[5.9/10] Suffice it to say, not my favorite episode of the show. Tom just acts like too much of a jerk to be redeemed in the last two minutes. I get the vulnerability he’s supposed to be showing after his grand business idea fails, but it still just rubs me the wrong way how he pulls the rug out from under Leslie like that. It’s Tom at his most selfish and annoying, and it’s not the sort of thing you can just sweep under the rug.
It’s not like he crosses any major moral event horizons or anything, and Leslie’s mild drowning of him is amusing enough as a bit of revenge (not to mention her great “butthead” line), but it’s just one of the more unpleasant stories the show has done, and it doesn’t really recover enough goodwill in the end to make up for it, even if Leslie’s confidence that Tom won’t fail again is encouraging and Tom’s video biography of Leslie is sweet.
The rest of the episode is solid enough. My favorite of the other stories is Ron and Ann’s. Ron derives such joy from fixing things, and him sharing that with Ann, who takes to it with her usual enthusiasm, creates a small but heartwarming bond between the two of them. Ann is particularly funny with how into it she gets.
My least favorite story is Chris and Jerry’s. Maybe I’m just supposed to find Chris feeling uncomfortable about seeing his daughter in the throes of passion funnier than I do, but it’s continued to be a dud for me. Rob Lowe’s still doing good work as the endlessly positive Chris, but I just don’t love where they’re going with it.
Somewhere in the middle is the Ben/Andy/April storyline. When Andy and April throw a party and don’t tell Ben, it brings out their different methods of conflict resolution. That’s a decent enough storyline, and each of them having to figure out a method of resolving their beefs that works for everyone, particularly Ben having to overcome his passive aggressive hints at things, is a solid notion. The comedy just doesn’t follow like it needs to an the resolution is a bit underwhelming.
Overall, it’s still P&R so there’s still a decent number of laughs and some good character moments, but the show can do better.
[8.5/10] I’ve said it before, and I imagine I’ll say it again -- Star Trek is a surprisingly luddite show for a series so steeped in the potential and possibility of the technology of the future. Every time the Enterprise crew runs into some sort of artificial intelligence (which is roughly once every five episodes) there’s endless meditations on how all the ones and zeroes in the world just cannot capture the soul of man, and how well-meaning A.I. invariably goes wrong.
But what sets “The Ultimate Computer” apart -- and what sets virtuoso Trek scribe D.C. Fontana’s scripts apart as a general rule -- is that it focuses on the effect the M5, a computer that can potentially guide an entire ship all by itself, has on the people who made it, who service it, and who will possibly be replaced by it. The episode is not simply founded on ideas of “robots = bad” (though there’s some of that too, certainly) -- it’s rooted in how everyone involved is affected by the prospect of computers rising to the level of humans in their capabilities, or perhaps even surpassing it.
That makes “The Ultimate Computer,” with the attendant fears of automation that are baked into its premise, still very relevant fifty years later. There were understandable insecurities at the time the episode was made that the rise of these new machines would put the old flesh and blood workers out of a job. (There’s a funny All in the Family episode about this same fear.) To some degree, those fears were warranted, with automation in factories and other parts of the manufacturing sector.
But here in 2017, the world is being Moneyball’d; big data is providing the next big breakthroughs; A.I.s are beating our champions in jeopardy and driving cars on their own and even raining death down from above with drone strikes. The same insecurities that fuel “The Ultimate Computer” are very much present today, and that fact makes the episode seem both prescient in how the concerns it identifies are still relevant, but also a bit overblown considering we’ve had these same conversations for fifty years and seen the world tick up for the better.
Still, apart from the fascinating (a word I hesitate to use given McCoy’s playfully meta-prohibition on Spock saying it) social commentary aspect of the episode, what really struck about “The Ultimate Computer” is its focus on character motivations.
That starts with Kirk. He’s the fulcrum for those automation anxieties, thinking out loud with McCoy about whether he’s resistant to the M5 because of concerns about its abilities to function or whether he’s instead sublimating his own fears about being replaced, whether he’s taking natural precautions on new technology or being unduly reluctant given all that the duotronic computer has allowed the Federation to do. It creates layers in Kirk’s reactions when things inevitably start out right and then go wrong, and Shatner actually plays those shades pretty well, whether it’s his self-questioning with Bones or his almost cheerful resignation to being called a dunsil and seemingly consigned to the scrap heap.
But it ends with Daystrom. To the extent “The Ultimate Computer” has one, he’s the villain of the episode (and as it’s neat to meet the namesake of The Daystrom Institute) but he’s not treated as a mustache-twirling baddie or even the usual incompetent Starfleet potentate. Instead, he’s depicted is a man with a dream, someone who had a breakthrough in his twenties and has been struggling in vain to match it the rest of his life.
He wants to deliver the benefits of space travel and exploration without the risks posed by sending people hurtling through space and confronting hostile creatures. That’s not crazy, given the number of scrapes the Enterprise alone has had to make it through. But he also treats M5 as his child, something accentuated by impressing his own n-grams into its circuits. Daystrom isn’t just hopeful and a true believer about the benefits that this technology will bring to humanity -- he is invested in it as his creation, as an offspring of sorts, excusing its behavior until it becomes too much for him to bear. He is a proud papa when the M5 is succeeding, mastering transportation, away team rosters, and even war games.
Of course, that spirals out into the usual Asimov-like business of taking the well-meaning directive -- “preserve yourself” -- and turning that into an overzealous license to kill and destroy starships it misperceives at threats. But what works about the way that Kirk disables the M5 after it proves dangerous, and what distinguishes it from all the other times that Kirk has felled some evil robot with an oversimplified paradox, is that it’s rooted in something ironically very human.
He relies on the parts of Daystrom’s ethical code molded into the M5 and disarms his mechanical foe not by using logic, but by presenting him with a moral quandary. There is irony and poetry in defeating a robot who seems inhuman in its disregard for the value of life (or at least a very generous definition of self-defense) by teaching it the horror of what it’s done and having it effective give its own life as penance. It’s sort of deeply thought, affecting take on this whizbang world of lasers and spacemen that makes Star Trek more than just a rollicking adventure in the cosmos.
Of course, the episode ends with Kirk reaffirming the value of human beings in the usual, trite manner, in this case talking about how he banked on the commodore’s compassion in a way a computer would not, and reiterating the “computers can’t feel, man” tack that the show’s taken before. But it also ends with the show finding its balance, as it often does, in Spock.
One of the most touching moments in the episode (and one that frankly feels a little out of character), is Spock reassuring Kirk that whatever his fascination with computers, he’ll always be loyal to and appreciative of his captain and the ship couldn’t run without him. He doesn’t say it in so many words, but in his own Spockian way, it offers Kirk exactly what he needs to know and hear right then. And in the episode’s final moments, Spock explains that even he, much more embracing of the possibilities of artificial intelligence and embracing of efficiency, does not think they’re better than humans.
That’s the cinch. As much as “The Ultimate Computer* goes Frankenstein’s Monster with the M5 here, there is an affirmation, that the balance between technology and human labor is an important one -- than man needs the tools to allow him to fly, as Kirk himself once put it, to improve his lives and create greater possibilities, but that even the most stoic and open-minded person on the Enterprise isn’t ready to trade in his friends for those tools. The fears of being replaced are natural, as are the worries that technology gone wrong could prove a catastrophe, but in suggesting some manner of symbiosis, the idea that technology and humanity can grow together (and I don’t mean you, Borg Collective), there is still the sense of optimism and measured potential that undergirds the everlasting ethos of Star Trek, and all that followed from it.
[5.4/10] “Hey viewers, did you know that the Vietnam War is bad? Or wait, maybe it’s a necessary evil? Actually...uh...we’re not sure, but we’re hoping you’ll be distracting by this evil witch lady slinking around enough that you won’t actually think about it too hard and notice that this episode is kind of incoherent.”
Look, I can’t start every damn Star Trek write-up with an acknowledgment that times have changed since 1967 and social and political norms will read very differently someone watching this show in 2017 that they did fifty years ago. But still, the obvious allegory for Vietnam, and (sigh) once again the gender politics of the episode, play much different now and it makes “A Private Little War” come off as very dated and even backward.
Let’s start with the problems inherent to the episode regardless of the times, though. It is a very loud and blunt episode about what it’s referencing. If it wasn’t already clear that the Federation and the Klingons giving the locals weapons and setting them against one another was an allegory for Vietnam, Kirk and Bones have a conversation specifically discussing it to make sure you get it. I try not to be all-in on subtlety -- there’s soom for directness in art -- but if the show were being anymore hamfisted about what it was commenting on it would have just been forty-four minutes of Gene Roddenbery reading an essay entitled “Vietnam: My Thoughts.”
The other big problem with that is that the episode was nigh-incoherent, or at least a little contradictory about the point it wanted the audience to take from this. On the one hand, there’s a “war is a terrible terrible thing” message to the episode that is pretty loud and clear, with Kirk wanting to do everything possible to instill the importance of peace. But then he’s just as gung ho that balance of power is the only way to preserve these things and totally willing to give his favored locals guns to fight the Klingons (rather than, I don’t know, taking away all the modern, or at least more modern, technology from the opposing locals?). The show seemed to be at odds with itself -- damning war on one side and claiming that arming our Vietnamese allies was a necessary evil on the other.
Those two thoughts aren’t incompatible, but it does seem like a weird peacenik-meets-”war is inevitable” perspective for the show to take. If anything, it makes me wonder if there wasn’t some network censorship or arm wrestling matches in the writers’ room that led to some degree of hedging. The one point the episode harps on to an embarrassing degree is how this sort of conflict spoils an otherwise idyllic paradise. Again, if you weren’t sure that Star Trek wanted you to understand that the escalating conflict between the locals was regrettable, Kirks facepalm-worthy line about needing “twenty snakes for the Garden of Eden” lays it on thicker than an offensive lineman at an all you can eat buffet.
Speaking of Kirk, this is a notably poor outing for William Shatner, which, man is saying something. The acting, if you can call it that, that he delivers when he’s supposed to be in shock from the unicorn yeti attack, is just third grade play-level bad. Speaking of which, I realize a certain amount of willing suspension of disbelief is necessary with this show, but the alien sasquatch looked more like a community college mascot than a fearsome presence, which really weakened any supposed tension in these scenes.
And then there’s Nona...
Let’s get this out there. Nancy Kovack does a great job as a guest actress here. She commands the screen, gives you different shades of what could easily be a flat character, and chews the scenery a bit but makes it work as an outsized character in a ham-fisted episode. She does everything that’s asked of her and does it well and, in principle, Nona should be one of the most redeeming aspect of this one.
But man, the femme fatale/manipulative witch routine is really uncomfortable. To some degree, this is just Star Trek tapping into the Lady MacBeth vibe it’s employed from time to time, but it feels off here, like Nona is written as little more than a conniving temptress who will do anything for power. She’s like a non-comedic Tammy 2 from Parks and Recreation.
Then there’s the scene where a bunch of locals try to rape her and it’s played for cheap drama, with her being killed in what plays like it’s supposed to seem karmic rather than something horrible. As I’ve said before, this show just isn’t equipped to handle anything approaching sexual assault in a fashion that won’t make a modern viewer cringe, and this is no exception.
The big shame about “A Private Little War” is that it’s a great premise for an episode with an execution that is botched pretty badly. The notion of a primitive (or at least developing) culture on a planet being stoked and armed by two warring factions is a compelling story -- Vietnam allegory or no. But this episode just can’t get out of its own way in hammering home messages about the real life conflict or doing weird slinky temptress stuff to actually tell that story. I spent a good chunk of the episode wondering when things were going to progress in the escalation between the locals or come to a head. Instead, it’s a lot of pontificating and weird witch doctor stuff.
It’s fine to have a different focus or want to make sure your message gets across, but it immediately makes “A Private Little War” feel like a product of its time and not a compelling episode in its own right. The premise is a solid one, and as problematic a character as Nona is, Kovacks’s performance is quite good, but there’s so much other didactic and contradictory dialogue and story beats weighing the rest of this one down that it never rises above serviceable. “War is bad, but you have to do it anyway” seems to the point, and that’s an odd thing for the optimistic Star Trek to suggest, even in the tumultuous sixties.
[9.2/10] One of the problems I often have with The Original Series is tone. It’s the sort of show that will play some confrontation for high drama, only to immediately jump to something campy. Or, as in “The Changeling,” it’ll present a tense, lethal standoff with a seemingly unbeatable foe, only to have Kirk close the episode by making some lame joke that everybody laughs at right before he presumably has to go notified the families of his dead crewmen. There’s nothing wrong with blending tones in principle, but it can be tricky, and the sort of whiplash it creates has hurt many a Star Trek episode.
But “I, Mudd”, by contrast, knows exactly what tone it wants to have -- absurd delight -- and it makes the most of that animating spirit. While I’m not always on the same wavelength of this show when it comes to comedy, the humorous bent of this episode worked on me like gangbusters. I have seen cleverer Star Trek episodes; I have seen deeper Star Trek episodes; I have seen more affecting Star Trek episodes. But I don't think I've ever seen a Star Trek episode made out of more pure, broadly comic delight than "I, Mudd."
That begins with the title character. I had mixed feelings about Ol’ Harcourt in “Mudd’s Women,” but I loved him here. Roger C. Carmel digs into the role with relish, playing Mudd as an oily, outsized, living cartoon character. The way he preens, boasts, takes theatrical offense to Kirk’s insults, just makes him this broad but ebullient presence throughout the proceedings. There’s little doubt that Star Trek is going for big comedy here, but Mudd is a character who can withstand it, even channel it, to wonderful comic ends. It’s a shame that (I think) we won’t see him again until The Animated Series.
But as much fun as Mudd is in and of himself, his best material comes from his interactions with the rest of the crew, Kirk in particular. When Mudd relays how he escaped from his predicament after Rigel 12, his increasing, flabbergasted annoyance at Kirk calling him out on his self-aggrandizing euphemism is superb. The dynamic between the captain and the huckster is particularly well-written here, and it livens each moment the two men share the screen. Beyond that, his exchange with Spock over “selling fake patents to your mother” nicely blends Mudd’s over-the-top expressivism and the consistently great dry comedy of the Vulcan officer.
In the midst of all these great laughs and the superb character-based comedy, “I, Mudd” manages to include a pretty great little sci-fi story to boot. It’s not an especially novel one for Star Trek. We’ve done ancient robots before; we’ve done not being able to leave a planet before; and we’ve done defeat via logical paradox before. Still, there’s enough wrinkles to this one, Mudd included, to make the adventure down on the planet interesting.
Part of that comes from the androids’ “kill ‘em with kindness approach.” Star Trek goes full Asimov here, with the robots realizing that if their duty is to serve man, then the logical endpoint of that duty is to make sure that their guests can never leave so that the androids can make them as happy as possible. What makes that tack interesting is that in contrast to some of the other threats the crew of The Enterprise has faced, these robots are trying to tempt our heroes rather than cow them.
Uhura is offered indelible beauty and immortality (a prospect they raise against nicely as part of the later feint). Unexpected lothario Chekov (seriously, as much as Kirk’s reputation with alien ladies proceeds him, it’s Chekov who always seems to be macking on someone) is waited on by a pair of beautiful ladies with oblique hints that he can do with them what he will. Bone is amazed at the medical lab the robots have, and Scotty feels the same about their engineering shop. It’s not quite the same as “The Menagerie” or, god help me, “The Apple,” but Trek explores the conflict between paradise and freedom with commitment.
Still, it’s just as committed to making the loony most of the predicament presented. While the interconnected artificial beings (paging The Borg) feels like an excuse for a typical “we have to destroy the controlling hub!” solution, it’s the shape that solution takes that really elevates the episode. While the “short circuit the android with contradictions” is a cliché at this point, the way the crew does it -- by acting weird -- is utterly delightful.
To be frank, it feels like a Futurama solution (which is, I fully admit, putting the horse before the cart). It is easy to imagine the Planet Express crew facing a group of logic-bound androids and deciding the best way to make them explode is to be goofy and crazy, just as the Enterprise crew did here. And the way Kirk and company pull it off is delightful.
The manic joy in the eyes of the gang as Chekov and Uhura dance while Bones and Scotty play imaginary instruments and Kirk conducts is just perfect. Chekov being told to stay still and instead doing a little pirouette is amazing. Spock telling identical androids that he hates one and loves the other because of their similarities, or offering beatnik poetry about logic being a tweeting bird or a wreath of awful-smelling flowers has particular comic force coming from him. And the group’s pantomime of the explosives and other imagination game that prove to be too much for the robots show a comedic verve and commitment to silliness that really paid dividends.
In the midst of all this silliness, “I, Mudd” offers a trite but still well-observed take on humanity -- that as much as these artificial creatures may want to study us, there is an inherent, illogical contradiction baked into the human condition, whether in the form of enjoying captivity while wanting to be free, or loving and hating at once, or being able to be enmeshed in real danger while embracing the irreverence of the imagination, that is too much for any purely logical creature to understand.
Part of that contradiction is being able to take a television show committed to drama and danger, albeit a fairly campy one, and spend an episode that blends that sort of adventure with broadly comic goofball antics. Mudd being surrounded by a trio of copies of his scolding wife (who, in a nod to the casting director and costumers, looks like an appropriately severe woman) is the right ridiculous note to go out on. Star Trek doesn’t always get this silly or this comedically exaggerated, but when it does, it’s an absolute joy.
[5.3/10] At some point it becomes churlish to complain about Star Trek’s pacing. The show is what it is, and while the rhythms of a sixties sci-fi show on network television may not conform the breakneck pace of more and more genre shows of today, to some degree, you have to simply take the show as it is.
The other side of the coin is that “Catspaw” is pretty much the nadir of an episode where about 10-15 minutes worth of incident is stretched out to an entire hour. There is a very specific rubric to the episode and it goes as follows. Our heroes come across something weird. They stop and look puzzled about it for a little while. They consult among one another to see if anyone knows what the weird thing is. And then after agreeing that they’re not sure, they wander on to the next weird thing.
Now don’t get me wrong. Part of the Star Trek DNA is the gang encountering some unusual phenomena and having the senior staff debate and theorize what’s happening. But when Kirk and company are strolling through a would-be haunted house, and when that approach is repeated over and over again, it gets tedious very quickly.
There’s also some odd psychology at play that makes “Catspaw” harder to warm to. For one thing, it’s uncomfortable to hear Spock philosophizing with Kirk about the “racial memory,” and the theory that there are certain universal symbols of fear buried in the subconscious of different species throughout the universe is a pretty odd one, even by Star Trek standards. It’s one of those strange attempts to explain an uncommon situation, steeped in 60s-isms, that doesn’t read quite right to a modern viewer.
That said, one of the few things that boosts the episode is the way that it embraces the mystery of its antagonists rather than overexplaining who they are or where they come from or how their powers work. While one could ascribe that to laziness, it creates an air of intrigue about them beyond the fact that they’re yet another set of god-like beings our heroes run across in their travels.
We know enough about Sylvia and Korob as we need to know, and the episode is nicely stingy with the details. They’re trying to study the human mind, which they view as inferior. They’re testing the crew of the enterprise, under the auspices of some unknown elder ones. And they’re not used to feeling things or experiencing things in this way.
That last notion provides the most interesting material in the episode. Sylvia and Kirk’s romantic scene together is the steamiest stuff The Original Series has been able to muster thus far, with Shatner and guest star Antoinette Bower conveying real heat between the pair despite it being part of a deception from Kirk. Despite his usual affections for anything in a skirt, Kirk normally just makes googly eyes at the babe of the week, or has a movie star kiss with his co-star. But here, the more flourished tactile exchanges between the pair sell the way that Kirk is playing on Sylvia being new to such experiences and trying to overwhelm her.
That idea is the core of this episode, and while the execution is lacking, like many TOS episodes, there’s a compelling hook to it at least. The notion of a species for whom such sensations are foreign, even forbidden, to take on human form for the purpose of examining a lesser species only to find that the hedonistic and emotional experiences of that form are too much to give up is an interesting one. By the same token, the conflict between Korob, who wants to fulfill their duty and move on, and Sylvia, who has clearly gone native, provides some sparks for the episode as well.
It also speaks to the odd strain of seeming Macbeth homages in the episode. Maybe it’s just the three witches who initially warn Kirk (who were legitimately creepy and a little unnerving with their disfigure makeup). But there was something about Sylvia imploring Korob to act, and the entire castle setting that seemed to be trying to evoke Shakespeare (and one of his most gruesome plays) as much as it was shooting for a generic haunted house feel.
Many of the effects and ideas that played up to that haunted house vibe came of pretty campy to the modern eye. Again, I’m loathe to complain about the special effects from a show made on a TV budget five decades ago, but it’s hard not to laugh at a fluffy cat running around a miniature set being the big threat at the end of the episode. By the same token, the voodoo tricks the antagonists perform on the Enterprise, heating it or trapping it by use of a cheap-looking starship keychain, couldn’t help but provoke some chuckles.
Even that last stretch of the episode, where Kirk and Spock are desperately trying to escape, feels pretty perfunctory. We’ve done Bones and Sulu being brainwashed and turned against their crewmates before. We’ve done the half-speed scuffle where Spock and Kirk use their Federation Kung Fu before. We’ve done the “Kirk destroys the power source and everything goes back to normal” bit before.
With all of that well-worn territory brought up again, “Catspaw” comes off like an episode with one good idea that it can’t quite stretch out to fill the full runtime, and so the powers that be chose to have the good guys wander around looking befuddled to fill time, and tacked on the standard TOS climax to the end of it. There’s something undeniably compelling about the idea of creatures who do not know the feeling of attraction or betrayal or other such “unevolved” sensations finding themselves enraptured by the opportunity to try it out, but it’s surrounded with a bunch of stalling for time and generic Trek stuff, with a little psychological mumbo jumbo to boot. There’s something spooky enough about “Catspaw” at times, but on the whole, it’s less scary than it is boring, which makes it a tough watch during anything other than the electric moments when Sylvia is plotting, feeling, or cajoling her captives and comrades, like Lady Macbeth might.
[8.6/10] It’s amazing what a difference one actor can make in an episode of Star Trek. Matt Decker is a brief but potent shot in the arm for “The Doomsday Machine,” one whose appearance in the first act immediately sells everything else he does that helps spur the plot for the rest of the episode.
Much of that owes to the actor, William Windom, who breathes life into decker. The scene where Kirk and company rouse him, and relays the terrible events that befell him and his crew is arresting from the word go. The disorientation, the distress, the regret in his voice, quickly tell the audience how harrowing what Decker experienced was, without needing to see the scope of the battle. It sells the terror of “that thing” out there better than all the dry “but there used to be three planets in this system” remarks from stoic crewmen and shots of rubble ever could.
It also sells the sense of survivor’s guilt that motivates Decker. It’s hard to make a character both terribly misguided – to the point that he makes foolish decisions that put hundreds of other lives at risk – but also sympathetic. “The Doomsday Machine” pulls that trick off by showing Decker as clearly rattled and a little unhinged, throwing the weight of his rank around and sending the crew on dumb maneuvers, but by having the reason for that be that he’s haunted by the mistakes he made that got his entire crew killed.
That fact clearly weighs on Decker at every moment. Windom plays his single-minded obsession – to either avenge his fallen crewmates or assuage his guilt by joining them – with just the right combination of insanity and capability. He’s not thinking clearly, and he’s disturbed, but he knows enough to take command and order sweeps and attacks. It creates a magnetic, unpredictable presence at the center of the episode that spurs more than a little of “Doomsday Machine”’s action, both inside and outside the Enterprise.
It also pays dividends for the main cast. For one thing, it helps Kirk, who often works best as a side dish rather than a main course. He’s definitely at his peak here – encouraging of his subordinates, but particularly with Scotty, maintaining that wry edge that makes him more than just another stuffed shirt. Too many of his sarcastic asides or too much of his too-cool-for-school wit and he starts to come off as smug and self-satisfied, but when those moments are sprinkled in like this, it presents Kirk as someone who tries to take the edge off of the severity of the situation everyone’s facing with humor rather than someone who doesn’t take those situations seriously.
It also gives him the chance to provide a nice counterpoint to Decker. Kirk is willing to sacrifice himself to save the galaxy as well, but he’s unwilling to endanger his whole crew to do so when it’s unnecessary. The use of the jerry-rigged U.S.S. Constellation to blow up the Doomsday device lacks a bit of intrigue given that, once you realize how far into the episode we are, it’s pretty much a fait accompli that it will work.
Still, the countdown to beam Kirk off of the ship before it explodes actually caught my attention despite the fact that Kirk obviously doesn’t die here. Credit where it’s due, much of that belongs to Shatner, who plays Kirk as remaining stoic with just enough concern in his voice to sell the moment when telling his crewmen to beam him over. Much of it is the score and the editing, which cuts nicely between the various panic points of the effort, but Shatner does his part and it’s worth lauding.
It is also, as usual, worth lauding Leonard Nimoy and Spock. For all the epic white whale-chasing drama going on with the titular Doomsday Machine outside the ships, one of the most compelling parts of the episode is the struggle for command within the Enterprise. Episode writer Norman Spinrad writes Spock particularly well as someone who is by the book, but willing to use every page of that book against Decker when he thinks it’s putting the crew at risk.
Nimoy, understated as usual, communicates Spock’s conflicting desires to follow the regulations he agreed to by becoming a Starfleet officer, and also working within those regulations and that system to protect his crew and his ship. One of the best scenes in the hot-tempered Bones imploring his frenemy Spock to “do something” and Spock grinning and bearing it (so to speak). A by-the-book guy like Spock is unwilling to break the rules, but also is looking out for the best interests of The Enterprise, and that creates both an interesting internal conflict for him and an interesting tet-a-tet between him and Decker for much of the episode. (Decker, meanwhile, continues the proud Star Trek tradition of every officer above the rank of captain being evil, insane, incompetent, or all three.)
But that power struggle is still in service of how to address the giant, Eye of Sauron-containing cornucopia that is attacking the two Federation ships and chewing through planets. It may simple stem from the fact that this is one of those episode where the “remastering” of the old footage is most evident, but “Doomsday Machine” has more of an epic, even cinematic feel than many episodes of The Original Series. The shots of the Enterprise and the Constellation firing on the machine, or careening into its fiery maw, offer the sort of thrilling space battle that are understandably few and far between in the Star Trek of the sixties.
The machine itself provides a great deal of the tension, even apart from the good character work being done all around. This massive, destructive device, that cannot be reasoned with, that prevents warning, and that is difficult to escape presents a real challenge to our heroes that mandates some creative thinking and desperation maneuvers. Sure, the thematic elements are laid on a little thick – “Can you tell we’re offering a cautionary tale about nuclear weapons?! Can ya!?” – but the titular machine serves its narrative purposes as well or better as it serves its thematic one.
That machine is the object of Decker’s Ahab-like fixation in this Moby Dick-esque tale. “The Doomsday Machine” is an episode centered around individuals who are devoted to their crew, and wondering which rules they can break, what principles are inviolable, and what parts of themselves they’re willing to sacrifice in order to save their ships or avenge their people. That’s the sort of character and narrative stakes that produces many of Star Trek’s best episodes, and “The Doomsday Machine” is no exception.
[7.1/10] I’ve talked about this before in the context of Star Trek, but one of the things that stands out to me watching this show is how many tropes it solidified, if not invented. My lens for original recipe Star Trek is often its heavily-influenced comedic successor Futurama, and everything from “paradox absorbing crumple zones” to stentorian-voiced robots to probes colliding with alien phenomena leave me mildly chucking and the problems and solutions in “The Changeling.”
And that’s completely unfair. Sure, there’s something kind of ridiculous about Kirk convincing a robot to blow up just based on the fact that it cannot resolve a case of mistaken identity, but there’s also something pure and goofily sci-fi about that too. To the modern eye, it’s kind of a silly tactic, given how much that sort of thing has been ingrained in the popular culture, but it is also, true to form, a Star Trek solution that relies on the wits of the captain and not just his fits.
It doesn’t help that Nomad is pretty clearly a redecorated water heater on a fishing line. But there too, it’s wholly unfair to blame a television show from the 1960s for not having its effect up to snuff. The flashing, accusatory milk canister isn’t necessarily as scary as it’s intended to be, despite the way it blasts and vaporizes the various members of the crew, but it proves the point of a piece of dangerous and advanced technology that cannot be controlled, only directed.
The premise of that is, at least, fairly interesting. Even in a show featuring god-like beings on a near-weekly basis, the notion of two probes colliding, combining, and creating a new, collective mission rings mildly implausible, but it’s still a neat enough concept. I like the fact that Nomad’s goal -- to seek out new life, and the alien probe’s goal -- to sterilizes the samples it collects, get mishmashed in the resulting probe’s settled on aim to seek out new life and if it is not perfect, destroy it. There’s some “just go with it” logic necessary for that, but hey, I’m willing to hop on board.
Nomad also presents the latest being with practically-supernatural powers trying to understand humanity on the show. Star Trek’s hit these notes several times before, but there’s still something at least a little compelling about Nomad being drawn to Uhura’s singing, and something eminently memeable about it shouting out “non-sequitor!” or “insufficient data!” to many responses it gets from the befuddled humans it interacts with. (Nomad’s line about Spock being a logically ordered unit is a nice touch to that effect too.)
And in that vein, the episode plays with the idea that if Kirk could keep up the charade of being the “James Roy Kirk” who invented Nomad, he might actually be able to use it for good. The fact that Nomad kills Scotty when he tries to defend Uhura (giving us our first “He’s dead, Jim” if I’m not mistaken) is obviated by the fact that when scolded by Kirk, Nomad is also able to bring him back from the dead. There is a power to Nomad, and there’s the possibility that Kirk could harness it for unmitigated good.
(Side rant: the last scene seems to be toying around with these ideas in a comedic guise. That’s all well and good, and I’ll admit, there’s something quite amusing about Kirk joking about how Nomad though of him as its mother, giving a yente-ish “My son, the doctor” declaration, and saying “it gets you right here.” But there’s also something really word about him being that blase and jocular after that thing killed half a dozen of his men. I suppose when you lose as many redshirts as Kirk does on a weekly basis, you just get used to it.)
Of course, if Nomad were able to be cowed and use as an instrument of good, it would drastically change the show, and so everything must go back to the status quo. The upshot is that Nomad proves to be too dangerous to be kept around. Its robotic and myopic focus on perfection means it does not recognize the value of other sentient, “disordered” beings and kill, vaporizes, or mind-wipes them with reckless abandon.
There’s some interesting ideas at play there -- sense that rigidity or the quest for perfection at all costs can lead to some terrible results. (And I might be reaching with this, but it wouldn’t be the first time that Star Trek made some oblique references to Nazism.) There’s also the strange pitiableness of Nomad simply trying to fulfill its mission, and existing as enough of a sentient being itself for Spock to perform a mind-meld, but not being able to understand why others would be so upset at it taking lives. It is that rigidity, that quest for perfection, that ultimately proves to be Nomad’s downfall, which fits into the types of irony Star Trek likes to bake into its episodes.
Still, there’s a fair amount of repetition and padding on the way to solving the mystery. It becomes clear that Nomad is a threat and while Kirk seems content to pacify the item when trying to come up with a plan, it takes too many cycles of “it just killed a dude” for him to actually try to get rid of it. And again, the solution is perfectly legitimate, but comes off a little hokey to a viewer coming to the now-stereotypical robo-character fifty years later.
Still, even if these things have become tropes -- the robot that cannot divert from its mission, the mistaken identification of its creator, the A.I.-defeating paradox -- those tropes had to start somewhere, and they had to be passed down from somewhere. “The Changeling” isn't my favorite episode of Star Trek, and I wouldn’t call it the show’s cleverest or most entertaining installment, but there is something fascinating, as Spock might put it, about seeing those tropes deployed so earnestly and unironically. In an era where sci-fi in particular is constantly eating its own tail and trying to subvert expectations, seeing it all played straight has an attraction and uniqueness all its own.
[8.5/10] One of the things that I love about Star Trek as a franchise is that across so many different series, it offers episodes that combine an interesting moral or political though experiment with adventure and creative problem solving. “Taste of Armageddon” is not the first episode of TOS to follow this tack, but it’s one of the best embodiments of this recurring blueprint throughout the Trek universe.
The thematic element of the episode (I wouldn’t dare call it subtext given Kirk’s speech at the end) is the old chestnut about whether there can ever be a truly “civil” war. In an attempt to open diplomatic relations between the Federation and the Eminians, Kirk and company discovery that this planet has devised a bizarre form of warfare with another planet in the system. They fight their battles with computers, rather than bombs, essentially playing a gigantic game of Battleship, with the catch being that any people who are in the “blast radius” of the map on the computer screen are required by their own government to go to a disintegration chamber and become a “casualty” of the strike (though nobody seems to need to be coerced, with all seemingly viewing it as a duty). That way, the Eminians and their enemies can continue this war that they’ve been having for 500 years, without the property damage or other harm to their infrastructure and way of life.
It’s a classic sci-fi premise, one that takes a futuristic version of a current day practice and tries to expose the absurdity or unexamined foundation of the real life practice in the process. The episode succeeds with it on two fronts. The first is the most basic – it makes the delivery of this information interesting, which could be difficult given the exposition necessary. By dropping our heroes into the Eminian control room (replete with the Star Trek Babe of the Week, because of course), and not explaining anything when this “battle” is going on, the show allows the audience to share the confusion of the members of Starfleet down on the planet. It creates a sense of intrigue about what exactly is going on here that makes you want to stick around to find out.
But it also gives the Eminians, as Spock notes, a strange sort of logic to their actions. It may seem bizarre to us to fight what amounts to a video game war where people willingly walk to their deaths when their on-screen equivalents have been felled, but these people have a point. There’s a great deal of talk in the episode about war being inevitable, about conflict being inevitable, and that this was devised as a way for the Emenians and their enemies to face this reality, while allowing their civilizations to continue, their buildings to stand, their crops to grow. They may get lectured about the folly of their way of life, but “Taste of Armageddon” creates a legitimate rationale for the Emenians as a whole and Anan-7 in particular. It is, as Mike Ehrmantraut might say, a half-measure, but one that has allowed the Emenians to stomach war and avoid greater devastation in the process.
That, however, is presented as the problem. There’s a very interesting notion in “Armageddon” that it is the very bloodlessness, the clean and neat qualities of this endless battle between planets, that has allowed the war to continue. The episode’s biggest flaw is the time it devotes to Kirk delivering this message from on high and condescending to the Emenians with both haughtiness and hammy acting. Nevertheless, it’s an interesting idea – that by making war tolerable, so that the devastation that comes with it is muted and organized, you also make it endless, something that never gets bad enough to where peace becomes a preferable alternative. Deep down, “Armageddon” is an episode about incentives, a might even work as a great illustration of the concept of moral hazard. But what gives it force is the sense that there’s merits to both sides of the point.
Even throwing out the interesting thematic side of the episode though, “Armageddon” simply offers a great story. Kirk, Spock, and a coterie of redshirts running around an alien world, trying to regain their weapons and stop the madness makes for some classic Star Trek sneaking around and saving the day. The concept of the “disintegration chambers” (hello Futurama’s suicide booths!) is a chilling one, and seeing Kirk and Spock disrupt these procedures and secure the tools necessary to contact the Enterprise and escape are a thrill. In particular, the scene where Spock uses his telepathic abilities to persuade the guard behind the door to open up is some straight up Jedi business, and the way the episode cuts back and forth between Spock running his fingers along the door and the guard registers a note of mild distress is masterful.
It also gives us a chance to see some unexpected mettle from Scotty as temporary commander of the Enterprise. The way he immediately sniffs out the Emenians’ deception about changing Kirk’s voice, responds at the ready to “General Order 24,” and stands up Ambassador Fox about not lowering the shields despite the implied threat of court martial shows that Scotty may not just be an engineering whiz, but a dependable leader as well. Ambassador Fox is the latest in a long line of jerkish, seemingly callous Starfleet muckity-mucks, and seeing his foolhardiness punished, but then allowing him to be a vital part of the peace process, is a nice way to use that archetype.
At its best, Star Trek finds the balance between its high-minded thought experiment side and its on the ground action and adventure side. “Armageddon” fits the bill. Whether it’s Anan 7 making the case of losing a few million lives to save a hundred million (and giving a good, layered performance in the process), or Spock bursting in to save Kirk only to find that he’s already saved himself, or Scotty standing up to authority, Armageddon has both the heady social commentary that the series became famous for, and the rough and tumble fun that made it more than a lecture on civilization. You need both sides, and when they work in sync, the result is something great.
Now, this is classic Star Trek! Despite a few problems, this is a delight to watch from start to finish and is Discovery's first foray into the tried-and-tested 'bottle show'. These episodes often end up being my favourites, we are given a situation and really get to dive into it. They often reveal a lot about our characters and usually have fun doing it. Great examples of this include 'Civil Defense' (DS9), 'Disaster' (TNG), 'Explorers' (DS9) and of course the other classic Trek time-loop show, 'Cause and Effect' (TNG).
If I had any doubts about Rainn Wilson's portrayal of Harry Mudd, this episode easily washed them away. He's a lot of fun and full of energy, as well as managing to come off as a fairly complex person. It was interesting the way he was quite cruel to the crew of the Discovery, and then shrivels up at the sight of Stella and her father. I think there was a missed opportunity to make her a bit more like the shrew seen in The Original Series, but it's important to remember that what we saw there was Mudd's own vision of her rather than the actual person. The various deaths were quite mean spirited, despite being somewhat offset due to the fact that they weren't permanent A couple were also pretty funny, although I never quite got the impression that those little purple balls caused an "agonising" death.
Mostly, I think I enjoyed that this episode showed us the characters in more relaxed and natural states. Captain Lorca's apathy at finding a space whale is quite funny and even endearing, as he tells his crew to just get on with it (loved that he's finally sitting in the chair, too). Tilly continues to just delight me, and drunk Tilly is even better. It seems to me that she's hiding a lot of confidence under a socially awkward front. Stamets possibly emerged as the best part for me, this new happy version of him is charming and fun to spend time with (again, PLEASE let us get back to that mirror image thing from a couple of episodes ago).
The Burnham/Tyler pairing is maybe not my favourite thing. I don't feel a huge amount of chemistry between them, but then again Michael's standoffish nature means that she doesn't really have chemistry with anybody. I think it's more down to me not really clicking with the character of Tyler, as I talked about in my review for the previous episode. He feels like he's fit in too easily and his personality is a bare minimum.
Where the episode could have done a slightly better job is with the various time loop escapades. The movement through them became a bit too quick, and we are supposed to understand that Stamets explains things to Burnham who explains things to Tyler who explains things to Lorca, etc. every time, and everyone just accepts what they're being told and gets to action? That took me out of things a bit, and I would have been perfectly happy to have longer scenes that established things better. It's also hard to ignore the fact that the episode should have been all from Stamet's point-of-view, as he's the one dealing with it all.
Overall though, damn this was fantastic. The use of the introductory log and mostly self-contained nature of the episode made this feel so much like it was a part of the franchise I love. Mostly, though, it let us get a grip on these new characters and let them just get on with things as opposed to being dragged along by plot mechanics.
[7.7/10] Plenty of great stuff in this one. Anytime Leslie has a moral dilemma, particularly one as low stakes as whether to fib about whether the possum she caught is the possum, it makes for a good episode. Leslie’s struggle with whether to take the credit for nabbing “Fairway Frank” and pick up a chit from the mayor’s office in the process, or to be honest that she’s not sure if it’s really him and save a potentially innocent possum is a good one. It has great talking head segments (like the one about Leslie asking herself questions) and other fun stuff like her frantic insistence that April help.
April’s help is a nice deal too. She worries about the fact that Andy caught the possum, because Shawna Malway-Tweep suggests it might win him Anne back. Andy’s boasting and preening in front of “the press” and April’s quiet frustration makes for a nice contrast. And her and Leslie freaking out and hiding and chasing when the possum gets loose in Anne’s house makes for some great comic setpieces. (The same goes for Tom fleeing in a panic as soon as he sees the possum.)
The B-story is a good one too. Mark helping Ron get his woodshop up to code, despite Ron’s insistence that the city code shouldn’t apply to him and his libertarian leanings is another great instance of Ron bending his own principles a little bit because someone is being kind to him. His smile after running the book with the city code in it through a saw and the perturbed noise he makes when he has to then go back and try to read it are both great. It’s a nice Mark-Ron story, which we don’t get much of. (Sidenote: I didn’t expect to have this reaction on rewatch, but I’ve actually really enjoyed Mark as the straight man this season. Still love what happens next, but I wish we’d gotten to maintain at least a little of that.)
Overall, it’s a very funny episode that has great character moments for Leslie, Ron, and April, which makes it a-okay in my book.
8.7/10. Archer is back! You knew it!
And what a return to form. Maybe after a year of doing Archer Vice, and a turn at going official with the CIA, a L.A. detective agency is the right move to refresh the show a bit. This was pretty classic stuff, with Archer, Lana, and Ray having misadventures in the field with their usual witty banter ("why didn't you tell us you were bleeding like a Russian princess?"), Mallory being a big presence with her acerbic wit (including her delightful comment that the ability to buy liquor in grocery store is "the only thing about L.A. that doesn't make [her] want to vomit" and her hilarious take downs when Cyril tries to throw his weight around), Cyril playing up his mostly ceremonial role as head of the agency ("the writing is literally on the wall), Krieger throwing together his usually goodie bags (hush puppies), and Pam and Cheryl enjoying their usual bit of amusing sidekickery.
It's only one episode, but this was a return to form, with enough self-referential humor to make you feel like the show remembers where it came from, but not so much that it feels indulgent. Plus the fact that they'd been duped by a faux-movie star is a classic Archer twist. The story is simple enough, and the animation is better than ever (though I could do without those weird silhouette interstitial cards) but what really sells this show is the crackerjack dialogue that manages to be funny, cutting, and clever, and "The Figgis Agency" had that in spades. Very glad to have the show back.
Oh no! The science is threatening to science! We'll have to open a science hole, lure the bad guy in, and defeat her with the science gun! Wait, the science gun isn't working the way it's supposed to! Time to turn the science car into a science bomb and save the day!
I'll admit that's an unfair bit of fun on my part. Pretty much any end-of-season fireworks can be reduced to something along those lines. But let's be honest here, the whole zero matter storyline was something of a dud, no pun intended. The "mystery" part of the plot lost its intrigue very quickly, and the "power of the goop compels you" part of it lost its juice pretty quickly as well. That final showdown, where the blasted the goop out of Whitney Frost, and then sealed it away for good with nothing more than some pluck and hover car felt anticlimactic after the prior hoopla out in the desert, but it's really just the icing on a pretty underwhelming cake.
It's a shame, because there's the seed of a good idea thematically amid the onslaught of plot contrivances and shallow technobabble. The new villain and the new ally, both of whom become consumed by the zero matter have a connection that resonates despite the clunkiness of the story itself. Both are smart, capable individuals who are disregarded by 1950s society because of the color of their skin or a pair of X-chromosomes, who respond to their predicaments in very different ways.
But the finale of Agent Carter doesn't feel like the culmination of that. It barely feels like the culmination of the zero matter issues on a basic plot level. After all the trouble that Whitney Frost has caused, all the difficulty that the team has had fighting her and getting the upper hand on her and fixing the problems she's caused, all they have to do is lure her to a secluded area and out-science her. That feels unsatisfying because, despite the difficulty in closing the rift and stealing Frost's plans, the actual scheme feels too easy relative to the type of difficulties both Frost and zero matter have posed this season.
Despite that, at the end of the day, there's something that feels appropriate about the big arc of the season closing in a somewhat perfunctory manner, because it's never really been the thing that kept this show going. It's hard to call a show with an overarching plot and an action/adventure vibe a "hangout" show, but what drives Agent Carter and makes it a cut above its competitors are the stellar character dynamics between the best personalities on the show.
To that end, it feels right that the best parts of the finale were not the semi-convenient scheme to defeat the bad guy once and for all, but rather the budget excesses of a season (likely series) finale being able to get all of the players into one room and bounce them off of each other. I don't love all of them, but Agent Carter has done an impressive job at giving even minor characters like Rose and Samberly enough of a sketched out personality that the audience knows enough about everyone on screen, and they're all distinguishable from one another, to where we care about them.
I didn't know that I wanted Ken Marino and Dominic Cooper to rib each other as a pair of 50s bigwigs, but seeing Joseph Manfredi and Howard Stark play off of one another in a brief moment at brunch was nothing but charm and comedy. Cooper injected quite a bit of verve to the finale in fact, whether he was flirting with Rose (to Samberly's annoyance), bantering with Jarvis, trying to claim the naming rights for the rift opener, or having Peggy blow his bluster back in his face.
But Stark's presence is an indicator of what makes the show worth watching--and it's not the clumsily-structured major plot machinery--it's the fun, jaunty tone, with the emotional ballast of strong character moments that Agent Carter can pull off better than any MCU property this side of Guardians of the Galaxy.
To wit, one of the funniest scenes in "Hollywood Ending" is Jarvis's despondent tone when he learns that Peggy has opted to take a taxi rather than have him drive her to her destination, and his correspondingly chipper shift in demeanor once she gives in and let's him hang out with a hero he clearly loves and idolizes for a little while longer. But it's proceeded by a moment shared between Peggy and the endearing Ana Jarvis, who is an unexpected pillar of strength on the show that assuages Peggy's palpable guilt and thanks her for protecting Mrs. Jarvis's husband.
It's just one of several superlative bits from Atwell as Carter in the episode, who uses subtle facial expressions to convey her character's inner thoughts and can shift in tone perfectly with the moment. She hits the right notes of bemusement and confidence when she tells Thompson that she won't turn him in because she thinks he's a good man; she strikes the right balance of concern and reassurance when she asks Jarvis how Ana is doing and tells him he may be the strongest of any of them, and she finds the right place between quiet respect and well-deserved combativeness for Stark's various bon mots. With Atwell at the lead and James D'Arcy close behind, Agent Carter can depend on superb performances from its principals, and can even bust out ringers like Howard Stark, Joseph Manfredi (whose scene where he unwittingly smokes out a confession from one of his lieutenants was also a comedy highlight), Ana Jarvis, an unexpectedly amusing Jack Thompson and a sadly absent Dottie Underwood.
Which is why it's so frustrating that on top of the uninspiring finish to the zero matter storyline, the season devolves back into a tedious love triangle. As little chemistry as Wilkes and Peggy have had beyond one good kiss, their "the timing just wasn't right" scene felt odd and inert. Maybe if we'd felt their attraction more, it would have had more meaning, but even with how poorly the relationship was built up, that scene seemed like an odd, convenient way to effectively close it off.
And Sousa, or as my wife refers to him, "Wet Rag #2," was no improvement. The show has been trying to sell that relationship all season, and it's no more successful here in a labored attempt at a Tracy/Hepburn vibe than it's been before. Sousa is a bland lump, regardless of his plucky hero routine, and while it makes sense at a basic level that Peggy would respect Sousa for his principles and share some mutual admiration after all they'd been through, the romantic sparks between them just aren't there, and it leaves the big kiss that's supposed to send the season, and possibly the series, out on a high note, feel more like a sour one.
I've already written about how one of this show's strengths in its first season is that it didn't feel the need to delve into trope-y love interests for its lead. In the final tally, what makes Agent Carter an interesting engaging show isn't its season-long arcs, or false-start attempts at romance. It's Peggy Carter, a unique, complicated, multi-faceted character worth investing in, who has a clear personality and perspective that makes her the best part of every adventure she embarks on and every exchange with Jarvis or Stark or this week's villain she has. The tone of the show and the great supporting task help make that possible, but cliched plot-related hoopla, and a bargain basement love triangle with a pair of dull suitors drag down one of the brightest lights in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Agent Carter, and Peggy Carter, deserve better.
