“Day of the Dove”
Written by Jerome Bixby
Directed by Marvin Chomsky
Season 3, Episode 7
Production episode: 3×11
Original air date: November 1, 1968
Star date: Armageddon
Mission summary
An Enterprise landing party beams down to planet Beta XII-A with phasers drawn, responding to a distress call from a Federation colony that they can’t find. Captain Kirk, Dr. McCoy, Ensign Chekov, and the redshirt are oblivious to the glowing mass of energy hovering suspiciously nearby, instead focusing on the Klingon battle cruiser that arrives on the scene.
Before Enterprise can engage them in battle, explosions cripple the Klingon ship from within. Its commander, Kang, and four other Klingons join Kirk’s team on the planet. Kang smacks Kirk with his disruptor pistol and accuses him of faking a distress call to ambush them with a new Federation weapon. With 400 of his own crew dead and a disabled vessel, he demands they surrender Enterprise. Kirk refuses and suggests that the Klingons tested a weapon on the colony and wiped out all trace of it. Chekov add his two cents: he launches himself at the Klingons, screaming about how they killed his brother Piotr at Archanis IV. The Klingons torture him, which encourages Kirk to cooperate with them. Kang rubs it in a little: “A Klingon never would have surrendered.”
Kirk orders Spock to beam them and their guests aboard. But he presses a panic button on his communicator (is it a stick-up?) to let his first officer know what’s really going on. They beam everyone up (closely followed by the glowy thing on the planet) but only Kirk and his men materialize on the transporter pads. Scotty holds the Klingons’ patterns in suspension until a security team arrives to arrest them. Enterprise also begins evacuating survivors from the Klingon ship, including a female Klingon.
KANG: My wife, Mara, and my science officer.
MARA: Kang, what has happened?
KANG: More Federation treachery. We are prisoners.
MARA: What will they do to us? I’ve heard of their atrocities, their death camps. They will torture us for our scientific and military information.
KIRK: Apparently you have a few things to learn about us. Detain them in the crew lounge. Program the food synthesizer to accommodate our guests. You’ll be well-treated, Kang.
KANG: So I have seen.
Meanwhile, their glowing stowaway wanders the ship’s corridors undetected, and subspace communications are blocked, leaving the crew to figure out what’s happening without the sage advice of Starfleet. Ever the voice of reason, Spock insists that the Klingons couldn’t have harmed the colony—they were nowhere near it at the time. But Chekov is unconvinced, and surprisingly McCoy agrees: “What proof do we need? We know what a Klingon is.”
After they destroy the crippled Klingon ship, which was leaking dangerous radiation, communications remain blocked. Uhura throws a tantrum on the bridge—which is understandable because that’s her only job—while the glowy thing looks on. Then the ship makes an abrupt change in speed and course: heading at warp 9 out of the galaxy. (Again!) Scotty can’t do anything to shut down the engines, and it gets worse when emergency bulkheads trap 392 crewmen in the lower decks.
Kirk thinks Kang is behind all this and sucker punches him in the rec room. The Klingons are able to arm themselves when various objects spontaneously transform into swords—including the phasers Kirk and his security guards are holding. Kirk and his men cross swords with the Klingons and escape into a turbolift, with only one of the redshirts, Lt. Johnson, getting stabbed in the process. Not bad, but the day is still young. Back on the bridge, Spock belatedly realizes that none of this makes any sense.
SPOCK: Captain, neither the Klingon technology nor ours is capable of this: the instantaneous transmutation of matter. I doubt that they are responsible.
KIRK: Any other logical candidate?
SPOCK: None. However, if they had such power, would they not have used it to create more effective weapons and only for themselves?
Good point, Spock! Since the ship is running itself, Kirk tells Scotty to free the trapped crewmembers and sends Sulu down to Auxiliary Control. Chekov wants to take revenge on the Klingons for the death of his brother, but Kirk won’t let him out to play. He runs off the bridge anyway, brandishing a sword. Sulu’s confused though: Chekov never had a brother. (Shouldn’t Kirk or Spock know that, what with personnel records?)
The escaped Klingons discover a copy of the The Enterprise Technical Manual and decide to take over Engineering, since it’s the thing to do. Scotty reports that the bulkheads are somehow impervious to phaser torches and every weapon in the armory has been transformed into swords, lances, and other “antiques.” He grabs a Scottish claymore and joins Sulu, just in time to be attacked. Of course, they lose Engineering.
At least Spock has made some progress on figuring out their situation. He exercises his higher math skills to determine that the Enterprise crew and the Klingons each have exactly thirty-eight people in play on each side, and sensors detect an extra, unknown life form of pure energy—rarely a good sign. Even the ship’s uncannily intelligent computer can’t figure out what’s happening, but it’s enough to convince Kirk that they’re all being punk’d by an alien, and he decides they need to form a truce with the Klingons. McCoy shows up on the bridge and flips out when he hears the plan.
MCCOY: Truce? Are you serious? I’ve got men in Sickbay, some of them dying. Atrocities committed on their persons, and you talk about making peace with these fiends? If our backs were turned, they’d jump us in a minute. And you know what Klingons do to prisoners. Slave labor, death planets, experiments!
KIRK: McCoy?
MCCOY: While you’re talking, they’re planning attacks. This is a fight to the death. We’d better start trying to win it!
SPOCK: We are attempting to end it, Doctor. By reason, preferably. There is an alien on board which may have created this situation.
MCCOY: Who cares what started it, Mr. Spock. We’re in it! Murderers. We should wipe out every one of them!
KIRK: The alien is the real threat. That’s the enemy we have to wipe out.
UHURA: Sickbay calling, Doctor. There are more wounded men requiring your attention.
MCCOY: How many more men must die before you two begin to act like military men instead of fools?
Kirk’s stunned by the doctor’s uncharacteristic outburst–he hasn’t been this upset since T.R. Knight left Grey’s Anatomy. Kirk calls Kang to make peace, but the Klingon commander switches off life support. So, that’s probably a no. Scotty’s the next person to turn up crazed on the bridge. He accuses the captain of dooming them all and starts insulting poor, innocent Spock. The Vulcan gives as good as he gets and is about to bash the engineer’s head in when Kirk breaks up the fight. “What are we saying? What are we doing to each other?” he asks. Then he finally groks what is happening.
KIRK: Two forces aboard this ship, each of them equally armed. Has a war been staged for us, complete with weapons and ideology and patriotic drum beating? Even, Spock, even race hatred?
SPOCK: Recent events would seem to be directed toward a magnification of the basic hostilities between humans and Klingons. Apparently, it is by design that we fight. We seem to be pawns.
KIRK: But what’s the game? And whose? And what are the rules?
Power suddenly returns to life support and the bridge, enabling Spock to track down their alien antagonist to Engineering—which also happens to be where Chekov is lurking. The mad Russian attacks a Klingon and Kang’s wife Mara, and is in the midst of sexual assault when Kirk pulls him off her and knocks him out. Horrified, Kirk carries Chekov to Sickbay, accompanied by Spock and a silent Mara. There, they learn that the injured crewmen are miraculously healing so they can continue fighting, including Lt. Johnson. The doctor’s also coming to his senses and he apologizes for his earlier rudeness.
Kirk, Spock, and Mara go alien hunting and soon corner the glowy thing in a corridor. Lt. Johnson finds them and starts a sword fight. Spock subdues him with a neck pinch and observes that the glowy thing had a healthy red glow during the tussle, but its energy levels decreased when Johnson went sleepytime. Kirk spells it out: “It exists on the hatred of others.” The little guy has been manipulating them all into a conflict with the Klingons, one that will never end unless they can get rid of it. Scotty interrupts with some more bad news: the dilithium crystals are going to burn out in twelve minutes.
Kang still won’t talk, so Kirk takes a desperate measure and uses Mara as a bargaining chip: he threatens to kill her if Kang won’t respond. The Klingon commander calls his bluff, but Mara is so surprised that Kirk isn’t actually going to kill her that she questions all the propaganda she’s heard about the Federation. She agrees to help him get through to Kang, and they risk a tricky intra-ship transport to Kang’s coordinates in Engineering. Kirk and Mara arrive unarmed, but Kang won’t listen to his wife—he sees the tunic that Chekov tore and assumes that she’s been…compromised. Mara tosses Kirk a sword and he spars with Kang while he tries to point out the glowy thing watching them. The captain finally tosses aside his weapon:
All right. All right. In the heart. In the head. I won’t stay dead. Next time I’ll do the same to you. I’ll kill you. And it goes on, the good old game of war, pawn against pawn! Stopping the bad guys. While somewhere, something sits back and laughs and starts it all over again.
Mara pleads with her husband, and at last Kang relents. He drops his weapon and calls a ship-wide truce with Kirk. With the fighting over, Spock proposes that “good spirits might make an effective weapon.” Kirk shoos the glowy thing away, and they all start laughing until the alien leaves the ship. And they all lived happily ever after.
Analysis
The hate vampire (it sparkles!) in “Day of the Dove” upstages the manipulative Melkotians from “Spectre of the Gun,” resulting in an even less coherent plot—sadly accomplished with far less artistry. Since the glowing cloud of energy of the week can transmute matter, control people’s minds, heal people, plant false memories, alter the laws of physics, and do pretty much whatever else the script calls for, anything can and does happen to keep the story moving. There are few rules governing this creature’s existence and its interactions with humanoids, except that it feeds on hate and is willing to expend huge amounts of energy to ensure a steady supply of it—surely a biological inconsistency. Sometimes it can be seen and sometimes it can’t, and it can move through walls except when it’s convenient for it to be cornered. There’s little attempt to make any aspect of this story believable or compelling, and the episode lacks meaningful character development; Kirk and the others are essentially puppets, of both the alien and the script, acting and speaking to fulfill an agenda and merely responding to external stimuli with few opportunities for agency.
It’s odd that an episode that demonstrates the dangers of listening to propaganda without questioning the truth is itself so strongly propagandistic. Though Star Trek often excelled at encouraging political and social change under the guise of science fiction, it occasionally delivered its messages with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer. Here, it’s clear that we’re meant to learn that war is bad, that we must work together regardless of race or belief if we’re ever to make peace. This is a high ideal, appropriate for Star Trek, but it’s also too obvious to be truly effective—no one likes to be preached to, least of all the choir.
In Roddenberry’s future, the only way humans would express “race hatred” and violence is under alien influence (except in all the episodes where this is their natural inclination). Chekov’s vendetta against the Klingons and his attempted rape of one of their women is particularly uncomfortable, however evocative it is of actual war crimes. That may be the point, but it’s especially hard to watch because Chekov would never act this way under normal circumstances. And yet, they all get over their false behavior easily. McCoy merely apologizes for his prejudices, and all is forgiven. We never see Chekov’s reaction to his treatment of Mara, but she seems strangely unperturbed by the experience. On the other hand, I kept thinking about the dinner scene from Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, where the Enterprise crew’s reactions to their Klingon guests are not far off from their portrayal in this episode.
The episode is further marred by the fact that once again Kirk is strangely equipped to hold onto his reason even when being controlled by an alien intelligence. Sulu karate chopping a Klingon while armed with a katana almost made me wince as much as Chekov’s assault of Mara; sure, he could be trained in martial arts, but it seems almost too easy to fall into that stereotype, which the show’s creators so carefully avoided in the first season. This episode ends with a belly laugh as so many do, but it’s just as forced as the rest of the episode. The trick reminded me a bit of the “dust bunnies” from the anime film My Neighbor Totoro, which are also cast out of a house by feigning cheerfulness, but somehow the concept was easier to accept in a children’s film steeped in supernatural mythology.
The episode does have some good points. Not only is this the first time we see Klingon women, one of which also happens to be a science officer, but Mara gives us some interesting insight into the Klingon’s warrior mentality:
We have always fought. We must. We are hunters, Captain, tracking and taking what we need. There are poor planets in the Klingon systems, we must push outward if we are to survive.
It’s also interesting to see Kirk trick the Klingons when he beams them up to the ship, and this episode introduces us to intra-ship transport, which becomes much less hazardous in later Star Trek shows—although, these additions to the canon can also be looked at as convenient plot devices that essentially change the rules to reach the conclusion.
Eugene’s Rating: Warp 2 (on a scale of 1-6)
Torie Atkinson: War bad. Peace good. Grunt.
I’m all for mildly transparent social messages but this had the subtlety of a jackhammer symphony. They took what could be an interesting idea–wizard’s chess, anyone?–and instead turned it into a childish metaphor reduced and then reduced some more into a stultifying and incoherent moral lesson. (Ironically, the episode rages against propagandistic lessons!)
More egregiously, I felt it conflated war with the individuals who fight in it. Repeatedly, “race hatred” and overt bigotry are cited as the reasons the Federation-Klingon War exists–and while that may be true on an individual level, it’s a) impossible to know how widespread that really is–most of the Federation people we meet seem to be fine folk; and b) probably completely irrelevant to the actual reasons the two groups are at war with one another. Mara makes clear that the Klingon expansion (which so irks the Federation and we see firsthand in “Errand of Mercy”) is a political necessity for their empire. I suspect it is the encroachment on territory and aggressive colonization that has sparked the war with the Federation, not simple bigotry. I’m not saying wars don’t happen because of sheer hatred, but that seems extremely unlikely in this particular instance. The lesson, then, that we could all make peace if we simply stopped fighting, struck me as particularly naive.
That said, individuals can make a difference in a war–we see that in “Balance of Terror”–but the circumstances of this episode were so self-contained I don’t see the wider effect. Working together to fight a menacing space douche is a worthy goal, but not necessarily applicable to global peace. If it had dealt more maturely with issues of war–made a distinction between soldiers and empires, demonstrated or even implied that this event positively improved relationships between the factions–perhaps I could forgive the awful production elements.
And are they awful! There’s so much hamminess in the performances that the episode oscillates between inappropriate seriousness and outright self-parody. DeForest Kelly displays some of his worst acting here since “Spock’s Brain,” barking his lines madly (and yet, half-heartedly), and then about halfway through the episode just giving up. Doohan doesn’t fare much better, and Shatner! Don’t break my heart like this… Need I even comment at this point on the music? Still, it’s like Wagner compared to the godawful fight choreography. It just felt campy and wholly inappropriate for what should’ve been–not somber, but not completely outlandish, either.
I am a nitpicker by nature, but I felt completely justified with this one. If the Klingons can selectively cut power to part of the Enterprise, why didn’t our guys try that earlier? Why do they keep grabbing Mara’s arm and dragging her around like some kind of deadweight, even after she’s agreed to cooperate? How does no one notice this GIANT GLOWING BALL whose physical limitations vary from scene to scene (can it go through walls? How does it get cornered?). And worst of all, why does Mara shout to Kang that it’s a trap after seeing the alien herself with her own two eyes. Her whole attitude changes when Kirk doesn’t kill her, but how is that relevant to the giant sparkly death ball she has just seen? (Also? Giant sparkly death ball. ’Nuff said.)
It’s not without its (all too rare) charms. I enjoyed the way that Kirk manages to trick the Klingons into getting onboard the ship (he does not, in fact, lie–he is very precise in his language). Kang’s response that “We have no devil, Kirk” is a line for the ages, and the brutal man-punch that Kirk delivers when they all arrive in the transporter bay is probably the primary reason I’m not rating this a warp 1.
There’s one question I really want answered: why are the Klingons suddenly in layers of brown face paint? In the movies and all of the next generations the Klingons are obviously black: they’re often played by black actors and unfortunately saddled with a lot of black stereotypes (they’re violent and aggressive!), but even when played by white actors their makeup and appearance was convincing enough to hide their race. I have no idea if that was the intention in the original series. When we covered “Errand of Mercy” we mentioned that the script was going for a more Asian/Mongolian look, and in “The Trouble With Tribbles” they’re very clearly white, with no face paint at all. This is the darkest we’ve ever seen the Klingons. What prompted the change? Did the creative team decide to make them black between the first and third seasons? Or is that not the aim at all, in which case the face paint is an unfortunate coincidence that unwittingly evokes the problematic history of blackface? I can’t imagine any makeup artist, producer, or director oblivious to such an obvious first impression. What the hell was going on there?
Torie’s Rating: Warp 2
Best Line: KANG: Out! We need no urging to hate humans. But for the present, only a fool fights in a burning house. Out!
Syndication Edits: None
Trivia: John Colicos was meant to reprise his role as the Klingon Commander Kor, but when he became unavailable Michael Ansara was cast as a new character, Kang, who later joined Kor on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (“Blood Oath”) and encountered Captain Sulu in the Star Trek: Voyager episode “Flashback.” This likely explains why Kirk and Kang already seem to know each other.
Bixby’s original script called for the Klingons and Enterprise crew to sing songs and join in a peace march to drive the alien away. This likely would have had the same effect on viewers.
According to Bixby’s son Emerson, Bixby asked James Doohan to pronounce the word “Vulcan” to suggest a stronger adjective when he shouts at Spock on the bridge, which obviously slipped by the ship’s censors.
This is the only Star Trek episode to feature Klingon women and intraship beaming, as well as Sulu’s only visit to Engineering and the Jefferies tubes.
The Klingon agonizer used on Chekov is the same used in “Mirror, Mirror.”
Other notes: This episode establishes much of the layout of the Enterprise decks in show continuity, including the location of Engineering at the forward section of the secondary hull, the location of crew quarters in the saucer section, and the existence of an emergency manual control in a Jefferies tube.
Michael Ansara (Kang) also appeared in major genre shows of the time, including The Outer Limits (“Soldier,” written by Harlan Ellison), “Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea,” “The Time Tunnel,” “Lost in Space,” “Land of the Giants,” and “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.” More recently, he provided the voice of Mr. Freeze in Batman: The Animated Series and Batman Beyond.
In Greg Cox’s Q Continuum novels, the alien entity in this episode is named (*), part of a gang of space douches that includes Gorgan (“And the Children Shall Lead“) and “God” from Star Trek V.
Previous episode: Season 3, Episode 6 -“Spectre of the Gun.”
Next episode: Season 3, Episode 8 -“For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky.” US residents can watch it for free at the CBS website.
Oh, by the gods how I hate magical aliens. This has the full powers of the scriptwriter bound by no limitations. Feeding on hate? What the specific frequency of hate? Is that high-energy photon, or something below infrared?
This episode has the full range of badness that can happen in Star Trek. The technology is breaking to provide the third act ticking clock, god-like aliens toying with our heroic crew, acting so hammy it is surprising that the set survived all the chewing, ‘messages’ for the audience so blatant they would embarrass the writers of after school specials.
The scary thing is, there’s more to come this season.
That said, I did enjoy watching Michael Ansara as Kang, and the feeble attempts at giving the Klingon more of a culture than just space-Nazis. How I wish I had his voice though. What a wonderful voice that actor has.
Conservation of energy seems to be a big problem here. Is hate really so powerful a force that it can fuel transmutation of matter? Heal deadly wounds? If hate is really so powerful a force, why lock most of the bulk of the crew below decks and continue to expend it in volume by continually reviving a limited number of haters? There must be more efficient ways to raise and siphon negative energy… like the U.S. Congress!
And, yes, Michael Ansara is great. The Klingon with the most gravitas and powerful delivery in TOS.
Perhaps the saddest part of this episode is that, with a few tweaks, it could have been good. Fix the alien so it isn’t so all-powerful (entities feeding off of emotions had still been a staple in SF not too long before; I’m willing to overlook the problematic physics), tone down the message some, it’s still a space douche, but a more palatable one.
Your review has given me a different perspective on this episode, though. I think it may not actually have been about war, but about racism and racial violence. Don’t forget that things were still very tense. There had been a number of riots in 1968 (several triggered by the assassination of Martin Luther King) and several more in the years before. Protests in the south were still being met with water cannon and dogs, and churches were still burning. (Not to mention the political violence at the Democratic convention and other places.) Things were past their peak, but it was still pretty bad. All of that could explain the decision to darken the Klingons in this episode (I’d always thought of them more as orange prior to this).
Minor points: While Kirk and Spock could have accessed Chekov’s personnel file to see that he didn’t have a brother, there’s no real reason for them to have that information at the tip of the fingers. Sulu and Chekov hang out together and talk about this and that, as friends do. It’s more natural that Sulu would notice the discrepancy.
Mara’s mild reaction to her near rape by Chekov could be put down to her being Klingon. If you look at some of the Klingon mating rituals we see in TNG and DS9, he comes across almost shy. I certainly never thought of the TNG Klingons as representing black stereotypes. Their violence and aggression stemmed from TOS canon and the rest had a lot of samurai and other warrior cultures in it. Some even came from this episode.
Coming from the tail end of a generation that thought it was cool and rebellious when radio stations played the unexpurgated versions of “Money” and “Who Are You”, I assure that “Get your Vulcan hands off me,” was awesome.
Somethign else taht really bothered me was Mara. At times she driven and capable, then for most scene she’s widow dressing. STanding around while others talk and she just looks on dumbly.
The scene with Chekov was the worst. Not only for mind-controled Chekov’s out of character actions, but because Mara acted like a typical TV girl, freezing in terror at a male’s assault. Shoot, Chekov dropped his sword to grope her, at that point she should have kicked his ***.
Chiming in to agree with everyone that Michael Ansara was rather terrific in this episode, especially considering the material he had to work with. Maybe that’s why I decided to link to a bunch of the other shows he appeared in. He’s truly wonderful on DS9, even if you don’t otherwise like the show.
@3 DemetriosX
If you look at some of the Klingon mating rituals we see in TNG and DS9, he comes across almost shy.
Ha! I think I agree with bobsandiego, that I would have liked some kind of reaction from her, though it was perhaps more disturbing because she was so emotionally flat after the incident. I’m used to the Klingon women being the aggressors, but that obviously wasn’t introduced until much later. One of the bits of dialogue I liked most was her explanation of the Klingon imperative for violence, because that at least is consistent with later canon and it was great to see the seed of their entire, rich culture in this episode. Ditto on the “We have no devil” line, though I think there actually is a Klingon devil in a later episode?
I missed Scotty’s delivery of “Get your Vulcan hands off me,” at first (stunned by the mediocrity of this episode) but when I played it back it made me grin.
Oh yay. Another space douche episode.
Yippee. I’m as giddy as an Orion schoolgirl. Totally.
Oh, look. It’s an illogical space douche. Why doesn’t Spock call it out on the logic failures?
Dear Gentlebeing,
I invite you to step outside with me, at your earliest convenience. Your logic is replete with invalid statements and unsound arguments. Your subjective view of noncorporealness is inconsistent and baffling. Also, your mother says “I just love pon farr.”
Spock, Cmdr/XO/ScO Enterprise NCC-1701
@ 1 bobsandiego
It’s not just a magical alien–it’s one we get basically no explanation for, and he never shows up again.
@ 2 Lemnoc
I like the feeding on emotions trope, but only if there are rules that govern how that works and why.
@ 3 DemetriosX
If the makeup was intentional and it IS supposed to be an allegory of the kind of culture wars going on at the time, that would be really interesting. I’m not sure I buy it but it’s the explanation I like the most so far–much more appealing than the generic antiwar sentiment I had imagined. Is there any information on this from the writers or the creative team? Was it a kind of precursor to “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield,” a sandbox for it? Or is it just the incidental combination of bland antiwar platitudes and unfortunate makeup choices?
Fair point about Chekov having a brother, but they all seem to hang out a lot. I think he’d know that much. I know who among my coworkers have siblings…
I wouldn’t link the Klingon mating rituals (which, ugh, I can only again use the word “unfortunate” to describe) to TOS. Mara, at least, is about as aggressive as a doorstop for all but the last five minutes of the episode. As for TNG and on representations of Klingons, I think it’s pretty obvious. The early TNG seasons just had them be these aggressive, brutish people. But as the seasons went on they actually bothered to give them a rich culture that I wound up liking a great deal. In the beginning, though, they’re one-note meanies.
@ 4 bobsandiego
It’s okay, you can say “ass” here. :)
She is window dressing. Maybe she’s just in powersaving mode? Please stand by…
@ 6 CatieCat
Does this mean we can start a thread of Vulcan “your mom” jokes? Sadly, I’m not inspired to begin it.
As I kid, I enjoyed this one because of the unusual resolution: a few hugs and backslaps is all it takes to prevail against an unbeatable enemy. However, I came across this episode recently and, boy, did it not hold up. I have to agree with your assessments. It’s way too over-the-top — and I can only imagine if they had gone the peace-march route! Yikes! Also, it was a real shame that they finally introduced a strong Klingon woman — only to have her manhandled and nearly raped.
@7 Torie Atkinson
Fair point about Chekov having a brother, but they all seem to hang out a lot. I think he’d know that much.
If Chekov actually had a brother who’d been murdered, I could see him not bringing it up all that often, except as a sympathy play. “Sorry I’m late for work, but this is the anniversary of the day my only brother was brutally slayed by Klingons.” Kirk would probably give him a pass for that, considering his own sob story.
Even though they do spend a lot of time together on missions and on the bridge, he’s an ensign who maybe doesn’t hang out with his superiors much or chat about TV shows by the replicator. I expect they’d recall his biographical details in passing, except that Kirk obviously never does any research. (I guess Spock is like his smart phone.) I actually liked that Sulu knows Chekov well enough to have that inside knowledge about his family. A lot of my friends and co-workers were surprised to learn I have an older sister even after knowing me for years–it just doesn’t come up, especially since we aren’t very close. In any event, this was not the biggest problem with the plot in this particular case.
Let’s see … so far we’ve had an incorporeal being that feeds on fear (‘Wolf in the Fold’), one that feeds on love (‘Metamorphosis’), and now one that feeds on hate. I’d be interested in the evolutionary mechanisms that produced creatures like this. And, as bobsandiego asks, what portion of the spectrum do these energies occupy? What particles are involved? Hateons? Lovinos? What’s their spin, charge, rest mass?
And what happens to this thing after it leaves the ship? Nobody seems to care! Off to start a war in some other planetary system, I guess; not Starfleet’s problem.
Meh.
Anyway. It certainly is good to know that the Klingon High Command shares Starfleet’s fashion sense and clothes its female personnel in short skirts/culottes and boots! Makes strolling down the corridors so much more pleasant…
Interestingly, Scotty does seem to know his swords, as did the property master of the day, for the blade he pulls out of the armoury does, indeed, appear to be a claymore, although of a more modern, shorter, ceremonial variety, not the two-handed, 5-foot-long monster.
And, fortunately, my universe is unsullied by TNG or other follow-on series, and I couldn’t care less about comparing the original Klingons to the ones that followed on. I thought Kor was awesome, and Kang would have been great in a better episode. Koloth (from ‘The Trouble with Tribbles’) was comic relief; the strange variation from episode to episode in makeup was interesting, but perhaps could be explained as similar to variations in human skin tone shading. Maybe all of Kang’s people come from one part of Klingon, and all of Koloth’s from another. Maybe on Klingon, Kang’s folks call Koloth’s folks ‘crackers’…
I guess I remember liking this episode all right when I was a kid, but, then, it seemed better than most of the third season. I haven’t watched it in awhile; I think that comparison probably stands, as the third season is largely crap, and one takes what one can. It did have a number of good lines, which were pretty much the only thing that made it watchable.
And if you want funny, play the big swordfight in the corridor and watch as these guys twirl those swords through the same arcs time after time after time. Pretty sad, really. You want swordfighting? Get Richard Lester’s The Three Musketeers (the one and only one worth watching).
Maybe on Klingon, Kang’s folks call Koloth’s folks ‘crackers’…
I wonder, do the Klingons have their own version of National Brotherhood Week?
@ 7 Torie
Yeah I can say ass here, but sometimes the *** is more fun. :)
As far as Scotty and ‘Vulcan’, you know it was just this minute I understood the phenomic reference. Duh! When he said it I just thought Scotty was being justifiablly wary of a sudden nerve pinch.
Old Klingons vs New Klingons – really it’s two separate things here,Old klingons, bad and evil, they slaughter hotsages to make a point. New Klingons — we’ll the best way to describe them is Dwarven Samuari.
Wheee! We’re all on the same page. Warp Two ahead!
Weak script with a heavy ‘message’ rescued by awesome actors.
Anyway. It certainly is good to know that the Klingon High Command shares Starfleet’s fashion sense and clothes its female personnel in short skirts/culottes and boots!
Heh. Now I’m wondering which side started the fashion and which copied it. Is Klingon France to Starfleet’s Britain?
Several things here.
First, the Emotionally Charged Space Douche of the Week is basically recreating Valhalla — fight your sworn foes all day long, then go home and heal all your wounds and drink a bunch of mead, and do the same thing again tomorrow, forever. It seemed appealing to the Vikings, and frankly I’m surprised that Kang wouldn’t be trying to encourage it, it seems like it’d be right up the Klingon alley.
That said, Kang’s gotta be pretty stupid. How did he *ever* expect the “beam me up to your ship so we can hijack it” gambit to work? Seriously? Do they teach that one in Klingon School?
Regarding the face paint, the angle I thought they might have been going for — if it wasn’t meant as blackface for reasons that are by now inscrutable — was Renaissance depictions of devils and demons as being coal-black. Which, unfortunately, I’m not finding examples of right now. Ugh.
In any event, watching changing representations of The Klingon through TOS and into TNG is totally an interesting topic. And possibly a graduate seminar. Hrm…
DemetriosX has said much of what I would have said.
While the third season turkeys deserve to be identified as such, I don’t think we can give completely fair reviews of these episodes without taking into account the times in which they were made and shown. DemetriosX has pointed out the war and the rioting, but there is more to it. There was a war back then. Two wars if you count the cold war. There are three wars today counting the war on terrorism. There was the civil rights movement and there were riots back then. And there were the large (lead story and front page story kind of large) anti-war protests. What do we have today? Where are the protests? Racism – thinly disguised as patriotism on one side and as progress on the other – seems as strong as ever.
There is another dimension to consider for comparison. What was TV back then and what is it today. True, network TV was and is a vehicle for conveying advertisements, and silly shows are part of both eras – Beverly Hillbillys, Gilligan, Let’s Make A Deal compared with what ever sitcoms are running today. (I don’t have a TV and I don’t miss it.) The difference is in the dramas – notably the law oriented dramas. Perry Mason, Ironsides, Judd For The Defense, Adam 12 were all evenhanded shows. Even Dragnet was evenhanded compared to what has come since then. (I can only comment on what I saw before my old set blew out but I think that’s enough.) The viewer could come away from those shows with a sense of justice having been served but the viewer may have also come away with questions to think about. Joe Friday would go after a cop for having done the slightest thing wrong and he would ask the question ‘What does it make us when we do wrong? Even when we think we are doing good in getting the perpetrator off the street?’ What do we have today?
When an error is committed and the suspect has to be released the lead (or one of the leads) makes a comment like ‘There ought to be a law…’ or ‘The law has to be changed so that…’ In other cases, a cop or prosecutor is shown breaking the law to get what the case needs for a conviction. Afterward the character confessed to a supervisor and was told ‘Relax. No harm done. You got a conviction and that’s all that counts.’ In real life, a customer of the hobby shop said (while in his Deputy Sheriff uniform) “The public doesn’t want a police force that obeys the law. They want a force that will do whatever it takes to get the bad guys off the street.” Everybody else around him agreed with him.
Okay. I hear the command – Back away from the rant.
The difference is that today TV doesn’t pose questions for the viewer to consider. TV tells the viewer what to think.
As with my comment in the discussion on And The Children Shall Lead, I think think this episode was ahead of its time. This is a preachy episode but it failed at that because there was not a model on which it could have been structured. However, I find it interesting, and to Star Trek’s credit, that even though the preachy type of show could work today, the message contained within this episode would fall largely upon deaf ears with today’s audience.
Even with all this episode’s faults, it did work within the context of its time. While I can’t speak for the adults’ reactions, I can tell you that kids did talk about this one. We reacted to Kirk’s “…must stop the war now.” line with glee. Kirk got it! A wrong war shouldn’t be fought. I wall always have a fondness for this episode because I first saw it as a kid in that era. But, that fondness does not prevent me from seeing the problems with the storytelling when I look at this one now.
Now a quick comment about the change in the Klingon makeup. I can’t help wondering if that was another of Freddie’s ideas. Not alien enough. Not threatening enough. He knew that the largest audience groups were young white women – seemingly because of Spock – and young white males – because of the military and sci-fi aspects of the show. What could be more threatening to them than…? Another reason to not think highly of that man.
And Mara’s reaction to Chekov’s assault. The Klingons were being presented as a bloodthirsty warrior race. Maybe they felt that not having her react as the typical Human woman only added to that difference. But at the same time. Do you think the network censors of that time would have permitted her to react in the same way that we saw in later Klingon sexual situations? Yes. By today’s standards it comes off as weak and questionable but back then it may have been as far as they could have gone.
Wow! new comments while I worked on mine. Now I have to see if I’m out of date.
@16 Ludon
But Mara’s reaction to Checkov’s assault was very typical of 60’s TV females. Eye eide open in fear, but basicly passive and helpless as the attacker did his thing. It certianly has none of the violence of the real thing — which you could not do on TV then — but for an alien woman, one weaned on war it was utterly a betrayal of the character concept.
BTW I am not saying all femal characters shoudl react the same way — then they woudl not be characters. Kaylee in Firefly does freeze up when faced in the same situation and it fits her character, it doesn’t fit even the thin character they tried to paint on Mara.
An interesting exercise might be to trawl through Scotty’s various reactions to Cmdr. Spock over three seasons. He’s fairly hostile (“Paradise Syndrome”) to downright mutinous (“Gamesters”) to outright homicidal (“Children Shall Lead”) against the Vulcan in bad times and never loving in good times.
The only time I can recall Scotty coming valiantly to Spock’s defense is in Season One’s “Galileo Seven” when he objects to Mr. Boma’s suggestion of leaving Spock’s corpse stripped and naked on a hostile planet. Probably because the engines still needed fixin’.
There are poor planets in the Klingon systems, we must push outward if we are to survive.
This is extremely similar to the actual history of Spain, where the conquering monarchs from the arid desert around Madrid conquered first the other Iberian peoples (Andalusians, Catalans, Basques, Galicians), then used the captured wealth to keep expanding outward — all the while preaching Spanish language identity, for fear of losing their acquired wealth base to internal dissent.
@11 NomadUK
And what happens to this thing after it leaves the ship?
I was surprised that Spock has no curiosity in this life form. Granted, their lives are on the line, but as a science officer encountering a strange new life form, he makes zero attempt to study it. They do try to communicate with it, but don’t muster much effort. Spock should have been asking some of these questions at least, before Kirk Spock-blocks him again and insists on killing it or driving it away.
I also find it interesting that Kirk attributes some of Earth’s violent past to this creature (not even one of its kind–this very one!), which would be a really convenient excuse for the wars we’ve fought. “Oh, it wasn’t our fault, an alien made us hate each other.”
@13 bobsandiego
As far as Scotty and ‘Vulcan’, you know it was just this minute I understood the phenomic reference. Duh!
Even when I was listening for it, it took a moment for it to register.
@14 ChuchHatesTucker
Wheee! We’re all on the same page. Warp Two ahead!
How often do we all agree like this? :)
@15 DeepThought
This one reminded me of the DS9 episode “Battle Lines” with the planet where people could never die and were stuck in an endless war. Though I suppose as a first season episode, it wasn’t much better than “Day of the Dove”.
@16 Ludon
Thanks for helping to put this in a better context for the time, especially with the reactions of kids then. I can’t fully recall my original response to this as a kid, but I don’t think it seemed as heavyhanded to me then. Possibly because it was still a newish concept, or one I hadn’t formed strong opinions on yet (other than the obvious–war is bad). Not ranty at all, but very thoughtful, especially the observation that today “TV tells the viewer what to think.”
@19 Lemnoc
You’re absolutely right–Scotty and Spock have always had a rocky relationship, evolving into a grudging admiration and respect that was hard won–more of a working relationship than the friendship we probably attribute to the crew as a whole. Though he does seem distressed when Spock sacrifices himself at the end of STII.
It’s a really small detail, but one of the things I rather liked was the fact that the Klingon transporter is absolutely silent as they first beam down onto the planet. That’s the sort of thing that comes in handy when you’re trying to invade.
Also, since you’re reporting on some of Ansara’s filmography, we should also note the bit of nepotism that went on over at I Dream of Jeannie, where he played three different roles, one of which also included one of Farrah Fawcett’s first TV appearances.
Lemnoc@19: I think it isn’t so much that Scott dislikes Spock as that he’s an emotional, go-get-’em kind of fellow, and doesn’t have much patience for Spock’s slow, steady, logical approach to things. I think it’s impatience more than anything else.
That said, he’s also very much a professional, and clearly will support Spock because of his rank and authority (viz, ‘The Galileo Seven’ and — in horrors yet to come — ‘That Which Survives’). That he doesn’t have a fraternal relationship with him is not unusual for Scott; I’m fairly certain that he only calls Kirk ‘Jim’ in one episode — ‘Mirror, Mirror’ — and, to me, it just didn’t sound right. Scotty calls Kirk ‘Captain’, and he calls Spock ‘Mister’, and that’s just the way he is.
@ 9 Mercurio
If only the Klingon woman had taken cues from the Romulan woman we met in “The Enterprise Incident.”
@ 11 NomadUK
It also bothered me that they drive the creature off without a) trying to understand it or b) trying to stop it from trapping some other unsuspecting race.
Re: Lehrer, he taught math at UC Santa Cruz, where I grew up, though he apparently HATED it when people brought up his musical past. I think he’s still kicking around there.
@ 14 ChurchHatesTucker
Maybe the fashion is just one of those things that happened simultaneously across the universe.
@ 20 DrDave
Interesting. It’s a throwaway line but I’m glad it’s in there, because it implies the Klingons had political or economic reasons for their aggression and expansion, aside from just bloodlust and race hatred.
@ 23 ccradio
It also comes in handy when you’re trying to save on budget.
Scotty was always one of my favorite characters from the original series. I love how unflappable he was. Kirk orders general order 27 and Scott’s right there. He’s compassionate enough to rush to the resuce and smart enough not to fall for the same trick twice. He’s a cool, collected and uncontrol character.
I have no idea who they though they were writing int he new film but it was not Montgomery Scott. IN my opinion his character diverges the most of all from the original series. (And yes I think he’s further afield than Spock/Uhura.)
bobsandiego@26: I have no idea who they though they were writing int he new film but it was not Montgomery Scott
It was done by the same kind of people who think Kirk goes around the galaxy nailing every space bimbo in sight and blowing away the bad guys with reckless abandon. Which is to say, people who don’t understand Star Trek at all. Which explains a lot, really.
@26 BobSanDiego “Scotty was always one of my favorite characters from the original series. I love how unflappable he was.”
Ditto that. He became mostly comic relief in the movies, which was a shame. One of the reasons I hate NuTrek is that the went with ‘movies Scotty.’ He was originally a badass, hard-drinking, nerd. That’s an awesome character! (Not to mention role model.)
Calling it ‘Movies scotty’ is a bit too broad. Star Treks I-III he’s pretty much Montgomery Scott as we knew him. IV everyone was the fish out of water for comedic effect.
V – William Shatner’s baby – turned Scotty into a joke.
@23 ccradio
the Klingon transporter is absolutely silent
I didn’t notice that! I did think it was nice that they used a different optical effect for the Klingon transporter. I have to wonder about that though. Theoretically all transporters work about the same, right? So what accounts for the differences in the transport matrix? It’s great to distinguish one group from another, but is this something you can program? If we ever end up inventing and commercializing transporters, they’d better offer all the different Star Trek effects as customizable options.
@25 Torie
It also comes in handy when you’re trying to save on budget.
Do sound effects really cost that much? Actually, never mind. The number of times they reuse sounds like “broingggg!” suggests that yes, they do.
Obsessive that I am, I actually did a little research since my post last night.
The fanwank explanation (based on The Final Reflection, a ST novel that predates the TOS timeline and is therefore not canon) is in line with my theory that silent transport means easy invasion. The Federation transporter’s whine is a subcarrier wave that behaves as a kind of checksum digit for the subspace signal being sent.
Klingon transporters are therefore a little bit less safe than the Federation models, but that’s the tradeoff for the stealth.
I have to confess to being fond of this episode.
Yeah, it’s a Giant Magical Space Douche that drives the plot, and the sword fighting was dreadful (looked like the ran the extras through about 10 minutes of drills), and the whole Mara thing was, best efforts of the apologists aside, darned weak.
But everyone gets a chance to chew the scenery here. Everybody gets mean and angry, and trots out dialog their characters would never say in a zillion years normally. (Though reading McCoy’s rant about Klingons made me think that some conservative media commentators have been taking notes).
Is it silly? Sure. But confronting attitudes like “It’s us or them” is always worthwhile. And getting not one, but two Klingon proverbs is pure geeky gold.
I had not heard that Colicos had been slated to return as Kor for this ep. That would have made it very different, I think. Ansara (yes, love the voice) was much more physical, savage. A hate-deranged Kor would have been more cruel and sadistic.
@31 ccradio
Canonical or not, those are fascinating explanations for transporter functionality. I mean, it sounds plausible :)
@32 ***Dave
You’re right–the fact that they tackled this topic at all is commendable, especially on network television. Perhaps back then they needed to be completely obvious about it because otherwise some people just wouldn’t get it. That’s a good point: is it better to make an effort to say something meaningful even if you handle it poorly, or not bother raising the issues at all? I also wonder if the sense that this was the show’s last season made them a little more willing to take chances like this, though in this case it’s hard to tell if they were being more ambitious or just lazier.
I didn’t worry about the makeup. It’s probably because, in an industry where makeup artist are regarded as fungible and a season where doors move around aboard the ship, continuity in makeup was just not there.
I did laugh at Kang: “A Klingon never would have surrendered.”
Cut to transporter room: okay, maybe just this once….
Eugene @33: I’d say that here, they were just being lazy. At the time, TV shows were very rarely canceled with only a handful of episodes aired/in the can and it took something really egregious for it to happen. Cancellations came either at mid-season (after 13 episodes) or the end of the season in June. At this point, they must have known they had been picked up for the second half of the season, so there was no need for effort, really.
Also, taking chances on a message is simply not a feature of season 3.
I always thought that it was rather clever the visual effect of the alien is simply an out of focus, overly-lit pinwheel. Simple but effective ( I didn’t catch on to what it really was until decades later ). Apparently this trick was so easy that years later a variation on it was used in a couple of “Space:1999” episodes, particularly one of the better ones, “Dragon’s Domain”.
I was prepared to say something slightly unkind about all the snark concerning “conservation of energy” and whatnot. I’ve never quite shared writers’ (or readers’) obsession with chasing the ignis fatuus that is “plausibility”, although I confess that vitalism of any sort makes even my eyes glaze over a bit if only because the concept’s so overused in fiction. In any case I misremembered the episode somewhat, thinking that all the talk about how the sparkly alien “fed” on hatred was vague enough to admit of a purely metaphorical interpretation. But upon checking a transcript I find that, in fact, the episode is unfortunately specific in saying that the alien “loses energy” without hatred and must “subsist” on it. In which case, why not simply find (say) a big city somewhere and hover over a traffic jam? There’ll be an endless supply of resentment and loathing to soak in and it won’t cost any effort at all, certainly not the sort of effort required to cripple starships and bring dead people back to life.
A slight change in wording would have sufficed to permit the “metaphorical interpretation” I suggested. Wouldn’t it be enough to suppose that the sparkly alien merely had an insatiable appetite for hatred? You could still use words like “need” and “feeding” without having to invoke any notion that the alien actually requires hatred as a fuel. The episode would still suck but it wouldn’t be quite so ridiculous.
@37: Well, yes, but it changes the story somewhat, don’t you think, if the entity is doing so basically to get a good bong hit, rather than to survive?