Not to mention the Earth-Mimbari War and The Line
oh wait
…but you’re welcome to try ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
G’carr and Lando could totally beat up a Mimbari.
As if.
Your ordinary Mimbari fought like a Ninja, even if said Mimbari sang songs about fish heads in a past life. And Rangers… well, mister, Rangers were like Ninja Ninjas.
Narn fought like girls. Hissing and scratching
& Centauri… oh LOL
Great maker.
Whoosh.
Great post. After only having seen almost 2 seasons of the original series, I agree that it is much more of a wild frontier. With that said, I also like the decision made for TNG to have a more settled federation. I think it makes sense for things to move in that direction, even given what I’ve seen so far in TOS. It’s the equivalent of settling the American West, and then fastforwarding to today.
Roddenberry’s idea for TOS was ‘Wagon Train to the stars,’ copying the formula for the successful Wagon Train series about the west. The idea of DS9 was clearly of a frontier outpost in the old west. It even has a saloon!
I don’t mean this as a knock on TNG, but I don’t really know what the one-sentence idea for TNG was.
“I can cut off your oxygen and suffocate you!”
“Whoever he is, he sure talks gloomy.”
Welcome back to another round of Star Trek, this week’s episode is “The Wolf in the Fold”, wherein they somehow manage to fit Jack the Ripper into Trek lore. If you can roll with that, and with the early part of the episode trying to sell you on Scotty being a murderer of women, you might get some enjoyment out of the episode. Personally, I found it all a bit much. Not a bad episode, just a little too out there for me. They travel light years to an alien planet only to discover a strange entity that killed a lot of women in London in the late 1800s. It doesn’t bother me that this strains credulity a bit, they do at least try to explain that the progression of unexplained murders follows a linear path to arrive at Argelius II at this time. It just always disappoints me a little bit that this awesome, starfaring show sometimes aimed a little lower than it could have.
Anyway, the episode was written by noted sci-fi and horror author Robert Bloch. He wrote the earlier episodes “Catspaw” and “What Are Little Girls Made Of?” which are also tinged a bit with horror elements. You may also recognize the actor who played Hingist, John Fiedler - he was on everything, seems like. He played recurring roles on “The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis”, and was on several episodes of “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” and “The Twilight Zone”, and even played a juror in “Twelve Angry Men.” If you grew up watching Winnie the Pooh, you may recognize him as the voice of Piglet, which was a role he played for many decades up until his death.
I don’t think you’re meant to actually believe Scotty is a murderer. I think you’re meant to know that he isn’t, and be intrigued by how it can look as if he is.
I’ve always like this episode. It’s light, granted, but the performances are decent, the script moves along, and the conclusion is satisfying.
Kirk and McCoy at least take the possibility seriously, talking about “hysterical amnesia” and whether a knock on the head could scramble his brain enough to turn him into a serial killer. The episode at least puts the effort into creating a doubt, in the same way “The Cage” makes you question Spock’s motive in hijacking the Enterprise.
They’re discussing those alternatives because they don’t believe it. They’re raising them as possibilities only to make it clear they don’t accept them.
This is never stated. This is the discussion Kirk and McCoy have:
MCCOY: Captain, under normal conditions, Scotty would have never done such a thing.
KIRK: But that blow on the head. It could put all his previous behaviour patterns into the junk heap.
MCCOY: Of course, there’s another possibility.
KIRK: Explain.
MCCOY: Hysterical amnesia. When a man feels guilty about something, something too terrible to remember, he blots it out of his conscious memory.
And then later:
SCOTT: Lieutenant? Captain? Where’s
KIRK: Lieutenant Tracy is dead, Scott. You were found alone in the room.
SCOTT: Dead? But I
KIRK: What happened down there?
SCOTT: I was sitting there. She was taking her readings, and now I’m sitting here.
MCCOY: Is that all that happened?
SCOTT: I tell you, I don’t remember. I must have passed out.
MCCOY: It could be, Jim. That head injury.
KIRK: That head injury. Think, Scotty.
SCOTT: Captain, I’ve been trying. I can’t even believe this is really happening.
And then again later -
KIRK: Three murders, and Scotty the only possible answer each time.
MCCOY: I don’t care what the circumstances indicate, Jim. Scotty simply could not have done it.
KIRK: Normally, no, but that blow on his head could
SCOTT: No, Captain.
KIRK Scotty, I’m sorry. You don’t even remember whether you did it or not.
HENGIST: I agree with you, Captain. I’m perfectly satisfied Mister Scott is guilty.
KIRK: But not responsible.
HENGIST: That is unproven, sir.
KIRK: We can prove it, if he’s insane.
Kirk clearly accepts the possibility that Scotty killed the women, but may have been incapacitated during the actual killing.
I always interpreted the actions of the command staff as accepting that Scotty was absolutely hemmed in by circumstantial evidence, and knowing that the Scotty they knew would never commit murder, were trying to find evidence that would prove he was’t responsible for his actions.
I like this episode, and always have. The Sci-Fi Horror blend really worked, I think. The only moment that makes me say, “waitaminnit” is the Computer possession thing.
Having said that when I was 12 and saw it for the first time, hearing “Redjack!, Redjack!, REDJACK!” come blaring out of the Computer scared the bejeezus out of me.
And that’s basically what I’m saying, they accept fairly early on that it’s entirely possible that Scotty did kill those women, but they don’t believe he was in his right mind if he did so. Because a concussion can turn you into a mass murderer, I guess. I get that this was done mostly for dramatic purposes, characters can shift according to the needs of the story to a certain extent. But we spend better than half the episode trying to prove Scotty’s innocence before we figure out that is was some malignant space entity who has a serious grudge against women for, you know, reasons. The whole episode feels weird to me.
It’s a murder mystery in a sci fi universe, touching on horror themes. I don’t know why it seems weird to you. I mean, based on the conventions of episodic tv at the time, we know Scotty didn’t do it. He’s a recurring character. But other than that, its well-acted and well done. Also, it exposes us to a planet’s culture and belief systems as it winds through the plot. It ain’t “Doomsday Machine” but its a pretty good episode.
Can’t agree with the last part. It’s like two episodes mashed together. We have a murder mystery against a character that we know full well isn’t a murderer, but everyone within the fiction must accept at least the possibility that he could be. So we sit through a fairly lengthy investigation and another courtroom drama and then find out that the killer was a space ghost. Then we shift into space thriller, with space ghost possessing the Enterprise and trying to kill everyone until we trick the ghost and beam him into space. If you were to tell me that Robert Block wrote the first 2/3 of the script and then threw his hands up and walked out, then they just chopped the ending off some other script and Frankensteined it onto this one, I wouldn’t find that much of a stretch at all.