Friday's Child by: D.C. Fontana and directed by: Joseph Pevney

“Friday’s Child” is written by D.C. Fontana and is directed by Joseph Pevney.  It was filmed under production code 32, was the 11^th episode of Star Trek Season 2, the 40^th episode of Star Trek, and was broadcast on December 1, 1967.

 

For its first year of production and well into its second, D.C. Fontana remained the only female scriptwriter on Star Trek and “Friday’s Child” feels as if it is her attempt to write an episode of Star Trek from that female perspective to interesting results.  The setup is standard Star Trek, the Enterprise is in orbit around the planet Capella IV to negotiate a mining contract for the Federation with the very patriarchal inhabitants of the planet before things start to go wrong.  McCoy has spent time learning the customs of these people to act as an ambassador and to avoid any problems, but before any deal can be made a Klingon, Kras played by Tige Andrews, appears and is also attempting to make a similar deal.  There is also a Klingon plot to lure the Enterprise away with a false distress message sent by the Klingons which keeps Scotty, Sulu, Chekov, and Uhura occupied while Kirk, Spock, and McCoy deal with a coup on the planet leaving the pregnant partner of the dead chief in peril.

 

While much of the meat of the episode takes place on the planet, the Enterprise sequence acts as a fascinating B-plot to look at the evolution of the Klingons since their first appearance in “Errand of Mercy”.  It has become clear that tensions between the Federation and the Klingons has actually escalated quite a bit, the Klingon appearing on the planet in the pre-credits sequence leads the redshirt of the episode to immediately fire, and Fontana’s script casts the Klingons as honorable but still deadly enemies.  The distress signal the Enterprise gets allows James Doohan and Walter Koenig in particular to really show their acting abilities as Scotty and Chekov are the ones to handle the crisis, which is fascinating to watch.  The distress signal in hindsight is obviously a ruse, but when you’re watching you don’t really see the ruse until things start to go wrong, the ship in distress isn’t actually there and it is meant to get the Enterprise away in the hopes of destroying a Federation ship and starting a war.  This is a plotline that reflects a general framing of the Cold War of the United States as positive and the Soviet Union as negative if you look into this specifically, Capella IV representing the Global South and general interference.  The episode builds up to framing western interference as good, the mining agreement does go to the Federation in the end, while the east is framed as bad, the Klingon being killed at the climax of the episode.  This is an interesting framing and actually feels in places a little bit outside of Star Trek’s normal philosophy, other episodes tackling the Cold War up to this point had generally explored the similarities of the United States/Soviet Union power structures in episodes like “Balance of Terror”.

 

The A-plot involving Eleen, played by Julie Newmar, and Kirk, Spock, and McCoy attempting to save this civilization is also fascinating for different reasons.  Fontana takes cultural cues from Dune which would have been published two years prior, the planet’s fashions being close to the descriptions of Herbert’s novel.  Fontana is also heavily exploring themes of motherhood and choice.  While Star Trek certainly couldn’t outright mention abortion nor endorse it in 1967, Eleen’s pregnancy is framed as an unwanted one and one that is too far along to abort.  Newmar’s performance is a fascinating one tot watch as she is the victim of a heavily patriarchal society that has just used her body to create an heir, most likely against her will.  Eleen latches onto McCoy who is there to provide the best healthcare, deliver and protect the baby in the best way that he can, though not take responsibility for a child that is not his.  There is some interesting interference as this culture does not permit women to be touched by those who are not their husbands, McCoy having to break and ignore those cultural practices actively which is a fascinatingly 1960s look at cultural interaction, though McCoy is also in the right for doing so, if he didn’t both child and mother would likely die.  DeForest Kelley’s performance is honestly one of his best of the series thus far, giving a nuanced portrayal while Shatner and Nimoy get to be in the backseat for much of the episode which is nice.  Even the final joke of the episode serves to show how McCoy works as a character which is wonderful.

 

Overall, “Friday’s Child” is an episode with some very outdated sexual politics but D.C. Fontana and Joseph Pevney should be praised for their attempts to write a pro-choice episode though still falling into some issues of objectification.  Julie Newmar and DeForest Kelley give the best performances and the integration of the B-plot with the Klingons is fascinating, beginning the long process of developing them into a fuller species if it is left in some largely of the time tropes involving the Cold War.  A solid time.  7/10.