1x07 What Are Little Girls Made Of?

7.1/10. There’s still a lot of Star Trek left, but I feel like a good chunk of my reviews are going to go something along the lines of “There’s a lot of interesting ideas at play here, but the execution of them is, muddled, weird, cheesy, or all three.” That’s “What Little Girls Are Made Of” to a tee.

To that end, a great deal of the idea the episode plays around with are endlessly fascinating. The concept of an ancient but advanced society, using robots to serve them until they’re overtaken by their creations is a classic sci-fi premise explored in everything from Battlestar Galactica to Voyager. The notion of the Turing test – whether artificial intelligence can be good enough to fool human intelligence – and the implications of that, is an incredibly interesting thought that TNG and Blade Runner would delve into later. The notion of androids handling conflicting orders about protection and survival is right out of Asimov. The concept of transferring a human mind into a machine and the advantages and pitfalls of that idea is intellectually stimulating, and everything from TNG to BSG to A.I. has examined the line between humanity and machinery and whether it may be fuzzier than we flesh and blood beings might believe.

It’s all very interesting, but it might be too much for one story. There’s the sense of writer Robert Bloch throwing everything and the kitchen sink related to artificial intelligence here and not really coming up with a clear throughline or vision for the episode.

To wit, it’s not clear what the point of all of this is, particularly when many of the plot points and character beats conflicts with one another. Is it that androids, no matter how sophisticated, lack the moral feeling, the soul, the sentiment, etc., as is seemingly suggested by Dr. Korby’s inability to do anything but “equate” or “transmit” when challenged by Kirk in the end. Or is it that androids are far from perfection, subject to the same emotional whims and currents of passion as humans, as Kirk’s uncomfortable, rape-y encounter with Andrea seems to say. Or is it that they’re just subject to a hierarchy of commands, and thus dangerous and unpredictable like Ruk’s part of the story appears to indicate.

I don’t know, and I’m not convinced Bloch does either, or at least, I’m not sure he ever finds a clear voice in the episode. That, combined with some other clunky elements of the episode, drags the proceedings down. For one thing, we just had an Evil Kirk episode. There’s mercifully less of the double act this time, and Kirk’s means of signaling to Spock that something is amiss is quite clever (and through his hurt, Spock reveals that despite his logic, he is more than just a cold machine), but it still feels like a parlor trick that doesn’t add much an already overstuffed story.

And yet, there’s a number of very interesting elements too. Bringing Christine down to the caverns, and making her Korby’s fiancé adds a strong emotional undercurrent to what could otherwise have easily been a bog standard mystery of the week. (Though between that, Bones’s old flame in “The Man Trap,” and Kirk’s old buddy from the academy in “The Naked Time,” the crew of the Enterprise should really be more careful about their long lost friends.) Her reunion, her response and reaction to everything that takes place, and her scenes with Korby in particular, have a heightened quality that adds a human dimension to the sci-fi narrative.

But it still comes down to an episode that ultimately feels like a mishmash of intriguing, but never quite fully-formed ideas about artificial intelligence. Even getting past the sixties silliness of Lurch the Martian in his low-grade Halloween costume makeup, Sherry Jackson slinking around in a pair of weird futuristic overalls that I’m shocked made it past standards & practices in 1966, and yet another appearance by Shirtless Shatner ™, it’s just too much for an episode to go through in fifty minutes. Bogging things down with corny closeups and stings, and more splitscreen novelties doesn’t give what’s there room to breathe.

Still, the ideas alone, and some good performances (Majel Barrett does a particularly good job selling the conflicted hope and fear going through Nurse Chapel’s head, and as unfortunate a role as Sherry Jackson is giving, she communicates Andrea’s shock at Kirk’s actions and the feelings of guilt and love stirred up inside her quite well), elevate this one. The episode certainly gets ungainly at times, but the core of it is good, and that helps counter the scattershot treatment of its themes throughout the episode.

A great story. Androids with almost the level of sophistication as we see in ST:tNG, but using a programmable approach instead of a neural net approach. Very state-of-the-art for the 60s and very well done. I actually enjoyed this much more than I expected because it doesn't try to use any science or engineering to make it seem plausible, which almost always fails because the writers don't consult experts. Instead, this completely glosses over everything and results in a much more enjoyable experience. I'm not sure this approach would work in an action oriented story like we have today, but it definitely works in a character driven story.

The other aspect I love about this story is that we see Andrea has grown beyond her programming. Something commonplace by today's standards would have been incredibly novel for the 60s. The best part is that it is ancillary to the plot. We only get a glimpse that Andrea is far more than she was programmed to be.

Ted Cassidy is great, as always, in his typecast roles. He does a fantastic low intellect, emotionless brute. However, we did get to see some emotion from Ruk towards the end. The padding to add muscles to his otherwise thin frame worked well in this role. It was quite well integrated into the outfit so that it wasn't as obvious as I expected when I first saw him. Props to the clothing and prop designers.