“The Lorelei Signal” is written by: Margaret Armen and
is directed by: Hal Sutherland. It was produced
under production code 22006, was the 4th episode of Star Trek:
The Animated Series, and was broadcast on September 29, 1973.
When I saw Margaret Armen was responsible for this episode
of Star Trek: The Animated Series, I was apprehensive to say the
least. Armen wrote multiple episodes of Star
Trek before this of varying quality from the genuinely great “The Cloud
Minders”, to the rocky but with potential “The Paradise Syndrome”, to the
downright awful “The Gamesters of Triskelion”.
“The Lorelei Signal” is an episode that draws on Greek mythology for its
plot, mainly The Odyssey and several of its escapades on temptation. The temptation draws on the interpretation of
the Sirens of mythology being beautiful women and only tempting towards men
which is what you’d expect from an episode written in 1973. The Enterprise investigates a signal
that puts the male members of the ship under its sway, being sent out by a race
of women who then force them to undergo transformations into older men. The male landing party begins to age a decade
in a day and it’s up to Uhura and Nurse Chapel to save everyone. This involves Uhura taking command of the Enterprise
which is the highlight of the episode, becoming clear that Nichelle Nichols is
clearly having a ball in her voice role here.
This is also an episode where Nichols is joining James Doohan and Majel
Barrett in the additional voices department, Barrett needing backup on the
female aliens in particular. While Nichols
is great as Uhura and her character actually gets agency and a plotline, Armen’s
script is particularly held back by the fact that the episode does keep cutting
back to the planet where the male characters are captured. This is largely for exposition to explain how
they’re aging and how Spock is aging slower because of his heritage as a
Vulcan. Now, this doesn’t help that the Enterprise
crew aging was already done in “The Deadly Years” which already was a fairly weak
episode.
The episode has also aged poorly in terms of its plot,
mainly because it essentially treats the sexes as two separate species and not two
genetic expressions of the same species.
The inhabitants once were mixed in terms of sex, but the men died off
while the women were able to evolve a secretion that allow them to overcome the
aging effects of the planet. The trouble
here is honestly that Armen doesn’t really seem to have much focus in terms of
what she is trying to say with the episode, is it about men and women learning
to live in harmony or is she just using an all-female planet because it has the
potential to be an interesting setting that then has little to do. It could also be that Armen is not comfortable
writing in the 25 minute format of Star Trek: The Animated Series, this
is an episode after all that doesn’t quite reach the length. There is a full minute where James Doohan as
Scotty sings a song and our male characters are sitting in an urn in a
rainstorm to drown because they’ve been lured to their deaths. This is an episode where things happen and
have very little in way of explanation, largely using the imagery of mythology because
it seems like a cool idea. It’s really
only in the final minutes of the episode where Armen seems to go onto a point
of being about living life to the fullest which feels tacked on.
Overall, despite everything “The Lorelei Signal” does have
a lot to like, especially with Nichelle Nichols actually getting things to do
in an episode and seeing a woman of color take command, albeit briefly, is a
great statement that feels more progressive than many original series Star
Trek episodes. The trouble comes
with the fact that it retreads some ground of previous Star Trek
episodes without really setting things apart from those episodes, even if the shorter
runtime means the aging works slightly better.
5/10.
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