“The Slaver Weapon”
Written by Larry Niven
Directed by Hal Sutherland
Season 1, Episode 14
Production episode: 22011
Original air date: December 15, 1973
Star date: 4187.3
Mission summary
Spock, Uhura, and Sulu, commanding the shuttlecraft Copernicus, are delivering precious cargo to Federation Starbase 25: a Slaver stasis box recovered from the planet Kzin. The long lost Slaver Empire scattered these time capsules across the galaxy, which either contain perfectly preserved artifacts from the billion-year-old civilization or booby traps; apparently the Empire fell due to its unhealthy addiction to the game show Let’s Make a Deal.
One stasis box provided a flying belt which led to the development of artificial gravity fields on starships, thus they’re potentially very valuable, dangerous, and incredibly rare–the only way to detect a stasis box is with another stasis box or dumb luck. As it happens, Spock’s box unexpectedly points the way to another one on planet Beta Lyrae. Spock is skeptical that a stasis box could go undiscovered there for so long, but they can’t pass it by without investigating.
They beam down to the icy Beta Lyrae to search for the stasis box and are promptly ambushed by Kzinti pirates. These space cats, long-time enemies of the Federation, have violated a treaty by kidnapping Spock, Uhura, and Sulu. The situation will become much worse if the Kzinti discover a powerful weapon inside the stasis box they have confiscated. But fortunately the Vulcan scientist is well-versed in Kzinti culture.
SPOCK: The lean, bedraggled one is a reader of minds.
UHURA: I’ve heard all Kzinti telepaths are unhappy neurotics. He fits the description.
SPOCK: There is no sure way to guard our thoughts from him. Mr. Sulu, he is not likely to deal with me or Lt. Uhura. She and I are inferior beings to them. But the Kzinti are meat eaters. If you sense him reading your mind, think of eating a raw vegetable.
SULU: Yes, sir. Maybe I can goad them into revealing their purpose.
SPOCK: Lt. Uhura. This may be crucial. In the presence of the Kzinti, do not say anything, do not do anything startling. Try to look harmless.
UHURA: Any special reason?
SPOCK: Are you forgetting Kzinti females are dumb animals? In an emergency the Kzinti may forget a human female is an intelligent creature.
UHURA: Thanks. Thanks a lot.
Sure enough, the Kzinti Chuft Captain of the Traitor’s Claw addresses only Sulu, divulging that he needs a powerful Slaver weapon to set himself up for life. The feline aliens open up the Slaver Cracker Jack box and discover three prizes inside: what may be the only Slaver portrait ever discovered, a hunk of SPAM that turns out to be poisonous protoplasm, and a green ray gun.
Since the gun didn’t come with an instruction manual, the Kzinti bring their prisoners to the surface of Beta Lyrae for target practice. The odd weapon has several settings, each of which transforms it into a different configuration: a harmless-seeming sonic gun, a telescope, a laser beam, and a personal rocket. The latter manages to knock Uhura free of the police web immobilizing her and her crewmates, allowing her to run away. She is quickly apprehended, as it’s surprisingly hard to run in snow with high heels on.
So far, none of the device’s settings have revealed the devastating Slaver weapon that Chuft hopes for–the technology is barely on par with the Federation’s. But the next setting turns the Slaver Army Knife into an “energy absorber,” which deactivates the police web and enables the prisoners to make another escape attempt. Spock zigs and Sulu zags, but Uhura travels in a straight line and is shot down easily again. The science officer manages to knock Chuft down in the scuffle and nabs the ray gun, so that’s something.
SULU: They’ve got Uhura, and subspace radio. They can call for help from the Kzin planet if they think the weapon’s worth it.
SPOCK: No, they cannot. Or rather, will not.
SULU: Why?
SPOCK: Because I kicked Chuft Captain. Consider. Chuft Captain has been attacked by an herbivorous pacifist, an eater of leaves and roots. One who traditionally does not fight. And the ultimate insult, I left him alive. Chuft Captain’s honor is at stake. He must seek personal revenge before he can call for help.
Indeed, Chuft calls Sulu to offer an exchange: the weapon for Uhura and challenge Spock to single combat. The Vulcan calculates the odds of defeating the injured Kzinti at less than favorable, so they decline. Then he and Sulu set to work unlocking the secrets of the Slaver device. Sulu, a weapons expert, deduces that it belonged to the Slaver equivalent of James Bond. So they reason that a spy’s toolkit also must have a self-destruct setting, which might be accessed through its “null setting.”
This setting reverts the device to a form that resembles a green globe with a handle. They discover that twisting it reveals another mode: a matter-energy converter more powerful than anything in the Federation. Jackpot! They set off an atomic explosion from a distance; a few moments later the blast wave reaches Spock and Sulu and knocks them out.
They revive back in Kzinti custody. Now that the catmen have witnessed the destructive power of the Slaver thingey, they’re even more eager to learn how it works. It has resumed its globe shape, and Chuft triggers yet another mode: an interactive voice interface.
CHUFT: How long has it been since you were turned off?
WEAPON: I do not know. When I am off, I have no sense of passing time.
CHUFT: What is the last thing you remember?
WEAPON: We were on a mission. I may not tell you of it unless you know certain code words.
KZINTI: If you could describe the positions of the stars in your sector, we would know how much time has passed since then.
WEAPON: Without certain code words, I may not describe our location.
CHUFT: One of the settings on this weapon was a total conversion beam. We saw it. Tell us how to find it.
WEAPON: Twist me widdershins until you reach the null position.
Sulu and Uhura are certain they’re all hosed, but Spock is oddly unconcerned because the Slaver weapon transformed into a new shape that didn’t look at all like it’s previous matter-conversion mode. He figures the Slaver weapon, assuming itself captured by the enemy in the midst of a war, would take a defensive measure… Such as tricking the Kzinti into triggering its self-destruct mode. Spock also knows that curiosity always kills the cat.
When Chuft activates the weapon, it explodes and blows open part of the Traitor’s Claw. Spock, Sulu, and Uhura are able to escape, protected by their life-support belts. Sulu laments that the destroyed Slaver weapon belongs in a museum, but Spock ruminates that it was too destructive, too tempting a weapon to be allowed to exist:
SPOCK: Strange, how the past sometimes breaks through into the present. That ancient war could have sparked a new war between man and Kzinti.
UHURA: Didn’t you say the Kzinti have legends of weapons haunted by their dead owners
SPOCK: Yes, an ancient superstition.
UHURA: At this rate, they’ll never get over those old superstitions.
Analysis
Perhaps owing to its origin as a non-Trek Kzinti story by SF master Larry Niven, “The Soft Weapon,” this animated episode isn’t a perfect fit for the Star Trek universe but stands as interesting SF story in its own right–while still managing to be more faithful to the characters and franchise than many original scripts. It’s an odd, brilliant blend of what makes for good SF and what makes for good Trek, which aren’t always the same qualities.
It’s a delight to see Spock and second-string characters like Uhura and Sulu on a mission together. They work surprisingly well as a team, and the first officer’s command skills have come a long way since his ill-fated trip on the Galileo in season one of the original series. I especially liked the acknowledgment of Sulu’s weapons expertise and Uhura’s intelligence, and Spock himself shines because he understands Kzinti psychology so well.
The core of the episode is, of course, the Slaver weapon, which is an intriguing puzzle that kept me engaged throughout. I love the idea of these unpredictable time capsules; the history of the lost Slaver civilization, as well as the Kzinti wars, adds more flavor to the overall Star Trek history–whether or not these elements are considered canonical. Though I am utterly unfamiliar with Niven’s Kzinti stories, which I plan to remedy, I wish they had reappeared in Star Trek so we could learn more about them. I finally understand why they’re considered such a highlight of the animated series: Even though they’re mildly ridiculous space cats, glorified pirates really, they’re an interesting race that settles easily with the Star Trek rogues’ gallery. I was especially intrigued by their superstitious belief in weapons that are haunted by their dead owners.
Speaking of weapons, I was struck by something that might have been unintentional or could be significant: Sulu being the one to discover the weapon mode that amounts to an A-bomb. His panicked outcry “We can’t give them that!” and Spock’s later opinion that some weapons are simply too powerful for anyone to own may be commentary on the atomic bomb and the hydrogen bomb; the threat of mutual assured destruction in nuclear war preoccupied many minds in the early 70s, when this episode first aired. Considering that the Slavers perished in wars, and the Federation and Kzinti came close to repeating that mistake, this episode offers a sobering look at the consequences of destructive technology and imperial ambitions–mature fare indeed for an animated show, and the most successful and Star Trekish aspect of this episode.
Eugene’s Rating: Warp 6 (on a scale of 1-6)
Torie Atkinson: This is such a weird mix of genres. Part Indiana Jones (“It belongs in a museum!”) with some Battlefield Earth backstory to boot, “The Slaver Weapon” is hard to place. It’s a reasonably good science fiction story but not much of a Star Trek one. Take away the character names and the Federation and nothing changes. It stands alone without the ST trappings and as a result seems out of place.
I wasn’t a fan of the Kzinti. A lot of their characterization evoked (or more likely, were recycled for) for TNG-era Klingons (they are obsessed with honor! and war! and manliness!), and I didn’t like it then, either. Their motivations were entirely obscure, and they came across as a race of shallow neanderthals, not formidable enemies. Sulu mentions that the Federation has bested them in war four times, which undermines any potential threat they pose. Why should we be afraid now? And if you’re going to go with cat people, why not a race that actually acts like cats? Vernor Vinge nailed that with the dog-like Tines that think and operate in packs. I just don’t see anything about them that’s particularly cat-like but the fur, and if that’s the case, what’s the point? There has to be some reason they evolved to look like that. It felt arbitrary and poorly thought-out.
There are so many cool things here–the puzzle boxes, the idea that weapons could be possessed by their former owners, the potentially hilarious interactions with a spy’s personal computer, the possibility of toying with a telepath by thinking salad thoughts–and yet in the twenty minutes, none of them were fleshed out and most were merely hinted at and dropped entirely for the rest of the episode.
I liked getting a story that wasn’t about Kirk, for once, but Uhura is basically a throw-away (her escape attempts are embarrassing) and Sulu and Spock never wind up doing anything intelligent or resourceful. They discover the atomic bomb setting, which only gives the Kzinti something they want; and they only escape because the Kzinti are stupid to figure out that a reasoning computer weapon formerly owned by an alien spy that specifically instructs them it will not give them anything useful isn’t going to just spill its secret. Honestly the three of them could have been nameless ensigns and it would have worked–or not–just as well.
Torie’s Rating: Warp 3
Best Line: SPOCK: We are not tourists here, Lieutenant.
Trivia: D.C. Fontana approached Larry Niven to write an episode of the animated series, and Gene Roddenberry suggested he adapt his 1967 short story, “The Soft Weapon” (republished in the collection Neutron Star). The original story takes place in his Known Space universe, and he chose to include the Kzinti to see what others might do with the race in the Star Trek universe. In the adaptation, the original characters were replaced with Spock, Sulu, and Uhura, and the weapon was created by a race called the Tnuctipun that rebelled against the Thrintuns (Slavers). Niven was given permission to leave Kirk and other Star Trek characters out of the episode, and this is the only animated episode that doesn’t take place on Enterprise.
Once again, Hal Sutherland’s color blindness led to inappropriate pink coloring: in this case, the Traitor’s Claw, which D.C. Fontana didn’t notice until the episode aired. The trademark Kzinti stripes were left out because they were too difficult to animate.
James Doohan voiced all of the Kzinti.
This is the only animated episode to show characters killed on screen. But they had it coming.
Other notes: The Kzinti return to the Star Trek universe in the comic strip “The Wristwatch Plantation.”
Previous episode: Season 1, Episode 13 – “The Ambergris Element.”
Next episode: Season 1, Episode 15 – “The Eye of the Beholder.” US residents can watch it for free at the CBS website.
I should probably add that a) I’ve never read any Larry Niven; and b) my favorite line was Sulu’s “We can’t give them THAT!”
Housekeeping note: we’ll be taking a brief respite and picking up next Thursday. Eugene gets married this weekend!
Oh I luv me some Kzin. I have read “The Soft Weapon” and this is a fairly good adaptation. I love the idea that the man/Kzin wars took place in the Star trek Universe, though I can understand why they threw it out of canon. I really liked watching second string characters working the story while Kirk got a chance to sit it out on the bridge as a captain is supposed to do. (Anyway Kirk could never pinch-hit for a Puppeteer but Spock, yeah he can do that.)
About 30 years ago at a LosCon I had a chance to ask Larry Niven about the Kzinti in the Trek Universe and as far he is concerned they have the right to use the alien whenever they want. oooooooo it would be so cool to see a big screen Kzin.
Slightly off topic: I have an announcement at my blog, if anyone is interested.
Eugene: Best wishes and here’s hoping for many, many happy years ahead. I’m 3.5 years into my first marriage and loving it.
Congratulations, Eugene!
I find it interesting that neither of you is familiar with Niven’s Known Space stories. Admittedly, he declined tremendously as a writer around 1980, so I can see where you might not have been terribly tempted to read his catalog, but the early works are worth it. Most of Torie’s complaints regarding Kzinti motivations are better dealt with in the original story, but even in Niven, they are largely motivated by honor and war. It’s not necessarily uncatlike, but they are supposed to be more like lions or tigers than house cats.
For those who know their Niven, the other main story he pitched was the core of what would eventually become “The Borderland of Sol”, but with Outsiders disabling the ships. I guess we would have had Kirk as Bey Schaeffer any Spock as Carlos Wu (instead of a Pierson’s Puppeteer). I’m not sure it would have worked.
I was blown away by this episode when I first saw it (last week) for a number of reasons. How cool is it to have Larry Niven’s Kzinti aliens appearing in a Star Trek episode! Holy crossover, Batman! This alone delighted me. Then to have supporting characters Spock, Uhura and Sulu starring in the episode sans Kirk also surprised me. (Only a writer of Larry Niven’s stature could get away with excising Capt Kirk from ST!) I enjoyed the brief character moments: Uhura expressing how much she hates ice-planets; Spock expressing his high regard for Uhura’s intelligence and acknowledging Sulu’s weapons expertise. Good stuff!
I found the Kzinti scary and formidable: tiger-like telepaths stalking their prey! And who have no respect for *vegetarians*! How original and cool is that?
The stasis boxes were also a fascinating concept and kept me riveted as to what contraption they were going to pull out next.
I will say that all of this did seem a bit inconsistent with ST canon. Starship gravity fields came from these stasis boxes? Four previous wars with the Kzinti? Really?
But this episode came as a real pleasant surprise for me. (And I’m a huge Larry Niven fan.) A warp 5 or 6 from me.
Congrats, Eugene!
Overall, this was (as others have said) a decent sci-fi story, but not much of a Trek story.
That said, I still took issue with the Kzinti (and I’d read up on them from wiki-sources beforehand) — they just don’t seem like a very interesting species, doubly so when you get into the whole “breeding their women into sub-personhood intelligence” thing which, ugh, but they seem like a bunch of boneheads. They can lay a decent trap, but that’s about the only intelligent thing they do for the whole episode; after that, they’re so blinded by their own cultural prejudices and general haplessness that they can’t get anything even remotely useful out of our heroes. Between their ham-fisted interrogation attempts and their inability to operate the space weapon under any kind of controlled conditions, you have to wonder how they can even operate their own starship effectively.
I’m also a little miffed that Niven couldn’t let Uhura’s role be somewhat useful in some way. Two ineffectual failed escape attempts and a lot of standing in the corner being quiet do not do much to undercut the Kzinti opinion of female intelligence, and for all Spock says he values Uhura for her brains, that felt kind of forced given that she never has a chance to show them.
Then again, I might just be being grumpy today. So, hm.
Oh eugene and Torie is you decide to follow-up on the Kzin, read the older stuff first, the Man’Kzin wars stuff didn;t work as well in my opinion as the original stories or Ringworld
The shame of the Animated Series IMO is that they didn’t adapt more SF chestnuts into plots. You had the format to present really outré aliens and fantastical elements, anything goes. Imagine ‘Rendezvous With Rama’ adapted into Star Trek… or any of Asimov’s puzzle mysteries.
As far as Niven’s universe goes, that one ST:NG episode where they encountered the Dyson’s Sphere and didn’t even bother to explore it has got to rank among the biggest and dumbest lost opportunities in the entire franchise. That alien construct probably had more surface area to explore than the entire Federation of Planets.
As a note about ham-fisted Kzinti interrogation techniques, in the original story their technique was a whole lot more grisly. IIRC, they grilled the woman with the threat of ruining her leg. When she answered truthfully, her interrogators acknowledged she might be telling the truth but, in any case, they saw no compelling reason not to still destroy her leg. Which they did.
Reminded me a bit of merc SOP, where the coercive bullet to the knee comes before a single interrogative has been posed: Sets the stage and wastes no time.
bobsandiego suggested that it would be cool to see a big screen Kzin.
With Vulcan destroyed and Star Fleet having to rebuild a big part of its fleet, the nature of Star Fleet is changing. These changes ripple into the feel of the Federation as well and these ripples carry on through generations. When coming of age, young Jean-Luc Picard decides to accept a position with the Atlantis project so that he can stay close to home and help with the family business. These changes prevent Data’s head from being in that cavern in San Francisco. With no help from Picard or anyone from the Enterprise D, Guinan is left to discover the Devidian plot then take actions to stop them. Unfortunately, ripples from her actions catch the attention of the Kzin (many years later) and this sets the stage for the first Man-Kzin War.
There! It can be done. All we have to do is sell the idea to J.J. Abrams.
Ditto bobandsandiego about the Man-Kzin War series not being the best source for an appreciation of all things Kzinti
@10 Ludon Actually the second spec script I ever wrote was for TNG and I had Kzin in it. (I had already had the afore mentioned conversation with Mr. Niven at a convention.) Totally unrealistic of me, with those budgets and Fx no way in hell could a Kzinti be done, but I could dream. My agent bounced it higher than a geo-sat, but it was fun to write and dream up.
Hurrah for Eugene!
I didn’t see this episode in the original run; I knew of it only from the A.D.Foster adaptation. A few years later, I read Niven’s Ringworld. The puppeteer Nessus makes reference to kicking a Kzin called Chuft-Captain while on a world circling Beta Lyrae. I kind of went, “WTF?” (not that I ever used such language as an adolescent) but at last put it all together.
The adaptation has a line in it that goes something like, “Apparently Chuft-Captain’s idea of rational debate consisted of restating one’s position at progressively louder volumes.” Brilliant!
Wow, I never thought about it before, but it must have been very intimidating to have to do an adaptation of this episode. No matter what you do, it’s going to be compared to the original story, which was very popular. For that matter, how do you avoid ripping off the original, even unconsciously?
@14 DemetriosX
umm run it by Larry first? That’s what I woudl try to do, but man you are so right, that would be a very stressful adaptation to do.
@6 Deep Thought: I think the boneheadedness of the Kzinti made a little more sense in Niven’s stories. They’d only really been a military threat early on, when humans were technologically backward compared to the Star Trek world, and they still lost all their wars pretty quickly. By the time of this story, they had no real hope of conquering anything, but there were still some reckless guys like Chuft who would’ve caused a lot of damage if they’d acquired the weapon.
@9 Lemnoc: Almost, but it was actually even grosser than that: they froze the woman’s arm off, both as a threat, and also because they wanted to eat it.
@3 bobsandiego, @4 DemetriosX, @5 Mercurio, @13 Orebaugh
Thank you! We had a wonderful wedding, though I was disappointed that the DJ didn’t play the theme music to Star Trek: First Contact, as I requested :)
Congrats and felicitations, Eugene and your partner!
This was always one of my favourites, I’m closer to Eugene’s 6 than Torie’s 3 here. In part, because Niven’s pre-80s stories were really fun reads, and felt to me like what human exploration/settlement might really look like, were there some sort of slow-ride or FTL expansion. Like Mount Lookitthat, or WeMadeIt, it felt like real humans.
It’s a good adaptation, and I really wish they could have brought the Kzin into the ST universe, though I suppose they didn’t see enough to distinguish their culture from the Klingons’.
Though the pink spacesuits for the Kzin seemed…odd.
I’d have also liked to see the “police web” become a regular part of the series’ tech. It would have allowed a lot fewer one-punch-KO setups, and a lot fewer “I got one-punched but am right as rain in a few minutes”, to be able to restrain a being while still able to talk to them.
“bobsandiego suggested that it would be cool to see a big screen Kzin.”
I get the feeling we might have ( kinda ): When you get around to viewing ‘Star Trek IV – The Voyage Home’ look in the gallery of Starfleet personnel watching the trial of Kirk. There is a brown furred, bipedal, cat-like being in a fleet uniform watching the trial. He’s most visible in chapter 16, at about 1:48:00 talking to an Andorian
( immediately after the scene changes from the whales swimming towards the Golden Gate bridge ). Although it seems unlikely a Kzin would have been allowed to enlist in Starfleet, stranger things have happened ( perhaps it’s a male Caitian… a member of Lt. Mress’ species ). Still, intentional or not, I have always liked to think it was a nod to the animated series.
Y’all definitely do need to read more Niven. I can’t speak for the Kzin story collections by others.
His Kzinti began with better tech than humanity, but tended to attack before they were ready. Luckiliy.
And Spock as the leaf-eating, nonviolent-but-deadly Nessus- well done!
This episode is important to me personally, as it was the reason the Kzinti were included in Star Fleet Battles, a wargame from the late Seventies/early Eighties that managed to keep a kind of offshoot Trek continuity alive.
Meeeeeemorieeeess…
@S. Hutson Blount #21
— quoting from Cats? I see what you did there.
Interestingly, as someone who became a huge Niven and Known Space fan as a direct result of this episode, it always worked for me.
I was nine years old when the episode aired, and I remember it vividly. The whole thing was just really cool:
A cooler shuttle than the more boxey TOS version; stasis boxes; a fantastic nebula; cool alien landscapes; a talking, shape-shifting computer gun; cat people; life-support belts; police webs …
It was just frakking cool.
I started reading Niven the Sunday after the show aired. I began with the Neutron Star collection because it contained, “The Soft Weapon.” I read it first.
Then I realized that I’d entered into a much more massive universe, enticing to me in some ways more than Star Trek. I’ve been a Niven fan ever since. I do really hope that now that we can technologically produce Ringworld that someone will make it.
And no, not as a movie trilogy, but rather a twelve-hour miniseries airing Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for two weeks straight …
Now, nearing 50, I can see that, “The Slaver Weapon” was a really clever adaptation.
You needed a substitute for Nessus: a coward (I’m quite certain Em-3-Green’s race in “The Jihad” was based on the Puppeteers), a pascifist, an herbivore. In Niven’s universe, is at least bipolar by our standards. By his own race’s standards, he’s hopelessly mad. Herd animals (imagine intelligent life descended from cows), only the insane ever leave their system.
(It also turns out that only the insane can lead them, and that for millennia the Pierson’s Puppeteer’s have manipulated other races to their own supposed benefit.
(But that’s a whole other story …)
Spock works for this. He’s not a pacifist exactly, but he’s close enough. And where Nessus’ turning to kick Chuft-Captain seems more an act of madness or reflex, it becomes a straightforward act of logic on Spock’s part.
Then you needed a substitute for Jason. It can’t be Kirk, because it needs to be someone who isn’t in command of the mission. Sulu works, and take note, because this is the only time in TOS that Sulu is ever seen this actively in command of anything. No, he’s not the commander of the mission; but because the Kzinti won’t deal with Spock, he’s put in the position of having to act like the Commander from time to time.
Never, anywhere else in TOS would Sulu goad someone. Here he does it easily: “Stealing must be a habit with you: this ship, two stasis boxes … ”
Similarly, Uhura makes a decent substitute for Jason’s wife. And again, we see Uhura being considerably more actively involved than in any other episode. Most of the time, she’s opening hailing frequencies. Here, she quips, “Wrong — they don’t think much of you.”
The closest we ever saw Uhura come to this was in ST3, and that for only a couple of minutes.
It’s fun to see, and as I say, pretty cleverly replaces characters from the story. It’s really a pity that they never used the supporting characters like this before or since.
Sadly William is it unlikely we will ever get that Ringworld adaptation. Niven signed a very bad contract at the behest of a very bad agent and lost the rights to the film. The person who owns them has never been able to geta film of the novel made and will not sell the rights back.
I agree that they did a top flight job adapting the story and once at a LosCon I asked Niven about it and he told me as far as he’s concern Trek has the rights to use the Kzin in their universe….ahh the possibilities.