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Tuesday, August 12, 2025
Wednesday, July 23, 2025
Balance of Terror (Episode 09)
The complete 1957 submarine warfare film “The Enemy Below.” Video source: DK Classics YouTube channel.
It's not plagiarism. It's an homage.
— Ancient writer's excuse
In 2004, Christopher Booker published The Seven Basic Plots, in which he argued that all stories can be boiled down to only seven types of plots that have been used to tell a story. (The book, in actuality, listed nine, but the last two were considered rare by him.)
If all stories are just variations on seven themes, then it's no surprise that writers will find themselves copying, borrowing, or otherwise in parallel with stories told before by other writers.
“Balance of Terror” was based on The Enemy Below, a World War II submarine warfare film released in December 1957 by 20th Century Fox for the Christmas holidays. The film was based on a 1956 novel by the same name, authored by Denys Rayner, a Royal Navy officer who commanded anti-submarine convoy escort groups in the Atlantic during World War II. The novel was about a duel between a British destroyer and a U-boat; the 20th Century Fox film changed the protagonist to a US warship, and changed certain key plot elements.
At some point, screenwriter Paul Schneider saw the film. I could locate no biography of Schneider to determine if he might have served in World War II but, having been born in 1923, it's certainly possible. After the war, it was very common for veterans to write scripts based on their wartime experiences.
Schneider wrote an episode of The Lieutenant, Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek predecessor series about an officer in the US Marine Corps. For many who worked on Star Trek, The Lieutenant was their first encounter with Roddenberry — from the production office to directors, actors, and writers. Schneider wrote the teleplay for “Interlude,” in which Lt. William Tiberius Rice is paralyzed after a traffic accident. The episode was directed by Richard Donner, who went on to direct the 1978 Superman movie.
In researching These are the Voyages, Marc Cushman came across memos between Schneider, Roddenberry, and associate producer Robert Justman discussing the early drafts. Although he had written for television before, Schneider had never written a science fiction script. His first outline was far too long, although it contained many of the elements that would later appear in the shooting script. Roddenberry told Schneider to simplify the outline. It contained a lot of technical jargon, as had The Enemy Below, but that was too much for a passive audience watching a one-hour TV drama (50 minutes excluding commercials).
Decades later, the sequel series Star Trek: The Next Generation became infamous for its “technobabble,” mumbo-jumbo jargon so convoluted that entire volumes have been written to give some consistency to it all. The Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual was published in 1991 by Mike Okuda and Rick Sternbach, visual artists and technical advisers on the show, to help viewers play along.
But in these early days, Roddenberry wanted to keep it simple. Show, don't tell. This would lead to one glaring effects gaffe. In the episodes produced before “Balance of Terror,” we've only seen the starship fire phasers once — to destroy the buoy in “The Corbomite Maneuver.” We've yet to see photon torpedoes. In this episode, to heighten the submarine warfare analogy, when phasers are fired energy balls are unleashed, not beams of phased light. These energy balls eventually will become photon torpedoes.
Bob Justman fretted that the script could bankrupt the show. To this point, the produced episodes had minimal effects and few new sets. This script called for space battles emulating submarine warfare, as well as new sets for a space station office and the bridge of the enemy ship. A new starship model had to be built, the Romulan Warbird. Scenes would have to be filmed in post-production showing the Warbird flying through space firing its plasma torpedoes. To minimize costs, the team came up with the idea of the Romulan cloaking device — the ship is there but it can't be seen.
The Romulan Warbird fires its plasma torpedo at Outpost Four.
Another problem was how to depict the Romulans, the first rival power for our starship to encounter. The script described the Romulans as an offshoot of the Vulcans, which meant all Romulan crew members would have to look like Spock. Leonard Nimoy's ears and yellow-greenish makeup took long enough, but for a number of extras the production didn't have the time or the money. The solution was to have most crew members wear helmets, hiding their ears and hair.
Despite its broad canvas everyone, including NBC executives, was excited about the story and the rich character portrayals. Memos and drafts circulated to simplify the script and bring down the cost. As he had with other scripts, Roddenberry did the final draft edit himself.
The title “Balance of Terror” referred to a military philosophy popular at this time, which was that the US and the Soviet Union should each possess so many horrific nuclear weapons that it would be insane to fire on each other for fear of triggering Armageddon. Albert Wohlstetter of the Rand Corporation in 1958 published an article titled, “The Delicate Balance of Terror,” in which he wrote:
If peace were founded firmly on mutual terror and mutual terror on symmetrical nuclear powers, this would be, as Churchill has said, “a melancholy paradox;” nonetheless a most comforting one.
The problem was that deterrence could not be maintained because one side or the other would strive to develop a new weapon which would give it the advantage.
This is where “Balance of Terror” diverges from The Enemy Below. In the World War II film, both the US naval captain and the German submarine commander are well aware of the other's technological capabilities. In the Star Trek episode, no one has seen a Romulan warship in a hundred years. No one knows what a Romulan looks like. When we do encounter the Romulans, the technological balance is asymmetrical — the Enterprise has warp drive, but the Warbird has a cloaking device and a new wonder weapon, the plasma torpedo. In Season Three, “The Enterprise Incident” will be about a Starfleet scheme to steal the cloaking device technology, to restore the balance of terror. But in this episode, the plasma torpedo has upset the balance of terror. The presumed deterrence no longer works because the Romulans have the 23rd Century equivalent of the hydrogen bomb, while the Earth alliance does not.
The other problem with the balance-of-terror theory is that it assumes all players are rational actors. The Romulan praetor has ordered the Warbird to probe and cross the neutral zone to test Earth strength and resolve. We haven't seen them in a hundred years. They haven't seen us either. Romulan spies could be in our midst, but do we really know for sure? The praetor is a rational actor, not a 1945 Hitler bent on immolation of a Germany he believes has betrayed him. That's a story idea Star Trek has yet to tell.
Let's revisit the episode now and tell its story.
Phaser specialist Lt. Robert Tomlinson is about to marry phaser gunner Lt. Angela Martine. (Tomlinson is her superior officer …) Presiding over the ceremony is Captain Kirk. The wedding chapel, according to Marc Cushman, is a redress of the briefing room. The ceremony is non-denominational and secular; Kirk says that the ceremony is “in accordance with our laws and our many beliefs.”
From the bridge, Spock informs Kirk that two “Earth outposts” (the term “Federation” has not yet been introduced) have gone silent. The Enterprise is headed towards Outpost Four, hopefully ahead of whatever is wrong. The ceremony is interrupted by a red alert; Outpost Four is under attack by an unknown vessel.
Under the terms of the peace treaty negotiated via subspace a hundred years ago, crossing the neutral zone would be considered an act of war. Kirk informs the crew that, to prevent war, the outposts and the Enterprise are expendable.
The navigator, Lt. Stiles, tells Kirk that his ancestors were in the first war with the Romulans. “There was a Captain Stiles in the Space Service then.” The term “Starfleet” has not yet been introduced either.
To underscore the submarine warfare analogy, we're shown the phaser control room, which is a redress of Engineering. Phasers in this episode are fired manually from this room after an order from the bridge, which seems unnecessarily complicated, but that's how it was written to emulate The Enemy Below. In the film, both captains give orders via intercom to their torpedo rooms.
The Outpost Four commander advises that Outposts Two, Three, and Eight have been destroyed. He transmits an image of the attacking ship as it decloaks. Outpost Four joins the casualty list, then the attacker disappears.
Spock picks up a blip on the space radar. The enemy is on a direct course for the neutral zone.
Kirk orders a strategy used by US Navy Captain Murrell in The Enemy Below — match the moves of the enemy vessel to appear as a sensor echo.
Stiles mouths off at Kirk, warning that Romulan spies could be aboard the Enterprise. Sulu agrees. Uhura intercepts a Romulan transmission; Spock taps in to pick up visual images from their bridge. For the first time, we see Romulans. The commander looks just like … Spock's dad. Well, not yet, anyway, but he's the same actor, Mark Lenard. Having just suggested that Romulans spies could be aboard, Stiles stares down Spock.
Mark Lenard in his first Star Trek role, as a Romulan commander.
Although Sulu doesn't comment, for George Takei this must have echoed his childhood. He and his family were interned during World War II for being Japanese-Americans. They too looked like the enemy. Kirk warns Stiles to leave his bigotry in his quarters.
On the Romulan bridge, the Romulan commander and his first officer discuss the consequences of their actions. Sarek, er, Commander refers to “Earth outpost,” “Earth men,” “Earth commander.” Again, no Federation, no Starfleet.
A personal aside … I've always found the notion of “space Romans” a bit hokey. The Romulans wear Roman-inspired tunics. The second-in-command is called “Centurion,” an officer rank in the Roman army. An ambitious junior officer is named “Decius.” The home worlds are Romulus and Remus, who in mythology were the twin brothers who founded Rome. (A star chart shows Romulus and Romii, a continuity error.) Why would a Vulcan diaspora model itself after an ancient Earth Mediterranean culture?! But if Schneider's intention was to emulate Nazi Germany in The Enemy Below, then there's some sense to it in that Hitler admired ancient Rome so much that the Nazis emulated Roman symbols and architecture. If Nazi Germany was the Third Reich, the first was the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, which began circa 800 AD, more than three centuries after the fall of the Western Roman Empire.
What's in a name? Remus is called Romii on this neutral zone map.
Anyway … The Romulan commander is as disillusioned with his government's leadership as was the German submarine captain von Stolberg, who detests Hitler and the Nazi regime. Both serve out of a sense of duty to their country, not to its politics. We the viewer feel empathy for both, although we hope they lose.
As the Warbird approaches the neutral zone, Kirk sees an opportunity. The Warbird changes course to pass through a comet tail; although cloaked, the enemy vessel will leave a trail. But it's a trap; as in The Enemy Below, the enemy captain is far more experienced. The Romulan commander knows the tail will obscure the Enterprise sensors so the Warbird can change course and ambush the Earth ship. Having lost the quarry, Enterprise fires blind. (“Phasers” but they're what will eventually become photon torpedoes.) The battle begins.
Another aside … The Enterprise has warp drive (faster than light) while the Warbird has only impulse engines (not much different from Earth 21st Century rocket chemical propulsion). This should be no contest. But we're emulating a battle between a World War II US Navy destroyer and a German U-boat submarine, so it is what it is.
The Romulans don't have warp, but their plasma torpedo does. (How does that work?! Best not to ask. Show, don't tell.) As the torpedo is about to hit the Enterprise, Yeoman Rand and Captain Kirk embrace. I have to wonder if this scene was the inspiration behind a passage in the third revision of the Star Trek writers guide written after the first season by D.C. Fontana.
The test posed by the April 1967 edition of the Star Trek Writers Guide.
The above test is posed on the “Star Trek Format” page of the writers guide. It sounds a lot like the embrace between Kirk and Rand. Fontana wrote that the scene was “unbelievable.”
Why the correct answer? Simply because we've learned during a full season of making visual science fiction that believability of characters, their actions and reactions, is our greatest need and is the most important angle factor.
As an analogy, Fontana suggested a US Navy cruiser in waters off Vietnam. As a suicide attack approaches, the captain wouldn't hug a WAVE (the women's branch of the US Naval Reserve during World War II) if she happened to be aboard.
I'll point out a more practical reason — the Yeoman Rand character was eliminated halfway through the first season. But we're not there yet.
As the battle rages, the Romulan Centurion officer is fatally injured. The commander tends to him until he dies. This is another borrow from The Enemy Below. Von Stolberg's executive officer is also fatally injured; the captain refuses to abandon ship without him.
Kirk continues the chase into the neutral zone, assuming responsibility for the consequences. Both ships are badly damaged. Enterprise suffers twenty-two casualties, none of them fatal, but phaser control has only one crew member left — Tomlinson, the bridegroom. Stiles volunteers to help and leaves the bridge. Uhura replaces him at Navigation, not the first time we've seen her at this station; the camera lingers on the Asian and the African at the console. After Spock checks on the phaser room, a coolant leak begins. Spocks rescues Stiles, but Tomlinson dies, the lone casualty from the Romulan encounter.
Uhura at navigation, Sulu at the helm.
If you're keeping score … Tomlinson is the sixth crew member to die (not counting the two pilots). We've yet to lose a redshirt.
Kirk offers to take aboard the surviving Romulans, but their commander declines. In The Enemy Below, both ships were lost. The US destroyer had lifeboats but the U-boat did not. The Americans overloaded their lifeboats with the surviving Germans — the white and black pawns looked out for each other, control of the chess game way above their stature. The Romulan commander tells Kirk, “It is not our way.” Acknowledging they are also just pieces in the grand chess game, the commander adds, “In a different reality, I could have called you friend.” He then self-destructs the Warbird.
In real life, it seems that the Warbird model was destroyed as well. According to Memory Alpha, it's believed that the Warbird model maker destroyed it after a dispute with the propmakers union. That's why, in the third season episode “The Enterprise Incident,” the Romulans are now flying Klingon warships — the Warbird model no longer existed.
If anyone at 20th Century Fox took umbrage at this “homage” to The Enemy Below, there's no evidence of it. I could find no newspaper articles linking the two, although the 1957 film was playing on television around the same time as when this episode aired.
Star Trek borrowed from itself at least twice in future storytelling. Submarine warfare-style scenes occurred in two films, The Wrath of Khan and The Undiscovered Country. You can probably think of more examples, not just in the Star Trek universe but in other franchises.
Where does homage end and plagiarism begin?
If we return to Christopher Booker's seven basic plots, both the 1957 film and the 1966 episode fall into the category of “overcoming the monster.” To quote from Glen C. Strathy's article, overcoming the monster is “in which the hero must venture to the lair of a monster which is threatening the community, destroy it, and escape (often with a treasure).”
These are storytelling archetypes, but in this case we can find specific parallels. That said, Roddenberry and Schneider might argue that the beats in their episode are the logical progression of storytelling. Strathy wrote that Booker noted all seven basic plots follow a similar pattern:
- Anticipation
- Dream
- Frustration
- Nightmare
- Miraculous Escape/Redemption
If 20th Century Fox was at all concerned, most likely the studio executives shrugged and realized that, in the pressure of producing weekly TV shows, everyone borrows from everyone else. Maybe one day Fox will borrow from Star Trek …
A clip from the Fox TV series, “The Orville.” Video source: The Orville YouTube channel.
Sources:
Mark Cushman, These are the Voyages: TOS Season One (San Diego: Jacobs/Brown Press, 2013).
Thursday, June 19, 2025
Charlie X (Episode 08)
Dorothy Fontana. Image source: StarTrek.com.
Dorothy Catherine Fontana grew up in New Jersey listening to radio serials, and then watching TV shows as the medium became common in the 1950s. Dorothy was born in 1939; the shows that typically aired during her childhood on the few existing networks were Westerns and cop shows. Science fiction was all but non-existent, but that was okay, because science fiction didn't interest her. She did write horror stories involving her and her friends.
Preparing for an adult career, Dorothy learned clerical skills but also took business classes. After graduating from college with an executive secretarial degree, she found a job in New York City at the Screen Gems executive office. The clerical work would pay the bills while she pursued her writing career.
Fontana eventually moved to Los Angeles, where she found a job in the secretarial pool at Revue Studios, now part of Universal television. She was assigned to the office of San Peeples, a prolific television writer and producer whose career began with writing Western novels. Peeples gave her the opportunity to pitch and write for his Western TV shows; she earned her first TV credits for shows such as Shotgun Slade, The Tall Man, and Frontier Circus.
Dorothy Fontana's first screen credit with The Tall Man was an episode titled, “A Bounty for Billy.” She received story credit. Video source: My Drama YouTube channel.
Those credits were under the name “Dorothy C. Fontana,” but as an outsider she found it harder and harder to pitch scripts to TV show producers. Suspecting it had to do with her gender, Fontana changed her nom de plume to “D.C. Fontana.” That helped her sell a script to Ben Casey.
It was around this time that Peeples moved over to MGM to work on a film, and asked Dorothy to be his secretary. Gene Roddenberry was also at MGM producing The Lieutenant. When Peeples left MGM, Fontana returned to its clerical pool until Peeples recommended Fontana to his friend Roddenberry. Although her role was clerical, Dorothy made it known to Gene and other producers that her true interest was writing. By the time she encountered Gene, Dorothy already had several TV credits and was a member of the Writers Guild of America.
The Lieutenant was cancelled after one season. Gene shared with Dorothy his March 11, 1964 sixteen-page concept outline for Star Trek. Her favorite character in the outline was a first lieutenant named Mister Spock, described as a satanic-looking “half Martian.” Dorothy had no interest in science fiction, but Sam Peeples did, and helped Roddenberry with Star Trek's early development. Peeples wrote the script for the second pilot, “Where No Man Has Gone Before.”
Fontana followed Roddenberry to Desilu and Star Trek, as a producer's secretary. She was part of the show's original core — Roddenberry, associate producer Bob Justman, story editor John D.F. Black, and Dorothy Fontana. She was there for the two pilots, technically in a clerical role as production secretary but she became increasingly reponsible for the show's daily production, as well as script revisions and polishing.
Roddenberry's 1964 outline included a pitch idea for an episode called, “The Day Charlie Became God.” Although this was the sixth episode written for the first season, NBC selected it as the second episode to air, after “The Corbomite Maneuver.” That meant the script had to be quickly produced, with minimal effects or new sets. Because Dorothy was a credited script writer, and knew the show, Roddenberry let her pick a story idea from the outline. She picked “Charlie.”
The premise as described in the outline was:
The accidental occurrence of infinite power to do all things, in the hands of a very finite man.
Dorothy changed the “finite man” to a male 17-year old experiencing teen angst. He'd never seen a woman before. He was a child expected to act as an adult; having near-infinite power, using that power was his defense mechanism. That included his first interaction with a female.
This was at a time that Grace Lee Whitney's Janice Rand was considered a significant character. The script had Charlie stalking Rand; she and Captain Kirk had a forbidden mutual attraction. That set up a natural conflict between Kirk, Rand, and Charlie.
The change in title to “Charlie X” came from Fontana recalling that illiterate people once scrawled an X to sign their names. Her thinking was that Charlie had been raised by Thasians, who gave him his power but no education in how to be a human. In that sense, he was illiterate, hence the X.
This was also at a time when Roddenberry was using free-lance writers to develop the show's first thirteen scripts. Some of them were science fiction writers with no experience in television, or veteran TV writers with little experience in science fiction. Most of them were struggling to deliver their assignments on time. Dorothy had already sold several TV scripts, and knew the show's format as well as Gene. Since NBC wanted this script as the second episode to air, Dorothy delivered when the others could not.
The script was what came to be known as a “bottle” episode, meaning it takes place largely on standing sets with already contracted actors, reducing the cost. NBC and Desilu, in approving the series, had worried it might cost too much to make it profitable. The irony is that this episode led NBC to request a larger scope for future episodes. NBC program executive Stan Robertson, after reviewing a first draft script of “Charlie X,” sent this memo on July 6, 1966 to Roddenberry:
Without becoming involved in a rehash of all of the dialogue which has passed between us on this point, we are very aware, as you are, that the Enterprise, with all its lavishness, depth and grandeur, plus the imagination it took to construct it, is a definite plus as far as Star Trek is concerned. However, we, like you, are very aware of the dangers inherent in restricting any series of plots to the confines of only “four walls”, regardless of how magnificent they are …
A recommendation would be that in the case of “Charlie X” and other stories not yet in production, you give some thought to measures by which parts or all of our dramas might be told by action away from the Enterprise, possibly on planets or scientific stations, etc.
Bob Justman wrote this reply to Roddenberry:
We could do just what Stan wants. But I don't want to be around when Herb Solow tells us that Desilu has gone bankrupt.
Other than Roddenberry's minor revisions, the script proceeded into production as Fontana wrote it.
The teaser (the scene before the opening credits) opens with a captain's log. We've discussed in earlier columns the evolution of the captain's log as a tool to clue the audience what the episode is about. In a May 2 memo, Roddenberry wrote that the teaser should open with the captain's log. “Not only does it give Star Trek a 'trade mark,' but also helps us get past exposition fast and into dramatic action.” According to Marc Cushman in These Are the Voyages, Fontana submitted her initial story outline to Roddenberry on April 27, about a week before the May 2 memo requesting a captain's log as a Star Trek staple.
Fontana's first draft script was submitted on June 6, and the second draft on June 27. Along with input from Bob Justman, Roddenberry and Fontana developed an informal working relationship for evolving scripts. She was in the office. The free-lance writers were not. It was a pattern that would continue into The Next Generation. His final draft was dated July 5. Gene introduced Charlie's “raging hormones,” according to Cushman, who quoted story editor John D.F. Black as saying, “GR's habit was to put sex into everything. It drove Dorothy crazy because he did that to 'Charlie X.' He had to make it sexy.”
The captain's log informs us that the Enterprise has rendezvoused with the cargo vessel Antares. The ship's captain and first officer are beaming over with “an unusual passenger.” Quite nervous and agitated, they introduce Kirk to Charlie Evans, whom they praise — only after his eyes roll up into his head. They decline Kirk's offer of provisions and quickly leave.
A little bit about Star Trek lexicon — Kirk orders the transporter “chief” to “begin materialization.” It's a clunky word that eventually will be replaced by “beaming.” The Antares captain says that Charlie learned to speak by playing “microtapes.”
Kirk says that the Enterprise has a total of 428 crew members. As noted in our column about “The Naked Time,” four crewmembers died in “The Man Trap” (the first episode to air) and another in “The Naked Time,” which had yet to air, so depending on how you want to calculate the body count at this point it's either four or five. It will later be established that the Enterprise had a crew complement of about 430, so 428 may reflect some recent losses. (The crew complement during Captain Pike's time was about 200.)
“Is that a girl?” Charlie Evans' crush on Janice Rand drives the plot.
Yeoman Rand walks into the transporter room, with her transcription device at her side. An early concept was that the captain's yeoman was to record the captain's logs as a permanent record. That idea was eventually abandoned — one reason later used to justify Grace Lee Whitney's dismissal — but here she is showing up to tail the captain as a sort of executive secretary. (Perhaps an analogy to Fontana and Roddenberry?) Kirk assigns Rand to escort Charlie to his quarters. Charlie is quote flummoxed by Rand, having never seen a woman before.
During a physical exam, Charlie tells Dr. McCoy that he's “trying to make people like me.” That's our first hint something is wrong — trying to “make” someone like you is an adolescent attitude doomed to failure. As we all know. It's established that Charlie is 17 years old. (The actor, Robert Walker, Jr., was 26. Grace Lee Whitney was about ten years older.)
Charlie crawls out of a Jeffries Tube, followed by two crew members. The Jeffries Tube was first seen in the prior episode to be produced, “The Naked Time.” One tech slaps the other on the side of the butt. Seeing this, Charlie assumes this is normal behavior and, lacking context, slaps Janice on the derrière.
In the rec room, Spock plays the Vulcan lute. Uhura and Rand play cards. Spock smiles as Uhura hums along to his strumming. (Leonard Nimoy was still working out the nuances of his character.) Uhura improvises a ditty about Spock's devilish attraction, to which he plucks along. In her autobiography Beyond Uhura, Nichelle Nichols wrote that she and Roddenberry developed a back story for Uhura:
…she was a protégée of Mr. Spock, whom she admired for his daring, his intelligence, his stoicism, and especially for his logic.
The J.J. Abrams films took their relationship one step further, suggesting a romance.
As for the rec room scene, Nichols wrote:
The song I performed was a parody of an old English madrigal, and in singing it, I sort of tease Mr. Spock.
The madrigal included a line referring to woman crew members as a “female astronaut,” an anachronism of the mid-1960s (when no woman astronauts were in the US astronaut corps).
The intimacy between Spock and Uhura disappeared over time, as Uhura was reduced to opening hailing frequencies and playing a subordinate role to the three primary characters — Kirk, Spock, and McCoy.
When Uhura tries to sing about Charlie, he doesn't like it and makes her lose her voice.
Charlie then proceeds to impress Janice with card tricks, including cards with her face on it.
At extreme range, the Antares captain tries to warn Kirk about Charlie's true nature, but Charlie wills the cargo ship destroyed.
Charlie tells Janice of his attraction to her. She takes it to Kirk, who says he'll talk to the boy. As a parent … Kirk is a great starship captain.
Kirk takes Charlie to the gym. To quote from Galaxy Quest, Kirk manages to get his shirt off. A crew member named Sam laughs at Charlie and is vaporized for his trouble. Sam is #6 to die through the eight episodes written so far.
Charlie refuses Kirk's order to go to his quarters. Kirk says, “ Go to your quarters, or I'll pick you up and carry you there.” It would be super easy for Charlie to wish him away, but Charlie acquiesces and is escorted by two security officers, prime candidates for the first redshirts to die in the series.
Spock theorizes that Charlie somehow received his powers from the Thasians who once lived on the planet from where the Antares crew rescued Charlie. Spock and McCoy advise that Kirk continue to act as a parental figure for Charlie, since the boy seems to respect the captain. (It also means that Spock and McCoy are out of the direct line of fire.)
Charlie seizes control of the Enterprise. Encountering a female crew member, he turns her into an iguana, #7 on our casualty list.
After Janice rebuffs his advances, Charlie wishes her away too — but it's not time for Grace to leave the show just yet. Had this been a later episode, after it was decided to drop her character, it would have been a more definitive departure, just as Tasha Yar was dispatched after Denise Crosby decided to leave The Next Generation.
Charlie sadistically transmutes one crew member after one another. He breaks Spock's legs (although Kirk convinces him to reverse it). A female crew member is turned old. Another loses her face for laughing.
Despite having no mouth, she still makes moaning sounds. In just a few months, Harlan Ellison would publish a short story titled, “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream.” Considering Harlan was around the Star Trek production at this time, it's an interesting coincidence.
She has no mouth, and she must scream.
Having written herself into a corner, D.C. Fontana came up with an external rescue. The Thasians arrive. Janice materializes on the bridge. They say that, although they cannot restore the Antares, they have restored all the Enterprise crew, so our body count is back to five. The Thasians take Charlie with them.
“Charlie X” is remembered as Fontana's first Star Trek script, and one of the show's more memorable first season episodes, but from a writer's perspective it does have some weaknesses. As mentioned, a writer always wants to avoid writing oneself into a corner. Protagonists should solve the problem, not rely on an external miracle, which is what happened here. Choices should have consequences but, in the end, the Thasians restore the Enterprise to status quo. “Everything is as it was.”
If the lost crew members had not been restored, if Janice Rand were gone for good, the impact would have been much stronger on the viewer. But this was an era where shows were produced with the long-term objective of selling them in syndicated rerun. There was no guarantee that the show would air in its original intended order. Killing off Janice Rand or another established character would not have made sense if an independent station airs another episode with that character the next night.
Kirk thought he had a solution — taxing Charlie to the point that he couldn't control it all. It seemed to be working. Kirk was about to punch out Charlie, so McCoy could tranquilize him. But the Thasians intervened, so we'll never know for sure.
A writer might also consider wanting to explore how characters behave once defeated. In that scenario, it would be acceptable for the protagonist to lose. But this script opted for the deus ex machina, an ancient Latin term traced back to Aristotle to describe a device for resolving a plot.
John D.F. Black would leave the show by the middle of the first season. Steven Carabatsos succeeded him as story editor, but he left after the first season. By then, Dorothy had proven her writing skills, first by polishing the season's 24th episode “This Side of Paradise,” and then by writing the 19th episode, “Tomorrow is Yesterday.”
For the second season, Dorothy would become Star Trek's story editor.The best scripts written by D.C. Fontana were yet to come.
The original idea came from Gene Roddenberry, but D.C. Fontana wrote the teleplay.
Sources:
Television Academy Foundation with D.C. Fontana, December 29, 2003.
Writers Guild Foundation interview with D.C. Fontana, May 11, 2012.
Mark Cushman, These are the Voyages: TOS Season One (San Diego: Jacobs/Brown Press, 2013).
Nichelle Nichols, Beyond Uhura (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1994).
Herbert F. Solow and Robert H. Justman, Inside Star Trek: The Real Story (New York: Pocket Books, 1996).
Tuesday, May 6, 2025
The Naked Time (Episode 07)
Spock and Tormolen wear shower curtains while examining a department store mannequin. The episode gets better.
UPDATE May 8, 2025 — Christopher L. Bennett in this column's comments points us to an April 2023 FactTrek.com blog article exploring the writing history behind “The Naked Time.” Click here to read the excellent column by Michael Kmet and Maurice Molyneaux.
John D.F. Black was a 33-year old established television writer when he won an award in March 1966 from the Writers Guild of America (WGA) for his Mr. Novak episode, “With a Hammer in His Hand, Lord, Lord!” Mr. Novak was a series about an idealistic English teacher at a Los Angeles high school. The episode's plot was about Novak trying to learn the identity of three students who had roughed up another teacher.
Black's award was in the category of Dramatic-Episodic. That same night, speculative fiction writer Harlan Ellison won an award in the Anthology category for his Outer Limits episode, “Demon with a Glass Hand.”
Most Star Trek fans are well aware of Ellison's future connection to the original series, credited as the writer of “City on the Edge of Forever.” We'll revisit that controversial episode in a future column.
John D.F. Black, however, is known only to the most hardcore of Star Trek fans.
At the WGA award party, Gene Roddenberry approached Black about coming to work for him on Star Trek. Black was unfamiliar with science fiction, but became both an associate producer and story consultant, balancing those duties with Bob Justman. In his memoir Inside Star Trek: The Real Story, Justman wrote that Roddenberry decided Black needed to loosen up, so Gene played a practical joke on him. This was in late April 1966, when Star Trek was still in pre-production. Roddenberry recruited his paramour Majel Barrett to attempt seducing Black.
If you've read the earlier columns, you know that Barrett was dropped from the series after the first pilot, “The Cage.” Roddenberry schemed to hire her for the series anyway in a different role. Gene asked John to interview Barrett for possible employment. Roddenberry and other staff members burst in on them as Majel sat on John's lap and began to undo her blouse buttons.
Justman and his co-author Herb Solow wrote that Black struggled to write his first script, “The Naked Time,” while juggling that with his story consultant responsibilities reviewing other submitted scripts.
In These are the Voyages by Marc Cushman, Black recalled that he took offense to Roddenberry rewriting his first draft. According to Black, the WGA rules at the time prohibited a producer from rewriting a script until after the writer submitted a second draft. He said he had a verbal agreement with Roddenberry that his scripts would not be touched until after he'd written two drafts and a polish. Black objected to Roddenberry not only rewriting his drafts but those of other free-lance writers. Black's secretary (and future wife) believed that Roddenberry was drunk while rewriting John's first draft, due to the sloppiness of the written notes and his slurring voice on a Dictaphone recording.
Roddenberry's defense was that he had a unique vision for the show and its characters. The show needed to maintain a schedule; he couldn't afford to wait for his writers to perfect a script, because he needed those scripts to go into pre-production.
According to Cushman, some of Gene's changes added “ham-fisted changes in dialogue, but there are also many positive additions to the script.” Black created an assistant for Doctor McCoy named Nurse Ducheau. Roddenberry changed the character's name to Christine Chapel, intending to cast Majel Barrett in the role with a hair color change to blonde. In this episode, she's only called (and credited as) “Christine.”
Black eventually left the show mid-way through production of the first season. In a 2001 interview, Black said that what he liked most about this script was the lack of a villain. In that sense, it compares somewhat to the fourth Star Trek film, The Voyage Home. The threat there was an alien probe looking to communicate with extinct humpback whales.
Cushman also wrote about another time pressure, lining up a director for the episode. By May 1966, Roddenberry had hired nine directors for the first nine episodes. Bernard Kowalsky was slotted to direct “The Naked Time” but was already booked on another show. Unable to find another director, Roddenberry recruited Marc Daniels, who was to direct the preceding episode, “The Man Trap.” When filming of that episode ended three hours early, Daniels immediately began filming “The Naked Time” with the actors already on the set.
The premise of the episode doesn't fit any of the ideas in Roddenberry's March 11, 1964 sixteen-page concept outline used to pitch the show to the networks. It appears that the original premise came from Black.
Up to this point, the episodes had been captain-centric. You'll recall that Roddenberry's original premise was that each episode was to be a recollection of an adventure as told by the captain. The lead character can carry the show only so far, so “The Naked Time” was an opportunity to flesh out the supporting cast of characters.
The writer's tool for this episode is not unique. Each character, due to what's called in the biz a MacGuffin, is stripped down to his or her base emotions. Because the characters are trapped on the starship, these base emotions are going to collide.
For a budget-conscious show, this is known as a “bottle episode” meaning most or all scenes are filmed on existing sets with already contracted actors. In this case, our starship is metaphorically the ship-in-a-bottle. We've discussed in prior columns how Desilu and NBC closely scrutinized production of Star Trek, believing that a science fiction show couldn't stay within budget.
One has to give credit to the cast for selling some truly cheap props. Spock examines a frozen corpse that's clearly a department store mannequin. Their hazmat suits were cut from a shower curtain pattern.
Star Trek's strengths were its cast and its writers. “The Naked Time” has some truly dumb moments, especially in the teaser, but it's one of fandom's most popular episodes.
So let's dive in.
The Enterprise has been dispatched to recover a scientific party from a frozen world in its death throes. We're shown stock footage from … somewhere. Spock and Lt. J.G. Joe Tormolen beam down in hideous hazmat suits that are clearly ineffective because the headgear doesn't even attach to the rest of the suit. Tormolen can reach under and scratch his nose, which maу explain why he's only a J.G. The hazmat suits were made out of shower curtains, according to Marc Cushman.
All the members of the science team are dead. The frozen female is portrayed by a department store manneuqin. Leonard Nimoy and Stewart Moss sell it as best they can. Director Marc Daniels doesn't even bother to find a camera angle concealing the mannequin's face. One has to wonder if he was sending a message.
Tormolen removes his glove to scratch his nose, so we're assured he will get what he deserves. Particularly disrespectful is his placing the glove atop the head of the frozen console operator.
He places his exposed hand on the console. We see an animated red liquid jump onto his hand. That couldn't have been cheap in an otherwise cheaply produced episode, so kudos for that.
Dumbass then sticks the exposed hand under his face mask to smell it. Tormolen really deserves to die. Spock re-enters the room and warns Tormolen not to expose himself. So to speak.
Lt. J.G. Joe Tormolen, an early candidate for the 2266 Darwin Awards.
On his wrist communicator (a predecessor of the ones used in Star Trek: The Motion Picture?), Spock tells Kirk, “It's like nothing we've dealt with before.” According to Cushman, this is one of the “ham-fisted” lines added by Roddenberry to Black's script.
Thus concludes one of the more embarrassing teasers in the original series.
Spock and Tormolen beam up. Scotty activates a decontamination beam — just the lights flashing — which should have removed the contamination. If it did, we'd have no story.
Kirk orders the landing party to “Medicine.” (Formerly called Dispensary, also Sickbay.) McCoy's scans find nothing. Bones comments derisively about Spock's green blood, an early effort by the writing staff to create the banter between the two that will become a show staple. Kirk orders Spock to study the “tapes” recording during the away mission — a choice of words reflective of its time.
Majel Barrett makes her first appearance as Nurse Chapel. Bones calls her “Christine.” So that name is established.
The “tapes” show nothing, but Spock notes that the instruments would only show what they're designed to register.
Kirk says that “Earth science” needs a close-up measurement of the planet's death. The terms “Federation” and “Starfleet” still have yet to be introduced.
An obviously unwell Tormolen goes to the rec room for a meal. Sulu and Riley (his first appearance) enter. Riley says that Sulu was trying to interest him in botany, a callback to the prior episode, “The Man Trap,” in which Sulu maintained a botany lab. In the second pilot, Sulu was an astrophysicist. Tormolen pulls a table knife on Sulu, then stabs himself with it. The infection transfers to Sulu and Riley.
The second act begins with Sulu at the helm and Riley at navigation. Both are scratching their infected hands. Not a good place for them to be.
In any case, we can see that this is going to spread through the ship, so not much sense going into detail.
Tormolen dies, becoming the fifth crew member to die on screen. (Four died in “The Man Trap.”) We've yet to lose a redshirt. Chapel says to McCoy, “He's dead, doctor.” In future episodes, Bones is the one delivering that line.
After Spock relieves Riley of duty, he assigns Uhura to navigation. This is the second straight episode where we see Uhura at a post other than communications. Later in the episode, Uhura takes command of the bridge. But in future episodes, Uhura's role is diminished to opening hailing frequencies, one reason why Nichelle Nichols almost left the show. Later in the episode, Janice Rand takes the helm, giving Grace Lee Whitney's character a more prominent role.
Spock nerve-pinches Sulu, the second time we see Spock use the grip. George Takei sells it by collapsing to the floor as if he'd been turned off, but also credit Leonard Nimoy for the casual way he applies the pinch as if it's barely an effort. Kirk comments, “I'd like you to teach me that sometime.”
Riley sabotages engineering, introducing yet another writer's staple — a countdown. Spock informs us that the Enterprise has less than 20 minutes before the ship spirals into the atmosphere. Our characters will collide with one another as the clock ticks.
Scotty labors in a Jeffries Tube, trying to cut off Riley's control of engineering. This is the first time we see a Jeffries Tube, named after the show's production designer Matt Jeffries.
On his way to assist Scott, Spock encounters a crewman with a paint brush who has written LOVE MANKIND on a corridor wall. In an early draft, Black wrote that the crewman painted a mustache on Spock's face, causing the Vulcan to burst into tears. (How the crewman got Spock to hold still that long is unexplained …) In his memoir I Am Spock, Leonard Nimoy wrote that this scene was “a pointless exercise in stripping the dignity from him — and it also contradicted everything I knew about him.” Nimoy asked Black to rewrite the scene, but Black said there wasn't time. Nimoy then went to Roddenberry, who had Black rewrite the scene the way Leonard wanted.
The prequel series Star Trek: Strange New Worlds contradicts the Spock-Chapel relationship defined by this episode.
In the revision, Christine takes Spock's hand and expresses her love for him, transferring the virus. (In Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, the Spock-Chapel romance is quite robust, contradicting what was established in this episode.) With time for only one take, Nimoy gives a performance that defines the character for all eternity. Finding an empty briefing room, Spock breaks down and weeps in private. Nimoy's fan mail skyrocketed after this episode, which also gave him the leverage to demand more from the production and the studio.
Spock's intermix formula implodes the engines, causing the Enterprise to travel backwards in time. An early concept was that this was to be the jumping-off point for what eventually became “Tomorrow is Yesterday,” when the ship found itself above the 1960s United States. The two-parter idea was abandoned, but the episode would be produced later in the first season. The Enterprise regressed 71 hours, suggesting the crew could have observed themselves in orbit around Psi 2000, but Kirk decides to proceed to their next assignment.
Roddenberry recycled “The Naked Time” for Star Trek: The Next Generation, in an episode called “The Naked Now.” The Enterprise-D encountered a similar virus and symptoms. John D.F. Black was given a partial writing credit for that episode. D.C. Fontana rewrote that script at Roddenberry's direction, but he rewrote her draft, inserting sexually charged scenes. The android Data was inexplicably affected by the virus. Fontana had her name removed, replaced by a pseudonym, J. Michael Bingham.
Fun fact … As the Enterprise plunges deeper into the atmosphere, the planet appears to be spinning faster. This would have been consistent with orbital mechanics. The closer an object is to a gravitational source, the faster must be its velocity to equal the gravitational pull and remain in orbit. The International Space Station, for example, orbits Earth at an altitude of about 250 miles. It must maintain a velocity of about 17,500 miles per hour to avoid falling back into the atmosphere. Geosynchronous satellites, which orbit at an altitude of about 22,000 miles, travel at a velocity of about 7,000 miles per hour.
Sources:
“Writers Guild Honors 18 Members for Work,” Los Angeles Times, March 25, 1966, Part V, Page 12.
John D.F. Black Interview, Part 1, StarTrek.com, 2001.
John D.F. Black Interview, Part 2, StarTrek.com, 2001.
Mark Cushman, These are the Voyages: TOS Season One (San Diego: Jacobs/Brown Press, 2013).
Wednesday, February 5, 2025
The Man Trap (Episode 06)
An early NBC ad for “Star Trek.” Although the promo said September 15, NBC actually aired it a week early on September 8, 1966. Video source: TrekkieChannel YouTube channel.
The Star Trek “crown jewels” reside today in university libraries. At UCLA are the personal papers of creator Gene Roddenberry and associate producer Bob Justman. Showrunner Gene Coon's papers are at the University of Wyoming. Desliu executive Oscar Katz's papers are at the University of Maryland. Some founding fathers long ago sold off at auction their personal papers and other Star Trek memorabilia.
For researchers, none of it is in one place and, for the most part, unavailable online due to various copyright rules. I'd love to read through Roddenberry's papers, but a 3,000 mile trip to UCLA is not practical.
I have, however, found the next best thing.
In 2013, author Marc Cushman published a trilogy of books covering the show's original three-season run. Cushman had access to Roddenberry's and Justman's papers before they went to UCLA. Collectively called These Are The Voyages, I've acquired the trilogy and will cite them where used as an authoritative source.
I also found the TV Writing website, which is a PDF collection of scripts for Star Trek and other TV shows. Click here for the available TOS scripts. Not all scripts are available, but “The Man Trap” is, and so we plunge into this column's episode.
“The Man Trap” was originally a title for a very different concept. In Roddenberry's March 11, 1964 sixteen-page concept outline used to pitch the show to the networks, he listed a number of “story springboards.” One was called “The Man Trap.”
THE MAN TRAP. A desert trek story, taking members of our band from one point on a planet to another. But what appears to be a pleasant totally earthlike and harmless world, rapidly develops into a hundred miles of fear and suspicion as Captain April and crew begin to encounter strange apparitions. Actually more than apparitions, these are wish-fulfillment traps which become as real as flesh and blood. Whatever a man wants most will appear before him, i.e., water, food, a female, a long-dead parent, gold, or even a way to power. The traps become increasingly subtle to the point where our crew nearly destroys itself out of a total inability to separate the reality they must have from the apparitions which will destroy them.
A whiff of this premise remains in “The Man Trap” — and in other episodes, such as “The Cage” — but it sounds more like “Shore Leave,” which will be produced later in the first season. The episode that aired with the title “The Man Trap” is about an alien version of a chameleon that alters its appearance to whatever might attract prey.
Although this was the fourth first-season episode to be produced, it was the first to air. In their memoir Inside Star Trek: The Real Story, Desilu executive Herb Solow and Star Trek associate producer Bob Justman wrote that NBC wanted the first aired episode to be simple for the viewing audience to understand. Justman wrote, “I suspected the NBC people wanted 'Man Trap,' because it was scarier and more exploitable than the others.” It took place on a “strange new world” as promised by the opening narrative, and featured a monster creature as an antagonist.
According to Marc Cushman, the captain's logs had yet to be written when the episode was filmed. After watching a rough cut of the episode, Justman sent Roddenberry a memo advising, “… since this is liable to be our first or second show on the air, I think it would be wise to establish where we are and what we are doing over these shots.” Roddenberry agreed, and said he was writing it.
The script was originally assigned to veteran TV writer Lee Erwin, who had written “To Set It Right” for Roddenberry's last series, The Lieutnant. That episode was notable not only for depicting racism within the US Marine Corps, but also for the on-screen debut of Nichelle Nichols in a supporting role.
Unlike many of the writers Roddenberry recruited for the first season, Erwin had no science fiction literature background. Among his many credits were the amateur detective series Mr. and Mrs. North, the family adventure Western Circus Boy, and the scuba-diving action series Sea Hunt.
According to Marc Cushman's research, Erwin was the one who came up with the idea of a salt-sucking vampire, as well as the ability to fool its victims with illusions. But Roddenberry and Justman felt the premise needed more — more action, and more depth to its antagonist.
This was where George Clayton Johnson came in. Johnson had written seven episodes of The Twilight Zone among many other non-genre scripts. He told Roddenbery about his Twilight Zone episode, “The Four of Us Are Dying,” which had a person who could change his appearance. He coupled that with the notion of a creature who was the last of its kind, such as the nearly extinct buffalo.
Roddenberry paid Erwin a cancellation fee and reassigned the script to Johnson. According to Cushman, Johnson struggled with script revisions, in part because he was trying to honor the opening narrative's promise to explore strange new worlds. He and associate producer John D.F. Black debated how soon the plot should transfer from the planet surface to the Enterprise. It's also important to keep in mind that — as with other hired writers, even Roddenberry, Justman, and Black — everyone was still struggling with the creation of the Star Trek universe and its characters.
We discussed in earlier columns that Roddenberry's original format had each episode being told by the captain as a reminiscence of an earlier adventure. The stories so far — the two pilots and the three earlier episodes — were all captain-centric. This is the first episode that gives any significant story time to a different character — in this case, Chief Medical Officer Leonard McCoy. Spock's turn will have to wait, because NBC had encouraged Roddenberry to tone down Spock's presence, fearing he might appear too satanic for Bible Belt audiences.
As he did with most scripts, Roddenberry added his own final polish to Johnson's script. None of the changes are fundamental, but they reflect an effort by Gene to pacify the network. Marc Cushman, who reviewed all the various drafts, concluded:
Roddenberry's rewrite … was more in line with what NBC was asking for, putting emphasis on action/adventure … with a monster. Johnson's version had just a bit more heart.
Cushman wrote that, “'The Man Trap' is a study in loneliness. This is not a simple Man against Beast tale, but more so Man against Himself.” For me, I view the episode as a question of sentience. If the creature is sentient, does it deserve mercy?
Let's begin with the definition of sentience.
The Sentience Institute preaches the concept of the moral circle, which refers to “the boundary around entities that are granted moral consideration.”
At Sentience Institute, we are mainly interested in the societal moral circle. This captures the laws, policies, and norms that are intended to protect the interests of different entities. We envision a society where all sentient beings, that is, beings with the capacity for positive and negative experiences, are included in the inner moral circle. Note that this does not mean we think all sentient entities should be treated in exactly the same way. Different entities have different interests. Being in the inner circle means an entity’s specific set of interests are given full moral consideration, not that they are treated in exactly the same way as others in the circle.
Sentience Science views the question in the context of the animal rights movement.
Agreeing on the premise that sentient beings are capable of experiencing pain and suffering, most humans would further agree that it is morally wrong to inflict unnecessary pain or suffering. It may be persuasively argued that humans should not restrict our scope of protection to only sentient beings, because non-sentient things — trees and rivers, for example — also have intrinsic value. The primary importance of sentience as a moral measuring stick, however, is based on the idea that most people would agree that beings who can suffer should not be made to suffer unnecessarily.
Perhaps our question is not sentience, but sapience. Here's one person's definition:
Sentience: The ability to feel emotions, have a subjective experience, develop a personality, and form a morality.
Sapience: The ability to act rationally, to learn, to understand.
Is the salt vampire a sentient creature? Is it a sapient creature? Must its life be taken, or can it be spared?
I raise the issue because, in a later first season episode, a similar moral question will be raised. In “The Devil in the Dark,” the 25th first season episode to be produced, another indigenous creature is killing humans. We learn that the Horta is acting not out of malice but defense, protecting its offspring. Spock is the only one who pleads for compassion, although Kirk eventually acknowledges the Horta's intelligence. In “The Man Trap,” no one speaks for the creature other than Doctor Crater and the creature itself. It acts not out of malice but survival. We later learn that the creature killed Crater's wife Nancy but, after he began feeding it salt pills, they cohabited peacefully for a year.
The distinction between the two episodes may be when they were written. “The Man Trap” was crafted in the summer of 1966, before any episode had aired, when Roddenberry and his writing staff were still figuring out the Star Trek universe. By the time “The Devil in the Dark” was written by staff writer Gene Coon, everyone had a better handle on what the show was about and the characters' traits.
Let's visit this episode in the context of the creature's perspective.
The first time viewing audiences saw the Enterprise bridge. Spock is in command, and Uhura is at navigation.
The episode opens with the Enterprise in orbit around Planet M-113. This is the first time a viewing audience has seen the ship and its crew. Uhura in a red uniform (remember, in the first two filmed episodes she wore gold) is at the navigation console while an unnamed crewmember (in later episodes, he's Lt. Leslie) is at the helm. Spock is in command. We hear Kirk's voiceover establishing the circumstances. It's interesting that two of the first characters we meet are the ones the network feared — the satanic Vulcan and the female African-American.
Kirk, McCoy, and crewman Darnell beam down to perform a required examination of the Craters. These archaeologists are documenting the remains of a long-lost civilization. Why and how it fell, we're never told. McCoy once had a romance with Nancy, before she married Crater.
“Nancy” walks into their quarters. We later learn this isn't Nancy, but the creature, which has the ability to appear to a person in whatever form is pleasing. (The creature is not a shape-shifter.) To McCoy, Nancy appears as she did when they parted ten years ago. Kirk sees Nancy but older, gray-haired. Darnell sees a “provocative, brassy blonde” according to the script. He says she reminds him of a girl he met on Wrigley's Pleasure Planet. Kirk orders Darnell to step outside. Nancy calls McCoy “Plum,” an old affectionate nickname, so clearly the creature can read minds.
Although the civilization was built by the creatures' race, we see no evidence of them. We do see statues of a grotesque. Perhaps the production team didn't want to give away the final reveal, although it would have been nice to see a carving of the creature species.
Nancy says she'll go find Crater. Once outside, Darnell sees her again as the blonde. Nancy seduces him into the ruins.
Crater, meanwhile, is most uncooperative. He demands they deliver salt tablets and leave. Hearing Nancy scream, they run outside and find her (appearing older to everyone) next to the dead Darnell, who becomes the first Enterprise crewmember killed on the show. (A trivia question for your next nerd party …) McCoy declares, “Dead, Jim.” (Bones said “He's dead, Jim” in “The Enemy Within,” referring to the deceased space canine). The ex-Darnell has red circular mottling on his face. Kirk finds a green plant in his mouth. The Craters claim he ate a poisonous Borgia plant. Nancy reminds Kirk and McCoy about their request for salt.
Darnell's remains are beamed up to the ship. In sickbay (called “Dispensary” in the script), McCoy concludes there's no evidence of poisoning. Kirk is in a mood, demands to know what killed his crewmember. McCoy finds the body is missing salt, which Spock finds “fascinating.” (I believe this is the second time he's used the word; the first was in “The Corbomite Maneuver.”) Kirk connects this new evidence to the Craters' requests for salt tablets, and beams down again, this time with Spock and two more sacrificial lambs, er, crewmembers. Although neither wears a red shirt, the creature quickly desalinates both of them.
Crater runs off to find the creature. The creature assumes the appearance of crewman Green. Kirk orders the landing party beamed up, which means the Green-impersonating creature is now aboard the starship.
A couple observations here … The creature is wearing a phaser and holster belt. Did she take it off Green, or is that an illusion too? When the landing party beamed aboard, the creature materializes as Green, but would someone unaffected have seen the creature materialize? Would the yet-to-be-established pattern buffer know it was materializing Green or the creature? Oh well.
The creature, all but starving on M-113, now has a salt buffet from which to feed. Still appearing as Green, it encounters Janice Rand, who has a meal tray with salt and pepper shakers. The creature follows her into Sulu's botany lab(!), never seen again. In the second pilot, where we first met Sulu, he was an astrophysicist. In this episode, Sulu is not only a helmsman but dabbles in botany. In the lab is … well, here's how the script describes it.
The “sentient plant” in Sulu's botany lab.
In the center of the room — obviously one of Sulu's prize pets — is a large, undulating plant, swaying with sentient life and gives off a CHIMING, MELODIC HUM, like a harmonium.
Because it's not affected by the illusions, the plant screeches at the creature's presence and retreats into its nest. (The script once again refers to it as a “sentient plant.”)
The creature flees into the corridor, where it encounters Uhura. Its appearance changes yet again, this time into what the script calls a “Negro Crewman.” (A product of its time.) The creature hypnotizes Uhura and is about to feed, when Rand and Sulu approach to break the spell.
We've seen the creature feed on both men and women, so I guess it's not gender-picky. A lion doesn't ask the gazelle its gender either.
The creature spots a non-descript crewman alone. They exit off-screen. We've seen enough Planet Earth episodes to know how that will end.
Wandering the corridors, the creature stumbles across McCoy's quarters. It changes back into Nancy. “You do care, don't you, Leonard?” Bones is the only one the creature never tries to drain. Is that calculated because McCoy is an asset? Or is it genuine affection? The script doesn't offer a clue. Either way, it suggests this is a cunning creature, more than just an animal hunting on instinct. She persuades him to take a sleeping pill. The creature assumes McCoy's image and heads for the bridge.
Sulu and Janice find the desalinated n.d. crewman. (His name was Barnhart.) The body count is up to four. The secret's out, the creature is aboard. Back on the surface, Kirk and Spock find the ex-Green's body. They capture Crater, who reveals the truth. “She was the last of her kind … the last of its kind.” He compares the creature to Earth's passenger pigeon or buffalo. Kirk declares the difference — “Your creature is killing my people!”
Back aboard the Enterprise, the creature attends a staff meeting as McCoy. It states, “We could offer it salt without tricks. There's no reason for it to attack us.” Crater adds, “The creature is not dangerous when fed.” He argues that the creature is intelligent and needs love as much as humans do. “You bleed too much, Crater,” Kirk replies. Crater admits he can see the creature in its true form but refuses to help Kirk find it. Kirk orders McCoy to take Crater to sickbay for a truth serum injection; Spock accompanies them.
The creature attacks Spock, but fails because Vulcan blood is different. For the first time, we see green Vulcan blood, on Spock's forehead where the creature struck him. (And yet his scar is red …) Crater is dead, desalinated. So much for love and loyalty and all that.
The creature in its true form.
Reverting back into Nancy, the creature returns to McCoy's quarters. Kirk enters; I guess he went looking for the real McCoy, so to speak. The captain offers “Nancy” salt tablets; she can't resist. The creature paralyzes Kirk and is about to feed; McCoy has a phaser but can't pull the trigger. Spock enters (with a ridiculous bandage on his forehead); the creature smites him with one blow. The creature reverts to its true appearance — what the script calls a “beast” and begins to feed on Kirk. Bones shoots the creature; it slumps against the wall, reverts to Nancy, and looks back at McCoy. The creature begs him to spare it, but McCoy finishes it off.
The episode ends with Kirk in the captain's chair, Spock and McCoy at his side. “I was thinking about the buffalo, Mister Spock.” We fade to black.
If this episode had been written a year later, maybe even six months later, perhaps the ending would have been different. The creature could have been stunned heavily enough to put it in the brig. It could have been transported to the surface with a lifetime supply of salt tablets. Perhaps a means could have been found to artificially generate salt from the planet's resources. It would have lived out its life, a lonely life, but a full one.
Is it sentient? Is it sapient? Did it have the capacity to restrain its hunting instincts? From what we saw, apparently not, although it did co-exist with Crater for a year so long as salt was available. But it seems to me that it might have been worth the effort to establish a dialogue, perhaps dispatch a science vessel to learn the lost civilization's history from it, keep it company, maybe even clone other M-113 creatures in an attempt to repopulate the species.
Six months or a year later, Spock probably would have advocated for such an alternative. But at this early stage, he doesn't.
That's why we should contrast this with the decisions made in the episode, “The Devil in the Dark,” which we'll visit down the line.
You'll see the salt vampire again. It will show up later this season as Trelane's trophy in “The Squire of Gothos.”
As mentioned at the beginning of this article, “The Man Trap” was the first episode to air. Here are a few random newspaper reviews the next day.
“Star Trek” didn't offer any great moments … and I know how William Shatner must feel after seeing himself in those rushes and then remembering the juicy role as an attorney he had in the defunct “Of the People” (Or was it “For the People?”)
The producers have billed “Star Trek” as science fiction drama and in this respect they have failed. As a competitive series of space adventure for the youngsters in the format of “Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea” and “Lost in Space,” perhaps “Star Trek” will fare well. But against the earlier science fiction dramas in “Twilight Zone,” “One Step Beyond” or “The Outer Limits,” the new series wouldn't stand a chance.
Man has yet to conquer the universe. But man is coming close. NBC's “Star-Trek,” might have the whole thing aced out.
“Star-Trek,” is, frankly, weird. But the costumes and visual effects are right out of the old Frankenstein movies. It's a shocker baby — if you're easily shocked.
The thing takes place on a huge space ship and to keep the thing kosher there are boy-girl relationships and bad guys and good guys. All aboard the same ship. Also bad girls and good girls. Nothing strange about outer space, toots.
William Shatner, a legitimate pro actor, plays the lead. It's easy fantasy. Ray guns anyone?
Another hour-long NBC-TV series, “Star Trek,” a science fiction opus centering around a mammoth space ship, is so absurd that it is almost entertaining, what with a playboy bunny-type waitress. The premiere was a futuristic twist on the old vampire films. The villain, a creature able to change itself into any human form, required salt to survive, and got it by helping itself to the body content of other people, leaving them very deceased. Tune in next week. Whee!
“Star Trek” is the kind of comic strip adventure that is giving science fiction a bad name. It concerned an enormous space ship roaming through the cosmos on a five year inspection tour of our far-out neighbors. Aside from some brilliant camera work and a virtuoso performance by the makeup department this was a tedious and depressing hour.
Sunday, January 12, 2025
The Enemy Within (Episode 05)
The duplicate Kirk appears on the transporter pad.
“He is not easy to describe. There is something wrong with his appearance; something displeasing, something down-right detestable. I never saw a man I so disliked, and yet I scarce know why. He must be deformed somewhere; he gives a strong feeling of deformity, although I couldn’t specify the point. He’s an extraordinary looking man, and yet I really can name nothing out of the way. No, sir; I can make no hand of it; I can’t describe him. And it’s not want of memory; for I declare I can see him this moment.”
— “The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde,” by Robert Louis Stevenson
It's not much of a walk from Robert Louis Stevenson to Richard Matheson's script for “The Enemy Within.” Eighty years had passed since Stevenson's classic horror novel had been published in the United Kingdom. The dichotomy of the human psyche has long been fertile fodder for writers. Stevenson and Matheson are only two in a long lineage of writers to explore humanity's capacity for both good and evil, probably going back to the origin of storytelling. The first principle of storytelling is that drama comes out of conflict. What better conflict than with oneself?
Richard Matheson was a veteran writer in the media of speculative fiction magazines and novels, television, and films. He was part of Rod Serling's stable of screenwriters, authoring sixteen episodes for The Twilight Zone in its original run. Two of those episodes cast William Shatner — “Nick of Time” and “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet.” Because of the show's anthology format, neither time did he know Shatner would be cast, but with Star Trek that was different. He was writing a script knowing who would be playing his protagonist and that actor's skills.
William Shatner in Richard Matheson's “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet.” Video source: The Twilight Zone YouTube channel.
As discussed in earlier articles, Gene Roddenberry's earliest concept for Star Trek was that each episode would be a report or recollection by the captain of a particular past incident. Scripts would be captain-centric. In his prior series, The Lieutenant, scripts were centered on the eponymous Marine Corps lieutenant, William Tiberius Rice. It would be the same with Star Trek — tales about the captain, a riff on the Horatio Hornblower novels. Other Star Trek actors would not have their moment in the spotlight until later in the series.
A 2009 interview with Richard Matheson about his work on Star Trek and other 1960s network television. Video source: Television Academy Foundation YouTube channel.
Matheson wrote only one Star Trek episode. In a 2009 interview with the Television Academy Foundation, Matheson said he was unhappy with the producers adding the “B-story” about the landing party trapped on the planet surface. His script was all about the bifurcated Kirk. Matheson told the Academy, “I hate B-stories. To me, they slow a story down.” Matheson noted that Roddenberry recruited the top science fiction writers in town to develop scripts, but in the end concluded it was better to develop his own stable of writers. Matheson recalled, “I submitted other ideas but they never accepted them.” And so one of the most prolific and talented television writers of his time has only one Star Trek episode on his curriculum vitae.
The story takes place basically in two locations — on planet Alfa 177, and on the Enterprise. The first three regular season episodes produced so far all lacked a grand scope, narrowly focused perhaps to keep costs down while the production team figured out how to deliver an episode on time and on budget. Recall that the episodes did not air in production order. Although this was the third episode produced, it was the fifth to air. The two before it did not air until after this one; the earliest aired episodes have yet to be produced.
“The Enemy Within” begins with the landing party on the surface. Kirk's gold uniform is missing its delta logo insignia. In those early days, the costume department had a problem with the uniforms shrinking after every wash, so it may have been the logo wasn't replaced after washing. Or he's the captain and can wear whatever he wants. 😊
Sulu is holding a small dog costumed in an outfit to make it appear that it's an alien creature. I sure hope they fed it a lot of dog chow for putting up with that costume.
“Geological Technician Fisher” falls off a rock and cuts his hand. He's covered with a magnetic golden ore. Kirk tells Fisher to beam up and report to Sickbay.
Fisher beams up, but the transporter definitely doesn't like it. Scotty thinks it's a burnout.
Kirk then beams up, and stumbles dizzy off the pad. (And still missing his insignia.) Scotty escorts Kirk out of the room, despite the captain's warning not to leave the transporter unattended. (Boy howdy, will that happen a lot in future episodes …) As soon as they leave the room, the transporter comes on by itself, materializing a duplicate Kirk — the Hyde to our Jekyll. The script apparently referred to him as “Negative Kirk.”
Voilà, we have Star Trek's first transporter malfunction. But most certainly not the last.
This raises all sorts of questions that Gene Roddenberry probably would rather we not ask. How can the transporter create two objects out of one? Where did the matter come from to create a second person? If the transporter disassembles you and reassembles you as you were, then where'd the matter come from to create a second you?
If the transporter is simply a glorified copier machine, then the original you is destroyed and a duplicate made from some reservoir of raw matter. That would explain where the second person came from, but it also means that using the transporter is a death penalty.
This is why some writers (including me) prefer the term “speculative fiction” to “science fiction.” Speculative fiction is more of a “what if?” with less strict scientific rigor than science fiction. The latter requires a scientific explanation for how something works. The former just shows that it does.
I heard Star Trek writer DC Fontana once say that we don't need to explain how the phaser works. It simply does. Technobabble did not become a “thing” until The Next Generation.
Kirk's captain's log is a report from the future about what we are witnessing now. This was an early concept of how the logs would work — a recollection of past events.
“Positive Kirk” now has his logo insignia. In his quarters, he finds Yeoman Rand, who delivers the ship's manifest. Kirk dismisses her, but this foreshadows what's about to come.
Scotty informs Positive Kirk and Spock that the transporter created two versions of the space dog — except it's not a duplicate, it's “an opposite.” The rest of the landing party can't beam up.
At this point in the series, we've yet to see a shuttlecraft. Perhaps this episode led the producers to realize the Enterprise would have a Plan B if the transporter were down.
Negative Kirk shows up in Sickbay, also now sporting his insignia. He demands Saurian brandy from McCoy, further establishing a precedent going all the way back to “The Cage” that the captain drinks with the ship's doctor. This is the first mention of the alcoholic beverage.
The captain drinks on the job.
Wandering the corridors gulping from the brandy bottle, Negative Kirk slips into Rand's quarters. What happens next is, in my opinion, the most disturbing scene in the three years of the original series.
In her 1998 autobiography, Grace Lee Whitney describes it as “the rape scene.” Without his positive side to suppress his animal instincts, Negative Kirk assaults and pins down Janice on the floor. Grace saying “No!” appears to have been dubbed because her lips don't move. It's a brutal scene, painful to watch. Grace wrote that filming the scene left her with several bruises, because she did her own stunt work.
In earlier articles, we noted the early concept was that Kirk and Rand were attracted to one another, but suppressed it out of duty. In that sense, the scene acknowledges that Kirk feels an attraction just as much as Rand does. Rand may love Kirk, but what the opposite does isn't an expression of love. Rape is all about power and submission.
Rand reports the assault to Spock and McCoy, with Positive Kirk present. Grace wrote that, just before the scene, William Shatner stepped from behind the camera and slapped her without permission to shock her and make her cry. Two days had passed since filming the rape scene, so this assault was to put her back into the moment. Grace acknowledges the act delivered the desired performance but, in my opinion, there's no excuse for hitting someone without permission. Grace seems forgiving, which says more about her than it does Shatner.
Of greater significance is that the scene foreshadows what will happen to Grace during the filming of “Miri.” As noted in our last article, Grace was sexually assaulted for real by one of the show's executives after filming ended on a Friday night.
In his series These Are The Voyages, author Marc Cushman wrote that the rape scene was in Richard Matheson's original draft. The scene was most important to Matheson, who said, “What else could we show about this side of the Captain that would be more frightening?” Roddenberry worried that NBC censors might reject the scene.
Rand receives no counseling. Spock simply dismisses her. Sure, he's a Vulcan so maybe he's insensitive to her suffering, but still one would think that McCoy would advise counseling, therapy, a safe companion escort back to her quarters, etc.
“Negative” Kirk assaults Janice Rand.
In any case, Spock deduces that an imposter is aboard. Negative Kirk can be identified by scratches Rand left on his face, but in the captain's cabin Negative Kirk finds facial makeup he uses to hide the scratches. Why would Kirk have something like that?! Would our heroic captain have makeup for covering a zit?! Seems a bit odd.
Knowing the evil one is loose, why not station a guard in front of Rand's cabin? Might he not try again?
The landing party is slowly freezing to death … I understand Richard Matheson's point about the B-story being a distraction, but it did give George Takei and the extras some work and a paycheck. Producer Robert Justman complained in a memo that the landing party subplot was costing the production time and money, so he may have agreed with Matheson.
Negative Kirk clobbers a crewman and steals his phaser. Positive Kirk and Spock search Engineering for the opposite … Remember that, in The Wrath of Khan, Kirk said Khan's strategy reflected “two-dimensional thinking”? Well, Negative Kirk hides above them, climbing across the equipment. I guess Kirk's three-dimensional out-of-the-box instincts come from his negative side.
This is the scene that gave birth to the Vulcan nerve pinch. The script called for Spock to strike Negative Kirk on the head with the butt of his phaser. Leonard Nimoy felt this wasn't something a Vulcan would do. In his memoir I Am Spock, Nimoy wrote that he'd given thought to Vulcan culture and customs. He had decided that they were a touch-oriented society. As such, rather using brute force, Vulcans “were capable of transmitting a special energy from their fingertips. If applied to the proper nerve centers on a human's neck and shoulder, that energy would render the human unconscious.”
Leonard approached director Leo Penn and William Shatner about the concept. Give Bill credit for selling it, because he's the one who came up with the instant collapse. That's how it was filmed, and so a Star Trek staple was born.
Another Star Trek standard is uttered for the first time. Spock and Scott jury-rig the transporter to reassemble the two space dogs into one. The test seems to fail, as the dog beams up deceased. McCoy turns to Positive Kirk and declares, “He's dead, Jim.”
For the first time, Spock records a captain's log, but he identifies himself as the “Second Officer.” If he's the Second Officer, who is Number One?! An early blooper.
Spock hypothesizes that the test failed because the dog was frightened to death. It reacted out of instinct. A human, with his intellect, might understand and survive.
The two Kirks are run through the transporter, and our one whole Kirk materializes to take command. His first words are to order the landing party beamed up.
“The Enemy Within” is an early example of Star Trek trying to find itself. Gene Roddenberry and the producers are trying to find the right tone. The actors are trying to find their characters. The writers, all free-lancers, are flying blind. All they have for reference are a showing of the second pilot “Where No Man Has Gone Before” and a flurry of memos supplementing Roddenberry's 1964 16-page outline. Gene is up all hours of the night rewriting the drafts to align with his vision of what Star Trek should be.
This wouldn't be the last time Star Trek dipped its metaphorical pen into the “evil twin” inkwell. In the Season 2 episode “Mirror, Mirror,” yet another transporter malfunction would give us an entire parallel universe filled with evil duplicates of our characters. In the first season of The Next Generation the episode “Datalore” introduced us to Data's evil android predecessor Lore. TNG's sixth season episode “Second Chances” gave us Will Riker's duplicate Thomas, created years before in a long-forgotten transporter accident.
TNG also gave us the holodeck malfunction, something entirely new to go wrong, but that's for another time.
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