Girls in Space

Oh, I do love a good manoeuvre.  The crew of the Enterprise would have also welcomed a good manoeuvre at the beginning of this episode because they’re stuck with the boring task of making star maps.  They’re getting restless.  That is until a giant Rubik’s Cube blocks their path.  It’s a red alert moment.

When the ship cannot escape the Rubik’s Cube of Annoyance, Bailey, a young crewman (with an old face), raises his voice in alarm.  Spock coolly tells him there’s no need to raise his voice.  In fact as the episode goes on, Bailey will frequently over-react.  It’s his thing.

Like a bad smell, the cube seems impossible to lose.  Mr Sulu puts his foot on the accelerator and it keeps pace with them, spinning faster and faster.  It’s very disco.  Ultimately they blast it to bits and this is where their problems really begin.  A spectacular sphere made up of other spheres appears (at least in the remastered version it does, the original is less impressive).

An echoing, deep voice comes over the “navigation beam”.  Yes, the navigation beam.  It tells them that they have ten “Earth periods known as minutes” to get their affairs together before they are blown to smithereens.

Bailey loses it, eating up a large chunk of their crucial ten Earth periods known as minutes with a tantrum.  He’s dismissed.

After seven Earth periods known as minutes attempting to negotiate, Kirk turns to poker for a solution and attempts a bluff.  He tells the voice that the Enterprise is loaded with Corbomite, a substance which will destroy the Sphere if the ship is destroyed.

A tiny spaceship tows the Enterprise to a planet where it is to be destroyed.  The voice is quick to point out that size isn’t everything.  It’s what you do with it that counts.

Kirk orders Sulu to do some fancy flying to break the tractor beam, and it works, damaging the engines of the tiny ship along the way.

Kirk takes Bailey and McCoy over to the tiny ship to offer the hand of friendship and help.  Upon arrival they discover that the ship is in fact piloted by the kid from Gentle Ben, only bald and with a deeper voice.  It was all a ruse!

So, even though the kid had just threatened to kill them all, and clearly cannot be trusted, Kirk decides to leave Bailey behind to learn about the kid’s ways, believing he’ll get a better officer further down the line as a result.  It would be great to see a follow-up episode where we find out that Bailey was sold to a slave trader.  That would teach Kirk to think about the consequences of his actions.

The Corbomite Maneuvre is all about bluffing and deception.  We see it from both sides.  Firstly, when Kirk bluffs his way out of a seemingly unsolvable situation it feels wonderful being ‘in’ on the bluff, but the second bluff we are not in on, so when we discover that the threat to the ship was a hoax it leaves us feeling somewhat unsatisfied.  Having gone through the worry and danger of the threat to destroy the ship and the Enterprise breaking free, it seems to cheapen the experience to learn the enemy was just a bald kid.  It’s like the end of the Wizard of Oz when the curtain is pulled back and the all-powerful Wizard is just a man playing with his organ. F’nar f’nar.

Corbomite Shmorbomite.

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Vitamin Water

Okay, so perhaps not technically a space girl yet, but a cadet space girl is better than no space girl at all (especially when played by former American Idol Carrie Underwood).  A group of cadets are put through their paces by a Russian cosmonaut, but thanks to Vitamin Water, no challenge is too great.

As the episode begins, a big container of drugs is loaded onto the transporter. Or is it a normal-sized container of big drugs? If so, let’s hope they’re not suppositories. After lowering the Enterprise shields, the drugs are beamed to the prison planet below in exchange for a mysterious box large enough to hide a man in!

It turns out that the man-sized box contains… a man. Specifically, a man who looks like a total nut job. This is further evidenced when he attacks a crew member …insanely.

After pointing a phaser at the Captain and demanding asylum, the nut job is restrained and taken to sickbay. After a display of acting that could best be described as extreme, we learn that the nut job, is none other than Dr Van Nutjob, a scientist and employee of the prison planet.  A message from his colleague, Dr Adams, on the prison planet, reveals that Dr Nutjob had experimented on himself and damaged his brain. Bones is suspicious and requests that Kirk investigates.

Kirk asks McCoy to recommend a psychologist from his crew to beam down to the planet with him. Bones picks Dr Helen Noel, a very attractive space girl. In a brilliant move by the writer, we learn that something had happened between Kirk and Noel at a Christmas party. Kirk is clearly embarrassed.

On the planet, Noel believes everything that Dr Adams tells them, but Kirk becomes sceptical after meeting a prisoner who acts almost robotically.  The colony has been curing prisoners by making them bury their memories via a device called a neural neutraliser. Catchy.  Kirk decides that he and Noel should spend the night on the colony. Frankly, I’m not surprised.

Through the night, they explore the neural neutraliser. Kirk decides the best way to test if it will turn a brain into robotic mush is to strap himself into the device and let Noel plant suggestions in his mind. At first she plants the idea that Kirk is hungry, and it does indeed make him hungry.  Kirk then asks her to come up with an unusual suggestion. She suggests that he runs around with his trousers on his head. It’s all very funny. That is, until Dr Adams takes over the controls and starts planting suggestions that Kirk is madly in love with Noel and that it will cause him pain not being with her.

Released to their rooms, Kirk comes up with a plan. He loads Noel into an air vent (the kind large enough to take a human being, as seen in every television show ever, and rarely seen in real life). It leads to Noel crawling around on all fours, showing off her blue knickers.  Apparently, in the future, girls will wear their underwear over their tights. Ever noticed how they always match their uniforms. It’s Star Trek law.  I digress.

Helen shuts down the power, allowing Kirk to escape from the brain treatment room and Spock to beam down.  Immediately, he restores power, reactivating the machine and wiping Dr Adams’ mind. It all works out nicely. Except for Dr Adams who is left with the mental capacity of a baked bean.

Dagger of the Mind is a nicely written story, with many nice touches. The inclusion of Helen Noel is a work of genius, and the hinted-at back-story with Kirk adds a lot of depth, suggesting that a lot happens on the Enterprise between episodes.  Yes, Dagger of the Mind is an episode you won’t want to forget.

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 From Space.  Beyond Space.  Radiating sexy noise!  It’s The She Creatures!

With blue hair and sexy spacegirl outfits this is the Girls in Space band of the Future.  A brilliant track with an amusing video.  Processing… Boom!

The Enterprise has picked up an Earth-style distress signal coming from a nearby planet.  As Spock describes the planet, things seem a little familiar:  spheroid-shaped, oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere and it has an Africa!  It’s another Earth!  Who’d have thunk it?  “It seems impossible, but there it is,” says Kirk.  He’s spot on.

The landing party comprises of Kirk, Spock, Rand, McCoy and two of the luckiest security men ever to don the red uniform.  Unusually, they will live to see another adventure.

On pseudo-Earth, it looks like 1960, but nobody is around.  As Bones examines a broken tricycle, he’s attacked!  Hey, isn’t that Kurt Cobain?  No, it’s his deranged crusty-looking alter-ego.  Kirk punches him out.  Clearly not a Nirvana fan.  Bones examines him and delivers the all-too-familiar “He’s Dead” line.  Bones learns that Crusty Cobain’s metabolic rate is through the roof, as if he aged half a century in just a few minutes.  No wonder he trashed that tricycle.

They meet Miri, a young teenage girl, who is convinced that the landing party want to hurt her.  The grown-ups died from Kurt Cobain’s horrible disease and although the children were not affected, they witnessed their crazy behaviour and now fear adults.

Kirk tries to befriend Miri.  In the more innocent times that the show was made, some of Kirk’s compliments to Miri would have seemed charming, but unfortunately looking at this scene with 21st century eyes, they feel just a little awkward.  The delivery of lines like “Do you want to go some place with me?” show how much times have changed.

Kirk develops a weird rash (a blue splotch).  He’s been infected by Cobain’s disease.  Bones sets up a lab to investigate and discovers that the grown-ups were killed by a life prolongation project, designed to make people age just 1 month every 100 years.  The children are actually over 300 years old.  A child entering puberty is a death sentence.  When the kids enter puberty they get the disease.  As if spots and facial hair weren’t enough.

The children steal the communicators. When Kirk confronts the children, another wrinkly attacks Kirk.  Kirk stuns her.  Stuns her to Death!  Kids go running in every direction.  It’s like Ikea on a Sunday.

The story ends with a confrontation between Kirk and all the children.  If it doesn’t sound scary, you went to a better school than I did.  Kirk is dramatically outnumbered by people he can’t seem to reason with.

Ultimately Kirk convinces them that they’re turning into grown-ups, and that he wants to help them.

However, it is ultimately McCoy who saves the day, risking his life to try the untested vaccine.  It works – the blemishes fade.

The Enterprise leaves the planet, telling the children that support will be along at some time, and not to cause any trouble until they get there, or they’ll all get detention.

It’s great to watch the relationship between Spock, McCoy and Kirk developing in these early episodes as the writers come to realise what brilliant characters they have to work with.

Bizarrely there’s never any explanation as to why this planet is identical to Earth.  Must just be one of those things.

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