“The Cloud Minders”
Written by Margaret Armen
Story by David Gerrold and Oliver Crawford
Directed by Jud Taylor
Season 3, Episode 21
Production episode: 3×19
Original air date: February 28, 1969
Star date: 5818.4
Mission summary
To combat a devastating botanical plague that threatens the non-botanical life on Merak II, Enterprise heads to Ardana, a Federation world that possesses unobtainium zenite, the only thing in the universe that can save the trees. Upon arrival, they’re invited to the cloud city Stratos for an audience with the High Advisor Plasus, but they’re in too much of a hurry for pomp and circumstance. Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock beam down directly to the zenite mine entrance to pick up the prescription they ordered from drugstore.com and get on their way. However, they do spare some time to gaze admiringly at the city floating above and discuss its utter devotion to art and purely intellectual pursuits.
When they come down from the clouds, they realize that their zenite consignment isn’t waiting for them. Instead, they’re lassoed by a group of visored miners called Troglytes. Fortunately most of their attackers are wearing red jumpsuits, and thus are easily dispatched, but Kirk has more trouble wrestling with their leader, a woman in a blue jumpsuit. Or maybe he just likes rolling in the dirt with her. The fun is interrupted when Zeus, er, Plasus beams down with two guards dressed in shower caps and sheets. They shoot one of the Troglytes but the others escape. The High Advisor apologizes for the incident and gets them up to speed on the local political unrest; he blames the Disrupters, “Troglyte malcontents,” for confiscating the zenite consignment.
KIRK: They agreed to the delivery. Your council assured us of it.
PLASUS: They agreed obviously as a ruse to get valuable hostages.
KIRK: Hostages? For what purpose?
PLASUS: To force the council to meet their demands.
Plasus sends his Shower Cap Squad to look for the zenite and convinces Kirk and Spock to chill on Stratos during the search. In the Council art gallery, they look over the balcony. It’s a long way down. Spock comments, “Remarkable. The finest example of sustained antigravity elevation I’ve ever seen.” Make that the second finest; he stands corrected a moment later when Plasus’ daughter walks in wearing an outfit with remarkable lifting properties of its own. Plasus introduces Droxine as “one of our planet’s most incomparable works of art.” Kirk nods–of course there’s a beautiful woman in this episode. But in a strange turn of events, she’s more interested in Spock.
DROXINE: I have never before met a Vulcan, sir.
SPOCK: Nor I a work of art, madam.
Plasus takes them on a tour and becomes incensed when he finds a trowel stuck in the wall beside a work of modern art; frankly, it was an improvement. Droxine and Plasus lament that the rebels are spoiling the city and have no appreciation for fine art, but brush aside Kirk’s inquiries about the Disrupters’ demands. The captain reminds him of his responsibility to the Federation and the lives at stake if they can’t stop the botanical plague in time. Plasus sends him and Spock to their room with a Shower Cap Sentinel, as Droxine pouts: “Do you think that Captain Kirk and his very attractive officer will feel that we’re responsible for their injuries?”
Another sentinel walks in with a prisoner–a Troglyte without a transport card or a work permit to be in Stratos. Plasus accuses him of making that cutting artistic criticism with his “cavern implement” and questions him about the Disrupters.
TROGLYTE: I know nothing.
PLASUS: I would advise you to increase your knowledge.
TROGLYTE: That is not possible for a Troglyte. The Stratos city dwellers have said it.
Plasus orders the miner be secured to “the rostrum,” which sounds pretty ominous. The Troglyte thinks so too because he breaks free and heads back to the mines as quickly as possible–by leaping over the balcony and making like Wile E. Coyote. “Bummer,” Plasus says, more or less.
In their quarters, Kirk naps while Spock meditates and carries on a bizarre monologue in his head:
This troubled planet is a place of the most violent contrasts. Those who receive the rewards are totally separated from those who shoulder the burdens. It is not a wise leadership. Here on Stratos, everything is incomparably beautiful and pleasant. The High Advisor’s charming daughter, Droxine, particularly so. The name Droxine seems appropriate for her.
Whatever that means. But wait, there’s more:
I wonder, can she retain such purity and sweetness of mind and be aware of the life of the people on the surface of the planet? There, the harsh life in the mines is instilling the people with a bitter hatred. The young girl who led the attack against us when we beamed down was filled with the violence of desperation. If the lovely Droxine knew of the young miner’s misery, I wonder how the knowledge would affect her.
The cutaway shots of the Disrupter leader show she’s just as confused as we are at Spock’s ruminations. Exposition delivered, Spock moves to the next room where he finds the lovely Droxine puttering around. She must have been reading slash fiction, because she remarks, “Mr. Spock, I thought you had accompanied Captain Kirk to the rest chamber.” He tells her she was making too much noise. “What fascinating ears you have, Mr. Vulcan,” she says.
“The better to hear you with, my dear.”
“What discerning eyes you have, Mr. Vulcan!”
“The better to inexplicably fall in love with you, my dear.”
Those aren’t exact quotes, but they get the point across. Meanwhile, the Troglyte woman enters Kirk’s quarters, failing to realize that it’s risky to give him the home field advantage. She holds her trowel to his throat, but in no time at all he’s awake and pins her beneath him.
FEMALE TROGLYTE: Release me.
KIRK: So you can attack me again? That would be foolish.
FEMALE TROGLYTE: Call the guards if you’re afraid, Captain.
KIRK: I’m not afraid. In fact, I find this rather enjoyable.
He foolishly agrees to let her go if she answers some questions. When she gets up she goes for her trowel again and the struggle continues. Just next door, Spock and Droxine are now discussing the Vulcan sex drive. You know, which Spock once described as “a thing no out-worlder may know except those very few who have been involved. A Vulcan understands, but even we do not speak of it among ourselves. It is a deeply personal thing.”
DROXINE: You only take a mate once every seven years?
SPOCK: The seven-year cycle is biologically inherent in all Vulcan’s. At that time, the mating drive outweighs all other motivations.
DROXINE: And is there nothing that can disturb that cycle, Mister Spock?
SPOCK: Extreme feminine beauty is always disturbing, madam.
The Vulcan is Spock-blocked when he finally notices that Kirk is having trouble with a woman in the bedroom and rushes to his aid. Droxine follows and it turns out the two women know each other. But the foursome probably won’t be double-dating anytime soon; the miner’s name is Vanna and she used to work for Droxine’s family until she got tired of turning letters for Plasus’ favorite game show and decided to buy a trowel.
Sorry about that.
Anyway, Vanna is convinced that Plasus summoned Enterprise there to intimidate the Disrupters, even though Kirk insists they’re just there to pick up some zenite. “Starships do not transport cargo,” she says. Ha!
Droxine butts in to tell Vanna that there’s no room for her or the other Troglytes in Stratos or their “perfectly balanced social system,” disappointing Kirk and Spock with her shortsightedness. Vanna is taken away and held on the rostrum, where Plasus shows that violence isn’t completely missing from the cloud city by torturing the woman with energy rays. She screams, interrupting Kirk and Spock’s discussion of the etymology of the term “Troglyte.” The captain puts an end to Plasus’ interrogation, but the High Advisor sends him back to his ship. After Kirk and Spock beam up, he orders the Shower Cap Sentinels to kill Kirk if he returns.
With only twelve hours left to stop the botanical plague, Dr. McCoy busts the case wide open. He studies a zenite sample and discovers that in its raw form, it releases an odorless, invisible gas that lowers intelligence and increases violence. The Troglytes have been breathing it for their whole lives, which is why their mental faculties are so limited, but the effect will wear off once they’re no longer exposed to it. Kirk can’t wait to share the good news, but Plasus refuses to allow him to talk to Vanna or offer to trade filter masks to the Troglytes in exchange for the zenite. That’s never stopped Kirk before–he assumes full responsibility for defying Plasus’ orders and Starfleet regulations and beams down to Vanna’s cell with a mask and a proposal.
KIRK: Vanna, I’ve brought you a gift. There’s a dangerous gas in the mines that affects the development of the Troglytes exposed to it for a period of time. This mask will prevent any further damage.
VANNA: Gas from zenite?
KIRK: Yes.
VANNA: It’s hard to believe something which is neither seen nor felt can do so much harm.
KIRK: That’s true. But an idea can’t be seen or felt. That’s what’s kept the Troglytes in the mines all these centuries, a mistaken idea.
She eventually agrees to trust Kirk’s promise to help mediate between the Troglytes and the Council after he delivers the zenite. They get the drop on one of the sentinels and take his transport card to return to the mines. There, Vanna and her Troglyte friends get the drop on Kirk. She’s played him again! She takes his mask and phaser and makes the captain dig for zenite with his bare hands. Vanna’s buddies would rather kill Kirk, but she wants to keep him as a hostage.
KIRK: How long do you plan on keeping me here, providing Midro doesn’t kill me, of course?
VANNA: Until we have help in the mines and our homes are in the clouds.
KIRK: That’s quite a while. Longer than I expected.
Kirk surprises Vanna and they fight again; he really does seem to enjoy their tender moments together. He gets his phaser back and uses it to create a rockslide to seal them into the cave together. Kirk orders Spock to transport Plasus to their coordinates, for “a demonstration on the effects of unbelieved gas.” Plasus is understandably miffed at being kidnapped in the middle of lecturing his daughter on her suspect taste in men.
Unfortunately, the gas takes effect very slowly, though it has a noticeable effect on Kirk. To speed things up a bit, he orders Plasus to dig for zenite. When the oxygen in the enclosed cavern starts to run out, Plasus taps into his violent side; he challenges Kirk to a mortae duel. Kirk accepts and tosses his phaser aside, but Plasus kind of cheats by keeping both trowel-dagger-things for himself. While the two men struggle to the death, Vanna snatches Kirk’s communicator and calls Enterprise for help. Spock beams the three of them up to the transporter room, Kirk and Plasus still strangling each other. The captain knocks Plasus out and calls his experiment a success.
Back on Stratos, Droxine has come around. She suggests that they call the filter masks “protectors,” and Spock humors her. She plans to go down to the mines to find “beauty in the knowledge that lies below.” When she asks him what Vulcan’s like and comments that she’d like to visit it one day, he is conspicuously silent.
Vanna finally delivers the zenite, as promised, and persuades Kirk and Plasus to forget the whole unpleasant business in the mines, which will cut down on their paperwork. With only two hours and fifty-nine minutes left to save Merak II, Kirk and Spock get out of there while the getting’s good, leaving Droxine to gaze after them thoughtfully.
Analysis
I recalled “The Cloud Minders” fondly for its interesting setting in the cloud city, its questioning of class barriers, and a rare chance for Spock to woo a woman. I appreciate the first two aspects even more because of my love for Fritz Lang’s Metropolis; however, I now perceive the latter as one of the episode’s biggest drawbacks. First of all, I’d remembered Spock having a previous relationship with Droxine, but I must have conflated it with “This Side of Paradise.” Without that prior connection, he just falls for her too quickly, though their romance could have been much worse. No matter how uncomfortable their interactions make us, their brief flirtation is practically Victorian: they merely exchange pleasantries and compliments and never even touch each other–it’s a purely intellectual pursuit for them. In fact, I’ve pretty much decided for myself that Spock is really just being polite to Droxine to improve their odds of getting the zenite. Very logical, really. Yes, that explains everything, doesn’t it?
The zenite is another considerable problem, of course. Once again, there is only one mineral in the entire universe that can save a planet from a deadly illness, yet despite how much zenite Ardana trades with other planets, they can’t get it anywhere else. Doesn’t Stratos keep any extra in stock? What kind of a business are they running there, anyway? It also shocks me that in all this time no one has actually studied the stuff and realized that it’s potentially dangerous. Granted, Ardana had no reason to suspect zenite had such dire side effects, and it’s also possible that the Council was simply suppressing the knowledge. In which case, it’s more perplexing that they were ever admitted into the Federation at all given their treatment of the Troglytes. Is zenite so important that the Federation simply looked the other way? What is zenite even used for when there isn’t a plague?
I found the obvious comparisons between Droxine and Vanna most interesting of all. They’re two women of about the same age who live wildly different lives just because one was born into the mines, the other into privilege. Fair-haired Droxine is meant to be seen as the “good” one, while Vanna is clearly the enemy because she has black hair. Though Droxine is glamorized in her improbable gown and everyone says she’s beautiful, Vanna’s dress–in a darker shade of blue that matches the color of her mining jumpsuit–gives Droxine a run for her money, and the miner even slips into a more comfortable–and revealing–white minidress when she’s imprisoned. Though the Stratos-dwellers are supposed to be smart, Droxine doesn’t think for herself until Spock forces her to question everything she knows about her society. She simpers and fawns over Spock, coming off as rather simple-minded. In contrast, Vanna is passionate and clever, a strong woman of action. A natural leader. It’s a matter of opinion, but she is much more attractive to me than the passive Droxine. Charlene Polite is also a fabulous actress, playing Vanna as contemptuous and evil while still making her sympathetic and sexy–a striking difference from Diana Ewing’s vapid performance.
Incidentally, medical site flexyx.com tells me “droxine” is “a theophylline derivative with broncho- and vasodilator properties. It is used in the treatment of asthma, cardiac dyspnea, and bronchitis.” So how is her name appropriate for her, except in the later sense of the breathing masks?
Then we have the social commentary, which is really the heart of the episode. Though this is a transparent indictment of class distinctions between the haves and have-nots, and may have spoken to the racism and prejudice of the 1960s, it fits much better as a criticism of slavery. Even the title, “The Cloud Minders,” has a double meaning–both to describe the intellectual denizens of Stratos, and to point out the fact that they were minding the Troglytes as masters mind their slaves. With slavery a hundred years in the United States’ past at the time of broadcast, this seems like an outdated subject to moralize on. Though I suppose basic human rights never go out of style.
It may just be the recent run of awful episodes, but “The Cloud Minders” wasn’t too bad. It had some great dialogue, a terrific setup, and some wonderful character moments. Plus it was fun to see Scotty nearly pull off a site-to-site transport. I thought that’s what he was going to do, so I was confused when he said he’d like to see Plasus’ face and Spock told him he’d be able to. I guess it was a little too early for that technology in Star Trek.
By the way, why does Plasus know how to fight? I thought Kirk would beat him easily, but the High Advisor was pretty handy with those mortae.
Eugene’s Rating: Warp 3 (on a scale of 1-6)
Torie Atkinson: Perhaps this episode wouldn’t have appeared as mediocre as it did without its strong echoes of two great works: Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, and H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine. All three explore the consequences of strict class systems without mobility, yet the moralizing in Metropolis and The Time Machine doesn’t feel half as cheap as it does here.
As if commissioned by a task force for the Great Society, “The Cloud Minders” invokes the accrued disadvantages of generations of prejudice to explain the violent rebellion (which seemed an awful lot like race riots, but maybe I’m reading too much into it). I wonder how close to home this felt in 1969. The cultural turbulence was real, but unfortunately the science fictional treatment of it here isn’t worthy of much more than an eye-roll. Like “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield” the racial parallels aren’t so much undertones as they are completely on the surface (no pun intended). The troglytes, emotional and sometimes violent in their desperation, aren’t born that way. It’s because of their environment. But if they had the same opportunities that the cloud-dwellers had, well, they’d be just as smart and artistic and accomplished. Their disadvantages are purely systemic. It’s society, man. Unfortunately, these otherwise entirely reasonable and sympathetic arguments are made with inelegant, embarrassing dialogue, punctuated by the ponderous silences of someone taking an acting note too far. The worst line was McCoy’s observation that “It’s pretty hard to overcome prejudice.” What wisdom, sir. What wisdom.
There’s nothing like a good idea in a hollow narrative to undermine your message.
I guess it’s pretty late in the series to be whining about this, but I don’t know why the third season thinks it needs a female guest star every week. Diana Ewing and Charlene Polite were about as talented as last week’s Mary Linda Rapelye and her “accent.” Droxine might have been an android–I kept checking to make sure she blinked–and her disturbingly skinny figure inspired an alternate ending in my head where all the Stratos-dwellers needed were cookies. Vanna was better by comparison, but if that’s enough for you, I have this great movie with Paris Hilton you should watch. I didn’t buy the Spock/Droxine chemistry* at all, either. I love how the conversation path the two follow goes from social observations to Vulcan mating habits in, what, ten seconds flat? I prefer at least some subtlety–instead it stuck out like a Where’s Waldo: Castaway Collection.
And Kirk’s behavior is just inscrutable. He spends the entire episode trying to upend society by Teaching Lessons, when he could have just beamed into the cave, grabbed the zenite, and made his way to the botanical disaster planet. You can come back and start a worker’s revolution later, dude.
It was fun to see a new transporter effect, at least, and it was reasonably watchable. I have to at least give it credit for having its heart in the right place–between the head and hands.
*Wait for it…noooow you get it.
Torie’s Rating: Warp 3
Best Line: VANNA: But soon the atmosphere will go. We’ll die.
KIRK: Die from something that can’t be seen? You astound me, Vanna.
Syndication Edits: Segments of Kirk and Spock’s fight with the Troglytes; Droxine and Plasus discussing Kirk and Spock before the Troglyte prisoner is brought into the Council gallery; part of Plasus’ interrogation of the Troglyte; Vanna and Kirk discussing whether or not Starfleet ships carry cargo; Kirk confronting Plasus about torture; Captain’s Log, Star date 5819.0; Kirk telling Plasus about McCoy’s discovery about the zenite; part of Kirk’s discussing with Vanna in her cell; Spock’s Log, Star date 5819.3; Kirk calls Enterprise a few times in the cave before Spock picks up; and Spock and Scotty talking about needing Plasus to be alone before transporting him.
Trivia: In The World of Star Trek, David Gerrold provided some details on his original story on which this was based, “Castles in the Air.” In his version, a shuttlecraft carrying Kirk, Spock, and Uhura was shot down on a mission to collect dilithium crystals for Enterprise. But a dispute between the skymen and the “Mannies,” Manual Laborers on the surface, threatens the flow of crystals and opens their eyes to difficult environmental conditions that the workers faced. Kirk ultimately forces the two sides to talk, but the ending is not so clearly hopeful. Another title considered for the episode was “Revolt,” which sounds much more like a DS9 episode.
Kirk’s line “Who are you? What is the meaning of this attack?” was accidentally forgotten in filming but was dubbed in later. Some broadcasts eliminate the dialogue entirely.
This episode contains a rare internal monologue with overlapping clips summing up the episode’s plot.
A two-part prequel episode to “The Cloud Minders” was planned for Star Trek: Enterprise, featuring the cloud city Stratos, according to Executive Producer Manny Coto.
Stratos was designed in a rough sketch by Matt Jefferies and built out of green foam, white glue, and cotton.
Set decorator John Dwyer rented metal furniture to serve as the metal sculptures in Stratos.
The aerial view of the river from Stratos is the Hadramawt Plateau dry river basin in southern Saudi Arabia, as photographed by Gemini IV astronauts in 1965.
Other notes: Jeff Corey (Plasus) was one of Leonard Nimoy’s acting instructors and directed segments of Rod Serling’s “Night Gallery,” as did Nimoy.
James Blish’s novelization of this episode is titled “The Cloud Miners.”
Previous episode: Season 3, Episode 20 – “The Way to Eden.”
Next episode: Season 3, Episode 22 – “The Savage Curtain.” US residents can watch it for free at the CBS website.
First! (I think.)
Watchable, I suppose, but so many things wrong….
(Not the least of which is that gown Droxine’s trying to wear.)
I’m not sure how one achieves a civilisation capable of sustained anti-gravity elevation yet doesn’t understand simple chemistry, or the concept that most gases — like air — are invisible. I suppose the brain damage to the Troglytes is sufficiently advanced that might not grasp the concept, but that’s really pushing it.
Interesting how Obam — er, Bush — er, Jack Bau — er, Plasus immediately resorts to torture to extract information from the terrorists, and how not much has changed since 1968, other than that it used to be that the show’s hero was revolted by the concept and refused to permit it.
The special effects fail when the Troglyte throws himself off the balcony and shrinks down to a dot which then winks out is laughable. I mean, I’m waiting for the little cloud of dust to appear…
The whole zenite/botanical plague thing is, sadly, similar to other episodes (‘Requiem for Methuselah’, ‘Let This Be Your Last Battlefield’, ‘Obsession’, etc.) in which some substance needs to be obtained or transported, and it can only be found in one place. Clearly, given the kind of matter-scrambling technology evidenced by the transporter, and given Kirk’s own statements (viz, ‘Catspaw’: ‘We could manufacture a tonne of these on our ship; they mean nothing to us.’), Federation technology is capable of synthesizing any number of materials from raw elements. One might be able to argue that, somehow, dilithium and similar exotic materials are special cases (though one would have to explain how one then finds them just lying about for the taking on planetary surfaces), certainly simple minerals and compounds are easily manufactured in bulk?
It shows a dearth of imagination that the writers of Star Trek episodes, and, even more damningly, of Deep Space Nine episodes with their insipid ‘gold-pressed latinum’ (or whatever the hell it was), can’t deal with the concept of a society in which material scarcity is no longer a problem, and thus money and wealth are irrelevant — or, at least, are no longer a concern of average citizens. Sad, really.
The Spock/Droxine thing was astonishingly annoying on so many levels. Spock romances were handled nicely in ‘This Side of Paradise’, ‘Amok Time’, and ‘The Enterprise Incident’. Here, it’s just stupid, for all the reasons already given.
Okay. More later, maybe. But I really do want to try to be first!
Ooo! Made it!
This could have been a really good episode, but it keeps missing its own point. David Gerrold was really unhappy with the final result. There were originally two rebel leaders, one more violent and the other more political (i.e. MLK) and in the end Kirk made everybody sit down and talk at the point of a phaser. What really pisses him off, though, is that the ultimate resolution is that there is a way to protect the workers and they can go back to “being happy little darkies”. This episode, for all that its a 2 or 3, is a good sign that the show had lost its sense of social consciousness.
You beat NomadUK, this time! bahahahah
A generally forgettable episode with a heavy handed ‘message,’ by the ghods I hate heavy handed message stories. I remember reading, years and years ago, the original David Gerrold treatment fot his story and it was certainly better. Much better than a plauge of the week episode. (Frankly with all the plauges in the Federation you have to worry about their civil engineering practices.) We shall speak no more of David Gerrold my ire with him has yet to end.
One of the worst sins of this episode was the handling of pon-far. Every Seven Years??? What is this a Marilyn Monroe Star Trek? If the cycle were that regular and that predicatable I think Spock would have had the freakin; foresight to have arrainged his leave well in advance. But here it is in an episode specified as ‘every seven years’ so now we’re stuck with it. Poor Thodore, that ripped up his wonderful episode.
DemetriosX@3: I guess I always found the ending a bit ambiguous, in that, although the Troglytes were going to be given masks, and would probably keep on mining for the time being, were also meant to be educated and their rights recognised — the implication being that eventually they would … well, what? Be able to live on Stratos? And would Stratos dwellers then apply for mining jobs?
Yeah, okay, it’s rubbish. Really, the only solution is probably to bring the whole damned city crashing down, overthrow the order, and establish a worker’s commune. Workers of Ardana, unite!
Second!
Oh damn. I must be a slow reader…
bobsandiego@4: I don’t mind heavy-handed message stories (anything else is too subtle for most people, it seems), as long as they’re done well. Q.v., Soylent Green, Silent Running, Planet of the Apes. And I liked ‘A Private Little War’. This episode, however, fails that test.
And was this the episode that established the seven-year pon-farr myth? I don’t offhand recall any earlier reference to it. Another entry in its catalogue of sins!
@4 BobSanDiego @8NomadUK
DC Fontana established the seven year Pon Farr cycle for Amok Time. It was apparently taken too much to heart by most later writers. She meant it to be a time you *must* mate, but not the only time you’re able to mate.
ChurchHatesTucker@9: I just don’t recall any explicit mention of seven years in ‘Amok Time’. I think that came later — and was a bad idea, in any case.
@9 ChurchHatesTucker
It was not spelled out in her epsidoes, and she also wanted the Vulcan to have forked, ahem, members. What I stand by is until it is in an episode it is not cannon but speculation, Here, baldly we’re given the stupid 7 year itch pon-far. (aside from the already mentioned, wow it went from deeply secret and person so that Spock has a hard time telling Kirk about it all to something he’d update on his facebook page.)
bobsandiego@4: I’m not sure it’s so much a civil engineering problem as one of proper quarantine and disinfection. Notice that these diseases always come from somewhere other than the place that is afflicted.
And taking a wild guess at your problems with Mr. Gerrold, he swears book 5 will be delivered this year.
DemetriosX@12: If I catch your drift, I read book 1 ages ago, and I remember it being entertaining, but I just never did follow up with the rest of them.
I thought The Flying Sorcerers was pretty good, though. That was awhile back, too….
NomadUK @13: The only solo Gerrold that I’ve ever read was The Man Who Folded Himself and the original novella of “The Martian Child”. Readable, but not really compelling. When the first book in the series I referenced came out, I was on a boycott of massive multi-book series. On the whole, that boycott has paid off and I don’t have to worry about the fact that neither David Gerrold nor George RR Martin is my bitch.
@12 DemetriosX
Partially correct sir. Frankly it is the hight of rudeness and contemp to leave your fans hanging in a freakin cliff-hanger for 19 years and counting. Writing is a realtionship between author and reader he’s clearly let me know how he values my part of the relationship.
[Deleted by moderator.]
Here’s another plot hole: if the zenite gas is all that’s making the Troglytes illogical and emotional and the effects wear off once exposure stops, then what about all those Troglyte workers on Stratos? Every last one of them should no longer be feeling the effects, right?
The idea of a mineral or other “rare earth” material existing on only one planet is so flawed that it should be worth an immediate reduction of Ten points in scoring on any scale. (Unless your story is taking place within a Creationist Universe.) Planetary formation just doesn’t work that way. Zenite should have also been available in at least the other planets and smaller bodies in that system. While the Zenite on those other bodies would still belong to the society on Merak II, there should have been other sources available to the Enterprise. But then you lose your plot devise. What if the Unobtanium of the week was a bio-chemical compound? Something produced by a flower or insect that (so far) can only prosper on that planet? Or, in that jungle? http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104839/
I’m not surprised that the class struggle aspect of this story is still applicable today as is the use of and the reaction to the torture.
Merak II? Wasn’t there a character named Merak in another episode?
I dunno, folks. I think this episode handled the class/race tropes a LOT better and with more subtlety than “Last Battlefield,” for example. Here, at least, you had opportunity to think about the allegory and metaphor, rather than being bludgeoned by it. The episode also didn’t suffer from an instant reset button or “let’s all be friends” denouement.
This is a society that will struggle with its problems long after the Enterprise departs; and I didn’t get the sense Plasus (played with some complexity and rigor by the talented Jeff Corey) was as eager as Kirk to let bygones be bygones. My guess is the minute the E warped out, that grudge-holding jackass was filing his protest with SF Command.
Many things would have made this episode better, including LASTING and PERMANENT damage from prolonged zenite exposure that Stratos, as the economic beneficiary of mining operations, would be ethically bound to become caretakers—only now from a position of causal awareness. The “magic solution” undercuts the stronger message that we must take responsibility for our decisions and actions, and live with people with whom we have profound differences. That’s punchier.
It would be fun to compile a list of rare minerals the 23rd century evidently cannot live without.
Season 3 has featured several episodes that expand upon and deepen characters other than the captain, who was really the focus of the first two seasons. This one, with a unique interior monologue from Spock, is perhaps the most blatant (it reminds me of those two later Sherlock Holmes stories in which Holmes was his own narrator—interesting, but not entirely successful or satisfying). I imagine, had their been a fourth season, the trend would have become even more extreme with cyphers like Sulu and Uhura receiving some exploration.
This episode would have been middling in season two. It’s among the more nuanced episodes of season three.
The Pon Farr thing reminds me a bit of the “Luthor is pissed ’cause he’s bald” trope from Superman comics around the same period.
In that sequence, the Man of Steel does something careless and stupid, ruining a vital experiment of potential world fame that causes, as a side effect, Luthor to lose his hair. One could assume many things about the incident could make a lifelong enemy of a twisted genius, but dimwitted writers latched on to the dumbest and, from the standpoint of character development, most limiting of explanations.
It persists in the “lore” of dimwits, like Lizzie Borden and her axe and Al Gore and the Internet.
@ 1 NomadUK
I was surprised at the torture scenes, too. Some things never change…
DS9 depended on there being some kind of economy–otherwise how would Garak have been a tailor? It doesn’t make much sense, I admit, and I think DS9 went way too far by having money be part of pretty much every transaction. That said, I don’t think that a post-scarcity society wouldn’t still have some kind of black market for forbidden items. Money changing hands between the Federation and worlds that aren’t post-scarcity? Makes sense. Banned/illegal goods? Makes sense. Paying for your drink at the bar? Not as much.
@ 3 DemetriosX
What you’re describing sounds like X-Men. I don’t know that I would have liked that story any better.
@ 5 NomadUK
The ending REALLY doesn’t make sense. First of all, why do they mine with their hands? They have transporters but not drills? Secondly, who’s going to do the mining when they all live in sky paradise? Bah.
@ 15 bobsandiego
And here I play moderator: please don’t make allegations like that here. That’s a serious charge and throwing it out there on hearsay is a) not fair and b) not appropriate for this forum anyway. I deleted the relevant accusation.
@ 17 Ludon
It’s pretty weak. Also, haven’t they heard of stockpiling?
Ludon @17:
The zenite must flow!
The explanation for Spock losing his head over Droxine is simple- she has the first female belly button he ever saw. Just a few weeks ago, we still saw revealing but navel-covering outfits on the Lee Meriweathers, and now this!
@ Torie- I thought you were linking Paris’ other movie.
You know, I wish that writers didn’t feel the need to ratchet up dramatic tension with arbitrary deadlines. “We have to deliver this Zanax to Alpha Masculinis III by the time the next tv show comes on, or EVERYONE WILL DIE but nobody will be hurt as long as we make the deadline.” Couldn’t they just have stated that there’s a plague, and awful things are happening, and thus the longer we wait the worse it’ll be?? I think this is relevant to, say, our approach to anthropogenic climate change — people focus too much on the “by x time the changes will be irreversible” and assume that there’s time to delay, when part of acknowledging the problem is acknowledging that the best time to plant the tree would’ve been twenty years ago.
I was pleased, however, that Kirk was vulnerable to the dumb-dumb gas. Normally he has a very high resist, but for once he actually failed his saving throw against mental disruption & was affected by the status ailment. Winds up being more interesting that way. (Unlike Droxine — which, incidentally, is also a synthetic thyroid hormone; the like were sometimes prescribed in the ’60s as off-label weight-loss medications, inducing hyperthyroidism to shed pounds; maybe that’s why Spock thinks the name is appropriate . . . )
Also ditto’d all the comments about unobtanium mentioned here — why is it only on this planet, why are there no stocks anywhere else, isn’t there a spot market for it, etc.
@20 Torie
fair enough.
@16 DemetriosX:
if the zenite gas is all that’s making the Troglytes illogical and emotional and the effects wear off once exposure stops, then what about all those Troglyte workers on Stratos?
I suppose it would depend on how much exposure vs. how much time away. Vanna, presumably, becomes the resistance leader partly because she spent more time on Stratos than the other Troglytes. But it’s definitely glossed over.
I also appreciate Eugene’s analysis regarding the two women, both opposite to their cultures’ stereotypes.
@20 Torie:
haven’t they heard of stockpiling?
Just In Time inventory? Not that the term would be invented for quite some time.
To the Many comments that Zenite and its unque source and shortages, well I let them have that, thought I felt abused at just how often the went back to that particualraly bitter well.
The likely real world economics of interstellar travel boggle the usual concepts of world building and commerce. i can think of a single thing that would make economic sense to transport across intersetellar distances by ship. Minerals? Got ’em right here in system and easier to get to then those buried ones deep in uncomfortable gravity wells. Plants? well if they produce a molecule you need and you have star travel I bet you can make that damn molecule, if you can’t you bring the plants across the distance ONCE and start a farm where you need it. Food? That’s a bigger laugh. You’re much more likely to get a cow pregnant by sexual realtions that succeed in getting food value from an alien cow by eating it. Information will be the most valuable thing and easiest to transport However for fun stories I’ll let all that slide behind the hand waving./
@25 rvanwinkle
Thanks! I had a surprisingly good time writing this recap and thinking about the episode. Maybe because there are only a few to go, and I’m only going to be the primary writer for one more of them. (Thankfully, not “Turnabout Intruder.”)
I always assumed that “Droxine” was supposed to sound like a narcotic.
Almost completely unrelated to the episode: when I was in eighth grade, my science lab parter and I were both pretty big Star Trek fans. Of course, this was when Dinosaurs Roamed the Earth and there was just the one series. Also, Star Wars had the improbable title of Star Wars and Han was still shooting first.
Anyway.
So we’re given our Earth Science textbooks on the first day of school and we thumb through it, as one does on Day One when it still feels a little bit interesting. We both came upon it at about the same time: It’s a picture of
the Hadramawt Plateau dry river basin in southern Saudi Arabiathe surface of Ardana! What’s that doing in an EARTH science book?I’m no classicist, but a quick peek at the Project Perseus website informs me that δρόξιμα (droxima) is a late classical Greek word meaning “fruit (uncooked)”. Perhaps that’s what Spock had in mind, with regard to her name being appropriate.
bobsandiego@26: You beat me to the punch, it seems; I was going to write a bit more about the whole ‘interstellar commerce’ thing, and how impractical it all seems, unless one has relatively inexpensive, fast interstellar travel — which seems, unfortunately, terribly unlikely.
All your points make sense, really. I suppose it’s possible that one could colonise a system that was poor in the kinds of minerals one required for whatever purpose — but why would one bother colonising such a system in the first place?
I suppose it would also be possible that there might be some compounds that are readily obtainable in some location that would cost more to manufacture than to transport — but they’d have to be pretty damned exotic. I have no idea what they might be.
It does seem that the only thing conceivably worth transporting interstellar distances by ship is people bent on exploration, colonisation, and interaction with any alien species out there.
I’m trying to think how Larry Niven handles this in his Known Space series. I think he mentions that art — original art — is potentially valuable enough to make it worthwhile, especially given what appears to be cheap faster-than-light travel. I don’t recall how or even if he justifies any kind of commerce during the period of slower-than-light expansion; I think it’s all just colonisation and exploration.
The Mote in God’s Eye is space opera on a grand scale, with empire and trade, but, again there’s the Alderson drive, which makes trading in Jamaica Blue Mountain coffee over interstellar distances feasible.
This was written awhile back, and makes some good points.
On the Interstellar Trade issues — there’s always Paul Krugman’s contribution to the field. I haven’t bothered to read the actual paper yet, as there’s been too much on my plate — and besides, it deals with only relativistic speeds, so is obviously not relevant here, aside from the general objections to interstellar trade at all.
But yes, it really wasn’t until TNG at the earliest that writers for Star Trek realized just how incredibly disruptive the transporter technology is. Anything that can be moved with a transporter can be synthesized; and conversely, anything that can’t be synthesized can’t be moved with a transporter (whether due to small errors in the reassembly making the compound lose its special properties, or whatever). Indeed, that’s one limitation on transporter technology that I wish we could’ve seen at some point — substances that are valuable because persistent small pattern errors (missing bits, bit transposition, etc). turn delicious food into poison, or something like that. Of course, if it’s imperfect, then you can’t put a person in it, but still, transporter-induced mutation would have been an interesting angle. It would also have been nice if someone had acknowledged that whoever comes up with the most interesting replicator patterns is going to have high status in this society.
@33 Deepthought
If you can send people through the transporter then you can send anything through it. There’s a growing body of evidence that thought itself may be quantum mechanical in nature, in which case sending a person through the Star trek style transporter assures you the being at the other end is not the same. Heisenberg will not be ignored. (It’s why in my Space RPGs when I have introduced teleporting tech it was alway always always a gate system. Open a hole, shove the target through to the destination, close the whole no taking apart and putting back together. Man that avoids so many headaches!)
@31 Jack Mcdevitt handles new economies pretty well in some of his works. Very post captialism without a throw back to communism. Art there plays an important trade item. For my won Nationalized Space stories I hand wave past it by having freighters and cargo but never delving into what is carried on them. Yeah, it’s cheating,
@33 Deep Thought:
re: transporting/replicating: I recall more than one occasion (from TNG, DS9 and probably Voyager) where a character would complain that replicated food, or especially, drink, just wasn’t as good as the real thing. That could be a manifestation of the “small errors in reassembly” issue.
I also have a hazy recollection that there was an episode somewhere in the franchise where some sort of cargo couldn’t be transported, but required physical carriage. Can’t remember anything specific, though. Maybe it was in one of the (non-canon) books?
bobsandiego@34: I came to the same conclusion regarding teleportation mechanisms: use a gateway, not some bizarre matter-scrambling device. Frankly, the latter never made much sense to me, anyway. From a special-effects standpoint, though, perhaps it was easier to manage (just stop the camera, have everybody leave, and do the fade in post-production).
And the alternative could have been pretty damned cheesy: imagine having The Time Tunnel in the transporter room every week…
rvanwinkle@35: That could be a manifestation of the “small errors in reassembly” issue.
See, that’s the thing. If that were the case — if differences were so obvious as to be detectable by taste and smell — how could anyone allow sending people through that device? Clearly rubbish.
If I recall correctly, James Blish explored some of this in Spock Must Die, the first Star Trek novel. Weren’t Spock and Scotty having a discussion as to whether the individual who materialised at a location was, in fact, the same one who was transported? That was all a lead-in to the creation of the second Spock — similar to Kirk in ‘The Naked Time’.
Anyway. McCoy is right: I don’t trust the damned thing.
I’m with McCoy, too. And TNG proved it, though I don’t think the writers realized it. There’s an episode where they find Riker’s duplicate who had been stranded on a planet for several years. Some atmospheric effect caused the beam to split and so Riker both beamed up and didn’t. My most important criterion for beaming is that if there is a way to split the signal or to download it multiple times, then what comes out the other end isn’t the same as what went in. OTOH, there was a LT. Barkley episode where they tried to imply it was more of a gate technology than matter scrambling.
Of course, while it is related, the replicator isn’t identical to the transporter. The replicator assembles its product from a pattern, rather than having an actual mug of tea being held in transporter suspension for an indefinite length of time. It’s probably like the difference between pressed ham or turkey and the real thing. Or it could be largely psychological.
@DemetriosX re: patterns, that’s true — and often exotic foods can’t be replicated because they don’t have a pattern for it — but the patterns are likely created using the same scanning mechanism that assembles the pattern for a person and places it in the “pattern buffer” prior to transport. So as we all agree, replication errors invalidate its use for transportation.
@rvanwinkle yeah, people have definitely complained about replicated food — I especially remember Sisko, whose father was a chef, complaining. But I always took that to be a cross between the superstitious audiophile’s disdain for CDs compared to vinyl (sorry, one can’t really hear the difference), and just the recipe in the replicator kinda sucks. I mean, you ask for a hamburger, and it’s always medium well with mushrooms, and never has Worcester sauce like mom used to make…
@29 ccradio
That must have been quite a surprise! Did you keep the discovery to yourselves, in an attempt at self-preservation?
@30 DrDave
That must be it! But wow, that’s obscure. She reminds me more of cooked fruit, actually.
@37 DemetriosX
I think “The Enemy Within” set that precedent. If you can have two Kirks step out of that transporter, then as far as I’m concerned, neither of them is the real one. If they had both been dying because their cells were separated or technobabble, that would have been one thing, but if you can make a copy that lives long enough to have separate experiences and a different identity, then you just aren’t dealing with one person anymore. Clearly transporter technology advanced enough in a hundred years that multiple copies could continue to live a normal lifespan.
And for another thought exercise, as far as the transporter is concerned, Lt. Cmdr Data is a thing. If it can deconstruct and rematerialize his complex positronic net with no ill effects, then it should be able to replicate it. So what’s to stop Starfleet from storing his pattern and running them off like an assembly line? I rather think transporter technology has some dark secrets that they aren’t willing to explore too closely because they’re just so convenient. Like cell phones, or airport backscatter scanners…
All this talk of transporters reminds me of Michael Crichton’s novel Timeline. Overall it wasn’t that great, but the one interesting thing about it was the technology, which was basically a temporal transporter. As I recall, they explained that they had the technology to dematerialize someone and send them back in time, but they hadn’t figured out how to rebuild them on the other end. So when they send a team to the past, the people who rematerialized were different versions of them in a parallel universe where they had figured out how to restore them. Major handwaving going on there, but I thought it was a neat concept, and there were similar discussions over identity and the safety of the thing. The fact they all accepted that they were dying but that other versions of themselves would go on was intriguing. I have no idea how it was handled in the film though, because I’m pretty sure it’s not worth seeing.
And speaking of unpredictability, I love how our episode discussions go on these interesting tangents!
Bizarrely, I took a graduate philosophy course many years ago, on the subject of theories of personal identity. The Transporter figured prominently in many of the thought-experiments in the course.
Bottom line, if transporters can work, it’s because (a) people are things, like any other things, and (b) things can be scanned, described, and reconstituted from the pattern elsewhere. And once you can do that, there’s nothing to stop you scanning once and reconstituting 27 times, with each of the 27 copies having an equal claim to be “the real one”. There’s nothing to stop you generating an entire crew from backup tapes if (say) aliens have yet again taken over your ship and killed/imprisoned/dehydrated your original crew. When you beam down, you could leave the original behind (just in case), in suspension, and kill it if the landing party version gets back safely. Or just reproduce the original from the stored transporter file. Etc.
As far as “not being the same person”, it’s not as simple as it sounds. Are you the same person as you were 10 years ago, despite having no cells in common with that person? If so, what’s the important link? Continuity of memory? If so, are you willing to claim that amnesiacs aren’t the same people as their pre-amnesia ‘selves’? That people in comas aren’t anyone at all?
For a thorough investigation of these issues, see Derek Parfit’s book _Reasons and Persons_. I don’t agree with all of Parfit’s arguments, but he at least pokes into all the corners. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derek_Parfit
In the realm of classic SF, George O. Smith covered all of these issues in the Venus Equilateral series of stories in the 40’s — http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_Equilateral
On the discussion of transporters and replication. These two paragraphs are from the Star Trek The Next Generation Technical Manual (1991) by Rick Sternbach and Michael Okuda. The first is an author’s note and the second is an entry titled Replication Limits. Not completely cannon, but as close as it could get without having been seen in the show.
In ST:TNG, transporter technology is further postulated to have been advanced to the point where it can be used to replicate objects. This is a nifty idea, but we must be careful to limit the ability of the replicator, lest it become able to re-create any rare or valuable object, and perhaps even to bring people back to life. Such abilities would be quite detrimental to dramatic storytelling. The idea of replicated objects bring stored at “molecular resolution” instead of the “quantum resolution” necessary to re-create living beings is a result of that concern. (Actually, there have been a couple of occasions where the transporter has been improperly used to save the day, but our writers have become more careful about such things.)
Replication Limits. Personnel transport is accomplished at quantum-level resolution using analog image data. By contrast, food and hardware replication (Which employs transporter technology) employs digital image data at the much more limited molecular-level resolution. Because of this crucial limitation, replication of living beings is not possible.
Back to me talking now. As I see it, these paragraphs don’t only show how they tried to prevent the transporters/replicators from becoming a character generator (there is a pun in that), they also set the foundation for the cannon comments about replicated foods not being ‘as good’ as the original/real foods. Even if you step away from the fact that foods tend to come from living things – plants or animals – you’d still have to accept that many foods rely of some form of life such as yeast, bacteria and mold.(Breads, cheeses, wines, etc.) This could also explain why some medicines cannot be replicated.
These paragraphs also established that replicator technology was not available during the time-frame of The Original Series.
A discussion I took part in back in college (long before The Next Generation) touched on Star Trek’s transporters. One person suggested that within the Star Trek universe, the transporter could be taken as proof of a person’s soul. That is that if the original body is broken down and a replacement body is created at the end of the process, the soul carries into that replacement and if you tried to beam a second copy into existence it could not live because there was only one soul and that had transferred to the first copy. (We ignored the James Blish book Spock Must Die for that conversation.) It was one of those discussions that took place in the early morning hours after a ten-hour party put on by the Bored Board. I don’t drink, so I have a better memory of some of those discussions than most of the others but still, it’s been a little over thirty years so I don’t remember everything about that conversation.
Hi all–just a heads-up that today’s post will be a bit late. I know you’re all dying to read about the rock monster and Abe, but my week has been even crazier…
Well, I have to say that, by posting late, you’ve probably increased the likelihood that the rest of my workday will actually be productive — not a guaranteed thing, by any stretch, but definitely a higher probability.
So, thanks a helluva lot, there.
@42 Torie I know you’re all dying to read about the rock monster and Abe, but my week has been even crazier
Crazier than Lincoln in space, man you have had a crazy week!
I think I’ve come up with a great explanation for Spock’s completely out of character chattiness about his sex life ( and in fact for any other out of character behavior of his through the 3rd season ): Having your brain removed and reattached has GOT to mess with your centers of judgement, right? I’m sure McCoy missed a couple of connections here and there too. That’s gotta be it…
Brilliant, right?
Well, I gave it a shot.
@45 Dep1701 *golf clap*
@45Dep1701
Brilliant. I’ve been trying to come up with reasons as to Spock’s behavior here and in ‘That Which Survives’. This explains things so well, I thought I’d comment and tell you so.