like the plot of the Dirty Hands episode. A number of the people I’ve talked to who didn’t like the ending had also discounted Dirty Hands and the other “Problems Within The Fleet” episodes or call-outs as “Hollywood’s attempt to force their liberal. . .” and they didn’t want to count those episodes as part of the story. Therefore, they couldn’t understand why the people would be willing to give up their ships and technology. If they’d have payed attention to those aspects of the story they would have realized that the fleet was a dying entity. And yes, I do believe they would have taken with them whatever portable technology there was that was still working to use it while it was still available.
@52 DemetriosX
It would be a mistake to discount the entire series (BSG) because of what you’ve heard about the ending. And from re-watching the series, I can say that there are plenty of clues throughout the series – even in the miniseries – suggesting that “the hand of God” was going to play a part in the resolution.
Ludon@53: A number of the people I’ve talked to who didn’t like the ending had also discounted Dirty Hands and the other “Problems Within The Fleet” episodes or call-outs as “Hollywood’s attempt to force their liberal. . .”
See, that’s your first mistake right there: paying any attention to anything said by the kind of people who would think that.
I’ve heard an awful lot of good things about the new BSG, and have been tempted to watch it, but haven’t been able to get ahold of the discs at the local BlockBuster — which is truly as worthless as it is possible to get — and I’m not going to shell out the money for my own set, so I guess they’ll just sit in my film queue … along with the 470 or so others.
My thoughts on BSG: the miniseries was okay–enough to get me interested but didn’t blow me away. The first season and the first half of the second season are some of the best television ever made. I don’t say that lightly. It’s just stunningly good. Then the show tanked like no other, devolving first into boring, pointless asides, heavy-handed moral dithering, and finally unraveling into an embarrassing catastrophe that they kept having to “fix” to make sense, only to make it progressively worse. By the end the show managed a perfect storm of offensive, irritating, and nonsensical.
The ending was unspeakable, as far as I’m concerned.
DemetriosX and NomadUK: it’s definitely still worth watching, at least for the beginning. I think some of it’s on Hulu?
Oh, and to make this vaguely ST-related: watching BSG will definitely clarify the worst parts of TNG and DS9. Two words: Ronald Moore.
@ 56 Torie
I guess we disagree on the latter half of the series but thanks for answering. I was just curious after the comment you made about the Chief in the Dirty Hands episode.
I missed out on some discussions! Grr.
Generally agree with everything posted. I’m mildly amused by bobsandiego’s Eng; the zeroes in my department either had applicable degrees or at least had completed Nuclear Power School, and therefore weren’t the marginally competent clowns some of the “topsiders” had to deal with.
To close out the crew concerns, another reason- not that I think anyone planned it this way- for the smallish size for a “heavy cruiser” is vastly increased automation, and less need for bodies for damage control parties. I don’t think a space battle will last long enough to let you do much hole patching and power lead restoration.
@ Torie- Did you ever tell us which Star Trek movie was your favorite?
And I think women on submarines are authorized, but none are aboard yet. There are some submariner blogs (I wasn’t one, but there is a lot of cross-pollination between the nuc and sub communities) discussing the imminent arrivals. Disappointingly but unsurprisingly, they mostly fall into “oh noes, our leet performing submarines are being sacrificed to Obama’s PC concerns” or “duh, it’s coming, let us deal with it like professionals”.
Something I came across recently.
Lights of Zetar:
http://www.progressiveruin.com/2008/09/11/the-tarzan-of-outer-space/
People it could have been worse, we could have had to re-watch This.
@61 bobsandiego
Of course, now I kind of want to re-watch that… Is it worse than “The Great Vegetable Rebellion”?
@62
D’oh! I posted it in the wrong re-watch, I wanted it for The Way To Eden you know hippies and those irresponsible kids! Get off my intergalactic lawn!
@61 Lemnoc
Whoa. “A living mountain of light.” What’s the copyright date on that book?
I too was creeped out by this episode as a kid. The possession scenes always gave me the willies. I think the general mood is greatly enhanced by the liberal reuse of the score from “Where No Man Has Gone Before”.
Did anyone else notice the abandoned newspaper lying against the wall on the floor of the sickbay during the Kirk, Spock, McCoy discussion at the end of the episode? Check it out:
http://tos.trekcore.com/hd/albums/3x18hd/thelightsofzetarhd1587.jpg
Obviously the fact that the scene wasn’t reshot was proof of the declining time and money resources ( and / or apathy on the part of the crew, who obviously realized that at this point they were on a sinking ship ).
@66 Dep1701
Good eye! I can’t even tell what that is, but it obviously doesn’t belong there. That isn’t quite as lazy as some of the things that made it to broadcast on the old Doctor Who shows, but it definitely shows a lack of attention or concern about putting out the best work possible.
There are a lot of problems with this episode, most of which have already been discussed amply here. However, there are also some interesting ideas, even if they aren’t fully developed.
First, there is a pretty clear allegory about mental health stigma — an issue that few, if any, people were talking about in 1969. Lt. Romaine has a growing sense that the thoughts in her mind are not her own, but she is afraid to discuss this with others, and when she does, she receives unhelpful responses. Scotty dismisses her concerns, and tells her not to seek help. In fact, he provides a near-textbook list of reasons why people with mental health issues don’t seek treatment: your symptoms aren’t serious enough (“it’s just space”), it’s embarrassing (“you don’t report space sickness!”), you’ll lose your freedom (“do you want to spend the rest of the trip in sickbay?”), and treatment won’t be effective anyway (“Dr. McCoy can no more cure it than he can a cold”). His motivations are pretty transparent, and fundamentally selfish: he doesn’t want to give up his concept of Lt. Romaine as the type of person who couldn’t possibly have a mental health issue (“you’re the sanest woman who ever set foot on the Enterprise”), and more importantly, he wants to be around her 100% of the time, in a way that’s kind of creepy for someone who’s not an adolescent. Fortunately, when Lt. Romaine finally does open up about her issues to the rest of the crew, she gets the help she needs. Unfortunately, Scotty shows no signs of having learned anything. Even more unfortunately, the epsiode’s closer reinforces one of the most poisonous myths about mental illness: the idea that you can cure another person’s mental illness if you just love them enough. This myth is at the root of many, many dysfunctional, co-dependent relationships. Shame on Star Trek for repeating it.
Second, there is at least a possible feminist or woman-empowering dimension to this episode, even if the writers dropped the ball pretty badly. Sure, all of the male characters (including even Mr. Spock and the Zetarians) call Lt. Romaine “the girl.” Sure, they routinely dismiss her insights and concerns. But… every step of the way, she is proven right. That should count for something, shouldn’t it?
I mean, what this woman goes through is pretty amazing. In the briefing room scene, Scotty assumes the right to speak on her behalf, as though she is incapable of speaking for herself. In the next scene, the Zetars go a step further, and actually speak using her mouth. Given this context, it’s poignant when she says, “I am Mira Romaine. I will be who I choose to be.” Again, the significance of this is heavily blunted by the fact that none of the male characters seems to have actually learned anything. But still, there it is.
Finally, there’s an interesting ethical dimension when it comes to the cost of the Zetars’ survival. In “Return to Tomorrow,” Captain Kirk had no problem with non-corporeal aliens borrowing human bodies — in fact, he volunteered his own body for it. Of course, the aliens in “Return to Tomorrow” asked permission first. The aliens in “Return to Tomorrow” also hadn’t killed anyone yet; the Zetars had already killed the researchers on Memory Alpha. On the other hand, Kirk was willing to forgive the Horta for killing the miners and security guards in “Devil in the Dark,” and even to forgive the Gorn for massacring the colony in “Arena.” Was condemning the Zetars to total extinction really justified? Would first-season Kirk have come up with a better solution?
By the way, according to the folks at Orion Press, in the final draft of the script, the relationship between Scotty and Lt. Romaine developed more organically: the “you’re the sanest, smartest, etc.” scene was near the middle of the episode (just after they beam back from Memory Alpha). Prior to broadcast, the scene was moved into the teaser in order to establish the relationship earlier. Personally, I think the episode would have been much better in the original order.
Overall, not the best episode by far, but still a lot of food for thought, especially given that the series was nearing the end of its run (only six episodes left after this one).