The Pirates of Orion by: Howard Weinstein and directed by: Bill Reed

 

“The Pirates of Orion” is written by: Howard Weinstein and is directed by: Bill Reed.  It was produced under production code 22020, was the 1^st episode of Star Trek: The Animated Series Season 2, was the 17^th episode of Star Trek: The Animated Series, and was broadcast on September 7, 1974.

 

The second and final season of Star Trek: The Animated Series opens its second and final season with an adventure of Spock nearly dying from illness while the only cure is stolen by space pirates and it’s up to Captain Kirk and the Enterprise to get it back.  Okay, so the idea of this being a second season is actually quite silly, it’s just the final six episodes in the 22 episode order of Star Trek: The Animated Series but it is handled by a different director, Bill Reed, although both Reed and previous director Hal Sutherland are credited in different places during the episode.  I’m not entirely certain if the switch in direction is responsible for this, but “The Pirates of Orion” is an episode where every actor is delivering their lines in an almost rushed manner.  It’s possible that this is an episode whose script ran long and they needed to cut things down, the usual pauses between lines feel as if they’ve been edited out in several moments during the episode.  The performances of the villains of the episode are also particularly odd, the lines are performed in almost one breath with little between the lines, again an odd aspect of the episode’s editing.

 

This is also an episode where Orion is consistently pronounced with a different stress on the “i” because for whatever reason this is meant to be a completely different race of people than the green aliens that Star Trek has already established as Orions.  It’s far too consistent, coming from every actor involved in the episode, to just be a fluke from say William Shatner getting his lines wrong.  The plot itself also suffers from being particularly overstuffed, Howard Weinstein was only 19 when writing this episode and clearly going from his memory of watching Star Trek growing up.   This is an episode where everything just keeps moving without any real time to let things breathe, though putting Spock in danger as the ticking clock of the episode is good to keep the danger up.  While it feels partially as a workaround for limited availability from Leonard Nimoy, but it does allow DeForest Kelley as McCoy to get a few moments of kindness towards Spock and William Shatner as Kirk to get some nice bits of diplomacy.  The designs of the Orions are fairly nice though, and their actual presentation has some hints at a deeper culture.  There is an attempt to make some commentary on political neutrality and a society that is willing to end their own lives to keep that neutrality, but it’s one of those really dark themes that doesn’t actually get explored because this is a Saturday morning kid’s cartoon.

 

Overall, the second season of Star Trek: The Animated Series opens with an episode that despite some nice character interactions doesn’t really do a whole lot of note in terms of having a consistent plot.  Yes, the weird editing is bringing it down quite a bit, because there is a lot of potential here, but even with the editing problems this is an episode that is just another example of Star Trek: The Animated Series being perfectly fine.  This is also just something that Star Trek: The Animated Series struggles with, it’s often fine with a lot of potential lacking.  5/10.

The Jihad by: Stephen Kandel and directed by: Hal Sutherland

 

“The Jihad” is written by: Stephen Kandel and is directed by: Hal Sutherland.  It was produced under production code 22014, was the 16^th episode of Star Trek: The Animated Series, and was broadcast on January 12, 1974.

 

It’s incredibly weird for the first season finale of Star Trek: The Animated Series to be titled “The Jihad”, an Arabic word that has multiple meanings generally referring to inner struggle and strife but also colloquially refers to the idea of holy war.  The holy war idea is a particularly popular interpretation of the word jihad since 1965’s Dune was published with the Butlerian Jihad an essential part of that novel’s worldbuilding.  There is little doubt in my mind that author Stephen Kandel titled the episode “The Jihad” because of Dune, even if it isn’t a particularly accurate title.  This is an episode attempting to avert a war instead of dealing with any direct consequences of conflict or struggle.  Stephen Kandel also writes something entirely different from his three other Star Trek episodes, a quest episode where Kirk and Spock are recruited to recover a stolen religious artifact with a team of aliens to avoid a holy war.  Kandel establishes a team with every member having a role to play: Kirk is a leader and Spock is a strategist while the human Lara (voiced by Jane Webb, an actress familiar to Filmation productions) is a tracker, the reptilian Sord is the muscle, the insectoid EM3 Green is a lockpick, and the prince of the Skorr, Tcharr, represents the species from which the artifact was stolen.

 

The episode itself it pretty much going from place to place in an attempt to find the artefact: from icescapes, to forgotten temples, to giant chasms, until it’s eventually revealed who is responsible for stealing the artefact.  It’s not a bad premise for an episode, but Kandel almost overstuffs the 24 minute runtime with set pieces so there isn’t quite enough for each to feel quite complete.  This is also an episode where the animators, usually great on backgrounds as a visual feast, have clearly put their effort into designing the aliens joining Kirk and Spock on their mission.  The aliens are far more than the stereotypical Star Trek aliens being humans with distinctive headgear of some sort: there’s a humanoid bird, a humanoid reptile, and a humanoid insect.  All humanoid because it is easier to draw in a people shape and get dialogue out in lip flaps.  The climax of the episode is actually quite weak, Tchar’s betrayal is kind of the obvious answer and the action doesn’t really work on the show’s budget.  Menioned above was Jane Webb who appears due to both Nichelle Nichols and Majel Barrett being unavailable, but this episode also featured writer David Gerrold as EM3 Green adds to the episode standing out because of it.

 

Overall, Star Trek: The Animated Series ends its first season on an episode very much in the way that it began with “Beyond the Farthest Star”, doing something different and pushing the boundaries of what Star Trek could normally do.  It’s certainly a decent episode and doesn’t fall into the problem of being an episode that the viewer is going to immediately forget, but it is an episode where the ideas clearly need more time to really develop with added character in toe.  I applaud “The Jihad” anyway for being an episode that is at least interesting and accomplishes something different, the resolution having Kirk and Spock succeed but with no glory is a particularly nice twist.  6/10.

The Eye of the Beholder by: David P. Harmon and directed by: Hal Sutherland

 

“The Eye of the Beholder” is written by: David P. Harmon and is directed by: Hal Sutherland.  It was produced under production code 22016, was the 15^th episode of Star Trek: The Animated Series, and was broadcast on January 5, 1974.

 

So you guys know “The Cage”?  You know, the original Star Trek pilot, written by Gene Roddenberry, directed by Robert Butler, most of its footage reused in the two-part “The Menagerie” as a budget saver.  “The Eye of the Beholder” is essentially Star Trek: The Animated Series remaking “The Cage” but instead of Roddenberry writing it’s David P. Harmon, a writer responsible for “The Deadly Years” and “A Piece of the Action”.  The former is a more hard line speculative science fiction of the Enterprise dealing with aging and the latter a pastiche of gangster films in space.  “The Eye of the Beholder” fits more with the former in terms of tone, it wants to be about the Enterprise stumbling upon a planet with its own thriving ecosystem and forms of life that are initially unable to recognize humanity as intelligent.  This is where “The Cage” parallels begin: Kirk, Spock, and McCoy are put in a zoo because the inhabitants of this planet believe that they are animals in need of being protected.  That is where the thematic parallels to “The Cage” largely end, this isn’t a breeding experiment or even an experiment at all, it's more of a simple zoo.  The back half of the episode is our heroes attempting to communicate with the intelligent alien slugs, eventually getting Scotty to speak with one of the children to come to an understanding and leave the planet for several centuries.

 

Thematically, “The Eye of the Beholder” is an episode that should work.  Star Trek: The Animated Series came after man had landed on the moon and knowledge of the day was largely interested in the possibility of life on other planets not conforming to Earth life.  The aliens here are sluglike and the alien animals conform to being giant, unintelligent monsters to actually menace our heroes.  There’s also a previous Federation starship which found its way to the planet to allow more dialogue since this is a series whose strengths generally lie in dialogue heavy episodes.  The commander, sadly, is a character who delivers every line in a William Shatner like cadence.  There’s a good chance that after 15 episodes, James Doohan is breaking down from carrying this series on his back while the female officer is just Majel Barrett giving her usual performance.  The Shatneresque cadence is kind of emblematic of this episode’s issues, it's somehow one of the slowest moving episodes of Star Trek I have seen, despite being 25 minutes.  The aliens don’t actually get any characterization, even after they begin to telepathically speak with our crew, there isn’t much there.  Harmon does attempt to create some conflict that isn’t fighting aliens, largely built upon the aliens not understanding human speech or biology.  This is one of those ideas that could be brilliant under a different writer, Harmon has great ideas, but his previous scripts had only been weak: “A Piece of the Action” works because it was rewritten by Gene L. Coon.

 

Overall, “The Eye of the Beholder” has the seeds of greatness, but it’s an incredibly uneven episode.  There’s simultaneously too many and too few ideas populating the episode so the viewer can’t really focus on a singular theme or even a point.  Add that to what feels like more reused animation than is normal from a Filmation project, this leads to an episode that really doesn’t do much of anything.  It’s one that you’re likely to watch and then almost immediately forget exists.  4/10.

The Slaver Weapon written and adapted by: Larry Niven and directed by: Hal Sutherland

 

“The Slaver Weapon” is written by: Larry Niven, is adapted from his short story “The Soft Weapon”, and is directed by: Hal Sutherland.  It was produced under production code 22011, was the 14^th episode of Star Trek: The Animated Series, and was broadcast on December 8, 1973.

 

Larry Niven as a writer actually seems to thrive in a shorter medium.  His Known Space universe is one of those pieces of modern science fiction that has found its way into the idea of a science fiction canon.  Ringworld is his most well-known novel, and before today the only work from his that I have actually read, my general outlook on Niven’s work being incredibly good at worldbuilding while being quite bland at character work and plot.  Ringworld was a novel, but “The Slaver Weapon” is a 25-minute episode of Star Trek: The Animated Series adapted from his short story, “The Soft Weapon”, and with it comes the ability to play to Niven’s strengths as a writer.  Niven is already working with established characters throughout the episode, the main cast is reduced to Spock, Uhura, and Sulu going against a group of kzinti on an ice planet making this the first episode of Star Trek to air to not feature Captain Kirk at all.  The conflict of the episode is one over a weapon that a group of kzinti wish to use to go at war with humanity, both groups discovering stasis boxes.  This is a 25-minute episode stuffed full of interesting ideas and pieces of worldbuilding that one should expect from Larry Niven: the stasis boxes are relics of ancient civilizations lost billions of years ago, the kzinti society feels fully fleshed out despite having to be presented completely new in a single episode of a television show, and the titular slaver weapon is a piece of technology that changes form on the fly.  The actual plot is perhaps the episode’s only real weakness: it’s essentially a game of hot potato with the weapon for 25-minutes so there really isn’t anything complex than getting the weapon away from the kzinti and learning about the Slavers.

 

Niven’s general weakness in character writing for individuals is actually towards this episode’s strengths.  Spock as a character is a character that’s fairly easy to fill in with Leonard Nimoy in the role being an actor who knows the character like the back of his hand so can fill in the gaps.  Spock is in the leadership role this episode heading the expedition as First Officer and is allowed to serve as an ambassador in a way to the kzinti.  Sure, diplomacy almost immediately breaks down, but Spock’s knowledge of kzinti culture helps guide Sulu and Uhura through their interactions and allows for Niven’s worldbuilding to come through in exposition dumps that make sense.  Sulu and Uhura aren’t particularly well characterized, if you strip things away this is an episode where Sulu’s role in particular could have been taken up by anyone else, less so for Uhura as one of two female established characters, but just by giving the characters the space and actions to take in the plot you can tell that George Takei and Nichelle Nichols are able to flex their acting ability.  Star Trek: The Animated Series has generally been better for Takei and Nichols, even if they’re being given smaller, extra parts with James Doohan, but “The Slaver Weapon” only has them playing Sulu and Uhura, Doohan being the one voicing the kzinti in the episode keeps the other two together.  Takei and Nichols are the ones in the spotlight with Nimoy for the entire episode, something that should have been done more before this point.

 

Overall, “The Slaver Weapon” is an episode that rises above because it actually decides to be something different.  Larry Niven brings his worldbuilding abilities to Star Trek and not having William Shatner as Captain Kirk is an added bonus allowing other characters to take the spotlight.  The kzinti sadly don’t reappear after this in Star Trek¸ though not without attempts being made and Niven being willing to work around the copyright issues that a future crossover might bring if he was not the one writing it, but this is just an episode that knows exactly what it’s doing.  It’s a reflection on looking into a past civilization without any of the ability to truly understand it making it just an excellent piece of speculative fiction.  9/10.

The Ambergris Element by: Margaret Armen and directed by: Hal Sutherland

 

“The Ambergris Element” is written by: Margaret Armen and is directed by: Hal Sutherland.  It was produced under production code 22013, was the 13^th episode of Star Trek: The Animated Series, and was broadcast on December 1, 1973.

 

Sometimes there’s an episode of television that’s just throwing whatever they can at the wall in the hopes of something sticking.  That’s essentially what “The Ambergris Element” does for 24-minutes and it’s honestly what I should have come to expect from a Margaret Armen script.  This is the last thing Armen would write for Star Trek and it’s definitely a low note to go out on, though not quite as bad as her debut “The Gamesters of Triskelion”.  This is an episode where events just happen without any real connective tissue to knit everything back together in the end.  The premise starts out strong enough, the Enterprise arrives at the planet Argo, a planet whose ecology shifted into the past to be a water planet, on an exploratory mission to study exactly how this happened as another planet is going through similar seismic shifts that will become like Argo.  That should be plenty to drive an episode forward, since this is part of The Animated Series the other planet could easily have been shown even briefly.  The planet also has life on it that was not detected, including giant sea monsters, again enough for an episode to really be pushed forward to the length.  Instead the episode draws loose inspiration from the twist of H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Shadow Over Innsmouth” and the idea of Atlantis, Kirk and Spock disappear and become fish people.  Okay, not literal fish people, but they are mutated to breath underwater and have webbed hands, the Filmation team obviously didn’t have the time or the budget to really alter the models, the webbed hands only being shown in a handful of shots.

 

Trying to discover what happened to Kirk and Spock means that McCoy actually gets things to do in this episode including getting a log entry of his own, DeFroest Kelley also getting to actually give a performance for the first time in a long while for Star Trek: The Animated Series.  The episode shifts to the now fish like Kirk and Spock going underwater where there are a race of intelligent fish people played by James Doohan and Majel Barrett (and possibly producer Lou Scheimer).  The Aquans are mistrustful and basically go along age lines with the older generations not trusting them while the younger generation wants to help Kirk and Spock, that generation being why the pair are now water breathers.  The episode then shifts into a quest for Kirk and Spock to find the opposite of the titular ambergris element, something that will reverse Kirk and Spock’s condition.  There are also earthquakes happening so Bones on the surface is in some danger, who doesn’t really contribute to the quest for the anti-ambergris element (though to be fair the mutagens are not actually called the ambergris element, it’s just likened to ambergris once in the resolution).  The sea monsters end up factoring in the resolution, they supply the mutagen in the form of venom, and then the episode kind of ends.  The two generations decide to live in separate environments, because apparently the young wished to return to the surface world for reasons that don’t make sense.  The planet is covered in water so there isn’t really anywhere for them to go, Armen just seems to think this episode needs a moral and this is going to be it.

 

Overall, “The Ambergris Element” is an episode that feels commissioned to fill a slot with an author who the team knew could have delivered a script for production.  Yes, it certainly attempts to do more than what the original series could do, but it’s an episode that doesn’t actually have a plot.  It’s a series of events where one moment just leaps ahead to the next without any of the connective tissue that a story needs.  Margaret Armen hinders herself by not really having anything to say and just throwing as many things as she can into the episode that it doesn’t actually say anything, not even telling a story just having things happen.  2/10.

Doctor Who and the Visitation by: Eric Saward

 

Doctor Who and the Visitation was written by Eric Saward, based on his story The Visitation.  It was the 70^th story to be novelized by Target Books.

 

The Visitation as a television story is one of those pseudo historicals that are quite good but if we are being completely honest was a good candidate to be among the first batch of Peter Davison stories to be novelized.  Eric Saward took the task of adapting the script himself and the book hit shelves six months after the original serial finished broadcast on BBC One.  This is the fourth novel from Eric Saward I’ve read, though actually the first he had written.  Eric Saward as a novelist seems paradoxical, Doctor Who and the Visitation is perhaps the best of the four books of his that I have read.  Perhaps this is because there wasn’t much time in between the serial airing and the necessary publication date so Saward really only had time to convert the stage action into prose without any of his additions.  This doesn’t have the trouble of attempting to be a Douglas Adams style farce where there was none, nor does it feel like this is a novelization done out of necessity and not interest.  It’s just a fairly straightforward adaptation of the original serial with few additions to really convert it.  This has happened before for a novelization, Doctor Who and the Giant Robot had Terrance Dicks adapt Robot in less than two months from when that serial finished airing and still made it a pretty fun adaptation.  Terrance Dicks as an author is a workman who is incredibly easy to read while Eric Saward is not.

 

Eric Saward as a writer doesn’t seem to understand entirely how to write an actual novel, his prose being incredibly bare bones.  I listened to the audiobook release of this by Matthew Waterhouse and Waterhouse is genuinely a great narrator despite having little material to work with.  There is also the general sense of Saward’s violent tendencies in terms of storytelling, the family at the beginning is killed in a particularly brutal way and there is this sense of the Terileptil threat being all the more violent in the novelization.  There also is little care for the female characters, Adric of all people being the one who gets some development with Saward foreshadowing the events of Earthshock with a desire to go home.  It’s not much characterization, but at least it’s something when the rest of the cast get nothing.  Okay that’s not technically true, Richard Mace gets some expansion, though without the television performance backing him up you can really see more of Saward’s tendencies as a writer.

 

Overall, Doctor Who and the Visitation is just one of those novelizations that are particularly fine.  It came out about a year before VHS releases for Doctor Who began and it’s saddled with a writer who is just so clearly uninterested in doing anything with the material it’s almost entirely unremarkable for what it does.  5/10.