“Turnabout Intruder”
Teleplay by Arthur Singer
Story by Gene Roddenberry
Directed by Herb Wallerstein
Season 3, Episode 24
Production episode: 3×24
Original air date: June 3, 1969
Star date: 5928.5
Mission summary
The Enterprise has arrived at Camus II where a team of researchers exploring a long-lost civilization have sent out a distress signal. When they beam down they find that only two scientists have survived the mysterious circumstances: Dr. Coleman, the surgeon, and Dr. Janice Lester, the expedition’s leader and an old flame of Kirk’s. Dr. Lester is bedridden from radiation poisoning and seems on the brink of death. Kirk goes to her, but she can barely speak. (He’s just that impressive.) He stays with her as Spock, McCoy, and Dr. Coleman detect weak lifesigns elsewhere on the station and exit in pursuit.
While Kirk and Dr. Lester arbor some residual tenderness towards one another, they have some resentment issues like you wouldn’t believe:
JANICE: I hoped I wouldn’t see you again.
KIRK: I don’t blame you.
JANICE: The year we were together at Starfleet is the only time in my life I was alive.
KIRK: I never stopped you from going on with your space work.
JANICE: Your world of starship captains doesn’t admit women. It isn’t fair.
KIRK: No, it isn’t. And you punished and tortured me because of it.
JANICE: I loved you. We could’ve roamed among the stars.
KIRK: We’d have killed each other.
JANICE: It might have been better.
Kirk, in his wisdom, doesn’t respond to that particular remark. Instead he explores the room he’s in a little bit. Short attention span, that captain. Against the back wall of the sick room is a lighted structure, with some kind of alien markings all over it. With his back turned to Janice, Kirk inspects the strange wall. Seems… wall-y. Yep. Well, that was productive. Meanwhile, Janice pulls out a remote control and points it at Kirk. With a buzz from the remote he is pulled against the wall and immobilized. It’s a trap!1 Dr. Lester, smiling, gets out of bed easily–so much for radiation sickness–and walks toward him. On the side of the structure are two switches, and she flips one and then stands beside Kirk against the wall. Thanks to the wonders of crappy special effects, we see a shadow of Kirk lift out of his body and overlay onto hers, while a shadow of Lester lifts out of her body and onto the captain’s. They’ve switched bodies!The captain–now possessed by Dr. Lester2–awakes first, and switches the machine off. She carries her old body to the bed and delights in her victory:
LESTER (AS KIRK): You had your chance, Captain Kirk. You should’ve smothered the life in me. Then they would have said Dr. Janice Lester died of radiation poisoning in the line of duty. Why didn’t you do it? You always wanted to. Didn’t you? You had the strength to do it. But you were afraid. You were always afraid. Now Janice Lester takes the place of Captain Kirk. I already possess your physical strength. Only this Captain Kirk is not afraid to kill. Now you know the indignity of being a woman. For you this agony will soon pass, as it has for me. Quiet. Quiet! Believe me, it’s better to be dead than to live alone in the body of a woman. It’s better to be dead.
Are we back on Elba II?? This woman’s a few warp cores short of an engine. She hovers over Kirk, who is unconscious and trapped in her weak womanly body, and begins to wrap her scarf around her hands to choke him. But as she hesitates she hears footsteps and voices approaching. Too late! Damned womanly hesitation! McCoy, Coleman, and Spock return. The person in distress didn’t make it. McCoy believes it’s celebium radiation that affected the scientists, but Coleman disagrees. In either case (the person who seems to be) Dr. Lester, unconscious on the bed, will die without treatment. Will Kirk beam her up to the Enterprise?
Lester takes a moment to consider the possibility: does she raise suspicion and get her goal, by leaving Kirk to die alone on the planet, while she takes his place? Or does she do what she knows Kirk would do and try to save her? She opts for the latter, and they all beam up to the ship. The unconscious body of Lester is taken to sickbay, while Kirk tells McCoy to take “special” care of her:
LESTER (AS KIRK): It’s been a long time since I saw her. I walked out on her when it became serious.
MCCOY: Well, you must have been very young at the time, Jim.
LESTER (AS KIRK): Youth doesn’t excuse everything, Doctor McCoy. It’s a very unhappy memory for me.
That’s an understatement! Lester-as-Kirk then meets up with Dr. Coleman, who seems a little put out. He knows exactly what’s going on, but why isn’t the real Kirk dead yet?
COLEMAN: That’s all we can ask for. How can death be explained now?
LESTER (AS KIRK): I tell you it can’t continue.
COLEMAN: You killed every one of the staff. You sent them where you knew the celebium shielding was weak. Now why didn’t you kill him? You had the perfect opportunity.
LESTER (AS KIRK): There wasn’t enough time.
COLEMAN: I gave you every minute you asked for.
LESTER (AS KIRK): He hung onto life too hard. I couldn’t–
COLEMAN: You couldn’t because you love him. You want me to be his murderer.
LESTER (AS KIRK): Love? Him? I love the life he led. The power of a starship commander. It’s my life now.
COLEMAN: I won’t become a murderer.
LESTER (AS KIRK): You are a murderer! You knew it was celebium. You could’ve treated them for it. You’re a murderer many times over.
Before we can settle this very important “who’s the biggest murderer” fight, though, McCoy enters and wants to know why Kirk is hanging out in the sick ward. He claims to have been there to comfort Janice, but even McCoy knows something’s up. Moreover, there’s no radiation damage to speak of, so what’s Dr. Coleman on about? He thinks Janice will be coming around shortly and can’t really find anything wrong with her–maybe her paralysis is the result of a phaser stun? Coleman insists it is radiation and that she must be kept sedated–a move McCoy thinks is risky. In the end, Coleman whines loudest and prevails: Kirk decides to give him authority over Dr. Lester as a patient. McCoy’s furious, but he tells Nurse Chapel to do as ordered and apply the sedative anyway. Just as she does so, Dr. Lester seems to mumble something about losing command of the Enterprise.
You know, standard Federation fever dream.
The real Lester, meanwhile, is gloating in voiceover about her amazing success:
LESTER (AS KIRK): Now the years I spent studying every single detail of the ship’s operation will be tested. With a little experience, I will be invulnerable to suspicion. At last I attain what is my just due. Command of a starship. All the months of preparation now come to fruition.
Unfortunately, we know from repeated third season outings how right she probably is about her ability to take over the ship. She gets started right away by getting the real Kirk out of the picture, and plotting a course to the Benecia Colony. It’s not just out of the way but in the opposite direction they want to go, which raises the suspicions of her bridge officers–but its primitive resources and remote location make it the perfect place to dump the newly feminized Captain Kirk.
From there, she retires to Kirk’s room…. to file her nails. Sigh. McCoy enters, sweaty-browed and angry, and she continues to primp her new body during the conversation. McCoy has discovered that Dr. Coleman, if that is his real name,3 was fired from starship duty for incompetence and gross medical malpractice. This doesn’t seem to faze the new Kirk, who suggests political reasons for his dismissal. But McCoy is on a mission now, and has an additional demand: that Kirk report for a full physical exam. The reason? “Emotional instability” and “erratic mental attitudes.” Lester rebuffs him but is called to the bridge before they can hash it out further.
Meanwhile, Kirk slowly awakes in sickbay a little confused. He approaches the mirror and discovers the body upgrade since he was last reliably conscious. He shouts for Dr. McCoy but is greeted instead by Dr. Coleman, who doesn’t seem particularly persuaded by Kirk’s entreaties that he’s not Lester. Nurse Chapel enters and Kirk tries to appeal to her, but Coleman explains that she has been delusional for months, specifically believing herself to be Captain Kirk. Chapel brings a sedative and puts the old girl down.
Later, Kirk awakes again, this time strapped to the bed, to find only Chapel in the room. Chapel has brought her a drink, and she asks to drink it slowly, but promises she’ll “be good.” Chapel seems reassured by her newfound sanity and acquiesces, leaving Kirk in the room alone with the drink. As soon as she leaves, Kirk smashes the glass against the bed and uses the sharp edges to saw through the restraining strap.
In his hospital dress, he runs through the hallways of the Enterprise half-mad, shouting for Spock and McCoy. He finds them both in the main sickbay area–with Lester. Lester forces Kirk out of sickbay and karate-chops her old body. Kirk slumps to the floor, helpless. Even McCoy is freaked out by this incident, but Lester just says, “She might’ve killed someone,” and orders some redshirts to lock the real Kirk up in isolation where no one can speak with him.
McCoy takes advantage of the opportunity to subject Lester to an exam. She passes all of the physical tests with flying colors (that Kirk is a fine, fine man), but there’s one more test: the Robbiani dermal-optic emotional structure test. McCoy flashes some colored lights at him to see how he responds. Alas, Lester manages to pass this test, too, which proves it’s about as scientifically accurate as seeing whether or not he cries during Ghost. (Pfft. Women.)
Spock has picked up a trail, though. He heads to Lester’s confinement and is stopped by a guard. Luckily he convinces the poor fool that it’d be just ludicrous if Kirk intended that he, the first officer, couldn’t speak to the prisoner. This seems reasonable to the redshirt so he accompanies Spock into the room to speak to this Janice Lester. If that is her real name.4
Kirk explains everything to Spock. He alludes to their adventures with the Vians and the Tholians, but Spock suggests that both those incidents are part of the public record. So he decides to prove it the only way he can–with a mind meld.
Yep, it’s Kirk.
The redshirt thinks this is all kinds of fucked up, but isn’t about to disobey orders to let his first officer worship some crazy woman who thinks she’s the captain. Spock goes to nerve-pinch him on his way out, but Galloway catches him in the act and cries for guards! That’s okay, though, because Spock has two hands, and gets him with the second one. He nerve-pinches the guard outside, too, but someone was able to warn Lester, and Spock and Kirk are soon overwhelmed. Lester demands that both Spock and Kirk be arrested on the charge of mutiny, and she immediately convenes a court martial to sentence them for their crimes.
Sulu, Chekov, Scotty, McCoy, Spock, and some redshirts are all convened in the briefing room. Spock testifies first, but has no physical or scientific evidence that the body-swap occurred. His mind-meld cannot be proven, and McCoy’s tests of “Kirk” checked out exactly fine. He does, however, demand that “Lester” be allowed to testify in her defense. At first the real Lester refuses, but then she agrees. After all, Kirk will simply look completely insane.
LESTER (AS KIRK): You claim that, that you are Captain James T. Kirk?
KIRK (AS LESTER): No. I am not Captain Kirk. That is very apparent. I claim that whatever it is that makes James Kirk a living being special to himself is being held here in this body.
Hmm. Well that didn’t work out so well.
LESTER (AS KIRK): Oh. Well. However, as I understand it, I am Dr. Janice Lester.
KIRK (AS LESTER): That’s very clever, but I didn’t say it. I said, the body of James Kirk is being used by Dr. Janice Lester.
Hmm. Again, this doesn’t seem to be helping Lester’s case. What else could make Kirk seem crazy…
LESTER (AS KIRK): Violence by the lady, perpetrated on Captain Kirk? I ask the assembled personnel to look at Dr. Janice Lester and visualise that historic moment. Can you, can you tell me why Dr. Janice Lester would agree to this ludicrous exchange?
KIRK (AS LESTER): Yes. To get the power she craved, to attain a position she doesn’t merit by temperament or training. And most of all, she wanted to murder James Kirk, a man who once loved her. But her intense hatred of her own womanhood made life with her impossible.
At this point Spock jumps in, but Lester accuses him of trying to discredit her so that he himself can take over the Enterprise. She begs him to rescind his accusations:
LESTER (AS KIRK): Spock. Spock, give it up! Return to the Enterprise family. All charges will be dropped and the madness that temporarily overcame all of us on Camus II will fade and be forgotten.
Alas, Spock’s gotten a taste of mutiny, and he likes it:
SPOCK: No, sir. I shall not withdraw a single charge that I have made. You are not Captain Kirk. You have ruthlessly appropriated his body, but the life entity within you is not that of Captain Kirk. You do not belong in charge of the Enterprise and I shall do everything in my power against you.
This infuriates Lester. It was all going so well! She shouts and bangs her fists and demands that a vote be taken immediately on the fate of these mutineers. Everyone seems kind of uncomfortable about this outburst. They adjourn, and in the hallway Scotty confronts McCoy about how he will vote. He suggests that if this “Kirk” goes crazy again with another outburst and does not accept their votes against him, that they should mutiny. McCoy looks grim.
When they re-enter the room, Lester has the court reporter/communications officer play back their conversation in the hallway. Busted! And now Lester’s REALLY fuming. She flies off the handle and demands that the traitors be executed. Chekov and Sulu are both shocked–executions are forbidden! But no, it’s not up to them. The traitors will be executed immediately. And by immediately, she means after several scenes unfold, showing how our heroes are going to stop it.
Sulu and Chekov are busy planning how to stop the executions when Lester loses it, and not in the usual crazy murderer way. The link between her and Kirk begins to weaken, and for a moment she senses that she’s in the brig. She finds Coleman and he says that she must kill her body with the real Kirk soon or the transference will be broken. But killing is just so manly, she can’t handle it, and tells Coleman to do it–or else risk his own exposure as a murderer. Reluctantly he drums up a lethal dose of something into a hypospray and they set off to to the holding cell.
They open the cell to “sedate” Kirk, but Kirk attacks! That wily fox! Some man(??)-wrestling ensues, and during the fray the transference is broken, this time for good. Lester–back in her own body–sobs uncontrollably.
LESTER: Ohh! I’ve lost to the captain. I’ve lost to James Kirk! I want you dead! I want you dead! I want you dead! Oh, I’m never going to be the captain. Never. Kill him.
Coleman takes her in his arms, confesses that he loves her, and McCoy escorts them to sickbay. Kirk, relieved to be himself again, reflects:
KIRK: I didn’t want to destroy her.
SPOCK: I’m sure we all understand that, Captain.
KIRK: Her life could have been as rich as any woman’s, if only… If only…
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1 Where’s Admiral Akhbar when you need him?
2 In this review I refer to each character by the person who inhabits the body, not the appearance of the body. So Kirk in Lester’s body is still Kirk, and Lester in Kirk’s body is still Lester. Seeing as the point of the episode is to communicate that physical appearances cannot hide who we really are, this seemed an appropriate tack to take.
Analysis
Fiction can have value and merit even when it offends. Mildred Pierce is a sexist propaganda piece from the ’50s, but it’s a brilliant noir. Ezra Pound was a fascist and a Nazi sympathizer, but he wrote some of the most significant poetry of the 20th century. And H.P. Lovecraft, the man who has come in many ways to define horror, wrote some of the most appallingly racist fiction you’ve ever laid eyes on. Even with the warts–and those are some huge, monstrous warts–it’s difficult to deny the incredible power and brilliance of their work.
“Turnabout Intruder,” on the other hand, should probably be buried in the deepest volcano to burn for a thousand lifetimes and be seen by no one.
Janice Lester is the most sexist character to ever appear in Star Trek. Her complete incompetence as a captain, uncontrollable emotions, psychological instability, and sociopathic disregard for any human life but her own cast her as one of the great villains of the series. None of these qualities are in themselves problematic–they’re the makings of a great villain, actually. The problems are all motivational. She’s power-hungry and ambitious not because she’s been shut out of a culture that refuses to accept women: it’s because she’s actually that incompetent. Kirk calls the captain’s chair the “position she doesn’t merit.” She doesn’t resist killing Kirk because she has empathy for her antagonist or a deeply rooted respect for all life: it’s because she’s actually a coward. Dr. Coleman calls her on it and she basically agrees with him. She doesn’t even have confidence: she has arrogance. It can’t rightly be called hubris because she hasn’t enough judgment to reasonably err from it.
There’s no perceptiveness, no depth to her. She believes that because she has passed the physical tests and successfully overcome any doubts about her outward appearance that she will be accepted as the captain, utterly failing to understand that Kirk’s leadership lies in his respect for his crew. It is that, and not his title, that commands their loyalty.
And why? Because she’s a woman scorned. I’m sure getting dumped by Kirk is rough, but really? Driving you to murder your entire scientific outpost? There are other fish in the great galactic sea, lady. It’s not just break-up blues, either. She does it because, as Kirk says, of her “hatred of her own womanhood.” What the hell does that mean? Does she write angry screeds to her uterus? Then there’s the little gem about how she would not accept the “richness” that other women enjoy in their womanly lives. Again: what? Is this about giving up her career to get married and have babies? Is the implication that that life wasn’t good enough for her? And lastly, she says herself that she wants Kirk to suffer the “indignity” of being a woman. Which indignity? Do they have jeggings in this quadrant? Oh, I know! The indignity of having to watch offensive portrayals of ourselves in fiction! Or does she just attribute her exclusion from the command track to her lady parts and not her obvious psychosis? I can’t even comprehend her motivations. Fans seem to agree that her remark about women not be admitted to the world of starship captains has to do with Kirk’s marriage to the ship and not any kind of official policy. But then, what exactly is her motivation? Janice Lester does not have to be a bad character. If she had simply gone mad from loneliness in space, or from feeling like a failure by not making it to the command track, or from pretty much any other reason than that she hates being a woman, this episode could have been good. Still weak, but watchable. Compelling, even. But no. She “tortured” Kirk for the unfairness of her station. Because his world won’t admit women. Even if it were policy, I wouldn’t blame them, though I think she should’ve gone for a Commodore instead–they tend to be so batshit crazy that I doubt anyone would have noticed the switch.
The premise is just so antithetical to the ideals of Star Trek. Where’s Kirk’s promise of equality? Of people not seeing you for your size or your skin? Why do the Romulans have a woman commander and the Federation doesn’t get one for four iterations? It’s appalling and it’s shameful. Janice Lester is a disgrace. We’ve seen good women before, there’s absolutely no reason for this and no excuse. We’ve met Edith Keeler, the Romulan Commander, and Areel Shaw. We know the show can do better and has done better. This is the show just giving up. What a disastrous and disappointing note to end such an optimistic series on.
I’m also not so generous as to cite sexism as the episode’s only weakness. The plot only works (well, “works”) because Kirk is incapacitated for the entire episode. They keep him sedated, as they must, or else he could find some way–or ten–to take back his ship. I was baffled by his inability to do so. Proving that he was the real Kirk should be trivially easy. He’s done it before! I can’t imagine that he and Spock haven’t got a thousand embarrassing secrets between them. But nothing really comes together, does it? The entire crew speaks in whispers of a mutiny, yet Lester, red-faced with hysteria and on a murder rampage, is so obviously not the captain that I don’t see how it qualifies as a mutiny. They’re deposing a tyrant masquerading as their actual leader. Where’s the problem? Then there are things like Coleman’s motivation, which I guess got mixed in with the recycling. Why would he help this person? At the end he suddenly declares that he loves her, but there’s no evidence of that at all prior and certainly no indication she reciprocates. And why does the transference suddenly stop working? Did they hit a low signal area? I hate it when I have no bars.
But I have to give credit where it’s due, even here, at the bottom of the volcano, with Xenu. The performances are nothing short of incredible. Shatner, playing Janice playing Kirk, acts his socks off. Physically, he’s extremely effective at conveying both the little and the not-so-little ways in which she differs from our hero. I love when they first swap bodies and he lightly touches his hips and his hair: those are new. When McCoy suggests beaming “her” up to the ship, his voice hesitates before making a decision. The real Kirk would never hesitate to help someone in need. There’s the moment after they beam up when McCoy says “Dr. Lester” and Shatner twitches at her name, suppressing the urge to respond. He touches the captain’s chair with reverence rather than familiarity and ease. But what really gives it away are the facial expressions. Shatner smiles at all the wrong times. He laughs confidently when he should feel shame or fear. He even walks differently, with a kind of unearned contempt for those around him. It’s brilliant. It’s amazing to watch.
Sandra Smith is no slouch, either. She exudes confidence and poise. She speaks slowly and deliberately, maintaining eye contact, never wavering. You can really believe that she’s Captain Kirk. There’s a fierceness in her eyes when she breaks that glass and begins to saw away at the straps. It’s creative and bold. It’s so very much the kind of thing he would do. And he doesn’t dwell on what’s happened. He doesn’t try to figure out how, or even why–he simply starts the work of getting his ship and his body back. She doesn’t have many lines but she manages his presence very well nonetheless.
With those performers the show could’ve ended as richly as it began. If only… if only…
Nonetheless, if I am here, I am glad to be here with you, our fine readers. Here, at the end of all* things.
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Torie’s Rating: Full Stop (on a scale of 1-6)
Eugene Myers: THUD.
What was that? Oh, it was the sound of Star Trek falling flat on its face.
It’s a shame that the series officially ends on such a weak episode. Before I dwell on the many ways “Turnabout” disappoints, let me point out a few things. First, as much as this is indicative of the general quality of the third season, it’s also very much a quintessential Star Trek story. 78 episodes after “The Man Trap”–which also involved an old flame, a remote outpost, and strange deaths–the show is still exploring unbearable loneliness, albeit the supposed agony of being “alone in a woman’s body.” Just as early episodes like “The Enemy Within” addressed the question of identity, “Turnabout” attempts to define personality. I rather how Kirk–in Lester’s body–focuses on the importance of the mind in determining who he is, regardless of the body his consciousness is in. I think this is incredibly insightful, especially in an episode that nominally struggles with gender issues via a woman who wants to be a man.
As usual, loyalty is also a key component of the drama that unfolds. Kirk appeals to Spock to trust and help him by reminding the Vulcan of other missions where their friendship affected his actions, most notably “The Tholian Web,” one of several neat little tidbits of continuity in the script. Naturally, this theme resonates through the films, especially Star Trek III: The Search for Spock.
Spock handles the bizarre situation admirably, and it’s fascinating that he ends up following his feelings more than Dr. McCoy does. The doctor is too caught up in the need for hard evidence; he says this is the only thing that will satisfy Starfleet Command, but I think he’s also relying on his medical expertise to assess the captain’s condition, and he can’t accept that his tests and instruments can fail him. McCoy’s friendship with Jim is just as strong as Spock’s, yet they act in opposition to each other. Or is it that even in the face of Kirk’s aberrant behavior, is McCoy trying to give his captain the benefit of the doubt?
The performances are strong, to a point. Oddly enough, I couldn’t stand Lester whenever she’s hysterical and weak–whether it was Shatner or Smith playing the part. But Smith is wonderfully evil as a strong woman acting out her plot for revenge, and she has good moments as Kirk as well. Shatner was less successful getting in touch with his feminine side, though his initial behavior strongly reminded me a lot of his turn as the shapeshifter in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country; he brought a playfulness to the character, a lightness in his voice and manner, that perhaps belies his traditionally more serious portrayal of a starship captain bearing the burden of 430 lives on a daily basis.
So, okay, the episode wants to examine women’s rights, sort of. Though this was certainly a hot button issue in 1969, it’s embarrassingly out of place in humanity’s enlightened future. From a plot perspective, the problem is that the situation is too close to real life. There’s no metaphor involved here–Starfleet is just as bureaucratic and misogynistic as the U.S. government in the Sixties.
The science fictional spin does nothing to highlight the wrongness of that attitude–if anything, it enforces it. Starfleet doesn’t trust a woman to command a starship, and indeed she can’t: Lester’s shown to be irrational, weepy, power-hungry, and incompetent. I was stunned when Kirk was actually filing his nails while talking to Dr. McCoy. Unfortunately, no one points out that Lester in particular is not firing on all thrusters, that her behavior isn’t representative of all women. No one acknowledges that Starfleet’s policy is inappropriate for a culture that embraces everyone for who they are.
I could go on about this for a while, but it just seems like a missed opportunity to have Lester herself buy into female inferiority to the point that she wants to be a man. Does she want to be a man because she truly believes they’re superior, or because it’s the only way for her to command a starship? How much more interesting would it be if she had been fully competent in command of Enterprise, perhaps even in a crisis? Instead, her unsuitability for the role was pushed to comedic levels–or at least, it would be funny if it weren’t so infuriating. (Incidentally, how many male Starfleet captains have we seen go off the deep end since the series began? Oh yeah, they’re definitely much better candidates for command.)
From another perspective, the episode just fails to be interesting or entertaining. It devolves into another boring court martial, which doesn’t even make any sense. They can record other people’s conversations and use it as evidence against them when they aren’t even on trial? Why wouldn’t Spock’s testimony as a Vulcan, scientist, and Starfleet officer be admissible as evidence? How can Kirk be an impartial judge when he was the victim of the crime? How can he offer to pardon Spock if he cooperates?
Worst of all, the script just doesn’t take any chances with its provocative material, and it chooses the easy way out by allowing Kirk and Lester to switch back without the aid of whatever alien technology made the swap possible. Strange that Starfleet never studies this miraculous device and we never hear of it again in canon–except obliquely on Star Trek: The Next Generation, where they rightly decide to just skip it all together.
Speaking of mind transference, I’ve seen that visual effect in cartoons when characters switch places, but somehow it looks sillier in a live-action drama intended for adults. And how are Lester and Kirk recording logs about what’s going on? And why would she?
Deep breaths. I just wish the show’s conclusion weren’t so anticlimactic, and that the last season hadn’t so frequently gone where the show had gone before–and poorly at that. I imagine that back then, even the most hardcore Star Trek fans might have felt the show itself had betrayed them and swapped places with some other series, or that it had done as much as it could on network television. Though I’m sorry that this re-watch is over, I’m also relieved that I don’t have to suffer through the weekly disappointment of wasted potential.
Eugene’s Rating: Full Stop
Best Line: LESTER: Believe me, it’s better to be dead than to live alone in the body of a woman.
Syndication Edits: Scotty’s comments in the transporter room that Lester is fortunate to be alive; Lester enjoying the feel of the captain’s chair when she first arrives on the bridge; Sulu interrupting Lester and McCoy’s fight over the physical exam; some slow pans and shots; a huge portion of the discussion between Spock and McCoy about Kirk’s emotional state and what they can do to find out more; the horizontal stairmaster portion of the exam; Lester’s captain’s log about how she has no fears of discovery after the exam; redshirts laughing at Kirk’s insistence that he’s not Lester, and reaction shots from the rest of the witnesses; Lester asking Spock if he’s ever heard of a body transfer before, and Spock saying no; more reaction shots (a shame, because some of those facial expressions are priceless); McCoy’s initial quiet contemplation about the vote and Scotty’s entrance; the first part of Sulu and Chekov’s discussion on the bridge about whether they will allow the executions to take place.
Trivia: The on-set nickname for this episode was “Captain Kirk, Space Queen.”
Galloway, the redshirt who accompanies Spock when he questions Kirk-as-Lester, actually died in continuity in “The Omega Glory.” Whoops. The actor was recast as Lt. Johnson in “Day of the Dove.” Double whoops.
Chekov tells Sulu that only General Order 4 carries a death penalty. Either he’s misremembering or they got confused with General Order 7, from “The Menagerie.”
If you pay attention during the court martial scene, Lester-as-Kirk exits the room via… wall. Apparently Shatner tried to explain to the director that there was no door there, but the director wouldn’t listen.
Until NewTrek, Sandra Smith was the only person other than Shatner to ever “play” Captain Kirk.
Shatner was sick with the flu during the production and had trouble carrying Smith in take after take.
In a famous outtake, Shatner replaced the line “Spock, give it up. Come back to the Enterprise family. All charges will be dropped. And the madness that overcame all of us on Camus II will fade and be forgotten” with: “Spock, it’s always been you, you know it’s always been you. Say you love me too.”
Other notes: The only regular character missing in this episode is Uhura; Nichelle Nichols had a singing engagement.
The episode was inspired by a 1930s comedic novel called Turnabout, in which a husband and wife switch bodies. It was made into a movie directed by Hal Roach in 1940.
Previous episode: Season 3, Episode 23 – “All Our Yesterdays.”
And for St. Patrick’s day Star Trek gives us a load of blarney!
There’s only one rating to give this episode: Terminal reentry, clearly there is no recovering from this disaster.
First off: Mind transference in an SF setting? What exactly is being transmitted from body to body? Clearly their brains (Brain? what is Brain?) are still in their skull (if missing from the writers) so just how does memory et al jump from one to the other?
Second: Yeah, during the first half Shatner’s acting was pretty good, but by the final acts the man had clearly starved himself because he was eating the scenery. Great take on femininity there, Bill.
Third: sorry Torie the plot of the episode does revolve around the offensive stupid and anti-trek concept that Starfleet does not allow women to command. when :ester complains the command doesn’t admit women and that it’s unfair Kirk agrees it is, he doesn’t defend himself or say anything to give the impression it was anything but the policy. It’s the reason she hates herself as a woman because women aren’t allowed in the boys’ clubs. And of course it all comes down to that stupid ending lines, she could have had as a fulfilling life as any woman, if only… yeah if only she’d submitted to her rightful and proper place.
hmm I do wonder about that love affair between Lester and Coleman I men how does that work after the transfer? What was Coleman thinking?
I’m trying to make something of the fact that the planet is named Camus II. Camus’ existentialism (for all he denied the term) focused on the absurdity (here, innate meaninglessness) of existence, and the impossibility of connecting our absurd existence to any form of permanence or meaning. Instead, we must create our own meanings, acknowledge the absurd and live, in despite of it, for the struggle to create meaning itself.
This seems to me directly relevant to Kirk’s central thesis throughout the series: that humanity, human progress, is defined not by any particular end point or achievement, but that the essence of humanity is the struggle to create a better world, to face challenges and thereby better itself. We see Kirk literally destroying the underpinnings of paradise on a number of occasions, because it is more creative of human-ness for the people to struggle in agony than to grow complacent in luxury.
So it’s a pretty powerful thematic name for the series as a whole — but as to relevance to this particular episode . . . I suppose in one sense it’s what Lester is missing in her interpretation of the world. She sees the form of Kirk the Captain, without acknowledging that it is his essential nature that shapes that role to him and to his crew. . . nah, I don’t buy that either.
Unrelated open question: do we buy that Starfleet is a sexist society? Obviously the 1960s were; but ultimately, do we think that Lester is right, that the Starfleet captain’s club wouldn’t admit a woman; or is she looking for a scapegoat for the failures which she’s encountered due to her own personal inadequacies?
@bobsandiego #1
Re: Kirk not defending himself/Starfleet against the charge of sexism — I dunno. I kinda thought by that point he knew she was cuckoo and was just humoring her to avoid a big argument with a sick/dying woman. Seems pretty harsh to tell someone on her death bed “It wasn’t sexism holding you back, you just suck too much to succeed.”
So I’m not completely convinced. She does get treated with a kind of 60s-TV chauvanistic brush-off or condescension; but I’m not sure if that’s a “Don’t Startle the Crazy Lady” thing or if it’s a sincere reflection of the attitudes of this society.
Phenomenal job on this one, Torie. I expected you would say all this better than I could, so I was tempted to sit this one out :) The show ended weak, but I think we ended as strong as ever. All your observations on Shatner’s subtle performance almost make me want to watch it again to see what I missed. Almost.
@2 DeepThought
That’s a really cool observation about Camus. I’ve never read him, but I should have thought of that.
And unfortunately, as bobsandiego said, I think it’s pretty clear that Starfleet won’t allow a woman to captain a starship. Maybe it was poorly worded, like much of the rest of this script, but I don’t see any point to bending the phrasing to mean something else. Whether or not it’s official policy, it could be that Command has actively resisted promoting women, or there simply isn’t any precedence for it.
In addition to the strong female leaders Torie mentioned in the show, I’ll also throw in T’Pau as a prime example.
By the way, wasn’t one of the Federation Presidents in the films a woman?
It’s been a while since I’ve seen this, but my memory of Shatner as Lester is something bordering on camp. He minces. That’s the only word I can think of for it. It’s like a bad audition for La Cage aux Folles. If I were a woman (or a gay man, for that matter), I think I’d find it offensive.
And the plot just doesn’t know what to do with itself. Either Lester needed to be toned down so that we could see that it really was sexism keeping her out of the big chair, or we needed to see that women could have command (or at least that the glass ceiling was breaking) and Lester was kept out because she was absolutely bugf*ck. It’s too bad the episode couldn’t have been better or a whole lot worse. Either would have been better for the last episode.
That outtake was probably another major contributor to the birth of slashfic. Wrap-up next week? And one for the season and one for the show as a whole? Then the movies.
from a writer’s perspective I think the episode would have been more dramatic if we had not been shown the mind transfer event at all. Follow Spock and Bones to the dying people, come back and Kirk’s acting odd and Lester is out cold. Make it a bit of a mystery that the veiwer has to follow with the characters. At least that’s how I would have handled it.
A schtick performed on every “phantasy” TV show from the ’60s, from Gilligan’s Island to the Flintstones.
For me, one of the greatest weaknesses of this atrocious episode is in the casting.
Not only can I not at all see Captain James T. Kirk involved in a protracted, impassioned relationship with a woman who looks and sounds and behaves like Sandra Smith (compare to the stunning babes this guy has toyed with), I also cannot see any part of Kirk in the dulled portrayal by Sandra Smith. Shatner actually does a reasonably good acting job in the role of a hysterical female; Smith conveys nothing about our charming, brash, authoritative and resourceful captain.
The problems seep outward from there.
This is the guy who instantly sized up the situation in “What Are Little Girls Made Of” in order to sabotage his android lookalike, and he can’t figure out any way to fox his way out of Sickbay? Who’s lied shamelessly and creatively to overcome cops and gangsters and Nazis? This is also the guy who “relaxed” by getting into a brutal knockdown, dragout fistfight with Finnegan in “Shore Leave” and who, outnumbered, bodily threw himself into several guys in “Tomorrow Is Yesterday” and fought three-to-one against armed “Gamesters of Triskelion,” and he can’t physically assert himself inside a woman’s body? This is the guy who can bluff and fight and con his way out of any desperate situation, and he’s reduced to helpless passivity?
Every other jackhole hippie in the universe can read the Starship Takeover Manual, but Kirk-as-Lester can’t even hobble down to Auxiliary Control or into a Jefferies Tube?
Kirk-as-Lester should have had that ship completely tied in knots within minutes, ready to blow apart, until Lester-as-Kirk was begging him to resume command. Now THAT would have been an episode to watch!
There should have been at least 50 ways he could instantly communicate the situation to McCoy, and all Spock needed to cue in was “Queen to queens level three.” Not only this, but having (supposedly but not believably) had a prior relationship with Lester, he should have been able to quickly turn her-as-him over his-as-her knee.
To command is to know what it is to assume command, instantly and without hesitation. If there’s one thing we know about Kirk, it’s that.
It’s just a terrible episode that takes a larger-than-life heroic figure built up over 80 episodes and reduces him to a passive weakling awaiting summary execution by a hysterical nutjob. Ultimately what resolves the episode is not Kirk who succeeds, it’s Lester who fails. Terrible; terrible in every dimension.
Hmm — I’m still not convinced that the Starfleet “No Gurlz” Rule is legit. The problem is all the counterexamples could be seen as retcons (Erika Hernandez of Enterprise), or are from the TNG-era Starfleet (like Geordi’s mom). The captain of the Saratoga in ST IV was a woman, but she’s a good deal younger than Kirk, and that movie was twenty years down the road. We also get a Captain Flynn who was Chief of Security in a TOS novel and promoted to Captain by the time of the Khaaaaan novelization. . . there was also a female captain Carmen Ikeya in the 1988 novel Time for Yesterday, though those aren’t really canonical . . .
Ultimately, though, I think the absence of contrary evidence is due to network censorship, rather than a world-building choice — Number One is a pretty clear sign that Rodenberry at least wanted there to be women in command positions (and a woman be XO should’ve at the very least given Lester pause, if she weren’t psychotic). If there was a hard bar to female captains, the franchise has certainly tried hard to walk it back since ’69.
This one is better than I remember it. Not that it’s good, mind you, but better. That bit about women captains really taints it. I get what they were thinking, SF is really about the present after all, but it doesn’t really fit with the rest of the series.
The performances were fun (Shatner does tend to leave bite marks in the scenery, but that’s why he’s the Shat) and a lot of individual bits were great. Galloway anticipating the neck pinch only to get taken out by the ambidexterous Spock still makes me smile.
BobSanDiego (at #6) has it exactly right from a dramatic perspective. Why show us? Tell the story from Spock’s POV (or McCoy’s or whomever) and you have a stronger show.
All and all, I’ll give it a 1.5. I defy anyone to tell me that this was worse than The Empath.
Ah, well. It certainly would have been better to have ended on a high note.
I think the ‘full stop’ ratings were a bit harsh, really — there were other episodes that were just plain worse, and did better. And I agree with Torie’s assessment of the acting (sorry, Eugene): it is brilliant; they went out with a bang. But the utterly blatant sexism really does rankle.
And, no, there simply is no way to justify it by trying to twist some other meaning into it: it’s quite clear that the episode’s premise is that Starfleet does not allow women into starship command. Coming as it does from the 1960s, this is perhaps unsurprising; women weren’t allowed into lots of upper-eschelon positions, especially in the military. One would like to think that the writers were a bit more enlightened — as is pointed out, Roddenberry had a female Number One in ‘The Menagerie’. But, no doubt, the network just had a problem with that.
Interestingly, I think perhaps this might be the only other episode besides ‘Where No Man Has Gone Before’ in which a woman wears trousers (and I did rather like that outfit)….
I think that Lester’s psychosis could have been tolerable had it not been for the Starfleet sexism; I don’t think it would be completely unreasonable to have a psychotic female character who hates being a woman — of course, that would have been quite a different story, I think. And she would have had to have been truly insane — after all, by the 23rd century sex-change operations would have been fairly trivial, I should have thought.
It’s mentioned in the Trivia section that Shatner had flu; what’s not made clear is that he was running a fever during shooting, and that they kept having to reapply the makeup because it was melting off his face. This makes his performance even more amazing. (‘Mincing’ — well, maybe, but that was the character, so there you go.)
As far as Coleman’s romance with Lester continuing after the transference, well — one would like to think that sexual attitudes will be a bit more open by then, and that he’s in love with Lester, not just her body.
And my favourite line? Scotty’s summation in the corridor: ‘Doctor, I’ve seen the captain feverish, sick, drunk, delirious, terrified, overjoyed, boiling mad. But up to now I have never seen him red-faced with hysteria.’ I liked that.
And so, this is the end, my friend(s).
Not sure what comes next. NewTrek, I suppose. Or maybe the films. And I’ll try to keep up with it all. But this has been special, and I have to say that I have truly, truly enjoyed these past months, writing and reading about a subject that has been a constant companion of mine for 40 years. I’ve loved every minute of it, and I just want to express my deepest appreciation to Torrie and Eugene for the time, effort, and psychic duress they’ve endured in putting this all together for our entertainment.
There are multiple pints of fine British ale — served at the proper temperature — at your disposal any time any of you find yourselves in or near Oxford. You’ve been wonderful company.
On their behalf, then — and perhaps a fitting apology for this episode — I give you this:
Thanks, everyone.
And my apologies for misspelling Torie’s name. Argh.
@10 NomadUK
I second your opinions on our talented hosts, Eugene & Torie. This has been fun and engaging and in part because of their fine leadershi, the rest has come from a bunch of fine commenters This has been fun.
@10 NomadUK- How can you forget Victoria Jackson in “What Are Little Girls Made Of?” and her trouser outfit? Jill Ireland in “This Side of Paradise”, too; I’m sure there are more.
And you have expressed my feelings and gratitude better than I could’ve; so I’ll just append a “Me too, y’all!”
Maybe Torie can correct your spelling :)
@Torie- I predicted long ago that you would probably like The Shat’s performance, but haaaate the story.
Janice had to be incompetent- serial murder disqualifies her as “normal”- and I can buy her being resentful, blaming Kirk, and going insane eventually- but I am surprised that the producers (Gene, wtf, no excuse!) allowed the statement re: female commanders to make it. I understand that people in the 60s would acept and believe this, but Star Trek does better than this with social issues (and has, e.g. the Romulan commander). Even with poor execution, the intent is usually correct.
But… on the other hand… has anyone here heard of Captain Holly Graf, the former CO of USS Cowpens, and the circumstances of her relief? There are similarities- no not the mind transfer!
before people bag on the Great Bird about the plot just a word on stoyr by credit, themeans they took a story and re-wrote, for all I know the only aspect that remained was the mind transfer and an imposter Kirk. For the sexist ‘no girl allowed’ premise I blame Fred the Fink.
@ 1 bobsandiego
I didn’t mind the body-swap technology. Sure it was a shortcut, but those things always are.
I’m really intrigued by the overwhelming consensus that women weren’t allowed to be commanders. I found it impossible to tell in the context of her psychosis if she, by virtue of being crazy, had never managed to hack it as a commander and thus blamed it all on her sex, or if she actually hit a real wall and that stifling of her ability and potential is what drove her off the deep end. I tend to discount assertions made by crazy people so I didn’t assume that her remark was an accurate representation of the situation.
@ 2 DeepThought
I thought the Camus reference tied in closely to her line about how her year with Kirk was the only time she ever felt alive. I get the impression that since then, she’s been a kind of shell of a person, emotionless and blank, like The Stranger–and that like Meursault it comes with the territory of being an outsider to the dominant culture.
@ 5 DemetriosX
I don’t see why anyone should be offended by his performance, unless they, too, are psychotic murderers. Not a lot of resemblance to myself in that character. :)
That’s pretty much my take on how they could have handled the gender issue, too. Either she’s so crazy they wouldn’t promote her, or there’s actually a barrier there and it drove her mad.
@ 7 Lemnoc
You break my heart, but I think the problems you describe are writing problems not casting problem. I mean, Kirk revealing himself should have been, again, trivially easy. They had to literally sedate him for as much of the episode as possible in order for the plot to unfold in the way it did.
@ 8 DeepThought
One word: retcon.
@ 9 ChurchHatesTucker
That moment with Galloway is just priceless. Right up there with the arachnid joke Spock pulls in “A Taste of Armageddon.”
@ 9 ChurchHatesTucker
Oh, and “The Empath” is better. But “Plato’s Stepchildren” is still worse.
@ 10 NomadUK
You’re going to make me cry! Thank you. Would you hate me forever if I admitted that I didn’t drink beer? *ducks*
I didn’t like that line. The fact that he uses the word “hysterical” was, I think, pointed, and awful. She’s not a hysterical woman: she’s a crazy person. But I’m glad someone agrees with me on the performances. Yeah, he’s chewing scenery, but he’s also playing the most insane person we’ve ever seen on the show. And we’ve seen some pretty batty commodores in our time.
@ 13 sps49
Is that real? Cowpens?
@ 12 bobsandiego
*hat tip*
@ All
Re: what to do next, well, that’s up in the air. This project isn’t worth much without all of you, so if you have ideas or requests, let ’em at us. If you’ll stick with us, we’ll stick with you. We’ll probably be taking some breaks, though. Eugene’s getting married in July AND has a book coming out, while I have no excuse other than slight burnout.
We’ll certainly do a season wrap-up post (uggggh), and probably a series wrap-up. After that, we were thinking of continuing the “in air date order” rule to do The Animated Series, which is available for free via CBS.com, when their site isn’t broken, and free the rest of the time through Google thanks to smart archiving. I haven’t seen any of it save the tribbles episode, and Eugene has seen maybe half. Beyond that: well, “The Cage” aired in the ’80s and there are the movies, of course, which I wouldn’t miss for the world.
Beyond that: we’ve discussed doing partial re-watches of NewTreks, i.e. picking a few episodes per season we definitely want to cover, and letting folks vote on the remainder. The problem with such long-lived series is that there’s a lot of mediocrity there, so better to pick the real highs and lows and have fun with those than sludge through, what, 200 episodes a series? God, I’ll be writing these things when I retire!
But what do you guys think? Should we just call it quits after the movies? Any requests? You’ll still call us, right?
sps49@13: Damn, you’re right. How could I forget those? All I can say is it’s been a long three seasons….
Torie@15: Just because a crazy person says something doesn’t mean it’s not true! I think, though, that it’s really two things: First, Kirk doesn’t really say anything to disagree with her statement that his world of starship command doesn’t admit women; second, we’re a cynical bunch and probably assume that the writer or the network were just sexist pigs.
Anyway, I see your point, and I suppose there’s some room for ambiguity there. I just think that if they’d been open to the idea, there would have been a female in charge of a ship (other than the Romulan commander) somewhere along the way.
I wonder, in fact, whether the Romulan commander was seen in sort of the same light as women in high positions in Communist militaries — it was okay for them to put those women in charge, but, hey, they’re Communists! We freedom-loving democracies keep our women safe in the kitchen. Or something.
Torie@16: Would you hate me forever if I admitted that I didn’t drink beer?
Well, nobody’s perfect. But we also have a lovely selection of fine French wines and Scotch and Irish whiskeys, and, of course, the usual nonalcoholic stuff if that’s your thing. So, whatever works!
And, frankly, I think your proposals for future rewatches (films, animated series, and high points of the newer stuff) sound just fine. I’m happy to hang around for those.
First, a series recap. Then, tackle the Animated Series!
(…seriously, I think an interesting project would be to take the [authentic] voices of ST:AS and redub them into a better animation).
@15 Torie
It’s just the mind and body being such totally distinct things is so ignorant as to the function of that brain and its make-up, even in 68 they knew better. You can’t separate the person from his brain. (Anyway if there is this specialness that can be sifted out think about that with transporters and McCoy looks like the sighted man in the land of the blind.)
As to Lester and her motivation, the only thing htat makes sense is tat she’s held back by her gender. Had she washed out in school the academy, or the fleet Spock would have known that, kirk would have knonw that and thrown it back into her face that *she* wasn’t good enough, no they all accept she can’t be in command. Also with that bit, being locked out by her gender, the final lines make no sense what so ever. That was the point of the episode she could have been happy and fulfilled had she stayed in her place. (ug I feel so unclean now. Like when I read ‘Who Censored Roger Rabbit?’)
I’m all for keeping going. At the very least, a season wrap-up is traditional now and a series wrap-up would also be interesting, especially looking back at some of your old grades. As far as I can tell, the movies have always been part of the plan, no? They were on the Tor index and they’re on the index here. TAS would also be interesting, although it has been decanonized. Several episodes were follow-ups and most of the writing wasn’t bad.
And yes, Torie, the USS Cowpens. It’s named for a Revolutionary War battle. The more recent ship of that name had one of the first female commanders in the Navy and she was… problematic.
oh yes, lets continue. I don;t really care that much about the Animated series, except of course there we get Star Trek Kzinti! What a great set of bad guys to pull into the relauch huh?
Anyway Torie you *have* to conitue onto the fils, cuase you still have told and justified you fav Trek movie…
TAS next. Then do Farragut Animated. (Seriously. It’s a ridiculously faithful adaptation.)
Then the movies/TNG/Whatever. I’m loving this too much to stop. Heck, I’ll even watch Enterprise if y’all cover it.
Sure, continue, but are you really going to hold off on The Cage? It belongs with the original set, I feel.
The animated series was done by many of the best people from the live-action show, and was well made- for a Saturday morning cartoon. The music cues got old, though. The music cues got old. Did I already say the theme music got old after a while?
I would feel terrible if Torie and Eugene watched ST:E for us. There were a few good ones there, but oh, the piles of dross!
Significant episodes of the many many series episodes sounds good, as does voting for our preferences. I will first alert you to a site that has some of the worst of Trek already, at agonybooth.com/recaps/Star_Trek/
They had me at “Agony Booth”.
@6 bobsandiego
Absolutely, that approach would have improved the episode, but a lot of other things would have had to change before it became good. At this point, most of the production team probably just didn’t care anymore, or just didn’t know what they were doing, as shown by the director trying to get Shatner to walk through a wall.
@7 Lemnoc
Good points all. For some reason I love episodes where the crew has to use their knowledge of the ship to take it over. They did a lot of great episodes like that on TNG: “Starship Mine,” “The Game,” “Brothers,” “Rascals”… Kirk was completely, uh, castrated, in this episode.
@All
Thanks for the kind words and for sticking with us. It really means a lot to us that you followed us over here, and I couldn’t ask for a more intelligent and thoughtful group to discuss one of my favorite shows with. I look forward to continuing the voyage we have begun…
@10 Nomad, I’ll definitely take you up on that ale. I have to get back to England one of these days.
@19 Lemnoc
Now that’s a good idea. If only I were a better artist, I would love to re-animate the show. (That’s an odd sentence.) These days, if they really wanted, they could use CGI models of the original actors to revive it as “live-action,” which would only be a little creepy. The furries would certainly tune in for the catwoman communications officer. And that’s a bonus?
@23 ChurchHatesTucker
I’ve been meaning to check out Farragut. It’s a remarkable production, that’s for sure. Heck, I wouldn’t mind reviewing some of the live-action fan series and films either…
@24 sps49
I think “The Cage” is kind of an odd duck with the original series, especially with “The Menagerie” there. We weren’t sure where to fit it, but it’s open to discussion.
And I, for one, have been planning to sit through all of Enterprise, just to get a bigger advantage in Star Trek Scene-It!. The gap in my knowledge of Trek continuity vexes me. But no fear, I wouldn’t put all of you through that. And Torie wants to re-watch Voyager for some reason.
I, for one, vote to do the cage before we move on. Post season three wrap-up, but before any new series.
I’m late getting here again – I see you’re already talking about what to do next. I’d suggest that instead of doing a stand-alone review of The Cage, you could do a comparative review of The Cage with The Menagerie episodes. Otherwise, I’m game for just about anything as I enjoy reading so many different takes of these episodes.
Now on to the episode under discussion. For years I’ve dismissed this episode as a silly little thought/mind swapping story. Not until reading this review did I make a connection between this episode and another book/movie. Not that that possible source of inspiration offers any excuse for this episode’s storytelling problems. Additionally, as good as Shatner was as Lester in this episode (and as Kirk throughout the series), he just couldn’t stand up to Humphrey Bogart’s performance as Lt. Commander Queeg in The Caine Mutiny. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0046816/ There is no mind/body swap in The Caine Mutiny but there is the story of a crew facing the possibility of having to relieve their Captain of command. Maybe there is a connection and that would only add to the thought of how much better this episode could have been. I agree with Torie about the performances but this is not an episode I feel compelled to watch if I know it is going to be on.
@ 17 NomadUK
That’s a good point. Maybe the Romulan commander was just another opportunity to separate us from them.
Wine and whiskey work for me. I haven’t been to the UK in five years, maybe I’m due.
@ 19 Lemnoc
That’s a little ambitious for me.
@ 20 bobsandiego
That’s a good point, actually, Kirk would probably have railed on about how she couldn’t hack it. And the whole “none of this would have happened if you had just known your place” ending wouldn’t work at all.
@ 21 DemetriosX
Just looked up Holly Graf–yikes.
The movies have always been part of the plan, yes. But there are only six of those!
@ 22 bobsandiego
How can you stand the suspense?
@ 23 ChurchHatesTucker
Don’t say such things! Eugene has been suggesting we watch Enterprise since it went up for free on Hulu. I don’t know if I can do it. I mean, I could if I had the moral support of you all, but… shudder.
@ 24 sps49
Can it be worse than the third season music? I swear, if I have to hear that “Spock’s Brain” music ONE MORE TIME…
@ 26 Eugene
I’m not ashamed to admit it, I do kind of want to re-watch Voyager. I haven’t seen it since first run and some of them were really… interesting.
@ 28 Ludon
I can’t imagine a review of “The Cage” would be complete without a comparison to the episode(s) it became.
The Caine Mutiny‘s definitely getting bumped up on my Netflix queue.
bobsandiego @15: I pretty much agree with you about the science, but why would you single out Star Trek for that complaint? I mean, surely you’re aware that mind transference has been a very, very, very common SF trope for a long time. Even if “they knew better in 1968” (though I’m not sure why you’re so sure of that), similar plots are still being used today. Unless you mean Star Trek should be held to a higher standard because it’s otherwise so scrupulously accurate about science…?!?
As for the road ahead: I vote for The Cage, then TAS, then the movies.
@28 ludon
Wow, way to whip-saw us from crap to gold there, dude. The Caine Mutiny is one of my all time favorite films. Long before I had homevideos it was a movie that if I caught it on TV I just had to watch to the end. Torie if you have never seen this you are in for a real treat. (you’ll also have a better understanding what William Windom was doing with the data cards way back in <em: The Doomsday Machine episode of Trek.) I had to read the award winning novel and that was a treat as well. The Caine Mutiny (also a film resposnible for Michael Caine’s screen name) has a pitch perfect cast with scenes that are very memorable. man I love that movie.
@30 Eli B
I can’t, off the top of my head, think of a single SF treatment of mind transference that I liked, and when you combine it with blatant sexism I like it even less. Now if you do it via magic or comic-book science I’ll be much more forgiving. The Mind/body switch in 4th season of Buffy The Vampire Slayer was damn good, but as I aid it was magic.
There simply can’t be enough recommendations for The Caine Mutiny, and Humphrey Bogart’s performance in it is classic. William Windom’s echoing of that performance was pure genius, and, great as it is, is simply not as amazing as it should be if you haven’t seen the film.
It should be pointed out that José Ferrer does a stellar job as well — though if you want to really see him in top form, Cyrano de Bergerac is absolutely must viewing.
There’s just something about Fred MacMurray that always seems a bit stiff to me. He’s probably best in Double Jeopardy, but he does as good a job in Caine as anywhere, I suppose.
@31 bobsandiego
Never mind Torie, I haven’t seen The Caine Mutiny yet, and I don’t know why because I love Bogart films. I will remedy this. Thanks for the recommendation, guys!
@ 34 Eugene
A Bogart fan and you haven’t seen The Caine Mutiny? Oh, you are in for some fine film fun. I wish it were out on blu-ray but I simply have the DVD. I once had an idea to adapt part of the theme for a Next Generation story with Weslesy at his first duty station.
I wonder is it on Netflix instant view and how many us have xbox live and netflix accounts?
Unfortunately it isn’t on Instant Watch–I just added the DVD to my queue. But what you propose is intriguing, if many of us do have Netflix and Xbox Live, which I do.
technical note for those who are goin to watch The Caine Mutiny
Landing craft, small low boats for Marine to assault beaches, could not see the beaches if they were more than a 1000 yards from the beach. So until they reached that distance they required a talled vessel to guide them or else they’d go off course and land somewhere other than where the wanted and were expected. Being off-target in an amphid invasion is very bad news for the marines involved.
Know this fact will make key scenes more inteligible and dramatic.
The Caine Mutiny: The book is great, too. Very solid. Kind of the gold standard in naval mutiny reading.
@ 36 Eugene
I’ve never watched a movie on Netflix with the xbox party feature but it think it can be done….
@32 bobsandiego: Well, I sure wasn’t saying you had to like the idea or think it’s scientifically valid. I just thought your original complaint, “Mind transference in an SF setting?”, was a little odd since it sounded like you were saying that that was an unusually implausible thing for an SF story to do (and that they should’ve known better because it was 1968)– which clearly isn’t the case; there’s been mind transference in an SF setting ever since there was such a thing as an SF setting. Not to mention that Star Trek used even more scientifically dubious premises fairly often. But if you just meant that it’s a premise you generally don’t like, then never mind.
I can’t stand this episode. It’s one of the very few that I’d rather watch just about anything else rather than see an episode of TOS. It always feels like rubbing “this is a show for and by BOYZ” in my face: “See? Women can’t be captain, cause they’re all kindsa crazy boogedy boogedy!”
Just…ugh. I’d rather watch The Way to Eden and Plato’s Stepchildren on loop.
I’m up for whatever else you folks want to continue with. In fact, I was going to ask you about whether you’d be interested in hosting other people doing rewatches of stuff. I’ve been of a mind to look at a couple of series I quite like, and since one of them has completely stalled over at That Other Rewatch site, it’s even more of a push to do it. Plus, I now own the entirety of the two series I’m most interested in. :)
@40 Hob
I think I see where you are coming from. True is may well be a well warm path in some SF to do the body/swap story, my objection is not that Trek was unusal in using it, but used it all. To paraphrase spock, there is no fact or any extrapolation of fact that would explain how to achive by techology such an effect and as such its poor SF.
Did Trek, and much other Media SF, have dubious science, yuppers, but they often gave up compelling stories about interesting characters, e.g. Balance Of Terror give me that you still have a chance for a win, give me both and you have a chance for an EPIC win, give me neither and I’ll mock it to my grave.
I’ll willing toi let SF have all sorts of errors if they are done in good faith and the result is not poor ploting and characters. Much of SF has mankind eating and being eaten by alien lifeforms as awell as catching alien illnesses all of which is fantastically unlikely but I’ll let it slide. (Howvere the author who pays attention to the why and deals with it often earns bonsu points on myscoreboard. Few people remember that in The puppet Masters Heinlein actually touched on this and explained that the parasites had been modified for terran life. Way cool.
@ 35 bobsandiego
I’m on Xbox live, of course. Username: torz0r. I even have a gold membership and will kick your ass at Catan. Bring it.
@ 41 CatieCat
It reminds me of a fake debate we had in 10th grade social studies. We had to be on opposite sides of a debate. This debate was: Can a woman be president? The opposition said no, “because she might menstruate on some important documents.” Which just goes to show how creative 10th graders can be.
Re: additional bloggers, it’s possible. I think right now we’d like to keep this to us, but send us an e-mail so we have your info and we’ll let you know if that changes.
@ 42 bobsandiego
I think Star Trek and Its Offenses To Science should be a doctoral thesis, if it isn’t already.
@43 torie
I’ll send you a friend invite, my username on Xbox live is pheron and I’m more of a FPS kind of guy
The opposition said no, “because she might menstruate on some important documents.”
I want to have been in your 10th-grade class!
oh, anyone else on xbox live if certainly welcome to friend me! Pheron
@46 bobsandiego
I think I actually have to renew my Gold membership, but my Xbox Live account name is Kasuga Kyosuke. Do you need a certain membership level to watch Netflix movies with people? I bet you do.
@ 44 bobsandiego
Friended!
@ 45 NomadUK
The teacher was pretty horrified. Who knew that was a concern?
@ 47 Eugene
You need a Gold membership to watch Netflix at all, so if you have that ability you should be able to try out the “party play” sometime.
Back to the episode: the more I think about it, the more I’m bothered by how emotional Spock is throughout. He always seems to be biting back words, as if he’s going to snap. During the court martial he spits out the word “Sir” like it gives him a bad taste in his mouth. I wonder if the episode would have worked (slightly) better if they had swapped his role with McCoy’s. It just doesn’t make sense for Spock to be so easily mutinous and passionate in his hatred for Lester-as-Kirk. He’s dealt with impostors before and never got so close to losing it.
@48 Torie
Good catch about Spock getting all high-strung, in all the badness of the episode that element slipped right past me.
I’m sad that the series has reached its end, but I’m optimistic we’ll continue on and have good fun with Trek variations to come. I played Trek Roulette Thursday night and lucked out, came up ‘Tribbles.’
@48 Torie
Maybe Spock just agrees with Starfleet policy that women don’t belong in the captain’s chair. Loses it.
…sorry, couldn’t resist ;-)
And, by the way — Happy 80th birthday, William Shatner.
I’m grieving already at the thought that the world may be without him soon enough; have to stop thinking about that, but, on that day, I shall mourn.
@51 NomadUK
Shhh… Don’t jinx him!
But I’m glad you mentioned it was his birthday. I didn’t quite have enough for a separate post here, but we should have marked the occasion.
Respectfully, I would rate this episode a 2. Not because the story works — it doesn’t; it’s horribly, horribly sexist and Lester’s paralysis when faced with command decisions is offensive and stupid. No, I think it’s a 2 because this is Shatnerian acting at its peak, so hammy and over-the-top that it never fails to entertain. It’s on par with the Gamesters of Triskelian (another silly episode) and The Enemy Within (an excellent episode) in terms of Shatner’s amusing (over)acting.
@ 53 Mercurio
I don’t disagree. I think that absent the social commentary this is a pretty solid 2. The plot is riddled with holes and nonsense, but the acting is top-notch and compelling from beginning to end. Alas, for me, the moral of the story is just so appalling it drags what few merits it has down, down, down.
But I also don’t think The Shat overacts. I think he’s capable of incredible subtlety and nuance, as we see even here in some of his little moments as Lester. He’s a true stage actor. But when the script calls for a crazy person, man, can he deliver.
Torie@54: You rose to The Shat’s defence before I did: The man is simply good. There is, quite simply, nobody else who could have played that role, in all its subtlety and, yes, occasional extravagance.
It’s a shame that Tor concentrated on his attempts to interpret song (not always successfully, I’m afraid), and didn’t instead feature clips from, say, The Twilight Zone, or The Andersonville Trial, or The Intruder, or any of the dozens of other things he’s done over the past 50 years or more.
The man is ace; there is no substitute.
ON Shatner:
That man can really act, but he can really over-act too. NIcholas Meyer has said the key to getting a good performance from Shatner is lots of takes, ash the early one are where he’s over the top and then he levels off.
But his career certainly bridges some stellar performances. If you want to see a really different kind of movie with Shatner in it see INNCUBUS. It’s a demoni horror story filmed entirely in esperanto and written by the creator of The Outer LImits.
@55 NomadUK
I think I missed that post, or it sounds like I didn’t miss anything. I think one of his finest performances was in “Nick of Time” on The Twilight Zone, one of my favorite half hours of television. It’s so easy to mock him, but he’s really quite talented. I mean, he’s still working today!
@56 bobsandiego
I’ve been tempted to check out INCUBUS, but I’m afraid… Didn’t know about the connection to The Outer Limits, but the Esperanto thing swings me back around to AFRAID.
Have you read Nick Meyer’s memoir on his career and the Star Trek films? View from the Bridge, I think? It looks interesting.
@57 Eugene
Have not fear. It’s really just like watching a European art film with subtitles. It’s black-and-white, sounds vaguely European, and it fairly good. There’s even an audio commentary track by Shatner, with his usual mix of truth and playful fibs.
@ 54 {Torie] and @55 {NomadUK]:
I will grant you that Shatner is certainly *capable* of nuance. In his Twilight Zone episodes and in many Star Trek episodes, he’s measured and convincing. And always charismatic. But does he sometimes *over*act? C’mon, with the best of them. He’s notorious for it! I give you Exhibit A: Turnabout Intruder as he prances about and swishes through the scenery like a ballerina (someone above used the word “minces,” which is on target). I wouldn’t call this “top-notch” acting by any traditional measure. Janice Lester was not that effeminate! (I don’t think any woman is that effeminate!:)) Maybe, with more subtlety, Lester’s difficulty in making decisions might not have come across as laughably as it does. (On the other hand, the script is so awful that probably nothing could have saved it, so at least Shatner made it entertaining.) My point is that Shatner has mastered a special category of bad acting: the silly, so-hammy-it[‘s-a-hoot brand of acting, which he occasionally puts on display as in this episode.
Shatner can pull off some very good roles, but it should be noted that he learned his chops in an era that had a very specific acting theory that tended to stress some of the things that come across as flaws in his performances. You see a degree of staginess in a lot of actors from the era. I don’t know if it was related to the Brechtian ideal that the audience should never forget they are watching a performance or what, but you often see a sort of “Look at me, I am acting in a lot of late 50s/60s actors. With the Shat, it comes across most in his occasionally odd diction. But he’s aware of it and has fun with it. The day before his birthday he tweeted that his birthday should be “Everyone talk like me day”.
I’ll tell you what bothered me about this episode. It’s a relatively minor thing. There’s a point where the transfer weakens and they’re about to switch back. Shatner chose (or was asked) to portray this experience by writhing around and looking horrified. While sitting in the command chair You mean to tell me that people on the bridge didn’t notice???
And yes, for the record, it’s women can’t be captains, not Janice is just saying that because she was nuts and didn’t qualify. Kirk’s reply is that it isn’t fair — not that she screwed up.
@ 59 Mercurio
I’m more inclined to blame the over-the-top “womanly” stuff on the script. You gotta work with what you’ve got, after all…
@ 60 DemetriosX
I don’t think that’s a 50s/60s thing, I think that’s a stage thing, and it’s true today. You have to make your voice and movement distinct, because usually you’re pretty far away from an audience (not unlike watching something on a tiny 60s set). Early popular television is heavily influenced by this, in costuming and makeup and sets as well. There’s a reason blocking and tableau is so important–you have to communicate feelings and relationships intuitively, because you can’t be right up there and close to read their faces.
This has been completely obliterated by The Close-Up, which I’ve argued before is the greatest sin of modern TV. Now that we can just look at people’s faces back and forth for an hour, there’s no need to communicate with gesture or movement. Shatner is great at being nervous in the scene when he just beams up and McCoy approaches him very friendly-like. You can see his face twitch, his hands look uncomfortable, and he seems like he doesn’t know how to move or be in this new body. What do I do with this arm, and this one? Nowadays we’d just show his face and go “Oh look, he’s nervous.”
@ 61 Bluejay Young
They do look at him, though. The person at the communications console (Nameless Babe #4) looks completely freaked out, and Chekov and Sulu are obviously trying as hard as they possibly can NOT to stare and thus upset the crazy person. I see this in action all the time at the subway: if someone is acting completely batty, you do not engage. You pretend nothing is wrong.
Re: woman as captains, well, I gave it the benefit of the doubt.
Torie @62: So it’s basically a replication of the way silent movies were heavily influenced by the stage conventions of the late 19th/early 20th century. I will bow to your expertise as a theater person, but it seems to me that you see it in film actors from the period, too. (I keep wanting to point to Victor Mature, but I know that isn’t who I mean; he was just a bad actor.) I thought maybe it was an Actor’s Studio thing or something.
@ 63 DemetriosX
I am by no means an expert, but I’d hazard the guess that stage acting hasn’t changed nearly as much over the last 100 years as television & movies have over the last forty.* That kind of performance (which today we think of as hammy) is still around in theater and remains pretty much unchanged–but you don’t see it much on TV anymore.
Re: silent film, I think part of that is simply a genre issue: the big seller was melodrama, which is why you get so many ridiculous performances in equally ridiculous movies. Combine that with the gesture-only format and it’s kind of like a recursive loop of hammy silliness even in the most Serious Movies.
*I’m a lighting person and don’t know much about acting history, so this is conjecture. My forays into acting are limited to one 5th grade play and one college directing workshop in which I made the entire class erupt in laughter over a very serious scene in Chekov’s The Seagull. Alas, not my calling.
@DemetriosX #63 & Torie #64
Well, as a theatre person, yes and no. Theatre traditions and training are much stronger in television from the 1960s than they are today, for many of the reasons that Torie mentions. That said, there has been a trend toward increasing naturalism on the stage, as well — perhaps due to influence going back the other direction, though thank god we’ve not yet figured out a way to cut from closeup to closeup to explosion on the stage (despite Disney’s best efforts with puppets and pyrotechnics on Broadway). Er, I mean, increasing naturalism when the draw isn’t elephants on stage or dropping performers from the rafters. . .
Well that really is a crappy ending to a show that has proven to be able to stand the tests of time pretty well. I can just imagine people watching it when it was aired for the first time, letting out a huge sigh of relief that the madness at last was over.
It really is a miracle that it was able to come back in animation and all the movies and everything else that has come since.
I’ve always had to defend Shatner against a lot of people complaining about his acting. But you really have to admire a guy who will go out with such a bang as he did in this episode. Dealing with a fever, an outright offensive script (which, hell, he might not have even been offended by, but whatever) and still giving it his all. Well, I’m impressed.
I also wanted to add my appreciation to Torie and Eugene for going the distance with this series. You both really helped to remind me of my love for the show, and you really did a great job of discussing where the series succeeded and failed. I really can’t wait to take part in the movie re-watch discussions.
@66 Toryx
Thanks! It was our pleasure, and it’s been great fun sharing the series with you folks. Which is why we’re planning to keep it going as long as possible :)
My, my, this one. I can’t bring myself to rate it among Star Trek‘s all-time worst for one reason: Shatner’s acting is utterly hilarious, especially in the final act. Without a trace of shame or dignity he shrieks and writhes and makes faces and it never, ever gets old for me. I love how, in the final scene when Janice Lester finally loses control over Kirk’s body, Kirk does this pirouette along the wall and, if you look closely, you can see his toupee slip off a little. Also top-notch is the scene where Lester-as-Kirk loses temporary control on the bridge while screaming at Sulu and Chekov; his gyrations end with a hysterically funny pose, with Kirk holding up his hands and gaping open-mouthed straight at the camera.
I see that there’s been much discussion of whether the episode implies that all women were barred from Starfleet command or it was just Dr. Lester. #61 (Bluejay Young) has the right of it: when Dr. Lester says that it’s unfair that women aren’t allowed, Kirk agrees, plainly showing that it’s not just in Dr. Lester’s mind. Also there’s at least one other Star Trek episode–I can’t remember which, exactly–in which Kirk explicitly states that women in Starfleet were expected someday to marry and leave the service. I’m quite familiar with this notion, thanks mostly to those disagreeable educational films about love and marriage that Mystery Science Theater 3000 loved to make fun of; they clearly assume that education and employment, for women, were meant only to fill in the gap between leaving home and getting a husband. There’s one such short film, for example, in which a girl’s parents are annoyed that she wants to get married early to some chump she’s known for only a few weeks because then it necessarily followed that she’d have to quit school. Marriage and school together? Don’t be silly! It’s sadly indisputable that in the world of Star Trek the same assumption is at work.
I don’t think that things were really all that much better in TNG. Yeah, you had some token females pop up from time to time in bit roles and walkons, but you had other episodes that veered into “Turnabout Intruder” territory. In particular I have an episode called “The Drumhead” in mind, a clumsy Red Scare analogy, in which a Starfleet admiral, a woman, is slowly revealed to be an unbalanced fanatic festering with resentment. Her hysteria comes across uncomfortably like Dr. Lester’s.
I will say this in favor of “Turnabout Intruder”. TNG would go back to the same well again and again, giving us many episodes in which Enterprise officers were plainly under the influence of outside forces. There was one, for example, in which Picard is zapped with something and starts doing weird things like giving incongruous orders and singing drinking songs in Ten Forward. In such TNG episodes the crew always end up wringing their hands for a ridiculously long time about what to do. In “Turnabout Intruder”, though, the officers are a bit more decisive. Scotty and McCoy decide upon action immediately after watching “Kirk” foaming at the mouth during Spock’s court-martial. Chekov and Sulu immediately challenge “Kirk”‘s decision to impose the death penalty and respond with passive resistance.
@68 etomlins
Interesting points about comparing this to TNG. On the one hand, I don’t think I agree that TNG casts women in precisely the same light as TOS does, at least in respect to command capability. It showed a woman as captain of the Enterprise-C, for instance, who in the original timeline helped to end hostilities between the Federation and the Klingons through bold and compassionate action. However, I think TNG-era Star Trek often shows women leaders as harsh and strict, such as Shelby in “The Best of Both Worlds” and Admiral Nechayev–and the crew often ignored their orders. I always thought Janeway was also presented as “too tough” to the point of being unlikable. I think this is something we can (and probably will) examine in more depth in the upcoming re-watch.
As for the crew’s handwringing in TNG, I think you’re onto something there. By this era, there were so many protocols for dealing with situations like that, the crew had to be absolutely sure before they made any accusations like that, and they often let their feelings of loyalty override their concern. Part of this comes from being in constant contact with Starfleet–there was a chain of command they had to follow, as opposed to Kirk’s era, where it could take days or weeks to update Starfleet and get their orders. This is one of the things I really liked about Janeway: early on she realizes she has to be more decisive, and they have to be more flexible with the rules, because they’re on their own out there in the Delta Quadrant, just like Kirk and his crew were on the frontiers.
I think the jibes at this episode as a betrayal of Star Trek’s inclusionary vision by its exposure of the misogyny behind Star Fleet’s banning of women from command are faulty. The criticism is based on Dr. Lester’s comment that Star Fleet forbids women from command of a starship; when in fact she is merely bug-house insane.
Star Fleet didn’t have a policy forbidding women from command, it simply refused to accept Janice Lester, who is demonstrably unstable, even psychotic. Her psychosis eventually drives her to mass murder. Why take anything her character says as evidence of anti-feminine bigotry on the part of Star Fleet?
The criticism is based on Dr. Lester’s comment that Star Fleet forbids women from command of a starship…
Which Capt. Kirk immediately confirms. Sorry, Curtiss, it’s not just in Dr. Lester’s mind.
Also, it’s not so much Starfleet’s attitude that’s the problem – it’s the writers’ use of Lester as a straw man argument, saying that obviously women can’t be in command, because look what happens when one gets a chance!
It’s like the show sets it up to say, look, there’s this unfair thing: women can’t be captains. But then, for their little surprise turn, it turns out that Lester, as a stand-in for women in general, is completely incapable of command – and all the ways in which she’s seen as unsuitable are entirely based on the stereotypical portrayal of her gender. She’s irrational, makes decisions based on emotion, can’t cope with insubordination of any kind, has overarching ambition beyond her capacity (uppity woman!).
Given that this was literally the single only time in the entirety of TOS that we saw anyone even mention the idea of a woman in command, the straw woman nature of their depiction of that idea’s failure is very, very disappointing.
It’s the writers’ misogyny that bothers me, not Starfleet’s. If this episode had taken place in a universe where women could be captains, it would still be a misogynist mess because of the stereotypical ways in which they show her failure.
the single only time in the entirety of TOS that we saw anyone even mention the idea of a woman in command
To be clear, I mean a Starfleet vessel; there is of course the awesome Romulan Commander in The Enterprise Incident – which suggests that the primitive Romulans, still using sub-light drives, were more advanced than Starfleet in gender roles, by a considerable amount.
Especially disappointing because there’s no reason whatever for this story to have included the sexist angle. With a very little rewriting it could have been made into a story about anyone who had flamed out of Starfleet for instability, blamed Capt. Kirk personally for some reason or other, and decided to exact an unusual sort of revenge on him once the opportunity came up. There are other problems in “Turnabout Intruder” that aren’t so easily repaired but the most embarrassing problem could have been fixed in five minutes. The most important aspect of the story–the crew’s increasing consternation at their captain’s unusual behavior, Spock’s learning the truth and facing the charge of mutiny as a result–did not require Dr. Lester to be some bizarre self-loathing harpy.
Incidentally, how many professional women did we meet throughout TOS’s run that had some kind of personal history with Capt. Kirk? You got the idea that no woman ever made it anywhere in the Federation if they hadn’t been infatuated with James Kirk as some point (and, of course, regretted that it hadn’t gone anywhere.)
@71
“Which Capt. Kirk immediately confirms. Sorry, Curtiss, it’s not just in Dr. Lester’s mind.”
It may be wishful thinking on my part, but I’ve always taken Kirk’s acquiescense as a kind of “let’s not upset the crazy person…just humor them” statement. Remember, he’s supposed to be keeping her calm. Trying to engage her in an intelligent conversation on the point would be moot. I’ve had to take the same sort of tack when dealing with a relative who had dementia. Arguing with them accomplished nothing. Best to just agree and defuse the situation. I don’t doubt for a moment that it was some unfortunate sexist leaning in the author, the script, or even the network, but in this particular case, it isn’t really that hard for me to personally spin it in a more positive light.
What I find harder to reconcile is; why were two obviously unhinged individuals placed in charge of an expedition like this? the Federation and Starfleet must have some really lax psychological criteria when they hand out assignments like this. Why would you place someone who has such obvious emotional issues in charge, and make the chief medical officer someone who has been written up for “flagrant medical blunders”? Isn’t that a little risky on a far-flung expedition like this?
It also bothers me that at the end, Coleman says he’d like to take care of Lester, and McCoy agrees, as if that’ll be no problem at all. Ummm, hello? Didn’t these two just conspire to take over a starship, and murder the command crew? Wouldn’t you keep them as far apart as possible?
I know I’m very late to this party, but I was reading your TNG Re-Watch and thought, “Okay, let’s see what they have to say about Turnabout Intruder.”
Why? Because I very clearly remember watching it when it first ran — I was 15 at the time. I throw a pillow at the screen after the last line. (I wanted to throw something harder, but my mom would have killed me if I broke our TV.)
This was not just because I found it a deeply offensive episode, but also because I was a huge Mr. Spock fan, and I was sure (in my adolescent naiveté) that in the last few seconds, he would contradict the incredible sexism of the plot and affirm that women could be captains, it was just that she was unfit/crazy/whatever.
But when Kirk uttered that line about “Her life could have been rich as any woman’s” (which made it quite obvious that her problem was that she didn’t know her place), and Spock nodded gravely in agreement, I was devastated.
I was so glad years later that the episode was recognized for the drek it actually was….
@76 Barbara Krasnoff
Welcome to our sad party, already in progress!
People today are quick to criticize the last episodes of television series, but this has to be one of the worst I’ve ever seen. It’s actually a blessing that it’s just another episode instead of the culmination of a continuing storyline, and fortunately it’s not even their last mission. It’s more a product of its time than almost any other episode, including the one where they actually visit Earth in the 1960s. And I am so glad Star Trek quickly moved beyond this bizarre sexism, to explore new ways to be sexist.
The quality of the discussion above illustrates a truism about original series Star Trek–even when it was bad, it was still interesting. I tend to agree with Torie almost completely, except that contrary to what she says @54, I would give this episode its two stars for its dramatic merits and not grade it down for the obvious weakness of the screenplay. The story premise had great potential–even great feminist potential–but the teleplay (credited to Arthur Singer) doesn’t live up to the story (by Gene Roddenberry). If this script had be worked on and rewritten by the likes of Justman, Coon, Fontana, and even Roddenberry, this could have been a landmark episode, with Dr. Lester joining the pantheon of classic Trek villains alongside Khan, Harry Mudd, and Commander Kor.
This means we’ve now finished our TOS rewatch at my Trek community as well! I look forward to following The Viewscreen’s footsteps by moving forward, in release order, with Trek. Better pick up the pace, or in a couple of years we’ll catch you!
I had to go back and watch this thing again after reading Shatner: Where No Man by Sondra Marshak and Myrna Culbreath. They repeatedly reference this episode because they’re intrigued by the body-switching.
What I found much more interesting were Leonard Nimoy’s comments. He was restrained and gentlemanly as always, but it’s clear he hated this episode, hated everything about it. He had voiced repeated objections to the script while it was in production.
He confirmed that they were indeed saying women can’t be captains, that they cannot do all that men do. Then they stacked the deck by giving us a batshxt insane woman in charge. And he put it right in Roddenberry’s lap, not Fred the Fink.
“What [Roddenberry] set out to prove was that this lady, given command of the ship, would blow it.“