“Elaan of Troyius”
Written and directed by John Meredyth Lucas
Season 3, Episode 2
Production episode 60043-57
Original air date: December 20, 1968
Stardate: 4372.5
Captain’s log. The Enterprise has been sent to a pair of warring worlds, Elas and Troyius, under radio silence, beaming Ambassador Petri aboard from Troyius. Kirk’s orders are only to do as the ambassador says, and he says to head to Elas to beam a delegation aboard. The Elasians are pissed that the Enterprise is late—which Kirk didn’t think they were—and Spock and McCoy discuss the anthropological report on the Elasians: the men are vicious and bad-tempered, and the women are “mystical” and drive men wild. (McCoy is smirking creepily as he says that.)
Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and Scotty meet with Petri in the transporter room. Three security guards beam aboard to secure the room for Elaan, the Dohlman of Elas. Petri and the guards get down on one knee to pay homage to her; once she materializes, the Enterprise crew also kneel.
When Kirk and Spock try to discuss things, the security chief, Kryton, shuts them down, saying Elaan has not given them permission to speak. She then haughtily declares that he is allowed to show her to her quarters. Kirk fobs that off on Spock and takes Petri aside—after Elaan generously grants him permission to leave.
Petri finally actually explains what’s going on: Elaan is to marry the Troyian leader, to bring peace between Elas and Troyius. Petri’s job is to prepare her for her impending nuptials, which is a difficult task, given Elasian arrogance in general and Elaan’s pomposity in particular.
For whatever reason, Elaan is given Uhura’s quarters rather than VIP quarters on the ship (they must have them—where the heck were all those ambassadors sleeping in “Journey to Babel“?), and she is dissatisfied with them, a fact that irks both Uhura and Kirk.
Kirk goes to Uhura’s quarters to find that Elaan doesn’t want any of the gifts Petri has brought, doesn’t like Uhura’s cabin, and doesn’t want any part of this. She has Kryton forcibly remove Petri from the cabin, leaving Kirk to deal with Elaan’s tantrums. Kirk tartly informs her that there are no better quarters (really? the communications officer has the best quarters on the ship?) and that he’d be happy to fill the place with breakables for her to throw at the wall. He then leaves without getting her permission to leave.
Petri is at his wit’s end. Kirk suggests not being polite to her, as she doesn’t respond to it. They respect strength, so Kirk thinks he should go at her strong.
Spock detects what appears to be a sensor ghost. Elas and Troyius are proximate to Klingon space, and the empire has claimed the system as well. The “ghost” moves closer and reveals itself to be a Klingon warship, which is now pacing the Enterprise, despite the fact that the latter ship is moving as slowly as possible to give Petri maximum time to prep Elaan.
Unfortunately, that preparation is going poorly. Elaan is snotty to Scotty as she tours engineering and stabs Petri in the back. The ambassador recovers in sickbay, but he will have nothing further to do with any of this.
So it’s left to Kirk to tame the shrew. (Ahem.) He yells at her and tells her that she has to be civilized. Elaan seems uninterested, and at one point tosses a knife at Kirk, but misses.
Returning to the bridge, Kirk has Uhura contact the Klingons to ask their intentions, but they won’t respond.
Kirk goes to Elaan’s quarters, keeping Spock on standby to stun her guards in case they are recalcitrant—which they are, as Elaan has threatened to whip them if they let Kirk in. When Spock asks how he knew that would be necessary, Kirk just says, “Mr. Spock, the women of your planet are logical. That is the only planet in the galaxy where that is the case.” And then I ran to the bathroom to throw up.
Once I got back from puking, Kirk enters her cabin and touches her, which is a capital offense on Elas—but not on the Enterprise. After throwing another temper tantrum, Elaan finally admits that one thing she can learn from Kirk is how to get people to like her. She doesn’t want people to hate her, and she starts to cry. Petri mentioned earlier that Elasian women’s tears make men fall for them, and sure enough, as soon as Kirk wipes away Elaan’s tears, he’s totally smitten with her. (And the look on her face makes it clear that that was her intention.)
Kryton enters an inexplicably empty engine room and sabotages the ship, killing one engineer who notices him. Kryton then sends a tight-beam signal to the Klingon ship, which Uhura picks up. Kirk manages to pry himself off Elaan long enough to send security to engineering. They capture Kryton, who kills himself rather than be interrogated. Elaan reveals that Kryton was in love with her and was furious that she was to marry another. Apparently that jealousy was enough to sell out to the Klingons.
Elaan is unconcerned about the Klingons, as she used her tears to seduce Kirk in the hopes that he would use the Enterprise to destroy Troyius and allow them to rule the system together. Kirk is appalled by the notion, but smooches her anyhow, thanks to the Magic Tears Of Doom—at least until Spock and McCoy interrupt.
McCoy tells Kirk about the Magic Tears Of Doom. Kirk tells the doctor to work on an antidote while Kirk and Spock head bridge-ward, as the Klingon ship is on an intercept course. They go to red alert. Kirk is about to order Sulu and Chekov to warp to give them maneuvering room, but then Scotty discovers Kryton’s sabotage: he triggered the warp drive to blow up as soon as it’s engaged, and also destroyed the dilithium crystals. The Enterprise must fight on impulse only—but the Klingons aren’t trying to fight, they’re trying to prompt the ship to go to warp and go boom, so they technically won’t violate the Organian Peace Treaty.
Elaan continues to hammer away at Kirk, trying to get him to refuse to turn her over to another man to marry, but Kirk’s sense of duty outweighs the power of the Magic Tears Of Doom. He sends her to sickbay so McCoy and Chapel can work on an antidote.
The Klingons are now going overt: trying to engage the ship in battle. But the loss of the crystals means they can’t fire weapons. Kirk tries to stall, but the Klingon captain isn’t having any of it.
Petri approaches Elaan humbly, asking her to at least put on the necklace (if not the dress and the wedding slippers) as a token of peace between their worlds. Elaan dismisses him, aggravated at how men of other worlds (meaning Petri and Kirk) can only seem to talk of peace and duty, bah fooey. However, she takes the necklace, goes to her quarters, changes into another dress (her fourth of the episode), and then goes to the bridge because she wants to die with Kirk. How romantic.
The Klingons fire. Sulu nimbly maneuvers, but the ship can’t respond fast enough on impulse power.
Internal sensors pick up an odd energy reading on the bridge, and Spock traces it to Elaan—specifically her necklace. She dismisses them as common stones, but they happen to be dilithium crystals. No wonder the Klingons want the system for themselves. Spock runs them down to engineering while the Klingon ship continues to fire on the Enterprise. Kirk stalls the Klingons until the crystals are in place. He waits until the last minute to kick in the warp drive and then has Chekov fire a full spread of photon torpedoes, which cripples the Klingon ship. Kirk resumes course for Troyius, confusing Elaan because he doesn’t finish the Klingon ship off.
Kirk sees Elaan off when they come into orbit of Troyius. She gives him her dagger, as they don’t wear such things on Troyius, as a memento. (“Here, have this thing I tried to kill two people with.”) They beam down and everyone is weepy for Kirk’s artificially created love used to manipulate him into getting her out of a marriage she didn’t want.
McCoy comes to the bridge and announces that he found a cure, but Spock says that Kirk already found the cure: the Enterprise. And it’s a good thing the episode ended, ’cause I gotta throw up again…
Can’t we just reverse the polarity? Apparently dilithium crystals are all over the place on Elas and Troyius. You’d think the Federation, which Scotty says protects these two planets, would have noticed them, especially since Spock was able to detect them just from them sitting around Elaan’s neck. Did no one actually, y’know, visit the place?
Fascinating. Kirk fully intends to have Spock mind-meld with Kryton as an interrogation tool. That’s totally ethical.
I’m a doctor not an escalator. This episode is the first time McCoy says to Spock, “Are you out of your Vulcan mind?” It is not the last—he’ll say it again in The Wrath of Khan and the 2009 Star Trek.
Ahead warp one, aye. Sulu engages in some nifty maneuvering to keep the Klingon ship from destroying the Enterprise until Scotty and Spock can get the warp drive back up and running.
It’s a Russian invention. Once he can actually fire weapons, Chekov is able to cripple the Klingon ship with a single spread of photon torpedoes.
Hailing frequencies open. Uhura has lots of pretty things in her quarters. Elaan throws a lot of them against a wall, and also throws a knife at one of her paintings. (That’s the last time she makes her place into an Air B&B, I can tell you that…)
I cannot change the laws of physics! Scotty spends the entire episode complaining—about the mission, about Elaan’s tour of engineering, about how long it’ll take to find what Kryton did, about how risky it is to use Elaan’s crystals, and at this point you just wanna smack him, y’know?
No sex, please, we’re Starfleet. During one of Elaan’s tantrums, Kirk says that he is tempted to give her a spanking, an Earth custom for brats who are misbehaving. Later, after Kirk is whammied by the Magic Tears Of Doom and they smooch, Elaan asks for more information about spanking, and Kirk just smirks and says they’ll talk about it later. Wah-HEY!
Go put on a red shirt. Evans manages to survive, but he does let Kryton take his phaser and kill himself with it, thus preserving Enterprise security’s record of total incompetence. Meanwhile, a redshirt does get killed, but it’s an engineer rather than a security guard.
Channel open. “We cannot make peace with people we detest.”
“Stop trying to kill each other—then worry about being friendly.”
Petri giving up on diplomacy and Kirk showing him how to make it work, maybe.
Welcome aboard. Jay Robinson and Tony Young play Petri and Kryton, Lee Duncan and Victor Brandt play the redshirts (Brandt will return in “The Way to Eden” as a space hippie), Dick Durock and Charles Beck play the guards, and K.L. Smith plays the Klingon captain. Plus we have recurring regulars George Takei, Nichelle Nichols, James Doohan, Walter Koenig, and Majel Barrett.
But the big guest is France Nuyen as Elaan. Probably also known for her role as Dr. Kiem on St. Elsewhere, Nuyen tries her best to bring dignity to a most undignified role.
Trivial matters: This is the only story in the entire 50-year history of the Trek franchise in which the sole writer and sole director are the same person.
We see a Klingon ship for the first time in this episode, establishing the iconic design that would remain the standard for all Klingon vessels going forward. In “Errand of Mercy,” “A Private Little War,” and “The Trouble with Tribbles,” the ships were kept off camera (though they would be seen in the remastered versions of those episodes, as well as in “Trials and Tribble-ations“), and in “Friday’s Child” it was just a distant blob of light (also rendered in more detail, in line with the designs debuted in this episode, in the remastered version). “Day of the Dove,” which actually aired prior to this one, reused footage from this episode of the Klingon ship.
Both Elas and Troyius were fleshed out by both FASA and Decipher for their Trek role-playing games. The worlds appeared again in Firestorm by L.A. Graf and were mentioned in both the Destiny trilogy by David Mack and A Singular Destiny by your humble rewatcher.
Scotty was telling a hapless Enterprise-D crew member all about the events of this episode when he was being escorted to his guest quarters after being rescued from the Jenolen in TNG‘s “Relics.”
To boldly go. “I did not give you permission to leave!” I first read The Taming of the Shrew in high school, and I’ve seen several productions of it over the years, from the famous Richard Burton/Elizabeth Taylor film in the 1960s to the John Cleese BBC Shakespeare production in the 1980s, plus several staged versions. Those experiences have left me with a deep-seated loathing for the play. The only one I actually liked was a production done at the Delacorte Theatre in New York in 1990 featuring Morgan Freeman as Petruchio and Tracey Ullman as Kate. What I loved about how Freeman and Ullman played it was that it made it abundantly clear that Kate only put up with Petruchio’s shenanigans because, holy crap, the sex was fantastic. It’s the only thing that made the sexist drivel even approach the possibility of palatable to me.
So you can imagine how I feel about Trek‘s take on it.
To be fair, it’s not just a riff on the Bard’s most sexist play. There are heavy elements of the story of Helen of Troy here (as if the title didn’t make that obvious), as well as that of Mark Anthony and Princess Cleopatra (particularly Shakespeare’s version of that historical tale), and, as David Morgan-Mar pointed out in his comic-strip recap on Planet of Hats, Casablanca.
But it’s just as awful. People have been debating about Shrew for centuries, but what I ultimately see is a story in which a man verbally abuses and gaslights a strong-willed woman in order to bend her to his will and turn her into a meek, domesticated non-entity.
What’s frustrating about “Elaan of Troyius” is that we see the same transformation from strong-willed woman who does as she pleases to a much meeker person who does her duty—but the actual transition doesn’t seem to have happened for any good reason. In fact, the only interpretation that does make sense is the same one that Tracey Ullman used in 1990, and that we also saw last season in “The Gamesters of Triskelion,” to wit, the power of James T. Kirk’s smooches are enough to radically alter an alien woman’s entire worldview.
Yeah.
It’s especially frustrating, because there’s the potential for an interesting story here, and it’s one that I think France Nuyen would have been able to pull off. We’ve got a woman who, on the one hand, is the ruler of her world and accustomed to being obeyed by everyone to whom she speaks—yet she is being forced into a marriage against her will. She sees in Kirk a way out, and so she uses her Magic Tears Of Doom to bend him to her will the same way she’s been bending men to her will all her life—but then it doesn’t work, because his sense of duty is greater than her chemically induced infatuation. She could have been a magnificently tragic figure; she could’ve been a complex character.
Instead, she’s a caricature, a “mass of conflicting impulses” like all women, just a spoiled brat who should be spanked, whose sole purpose is to annoy the men around her. At least, that is, until she finds the love of a good man—and there’s no better man than Jim Kirk, ain’t that right, ladies? (Cue wink at the camera.)
The episode has its moments. The climactic battle against the Klingon ship is kinda fun, with all the maneuvering and stalling, and William Ware Theiss outdid himself with Elaan’s incredibly sexy outfits. (Less so with Elaan’s guards’ outfits, which look like a cross between Roman legionnaires and glam rockers.) But ultimately, it’s a piece of wrongheaded drivel that wastes its primary guest star’s talents, viewing her only as a bratty object instead of as a person.
Warp factor rating: 2
Next week: “The Paradise Syndrome”
Keith R.A. DeCandido reminds everyone to please preorder the eBook of his Stargate SG-1 novel Kali’s Wrath at Amazon or Amazon UK. It goes on sale on the 19th of May. If you prefer the print version, it’ll be out in June. Also check out Keith’s rewatch of the Stargate TV series and movies right here on Tor.com.
This was a product of its time, that’s for sure. But filtering out the gender politics, there’s something to be said for a story about Kirk teaching a pampered, selfish monarch to be a better leader by learning to compromise and listen. I’ve seen some stories where that was done with child monarchs as the guest stars, and Elaan is really quite childish, in a way that seems to come more from her dictatorial power than from her sex specifically (magic love-potion tears aside). To my mind, that aspect is prominent enough in the story that I can focus on it instead of the more gendered aspects.
The strongest aspect of the episode is Fred Steiner’s truly spectacular musical score, which not only adds one more notable love theme to his repertoire and has some nice dramatic beats, but also features the most intense TOS battle music since “The Doomsday Machine.” I always loved the scoring for the Klingon battle sequences, but hearing it clean and remastered on the DVD set was a revelation. It’s gorgeous stuff, downright cinematic.
France Nuyen and William Shatner had a history together, having starred in the original Broadway cast of The World of Suzie Wong. So this was a reunion for them. And while “Plato’s Stepchildren” gets credit for being the “first interracial kiss” in TOS (though not really the first in TV history, despite later claims), this one (with Shatner kissing the half-Vietnamese Nuyen) was made 10 episodes earlier, despite being delayed until midseason. Incidentally, Nuyen had married Robert Culp just six months before this episode was made.
Two minor players here would go on to play DC Comics characters. Stuntman-actor Dick Durock would go on to play Swamp Thing in two movies and a TV series, and Victor Brandt would voice Professor Emil Hamilton in Superman: The Animated Series. Durock also appeared in The Incredible Hulk: “The First” as another Hulk-like creature, and in the original Battlestar Galactica as the Imperious Leader (with Patrick Macnee dubbing his voice).
I don’t think Elas and Troyius themselves appeared in Graf’s Firestorm; rather, a group of Elasians (including Elaan’s successor as Dohlman) was visiting the planet where the novel took place.
Of Elaan’s four dresses, I think my least favorite is the second (I love how much skin it shows, but otherwise it’s a clumsy design) and my favorite is the last one.
Dig that look on Doohan’s face as they kneel for Elaan! “Ok, whatever!“
Kirk fully intends to have Spock mind-meld with Kryton as an interrogation tool. That’s totally ethical. – So there is precedent for that icky scene in Star Trek VI. How… disappointing.
I never realized McCoy only said “out of your Vulcan mind” here. Did it stick because “Vulcan” makes a handy but not-bleepable soundalike for an English gerund that starts with f, do you think?
My favorite version of Shrew is and ever shall be that one Moonlighting episode. I haven’t watched “Elaan of Troyius” in years, and you’ve reminded me why. Great and very funny recap!
All I have to add (for now) is that Ambassador Petri, more than any other TOS alien, looks like an escapee from the Adam West Batman’s rogues’ gallery. (Yes, even more so than Frank Gorshin when he shows up later this season.)
I’ll always think of this episode as “the one where Kirk slaps a woman. “
I watched this a couple months ago and figured you’d have a field day with it. Glad to see you didn’t disappoint.
Keith, you really need to look into your diet. Vomiting so much isn’t healthy.
I never liked Shrew either, but the Elizabeth Taylor/Richard Burton version was at least made palatable by Liz’s acting, where her expressions when Kate starts doing as Petruchio demands show she’s clearly figured him out and is thinking “since I’m stuck with you, you’ll see how well I can play this game, Petey boy.”
I had been more or less dreading the rewatch reaching the third season, since I remember most of those episodes as being terrible, and, with few exceptions, haven’t watched any of them in years. Both “Spectre of the Gun” and “Elaan of Troyius” I remembered as being among the worst of ST. However, they each turned out to be far more watchable than I remembered. They certainly aren’t great episodes, or even really good episodes, by any means, but I enjoyed each of them far more than such first and second season episodes as “The Alternative Factor” and “Catspaw.” That said, I largely agree with Keith’s analysis – it is a sexist episode, and doesn’t add much to earlier riffs on “Taming of the Shrew.” Nonetheless, I found much of the acting solid, even if not spectacular, and rather enjoyed seeing Kirk manage to continue to be a starship captain despite his befuddled obsession with Elaan.
As the episode concluded, I remembered that there’s a short story sequel to this episode (“Obligations Discharged” in Strange New Worlds VII) which I immediately reread. It gives a peek into the future of both Kirk and Elaan, told from Elaan’s point of view. To me it was well worth reading, and felt consistent with both the characters and the events of the episode.
+1 warp factor for non-white casting????
The only version of Shrew I can stand at all is 10 Things I Hate About You.
You left out the two silly technological bits in this episode that have always stuck with me:
Firstly, it’s absolutely ridiculous to have all the ship’s weapons be dependent upon the warp drive. In fact, “The Doomsday Machine” had the Enterprise and the Constellation firing phasers just fine without warp drive functioning. Later on,the TOS movies would establish that the Enterprise’s refit tied the phasers into the warp drive as a new innovation to increase their power, meaning that they shouldn’t be connected here. I seriously doubt that Starfleet would design a ship to be this vulnerable whenever the warp drive is knocked out.
Secondly, when Scotty is able to restore enough power to fire torpedoes, Kirk orders that the ship pivot at Warp 2. In other words, he wants the Enterprise to rotate about on its axis at several times the speed of light. Right..
StrongDreams: The nonwhite casting is part of why it’s as high as a 2. :)
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Quoth Christopher: “But filtering out the gender politics, there’s something to be said for a story about Kirk teaching a pampered, selfish monarch to be a better leader by learning to compromise and listen.”
Yes, but this isn’t that story. There’s no evidence to suggest that any of Kirk’s lessons actually got through to her. She just goes from being a bitch to being less of a bitch. There’s no process, there’s just arbitrary change.
This episode’s plot could have been a good episode, but the execution failed on every level except on the acting level, as Nuyen and Shatner both do very well (as do the other guest stars and the regulars), but it’s still in the end a sexist failure. I can’t be as dismissive of the fact that it’s a product of its time as you are.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@10/BaselGill: Actually there’s no reason why a ship shouldn’t be able to rotate about its axis in spaceflight. There’s no air resistance, so ships wouldn’t bank like they’re seen to do in Star Wars and the like, and there’s no need to maintain continuous thrust to keep going forward, so there’s no reason you can’t just coast and flip around into any desired orientation, such as flying backward or belly-forward. (See Babylon 5‘s space fighter sequences, if you can find the show — they tended to handle the physics pretty well.)
And of course, a ship in warp drive isn’t technically moving at all. Rather, it’s sitting still inside a bubble of spacetime and altering the geometry of the spacetime around that bubble.
Is it sad or funny that I was able to predict that krad’s rating for this episode would be a 3 at best (and I was thinking likely a 1) before the opening credits rolled?
Kudos to Keith for making this particular recap so entertaining. I was dreading revisiting this one, but the sarcasm and the colorful reactions really made this one palatable. I’d somehow missed McCoy’s creepy smirk the last time I watched this.
Anyway, this episode is pure sexist drivel, inspired by equally atrocious source material. It may be a product of the time it was made in, but then again someone decided this was good enough to warrant an equally abysmal remake when Berman and Braga produced the Enterprise episode Precious Cargo. What keeps this episode from being a complete bore is the 3rd act’s climax against the Klingons.
You want the “escort the woman to marry a politician” plot done right? Drop the offensive caricature and the shrew angle, and watch TNG’s The Perfect Mate for a truly three dimensional take on the story.
Eduardo, I would argue against “The Perfect Mate” being the plot done right. In fact, I already did that argument…..
—-Keith R.A. DeCandido
For me most of 3rd season episodes fall into “good idea, bad writing” cathegory. As Keith mentioned, there was a lot to work with. But the episode manages to miss on all counts, even choosing duty over your desires parallel between Elaan and Kirk is messed up. It could have been a good episode but instead is… well, watchable, just about.
Acting saves it a bit. And I for some unknown reason always liked the moment when Elaan throws knife at Kirk and his reaction to it.
2 is about right.
I rewatched this a couple of days ago and was surprised that I actually liked it. Yes, the premise is as sexist as it gets, a lot of the plot is silly, Kirk’s comment to Spock is the single most sexist thing he says in the entire TV show, and the forced mind meld is a moral low point of the show, but I still found quite a few things I liked.
First, it’s entertaining. Then, I always like it when the Enterprise ferries diplomats. Sexist clichés notwithstanding, I also find some of the early dialogue between Kirk and Elaan quite funny. (“I have eliminated the problem.” – “You have eliminated the teacher. The problem remains.”)
I like the change of tone, that it starts out as a comedy and then gets more serious. I find Elaan’s and Kirk’s relationship believable despite the silly premise, mostly due to really good acting by both Nuyen and Shatner.
I like it that they don’t destroy the Klingon ship, that Elaan is surprised about that and also that Kirk for once doesn’t give a speech but nevertheless makes her think. That’s a vast improvement over Friday’s Child where Kirk and Spock shoot the locals and Kirk explicitly targets “the Klingon”.
Elaan does start out as a caricature, but I find that she grows into a real person. (Although a lot of that is due to Nuyen’s acting too.) When Elaan “captures” Kirk, she does it because she’s in an alien and hostile environment, and she wants to have someone work for her, not against her. In my understanding, she’s only partially successful and eventually comes around to his view of things not because he’s so sexy but because he’s a really grown-up person, someone who’s serious about his work and his values, so much so that her chemically-induced love can’t change that. That’s obviously something new to her. And eventually, it changes her.
I think there is some believable character development there, because she repeatedly questions him, and her views seem to change gradually. In their first talk, she suggests that he could destroy Troyius. She doesn’t suggest that again. Later she’s surprised that he doesn’t fight the Klingons. I rather like it that neither of them does a big speech about values, that she merely sees how Kirk thinks and acts and slowly changes her own views because of that.
I also like it that bullying Elaan does not work, but being on her side while still maintaining the position that she should give up her personal happiness for the peace treaty does. Although it’s a sad message. And it’s annoying that after that, the episode ends with a cheerful scene on the bridge. It should have ended after the scene in the transporter room.
I agree about the non-white casting. This is one of the episodes where I read the novelization first (I totally disliked it, which probably shows the significance of the acting for my rating of the episode), and I imagined Elaan as the typical Star Trek alien female – Caucasian and blonde. I was baffled when I finally got to watch the episode, and noticed that I had always assumed that all aliens look like me. Of course that’s because they usually did, which makes this one stand out.
I don’t remember this one at all. And I saw every TOS episode multiple times on channel 20 in the 70’s here in NoVa.
“Atomic Shakespeare” from Moonlighting is a great take on Shrew, as is “10 Things”. The play itself? Never seen it all the way through.
The Utah Shakespeare Festival (in Cedar City Utah, where I lived for 10 years) did it a couple of times, and both times the director got very “creative” with sets (ask about the “Birdhouse Set” if you ever go there), or with casting, with the casting of an african american actor in the clown character who was then directed to play it very slapstick. The Salt Lake Tribune referred to the character as “Steppin Fetchit”.
Terrible main plot, but I did have a childhood soft spot for the battle – first real view of a Klingon ship (and we should take a minute to acknowledge what an iconic design that was, how it managed to look like the product of the same physics that produced the Enterprise while having different design priorities and asthetics). And at least the idea that there was a connection between power from the main engines and the weapons certainly influenced many games going forward. I always interpreted “pivot at Warp 2” as indicating “go to Warp 2 and turn as sharply as possible” rather than “turn exactly in place”.
Sadly, I can no longer refrain from Shakespeare comment. For an excellent version that makes it clear that Kate’s smarter than Petruchio and can outthink him, try this version: http://www.amazon.com/Taming-Shrew-Broadway-Theatre-Archive/dp/B00006G8HO/ref=sr_1_5?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1463072975&sr=1-5&keywords=taming+of+the+shrew It’s got Marc Singer (yes, he could actually act, this is an amazing production) and Fredi Olster.
I don’t have much to say about the Star Trek episode. And I’m actually making myself stop talking about Taming of the Shrew, for once.
I have to confess, this is one I skipped when I watched them. (Didn’t think waiting around for the streaming to sort itself out was worth it after I read the synopsis…)
That said, Elaan’s Cleopatra hairdo sticks out to me. Maybe Cleopatra was the first thing the costume designers thought of when they heard they were dressing a queen? Of course, the costume department has a thing for faux-roman tunics in the last two seasons, worn ludicrously short.
@20/Bruce: Yes, the Klingon ship design is great! I add it to my “things I like about this episode” list.
I love the Klingon ship design. Matt Jefferies’s starships were so much more elegant than anything his successors in Trek productions have designed. The Klingon battlecruiser is so sleek and menacing. I’ve always thought of it as evoking a long-necked dragon with spread wings.
Aha, Keith, see – I wasn’t the only one to think of “The Perfect Mate” with this one.
And yeah, I really liked Elaan before she learned to behave like Kirk wanted her to. Honestly, the scene where she’s eating and drinking boorishly is my favorite.
@25/MeredithP: Who knows? Maybe she still eats that way. After all, Kirk probably stopped lecturing her after that little tear attack of hers.
Imagine the wedding reception on Troyius, with the bride all nice and well-behaved until the food is served… At the very least she could introduce an annual Elasian-Troyian friedship day where the peace treaty is celebrated with an Elasian-style feast.
Come to think of it, The Undiscovered Country owes a lot to this episode – not only the forced mind meld, but also the idea that people from warrior cultures have terrible table manners (and the idea that there is such a thing as objectively good or bad table manners).
Jay Robinson (Petri) will also go on to play Cassius Thorne in the Buck Rogers episode: Planet Of The Amazon Women.
“Kirk just says, “Mr. Spock, the women of your planet are logical. That is the only planet in the galaxy where that is the case.””
He could say the same about the men. :)
“Dick Durock and Charles Beck play the guards”
Dick Durock is my new pornstar name.
@18 – Janajansen:
“This is one of the episodes where I read the novelization first, and I imagined Elaan as the typical Star Trek alien female – Caucasian and blonde.”
Same here. I at least imagined her Caucasian.
I honestly could never tell as a kid what ethnicity Elaan was, since her makeup was so heavy that it obscured the shape of her eyes, and I couldn’t really distinguish her skin tone in black & white. And I wouldn’t have been able to recognize “Nuyen” as a variant spelling of Nguyen (her real name is France Nguyen Van-Nga). I knew she had a foreign accent, but I couldn’t even tell it was French. I probably just figured it was an Elasian accent, although Kryton doesn’t have one.
@29/Christopher: It’s the Elasian royal accent.
In direct contrast to the Trek “planet of hats” trope, people from places within less than 100 km of each other can have very different accents.
I always wondered about T’Pau’s accent being so different from other Vulcans. I figured maybe she wasn’t as fluent in English as Spock or Sarek. But then we saw young T’Pau in Enterprise speaking with an American accent. I figure there she was speaking Vulcan and we were hearing her through the universal translator.
I really wouldn’t expect everybody from the same planet to have the same accent. Maybe when I was a kid.
@33/lordm: Yeah, but this is Star Trek, where it’s routinely assumed that everyone from a given planet has the same culture, the same language, the same religion, the same fashion sense, and the same hairstylist.
Planet of hats, I know.
Everyone sounds the same because different accents don’t survive being run through the universal translator. But the translator may try to capture speech patterns of different social classes because those could be relevant when dealing with the respective people.
So, I say Elaan uses some kind of royal diction. It gets rendered as a French accent because the person who programmed the translator thinks French is posh.
You know, T’Pau’s lack of accent in ENT never struck me as something to wonder about. Hm. Maybe, as @36/JanaJensen suggests is the case with Elaan, T’Pau is speaking in “liturgical Vulcan” — the way some churches still stick with King James English (all those “thees” and “thous” — although ostensibly more formal, I believe those pronouns were the familiar in Shakespeare’s day, but… been a long time since my English lit classes). Or maybe she’s speaking English as a concession to Kirk and McCoy (although this doesn’t seem likely, given her resentment of their presence at the ceremony… is it just that some words, like Kroykah!, don’t translate? It pretty clearly seems to mean “cut that out!”)
Either way, I’m glad the UT didn’t rob us of Ms. Lovsky’s magnificent accent! ;)
@37/Mike: You’re right, thou/thee was originally a familiar usage, not a formal one — English translations of the Bible used it in conversations with God because that relationship was considered intimate, like family. But then organized religion went and made it all formal and official, so people came to think of thou/thee as something distant and ceremonial. Also, “Amok Time” got the grammar completely wrong, using “thee” exclusively for both subject and object, when it should be “thou” in the nominative (e.g. “And thou art called?” instead of “And thee are called?” and “Thou namest these outworlders” instead of “Thee names these outworlders”).
Hey folks! You may have noticed the lack of rewatch today. My fiancee sprained her ankle over the weekend. She’s doing okay — it’s better today than yesterday, and it was better yesterday than it was when it happened Sunday — but caring for her borked my writing schedule a bit. “The Paradise Syndrome” will go up tomorrow.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Ouch. Tell her to get well soon!
To quote John Locke: you’re having a bad month.
Hope she gets well soon.
Best wishes for her speedy healing!
Wrenn is doing much better, thank you all. She’s hoping to go out shopping today with a friend. :)
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Huzzah! Thanks for the good update, Keith.
@3 Kirk slapped Elaan in this episode, but in The Gamesters of Triskelion he knocked Shana out with a single punch. That stood out more for me. And of course there’s McCoy hitting Eleen in Friday’s Child (except one could argue that she deserved it).
(I can see comments again in the rewatches! I don’t know what happened, but I’m glad it fixed itself.)
In case anyone’s interested, I just saw another version of The Taming of the Shrew, again a free one in the Delacorte Theatre here in NYC, with an all-female cast. Here’s my review of it….
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Wasn’t one of the things that made Taming Of The Shrew fair FOR ITS DAY the fact that Petruchio NEVER laid a hand on Kate, when in all of its contemporaries the wife was beaten into “her place.” And yet in this remake (Even if only in a response) Kirk slaps Elaan. Think about that. Anyways for some who can this way better then me check out the following link.
http://sfdebris.com/videos/startrek/s057.php
I really don’t think it’s necessary to dwell on every sexist comment or action in a series made 50 years ago in nearly every episode. And the hyperbole of a stereotypical statement making someone puke instead of just accepting this as a product of its time gets more than a little tiring. It’s since been more than made up for in the newer series with women captains, security guards, and many admirals, etc. In fact almost without fail unless an admiral was a villain in the Next Generation they all were women or minorities . So they’ve since gone above and beyond realism to try to cater to the political correctness currently prevalent. But for the older shows it’s not necessary to point out the prevailing and accepted mores of the day any more than it is to comment on the dated color palette in every single episode. Concentrating on that and having such a strong reaction as if it’s shocking that there was some sexism in the sixties is repetitive and seems like overcompensation and an oversensitivity or even an attempt to find sexism where none exists. I found myself repeatedly checking to see if the summaries were written by women because of the seemingly fervent and knee jerk reaction to even the most mild of sixties’ gender attitudes and culture. Star Trek did/does have a largely male majority fan base after all and had to appeal to them at some level to remain on the air. But even that considered it did show women and minorities in many positions that were unthinkable at the time . This show has been often given great credit for being much more diverse and a head of its time so how about dropping the criticism about the few things that they that didn’t get perfect and remember that did at some level had to appeal to the common and accepted morals and male audience of the time. There are just as many reasons to be critical of the newer shows of bowing to political correctness to the extreme but those are rarely mentioned ( men wearing mini skirts and women being called sir being two examples). So OKAY, we know the sixties were sexist and therefore female officers wear mini skirts and go-go boots but that’s no reason to take every single comment and go on a rant about how sexist and horrible and misogynistic it is. It’s getting in the way of the show’s main focus and the ways it was progressive by harping on the harmless comments that were typical for the time. It’s actually more offensive to try to force today’s political correctness on to a show made 50 years ago! We know that it was in its time considered Progressive and liberal. It’s science fiction. It’s from the 60s. Taken in this context there’s no need to highlight and make such a big deal out of every single simple comment attitude or action that would not have been inappropriate at the time. We’re trying to enjoy a time capsule of a cultural phenomenon and the preaching out of context detracts from the enjoyment of re-watching them. Just like I wouldn’t want to be reminded that every episode of The Lone Ranger was racist against Native Americans I don’t need to be constantly reminded with hyperbolic terms that SHOCKER there were different attitudes towards women in the sixties. A single comment in the pilot episode summary addressing the series as a whole have been enough. It doesn’t need to be pointed every single time it happens. Let It Go and enjoy the Voyages and the advancements that they did make instead of harping on where MAN hadn’t boldly gone yet.
@49/Daniel McCormick: As far as I know, the original Star Trek had a large female fanbase.
And I, for my part, find the skintight bodysuits worn by Deanna Troi, Seven of Nine and T’Pol much more irritating than the miniskirt uniforms.
@50/Jana: Yes, TOS was very popular with women, largely because of Spock, but also because of the show’s inclusive (by ’60s standards) portrayal of women. Almost all of the first generation of fanfic writers and convention organizers were female.
@51/Christopher: I can imagine that the way the main characters took care of each other and all the stories where they helped others and solved problems peacefully played a role in that, too. Those were the aspects that won my (then) fifteen-year-old daughter over when I showed her some TOS episodes last year.
@49 – Daniel:
It’s not really about what is necessary, it’s a personal choice of the rewatcher, krad, to view this show through modern eyes. If it was about what was necessary, this whole series of reviews aren’t necessary, yet here they are, and a lot of us enjoy them.
@MikePoteet no. 37: The KJB was consciously written in a style of English that by that stage had already become archaic and ungrammatic. There were two major reasons for this, 1) even in the 1600s making something seem older that it was gave it a veneer of authenticity it didn’t deserve (even if you believe the veracity of the bible the KJV made massive changes to it), and 2) the same reason why the rcc wouldn’t translate the vulgates from Latin, to make sure the plebs sales didn’t know what they were believing in.
I know I’m late on this one, but language can be very interesting.
@54/Brian: What I understood about the KJV’s language was that it’s just the opposite of your second point — it was deliberately translated using the simplest language possible so that it would be easily understandable to the masses no matter how little education they had. I think it has a total of only about 5000 distinct words (I’d assume that’s discounting proper names), while the contemporary works of Shakespeare had more like 50,000.
I sense a pattern forming… I seem to remember fondly episodes with an important female guest star. Elaan of Troyius definitely qualifies. Strong woman my eye – Elaan is a spoiled brat with no sense of responsibility she totally deserves to be slapped – especially after dissing Uhura’s lovely quarters! I also fondly remember Elaan’s lovely costumes. I especially like her wedding dress. And for her sake I devoutly hope that Petri is not a standard example of Troyian males!
@50/Jana; I totally agree with you about the skintight bodysuits. MUCH more sexually exploitative than the TOS miniskirts.
@57/Roxana: Glad to hear it!
Completely unrelated, all the talk about The Taming of the Shrew made me curious, so I went and read it. It was worse than I expected. The woman in the play is humiliated, sleep-deprived, starved (including a scene where they pretend to offer her food) and brainwashed into declaring that black is white, and that’s supposed to be funny. It’s Stalinist reeducation as romantic comedy.
That said, if this episode is indeed “Star Trek’s take on it”, it deserves a medal, because it turns the plot on its head. Elaan never changes due to bullying or mistreatment, on the contrary, she comes out on top. She only changes after she has secured an ally and nobody tries to change her any more.
@58/Jana: I once wrote an essay for a college Shakespeare class arguing that The Merchant of Venice was a complex enough play to have more than one play’s worth of substance in it — that buried within the comedy was a tragedy from Shylock’s point of view. I wonder if the same could be said of The Taming of the Shrew. Maybe there’s a subversive or satirical element to it, and maybe Kate’s treatment is so awful because we’re supposed to sympathize with her and recognize what a total jerk Petruchio is. But I haven’t read or seen it in a long time, so I’m not sure. (Honestly, whenever I think of The Taming of the Shrew, what I visualize is the Moonlighting episode that satirized it.)
@58 If you think it is bad you should try reading its contemporaries. They often include BEATING the wife.
@58 correct, Shakespeare’s take on the Shrew plot is actually a step forward, if a small one. Not only is Kate not physically beaten into submission but in her final speech she argues not that women are inferior and so subject to men but that women should obey their husbands because those husbands love them and want what is best for them.
@61 Makes me wonder if Shakespeare wanted to push for more but felt that this is all that society would let him get away with.
@62/BenW: Exactly what I’m thinking. There’s only so much you can slip past the radar.
@63 I think it would for good metafiction for a story about Shakespeare wanting to write a story closer to modern values but having to settle for Taming Of The Shrew and The Merchant Of Venice. While both of those stories have aged terribly it should not be denied that they downright subversive for their day.
@64/BenW: Although it would be unwise to make Shakespeare too modern. Even the most progressive values of the past would’ve been very alien and probably very backward to modern eyes. I’d resist the temptation to assume Shakespeare was some social activist pushing for change; I suspect it’s more just that he was very good at getting into the heads of all different kinds of people and writing from their point of view, so that he could create believable characters. What the Bard’s long been celebrated for is his keen insight into every facet of human nature. Writing Kate or Shylock sympathetically doesn’t necessarily mean he was advocating feminism or religious equality, any more than writing Macbeth or Claudius sympathetically meant he approved of murderers. It just meant he was good at understanding what motivated different kinds of people and pitting their opposing points of view against each other.
As far as we can tell from his plays Shakespeare had a pretty positive image of women; his female characters have dimension and agency and wit. That said he was no feminist. He saw women exercising their talents and wit within the social structure of his times which he probably saw as the natural order. He embraced the idea that men had a responsibility to treat their women folk kindly and with respect. This perhaps was a natural stance for a man who might have had a problematic marriage but was also the father of two daughters who he saw as his heirs.
@59/Christopher: Now that you mention it, I wonder whether there is an alternative interpretation, namely that Katherine isn’t quite as subdued as it seems, and not as badly off. Because the very last line, spoken by Lucentio, is: “‘Tis a wonder, by your leave, she will be tamed so”, and my edition of the book tells me that this means “… that she let herself be tamed”. My English isn’t good enough to be sure, but could this be taken to mean that maybe her obedience is only pretense? In the second act, we learn that she wants to be married and that she’s jealous of her sister. Her father wants to get rid of her. And the woman she lectures about obedience in her final speech had just insulted her. So she doesn’t have any friends, and her previous life isn’t so great either. Is this an open ending? Or am I overinterpreting?
@60/BenW: I honestly don’t know if beating is worse than sleep deprivation or if it’s the other way round.
@61/Roxana: Well, she does argue that women should obey their husbands because they are weak. There’s this: “Why are our bodies soft and weak and smooth, unapt to toil and trouble in the world, but that our soft conditions and our hearts should well agree with our external parts?” And this: “But now I see our lances are but straws, our strength as weak, our weakness past compare”.
@66/Roxana: I don’t think he had an agenda concerning women, he simply wanted to tell good stories. Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing has a sharp tongue too, and she’s a positive character and doesn’t get punished. Whatever serves the story is fine.
I’ve always read ‘Shrew’ as Katherine learning that you catch more flies with honey. Petruchio shows her that raging gets her nowhere but asking nicely is very likely to get her what she wants. And we must remember that all her life Kate has been told that her sister Bianca is better, sweeter and more feminine than she is. I think many modern readers underestimate how much FUN it is for Kate to get her own back by lecturing Bianca on proper wifely and feminine behavior. By emphasizing that men care for, protect and love their wives and so deserve obedience in return Kate is putting forward idea that men EARN obedience by their treatment of their wives which is quite revolutionary.
@68/Roxana: But Petruchio has treated her really badly, so how did he earn her obedience? IMO she’s either been brainwashed into accepting this mistreatment as love, or she’s being sarcastic.
I’ve seen more than one interpretation of Shrew in which it was clear from the performances that Kate was totally full of it when she made the speech, but she did it in league with Petruchio in order to win the bet.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@70/krad: Uh, is it really an improvement to have her ally herself with the guy who mistreated her?
I don’t see her as brainwashed so much as having learned a new, and much better strategy for dealing with the world and one that gets not only what she wants but respect and admiration. Look at the ending; her father thinks she’s cooler than Bianca – for the first time in her life – and little sister has been publicly humiliated. Kate has learned to play within the rules – rules we of course deny and dislike – successfully. From a 16th century standpoint this is a total win.
Jana: Yes, because she’s already pretty much stuck with Petruchio anyhow, so at least she’s making the best of it.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@72/Roxana: The way I see it, she does not get what she wants – she still has to obey her husband’s every whim and leave the party early. The admiration and respect isn’t for her, but for him. Yes, she has learned a new strategy for dealing with the world – she has learned to be submissive and/or deceitful. I agree about her sister, but if that’s the only thing she gets – the ability to hurt others more effectively – I wouldn’t call it a win in any century.
@73/krad: True, but still depressing.
‘Submission’ and deceit was unfortunately how women got some control over their lives in those days. Interesting that Shakespeare realized that, possibly unconsciously.
Elaan of Elas, terrible attitude but a terrific wardrobe. But maybe we should cut her some slack, she’s on her way to marry a total stranger and spend the rest of her life on an enemy planet, she’s probably scared out of her mind and desperate for a way out. Her attitude starts to change when she starts thinking about how her marriage will affect other people than herself and what it means for both planets.
ME TV’s Sci Fi Saturday Night has been bringing me to read articles in two different rewatches here. (Ah, if only you had a Battlestar Galactica rewatch, KRAD!) For this Star Trek ep, it was largely to read the justified and properly delivered excoriation of the – well, yes, vomitous – sexism expressed. Also, I wanted to see if there was any note of the version of the Klingon ship shown in the remastered edition – because it seems to make one of the strongest cases yet that too many effects shots were replaced in the updates. I actually liked the idea of modernizing some FX from the original program when I first heard of it; but in practice they seem to have stepped in more often than necessary, and sometimes made things worse – particularly in this episode, where the updated Klingon ship not only feels a little insubstantial, but doesn’t even look fully rendered.
But, it was the comments section as much as anything which really led me to post. @49 is a comment almost as offensive as the “only planet in the galaxy” garbage Kirk spouts. KRAD very often notes the more ignorant times in which these episodes were written. But the revolting excrement which sometimes appears should still be excoriated as such by modern viewers, even if it was “part of the times”. Being more offended by someone daring to repeatedly criticize an aspect of Star Trek than by the actual repugnant thoughts which made it into the occasional early work is, frankly, a little disturbing. Something being an artifact of an era still does not equal it being right, and even with the excuse of a program which was progressive in other areas, and which would grow greatly in regards to gender equality, these early instances of egregious sexism deserve, and in fact require, acknowledgement, and all the repulsion Keith wants to throw at them.
@77, Personally I thought Kirk’s comment about the Vulcan being the only planet with logical women was funny. But then I think irrational male’s projection of their failing on perfectly logical women hilarious.
Has anyone seen SFDebris review of this episode?
I thought the portrayal of Sarek’s wife Amanda to be much more sexist. After all Elaan of Troyus is presumably not intended to be offered as an example of a mature woman.
Vulcan is also the only planet where the men are supposed to be logical. And in my opinion, Sarek’s controlling behavior toward Spock, and his “Come here, Wife.” attitude toward Amanda, shows that being logical is not in itself a virtue.
Vulcans aren’t logical, they’re just very good at rationalizing their prejudices.
Now you’re exaggerating. Vulcans are logical much of the time, just not all the time, as they themselves like to pretend. They are very good at reasoning out things, as we see time and again. And they control their emotions, which is a good thing, at least for them, because before they started doing that they were “warlike barbarians who nearly killed themselves off with their own passions” (Spock and McCoy in “All Our Yesterdays”).
I find it interesting that Vulcans used to be so beloved in the first decades of Star Trek fandom, whereas these days a lot of people seem to disapprove of them, from Georgiou in Discovery to people in these discussions. A changed attitude towards rigid self-control, perhaps?
Were Vulcans really beloved by fans? Or was it because Leonard Nimoy and Mark Lenard were so good at playing them? I suspect it’s the latter, because whenever I see a bland miscast actor playing a Vulcan, the negatives of their culture are more apparent to me.
@84/Cheerio: I’m sure that Nimoy and Lenard had something to do with it, but fans also invented Vulcan characters of their own, discussed Vulcan philosophy and made up the Vulcan language. There was a Usenet newsgroup called alt.fan.surak, for example.
It seems every time I watch this episode, I go back and forth between strongly disliking it to not minding it. It certainly has its issues that cause me to eyeroll every time, and deservedly so. And its good points are nowhere near enough to counter its bad points, which I guess is a staple of Season 3.
Is it just me, or does Kirk come off as an uber-hypocrite here when he slaps Elaan? In “Charlie X”, he explains to Charlie Evans that ‘there’s no right way to hit a woman’. Granted he also hits women in “Gamesters” and “By Any Other Name”, but those were life and death situations and he actually had the decency to feel bad about it after. In this episode, he just does it apparently out of frustration and/or a tactic to settle her down. Still, minus that albatross, I do enjoy Bill Shatner and France Nuyen’s early scenery chewing.
As for the battle with the Klingons, it was great to finally (production-wise) see the classic Matt Jefferies Klingon ship in action!
@krad/Welcome aboard: Totally random how I discovered it, but Nuyen’s character in St. Eleswhere is spelled with the “e” before the “i”.
Speaking of randomness, I vote the Klingon’s beard in this episode to be the best Klingon beard in all of TOS!
@32/CLB: In a nice bit of continuity, in ENT “Home”, the Vulcan officiating T’Pol and Koss’s wedding, speaks in an identical accent to TOS T’Pau. It doesn’t really solve the problem of the two versions of T’Pau’s accents, but I guess your theory about the UT vs. no UT is as good an explanation as any.
@83/JanaJansen: Star Trek Enterprise did a lot of harm to the perception of Vulcans in the first three seasons. Season 4 returned the Vulcans to their TOS era state, but I think a lot of damage was done among the fandom.
@86/Thierafhal: The difference may be that a woman wrote “Charlie X” and a man wrote this one. Then again, it could be just that Kirk doesn’t consider Elaan a “lady” deserving of respectful/gentle treatment.
And I disagree emphatically that ENT “harmed” the portrayal of Vulcans. On the contrary, I think it enriched them enormously and approached their history very intelligently by allowing their culture to change over time, rather than be lazily stereotyped as a single unchanging thing from century to century, which is not how any culture would realistically work. Vulcans were a far more 3-dimensional culture after ENT, and that is the exact opposite of harm.
Besides, as Keith has pointed out on a number of occasions, the hagiographic view of Vulcans in early fandom was at odds with how TOS actually portrayed them. The phenomenon of Vulcans being imperious, hypocritical jerks is by no means an invention of DS9 or ENT; it’s right there in “Amok Time” with the whole fight-to-the-death ritual, T’Pau’s contempt for humans, and T’Pring’s ruthless scheming. It’s there in “Journey to Babel” with Sarek and Spock’s 18-year estrangement and irrational stubbornness, and Sarek’s highly undiplomatic racial slurs against fellow ambassadors. And it’s there every time Spock condescends toward humans. Fandom just overlooked that because they were so in love with Spock, and so they idealized Vulcans as wise and noble Tolkien elves, rather than acknowledging their jerkier tendencies. Later productions portrayed Vulcans in a way utterly consistent with TOS; they just did it more frequently, so it was harder for fans to delude themselves.
@86, as far as I’m concerned Elaan totally deserved an open handed slap. As I recall charlie X kirk was explaining that slapping a woman on the backside was unacceptable.
Kirk did not convert Elaan, he certainly started her thinking on new lines but her moment of conversion came in sickbay, talking to Petrie . He begs her to accept the wedding gown and other gifts as a symbol of both their people’s desperate desire for peace. It is very likely it will only be a symbol as they are both likely to die in the near future. Elaan comments that all men from other worlds ever talk about is peace and dury., but she takes the gown from Petrie’s hands, and the next time we see her she is is wearing it and the other gifts. She has decided. Elaan chooses to live or die as a queen of Troyius. Kirk contributed to her change of mind. But she doesn’t do it to please him. She does it for Elas and for Troyius, for both her peoples and both her families. Petrie has changed too. He has accepted Elaan as his true queen and is now ready to help and support her not just endure her.
@87/CLB:
Rereading what I wrote, I’m embarrassed to say how little thought I put into it. I wrote my comment on two hours of sleep, so that’s probably why. My brain was locked into the plot point at the end of the “Kir’Shara” arc where it’s revealed Administrator V’Las was working with the Romulans. What I was trying to get at is that the High Command was portrayed by Syrran in “The Forge” as not following the ‘true path of Surak’. It was used in Enterprise as a way to explain the Vulcans’ heavy handed approach to keeping humans from going too far too fast. Although it was only part of the story. One of my favorite scenes in “The Forge” was the conversation between Admiral Forrest and Ambassador Soval about Vulcans seeing a bit of themselves in us and fearing what humans might do on the galactic stage if unleashed.
Ultimately, it was silly of me to blame the negative perception of Vulcans on Enterprise alone. I think in some corners of fandom, there was some outrage at how Enterprise Vulcans were portrayed. In the face of failing ratings, season 4 was presented as a kind of reboot to try and tie Enterprise more softly into TOS lore as it pertained to the Vulcans. I fully acknowledge that not all fandom had such a negative view on Enterprise. I myself had no issue with how Vulcans were portrayed in seasons 1-3. In fact, I hold Enterprise in high regard and think it gets too bad a wrap.
Yes, Vulcans are genuinely afraid of what humans will do. Which as you recall turns out to be making friends, mediating conflicts and helping found the United Federation of Planets. Terrifying.
@90/princessroxana:
Hindsight is 20/20 as they say. The Vulcans’ fear was based on their perception of humans as a kind of pre-logic Vulcan, but without any future prospects of developing that kind of logic. What they apparently didn’t factor in is what Kirk said in ‘A Taste of Armageddon’ as a kind of truism: “We can admit that we’re killers, but were not going to kill today. That’s all it takes. Knowing that we won’t kill today!”
Ghastly, misogynistic trash. I have little else to say about this one.
Like you said about Children Shall Lead, I see the problems but I like it anyway.
Like the Scotsman said, it’s a good thing we don’t all like the same things, think of the shortage of oatmeal!
I’m really enjoying watching all the Star Treks on Netflix. It’s fun to rewatch. I’ve been a huge fan of Star Trek since I’m a little kid, so figure around 50 years. I know it might not be popular but I have to agree with Daniel’s number 49 post. I know it’s not politically correct to forgive the behavior of the past but certainly women were treated a lot worse further back in our history. I know as the father of two adult daughters there’s still plenty of sexism and mistreatment going on and it’s not right but I’m not gonna hold it against Star Trek from the 60s. I’d also like to add that post number 18 by JanaJansen. I thought was right on the money. I really agree with her assessment of the episode. I think it’s her my apologies if it’s not. Right now I’m not gonna nitpick all the annoying things about this episode and others, particularly like somebody mentioned the lack of any security for engineering with semi hostile guests aboard.
This gets my vote as the absolute worst Star Trek-TOS episode. It’s not even bad enough to be entertaining (like ‘The Apple’). ‘Elaan’ is boring unwatchable and utterly without any redeeming values. The Kirk-Elaan ‘love story’ MAY have been an allusion to Shakespeare’s ‘Taming of the Shrew’ and of course the title refers to ‘Helen of Troy.’ In addition, they might have tried to make Elaan look like Cleopatra of Egypt. While I love these references to classical and 16th century figures, this episode is bad all around. And don’t get me started on those hideous garish clothes worn by the Elasians!