Forest of Illusions

“I am Nazgaar of the Spirit World…”

Oh goodie, more violence against women. Just another Wednesday then?

At least there’s a vaguely defensible reason for it this time, given that “Wolf in the Fold” borrows its basic structure from slasher movies, which is somewhat befitting the third of three Star Trek episodes penned by Psycho author Robert Bloch. Indeed, this story is once again a straightforward whole plot lift, this time of Bloch’s own famous short story “Yours Truly, Jack The Ripper”, which posited the titular ripper had somehow managed to attain immortality through his crimes. This episode changes him to an ageless non-corporeal life-form who feeds on fear and death, but the basic premise and themes remain the same. “Wolf in the Fold” thus becomes a very competent and professional execution of this kind of horror story, as one would expect with a writer of Bloch’s calbre behind it. That said, I have to twist my own knife a bit here: Merely being in the slasher genre (or proto-slasher, depending on whether or not one wishes to name Psycho the ur example of its kind) does not, of course, excuse the violence towards women. This one’s better then Bloch’s previous effort in this regard, but really not by a whole lot and he doesn’t make a good case for himself when he opens in an exotic dance parlour clearly designed to cater to straight men, starts picking off women and then gives Spock dialog about how Redjack naturally preys on women because they’re more predisposed to extreme fear and terror and are thus more vulnerable then men.

There’s also the somewhat troubling matter that Star Trek has already shown itself to be bigger than the slasher genre, and in the Gene Roddenberry era no less. The very first episode to air, “The Man Trap”, was a complete rejection of this kind of story: Janice Rand and Sulu are shot like nameless slaughter victims, but their big scene involves them eating lunch and talking about plants. Salt Vampire is shot like a slasher villain, but is really a starving animal. Honestly, going from “The Man Trap” to “Wolf in the Fold” is kind of a step back for the show, especially given the former’s strength was in making all of its characters feel like likeable, complete people while the latter treats women as helpless passive objects. Sadly though, we should probably expect that given Star Trek‘s aggravating lack of internal consistency and general self-awareness. That all said though, I don’t want to completely go “Who Mourns for Adonais?” on Bloch, mostly because I really, really don’t have the energy, but also because Bloch, despite his failings, and he does have several, remains one of the good guys. Anybody who gave us voodoo and alchemy in “Catspaw” clearly has hidden depths and is someone worth taking the time to engage with, and “Wolf in the Fold” is a similarly intriguing magickal door if one looks at it a certain way.

The obvious thing to talk about would be Redjack: An ancient being of pure evil who has existed since the dawn of time and thrives on fear, terror and death.…

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The beginning of a proud tradition,

“The Doomsday Machine” is one of the episodes I most fondly remember from the Original Series. For me it was always a highlight of the second season: I enjoyed the tense, thriller-like pacing as the crew races against time to prevent the planet killer from destroying everything, I thought splitting the main cast up was a great way to play up the drama of the situation (though it’s been done before this season, I think it might be the most effective here) and I loved the fact Kirk, Scotty and the away team get the Constellation up and running by themselves and operate it all on their own. I also loved the design and concept of the planet killer itself, a big, scary automaton of destruction that the crew had to out-think and outmaneuver and I thought Commodore Decker’s tragic fall from grace was a particularly well-executed and memorable character moment. Naturally, it would seem few people agree with me as this seems to be one of the more contentious episodes of the year.

James Doohan seems to have considered this his favourite episode of the Original Series and said so at conventions on a number of occasions. Apparently, however, he was frequently met with eye-rolls and groans from the audience whenever he said so. D.C. Fontana as well has been quoted as saying this is the weakest episode of the series and her least favourite. I must say I’m at something at a loss to explain why: I always thought this episode was both a critical and fan favourite, and I really can’t see how Fontana can claim “The Doomsday Machine” is in any way worse than, say, “The Omega Glory” or indeed her own “Friday’s Child” and that’s just from this season alone. Expand your lens to the years that bookended season two and you’ve got “The Enemy Within”, “Mudd’s Women” and “Space Seed” to pick three particularly egregious examples of episodes that weigh down the first season considerably, not to mention, well, pretty much all of season three. Even the episode’s own cast isn’t completely on the same page: While the regulars are as fantastic as always (special notice being paid to William Shatner, James Doohan and Leonard Nimoy, who all deliver compellingly intense and colourful performances), William Windom, who played Decker, has gone on record a number of times to say he didn’t take Star Trek at all seriously because it was science fiction and played his role basically as a cartoon character in an attempt to mock it (ironically, Windom’s performance remains commendable and memorable, despite a few instances of obvious gurning).

What “The Doomsday Machine” seems like to me is a very simple, straightforward and more than sufficiently entertaining thriller. This is important to take note of, because this the first time Star Trek has actually done “straightforward” all year: “Catspaw” and “Amok Time” were by necessity bombshell game-changing episodes while “Metamorphosis” was Gene Coon’s reaction to this and the next step in his evolving vision for the series.…

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“You know T’Pau, I’m starting to think you were right.”

“Amok Time” is the price Star Trek pays for “Who Mourns for Adonais?”. This is the show’s shamefully repressed sexuality finally catching up with it. Miraculously, or perhaps simply because it’s impossible to spectacularly self-destruct in the same manner a second time, the show hits just about all the notes it needs to in this kind of scenario. “Amok Time” is without doubt another classic, perhaps not an unequivocal masterpiece, but definitely a landmark episode that sets the stage for a great deal of future great Star Trek.

The parallels here really couldn’t be any more perfect. Spock, who so desires to be distant, calculating and logical, is driven into an uncontrollable madness because of the very instincts and emotions he’s trying to bury and ignore. The Vulcans perceive their sexual drive as at once shameful taboo, but also as a deeply ancient and revered aspect of their cultural heritage, thus forcing them into a mating cycle which they can repress for awhile, but physiologically must acknowledge when the time comes, or else they will die. Given Spock is something of a central character and a microcosm for Star Trek and the numerous problems the series has in regards to gender roles, sexuality and women, even more overt and noticeable in the last few episodes, the analysis sort of writes itself here.

But to elaborate, and despite all the ancient and mysterious Vulcan ritualism of the koon-ut-kal-if-fee, the whole concept of Pon Farr is an extremely Western one. In my writeup of “Mudd’s Women” I talked about how sexuality is perceived in these societies cribbing a bit from (and probably misinterpreting) Michel Foucault. In brief, Western sexuality is intrinsically linked with the idea of taboo, because while the rise of modernism led to a net increase in sexual discourse, it was carefully fielded through “official channels”, most notably the Counter-Reformation-era Catholic church. As a result, sex is taboo but the taboo is also now sexy leading to the oxymoronic catch-22 that is responsible for pretty much all the repressive sexual tension Westerners live with. While sex wasn’t talked about as much in pre-modern societies, it was just a natural thing that happened. So, even though they weren’t living in sexually liberated golden ages of free love (as with most golden ages, this was a myth thought up after the fact by people nostalgic for a past that never existed in an attempt to cope with a present they didn’t know how to deal with), pre-modern people didn’t have to deal with quite the same problems modern people do.

And Pon Farr is very much a commentary on this, if not exactly diegetically then definitely extradiegetically. Sexuality is something that’s an integral part of what it means to be human(oid), and denying that is, if not actively suicidal, at the very least counterproductive and unhealthy. What’s really charming about “Amok Time” is how Spock is seen as being obstinate and, honestly, a bit childish for fervently trying to hide from his sexuality.…

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“Yet fire does not destroy, it carbonizes, and this remains transformation and metamorphosis.”

I have had it with Star Trek‘s hatred of women. No. More than that. I have had it with Star Trek.

I’m sorry, that’s it. No more apologies. No more attempts at redemptive readings. No more emphasizing the oversignified positives. This is the fourth episode in a row I’ve had to deal with blatant, ghastly, retrograde misogyny in this show and this is the worst week yet. Anyone who can remotely consider Star Trek progressive in feminist areas quite frankly hasn’t watched it. Period. That’s the only way I can see glancing over the second trivialized brutal rape scene of an infantilized woman in as many years. This is all the more infuriating as “Who Mourns for Adonais?” actually has one or two interesting things worth talking about, but absolutely everything else is dwarfed and subsumed by the big, glaring bit of rape apologia the episode tosses at us in its climax, so we have to address that before we can even think about other discussion topics. Remember back in “The Enemy Within” where I said Star Trek had become broken and irredeemable? Well, guess what: It still is.

“Who Mourns for Adonais?” is “Space Seed” except Greek-flavoured. Once again we have a female humanities scholar, this time an anthropologist because Star Trek hates me, personally, swayed by an overwhelming, dominant male presence who betrays the crew because according to this dross women are fickle, capricious and mysterious. It’s just the stakes have been raised as we now have a man claiming to be a god instead of a dictator. At least Kirk doesn’t belittle her field and her entire gender this time around, not that his acceptance counts for much anymore, although Doctor McCoy’s comments more than fill the gap Kirk leaves in this regard. And, for that matter, at least Khan didn’t flat out explicitly rape Marla McGivers, though, which Apollo quite clearly does to Carolyn Palamas in the climax to this episode. When you have made Khan Noonien Singh look benevolent and restrained something has gone very wrong. This time it’s even worse than it was with Janice Rand in “The Enemy Within”, because as horrible as that was, that was still only *attempted* rape. This is a full-on rape scene with the camera leeringly focused on Apollo’s godlike dominance over Palamas and her pained, tortured, helpless expression. Furthermore, it’s a scene about tearing her down, breaking her, invalidating her, mocking her agency, degrading her and dehumanizing her, just as all rape truly is: Right before the rape, she had finally stood up to Apollo and began acting like an anthropologist for the first time in the episode, and she’s utterly destroyed as a person for doing work she presumably loved doing.

And the worst part? The actual, very worst part? The show doesn’t have one single problem with this. This episode was originally supposed to end with McCoy revealing to Kirk that Palamas was pregnant by Apollo and joking about how his sickbay is not designed to deliver the children of gods.…

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What d’you think, Spock? I was thinking “Get Rid Of Slimy Klingons”.

D.C. Fontana has a rather unsettling habit of making my life extremely difficult.

She’s Star Trek’s first staff writer who is a woman and has written several of the most influential and groundbreaking episodes in the franchise, including two of my absolute, all-time favourites. Unfortunately, every single episode she’s been involved in I’ve looked so far in this project (save, debatably, “Tomorrow is Yesterday”) has been an infuriating, baldly reactionary disaster including, well, this one. In “Friday’s Child” we have, in no particular order, the Federation explicitly as the “good” empire to the Klingon’s “bad” empire, Kirk and Spock completely overturning the society and rules of an entire planetary culture pretty much for lulz, and, oh yeah, a pregnant woman, belittled and infantilized by just about every other character by being referred to as “the girl”, whom the show treats as both a comic relief and a burden because of her attempts to be headstrong and independent.

Let’s take a look at the most egregious and upsetting thing first: Not the imperialistic or Prime Directive issues; the show couldn’t give a toss about those here and neither should we until it decides to take another look at them. No, I’m instead talking about Eleen Akaar, because of fucking course I’m talking about Eleen Akaar. A proud, strong woman who doesn’t let any man touch her, yet who eagerly submits to Doctor McCoy when he proves his superior fortitude and asserts his dominance and authority over her, by, of all things slapping her and knowing more about labour and childbirth then her as well as every other woman in her society. This is so blatantly, obviously and stupefyingly misogynistic I’m actually speechless: There’s no reaction to that I can muster apart from stunned disbelief and disgust such that I actually feel dirty and personally hurt after watching this. Let’s try and move on as quickly as possible, lest this essay devolve into another screamy, infuriated diatribe a la “The Corbomite Maneuver” or “The Enemy Within”.

In an attempt to give Fontana some manner of credit and benefit of the doubt, because I truly find it almost impossible to believe a woman in her position could ever come up with something as hurtful and offensive as this, a large portion of the blame for the feminist nightmare of “Friday’s Child” should, both sadly and obviously, go to Gene Roddenberry. Had Fontana’s original draft gone into production, Eleen would have been depicted as an even stronger presence, explicit in revolt against the male supremacy of Capellan society, which believed women were mothers and homemakers and nothing else. The climax would have also seen her sacrificing the life of her child in order to preserve her own, which actually gels much better with Kirk’s line that Eleen “hates the unborn child she is carrying” and Eleen’s own dialog that in her culture, children belong expressly to the father (as well as the subtle implication early on that the only reason Akaar married Eleen was to give him a son in the first place).…

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Love is possible.

The obvious way to open this post would be with some cheekily prescient call-forward to Star Trek First Contact, the consensus-second-best Star Trek movie, in which Zefram Cochrane (who is introduced here) plays a significant role. However, that essay is going to be wild and crazy enough without having to deal with baggage from “Metamorphosis” on top of it all, so let’s leave the future to the future for now.

“Metamorphosis” is a significant improvement over last episode, which is typically the case when Gene Coon is writing. What’s more interesting, however, is that this is very much Gene Coon for the second season: Building off of themes he introduced in “The Devil in the Dark” and clearly noticing the show’s landscape has been permanently altered in the wake of the bombshell that was “Catspaw”, “Metamorphosis” is the first clear, concrete step forward Star Trek has taken since, well, Coon’s last episode. It’s not perfect, not even the best script we’ve seen from Coon so far, and the particular kind of faults it has mean it’s ultimately less than successful, but this is still very much the sort of sign we should be looking for from Star Trek at the start of its second consecutive year on the air.

Charmingly, Coon’s next step from burning the show to the ground and challenging it to justify its existence and prove it’s capable of behaving in a peaceful, constructive manner is to give it an incredibly straightforward and intimate love story. Not a fake romance plot, like Nurse Chapel swooning over Doctor Korby just long enough to provide necessary drama in a floundering episode or when Kirk shacks up with any of his Desilu-mandated girls-of-the-week, but a real, actual love story between two people that takes a serious, mature look at what that concept is, how it’s expressed and how its interpreted. The Companion loves the stranded Zefram Cochrane, but is only capable of displaying her affection by keeping him alive and providing for him. But that’s not the kind of companionship he really needs, which prompts her to similarly maroon Kirk, Spock, McCoy and the commissioner. Cochrane can’t see this as love, because The Companion is not a being like himself, and when he finds out the truth he recoils in horror. And, in an actually lovely speech from Kirk, without doubt one of his most memorable scenes in the show so far, he points out to both of them that true love can’t be one-sided and that two people must be joined as equals for it to exist.

This speech is a watershed from Kirk, and his depiction in this episode is crucial to continuing his extradiegetic challenge given to him by Coon in “Arena” to grow and mature Star Trek. Much like in “the Devil in the Dark”, Kirk starts out angry and frenzied, even considering destroying The Companion if it means freeing the trapped shuttlecraft. But he is reminded by McCoy, in one of his best and, frankly, most welcome lines to date that “perhaps being a soldier for so long” has caused Kirk to forget he’s “also trained as a diplomat”.…

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Little known fact: Back in the day they used to have Enterprise moon pendants.

Well, to start things off I’d like to say that coming off of Raumpatrouille Orion and The Prisoner it’s rather exasperating to tune in for the brand new season of Star Trek and see Captain Kirk stomp around the bridge in a huff and bluster about people failing to follow landing party procedure. It would have been very nice to be able to open this post with a hearty declaration that the show has finally turned a corner with the first story produced for the new year, especially with a premise as tantalizing as the one this episode has. But no, “Catspaw” is aggravatingly business as usual.

Which is really rather puzzling, because it has the makings of something incomparably bizarre and interesting to talk about. First of all, this episode has the single most bonkers pitch in the history of the franchise: It is literally a Star Trek holiday special. I’m not even kidding-The only reason “Catspaw” exists is because somebody, most likely at NBC, decided Star Trek really needed to have a Halloween special. So, we get fifty minutes of Kirk, Spock and McCoy wandering around a stereotypically spooky haunted castle with witches, skeletons, black cats and evil wizards. There are any number of reasonable, plausible reasons for this premise to go hilariously and catastrophically off the rails but, in a moment of genuine insight, Gene Roddenberry and Gene Coon make the actually sane and sensible decision to give the story to the only person on staff remotely capable of taking this quite literal nightmare pitch and turning into something other than an unmitigated disaster: Robert Bloch.

Bloch only had one other Star Trek script to his name at this time: “What Are Little Girls Made Of”? early on in the first season, an episode that could charitably be described as not going quite according to plan. However, before we run to the hills screaming, it’s worth pointing out Bloch was actually an extremely respected and influential author, penning a little novel called Psycho, so perhaps the failings of the previous story can and should be laid once again at the feet of Gene Roddenberry, who decided he needed to rewrite the whole thing in the middle of primary filming. Thankfully Roddenberry seemed to see no need to do similar micromanaging here, so with “Catspaw” we get a better glimpse into the sorts of things Bloch is actually interested in talking about, which seems to be pretty clearly “horror”. Not just any kind of horror, though: The type of horror Bloch seems to fancy the most, especially when it comes to writing Star Trek, is descended from the works of US novelist H.P. Lovecraft.

Lovecraft was a prolific early 20th century writer with a particular interest in uniquely mystical and cosmic variety of psychological horror. In Lovecraft’s works, the universe is really the domain of vast, incomprehensible ancient monsters who exist so far above and beyond the realm of human comprehension that to even glimpse one or speak its name would drive a person to complete and inconsolable madness.…

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