“Bem”
Written by David Gerrold
Directed by Bill Reed
Animated Season 2, Episode 2
Production episode 22018
Original air date: September 14, 1974
Stardate: 7403.6
Captain’s log. The Enterprise has taken on Ari bn Bem, a representative from a recently contacted species, as a passenger. He will be observing Starfleet’s exploration and first-contact protocols in action.
Delta Theta III is a planet with some aboriginal life forms. Kirk’s mission is to plant monitoring devices without the locals seeing them. Bem—who has spent the last six missions in his quarters, not noticeably observing much of anything—volunteers to go on this landing party. Kirk is reluctant, but Bem insists, and he beams down along with Kirk, Spock, Scotty, and Sulu.
Bem sets the coordinates, and Kirk and Spock wind up materializing over a body of water. Bem jumps in to offer assistance—but even as Kirk insists they’re all right, Bem’s legs disengage from his torso and walk over to Kirk and Spock, using the water as cover to remove their phasers and communicators, replacing them with fakes.
Uhura reports from the Enterprise that there’s some kind of sensor anomaly on the planet. Kirk orders her to monitor it and keep them posted.
Bem detects life forms nearby—and then inexplicably runs off. He gets through thick underbrush by detaching his body into several independent components. Kirk and Spock go after him, only to find him captured by a group of natives.
Arex reports that the sensor anomaly is increasing in size. Uhura can’t raise Kirk or Spock, nor can the Enterprise detect their communicators. Per Kirk’s orders (and against Scotty’s better judgment), Uhura has Scotty and Sulu beamed back immediately while Arex scans for the captain and first officer.
Kirk and Spock, meanwhile, have discovered that their communicators are fakes. They follow Bem and his captors to their village. They try to rescue Bem—who insists that this is part of his observation—but then are captured themselves. Bem eventually reveals that he has the actual communicators and phasers belonging to Kirk and Spock. He detaches his legs, which hand them back. Kirk is baffled as to why he didn’t escape earlier. Bem says that this allowed him to observe Kirk trying to rescue him. Kirk is livid that Bem is treating this dangerous mission like his personal lab experiment, and places him under arrest.
But first they have to escape the village. When they try to, an alien entity appears and paralyzes the landing party. She says that the natives are her children and she will not let the landing party harm them. The trio are imprisoned once again. Bem declares Kirk to be incompetent and not intelligent. He detaches his head, torso, and legs, uses them to leave his cage, and then wanders off, leaving Kirk and Spock to their own devices.
Kirk contacts the alien entity and offers to leave and warn others to leave the planet alone. The entity agrees as long as the landing party departs. But Kirk can’t leave Bem behind, so he orders Scotty to beam down with a security detail to find Bem—who, it turns out, has again been captured.
Bem realizes he’s erred and claims he must disassociate himself and no longer be a colony creature. But the alien entity convinces him not to do so—yes, he erred, but if he, in essence, kills himself, he can’t learn from his mistakes. Bem is humbled and agrees.
They beam back, and Kirk declares the planet to be quarantined.
Can’t we just reverse the polarity? Bem is a colony creature made up of three distinctive portions—a set of legs with arms that unfold from the hips, a torso, and a head. The torso and head can apparently float.
Fascinating. When Kirk muses on why they always wind up being captured and put in cages by aliens, Spock’s very un-Vulcan answer is, “Fate.”
Hailing frequencies open. Good week for Nichelle Nichols, as Uhura gets to be in charge of the ship for a while (though they never actually have her sitting in the command chair for some reason) and she also does the voice of the alien entity.
Ahead warp one, aye. Sulu does get to go on the landing party. However, he doesn’t get any lines.
I cannot change the laws of physics! Scotty somehow misses that Bem’s landing coordinates will drop Kirk and Spock in the drink.
Forewarned is three-armed. Arex is the one who discovers and tracks the sensor anomaly (which is truly the alien entity that guards the locals).
Go put on a red shirt. The security detail manage to rescue Kirk and Spock from their cages and rescue Bem from his recapture by the natives.
Channel open.
“How come we always end up like this?”
“I assume that’s a rhetorical question, Captain.”
–Kirk musing over Trek clichés and Spock giving it the response it deserves.
Welcome aboard. Only four people provide voices for the entire episode, as even DeForest Kelley gets the week off. James Doohan voices Scotty and Arex like usual, along with Bem, while Nichelle Nichols voices both Uhura and the alien entity. While Sulu and M’Ress both appear, they have no dialogue.
Trivial matters: David Gerrold originally pitched this story during the third season of the live-action series, but it was rejected. D.C. Fontana bought it for the first season of the animated series, but it was the seventeenth script bought for a sixteen-episode run, and it was left unproduced. When six more episodes were ordered, “Bem” was one of the ones immediately produced, since it was already paid for.
This episode establishes that Kirk’s middle name is “Tiberius.” It would continue to be used in tie-in fiction moving forward (most notably in Gerrold’s own The Galactic Whirlpool, as well as Gene Roddenberry’s novelization of Star Trek: The Motion Picture), though it wouldn’t be spoken on screen again until Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.
The episode title and guest character’s last name is a play on the old science fiction abbreviation BEM, for bug-eyed monster, a common description of nasty aliens.
To boldly go. “This isn’t my communicator!” Another case where the animated format helps out, as neither Bem nor the natives would look anywhere near as cool in the live-action of the era. I like the fact that the locals are saurian, and nobody comments on it one way or the other, I like Bem’s odd form of speaking that indicates that he’s not speaking his native tongue, and I like the weirdness of his being able to detach body parts that work on their own.
The actual practicalities of Bem’s ability to separate don’t entirely make sense—how do his head and torso just float like that?—but it provides a fun visual, particularly when the legs pick Kirk and Spock’s pockets.
In particular, I like the fact that Bem is, basically, a jerk. Better still, he’s a jerk who gets his comeuppance at the end. And while the shift from overbearing jerk to apologetic depressive at the end is a bit too fast, one can chalk that up to the limited time slot and the kids-show format.
William Shatner is obviously much more comfortable with voiceover work at this stage, as he does a much better job of portraying Kirk’s emotions—notably, his frustrations with Bem’s nonsense—in this second season than he ever managed in the first.
I must confess to having cheered when Uhura lectures Scott on following proper procedure. As I’ve pointed out any number of times, Kirk’s reputation as a maverick who thumbs his nose at the rulebook is entirely an artifact of the movies—usually if someone’s going to break the rules or disobey orders, it’s Scotty (e.g., “A Taste of Armageddon,” “Friday’s Child“), and it’s nice to see Uhura bitchslap him for it. And just in general, it’s good to once again see Uhura in charge, and this time it’s a legitimate thing rather than her just being in charge ’cause it’s the girl episode.
Speaking of Uhura, Nichelle Nichols is also the main saving grace of the alien entity that guards the natives—an addition suggested by Gene Roddenberry, whose fetish for godlike aliens who treat primitive species as their children would continue into the first season of TNG—as she lends that alien a gravitas that I guarantee James Doohan’s gruff line readings would not have provided (cf. his woo-woo voice for the Guardian of Forever in “Yesteryear“). Having said that, I do like the alien calling the Federation on its arrogance to consider classifying planets that aren’t theirs, too. The line between archaeological curiosity and arrogance is a thin one, and it’s one the Federation dances on a lot. Nice to see that acknowledged.
Warp factor rating: 8
Next week: “The Practical Joker”
Keith R.A. DeCandido is running a Kickstarter for Mermaid Precinct, the long-awaited fifth novel in his fantasy/police procedure series, in which Torin and Danthres will be charged with finding out who murdered the legendary Pirate Queen. Please support it, as there are many nifty rewards, and there will be tons of nifty stretch goals!
I haven’t had time to read the review yet, but what happens if I post first anyway?
I hadn’t seen this episode, so when you described the legs pickpocketing Kirk and Spock, I imagined its toes doing the stealing.
Edited: It seems that my original comment #3 has re-emerged. Since I posted it again as #5, I’ve deleted it. For anyone reading this thread, the comment #3 referred to in comments #4 and #5 wasn’t posted by me, but by Christopher Bennett and has since become comment #6.
@3 Christopher Bennett, that’s actually one of the first things I noticed about the entity although I’m not crazy about this episode (yay! Only four more to go!) and am just enjoying watching the series for the first time as a bucket list option. And of course now if a convention insists, I can do trivia on it!
KRAD? Why in all the other times in the series AND in some cases, in far more perilous situations/”opportunities”, did Kirk NOT reveal his middle name sooner? Since I don’t consider TAS canon we don’t get to hear with the T stands for for 25years. That seems a cheat to the fans.
I also think the quarantining of the planet is overkill. Sure there’s an alien intelligence butt are we to assume that a properly educated and prepared benign landing party could not be trusted to explore and study? I mean it’s not as if the Companion II was threatening to kill Kirk and his crew….?
And remind me the point of showing Sulu or any character who does not get any lines in the episode. For THAT matter, wouldn’t McCoy have been far more useful here than in many other episodes?
I find it a bit irresponsible of Kirk and crew to allow a “member of a recently contacted alien species” to accompany them on a delicate mission like this. But it was fun to watch.
My interpretation of Bem’s odd way of talking, at least his odd way of referring to himself, is that “this one” isn’t the person who’s talking in a strict way of speaking, because he’s made up of several parts. Maybe he would call the head “I”.
Uhura in command was great, although it’s a pity that she didn’t sit in the chair.
Isn’t Spock the one who always disobeys orders?
The encounter with the alien entity shows that our guys don’t oppose godlike beings guarding native populations on principle, they only do so when said beings (or computers) mind-control their subjects, keep them in a condition of stasis, and pose a threat to the landing party or the ship.
@3/Christopher: “I tend to think that if a colony intelligence did evolve, it wouldn’t look so humanoid.” No, probably not, but it’s funnier this way. And humanoid aliens aren’t particularly likely in any case.
Do we know that the entity can communicate without a universal translator? I assume that our guys always carry universal translators, and perhaps they were upgraded after “Metamorphosis” to allow communication with cloud creatures without prior adjustment.
@4/Lou FW Israel: Although Kirk claims that quarantining the planet is necessary “for us as well”, I still got the impression that he does it mostly out of courtesy. The entity wants them to keep out, so they keep out.
Sorry, I tried editing my comment from last night and somehow erased it. Tor.com’s commenting system is acting up again and it apparently eats my posts if I don’t have my cache cleared. I’ll try reposting the message that was originally #3:
Not bad, a nicely Trekkish story with some witty Gerrold dialogue, although maybe Spock’s gets a bit too cute.The performances and animation are definitely improved this season. That might just be because they weren’t as rushed in the production, with fewer episodes to make — but maybe Bill Reed was just a better director than Hal Sutherland.
I’ve always been more fond of the version of this episode in Alan Dean Foster’s Star Trek Log Nine. His version of Bem is a more plausible portrayal of a colony creature. His head and torso don’t just hover in midair; the torso walks on its arms (which can’t separate from the shoulders) and the head crawls on cilia that come out of its neck. I tend to think that if a colony intelligence did evolve, it wouldn’t look so humanoid. I wish Filmation had gone for one of its more exotic designs here, like the Vendorians and Phylosians.
Foster also added a sequel adventure to pad out the novel, in which the Enterprise returned Bem home to Pandro. Foster fleshed out a whole biosphere of colony creatures of various types, really going wild with the premise. The story featured a Klingon plot involving grafting unnatural numbers of component creatures together into gigantic, predatory colony creatures. Bizarrely, the Klingon in charge of the project was Captain Kor of the Imperial Science Division, though it was an entirely different Kor from the one Foster had written about in his adaptation of “The Time Trap” five volumes earlier.
I can’t believe the resemblance never struck me before, but I wonder if the “god” entity here was from the same incorporeal species as the Companion in “Metamorphosis.” It had a similar appearance of flickering, multicolored lights, and a similar level of powers. Although it could communicate without a Universal Translator, and the Companion couldn’t do that disintegration trick, so maybe they’re just similar species. Or maybe this individual is just more gifted in the use of its abilities.
I’m still endlessly amused by the fact that Kirk and Spock can’t get themselves out of those large, untethered jungle gyms.
@7/Quill: Maybe the cages are made of a heavy kind of wood. By my count, each one is made of 36 logs that are maybe 5-6 feet long each, and maybe 3 inches thick. Say they average 68 in long and 3 in wide, for a volume of about 480 cubic inches, or about 0.28 cubic feet. So the whole cage has a volume of 10 cubic feet of wood. If it’s made of a dense wood like oak or hickory, each cage could weigh 450-500 pounds. (I generally don’t work in Imperial units, but the online wood-density charts I can find use pounds per cubic feet.)
And of course, that’s under Earth gravity. Delta Theta III might have higher gravity.
This is my favorite episode of The Animated Series. Even more so than Yesteryear. I’d argue this was almost Gerrold’s best Trek work, a very close second to the original Tribbles TOS entry. While that episode excelled in comedy and character interplay, this one was a straightforward drama.
There’s something about Bem as a character that really gets to me. I think it’s the way his arrogance somehow gets diluted in his vocal performance. Definitely one of the more alien characters in all of Trek. I don’t know what Doohan’s intentions were for the role, but the tone of depression that comes in his tone of voice makes me see Bem as a pitiful sad and tragic figure. One who needed to be rescued from his own failings. Thankfully we get one of the more understanding superbeings, representing some of Trek’s better ideals. For once we get an optimistic ending where communication is the key.
And to top it off, we actually get some decent use of the bridge crew.
P.S. – What in the world is happening to Tor.com’s comments system? I had to access from a different platform in order to post this.
There’s an awesome colony creature in Anvil of Stars. Just sayin’
Only ten comments! Where is everybody? Fighting the quirks of the comments system?
This one thinks this episode was really cool.
This one thinks Bem alien concept was wonderful, and thanks Krad writer for opportunity to enjoy episode.
I’m with Christopher on this one. The episode is OK but the ADF adaptation and follow on story are so much better, fixing the various oddities of the episode and giving us a look at what a planet of colony creatures would be like in the Trek-verse.
Bem was an opportunity to really go to town, design wise, since the various parts weren’t evolved as a single unit but are simply different parts that have come together in this particular configuration at this point in time. Making him humanoid was a mistake IMO.
It’s nice to see the Starfleeters get called out for their dicking around with the natives. Unfortunately, not ever planet with less advanced species have a benevolent overseer. Makes you wonder if perhaps Starfleet finally got the message and decided to do more covert observation instead of just beaming people down and hoping that they wouldn’t be spotted by the natives. Because you KNOW that they would be. When you’re trespassing on someone else’s planet, you’d better be darn sure that they don’t know that you’re there. If you are found out, then you should be willing to face whatever punishment they decide you are worthy of. Sorry, but you don’t get to decide the rules.
Some fun bits but a number of head scratchers as well lands this one in the middle of the pack with a bonus point for being a Gerrold story.
6/10
@13/kkozoriz: “Makes you wonder if perhaps Starfleet finally got the message and decided to do more covert observation instead of just beaming people down and hoping that they wouldn’t be spotted by the natives.”
Yes, they did, as we saw in TNG: “Who Watches the Watchers?” and Insurrection.
Although, to be fair, the landing party’s intention here was to keep their distance from the native settlement, plant the observation devices unseen, and then leave and observe the natives remotely. It was Bem who barged ahead and provoked his own capture by the natives, and Kirk and Spock just got caught because they went after him in order to stop exactly that from happening.
14. ChristopherLBennett – But they still do the “let’s disguise ourselves as natives” thing as we saw with the Mintakans and others. At least they altered their appearances there. Showing up in uniform and obviously not bring from around here really worked against them, even with the problems being caused by Bem.
Seriously, whose bright idea was it to invite someone with no experience in first contact procedures to “observe’ their procedures?
“Travelling with us as an independent observer is a member of a recently contacted alien species, Honorary Commander Ari bn Bem.”
Recently contacted (i.e. – essentially unknown.). And while he may be an honorary Commander, Kiek still outranks him. I would imagine that someone back at Starfleet HQ found them selves transferred to waste disposal.
@15/kkozoriz: I imagine that the “independent observer” licence wasn’t supposed to include participation in this kind of mission, that Starfleet had invited alien observers onto their starships before, and that all prior observers were better behaved. Perhaps the corresponding regulation was rewritten after the events of this episode.
Kirk did try to discourage Bem from accompanying the landing party, pointing out that a trip to a potentially hazardous planet was a bad time for him to finally begin observing. So this was clearly never the plan.
Alan Dean Foster’s version clarifies that the Pandronians had valuable medical and biological knowledge, and that the Federation was competing with the Klingons and Romulans to win Pandro as an ally, so it was politically and diplomatically urgent to make them happy, and Kirk was under orders to do whatever Bem requested. So he could try to talk him out of joining the landing party, but ultimately couldn’t refuse.
Although Foster’s version is quite different from the animated version in a lot of ways. He’s routinely addressed as “bn Bem” instead of just “Bem.” Physically, in addition to his body parts crawling on arms/cilia rather than floating, he’s described as a “creature” who’s “bulky, blue, and hirsute,” with no resemblance to “anything manlike” beyond being “more or less of human size.” Also, he has “a voice like a contrabassoon full of marbles,” quite different from the soft, fluting tenor Doohan gave him. There’s no description I can find of his eyes, so I’m not sure if Foster imagined him as the literal Bug-Eyed Monster suggested by his surname.
I actually rather enjoyed this one. The colony creature aspect of Bem, Uhura getting to be in charge again (let her sit in the chair!), and the proto-Gorn look of the planet’s indigenous inhabitants (at least that’s what they reminded me of).
I liked Kirk talking to the alien Entity (although “Kirk to Entity” made me chuckle every time he said it). And rather than out-smarting the computer, or trickery, he actually negotiated an agreement that was, by and large, to the mutual benefit of all involved, even Bem.
And Lou FW Israel @@@@@ 4 said:
I think there’s a hint of Heisenberg in the response to this question. No matter how careful, courteous, professional, educated, or prepared your observers are, they will, by the mere act of observing, influence the natural course of the occupants of the planet. If it was the wish of the Entity that that not be the case, I totally understand Kirk acceding to that request. Besides, stuff always goes wrong. Just look at “Insurrection” and “Who Watches the Watchers.”
(And yes, I know the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle relates to the study of subatomic particles, but generally, it would be somewhat difficult to avoid the same concept applying to observational study on a larger scale).
@18/JamesP: I think there’s an interview with Shatner on the old Inside Star Trek record album from the ’70s where he uses much the same principle to justify the Prime Directive — that since observing a thing changes what’s being observed, it’s anthropologically preferable to observe from secret and not interact. However, he was pretty much entirely wrong. In real anthropology, immersion in a culture is an essential part of studying it. You can’t really understand it by watching it from outside, filtered through your own cultural assumptions and making guesses about theirs; you have to live as they do, become part of their world, interact like a native and learn to see the world and each other in the same way they do. You don’t have to worry about changing them; they’re the ones who are at home, comfortable amid their own culture and worldview, and you’re an isolated visitor. So they’re the ones who will change you, and it’s by letting yourself be changed that you come to understand how they really think, rather than just making guesses based on your own preconceptions and flawed analogies.
This is true not just of human cultures, but other species as well; a number of primate researchers like Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey learned about great apes by living among them and getting adopted into their communities, learning about their social dynamics from inside. There are limits to what you can learn or understand by keeping a detached distance. The Prime Directive is actually very bad anthropology. Of course, it’s not meant to be an anthropological tool at all, but a check on our own arrogance, to keep Starfleet captains from playing god or trying to conquer or change other cultures “for their own good.”
CLB @19 – Thanks for the followup. I’m not especially science-minded, so it’s good to get the perspective of people who have a far greater understanding of such matters than myself.
Of course, even as I was writing it, parts of me didn’t feel like I was making sense, so now I know why.
Late to the party, but I also have very fond memories of Alan Dean Foster’s novelization of the episode. Which, in fact, I read long before I actually saw the episode in its original form, so I was kind of confused when the story ended where it did.
@21/hoopmanjh: Although I saw TAS in first run as a kid, there was a long stretch thereafter when I was only able to revisit the stories through the Foster volumes, so they became my default perception of the series. When I finally saw “BEM” again on home video, I was surprised by things like Bem’s body parts floating and the arms being able to separate.
Wow, been a long time since I have seen this. What really struck me here of all places was the level of obsequiousness displayed for Bem. I don’t think he got an Honorary Commander rank. He strikes me as having Honorary Ambassador status. It seems that while becoming an admiral is that path to true evil, being an ambassador in the Federation makes you the equivalent of an Imperial Inquisitor from Warhammer. I many ways I respect the level of authority that the Fed give the peacemakers. But the show seems to go out of it’s way to demonstrate them as incompetent or out of touch.
Seriously, were there ever any good/non-dickish Admirals?
Cleggster: One or two. We only saw a couple admirals in TOS, and they were mostly harmless. There was Admiral Haden in two episodes of TNG, Admiral Paris in Voyager. If it wasn’t for the revelations of “Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges,” I’d put Ross in there, too….
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Isn’t any admiral’s main function in TOS to prevent Kirk and Spock from saving each other?
I’d be willing to bet the reason Uhura didn’t sit in the chair was because they could reuse more animation if she stayed where she usually does.
@23 I can think of a few non-dickish Admirals.
There were a fair few who basically showed up on a view screen to give someone a mission and then disappeared.
But there was Admiral Hanson from “Best of Both Worlds” and Admiral Quin from “Coming of Age” and Conspiracy, both of whom were good friends of Picard. Admiral Brand, the Commandant of the Academy in “the First Duty”. There was also Fleet Admiral Shanthi, who didn’t do much in “Redemption” except authorise Picard’s plan but was later mention in “Pegasus” as sorting out Admiral Pressman.
Also, if Admiral Ross is considered potentially dickish after “Inter arma enim silent legis” then I’m not sure where that leaves Sisko after “In the Pale Moonlight.”
@26/Jamoche: But that doesn’t explain the shots of Uhura standing beside the command chair rather than sitting in her own seat. Although maybe it does — they didn’t have any stock cels of her sitting at the angle that goes with command-chair shots, but they did have stock of her standing and facing screen right.
@27/Richard: I think the better analogy is between Ross and Garak, since Garak was the one who manipulated Sisko into letting him get away with more and more extreme actions. None of it was what Sisko wanted; he was just desperate enough to let Garak take advantage of him. Garak was the one who truly believed that such immoral actions were necessary for the greater good, and that’s what Ross believed too.
@28 ChristopherLBennett given that Sisko’s intention since almost the beginning was to con the Romulans into joining the war with manufactured evidence, likely leading to the deaths of thousands if not millions of Romulans, I’m not sure how sympathetic I am. He only baulked at engaging in a political assassination. And at the end he explicitly states that he “can live with it.” I don’t think this one can be pinned entirely on Garak who acted, almost, with Sisko’s explicit consent throughout.
The thing with Sisko is that while he said he could live with it, he didn’t say it in a way that suggested he could live with living with it, to be a bit recursive on the matter. That living with it meant actually having it weigh on his conscience and not being something that was like water off a duck’s back. Too often in media people say “I can live with it” and then don’t live with it. It is a glib remark for something that never troubles them nor that they ever give thought to consequences of. Sisko, in the episode, and in a few other scenes later in the series (because this was pre-full serialisation so that was about the most they would do), always gave the impression he was a haunted man who was living with the weight of having committed a crime even if he thought the crime itself was worth it. It was a stark contrast to the way “I can live with it” is so often glibly used, in fiction as well as out.
@30/random22: Exactly. It’s clear that Sisko is trying and failing to convince himself that he can live with it. That’s why he repeated the line to himself.
@4/LFWI said: “And of course now if a convention insists, I can do trivia on it!”
Does this happen often in Canada? Conventions begging people who have seen a show once to recount what they recall? ;)
It must be a typo, since I doubt that the wit of David Gerrold would have Spock call Kirk, “Catpain.”
BeeGee: ARGH! Can’t believe I missed that. For two years!!!!
Sigh.
It’s now fixed. Thank you.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido, going into the corner to eat worms
@ChristopherLBennett — your experience of the Log series resonates with me. Especially before I had a VCR of my own and marathons to record, my most frequent consumption of Star Trek episodes was through the Log series and Blish episode adaptations. That extended to the movie novelizations (and those of Star Wars, for that matter).
I lost track of how many times I watched one of the episodes or movies and wound up scratching my head from something that seemed different or missing.