“Friday’s Child”
Written by D.C. Fontana
Directed by Joseph Pevney
Season 2, Episode 3
Production episode 60332
Original air date: December 1, 1967
Stardate: 3497.2
Captain’s log. McCoy is briefing Kirk, Spock, Uhura, Scotty, and Chekov about Capella IV, where he was stationed for a few months. The natives are tall and their culture very much that of warriors. They were uninterested in medical assistance, as they felt only the strong should survive. We also see a kligat in action, a throwing-star-like weapon that is quite deadly.
The Federation wants Kirk to negotiate a mining treaty with the Capellans for topaline. Spock would normally recommend a heavily armed party, but McCoy cautions against that—a show of force would guarantee that they won’t sign any treaty. So Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and Grant from security beam down, leaving Scotty in charge of the Enterprise, with a caution from Kirk that the Klingons have been sighted in the vicinity.
The landing party is greeted by Maab and a bunch of Capellans—and a Klingon, the sight of whom causes Grant to unholster his phaser. That action proves fatal, as one of the other Capellans immediately throws his kligat at Grant, killing him instantly. The Klingon, Kras, asks if it’s Federation policy to shoot unarmed Klingons on sight. Kirk—who’s furious—nonetheless acquiesces to the Capellans’ desire for them to remain unarmed, and they turn over their weapons. Kras is negotiating on the Klingons’ behalf for the topaline as well.
They cool their heels in a tent. A woman comes to provide food, a gesture of friendship in exchange for their turning over their weapons. McCoy warns Kirk, however, not to touch her, or her closest male relative will try to kill him. When Kirk declines to touch her, said closest male relative enters, expressing disappointment that he didn’t get a chance to beat Kirk up.
They are brought before Teer Akaar, who leads the Ten Tribes of Capella. They also meet his wife Eleen, who is very pregnant with his heir. Kirk objects to Grant being killed, which confuses Akaar, as it was his man and it should have been Grant’s pleasure and privilege to die for him. Maab explains that humans don’t feel that way, and Kras adds that Klingons totally do, so they’re cooler.
McCoy steps in and says that Maab is correct, and that Kras is a liar. Maab defends Kras, and the Klingon makes his case: the Klingon culture is very much like the Capellans’, and they will provide weapons and training, not useless liquids and powders to heal the sick. Kirk, however, promises that Capella will remain autonomous. The Klingons conquer—the Federation will simply trade and leave them alone otherwise.
It’s also clear that there’s a power struggle going on between Akaar and Maab, though when Akaar out-and-out asks if Maab is challenging his rule, Maab backs down and says that such a challenge is Akaar’s to make.
Kirk tries to get the communicators back so he can call the Enterprise, but Akaar dismisses him—”The sky does not interest me.”
Soon thereafter, Maab proves himself a liar by starting his coup. While civil war breaks out among the Ten Tribes, Kirk, Spock, and McCoy head to the tent where their equipment has been taken, only to find Kras also searching for his equipment. He claims to have no quarrel with Kirk right before he attacks with a Capellan sword. But Kirk gets the upper hand, and Kras says he has a small scout ship nearby—then Maab comes in and declares victory. Akaar is dead, and he now leads the Ten Tribes. Kras tries to convince Maab to kill the landing party, but Maab was impressed with how Kirk comported himself during the battle, including overpowering the Klingon—and he saw fear in Kras’s eyes when Kirk held his sword to Kras’s neck.
Maab brings Eleen before him. The child she carries would be Teer, and is therefore a threat to his rule. But Kirk’s not about to stand and watch a pregnant woman get killed, so he and Spock remonstrate with the Capellans—to no avail. Touching the wife of a Teer is a high crime. Eleen insists that she was willing to obey the law, and asks that she watch Kirk die for touching her.
On the Enterprise, Chekov picks up a ship at extreme range—it could be a Klingon ship. But once it goes out of range, Uhura gets a weak signal that seems to be a distress signal from the S.S. Deirdre, saying they’re under attack by the Klingons. Uhura can’t raise Kirk, so Scotty has no choice but to break orbit and render assistance. But when they arrive at the source of the distress call, there’s nothing there—no ship, no debris, no sign of any activity whatsoever.
Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and Eleen are being held in a tent. Spock hypothesizes (correctly) that the Enterprise has been otherwise engaged, else Scotty would have beamed down a search party after they didn’t check in. McCoy tries to treat Eleen—she burned herself earlier—and the guards are so appalled at his brazenly touching the wife of a Teer that Kirk and Spock are able to take them out. While Eleen is prepared to die, she does admit that she would prefer to live, and so the four of them set out into the rock formation outside the settlement. They manage to retrieve their communicators, but their phasers are nowhere to be found. (Maab has taken both the phasers and Kras’s disruptor for himself, as he’s intrigued by them.)
Kirk feels the rocks are a “nice place to get trapped in,” but Spock says that it’s also defensible. Meanwhile McCoy struggles to get Eleen to let him fix the burns on her arm. Then he checks the fetus (over Eleen’s objection; she slaps him twice, and after the second time he slaps her back, which shocks her enough to let him finish his exam), and says it’ll come any time now. Eleen is impressed with his medical skills, which are far beyond those even of Capellan midwives.
The most direct path to the plateau where they’ve set up is a narrow passageway. Kirk and Spock are able to use their communicators to make a sonic pulse that causes a rockslide. Now Maab, Kras, and what’s left of their attack party must go around the long way. (In the confusion, Kras finds a Federation phaser on one of the Capellans and takes it, stabbing the Capellan to death.)
McCoy is understandably concerned about the possibility of giving birth to a cranky Capellan on a rock. They move to a cave, which is a much more defensible position. Eleen refuses to allow anyone other than McCoy to touch her as he struggles to help her into the cave.
The Enterprise has performed an exhaustive search, but found no sign of the Deirdre. Scotty has Chekov play back the recording of the distress signal—and he realizes that they asked for the Enterprise for help by name, which makes no sense in a general distress call. Scotty is unwilling to risk being wrong and leaving the freighter screwed, so they finish the search, then bugger back to Capella at warp six. As soon as they head back, Uhura gets another distress call, this from the U.S.S. Carolina. Scotty ignores it on the fool-me-once-shame-on-you-fool-me-twice-shame-on-me theory, and accepts responsibility should it prove to be real.
McCoy cares for Eleen, who’s in pain, either from her exertions or something wrong with the pregnancy. He tries to convince her to want the child, but she insists that it belongs to the Teer—and with him dead, she cedes the child to McCoy, much to his annoyance. However, she does deliver the child with McCoy’s help. It’s a bouncing baby boy, whom Eleen refers to as “our” child, meaning hers and McCoy’s, which rather intrigues Kirk and Spock. (McCoy says he’ll explain later.)
Meanwhile, Kirk and Spock use the local vegetation to fashion bows and arrows. Capellans never developed the bow, so it should catch them off-guard. (This almost makes up for the fact that the bows they fashion have an effective range of about thirty feet, maybe.)
As the Enterprise approaches Capella, a Klingon ship intercepts them. Scotty calls battle stations. Uhura tries to hail the Klingons to no avail.
Eleen renders McCoy unconscious with a rock and sneaks out of the cave, leaving her baby behind. While McCoy tends to the baby and the lump on the back of his head, Kirk and Spock lie in wait for Maab’s party with their makeshift bows.
Maab is surprised to see a no-longer pregnant Eleen come down to meet him. She claims the child and the landing party are dead, that she killed them while they slept. Maab knows she’s lying—his scout already saw Kirk and Spock—but he lets her go out of respect for her status as wife of the Teer.
Kras isn’t so forgiving. He insists that they verify her story, and pulls out his purloined phaser, to Maab’s annoyance.
Kirk chooses that moment to attack, firing an arrow into Kras’s leg. It becomes a three-front fight. The Capellans fight Kirk and Spock, the former with kligats that never strike their target, the latter with arrows that somehow always score kill shots. Kirk and Spock try to stop Kras. And Kras fights the Capellans, disintegrating the one whom Maab sends after him.
Realizing he made a mistake getting into bed with the Klingons, Maab gives Eleen her life back and raises a weapon toward Kras. As Kras shoots, killing Maab, another Capellan kills Kras with a kligat.
Only then does Scotty show up with a security detail. The Klingons apparently had no stomach for a pitched battle with a starship.
Kirk is able to negotiate mining rights with the new High Teer’s regent: Eleen, who will represent her son until he comes of age. McCoy then reveals the Teer’s name: Leonard James Akaar. At this revelation, Spock says that Leonard McCoy and James Kirk will be insufferably pleased with themselves for at least a month over that.
Can’t we just reverse the polarity? Topaline is used in atmospheric domes—how is never made clear, though James Blish had Kirk provide an in-depth explanation (one that was lost on Akaar) in his adaptation in Star Trek 3.
Fascinating. Spock is totally incapable of properly holding a baby, and evinces no interest in learning.
I’m a doctor not an escalator. McCoy has visited Capella before, and his past experience is useful. Plus, he utters the phrase that gave this category its name when he helps Eleen up a ridge. Oh, and he delivers a baby, who is then named after him.
I cannot change the laws of physics! Scotty handles himself well in command of the ship, figuring out the Klingons’ trick distress call, though still doing his duty to make sure it is fake before heading back to Capella. Of course, the trick still works, as Scotty doesn’t arrive until it’s all over…
Ahead warp one, aye. Sulu gets a new toy! The gooseneck scanner that dramatically rises from his console makes its first appearance here.
Hailing frequencies open. Uhura constantly points out that the distress signals could be real and that they’d be abandoning people in need if they broke off.
It’s a Russian invention. As with McCoy, so too with Chekov: we get the source of the navigator’s category as he claims that “fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me” is actually a saying from Russia. His silly smile after he says it indicates that he knows he’s full of shit, a level of self-awareness of his own foolishness he will abandon before too long….
Go put on a red shirt. Poor Grant gets only two words of dialogue—”A Klingon!”—before he’s kligat target practice. Kirk remains cranky about his death for most of Act 1, but has totally forgotten about him by the time of Maab’s coup.
Channel open. “How did you arrange to touch her, Bones? Give her a happy pill?”
“No, a right cross.”
Kirk advocating drugging a pregnant woman, while McCoy expresses his preference for violence against pregnant women.
Welcome aboard. Tige Andres plays Kras, only the second (major) Klingon we’ve met, and he’s much less impressive than Kor, though still quite slimy (he’s only referred to as “Klingon” in dialogue; his name comes from the script and the closing credits). Michael Dante, Ben Gage, Cal Bolder, and Kirk Raymone all do the big strong monotone routine as assorted Capellans. Robert Bralver plays the ill-fated Grant, while recurring regulars James Doohan, George Takei, Nichelle Nichols, and Walter Koenig are all present, the latter officially becoming recurring with his second appearance here.
But the big guest is Julie Newmar as Eleen. Best known as one of the three women who played Catwoman on the 1966 Batman (and the one who appeared the most), Newmar was probably at least partly cast due to her great height (as were most of the men), but she brought a tremendous gravitas to Eleen.
Trivial matters: The episode’s title comes from an old children’s rhyme, first printed in Harper’s Weekly in 1887, assigning a child to each day of the week. Friday’s child is full of woe, according to the poem, which James Blish quoted in full as the epigraph of his adaptation of the episode in Star Trek 3.
The Klingons are firmly established as recurring antagonists in this episode, following their debut in “Errand of Mercy.” This is the first of three appearances the Klingons make this season; they’ll be back in “The Trouble with Tribbles” and “A Private Little War.”
All the scenes on Capella were filmed at the famous Vasquez Rocks (see also “Arena,” etc.), where it was upwards of 110 degrees, making it very uncomfortable, particularly for the people playing Capellans and their thick garb.
The character of Leonard James Akaar will be seen quite a bit in the tie-in fiction. In the TOS movie era, he shows up as a young adult in issue #11 of DC’s second monthly Star Trek comic by Peter David, Gordon Purcell, and Arne Starr, part of the “Trial of James T. Kirk” storyline. Later, he appeared in The Sundered by Andy Mangels & Michael A. Martin, part of the “Lost Era” series, as the chief of security on the U.S.S. Excelsior under Captain Sulu in the late 23rd century. Starting in the post-finale DS9 novels, and continuing into the Titan series, as well as various other 24th-century novels, not to mention the Star Trek Online game, he has been a high-ranking admiral in Starfleet, having been exiled from Capella.
Capella is also seen in the novels Invasion: First Strike by Diane Carey (shortly after this episode) and your humble rewatcher’s A Singular Destiny (in the 24th century).
Topaline is seen again in the Enterprise episode “The Shipment,” and is also referenced in numerous prose stories.
To boldly go. “The child is mine.” Objectively, there’s not a lot to recommend this episode. We start with the Capellans, who are all played with the same “ignoble savage” style common to contemporary portrayals of Native Americans, mistaking lack of technological sophistication for stupidity, and all of them talking like not-too-bright ten-year-olds. Michael Dante is the worst offender, as his Maab shows even less emotion than Spock, draining the interest from his verbal sparring with Akaar, his change of heart toward Kirk and against Kras, and his sacrifice at the end.
Then we have a confrontation between the Enterprise and a Klingon ship all nice and set up—which is then resolved off camera. Buh? The Klingons we met in “Errand of Mercy” never gave the impression of not having the belly for combat, and either way, that was a gun placed on the mantelpiece that was never fired.
And then we have Eleen. There’s a lot of puerile humor involved in McCoy’s treatment of her, from Spock walking by just as Eleen is holding his hand to the whole “the child is mine”/”yes, it’s yours” bit, which results in lots of tee-hee nonsense from Kirk and Spock that just makes me cringe. Not to mention the slapstick idiocy with McCoy and Eleen hitting each other.
Don’t even get me started on the selective marksmanship. Somehow, Kirk and Spock can fashion perfect bows with plant life in a couple of hours and then get perfect kill shots on several Capellans with bows that would have trouble killing a bunny rabbit at fifty paces. Somehow, the Capellans are always unerring with their kligats until they throw them at either Kirk or Spock, when they miss by a country mile.
Yet, with all that, I enjoy the episode. Part of it is that it’s a good vehicle for DeForest Kelley, both in terms of his serving as native guide early on, and later when he treats Eleen, as the character’s trademark competence and snarkiness serve him in good stead. Julie Newmar helps, too, as she imbues Eleen with a gravitas in excess of what the script gives her to work with. She’s also the only one who makes the me-welcome-Earthmen-to-planet affect of the Capellans actually work when spoken out loud.
The politics of the Capellans are also compelling, with Kirk and Kras caught in the middle of the tensions between Maab and Akaar, and the tension of the siege on Vasquez Rocks is well played. It’s one of those episodes that I enjoy watching while I’m watching it, even if my stomach hurts when I think about it afterward.
Warp factor rating: 5
Next week: “Who Mourns for Adonais?”
Keith R.A. DeCandido will be a guest at 2050 Events this weekend in Daytona Beach, Florida. He’ll have a table, and will also be doing some panels, including a Farscape panel alongside Gigi “Chiana” Edgley. His full schedule is here.
Julie Newmar is the only reason this episode works for me at all. From the ridiculous portrayals to the “twang” effects from weapons, it’s just ridiculous. But damn, Julie Newmar was good. I would love to have had more of her. She’s one of those “wait, so-and-so was in Star Trek?” guest stars, and if I could watch a cut version of this episode that’s just her performance, I’d be all for it.
It wasn’t until recently that I realized just how much the Capellans fit into the stereotype of tribal cultures in ’60s TV, whether “Indians” or Arabs or Africans. But the whole noble-savage thing is there — the proud, stoic warrior people with barbaric customs and no regard for life. The “tribal” motifs composer Gerald Fried gives the Capellans, and the use of perennial TV-Western location Vasquez Rocks, only add to it.
I think of this as the one time that Kirk really, unambiguously violated the Prime Directive. In other instances, he saw himself as acting to preserve the Directive, intervening to cancel out others’ intervention and restore a culture’s right to make its own decisions. Here, though, the Capellans were under no manipulation from alien conquerors or ancient computers. They had their own clearly defined laws and customs about the fate of a deposed Teer’s wife and child, and Kirk straight-up violated those laws, even after making a highfalutin speech about how the Federation was better than the Klingons because it would always respect their cultural autonomy. You can’t even argue that Maab’s coup was provoked by Klingon interference. Kras didn’t seem to be behind it, since his own weapon was still confiscated and he tried to use the coup as cover to retrieve it. Maab would’ve overthrown Akaar without any interference at all, so Kirk wasn’t counteracting alien interference when he saved Eleen; he was committing it.
Friday’s Child was one of the shows I’d never previously watched prior to this rewatch. Finally saw it last month. Watchable, and that’s about it. Julie Newmar gives a memorable performance, and Pevney gives an adventurous vibe to the story, but otherwise this is really lacking. Talk about mischaracterizing the Klingons, so well introduced in Errand of Mercy. The whole morally corrupt arms dealer angle goes against everything Klingon. This would have worked far better if Kras had been a Ferengi instead (which of course would take another 20 years to materialize).
Stereotypes and 60’s sexism aside, I never thought Fontana could deliver a script so devoid of substance. Even Spock, her favorite character, felt like a one-dimensional caricature. There’s never any attempt to delve deeper into the moral ramifications of Kirk’s actions. I’m glad Roddenberry delivered A Private Little War, which to me was the story Friday’s Child failed to be.
@3/Eduardo: By TOS standards, Kras’s behavior is exactly right for a Klingon. The Making of Star Trek‘s summary of the Klingons says, “Their only rule in life is that rules are made to be broken by shrewdness, deceit, or power. Cruelty is something admirable; honor is a despicable trait… Their society is totally devoted to personal gain by the cleverest, strongest, or most treacherous.” That was the way they were originally conceived — as “space Mongols,” a Fu Manchu stereotype of scheming and sinister barbarians. It was the Romulans who were the honorable ones as far as TOS was concerned. After all, they were space Romans, so they were the civilized ones.
The first mention of honor by a Klingon was in The Search for Spock, and that was only because the script was originally written with Romulan villains and then changed to Klingons without any significant changes in the writing (which is how Klingons were suddenly using Birds-of-Prey with cloaking devices). TNG then took that throwaway mention of honor and turned it into the Klingons’ defining trait in order to justify turning them into Federation allies. Then they turned Romulans into the treacherous ones because they were still bad guys. Basically, TNG completely inverted the characterizations of the Klingons and Romulans.
@@.-@: That was probably a change for the better, given how the Klingon arcs for TNG and DS9 turned out.
@5: Well, I think that TNG/DS9 Klingons ultimately turned out to be just as treacherous and devious as their TOS forebears; they just felt more of a need to convince themselves that their actions were honorable. Honestly I got sick of their constant bluster about honor this and honor that. Basically they just swapped out “space Mongol” for “space samurai.”
This is usually an episode I skip, it’s okay, not great. I’d say yeah, a definite 5.
But! It gave us the origin of Admiral Akaar! One of my favorite character in the Trek relaunch novels.
I admit it was the first time I watched this episode and I can’t make up my mind about it. There are definitely some cringeworthy moments like scenes with the baby, McCoy slapping the girl (not so much slapping itself but the way it is played), and this ridiculous Teletubies getup natives are wearing… And while handmade bows and marksmanship just about pass my disbelief suspension ability, the fact that onboard the Enterprise none of trained professionals recognized irregularity in the call for help and fell for it seems pretty ridiculous to me.
Then there is Prime Directive issue. Maybe it was supposed to be ok because it is not even the first contact and they are meddling already anyway or maybe because “Klingons started it before we did”, but no matter how I try to look at it it doesn’t sit well with me.
On the other hand, it was interesting to see McCoy as the one doing most of the talking, and there are good scenes of Kirk, Spock and McCoy working together. I found it hilarious how Kirk pulled “you say we can’t do it? oh, too bad, then we won’t” trick on Spock to make him do what he wanted and two minutes later tried the same on McCoy with same result. And Scotty in command is always fun to watch. Julie Newmar was good…
I think I’d give it a 4. Watchable, but not much more.
I occasionally feel funny nitpicking episodes, but this is one I enjoy nitpicking, and my nitpick du jour for this episode is that in my opinion William Shatner blew a line (and they left it in). Specifically, McCoy said “Oochie woochie koochie koo” and when Spock questioned the expression, what I heard from Shatner sounded like: “Oochie koochie koochie koo”, misquoting McCoy. (But I loved when he suggested to Spock to consult linguistics.)
@9/richF: I’ve never thought of that as a blown line or a misquote, because McCoy’s version is kind of an idiosyncratic variant of the more normal “Coochie-coochie-coo.” So it seems natural to me that Kirk would say it his own way (or split the difference, at least) rather than adopting someone else’s idiosyncrasy.
It’s amazing how, apart from The Trouble with Tribbles and Day of the Dove, all the TOS Klingon episodes are variations on the same plot — Kirk has to convince the natives that the Federation is awesome, but there are Klingons tying to make the case for their side. Throw in a lot of running around on location, a crisis in space to keep the Enterprise busy, and something memorable at the end so the audience can tell the story apart from all the other Klingon episodes (The aliens are more advanced than the Federation! And they’re really Americans from an alternate timeline! And Kirk gives them weapons in an allegory of Vietnam! And the woman names the baby after Dr. McCoy and the captain!)
@11/SeanOHara: Leaving out the illusory Kahless in “The Savage Curtain,” Klingons appeared in six episodes: “Errand of Mercy,” “Friday’s Child,” “The Trouble With Tribbles,” “A Private Little War,” “Elaan of Troyius,” and “Day of the Dove.” You seem to be misremembering “The Omega Glory” as a Klingon episode (not to mention an alternate timeline episode; it was neither). And I don’t think “Elaan” fits your pattern.
As for the remaining three, I think you’re exaggerating the similarities. “Errand” depicts an open Klingon occupation that Kirk tries and fails to stave off, a whole army coming in and taking over a unified world. “Friday’s Child” and “A Private Little War” both involve a single Klingon agent backing one side in a local power struggle, openly in “Child” and clandestinely in “Private.” On second thought, maybe “Elaan” does vaguely fit the pattern, because a bad guy among the Elasians is on the Klingons’ payroll, but it’s structurally rather different. Anyway, it should come as no surprise that they would do allegories for Cold War brinksmanship and proxy conflicts during the Vietnam era. And the establishment of the treaty in “Errand” precluded doing more overt war stories.
Husband assassinated in a surprise coup, flight across a wild landscape while heavily pregnant… somehow I’ve never seen it noted anywhere, but this is an episode from the life of Mary, Queen of Scots – something of which I suspect D. C. Fontana was well aware. As for Klingons having a concept of honor, it’s never stated in TOS, but it is implied by Kor respecting Kirk and wishing he had the “glory” of open combat with him, and by Kang’s fury at Kirk breaking his word. On the other hand, the long-ago fanzine “Babel”, which reviewed early-draft scripts sold by Roddenberry’s Lincoln Enterprises, revealed that the treacherous-Klingon role in “Friday’s Child” was originally meant for Kor, until John Colicos turned out to be committed to another job. Maybe that’s why Kras is only called “Klingon” in the dialogue; at the time of writing, they may not have been sure who would wind up playing the part. The same was true of Krell in “A Private Little War”, who also started out as Kor, and is essentially identical to the villain here.
Most of the Capellan names and terms have a double vowel that’s pronounced as two separate syllables, and I can’t help thinking “Man, the ONE TIME they could’ve legitimately thrown apostrophes into every damned word, and they didn’t do it.”
“I’m glad Roddenberry delivered A Private Little War, which to me was the story Friday’s Child”
Except that Eleen at least had honor and dignity while the woman in the other one (whose name eludes me at this hour) was a straight-up treacherous bitch. So I prefer this ep as a woman.
“Basically, TNG completely inverted the characterizations of the Klingons and Romulans.”
*Scowl*. I’ve never forgiven them for this to this very day.
How do you ‘never develop the bow’? Bizarre.
@16
IIRC, Neanderthals never developed bows or spears. Their anatomy wasn’t suited for it.
@16/NumberNone: There are plenty of instances in history of one culture never developing a technology that another culture considered obvious. For instance, Europeans never figured out the moldboard plow until they got it from China, and Native Americans never employed the wheel for transportation. A Capellan would probably find it bizarre that humans never developed the kligat.
For my money, the only Klingon on TOS who remotely measured up to John Colicos portrayal of Kor, was Michael Ansara’s Kang in Day of the Dove. They were characters I would have loved to see go up against Kirk again. At least we got to see them on DS9.
I loved McCoy in this episode. And yes, Julie Newmar. :)
@3 – Eduardo: “Morally corrupt arms dealer” doesn’t go against Klingon characterization in this show. You’re superimposing their later (out of universe) uber warrior culture onto them. In TOS they were in a Cold War against the Federation, always encroaching in on primitive civilizations to get the planets and resources before the Federation can.
Oh, Chris beat me to it, and with references.
It’s nice that we get to know something about McCoy’s past in this episode. But I wonder why he visited the planet before to practice medicine, and why they have the job to negotiate a treaty with the Capellans now. Shouldn’t they leave them alone because they’re a pre-warp culture?
Also I find the ending hard to believe. Eleen was supposed to die with her huband, and telling the truth is very important to the Capellans, and yet she gets away with lying to them, and they make her the regent in the end? That came as a total surprise to me.
TV births are always so easy…
Keep in mind, and yes this is a retcon, that they Klingons we see in TOS are QuchHa’ and don’t necessarily have the same beliefs regarding honor as the HemQuch. In fact, that was a plot point in my Seven Deadly Sins novella in 2010, that the smooth headed Klingons weren’t considered “real” Klingons by their bumpy-headed cousins, polluted as they are by human DNA (per “Affliction”/”Divergence” on Enterprise). Because of that, many QuchHa‘ rejected the teachings of Kahless, hence the less honorable ones we see like Kras and Kor’s lieutenant.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@22/Jana: We know from TAS: “Albatross” that McCoy once went on a medical relief expedition to various planets early in his Starfleet career. I used to assume that his visit to Capella was around that time, although the footage shows him in a post-2266 uniform, so I’m not sure what to make of that.
The whole “pre-warp” requirement for the Prime Directive wasn’t established in those specific terms until TNG’s “First Contact” in 1991. And no pun intended, but it’s totally warped fandom’s understanding of what the PD is supposed to be about. The point of the PD is not “Let’s all hide from the people who aren’t in the warp club yet and giggle at them behind their backs,” it’s “Respect other cultures’ right to self-determination,” period. The problem with casting that in terms of pre-warp/post-warp is that it makes the unrealistic assumption that inventing warp drive is the only way a species could discover alien life. There are plenty of other ways. They could pick up alien messages with radio telescopes or observe starship engine exhaust with gamma-ray telescopes. If they don’t have telescopes yet, they could’ve discovered ancient alien ruins on their planet. They could have been visited by other aliens who didn’t have a Prime Directive and didn’t hesitate to contact them. Or they could’ve been visited by an Earth or early Federation ship before the PD was implemented. I’ve always assumed one of those last two was the case for the Capellans. Their planet has valuable minerals, so presumably they’ve been visited before by aliens (or maybe pre-Federation Space Boomer humans) who wanted those minerals and negotiated for mining rights with the Capellans.
Whatever the reason, if they already know that aliens exist, there’s no reason to hide it from them, and thus no reason not to interact with them, as long as you respect their autonomy and don’t force them to follow your rules and customs. The other thing the whole silly “pre-warp” rule has obscured is that the PD does apply to post-contact races, because the principle of respecting free choice still applies even to cultures that know you exist. In fact, it’s far more important in cases where you actually are interacting with another culture and have to be careful about how you do so.
As for Eleen — so a culture places political expediency over sincere and unwavering regard for its professed principles. In what way is this remotely unbelievable? Political factions usually use their values as an excuse to justify their pursuit of power. With Maab defeated, someone had to lead them, and restoring Akaar’s line through a regency was probably the best way to preserve order and prevent a free-for-all struggle for the Teership.
Ragnarredbeard @@@@@ 17:
Archeological evidence for spears dates back at least 500,000 years; Neanderthals definitely used them.
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2012/nov/15/stone-spear-early-human-species
@krad, how did the tie in fiction deal with Kang, Koloth, and Kor appearing in DS9 looking like traditional Klingons? Did they undergo some sort of DNA extraction to purify their Klingonness?
I have yet to dive into tie-in fiction (I’m finishing Scalzi’s Redshirts), but when I do I plan on starting with either your’s or CLB’s work since I’m familiar with you two through the various rewatchs?
@26/Jason_UmmaMacabre: See Excelsior: Forged in Fire by Michael A. Martin and Andy Mangels. It addresses how the Augment virus’s effects were finally “cured.”
@25
PeterErwin,
I should have specified better. Throwing spears and bows were never developed by the Neanderthal because their anatomy wasn’t set up for throwing things efficiently. Shoulder joint mobility was the problem for them. Standard thrusting spears were not a problem for them.
The article you reference also wasn’t about Neanderthal but about Heidelbergensis, which pre-dated them and modern humans and apparently their shoulders had enough mobility to throw things well (or at least better than Neanderthals).
As far as I know, the first fossil traces of projectile weapons like throwing spears and bows doesn’t occur until 80,000 years ago in Africa, which would leave Neanderthals out.
@28/Ragnarredbeard: But Neanderthal physical limitations are hardly relevant here, because Capellans are anatomically indistinguishable from Homo sapiens sapiens and are clearly adept with thrown weapons. They simply have a different history of invention, which is something that happens with different cultures in real life, as I mentioned. No invention is inevitable; it just seems that way after someone finally thinks it up.
Jason: As Christopher said, it was dealt with in Forged in Fire, which simultaneously was the sequel to “Affliction”/”Divergence” (by curing the Klingons of the Augment virus, thus eliminating all smooth-headed Klingons) and the prequel to “Blood Oath” (by dramatizing the encounter Kang, Kor, Koloth, and Curzon Dax had with the albino mentioned in that episode, which also involved Sulu and the Excelsior). I strongly recommend the book, actually. Andy & Mike did a superb job.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@krad, @ChristopherLBennett, thank you both for the recommendation. Forged in Fire is added to the read list.
But how tall was/is Julie Newmar? I know she’s all lithe slinkiness as Catwoman, but I never got the sense that she was junoesque.
Edit:
Dang…. A quick cursory google query tells me that she was 5’11”!!!! In her Catwoman little stiletto booties she must have been MAGNIFICENT.
@32/LadyBelaine: Yes, indeed. I noted a scene in a Batman episode where Catwoman was standing next to Batman and she appeared taller than he did, even though Adam West is 6’2″. Those must’ve been some heels.
But, the native Australians never developed the bow and arrow either. It could happen.
I think I agree with everyone who says Julie Newmar makes this episode work. I remember reading the James Blish story version where her character in that was just . . . ugh. The baby wasn’t even the Teer’s, although that gave her boyfriend some claim to be the regent/next Teer (because they had trouble picturing a woman leader?). I am SO glad that isn’t where the episode went.
By the way, when you realize McCoy spent a few months on this planet, it give some perspective to his interactions with Khan. Given their attitudes in general and their view of healers in particular, Khan may have just been the latest patient McCoy had who held a knife to his throat. I’m sure Khan would be glad to know he was just the latest in a long, boring row of difficult patients.
But, the big issue: Judging by the furs we saw, they’ve got some really interesting animals on this planet (pastel predators, perhaps?). But, we didn’t get to see ANY of them!
@24/Christopher: Sorry, I was being sloppy – when I wrote “pre-warp”, I really meant something like “less technologically avanced and not aware of the fact that there are people on other worlds” and was too lazy to write that down.
Yes, the Capellans may have been contacted before. That’s both nicer and makes more sense, given McCoy’s earlier visit, than my cynical thought that the Federation upholds their principles only as long as the planet in question doesn’t have any resources they need.
Concerning the ending, I don’t find it hard to believe that the Capellans are political pragmatists – I find it hard to believe that they would choose Eleen as a leader. Partly because they seemed pretty misogynistic before (although I recognize that wives or daughters of leading men can become leaders in societies where women otherwise can’t), but mostly because Eleen doesn’t do anything leader-y. When she went down to her people, I expected her to resolve the situation somehow, and she didn’t. Well, she did tell the men to fight Kras, but that’s all. I guess it just didn’t work for me.
@35/Jana: But that’s just what I’m saying. The core principle of the Prime Directive is not “Let’s keep the primitives in the dark about the universe.” The core principle is respecting their right to self-determination. Keeping the existence of other worlds from cultures that haven’t discovered them yet is merely a means to that end in that specific situation, not an end in itself. It’s about not unilaterally imposing a change on their culture — because that discovery would be a major change in how they view themselves and the universe. The idea behind the PD is that a civilization has the right to determine its own path, to make changes under its own impetus and control, rather than having them imposed from outside. If a society has already discovered alien life on its own, though, then that change has already been made, so it’s no longer relevant. If they’re already in contact with other worlds and trading with them, then that’s the path they’ve established for themselves.
The PD is absolutely not about how “primitive” another culture is or how much technology they have, and TNG totally corrupted the meaning of the PD by recasting it in those condescending terms. It’s supposed to be about recognizing that other cultures should not be condescended to and seen as childish or ignorant — that whatever their level of development, they have the ability and the right to make decisions for themselves like adults rather than having decisions forced on them by outsiders who arrogantly believe their superior technology gives them the right to impose control.
Although, as Keith pointed out, this episode didn’t do the best job of illustrating that principle, because it bought into the Kiplingesque stereotype of less technologically advanced cultures as childlike primitives who couldn’t control their base impulses, and had Kirk and McCoy spend the episode convincing Eleen that Federation morality was better than Capellan.
And Eleen isn’t the leader, technically. Leonard James Akaar is the leader, the hereditary teer, and Eleen is his regent. They didn’t choose anyone, because it’s a monarchy, not a democracy. Since Maab failed to kill the heir of the High Teer, that means the heir is automatically entitled to the, err, teerage. And if Eleen is his only living relative, then she would automatically be his regent until he’s old enough to rule for himself.
Although in the Pocket novel continuity, there was, in fact, a successful coup five years after this episode (by Maab’s lieutenant Keel, the guy who killed Kras), forcing Eleen and her son into exile. Which is why Leonard James Akaar went on to become a Starfleet admiral instead of ruling Capella. So evidently not everyone stoically accepted Eleen’s regency.
@34 – Ellyne: “Pastel Predators” is my new band name,
@36/Christopher: Did I contradict you? I didn’t mean to. I agree that the PD is about respecting others.
And the only living relative is not always automatically the regent – different cultures may have different rules for this. We don’t know the Capellan rules. Maybe Eleen is automatically the regent; that would explain the ending, but I find it unlikely, given their attitude towards women. Or there is no clear rule; in that case it would have helped if we had seen her taking charge.
@38/Jana: Well, there are multiple historical examples of women who have managed to hold considerable power over the throne in nominally sexist cultures, sometimes as regents to underage monarchs, like the Dowager Empress of China (if I’m recalling my history correctly). So it’s not unprecedented. Just because historical cultures have been sexist, that hasn’t precluded women from finding ways to work around it, especially when they had the advantage of royal blood.
I always remember the first time I watched this episode, and the most human-looking Klingon we’ve ever scene steps out (seriously, the only thing that really marks him as Klingon is his uniform) and the guy immediately shouts, “A KLINGON!” At the time I just found it incredibly amusing.
@40/crzydroid: Reportedly, here and in “The Trouble With Tribbles,” Fred Phillips basically forgot how he’d done the Klingon makeup in “Errand of Mercy.” That design had been basically improvised by John Colicos and Phillips, so maybe he didn’t keep good records of it.
@39/Christopher: Well, that’s what I meant – I would have liked to see Eleen find a way to work around it, not just be told the result in the final scene.
@@.-@ Christopher L Bennett:”That was the way they were originally conceived — as “space Mongols,” a Fu Manchu stereotype of scheming and sinister barbarians.”
More like “Space Mongols crossed with the Soviet Union.” Cf how the Klingons in “Errand if Mercy” exist under conditions of omnipresent surveillance (eg, even Commander Kor is monitored, 1984-style, in his own office). And note Kirk’s speech to the Organian Council about how the Klingons rule subject peoples:
KIRK: Gentlemen, I have seen what the Klingons do to planets like yours. They are organized into vast slave labor camps. No freedoms whatsoever. Your goods will be confiscated. Hostages taken and killed, your leaders confined. You’d be far better off on a penal planet. Infinitely better off.
It reads quite like the Soviet Union at the height of its Stalinist phase:
Kenneth Christie, Historical Injustice and Democratic Transition in Eastern Asia and Northern Europe: Ghosts at the Table of Democracy(2002):
Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonians (1940-41): 85,000 deported, of which 55,000 killed or died
Baltics executed during reconquest (1944-45): 30,000
Postwar partisan war:
Lithuanians: 40-50,000 k.
Latvians: 25,000 k.
Estonians: 15,000 k.
Deaths during ethnic cleansing operations (Chechens, etc) during WW2: NKVD archive list 231,000 deaths
Mass executions of ethnic Poles:
1937-38: 111,071 executions during Great Terror
Polish POWs executed during WW2: 21,892
And that’s not even bringing into account more recent bits of business like the crushing of the Hungarian revolution in 1956, the erection of the Berlin Wall in 1961, etc
And, of course, the Federation vs Klingons stuff in both” Friday’s Child” and in “A Private Little War” functions as a pretty neat metaphor for USA vs USSR maneuvering in the Third World in the ’60s
Frankly, the whole Mongol/Genghis Khan business seems to stem more from John Colicos than from the script.
@43/trajan23: Sure, obviously the Cold War allegory was part of it. But the whole angle of a culture that celebrates treachery and deceit does resonate with the Yellow-Peril stereotypes of the era. I’d say it’s a mix of both.
@43, 44: I wonder if it may have been a common analogy at the time to equate the two. I did a quick web search and found that Hitler did that in a speech in November 1941, calling the USSR a “mongol state” and Stalin a “second Ghengis Khan”. Not quite a forerunner to be proud of, but maybe others had the same idea independently.
@45/Jana: I doubt others would’ve been quite so racist about it as Hitler, because, well, Hitler. But there’s a common tendency to equate anyone you don’t like with Genghis Khan, except in Mongolia, where he’s a national hero. There’s a long history of hostility between sedentary agrarian civilizations and nomadic pastoralists, with the former stereotyping the latter as primitive savages (even though the horse-nomad lifestyle originated more recently than agrarian civilization, since horses had to be domesticated first) and the latter tending to see the former as simply a resource to be exploited. Although a lot of it is racial. Genghis wasn’t really that different from Alexander the Great (aside from being a lot more successful); they were both ruthlessly brutal to their enemies and tolerant and generous toward their cooperative subjects. But for the longest time, the West has idolized Alexander and demonized Genghis. Just wait until we get to “The Savage Curtain.”
Still, I think there’s a fair degree of ambiguity in how the USSR was portrayed in Cold-War American media. Sometimes they were demonized, but at others they were portrayed as understandable people who were as reluctant to go to war as we were. And TV seemed to go back and forth on how they were portrayed. The Man from UNCLE gave us Illya Kuryakin as a good-guy Soviet agent working alongside an American agent in the name of global security, and pretty much glossed over the whole Cold War thing. Early episodes of The Six Million Dollar Man took a similar approach, portraying the Soviets as our partners in space exploration more than as our rivals in espionage and nuclear brinksmanship.
@46/Christopher: The big difference, of course, is that Alexander came from Europe and conquered parts of Asia, whereas Genghis Khan came from Asia and had descendents who conquered parts of Europe. Not the same thing at all (from a European perspective).
I thought that people (in the West) might have been more inclined to compare the USSR to Mongolia than any other place because it’s in the same part of the world (because the Mongols conquered Russia, and then the Russians conquered the Mongols, but if you don’t look too closely it makes the one the successor of the other). But, as I wrote, I couldn’t really find any evidence for this.
@47/Jana: That’s my whole point — the only reason they’re seen differently is ethnocentrism/racism. Europeans see Alexander in a more positive light while Asians see Genghis in a more positive light. Looked at objectively, they were about the same, except that Genghis was far more successful. But because of Western racial biases, “The Savage Curtain” reduced the most effective military leader and conqueror in the history of the pre-modern world to a mute henchman.
As for the Russians, because of that selfsame ethnocentrism on the part of the West, they’ve spent centuries trying to define themselves as Europeans rather than Asians, even to the extent of convincing mapmakers to move the Europe/Asia boundary west to the Ural mountains. And in TV and movies, Soviets were generally portrayed as the same kind of European villains as Nazis or mad scientists or what-have-you, rather than being saddled with any particular “Asiatic” traits. The Klingons had a mix of both Soviet-parallel and Yellow-Peril stereotype because they were a fictional construct and could be built from an amalgam of cultural sources — just as TNG-era Klingons are half-samurai, half-Viking. Or just as the Capellans in “Friday’s Child” could be a mix of “Indian” and Arab tribal stereotypes while also being blond and Nordic in appearance.
@49/Christopher: I got your point, I was just trying to be sarcastic. And yes, “The Savage Curtain” is really bad.
Concerning Europe/Asia, since there is no geographical boundary, it must be defined culturally and the definition will change from time to time, even if there were no racism involved. Unless you give it up and see the whole thing as one continent. (My daughters would be all for that, because then they wouldn’t have to learn it by heart for school.)
Why would moving the boundary west help the Russians to define themselves as Europeans?
@49/Jana: Sorry, I meant moving the boundary east, so that more of Russia would be counted as part of Europe rather than Asia.
And yes, geographically speaking, Europe is just a large peninsula of Asia — it’s comparable in size to the Siberian Peninsula on the other side. The only reason it’s counted as a distinct continent is because the Europeans were the ones making the maps.
@@@@@ 44 Christopher L Bennett :”Sure, obviously the Cold War allegory was part of it. But the whole angle of a culture that celebrates treachery and deceit does resonate with the Yellow-Peril stereotypes of the era. I’d say it’s a mix of both.”
Sure, and one can note how the mix between Mongol and Soviet influences varies over time. Cf, for example, how THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY pushed the Soviet parallels to the limit (Chernobyl on a Klingon moon, a Gorbachev-style Klingon leader, a Klingon prison planet actually being called the GULAG Rura Penthe, etc).
@@@@@48 Christopher L Bennett:”Europeans see Alexander in a more positive light while Asians see Genghis in a more positive light.”
Not just Europeans; Arab historiography also paints a pretty negative portrait of the Mongol Conquests. Which is understandable, seeing as how Islamic culture took a pretty big hit (cf things like the destruction of Baghdad in 1258, etc)
“Looked at objectively, they were about the same, except that Genghis was far more successful.”
Which also means that he was responsible for more deaths. A great conqueror is, by necessity, a great killer.And Genghis Khan’s death toll is frequently estimated to be in the 40 million range. Whereas Alexander’s is normally estimated to be well under 10 million.
@51/trajan23: Yes, but the Mongol Empire also established a peace that lasted for generations and made it possible for a traveler to cross the entire length of the Silk Road without fear of attack, as well as promoting cultural and economic exchange that enriched multiple civilizations, encouraging religious tolerance, and the like. Every major civilization has both positive and negative impacts. A biased historian will play up one side and play down the other. An honest historian will acknowledge both sides.
So, the Mongol Empire made the trains run on time? :)
@53/lordmagnusen: And the United States, land of the free, kept slaves for centuries. It’s dishonest to caricature any civilization as being all good or all bad.
I wasn’t refuting your point, I was making a joke.
@@@@@52 Christopher L Bennett:@@@@@51/trajan23:” Yes, but the Mongol Empire also established a peace that lasted for generations and made it possible for a traveler to cross the entire length of the Silk Road without fear of attack, as well as promoting cultural and economic exchange that enriched multiple civilizations, encouraging religious tolerance, and the like. Every major civilization has both positive and negative impacts. A biased historian will play up one side and play down the other. An honest historian will acknowledge both sides.”
Sure, and Mongol history has been going through a “Mongols were great, rah, rah, rah” phase for quite some time now. CF pro-Mongol propaganda screeds like Jack Weatherford’s Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World (2004), where he comes pretty close to denying/downplaying just about every massacre/atrocity committed by the Mongols.
@@@@@ 54:”@@@@@53/lordmagnusen: And the United States, land of the free, kept slaves for centuries.”
A nitpick. Slavery ended in 1865. The USA became an independent nation in either 1776 (Declaration of Independence) or 1783 (formal end of the War of Independence), depending on your definition. Hence, the USA, as a nation, allowed slavery for less than 100 years.
@56/trajan23: You’re not getting it. You’re trying to take one side over the other, and my point is that it’s dishonest and unintelligent to pretend that any civilization is pure good or pure evil. You’re claiming that your bias is more right than the other side’s bias, but my point is that the responsibility of honest historiographers is to reject bias — or at least to be up front about their own biases and encourage people to consider every side, rather than abusing history to serve a political or racial agenda.
@57 Christopher L Bennett:”@56/trajan23: You’re not getting it. You’re trying to take one side over the other, and my point is that it’s dishonest and unintelligent to pretend that any civilization is pure good or pure evil.”
Did I say that the Mongols were “pure evil?” No, I simply noted that any honest depiction of the Mongol conquests needs to take the massive death toll caused by those conquests into account:
China: Approx 30 million dead
Invasion of the Khwarazmian Empire: numerous cities sacked (Samarkand, Bukhara, Urgench, Merv, etc) and resisting populations massacred. Deaths in Iran: usually estimated at around 1.5 million.
Deaths in Afghanistan: Usually estimated at around 700,000
Deaths in European Russia: Approx 500,000
etc, etc, etc,
“You’re claiming that your bias is more right than the other side’s bias,”
My bias simply consists in noting that the Mongols killed a very, very large number of people. Hence, anytime that someone wants to extol them for making travel safe on the Silk Road, I feel that it is useful to recall that that safety was won at a great cost in human lives.
“but my point is that the responsibility of honest historiographers is to reject bias — or at least to be up front about their own biases and encourage people to consider every side, rather than abusing history to serve a political or racial agenda.”
And a lot of history currently being written about the Mongols reflects a pro-Mongol bias.
@58/trajan23: Name one major civilization that has not killed a large number of people.
@59 Christopher L Bennett:”@58/trajan23: Name one major civilization that has not killed a large number of people.”
Did I ever say that the Mongols were unique? Or that other civilizations were pacifistic?Hardly. This whole discussion began when you extolled Genghis Khan, noting that his empire exceeded Alexander’s. I then added the necessary corollary, that Genghis Khan was a greater killer than Alexander.
Or, to put it another way, which “Great Conquerors” before the modern era* exceeded Genghis Khan’s death toll?Off-hand, I can’t think of anyone.
*Obviously, if one brings the modern era into the equation, Leopold II, Stalin, Hitler, and Mao come to mind as rival candidates:
Leopold II: Estimates for deaths in the Congo go as high as 10 million
Stalin: 9 million deaths during the period 1929-53: Approx 6 million in the 1932-33 famine (3 million plus in Ukraine alone, over 600,000 executions in the Great Terror of 1937-38, 150,000 soldiers executed for “cowardice” and “desertion” during WW2, 231,000 in ethnic cleansing operations, 1.6 million in the GULAG, etc, etc.
And that’s without bringing in deaths from “normal” military operations (soldiers killed in battle, civilian populations killed in military operations, etc)
Hitler: 11-12 million civilians and POWs killed from 1939-45 (5 million plus Jews in Holocaust, over 3 million Soviet POWs systematically starved to death, approx 700,000 civilians massacred in “reprisal operations,” etc).
As with Stalin, the numbers will go much higher if “normal deaths” are added to the tally.
Mao: Around 40 million deaths from 1949-76 (approx 3 million in purges in late ’40s-early ’50s, 30 million plus in Great Leap Forward Famine, 500,000 to 2 million in Cultural Revolution, etc).
Why are we talking about Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan?
To get back to ‘Friday’s Child’ I personally find Eleen fascinating. I see her as a woman who has dedicated her life to being the perfect Capella tribeswoman. And it’s worked out great for her, she’s the wife of a High Teer it doesn’t get better than that. She’s admired and respected, nobody has any problem with her sitting in on a tribal council and putting in her two cents. Akaar obviously adores her and she’s fond of him too. I love her little protective moment when she steps between her husband and an insistent Kirk indicating in no uncertain terms that this interview is over, the door is that way.
Of course then it all goes pear shaped. Akaar is killed and Eleen knows what that means for her. She must die too along with her unborn child. She is not thrilled by this but she’s lived by the law and she will die by it like the ideal Capella woman she is. Unbelievably her night takes a turn for the worse, that pushy alien LAYS HANDS ON HER! All Eleen’s anger at the ruin of her perfect life explodes. Before she dies she’s going to see Kirk dead. It’s her right!
After an hour or two contemplating her imminent death Eleen isn’t feeling so law-abiding anymore. Offered a chance to live she takes it even though it it means living among aliens. She’s still angry about the loss of her position and that anger is displaced onto her unborn child. It’s all this damn baby’s fault. This and the fact that bearing a child without a father to claim it is shameful in itself and Eleen’s just a bubbling cauldron of resentment. Why has this happened to her? She’s followed all the rules, why has it gone so wrong?
She’s already taken a bit of a shine to McCoy and when he, she thinks, claims the child for his own she begins to feel like maybe she has a bearable future after all. But once again things go wrong.The aliens can’t reach their ship and Maab’s hunting party is close behind. As far as Eleen is concerned Kirk and Spock can fall off a cliff but she cares what happens to McCoy and their child, so she wacks Bones with a rock and runs for the hunting party where she lies like a rug to save her child and his father.
It’s hard to overemphasize what a sacrifice of honor this is. Eleen, the perfect Capella woman, is breaking all the rules. I suspect Maab knows or guesses she’slying but he’s willing to let it go. He’s been having his doubts about his alliance with the Klingon and when Kras shows his word is grass Maab sacrifices himself to remove the threat first giving Eleen back her life in more ways than one. Her career as a Capellan tribeswoman is back on track and she’s now the mother and regent of a High Teer. But she’s also learned to think outside her cultural box and follow her conscience rather than the rules. Major character development!
@61/Roxana: I like your reading of the episode. It never made much sense to me, but now it does.
Thank you.
In light of the lengthy debate above I almost feel compelled to reprise the comment about Khan Singh, that “We can be against him and admire him at the same time.”
Which Spock immediately dismissed as illogical, but we’re all human here. So far as I know.
A depressingly long, tedious slog of an episode. I thought it started off fairly well with the tense situation with keeping the Capellans appeased and I wish it stayed there. It could have been about Kirk (with a copious amount of aid from McCoy) and Kras having to carefully outmaneuver each other while sticking to the fragile ceasefire, both vying for the favor of the Teer. I heard the screenplay as submitted by Fontana had a subplot where Eleen was sick of the patriarchal ways of the Capellans and ends out denouncing them, so that would have been a definite improvement too. The only surprise for me is McCoy turning out to be the real father; I absolutely didn’t expect Star Trek to go there.
@65/Fujimoto: McCoy was in no way the real father; his first visit to Capella was much longer ago than that. Eleen saying the child was his was just a comedy bit, and a reflection of her own reluctance to accept responsibility for the child. Basically “Okay, if you want the kid to live so much, you can have it.”
After all, this was the 1960s. There’s no way they would’ve had one of their series leads father a child with a married woman — and then abandon them at the end of the episode.
Eleen’s weird culture makes bearing a child without a father to claim it disgraceful. Eleen who has devoted her life to being the perfect Capellan woman finds this hard to take on top of all her other problems. McCoy apparently claiming her child gives her a way forward with honor of course she grabs it.
Interestingly, according to Blish’s adaptation of this episode, the Cereians (?) (Blish does not call them Capellans) are the descendants of colonists who were originally from an Earth colony on the asteroid Ceres. This could explain why the PD was ignored by our heroes. Clearly, Blish’s adaptation was based on an earlier script or he made changes as he was wont to do with his Star Trek adaptations.
Even though the effectiveness of the Maab actor is debatable, I do love his line about the fear in the Klingon’s eyes when he comes to the realization that Kirk is more badass than Kras!
@14/Majicou: I’m not sure how common apostrophed names in fiction were in the 60’s and earlier. I imagine they weren’t over-used the way they are today. In that sense, I’m delighted that the names didn’t have apostrophes! This segues into one little detail I loved and that was when Eleen said McCoy’s name, she pronounced it Capellan style: “Mak koy”. It was a nice little touch.
I never had the impression that the Capellans were stupid or child-like; I actually had the opposite impression.
As for their costume, I thought they were brilliant. They were filled with detail and, while obviously from the same culture (which is to be commended), differed from each other in rational ways.
Monday’s child is fair of face… Tuesday’s child is full of grace… Wednesdays child is full of woe… Thursdays child has far to go… Fridays child is loving and giving… Saturdays child works hard for his living,,, The child born on the Sabbath day, is blythe, bonny, merry, and gay (or something like that). Or so one version goes. Being born on a Friday, I had to look it up…
It should be noted that in the follow-up novels and short fiction, Leonard James Akaar joined Starfleet, reached the rank of admiral and eventually became the head of Starfleet, his long life preceding through the TNG and DS9 era and beyond.
costumer: You mean that thing that I noted in the fourth paragraph of the Trivial Matters section of the very rewatch entry that you’re commenting on?
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Sorry Krad. I just came back to this topic because I had posted on it earlier and got a notification when Ron posted. I didn’t go back and reread the post and its been 4 months since I read the actual review.
@71 : At least according to Wikipedia, over the years since this first appeared, at least as far back as 1838, there has been variation in which attributes are assigned to which children. The 1838 version, as in yours, as Friday’s child as “loving and giving”. I don’t doubt that the 1887 Harper’s Weekly version, and Blish, had “full of woe”. The 1838 also had “Christmas Day” instead of “Sabbath Day”.
“Friday’s Child” is a rather mundane episode and yet I strangely find it very entertaining – perhaps because of the touches of humor in it. Like “Private Little War” it’s about the Federation and Klingon empire battling over control of a “primitive” planet with great natural resources. But I did find the Capellans’ elaborate costumes hilariously inappropriate for what appeared to be a warm climate. One thing that bothered me about the episode was at the end when Spock seemed to be “shocked” and even “resentful” that Eleen’s baby was named “Leonard James Akaar.” I realize that scene was done for laughs, but would the serious, somber Spock really care about such nonsense?
It should be considered that while Capella might seem warm to us, that doesn’t mean it is warm to them. For all we know, they are in the midst of winter and the planet trends much warmer than earth.
It should also be considered that the materials the Capellans make their clothes out of are designed to cool the body through properties we are unfamiliar with.
It should also be considered that people often develop clothing styles that are uncomfortable, but considered proper for a whole host of reasons.
Quoth Palash: “but would the serious, somber Spock really care about such nonsense?”
What he cared about was what he said, that Kirk and McCoy were going to be insufferable about it, and Spock was going to have to listen to it…..
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
The James Blish story of this episode is very different from the televised version. Again, I don’t know if Blish based his story on earlier drafts of he script or if he added his own material. In any case, Maab is the younger brother of Teer Akaar (in the actual episode that relationship was not clear). And they weren’t Capellans, but rather Cereans. Most intriguingly, the Cereans were believed to be descendants of human colonists who had lost all contact with Earth and their familiarity with modern technology. I kinda wish that last item was referred to in the broadcast episode.
Palaish@79: It’s been ages since I read Blish’s adaptations (I should go back and do that again, assuming the pages in my old paperbacks hold up), so I don’t remember the details of his version. ‘Cerean’ implies a native of Ceres, which is an asteroid in Sol System; could be another place with a similar name, certainly, but Capella is definitely someplace else (Alpha Aurigae, third-brightest star in the Northern Hemisphere sky, forty-some-odd lightyears from Sol), so it makes it clearer.
The problem with colonists losing touch with Earth/Terra and modern technology is that it’s only been a couple of centuries since warp drive was invented, and it just doesn’t seem long enough for that kind of regression and cultural drift to have occurred since the establishment of a colony there (which, presumably, was not that long ago, given the distances, rate of human expansion, etc). Give it a few more centuries, maybe.
@79/Palash: “I don’t know if Blish based his story on earlier drafts of he script or if he added his own material.”
He did both. In this case, it seems like it’s mostly early-draft differences. But Blish often interpolated ideas from his own fiction, primarily his Cities in Flight universe, into his Trek adaptations, for instance justifying Miri’s world as an Earth colony founded by refugees from the Cold Peace, a historical era from the first CoF novel. His Cerean backstory might’ve been another example.
What surprises me about Blish’s “Friday’s Child” is that there are no Klingons in it.
@80/NomadUK: ” ‘Cerean’ implies a native of Ceres, which is an asteroid in Sol System; could be another place with a similar name”
I would guess that Blish was working from an early draft, one that hadn’t yet had Klingons put in. I suspect the original script used Ceres and the Kellam DeForest research people pointed out that was a Solar asteroid and recommended using an alternate name.
It was pretty common back then for sci-fi writers to use the names of Solar planets for alien worlds. Roddenberry’s initial pitch proposed that Spock was “probably half-Martian,” and I strongly suspect that Vulcan was originally meant to be the hypothetical planet theorized in the 19th century to be the innermost planet, closer to the Sun than Mercury — which was discredited when General Relativity explained Mercury’s orbital anomalies, but that lingered as an idea in science fiction for generations.
CLB@81: Yes, astronomy never does seem to be the strong suit in many television (and film!) writers’ hands. Planetary names are the least of it; my favourites are always the distances: millions (gasp!) of miles (Klaatu barada nikto, anyone?) or— going the other way — millions of lightyears! It was always pleasant when someone got it right, and I think Star Trek got it right more often than not (though there were a few laughable moments), which was especially unusual for 50s/60s era television.
Yes, I neglected to mention some other differences between the Blish version and the broadcast version. In Blish’s tale, Eleen is murdered by Maab’s crew, NOT because she gave birth to a baby who would one day become Teer – but rather because she was unfaithful to her husband Akaar! The actual father of the baby (who is not named) then kills Maab. As for the Klingons, there are none on the planet (i.e., no Kras), but it is said that Maab had a deal with them for planetary mining rights and that Klingon warships engaged the Enterprise in space. Another odd aspect of the Blish version was that after seeing the baby for the first time, Spock called it an “average specimen”! Even more disturbing, both Kirk and Spock seemed to agree with the notion of Eleen being killed for her duplicity and her infidelity! Thus the actual TV version was plain vanilla compared to Blish’s tale!
Palash: Blish was often working from earlier drafts of the scripts when he was writing his adaptations. To give three examples:
In “The Doomsday Machine,” the CO of the Constellation was named Brand Decker and he didn’t commit suicide, which was how it was in the earlier drafts of the script before they changed his name to Matthew and added the “action scene” of Decker flying into the shuttle.
In “The Conscience of the King,” the other crewmember who lived under Kodos was named Daiken, which wasn’t changed to Riley until Bruce Hyde was cast in the role.
“The Man Trap” was titled “The Unreal McCoy,” which was the earlier working title of the episode.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido