“The Time Trap”
Written by Joyce Perry
Directed by Hal Sutherland
Animated Season 1, Episode 12
Production episode 22010
Original air date: November 24, 1973
Stardate: 5267.2
Captain’s log. The Enterprise is surveying the Delta Triangle, a region of space where hundreds of ships have been lost, in an attempt to determine why so many ships have disappeared there.
They encounter a Klingon ship, the Klothos, under the command of Kor, which immediately fires upon the Enterprise. When Sulu fires back, the ship disappears—but the Klingon shields deflected the weapons fire. Nonetheless, it vanished. Two more Klingon ships arrive, and Commander Kuri accuses Kirk of destroying the Klothos.
Kirk orders Sulu to the same coordinates as the Klothos, and when they arrive, they suffer vertigo and instrument failure. When it clears, they find themselves in a ship graveyard. Scotty is impressed, as he sees vessel designs he’s only seen in museums. They also see the Bonaventure, the first ship to have warp drive installed. It disappeared without a trace after only a few missions.
The Klothos and Enterprise find each other, and they exchange fire—but the weapons fire is frozen, and then both Kirk and Kor are transported off their bridges and in front of the Elysian Council, which is made up of representatives from all the ships that became trapped in the Delta Triangle. They have formed a civilization in this little pocket dimension, ruled by the council, who make it abundantly clear that no hostile acts will be tolerated. They make it equally clear that there is no escape.
The captains are returned to their ships, and Scotty reports that the Enterprise dilithium crystals are deteriorating. They have four days to find a way out before ship’s power is drained. On the Klothos, Kor’s people are also trying to find a way out. The council, thanks to a telepath named Magen, know that they’re trying, but they also believe that the new arrivals have to try to escape before they will accept that they’re trapped.
Kor tries to power his way out, but fails. However, that gives Spock the idea of combining the engine power of both ships to get through. Kor goes along with it, afterward ordering his first officer Kaz to arrange things so that the Enterprise is destroyed once they break through.
Spock has been acting weird, putting his arms around the Klingons and being chummy with them—which, it turns out, was on purpose, using his touch telepathy to pick up impressions from the Klingons. He knows the Klingons are planning some kind of sabotage.
On the eve of the escape attempt, Kirk hosts a reception for both the Klingons and the Elysians. Devna, an Orion woman, dances for the crew and speaks wistfully of her home of Orion, but refuses Kirk’s offer to go with them when they try to leave, because she’s sure they’ll fail.
The Klingons start a fight in order to cover the sabotage, and the Elysians haul Kor and his crew up on charges. Kirk pleads with them not to imprison the Klothos, as that would also doom the Enterprise. The council agrees, and releases Kor and his crewmember to Kirk’s custody.
The escape attempt proves successful—and Magen picks up the specifics of the Klingon sabotage telepathically, allowing the council to warn the Enterprise. Scotty and Spock find the explosive and eject it from the ship.
The two vessels break free and go their separate ways, with Kor taking full credit for their escape to the Klingon High Council.
Can’t we just reverse the polarity? This episode establishes that Klingon ships use an S-2 graf unit for a warp engine.
Fascinating. Spock is unusually goofy in this one, acting chummy with Klingons in order to receive telepathic impressions from them, which is out of character on two different levels: it’s weird for him to behave that way, in a way that would confuse his friends and crew mates, and it’s also seriously unethical.
I’m a doctor not an escalator. Hilariously, McCoy is the one who has to point out to Kirk that Spock is acting weird. Kirk, his theoretical best friend, doesn’t even notice.
Ahead warp one, aye. Sulu puts the Enterprise at the exact spot the Klothos was at, which is an impressive bit of astrogation in a region of space that messes with sensors, and given how friggin huge space is generally…
Hailing frequencies open. Uhura picks up on Kor’s transmission taking credit, which is the only useful thing she does, though Nichelle Nichols does get to do a bunch of other voices, at least.
I cannot change the laws of physics! It’s unclear why it took Scotty and Spock to undo the Klingon sabotage, especially since it involved throwing a thing the size of a horse pill into the recycling bin…
No sex, please, we’re Starfleet. We sadly do not get to see Devna’s dance at the reception. Oh, well, we’ll always have Vina…
Channel open.
“Your willingness to work with your old enemy, Kirk—it is not like you, Commander. What do you really have in mind?”
“You do know me, Kaz. Very well, what would you think if the Enterprise suddenly disintegrated after our dual ship had pierced the time continuum?”
“I would think my commander had maneuvered brilliantly.”
–Kaz suffering a crisis of faith in Kor’s evilness and Kor restoring that faith.
Welcome aboard. Nichelle Nichols does three voices—Majel Barrett does not appear in this one for some reason—including her usual role of Uhura, and both Devna and Magen. George Takei voices both Sulu and Kuri, and James Doohan is Scotty, Xerius, and Kor. Unknown actors provide the voices of Gabler and Kaz. (For some inexplicable reason, Kaz is often credited to Doohan, even though Kaz sounds nothing like him, even a little bit.)
Trivial matters: Dayton Ward and Kevin Dilmore did a sequel to this episode involving the Starfleet Corps of Engineers in the eBook novella Where Time Stands Still (later reprinted in the collection Creative Couplings).
The Delta Triangle is, obviously, a riff on the Devil’s Triangle, better known these days as the Bermuda Triangle, a location in the Atlantic Ocean where many ships have been lost.
Kor would mention commanding the Klothos in “Once More Unto the Breach” on DS9, only the second time a live-action series would make a direct reference to the animated series (the first being Sarek referring to the events of “Yesteryear” in “Unification I” on TNG).
This is the second of five appearances by Kor on screen, and the only time John Colicos wasn’t playing the role. Instead—as with Koloth in “More Tribbles, More Troubles“—he was voiced by James Doohan. The producers attempted to bring Kor back twice after “Errand of Mercy,” but Colicos wasn’t available for either “The Trouble with Tribbles” or “Day of the Dove,” so they created new Klingons instead. This time they succeeded in bringing him back by virtue of not actually needing Colicos to do it. He’ll return thrice on DS9, in “Blood Oath,” “The Sword of Kahless,” and the aforementioned “Once More Unto the Breach.”
Some of the ships in the graveyard were early rejected designs for the insectoid ship seen in “Beyond the Farthest Star.” One of the aliens on the Elysian Council is a Phylosian from “The Infinite Vulcan.”
This is the last chronological appearance of a smooth-headed Klingon (QuchHa’). The next time we see Klingons will be in The Motion Picture, which introduced the ridge-headed design (HemQuch) that would be used henceforth. The only other times we’ll see QuchHa’ after this are on Enterprise, when QuchHa’ were created in “Affliction” and “Divergence,” and in DS9‘s “Trials and Tribble-ations,” when the Defiant travels back in time to the events of “The Trouble with Tribbles.”
Based on the reference in this episode, Judith & Garfield Reeves-Stevens established Zefram Cochrane’s first ship to have warp drive as being called the Bonaventure in the novel Federation. That would later be superseded by the movie First Contact, which had Cochrane’s ship be called the Phoenix. The aforementioned Where Time Stands Still reconciled this by having the Bonaventure be the first official Earth ship to have a warp engine (since the Phoenix flight was pretty much done in somebody’s back yard), and its loss in the Delta Triangle was theorized to be a design flaw, which led Cochrane to start the Warp 5 Project that culminated in the NX-01 seen in the show Enterprise. The Bonaventure was also seen in The Spaceflight Chronology by Stan & Fred Goldstein and Rick Sternbach and in the FASA RPG module The Four Years War.
Devna is a recurring character (at a time prior to her being lost in the Delta Triangle) in Christopher L. Bennett’s Enterprise: Rise of the Federation novel series.
In 2009, your humble rewatcher was the subject of a comedy roast for charity at the Shore Leave convention, the first of three (the other two victims in 2010 and 2011 were, respectively, Michael Jan Friedman and Robert Greenberger). One of the segments produced for the roast was a “lost” animated episode, “Requiem for a Martian,” supposedly written by me when I was four years old, and intended to be the first episode of the third season of the animated series. The footage for that “lost” episode all came from this episode, including dubbing in President Barack Obama’s voice over Gabler (it works frighteningly well).
To boldly go. “I’ve never known Spock to act like a pal under any circumstances.” This is one case where the episode suffers mightily from the half-hour format, because our heroes are barely in Elysia before they have to effect their escape. We never really get to see Elysia, and that’s too bad. It was a great opportunity to show how disparate species can cooperate under the right circumstances, and a chance at a nifty analogy to how Kirk and Kor have to work together.
But the tropes and time frame of Saturday morning cartoons means that we have to have Kor betray the crew and that we only have half an hour to tell the story. So as a result, the episode feels like it skimps on the plot.
On top of that, Kor is very disappointing. The character design is actually pretty close to John Colicos, and James Doohan at least occasionally matches John Colicos’s vocal cadence, but all nuance is lost from the character. There’s no reason for it to be Kor. Every other returning character has been important to the plot—Sarek and Amanda, Cyrano Jones and Koloth and Korax, Harry Mudd—or minor enough to not matter—Bob Wesley—but Kor is supposed to be a dangerous antagonist, and he’s a shadow of his former self (and his future self, for that matter, as he’s totally awesome when he appears on DS9).
It’s bizarre that Majel Barrett’s services weren’t used—it’s very obvious Nichelle Nichols doubling up on both Magen and Devna, and it would’ve been more effective if Barrett had done one of those voices—and that’s not the only vocal peculiarity. George Takei’s distinct voice isn’t differentiated enough as Kuri from Sulu’s voice, and nobody can agree on how to pronounce Magen or Xerius’s names.
The Delta Triangle is a tiresomely derivative concept, but Elysia has some serious potential, and it’s really too bad that it was wasted in favor of space battles and sabotage. The episode would’ve been far stronger dropping Kuri and the other two Klingon ships, and maybe having Kor be inspired by the example of the Elysians and agreeing to work with Kirk. (Especially since there’s a Klingon right there on the Elysian council, which is never actually mentioned by anyone.)
Warp factor rating: 5
Next week: “The Ambergris Element”
Keith R.A. DeCandido recently announced one of his niftiest new projects, which will be out this summer: Orphan Black: Classified Clone Report—From the Files of Dr. Delphine Cormier. This reference work is the ultimate companion to the BBC America TV series, and will be released alongside the airing of the show’s fifth and final season. More information on Keith’s blog.
Not a direct connection, but the Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force video game features a similar “graveyard” of lost ships, including Klingons and a ship from the Mirror Universe’s Terran Empire (a convenient excuse to get “familiar” enemies into the Delta Quadrant). The Graveyard was a lot less pleasant than Elysia; instead of a council, the inhabitants had reverted to bands of scavengers.
I can’t put my finger on it, but Magen seriously rubs me the wrong way. Other than that, I didn’t mind the episode too much. Yes, it’s got some serious holes, but it’s a little bit more “thinky” than a lot of the TAS episodes. Of course, “not minding” an episode is damning with faint praise, but when you compare it to the Incredible Shrinking Enterprise Crew from last week, we’re actually in pretty good shape.
Wrong series, but my favorite graveyard of lost ships was in the Space: 1999 episode Dragon’s Domain, which absolutely terrified me as a small child.
I actually kind of enjoyed this one. It was good to see the crew of the Big E working, reluctantly though it may be, with Klingons. Sort of like “Day of the Dove.” Speaking of which, while it was good to get Kor back, I think it would have made more sense for this to be Kang, as the Elysian philosophy seems to work better with the moral of that story than that of “Errand of Mercy.” Although the ultimate (attempted) treachery of the Klingons here doesn’t line up with where “Day of the Dove” ended.
I tried to note which aliens I could specifically identify on the Elysian council. I assume Xerius was supposed to be a Vulcan, although I suppose he could have been a Romulan, and I saw another Vulcanoid, Devna was obviously an Orion (although a paler green than we’re accustomed to seeing). I also specifically noted the Klingon, Andorian, Gorn, and Tellarite. I missed the Phylosian.
Regarding Spock’s touching the Klingons – I agree it’s a slippery slope, but I read it as just enough to get an impression of their state of mind. Not as invasive as what was done to Valeris. More along the lines of the readings Counselor Troi would usually sense.
Devna’s green is probably lighter than other Orions’ for the same reason that the klingon’s are wearing pink.
This and the computer game mentioned by @1 sounds a lot like the Voyager episode “The Void.” By no means a perfect episode but, weirdly, a microcosm of what Voyager should have been all along (forming alliances with local aliens, discovering strange new technology, temporarily taking on new crew, etc.). In these more serialized days, it would be interesting to see an arc like this play out for half a season or at least a four- or five-parter.
I wonder if that’s supposed to be a Kzin between the Klingon and the Andorian. The character design is a little different from what we see in “The Slaver Weapon” (only 2 episodes away), but it could be an early draft design.
What I like best about this episode is Devna. I generally like Orion women as part of the Star Trek ensemble of diverse, colourful aliens, but in “The Cage” they come with so much sexist crap (“animal women”, “slaves”) that it’s annyoing. Marta in “Whom Gods Destroy” is a little better, but still a seductress and a murderous madwoman. In contrast, Devna is a member of the ruling council, she’s the one who does all the interacting with the new guys, and the fact that she dances and wears a bikini does not seem to diminish her authority in anyone’s view.
Apart from that, I like the council with all the different aliens, but the episode doesn’t have a lot of plot. And what little plot it has is wasted on space battles and scheming.
IMO animated Kor doesn’t look at all like the Kor from “Errand of Mercy”. His face should be much rounder.
The name “Delta Triangle” seems a bit redundant, since a delta is shaped like a triangle.
I can see the point that this episode is a cursory handling of its premise, but I think it works pretty well and has a good pace. The glimpse we get of Elysia is quite interesting and it would’ve been nice to see more. It does rely a little too heavily on telepathy and psionics as cure-all plot devices, though.
The episode is surprisingly similar to an issue of Gold Key’s Trek comic that came out the year before, “Museum at the End of Time.” I’m tempted to suspect plagiarism, except it is kind of a standard “Bermuda Triangle” plot. Still, I have to wonder.
I’ve used Devna as a major recurring character in my Enterprise: Rise of the Federation novels. When I was looking for characters who might’ve been around in the 2160s, I realized that the agelessness of the “Time Trap” guest characters meant that I could draw on them, and since I was featuring the Orions as a main antagonist, it made sense to include Devna in her pre-Triangle days. Although that means Xerius is overstating a bit when he says everyone on the council is centuries old.
One problem with modern editions of the episode: The space background within the Delta Triangle is supposed to be red, but it’s mistakenly been color-corrected to black in all but one shot of the DVD/Netflix version. This is analogous to the famous story of how the Orion makeup tests for “The Cage” (with Majel Barrett donning the green makeup for the tests) kept getting color-corrected from green to pink by a well-meaning film lab tech and the producers couldn’t figure out why the makeup wouldn’t show up on camera.
I’m pretty sure that Gabler and Kaz are the same actor, but I’m still not sure who it is. Kaz is certainly the biggest role he’s had so far.
@4/JamesP: According to the Star Trek Concordance and the Alan Dean Foster adaptation, Xerius is a Romulan — which can also be deduced from his faux-Roman name and from the widow’s-peak hairstyle he shares with all other TAS Romulans (and most Romulans from TNG and after). The Vulcan is the white-haired fellow on the right side of the council, between the Tellarite and the water-breathing female. Note that his costume is a differently colored version of Sarek’s outfit from “Yesteryear.”
In addition to the species you noted, the council also includes a prototype design for a Kzin, an insectoid of unknown species (perhaps a Kaferian, since they’ve been established as insectoid in the books), and a human woman in a white Starfleet-like uniform (perhaps meant to be one of the Bonaventure crew?).
@8/Jana: I agree — Devna is the only sane, intelligent Orion woman we see in TOS and TAS combined. Maybe that’s why I was so interested in using her as a character. I also find it ironic that this supposedly more kid-friendly incarnation of Trek featured by far the most scantily clad Orion woman to date.
@9/Christopher: What – that’s the same Devna? I never made the connection. That’s cool. But she had such a bad life on Orion. Would she really miss it?
Goofily out of character, I’ll give you, but Spock has always been willing to have a somewhat loose relationship with ethics if it suited his purpose.
Still, ship falls into a spacey-wacey thing ends up in the Delta Quadrant Triangle has to strike up an unusual alliance and defeat some powers there, still makes it home at the end of the episode. This is why Kirk is objectively a superior captain to Janeway.
This is one of the few Animated Series episodes I did love when it was first broadcast. Good honest old fashioned space opera. Fantastic, I give it 10 out of 10.
Keep in mind that the Bermuda Triangle’s original nickname was the Devil’s Triangle. “Delta” sounds more science-y, but is close enough to “Devil’s” to be a good riff on the phrase. It conjures images of the Devil’s Triangle — BUT IN SPACE!
Did not know about Devna in Rise of the Federation. Will edit the Trivial Matters forthwith…..
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Is this the first canon story to state the Klingons have cloaking devices? Spock says that the way the Klothos disappeared is inconsistent with they way the ship would disappear if it were using its cloaking device.
@10/Jana: “But she had such a bad life on Orion. Would she really miss it?”
That’s a discrepancy I noted while I was watching, and I’m sure I can think of some way to reconcile it.
@13/patrick: Yes, as far as I can tell, it is the first mention of Klingons having cloaks.
@14/Christopher: I’m looking forward to it!
Completely unrelated, I just browsed through this episode’s screencaps on trekcore.com and noticed how many nice design features it has – all the different spaceships, the weird script Spock’s formula is written in, the triangular table in the Klothos’ briefing room. And I’ve forgotten to praise the female Klingon crewmember.
@15/Jana: I’ve forgotten how little Kali had to do in the actual episode. Keith’s review claims that Nichelle Nichols did her voice, but in fact she was completely silent. She’s spoken to and about, but she doesn’t speak on camera. She does have a few lines in Alan Dean Foster’s adaptation, and she’s a major character in the 1984 Trek novel The Tears of the Singers by future TNG staffer Melinda Snodgrass — in fact, that book portrays her as Kor’s wife.
@16/Christopher: Hmm, I would prefer if Klingon females could serve on spaceships without being the boss’s wife. I hardly remember The Tears of the Singers, but I do remember that I didn’t like it as much as I expected.
Christopher: I could’ve sworn she had one line of dialogue at some point, but you’re right, she was silent………
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
CLB @9 – Thanks for the follow-up on the various species present on the council. I almost made the Romulan jump for Xerius based on the pseudo-Roman name, as you indicated. I didn’t recognize the Kzin (I haven’t seen any episodes of TAS other than those we’re up to on this rewatch) and wouldn’t have known a Kaferian from a Xindi Insectoid. I thought I saw a Human, too, but thanks for confirming there was one there.
Spock not letting Kirk in on what he was doing was maybe out of character, but Spock using his abilities in ethically questionable ways to gain intelligence on potentially hostile individuals to protect the ship, crew and the mission is not.
I believe we only really see one Orion woman in the original series, Marta. Vina was just roleplaying Pike’s expectation of what an Orion woman is like. Whatever that says about Pike and his sources on Orion culture.
@20/Crusader75: “Spock not letting Kirk in on what he was doing was maybe out of character” – I’d say that was in character too. Some evidence:
In “The Menagerie”, Spock hijacks the Enterprise without consulting anyone. In the final scene, Kirk tells him: “You could have come to me and explained.” In “Operation: Annihilate!”, Spock escapes from sickbay and tries to beam down to the planet without checking with Kirk first. He only explains himself after Scotty stops him with a phaser. Then there’s the “Forget” scene in “Requiem for Methuselah”. In TMP, Spock nerve-pinches a technician and leaves the Enterprise to mind-meld with V’Ger. In TWOK, he furtively leaves the bridge and goes to Engineering to repair the ship and die. In TVH, he goes for a swim in the whale tank, again without telling Kirk.
Spock frequently does what he thinks is right without obtaining permission first. What’s out of character here is his play-acting and the fact that Kirk doesn’t notice anything unusual.
“Vina was just roleplaying Pike’s expectation of what an Orion woman is like. Whatever that says about Pike and his sources on Orion culture.” – Earlier in the episode there’s also this line by Boyce: “You, an Orion trader, dealing in green animal women, slaves?” So if it’s a misconception, it isn’t restricted to Pike.
Krad, I’m sorry to interrupt, but are you going to do Voyager? Because I’ve just come to the end of season 2 (first time through this series), and I’m gonna need some krad-thoughts and discussion on these episodes.
KYS: I have no plans to do Voyager, no, sorry. Nor Enterprise, if it comes to that…..
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@20/Crusader75: Yes, it’s true that by in-universe standards, Marta and Devna are the only “real” Orions we see, but I was talking about the show’s portrayals of Orion women, and Vina’s Orion guise was the template for all the later depictions, so of course it counts. What I’m saying is that Devna was the first portrayal of a female Orion character that presented her as a rational, intelligent person rather than a mindless sex object or a madwoman. Marta was a step up from illusion-Vina in actually having a voice and a personality, and Devna was a step up from Marta in being sane and serene.
We need a brainwashed krad clone to do VOY and ENT.
When you only have 20 minutes of runtime, the way I think is you have to move the story forward no matter what. Hit the necessary beats and move on to the next point. Part of the reason I’ve enjoyed animated shows as a kid is because it kept that pace. I think this episode applies, maintaining a sense of urgency and keeping an adventurous spirit. After all, this isn’t a sitcom light on plot. This is plot-heavy sci-fi.
I agree, however, that they really did Kor a disservice. They might as well have created a new token Klingon antagonist. Then again, at least it wasn’t Kang they butchered.
@Keith: I’m not expecting a Voyager or Enterprise rewatch, but it would be interesting to cover the 13 movies. It’s been 31 years since Voyage Home. A good time as any to rewatch those films.
An interesting, if overdone, story. We’ve seen many of these sorts of stories in many different genres so it’s not surprising that Trek has done one (or two…). I agree that it suffered from a lack of space to actually tell the story. As it is, we got the bare bones of what could have been an interesting one.
As Kor is my favourite Klingon, I’m sorry to see him portrayed this way. I think it would have worked better (in a longer format) to have one of his officers come up with the plan and have Kor rect to this attack on his honour. In Errand of Mercy, he didn’t simply start killing hostages until Kirk & Spock decided that the Organians needed to be turned into something that they weren’t. And at the end, he seemed just as peeved at the idea that he was being manipulated as Kirk was when he was shown to be just a bloodthirsty as he said the Klingons were.
Lots of new and interesting aliens. Too bad we only met a couple of them in any depth. I don’t imagine that the felinoid was supposed to be a Kzinti. If we can have aliens that greatly resemble humans, why not some that resemble Caitians and Kzinti as well?
As far as the portrayal of the Orion Devna goes, I see Boyce’s comment in The Menagere as one similar to Europeans thoughts on what people living in Africa were. That is, so different from what they are used to that they are automatically considered foul and deviant. A much more nuanced portrayal is what we see here. Side note, for an interesting take on the Orions, check out the Orion sourcebook from the FASA role playing game. It came in two Volumes, The book of Common Knowledge, which gave the Federation’s view of them and The Book of Deep Knowledge that showed what they were really like. A great bit of world building by FASA and much more subtle and nuanced that what we usually get from the Orions. For example, the lodubyaln or “life contractors” are what is commonly referred to as green Orion slave women. The name is shown to be false and the reality is a deep and interesting look at Orion culture. Not all green Orion women are lodubyaln. There’s also the Ruddy Orions and the Greys, who are hidden away from outsiders.
One thing that bothers me is that Kirk orders the Enterprise to go to the exact coordinates that the Klothos when it disappeared. Space is big. Are we to believe that every one of these ship just happened to occupy the exact same space over the centuries? Either the Delta Triangle is a lot smaller than we’re led to believe or else it doesn’t work like we’re told it does.
Once again, Spock shows that the only definition of what is right is his own. Your mind is yours? Not while Spock is around. If he even suspects you’re up to something, be ready to have your innermost thoughts brought into play. Like his actions at the end of Requiem for Methuselah, personal privacy be damned. And this is the guy that made such a big show about discussing Vulcan mating behaviour. Apparently Vulcans are the only people he believes have a right to privacy.
Some interesting ship designs. Nothing to match up to the pod ship from Beyond the Farthest Star but cool none the less. It would have been nice to get a better look at them. Again, the limited time works against it.
All in all, not too bad but missing out on some details that would have enriched it.
6/10
I say we shanghai…er volunteer… er ask CLB to do a VOY or ENT rewatch series!
Like more than a few other TAS episodes, there was an interesting idea behind it but it was lost somewhere in the mire.
@21 – Spock acting gregarious should have set Kirk’s nose to twitching that his 1st Officer was up to something. Anyone who knows the guy should see that that ain’t right. Maybe Spock has a bit of Sybok…wait, no,…Sybok does not exist, he does NOT.
Perhaps what Pike’s perception of Orion women is one that is prevalent in the Federation, but it is not necessarily true. Vina is still playing to the version of Orion culture in Pike’s head, so to play out the day dream he related to Boyce and seduce him. Since the Orions actually are slavers, perhaps the “animal women” is, well, marketing on their part (they are slavers, smugglers and pirates after all, we already know they make horrible moral choices).
@20 – I understand, but Vina’s performance was due to the Talosians trying to get Pike to see Vina as a sex object. In story, it was playing up the most lurid aspects of what Pike knows about Orions (and playing up to Roddenberry’s prurient interests). In universe, it was just matching Pike’s notions what Orions were, not necessarily what they actually were. All I am trying say is that you are not necessarily locked into that point of view about that culture. There was one other probable Orion character, though that was a male. The impostor Andorian Ambassador’s attaché in “Journey to Babel”.
Saw this one recently for the first time since the 70s, and it struck me as a fairly textbook example of lazy plotting, with things happening for no other reason than that the story suddenly requires it. Like, why couldn’t Magen have detected the Klingons’ deception all along, rather than having to wait for the climactic moment at which somebody had to haul Kirk et al’s ass out of the fire?
Oh, and from what I remember of the era in which this episode was produced, the name Bermuda Triangle was always used more frequently than Devil’s Triangle. The former is by no means a recent renaming.
@30/Crusader: As I said, I’m not talking about in-universe explanations, I’m talking about how the creators of a work of fiction approached a certain category of character, and thus how Orion women were presented to us, the viewers. The one has nothing to do with the other. I’m not saying there’s a contradiction that needs to be explained; obviously different individuals of any species will be different from each other. And Marta was explicitly called insane, so obviously she wasn’t meant to be typical. It’s just that “The Time Trap” was the first time a writer of a Star Trek episode chose to depict an individual Orion female who was intelligent and rational, and that creative choice added breadth and nuance to how the species was portrayed.
And yes, Thelev (or whatever his real name was) was the only male Orion we saw in TOS. It’s interesting to note that the male Orions we’ll see in TAS’s “The Pirates of Orion” are blue-skinned instead of green. Maybe that was another side effect of Hal Sutherland’s colorblindness, but maybe they were assuming that Thelev’s blue coloration wasn’t a disguise, that the women were green and the men were blue.
Speaking of weird ideas about Orion coloration, the Star Trek Concordance by Bjo Trimble refers to Devna as “a gold-skinned Orion girl in a red bikini suit.” I can only surmise that the color balance on Trimble’s TV was off (something that was prone to happen in the ’70s, where pretty much every aspect of the image had to be tuned in manually with knobs and dials and was prone to shifting unpredictably), perhaps adding too much red to her pale green skin and orange bikini. But since I only had a black-and-white set as a kid, I assumed for decades that Devna actually was gold-skinned. Even after seeing the episode in color multiple times, I still assumed, as recently as a few years ago, that Devna was gold, which is why I put a passing reference to gold-skinned Orions in my novel Forgotten History. I guess my preconception was so strong that it overrode direct observation. She does look kind of greenish-gold in some shots, at least.
@31/Steve: No doubt, Magen wasn’t able to monitor constantly; the episode implied that she had to concentrate and make an effort. Devna said “Gently, good Magen” as though she were straining, and then said “Return to us now,” suggesting her clairvoyance was an altered state of consciousness that it took an effort to enter and leave. I assume Magen was concentrating extra-hard on the ships as they attempted their escape, and that’s why she detected the trap then and not before.
By the way, Foster’s novelization identifies Magen (or “Megan” as he spells it) as a Cygnian.
1. Ive always assumed the animated star trek was in a universe that overlaps regular star trek in very strange ways. Checkovs not missing some space/time burp split him into both Arex and Catwom….I MEAN M’RESS
2. What the heck was satuday moring Tvs obsseson with the burmuda triangle?
3 Speaking of Multivereses I think Kirk shows up in gotham working for the penquin in new adventures of Batman
@33/roblewmac: There were a lot of sensationalist books and TV specials playing up the Bermuda Triangle myth in the ’60s and ’70s, so it follows that there were a lot of SF/fantasy shows in the period that did stories about it. They were very common back then, and into the ’80s as well. There was a whole ’70s TV series about the Triangle, The Fantastic Journey. The Lynda Carter Wonder Woman series put Paradise Island in the Triangle. And tons of shows had episodes set there and offering various explanations for the alleged mystery, from UFOs to dimensional warps to monsters to evil hijacking schemes. (My favorite was the SeaQuest episode “Bad Water,” which offered a strictly scientific explanation with no woo-woo nonsense of any kind. Although the real explanation is tabloid journalism; there are no more disappearances there than anywhere else, but one or two notable ones got played up in the media, so later ones in the same region got more attention.)
@27/kkozoriz: Klingon honour hadn’t been invented yet. In “Errand of Mercy”, Kor proudly talks about their ruthlessness, strength, unity and surveillance, but not about honour. Nor do any of the other Klingons in TOS. The idea first appears in TSFS, when Kruge tells Valkris “You will be remembered with honour” before he kills her.
Just because the word itself wasn’t used, doesn’t mean that they didn’t have such a concept. You could say that the taking of Organinan hostages showed a sort of Klingon honour since Kor could have simply killed them outright. “I’ll keep your people alive as long as you don’t oppose us” would be seen as a threat to a human it to a Klingon it cold be seen as a promise to treat the hostages fairly. The Final Reflection touches on this with the kuve (servitors). You don’t treat them like Klingons but you don’t mistreat them unless necessary. Now, mistreatment of a servitor can be anything up to and including death but they do have rules for such things.
And what they passed off as Klingon honour in TNG consisted mostly of talking about it and then ignoring it. They were an interstellar biker gang with very fluid definition of what was honourable. Entertaining to be sure but, for the most part, made up as they went along. How often was Worf disgusted by the behaviour of other Klingons and declared that they were without honour
@36/kkozoriz: True, but that’s a reinterpretation. I meant to say that at the time of TAS, a story about Klingon honour would have been unlikely because the concept didn’t exist yet.
Your mention of The Final Reflection makes me wonder who invented it. That book is from 1984. So is TSFS. Does that mean the idea had been around before? Or is it just the most likely way to go if you want to give some depth to your baddies?
I like the term “interstellar biker gang”.
@37/Jana: You’re right — The Making of Star Trek established Romulans as the honorable warriors (since they were space Romans) and Klingons as the endemically treacherous and deceitful ones (since they were based on racial stereotypes of Oriental villains). The Search for Spock was written with Romulan villains that were then casually rewritten as Klingons without anything else being changed, which was how Klingons suddenly ended up with honor, Birds of Prey, etc.
I think you’re right that it was just convergent evolution with The Final Reflection. A standard way to give a race of warriors positive attributes is to give them a code of honor — they’re violent killers, but at least they play fair and follow a code so it isn’t random savagery. There are tons of honorable warrior races in sci-fi and fantasy.
A reflection in the changing public perception of those groups, perhaps. We now know that the Romans were far more likely to be devious treacherous political schemers than honourable warriors. Their approach to treaties was that they were there more to get their enemies off f a war footing and far enough entrenched in the Roman way of life so the populace would support the Roman government when they betrayed their previous allies.
While the contrast with both Vikings and Mongols is that we used to think of those groups as backstabbing warmongers and while they both had a more than healthy love of combat, they also had a rich history of social rules and obligations as well.
@38 — That’s fascinating! I didn’t realize that the Search for Spock villains had been swapped out like that; and how much future canon was profoundly impacted by giving Klingons a Bird of Prey in that one movie?
@39/random22: No, the changes in the Klingons and Romulans had nothing to do with changes in their historical referents. The makers of the movies and TNG were no doubt quite happy to abandon the problematical Orientalist stereotypes the TOS Klingons were based on, which may have been a factor in giving them a more alien redesign — although TNG ended up substituting different cultural referents, making them samurai Vikings instead of Soviet Mongol hordes.
As I said, Klingon honor was established by accident in The Search for Spock, when lines written for a Romulan character were given to a Klingon. Of course, Kruge was quite treacherous and the mention of honor was mere lip service; but when TNG established peace with the Klingons and needed to portray them in a more positive light, they embraced the idea of Klingons being defined by honor, because that’s a standard trick for making a warrior culture seem admirable.
But with the Klingons as good guys now, and the Ferengi fizzling out as the major threat they were conceived to be, that left the Romulans to become TNG’s primary villains. And that meant they had to become more treacherous and malevolent. Also, part of the reason the Romulans were sympathetic in TOS is because they were a Vulcan offshoot so there was a connection with Spock. With no significant Vulcan characters in TNG or DS9, that channel for identification with the Romulans was absent.
@38/Christopher: I’ve always found it confusing that the Romulan ships had birds of prey painted on them, whereas the Klingon ships were called “Birds of Prey”. But that explains it. Also the sudden existence of a Klingon neutral zone.
@41/Christopher: IMO using all kinds of evil stereotypes for the Klingons in “Errand of Mercy” was actually quite clever, because it made the punchline – that Kirk had more in common with his enemy than with the people he had originally set out to protect – more effective. It became problematic when they were reused in more conventional stories in the second season.
As for the Romulans, weren’t they portrayed as treacherous right from the start? They used a cloaked ship to destroy several Federation outposts on the far side of the neutral zone without prior warning or declaration of war. And according to Spock, “Earth believes the Romulans to be warlike, cruel, treacherous.”
@42/Jana: The defining aspect of the Romulans in “Balance of Terror” that was picked up on in a number of tie-ins (notably Diane Duane’s novels) is that there was a more honorable older generation, represented by the Commander and Centurion, that was being supplanted by a younger generation that was more militant and unprincipled. There’s some of this dynamic reflected in TNG’s “The Defector” too, I think. So the idea is of a once-noble culture becoming more decadent, which I suppose is also part of the Roman influence.
And I think what you said about “Errand” applies to “Balance” as well. Spock only said that Earth believed the Romulans to be treacherous, based on very little information and a total lack of face-to-face contact. Then we went to the Romulan ship and saw that the Commander and Centurion were nothing like the stereotype that people like Stiles embraced.
@43/Christopher: Yes, that’s true.
I’ve never believed that the TNG Klingons could actually run an interstellar empire. There’s too much infighting. Combine that with the devastating weapons available and they’d be too busy killing each other to make much of a threat to anyone else. For every one that attacked the Federation or the Romulans, there’d be two attacking their holdings back home.
These are the guys that execute their weapon officer, one out of a crew of twelve on a BoP, for blowing up the target. That’s getting rid of 8% of your crew just because you’re peeved.
At least Kor in Errand of Mercy was shown as a strict but competent administrator. Later Klingons would be trashing their office, getting drunk on bloodwine, head butting their solders and generally being loud and obnoxious.
37. JanaJansen – “I like the term “interstellar biker gang”.”
The thing with modern Klingons is that we mostly see the blustering warriors, but we also know there are diplomats and lawyers and administrators and scientists, etc (and we sometimes see them) that actually run the empire.
Yes, but the power lies with the Chancellor and the council and those are exclusively warriors. The rest may keep the trains running the the council keep blowing up the tracks. And when we do see the non-warriors, they’re usually treated with scorn.
@45 “I’ve never believed that the TNG Klingons could actually run an interstellar empire. There’s too much infighting. Combine that with the devastating weapons available and they’d be too busy killing each other to make much of a threat to anyone else.”
But the infighting is true of most of the great Earth empires down through history – and they still managed to be a considerable threat to people who weren’t them. The Romans, particularly, took infighting to new heights (or depths, depending on how you view these things) but still managed to deal with the majority of Europe, northern Africa and a good chunk of the Middle East!
You could also argue that the ten years covered by TNG/DS9 were a period of instability on a par with the civil war that followed Julius Caesar’s death and that Martok is the Klingon equivalent of Augustus.
As long as they keep the infighting and shenanigans inside the council chamber and unite against a common foe if a threat comes along then they can infight and still rule an empire. No Klingon wants to overthrow the Empire, they just want to be one up in the hierarchy within it but will still defend that institution to the death. That is why Duras was such a threat, he really was prepared to upend the board in favour of his own ego.
The Klingon civil war was started as a war between two families. It soon included the rest of the empire as the houses chose sides. It doesn’t take much to disrupt Klingon society.
It’s not like it was everyone against Duras after all.
The council chamber was large but they only had a small amout of aliens from various planets judging from all the thousands of star ships there including the USS BONIVENTURE the first federation star ship to have warp drive and the Delta Triangle is a sort of version of the Burmuda Triangle and the sort of suargaso sea of all star ships and amonst the various races there semas to be a Gorn theres also a telirite,andorian,romulan,vulcan,pholosian, and many many more
One of the reasons that I like the PC game “Klingon Academy” so much, is that you get a lot of insight into Klingon culture and government. And General Chang (reprised by Christopher Plummer) makes a number of wonderful lectures on the what it means to be a Klingon Warrior, and their tenets of Honor, Duty, and Loyalty. The game also implies that during the TOS-era General Chang would have had a significant command-role in orchestrating a war with the Federation had the Organians not intervened. Cool stuff.
@12/krad: “Keep in mind that the Bermuda Triangle’s original nickname was the Devil’s Triangle.”
Just belatedly noticed this, but as far as I can tell, it’s the other way around. The Bermuda Triangle is one of those myths that we assume has been around for centuries but was really invented recently by hoaxers and sensationalists who pretended it was ancient to make it sound more credible. The myth that there was an unusual amount of disappearances in the sea near Bermuda began with a 1950 article, and the idea that it happened in a triangular region was added in 1952. The name “Bermuda Triangle” was coined in a 1964 article by Vincent Gaddis, “The Deadly Bermuda Triangle.” But as far as I can tell, the “Devil’s Triangle” name wasn’t coined until the 1970s, primarily popularized in a 1974 book of that title by Richard Winer.
I guess we assume that name is older because the “Devil” angle makes it feel like it comes from superstitious mariners of centuries past. But apparently not.
I like this episode. One of those instances when I wanted the episode to be longer. A lot of TOS episodes run a little long/slow for my taste, but this is a case where the episode really moved along at a clip.
There was an episode of Space Battleship Yamato: 2199 (an excellent remake, btw, and you should all go watch it) that sorta ripped this episode off. Yamato and a Gamilon warship fall through a dimensional rift into a pocket universe with wrecked ships in it and have to work together to get back into normal space, with the Gamilon ship planning to double-cross Yamato as they return to normal space. There’s no living people in it other than themselves, though.