“The Lorelei Signal”
Written by Margaret Armen
Directed by Hal Sutherland
Season 1, Episode 4
Production episode: 22006
Original air date: September 29, 1973
Star date: 5483.7
Mission summary
Enterprise tempts fate by visiting an unfamiliar region of space where Federation ships have been disappearing for the past 150 years. A hot tip from the Klingons and Romulans reveals that ships disappear like clockwork, every 27.346 “star years,” give or take.
The ship stands by on Yellow Alert. As Spock reaches the end of his countdown, Uhura picks up a subspace radio signal, as she does. She puts it on the speakers and comments that it sounds “more like music than a message.” At the same moment, the ship is probed from the Taurean system, where the signal originates–twenty light years away. Kirk and Spock claim the probe seems like a summons, but Uhura disagrees, somewhat mystified by their observation.
They set a course for the Taurean system, and the male crew’s behavior becomes increasingly odd, especially when they begin hallucinating about white-haired women. Uhura calls Nurse Chapel to the Bridge for her professional opinion; Dr. McCoy can’t be bothered because he’s too busy thinking about beautiful flowers.
Before too long, the ship arrives at the second planet and Kirk leads a landing party to check it out. Scotty’s left in command, but he and the other men aren’t good for much anymore. Uhura catches three errors in Spock’s sensor readings, a sign that something is seriously wrong.
On the planet’s surface, Kirk gets careless with protocol. Rather than collect tricorder readings, he brashly leads Spock, McCoy, and a red shirt straight to a beautiful structure, ignoring his science officer’s recommendation that they hold off until they figure out what’s influencing their behavior.
At the building, they’re met by a group of white-haired women who greet them by name. Not only are the women “psychokinetic,” which turns McCoy on, but they have “Opto-aud,” a cable television service that shows them anything they want–including Enterprise. Kirk asks Theela, the Head Female, about the signal they followed. She replies, “I will explain its meaning later. We have prepared a feast to celebrate your presence.” Uh oh.
The men can’t seem to focus on anything but the beautiful women and their delicious, uh, nectar. Kirk records a rambling log about how their hosts “radiate delight,” and when Theela tells him the men of the planet occupy another compound, he just lets it go with, “That makes sense.” Then she weeps as one by one the men pass out and are dragged away to a bedroom to suffer unspeakable horrors.
The landing party wakes up, a lot older but not much wiser, sporting flashy new headbands that they can’t remove. Back on Enterprise, Uhura’s computer scans show that the probe from the planet is weakening the male crew. She assumes command of the ship and orders female security teams to guard the transporters to prevent any men from beaming down to their certain deaths. Scotty doesn’t put up any resistance to her mutiny–he’d rather keep singing in a Scottish brogue. Uhura records her bold action in the log and promotes Chapel to Chief Medical Officer. Things are looking up on old Enterprise.
Dr. McCoy’s medical bag provides some stimulants to keep the prematurely aging men going, as well as a medical scanner that Spock uses to open the door of their comfy prison. They make a break for it and hide in a giant urn in the garden while their captors search for them.
KIRK: The headbands. Look at them.
SPOCK: I have noticed that their glow diminishes when the women are not present. They could be polarized conductors which transfer our vital energy to the bodies of the women.
KIRK: You mean they’re actually draining our life forces?
SPOCK: That would account for our rapid aging, Captain. And our weakness. If you recall, the women seemed listless at first. But as our strength has failed, they have become more energetic and vital.
Spock calculates they’re aging at a rate of ten years a day, which means they’ll be dead pretty soon and the women will need replacements from Enterprise. Since Vulcans have much longer lifespans and he’s in better shape, Spock volunteers to go find their communicators and warn the ship. He sneaks back into the women’s compound and uses the Opto-aud to locate their equipment. He contacts Enterprise and orders an all-female rescue party, just before he’s discovered and faints. As last requests go, that isn’t a bad one.
Uhura and Chapel beam down with a team of red skirts and stun all the white-haired women. (Uhura isn’t much for diplomacy.) They’re unable to find the hidden landing party, until Spock reaches out to Nurse Chapel telepathically and leads her to his bedside. She pries off his headband and he instructs her to divert the ship’s energy to the shields to block the probe.
CHAPEL: We tried that.
SPOCK: Use all ship’s energy. Everything channeled to the shields. Hurry, Christine.
Oh, well, they didn’t try that.
It starts to rain, flooding the urn, but Kirk, McCoy, and Carver are too feeble to climb out. Meanwhile, Theela uses the Opto-aud to force some exposition on Uhura:
This is the race from whom we are descended. They came to this planet when our homeworld began to die. They built this place and all surrounding it. They did not know this planet drains humanoid energy. But the women’s bodies developed a glandular secretion, enabling them to survive and to manipulate certain areas of the males’ brains, influence their emotional senses. Ultimately, it drained the men, caused them to weaken and die.
That makes sense.
So they’re immortal, trapped on the planet, and forced to steal lifeforce energy from men every 27 years. And they can’t even bear children! That’s no way to live.
They use the Opto-aud to find Kirk and the others. Uhura’s really trigger-happy, so she blasts them out of the water-filled urn. But they’re still so old! Spock suggests using the transporter to restore them to the way they were at the beginning of the episode. That ridiculous plan will never–
It works. And on the planet, the women destroy their evil transmitter.
THEELA: Tell Captain Kirk we have kept the agreement.
UHURA: A crew of women will bring a ship back. You’ll be transported to the first suitable planet.
THEELA: How quickly will we become as other women?
UHURA: Dr. McCoy says it should only take a few months.
THEELA: A life of hope. New learning. Perhaps love. Oh, it is a much better future than immortality.
Analysis
This episode straddles the thin line between awesome and awful. It scores huge points for being the first broadcast Star Trek story to put a woman in charge of Enterprise, thereby refuting the idea put forth in “Turnabout Intruder” that women can’t command, and the tag team of Uhura and Christine Chapel is hard to beat.
Yet this primary strength of the episode also highlights its biggest weaknesses, which are also related to gender issues. On the face of it, “The Lorelei Signal” could be viewed as an empowering feminist story, if it weren’t undermined by the whole situation with the Taurean women. There was something distasteful about their portrayal as being “listless” until they sap men of their lifeforce, and the men in turn becoming dreamy, distractible, and weak. Another interpretation of the episode might be that the women are completely dependent on men and can only become strong and vital by sapping their energy, and what kind of a message is that? After all, why can’t they drain “lifeforce” from the Enterprise women as well?
These weird thematic undertones become much more overt near the end. This explanation for how the Taurean women work is fairly damning: “But the women’s bodies developed a glandular secretion, enabling them to survive and to manipulate certain areas of the males’ brains, influence their emotional senses. Ultimately, it drained the men, caused them to weaken and die.” This is compounded a moment later by this gem: “We are unable even to bear children.”
The implication is clear. For all their beauty and wiles, the Taurean women aren’t women at all. Kirk and Uhura offer them a chance to become like “other women”–ie. “normal”–and they hastily correct the error of their ways. Though they claim they can now pursue hope and learning, what they’re really after is love. Which surely means babies. And there we may have the true meaning behind one of the most intriguing moments of the episode, Theela’s tear. Initially I thought she wept because she regretted the need to harm the men, but now I wonder if she’s simply lamenting not being able to build a future with one of them. Probably Kirk.
But I get it. This is also an exploration of the curse of immortality, riffing on themes Star Trek has already engaged with. Immortality is boring and stagnant, and it always comes at a price–in this case, the need to lure men in every 27 years. What isn’t entirely clear is what happens to the women if they don’t juice up. They don’t age, they don’t die–they just get kind of tired? If this life is so horrible, why not just let it kill them off?
Even with these unsightly blemishes marring the potential for a meaningful, progressive story, there are some wonderful bits in it which feel very Star Trek. I don’t know what Scott was singing on the Bridge, but it was unexpected and fun. But my favorite moment of all was when Spock reached out telepathically to Nurse Chapel, and he calls her Christine. In a way, Spock’s sending out his own “Lorelei signal,” taking advantage of the unique bond they share.
In the end I have to penalize the episode for the stunning deus ex machina that restores the landing party’s age more or less magically, which completely changes our understanding of the transporters and introduces all those niggling questions we have about whether or not what goes in is what comes out. And this episode features some of the shoddiest animation yet. When Uhura and the red skirts beam down, even Nurse Chapel is in a red uniform. I thought maybe she’d simply coordinated her outfit with the other women, but in the next frame she’s back in blue. Then I was astonishes when her left arm turns red while the rest of her stays in blue. There are mistakes, and then there are mistakes.
On the whole, I feel this episode might have been a mistake, but at least it was made with good intentions.
Eugene’s Rating: Warp 3 (on a scale of 1-6)
Torie Atkinson: I don’t really see a scenario where this plot could have worked.
There’s just no way to do justice to a story centered on primal sexuality when your audience is intended to be pre-pre-pre-pubescent and you have to get past the daytime censors. The men’s attraction to the planet and it’s “women” comes off as either wholly bizarre (nothing gets me hot like… flowers? What’s going on with McCoy?) or hilariously tame (yeah baby, rock that yellow jumpsuit…thing). And censors or no, once you mix in the need to make our heroes dutiful to ship and country the chance of an erotic escapade in which they succumb to their basest urges is, well, remote. I love it when Spock says “Gee, maybe we should stay away from that castle” and Kirk simply shrugs it off. It doesn’t feel like passions are broiling beneath the surface, warring with each man’s awareness that this is dangerous yet exciting–sexiness level: 10! This is more like sexiness level: boiled cabbage. Sterilized sirens aren’t compelling, so why did they even go there?
It did have some laugh out loud moments, but unfortunately I think those were unintentional. Watching Theela command things, from her lady thugs (“Obstruct them!”) to the Opto-Aud (“The past! Reveal it!”), definitely brought on a case of the giggles. So did Scotty’s singing, the “hallucination” animation (which felt like one of those soap opera credit sequences where sexy-looking people flip back their hair and turn to the zooming camera), and the fact that Theela could name the landing party dudes except for that one red shirt guy who somehow comes along, has one line, no action, and lives at the end.
I think Eugene covered the sexist aspects really well, so I’ll just add that what really kills an otherwise awesome stint as commanding officer was Uhura’s last line, that Kirk looks “more handsome than ever.” I don’t think I actually groaned until that moment.
No wait, I lied. The recurring music cues have finally taken their toll and I’m pretty sure I groaned during that DRAMATIC!MUSIC! one that overtakes Kirk at least four times. I’m tempted to watch the rest of the series with subtitles only. But then I’d have nothing to focus on but the animation…
Torie’s Rating: Warp 2
Best Line: McCoy: “First time I ever admired a body function.”
Trivia: The writer, Margaret Armen, also wrote three episodes of the original series: “The Gamesters of Triskelion,” “The Paradise Syndrome,” and “The Cloud Minders.” Is anyone surprised? So far she’s four for four, but she’ll have another chance to break warp 3 with another animated episode, “The Ambergris Element,” later this season.
Another planet is named Taurus II in “The Galileo Seven.”
This is the only time Lt. Uhura ever assumes command of Enterprise in any TV shows or films.
A similar plot was used in the Star Trek: Voyager episode “Favorite Son,” which featured aliens called the Taresians, and the Star Trek: Enterprise episode “Bound,” which featured three Orion slave girls.
Other notes: The Lorelei, or Loreley, is a rock at the narrowest part of the Rhine between Switzerland and the North Sea, on the eastern bank near St. Goarshausen, Germany. Because it has caused so many boat accidents, it inspired stories about a woman who bewitches men to their doom, similar to the Greek myths about the Sirens.
Previous episode: Season 1, Episode 3- “One of Our Planets is Missing.”
Next episode: Season 1, Episode 5 – “More Troubles, More Tribbles.” US residents can watch it for free at the CBS website.
I suppose the general weakness of this episode tends to get overshadowed by Uhura getting to take command and the rest of the female crew members also stepping up. The business at the end with the transporter got used a lot in TNG. I can think of a few episodes where they run people through the transporter to fix an insoluble problem, while technobabbling about the pattern buffer.
I love “red skirts”. Good work there, Mr. Professional Author Guy.
Definitely with Torie on this one, though when I was younger I liked it solely for the unbelievable part of OMG WOMEN WITH AGENCY AND ACTUAL EFFECTIVENESS AT SOMETHING OTHER THAN COMFORTING THE MENFOLKS I THINK I MIGHT DIE.
It still does give me that little thrill inside, seeing (for the first time) a woman take the ship under command, and a team of women using phasers and fighting, and making decisions, and OMG WHY DIDN’T THEY DO THIS EARLIER IT’S SO AWESOME.
But yes, overall, the “oh good the men are back in command, whew the universe will be okay” tone at the end always spoils it. I tend to stop watching around the part where they figure out the transporter silliness, because it’ll harsh my buzz too bad.
Great review, though, and yes, totally love the “red skirts” line, particularly for the 60s/70s Trek. Anyone else notice that in the (largely horrible) 2009 movie, there’s at least one male crewmember who’s wearing what appears to be a male version of the miniskirt uniform? He’s in command gold, a white guy with light brown hair, if I’m remembering right, in the background of (I think) a bridge scene. I totally squeed out loud that they’d done that.
I’ll give the episode some credit for trying to show women in command and capable. I do love that when it comes down to it you just don’t mess Uhura. She asked nicely, they refused, she phasered them, bam no folling around on this girl’s part.
The themes of the episode is horribly weakened by the fact that the women in fact barely save the day. The men, muddle-minded and weak still figure out the issue, figure out the shields need all the powers, and figure out that all this time they’ve had a magic device named a transporter. (It why in my space based RPGs transporter tech was clearly gates and they never ever ever took things apart and put them back together again.)
I will also tip my hat at Eugene for the red skirts, thought I must admit I have seen the jest before in a post by Cleolinda describing the people going along with Perseus in the recent remake of Clash Of The Titans. (If you are not reading Clelinda Movies in 15 Minutes Posts you should.
@2 Caitecait
Now I’ll have to pull out my bluray of Star Trek (2009) and look for the skirted guy.
@3 CaiteiCait, I missed the guy in the reboot, but wasn’t there a guy like that in the first episode of TNG? IIRC, he was in blue, but otherwise a skirt.
Going with Eugene again, Warp 3. Solid episode, with its (period) progressiveness offset by its (period) conservatism.
Side note: this episode gets mined a lot for video remixes. I’ve done it myself.
I remember very little of this episode from the 70s and that suggests that I only watched it once and avoided it in the reruns. In my opinion from reading this review I say that this episode can only work in a white bread, homogenized milk, real men keep our country safe and ‘blonds have more fun’ based society. The American ‘Ideal’ of the 50s and the 60s – which did carry over into the 70s as a backlash to the flower children. Even as a young teen, I couldn’t accept the notion that every man on the ship would be tempted by the call of a white haired (blond) woman. Had the writers thought to use a trick used much later to good effect in Red Dwarf – having each person see their own ideal object of desire – that part of the episode might have worked better.
I agree about the transporter technology being abused here. How about this approach to ending the episode. The men will recover but it will take time and rest away from that planet. (Would one week or so be enough? this is, after all, a series.) This leaves Uhura and the others in temporary command at the conclusion of the episode. That could have been interesting but the early 70s was still too early for that to have happened just as it was too early to suggest that a few of the men were not drawn to the call because they were gay.
I want to say that there were two or three appearances of skirted men during the run of TNG – always as background characters.
Also. Did anyone else think of the Cylon #6 model on seeing that second screen cap above?
Torie, I’m glad you mentioned the line about Kirk being “more handsome than ever,” because I meant to rant about it. I think my jaw literally dropped when she said that.
@2 CaitieCait @4 DemetriosX
I definitely remember the guy in the skort in TNG, but didn’t spot that in the movie. Time for a re-watch, unless there’s a screencap out there somewhere to save me the trouble…
@3 bobsandiego
You’re right, it bugged me that Spock still helped them come up with a solution, and we didn’t need him to order a female crew down to save them–I believe Uhura was about to do that anyway. Still, coming in with phasers blazing did ultimately save the day, don’t you think?
@5 ChurchHatesTucker
Bravo! And from some of those clips, it looks like there are some “interesting” developments in later episodes. Was that a Gorn hanging out with an Orion slave girl? Okayyy…
@6 Ludon
Good point about the female ideal presented in this. But I think to some extent they did tempt them with customized hallucinations: Spock hears Vulcan drums, remember, and for some reason McCoy is thinking about flowers.
Also. Did anyone else think of the Cylon #6 model on seeing that second screen cap above?
I am now…
LOL, now I’m hoping I wasn’t just having wishful seeing – but I could swear I saw at least one man so dressed.
I’ve only watched TNG spottily; the first season turned me right off when I saw it come out (Ferengi? The greed-driven dudes are named with an Arabic word? That can’t be going anywhere good, can it Frank Herbert?!), so I can likely say I’ve never seen the background redskirts you all allude to, but I wish I had. Even one guy on a vessel wearing it makes me a whole lot more easygoing about the women’s uniform being so often that style. Or at least seeing more women in Starfleet not in skirts, which apparently also happened a fair bit on TNG.
Also remember when this came out how utterly rare it was to see women a) armed in any way and b) actually using those weapons, on the rare occasions they were allowed them. Not just on Star Trek, but anywhere. So this episode had a great effect on me, because it said to me, “Hey, in the future? Maybe they won’t be such a giant wad of sexist jerks!”
For all its mediocrity, it stands out solely because it was almost the first of its kind anywhere, at least in its ability to inspire little girl geeks as well as TOS had regularly inspired little boy geeks.
No one has mentioned Theela’s psycho staring blue eyes. Why is that? At least she gets colored eyes, unlike the regular cast.
With Nichelle and Majel voicing all the female characters, I got the impression they were talking to themselves — though I doubt I noticed that when I was 10.
I’m with Eugene here. They were trying to tell a Trek story, even if the execution fell short. (How many TOS episodes did we say that about?) I don’t know how the show came to be regarded as non-canon: created by Gene, same opening voiceover, same cast, same writers. What’s not to like? These first few eps have at least felt Trekky to me.
I read the ‘more handsome than ever’ line as an acknowledgement of male vanity. Usually it’s depicted as a female concern (c.f., Miri.)
Ladies kicking ass; that should happen more often. I liked Voyager putting Kate Mulgrew as the front-and-center Captain and not a one-off or offsite woman in charge (although the show soon lost me for story reasons).
But come on- women weren’t put in miniskirts to insult them or make them lesser. And having a male actor in one isn’t equalizing, it’s just stupid. Grunge scene males wearing dresses was silly, and if you aren’t dressing for the Highlands, the desert, or ancient Greece/ Rome, wearing a miniskirt now is just inviting ridicule. Someone needs to explain the why of the offensiveness to me.
Military uniforms today include skirts for women, although not for actual “working” uniforms. Function can require pants, but skirts are infrequently so.
/shields up
I knew we were in trouble when the opening sequence was:
“Hey, right on cue when we’re expecting to learn what wiped out all of those other ships, we get an audio signal. Let’s broadcast it throughout the ship!”
No one has mentioned the other implication of the story line — that none of those other ships that disappeared had enough women on them to operate a ship. Not even a mere 27 years ago… Like TOS, the animated series is set in a distant future that is only a couple of decades removed from WW2, culturally.
Gotta agree, though, that Uhura kicked butt.
I don’t remember this one from the original run either, for what it’s worth.
@9 Orebaugh
Didn’t notice her blue eyes. Totally missed that, but I suppose it’s just reinforcing that stereotypical ideal of beauty.
It’s kind of funny how many few actors they have to do all these voices. It reminded me of Thundercats, where almost everyone did at least two characters in an episode. Unfortunately not everyone is as talented as actors like Billy West, who have such a range of distinctive voices you’d never guess he’s talking to himself all the time on Futurama. Though they’re still better than celebrities who for some reason are hired to use their normal voices.
@10 ChurchHatesTucker
I like your interpretation much more. Maybe she’s just buttering the captain up so he’ll put her in charge more often.
@12 DrDave
Good observation! I suppose those ships either had no women onboard, or they simply died or settled elsewhere?
In general:
The miniskirt/minidress thing is technically called a “skant“. It does show up a bit in TNG, most notably in the very early times when they were trying to claim it was a unisex uniform worn for, er, some reason or another. They backed off that one pretty quick.
@CaitieCait in #8
Re: Ferengi — yes, it is an Arabic word. However, it’s a medieval Arabic word for “foreign trader,” derived from the word “Frank” (the Germanic people, not the personal name), who had the reputation (as do foreign traders in many cultures, for obvious reasons) of being greedy and unscrupulous hard-bargainers. So overall, appropriate; and while it may be Herbert-level mining Arabic culture, it’s at least not insulting to Arabs . . . Early-TNG Ferengi remain extremely unfortunate — let’s face it, TNG Season 1 is pretty terrible — but you should give it another shot! The middle seasons are consistently really awesome.
@Ludon #6
re: the siren thing not working on gay men — that’s an interesting question. The episode presents it as a glandular secretion, which presumably affects male biochemistry rather than appealing to sexuality through the usual channels (and lord knows that, Georgia O’Keefe references aside, McCoy isn’t getting all hot and bothered over pictures of orchids). It’s possible gay male crewmembers would either hallucinate He-Man instead of She-Ra (y’all know that’s what these sirens look like) or else just feel compelled without any particular reason. Given how neutered the sexuality of the episode is, it’s not all that clear that the menfolk feel anything more specifically erotic. There’s certainly no death-by-snoo-snoo.
I’d say it’s more problematic that the glandular secretion of females in one particular species works over the radio, on menfolk of a whole slew of different species aboard ship; but it’s the (caution: TVTropes link) Planet of Hats, you gotta take that one in stride.
One last thought — it’s bad enough that Spock has to give away the answer to Chapel, but it would’ve at least been forgivable if it hadn’t been something so obvious. No, you gotta go back and use *all* the power! You can’t just turn the shields up to 6 and then shrug! C’mon guys.
I prefer “skort”; it’s a bit more precise and was more commonly used back in the day. The 60s Star Trek uniforms were shorts with fabric flaps in front and behind; I thougt they were skirts for the longest time.
This was definitely a mixed episode. The awesome moments were great (Nichelle Nichols and Majel Barrett must have really enjoyed being able to say more than a couple of words at a time) but the bad moments were truly terrible. I laughed a lot. “Obstruct them!”
I agree that it really sucked for Spock to come around and tell them what to do. But I really enjoyed Uhura not wasting any time and stunning the lot of the women even though there was a kind of catfight feel to the whole thing.
Theela’s crazy blue eyes really were creepy. If I’d seen this as a kid those would probably have given me nightmares.
I laughed the hardest when Scotty was singing and the Enterprise was sloooowly moving onto the screen. I liked Scott’s singing and all but it seemed so out of place with the rest of the episode.
The transporter trick was lame but it has been used before.
Great big plot hole: why didn’t Theela use the opto-aud to find the men right after they escaped? We know it would have located them, because that’s how they did find them eventually.
Gotta love those mini dresses they are just so cute even wore one to star trek convention with those boots. Too bad the men are too big and hairy or maybe a guy thing I don’t get to wear them so I guess they miss the fun. Still it was a pleasure to wear a sexy mini skirt being escorted by two butch women dressed in male uniforms armed with phasers to a comicon. Being treated like a lady giving the horny geeks a thrill showing silky smooth legs and being called doll face. If they make remake the women should command and everyone wear those mini dresses though the women can always wear pants if they feel naked.
I give this one a high rating just because Uhura and Chapel do kick ass when they take control. I also like the nod to the special connection between Chapel and Spock that’s first shown in Amok Time.
The funniest part is when the aging men are worried about drowning in the urn. Even if they’re too old or tired to tread water, they can just float! Every human being can float. And that would have to be a mighty hard rain to fill up an urn that size in a few minutes.
The guys in skorts appear in at least 2 and maybe as many as 4 TNG episodes, all in the first season. I believe the 2 appearances in the pilot are the same person, but the person pictured in the other episode is a different person altogether.