This is week two of our look back at season 2 of Star Trek, the original series.
These posts are not meant to be objective or comprehensive.
The criteria are as follows:
- I watched it
- I remember I watched it
- I enjoyed it when I watched it
For this week's post let's start with "The Doomsday Machine".
The Enterprise Is running down mystery: a trail of destroyed planets, entire Star systems, reduced to rubble.
What destroyed them and why?
And where did it get to?
While on the prowl for this unknown "planet killer", the Enterprise detects a distress signal from the USS Constitution*, adrift in space, severely damaged.
*The Constitution is a sister ship to the Enterprise so the special effects crew can save some money on designing a new ship and just bust out a spare Enterprise kit, relabel it and mess it up a bit.
Kirk, Scotty, McCoy and a salvage crew beam over to find the ship occupied by one person, the ship's commander Commodore** Matt Decker.
**Why is this dude a "commodore" and not a "captain"? I have no idea but it will allow Decker to pull rank later and I'm getting ahead of myself.
Decker is distraught and traumatized as he tearfully relates his encounter with the large space faring engine of destruction.
DECKER: We tried to contact Starfleet. No one heard. No one! We couldn't run.
KIRK: What happened to your crew?
DECKER: Oh, I had to beam them down. We were dead. No power, our phasers useless. I stayed behind, the last man. The Captain, the last man aboard the ship. That's what you're supposed to do, isn't it? And then it hit again and the transporter went out. They were down there, and I'm up here.
KIRK: What hit? What attacked you?
DECKER: They say there's no devil, Jim, but there is. Right out of hell, I saw it.
KIRK: Matt, where's your crew?
DECKER: On the third planet.
KIRK: There is no third planet.
DECKER: Don't you think I know that? There was, but not anymore. They called me. They begged me for help, four hundred of them. I couldn't. I couldn't.
Leave it to Spock to suss out some deets on what Decker and his ship encountered.
SPOCK: She was attacked by what appears to be essentially a robot, an automated weapon of immense size and power. Its apparent function is to smash planets to rubble and then digest the debris for fuel. It is, therefore, self-sustaining as long as there are planetary bodies for it to feed on.
DECKER: That thing is on the way to the heart of our galaxy. What are you going to do about it?
MCCOY: We're going to do is get you back to the Enterprise.
DECKER: Oh, no, I stay here. I'm not leaving my ship!
KIRK: There's no ship to leave. It's a dead hulk! We'll take her in tow. I'll stay onboard and get her ready. You go back to the Enterprise with the doctor and let him help you.
DECKER: It's just that I, I, I never lost a command before.
Is it too much of a spoiler to say that Decker will soon aim to get a command back.
The planet killer is located and the Enterprise moves towards it. Refusing to sit this out quietly, Decker rushes to the bridge and assume command with a new plan.
Instead of shooting the planet killer with phasers from the Constitution, he will now shoot it with phasers from the Enterprise.
Yeah, it's not much of a plan, I know.
By the way, Kirk's still stuck on the Constitution. Transporter problems, wouldn't you know.
All Decker accomplishes is get the planet killer's attention and just a glancing power blast from the machine is enough to incapacitate the Enterprise.
Good job breaking it, Decker!
That's enough koo-koo for Cocoa Puffs to convince Spock to relieve Decker of command.
Leaving the bridge, Decker steals a shuttle (seriously, no one ever thinks to lock these things) and flies it down into the great machine, intent to blow it up from the inside.
It doesn't work.
But it's not a bad idea. It just needs a bigger bang.
Kirk decides to ram the Constitution down this planet killer's throat. If Scotty can get those damn transporters back on line.
But he better hurry. The planet killer is swinging around for another go and this time, the Enterprise will not survive.
Long story made short: the Constitution goes boom inside the planet killer and it goes dead.
And Scotty beams Kirk out of there with a split second to spare.
A lot of classic Trek Tropes at work here:
- the transporter doesn't bloody work when you want it to but it will work when you need it to if you're in the opening credits. KIRK: Gentlemen, I suggest you beam me aboard...
- Scotty wrench wrangling in a Jeffries tube banging out a last minute miracle.
- The "bad admiral" (in this case "commodore") who is bat shit crazy but usurps power to make everyone's life hell.
FUN FACT: the producers had hoped to get film noir legend Robert Ryan to play Decker but he was "unavailable" (or IMHO, "too big a name to do your little science fiction make believe show").
ANOTHER FUN FACT: the character of Will Decker in Star Trek: The Motion Picture was the son of Matt Decker.
AND THIS FUN FACT: Dave-El does not know what the word "FUN" means.
"The Doomsday Machine" did not receive an onscreen follow up in any incarnation of a Star Trek TV show or film. But the Star Trek: TNG novel "Vendetta" depicts the original Planet Killer as a prototype for a weapon designed to combat the Borg.
Several media outlets rank "The Doomsday Machine" among the top all time episodes of Star Trek.
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After last week's post led us to explore Vulcan sex habits with "Amok Time", this week we get another peek into Vulcan culture as Spock is reunited with his parents in "Journey to Babel"
Enterprise is transporting Federation ambassadors to a conference on the planet Babel to discuss the admission of the Coridan system into the Federation.
Among the ambassadors include Andorians and Tellarites and representing the planet Vulcan is Sarek. Joining Sarek is Amanda, "she who is my wife."
Sarek and Amanda are Spock's parents.
There's a lot going on:
- Spock teaches McCoy the Vulcan salute.
- Things are frosty between Spock and Sarek. Seems the father did not approve of his son's Starfleet career aspirations.
- There are efforts by Kirk and McCoy to get Amanda to cough of some goss on Spock's childhood to embarrass Spock. Spock refuses to be taken down by any awkward tales of his childhood.
- Relationships within the ship are super tense and culminates in an ambassador being murdered.
- Things are tense outside in space where a mysterious space craft is following the Enterprise.
- Sarek has a medical condition that is threatening his life. McCoy can fix it but needs a blood transfusion from Spock.
BUT...
- Kirk is attacked by an Andorian who brutally stabs him, leaving him out of commission and Spock in command.
Spock will not relent his command responsibilities to participate in the medical procedure that will save his father.
His very human mother Amanda is kind of pissy about this.
- She married a Vulcan.
- She lives on Vulcan.
- She's been impregnated by a Vulcan.
Does she not understand how Vulcans work?
Kirk convinces Spock he's OK enough to resume command so Spock will do McCoy's medical thing to save Sarek.
Kirk is NOT that OK and promised McCoy he would step aside once Spock was in sickbay to help his dad.
BUT....
This is when the mysterious ship that's been shadowing the Enterprise opts to attack.
Long story made short: the attacking ship is destroyed, the conspiracy against the Federation is exposed (the "Andorian" who attacked Kirk was not an Andorian) and Sarek survives his operation.
Which leads to a very amusing exchange.
AMANDA: And you, Sarek. Would you also say thank you to your son?
SAREK: I don't understand.
AMANDA: For saving your life.
SAREK: Spock acted in the only logical manner open to him. One does not thank logic, Amanda.
AMANDA: Logic, logic! I'm sick to death of logic. Do you want to know how I feel about your logic?
SPOCK: Emotional, isn't she?
SAREK: She has always been that way.
SPOCK: Indeed? Why did you marry her?
SAREK: At the time, it seemed the logical thing to do.
I've always loved that last line from Sarek.
Not to be outdone, McCoy gets to take charge over Kirk and Spock. Past being able to fake being well, Kirk is getting wobbly.
KIRK: Bones. (starts to collapse.) No, no, I'm all right
(McCoy helps him onto a bed.)
MCCOY: If you keep arguing with your kindly family doctor, you're going to spend your next ten days right here. If you co-operate, you'll be out in two.
SPOCK: Doctor, I'll return to my station now.
MCCOY: You are at your station, Mister Spock.
KIRK: Doctor McCoy, I believe you're enjoying all this.
SPOCK: Indeed, Captain. I've never seen him look so happy.
MCCOY: Shut up. (to Kirk) Shh. Shh! (to camera) Well, what do you know? I finally got the last word.
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I actually came late to this next particular episode, having missed it in the perpetual reruns of my youth: "Obsession"
Captain Kirk's current crisis is informed by his past.
Eleven years prior while serving on the USS Farragut, Kirk had an encounter with an alien entity, a cloud like being capable of inflicting painful death.
The entity killed the ship's captain and most of the crew. Over the intervening years, Kirk has been weighed down by guilt. Not just guilt over having survived but also guilt about his hesitation before firing on the creature.
Guilt feeds into anger and obsession. When the creature returns and begins killing again, Kirk is determined to track down the creature and kill it once and for all.
Kirk is a ball of tension and frayed nerves, losing his temper and lashing out at the crew. He keeps pushing the ship and the crew past their limits to track the creature and ultimately destroy it. This is Kirk's driving purpose and nothing else matters.
Encounters with the entity have not gone well with members of the Enterprise crew winding up injured or dead.
Spock and McCoy are both very concerned about the captain's extreme behavior, the consequences to the ship and to the crew and begin to speculate on his fitness for command.
Mind you, Kirk is not under an enemy's mental control or replaced by a shapeshifter or a multiversal doppelganger.
Captain James T. Kirk is in fact Captain James T. Kirk and he's dealing with some shit. And admittedly not dealing with it very well.
It seems Spock and McCoy are not the only ones wondering what's going on with Kirk,
Captain's log, stardate 3619.6. One of the men in critical condition, the other is dead. And I, I am now even more convinced that this is not only an intelligent creature, but the same which decimated the crew of the USS Farragut eleven years ago in another part of the galaxy.
Both Spock and McCoy are doubtful of this, and I sense they also doubt my decision to stay and fight the thing. Why am I keeping the ship here?
Long story made short: Kirk is able to corner the creature into a trap and set off a bomb to finally destroy it.
But the real battle all along was with himself and his decade plus guilt over what happened with the Farragut and it's crew.
What makes "Obsession" work is less the conundrum of how to find and stop the cloud entity and more about Kirk's very human need for redemption and retribution balanced against his responsibilities as captain to protect his ship and his crew.
This episode poses an interesting challenge for the erstwhile infallible Capt. Kirk, a threat not from out there but from within.
Next up is the pièce de résistance of vintage Star Trek, "The Trouble With Tribbles" but you know what, this post has gone on long enough.
We will pick up with the Tribbles on next week's Star Trekking.
Until then, remember to be good to one another and to live long and prosper.
Thanks again to Chrissie's Transcripts Site for the script excerpts.
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