Star Trek Randomized Rewatch: Wolf in the Fold

ST "Wolf in the Fold"

"Wolf in the Fold" doesn't do much by halves. It's an insane episode, and with every passing improbable turn of the plot (like the twist of a stage knife), it becomes even more of a helium-laugh fest.

On the face of it, the premise would be anything but amusing; Scotty is accused of murder, his bloody hands on the murder weapon. There is a thread throughout the episode of, shall we say... exaggeration. Kirk, McCoy, and Scotty are taking their shore leave on a planet home to a "completely hedonistic society", to allow Scotty to get over a recent development in his psychological makeup: a "total resentment of women", because a female engineer was involved in an accident that gave Scotty a head wound.

So from the start, two things are clear. We are in the realm of cartoon psychodrama. And the original Star Trek finds itself once again on shaky misogynistic grounds. Writer Robert Bloch (of the novel Psycho) deploys his big twist late in the game: the murders were in fact carried out by Jack the Ripper, who all these centuries has lived on as a non-corporeal entity! And if that's not enough of a WTF'er, the crew foils Jack's plot while extremely high!

That's right, McCoy injects the crew with a tranquilizer that has a blissing out effect. Add to all this that the primary human antagonist of the episode and vessel of Jack the Ripper, Hengist, is played by John Fiedler, also known as the voice of Piglet.

"Wolf in the Fold"'s gender dynamics haven't aged well, but the episode is a bonkers laugh riot. I don't know how to rate something like this but on balance we'll go with 6/10.

For a less campy take on Jack the Ripper in the 23rd Century, check out the Babylon 5 episode "Comes the Inquisitor".

Star Trek Randomized Rewatch: Elaan of Troyius

ST "Elaan of Troyius"

"Elaan of Troyius" is a histrionic episode, whose only measure of success comes when viewed as high camp. Elaan (South Pacific's France Nuyen) of Elas is to be married off to the ruler of Troyius to mitigate a war. The trouble is, Elaan is an impetuous and arrogant hurricane of a stateswoman and rages against her arranged marriage. The idea is that Elas is an aggressive warrior culture, but in practice it's more like a series of over-the-top temper tantrums. And because it falls on Kirk to "discipline" the unruly Elaan, the episode moves the needle for crazy sexual politics all over the place.

One of the Elasian guards (who dress like Flash Gordon rejects) apparently kills a redshirt just by... touching his head? And when head guard Kryton kills himself, Kirk and company barely react to his act of desperation and get on with the plot. Emotional realism is not the episode's priority.

Written and directed by John Meredyth Lucas, "Elaan of Troyius" is a rare case study in Star Trek auteur theory. One of Lucas' primary moves is the highly provocative "save money" technique. Multiple times, stock footage of the bridge is used for coverage, so alternatively Sulu and Chekov are replaced by imposters, then switch back to the familiar helmsman and navigator.

Lucas has not hidden his mythological influence for the episode: replace Elaan with Helen and Troyius with Troy. But any "take" on that Iliad story is purely superficial and certainly incoherent. To add tension, Lucas adds a Klingon subplot that pays off with an extended space battle, which is a novelty in the original series. I do have some time for Jay Robinson's guest performance as Troyian Ambassador Petri, who gives the character an officious quality.

The only way to enjoy the episode is to take it as camp. 3/10.

Star Trek Randomized Rewatch: The Devil in the Dark

ST "The Devil in the Dark"

"The Devil in the Dark" is an iconic, foundational episode. The one with the Horta. With "No kill I". The fairy tale of the monster who isn't really a monster, but instead a mother protecting her young from the human monsters. But it is an episode with feet of clay. I intend not to rag on it, but to honestly appraise it as a piece of dramatic television.

Where it succeeds is its quintessentially Trekkian moral. The misunderstood monster is a sentient form of life that demands respect. The framing is a little off, though. The ultimate message of coexistence is in service of very 20th Century stakes: the mining operation that has encroached on Horta breeding grounds is discussed in terms of its profitability, and the arrangement reached with the Horta at the end of the episode feels a little more exploitative than symbiotic. Still, the power of the twist is best illustrated by the reaction of the miners. They're enraged enough to beat Enterprise officers with lead pipes, but upon hearing that they unwittingly killed Horta children, they are conciliatory.

There are plot oddities. After the Horta kills an Enterprise security officer, Spock successfully accounts for all crew members with his tricorder and then Kirk says "I will lose no more men". A second draft was needed there. Later, Spock says that they have about 100 security personnel (redshirts) searching for the Horta. In other words, a fourth of the Enterprise crew are in these tunnels, and they're all security officers!

The centerpiece of the episode is Spock's mind meld with the Horta. Leonard Nimoy goes in for some textbook "seance" acting here, channeling the anguish of the creature with commitment. I realize for the first time, seeing Spock empathically channeling this creature's emotions and yelling "Pain!" several times, that Spock is starting a legacy for TNG's Deanna Troi to pick up.

The two scenes of humor are off the mark. But the most successful bit of comedy in the episode might come from McCoy scanning a human outline on the ground with a tricorder.

Of course the physical realization of the Horta itself is a cheesy effect, but why should that bother anyone? That said, you can see the fringe of the carpet they're using as part of the creature, which recalls the shambling rug monster of The Creeping Terror, as featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000. As Spock says, "Astonishing that anything of that bulk could move so rapidly."

The legacy of "The Devil of the Dark" rightly lives on in digestible soundbites. The episode itself is a respectable runaround in a series of tunnels, admittedly with a twist that embodies the best of Star Trek. 6/10.

Star Trek Randomized Rewatch: Charlie X

ST "Charlie X"

"Charlie X" was the second Star Trek episode ever to air (though the eighth produced), and it is an early example of a familiar type of Trek story: the godlike being episode. The titular Charlie is an outwardly average teenage human, but who mysteriously survived on a desolate planet for years - to dispel the mystery, the near-omnipotent powers given to him by the local non-corporeal life-forms helped. So the hook of the episode is, what if a raging hormonal teenager, and one who grew up in near-isolation at that, had great power?

The potential of the premise is undermined by Charlie himself. There's nothing appealing about his (intentionally) awkward screen presence; he has no particular redeeming qualities as a person or as a villain worth watching. Charlie's mood swings over an unrequited first crush prove to be uncomfortable to watch. In one typically cliched moment, he makes a female crew member rapidly age, so she can scream for her lost youth. (And in one atypically horrifying moment, he relieves a crew member of her face.) The ending is tonally confused; it's unclear whether it's going for relief, tragedy, or horror.

What does distinguish "Charlie X" is that it's essentially a hang-out episode. Everyone's shown during leisure time. With Spock backing on his Vulcan lyre, Uhura sings of his "devil ears and devil eyes". This irreverent, impromptu musical revue feels like something that would go on a solo Nichelle Nichols tie-in novelty album. Characters are seen to play three-dimensional chess and solitaire, practice martial arts, and generally socialize.

Stray observations:
- This is early in the series, so it's not Starfleet but UESPA, the United Earth Space Probe Agency.
- The show predicts synthetic meat.
- The finale, where a mischievous godlike being is called home by his "parents", will be repeated in "The Squire of Gothos". Here, the Thasian who takes Charlie looks like something out of The Haunted Mansion.
- The Thasian also declaims in a deep voice, "Everything is as it was". The Guardian of Forever will later say the same thing in the same tone of voice in "The City on the Edge of Forever".

An episode called "Charlie X" would do well to portray a more compelling Charlie X. 3/10.