“Forget...”: The Counter-Clock Incident

"Turning back time, Fred Bronson recalls his service to Starfleet."

“We're all dead men walking, Agent, and it doesn't please me any more than it does you. Look in a mirror sometime if you don't believe me. I have. Nevertheless, you are more correct then you think. Everywhere is here and now in a Time War. This brutal fighting will come to an end, just not on your terms. No matter which way our gamble plays off, we still want to go forward. You'd take the entire galaxy backwards as you retreat into your own obsolescence. We will prevail. And when we do, it will be the most terrible calamity this galaxy has ever seen. Of that I am as certain as it is possible for a person to be about anything, because I've already foreseen it come to pass. This battle was only the beginning.”

“If your soldiers die, they will die for nothing. We're not going to let you commit suicide. Whether they die or not, you'll still stand trial for your crimes against the timeline. Your war is over. This ends here and now.”

“And when is that ever the case with time travel? You're making a pointless argument. The actions I take in service of my cause may later be determined to be just and they may not, but right now I'm doing what my instinct tells me is right, and I'm convinced this cause is a righteous one. I'm not too keen on the part fate has given me, but it's my role to play and I'll give the best performance I can. None of us are destined to come out the other side of this war alive, Agent. That much I know.”

“And yet you would take the lives of countless people into your hands, depriving them of their agency as you singlehandedly rewrite centuries of history! Your actions are not in keeping with the ideals you espouse.”

“This isn't about ensuring the future will be better for us personally, not entirely. It's about giving everyone a second chance. A second life. A good life under a despotic Empire is neither truly good, nor truly living, no matter how much enlightenment rhetoric the Imperial Overlords happen to use. You used to feel the same way. I know, I've seen it.”

“And, naturally, you of course have the best vision of the future...”

“At least we acknowledge we *can* change. We believe a utopia that doesn't allow for people to learn and grow is no utopia, especially if it means obligatory subservience.”

“It's childish to go back and try to change your mistakes instead of learning from them.”

“It's only self-interest inasmuch as it's an interest shared with a large portion of the affected multiverse.”

“Regardless of the size and scope of your particular outfit, your crimes are the most severe. So far, you've succeeded in ways many others haven't come close to. History has been significantly altered as a direct result of your actions, perhaps irreparably so. You wish to change history to serve your own interest. That alone means the Cabal is without question the most dangerous combatant in this fight.”

“The Cabal is a haphazardly organised group of mercenaries armed with the temporal equivalent of sticks fighting the entire Imperial Armed Space Forces. Not that we aren't efficient and competent in our own way, I'm quite proud of what my people have been able to accomplish so far, but the metaphor still fits. Now, you may have absorbed and internalized your own propaganda, but, in case you've forgotten, there are other factions in this war aside from us. Some of those are actual military outfits, and have considerably more nefarious aims than securing liberty and dignity. Have you ever considered using some of your resources to combat them, or are you too fixated on the scary outsiders who don't play by your rulebook?”

“All I see right now is a known fugitive making a desperate plea for clemency. You're running a terrorist organisation motivated purely by hatred and selfishness, and for that I will see all of you brought to justice.”

“Because I can see ahead, and you should be able to as well. Or perhaps you can, but you don't mind what you see. What you would condemn the galaxy to. A future living under the boot of a homogenous, monolithic conquering force growing and expanding in perpetuity until the entire universe is choked out. I can't decide what would be worse: That you can't see, or that you won't see.”

“You play the romantic and heroic outlaw, but what makes you any different? Upholding this corrupted timeline would benefit your aims as much as you claim correcting it would benefit ours.”

“You're even more hopeless and naive then I thought you were if you believe that.”

“That's where you're so misguided! Laws exist for a reason! They're created so that everyone has an equal opportunity for success and is guaranteed a measure of dignity! Without some structure, without some order, we would all be helpless and in a state of perpetual danger! We as a community, as a collective, have created a perfect utopia here. There is no want. There is no suffering. Each and every person is equal. To act in defiance of that is to act in defiance of peace and prosperity!”

“And what, aside from your frankly obscene amounts of power and authority, gives you the right to say that? You obviously haven't come to those conclusions based on a commitment to reduce suffering and maximize dignity otherwise you'd be on my side.”

“It 'doesn't suit' me because it's a corrupt timeline! This is not the way history is meant to play out! You would put the stability of the entire time-space continuum in peril!”

“It would seem we have two wildly different conceptions of self-interest, Agent. From my perspective, the lives of the millions of people on those planets, not to mention the hundreds aboard that ship and the countless other people affected by this act, mean considerably more than temporal law, which in this case will have you erasing two entire years of galactic history, largely because it doesn't suit you.”

“You violated commonly accepted temporal law for your own reasons of self-interest.”

“I would have thought someone of your considerable age and experience would be able to recognise that facts are mutable, situational things in the best of circumstances. And these are hardly the best of circumstances.”

“The Cabal broke the Accords and initiated open hostilities, and no matter how much you try to change the subject or diffuse blame that remains a fact. I was present when the opening salvo was fired and I have documented evidence to support my argument! Please don't waste your breath and our time, it shall accomplish nothing and only delay the inevitable.”

“Peace achieved through stomping out and silencing out any dissenting voices, you mean. Or did you momentarily forget you currently have me staring down an Imperial Armada the size of a solar system that spans at least three discrete timelines? Funny how you don't seem to grasp the irony of that.”

“You don't speak for the oppressed. You're just a megalomaniacal manipulator with delusions of godhood who's gotten far too good at using people to satisfy your own self-centered interests. And even if you did, you'd be mistaken. We strive only for peace with people throughout space and time. It is you who seek out conflict.”

“No, Agent. You started it. Or, to be precise, you will start it. Figure it out. You have temporal observatories, don't you? And I know the Guardian of Forever exists in your timeline-I believe we've had that little discussion already. Well...We have from my perspective at least. All we're doing is fighting back and reclaiming our personhood. Oppressed people tend to do that. And you should've expected that.”

“I know it's about you and your little faction flagrantly and deliberately violating the Temporal Accords, potentially endangering every civilized race in the galaxy. Let's remember it's your kind who started this whole war.”

“You still don't understand what this is all about, do you? You really don't! But I suppose we should've expected it.”

“I don't have time for your speechifying, and your appropriation of other people's words fail to make you sound the slightest bit more intelligent. You're surrounded, outmanned and outgunned. This war is over. Please. For the sake of yourself and your people, not to mention the countless lives lost in this senseless slaughter, please surrender. Your crew will be treated with the utmost respect while they're being processed”.

“'History is written by the victors'. And 'to the victor goes the spoils'. Isn't that what they used to say?”

There is a brilliant flash of light, a “winking out” and then everything goes dark.

End.

“Only the beginning”: How Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth

"''How Sharper' was a dream piece of work, we had artistic integrity all the way through,' Wise notes. 'All experiences should be so good.'"

Although there's one more episode to go according to the official episode list, “How Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth” can in some ways be seen as the series finale of Star Trek: The Animated Series, and really, the first phase of the Star Trek franchise. It's a return one last time to the realm of the magickal, a conscious and deliberate claim that Star Trek is an extension of indigenous spirituality (or at least should be), and, somewhat incredibly, is “Who Mourns for Adonais?” done properly, written as a tribute to and eulogy of Gene Coon. It's also the solitary Emmy Award win of the entire Star Trek franchise.

After a mysterious probe visited the founding homeworlds of the Federation and attempted to contact them before randomly exploding, the Enterprise is following its trail back to what it hopes will be its source, where it discovers a gigantic starship that suddenly, before everyone's eyes adopts the visage of a ferocious-looking feathered lizard. Helmsman Dawson Walking Bear, a student of indigenous cultures, in particular Native American and Mesoamerican, immediately recognises the creature before them as Kukulkan: An ancient Mayan deity associated with the Vision Serpent, the symbolic embodiment of the gateway to the spirit world, and the intermediary between mortals and their ancestors and gods (serpents being very important in Mayan spirituality anyway, oftentimes seen as the vessels the moon and stars use to travel across the heavens). Kukulkan is saddened that humanity seems to have forgotten him, but, because Walking Bear remembered, he wonders if the Enterprise crew can do what he claims their ancestors failed to, and transports him, Kirk, McCoy and Scotty to his ship.

The crewmembers materialize in a large, empty room that morphs into a gigantic city modeled off of Maya, Aztec and ancient Chinese design. Walking Bear points out that Kukulkan is said to have asked his followers to build him a city and that, once they had, he would return (a trait which, according to my cursory research, is actually more similar to the tales of the K'iche Mayan feathered serpent Q'uq'umatz). Kirk figures the city must be a kind of signal, that Kukulkan must have appeared to many different peoples, and, since each culture only focused on one piece of the iconography, none of them built the city exactly right. However, they might be able to figure it out now together. Naturally, they succeed and Kukulkan appears before the landing party. Kukulkan claims that he's upset by the ceaseless violence of human history and fears all the work he's done to to help humanity has been for naught. It now falls to Kirk, McCoy, Scotty and Walking Bear to convince the serpent god that humanity's capacity for self-improvement demonstrate that his faith was not ill-placed, but also that the time has come for humans to learn their own lessons by themselves, because a parent cannot keep a child forever.

My enthusiasm belies the fact that this one is obviously really good and it comes so, so close to being just about everything I want out of Star Trek. The concept is just about perfect, and a masterstroke as is. The iconography and animation? “How Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth” has been one of those episodes that's haunted me for decades. Finally being able to see it was breathtaking. And, just as Kukulkan's faith in humanity was restored by the crew of the Enterprise, so was my faith in Star Trek reaffirmed by learning about the backstory for this episode. The episode's writer, Russell Bates, happened to be a Native American himself, a Kiowa, and D.C. Fontana immediately sought him out because she explicitly wanted a science fiction story from a Native American perspective.

Bates was paired with Robert Wise, an animator who would go on to write for a number of shows from the Renaissance Age of Animation, such as Jem, Chip 'n' Dale Rescue Rangers and Batman: The Animated Series. And, although it's not well-known, Wise also was a major architect for the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles TV series, and is largely responsible for giving the four turtles the distinctive and iconic personalities now strongly associated with them. Fontana hoped that together the two creators would bounce ideas off of each other and come up with something vivid and memorable that really took advantage of animation as a medium. And, while the end result is most certainly that, here's also where things start to go a bit downhill for this episode. Maddeningly, as brilliant as it is, there are one or two conceptual things about “How Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth” that don't sit quite right with me.

Firstly, while the story was supposed to be about Native American mythology, the primary character is Kukulkan, who is quite blatantly a Mesoamerican deity and that's not *exactly* the same thing. According to Wise, Kukulkan's role was originally supposed to be filled by a Thunderbird, which *is* part of Native American mythology, but the decision was made to change it to the feathered serpent because Mayan culture would be more colourful to depict and, well, more recognisable to a Western audience. I'm not sure how I feel about this: Considering the whole point was to do a Native American science fiction story, shifting the focus to the Mayans feels like cheating, although Bates does say his people share some ancestry with the Mayans (I'm finding that hard to corroborate, but I'm not about to presume I know more about Bates' people and heritage than he does).

Then there's the other big problem. This is quite clearly a von Däniken-inspired story again, with all the requisite racist, colonialist baggage that goes along with him, and this time he's specifically name-checked by Wise so there can be no mistake. Wise said he and Bates decided to do a story built around Chariots of the Gods?...because it was about science fiction and ancient people and the book was popular at the time. Which, you know, I can't fault their business sense, but that's the banality of evil, isn't it? Isn't that how hegemony reasserts itself? Little things people do because it's expected, or “that's just the way things are” or...because it sells well? Come on. I expect a little better of Star Trek by now. Though, to their credit, Bates and Wise, in particular Bates, do try to pull a formidable reconstruction effort on von Däniken and end up sidestepping a sizable portion, but not all, of his more problematic connotations. Of the von Däniken-esque structure, Bates says (emphasis his)

"I always had been outraged that Europeans said the vast cities in Central and South America could not have been built by the 'savages'. They had to have had help: the Egyptians, or the Chinese, or the Phoenicians, or even the Atlanteans came, taught the poor Indians how to build their civilization, and that's how it all happened. Horse breath! So, the story about Kukulkan became that Kukulkan visited ALL races of mankind, taught them his knowledge, and then departed. Now the story said that NOBODY on Earth invented a damned thing! They all got their knowledge from somebody else!”

and while that is an admirable way of approaching this kind of brief, it still doesn't quite work. For one thing, Bates and Wise only mention the Maya, the Aztecs, the Chinese and, briefly, the Egyptians: The script never mentions any Western cultures. This could be read a couple different ways, but none of them are totally unproblematic.

On the one hand this is bad because it obviously implies that the West is the only human culture that didn't need outside help and sprung up of its own volition. On the other hand, if the episode *did* show us Western motifs in Kukulkan's city we might have been stuck with the “Requiem for Methuselah” problem and ended up attributing all of human history to one person. At least it would be a feathered lizard god this time instead of an Old White Dude, but still. My personal take (and it's not quite a watertight defense, but it's the best reading I could come up with) is that because Kukulkan is altogether more benevolent than Apollo, and also far more straightforwardly a deity and path towards enlightenment, the episode is telling us that Westernism is fundamentally disconnected from spiritual truths and magickal ways of knowing, and thus an ultimately nihilistic, dead-end worldview. Which is, to be fair, a perfectly fair and accurate statement.

Another thing worth mentioning about this is that in having each culture fixate on one specific aspect of the city, the episode positions itself firmly within an extremely Platonic conception of external transcendent Truth. This is the “blind-men-feeling-about-an-elephant” motif, where everyone understands a piece of the grand, discrete, complete Truth, but never the entirety of it. Being Platonic, and thus Western, this is also a model I'm not especially enamoured of and is also not necessarily the conception of metaphysics the ancient Maya had. I tend to be drawn more to the idea of “truths” rather than “Truth”: Lower-case-t truths do exist, but they come into being due to the interaction of many different human and nonhuman factors. I feel assuming there's a monolithic, objective “Truth” that is only revealed to us a little at a time presumes a Greco-European and pop Christian view of things I'm trying to exorcise from at least my personal vernacular and rhetoric.

In the comments under the post on “Who Mourns for Adonais?”, on which this episode is explicitly and heavily based, Adam Riggio said that, if you can look past the horrific rape apologia (which I can't) the way to go about redeeming that episode would be to read it as Star Trek's Hail Mary grab for mythic cultural relevance. In destroying the Golden Apollonian Male ideal central to Western myth and Western mysticism, Star Trek has not only slain its gods but supplanted them, a reading endorsed by the status the franchise has in pop culture now. I think this argument, with a few tweaks, is actually far more applicable to “How Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth”: This time though, the Enterprise isn't killing its gods, because it recognises Kukulkan is a kindly and helpful spirit, albeit one who's a bit overbearing and overprotective. We once again get the metaphor of humanity as children, which will continue to be a major theme that will see us out of the 1970s. But, unlike in “Bem”, here the show acknowledges that the children are growing up and continuing to learn, which is a kind of reiteration of Kirk's defense of humanity in “The Magicks of Megas-Tu”.

In fact, we could even go so far as to read this episode as declaring that the Enterprise crew is on the way to becoming gods themselves: They speak to Kukulkan as equals, while they spoke to Apollo as enemy combatants. We're no longer petulantly declaring we have no need of gods, instead we now understand that gods and spirits have many things to teach us. However, any good teacher knows that they don't know everything and there will always be more to learn, and this is what the Enterprise crew now know themselves, and what they remind Kukulkan of. The ideal teacher-student relationship is a symbiotic one: Teachers should learn as much from their students as the students do from their teachers, and indeed, the gods and spirits have as much to learn from us as we do from them. This is the true shaman's trick, much as we saw in “The Time Trap”. And this is what we would all do well to remember, as McCoy and Kirk helpfully point out by reciting the King Lear quote from which this episode takes its title:

"How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child."

After all that, maybe it's fitting that we go out on a wildly ambitious and terribly exciting, if somewhat flawed, episode. “How Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth” may not be the perfect, definitive episode of Star Trek and it may not even be as conceptually tight as something like “The Jihad”, “The Magicks of Megas-Tu” or “Beyond the Farthest Star”. But it doesn't have to be. This is a story all about how Star Trek is continually striving to better itself, and how much of a strength it can be when humanity does so too. It's proof the show is now firmly on the right track and is committed to always trying to be better than it used to be. D.C. Fontana and her team have left Star Trek in a much better, much stronger and much healthier place then her predecessors on the Original Series did.

The weird, ropey show that was chronically behind its time and never seemed to know what it wanted to be finally has a purpose and a legacy and, at this rate, might just turn into something that lasts the ages.

“Yes, I've read a poem. Try not to faint.”: Albatross

"'The Star Trek fan who hasn't discovered the Animated Series is really missing out", Wise declares."

In their unauthorized Star Trek episode guide Beyond the Final Frontier, Lance Parkin and Mark Jones said that the story for this episode would have been a great concept to explore on one of the live-action series and bemoaned the fact it was done on a cartoon show.

So naturally the first thing I'm going to do is continue to complain about how undervalued animation is as a form of creative expression. Because Parkin and Jones' argument makes zero sense to me. There is nothing about “Albatross” that could have been done better on the Original Series. The emotional core of the episode hinges on Spock and McCoy, and while both Leonard Nimoy and DeForest Kelley can be visual actors at times, especially Nimoy, visual acting skills are not expressly needed for the kind of story this is. Actually, this episode serves as a great reminder of how multitalented and versatile this cast really is: Nimoy and Kelley convey all the emotion they need to through their voices alone, evidence they're just as strong in the recording booth as they are on stage. Furthermore, neither Kelley nor Nimoy are anywhere near as visual as William Shatner, who delivers yet another memorable marquee performance here. If William Shatner of all people can make the transition to animation effortlessly and painlessly, really all arguments about animation as an inferior medium are invalid.

Furthermore, declaring that it's a shame an episode like this wasn't done on the Original Series does a major disservice to D.C. Fontana, the Animated Series creative team and all the good work they've done over the past two years. This is flatly a tighter, stronger and more thematically and ethically coherent show now than it was in the 1960s. In fact, far from being the mini-classic Parkin and Jones seem to think it is, I'm of the mind “Albatross” is another of this season's mediocre outings. But the fact this, a character piece about the crew's loyalty to McCoy and righteous anger at a mishandling of justice, can now be called middling should be seen as incredibly telling. On the Original Series, we were regularly getting fed absolute garbage like “Mudd's Women”, “The Apple”, “Who Mourns for Adonais?”, “The Omega Glory”, “Elaan of Troyius”, “The Enemy Within” and “The Savage Curtain”. On the Animated Series, we haven't seen anything come remotely close to those cratering lows with the exception of Margaret Armen's stuff, which is a special case and frankly to be expected. The fact this episode even exists is testament alone to what the Animated Series has been able to accomplish.

I suppose it'd help if I explained a bit about what “Albatross” is about. Basically, on a diplomatic mission to the planet Dramia, the Enterprise crew is shocked to see Doctor McCoy arrested on charges of committing mass genocide via a plague he allegedly brought to the second planet in the system nineteen years ago. With McCoy in jail, a furious Kirk takes the Enterprise and the rest of the crew to Dramia II to conduct an independent investigation in search of evidence proving the CMO's innocence. That's essentially it, and that gets at the root of the problem with this episode. We're back in “Court Martial” territory, if only in general narrative structure, and while we're thankfully spared the lengthy, bombastic courtroom drama and are instead mercifully granted a minor space adventure instead, the same general problems apply. Namely, we know McCoy is innocent, and it's even more apparent here than in “Court Martial”. You don't go five seasons with the same cast of characters and suddenly have one of them turn into a genocidal tyrant, unless the creative team is completely blitheringly incompetent.

Now, the problem here isn't that this is some failure of the episode to build up sufficient tension, it's that this entire type of story is fundamentally unworkable. No matter how hard you try, you simply cannot build an entire episode around the possibility one of the show's major characters is secretly a killer or some other kind of awful person. Narrative logic is going to make protagonists immediately and irreversibly sympathetic simply by virtue of them being protagonists. The other option, and I mean the *only* other option, is to base your show around a straight-up villain protagonist, which requires an altogether more deft handle on storytelling craft. The best the kind of story both “Albatross” and “Court Martial” are can hope for is to make its central mystery about why our hero is wrongfully accused, what might have happened to cause the third party to think this way and how we can fix it.

And neither episode really gets it right: The earlier story tried to paper the whole thing over with a whole bunch of manly legal drama swagger and just wound up looking silly and pointless and this one has the Enterprise pop off to Dramia II to find the real source of the plague, which turns out to be a deadly space aurora which, while certainly unique, still isn't terribly inspiring (although this does lead towards a decent climax where Spock, the only one not afflicted, gets to break McCoy out of jail so he can cure the plague and prove his own innocence to everyone). I just really have a problem with any story that arbitrarily puts the protagonists' morality in question unless moral ambiguity is built into the premise of the show, which it's fundamentally not at this stage in Star Trek's history. Indeed, I'd go so far as to claim this kind of plot has worked precisely once in the entire history of Trek, and that success was due in part to the timing of when the episode was made and the fact it was penned by two bloody brilliant writers.

What's actually the most interesting thing about this episode to me, aside from the acting (the puckish delight Shatner imbues Kirk as he manipulates the spy the Dramian government sent after the Enterprise into stowing away, thus invalidating his claim to legal authority, is particularly delightful) is the aurora, and, more to the point, the idea of an aurora in space. Now, before I get yelled at by physics nerds or Richard Dawkins acolytes, I am well aware having a spaceborn aurora is scientifically inaccurate and that they're in truth caused by the interaction of charged magnetic particles in the thermospheres of planets. I also don't care.

Visually and symbolically, aurorae are phenomena of the heavens, and ancient peoples in the far north and far south have historically seen them as belonging to the domain of the sky. Inuit tradition holds that the aurorae are alternately souls of ancestors or animals, a dangerous force that would decapitate you if you whistled at it, or spirit guides for hunting and healing. While I couldn't find any Sami traditions concerning aurorae, the earliest Norse account hypothesizes that they might have something to do with sun flares, or giant fires that surround the ocean, or even the stored energy of the glaciers themselves. In Australia, amongst the Gunai and Ngarrindjeri peoples of Victoria and South Australia, respectively, the aurorae were otherworldly bushfires or the campfires of spirits, while indigenous peoples in Queensland saw them as the medium through which spirits communicated with those of us in the mortal world, somewhat similarly to the Inuit.

Irritatingly, “Albatross” doesn't seem to pick up on any of these indigenous interpretations of aurorae in the heavens. However, what the episode's conception of them does seem the most similar to is, curiously, historical Western astronomical beliefs. Tycho Brahe was said to be of the opinion aurorae cause disease by emitting sulfuric vapour, which is not altogether removed from what happens here. Although the actual mechanism by which it infects the Dramians and then the Enterprise crew isn't really explained, the aurora is very clearly the source of the ailment du jour, which would seem to put this episode somewhat in Brahe's tradition. What I find interesting about this is that it positions Star Trek in some sense into the history of astronomy, or to be more precise, the symbolism and rhetoric of historical astronomy. It's still too Western for my personal tastes, but it is intriguing to think about given the way science fiction of this period is growing increasingly invested with the idea of genre trappings and its own setting and motifs. We can now talk about the history of how people have perceived and interacted with the natural world and how that's shaped our art and philosophies, because of course it has.

But unfortunately I can't really recommend the episode at hand. This is all fascinating and gives us a lot of material to work with in the future, but the actual twenty minutes you can call up onscreen isn't the Animated Series' finest moment, though there are a few charming bits here and there. But again, the fact I can say that about an episode with no discernibly massive problems and that something this solid and effective can be called mediocre really tells the whole story here. It concisely drives home just what D.C. Fontana and her team were able to accomplish with the Animated Series, and that's something worth reminding as we approach its final curtain call.

"National Tapioca Pudding Day": The Practical Joker

And this would be the point you should run away screaming.

“The Practical Joker” was the Animated Series episode I most dreaded having to watch, even before knowing about Margaret Armen's submissions. And, while the actual episode isn't anywhere near as dreadful as I feared it was going to be, it's still concerning as it marks the point where The Animated Series treads the closest to becoming the one thing that would simply torpedo its legacy: Children's television.

Now, there's nothing inherently wrong with children's television. When it's working properly, there's an elegance to children's television that can make it fundamentally more sophisticated and effective than “adult” fiction because it doesn't shy away from being idealistic or taking a stand. Indeed, my very favourite television shows were, in fact, designed with children predominantly in mind or at least operated according to a logic that children would find recognisable. But this...is not the kind of children's television I'm talking about here.

Before I go any further I should probably get the plot synopsis out of the way. While taking a break from a geological survey mission, the Enterprise is randomly attacked by a fleet of Romulan battlecruisers. After seeking refuge in an electrically-charged space cloud, a series of strange occurrences starts to befall the crew. All the cups and silverware are replaced with trick ones, Spock's science station scanner is replaced with one that has black ink on the eyepieces and the replicators start shooting food out at anyone who tries to use them. Finally, in a woefully iconic moment, Kirk storms onto the bridge and fumes about how someone stole his uniform from the laundry chute and replaced it with one that has “Kirk is a Jerk” emblazoned on the back in bold lettering. After taking turns blaming each other, the crew soon realizes that their practical joker is the Enterprise computer itself, which is suffering from an electronic nervous breakdown as a result of the charged storm the ship passed through. The crew must now work against the clock to interpret and outmanoeuvre the ship's erratic behaviour before it outwits everyone by plunging them into the Neutral Zone.

So it's dumb, but inoffensively so. In fact, it's actually somewhat clever as it starts out leading us to believe it's going to be a rote and banal children's television story about a practical joker who will eventually get their comeuppance and learn a lesson about playing hurtful jokes on people before turning into a basic Star Trek techno-puzzle about a computer going out of control. In essence, the episode has played a practical joke on us through subverting expectations, but it's not really an especially good one as neither type of story is something terribly easy to get excited about. Now, the basic concept of the back half of the episode, that of the Enterprise gaining sentience and leaving clues for its crew to figure out, is actually pretty interesting and it's a testament to their shared skill as writers that Brannon Braga and Joe Menosky eventually do this story for Star Trek: The Next Generation and manage to make it something other than an unwatchably cringe-worthy disaster. But that story is not this one, and while there are significantly worse ways to kill twenty minutes, I'd be hard pressed to call “The Practical Joker” a highlight of the series. There are a few funny lines and moments, but nothing that struck me as especially memorable.

The other notable thing about this episode is that it introduces the Holodeck. It's called the rec room here, but it's self evidently what we'd now call a Holodeck: A room the crew can go to on their off hours to relax in any one of its pre-programmed virtual reality environments. Gene Roddenberry had actually wanted to introduce the Holodeck in the third season of the Original Series, but budget cuts and his own stepping back from day-to-day duties meant he didn't get to put it into an episode until the Animated Series. And, given we now have the Holodeck, we of course also now have the Holodeck malfunction: In this case the Enterprise plays a joke on McCoy, Sulu and Uhura by locking them in, laying a pit trap for them and then cycling through all the different programmes until settling on a whiteout in an arctic tundra and putting them at risk for exposure. And, although the Holodeck works best when it's used to explore themes of artifice, metafiction and genre mashup and while we'll have to wait for its reappearance in Star Trek: The Next Generation before we get there, the first appearance of such an iconic part of the franchise is definitely worth paying attention to.

Now, having exhausted basically all the erudition I can derive from this episode, I want to focus more on the direction it seemed to be going before it pulled a bait-and-switch and why that had me worried for quite awhile. Of course, what I'm referring to is the tendency to associate animation exclusively with children's television, and not only children's television in general, but cheap, disposable and mindless children's television. At some point in its history, most typically pegged at the moment when Hanna-Barbera figured out how to make filler Saturday Morning programming cost effectively and efficiently, cartoons began to be seen as kid's stuff not worthy of serious consideration.

Soon, creators themselves began to internalize this negative reputation and started talking down to their audience, resulting in a vast majority of animation becoming insufferably and unwatchably patronizing, either because it was obvious throwaway work nobody put any thought into or because it was irritatingly and smugly didactic in its attempt to “teach a lesson”. It eventually got to the point that James “Shamus” Culhane, a veteran animator and director who worked on the legendary Woody Woodpecker short “The Barber of Seville” (named one of the 50 Greatest Cartoons of All Time by animation historian Jerry Beck) along with numerous Disney Animated Canon movies, flat-out said nobody should make cartoons with children primarily or exclusively in mind as they will inevitably be cripplingly paternalistic.

With the success of shows like The Simpsons, South Park and the output of Pixar in more recent years this attitude no longer seems to be quite as widely accepted as it once was, but I still see it quite a lot. Even in my own experience writing about animation this crops up quite frequently: I get the most snarky and bemused reactions and do the worst traffic numbers whenever I talk about cartoons or children's television (the exceptions being if I talk about something ubiquitous like the Disney Animated Canon or get picked up on a fluke by a huge community blog). Even trying to get people to accept that something as self-evidently culturally and historically significant as Scooby-Doo probably warrants analysis is an uphill battle. This very blog, in fact, has suffered somewhat: My readership figures and comment threads tapered off significantly following the switch from the Original Series to the Animated Series. And, while I did expect this and can't chalk the whole thing up to me covering a cartoon show, I also find it hard to believe that's not a factor either.

And this is noticeable in the production of the Animated Series itself. There's the fact it aired on Saturday Mornings for one thing, but also look at how D.C. Fontana herself felt compelled to defend “Yesteryear” on the basis that it supposedly “taught a valuable lesson to children” and not on the basis of it being, you know, possibly the single greatest character study in the history of Star Trek to date. "The Magicks of Megas-Tu", debatably the high water mark of the entire series, was almost never made because the network was afraid it that it would cause children to believe God didn't exist, and Fontana had to come up with some strangled argument about how Lucian's status as the Devil implicitly proved God existed as well to convince them to let it go through. Also look at the very obvious science lessons shoehorned into “One Of Our Planets Is Missing” and “The Terratin Incident” that in both cases jarred pretty horribly with the rest of their respective stories. While this might not be a guiding concern for those running the show, it very much seems like something that at least had to be on their minds somewhat.

And now maybe it becomes clear why an episode about a practical joker going around playing pranks on the Enterprise crew would make me nervous. Because there's no way in hell an episode with this kind of premise would ever have been made on one of the live action shows. And for the first time in the history of the Animated Series that's not a good thing. The sentient starship stuff, yeah: I previously mentioned Braga and Menosky and they do make it work, and they're far from the only ones to. The Holodeck stuff? I mean, come on, do I need to even say it? Of course Star Trek comes back to that. But the pranks? Absolutely not. That kind of a setup is the exclusive domain of the absolute dregs of the print-and-forget children's animation industry, and that's sobering. So, even though “The Practical Joker” isn't actually that kind of story, the fact it gets close enough so as to tease us with the possibility it might be is sincerely troubling.

It may be a joke, but I'm not laughing.

“Is green, yes.”: Bem

This out-of-context screencap is more entertaining than the whole episode.

“Bem” is the final “official” contribution to Star Trek by Dave Gerrold, though his presence and influence is going to be felt on the franchise for years to come (most notably during the first third of Star Trek: The Next Generation's first season, when he was on staff). From what I gather, it seems to have the reputation for being one of the better remembered and most admired episodes of The Animated Series, although Gerrold and D.C. Fontana do seem to go back and forth a bit on what their actual takeaway on it was.

So naturally I don't think it works in the slightest.

The story concerns the Enterprise taking on an attache by the name of Ari bn Bem, representing the planet Pandro. Bem is acting as an independent observer judging the Enterprise crew to determine whether or not the Federation is worthy of establishing formal diplomatic relations with his people. Though he sat out the previous six missions, Bem insists on being allowed to accompany the landing party on a dangerous reconnaissance mission to investigate uncontacted aboriginal people on Delta Theta III. Beaming down, it soon becomes apparent that Bem has ulterior motives, as he clandestinely replaces Kirk and Spock's phasers and communicators with forgeries and then runs off, getting captured by the natives in the process. Pursuing Bem, Kirk and Spock end up captured themselves, where Bem reveals to them that, as a colony organism, he could have divided into discrete parts and escaped at any time, but allowed himself to be captured to firstly study the native population from within, but also to see how Kirk and Spock would respond, disapproving of their repeated attempts to resolve the situation with force.

OK. I have quite a few issues with this setup already, and that's the briefest summary I could manage. First of all, as someone with a background in anthropology this entire premise rankles me. The ethics of “uncontacted” cultures is a sticky proposition to begin with, and the ever-present headache that is Star Trek's Prime Directive makes it worse. There's always a kind of paternalism (and, frankly, racism) present in the assumption that indigenous peoples, especially indigenous peoples who are “uncontacted”, are some kind of living time capsule from humanity's prehistory. You can't tell anything objectively about human history (well, you can't really tell anything objectively, but that's another matter entirely), and certainly not through ethnography. All that gets you is a not-always-clear outsider's perspective of how a culture operates *in the present day*. Furthermore, it's more than a little patronizing and naive to assume that all so-called “uncontacted” people are too childlike and stupid to at least guess some kind of an outside world exists.

None of this is helped by every single person in the episode acting like a complete idiot. Kirk and Spock are in full-on colonialist mode here again, stressing the importance of this mission to “classify” the aboriginal people of Delta Theta III, like the good Lamarckists they are. Spock even throws out pointedly ridiculous descriptors like “late primitivism” as if he's some kind of imperial anthropologist from back when formal colonial empires were a thing and institutionalized racism and modernist teleology were the guiding philosophies of the day (I mean, even more than they are now). Thankfully they're both called out on this bullshit by Bem and one other character who we'll talk about later, but none of it takes, frankly, especially when Bem acts colossally stupidly himself. At no point in the history of anthropology has it been considered a standard part of participant observation to charge headlong into your contact village and let yourself get captured and thrown into a stereotypical bamboo cage straight out of old fashioned adventure stories. Somehow I don't recall reading that in Bronislaw Malinowski's handbook.

Actually let's talk some more about Bem. He is, in fact, named after precisely what you think he's named after. And no, he isn't one. “BEM”, for the uninitiated, is a cheeky acronym for the stock science fiction concept of the Bug-Eyed Monster. Gerrold originally pitched this story as a sort of joke about how fun it might be to see an actual BEM in Star Trek...but he's also said that Bem himself was never intended to actually *be* a BEM, so I have no idea what Gerrold's point actually was. It's also worth noting that, given the way he acts in the actual episode, were Gerrold a woman, Bem would absolutely have been declared a Mary Sue at this point. He's a character who we've never seen before immediately made honourary commander and who, despite his deceptive machinations, goes on to lecture Kirk and Spock about their smug sense of entitlement and dangerously irresponsible reliance on technology and firepower.

So for awhile it seems like the script is making “Bem” out to be another criticism of Star Trek's authoritarian and imperialist tendencies by showing how the titular character has a better philosophy towards exploring and meeting people (even though he actually doesn't), but the problem is any story like this made in the wake of “The Magicks of Megas-Tu” that doesn't acknowledge humanity's drive towards constant self-improvement is, in my opinion, flatly outdated. Thankfully the episode does try to address this but it doesn't seem to be thanks to Gerrold. Gene Roddenberry took a particular interest in this episode and made a ton of edits and alterations to it and, unbelievably, he's the one who seemed to recognise the majority of its problems and made the biggest effort to alleviate them.

But before we can get too excited, it turns out Roddenberry doesn't really know what to do with this pitch either and his additions don't really help. Roddenberry felt that it would be a good idea if the Enterprise crew met God on Delta Theta III, and had Gerrold add such a character to come in and but both Kirk and Bem in their places. Starting here Roddenberry starts to develop a fascination with the concept of God or some other kind of transcendent Truth, and this will eventually culminate in his big overblown treatise on the matter in 1979. And although this never *quite* works out for him (although I do submit a portion of this might be my own hesitation about this kind of Greco-European conception of the divine and objective reality), the depiction of it in “Bem” is prototypical and ill-defined even by Roddenberry's standards.

See it turns out God, who is apparently Nichelle Nichols, is upset at the Federation and the Pandronians interfering on Delta Theta III. And here's where this episode really goes to pieces for me: Roddenberry, or perhaps Gerrold, adds in an underlying motif about testing. The Enterprise crew are testing the Delta Thetans to find out what taxonomical classification of people they are. Bem claims to be testing the Federation, via Starfleet, by observing how they react to certain situations and God, meanwhile, resents the hubris in either of them thinking they have the right to test and classify anything. It's at this point any possibility of this being a critique of Star Trek’s narrative logic and ethics goes out the window, because Bem breaks down and says he's failed his own test by underestimating Kirk and acting foolishly by violating his orders and going against Starfleet regulation, which is obviously more enlightened then he gave it credit for. Maybe Bem then is Gerrold's criticism of the Mary Sue, which would be even more troubling as this would mean Gerrold is saying what's most valuable about Star Trek is its well-founded rigid authoritarian chain of command.

Now I don't want to totally single out Gerrold for blame here. He's a demonstrably good writer, albeit one who has a frustrating tendency to try and punch above his weight class before he's really prepared to. And a lot of the things that make Gerrold's pitches so entertaining are on display here, most notably the comic timing. Furthermore, both he and D.C. Fontana have said on occasion that this isn't a story either of them are terribly proud of. But even so, this one flatly does not work: “Bem” is Gerrold's most troubling submission yet (though unfortunately not the most troubling of his we're going to look at) and there's an even larger issue at play here: It's all that testing.

Unlike previous such characters, and indeed future ones, the God in this story is very much someone we're supposed to defer to. She's a wise and benevolent God, pointing out to the now-suicidal Bem that punishment is only necessary when someone is incapable of learning. Coming from her, this is both a reinforcement and an endorsement of authority. But what really bothers me is, as Spock points out, the God in this story is very clearly a tester too: She's testing the Delta Thetans (to whom she refers to as children in need of guidance, thus once again invoking the racist notion that indigenous people are quaint, primitive and childlike) and using their planet as a large-scale laboratory on social evolution. She's doing the exact thing she found abhorrent when Kirk and Spock attempted it. But she has the right, because she's God and thus a legitimate higher power.

This is, of course, a very Christian, and thus Western, conception of divinity. But what marks it as such is not merely the crass authoritarianism, but also the notion that God is some kind of arch-manipulator, putting out tests to put her experimental subjects through to see if they pass muster. Avital Ronell has a great book called The Test Drive which equates the ubiquity of scientific-style tests in Western Modernity with Freud's Drive Theory. Westerners are thus compelled to test ourselves and each other, and this seeps into all aspects of Western thought, discourse and pop consciousness.

One of the things Ronell's book grew out of, for example, was her analysis of the rhetoric surrounding the First Gulf War, and in particular how it was promised to be “bloodless” and “safe”, and how this paralleled with the then-contemporary AIDS panic. In essence, the war was the US' attempt to test itself for AIDS, and to reassure itself that its test came back negative and, implicitly, that it wasn't gay. The test then is what we use to legitimize all aspects of our lives, not just our approach to scientific research, but love, war, and, as I think Roddenberry and Gerrold show here, our own sense of self-worth. It's a powerful, if not the primary, force in both normalization and marginalization. It's how we determine what's acceptable and what isn't.

So, if the only way anything can be considered serious and worthy of consideration is if it passes a test, it's not that much of a stretch to see the entirety of existence as one great science experiment with an almighty God, or some other objective force (such as Reason, Nature or The Universe. This is another area in which Western Science and Western Religion show themselves to really be born of the same underlying mentality), as the only truly legitimate authority by which we can measure ourselves against. We are all, as Kirk and Spock say in the denouement, merely children hoping to pass muster.

Thankfully, for me at least, the Western version of transcendentalism isn't the only one that exists. But that's all I'm going to say about this topic for now.

“...strictly neutral in this matter as you well know...”: The Pirates of Orion

"...I thought we weren't playing cowboys anymore."

“The Pirates of Orion” is one of the best character pieces in the Animated Series and builds nicely on established Star Trek lore without feeling either slavish or repetitive, but most of all it fits neatly into the pattern we've been crafting for the franchise over the past few posts.

The Enterprise is en route to a dedication ceremony on Deneb V while recovering from an outbreak of choriocytosis, a particularly virulent respiratory disease that prevents red blood cells from transporting oxygen. Just when the crew thinks the plague is under control, Spock suddenly collapses on the bridge. After rushing him to sickbay, McCoy informs Kirk that Vulcan physiology is similar enough to that of humans to make him susceptible, but different enough that it becomes far more serious, and that Spock will die in three days unless the crew can get their hands on some strobolin, the only known antidote. Realising the nearest source of the vaccine is four days away from the Enterprise's position, Kirk calls the starship Potemkin and freighter Huron for help in forming a brigade line. However, on its way to the Enterprise, the Huron is attacked by the titular Orion pirates, acting outside the declared neutrality of their government, who hijack the ship and steal its cargo. It now falls to Kirk to track down the Orions and reclaim the cargo without provoking a diplomatic incident.

This isn't the first time we've seen the Orion Syndicate since “Journey to Babel”, but it's the first time we've seen it focused on to this extent. Even so, however, “The Pirates of Orion” keeps its space opera overtones and world building somewhat in check: The Orions act in a manner totally consistent with their previous appearance, down to the mention of how any Orion ship is duty-bound to self-destruct and its crew commit suicide should their mission fail in such a way that it puts their government's neutrality at risk. Just like in “Journey to Babel” though, and decidedly unlike some of their later appearances, infodumps about Orion society are not actually the focal point of the entire episode. Though the space adventure stuff isn't quite less important than the character drama here as they're at least about equal, there's still an appreciable balance between the two. Furthermore, this episode firmly establishes the Orion Syndicate as one of the proper, top tier antagonists for the Federation and the Enterprise crew, so when they reappear a few years later in Star Fleet Battles and when the video game based on that universe gets named after them, it's all but expected.

Which is all good, because “The Pirates of Orion” itself is neither the most original, creative or inspiring space pirate story ever told. I was consistently hoping throughout this episode that Kirk would be forced into negotiations with the Orions to get the vaccine and that we'd eventually get to see Kirk break treaty and regulations to save Spock's life. And while that *sorta* happens, it's nowhere near as interesting as it could have been in my opinion. The Orions get a pretty stock story: They callously hijack a freighter transporting much-needed medicine, and are stubbornly unwilling to hand it over for just long enough to fill out the episode.

What I wanted to see was the Enterprise deliberately *seek out* the Orion Syndicate as it was the only way they could get the medicine in a pinch, and for Kirk to give some speech about how it doesn't matter who's selling it and where it's coming from if the transaction saves lives. This could even be used as a kind of minor criticism of the pharmaceutical industry, as holding life-saving treatments hostage in exchange for capitalistic profit is tantamount to piracy, and at least the Orions are honest about what they do (indeed, McCoy even gets a great little line where he's frustrated that doctors are only as good as their drugs). Instead, we get a generic space adventure with some pirates and, while that's not terrible, it's considerably less effective than what I was hoping for.

Generic space adventures are often the hardest type of episode for me to write about. I don't dislike them, and in fact I can get really into one that's especially well-done (though truth be known I do tend to prefer the ones that use their space adventure trappings to disguise something a bit more clever). But there's not often a ton to actually say about them, and they tend to succeed or fail based on how clever the premise is and what kinds of intriguing images the creative team can come up with. And “The Pirates of Orion” is pretty solid as far as these sorts of things go: The Orion ship itself is imposing and cool-looking, the exploding asteroid belt the two starships take refuge in is delightfully mental and amazingly looks like a bunch of jawbreakers floating in space and seeing a Federation starship that's not Constitution-Class is yet another little thing that helps make the world of Star Trek feel more alive.

(Indeed it's the Huron that captured my interest the easiest here: The first half of the episode splits its time evenly between them and the Enterprise, and we start to get to know Captain O'Shea and his bridge crew. Barring Kirk seeking out the Orion Syndicate, I was hoping we'd at least get to see some swashbuckling action scenes of O'Shea defending his ship from a boarding party, but no, the attack happens completely off-camera).

But all this doesn't take into account what a strong character piece this episode is. If not, perhaps, for the plot (Kirk and McCoy racing against time to save Spock's life as a demonstration of how close the three friends are is not a *totally* fresh concept), definitely for the dialog and acting. Kirk and McCoy get a lot of scenes together where they confess how much Spock means to them, which is nice given this kind of story and really humanizes the two in a way that Star Trek at this stage doesn't always *quite* manage to do as often as it could. But William Shatner and DeForest Kelley are the real standouts here, delivering some of their best performances in the Animated Series yet. Actually, the performances they turn in here are a return to kind of gritty, matter-of-fact frankness and gravity we really haven't seen from these two since quite early on in the Original Series: It reminds me a lot of McCoy's “And in all of that, perhaps more, only one of each of us” speech in “Balance of Terror” and his “Why don't you ask Jim Kirk?” line in “The Ultimate Computer”, which is very much appreciated.

And aside from Kirk and McCoy, the rest of the cast gets handled quite well too. Much like in “Beyond the Farthest Star”, or perhaps even “The Jihad”, each member of the crew has a dedicated role to play and they all contribute something to saving Spock and resolving the diplomatic crisis with the Orions. Kirk, McCoy, Uhura and Scotty beam over to the Huron once they figure out something's gone wrong, and they use their combined skillsets to piece together what happened. Scotty investigates the engine room and the hold, McCoy examines the crew and Uhura goes over the ship's logs and record tapes. Meanwhile, Arex takes over the science station on the bridge in Spock's absence, much as his predecessor Chekov used to do in the Original Series, and the Enterprise itself is left in Sulu's capable hands.

But as perfectly solid as “The Pirates of Orion” is, the real thing that makes it worthy of note is its writer, Howard Weinstein. Weinstein will go on to contribute a number of stories to the various and sundry Star Trek comics, but this is is first effort and when he wrote it he was only 19, making this his actual, very first published work as a writer. And it's a damn promising debut, especially given the fact he submitted it to D.C. Fontana pretty much out of the blue and got it accepted largely without incident. Even Gene Roddenberry said this was one of the best debut scripts he'd ever read. This is endlessly fascinating to me, especially against the backdrop of all this stuff about fan culture and writing we've been talking about lately: There's this huge feeling amongst the fandom that Star Trek is something dead and buried and only being kept alive through zines, and here's some random kid submitting a totally unsolicited script to what I remind you is the current, official version of the franchise and he gets it produced as a cracking season premier.

I don't really have a larger point here except to reflect on the irony of not just that story itself, but the fact this isn't anywhere near the last time something like this is going to happen.

“Though all men be equally frail before the world...”: The Jihad

Oh, had I a golden thread/And needle so fine/I'd weave a magic strand/Of rainbow design

This episode was written by Stephen Kandel, better known for the Harry Mudd trilogy and, would you believe it, it turns out he did have a good Star Trek story to tell after all. More than good, in fact: “The Jihad” is properly excellent and closes out the Animated Series' first season on one of the show's high notes.

Kandell had been a regular writer on Mission: Impossible during the original era of Star Trek, and that's sort of what this episode feels like a little bit: A Mission: Impossible story. Kirk and Spock are called to a summit held by the Vedala, the oldest known spacefaring civilization. The Vedala have assembled a crack team of specialists from around the galaxy to partake in a top-secret mission to prevent an interstellar war. Aside from Kirk and Spock, there's Lara, a ranger and tracker from a planet where humans remained hunter-gatherers, Sord, a reptilian warrior, Em/3/Green, a nervous lockpicking expert who resembles a kind of insect (and voiced by Dave Gerrold no less: Gerrold has something of a habit for getting people to write him into Star Trek episodes) and Tcharr, hereditary prince of the birdlike Skorr, who is the primary reason for the team-up.

The Vedala have gathered the team together to track down The Soul of the Skorr, an ancient artefact that literally holds the soul of the Skorr's great prophet Alar, who was made immortal upon death by being bound into an energy web and whose life force keeps peace among his disciples and their descendents. The Soul has gone missing, and Tcharr fears that should word of its theft become public, the Skorr will return to their warlike roots and declare a holy war on the galaxy. Thankfully, the Vedala have traced it to the “Mad Planet”, a lifeless rock constantly tearing itself to pieces due to constant earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, blizzards, tsunamis and gravity shifts. On the way, the task force will have to contend with the harsh unforgiving and ever-changing landscape of the Mad Planet while learning to trust and respect each other in order to work together as a team.

There is so much going on right from the outset here it's difficult to keep track of. “The Jihad” is simply overstuffed with fascinating ideas and concepts it's hard for me to even figure out where to begin, and I couldn't be happier: This is a picture perfect example of taking the potential of science fiction television, and in particular animated science fiction television, resolutely rising to the challenge and just running with it. I've never seen a Star Trek episode quite like this one before and I'm actually not sure I'm going to see another like it again. I suppose a good place to start would be the team itself: This is a truly creative and inspired bit of creature design. For the first time in awhile, it feels like the Animated Series team is really taking full advantage of their medium and showing us visuals they really couldn't have pulled off through live action. More to the point, each individual member has a defined and memorable personality, which is something Star Trek has been a bit changeable with in the past. It perhaps helps there's a larger voice cast than normal: Though Dave Gerrold and James Doohan are predictably good, the standout for me is Jane Webb as both the Vedala and Lara, both of which are charming and charismatic characters.

Actually, it's Lara who was the real standout for me. She's someone utterly unlike basically anyone else in the entirety of Star Trek-In many ways she reminds me of Doctor Who's Leela, except much, much more effective. Lara is an indigenous hunter and tracker who eschews the technoscientific world of the Federation to live solely through her instincts and her ability to read the land. Nevertheless, her and her people have still obviously managed to develop spaceflight and Lara herself is just as cosmopolitan, knowledgeable and essential as everyone else on the team.

This is so incredibly utopian it's practically more Vaka Rangi than Vaka Rangi: A non-Western, non-Modern hunter-gatherer society that holds women in esteem, maintains their connection to the land and the skills that allowed them to foster that connection all the while cherry-picking the things from more Western societies that suit their lifestyle but that don't put it at risk of extinction that's now out among the stars in equal standing with the vast, sprawling galactic empires? I mean that's just absolutely perfect. It's exactly what Star Trek needs: Proof positive there are ways for humans to live in peace and dignity in its world without becoming subsumed by the more problematic aspects of the Federation. In Lara we see Star Trek's idealistic dream of living out among the stars on a journey of self-improvement mixed with the equally idealistic, though often neglected, hope that traditional indigenous knowledge and ways of life can live on too. It's the final disconnect between Modernist Neo-Imperialism and space travel story, demonstrating once and for all that Star Trek doesn't need to be western to be utopian.

As for Lara herself, there's a wonderful little story thread between her and Kirk throughout the episode: For Lara's people, it's not customary to obfuscate one's feelings and desires, especially when it comes to romance and friendship, and Lara makes it perfectly, blatantly clear to Kirk that she finds him attractive and that she'd like to use their brief time together to “make green memories”. However Kirk gently and politely rejects her advances, saying he has too many “green memories” of his own, but they eventually grow to respect one another and become close allies nevertheless. Not only is this a clever subversion (and inversion!) of a lot of the stereotypes of Kirk from the Original Series, it's a fantastic little series of character moments and it propels Lara to the forefront of Star Trek's female characters, at least in this phase of its history. I mean at what other point before the early 1990s or so are you going to find someone like this, a woman who is not only an unabashed equal but who is this blunt and forward to boot? It's great to see, and Webb and William Shatner knock it out of the park, which is tough to do when you're not in the same recording studio as the person you're supposed to be reacting to.

Furthermore, there's yet another great scene with Lara near the climax, where it's revealed someone on the team is trying to sabotage the mission from within and kill off their teammates. For awhile I was really worried the traitor would be Lara, as she's set up to be such a bold, aggressive and determined character. But no, it's one of the other characters, and it's Lara, along with Kirk and Spock, who helps rally those who remain loyal to the Vedala to recapture the Soul of the Skorr and bring everyone back home alive.

I guess I owe Stephen Kandel an apology: Freed from Harry Mudd and Gene Roddenberry it would seem he's more than capable of writing an admirable female hero, because “The Jihad” gives us two: Lara, of course, but the Vedala star-mystic as well who summons the team and gives them guidance on their journey through her powers of foresight and telekinesis.

Speaking of which this episode is dripping with magick. It's almost as magickal as “The Magicks of Megas-Tu”. The Vedala are plainly psychic and use straight-up astral projection to help discern the location of the Soul and also seem to have mastery over telepathy, teleporation and telekinesis. And, just like in “The Magicks of Megas-Tu”, this is given no other explanation other than that it self-evidently exists. This isn't “mental science”, it's magic plain and simple. However, this is not what we'd think of as straightforward high fantasy either, though it might appear to be this at first glance. What's really interesting about the trappings of “The Jihad” is that this is all happening against the background of what remains a science fiction setting: While the Vedala may not practice “mental science” the way Isaac Asimov might have conceived of it, what they do is demonstrate the mundane reality of magick within the Star Trek universe. The magick of the Vedala exists alongside all the other ways of knowing in the galaxy and is treated as just as valid a worldview as any other. Indeed perhaps it might be even more highly valued as the Vedala are considered the oldest and most revered civilization in the galaxy and their word carries considerable clout on the interstellar stage.

Then there's the Mad Planet, which seems to operate according to a distinctly magickal logic.The whole world feels alive, which is even more fitting considering the inclusion of Lara, as many indigenous hunter-gatherer societies also understand their connection to the land through animism. But more to the point the Mad Planet feels not just alive, but also angry and tormented: It's the personification of the challenge the team must undertake to recover the Soul of Skorr, and that also gives the title “The Jihad” a secondary meaning. See, in actual Muslim spirituality, “jihad” means “struggle” (this is, in fact, literally what the word translates out to), and the Qur’an mentions two different kinds of jihads. One is the version that's most familiar to a 21st century audience, that is, a righteous struggle against one's enemies (though crucially this is most traditionally seen as a revolutionary act done to overthrow oppressors, not a holy crusade against nonbelievers for death and glory). However the second, and more important, meaning is that of an inner personal struggle to overcome challenge on an everyday basis. It's a challenge to remain true to your ideals and beliefs each and every day. So not only will the Skorr launch the holy war kind of jihad if the Soul isn't brought back, but the team themselves are undergoing a kind of jihad on the Mad Planet to work together and respect one another, thus living up to their own ideals.

Which brings us back to the Soul of Skorr itself, which is this message given form and, as a result, it's ultimate magick spell. On first glace it looks straightforwardly pop Christian, much like the life force receptacles from “Return to Tomorrow”, but it's actually more arcane than that: Tcharr says it's the result of binding Alar's soul to the mortal plain, but there's no mention of some technobabble explanation for extracting life energies or whatever that would prompt a Cartesian reading. No, in practice the Soul serves a very different purpose. Alar was a beloved prophet who inspired the Skorr to leave their warlike past behind them and the Skorr made him a cultural hero and strove to follow his example ever since. Knowing this, it makes that name extremely telling. The Soul of Skorr is just that: The collective hopes, dreams and ideals of a people projected onto a sacred totem, thus giving them immortal life and power. This touches on the heart of magick, which is the appropriation and manipulation of symbols and the belief that symbols have power and agency unto themselves, because belief itself grants them. No wonder the disappearance of the Soul would put the Skorr on a retrograde path and plunge the galaxy into war, because without ideals people become cynical and, even worse, apathetic. And that's also why a multicultural team of equals culled from all ways of life and all knowledge networks is needed to get it back.

Which means “The Jihad” is, put simply, perfect Star Trek. It's a story about idealism and cultural signifiers and the role they play in our lives. It's utopian not in the didactic, authoritarian way the franchise gets a bad name for these days, but because it looks frankly at the concept of ideals, why they're important and how people challenge themselves to try and live up to them. This is not a story about the enlightened space navy going around reorganizing societies, it's a story about how all people all over the universe try to better themselves, and how magickal it is when they succeed. And on top of that, it's bloody gorgeous to look at. It's absolutely everything Star Trek is good at wrapped up in a neat little gift basket.

Even across the span of decades, I think I can still hear D.C. Fontana dropping the mic.

“Just think what some zoo will pay for you!”: The Eye of the Beholder

Which of you is the one named "Mr. Snuffleupagus"?

“The Eye of the Beholder” concerns the Enterprise attempting to locate the crew of a research ship that went missing in the vicinity of Lactra VII. Beaming down to investigate, Kirk, Spock and McCoy discover three wildly different ecosystems positioned unnaturally adjacent to each other. Spock supposes that this planet might in fact be some kind of enormous zoo created by beings significantly more advanced then the Federation races, a supposition proven correct when giant telepathic slugs with trunks come, abduct the landing party and take them to a specially-crafted humanoid exhibit guarded by an unbreakable force field.

Somehow it feels like we've been here before.

This episode was written by David P. Harmon, who also wrote “The Deadly Years” and co-wrote “A Piece of the Action” with Gene Coon. However it's pretty clear now that the latter story must have been primarily Coon because this episode is much more akin to the former. In other words, it's another perfectly forgettable filler episode. And let's be honest: “The Eye of the Beholder” is totally “The Cage” all over again. It doesn't even try to distinguish itself from possibly the most famous episode of Star Trek ever, apart from having the zookeepers be the aforementioned giant telepathic slugs with trunks instead of Talosians.

Since Harmon apparently has no qualms about stooping so low as to recycle the plot wholesale from the very first episode of Star Trek I don't feel bad about reusing a lot of my commentary from “The Deadly Years”. The concept of filler episodes (in the original “this-feels-like-an-off-week” sense and not the contemporary “I-have-to-wait-another-week-to-learn-more-about-my-Big-Damn-Character-Arc" sense) is a phenomenon somewhat unique to television, and United States television in particular, born as it is out of the necessity of making sure something makes it to air every week during the season. Flatly, sometimes you just need to crank something out to fill your episode quota. TV has always been one of the more visibly workmanlike of the creative mediums as a result, and this isn't necessarily a bad thing, because it gives us as viewers and critics special access to the creative process that goes into making it that the allure of the Cinematic Artifice and Singular Vision usually makes it hard for us to notice in, say, movies.

However.

As wonderful as that may all be and as criminally overvalued as I do in fact find plot and character development to be, I still tend to find that US TV engages in filler episodes alarmingly more frequently than it perhaps needs to. This is because in the US, the annual television season traditionally runs nonstop from September to May except for a hiatus in November and December and demands a quota of about 25-30 episodes as a result. There's only so many stories anyone can come up with for one setting in one sitting, and this means time, money and other resources get spread out over a huge swath of productions instead of being discreetly allocated to a small handful of them. US TV creators tend then to be ludicrously overworked and pressured, and corners get cut that inevitably bring down a show's average day-to-day potential. Eventually it can start to feel like the production team is punching a timecard and cranking out generic, formulaic stories because that's all they're physically capable of doing.

And anyway, even if “The Eye of the Beholder” did in fact have to be a filler episode (and given that it's the penultimate episode of The Animated Series' first season, it in all likelihood probably did) there were still ways to make it unique and entertaining without engaging in one of the most painfully obvious bits of self-plagiarism in the franchise to date. This could very easily have been a very enjoyable generic space adventure: Indeed, the first third-to-one-half of the episode is basically that-Kirk, Spock and McCoy wander first through volcanic hot springs, then a desert and finally a forest fending off giant monsters that keep popping up every now and again in search of the missing research team and bantering the whole way. The episode could have played up its already-weird and captivating setting and been about how the landing party survives in such an uncanny place.

The episode could have come up with some out-there technobabble explanation for why so many ecosystems exist in such close proximity to each other, like maybe this is an amalgam planet made up of the hunks of a lot of other planets that fused when their orbits caused them to smash into one another. Or maybe it's a planet that exists in multiple time periods or universes all at the same time and each time the landing party moves into a different ecosystem they're travelling between different realities. There would probably have to be some kind of signature Star Trek twist at the end to keep it from turning into full-on Space Ghost, like perhaps Kirk having to find a way to save both the lost research team and the local wildlife without endangering either of them, but that still strikes me as perfectly doable and exceedingly more interesting then defaulting back to the franchise's dead end of a pilot.

That aside there are a lot of little things that irk me about this one. Though they get some good lines and I enjoy how Kirk keeps imploring Spock and McCoy to stop bickering, the landing party is written in just about the most stereotypical and uninteresting way you can think of. Spock's a logic machine, McCoy is irrational, emotional and impulsive and Kirk tries to mediate between them. Furthermore, Harmon seems to view the rest of the crew besides Spock with some manner of disdain, because for one, hardly anyone outside the triumvirate actually appears in this episode (though Scotty and M'Ress show up near the end and play minor important roles) and secondly Spock is written to be always right: He has the whole plot basically figured out five minutes in, corrects everyone and just generally lectures everyone on how wrong and illogical they're being. I guess it's a return to “The Cage” in politics as well as plot, as this is a very unlikably Gene Roddenberry-esque conception of Spock (or rather the logician character, as in "The Cage" this was, of course, Number One): The character who exists to point out how fallible and naive the hopelessly emotional humans are.

The one thing that is sort of fun about “The Eye of the Beholder” is how it handles its resolution in comparison to how “The Cage” handled its. In the earlier episode, Pike broke the Talosians' thought shield by frightening them with violent imagery and physically and mentally muscled his way out. Here, Kirk and his crew make constant attempts to contact the Lactrans and convince them they're members of intelligent species who don't deserve to be imprisoned. And, in spite of Spock's gloating about the telepathic link he shares with the Lactrans it's Scotty and M'Ress who end up saving the day here: After a botched attempt to beam back to the Enterprise, a baby Lactran ends up getting transported up in Kirk's place and makes its way to the bridge where it confronts Scotty and M'Ress.

After a moment, Scotty beams down with the baby (who, despite being only six years old has an IQ in the thousands) and casually informs the landing party he was able to strike up a telepathic conversation with it and taught it all he knew about the Federation while M'Ress gave it access to the ship's computers to learn more. In doing so, the working-class everyman Scotty does what the highly trained mentalist Spock was unable to do and convince the Lactrans that humans and Vulcans (and Caitians) are intelligent beings: In fact, the Lactrans pay them the highest compliment by telling the landing party (as relayed by Scotty) that they remind them of the Lactrans themselves long ago, and that maybe in a few more (Lactran) centuries, everyone will be able to communicate as equals. It's a wonderfully Animated Series style ending that builds on the work of stories like “The Magicks of Megas-Tu” and “The Time Trap” and ends up making the whole episode worthwhile.

So once again this isn't a terrible episode: Like the vast majority of this series' poor stories, it's a mediocre outing that still shows Star Trek making visible progress even in its weakest moments. And that's pretty damn admirable place to be in at the end of the first season of an animated reboot of a failed Cult Sci-Fi show.

“We must not let it happen again.” The Slaver Weapon

Take note: This is what a sci-fi planet should look like.

Like so many other stories like it, “The Slaver Weapon” is a not-actually-terribly-good episode that still manages to set in motion events that will change everything we thought we knew about the world of Star Trek and call into question the franchise's closest-held tenets and ideals.

It has an interesting pedigree though. We've heard a few hints and clues about the Kzinti and some hostilities with them before, but this is the first time we've actually seen them: An aggressive race of catlike people who have persistently attacked settlements, who make war to eat those they defeat in battle and who are so misogynistic they've literally bred intelligence out of their women. They are a frighteningly unlikable adversary for this series, and if they don't sound like typical Star Trek villains that's probably because they're not, in point of fact, from Star Trek at all. The Kzinti actually hail from the self-contained Known Universe, encompassing the collected work of noted science fiction author Larry Niven, and this episode is actually a straight translation of his short story “The Soft Weapon” for Star Trek. The reason it's here is because D.C. Fontana was a huge fan of Niven's and personally requested he contribute something for the Animated Series. The two approached Gene Roddenberry with the idea, and while it was thought many of Niven's pitches were too violent for the show, Roddenberry eventually suggested adapting “The Soft Weapon”.

As a result there's not a whole lot to say about the episode as aired, because it straightforwardly, literally *is* “The Soft Weapon”, only with the names changed. An interesting consequence of this is that the episode features exclusively Sulu, Uhura and Spock in starring roles, standing in for the original story's protagonists (a human couple and a vegetarian alien scientists named Nessus), and thus none of the other regulars appear. This sadly doesn't help the episode much though, because while it's nice to see Sulu and Uhura get really meaty roles again, it's painfully clear “The Soft Weapon” had a rather blatant Pulp structure, so we get to see many riveting scenes of our heroes getting captured by Kzinti pirates, escaping said Kzinti pirates and being recaptured about ten seconds later. And of course, the female character has to be abducted and held for ransom.

There are, however, two main aspects of this episode that remain quite provocative. The first is, of course, the Kzinti: Despite being canon expatriates, the fact remains having a concept as shocking as the Kzinti here does change the game rather decisively for Star Trek. Trying to weld established Star Trek mythos with Niven's Known Universe has some really bizarre consequences that, thanks to a happy accident, wind up adding a lot more nuance to our franchise. The biggest bomb comes about when you try and reconcile the supposedly pacifistic and utopian Federation with the nasty history of the Earth-Kzin Wars: The implication of this episode then becomes that at some point prior to the foundation of the modern Federation, Earth and its allies were engaged in a series of horrific and consecutive wars where they absolutely decimated the Kzinti armies.

The decisive moment comes at the Treaty of Sirius, where Earth demanded harsh concessions from the Kzinti, forcing them to completely demilitarize and give the nascent Federation total unhindered access to Kzinti space. I have little sympathy for the warlike, misogynistic Kzinti (who were, of course, always the aggressors), but the sheer scale of the repercussions Earth called for at the Treaty simply sounds vicious, and it reminds me altogether too well of, say, the quick scapegoating of Germany following World War I. In Niven's original work, he further puts this into “natural selection” terms, explaining how the instinctively confrontational Kzinti died out due to their own belligerence, thus allowing the “more evolved” humans to thrive and the more progressive Kzinti to eventually adapt. It doesn't take a whole lot to twist that into imperialistic propaganda and apologia for Social Darwinism, and this is an unthinkably serious accusation to level at the Federation.

But not, in retrospect, an altogether unexpected one. We've always maintained that the Federation is far from a perfect, ideal model of government, despite the increasingly universalist rhetoric of the franchise that is slowly but surely beginning to dangerously conflate Star Trek's idealism with that of the Federation. It's not a huge leap of logic to extrapolate this back and figure the Federation probably had some kind of an imperialistic past or that a desire for empire might not in some way be built into the core of how it operates. Indeed, when next we see the Kzinti in Star Trek the Federation is put explicitly on the same level as any number of other wide-reaching galactic empires. It becomes but one massive military power among many others.

I'm also reminded of something Robert Hewitt Wolfe said in regards to the episode “Crossover” on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine:

"Empires aren't usually brutal unless there's a reason. There are usually external or internal pressures that cause them to be that way.”

There's more to this quote and Wolfe frames it in a way that's not totally unproblematic, but we'll deal with that in 1994. What I want to focus on here is the idea that empires arise out of a *need* to be brutal. The fear of the unknown, or rather of uncertainty and fungibility, a fear of the idea things can entropically change outside of your control (and a further belief that you are *entitled* to exert that control) and a panicky desire to maintain order has been a driving force of authoritarianism since time immemorial. The true horror of the Earth-Kzin wars is that it opens the possibility that this kind of fear and paranoia might actually be the defining belief upon which the entire Federation was founded.

Think about it. The Kzinti, despite how despicable they can be, are basically complete rubbish. As Beowulf Schaeffer says in Niven's story “Grendel”, “The Kzinti aren't really a threat. They'll always attack before they're ready". Not to mention the fact they lost every single conflict they ever had with Earth hilariously decisively. They're not a threat, they're a joke. It's Earth, and by extension the proto-Federation, who commit the worst atrocities during the Kzin Wars via the Treaty of Sirius thanks to their need to assert their dominance and growing military might and influence. This becomes the new Original Sin of the Federation: Despite all its rosy utopian rhetoric, it has roots in the same old ugly empire building Westerners are so depressingly good at. Oh sure, later writers will shy away from this, try to correct it and posit other origins for the Federation, but the damage has been done. This never goes away. This is a part of the Federation and Star Trek from here on out.

This ties into the other intriguing concept Star Trek inherits from the Known Universe via “The Slaver Weapon”: The titular weapon itself. In both stories, an Earth team has recovered an ancient stasis box dating from what amounts to The Old Universe, when they're abducted by the Kzinti. Apparently there once was an infinitely old race that existed billions of years ago who conquered the entire universe and enslaved every other sentient species (in Star Trek they're the Slavers, while in the Known Universe they're called the Thrint). Although no traces of their civilization still exist, they did leave behind these boxes which contain assorted artefacts preserved by a stasis field and which, through modern reverse engineering, have provided the basis for basically all technology as it exists today. The box Spock/Nessus found that he and his friends are fighting with the Kzinti over contained a weapon used by a Slaver/Thrint spy that can transform into many different forms, one of which has the power to instantaneously convert planet-sized pieces of matter into energy.

This is almost a bleaker revelation than the Kzin Wars. Literally the entire contemporary society of the Star Trek universe is modeling itself after an oppressive and genocidal race of actual monsters (we get to see an image that's largely assumed to be a Slaver/Thrint, and it looks like a giant saurian) not only technoscientifically but socially: The Federation and the Kzinti would go to war again over such a device-The Kzinti already proved they would be willing to kill and die to posses it, and after it predictably self-destructs at the end, Spock attempts to console Sulu, who is saddened that he won't be able to bring the device to a museum, by saying it would never have wound up in a museum anyway. This might well be the darkest ending we've seen yet on Star Trek: The Enterprise crew get to remain noble, but there is now overwhelming evidence that they might be the only scrupulous and upstanding people in a a universe built entirely around hatred, conflict and a desire to oppress and subjugate others. This is paradoxically the least Star Trek story we've ever seen, but, terrifyingly, it's absolutely in keeping with the way the show works.

Although the plot is less than compelling, the historical significance of “The Slaver Weapon” alone makes it worth a look. This is the starting point of a new approach to Star Trek: Not quite another reboot or reconceptualization, but a secondary thread that haunts the margins of the franchise popping up every now and again to remind us that we can hold to our utopian fantasies about the show as much as we like, but we'll never quite be able to distill this out of it. This is Star Trek's Dark Side, and the only way to confront your Dark Side is to accept that it exists, if not embrace it.