Amok Time
What’s It All About?
So here we are, season 2, and it starts
with one of THE iconic Star Trek original series episodes. The focus on Spock is
probably a reflection of the production team’s awareness of the popularity of
Spock throughout the first season, and generally episodes which foreground Spock
are often better than episodes that don’t.
With each episode having little more than 50
minutes actual ‘story’ time as such, once you’ve accounted for ad breaks and
opening and closing titles, when you’ve got a real story it can be difficult to
make sure that you cram the whole story in. This may be the reason why “Amok
Time” has such a relatively abrupt start. If you had all the time in the world
then you could very slowly build up what is happening to Spock. We don’t have
that luxury, so right from the pre-title sequence Spock is behaving oddly and
causing concern. One of the tell-tale signs is the fact that Nurse Chappell
makes him some Vulcan plomeek soup, which he throws all over the walls. Later
on in the episode McCoy sardonically observes to her – you never give up, do
you?! – No, matey she doesn’t, and she’ll still be around in the franchise
after you’ve hung up your stethoscope.
Spock requests the ship divert to Vulcan, and
give him shore leave, but he will not tell Kirk why it is so urgent for him.
Kirk agrees, but then a request for StarFleet for the Enterprise to take part
in some ceremony in Altair 6 comes through. Spock changes the course back to
Vulcan, and cannot explain to Kirk why he has done it, in fact, he wasn’t even
aware that he had done it. Finally, in his quarters, he explains to Kirk what
it’s all about.
Here we get a healthy slice of new Vulcan
lore – and also some of the worst dialogue which poor old William Shatner was ever given to say
as Kirk. Spock tells
him that it is the Pon Farr, but finds it difficult to cut to the chase. So we
get: -
“It is to do with biology.”
“Biology?”
“Biology.”
“Vulcan biology?”
“Yes.”
“The biology of Vulcans?”
I mean, how thick is Kirk in this scene? I
have to say, though, I do like it when Spock turns to Kirk and asks how he
imagines Vulcans mate, and he choose his words, saying that he imagines that
they do it . . . logically. Of course, the whole point of the story is that
they don’t. They go crazy – well, I’ll be honest, you’ll see worse outside any
town centre pub on a Friday night, but it’s as crazy as you can expect a Vulcan
to get. When the Pon Farr comes on them, they either mate . . . or die. After
trying his luck with the Admiral who told him to divert to Altair VI, Kirk mutinies,
and goes to Vulcan to save his best bud. Spock asks Kirk and McCoy to accompany
him to the ceremony, which upsets the Vulcan matriarch T’Pau, but is actually
permitted, providing that they never speak of what they see. Right, at this
point I have to speak of T’Pau. This is childish of me, but I couldn’t quite
get over her rather heavy central European accent. Rather less childishly, I
found myself exceptionally irritated by her continual and incorrect use of the
word ‘thee’. What follows is a short grammar lesson, so please feel free to
look down to the next paragraph. Basically, ‘thee’ is the object form of the
archaic word ‘thou’ which means ‘you’. So you can grammatically say : -
I will marry thee
I will give my word to thee
I will give my word to thee
I have heard good things of thee.
What you CANNOT do is use it as the subject
of a verb. So you can’t say –
Thee has agreed to marry T’Pring.
You have to say Thou.
Ah yes, Dave – you may well be saying – but
this is Vulcan. Surely they can use thee how they like. I accept that you can
have this point of view, yes, but the trouble is it sounds like
cod-Shakespearian dialogue done extremely badly, and it detracts from what is
going on. Especially when bloody Spock starts doing it as well!
So, Spock’s intended, T’Pring makes a challenge
to stop the ceremony going ahead, as is her right. She likes Stonn, who will be
a lot easier to dominate than Spock will. Their plan is for Stonn to challenge
Spock, but that goes out of the window, when she picks Kirk. Her thinking is
that if Spock kills Kirk, he won’t want her because he will be so mortified,
and if Kirk kills Spock, Kirk won’t want her. Either way, she wins. Kirk makes
the schoolboy error of not actually asking the details of the combat. So, after
he agrees, he gives a great double take as T’Pau observes as she passes on her
way out – “This combat is to de dett.” If you don’t speak Vulcan, well it means
a fight to the death.
You know what happens I’m sure – wily old
McCoy asks permission to give Kirk an injection to combat the effects of the
heat and the thin atmosphere, and then slips Kirk a mickey finn. As soon as it
takes effect he announces that Kirk is dead, and has him beamed up to the
Enterprise before anyone notices that he’s still breathing. Spock interrogates
T’Pring, and gives her the freedom to marry Stonn, warning him that wanting is
not the same as having. Good line.
Not quite over yet, Spock presents himself
to McCoy on the Enterprise, ordering him to lock him up for murdering Kirk,
then has about half a second’s unrestrained joy as Kirk appears from the
doorway behind him. Ahhhhhh.
You Probably Already Know That: -
·
This was scripted by Theodore
Sturgeon. Theodore ‘Ted’ Sturgeon was among the first rank of American Science
Fiction writers of the middle of the 20th century, and award winning
writer of a large number of short stories and successful novels
·
The Vulcan matriarch presiding
over the ceremony is called T’Pau. Her name was used by a British 1980s band
fronted by singer Carol Decker. Although their success was shortlived they
scored a massive hit with the single “China In Your Hand”.
·
Pavel Chekov, played by Walter
Koenig, makes his first appearance in this story. The youngest member of the
regular cast, Koenig was hired to appeal to younger female viewers, hence the
Beatle/Monkee haircut. For his first few stories until his own hair grew long
enough he was forced to wear a ‘monkees’ wig, which he hated. To be fair he
does look ridiculous in it.
·
Gerald Fried’s piece of iconic incidental
music played during the fight scene became the standard piece of Star Trek hand
to hand fight music. It has been used in a number of parodies, including scenes
in Futurama and films such as Jim Carrey’s “The Cable Guy”
·
Celia Lovsky, the Austrian
American actress who played T’Pau, made her final screen appearance in the sci
fi film “Soylent Green”, which incidentally also saw the last screen appearance
of Edward G. Robinson.
·
Lawrence Montaigne, who plays
Stonn was seen in the series 1 episode “Balance of Terror” playing the Romulan
second in command. He’s in good company. Mark Lenard, who played the Romulan
commander in “Balance of Terror”, will reappear as Spock’s father, Sarek.
Verdict
In all seriousness, daft dialogue to one
side, what’s not to like? I don’t kid myself that we all like the episodes that
we like for the same reasons, but I think “Amok Time” is pretty great, even
allowing for the faults with dialogue that I’ve already mentioned. It as the
archetypal Star Trek hand to hand combat scene, with the fight between Kirk and
Spock. It fills in a little background on the most consistently interesting
member of the Enterprise crew, without necessarily totally deunding him of
mystery. Where, for example, are his family while this ceremony is going on?
Does he in fact have any family members still on Vulcan? These are questions
which will be answered later on in the season, but for now it’s enough that the
viewer asks the questions in the first place.
Not enough? Well, I also like the little
more depth that is added to the understated Nurse Chapel/Spock unrequited love
story. Spock, it appears does not reject Christine because he is totally
unfeeling towards her, but because his biology means that he cannot love her,
or at least not in any way which would satisfy her.
It’s not quite my favourite episode of the
whole season, but I have to say, it’s right up there with the best of them.
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