3x21 The Cloud Minders

[6.9/10] It’s hard to know whether Star Trek’s messages are getting less subtle, if I’m just more attuned to them, or the show is generally preachier as it nears it end. Whatever the reason, The Original Series feels more and more apt to deliver its messages loud and clear for the audience to hear.

Having covered racism, war, and overpopulation, the show turns its attentions to classism and segregation in “The Cloud Minders.” The Federation is in desperate need of this week’s version of unobtanium (called zenite) in order to cure the latest botanical epidemic sweeping the galaxy. That puts a ticking clock on their adventures in this episode, which is a tack the show returns to often, but still operates as a solid nuts and bolts way to add some urgency to the proceedings.

In order to retrieve the necessary macguffonium, the Enterprise travels to a segregated planet. A small but lucky proportion of its population literally lives in the clouds, in a city called Stratos where the denizens consider themselves genteel and cultured. The leader of the planet, Plasus, and his daughter Droxine (who is, naturally, wearing one of costume designer William Theiss’s beautiful but demeaning dresses that seems to defy the laws of physics) live there. The leader literally and figuratively looks down on the other portion of the population who live below, creatively called the troglytes. They are workers who mine the local minerals and presumably do all the other menial work on the planet.

Shockingly, this arrangement isn’t pleasing to everyone involved and there is trouble and insurrection afoot. A select few troglytes are educated and brought to live on Stratos in order to serve the residents of the cloud city, and a number of them have banded together to form a resistance movement called The Disruptors. Vanna, one of the ringleaders of the Disruptors and a former lady in waiting (or something along those lines) to Droxine, is withholding the zenite and trying to take hostages to get concessions from the ruling class.

As with “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield,” the episode isn’t exactly subtle with its points or its framing of the conflict. The residents of Stratos, Plasus in particular, view the Troglytes as inherently inferior, and absolutely incapable of being equals. The Troglytes, meanwhile, view the people on Stratos as selfish snob who treat them poorly and deny them basics like warmth and sunshine in their elevated paradise. It’d be hard to miss the class critique implicit in the episode.

But what elevates “The Cloud Minders” over some of its message-heavy brethren is the craft apart from the story. For one thing, this is one of the best production designs the cash-strapped show’s had in a while. The foam rocks are back in force, but most impressively, set designer Walter Jeffries really captures the ideas of opulence and sophistication on Stratos. The ascending staircases, the intricate art scattered everywhere, and red sky flanking the pearly confines of the cloud city immediately contrast it with the caves below. And as much as Theiss’s designs seem gratuitous to me, the costumes here, for both women and men, really are distinctive.

The episode also gets a shot in the arm from the direction of Jud Taylor (who returns after directing “Battlefield”). Whether it’s swooping around a rock formation, starting a shot from behind one of the pieces of art, or jostling the camera, steadicam style to capture the tumult of a Federation vs. Disruptor throwdown, Taylor’s cinematography keeps the energy of the piece up even when the script feels too obvious.

The other thing “The Cloud Minders” has going for it is that however heavy-handed the episode is about its ideas, there’s a pretty immediate sense of place. It may just be that the slobs vs. snobs type conflict is so trite that it can fill in the gaps, but the pontification by Plasus and angry complaints from Vanna, in addition to the set decoration and bits of exposition establish the terms of this planet quickly and effectively.

The episode weakens a bit when McCoy discovers that the Troglytes are actually mentally inferior to their cloud-minding counterparts, but only because the zenite, in its raw form, emits a gas that slows mental development and makes people more emotional. Naturally, Kirk commissions a gas mask and tries to introduce it by force when Plasus won’t condone it. Cowboy Kirk breaks Vanna out of jail, gets double crossed by her in the caves, but gets the upper hand and has Plasus beamed into the caves too so that they can both see the effect of the Zenite fact. Of course, they get more emotional and things break out into a fight until, as usual, Spock saves the day at the last minute.

The plot mechanics feel kind of perfunctory, with Plasus in particular feeling too obstinate and Vanna feeling too apt to rebuff someone trying to help her, but I suppose it feeds into the episode’s themes that these people are entrenched in their classist attitudes and resentments and even cold hard facts can’t dissuade them. The episode shows that progress is possible, however, when after the fistfight has been resolved, Kirk and Plasus are still arguing with one another, and it’s Vanna, the “inferior Troglyte” who’s supposed to be less sophisticated who recognizes the futility of it.

But there’s also hope in the form of Droxine, who, even before the zenite gas’s effects are revealed, seems to have more sympathy for the Troglytes than her father and more aspirations for unity than Vanna. She also harbors a crush on Spock (which, for once, seems to be returned by the Vulcan) which evinces the sense that she is a little more worldly and a little more open-minded than her planetary counterparts. She’s relatively underserved here, but there’s the hint that with her as an influence, and the gas masks in force, there’s hope that a peace and new age might be brokered.

It’s a little too tidy for a conflict that’s been raging for generations, but that’s Star Trek, and to the episode’s credit, it’s not as though all the problems are magically solved by the end of the hour, there’s just reasonable hope that they might be. (Oh yeah, and the Enterprise gets the Zenite with just enough time to make it to the endangered planet. Hooray!) “The Cloud Minders” isn’t necessarily any better or more nuanced in its messaging or themes than similar episodes, but it does a better job at creating an engrossing environment and setup for those themes to unfold in, and that makes it more enjoyable, even as the preachiness wears thinner than the fabrics Theiss has his leading ladies don.

In this season, crew members used to be trapped, captured, imprisoned in multiple episodes in a row. Recently, epidemics and diseases dominate plots. There was a flu epidemic aboard, later there was a hippie with a contagious virus now it's a virus or something endangering plant life of an entire planet. (This episode still has some minor hostage capture scenes). Why do writers enjoy these recurring patterns so much?

Spock's monologue is a short cut to describe this unequal society from the off. It's also great though. His description sounds as if he was a communist philosopher. Marx, Engels or the like.

The floating city and the surface with the canyons look awesome. Other stages like the mines are mediocre. The story is a very classic Star Trek Story that is as relevant today as in 1969. Star Trek officer sees a segregated society and wants to help fix the planet. Simple story. Too simple? Too preaching? Overall a good story though. Execution is mediocre. I hate it when episodes turn into a WWE event. Still a solid 6/10 which is better than the average episode of season three.

Droxine's dress and hairdo are spectacular. It's only rivaled by JLo's famous green dress decades later.