These Are The Voyages-Star Trek TOS Remastered and Reconsidered

Books, comics, TV, music
464

In note style, since I’m not as good as you guys at serious critique.

Two Kirks. It’s funny. I am going to assume that the episodes are actually the order that the Enterprise encounters them. And I also assume that the there is plenty of time in between them where the crew is bored to shit. And, if Kirk is a real ship captain, he runs competency drills to keep them fresh.

Anyway, in canon? Who on the ship remembers good/evil Kirk? Out of the 400 odd people on the ship, only a few experienced it. They all probably heard the loudspeaker warnings. But I’d guess the average person heard them and then forgot them. Back to the poker games and trying to get laid.

Storywise, Robert Fucking Bloch wrote it. He wasn’t watching the previous episode first. He had the story bible and he wrote the episode. And James Goldstone directed it. This man knows episodic TV.

So in my opinion? Top 20.

Anyway. This was the first episode that I thought was real science fiction. Androids. After this there would be a lot more. And I loved that in this ep the damaged android had burnt wires hanging out of his body. Later there would be androids with something approaching smaller circuitry. But even Norman had moving parts.

I have a problem with nurse Chapel having him as a fiance. How is Korby described by Kirk? As some kind of archaeological doctor? Because he translated an Orion thing? Well he’s a genius. And Chapel worked with him. But now she is a nurse. And they just

drifted

apart.

Now they are in love again until she sees his living fuck doll. Even though he tries to explain, and I have to dig this up…

Dr. Roger Korby: Christine, you must realise an android is like a computer. It does only what I program. As a trained scientist yourself, you must realise…

Christine Chapel: That given a mechanical Dr. Brown, a mechanical geisha would be no more difficult?

Dr. Roger Korby: You think I could love a machine?

Christine Chapel: Did you?

Dr. Roger Korby: Andrea is incapable of that. She simply obeys orders.

Yeah Doc. That’s cool. So you have a robot fuck doll. No need to clarify.

Taking a break. BBS

465

I got the impression that while Chapel very likely was steamed that Kirby appeared to have a lovely sexbot at his disposal, Korby interpreted her question about “love” as being about the ability to feel, to experience the emotion of love. You’ll recall that in order to prove that she has Andrea kiss and then hit Kirk in rapid succession and says triumphantly that she feels nothing, only follows orders. I think, and this is me looking with my 2018 eyes, Dr Korby basically deflected the question. Or didn’t think of using a sexbot as a betrayal of his betrothed. Or both.

466

They always talked about “Love” when they were alluding to sex in this period on TV, though that was unraveling.

Except for the fact that he is made of wires and can’t love either, emotionally or physically. , when he says that about "Sexbot "Andrea. Kind of a circular logic moment, actually.

467

I thought that was because he was a higher android like the Kirk android, because he copied his brain scan. And therefore might be capable of “love”. Or at least fooled himself that he was.

468

Until events proved him wrong. That’s what i mean about the circular logic. He makes claims, but the denouement proves it wrong.

469

Interesting, the episode of TNG I just watched covered similar ideas. In fact Data’s ‘humaness’ is a recurring theme.

That said in TNG his nature is considered unique, and there aren’t any other sentient machines even close, which seems a bit of a continuity break given this episode.

470

Out, Heretic! No discussions of Spiner-ness and the “mysteries” of Data occur in this place!!

Ye shall find no Tachyon fields, Holodecks or replicated Warp Engines here! Thou shall find no such comforts for you here! We shall make this a wilderness for ye, barren of all Wesleys.

So sayeth the book.

471

As far as Holodeck episodes, you picked a gif from one of the best.

472

I actually did think about Data when I was watching this episode, even though androids haven’t been mentioned previously everyone is clearly familiar with them and doesn’t really seem surprised to see them. That’s consistent with Data’s experiences in TNG when everyone who meets him assumes he is an automaton and he has to go to great lengths to prove his personhood.

473

Agree. I think from a Science Fiction standpoint, everyone is well versed in Asimov at this time. So a humanoid robot isn’t out of left field.

474

But we haven’t been introduced to any yet in the show. They just show up and everyone sort of goes, oh right, androids. Their presence is assumed.

475

I think Bloch is running with that, yes. It’s accepted because it’s i the audience’s collective subconscious, Sci Fi-wise. It’s not big deal as a concept. It is a big deal to the crew and the science in-universe though.

476

Well no, it’s not a big deal to the crew. They’ve clearly had experiences with androids in the past and don’t have any real difficulties playing their weaknesses, their perfect logic and inability to grasp illogical human nature, against them.

477

Yes, agree conceptually. The physical creation of them is portrayed as very innovative. But the crew is very familiar with computers and whatnot and the concept of androids. And the show does little exposition, convinced that the audience will have no problem getting it either.

478

Ugh.

While I really like that this episode tries to tackle some interesting themes (Hi there, Westworld!), the execution is just a hot mess.

Poor lighting in some scenes and some strangely bad camera work. In the opening scene there are two crash zooms (on the comm and then on Nurse Chapel) that stick out.

The android machine was pretty cool, though.

There some fun dialogue between Nurse Chapel and Dr. Korby, that’s mentioned above, but then we’re also expected to endure:

KIRK: Why? Can’t your memory banks solve a simple equation like that? What happened to the old ones, Ruk?
RUK: So long ago.
KIRK: Is it possible they built their machines too well, gave them pride and a desire to survive? Machines that wanted logic and order and found that frustrated by the illogical emotional creatures that built them?
RUK: Yes, the old ones. The ones who made us. They grew fearful of us. They began to turn us off.
KIRK: And isn’t it Korby who’s creating the same danger to you all over again? Unlike you, we humans are full of unpredictable emotions that logic cannot solve.
RUK: Yes. Yes, it had been so long ago, I had forgotten. The old ones here. The ones who made us, yes. Yes, it is still in my memory banks. It became necessary to destroy them. You are inconsistent. You cannot be programmed. You are inferior.
KIRK: And Korby?
RUK: You came from the outside. You bring disorder here.
KIRK: The danger to you is Korby.
RUK: I was programmed by Korby. I cannot harm him.
KIRK: The old ones programmed you, too, but it became possible to destroy them.
RUK: That was the equation! (seizes Kirk) Existence! Survival must cancel out programming.
KIRK: That’s it, Ruk! Logic! You can’t protect someone who’s trying to destroy you!

That’s quite a leap, Captain!

I do think Kirk’s attempt to imprint a message to Spock while he was being photocopied was pretty clever.

Notes:

  • Android men get full body jumpsuits. Android women get sexy suspenders.

image

  • To make an android you need a person, a machine, and some mattress stuffing shaped vaguely like a person

  • Naked Kirk!

  • Multi-Kirk! (again)

  • Penis stalactite FTW!

-Greg out

479

I’m a renegade, and therefore not playing by your rules. i.e. I watched this episode already last week whilst you were talking about Joel and Mike (who?) and a few more episodes past this!

Before you started this thread, I was already planning on watching Star Trek from TOS to DS9 and possibly ENT, with a lot of skips in the TOS department as I was expecting it to be campy and rubbish. But since you’ve started this thread I’ve decided to watch almost all of the TOS ones, except the ones that are universally regarded as being campy and rubbish.

This one made the list! Here are some notes I took whilst watching.

What Are Little Girls Made of?

  • Why does the Captain of a starship regularly go down to planets? Isn’t that a job for the mooks below decks? Granted, it’s the “TV” way to do it, and every other Trek and most other sci-fi series do it. But it always annoys me that the prize Turkey goes into every dangerous situation, usually alone.
  • You get to see Uhuru’s bum cheek when she stands up from the chair, and in HD you can see that Android woman’s nipples. This is risky stuff for the late 60s!!
  • This is also the first redshirt I’ve seen offed on a polystyrene world (I skipped some of the earlier ones), and we get to see two of them casually murdered by a theatrical horror-villain. Interestingly, Kirk knew both of their names, whereas I always thought the trope was that redshirts were nameless mooks sent to the slaughter.
    • Infact, from a few later episodes, we see that not only is their a wide variety is named crew members, but that the senior officers all seem to know their names. This is quite an admiral trait on a crew of 300 or so, and I’m sure some of those 300 are barbers and cooks. I don’t remember Picard being so familiar.
  • To badly quote HBO’s Silicon Valley: “He’s clearly having sex with that robot”
  • Shatner really had to suck his gut in whilst inside that Android creating machine.
  • Do you think Data was made on a spinning table as well?
  • The way that human-sized stone-golem flopped onto the table made me think there was an actor inside that would be ‘revealed’. I’m kind of disappointed that wasn’t the case.
  • I find it hard to believe that, even in the 60s, the writers, producers, directors, props department etc thought that an open-topped spinning table would be an effective and believable way to carve a electronic golem.
  • It’s a few episodes in and we already have our second duplicate Kirk episode! When’s the mirror universe episode with a duplicate-everyone, is that next? :)
  • Can you imagine Picard or Janeway garrotting someone to take them prisoner in a bid to escape their lunacy? Kirk is a decisive man of action. I guess this is the darkness that was spoken about when Kirk split in two.
  • Haha it’s Kirk with the giant styrofoam penis! I’ve seen gifs of this. How could they not know it looked like a penis?
  • Oh god. He taught the android to love! And in just a few minutes. And he taught the angry one to kill. Kirk’s something of a genius-level manipulator. I also like how Corby never seemed to come to this conclusion in the entire time and wasn’t scared of of Lurch. [post-edit : I guess because he’s an Android as well? Makes sense]
  • These androids can’t emote! Only equation things! (Even though Corby’s needy desire to have Christine’s approval is a form of emotion?). Too much emotion cause him to shut down! Perhaps his tears burnt out his circuits, Futurama stlye? :) And Andrea to gets “confused”, just like a robot actually would if presented with two contradictory facts.
  • I liked that Kirk mentioned Genghis Khan, Hitler, Ferris, and Maltuvis. I do like it when they set up a bit of throwaway lore like that, even if such a thing has become a trope. I imagine a lot of Trek was not tropey at the time but is now massively cliched.

I remember Star Trek having quite varied storylines, but so far it’s mostly a lot of ancient races with last bastions, and people with god-like powers. In this case it was another ancient race with bonus last surviving bastion, ready to kill all intruders. Kirk’s not doing too well on his mission to find new life and new civilisations. He keeps finding old stuff! I guess it’s new to humanity, which is all that matters.

Interestingly this was also another ubermench episode. This one didn’t have god-like powers or ascende, however, he just took the traditional route and uploaded himself into a robot, so that does differentiate it from the previous episodes.

So far my rankings are:
Great:
N/A

Good:

  1. S1E4: The Naked Time
  2. S1E5: The Enemy Within

Mediocre:

  1. S1E7: What Are Little Girls Made of?

Awful:

  • S1E3: Where No Man Has Gone Before
  • S1E6: Mudd’s Women

Skipped:

  • S1E0: The Cage
  • S1E1: The Man Trap
  • S1E2: Charlie X
480

All right, my fodder for the cannons! Always good to have new opinions. I guess I’d agree that we haven’t really seen any great episodes yet - but I cheated and looked ahead and I see there’s a run of some seriously good, maybe even great ones coming up pretty soon. It’s going to be awesome.

481

It is hard to to take any actions from a conference room or holodeck, agreed.

482

I can see Picard doing it. Who is this Janeway?

483

It’s from a Beverly Hillbillies episode. Jane Hathaway gets confused with a Heath Janeaway. Hijinks ensue.