“Shore Leave”
Written by Theodore Sturgeon
Directed by Robert Sparr
Season 1, Episode 15
Production episode: 1×17
Original air date: December 29, 1966
Star date: 3025.3
Mission summary
The Enterprise stumbles upon a lush paradise planet, green and peaceful. Aside from strangely lacking in any animals or other life forms, the planet is reminiscent of Earth. Since the ship’s crew has had a grueling three months, Kirk agrees to survey the place as a possible site for shore leave, which is a little mysterious since there’s absolutely nothing to do down there. I guess there’s no Risa yet. Sulu and McCoy beam down to take some readings, and everything seems to check out…just a little bit too well. “It’s like something out of Alice in Wonderland,” McCoy remarks.
Then, out of nowhere, a huge white rabbit appears, checking its gold watch. “I’m late!” he cries, and runs off. The rabbit is followed by a little girl in blue. McCoy looks absolutely terrified.
McCoy reports his sighting to Kirk, who laughs it off as a trick to get him down to the surface and rest, and refuses to take the bait. Spock enters to discuss a matter of some importance: a crew member “who’s showing signs of stress and fatigue—reaction time down 9-12%, associational reading norm minus 3…He’s becoming irritable and quarrelsome, yet he refuses to take rest and rehabilitation.” Spock agrees that he has that right to refuse, but Kirk interrupts him:
Kirk: A crewman’s right ends where the safety of the ship begins. That man will go ashore on my orders. What’s his name?
Spock: “James Kirk.” Enjoy yourself, Captain.
Tricksy Vulcanses.
Kirk beams down with a new yeoman, Tonia Barrows, who aside from her physique is entirely a waste of space-time. She repeats everything the captain says, only more flirtatiously. They meet up with McCoy, who shows them the footprints of the giant rabbit, to prove he didn’t imagine the whole thing. Kirk admits that it had to have been more than illusion, and eventually finds Sulu having some target practice fun—with an old six-shot revolver.
Kirk: Where did you get it?
Sulu. I found it. It’s a crazy coincidence, but I’ve always wanted one like this. Found it lying over there…
That doesn’t seem suspicious or dangerous at all! Kirk takes away his toy (Takei’s dejected face is really something), and they divide up to investigate the area.
Kirk teases McCoy about the rabbit, and we learn a bit more about Kirk’s past:
Kirk: What’s the matter, getting a persecution complex?
McCoy: Well, I’m beginning to feel picked on.
Kirk: I know the feeling. I had it at the academy. An upperclassman there—one practical joke after another and always on me—my own personal devil, a guy by the name of Finnegan.
McCoy: And you being the very serious young—
Kirk: Serious? I was absolutely grim, which delighted Finnegan no end.
Guess who they meet next!
McCoy and Kirk split up, the better to make sure no one can corroborate anyone’s findings. In no time Kirk stumbles across none other than Finnegan himself, and oh my what an asshole he is. His entrance is marked by Irish pipes (did no one think that would be offensive?), and he dances around like the puckish jerk he is, then hits Kirk square in the jaw. You immediately want to punch him in the face—but don’t worry, we’ll get there.
Meanwhile, McCoy and Kirk both hear a woman screaming, and discover Yeoman Barrows bloodied and upset. Her tunic is ripped across the chest, and she explains that none other than Don Juan came to her. Kirk tells McCoy to stay with her and runs off to find Sulu, who left in pursuit of the cloaked assaulter.
Kirk stumbles upon a rocky outcropping, and finds a beautiful woman dressed in long robes. It’s Ruth, a flame of his from fifteen years ago, and she hasn’t aged a day. Before they can get, ahem, reacquainted, he contacts the landing party and tells them to rendezvous in the glade where they first beamed down. Spock then contacts him because has learned that there is industrial activity beneath the surface, and it’s draining the ship’s power.
Meanwhile, McCoy flirts shamelessly with Yeoman Barrow, in a scene so inappropriate and unsettling that I can’t really describe it. This is what transpires:
Barrow: I was thinking, before my tunic was torn, that in a place like this a girl should be… oh, let’s see now, a girl should be dressed like a fairy-tale princess with lots of floaty stuff and a tall hat with a veil.
McCoy: I see what you mean, but then you’d have whole armies of Don Juans to fight off… and me, too.
Barrow: Is that a promise, Doctor? (sees outfit on tree) Oh, Doctor, they’re lovely. Look at me, Doctor—A lady to be protected and fought for. A princess of the blood royal.
McCoy: You are all of those things… and many more. They’ll look even lovelier with you wearing them.
Barrow: Doctor… I’m afraid.
McCoy: Now, look, I don’t know how or why, but the dress is here. I’d like to see you in it. Why don’t you put it on?
Wow. Barrow: way to remind us of your utterly pointless existence! McCoy: way to coerce her into being more sexually pleasing to you! Just wins all around. But the mysterious dress isn’t the only thing that isn’t right appearing on this planet. Two crewmembers, Angela and Rodriguez, encounter an enormous tiger, and then Sulu gets attacked by…wait for it…a samurai. Yes, kids, a samurai with a katana goes after the Japanese man. I dearly hope that this is the most offensive paragraph I ever have to write. Kirk finds him, and with communications on the fritz, they head towards the rendezvous point. Spock beams down and joins them.
McCoy and Barrow come upon the glade (holding hands, no less), but no one is there! That is, of course, until a knight in full armor riding a horse is seen in the distance. McCoy assures Barrow, who is burgeoning on hysterics, “These things cannot be real. Hallucinations can’t harm us.” He holds his ground while the knight charges.
He gets lanced through the stomach and dies.
Kirk, Spock, and Sulu get there just in time to shoot the knight with the pistol, in an oddly funny scenario that nearly makes you forget that McCoy just died. Barrow finally bursts into hysterical tears, shouting that this is all her fault. No one tells her she’s wrong, of course, probably because she’s the woman so it probably was her fault. Strangely, neither Kirk nor Sulu seem to be interested in why she’s wearing a princess dress.
They inspect the fallen knight, but he looks more like a doll or a dummy than a real person. Spock explains, “This is definitely a mechanical contrivance. It has the same basic cell structure as the plants here, even the trees, the grass.” Kirk is confused:
Kirk: Are you saying this is a plant, Mr. Spock?
Spock: I’m saying that these are all multi-cellular castings. The plants, the animals, the people—they’re all being manufactured.
Kirk: By who? And why? And why these particular things?
Spock: All we know for certain is that they act exactly like the real thing. Just as pleasant…or just as deadly.
Rodriguez and Angela are still in the dark about the nature of the whole thing, and Rodriguez unwittingly summons up early-20th century planes. Angela, poor thing, gets gunned down by one of the planes.
Kirk sees Finnegan again and decides he’s going to have his vengeance, once and for all. He chases the Irishman to a rock outcropping, and they proceed to wrestle for dominance. Faces get sullied, shirts get torn…maybe this planet isn’t so bad after all! In the end Kirk manages to best his former tormentor. He keeps demanding answers from the guy, but gets none, until Spock shows up and points out that this is something Kirk has wanted to do for a very long time. He must’ve conjured it by just thinking about it. That took entirely too long to figure out, if you ask me.
They run back to reunite with the rest of the landing party, passing a tiger, a warplane, and a samurai. It’s sort of like an Animaniacs episode, where they run from set to set on the studio. Or a bar joke. Or a Sci-Fi Original Movie. Don Juan tries to kidnap Barrows again (yawn), but they fight him off.
Kirk commands his crew not to think of anything—to make their minds a blank slate. Then, the Stay Puft Marshmallow man appears! Just kidding, it’s a humanoid. He calls himself the Caretaker, and says that the planet is an amusement park, intended for play. They’ve repaired McCoy and Angela, and McCoy shows up with some Playboy bunny-esque space hussies. Leonard “Bones” McCoy, pimp extraordinaire! Barrow jealously forces them to leave, throwing her arms around McCoy.
The Caretaker has decided that Kirk’s race is not yet ready to understand the hows or whys, but agrees to let them carouse nonetheless. The captain orders the crew to begin beaming down for shore leave, for the best vacation of their lives.
Analysis:
This episode is essentially the first holodeck episode, and if you remember how those usually turned out (*cough*FistfulOfDatas*cough*), then you where to set your expectations. This ep was remarkable only in its offensiveness. I cringed in nearly every scene, from the female yeoman massaging Kirk in the opening, to the Japanese man being chased by the katana-wielding samurai. Even the Irish pipe music when Finnegan appeared was too much. So he’s Irish, and that’s supposed to make him an asshole? Barrows, the new yeoman, only ever seems to think about romance, and then gets nearly raped by Don Juan. Yay, the woman’s fantasy is of course to be the princess in the castle protected by the great white knight. No freaking thank you. And Bones should know better. His come-ons to Barrows were inappropriate and creepy. He treats her like a doll for dress-up, to amuse and delight him. So much for equality in the workplace, eh?
I could go on about the flimsy plot, the unsatisfying conclusion, and yet another occurrence of the “space douche” phenomenon (super-advanced race uses is time to toy around with the Enterprise; see “The Corbomite Maneuver”) but none of that really compares to how offensive it is to just about everyone. Men fantasize about beating the shit out of each other; women fantasize about getting ravaged and worshipped as princesses; and the Asian guy imagines having to battle samurai. That’s it? That’s all there is to the human subconscious?
I’d forgive it if we didn’t know from “The Enemy Within,” “Dagger of the Mind,” and “What Are Little Girls Made Of?” that they’ve touched upon these ideas before in a much more interesting, thoughtful, and considerate way. It’s hard to believe that Theodore Sturgeon wrote this, though the original idea for the episode sounded much more interesting. According to The Star Trek Compendium, the original outline included McCoy getting dragged down below by a creepy set of mechanical arms, and one of the things to appear was a crewmember’s mother (rather than a love interest? I do not know). Kirk gets them out of the situation by concentrating on wanting to know everything, to which the Caretaker appears to answer his questions. In that version, the planet is 1000 years old, and completely automated—an unattended program. Much more interesting, don’t you think?
All in all: hard to watch. Maybe it was funny in 1966, but worthless women, attempted rape, and racial stereotypes don’t make me laugh one bit.
Torie’s Rating: Warp Factor 2 (It did let me use the half-naked man-wrestling tag again, so I bumped it up)
Eugene Myers: This is appropriate to review now, since Fleet Week is just wrapping up in New York. As a comedic episode of Star Trek, “Shore Leave” mostly delivers. I was really enjoying myself for the first part of it, much more than I had expected since I had some unfavorable impressions lingering from my childhood (mostly I remembered the White Rabbit and Yeoman Barrows’ princess getup). I cracked up when Barrows gave Kirk a back rub and he thought it was Spock, but this does make you wonder if he’s accustomed to Spock massaging him on the Bridge. As we see in Enterprise, Vulcans do have a particular talent with neuropressure massages…
McCoy’s reactions to the White Rabbit and Alice are precious, as are his flirtations with Barrows. (“My dear girl, I am a doctor. When I peek, it’s in the line of duty.”) There are a lot of other terrific moments, such as Spock tricking Kirk into beaming down for R&R, the anachronistic delight in seeing a 23rd Century spaceman shoot a medieval knight with a police revolver, and McCoy with his chorus girls (who did not amuse Barrows in the slightest). I was also pleased to see another ethnicity represented by Lieutenant Esteban Rodriguez.
So where does it all go wrong? The episode builds a sense of mystery and raises tension as people are actually killed by their “hallucinations.” It’s also great to learn a little more about Kirk’s past via his run-ins with the mischievous Finnegan and his former love Ruth, and add some depth to Sulu, who appreciates old weaponry as much as plants. But the episode started to lose me when it implies that Yeoman Barrows wants to be ravaged and/or rescued. The attack by Don Juan where her tunic is nearly torn off feels out-of-synch with the humorous tone of the rest of the episode, and there are a lot of other weird manifestations that don’t quite fit. Who dreamed up that tiger and the fighter planes? Did Sulu really have to be chased by a samurai warrior?
Ultimately, the episode fails because the explanation for the odd occurrences and the goofy antenna we see tracking the crew’s movements is as disappointing as finding out it was all just a dream. Not only is this planet some kind of advanced amusement park that can manufacture anything people imagine and resurrect the dead, but the planet’s Caretaker won’t explain how any of it is done because “your race is not yet ready to understand us.” That is such a copout. On top of that, tickets to Six Flags for us today are ridiculously expensive, but these aliens let anyone visit their planet whenever they feel like it? Without even posting instructions?
In the end, this episode is as forced as the laughter following Mr. Spock’s final comment that Kirk and the others are “most illogical.” Ha ha ha, we haven’t heard that one before, Spock.
Eugene’s Rating: Warp Factor 2
Best Line: “The more complex the mind, the greater the need for the simplicity of play.”
Syndication Edits: Kirk holding Ruth is cut a bit short, and two captain’s logs (the stardate one and the supplemental log entry later) got axed. Weird, seeing as they left in the insane amount of half-naked man-wrestling.
Trivia: This was principally filmed in two places: “Africa, USA,” a private facility that they painted up with red spray paint to make it look more alien, and Vasquez Rocks, a California park.
The woman who is Angela here appeared in the previous episode as the woman who lost her fiancé (though she is presumably playing different characters).
Other Notes: Theodore Sturgeon also wrote “Amok Time.”
Previous Episode: Season 1, Episode 14 – “Balance of Terror.”
Next Episode: Season 1, Episode 16 – “The Galileo Seven.” US residents can watch it for free at the CBS website.
This post originally appeared on Tor.com
“The woman who is Angela here appeared in the previous episode as the woman who lost her fiancé (though she is presumably playing different characters).”
Not so sure about that. They are both named Angela… although her surname in “BOT” was Martine, and here it’s Teller. I believe she even has another last name when she last appears in “Turnabout Intruder”. Either this woman falls in love and gets married at the drop of a hat, or she views the Enterprise as a giant spacegoing “Love Boat”. Either way it’s another disservice to the portrayal of females in the series to have the same actress portraying characters with only romance on their minds, especially in episodes that aired back-to-back ( especially after we saw her so broken up about losing her fiance just a week before … granted, first thing she did was turn and hug Kirk in the chapel, until he throws cold water on her by talking about her dead fiance, so maybe she’s a consistent character after all ).
” Angela, poor thing, gets gunned down by one of the planes”.
Actually, I don’t think she does. An observant friend once pointed out to me that the bullets go past the pair, but Rodriguez runs her smack into the tree, knocking her out cold.
This is one of my favorite episodes. Sure, it’s ridiculous on many levels. You might have mentioned the ostensible lack of animals, both in this episode and “This Side of Paradise”: the existence of Earth-like foliage without insect pollinators is no less bizarre than a rabbit with a pocketwatch.
The Yeoman Barrows character reflects cultural attitudes towards women that were presumably common in 1966, but are troubling today. Unfortunately, that’s hardly unique to this episode. There’s a certain “swinging ’60s” element to the interaction between Barrows and McCoy that suggests that the sexual revolution has taken place, but women’s liberation hasn’t. It’s important to recognize that, ultimately, Star Trek is a historical document of the 1960s, not the 23rd century. The fact that it seems creepy now is an indication of how far we’ve come.
That being said, I don’t think it’s completely fair to interpret Yeoman Barrows as being a stand-in for all women. Anyone who reads Dan Savage’s column knows that people fantasize about all kinds of things, including very scary things that they wouldn’t actually want to happen to them in real life. I don’t think the fact that a female character has fantasies involving helplessness automatically means that Ted Sturgeon is saying that all women want or need men to protect them. (On the other hand, this is 1966; see the previous point).
For similar reasons, I don’t see why Sulu being chased by a samurai is offensive. So a Japanese guy can’t think about samurai? Why is it acceptable for him to think about things from a Western cultural context (i.e. the police service revolver), but not from a Japanese cultural context? I think it might be offensive if the episode portrayed Japanese-ness as being Sulu’s only trait, but it doesn’t.
As far as Finnegan, well, I’d say the fake Irish accent and the leaping-around-like-a-freaking-leprechaun is more sad and pathetic than offensive. The apparent glee when he thinks he’s killed Kirk just before the commercial break is pretty messed up, too: a little too extreme (to say the least) for someone who’s supposed to be a college prankster. That being said, I really like the musical theme for the Finnegan scenes, so I’m willing to overlook pretty much everything else about them.
Comparing the last act to an episode of Animaniacs is apt — but, hey, I love Animaniacs. Everyone involved appears to genuinely be having fun.
But what I really like about this episode is the message: that the human unconscious is full of fun and exciting things, if we just relax and enjoy them. It’s a good counterpoint to all the grim episodes about the dangers of confusing fantasy and reality, and the terrible, dark things lurking in our minds. It seems to say something positive and optimistic about the human imagination, which (in my opinion) is a good message for a science fiction show.
I can’t stand “Shore Leave”–mostly because it forces the characters to pretend to be really stupid all the way through the episode; there is no point at which the audience isn’t five steps ahead of all the characters, and it should really be the other way around. (This is also a reason that I don’t like to watch horror movies.)
But, yes, the parade of loutish stereotypes contributes to my disdain. It’s not that Sulu isn’t allowed to think about a Samurai, it’s that the producers of the show are signaling that they don’t think of Sulu as anything but a kabuki racial stereotype (it’s not even a flattering image of a Samurai–just a screaming, mindless berserker). Then, all the young George Takeis in the audience get to see no positive representation of their culture except this poisonous reduction. Fortunately, this was a lapse, but it’s part of what makes “The Naked Time” so precious–Sulu get to be Errol Flynn, not Charlie Chan.
Kevin, does a fascination with 20th century firearms fit a “kabuki racial stereotype”? I think it’s really reaching to take this one scene with Sulu, which lasts all of 10 seconds and is far from the only Sulu scene in the episode, and say that George Takei is being forced to play Charlie Chan. I’m all for calling out Star Trek when it betrays its values, I just don’t think this is an instance if that. Has George Takei ever said anything about this?
I’m pretty sure I have read that somewhere, but I can’t immediately find it this morning. It may be more in the discussions of “The Naked Time” which was also supposed to feature Takei fighting with a samarai sword–in that case, Takei spoke up, and got it changed. He’s probably more comfortable talking about that episode in a positive light than he is criticizing “Shore Leave.” You’re right, of course, that George in his performance makes much more of the character than a stereotype.
This must be what I was thinking of. In Marc Cushman’s These Are the Voyages, Vol. 1, he relates about “The Naked Time”:
Page 206, citing a 1997 Sci-Fi channel interview.
Ok, but in “Shore Leave,” Sulu isn’t brandishing a samurai sword; he has a passing thought about a samurai warrior. There’s a big difference. “The Naked Time” was ostensibly showing us the inner nature of the characters; “Shore Leave” is showing us various entities that happen to inhabit the characters’ imaginations. I don’t think the White Rabbit or the World War II airplanes say anything essential about McCoy or Rodriguez, so why should the samurai be interpreted as saying something essential about Sulu?
I must admit that I find the negative reviews on this episode more than a bit amusing… I’ve just finished re-reading Melinda Snodgrass’ article for Omni Magazine from 1991 regarding Star Trek: The Next generation… (Melinda was a writer and script editor for several seasons of TNG)
Omni Magazine – 1991
Boldly Going Nowhere –Melinda Snodgrass
“World hunger, global warming, energy depletion –small cheese when measured against the looming dangers of a Klingon civil war, and whether dilithium crystals will really decrystallize when exposed to ‘Sselgninaem.’ But nobody said it would be easy to muse on Star Trek’s impact on society during the last twenty-five years. That’s why Omni asked me, a former Star Trek executive consultant to do it.
Star Trek’s creator and executive producer, Gene Roddenberry, has joined the august group of men with an agenda. Beware of men concerned with their place in history. With politicians this obsession usually ends up costing you in either money or blood. In the case of Star Trek: The Next Generation, it ends up wasting your time.
In 1966, when Star trek first beamed into millions of homes, Roddenberry’s agenda was getting a TV sow on the air so he could make some money –a sensible and laudable goal. Although the show limped through three season, receiving only marginal ratings, it delighted those of us who read science fiction and were starved for a visual presentation of our favorite genre.
Looking back from the perspective of twenty-five years, I realize that the original recipe was pretty good science fiction. Not always, of course; Classic Trek had its share or gobblers –‘Spock’s Brain,’ ‘The Omega Glory,’ Even so, there were scripts by Robert Bloch, Harlan Ellison, Theodore Strugeon, David Gerrold, Dorothy Fontana –people who understood that science fiction isn’t about gadgets and technological gim-cracks but about the effect the technological gimcracks have on people. Go back and look at ‘Charley X’ (sic), ‘City on the Edge of Forever,’ ‘Errands of Mercy.’
Yes, the special effects were laughable, the sets cheesy, and you had William Shatner chewing scenery. But I’ll take Captain James T. Kirk kissing the girl, punching the bad guy, and violating the Prime Directive about twice a show over the bloodless automatons who now crew the Enterprise.
The old show was passionate. These were flawed individuals, people with whom we could identify because we possess the same failings. How they met and defeated their personal demos was more gripping than the godlike-alien-of-the-week we get on Star Trek: The Next Generation. The dramatic problem with godlike aliens is that it takes a godlike alien to catch a godlike alien.
But all things pass, including Classic Trek. It faded away to that limbo where old television shows go to die, until it rose from the dead in the form of Star Trek conventions.
And the conventions begat movies, and the movies begat the new series. Amen. The dreadful effect of all the hype was that Roddenberry decided that he could no longer just do a television show so he could make some money. Now he had to speak to the ages because this was serious shit, this was ‘philosophy’. In the new improved twenty-third century there is no want, no money, no crime (if you should even get a naughty notion they’ll come and make your mind right –terrifying prospect). And there are apparently no emotions. All of which combines to create a stultifying forty-seven minutes in front of your television. The essence of drama is conflict, and there’s none to be found in the new Star Trek. But that’s dramatic criticism and it doesn’t quite address the question of whether Star Trek, old or new, has fundamentally affected society.
Without question Star Trek’s impact is incredibly diffuse. Probably half the world’s population would recognize the familiar ‘Beam me up, Scotty’. But that’s chrome. Essentially, Star Trek hasn’t affected the ethics, morality, or philosophy of ours or any other society.
Star Trek has always been a reflector of the country’s attitudes rather that a shaper of those attitudes. In the Sixties, we had the gung ho New Frontier democracy of napalm. (Consider ‘The Apple’’: Let’s blow up the papier-mâché tyrannosaurus with the horn on its head so the people who worshipped it can experience hunger and death. I love this plan. Jim)
It was swashbuckling, far better entertainment than Star Trek: The Next Generation, which reflects the stodgy, self-righteous Reagan-Bush New World order. Star Trek: The Next Generation is kinder and gentler, probably more paternalistic but basically just as coercive as the New Frontier activism of Classic Trek. Is it important? Does it matter? No. As I said while on Star Trek: The Next Generation, “We’re not eradicatin’ world hunger here. It’s just a TV show.”
I grew up with the original, while it has flawed -even terrible episodes, I still prefer it to ST:TNG, don’t get me wrong, I like many episodes of TNG but frequently found it lacking. I remember reading that Rick Berman and Brannon Braga never like the original Star Trek. It seems they over-frequently mined the original show for ideas; much more than just canonical material/references.
I found ‘Shore Leave’ a fun, enjoyable episode. I think ST:TNG has more than it’s fair share of moribund episodes. The strange thing I’ve noticed is how much more TNG has dated compared to the original Star Trek. The costuming looks uniformly ’80’s music video’-inspired, a bit too MTV.
I definitely prefer TOS over TNG for multiple reasons, but I disagree with Snodgrass’ assertion that Star Trek should just be entertainment rather than philosophy. If anything, there was more philosopy in TOS than TNG; it was the ’60s, so everything had multiple levels of meaning and allegory. Nearly every episode had a “message” of some kind, some more obvious than others. To me, the message of “Shore Leave” is that people should relax and have fun. That’s as good of a message in 2015 as in 1966.
I fully agree with your statement. I was taken aback by the bashing of this episode. The production on ‘Shore Leave’ was exceptional, great camera work that gave it a cinematic appeal.
Ah, the music… ‘Shore Leave’ has some great themes in it, Gerald Fried did some great work for this episode. My brother and I would frequently discuss TNG for what we considered musical failings; nothing ever seemed particularly dramatic from a music standpoint in the show.
Every noticed when captain kirk and spock are running, right after plane attack you can see something wrote on rock. I can make out “yes we fu” after that it is unclear