Star Trek 3x17 "That Which Survives"

rating: **

Memory Alpha summary

So, "That Which Survives" is later echoed in "Arsenal of Freedom" (Next Generation), "Civil Defense" (Deep Space Nine), "Prototype" (Voyager).  It's basically an episode about a defense mechanism that outlasts both its civilization and its need.

Because it's this series, it takes the form of a hot chick, naturally.

via Let's Watch Star Trek.  Many redshirts were killed to bring us this information.

But perhaps more interestingly, a lot of other standard elements take different shape in the episode.  For a change, when characters and/or ships go missing, that's not even the end of the crisis.  Which leads to this being a kind of Scotty episode, as he works feverishly to get the Enterprise back under control.  If all you care about Scotty is how awesome an engineer he is (and let's face it, in the series itself, what else is there?), this may be the ultimate episode for you.

And to a certain point, it even seems as if it's a Sulu episode, too.  (How often does that happen?  How about...never?)  He's part of the landing party, and when it seems the Enterprise has been lost he begins offering suggestions.  Sure, Kirk dismisses them.  But Sulu's making them.  It's another small step toward that captaincy waiting in his distant future.  It's him being almost taken seriously!  And then later, the hot chick seems like she's choosing him rather than Kirk!  That definitely never happens!  Weird circumstances, sure, but that's one of the story beats.  So if you're a fan of Sulu, this an episode to catch in that regard as well.  

Wonders never cease, right?  And, and that title?  It's Kirk's summation of the whole experience.  Naturally.  Beauty survives.  All he'll remember is the hot chick.

four quarter analysis

franchise * series * essential * character

notable guest-stars:

Lee Merriwether

 

Star Trek 3x16 "The Mark of Gideon"

rating: *

Memory Alpha summary

"Mark of Gideon" is a Federation episode, explaining what goes wrong horribly after a planet petitions for membership and Kirk visits to check out what it's like.  That's all well and good.  In some ways, that's all you need to know about Deep Space Nine as a series (the Bajor problem is easy to forget after the long Dominion War years).

Aside from that relevance, "Gideon" is also a lot like a lot of other episodes, in that it's basically Kirk running up against a planet with a particular problem, this one being overpopulation.  As usually happens in these cases, the planet has elected for an extreme solution.  Happened before, would happen again, across multiple series, usually in one-off episodes.

via Star Trek

When you're a Simpsons episode you can change the story you're telling whenever you want.  When you're not, vacillating isn't always such a good thing.  The idea of overpopulation is introduced but isn't really important until the end of the episode, when an explanation for why Kirk goes missing and the planet proves so uncooperative must be made.  But by that point it could have been anything.  It's arbitrary, and is a clear example of the limits of the kind of storytelling the series favored.  

Better to remember that it was an effort at exploring not just strange new worlds but those who attempting to join the existing framework.  The fact that it's a story template later revisited, and with equally spotty results, is an indication that it's a tough idea that was never truly solved.  Even DS9 walked away from it.  A challenge to be tackled more directly next time?  Although it might be argued that Enterprise did exactly that, as it explored the founding of the Federation.  And so perhaps another reason to reconsider that series...

four quarter analysis

franchise * series * essential * character

Star Trek 3x15 "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield"

rating: **

Memory Alpha summary

Okay, let me rephrase the third season again.  I think I'll get it right this time.  I think it was a last ditch effort to make the series iconic in the minds of viewers.  Not just good or challenging or memorable, but so they couldn't ignore what it tried to do during its run.  And that's what "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield" is all about.  This is the episode that has these guys:

via WC Tech.  E-e-ebony and i-i-ivory!

It's that moment where subtlety goes out the window.  "Hey!  We're all human!  To quote Michael Jackson, 'It doesn't matter if you're black or white!'  Because we happen to be BOTH!" But of course these two knuckleheads don't get that.  An Enterprise episode, "Chosen Realm," borrowed the whole concept of its ending: if you don't learn to get along with each other, you wipe each other out.  

It's probably the most famous episode of the third season, the epitome of the go-for-broke attitude that happened to also add important bits of material to the canon, like Tholians, Surak, Kahless the Unforgettable, Memory Alpha.  And aliens whose skin pigmentation has this slight variation outsiders would never even notice, but to them is of vital, deadly importance.  Sound like any struggles you might have heard about in our own times?

Take it for what you will.  Commendable, courageous, but...Great historic significance, maybe not the greatest of episodes.

four quarter analysis

franchise * series * essential * character

notable guest-stars:

Frank Gorshin

Majel Roddenberry

Star Trek 3x14 "Whom Gods Destroy"

rating: **

Memory Alpha summary

This is the cautionary tale for Starfleet captains.  Garth was a legend who went mad, and subsequently becomes a problem for Kirk to handle.  That's the gist of "Whom Gods Destroy."

via Dude Rocket. On the plus side, Green Yvonne Craig!

Or, to put it another way, this is how Kirk could have ended up after any number of his own crazy adventures.  It's also an episode that helps foster the idea that, much as how a lot of his costars came to consider William Shatner, Kirk was basically the only game in town.  I get that the star of a show is prone to having a lot of Big Dramatic Things fall in his lap, and saving the galaxy becomes the prerequisite for a sci-fi hero, but it's easy to assume that Kirk's era is somehow completely dominated by him.  He's the only competent captain, the only hero...you get the picture.  When some other Starfleet or Federation figure comes along, it's Kirk who's got to rescue them from their foibles.

"Gods Destroy" is a quintessential third season episode.  Unlike the relative world-building of the second season or the iconic development of the first, it's a season replete with ideas that leave a considerable impression on the franchise without seeming to.  That's Garth in a nutshell.  It's not that, like Commodore Decker in "The Doomsday Machine" where he's faced with a threat that's arguably more significant than he is.  Leonard Nimoy apparently had a ton of problems with the episode, and there are endless parallels to be made with "Dagger of the Mind."  Yet "Gods Destroy" is distinctive from "Dagger" thanks to Garth.  "Dagger" has no Garth.  His presence alone makes this an episode that could have been Kirk's, or directly significant to Kirk himself, but in the end is, as I said, a story of what could have been, a worst case scenario.  

There are Andorians, Tellarites, and Orions running around.  This whole season was a last-ditch effort to remind viewers what made the series memorable in the first place.  If few people argue that it was the best season or had the best episodes, then at least it can be said that it was an effort to blend the instincts of the two preceding seasons.

The episode also features the familiar trope of someone impersonating a main character.  As usual, it's Kirk.  (It's more memorable in The Undiscovered Country.)

four quarter analysis

series * franchise * essential * character

notable guest-stars:

Yvonne Craig

Star Trek 3x13 "Elaan of Troyius"

rating: **

Memory Alpha summary

Like the later Next Generation ("The Perfect Mate") and Enterprise ("Precious Cargo") episodes, "Elaan of Troyius" is about a bride on the way to a politically-motivated wedding whose journey is complicated by her encounter with a formidable Starfleet officer.

via Trek Core. Looks Egyptian but she's Greek to Kirk!

As the title certainly evokes for me, this is another of the many episodes drawing from classical history, specifically Greek or Roman figures.  "Troyius" owes its origins to The Iliad, the story of the Trojan War, and Elaan is a kind of Helen of Troy figure, a problematic bride if there ever was one.

via Trek Core.  From the little-known Greek Green Goblin myth.

The most intriguing element element of the episode is that it seems to be the quintessential setup for Kirk Is A Cad storytelling, but he in fact resists the easy romance the whole time.  Elaan is kind of like an Orion Slave Girl (less dancing, more like how they were explained in Enterprise), irresistible.  Yet Kirk does resist her.  Picard had a far less easy time of it (though, in fairness, he was matched up against Famke Janssen, while Trip's impossible scenario pitted him against the equally alluring Padma Lakshmi).

Interestingly, this is also a Klingon episode, certainly not famously so, but it does present, if not in broadcast than at least production order (meaning it was created for "Elaan"), the iconic first Klingon starship of the franchise:

via RPF.  I had a model of it.  Glued it badly together myself!

I won't overstate how much you need to see "Elaan of Troyius," but there are reasons to consider it fairly significant in a minor kind of way.  (Such glowing praise!)  And if you're looking for near-Uhura episodes, this is another one to catch in that regard.  We see her quarters.  That sort of thing.

four quarter analysis

franchise * series * essential * character

notable guest-stars:

Majel Roddenberry

Star Trek 3x12 "The Empath"

rating *

Memory Alpha summary

Like Q in The Next Generation, an entire aliens species is tested, although in "The Empath" it's with a single individual.  The results probably would have been better with a better choice as to how to represent that individual.

As the title suggests, the individual is an empath, like Troi in Next Generation (it's easy to assume the episode was considered somewhat heavily in the formative development of the second series, kind of merged with The Motion Picture and Gene Roddenberry's attempts at launching a TV show with a robotic lead character).  But she's also a mute, and therein lies the rub.  The performance falls flat for anyone who doesn't particularly want melodrama inserted into the mix, but there it is and there's very little else to be said about it.

via Tom Taylorville

It's the kind of episode that's just kind of there, reminiscent of "The Cage," the original pilot in concept and execution.  If so much of it hadn't apparently been duplicated to much greater effect, I'd say it should otherwise very easily be stricken from the record, a contender for the distinction of worst episodes in the way "Spock's Brain" is usually much more easily considered.

four quarter analysis

franchise * series * essential * character

Star Trek 3x11 "Wink of an Eye"

rating: *

Memory Alpha summary

There are some episodes that are neither good nor bad, are just adventures you take in if you generally like what you've been watching.  I have four distinctions every episode is measured by.  I begin with the premise if it's worth watching at all, it gets at least one of them, whether for a viewer who happens to be a fan of the series, the franchise in general, or if there's a reason to watch for a specific character, and the fourth one as to whether it's essential for any one of the three.  (I always rank character last because for me it's the mark of the best stories regardless of any other factor.)

I begin with all that because there's...really nothing else worth talking about with "Wink of an Eye."  There are countless examples of other episodes throughout the franchise where the ship is hijacked by aliens.  This one happens to feature a particular gimmick in order to achieve it (as in fact they all do), which is that the aliens move faster than our crew (hence the title).

It's the kind of episode that's a reminder that Star Trek at its heart is a science fiction vehicle.  So often the gimmick isn't necessarily geared toward the genre so much as traditional elements either from it or the Star Trek template as it slowly emerged.  So that's all you really need to know.

via Trek Core.  Well, that and a skimpy outfit!

four quarter analysis

franchise * series * essential * character

notable guest-stars:

Majel Roddenberry

Star Trek 3x10 "Plato's Stepchildren"

rating: ****

Memory Alpha summary

There are perhaps as many reasons to loathe this episode as like it.  Reasons to loathe first:

• Guest aliens forcing our characters to do silly things.
• The overly-familiar template of guest aliens having a society our characters need to set straight.
• The overly-familiar template of guest aliens just happening to have patterned their society after something in Earth's past.
• Plato not even particularly being well-represented, so really, what was the point of using him at all?

All that being said, there's at least one great reason to watch "Plato's Stepchildren," and it looks like this:

via CNN

That would be Uhura kissing Kirk, the first interracial kiss seen on television (the Memory Alpha link provides some clarification, but the point stands), an historic event for which this episode, and indeed the whole series, will forever be known.  Sucks that it has to be under the auspices of alien control and all that, but there it is.  It happened.  Glad Star Trek made history like that.

That alone makes the episode must-see for its cultural significance, but there are other reasons, too.  There are franchise-specific reasons, parallels to be accounted for, trends to follow (eugenics, as in Khan; emotional transference, as in Lwaxana Troi in Deep Space Nine's "Fascination").

There's also the plight of Alexander, which becomes the crux of the story.  Alexander is one of the guest aliens, only he's considered inferior to the others.  Our characters end up spending their time not so much fixing the society as fighting for Alexander's rights.  If you like, this might be considered another level of the general Civil Rights push of the episode along with the kiss.

The good, in the case of this episode, easily outweighs the bad.  A real argument could be made for "Plato's Stepchildren" representing not only the third season but the series as a whole, the reason why something that seemed doomed to be lost and forgotten instead became a global phenomenon.  

That's easy to call a classic in my estimation.

four quarter analysis

franchise * series * essential * character

notable guest-stars:

Babara Babcock

Majel Roddenberry