“The Corbomite Maneuver”
Written by Jerry Sohl
Directed by Joseph Sargent
Season 1, Episode 2
Production episode 6149-03
Original air date: November 10, 1966
Stardate: 1512.2
Captain’s log: The Enterprise is off mapping an uncharted sector of space. They’ve been at it for three days, and the navigator, Lieutenant Bailey, seems frustrated. Then the helm console alarm goes off, and Sulu reports an object heading toward them. When Sulu takes evasive maneuvers, the object also changes course to remain on an intercept course. Lieutenant Nyota Uhura detects no signal from communications.
They receive visual contact, and it’s a multicolored rotating cube. When Spock orders Sulu to pilot around it, the cube again changes course to block them. Spock puts the ship on alert status, and Kirk is summoned to the bridge. However, the captain is in the midst of his quarterly physical—which, of course, requires him to be bare-chested and sweaty, wah hey!—and so Dr. Leonard McCoy (who has apparently hit the mute button on the alert signal) ignores the flashy red light until Kirk’s done proving he’s a manly manly specimen.
Once Kirk sees the red light, he contacts the bridge. Spock fills him in, then Kirk bitches McCoy out, then leaves sickbay while still shirtless and barefoot, thus allowing everyone in the corridors to get a look at his smooth, glistening chest. He goes to his quarters, puts his shirt on, checks in with the bridge again, and then leaves his quarters with the camera lovingly lingering on his ass as he exits his cabin.
Kirk arrives on the bridge, and gets reports from Spock, Uhura, Bailey, Sulu, Scotty, and McCoy. It all boils down to “it’s a cube, and we don’t know how it works.” Bailey votes to blast it with phasers, prompting Kirk to remind him that it’s not a democracy and he doesn’t get a vote.
Eighteen hours of study, scanning, and speculation later, and they’ve got nothing. Spock speculates that the cube may be “flypaper.” Kirk orders Bailey to plot a spiral course away from it (and not firing on it like the navigator was hoping), but the cube just keeps sticking with the ship, matching its relative position point for point.
Then the cube starts emitting radiation as the Enterprise picks up speed. Kirk orders full stop, but then the cube keeps moving toward them and is still giving off radiation. Continued attempts to shake it at sublight fail, so Kirk goes to warp. Even at warp 3, though, it stays with them, getting closer and closer and giving off lethal doses of radiation. Kirk orders Bailey to train phasers on the cube and fire.
The cube is destroyed, the damage to the ship minor and repairable. Kirk decides to forge ahead, to try to find whoever sent the cube. He also orders Sulu and Bailey to run battle and evasive simulations, as he was unsatisfied with their performance (well, really Bailey’s performance). Kirk leaves the bridge, accompanied by McCoy, who thinks he might have promoted Bailey too fast, that he may not be ready for the responsibility of chief navigator. The pair of them share a drink in Kirk’s quarters, and then Yeoman Janice Rand brings him lunch—a dietary salad, as ordered by McCoy, to Kirk’s surprise, as his weight was up a few pounds.
Lunch, however, is interrupted by another object, much larger, heading for the Enterprise. Kirk returns to the bridge to find that the object is made of the same material as the cube. This is a sphere that is several orders of magnitude bigger than the Enterprise, and which traps the ship in a tractor beam. This time there’s communication: the ship is called the Fesarius, from the First Federation, its shipmaster is named Balok, and he sounds pissed. They ignored the warning buoy and are obviously from a savage, primitive race. The Fesarius conducts an intense, invasive scan of the ship, and then determines that they must be destroyed. (Balok also destroys a recorder marker Kirk orders sent out to warn other ships about the First Federation.) Balok gives them ten minutes to make peace with themselves.
Kirk instead makes an encouraging speech to the crew, reminding them that fear of the unknown is often their greatest enemy, and also that any species capable of creating a civilization is at least capable of understanding their peaceful intent. He then tells Balok that they had no intention to trespass and promises to leave the area. However, engines won’t respond. Spock manages to track back the communication to get a visual feed, and they see Balok as a big, bald imposing dude with bug eyes.
Bailey—who has been so stunned that he barely heard his last three orders, two of which had to be carried out by Sulu instead—suddenly has a total breakdown, frustrated that the crew isn’t responding with sufficient emotion to their impending doom. Kirk finally relieves him of duty, ordering McCoy to escort him to his quarters.
Kirk then tries again to talk to Balok, saying that they had to destroy the buoy to preserve their own lives, but Balok just says they’ve got seven minutes left.
As the clock ticks down, Spock says he has no recommendations. In chess, he says, when one is outmatched, one resigns the game to avoid the inevitable checkmate. McCoy then returns to the bridge, reiterating that he thinks Bailey was promoted too soon, worked too hard. He says he’ll put in his medical log that he warned Kirk, and that’s no bluff.
At first, Kirk snaps at McCoy, and then Balok says there’s three minutes left. Kirk calms down and says he hopes they have time to argue about it. Then the word bluff hooks into Kirk’s mind, and he says, “Not chess, Spock—poker.”
He then tells Balok that their respect for other lifeforms requires that he warn them about the “corbomite” device that has been emplaced in all Earth ships for two hundred years. Any destructive power visited upon the ship is reflected back on the attacker by the “corbomite,” and has always resulted in the annihilation of the attacking ship.
McCoy and Kirk apologize to each other for the shitty timing of their argument. With half a minute left, Bailey returns to the bridge and asks permission to return to post.
Sulu counts down the last ten seconds (he must love New Year’s Eve parties), and then nothing happens. The bluff was successful. Balok announces a stay of execution pending examination of the “corbomite.” Kirk doesn’t respond immediately—“let him sweat for a change”—and then finally replies with two words: “Request denied.”
A much smaller vessel flies out of the bigger sphere and its tractor beam takes over, towing the Enterprise to a world in the First Federation that can sustain humanoid life. After a bit of a show of resignation, Kirk tries to break out of the tractor beam, hoping the smaller ship has less power to spare than the big-ass one. The engines are strained to the point of almost exploding from overheating, and then they break free.
Once they’re free, Uhura reports a weak signal coming from Balok, asking for help from the mothership. The signal is sufficiently weak that the mothership probably didn’t even pick it up. Kirk immediately orders the Enterprise to come to the aid of the aliens. He takes McCoy to treat the aliens if needed, and Bailey, to whom Kirk feels he owes a look at the face of the unknown. (Spock requests permission to go along, but Kirk wants him on the Enterprise in case it’s a trap.)
The trio are greeted by a very tiny alien and an animatronic puppet. The latter projected the image of Balok, while the little guy is the real Balok. He offers them all a drink and explains that the whole thing was a test to make sure they were civilized. Balok travels alone, and he’s grown lonely. He proposes an exchange of information and culture by having an envoy. Bailey volunteers to be that envoy, and then Balok gives him a tour of the ship.
Fascinating: While Spock’s species still hasn’t been identified by name, his status as a half-human hybrid is established here, as he says a) that Balok reminds him of his father (which is amusing in retrospect, since Balok looks nothing like Mark Lenard) and b) in response to Scotty saying, “Then heaven help your mother,” says that she considered herself a very fortunate Earth woman.
Plus, more shouty Spock! He bellows orders at a high volume—and then, hilariously, castigates Bailey for raising his voice unnecessarily.
I’m a doctor not an escalator: Apparently the original intended catchphrase for McCoy was “I never said that” when someone quotes a comment he made back at him, but it didn’t stick. The embryonic form of the catchphrase he did wind up with is uttered after Kirk complains that he didn’t tell Kirk about the alert: “What am I, a doctor or a moon-shuttle conductor?” Then, after Kirk leaves, and he’s alone in the room, he mutters, “If I jumped every time a light went off around here I’d start talking to myself.”
Ahead warp one, aye: Sulu is at his more familiar position of helmsman, where he’ll remain for the rest of the series (and all but one of the movies in which the character appears, the exception being the one where he’s the captain of his own ship).
Hailing frequencies open: In Uhura’s debut episode, 90% of her dialogue are the three words that make up this category title, generally in response to Kirk’s request for ship-to-ship communications. Given how often Kirk tries to talk to Balok and how often Balok ignores him or hangs up on him, this is perhaps not surprising, but she definitely wins the Repeated Dialogue Award for this episode…
I cannot change the laws of physics!: Scotty does absolutely nothing to justify his title of chief engineer in this episode. No, seriously, the one time he actually is doing his job as chief, he throws up his hands and says he has no frapping clue what makes the cube tick. Otherwise he just stands around and makes snotty comments about Sulu’s countdown and Spock’s parents. He does operate the transporter to beam them over to Balok’s ship, but that’s it.
No sex, please, we’re Starfleet: Kirk bitches to McCoy about being assigned a female yeoman, thus—as with Pike’s reaction to Colt in “The Cage”—reminding us that this was made in the mid-1960s. (Oddly, Kirk didn’t seem to have a problem with Smith/Jones in “Where No Man Has Gone Before.”) McCoy’s response is to ask if he doesn’t trust himself. Kirk doesn’t actually answer that question, instead saying he’s already got a female to care for: the Enterprise.
In addition, Kirk’s first three scenes are all ones that emphasize William Shatner’s sex appeal: shirtless, sweaty, and that lingering ass shot as he leaves his quarters.
Channel open: “Raising my voice back there doesn’t mean I was scared or couldn’t do my job. It means I happen to have a human thing called an adrenaline gland.”
“It does sound most inconvenient, however. Have you considered having it removed?”
“You try to cross brains with Spock, he’ll cut you to pieces every time.”
Bailey showing his lack of anatomy knowledge (it’s the adrenal gland), Spock saying “Bazinga,” and Sulu pointing out that Bailey should not go into a battle of wits unarmed.
Welcome aboard: James Doohan (Scotty) and George Takei (Sulu) are back and we get the debuts of other recurring regulars DeForest Kelley (McCoy), Nichelle Nichols (Uhura), and Grace Lee Whitney (Rand). In addition, Anthony Call guest stars as Bailey, Ted Cassidy does an uncredited turn as the voice of the fake Balok, and Walker Edmiston does an equally uncredited turn as the voice of the real Balok, overdubbing a six-year-old Clint Howard, who plays the real Balok.
Cassidy will return in “What Are Little Girls Made Of?” as Ruk and will lend his voice once again to the Gorn captain in “Arena.” Edmiston, a famous voiceover artist, will return half a dozen times to provide voice work on the show. As an adult, Howard will return to Trek by appearing as Grady in Deep Space Nine’s “Past Tense, Part II” and Muk in Enterprise’s “Acquisition.”
Trivial matters: This episode was produced first but aired tenth in part due to the considerable amount of post-production work required on it.
The red operations/security uniforms debut in this episode (Scotty wears that color, as does Rand), as do the “miniskirt” uniforms for women. Uhura is wearing command gold here and in “Mudd’s Women” before changing to her more familiar red in “The Man Trap.”
In this episode, we get a from-the-captain’s-chair shot of the screen and the navigation console. It’s clearly Sulu at the helm, but only the navigator’s left shoulder and arm can be seen. A similar shot a few seconds later has Sulu turning to look back at the captain. These two shots would be recycled a lot over the course of the next three years…
Bailey appears in the novel My Brother’s Keeper: Constitution by Michael Jan Friedman and the comic book Spock: Reflections by Scott & David Tipton and David Messina (both taking place prior to this episode) and in the comic book Debt of Honor by Chris Claremont and Adam Hughes and the short story “Ambassador at Large” by J.A. Rosales in Strange New Worlds (both taking place after this episode). In addition, the First Federation has been seen and referenced in the “Shatnerverse” novels written by William Shatner and Judith & Garfield Reeves-Stevens and in the Seekers novel series by David Mack, Dayton Ward, and Kevin Dilmore.
Quark will serve tranya in his bar on Deep Space Nine (e.g., in the episode “Facets”).
To boldly go: “End of watch? It’s the end of everything!” This works very nicely as an introduction to the series as it would be going forward, which makes its placement tenth in the airing order all the more frustrating. We get an establishing shot of the ship, are introduced to the main characters, who all get stuff to do, and we get a good look at the Enterprise’s mission to seek out new life and the difficulties of a first contact.
What’s particularly nice is the sense of community, carried over from “Where No Man Has Gone Before.” Sulu’s teasing of Bailey after Spock cuts him down to size, Scotty’s snide commentary, Rand using a phaser to heat coffee, McCoy’s banter with Kirk, Kirk and Spock’s relaxed friendship (I particularly like Spock sardonically pointing out Kirk’s inefficiency in asking Spock for advice on decisions he’s already made, not to mention Spock’s reluctant admitting to having no mojo for the final confrontation with Balok), and so on.
In particular, I like how the episode shows that these are professionals, in particular by giving us one person who’s spectacularly unprofessional in Bailey. In a lot of ways, this is the best way to introduce this crew: they’re the ones out there seeking out new life and new civilizations because they’re good at it. They’re not panicking about the Fesarius because encountering the Fesarius and its ilk is part of the job description.
Having said all this, the episode has its flaws. Kirk’s a bit quick to forgive Balok for exposing them all to lethal radiation and threatening to blow them up (of course, he’s so cuuuuuute! How can they resist????), Anthony Call’s Bailey is way too broad, and the episode is ultimately long stretches of people talking to each other with very little action. The latter is actually a feature, not a bug, as far as I’m concerned, but it does lead to some pacing problems. In particular, the sequence when the Enterprise breaks free of the tractor beam goes on more than a little bit too long…
Warp factor rating: 7
Next week: “Mudd’s Women”
Keith R.A. DeCandido’s next two out-of-town public appearances will be at (Re)Generation Who in Hunt Valley, Maryland (along with Doctors Colin Baker, Sylvester McCoy, and, via Skype, Tom Baker, as well as dozens of other Who actors and writers) at the end of March and at Treklanta in Atlanta, Georgia (along with actors Jason Carter, Anne Lockhart, and Sean Kenney, as well as dozens of fan film folk and artists and musicians and performers and such) at the end of April.
I love how Kirk, the Don Draper of Space, is so unfamiliar with salad that he startes to eat it with his hands instead of, you know, using a fork. I wonder what he would’ve thought of the kale craze of the early 21st century.
For anyone who gets the network “MeTV”, they just started rerunning the series last week, 1 per day. Unfortunately not in the order of the rewatch, but close enough.
On this episode and its predecessor as introductions: I wonder if 1966 viewers were as confused by starting with “The Man Trap” as 2002 viewers of Firefly were by starting with “The Train Job.” In Firefly‘s case, it definitely had an impact on the show’s reception, but it seems not to have been quite as hard for TOS viewers.
Kirk’s comment about not wanting a female yeoman is interesting, too. The traditional naval use of “yeoman” was a job for men, with the first female yeoman in the U.S. serving in WWI. Even today, it is a heavily male-dominated job, even though it includes typically “female work” like administrative and clerical tasks. And yet the yeomen on TOS are more secretarial in nature, bringing coffee and the like…which, in the 1960s, was much more clearly “female work” than even clerical tasks. So while it makes sense (again, 1960s context) for a woman to be bringing Kirk his lunch, it’s a bit incongruous to have him complain about a woman in the role. Not to mention that most yeomen we see are female, in fact I think Samno and Burke are the only male yeomen we ever see…so why is Kirk cursing the person who gave him a female yeoman, when they’re the norm?
Keith, you say it’s frustrating how this was aired tenth despite being such a good introduction to the series. Well, for me, this was my introduction to the series. I was five and a half years old, and I was intrigued by the promo I’d seen for this show called Star Trek, which as far as I could tell was about a funny-looking airplane flying around at night. So my parents let me stay up to watch it with them when it came on, and it was “The Corbomite Maneuver,” and I was utterly hooked. Seeing this episode that night was my introduction to Star Trek, to space, to science, and to science fiction, and it therefore set the course of my entire life. It’s one of my clearest childhood memories, and once I actually went through old microfilm newspaper archives to figure out the exact date. As nearly as I can figure out, it was Wednesday, January 9, 1974 at 8 PM on WXIX-TV Channel 19 (then an independent station), and the Cincinnati Enquirer listed it as: “STAR TREK: Unidentified spaceship lures Enterprise to near disaster. (Repeat)”.
So naturally this episode has always been a particular favorite of mine, and I’ve long wanted to do the definitive novel about the First Federation. They’ve been oddly untouched by the literature; aside from the books you mention, the only references have been in the TNG novel Gulliver’s Fugitives by Keith Sharee (featuring a pair of FF ambassadors aboard the Enterprise-D), the Voyager novel Ragnarok by Nathan Archer (in which the ruins of a Fesarius-class ship were found in the Delta Quadrant), and the short story “Ambassador at Large” by J.A. Rosales in the first Strange New Worlds anthology, in which the Voyager crew encounters an intact Fesarius, an aged Bailey, an ageless Balok, and, for some reason, the Cybermen (aka “Mondasians”). But that’s okay, since it leaves more for me!
I love the episode’s handling of the ensemble, this community of professionals and friends who are just doing their job, a job that happens to be in space, and being comfortably ordinary rather than the larger-than-life space heroes of most screen sci-fi of the day. It’s an attribute of the early first season that unfortunately faded over time, and this episode does it as well as any — thanks in part to Jerry Sohl’s script, but also probably to Joseph Sargent’s direction. Not long ago I saw Sargent’s movie Colossus: The Forbin Project, and it had a lot of that same everyday, businesslike, bantering flavor to the character interactions.
And as memorable as the visual effects were, I’m afraid I find them one of the episode’s few flaws, since the scale is all wrong. The cube buoy is said to be about 100 meters on a side, which would make it taller than the Enterprise, but it’s only about as thick as the rim of the saucer, making it more like 10-15 meters. And the Fesarius is said to be a mile across, but it looms so large before the Enterprise that it’s got to be several miles across at least. (Although it’s possible that in those metric-using times, “a mile” has become a figure of speech for “a really long way” rather than a specific measure.) Still, despite the scale problems, they’re striking visuals for the era. And a lot of credit also goes to Fred Steiner’s score for the episode. Steiner only did a few minutes of original music for this one, due to its post-production delays; it’s scored mainly with stock cues from the pilots and other episodes that were filmed later but scored earlier. But the original themes Steiner composed, including the lively action music and the ponderous eight-note motif for Balok and the Fesarius, were extremely memorable and frequently reused in later episodes (and recycled by Steiner himself in his “Who Mourns for Adonais?” score).
@3/MeredithP: The original idea was that female yeomen were unusual; “The Cage” established that Pike’s male yeoman had been killed on Rigel VII and he was having trouble adjusting to a female replacement. The plan was that the captain’s yeoman would be a continuing character. But Grace Lee Whitney left less than halfway through the season, and they ended up replacing her with guest-star yeomen-of-the-week who were all female as well. So female yeomen eventually became the norm, but that wasn’t the case at the time this episode was made.
Nice choice of screenshots. God I love the lighting on this show.
Thank you for the rewatch! I think I like this episode a little better now.
But I don’t agree that Bailey volunteers to stay with Balok. He’s being volunteered by Kirk. What else can he do but agree, after everything he did wrong before?
Also, what does Kirk mean with his last remark: “And I’d get a better officer in return”? Does he refer to Bailey, who will be a better officer after having spent some time with Balok? Or to Bailey’s replacement? That would be a really shitty thing to say in public.
They got a LOT of mileage out of that fake Balok puppet shot! We see it every time in end credit sequences that don’t include Orion Slave Vina. Even Futurama parodied it using Kif. A Desilu Production indeed.
@3: So, this was your first one. To me, it was The Cage, but as far as regular episodes go, my first exposure to Shatner TOS was Mudd’s Women (in retrospect, ugh). But Corbomite was still one of my early experiences also. And one of the show’s better entries. Reasonably tense, quite character-oriented and very tightly plotted.
It’s ironic it suffered so much delay on post, given that 85% of the story takes place on the bridge. With the exception of Balok’s set, I don’t think this was particularly expensive to shoot.
I didn’t care about Call’s performance either. Bailey works on paper, as a way to really properly introduce the crew’s inner workings.
And by @3, I actually meant @@.-@.
@@.-@ – I honestly can’t recall whether this episode was my introduction to the series, or whether it was “The Apple”. Either way, I had to watch what I could at my grandparents on summer vacations. Oh, pre-internet fandom…
I do recall that my first experience with Star Trek was “The Motion Picture” – at the ripe young age of 4 it has the distinction of being the first movie I saw in the theatre that I retain any memory of. Which, frankly, explains a lot.
@7/Eduardo: The in-joke in the end credits, devised by Bob Justman, was that they put Desilu vice-president Herb Solow’s name on top of the Scary Balok Puppet image, which is why it usually came at the end. It stopped once Paramount bought up Desilu and Solow moved on.
The Simpsons did a Trek-parody end-credits sequence recently too, and I believe they used Mr. Burns as the Scary Balok Puppet.
Christopher @@.-@ – Is it cited somewhere that female yeomen are unusual, or is it perhaps just that Pike is personally used to a male yeoman and thus has trouble with the replacement? I don’t remember this being mentioned, but my knowledge is nowhere near encyclopedic.
JanaJansen @6 – Kirk may have suggested it, but I had the feeling that Bailey jumped at the chance. He was thrilled with the idea, to my eyes.
My first exposure to Star Trek was “All Our Yesterdays” – I don’t remember how old I was, but it was quite young. Who knows, maybe that’s why I ended up as a public historian – subconsciously patterning myself after Mr. Atoz. :)
Re: the first Star Trek experience; as @9, it was “The Motion Picture,” at age of 7. I was sick, stayed in bed all day, couldn’t sleep at night. So mom let me watch. The fever did sort of blurr the difference between movie and reality; I remember feeling as if I was in there, not just watching, but living the story. It was pretty awesome. One of my favourite childhood memories.
Few years later I discovered there’s TNG on TV, and at about the same time started to read Star Trek books. And that’s how I first “met” this episode – I’ve read it.
Lots of things looked better in my imagination – Balok, his ship, actually all the “special effects”. But I couldn’t stop imagining all the characters as their older versions from the movie, since it was the only time I’ve seen them.
Anyway this is one of my favourite episodes – I liked the mystery of alien buoy and spaceship, not knowing who this Balok is, what is his motivation… he seemed really alien to me, and that is something I like and want more of in sci-fi.
Don Draper, of course, is the Captain Kirk of Madison Avenue.
I believe few people in 1960s Hollywood knew what a “meter” was.
And I don’t recall the episode being explicitly stated, but supposedly Nichelle Nichols looked at the camera after the same line 7 times and said “If I have to open hailing frequencies one more time, I’m going to blow up this f-ing panel”.
@11/MeredithP: No, it wasn’t stated outright that female yeomen were unusual. It’s just the logical inference from Pike’s reaction to a female yeoman in “The Cage” and Kirk’s reaction to one here. If the writers of those episodes had intended yeomen to be as exclusively female as they ended up being portrayed later, then neither captain’s reaction would’ve made sense. So clearly that was not the original intention.
@13/sps49: The special effects for “The Corbomite Maneuver” (as well as the pilots) were done by The Howard Anderson Company. Howard A. Anderson, Jr. studied math at UCLA, worked for Douglas Aircraft before WWII, and served in the Navy during WWII. He most probably learned the metric system in college, and would’ve surely encountered it in the Navy and in overseas countries during the war. For that matter, most of the adult American men of that generation would’ve served in WWII and/or Korea. And lots of special effects artists would have engineering or technical training and thus would be likely to have a familiarity with metric units.
For what it’s worth, the US legally recognized the metric system in 1866 — yes, eighteen-sixty-six — and has legally defined its measurements based on metric units since 1893. True, it wasn’t until the 1960s-70s that the government began making a serious effort to promote and standardize its use — an effort that eventually fell prey to public inertia — but it had been the official measurement system of the land for generations before then.
Christopher @14 – Okay, fair enough. But I still think the tasks demonstrated for the yeomen are a bit more “female” than tasks naval yeomen perform today, so I personally find it odd that they would prefer male yeomen. Just my opinion, though. :)
@15: Again, you’re basing that on how the yeoman role developed later in the series. I’m talking about the writers’ assumptions at the very start of the series, when the scripts for “The Cage” and “Corbomite” were written. At the time, they were assuming that female yeomen were anomalous or at least atypical. But since all the yeomen we ended up seeing in the show were female, later screenwriters therefore wrote them with traditional female roles in mind. So in retrospect, the assumptions made by Roddenberry and Sohl in writing these two early scripts seem inconsistent with what we ended up getting.
What strikes me is that the script writers made it a point to mention that the yeoman was a woman. We don’t get any remarks about how strange it is to work with a Vulcan or a Russian or a PoC. So are we supposed to assume that women have only recently started joining Star Fleet? Because that doesn’t seem right.
Christopher @16 – I find the waitress role we see in “The Cage” and “Corbomite” distinctly female. Naval yeomen do not bring coffee. If Star Trek’s yeomen bring coffee, then it seems to me it would be incongruous in the 1960’s to suggest that men would do it. That’s all I’m saying. :)
@17/bookworm1398: As a factoid in-universe, it doesn’t make sense for Pike or Kirk to find a female presence unusual, especially not in light of what we know now from Enterprise. But those lines were more reflective of the real-world context of the show, where women serving on military vessels was something that just wasn’t done in reality at the time, and thus was seen as warranting a mention. It wasn’t new to the characters, but it was new to the audience.
And really, a lot of the audience would’ve been uncomfortable or skeptical of the idea of women serving on a starship. I think that Pike’s and Kirk’s lines were probably written as a way of acknowledging their point of view and then moving on from it. The captain would mention at first that he was uneasy with the female presence, and then he’d learn to get over it. And hopefully the skeptical viewers would be won over at the same time. You can see a lot of this in shows and movies from the ’50s to the ’80s, female protagonists proving themselves to initially skeptical male protagonists. Heck, you can see it far more recently with Sokka in early episodes of Avatar: The Last Airbender.
@18/MeredithP: And I don’t think the scriptwriters were saying that male yeomen would bring coffee. After all, they never showed us a male yeoman. They showed us female yeomen while implying the existence of male ones. But they assumed that a female in the role, while she might share the responsibilities of a male yeoman, would also bear the additional responsibilities traditionally expected of a woman, like getting coffee. Just because they had the same job, that didn’t mean they were expected to behave equally. How many real-world women in office jobs have found they were expected to get coffee or clear tables or do other things that men in the same job were not expected to do?
This episode is a really great example of how to build tension without needing a lot of action. It also demonstrates Kirk vs. No-Win scenarios and how he bluffs his way out of it; a very good character episode for Kirk.
@@@@@#4, the First Federation was also mentioned in another ST book, Battlestations! by Diane Carey. Apparently their tractor beams were the gold standard, because when the main character, Piper, gets her first independent command of a rather moth-eaten transport and is unimpressed, her engineer is more pleased: “Captain, it’s a Fesarius!” He then goes on to extol their efficiency and power.
Star Trek gets high marks for its mixed race cast, but you’re better off looking to The Next Generation and later Treks for gender equality. Save for Edith Keeler, women in the original series are pretty much limited to getting coffee and answering the phone. Oh, and the bringers of soup on occasion.
Though somehow the Romulans had a female commander at one point in this series. Progressive lot, those Romulans.
@22 Patches: I disagree.
We also get:
Elizabeth Dehner, a psychiatrist.
Helen Noel, a psychiatrist.
Areel Shaw, a lawyer.
Leila Kalomi, a botanist.
And that’s just the first season.
Equally important, we see lots of female crew members, just walking around in the corridors or doing their jobs as navigators, as parts of a landing party (e.g. Yeoman Tamura in “A Taste of Armageddon”),…
When I was eleven years old, I first got interested in SF via Star Wars. Star Wars had Leia who did a lot of cool things – being the leader of the rebellion and a diplomat, stealing the Death Star plans, and taking an active role in her own rescue when the guys just weren’t up to it – but she was the only woman in the entire universe. Except for Luke’s aunt.
Compare this to all the women who are simply part of the crew in Star Trek – and that was ten years earlier.
Sorry I don’t have anything to add about the episode. Love the rewatch though.
Can I ask why it doesn’t show in the series view of tor? I can only pick it up in latest posts? This has been the case for all the TOS episodes done so far, including the intro. If this isn’t the right place to ask any idea where? Just don’t want to miss one.
Anyway back to the discussion. (Don’t you think the child is creepier than the dummy?)
I’m not 100% certain, but I think this one was also my introduction to the show. I remember being scared to death by the Balok image, and that’s what got me hooked, whether I’d seen any episodes before or not though I’m not sure. In the UK in the early seventies, the series was always shown on a Sunday afternoon, and it became the after Sunday dinner ritual for my brother an myself, The Big Match (football show) on ITV, then turn over to the BBC for Star Trek. At the start of each show my dad would ritually announce “oh no, not this rubbish again”, and then sit down with his eyes glued to the screen for the entire programme.
@23
A female Starfleet captain or admiral or commodore would’ve been far more impressive, that is if they wanted to make a statement as bold as putting a black woman on the bridge, and something beyond the standard soft focus love interest of the week. (And one wearing pants!)
@26: I don’t say they couldn’t have done better. Of course they could have done better. A Starfleet captain would have been great.
I merely contradict your original claim that women only served coffee and soup and answered the phone.
What they did was something in between those two extremes, and for a teenage girl in the late 1970s, that was already really, really cool.
By the way, they could have done better regarding the mixed race cast, either. All of the four leads were Caucasian males. Just the same, it was great to see Sulu and Uhura. And just the same, it was great to see all those women professionals.
@27
Yes, they pulled their punches a bit in both cases, more so with women. Which is a shame considering Star Trek was helped along by one of the first, if not the first, women executives in American television: Lucille Ball.
This was my first episode too and I was around 3-4 (albeit in the 80s). I remember thinking…”wait, these people are using their intelligence to resolve the situation rather than blasting their way at the first opportunity? Ok I’m hooked!”
This episode and my father taking me to see Star Trek III at the cinema are some of my earliest memories.
@27/Jana and 28/Patches: The meme within Trek fandom, promoted by Roddenberry himself, has long been that TOS was just about the most progressive show of its day in terms of racial and sexual inclusion. But if you look at the ’60s TV landscape, you’ll see that, although Trek was relatively ahead of the curve, there were other shows that did better. Trek had a black woman and an Asian man in supporting, recurring roles, but neither ever had an episode focus on them. But shows like I, Spy and Mission: Impossible had African-American lead actors who were on an equal footing with their white co-stars. (Well, one could argue that Barney on M:I started out in more of a support role, since he was usually crawling around in ducts setting up gadgets while his teammates were doing all the speaking and interacting, but over time he became more and more central.) And shows like M:I, The Avengers, and even Get Smart treated their female leads as highly impressive and competent professionals. Not to mention Batgirl in the Batman sitcom. That show was generally far from great in its treatment of female characters — Catwoman always huddled in the corner during the fight scenes, which was a waste of Julie Newmar’s athleticism — but Batgirl got to participate in fights, and was portrayed as fearless, smart, and resourceful, able to solve crimes and riddles as successfully as Batman and Robin without the benefit of multimillion-dollar Bat-computers and the like.
Granted, TOS did have some good guest roles for black actors, like Commodore Stone, Lt. Boma, and Richard Daystrom. But nothing in the lead cast, and among the regulars it was always the white males who got the story focus — sometimes directly at the others’ expense, such as when Sulu’s love interest in “This Side of Paradise” was rewritten into Spock’s love interest. And as we’ve discussed, the women tended to be relegated to support roles, though we got a few good moments here and there, like Martha Landon kicking butt in “The Apple” (against totally unskilled fighters, but still) and Uhura getting to fight with Marlena in “Mirror, Mirror.”
@29/Danis: Great point about how the episode stresses intelligent problem-solving and diplomacy — and blatantly discredits the kneejerk aggressive response by putting it in the unstable Bailey’s mouth. I suppose one could say the theme of the episode is that violence and hostility are really manifestations of fear, not strength. And for all that Balok was portrayed as a benevolent “Aww, I was just testing you guys” kind of alien, it’s always seemed to me that his people are very much driven by fear, putting up all these obstacles to others and making this massive show of strength and aggression to mask how small and vulnerable they are. It’s only when both sides are willing to look past their fear and lower their guard that they’re able to move forward.
Anyway, Keith’s right that this is a better introductory episode for the series than “The Man Trap” or either of the pilots, because it’s probably the best explication of just what it is that the show stands for — seeking out the unknown in the spirit of curiosity and goodwill, engaging with the universe through reason, restraint, and compassion rather than fear and hostility. “The Man Trap” and both pilots, to an extent, portray the unknown and new as something to be feared and fought against. But “Corbomite” shows it as something to be understood and embraced, to be faced with reason rather than fear. As Kirk says, it’s “an opportunity to demonstrate what our high-sounding words mean.” And it does so better than, really, any of the nine episodes that aired before it in the original run.
So it’s good that it was the episode I saw first, that this is the one that set the tone for how I would see Star Trek — and maybe influenced how I would see the world, although maybe that’s giving it too much credit.
Fantastic and funny synopsis, Keith! (Although surely you threw out some bait for fans like me who can’t resist pushing my glasses up the bridge of my nose to say, “Lieutenant Uhura’s first name wasn’t established onscreen as Nyota until the 2009 film, and even that was an alternate timeline version of the character,” in my best Professor Frink voice.) I especially enjoyed your Act I recap, with all the Kirk-McCoy business. (McCoy’s line about talking to himself is one of the funniest in the whole series, better than any of the “I’m-a-doctor-not-a”s.)
I really like this episode, despite its rough edges and residiual 1960s sexism. (Although, arguably, shirtless Shatner is proof of Roddenberry’s ideas about “equal opportunity” for men and women to be treated as sex objects.) “The Corbomite Manuever” is one of a very few TOS episodes saturated from start to finish with “sense of wonder.” Don’t get me wrong: Of course it is present throughout the series, and most if not all of the episodes have their “whoa… that’s awesome” moments (in intent, if not always in execution). But, like the two pilots, “Corbomite” (which is a de facto third pilot to my mind) rings change after change on the sense of wonder. The cube no one can figure out, the immensity of the Fesarius, the surprise that Balok turns out to be Ron Howard’s six-year-old brother…
And then there’s Bailey. In the comments thus far, Bailey seems to be getting a bad rap. I don’t disagree that, in-universe, it seems unlikely Bailey would have made it in Starfleet, let alone bridge duty on the Enterprise (although the Big E isn’t accorded “flagship” status until the movie era, right?). But, taking the episode on its own terms, Bailey gives voice to the tremendum part of the mysterium tremendum et fascinans, the “terrifying and fascinating mystery” that Rudolf Otto said contstiuted “the idea of the Holy.” (By the way, of course, this is the episode in which Spock says “Fascinating,” if memory serves.) The Fesarius is “holy” in the sense that is is totally other, completely alien to the Enterprise crew’s everyday existence. Bailey is not wrong to be scared by it. It’s just that Kirk is more right to be brave in the face of the mystery. I like Bailey, and I’m glad he’s come back in tie-in fiction from time to time.
@6/Jana: Ha! I’ve never taken Kirk’s comment as an insult — I think he meant Bailey would come back a better officer — but your alternative reading made me laugh. Thanks for the chuckle!
@4/Christopher: From your mouth to Pocket Books’ ears… if you get to do the defintive First Federation novel, I’ll put my quatloos down post-haste! I agree with you that Balok seems as fearful, in his own way, as Bailey.
For some reason I’m hesitating to point out this nitpick in “Welcome Aboard” and kept quiet about it in “The Cage” and “Where No Man Has Gone Before” waiting for someone else to chime in, but isn’t Kelley’s first name spelled “DeForest” with one r instead of two? Just to make sure I wasn’t going crazy or in an alternate universe where things are different from what I remember (like Worf in “Parallels”) I played the opening credits on YouTube to check for myself!
A few friends and I watched all of TOS a few years ago. While we already knew we’d be encountering stuff like omnipotent beings testing the Enterprise and Kirk talking a computer into destroying itself many times over, this episode surprised us by starting the spaz-who-sits-next-to-Sulu trend that I believe recurs a few times until we get Chekhov (who sometimes end up fulfilling the role himself).
But first… the tranya.
-Andy
Balok reminds him of his father (which is amusing in retrospect, since Balok looks nothing like Mark Lenard) …
Here’s my attempt at a no-prize: Maybe Spock means that Balok reminds him of his father’s general demeanor? Stern, forbidding, imposing….?
Oh, one nitpick: I wish the remastered version had added Balok’s missing line before Sulu’s, “I knew he would,” which is an intended reference to Balok’s time-announcement.
Bibliomike @31 – Better you than me on the Nyota bit; I was biting my tongue. :)
@35/Meredith: Yes, well. We all know TOS’ Uhura’s first name was Penda, anyway. ;)
@36: I don’t! When did it become Penda?
I know she was called Nyota in several tie-in novels before the name became official.
@31/Bibliomike: Actually the idea of the Enterprise as the “flagship of the Federation” (which really makes no sense) doesn’t come along until The Next Generation. Kirk’s Enterprise was always treated as just another ship in the fleet. Okay, TMP treated it as special in that it was apparently the first ship to be refitted to these new specs (given that the modifications were untested). And Roddenberry’s TMP novelization made the rather extravagant claim that Kirk was the only captain to bring his ship and crew back from a 5-year mission largely intact. But in TWOK the Enterprise was just a cadet training vessel, in TSFS it was an old ship that was being mothballed and supplanted by newer ships (ignoring the spanking-new refit it had gotten just over a decade before in-story), it wasn’t even in TVH, its replacement was a hunk of junk in TFF, and it was trashed and retired again in TUC. So in the TOS movies, the Enterprise was about as far from “flagship” status as you could get (except in the more accurate sense of the word as the ship from which an admiral is operating; in that sense, the E would’ve been Admiral Kirk’s flagship in TWOK).
@32/RichF: You’re right, it’s DeForest Kelley, one R. Although I always get confused myself because there are two Ls in his surname, so you kind of expect there to be two Rs in his first name.
And I always found it amusing that the main research consultant Roddenberry used on ST was named Kellam de Forest. That must’ve made for some confusing conversations now and then.
@37/Jana: “Penda” was a fan proposal for Uhura’s first name, popularized by the Best of Trek fanzine collections from Signet Books. The same article also proposed “Walter” as Sulu’s first name.
Hikaru as Sulu’s first name was coined by Vonda N. McIntyre in her 1981 novel The Entropy Effect, and Nyota for Uhura was coined by William Rotsler in Star Trek II Biographies the following year.
Christopher: Thanks for the information!
I also have to thank you guys for convincing me that this is a good episode. I used to think it was tedious and had way too much dialog consisting of “Hailing frequencies open”. I never realized that it’s one of the best episodes when it comes to conveying the “Star Trek message”. Also, having an adult alien look like a human baby is so cool – and none of the crew have any problems treating him as an adult. I’m sure he isn’t used to that (hence the puppet).
RichF @32 – Ha, we were each waiting for someone else to say something!
@38/Christopher: I always rather liked the claim to the Enterprise‘s unique status among the fleet (it might explain why Starfleet adopted the Enterprise insignia for everyone; and didn’t it also account for why Kirk had been promoted upward? He was too valuable an asset to lose?) It reinforces the idea that “risk is our business” – that, as Q would later tell Picard, “it’s not safe out here.” Plus, since it came from Roddenberry and didn’t explicitly contradict anything onscreen, I felt, why not?
You do raise good points about the Enterprise not being “the face of Starfleet” in the movies, though.
Wasn’t there a line in one of the early episodes to the effect that the Enterprise was one of 12, and thats why she was special? Or was that in one of the Making of Trek books?
ragnarredbeard: Roddenberry’s original notes (as seen in The Making of Star Trek) had 12 Constitution-class ships, but that number was never stated onscreen, I don’t think.
Bibliomike: The character played by Zoe Saldana is, fundamentally, the same person as the character played by Nichelle Nichols. The notion that one has a first name and the other doesn’t is silly unless presented with onscreen evidence to contradict it. The only reason not to acknowledge it is due to a desire to ignore the Abrams films, which I see no reason to ignore.
RichF: ARRRRRGH! I have consistently, constantly misspelled Kelley’s first name all my life. Geez.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@43 krad,
Found the line. Its in Tomorrow is Yesterday”. Kirk is giving Christopher the grand tour of the ship and he mentions there are only 12 like her.
I always had the feeling that the giant Fesarius was a bluff – that only the smaller part that Balok had real engines and systems, the rest being a facade to impress other starships. That made a nice symmetry to Kirk’s bluff, and explains why Balok separated his small ship (otherwise, if he’s the only crew, why leave it behind?). It also makes a nice symmetry to Kirk’s bluff. Does anyone else have that sense?
I think Kirk was less put out by women being in the crew than by the thought of having an attractive woman fussing over him intimately when he is duty bound not to get involved with her. See his speech in “The Naked Time”.
The show tries very hard to establish sexual tension between Kirk and Rand in the early production episodes. Was Rand intended to be a permanent romantic interest for Kirk? What would have if Grace Lee Whitney had not been made to leave the show?
@45 I agree with the bluff/counterbluff concept and I was also wondering had Kirk chosen to do nothing what would have happened. Since they would have presented a completely peaceful stance they would probably have gotten away with it and maintained freindly relations. Though the bluff was clever.
@43/Keith: I think you read too much into my (apparently unsuccessful) attempt at self-deprecating humor! I wasn’t seriously suggesting they were different characters (although I think the argument can be made that they are… When a timeline branches, are the people in timestream A really still the same as timestream B?), or to ignore the JJ films, or to suggest that TOS Uhura has no first name. “Eet vas leetle joke, sair.” “Extremely little, Bibliomike.” <g>
@45/bmac: I like your suggestion. Come to think of it, do we have any onscreen evidence that there is or was a “First Federation” at all, or is Balok just an independent explorer, toodling out there beyond the rim of the starlight, all on his own (or now with Bailey)?
@46/Crusader75: I believe that was the original intent for the Rand character, yes (or at least an ongoing sexual tension), but the show’s creative team quickly realized how limiting that would be for Kirk (although his supposed penchant for a “green chick in every port” is vastly overstated, anyway.) Would have made for an interesting dynamic in “City on the Edge of Forever,” though, if he’d felt torn between love for Rand (who was present in the first draft, though not developed) and his soulmate from the past, Edith.
@41/Bibliomike: It’s a fan myth that the arrowhead insignia was just the Enterprise emblem prior to TMP. In “Court-martial,” you can clearly see that other starship officers — colleagues of Kirk’s who treat him as a peer rather than a commanding officer — are wearing the arrowhead. You can also see it on a background starbase crewwoman in “The Menagerie,” and can barely glimpse it on the uniforms of the dead Defiant crewmen in “The Tholian Web” (although the makers of ENT: “In a Mirror, Darkly” missed this and gave the Defiant a different insignia based on the Starfleet Command chevron used in TOS). Not long ago, a Bob Justman memo was unearthed revealing that Roddenberry’s intention was for the arrowhead emblem to be used for all “Starship” crews (i.e. ships like the Enterprise), with other insignias being for other branches of the service (e.g. the Antares patch in “Charlie X” for the merchant marine), and that the variant ship patches in “The Doomsday Machine” and “The Omega Glory” were production errors.
And later canon has reinforced the use of the arrowhead before TOS. Voyager‘s “Friendship One” used a sideways version of the arrowhead as the United Earth Space Probe Agency logo in 2067. Enterprise included a tiny arrowhead on the enlisted rating patches on Earth Starfleet uniforms in the 2150s. And the 2009 movie showed the arrowhead in use on the Kelvin uniforms at the moment the timelines split.
And my problem with treating the Enterprise as unique and special in-universe is that it’s fannishly self-indulgent — assuming that the way the characters see their world is the same as the way we see it. We focus most on the E because it’s the ship we follow every week, but why would a member of another ship’s crew, or some civilian on Earth, revere the E and its crew the same way? It would just be another ship to them. Sure, they’re out there saving planets, but who says the other starships aren’t doing the same thing just as regularly? I’d rather believe there’s a larger world beyond what we’re seeing. Having the show’s heroes be the only ones who ever do anything important just makes it feel more like fiction.
Besides, as early episodes like “Corbomite” make clear, the Enterprise officers were not supposed to be grandiose space heroes. They were supposed to be everyday professionals simply performing their duty. The tone of the early first season, this episode in particular, is a clear repudiation of the romanticized, glamorous approach to space adventure. These guys weren’t meant to be any better than the rest of Starfleet. They weren’t meant to be the Chosen Ones, the only ones in the universe who could do the job. They were meant to be typical.
All of Starfleet should be the best and the brightest. Concentrating every good officer on a single ship is an incredibly stupid way of allocating personnel. That’s why I dislike the way TNG embraced the fannish elitism of treating the Enterprise as better than every other ship, as the one ship that all the finest officers got posted to. Didn’t that leave the rest of the fleet vulnerable? How does that kind of “We’re better than the rest of you” mentality fit into the supposed egalitarianism of the 24th century?
@48: No First Federation? Now, that would make Balok the king of bluffing! But then we also have to imagine that he installed the cube and the sphere all by himself and patiently waited for some unsuspecting spaceship to stumble upon them, don’t we?
I think it’s more likely that there really is a First Federation.
@49/Christopher: Yes, I ultimately agree with you, and Roddenberry’s interpretation wasn’t onscreen, so it’s not canon. I do think, however, that the Enterprise name became something to conjure with as a result of the events we see unfolding in the TOS movie era. Saving other planets, out there (thataway…) is one thing, but Kirk and crew save the Earth twice by my count (TMP and TVH — and the Federation President’s comments about “once again” could be construed to say they’d done it before, and not just in the V’Ger crisis), and Federation/”galactic civilization as we know it” twice (TSFS and TUC).
But I stand corrected, gladly, on the issue of the arrowhead emblem. Well, not gladly. Some fan myths I cherish. :) But facts are facts!
“Catwoman always huddled in the corner during the fight scenes”
Yes, but so did the Joker, the Penguin, the Riddler, Mr. Freeze, King Tut, Egghead, and so on and so on. Villains on Batman tended to leave the fighting to the henchmen, so Catwoman’s lack of participation in the fights really isn’t a good example of the show’s poor treatment of female characters.
@52/Ray: Sorry, but that’s not true. As you can see in this compilation video, most of the male villains — even the Penguin, who was played by a sixtyish actor — participated actively in the Bat-fights. The Joker was particularly vicious; in the first Joker episode, there was even a point where the Joker tried to strangle Batman with his bare hands. The only male villains who sat out the fights were the ones not physically capable of it for various reasons — Mr. Freeze couldn’t leave his cold zone, King Tut was too portly, and the Bookworm, I guess, was too much of a bookish intellectual with no physical prowess. But none of the female villains joined in the fights. The first story with a female villain, “Zelda the Great/A Death Worse than Fate,” didn’t even have a Bat-fight.
1. What is the purpose of the Fesarius in the first place? Why is it so huge when there is apparently only one (rather small) crewman aboard?
2. The Corbomite Manuever did not seem to actually do anything except take Balok aback abit and eventually amuse him that Kirk would try to find a third way out of his predicament by baldfacedly BSing him. From Balok’s POV it seems that his test has three parts: What does new species do when faced with an object incrementally growing into a serious threat, what they do against overwhelming odds and what they do against an inhabited ship they can defeat. I’m not sure Balok’s pilot craft was all that defenseless, or the rest of the Fesarius was all that far away.
3. The Enterprise is one of the Starfleet’s capital ships (equivalent to an aircrft carrier in the modern US Navy), A posting to any of the Constitution class would be considered a plum assignment. That should be special enough. The Enterprise might be especially since it is carrying the name of Starfleet’s first true deep space explorer. There is precedent in naval traditions to attach importance to that sort of thing. TNG tends to use the term “flagship” oddly anyway. There is no such thing as a single flagship for the whole fleet. All flagship really means is that the ship is equipped so that a flag officer and staff can use it as a command post. If memory serves, none of the Enterprises have really been used that way onscreen* (on those occasions when an Enterprise has actually been directing a fleet, there have been no flag officers on board).
*Maybe “Insurrection”?
Star Trek tends to use the term Flag Ship in its modern non-military sense of most prestigious ship of the line. You know, like how Acme Cruise Line Inc might refer to their new liner the “S.S. Expensive” as their flagship boat. It goes to all their best ports, costs the most, and has crew members that are actually trained in how to work on a boat.
@54/Crusader75: Sure, I’ve got nothing against the idea of the Enterprise being one member of the leading class of vessel. What I object to is the idea that it’s the best ship, even better than all the others in its class. That’s how TNG treated the Enterprise-D.
CLB @14- Howard A. Anderson, then, is one of the few in Hollywood that knew. He likely never got a good description or an up-to-date script to base the effects on. Perhaps you have never noticed writers, directors, suits, etc. act as if consistency and accuracy are low, low priorities.
and @49- You don’t need to go off on Bibliomike over insignia- the different insignia on significant guest characters like Captain Tracy, Lieutenant Shaw, and Commodore Decker suggest that the insignia of random background characters were likely production errors instead. And “later canon” means little in the context of watching Star Trek (aka TOS).
@57/sps49: As I said, most of the producers, writers, technicians, and executives in Hollywood at the time were probably WWII veterans who would’ve been familiar with metric units from their time in the military and/or overseas. And anyone who studied engineering, science, or math in college would probably have been familiar with metric units too. The metric system’s been around since the French Revolution, after all. Sure, it wasn’t in everyday use in the 1960s, but anyone who wanted to know how long a meter was could easily check a reference book.
And what in the world makes you think I was “going off” on Bibliomike? Providing new information is helping, not attacking. And Bibliomike himself took it in the helpful spirit I intended and thanked me for it (see post #51), so I don’t see any reason why you should get upset about it.
@57: The linked memo from Bob Justman about what Roddenberry intended the insignia to mean outweighs all that, I’d say. :P
The linked memo from Bob Justman cracks me up mainly for the phrase “their individual and collective breasts.”
I’m glad that I’m not the only one who thought the camera lingered a touch too long on Kirk’s ass in that scene.
@56 – I understand your objection, but the special treatment flows from the decision to give Kirk a new Enterprise with his original ship’s hull registry and continuing thatpractice through the 24th century with Enterprise-D. For better or worse, that was Roddenberry’s choice to take that forward. The unique treatment of the name and registry makes an Enterprise a special ship.
@59 – Except what the franchise actually shows is more important than behind the scenes memos. What is shown in TOS is more consistant with the “myth” than it is with the memo. It is rare that production errors result in more work for the costume department, so consistancy with the memo can be interpreted as concessions to budget rather than intent from the outside.
@62/Crusader75 – I am not certain it was Roddenberry’s decision (he was “demoted upward” to the role of Executive Consultant by that point, yes? And I remember reading a Starlog article at the time where he was being presented a composite image from ILM of the 1701-A and, if memory serves — and it may not — he was surprised and touched by it). But I like your way of thinking on the in-universe decision to treat the Enterprise as special! It dovetails with the Enterprise‘s exemplary record of world-saving from TMP forward. (Maybe it was also Starfleet’s atonement for Commander Morrow’s bone-headed decision to mothball her in ST III – I am convinced the real Starfleet Commander must have been on vacation that week!) I do think Christopher’s objection to how TNG treated the Enterprise is a sound one, but I think, as you say, Crusader, it was consistent with the canonical choice to do so during the TOS movie era.
And @57/sps49 – I appreciate the sentiment, but I took no offense at Christopher’s clarification of what was onscreen. I do agree with Crusader75 that what’s onscreen trumps memos; I’d just never realized I was viewing the onscreen evidence about the insignias through the lens of my preconceived notion. At the end of the day, though, hey, it’s a costume detail, and life is short. So nothing but happy Trek feelings all around, as far as I’m concerned. :)
@62/Crusader75: Yes, what canon shows is important, but as I said, canon does show the arrowhead used on other ships before TMP, in “Court-Martial” and “The Tholian Web.” Even going by TOS alone, we know for a fact that the arrowhead was never exclusive to the Enterprise. Yes, there were other insignias in use, but the arrowhead was used by multiple ships. That’s canonical from TOS itself, and reinforced by many things since.
The way I interpret it in my Rise of the Federation books is that the different insignias originally represented the Federation founder worlds’ respective space agencies, each of which was responsible for its own fleet. The arrowhead (used on the Friendship 1 probe and the Earth Starfleet enlisted patches) is the emblem of the United Earth Space Probe Agency, which manages the Earth Starfleet division; the pretzel-like Constellation patch is the emblem of the Andorian Guard; the hoof-like Antares emblem is the Tellar Space Administration emblem; etc. I figure that by the TOS era, these separate services have blended together into a more integrated Starfleet, but some vestige of the original divisions survives in Starfleet’s organization (since we know from “Tomorrow is Yesterday” that UESPA is still administering the Enterprise as late as 2266/7). So they do use multiple insignias, but for different divisions or fleets within the overall Starfleet, rather than for individual ships. So ships like the Enterprise, Kelvin, Defiant, etc. were under UESPA administration; the Constellation operated under whatever part of the organization is descended from the Andorian Guard; etc.
But eventually, there was some organizational change that eliminated the vestiges of those different subdivisions, or maybe it was just decided to eliminate the separate insignias during a uniform-redesign process; and so by the era of the movies, the UESPA arrowhead became the exclusive Starfleet insignia. Or maybe — and this just now occurred to me — the arrowhead-and-circle emblem used in the movie era (and its TNG-era arrowhead-and-oval descendant) could be meant as a hybrid of the UESPA emblem and the Vulcan IDIC, representing the diversity of all the member worlds.
This fangirl didn’t mind that lingering ass shot! Walking through the corridors with glistening pecs was a bit much, but more because I think it looked unprofessional. That’s also the scene where “The Most Interesting Man in the World” is supposed to appear, though there is considerable debate as to whether it really is the same actor.
“Dammit, Jim! Eat a salad once in a damn while!” AFAIK, this might be the only time McCoy, or anyone, made a reference to Kirk’s weight. I might be wrong about that, though. I’m pretty sure Shatner would not wanted it to be mentioned so it became the “elephant in the room” (pun intended) later on. Of course, by the time the movies came along, he wasn’t the only one to suffer from middle-age spread.
I always liked shouty Spock! I also like the “whatevs” shot of Uhura.
@65/ElleMarie: Yes, those shots of Uhura are priceless! You’re probably right about Kirk’s weight not coming up much. It’s ironic, since here, in his second episode (as at the outset of each season), Shatner’s at his most fit.
It’s too bad we won’t have figured out a way to have our tastiest foods be non-fattening as well even by the 23rd century….! ;)
@65 ElleMarie: I didn’t mind very much either :-)
But I think he’s still too young here to suffer from “middle-age spread” (nice term, though).
Here’s a fanwanky interpretation of Kirk’s (not Shatner’s) weight problem: We know he was on Tarsus IV when the food ran out and everybody was starving. Maybe since that time he subconsciously feels that he should put on some reserve for bad times, because you can never be sure that there will still be food tomorrow.
For what it’s worth, Shatner looked pretty fit when he did The Motion Picture (although that uniform also helped). And he was nearing 50 at that point.
@67/Jana: You should get a Trek No-Prize for that!
@69 Bibliomike: Thank you :-) :-)
On the subject of whether the Big E and its crew are “exceptional” compared to every other ship and character in the Trek universe, it’s long been a basic tenent of adventure drama that our characters are the best/most unique/most evil/tallest/most mostest of their kind in this world. If they’re not, why are we bothering to tell stories about them?
This could easily be seen as a simplistic point of view that belongs in the past of television storytelling, but it was, indeed, the point of view that largely obtained in television drama at the time Star Trek (and even most of its spinoffs) was made.
Does it present a realistic scenario? Probably not. But I’ve personally always found it more useful and illuminating to discuss Star Trek in the real-world terms of the times, places and culture in which it was created, rather than in-universe terms.
@71/SMB: Sure, that’s the usual pattern, but as I said, early first-season TOS episodes like this one seem to be specifically about refuting that kind of romanticized treatment of its heroes. Yes, they’re highly skilled at their jobs by virtue of being Starfleet officers on the most advanced and important class of ship, but they’re still just regular folks doing their jobs, not exaggerated superheroes. And they’re one of twelve such crews, as we later learn (or maybe thirteen, depending on how you take Kirk’s “twelve like her” line).
True, when we did see other starship crews later on, they tended not to hold up so well in comparison — indeed, they tended to die en masse, and of the four other starship captains we saw, one (Decker) was broken and unstable, two (Tracey and Garth) were murdering megalomaniacs, and only one (Wesley) seemed like a decent sort of guy. (And one, the unnamed Defiant captain glimpsed in “The Tholian Web,” was just dead.)
Oh, and there’s another thing — all those captains were Kirk’s seniors, and two of them were his superiors in rank (commodores). If anything, Kirk was the young upstart still trying to prove himself. Whatever notable feats he’d accomplish over the 5-year mission, it’s likely that his elders like Wesley and Decker had achieved plenty of their own years earlier. And Garth was a legend before he lost his mind — and who knows what he may have accomplished after he was cured?
So the tendency of later Trek to treat James T. Kirk as the one and only Starfleet hero of the 23rd century just doesn’t fit with how TOS itself portrayed him and his peers and seniors. He wasn’t the Chosen One, he was just a member of an illustrious fraternity of starship commanders. An elite group, to be sure, but not a one-man club.
That’s why I’m glad that Trek literature has fleshed out some of the other 23rd-century starship crews, showing in series like Vanguard and Seekers that the Enterprise wasn’t the only starship that managed to accomplish things beyond getting destroyed. IDW Comics has done this as well with John Byrne’s comics featuring an older Number One as a commodore in command of a starship.
Actually, that… sort of argues in favor of it being a fairly realistic portrayal of how the passage of time tends to make heroes out of people who, at the time, felt they were just doing their jobs.
@73/SMB: Sure, it does kind of make sense in context, particularly after Kirk and his crew saved the Earth twice in consecutive decades in the movies. But I happen to like the first season’s sense of everyday professionalism. Roddenberry and his original collaborators didn’t set out to make this show about larger-than-life heroes or Chosen Ones, so the fact that later generations of Trek creators and fans have built Kirk & co. into that is losing sight of the original intent. And I think that’s regrettable.
@74/ChristopherLBennett: It’s certainly not that I don’t see your point. Sure, I get that the lionization of Our Heroes pretty much amounts to in-universe fan service, and I get why it rankles. Swallowing its own tail has increasingly been a problem with Trek: there was a period, especially toward the end of DS9, when it seemed that Star Trek was no longer “about” much of anything except itself.
The problem I see here is, I don’t see it changing much, at least in the near future. The whole raison d’etre of the new movies (and I generally don’t dislike them) is to lob handballs off existing preestablished tropes to get a slightly different bounce. Part of the problem with Trek now is, it’s such a fan-driven exercise (in the sense of “who it’s made for”) that it would take a completely new approach to the material to leverage it out of that hole. And I don’t anticipate that happening soon.
@75/SMB: The thing is, the original purpose of the movie reboot was not simply to reuse old tropes. The reason they split off a new timeline was to give themselves the freedom to tell new stories unfettered by past continuity. They kind of lost sight of that in the second movie, which I think was largely due to Damon Lindelof; he was the one who insisted that the villain be Khan, over Roberto Orci’s objections. But Lindelof isn’t involved anymore, so I’m hopeful that we’ll see more originality in the third movie.
@76/ I understand what the motivation was. I didn’t say that was the only reason it was done. I’m just saying that it’s part and parcel of an increasingly self-referential tendency that is done very much to satisfy fan expectations. As a fan myself, I enjoy these, but I’m not blind to the way it calls overmuch attention to itself.
Oh, wait. The episode. Right.
Hey, I like Dave Bailey.
@78/SMB: Me too! Let’s have a series where he comes back after his time with Balok and becomes a kick-butt starship commander. Maybe give him a reformed Mr. Stiles (“Balance of Terror”) as his exec. Former Big E misfits make good!
@79/Bibliomike: I always kind of pictured Dave going on interstellar adventures with the little guy, with Bailey the wide-eyed human seeing the galaxy for the first time and Balok as his guide-slash-Doctor Who-slash-mentor-slash-Very Short Alien Auntie Mame.
BALOK AND BAILEY! This fall on ABC!
I agree with you, CLB. Its pretty silly and unrealistic to have one ship and one crew as the “best of the best”, as it were. TNG really dropped the ball on the idea of this organiation being Starfleet, that there is a whole fleet of ships boldly going. What I particularly like about Star Trek: Online is that you can make the captain and crew whoever you want them to be. And each of my captains and crews are proud to serve on their ships, even if they’re not the Enterprise. It’s unrealistic to have thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of officers wanting to serve on one ship; I would think being a Starfleet officer, wearing the uniform, serving on a starship (or not) would be extraordinary in itself. That’s how I treat my crews when I put together them together. A Starfleet crew serving, boldly going, just doing their jobs, on a ship not called Enterprise, but is a Starfleet ship nonetheless, holds just as much value as a ship that bears the 1701 mark, and I’m glad you and Keith and other Trek authors expand on that.
That’s what I really love about this episode. At this point, as has been said, they’re just professional, seasoned officers in an organization whose job happens to be exploring unknown space. They’re very relatable here, all of them, including Spock (especially at this early point, when he’s still shouty-grinny Spock). The episode plays out like something you would encounter on a mission in space, and you hope that the captain and crew make the right decisions, as we see here. This is definitely one of my early favorites.
I actually think Bailey gets my vote for best timing of the episode:
BAILEY: We’ve only got eight minutes left.
SULU: Seven minutes and forty five seconds.
BAILEY: He’s doing a countdown!
The exasperation in that last line is perfectly pitched.
@82/rwb: Yeah, I agree. Realistically, Bailey should, as a Starfleet professional, be doing a better job of keeping his – uh – stuff – together; but at the same time, he’s a junior officer (I don’t know that this is explicitly stated onscreen – haven’t actually had time to rewatch the episode this week, mea maxima culpa), and it seems obvious from his demeanor. His fright, as I said above, is perfectly understandable; the fact that Kirk reprimands him, and rightly, doesn’t change that.
I thought of someone else we can add to the category of “Not Yet Ready for Prime Bridge Crewmen”: Joe Tormolen. Can’t wait to see how Keith handles him.
Didn’t early TNG try to downplay Kirk and his Enterprise early on? I recall Riker in The Naked Now played it as if his memory of the events of The Naked Time were a somewhat obscure historical foot note. Scotty was not treated as being especially legendary by the E-D and was made to feel more marginalized than idolized. I don’t think Kirk and crew took on legend status in-universe until Generations retconned it in.
Apropos of nothing but my own twisted sense of detail, it should be noted that “Corbomite Maneuver” marks the first appearance of one of De Kelley’s more endearing quirks: his unerring ability to pronounce a newly-heard word differently than everyone else in the episode does.
In this case, it’s “Balok,” pronounced bay-lock. Balok says his name, the same broadcast is heard by everyone on the Enterprise, and what does McCoy do? He tells Kirk that Bah-lock’s message was heard all over the ship.
De did this a lot, and it supposedly drove his directors a little nuts. There are a few examples, but the other one that leaps to mind is in “Journey to Babel,” wherein Amanda tells Bones about Spock’s pet say-lott, to which he immediately responds quizzically, “Sell-it?”
@85/SMB: Nice catch!
83/Bibliomike: I’m pretty sure that McCoy takes Kirk to task in the episode for promoting Bailey too quickly.
83/Bibliomike: If actor Stewart Moss is to be believed (and why not), he had the same problems with Joe Tormolen’s little breach of sterility protocol as everyone else does. In one of Marc Cushman’s books about TOS, Moss is quoted as saying he asked the director, basically, why the hell am I taking my glove off? That makes my character look like an idiot.
According to Moss, the director’s answer was more or less because we don’t have an episode if you don’t.
@87/rwb: Oh, yes, you are correct. That makes me think of Picard doubting his own decision to appoint Wesley an acting ensign too soon in some early episode of TNG. (Or was he chiding Wesley at the time? “Maybe I gave you too much responsibiliy too soon”? I forget.)
@88/SMB: Yeah, I don’t blame Mr. Moss. I remember that anecdote from Cushman’s book. I wonder if there has ever been an attempt to justify Joe’s action in tie-in fiction…
Joe’s conscience pricked at him. He shouldn’t. He absolutely knew he shouldn’t. But the microchip that had been implanted in him at his dangerously complicated birth, a last ditch effort by Starfleet Medical to save his life, had the unpredictable side effect of making cold, frozen surfaces irresistible. The siren song of the glistening ice called out to Joe as, against his better judgment, ever fiber of his being crying out in protest, he removed his glove…
Nah. Probably not. ;)
89/Bibliomike: I smell the beginning of a new Pocket Books trilogy. THE TORMOLEN SYNDROME, BOOK I: An Itch In Time.
@90/SMB: Ha! Looks, from Memory Beta, like poor Joe hasn’t gotten too much extra-canonical attention. So why not? :)
@88 SMB: At least they wore protective suits at all. They never bothered in later episodes, which occasionally made them all look like idiots.
@65 ElleMarie: I kind of liked Kirk walking through the corridor with his shirt off. It does look out of place, but it also looks relaxed, as if he’s totally at home on his ship. It makes for a nice contrast to the military tone of the main part of the episode, just like the scene with Balok in the end.
@87 rwb: It seems like McCoy was right with his criticism. So maybe Kirk should be blamed instead of Bailey?
@92/JanaJansen: From what I gather, no one on the production team was very happy with the original suits. It was felt they looked like they were made out of shower curtains—primarily because, well, uh heh heh, they were. There wasn’t enough money in the budget to do a suit everyone was happy with, at least until the third season.
@75, 76,
In the context of “The crew of the Enterprise, chosen superheroes” and the new movies, it’s worth pointing out that the new movies take the Chosen One trope and turn it up to 11. Kirk ends up as Captain of the Enterprise not because he’s a professional officer who has demonstrated on numerous occasions as an ensign, lieutenant, and commander that he’s ready for his own command but rather because he’s James T. Kirk, and it’s his destiny. We’re given no other reason beyond that (well, and possibly neopotism) why a reckless cadet who wasn’t even supposed to be on the Enterprise would suddenly be promoted to be its captain.
Love them or hate them (I’ll admit to being in the later camp), after that beginning, it’s going to be almost impossible for the Abrams movies to treat Kirk as just another professional among many in Starfleet. That ship, as it were, has already sailed.
So they did try to appeal to the fans, but they did it all wrong – by making the crew of the Enterprise the Chosen Ones, by slipping in in-jokes like Kirk asking Uhura about her first name all the time, etc.
Instead of staying true to the characters, doing some space exploration and finding humanitarian solutions to problems. And having some fun along the way. Ok, they did that last bit.
Watched this episode last night when it aired on MeTV, paying attention to some of the points raised here.
By the way, MeTV did just start running Trek on weekday afternoons two weeks ago, but they’ve been showing it on Saturday nights for over three years, and are on their third pass throught the series (tonight they’re showing “The Alternative Factor) Kirk may have volunteered Bailey for the assignment of going off with Balok, but its clear to me that Bailey wanted the job. He nearly jumps out of his seat when Balok first proposes the idea.
Also, McCoy may be the first to mispronounce Balok’s name, but Uhura and Spock also say “Bah-lock”
@96/RayTomczak: You’re right — Kirk only nominated Bailey because he could see how eager Bailey was to do it.
Kirk just beat Bailey to the punch, as I meant to say when I was composing that comment in my head.
As far as the Enterprise being exceptional among all of Starfleet, isn’t Kirk supposed to be exceptional in at least one regard; that is being the youngest person ever to become a starship captain. I don’t remember if that’s actually established as canon in any of the episodes or movies or if I got that from a novel or comic book.
@98/RayTomczak: The book The Making of Star Trek establishes that Kirk was the youngest Academy graduate to earn a starship command. But that book was written two years into the series, so maybe it was an after-the-fact rationalization for casting an actor as young as Shatner in the role.
And as I said, it doesn’t mean he’s treated as more important than other captains during TOS; on the contrary, the other starship commanders he deals with tend to have greater rank or seniority.
@76/CLB
“They kind of lost sight of that in the second movie, which I think was largely due to Damon Lindelof; he was the one who insisted that the villain be Khan, over Roberto Orci’s objections.”
You mean Damon “How many MORE franchises can I damage?” Lindelof, don’t you? ;-)
@98 and @99 – I was about to suggest that Tryla Scott, in “Conspiracy” (TNG), broke Kirk’s (non-canonical?) record; but my conversations with Christopher have convinced me I should check my facts first. Turns out that script says she only “made captain faster than anyone in Starfleet history,” so maybe she wouldn’t necessarily have to have been younger than Kirk. (It’s a shame a character like that was created solely for the purposes of being killed off.)
@101
It’s a shame that entire storyline turned out to be pretty much a waste. If TNG was so against serialization, how did the producers ok that storyline only to chicken out?
@102: As I recall, there were people who loathed that particular storyline, and felt it was too dark for Star Trek. I don’t know if it were fans and viewers, because like much of TNG’s first season, there were people who loved Conspiracy. I’m actually surprised Roddenberry let that story get through at all. The idea of Picard and Riker blasting starfleet admirals (albeit possessed) without even trying to reason with them feels very anti-Trek.
@103
Oh I agree it was poorly executed (like a LOT of Season One, it was just ill thought-out and slap-dash), but it was a gem of an idea. It would have been better suited in a much later season when the writing (and ‘goodness’ of the Federation) in the new iteration was better established.
Just seemed so *odd* to run with it, and then… Pffft.
@102/Kieran: I don’t know that the TNG powers that be were “so against serialization” (if someone knows otherwise, please correct me); it’s just that serialization wasn’t really done yet on weekly television, unless you were a soap opera (daytime or prime time). Two-part episodes were still big fat “very special” hairy deals.
@103/Eduardo: Guilty as charged. I was one of the fans who just hated, hated, hated “Conspiracy” at the time, mostly for the gross-out factor, although the failure to at least attempt to communicate with the aliens is also, as you note, a mark against it. I think the alien possession angle was a compromise, since Roddenberry wouldn’t stand for real conspiracy and corruption within the Starfleet ranks (and I think there may be something to be said for that, DS9’s quite successful stories along those lines notwithstanding). No longer being a squeamish teenager, I’d probably be more okay with “Conspiracy” than I was in 1988…. but would you believe I still haven’t gone back and watched it? True story!
First I agree with those who like procedural quality of the episode which would later become a quality on TNG. the Enterprise encounters a problem, ideas are brought up, the ship’s systems used, strategies considered, but ther are also breaks and exhaustion. What some perceive as slowness is rather a thoroughness and professionalism. I also like the fact that indeed Kirk’s bluff is perceived by the crew as futile, Spock e.g. shakes amused his head and when it seems to turn into a triumph this is also smashed early by the Enterprise being towed.
Second Shatner is absolutely great. While Nimoy still doesn’t quite get his role and ruins the whole adrenaline gland gag by himself shouting around the clock, Shatner runs through the whole spectre of expressions, he’s tired, looks sceptical on Bailey, stares defiantly but also once with an open mouth, he’s amused, has a slightly desperate look for Spock’s visual contact attempt and is visibly angry when Spock diagnoses a checkmate.
As for the Enterprise being a special ship: Well it survives quite a lot of missions and quite a few other of the dozen Constellation ships don’t. Since the Enterprise takes over their mission and successfully finishes it, by default the concept of a series even a very loosely plotted one like TOS automatically elevates the protagonist to a special level. Also the ship surely wasn’t named by accident Enterprise considering the US aircraft carrier which was the most decorated WWII ship.
“@102/Kieran: I don’t know that the TNG powers that be were “so against serialization” (if someone knows otherwise, please correct me)”
They were. They were so initially determined to have stand-alone stories only, the writers weren’t allowed specify it was Spock’s wedding Picard referenced when talking to Sarek.
Also – getting the wagon back on the trail… I agree with the sentiments that this is maybe the best of the ‘three’ pilots. Getting through the adventure, ‘skinned knees and all’.
@107/Kieran OC: But you’re talking about two different things there. TNG’s producers’ desire to avoid referencing TOS too much is a totally separate question from their openness to serialization within TNG itself. Indeed, TNG was clearly a more serialized show than its predecessor, with lots of ongoing character arcs and recurring plot threads. There was more of it as the series went on, but even in the first season you can see signs of it, like Q appearing twice in the first half-season, Wesley advancing from nosy civilian to acting ensign to Academy applicant, Quinn and Remick being introduced in “Coming of Age” before returning in “Conspiracy,” etc.
So there was no hostility to serial elements in general. It’s just that the later producers weren’t interested in following up on “Conspiracy” in particular.
Just a reminder for those who didn’t catch Keith adding the “Next Week” line in the entry itself: Tuesday’s episode is “Mudd’s Women.” :)
@109
That’s two branches of the underlying issue though. Many, many interviews with the writers stress that TNG was initially regarded as more of a ‘reboot’ of the original series, and that they (Behr, Moore, etc especially) battled to have even any consequences carry over from one series to the next or even episode to the next (up to and including fighting tooth and nail for ‘Family’ for cryin’ out loud). The general rule initially was basically ‘No TOS, no baggage, full reset button each week’. Which is hardly a more updated model than twenty years earlier.
The model for TOS and TNG in the main was ‘one and done’. So apart from new villans (Q or Ferengi, etc), it’s curious to see what threads made it through. The ‘Picard-Crusher’ romance lasted about as long as the conspiracy. Both were unique season one experiments.
Although (to get back on track), TOS knew by its ‘third’ episode what it wanted to be (and how to write for it) better than TNG for the first season and a half.
This was, I think, the first episode I’ve ever seen.
Really loved it as a kid, and I still love it now. Certainly better than “Where No Man has Gone Before” (which I also liked).
@111/Kieran: “Apart from Q” — who showed up twice in season 1 — “and the Ferengi” — who also showed up twice in season 1. Those are pretty big “aparts.” Season 1 also gave us such recurring elements as the Troi-Riker romance; the promotion of Wesley to Acting Ensign; hints of trouble brewing with the Romulans (I believe they’re mentioned on a few occasions before they finally show up); Worf’s backstory as having been raised among humans; and the Picard-Crusher romantic tension did indeed persist the whole series long… I think plenty of threads made it through.
And @107: I think, as Christopher says (@109), we were using “serialized” to mean different things. No Trek series yet has been truly serialized (i.e., a single story or cluster of stories told in consecutive weekly parts, a la “Lost,” “Breaking Bad,” etc.) DS9 comes closest, and I’ve heard the Xindi season of “Enterprise” is quite a serialized story (I have yet to see it – I know, points off my Trek cred.)
@113/Mike: “Serialized” is the buzzword we love today, but what we’re really talking about here is continuity. TV dramas in the ’60s aspired to have as little continuity as possible — partly to emulate the classy anthology shows, partly so that the episodes could air in any order, and partly because they had few reruns and no home video, so a missed episode might never be seen. It was considered best to make every episode as standalone as possible, and it was impressive that TOS included as much continuity as it did — reusing character names for returning actors like Barbara Baldavin and Bruce Hyde, referring back to the second pilot and “A Taste of Armageddon” in “By Any Other Name,” etc.
But by the ’80s, while shows were still episodic, they’d begun injecting more continuity in terms of recurring character and plot threads. Each episode would still be self-contained, but there could be several episodes spaced months apart, or maybe about once a year, that would revisit a certain arc and push it forward a little more.
@114/Christopher: I understand your point and don’t actually think we’re on different pages – maybe just using the same words a little differently.
I’m intrigued by your remark that the 60s TV dramas were striving, at least to some extent, “to emulate the classy anthology shows.” Were there many anthologies left by 1966, or do you mean this was more the desire of those producing the weekly dramas with stable casts and standing sets that networks wanted for budget reasons?
@115/Mike: In ’50s TV, play anthologies like Playhouse 90 and Texaco Star Theater were the classiest shows on TV, so they were what TV drama producers and writers aspired to emulate. It was mainly soap operas and kids’ adventure shows that had serialization, so serial elements were seen as kitschy and lowbrow — pretty much the opposite of today’s views of serial vs. episodic storytelling. That attitude pretty much continued until the ’80s, when shows like Dallas and Hill Street Blues came along.
This was discussed on a blog I used to read a few years ago. Here are a couple of relevant posts:
http://zvbxrpl.blogspot.com/2004/10/who-lives-on-ranch-with-his-mom.html
http://zvbxrpl.blogspot.com/2004/10/continuity-terrors.html
@116: Thanks for the links. The blogger certainly has a point about sitcoms and serialization. In fact, it ocurred to me after I bought and watched the entire series on DVD a few months ago that a lot of what we see in modern TV drama, including serialization, season long story arcs, season ending cliffhangers and even the so-called “mid-season finale”, were first seen on prime time TV in the ABC sitcom SOAP .
@108 – Kieran: Yup, this seems like the best of the three, as “seeking out new life and new civilizations”, whereas “Where No Man Has Gone Before” is more about “hey, one of our friends just turned into a semi omnipotent douche, let’s kill him”, which is more of a Twilight Zone kind of plot.
@108/lordmagnusen – You say that as though it’s a bad thing! I think a lot of early TOS has a “Twilight Zone” vibe, which is one reason the first season appeals to me more than the other two. Not just “Where No Man…” (and “The Cage,” for that matter), but also “Charlie X,” “The Enemy Within,” “The Squire of Gothos,” “Arena,” “The Naked Time”… even “City on the Edge of Forever.” They’re all about ordinary people (if more heroic than we are) thrust into extraordinary situations, and there’s very often a moral lesson thrown in, to boot! (Maybe this connects to Christopher’s point @116 above, as another way TOS was trying to emulate “classy anthology shows.”)
Come to think of it, though, “Where No Man…” doesn’t quite fit the Zone vibe. If Serling had written it, Mitchell would probably have ended up triumphant, only to be brought low by a delayed allergic reaction to those golden apples. :)
On a side note, my kids and I were watching “Night at the Museum: Battle for the Smithsonian” over the weekend, and guess who turned up as a “statue” of a NASA mission control operator? None other than Clint Howard. All I could think was, “Hey, so *that’s* what Balok is doing these days!”
I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, but that one thing is “seek out new life…” and TZ is another.
@121/lordmagnusen: “We reach.” :) That’s the problem with online forums – can’t hear tone of voice! They absolutely are different things. Very few TZ characters were *willingly* going where no one had gone before!
(By the way, on one computer I see the handy-dandy text editing tools in these comment boxes… on another, I don’t, and am reduced to such unsightly typography as asterisks. What gives? I assume the problem is something on my end… any suggestions?)
@122/Mike: Actually there were a bunch of TZ episodes about space exploration missions. The pilot had a space-exploration angle. Then there’s “And When the Sky Was Opened,” where mysterious things happen to astronauts after a test flight; “I Shot an Arrow Into the Air,” about stranded astronauts; and other exploration stories like “Elegy,” “People Are Alike All Over,” “The Little People,” “Death Ship,” “The Parallel,” “Probe 7, Over and Out,” and “The Long Morrow.” Plus stories about established space colonies, like ‘The Lonely” and “On Thursday We Leave for Home.”
Sure, bad things tended to happen to the space explorers once they got out there, but they did go there willingly.
@123/Christopher: Yeah, such episodes crossed my mind as I was commenting. (I’ve been a TZ fan for a long time – I read Marc Scott Zicree’s Companion so often that I wore out my first copy, and knew some stories so well I felt as though I’d seen them even when I hadn’t!). I decided, however, that going willingly into space — as you quite rightly point out many characters did — is an altogether different thing from going willingly into that land of shadow and substance, of things and ideas…!
Anyway, no, I didn’t mean to suggest there were few stories about space exploration.
@123/Christopher: But I certainly do see how my comment could have been taken that way. Points off to me for trying to be clever! :)
Neither did I. :)
@85, I assume you will agree that sometimes our country doctor can’t even get the names of the crew right. (In the Apple, he called Hendoff “HEIN-dorff”, for one), but the worst example (and despite my expertise I did not catch this he first dozen times I saw this) has to be in All Our Yesterdays.
(Please note I am a proofreader by trade, as well as an entertainer, so the terms “grammar Nazi” and “language police” are not unknown to me)
When he is trying to get through to the EVEN MORE stubborn, thick-headed Vulcan, he reminds him that at this very moment, his ancestors are barbarians, “who killed THEMSELF off with their own passions.”
Now I am a veteran of small-budget films and cheap TV shows (hey, I’m TRYING to do better!), but I cannot believe that on network TV, an error as outrageous and egregious (grammar- or language-wise) would have been allowed to go unchecked like that. When I discovered it, I was absolutely dumbfounded. I wonder if anyone has a theory on this?
(I JUST discovered Keith’s series so I am trying to catch up slowly. I do not even know how to mark this post so that I can respond to people to respond to me.)
And BTW, McCoy is not the only one guilty of this. In Immunity Syndrome, there is NO REASON AT ALL for Kirk to call Kyle “Cowell”, not once but TWICE.
OK, I’ll shut up now for this episode.
It would appear I do not know how to signal someone that I am replying to them, either.
As my girlfriend would say, I am using the “old internet”.
I have also been completely unsuccessful at subscribing to this thread OR registering to this site.
Keith knows me on FB so if anyone has the answers, pleas let him know
Just saw this episode and it’s fantastic, it’s going to the top of my favorite episodes list. I like the interaction among the crew that Keith talked about. Also, the upholding of the values of Star Trek. And this episode did a good job of showing why Kirk was a good captain in his handling of the crisis.
For me the rough spot of an otherwise good episode was the constant stepping on of Uhura, what with Spork doing things Uhura should have been doing, such as getting a TV picture from the Fesarius. Other than that, the strong point of this show for me was the depiction of a command structure and how it held up under stress.
@131/DSL: That’s because Uhura was only added to the script as an afterthought. Remember, in production order, this was her first episode. She was shoehorned in late in the process, and thus she didn’t have much to do.
iTunes has Star Trek in both original and remastered versions. For some reason, this is the one episode where the remastered (actually, re-done) special effects appear in the original show. No doubt an error somewhere along the line, but I miss seeing the original Fesarius, which I remember as looking a bit like a beaded Christmas tree ornament.
I also love Sulu’s “Are you kidding?” look and slight shrug of resignation in response to Kirk’s line, “Impulse power too.” In for a penny…
@133/justinf – I miss seeing the original Fesarius, which I remember as looking a bit like a beaded Christmas tree ornament.
From your lips to Hallmark’s ears! I also want it to come with a button that, when pressed, starts the sound clip of Clint Howard’s Balok laughing uproariously.
By the way, since Margaret Clark just mentioned it on a recent podcast, I can now verify that my upcoming TOS novel The Face of the Unknown, due out at the end of 2016/start of 2017, is indeed that “definitive novel about the First Federation” that I mentioned always wanting to do in post #4. I’d actually already gotten the go-ahead to do the book about a month before I made that post, but I couldn’t announce it yet, so I just sort of hinted at it. The title, of course, is from Kirk’s line to Bailey when he invited him to join the boarding party to Balok’s pilot vessel: “The face of the unknown. I think I owe you a look at it.”
Great news, @135/Christopher – and great choice of title!
@136/Mike: Thanks. I wasn’t sure about the title at first — it was just the only “Corbomite Maneuver” quote I could find that was even remotely suitable as a title, and I was open to changing it if I thought of something better — but in the course of writing the book, I came to feel that it was a good fit for the story after all. (And the only other possibility that I considered was First Principles, which was kind of weak.)
Christopher: You could’ve called it Tranya for Everyone!
Okay, maybe not……………
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@138/krad: Actually, one thing I realized fairly late in the writing process is that I’d neglected to include any mentions of tranya. Naturally, I tried to remedy that in revisions.
Christopher: Tranya or no tranya, that sounds intriguing! When does the novel take place? Or aren’t you supposed to tell yet?
@140/Jana: Because it’s (just barely) part of the 50th anniversary year, it’s a 5-year-mission TOS story. It’s in between the end of the original series and the start of the animated series, to be precise. It’s my first full novel set in the 5-year mission, although I’ve visited it previously in one novelette (“As Others See Us” in the Constellations anthology) and in the flashbacks in the first half of Department of Temporal Investigations: Forgotten History.
The same time frame as James Swallow’s new book. Great! I’m excited this will be your first full 5YM novel.
One odd statement is when Spock says the mass of the larger ship “goes off his scale”.
How do they measure a planet or a star? Maybe they ran out of zeros.
Kind of like The Wizard of OZ at first making hiself look powerful and freighting Balock like the Wizard and in fact just a ordinary peson playing by a young Clint Howard
Balock kind of like The Wizard of Oz making himself look powerful with false image
I love this one. It’s one of my favorites.
@143. Well maybe the scale measuring planets is on Sulu’s desk and not Spock. Nobody said it was off Sulu’s scale.
Just like in The Wizard of Oz Balock is just an ordinary person hiding behinda scary and powerful looking super humanoid
My favorite scene has always been the briefing room, tired people slumped around a table full of tablets and coffee cups. It’s just so real.
@@@@@6/JanaJansen: You have an Interesting way to interpret Kirk’s meaning about getting a better officer in return. I’m reasonably certain, however, that the comment from Kirk was simply referring to Bailey coming back from his tenure with Balok as a more mature officer. As you said, it would be a shitty thing for Kirk to say if he meant the other thing.
I wonder why Kirk thought McCoy should go to “treat the aliens?” Wouldn’t Balok’s ship have its own doctors like the Enterprise?
McCoy is at his crusty best here (“if I jumped every time a light went on around here I’d wind up talking to myself”.)
What happened to the kid who played Balok?
@151/mspence: “I wonder why Kirk thought McCoy should go to “treat the aliens?” Wouldn’t Balok’s ship have its own doctors like the Enterprise?”
The ship sent out a distress call. Therefore, its crew needed outside assistance. The only sensible thing to do is to bring a doctor just in case. Ask any EMT or firefighter — a lot of what they do is responding to cases where they turn out not to be needed. They still respond to every call, because they never know when they actually will be needed.
“What happened to the kid who played Balok?”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clint_Howard
Just a note for anyone who’s made it to the end of these comments (or perhaps to update the entry if possible?), but regular commenter Christopher L. Bennett did get the chance to write his “dream project” he mentioned above, delving into what the First Federation was, and why we never heard about them again on-screen. As with the rest of his books, The Face of the Unknown is an excellent read on it’s own merits, but also a great follow-up to this episode!
D’oh, just noticed that I failed to load all the comments, and Christopher L. Bennett mentioned it himself above. Oh well, consider it an extra plug from an unbiased fan!
When I first saw this one, ‘way back when I was a kid, I was a little bugged by the labored way — both visually and in terms of the audio — that the “adult” male voice was dubbed onto Baby Balock’s mouth movements. I’m sure they did the best they could with the technology available, but for some reason I still find it frustrating. Nonethess, I do love this episode.
@155/MalcolmContent: Good voice dubbing isn’t a matter of technology, it’s a matter of the voice actor’s timing, their ability to match the lip sync of the actor they’re dubbing over (which is frequently themselves, in ADR dubbing for outdoors scenes where the voice recordings were noisy or low-quality). The main issue is whether the production has the time to do as many ADR takes as necessary for the actor to get the lip sync right. Although it’s true that these days you can fix lip sync errors with digital effects.
Well, there was one technological factor that made a lot of dubbed voices obvious in the TV of the era, which was that you could often tell from the acoustics that the voice was recorded in a studio or a small booth rather than outdoors, say.
‘Corbomite Maneuver’ was truly a great episode from start to finish – smart dialogue, interesting conflicts, fascinating aliens, bits of humor, genuine tension, surprise happy ending. I especially liked the subplot showing how Bailey was coming unglued by the rigors of spaceflight and his responsibilities. Instead of an being automaton like many other crewmen Bailey was very human, filled with fear and insecurities (as most of us would be in such a pressure-filled environment). My only small ‘gripe’ with this episode is that a red alert signal would never be “muted” and that McCoy would never conceal an emergency like that from the captain. I realize that scene was done for humor, but it just was not believable.