The Survivor by: James Schmerer and directed by: Hal Sutherland

 

“The Survivor” is written by: James Schmerer and is directed by: Hal Sutherland.  It was produced under production code 22005, was the 6^th episode of Star Trek: The Animated Series, and was broadcast on October 13, 1973.

 

James Schmerer was a writer who worked on several high profile shows of the 1970s and 1980s, and when watching “The Survivor”, his only contribution to Star Trek as a franchise, there is a sense of this script being commissioned because of the 1973 Writer’s Guild of America Strike.  The strike meant that writers could not write for live action series, but animation was exempt from the strike and this greatly increased the pool of writers submitting to Star Trek: The Animated Series for its 22 episode run.  You can tell Schmerer isn’t really equipped to handle a 22 minute piece of animation, this is an episode that opens with several minutes of exposition about Carter Winston, a philanthropist who used his fortune to guide people through misfortune when the Federation was unable to.  He has been missing for five years and his fiancé, Ann Nored, happens to be serving on the Enterprise and they can easily reignite their relationship.  Except they don’t, because this is Star Trek, something is wrong: the Enterprise is on the edge of the Romulan Neutral Zone and Captain Kirk orders a change of course into the Neutral Zone.  Carter is actually a shape-shifting alien called a Vendorian, Romulans show up threatening the Enterprise and Ann is able to convince the alien which has taken on some of Winston’s personality, saves the day.  “The Survivor” has the big problem of largely becoming a runaround on the Enterprise with very little of actual substance there.

 

Schmerer’s script tries to build this episode around the idea of this romance: there is a moment where Nored cannot bring herself to shoot the love of her life, even if she knows that it’s a shapeshifting alien.  Nichelle Nichols voices Ann Nored, and the voice she puts on for the role is particularly high pitch which while not grating comes very close to it.  Nichols is also trying to give something with the performance, but the material isn’t actually there.  The only amusement really comes when the shapeshifting nature of the Vendorian actually comes into play, turning into inanimate objects that would have been more effective in a live action setting and not the animation where backgrounds can be already inconsistent.  It doesn’t help that Schmerer’s characterization of the main crew, especially in tackling the Spock/Bones dynamic which is more antagonistic than ever.  The quips are particularly harsh and it really doesn’t feel like they work even as coworkers.  The exposition of the episode at the top also feels incredibly forced to fit into the format instead of letting it come out naturally.

 

Overall, “The Survivor” suffers from being an almost entirely uninteresting script from a one-off writer that has very little of substance.  The substance that is there is nothing that hasn’t already been done before on Star Trek and better elsewhere, coupled with uninteresting characterization makes for the first bad episode for Star Trek: The Animated Series. 4/10.