TOS reviews
Discussion (with spoilers) under the cut about "And the Children Shall Lead," "Is There in Truth No Beauty?" and "The Spectre of the Gun."
"And the Children Shall Lead"
This episode is an excellent example of (to quote vilakins) the show's unsentimental depiction of children. There's an implicit Freudian idea here of children as id monsters until they're properly socialized, or maybe it's a Calvinist view that children are unrestrainedly corrupt (because the postlapsarian human will is innately corrupt and children are pure selfish will) until they're trained out of it. Either way, certainly not the romantic idea of children as gentle innocents. In fact, it's adults who are referred to as "gentle"--too gentle for the alien's purposes. The scenes when the alien talks about his plan for conquest made me think of the brutality of real revolutionary movements involving children--the Hitler Youth, the Cultural Revolution, the Khmer Rouge. That kind of history, plus my own rather strong memories of being bullied as a kid, makes me agree that children are generally crueler than adults.
Of course, the children are reclaimed in the end, but only through the loss of their childish joy. They're redeemed by grief and regret, emotions that western cultures normally try to protect children from. They're redeemed by beginning to grow up.
I found all that really interesting, but the implications of the episode are a lot more subtle than its actual dialogue. It was weird to hear Spock talk about "evil" like a literal-minded Christian theologian.
On a much more shallow note: slashiest. episode. EVER. Check out the clip here if you doubt me. Serious clinging between Kirk and Spock, Spock using his Sexy Voice, and some stuff about "command" that probably inspired a thousand D/s slash epics. Kirk looks really hot in this episode, too. He's been looking great in all these early S3 eps; he obviously got back into shape during the hiatus after S2. And somebody remembered to start bleaching his hair again so that it's golden brown rather than muddy brown.
Equally shallow: why does this show pick such hideously ugly adolescent boy actors? They're fine with little kids, but whenever they need a 12-year-old boy they cast a gawping frog-faced SCARY one. This is true even when the kid isn't supposed to be scary.
"Is There in Truth No Beauty?"
George Herbert allusion FTW. Quoting the fairly obscure Jordan (I) suggests a real lit geek of a writer, which makes me happy. The Shakespeare references were less surprising, but also nice.
I really liked the episode, and Dr. Miranda Jones is unique in TOS (so far anyway) for being a woman uninterested in conventional romantic love. I was expecting her to be converted in some way, but no, she goes off with Kollos in the end. She loves Kollos, of course, but they're not exactly going to get married, buy a house in the suburbs, and have babies together. And she deals with her jealousy problem herself rather than being healed by the love of a good man.
I did feel like we were supposed to sympathize too much with Larry Marvick, who's got a full-blown case of male erotic entitlement: "I love you, therefore you owe me love, you cold bitch!"
This was balanced by a great moment during the dinner scene when McCoy asks Jones how she, a beautiful woman, can want to endure a lifetime of the Medusans' ugliness; she asks him how he, a man who loves life, can stand to be around disease and death. It's unusual in TOS for gendered double standards to be questioned, so I really liked that.
I also liked the fact that unlike most female TOS characters, Dr. Jones has some clothes on. It's meant to symbolize her quasi-Vulcan emotional repression, of course, but I was still glad to see a female character whose mind was treated as more interesting than her legs. (Plus, the sensor-wired overdress is a cool idea, even though I think the Federation should've had a cure for blindness. Clearly the Federation's medical technology lags way behind its spaceship technology, as witness poor Captain Pike.)
More exploration of Jones's time on Vulcan and her evident embrace of Vulcan culture would've been lovely had time permitted. I've read in Trek novels about humans studying on Vulcan, but I didn't know it was actual TOS canon; it suggests that Vulcan isn't quite as isolationist as one might think.
I sort of enjoyed the discussion of the IDIC symbol (yay Kirk for coming to Spock's defense) but knowing that it was just a marketing ploy by Gene Roddenberry rather palls my enthusiasm. What I've read about Roddenberry is sometimes off-putting, like the IDIC or the fact that during the filming of "Assignment Earth" he kept making the costume department shorten Miss Lincoln's skirt. I guess it bothers me mostly because some segments of Trek fandom worship Roddenberry as the most enlightened person ever, and he clearly wasn't. He seems to have been very progressive and awesome in some ways, less so in others. Just like most of us.
Moving on. Kollos!Spock was great, and it must've been fun for Leonard Nimoy to be allowed to smile a bit. I was sad that he called McCoy an acquaintance rather than a friend, though. This exchange was lovely: Kollos!Spock: (to Uhura) "She walks in beauty, like the night."
McCoy: That's not Spock!
Spock: You're surprised to find that I've read Byron, doctor.
Mccoy: That's Spock!
(And now I want fic about Spock reading human literature and being disturbed by, and more than a little envious of, all the emotional expression.)
I wonder whether Kollos's strong sense of human loneliness comes from Spock, who is fundamentally lonely despite being in a threesome with Kirk and McCoy having a couple of friends who care about him.
I wanted Kirk to be the one to bring Spock out of his madness, because the more slash, the better, but of course the whole point of the episode was that Jones had to get over her jealousy and do it herself.
"The Spectre of the Gun"
Boring. The plot was a transparent excuse to use a recycled set and very few cast members. (Why did Kirk insist on pushing on past the warning buoy, anyway? WTF, trespassing/invading is not a good way to start diplomatic relations.)
There was some nice interaction between the regulars. I liked McCoy actually comforting Kirk after Chekov's "death" instead of blaming him for it. Of course, McCoy takes it out on Spock instead as soon as Spock reminds them that they need to finish the tranquilizer grenade before five o'clock. Kirk: Not this minute, Spock. It takes us a little longer.
Spock: I understand the feeling, Captain.
McCoy: You talk about another man's feelings! What do you feel, Spock?
Spock: My feelings are not a subject for discussion, doctor.
McCoy: Because there are no feelings to discuss!
Scott: Mr. Spock, Chekov is dead! I say it now and I can hardly believe it. But you worked closely with him. That deserves some memorial.
McCoy: Spock will have no truck with grief, Scotty. It's human!
Kirk: (comes over from bar looking really irritated) Bones, Scotty -
Spock: Captain, it's quite all right. They forget I am half-human.
Mccoy and Scott look chastened.
I'm tired of McCoy bullying Spock whenever he's feeling upset, so I was glad to see him repent a little. (And even more so when Spock pays him a nice compliment a couple of scenes later.) Not that it'll stop McCoy from doing it again, sadly.
Scotty had some good moments in this episode, too, like using bourbon "to kill the pain" of testing out the painless tranquilizers.
Not much slash in this one, unless you count the look Kirk gives Spock while Spock is discoursing about illusion and the laws of physics. I count it, of course, and I think it can reasonably be translated as "My boyfriend is SO SMART, you guys, isn't it wonderful?" I also think the Kirk/Spock mindmeld was somehow more intimate and sexier than the others, but maybe that's just me.
The fight scene at the end was not just pointless, it completely undermined all the previous stuff about how the whole experience is an illusion. Kirk interacting with the illusions again would have put them back at risk of being killed. But obviously someone--possibly Shatner--felt the episode wouldn't be complete without Kirk doing one of those flying kicks.
*****
"And the Children Shall Lead"
This episode is an excellent example of (to quote vilakins) the show's unsentimental depiction of children. There's an implicit Freudian idea here of children as id monsters until they're properly socialized, or maybe it's a Calvinist view that children are unrestrainedly corrupt (because the postlapsarian human will is innately corrupt and children are pure selfish will) until they're trained out of it. Either way, certainly not the romantic idea of children as gentle innocents. In fact, it's adults who are referred to as "gentle"--too gentle for the alien's purposes. The scenes when the alien talks about his plan for conquest made me think of the brutality of real revolutionary movements involving children--the Hitler Youth, the Cultural Revolution, the Khmer Rouge. That kind of history, plus my own rather strong memories of being bullied as a kid, makes me agree that children are generally crueler than adults.
Of course, the children are reclaimed in the end, but only through the loss of their childish joy. They're redeemed by grief and regret, emotions that western cultures normally try to protect children from. They're redeemed by beginning to grow up.
I found all that really interesting, but the implications of the episode are a lot more subtle than its actual dialogue. It was weird to hear Spock talk about "evil" like a literal-minded Christian theologian.
On a much more shallow note: slashiest. episode. EVER. Check out the clip here if you doubt me. Serious clinging between Kirk and Spock, Spock using his Sexy Voice, and some stuff about "command" that probably inspired a thousand D/s slash epics. Kirk looks really hot in this episode, too. He's been looking great in all these early S3 eps; he obviously got back into shape during the hiatus after S2. And somebody remembered to start bleaching his hair again so that it's golden brown rather than muddy brown.
Equally shallow: why does this show pick such hideously ugly adolescent boy actors? They're fine with little kids, but whenever they need a 12-year-old boy they cast a gawping frog-faced SCARY one. This is true even when the kid isn't supposed to be scary.
"Is There in Truth No Beauty?"
George Herbert allusion FTW. Quoting the fairly obscure Jordan (I) suggests a real lit geek of a writer, which makes me happy. The Shakespeare references were less surprising, but also nice.
I really liked the episode, and Dr. Miranda Jones is unique in TOS (so far anyway) for being a woman uninterested in conventional romantic love. I was expecting her to be converted in some way, but no, she goes off with Kollos in the end. She loves Kollos, of course, but they're not exactly going to get married, buy a house in the suburbs, and have babies together. And she deals with her jealousy problem herself rather than being healed by the love of a good man.
I did feel like we were supposed to sympathize too much with Larry Marvick, who's got a full-blown case of male erotic entitlement: "I love you, therefore you owe me love, you cold bitch!"
This was balanced by a great moment during the dinner scene when McCoy asks Jones how she, a beautiful woman, can want to endure a lifetime of the Medusans' ugliness; she asks him how he, a man who loves life, can stand to be around disease and death. It's unusual in TOS for gendered double standards to be questioned, so I really liked that.
I also liked the fact that unlike most female TOS characters, Dr. Jones has some clothes on. It's meant to symbolize her quasi-Vulcan emotional repression, of course, but I was still glad to see a female character whose mind was treated as more interesting than her legs. (Plus, the sensor-wired overdress is a cool idea, even though I think the Federation should've had a cure for blindness. Clearly the Federation's medical technology lags way behind its spaceship technology, as witness poor Captain Pike.)
More exploration of Jones's time on Vulcan and her evident embrace of Vulcan culture would've been lovely had time permitted. I've read in Trek novels about humans studying on Vulcan, but I didn't know it was actual TOS canon; it suggests that Vulcan isn't quite as isolationist as one might think.
I sort of enjoyed the discussion of the IDIC symbol (yay Kirk for coming to Spock's defense) but knowing that it was just a marketing ploy by Gene Roddenberry rather palls my enthusiasm. What I've read about Roddenberry is sometimes off-putting, like the IDIC or the fact that during the filming of "Assignment Earth" he kept making the costume department shorten Miss Lincoln's skirt. I guess it bothers me mostly because some segments of Trek fandom worship Roddenberry as the most enlightened person ever, and he clearly wasn't. He seems to have been very progressive and awesome in some ways, less so in others. Just like most of us.
Moving on. Kollos!Spock was great, and it must've been fun for Leonard Nimoy to be allowed to smile a bit. I was sad that he called McCoy an acquaintance rather than a friend, though. This exchange was lovely: Kollos!Spock: (to Uhura) "She walks in beauty, like the night."
McCoy: That's not Spock!
Spock: You're surprised to find that I've read Byron, doctor.
Mccoy: That's Spock!
(And now I want fic about Spock reading human literature and being disturbed by, and more than a little envious of, all the emotional expression.)
I wonder whether Kollos's strong sense of human loneliness comes from Spock, who is fundamentally lonely despite being in a threesome with Kirk and McCoy having a couple of friends who care about him.
I wanted Kirk to be the one to bring Spock out of his madness, because the more slash, the better, but of course the whole point of the episode was that Jones had to get over her jealousy and do it herself.
"The Spectre of the Gun"
Boring. The plot was a transparent excuse to use a recycled set and very few cast members. (Why did Kirk insist on pushing on past the warning buoy, anyway? WTF, trespassing/invading is not a good way to start diplomatic relations.)
There was some nice interaction between the regulars. I liked McCoy actually comforting Kirk after Chekov's "death" instead of blaming him for it. Of course, McCoy takes it out on Spock instead as soon as Spock reminds them that they need to finish the tranquilizer grenade before five o'clock. Kirk: Not this minute, Spock. It takes us a little longer.
Spock: I understand the feeling, Captain.
McCoy: You talk about another man's feelings! What do you feel, Spock?
Spock: My feelings are not a subject for discussion, doctor.
McCoy: Because there are no feelings to discuss!
Scott: Mr. Spock, Chekov is dead! I say it now and I can hardly believe it. But you worked closely with him. That deserves some memorial.
McCoy: Spock will have no truck with grief, Scotty. It's human!
Kirk: (comes over from bar looking really irritated) Bones, Scotty -
Spock: Captain, it's quite all right. They forget I am half-human.
Mccoy and Scott look chastened.
I'm tired of McCoy bullying Spock whenever he's feeling upset, so I was glad to see him repent a little. (And even more so when Spock pays him a nice compliment a couple of scenes later.) Not that it'll stop McCoy from doing it again, sadly.
Scotty had some good moments in this episode, too, like using bourbon "to kill the pain" of testing out the painless tranquilizers.
Not much slash in this one, unless you count the look Kirk gives Spock while Spock is discoursing about illusion and the laws of physics. I count it, of course, and I think it can reasonably be translated as "My boyfriend is SO SMART, you guys, isn't it wonderful?" I also think the Kirk/Spock mindmeld was somehow more intimate and sexier than the others, but maybe that's just me.
The fight scene at the end was not just pointless, it completely undermined all the previous stuff about how the whole experience is an illusion. Kirk interacting with the illusions again would have put them back at risk of being killed. But obviously someone--possibly Shatner--felt the episode wouldn't be complete without Kirk doing one of those flying kicks.
*****