The Lorelei Signal by: Margaret Armen and directed by: Hal Sutherland

 

“The Lorelei Signal” is written by: Margaret Armen and is directed by: Hal Sutherland.  It was produced under production code 22006, was the 4^th 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.