My Favourite Star Trek Original Series Episodes: The Doomsday Machine

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.

My Favourite Star Trek Original Series episodes: Season 2: Episode 1: Amok Time

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 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 20^th 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.