“The Tholian Web”
Written by Judy Burns and Chet Richards
Directed by Herb Wallerstein and Ralph Senensky (uncredited)
Season 3, Episode 9
Production episode: 3×09
Original air date: November 15, 1968
Star date:5693.2
Mission summary
On the Enterprise bridge, Chekov and Sulu look like they regret whatever they had for lunch, but it turns out that space itself is disagreeing with them–Spock reports that it’s “literally breaking up.” Kirk is used to bad breakups, but this is causing all sorts of wonky sensor readings and the warp engines are inexplicably losing power. Then Chekov notices a ghostly ship ahead on the main viewscreen: the U.S.S. Defiant, a Constitution-class Federation ship which has been missing for three weeks. In this case they can only trust what they see with their own eyes, because sensors indicate their sister ship isn’t actually there. There’s no response to hails, so there’s only one thing to do–beam aboard to check things out.
They wear protection of course: sparkly, bulky spacesuits with independent life support systems and fancy name plates on the helmets. Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and Chekov transport directly to Defiant‘s bridge and discover two bodies: a crewman with his hands wrapped around his captain’s broken neck. McCoy scans them to make sure, but yeah, they’re very dead. This is either the first mutiny in Starfleet history, or a lovers’ tryst gone too far. Chekov locates additional grotesque corpses in Engineering and, ironically, Life Support, while McCoy investigates Defiant‘s sickbay-turned-morgue, and Spock confirms that the entire crew is dead. The doctor finds some of the patients strapped into the medical beds and surmises that Defiant‘s crewmembers killed each other. Chekov gets dizzy and his vision goes all fisheyed, but he shakes it off. It’s probably not important.
McCoy discovers something much more significant: a transparent body lying in the corridor. When his hand passes through both the man and a table, he realizes he has to get his parents to kiss at the Enchantment Under the Sea dance or he’ll never be born! Or the ship is dissolving around them. They decide it’s time to get out of there, but Scotty forgot to mention that the transporters are malfunctioning because of the localized Weirdness and he can only beam three of them back to the ship at a time. Kirk counts off quickly and realizes there are four of them. Using the logic of “eenie, meenie, miney, moe” he decides to stay behind and sends the others back to Enterprise. Spock offers to stay behind to “complete the data,” and because the captain is, you know, kind of important, but Kirk Spock-blocks him and insists on going in the next trip. Apparently he’s under the mistaken impression that a captain has to go down with any ship.
Scotty takes over the transporter controls from his useless intern and has a difficult time transporting Spock, McCoy, and Chekov. He has even more trouble locking onto Captain Kirk, no matter how many buttons he pushes or how forcefully. As Chekov watches Defiant fade away on the viewer, they lose the captain’s signal completely.
Hoping to avoid filling out all the paperwork involved when your captain dies, Spock refuses to believe Kirk is gone. The Vulcan calculates the next “period of spatial interphase,” when they might be able to grab Kirk from his previous coordinates. It’s crucial that they stay in one place and limit the use of power to avoid disrupting the fragile fabric of space. Chekov starts getting surly:
CHEKOV: I don’t understand what’s so special about this region of space.
SPOCK: Well, picture it this way, Mr. Chekov. We exist in a universe which co-exists with a multitude of others in the same physical space. At certain brief periods of time, an area of their space overlaps an area of ours. That is a time of interphase, during which we can connect with the Defiant‘s universe.
That sounds plausible, but Chekov must not like Spock’s condescending tone because he attacks him, howling like a monkey. Spock relaxes him with a Vulcan neck pinch and carts him off to Sickbay. McCoy suggests they move the ship away from the Defiant, but Spock insists they have to wait to retrieve the captain. Then an alien ship arrives and they’re hailed by Commander Loskene of the Tholian Assembly. He tells them to move along, they’re in a no-standing zone, but Spock convinces him that they’re trying to rescue an “interspatially trapped” ship and the Tholian agrees to wait to see if he’s telling the truth.
Meanwhile, other crewmembers are going fisheyed as Dr. McCoy races to find a cure for what’s ailing them. When the next interphase occurs, Scott tries to beam Captain Kirk back, but he isn’t where he was supposed to be. Spock thinks that the Tholian ship must have disrupted space and shifted Kirk’s coordinates, so he stubbornly decides to calculate the next interphase and wait some more. McCoy protests–the local Weirdness is responsible for the space madness afflicting the crew so the best thing would be to leave.
The Tholians agree and fire on Enterprise. Spock reluctantly fires back and disables their ship. Now they couldn’t leave even if they wanted to–Enterprise‘s power supply converters are busted. McCoy, naturally, is peeved.
MCCOY: Are you satisfied? Spock, why did you do it?
SPOCK: The decision to fight was logical. Lack of time prevented any other course of action. The Tholian ship had to be disabled.
MCCOY: You should’ve known what could’ve happened and done everything in your power to safeguard your crew. That is the mark of a starship captain, like Jim.
SPOCK: Doctor, I hardly believe this is the time for comparisons. Please go to your laboratory and search for an antidote to the effects of this space. That is your primary task, since we must remain here.
Then Tholian reinforcements arrive: a second ship seems to uh, mate with the first and together they begin projecting an energy filament around Enterprise. It’s all rather indecent. Spock and the computer have never seen anything like this energy field, but it’s clear that if they can’t restore power and leave before the Tholian web is completed, they’re done for.
Scott calls a press conference to pronounce Captain Kirk dead. One of the crew takes it really hard and he goes ballistic at the news. They calm him down forcefully and cart him off to Sickbay. Spock cops out of Kirk’s eulogy:
I shall not attempt to voice the quality of respect and admiration which Captain Kirk commanded. Each of you must evaluate the loss in the privacy of your own thoughts.
Scotty calls for a moment of silence–about ten seconds should do it, they’re in the middle of a situation, and Kirk didn’t even know most of their names, after all. Spock is raring to get back to the bridge and encourages McCoy to return to the lab to do his job, but the doctor reminds him that Kirk’s final orders were to listen to a pre-recorded message to be played in the event of his untimely demise. Spock resists, but finally agrees. In the captain’s quarters, the doctor reveals that he lured Spock there under false pretenses–not the first time someone was tricked into Kirk’s bedroom.
MCCOY: I really came here to find out why you stayed and fought.
SPOCK: The captain would have remained to recover a crew member at the risk of his own life or even his own ship.
MCCOY: Yes, he would, Mr. Spock, but you didn’t have that decision to make. What would you gain by fighting the Tholians? You could have assured yourself of a captaincy by leaving the area. But you chose to stay. Why?
SPOCK: I need not explain my rationale to you or any other member of this crew. There is a margin of variation in any experiment. While there was a chance, I was bound legally and morally to ascertain the captain’s status.
MCCOY: You mean to be sure if he was dead. Well, you made certain of that.
SPOCK: That is enough, Doctor. We both have other things to do.
Oh yeah, the message! McCoy takes a couple cheap shots at Spock while the Vulcan retrieves the tape from Kirk’s safe and plays it. From beyond the grave, Kirk advises them to stop bickering and do their jobs. Visibly embarrassed, McCoy apologizes for his behavior. Spock is saved by the whistle when Scotty calls him on the intercom to tell him he knows when the Tholian web will be completed–but of course, this information is best heard on the bridge.
Uhura’s getting ready for a relaxing evening in her own quarters when suddenly she feels a pang and sees Captain Kirk’s ghostly figure in her mirror. She rushes into the corridor to share the news that Kirk’s alive–sort of, somewhere, maybe–but McCoy finds her, assumes she’s lost her mind, and coaxes her to Sickbay to strap her into a bed. At least she’s already dressed for it. Scotty’s also having a pretty bad day. He’s in Engineering, minding his own business and trying to fix the ship, when a fisheyed engineer attacks him. The space madness is spreading, but the doctor is working on an antidote.
Time is running out. Scotty sees another of his crewmen go woozy and assumes they’re experiencing another moment of interphase. Spock says no, so perhaps the crewman just got into Scotty’s liquor cabinet… Then Scotty sees Kirk’s apparition floating before him then disappear. Spock summons the engineer to the bridge to smell his breath, where McCoy is once again slacking off.
MCCOY: Sounds like a horror story. Suppose there’s any truth in it?
SPOCK: In critical moments, men sometimes see exactly what they wish to see.
MCCOY: Do you suppose they’re seeing Jim because they’ve lost confidence in you?
SPOCK: I was merely stating a fact, Doctor.
MCCOY: It’s getting critical. There have been a number of assaults down on the lower decks. Even Scotty’s being affected. If Scotty goes under, that’s the finish of whatever chance we have of getting the Enterprise out of here.
SPOCK: Please leave that to me, Dr. McCoy. I realise that the crew are your prime concern. You can best serve them in your laboratory. I urge you to confine yourself to it until a remedy has been found.
MCCOY: Spock! It must be this space. It’s getting to me too. I know it’s nothing you’ve done, Spock. I, I’m sorry.
Convenient excuse, that. Spock should probably ignore those drunken text messages too.
Scotty arrives and points out their Ghost Captain, who is standing, er, hovering right behind them, trying to get Spock’s attention. He soon disappears, but now they know he’s alive…ish, and that Uhura isn’t crazy. McCoy returns to Sickbay to release her, and Nurse Chapel tells him the cure is ready. Things are finally coming together: Scotty has patched up the ship, mostly, and Spock has calculated the next interphase along with Kirk’s new coordinates. McCoy brings them all shots to celebrate–a cocktail derived from theragen, a Klingon nerve toxin, which should block the space madness.
MCCOY: One good slug of this, and you can hit a man with phaser stun, and he’d never feel it or even know it.
SCOTT: Does it make a good mix with Scotch?
MCCOY: It should.
SCOTT: I’ll let you know.
As the Tholian web closes in on Enterprise, interphase occurs and Kirk manifests on the viewscreen. Intern O’Neil gets a transporter lock on him just as their power usage shifts them through interphase and throws them out of the Tholian tractor field. O’Neil pushes a bunch of buttons and manages to get Kirk to materialize safely on the transporter pad, where McCoy pumps him full of a tri-ox compound to compensate for oxygen deprivation. The captain seems none the worse for wear. He returns to duty and tells his first officer and the doctor about the universe he had all to himself. He asks how they got on without him, and they pretend they didn’t have any problems at all.
KIRK: Well, I hope my last orders were helpful in solving any problems that you don’t feel worth reporting.
SPOCK: Orders, Captain?
MCCOY: What orders are you referring to, Jim?
KIRK: My last orders. The last orders that I left for both of you. The last taped orders.
MCCOY: Oh, those orders. Well, there wasn’t time. We never had a chance to listen to them.
SPOCK: No. You see, the crisis was upon us, and then passed so quickly, Captain, that we–
KIRK: Good. Good. Well, I hope we won’t have similar opportunities to test those orders… which you never heard.
Analysis
I was looking forward to this episode as one of the bright points of season three, and it didn’t disappoint. It starts off with a mysterious catastrophe on another Constitution-class ship, but unlike “The Omega Glory” it maintains the promise of the teaser when Defiant and Captain Kirk disappear, madness strikes the crew, and the Tholians turn up to further complicate matters. This is one of those stories where everything goes wrong, perhaps too much, but it all comes right in the end–and mostly because the crew is so damned good. Better than Defiant‘s, anyway. The escape from the Tholian web seems a bit too easy, but at least it’s consistent with the rules of interphase that were previously established. Sort of. Okay, it doesn’t really make any sense I suppose, but it didn’t ruin the rest of the episode for me.
The whole space madness schtick is getting a little old, and I would be happy if I never saw another fisheye camera shot for the rest of my life, let alone the rest of this series. But whenever McCoy isn’t goofing off or haranguing Spock, he’s actually earning his paycheck to come up with a solution, even if it’s just an excuse to prescribe alcohol. (Shouldn’t someone have stopped Scotty from running off with the whole bottle?) Spock’s also no slouch as either science officer or captain. He figures out the whole interphase thing, and he’s come a long way from his command of the stranded Galileo crew in season one; if you recall, he didn’t want to spare a moment to bury the dead crew then, but this time he holds a service in Kirk’s honor, even if it’s just a short one with a random assortment of crewmembers they probably pulled from the hall to fill seats. Perhaps his consideration is only because the casualty was his best friend, but still.
Misremembering the episode, I thought Kirk’s interphased form appeared all throughout the episode, causing them to actively search for him, so it was interesting to see that they really thought he was dead for most of it. Captain Kirk is largely absent, but his presence is strongly felt in almost every scene. Kirk is the main bond between Spock and McCoy, and his apparent death tears them apart just as it ultimately brings them closer together. Kirk’s prediction that they’re “locked in mortal combat” would seem like hyperbole if we didn’t see McCoy constantly dressing the Vulcan down and questioning his every action, repeatedly comparing the command style of his two friends. They make small but significant gestures to comfort each other, and in the end they unite to play a practical joke on Kirk. (And prove once again that Vulcans can lie.)
I’ve always had a soft spot for the Tholians ever since this episode (the only time they’re seen for a long while), and I was impressed by the fact that Commander Loskene was actually quite reasonable: he gives Spock a chance to prove he’s on a rescue mission before attacking. Even then, they don’t destroy the Enterprise, they just start to tow it away from the No Parking zone. The web is one of the coolest effects in the series, but it isn’t the most effective tractor technology, is it? Some other standout moments: the lingering shot on the monitor in Kirk’s quarters after they play his tape, the last link to the supposedly dead captain; McCoy’s discomfort as he listens to the message; and way the script weaves humor, horror, and seriousness together. Star Trek: Enterprise‘s combined callback to “The Tholian Web” and “Mirror, Mirror,” in which we learn that Defiant ended up in the mirror universe where Captain Archer tries to use its advanced technology to rule the Empire, is one of the highlights of that flawed series, one of the few episodes I’ve seen and can recommend.
Yes, this episode has its share of plot holes, but the story is compelling, the dialogue is terrific, and the visual effects are truly special.
Eugene’s Rating: Warp 6 (on a scale of 1-6)
Torie Atkinson: I was definitely looking forward to this one since so many have cited it as a bright spot, but it failed to elicit anything other than confusion out of me.
Let’s start with the spider web first. I love this idea… in theory. That a species can set traps in space for unsuspecting victims is creepy and cool, but it made absolutely no sense here. Why build an elaborate webbed sphere? What are they going to do with a ship once it’s in a ball? Play with it like a giant cat toy? Throw it down the garbage chute? Eat the tasty morsels inside? By the time they start constructing the web the Enterprise is already disabled. There’s nothing they can do at that point that they couldn’t do already. The web here was a delaying tactic to drag out the episode and keep the ship near the last known location of a Defiant–a plot contrivance that just annoyed me. TAKE THE ENTERPRISE, Tholians! It’s right there! Where’s the brilliant scheme I’m missing?
As for the interphase space tissue paper dissolving or whatever–what? To be honest, I had trouble following this plot thread at all. Was this spot in space deliberately warped to set a trap, or did it just happen to be a weak spot in the continuum that the Tholians were exploiting? If there’s some random spot in space that just keeps breaking apart, it seems like lurking around it and waiting for unsuspecting ships to get caught is a) what they were doing already and b) sufficient to accomplish whatever their goal is without building a web.
Space madness: oh wow, am I sick of this trope. But even if I weren’t, how did the space madness happen? I am, again, completely befuddled by the basic course of events. Is it a Tholian trap planted in the interphase hole? An inherent characteristic of the breaking apart of space? If the latter… what?
But I can forgive plot conveniences and promising story ideas lost in the rewriting process. I have a much more difficult time forgiving such a clumsy handling of Spock and McCoy’s characters. Here again we have Spock, cool as a cucumber, completely unaffected by the space madness. And again, we have McCoy being a complete asshat to him, like a nagging aunt or disgruntled middle manager. I felt tried having to watch this play out, and the only thing that made it worse was the fanfiction-esque addition of Kirk’s Last Tape that hopes they will be bestest friends and overcome their differences. Come on. Is Kirk their mother? I had to watch this crap in 5th grade and I sighed audibly then, too. I thought it made sense that McCoy would hate Spock, perhaps even openly, for losing Kirk–but to have that amplified in such an inexpert and frankly laughable way as to eliminate all nuance and subtlety… blame the space madness if you will, but it was a chore to watch.
The over-the-top performances from Kelley (flashbacks of Mr. DeMartino, anyone?) and Koenig (monkey screaming?), Nichol’s wide-eyed St. Stephen impression (with her exaggerated and high-strung movements you’d think she’d seen Jesus), and the patronizing moral about getting along struck me as pure melodrama.
The worst part was Kirk’s “funeral,” of which I remember almost nothing but the crazy guy having to be escorted from the room –talk about staying power. Here’s a real opportunity for something thoughtful, poetic, beautiful. But the writer clearly wasn’t up to that. As much as “Skin of Evil” was a giant flaming turd thrown through the window of the franchise, the funeral scene for Tasha Yar was so sweet and sad that even I–who hated Tasha– teared up a little. Did Spock’s notes sweat off his hand? Did McCoy forget to get up and say something? Did our producer Freddie just say “We’ve only got 30 seconds to do a funeral scene, make it shitty”?
I haven’t been this let down by hype since “Arena.”
Torie’s Rating: Warp 3
Best Line: SPOCK: I understand, Doctor. I’m sure the captain would simply have said, “Forget it, Bones.”
Syndication Edits: None
Trivia: The original outline for this episode, “In Essence Nothing,” had the starship Scimitar lost in interphase with Kirk pronounced dead immediately. Uhura leaves his memorial service and spots his ghostly form, but McCoy doesn’t believe her until he gives her a physical, but Spock remains skeptical and the doctor accuses him of being unable to hope the captain’s still alive. Chekov suggests they follow Scimitar into the other universe, which destroys the Tholian web and convinces Commander “LoCene” to trust them. The outline also referenced personal force fields instead of environmental units, which would not be used onscreen until the animated series.
Ralph Senensky was fired while directing this episode and replaced by Herb Wallerstein, but not before making his mark with the same fisheye camera lens trick he abused in “Is There in Truth No Beauty?”
Freelance writer Judy Burns pitched this episode as spirits surrounding Enterprise and came up with the interphase dimension to meet Roddenberry’s insistence that episodes be based on science, not supernatural events. She used the money she earned from the episode for a study trip to Africa.
The fate of the Defiant is shown in the Star Trek: Enterprise two-parter, “In a Mirror, Darkly.” Tholians also appear in another episode of that series, “Future Tense” and are referenced in other Star Trek series, including a Deep Space Nine episode titled “Defiant,” which is also the name of Captain Sisko’s starship while in command of the station.
Other notes: This episode won Star Trek‘s first Emmy for “Best Special Effects,” as created by Mike Minor, Denis Russell, and Van der Veer Photo Effects.
The apprentice became the master when camera operator Al Francis took over as director of photography from Jerry Finnerman, who held the job since Star Trek‘s first pilot, “The Cage.”
There are some fun international interpretations of the title for this episode, including “The Web” (Portugal), “The Spider Web” (Germany), and “Crisis of Captain Kirk Who Was Thrown Into Different Dimensional Space” (Japan).
Nichelle Nichols has cited this as one of her favorite episodes, along with “The Trouble With Tribbles.”
Previous episode: Season 3, Episode 8 -“For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky.”
Next episode: Season 3, Episode 10 – “Plato’s Stepchildren.” US residents can watch it for free at the CBS website.
I’m more with Eugene than with Torie on this one. While I would held back a warp rating and given it a five this was still a fine episode and better than I had remembered. I thought it was a really hood example of what could be done on a limited budget.
I never thought or entertained the thought that the space/time weakness was a Tholian plot. I had always assumed it was simple a feature of a local defect in space/time and the Tholians were just isolationists like the Gorns. (go Gorns!)
The Fish-eye madness was simply a by-product of the space/time defect and again not a Tholian plot.
Sadly I think this was the last dying ray of light from third season. Time to seal up our pressure suits and rig for vacuum.
This is an episode I had not seen too many times over the years and I think my impression of it has become strongly colored by the Enterprise episode(s). (I want to say that it was a two-parter.) The ‘space madness’ kind of made sense to me back in the 60s and 70s (reruns) as an artifact of the space-fabric breakdown. And I kind of like the Enterprise explanation that the madness was a by-product of the nature of the mirror universe – tat is until I thought about the fact that none of the characters in Mirror Mirror seemed to have been affected by the madness.
Discussing this episode with some friends back in my college years led to two thoughts about the Tholians. 1. They were immune to the effects of the distortion – and may not have been aware of its effects on other races. 2. The Tholians taking the time to build a web may have been intended as a big long ‘last chance’ for the offender to get off their lawn. The idea being that they didn’t really want to destroy the intruding ships, they just wanted to be left alone. But, that was just a bunch of college kids talking.
I liked the bickering between Spock and McCoy – within the context of an episode in a series without major story-arcs and with little concern for continuity. Have we been spoiled by the character growth and continual world building that took place in the later series? (I’m including myself in this question.) Within the context of one of the later series, McCoy should have been expect to have learned something from the separation situation in The Paradise Syndrome and have been more understanding of Spock’s way of dealing with such situations. But, in the original series, the characters are pretty must the same in the last episode as they were in the first. I guess this is part of what separated Prime Time shows from the daytime Soaps – a separation that was not really broken until Hill Street Blues and Norman Lear’s shows came along. (And, to a lesser degree, MASH)
The ghostly Kirk effect looks kind of goofy by today’s standards but back then it was what you’d expect.
By the way. For those wishing to play the home-version of The Tholian Web, your ships will come in next February. Round 2 will be releasing the old AMT original series Enterprise kit in a special ‘As Seen In “The Tholian Web” Episode Of Star Trek’ box with new box art and the addition of the Tholian web spinner ships in the kit along with decals to do either the Enterprise or the Defiant.
Also. I saw the Tholian ship studio models in the Smithsonian’s Star Trek exhibition many years ago. They looked much better in the episode than they did in the display case.
Torie, I didn’t get that this was a ploy by the Tholians either. I think it was just a weird bit of space that the Defiant happened to fall prey to. I admit that the tractor field doesn’t make much sense since a ship would already have to be disabled, but they probably don’t get to use it too often either so they were really excited to show off their toys. Or maybe it was new, and they’ve been waiting for an opportunity to test it out. The web also reminded me a little of the barrier that Q throws up around the Enterprise in “Encounter at Farpoint.”
Also, Spock wasn’t the only one unaffected by the space madness. Plenty of the crew hadn’t lost their minds yet. Though McCoy does make a snide comment about the fact that he would probably be fine because of his Vulcan physiology.
I was most disappointed by the recorded will and testament, which just turned out to be a final lecture from Kirk. I mean, who gets to keep all his stuff? Where was his heartfelt message to his two best friends, his words of comfort at their moment of loss? It would have been better if he recorded a bunch of them for different occasions, with this first one labeled “Don’t Panic.”
@1 bobsandiego
I almost gave it a 5, but I think I enjoyed too much of it to deduct points. Plus, it was such a relief after some of the crap we’ve seen this season.
@2 Ludon
Hard to have continuity and character development when they aired the episodes in an almost random order, and I assume writers didn’t plot or discuss their stories with each other. I’m not sure when the writer’s room was introduced to television, but series are planned and stories are broken much differently now. I think we can infer some characterization–as I noted, Spock is improving as a leader–but they rarely learn anything. The only real continuity we get is Kirk recycling corbomite from time to time, that sort of thing.
I like the idea that the Tholians are so alien they aren’t affected by the space madness, and that they just want to be left alone. I wonder if they’re technology might inadvertently be responsible for the thinning of space-time between universes. Kind of like how high warp speeds are damaging the universe in later TNG. Actually, let’s just forget about that part of the show, shall we?
I must have missed the Tholian ships at the Smithsonian, if they were there when I visited. I looked at some of the comparison shots of effects from the original episode and the remastered CGI in the HD episodes, and I think the older effects are superior–especially the ships. For some reason I really liked the ripply effect of the Tholian shields, too. Interesting that whenever Enterprise is attacked they never show the deflectors…
Two more comments I forgot to make in my earlier post.
1) I like that the Tholians are really alien looking. The weird faceted-crystal look is very neat and very inhuman. Though I would imagine that the Tholians would not like The Andromeda Strain. lol
2) Peter David write a Star TRelk novel where Enterprise-D came to the same locale of space and encountered the same Tholian Commander (apparently they are long lived.) The Tholian commander unaware that this was a different Enterprise asked if ‘There is a lying Vulcan named Spock among you.”
That made me giggle.
This is one of the better episodes of S3, but I agree with Torie’s analysis that McCoy is annoying throughout. His arguments are not even internally self-consistent.
He rages at Spock when Spock refuses to leave the area. He accuses Spock of wanting to abandon Kirk because Spock secretly desired a command of his own, yadda yadda.
Spock, meanwhile, makes no particular error in judgment and commands coolly throughout. I can’t imagine what Kirk would have down terribly different in a similar situation, other than put a bit more polish on the brass (that’s a complaint I also have of “Galilieo Seven,” BTW).
In this light, Kirk’s post-mortem advice comes across like a parent scolding his kids, one of which is behaving, the other of which is waving around a knife, saying, “You two play nice!”
@4 bobsandiego
2) That is really funny. I don’t think I read that one, but Google Books has the page with that conversation in their preview. It’s from David’s Vendetta: “The Giant Novel”. I also like how for a moment the tagline on the cover made me think Guinan was the Enterprise’s deadliest foe.
Eugene,
If I remember correctly, they or it – as it may have been only the one model – were / was in a display case with other props – looking more like painted wooden shapes than like spaceships and hardware. I really don’t remember what else was in that case but I have a feeling that this case was showing how crude and simple some of the props were for the series.
I’m going to have to side with Torie on this one. I’ve never really liked this episode, though I can’t necessarily say why. Among other things, I had completely forgotten the whole “ghost Kirk” thing, though it did come back when you mentioned it. On the whole a resounding, “Meh!” from me.
Apparently, the reason Nichelle Nichols liked this episode is because she got out of uniform and got to do a little more than announce that hailing frequencies were open. You do have to give her that.
And why does the bad stuff always happen to Chekov first?
@ 8 DemetriosX
Something I commented on when I saw Star Trek: The Motion Picture back in 1979. It’s not Star Trek until Chekov screams! LOL
Mostly good, but building that web takes FOREVER. It’s too obviously a plot device; what good is it in other circumstances?
I liked the Tholian designs, too. Very alien. I did NOT like what Phlox did to them in ST:E’s take (which was fun, otherwise).
@10 sps49
Easy. The Tholians are severs xenophobes and hate trespassers, but they also hate killing. perhaps that is related to their Xenophobia because everyone else in the galaxy seems kill-crazy. Anyway, their preferred method of dealing with intruders is use weapons to disable the intruder, then use the web to trap them before you drag them off your gad danged lawn.
I’ma gamemaster, I’m a master of the retcon!
Re-posting my not terribly earth-shattering observation from the, er, *other* re-watch site:
I thought the image of the ghostly Kirk appearing at intervals, as he slowly suffocated in a lonely dimension of his own, was pretty striking, but I didn’t realize till just now why it seemed so familiar. There’s a great story by James Tiptree, Jr., “The Man Who Walked Home”, that features a very similar apparition, albeit with a very different setup (time travel experiment gone wrong, causing a disaster in the past which the ghostly guy is moving towards; he can’t communicate with anyone because he’s living backwards in time and appearing for just a few seconds per year). It was written in 1973, five years after “The Tholian Web”, and as Tiptree was a big Trek fan it’s plausible that she was partly inspired by that image.
@5 Lemnoc
McCoy’s irrationality is hardly unjustified. It stems partly from the space madness, or so he claims, but I think a lot can be attributed to grief. Kirk essentially sacrificed himself for him and Spock, and he’s obviously taking it hard. He also can’t understand why Spock isn’t reacting more strongly, or perhaps he envies his control over his emotions. But I agree, his accusations that Spock wanted command come out of nowhere, and his erratic behavior is way too gradual to be symptoms of the spatial distortions–he never attacks anyone physically for one thing.
@DemetriosX
Since Chekov was a late addition to the crew, I think he just gets the short straw (along with Scotty). And though it’s forward of Star Trek to have a Russian character, this is the middle of the Cold War, so maybe it was subconsciously gratifying to make him silly and pile on the suffering? On TNG they always picked on Geordi, DS9 had O’Brien (because he was the best actor), and Voyager had Kim. I guess every ship needs a victim.
@12 Eli B
Hey, thanks for stopping by! I’m glad you mentioned that story. I’ve been meaning to read more Tiptree shorts lately, so I’ll look for that one. It does sound similar, especially with her apparently well-known appreciation of the show. From your description, it also reminds me a bit of the DS9 episode “The Visitor,” one of the best of the series if you haven’t seen it yet. And as we noted in last week’s review, Tiptree came up with some awesome titles; “The Man Who Walked Home” is very evocative.
I’m giving this one a solid five. It’s a strong episode, but not quite on par with, say, the Doomsday Machine.
The Tholians were one of the more intriguing races from TOS. Very alien, but not proportionately evil. They also were updated quite well in Enterprise (unlike the Gorn.)
I always assumed that the interphase was a local and transient event. Since Tholians are silicon-based creatures, they may not have even perceived it (note the ship’s sensors didn’t.)
I also thought it clear that McCoy was starting to feel a little fisheyed. Naturally, Spock is more resistant to such effects.
The Tholian web does seem like an odd thing, although I liked that about it. It just reinforced how alien these guys are. (I remember it being a bit more effective in Starship Battles, but I don’t recall the details enough to compare.)
Y’know what? I’m giving it an extra half point, because I can. Warp 5.5 ahead!
Something else that bugged me: Spock, after speaking with the Tholian, says that Tholians are “renowned for their punctuality.” Does that mean Starfleet has contact with them? Wouldn’t it then make no sense diplomatically for the Tholians to capture a Federation ship?
Has anyone else ever noticed that whenever Spock is in charge, every decision he makes is wrong wrong wrong to everyone else and people just harangue him about it? That never happens with Scotty.
@ 5 Lemnoc
McCoy’s arguments really aren’t consistent. He thinks that Spock is powerhungry for command, but then berates him for not abandoning Kirk to save the ship. It’s obvious Spock stayed and fought to try and recover Kirk; I would assume *that* would be the plan McCoy would endorse. It didn’t make sense. And I’m glad you echoed my feeling that Kirk’s last tape is basically a mom scolding her kids. Lame.
@ 9 sps49
Exactly. It takes too long, and what are they going to do once it’s done? Sit back and admire it?
@ 12 Eli B
Yes! I knew it reminded me a short story and this talk of TIptree recently has definitely had her on my mind. I like that story, and for the most part I can see how the ghost Kirk thing could be a neat episode–is it a manifestation of everyone’s demons/guilt? Is he really alive? But it just felt hokey here.
Just peeking in late, and then back to work….
– I agree with the generaly consensus that, as third-season episodes go, this is one of the best. That, however, is not saying a lot, and placing it anywhere near ‘The Doomsday Machine’ or ‘Arena’ is — well, in poor taste. But I’ll take it over most of what’s coming down the ‘pike…
– I always assumed the Tholians were some kind of non-carbon-based lifeform or some such. This seemed clear from their appearance on the viewscreen (not this Viewscreen, the other viewscreen) and what appeared to be ripples due to heat in the background — implying they lived under high temperature and pressure conditions. Not sure what that has to do with anything, really, but I did think they were cool.
– Torie@16: It is odd how much Starfleet or the Federation seem to know about civilisations with which they’ve had little or no contact. The Tholians, the legends about the Gorgan, the Thasians, the Fabrini … of course, all but two of those are third-season, so there you go.
– Why is Kirk always vertical when he appears? What’s holding him upright? Why isn’t he rotating about some other axis? Practising ballet?
– The spacesuits were reasonably cool-looking, especially given the exceedingly lame environmental protection used in previous episodes: the silly breathing masks from ‘The Squire of Gothos’, the thermal uniforms from ‘Spock’s Brain’, the shower curtains from ‘The Naked Time’. It was quite an impressive step that they required their use aboard Defiant — that’s the first time they’ve boarded a derelict ship that didn’t have an intact atmosphere. Both Constellation and Exeter still had life support — though, to be fair, Exeter had no real reason not to. Constellation, though, even still had artificial gravity! That AG system must be robust.
Speaking of robust systems, the other amazing feat of engineering is the antimatter containment system aboard these things, which never seems to fail. I mean, 97.835 megatonnes is peanuts: if anything like the amount of antimatter that must have been aboard Constellation had been released during its battle with the planet-killer, there wouldn’t have been one atom of that ship sticking to another.
– The Web looked cool, but even as a young kid I realised it was rubbish. Sort of like the Web now. Well, mostly, anyway; certain sites excepted.
– And, yes, Spock/McCoy artificial dramatics. Where are the wonderful exchanges from ‘Bread and Circuses’? ‘The Galileo Seven’? ‘The Immunity Syndrome’? ‘The Doomsday Machine’? McCoy is being just plain nasty — which really isn’t like him. And Spock is being just too cool — no human side at all. Except for the little white lie at the end.
I’m going to regret saying this, but the characterisations of McCoy and Spock in ‘The Empath’ and ‘That Which Survives’ (both of which we have yet to experience) are going to be better than what we have here.
– And — ‘locked in mortal combat’? Who writes this stuff? Not Kirk, certainly — the guy churned out literate Captain’s logs episode after episode, and knows Milton, for gods’ sake. In mortal combat with each other? Someone else? Be clear, man!
I don’t do warp factors. It can really suck, or it can be glorious. This didn’t suck too badly, but it wasn’t great. Meh.
NomadUK: “Why is Kirk always vertical when he appears? What’s holding him upright?”
To put it delicately, in all episodes and at all times, Kirk is in a state of… romantic enthusiasm… so powerful as to provide a sort of fixed axis around which the rest of the universe revolves.
Eli B@18: No, that’s just the sock.
@ 16 Torie “Does that mean Starfleet has contact with them? Wouldn’t it then make no sense diplomatically for the Tholians to capture a Federation ship?”
Actually you are assuming that contact/knowledge is the same as cordial relations and they are not. The USA Has had contact with North Korea and Iran but we do not have relations. So it is perfectly reasonable that the Feddies might know something of the Tholians but not have good or even bad relations. (though it does conflict with the ‘unknown region of space’ at the start of the episode.)
@15 Church hates Tucker
“(I remember it being a bit more effective in Starship Battles, but I don’t recall the details enough to compare.)”
Ah Star Fleet Battles (SFB) a game so complex it can no longer be taught to new players! I played the game a lot in the late 80’s, but usually as the Gorns. I have no memory of how effective the web was in the game. In our campaign someone had started the nasty rumor that you could use Tholians as Dilithium crystals and player — not me– began raiding their planets for the population. Amusing side note; the man who ran the Campaign and was truly a Trek fan all the way through eventually went on become a write for DS 9 and Voyager. (yea Jimmy Diggs!)
@Torie 16 “Something else that bugged me: Spock, after speaking with the Tholian, says that Tholians are “renowned for their punctuality.” Does that mean Starfleet has contact with them”
They may have had the information secondhand. Knowledge of doesn’t mean contact with.
@BobSanDiego 20 ” In our campaign someone had started the nasty rumor that you could use Tholians as Dilithium crystals…”
What an awesome idea! It would certainly explain their isolationism.
I remember Star Fleet Battles. I only played it a few times in the early to mid 80s, I think the original boxed set. The Gorn were definitely somewhat out of balance with the rest of the game. The Romulan disruptor bolt was pretty devastating if you could get into a good position, but it was hard to do without getting pounded. I don’t remember the Tholians, but I think there were Kzinti in the edition we played. And for some reason, this discussion has dredged the phrase “wild weasel shuttle” up from the depths of my subconscious. IIRC, those were pretty nasty, too.
A couple more thoughts after having just watched the show:
– As y’all have said, McCoy’s rant to Spock is pretty incoherent; but for me it fits with the Bones-Spock dynamic we’ve seen before, and Kelley’s clenched-teeth performance actually kind of helps. Basically, Bones knows that Spock is awesome, but he’s convinced that Spock’s logical deadpan affect is just a pose and it drives him nuts. He’s constantly trying to get Spock to react, to admit that his motivations aren’t as pure as he says they are, or just to get down off his pedestal and freak out miserably the way McCoy can’t help doing. McCoy was always played as a smart guy with a self-righteous streak who still has very little self-regard, in the sense that he’s willing to make a total ass of himself for the sake of arguing about something that bothers him.
– The restraints in sickbay, on both the Enterprise and the Defiant, seem to work on the honor system: there’s nothing to stop Chekhov from taking his hands out from under that seat-belt strap. Either rage has made him stupid (and the beds were designed on that assumption), or he’s kind of kinky.
– Uhura’s scene with McCoy where she asks if she’s going to become a screaming crazy person was nicely underplayed. And I liked her earlier moment of confused, childish joy when she’s trying to explain that she saw Kirk; even though it’s pretty stereotypical that Uhura always got the vulnerable emotional scenes, I’m still glad someone on the crew got to act like that.
@ 20 bobsandiego
Just because you don’t have cordial relations doesn’t mean you could capture a ship with no repercussions. If North Korea captured one of our ships, we’d have a diplomatic shitstorm on our hands–something that the Tholians don’t fear. So I have to assume they don’t actually have any contact.
@ ChurchHatesTucker
Where on earth do they get all this secondhand knowledge? The internet? “Anyone who lurks on the Alpha Quadrant forums knows the Tholians are a bunch of punctilious pricks…”
@ Eli B
It looked to me that the restraints were wrapped twice around the wrist. I thought the same thing at first, but it does look like they’ve got you held down pretty good.
@15 ChurchHatesTucker
If Torie would allow me to give partial warp factors, I would have given it a 5.5 too! So I had to round up :)
@17 NomadUK
locked in mortal combat
Yeah, that was more than a little hyperbolic. And even though Kirk called the situation, more or less, he must not have much faith in his men to assume they’ll be lost without him. He could have at least recorded a separate message for each of them, right?
@23 Eli B
I also liked how ecstatic Uhura was that the captain was alive. I felt bad for her having to lie in the same room as Chekov while he was screaming his head off. They don’t even have privacy curtains in Sickbay, not that it would have drowned him out, but a few hours of listening to him would have had me screaming too. It was sobering to see her silently crying when McCoy comes in to tell him he made a mistake. Good thing they don’t have medical malpractice in the future.
@20 bobsandiego
Wow! Jimmy Diggs wrote one of my favorite DS9 episodes, “Doctor Bashir, May I Presume?” Torie didn’t much care for it, but I thought it was fun, plus I’m also a Bond fan.
I only played Starfleet Battles once, or it may have been an adapted form of it–it was definitely confusing. I love the idea of using Tholians as dilithium crystals, or at least giving it a try… The rumor I heard once was that some starship captain had wiped out a planet by launching his vessel into it at warp nine and igniting the atmosphere. I don’t know how plausible that is, but it sounded cool. I’m sure they had it coming.
In the campaign I played, the guy running DS9 was a jerk and demanded that anyone who wanted to use the wormhole had to beg permission. I was somehow in control of a Borg ship, so when I approached the station, I hailed them with “We grant you permission to allow us to go through the wormhole.” That started a fight, which I won of course because I was the Borg.
@ 25 Eugene
Yeah yeah, blame me for your inflated score…
And I didn’t dislike “Doctor Bashir, May I Presume?” I love Robert Picardo something fierce, but the resolution was a little too pat for my tastes.
Why is it that there has never been a really good Star Trek game?
@25 Eugene
“The rumor I heard once was that some starship captain had wiped out a planet by launching his vessel into it at warp nine and igniting the atmosphere. I don’t know how plausible that is, but it sounded cool. I’m sure they had it coming.”
Plausibility may be debatable but an atmosphere was ignited at the beginning of Shockwave, Pt. 1 – the season one ending cliff-hanger episode of Enterprise. ***Spoiler ahead***
If I remember correctly, there was a mining colony on that planet and the processes they used created pollution that did not play very nicely with impulse drives. An explosive device had been planted on a shuttle set to make it appear that a vent had not been closed. Part of the Temporal Cold-War story arc.
Torie @26:
I think it’s because people have very specific expectations from Star Trek, while a game has to have a certain lack of specificity to allow the players to immerse themselves into the experience. I’m putting that badly. Basically, a game can’t deliver the same sort of thing that people expect to get out of Trek. If nothing else, you either have to give players a full range of options for action (thus moving away from authentic Trek responses) or put the game on rails.
That said, SFB has a small, but very devoted following. Their universe has diverged from the Trek universe due to licensing problems, but the few times I played it was close to canonical and wasn’t so complex it was impossible to learn. It wasn’t a bad game, but it wasn’t really all that different from a game involving, say, Napoleonic Wars naval battles.
@26 Torie
Oops, I mixed that DS9 episode up with “Our Man Bashir,” the first Bond-holodeck episode :) I like “Doctor Bashir, I Presume?” even more, largely because of Robert Picardo and the surprising revelation that mostly seemed as if it had been planned all along.
I’ve heard great things about the Starfleet Command computer games, but they’re very combat-heavy, which isn’t really the best thing about Star Trek, at least in my opinion. I may give the MMO another try one of these days, but I have plenty of other things to play that I’m more enthusiastic about at the moment.
@25 Eugene
Yeah, Jimmy is and was a character. When I knew him he was working as a Secuirty Guard and Star Trek was an obession. (A room full of detailed and hand painted minatures.) Sadly we fell out fo contact and now fly different orbits, but he was a good friend and a talented man. He also wrote the only epsiode of Voyage I ever liked.
@26 Torie – for upcomming episode I think you’re going to need a new rating. “ballastic.” Not under warp or impulse just flying without power!
SFB was a good game at the start. It played well and it was fun, but they kept adding more and more rules, each with their own exceptios to the established rules until there litterally was only one man who knew all the rules and that was because he had a photographic memory.
Apparently the company invloved learned their lesson in 2002 and launched a new version that has been greatly simplified.
@ 28 DemetriosX
What’s wrong with rails? I’ve exhausted my interest in infinitely open-ended games. Give me a tight, well-told story with strong, believable characters and realistic motivations any day! Just throw in the dilithium mining crafting skill and a transporter malfunction minigame and all the other gamers will be satisfied.
@ 29 Eugene
Yeah, I did not like that episode. *shudder*
@ 30 bobsandiego
You weren’t kidding…
@ 28 DemetriosX – I agree, but I may be biased on this. I prefer my RPGs to be at the table with my friends and not computer/video game RPG. Even just under the video game side fo things the writers and producers of the agmes are limited in waht they can do because the property owner is going to be afraid of damages to their quite valuable property.
@31 Torie Vlcan never bluff and I never kid about how bad 3rd season gets. I once was running a long-term Space RPG and the stories had gotten stale and I was having torubles coming up with new adventures for the players. When I was informed that my game felt like 3rd season Star Trek I killed it that night!
Torie @31: Rails suck! There’s nothing I hate more than crafting a carefully balanced party that meets my style of play, and then being told I have to disrupt that party and take along some character I have absolutely no use for and who creates a hole in the group’s skill set. Also, if the game says I now have to go do something I really don’t feel like doing at the moment, then I’m more likely not to start playing at all. And the longer I go without playing, the more likely I am to just stop completely. You can have all those things you say you want without putting the game on rails.
I thought as a child, and still do actually, that when Spock says “Ah, the renowned Tholian punctuality,” it was one of those dry wit things he often came up with, and not meant to be a factual statement.
@34 Jordana
I agree with you on his intent, but the phrasing certainly suggests prior knowledge. However, he is probably inferring their punctuality from Loskene’s earlier statement, “we will wait precisely one hour and fifty three minutes.”
I know I’m kind of late to this party, but I did want to add my two cents here:
Everyone who has commented has said that the Tholian tractor field seems like a rather lame device for capturing a ship. It takes a long time to create, and in the end, it seems like just a fancy way to tow an interloper away. I would agree except for one fact that everyone seems to overlook; Loskene’s ship was in a firefight with the Enterprise, and appears to sustain some damage. Perhaps with two or more fully functioning Tholian vessels, the process is much quicker ( it certainly was shown to be in “Star Trek: Enterprise”. It was also shown to contract and crush a trapped vessel which makes it a much more threatening weapon… cool, but since that is a much later series I wouldn’t let their interpretation of the web color my opinion of the original ).
Anyway, I always felt that since Loskene only had one other fully operational vessel to aid him, that was why the process was so slow… although I do like the postulated idea that the Tholians were just basically just trying to scare unwelcome intruders away ( ” Now I’m gonna count to three and give you just one more chance to leave. One…two…two and a half….two and three quarters… I’m not kidding…”).
it does beg the question as to why the other ship didn’t start firing on the Enterprise when it arrived, unless Loskene warned them that the Enterprise had some decent firepower.
I have to side with Torie on this one. I remember this as being much better than it actually is (admittedly not having seen it since I was a preteen). In addition to all the complaints she’s made, I have to say that the Tholians are tragically underdeveloped for a species featured in the title of the episode. The only really great thing about this episode for me was the new environmental suits. Considering the budget cutbacks I’m surprised we didn’t see those god-awful shower curtain outfits from “The Naked Time.”
I’m definitely on Torie’s side. I just don’t understand how she could have given this episode a warp 3, given its epic flaws, which she described very well. I gave it 1.5 out of 5 on our site (https://plus.google.com/112507191344108443039/posts/8uXEpkE6EQo); I would have rounded down to one and not up to two if half stars were disallowed. The half star was for the evironmental suits, the impressive amount of gore aboard the Defiant, and the general coolness of the concept of the lost ship phasing in and out of a dimensional rift. Even though this episode failed to make good use out of the concept, it surely inspired JMS in writing “Babylon Squared,” the best first season episode of Babylon 5.
“I am Commander Loskene. You are trespassing in a territorial annex of the Tholian Assembly. That is not a bit nice! You have made me very angry! Very angry indeed!”
Loskene then tries to tow away the Enterprise because it obstructs his view of Venus. ^_^