What’s It All About?
Having received a faint distress message
the Enterprise proceeds to a star system where it finds nothing but rubble, and
the hulk of its sister ship, the USS Constellation. Subspace interference
prevents them from sending a message to Star Fleet.
Kirk, McCoy and Scotty beam aboard the
Constellation. Most of the ship’s systems are out. They find a sole survivor,
the ship’s captain, Commodore Matt Decker. He starts to come round after McCoy
has injected him with some goo. He explains that his ship was attacked and
disabled. Rather inexplicably he took the decision to abandon ship and beam the
whole crew down to the third planet in the system. Before he could beam himself
the ship was attacked again, knocking out the transporter. Then the machine
turned upon the third planet, and destroyed it.
Decker describes a machine miles long with
a maw that could swallow a dozen starships. Spock works out that it must use
antiproton beams to cut up planets, and then ingest material from the planets to
give itself fuel and energy – so as long as it keeps killing planets it is
self-sustaining. He also plots its course, working out that whatever it is, it
has come from outside the galaxy. It appears to be heading for downtown Galaxy
central – or the most densely populated sector of the Galaxy at least. Decker
at last agrees to go to the sickbay on the Enterprise when Kirk says he will
take the Constellation in tow with a tractor beam. No sooner do McCoy and
Decker beam up, than the planet killer reappears.
The transporter and communications are
knocked out in the first attack, stranding Scotty and Kirk on the
Constellation. Scotty gets to work repairing the impulse drive, while the
Enterprise breaks away from the machine, which goes back on course or its next
target, which appears to be the Rigel system. The inhabited Rigel system.
This is where the main inter-character
drama is played out. Spock sees his duty as evading the machine, which he
believes the Enterprise cannot harm, and informing and warning Star Fleet once
clear of the sub space interference. Decker argues that their duty is to attack
and destroy the planet killer. Spock ignores this, which leads Decker to pull
rank, and to quote Star Fleet regulations in order to take over command. Spock
informs an indignant Doctor McCoy that he can only relieve Commodore Decker of
command if he has evidence that he is unfit, which he does not have. Yet.
Decker feels that he made the mistake of
trying to attack the machine at long range, and that he will be able to hurt it
from close up. Nope. The attack has no effect other than to draw the fire of
the planet killer, which does more damage to the Enterprise, and the planet
killer grabs it in a tractor beam and starts pulling it inside. Despite Spock’s
warning Decker delays trying to break free. Only the fact that, with its
impulse engines and phasers now working, the Constellation draws the machine’s
attention away from the Enterprise that saves it.
Kirk retreats, but Decker, now only a
wibble away from a straightjacket, thinks that two ships ought to be enough to
destroy the planet killer. This despite the fact that it will take a day to
repair the Enterprise shields and warp drive, and probably months to do the
same to the Constellation. At about this point communications are restored, and
Kirk assesses the situation and orders Spock to relieve Decker of duty, saying
that he will take the responsibility and the flak from Star Fleet himself. Relieved
and sent to sick bay, Decker slips his escort, and steals a shuttlecraft. His
plan, as he explains to Kirk, is to fly it right down the planet killer’s
throat, and blow it to kingdom come. 10/10 for the idea, but 0/10 for
execution. Still the readings Spock takes indicates that the killer’s power
output decreased after the explosion. So the plan is to ram the Constellation
down its throat with a thirty second delayed self-destruct. Despite some
transporter issues, they manage to pull first Scotty, then much later Kirk out,
and boom bang a bang bang, the machine is killed.
You Probably Already Know That: -
·
Commodore Matt Decker was envisaged
as having been the father of Will Decker, the officer from whom Admiral Kirk
takes command of The Enterprise in “Star Trek: The Motion Picture”. Gene
Roddenberry revealed this in “The Making of Star Trek: The Motion Picture”
·
The power of V’ger in the first
movie is similar to that of the Doomsday Machine, and the destructive alien
machine in “Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home” seems to have been inspired by the
Doomsday Machine.
·
Writer Norman Spinrad based the
episode on his unpublished story “The Planet Eater”. He has acknowledged that
he was influenced by Herman Melville’s ‘Moby Dick’.
·
The part of Decker was
originally written for actor Robert Ryan, who was unavailable for filming.
·
The number of the USS
Constellation NCC 1017 was made simply by jumbling the digits of the
Enterprise’s number – NCC 1701
·
Decker’s uniform bears a
different logo to the Enterprise uniforms, or the star emblem on general star
fleet uniforms as seen in episodes like “The Menagerie”. This one seems like a
small part of a celtic knot design.
·
As we’ve noted, James Blish
based many of his novelisations of stories on original scripts and this
probably explains why Matt Decker is actually called Brand Decker in his
version.
·
Consciously or subconsciously
the comedy series “Red Dwarf” parodied the section where Decker quotes Star
Fleet regulations on several occasions, usually with hologram Arnold Rimmer
misremembering the regulations and being corrected by Kryten the android.
The Verdict
Classic. This is, in my opinion, an extremely
strong episode which is difficult to fault. Let’s start with Decker. Actor
William Windom said that when he read the script he thought it was rather
silly, and played the character as if it was a cartoon. It was only years later
that he came to realise he had played Captain Ahab in space. Yet that’s exactly
what he does, and very well too. Decker’s collapse and his desperation to atone
for his previous mistakes are compelling. The effect on his career that Spock’s
actions in relieving him of command would have is understated, but this is just
as effective as beating the audience over the head with it. The fact that
Decker achieves a kind of redemption through unwittingly showing the crew the
way to defeat the machine is clever and well done.
The story is obviously a take on the threat
posed by nuclear weapons, and this may be a little hackneyed now, but was
pretty relevant just a few years after the Cuban Missile Crisis.
This is not the most complicated story
we’ll ever see in Star Trek. The one big idea – an unstoppable weapon that the
Enterprise must stop really isn’t that original, and this is but one of a
number of variations on the idea – you could argue that the same basic idea is
at the heart of “The Changeling” as well. But what makes “The Doomsday Weapon”
so successful is that for me, it is extremely well executed.
If I’m honest, I don’t generally like the
remastered effects in my boxed set DVDs of the original series. It’s not that
they’re bad – although if we’re honest they’re really not THAT good. But I had
no problem with the effects in the originals, and given the opportunity I’d
rather have seen them as they were originally, as I remember them. I feel this
very much about this particular story. But that’s a very small criticism. Maybe
“The Doomsday Machine” is maybe not the greatest Original Series episode –
although I think it’s certainly a candidate for the title. But whichever way
you look at it, it’s pretty darn good.
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