“That Which Survives”
Written by Michael Richards and John Meredyth Lucas
Directed by Herb Wallerstein
Season 3, Episode 14
Production episode 60043-69
Original air date: January 24, 1969
Stardate: unknown
Captain’s log. The Enterprise comes across a planet the size of the moon and which is only a few thousand years old, but somehow has an atmosphere and vegetation. Kirk takes down a landing party that includes McCoy, Sulu, and D’Amato, a geologist. As they’re about to beam down, a woman named Losira appears in the transporter room warning them not to beam down. Then she just touches Ensign Wyatt at the console, who collapses, dead.
A major earthquake hits the planet, a seismic disturbance unlike any D’Amato has seen before. The Enterprise is also majorly shaken up. After the quaking dies down, the Enterprise is more than 900 light-years away, according to Lieutenant Radha at the helm. Meanwhile, the landing party is stranded. Kirk orders the others to forage for food and shelter.
On the Enterprise, Wyatt is discovered dead, and M’Benga reports that he died of a major cellular disruption. Spock orders Radha to set a course back to the planet, and Scotty promises warp eight or better to get them there as fast as possible.
On the planet, D’Amato encounters Losira, who says that she is “for you.” He recognizes her from the transporter, and then she kills him. Even as she does so, McCoy picks up a powerful life form—which then disappears. D’Amato’s energy reading also appeared and disappeared like that, as did a magnetic disruption Sulu detected.
McCoy examines him, and he died the same way as Wyatt. Kirk tries to dig a grave, but it turns out that the entire planet is covered in igneous rock that even phasers can’t cut through. They bury D’Amato in a tomb of rocks.
The Enterprise powers forward at warp 8.4, though Scotty thinks the ship feels wrong. Spock admonishes him for his emotionalism (not for the first time). Scotty sends Engineer Watkins to check on the matter/antimatter valve, which he thinks might be overheating. Losira shows up, says she is for Watkins, and kills him, too, though the engineer is able to warn Scotty about her before he dies. M’Benga reports that Watkins died the same way Wyatt did, though he has no idea of the cause.
Sulu reports that the planet is actually made of an alloy, one that is impossible to have evolved naturally. It’s getting dark, so they get some rest. Sulu takes the first watch, and encounters Losira. He pulls a phaser on her, but it proves ineffective. Sulu calls a warning, and Kirk and McCoy come running. She says she is only for Sulu, and manages to touch his shoulder, which disrupts the cells in his shoulder. She touches Kirk and nothing happens, and all she can say is that she has to touch Sulu himself. After a moment, she seems to fold herself into space and disappear.
Apparently Losira managed to sabotage the engines, as they’re now running hot and speed is increasing, with nothing that Radha or Scotty can do about it. Spock suggests going into the service crawlway to bypass the sabotage, but the crawlway isn’t meant to be used when the engines are running. Spock is willing to risk it, since they’ll die if they do nothing, but then Scotty volunteers, since he knows the systems better than anyone. Scotty crawls in and gets to work even as the ship accelerates past warp thirteen.
On the planet, the landing party encounter Losira again, and this time she’s for Kirk. McCoy and Sulu interpolate themselves between her and Kirk. She identifies herself as the commander of the station, and says she’s sent to touch Kirk, but she doesn’t want to kill anyone. Kirk manages to squeeze information out of her, notably that there are none left. It’s possible that she’s all alone.
An entrance opens in one of the rocks. It may be a trap, but at this point, the only possible source of food and water is through there, so in they go.
The computer finishes an analysis Spock put it through establishing that the Enterprise went through molecular dematerialization that put the whole ship slightly out of phase. That was why Scotty thought the ship felt wrong. Spock orders Scotty to reverse the polarity on his tool and that does the trick. The ship is saved.
The landing party enters a console room and encounter Losira, who once again says she is for Kirk. Then two more show up, one saying she’s for McCoy, the other saying she’s for Sulu. Spock and a security guard show up, then, and Kirk orders the latter to fire on the computer.
The Losiras disappear, but then a recorded message of Losira plays: she is the last of the Kalandans on this outpost, the rest having died of a disease that they created when they built the planet. She says she set the automatic defenses to stop any non-Kalandans from claiming the planet, which certainly seems to have worked.
McCoy and Kirk make some sexist comments and they all beam back, never once even mentioning to Spock that D’Amato is dead, nor does Spock ask.
Can’t we just reverse the polarity? Scotty solves the problem by actually reversing the polarity! It’s awesome! We also get to see him climb into the access crawlways and fix stuff.
Fascinating. Spock spends the entire episode admonishing the crew for being emotional, having apparently forgotten with whom he’s serving. My favorite is that he takes the time to pedantically correct Scotty and lecture him when they’ve got less than fifteen minutes before the ship blows up and time is of the essence. He also bitches out Uhura, Radha, and M’Benga for not acting exactly like Spock himself.
I’m a doctor not an escalator. McCoy doesn’t actually have a lot to do in this one, aside from explain how D’Amato died (which we already knew from M’Benga) and treat Sulu’s shoulder.
Ahead warp one, aye. Sulu gets to be on the landing party, and while some of his suggestions are shot down out of hand by Kirk, he does figure out that the planet was constructed.
Meanwhile, his sub, Rahda, is the one who figures out that the Enterprise shifted position by the changed star patterns.
Hailing frequencies open. At one point, Uhura asks what the odds are that the landing party survived, prompting Spock to snidely say that they aren’t gambling. Uhura also is the one who keeps an eye on the magnetic containment when Scotty is futzing with it.
I cannot change the laws of physics! Scotty figures out that something’s wrong with the Enterprise before anyone else does, and gets slapped down by Spock for it. Then he volunteers for the suicide mission, and accomplishes it, because he’s just that awesome.
It’s a Russian invention. While Chekov isn’t in the episode, he’s name-checked, as Sulu mentions the Tunguska event when a meteor struck Siberia, prompting Kirk to say that if he wanted a lesson in Russian history, he’d have brought Chekov on the landing party.
Go put on a red shirt. Hefty body count in this one, as we lose Wyatt, Watkins, and D’Amato. None of them are security, as it happens, and we see a security guard at the end who actually lives through the episode.
No sex, please, we’re Starfleet. The landing party all feel the need to comment, several times, about how beautiful Losira is, as if that’s in any way relevant.
Channel open. “But as to the cause of death, well, your guess is as good as mine.”
“My guess, Doctor, would be valueless.”
One of the many times Spock’s literalism leads to his bitching out one of his subordinates, in this case M’Benga.
Welcome aboard. Booker Bradshaw reprises his role as M’Benga, having last appeared in “A Private Little War.” Naomi Pollack (Rahda), Arthur Batanides (D’Amato), and Kenneth Washington (Watkins) all do just enough to give their characters their own distinct personalities (and in the latter two cases, making their deaths more meaningful). Brad Forrest plays Wyatt, and George Takei, James Doohan, and Nichelle Nichols in their usual roles.
But the big guest is Lee Meriwether as Losira and the various replicas of her. The former Miss America is possibly best known for playing Catwoman in the 1966 Batman movie.
Trivial matters: Susan Wright’s novel One Small Step picks up right after this episode ends, with the Enterprise investigating the Kalandans further. The first book of the Gateways saga, Wright’s novel ties the Kalandans to the Iconians (from TNG‘s “Contagion” and DS9‘s “To the Death“), with the Enterprise being sent 1000 light-years away by a device that’s an early version of the gateways seen in the 24th-century episodes.
Sulu makes reference to the Horta from “The Devil in the Dark” when discussing the possibility that the rock that makes up the planet might be sentient.
The Enterprise apparently has at least three doctors, since we not only have McCoy and M’Benga, but also Dr. Sanchez, who is not seen, but who performed the autopsies on Wyatt and Watkins.
“Michael Richards” is a pseudonym for former story editor D.C. Fontana. She would use this nom du plume again on “The Way to Eden.” The script is the last by former show-runner John Meredyth Lucas.
To boldly go. “I am only for D’Amato.” This episode is a delightful throwback, as we actually get an episode that remembers that there’s an entire crew on the ship. Yes, three of the four crew members we meet die, but you can’t have everything. Still, it’s really wonderful to see Rahda, Wyatt, Watkins, and D’Amato, and see a landing party that isn’t just the three guys in the opening credits.
I also like the mystery elements. On the planet, we have Kirk and the gang trying to figure out what the planet is, while on the Enterprise, we have Spock and the gang trying to figure out what happened to them and then how to not let the ship blow up.
Lee Meriwether also does an excellent job as the various iterations of Losira, who has a fascinating (sorry) mix of the preprogrammed defense with the humanity of the template, as the more she’s questioned, the less she seems to want to do what she does. Doesn’t stop her, of course, and the three bodies she drops makes it clear that she’s a force to be reckoned with.
And in the end, it’s not an attack, it’s a defense: the replicas of Losira are there to protect the planet, and while it’s a particularly brutal form of defense, it’s also a very old outpost, and we don’t know anything about the Kalandans.
This is far from being a great episode, but it’s also one that has no particular flaws, either, except maybe for Spock’s endless pendantry, which really is on overdrive here to the point of self-parody. Just a solid science fiction story. And in a season that is full of a lot of dross, it’s a welcome relief.
Warp factor rating: 6
Next week: “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield”
Keith R.A. DeCandido will be at “Star Trek Mission New York” at the Javits Center for a panel on the impact of Trek this Sunday afternoon. He’s also curating a special New York Review of Science Fiction reading on Trek‘s 50th anniversary on 8 September at the Brooklyn Commons alongside best-selling authors Steven Barnes and David Mack and Tor.com’s own Emmet Asher-Perrin.
I love the existence of Radha. It’s a tiny role, but her presence speaks volumes about the commitment to diversity on this show. I’m not saying there aren’t problems, of course, but for the late ’60s her presence on the bridge is pretty damn remarkable.
Shouldn’t this have been under “No sex please, we’re Starfleet,” Keith? ;)
After watching this episode with my wife last week, I spent the rest of the evening saying “I am for you!” to her. I do not actually recommend this for marital harmony.
I have a theory that whenever you see a Vulcan getting really nitpicky and pedantic, that means they are having their own kind of panic or freak out. The more uptight Spock is the more worried and concerned he is.
Actually I recognize Lee Meriwether from Time Tunnel more than Batman. She played Dr. Ann McGregor. I don’t have a lot to say about this episode except Scotty remains awesome and that is some outfit Losira has on. You are Keith right the extra crewman add a nice touch even if most of them die.
I’ve always had a certain amount of fondness for this episode. I suppose it might have something to do with this being the very first complete episode of Star Trek I ever watched back when I was a 6 year old on its’ original run. I always thought it was cool having Lee Meriwether folding up into a line. The last time I watched this was within the last two years and I still liked it – goofy science and all.
@2: That feels like a logical consequence of Spock spending this episode ignoring or controlling his concern for the landing party and any reaction to the fact that the ship might blow up. Of course, it doesn’t help, but I’ve known people who get increasingly literal-minded or nitpicky under stress in the real world.
I didn’t remember much about this episode other than the pants with their belly-button shield.
A pretty middle-of-the-road episode for me, I guess. Not much to take note of story-wise, since it’s more just about surviving the dangers than anything more substantive. Losira’s reluctance to kill is sort of interesting, but since she’s just a preprogrammed entity — in retrospect, probably a hologram like those used in the 24th century — there’s really not that much depth to it. As for the setting, the one interesting thing about the Kalandan asteroid as a set was the way they actually managed to make the ground move during the quake. Otherwise, it was a very barren and dull landscape, and one wonders what the Kalandans were bothering to protect.
From a technical standpoint, the episode is problematical in the numbers it gives. It says they can cover 990.7 light years in under 12 hours at warp 8.4, which means that at the equivalent speed, Voyager should’ve been able to cover 70,000 ly in a bit over five weeks. So it doesn’t quite mesh with later continuity, and is pretty ridiculously fast even by TOS standards. But then, I decided long ago that the best way to treat numbers in Trek is to see them as arbitrary placeholders and not worry too much about their exact values, since the writers rarely do, or at least don’t agree with other writers’ assumptions.
I had a hard time deciding what to do with the name of Naomi Pollack’s character when I referenced her in my upcoming TOS novel The Face of the Unknown. Assuming she’s supposed to be Indian, her name should be spelled Radha, but apparently it’s spelled in the script as Rahda, and that’s what Memory Alpha uses and what’s been used in some earlier novels. I considered correcting it to Radha, but I found that apparently there is such a name as Rahda — it seems to be a Germanic surname, albeit a rare one. Since the actress wasn’t Indian herself, I figured maybe Rahda is at least half-European and could have that surname (though her first name used in the books is Manjula).
Speaking of names, Keith, you have Fontana’s pseudonym as Michael Richardson in the episode credits, rather than Richards.
Losira’s costume is interesting in that it shows a lot of skin but isn’t really sexy for me at all. In fact, it was a long time before I even realized that was exposed skin rather than a light-colored part of the outfit, given the unusual way it’s cut. Looking at it analytically now, I guess that from the front it’s basically a harem-girl outfit with a couple of added square bits (including one that strategically covers the navel to appease the ’60s censors), although from the back it becomes evident that the pants go all the way up to form the collar, while the top part is actually open in the back and presumably held on only with double-sided tape. Which should fit right into the “Theiss Titillation Theory” about how the sexiness of an outfit is proportional to how much it looks like it could fall off at any second, but I guess it makes the top a bit too loose and baggy, which undermines the effect. It’s a creative design, but assuming that the intent of baring skin was to make the wearer sexier, this is a case where it didn’t really have the intended result.
@5/Quill: “I’ve known people who get increasingly literal-minded or nitpicky under stress in the real world.”
Heck, I am one of those people.
– Was there an actress of this era more game than Lee Meriwether?
– I swear the episodes with Scotty crawling into a Jeffries Tube to fix stuff helped drive me into engineering as a career. What’s more badass than that?
– Can I be the only one who saw the Booker Bradshaw still above and immediately thought of this:
I don’t find the episode all that interesting, but it’s nice to see so many crewmembers. I like Rahda, but my favourite is D’Amato, because he’s middle-aged and ordinary-looking and because he’s actually an expert on the stuff they are investigating. Not a security guard, not a yeoman, not one of the main cast. When was the last time there was an expert in a landing party? The Deadly Years? Who Mourns For Adonais? He also seems to be a nice guy.
@6/Christopher: Rahda appears in your new novel? Cool.
This episode gets two points for the reappearance of M’Benga, and two more points for Radha/Rahda (that would have been at least three points, had she been played by someone of Indian extraction). CLB, I’m pleased to hear she is referenced in your upcoming novel. In what other novels has she appeared? And random22 @2, I like your theory, that Vulcans get compulsively nitpicky when they’re freaking out, and I’m going with it.
@9/Saavik: The one other Rahda appearance I know of offhand was A Choice of Catastrophes by Michael Schuster & Steve Mollmann, which is where she got the first name Manjula.
Funny. There was a time when Lee Meriwether would been best known for her role on BARNABY JONES, but I guess BATMAN and STAR TREK have had more staying power than BARNABY JONES . …
I confess: my favorite part of this episode was always the cool SFX effect “Losira” uses to appear and disappear–by collapsing into a two-dimensional line kinda of like an old TV set turning out. Much more creative and eye-catching than just having her appear in a blink of light or whatever.
” The landing party all feel the need to comment, several times, about how beautiful Losira is, as if that’s in any way relevant.” – They only do that twice: Sulu after he survived her attack and McCoy in the end. And it’s quite in character for McCoy to say something like that.
“McCoy and Kirk make some sexist comments and they all beam back, never once even mentioning to Spock that D’Amato is dead, nor does Spock ask.” – Kirk says: “She must have been a remarkable woman.” How is that sexist? Also, I don’t think that Spock has to ask about D’Amato. When he only sees three men, threatened by three Losiras, he can probably figure out what happened.
What bothers me more is that the landing party seems strangely unaffected by the fact that the Enterprise has presumably been destroyed. I’m missing a scene where Kirk and McCoy talk in private about their worries and doubts concerning the fate of the Enterprise, and how they can’t let those thoughts get in the way of ensuring their survival on the planet.
Concerning Rahda’s name, I can easily imagine a shift from Radha to Rahda. When I look at my family tree, the spelling of names used to change quite often in previous centuries. Of course, with computerised population databases, that shouldn’t happen anymore, but that’s only true if everybody uses the same script. If her people lived in a place that didn’t use Latin script, and then she had to give her name in Latin script when she joined Starfleet, such a spelling change could easily have happened. For example, I assume that Chekov has the same surname as poet Anton Chekhov, but it’s spelled differently. And the German transcription for that name is Tschechow, which looks completely different.
Oh, and I also like the theory that Spock gets pedantic when he’s freaking out.
@11/Greg Cox: The effect of Losira disappearing also looks a little like “a door closing”, which fits nicely with the dialogue.
Maybe I’m mistaken, I thought warp 10 was a limit. Warp 13?
Cecrow, you can go past warp 10, but then you have to turn into a salamander and have sex with Janeway. Not advised.
@12/Jana: Also Kirk’s closing line, “Beauty survives.”
As for the name, though, the thing is that the “H” in Indian names is not silent. It indicates the aspiration (breathiness) of the preceding consonant. So “Radha” kind of sounds like “Rad-ha,” not “Rada.” So it just wouldn’t work to move the H without significantly altering the sound of the name. (This is also why it’s wrong to misspell Gandhi as “Ghandi” as many Americans do.) It’d be like spelling my first name as “Christohper.” It would change how the adjacent consonant is pronounced, so it’s not a neutral change.
In fact, it’s the same with Chekov/Chekhov. Those are two distinct consonants in Cyrillic, ka (which looks and sounds like K) and kha (which looks like X and sounds like the German ch). It’s like the difference between “lock” and “loch.” So it’s more than just a spelling variation.
@13/cecrow: The warp 10 limit was invented for TNG, when Roddenberry wanted to keep warp speeds from getting out of hand, although it was later retconned that warp 10 was just a nickname for infinite velocity, which made it meaningless to call it a “limit.” In TOS, that nonsense hadn’t been invented yet, and it’s assumed they were using a different warp scale where the numbers represented smaller values. (The nominal explanation is that TOS warp velocities were the cube of the warp factor times the speed of light, while TNG warp velocities up to 9 went as the warp factor to the 10/3 power, and just increased asymptotically to infinity between 9 and 10. So, for instance, warp 6 would be 216c in TOS and 392c in TNG. But the actual onscreen warp velocities were always far faster than that, this episode being the most extreme example.) They got up to warp 11 in “The Changeling” and “By Any Other Name,” reached warp 14.1 in this episode, and in the animated episode “The Counter-Clock Incident” there was a ship traveling at warp 36 (though nothing about that episode makes any sense and even its novelizer retconned the whole thing as an illusion).
@15/Christopher: Ah, that one. Well, I find “Beauty survives” nonsensical (I’d say Spock states a truism), but not particularly sexist.
As for the name, I didn’t know that the “H” isn’t silent, but I suspected it. That’s why I included the Chekov/Chekhov example (being German, I know about that one), to show that a spelling change could still happen if it makes a difference in pronounciation. And maybe it doesn’t – maybe “dh” is pronounced differently two hundred years from now, due to language change. I know that the writers just messed it up, but I don’t think it’s unrealistic.
@16/Jana: Given that the actress was European, I prefer the idea that it’s just an uncommon Germanic surname that happens to sound like the Hindi name. Maybe, say, her grandfather was from India but moved to his wife’s native Germany, and the spelling of the family name Radha was localized. Or maybe it’s just a coincidence.
@17/Christopher: That’s true, your explanation takes her appearance into account.
There really isn’t much reason that Spock stays on the ship other than, “the script says so,” is there? Spock goes on away missions all the time, he’s fascinated by this planet, it’s a scientific enigma… and so he stays on the bridge. Hard to see a justification for this, other than the fact that D’Amato can be safely killed off and Spock can’t.
It’s funny how the interaction between Scotty and Spock in this mostly forgotten episode foreshadows the climax of Wrath of Khan. Next time, the dangerous emergency repairs actually will kill one of them.
I also love that Spock cancels the security alert under the theory that an entity that can throw them a thousand light years and sabotage their energy source won’t be waiting around to be thrown in the brig. A bit fatalistic, perhaps, but it is a concrete way of showing a difference between Kirk and Spock– hard to imagine James T. doing the same thing.
Christopher: Thanks for the correction on Fontana’s pseudonym. ‘Tis fixed.:)
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
This ranks as my least-favorite episode of TOS, even worse than “The Alternative Factor.” During my own rewatch a few years ago, with my daughter, it was the only episode that put me to sleep.
@15 CLB: For whatever it’s worth, ‘kipedia gives the Cyrillic spelling of both Pavel Chekov and Anton Chekhov as Чехов, and Memory Alpha the same. I… guess that probably comes from Russian localizations of ST?
@22/Majicou: I can only assume that’s a misspelling in reverse — that whoever transliterated it into Cyrillic treated it like Chekhov. Could it be that there is no such Russian name as Chekov with a ka, and the Russian translators knew that and fixed it?
In which case that would mean that every “ethnic” name in the TOS main cast is a fake name. Sulu isn’t an Asian surname, but a geographical name of a sea and district in the Philippines. (Roddenberry somehow thought that made it a “pan-Asian” name just because the sea abuts two or three different countries. It’s not; it’s specific to the Tausug people of Southeast Asia.) And “Uhura” is an invalid attempt to turn the Swahili name Uhuru into a feminine form by Romance-language rules (in reality it should be Uhuru regardless of gender). Okay, there actually are Scottish people named Scott, but that one’s kind of a gimme.
@23/Christopher: I always assumed that there is no Russian name Chekov with a [k] sound, and the “h” got dropped because it doesn’t get pronounced in English anyway. Christopher, I’m sorry, I misunderstood your comment #15, so my answer in comment #16 made no sense.
I just noticed that this episode is missing from the index.
Not much to say about this episode. I find it to be rather dull with the most pedestrian plot, and the ever annoying tendency to rely on redshirts for commercial breaks. If anything, I can see why Fontana chose to use one of her pen names for this one. The final result isn’t particularly interesting. At least, it’s not offensive nor too dumb.
And yet again, the ship blows past Warp 10. For all I know, the Enterprise should have ended up in the Delta Quadrant. When exactly was established that starships couldn’t go past Warp 10 due to the Transwarp threshold? Before or after TOS season 3? I’m pretty sure this plot point was at least established before that Voyager episode which we shall not name.
Nevertheless, Freiberger, for whatever reason, allowed the script to have that many crewmembers and spent enough money on hiring actors. After all, season 3 was all about cutting costs whenever possible.
And I’ve just read the TNG reference in the comments above regarding Warp limits. Thanks @15/Christopher.
Mister K-rad:
Episode reviews like this one (and the previous, “Wink of an Eye”, for me, call into question my Trek-fannishness, and also my ability to be remotely-objective. Mostly because (though I do read your reviews, focusing especially on the summaries) I just don’t understand why you rake some episodes over the coals for either not making sense or being outrageously (not by the standard of the 60s) sexist, but other episodes, like this one, where a whole planet exists because……..and a sexily-dressed woman exists to kill because………and people die for no good reason but……..well it gets wrapped up with a sexist message and……..6/10. Whereas “Wink of an Eye” was destroyed so badly last week that, though I wanted to protest, I just couldn’t find it in me to fight back.
Personally, I love both of these episodes. I also think both are outrageously stupid. But I don’t watch TOS for smartfulness (well, not Season Three), but I watch it for the same reason as I do for the better seasons: I wanna absorb the look and feel of a time. And, my GOD, are both of these episodes ridiculously, gleefully 60s.
I don’t think either of them are well-written (or re-written, as D.C.’s pseudonym might imply), but I feel both fall well within the realm of the “watchable”, with the period style (which I LOVE) adding so much to a story and screenplay that never really amount to much.
For me, all this campy Season Threes (not Spock’s Brain, not Plato’s Stepchildren, not Turnabout Intruder), the ones that don’t make a lot of sense but slide by a lot on 60s fashion and don’t-take-this-seriously plotting, I enjoy the hell out of them. Much like how I enjoy a lot of the “sillier/stupider” James Bond movies of the 60s and 70s.
I’m not trying to disagree with you. I just, still, kinda wonder where you’re coming from, destroying “Wink of an Eye”, but giving this one an above-average rating. When, to me, they’re both non-sensical “just because” plots that mostly get by on their period visuals. I’m not seeing any consistency or intelligence or sophistication in this episode that I’m not seeing in half of the rest of Season 3. And that’s as A) someone who feels TNG and DS9 are the “one true” Treks, and B) someone who still loves TOS, but only as a highly-dated series that is best not taken seriously at all. Seriously, if the lead guest-star actress has a particularly-beautiful dress, the whole episode gets at least a 4/10 from me. Style is a major basis of the show’s lasting success, isn’t it? Surely the nuanced characterization and impressive action scenes aren’t big selling points, are they?
Given your writing repertoire, you are clearly a far more seasoned Trek fan, I’ll acknowledge. I’m a TNG/DS9 era fan who only discovered TOS once Netflix made it available, for free (and who then greedily gobbled it up). How can you take any of these old episodes seriously and/or is it wrong to let an episode skate by on campy (/beautiful) visuals? You seem to think there are major screenwriting differences between even Season Three episodes. To me, they’re all kinda the same. None of them are really that good. But they’re all fun to look at. The season’s all pretty consistent. Why pick on certain episodes, and praise others? I just don’t see a huge difference in “serious” quality.
@28/Muthsarah: “it gets wrapped up with a sexist message”
On a side note, I don’t think that it does. I think the viewer is lead to believe that Kirk is going to say something sexist, and then with the last word he says something entirely different.
When he claims that he doesn’t agree with Spock, and then makes that pause after “Beauty -“, we’re supposed to assume that he will go on with “… is more important than intelligence, in a woman”, or something like that. Instead it turns out that he only contradicts Spock’s first, general statement and isn’t talking about Losira at all. It’s a joke. Not a good one, but still a joke.
Muthsarah: I think our fundamental difference is that you don’t take the third season seriously. I actually am. :)
In particular, one of the things I liked about this episode is the thing I liked about a lot of early first season episodes — I think Trek is at its best when it uses the entire crew of the ship, not just the three leads. This episode is a bit of a throwback to that, plus I liked the mystery elements, and thought they worked. I didn’t think “Wink of an Eye” worked well at all, for reasons I explained (possibly poorly) in the rewatch. *shrug* That’s what makes horse races…
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I am absolutely crestfallen to know that “reverse the polarity” was used prior to the Third Doctor. I wonder if Terrance Dicks heard it in this episode and it stuck with him enough to include it a few years later.
The phrase “reverse the polarity” traces back at least to 1898, in Edison’s Conquest of Mars by Garrett P. Serviss. :)
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
And of course reversing polarity is a real thing in electricity and magnetism, so the phrase goes back even earlier in real life. Here’s an 1877 telegraphy patent by Thomas Edison that involves reversing polarity in telegraph lines, which played some significant role in signal transmission, though I’m not sure what. Reversing the polarity of an electric motor will make it go backward. Reversing the polarity of old 2-pronged electrical plugs (the symmetrical kind that could plug in either way) could sometimes reduce line noise. And so on. Although there are other cases where reversing a polarity is harmful or makes no difference at all.
So polarity reversal is a perfectly normal, real-world thing. It just means swapping positive and negative, or left and right channels, or north and south magnetic poles, or the like. If there are two opposite sides of something, which is what polarity is, then it follows that they will often be reversible. Nothing anomalous there. The problem with “reverse the polarity” as sci-fi technobabble is a tendency to overuse it to the point of cliche, or to use it in contexts where it makes no sense. The infamous Doctor Who line is “reverse the polarity of the neutron flow,” which is basically gibberish. Neutrons are electrically neutral particles — it’s right there in their name — so they have no polarity to reverse. (Unless it’s something like spin polarity, maybe?)
Thanks for the polarity info. I always knew that reversing the polarity of the neutron flow was pure nonsense. But the Third Doctor only said that iteration of the line once!
@28:
Personally, I love both of these episodes. I also think both are outrageously stupid.
All Trek fans should probably have something like this embroidered on a Tribble-shaped pillow.
My minor gripe with this episode is something I didn’t even remember until I saw the picture in this rewatch. The make-shift tomb for D’Amato has just his rank and last name.. Really Captain? You went through the trouble to attempt to dig a grave and when that was impossible you at least constructed a tomb out of rocks and you couldn’t take a few more seconds to write his first name? Did the writers maybe feel that it was unfair giving D’Amato a first name when they didn’t do so for the other dead crewmwmbers?
@36/richf: Maybe his first name actually was Lieutenant. Like Columbo.
When I watched TOS with my daughter, she assumed that Uhura’s first name was Lieutenant.
@38/Jana: When I was first discovering Star Trek at the age of 5, I was initially upset at the ridiculousness of naming a guy “Check-Off,” because that wasn’t a real name. He didn’t even check anything off!
Also, when they talked about going to “the bridge” and then emerged through a pair of doors into a big circular room, I assumed that behind those doors was an actual bridge that they crossed to get to the big circular room.
“When being stalked by kandalan assassination replicant, avoid your demise with this one weird trick!”
A supremely powerful weapon that has a bizarrely convenient tactical flaw. Seems compelled to tell its victim who it can kill and by implication who it cannot. The Minoans would laugh at this attempt at a planetary defense system, if there were any Minoans left in 70 years.
Since the defenses are centuries old, I can accept that they’re acting weird–like telling the intended victims who they’re for.
On the basic idea that “beauty survives”–
I’m a bit split on this. Obviously, it’s dumb to equate inner beauty with physical beauty. It’s also the kind of dumbness Trek clearly avoided in other episodes, like Devil in the Dark. There’s also the problem that we have no clear reason to think the Losira’s personality should have been part of her duplicates.
However, if they’d hand-waved some explanation for why the doubles would be accessing her personality, it could have worked. We’re still left with an attempt of something like the Horta, a “monster” who isn’t really a monster, even if the attempt isn’t a successful one.
@41/Ellynne: As Kirk said, the Losira duplicates’ reluctance to fulfill their purpose was the evidence of the original’s personality within them. After all, if they were just blindly following their defensive programming, they’d have no reluctance.
As for the oddness of the defense system, Losira’s exact words were, “I will set the outpost controls on automatic. The computer will selectively defend against all life forms but our own.” There’s nothing there to indicate that the computer was designed to be a defense system. I always had the impression that the defense was something makeshift that Losira set up in response to the extreme situation and the lack of other options.
My only contributions to this are a) I loved the existence of Lt. Radha and b) Losira’s eye make-up game is exceptional.
That look Uhura gives Spock after he bitches her out, before she just says “Yes, Mr. Spock,”: priceless.
Definitely a better episode by season three standards. Nice to see Sulu (or anyone not in the Big Three), get off the ship. I kept looking at Rahda, hoping she’d be Indian, but no. Oh well. Lee Meriwether brings a quiet dignity, and yes, beauty to Losira and even her replicas. The real Losira’s message at the end is very moving. It’s only a minute, and it’s the end of the episode, but Lee Meriwether delivers it very quietly but movingly. I guess it’s why I didn’t mind Kirk’s (but only Kirk’s) comment: “Beauty…survives.”
Welcome back, krad. Hope all is well.
@39/Christopher: I like such stories.
@40/Crusader75: On the other hand, it’s adaptive. After two failed attempts, the next Losira duplicate doesn’t tell that she’s for Kirk until he figures it out for himself. When that doesn’t work either, the defense system creates multiple duplicates next. That would have worked if Spock hadn’t arrived in time.
@45/Jana: Maybe the targeted disruption is a safety mechanism, to make sure the security system isn’t a threat to innocent targets. Maybe it was designed to target any specific Kalandan individual who became a threat while ensuring that nobody else was hurt by mistake. And the “I am for you” thing may have been to let bystanders know that they weren’t the targets and should just get out of the way. When the plague wiped out the outpost’s population, Losira set the system to target any and all non-Kalandans, but she couldn’t override its safety features, so the replicas could still only target one person at a time.
I honestly think this was a perfect role for Lee Meriwether, in essence, a reluctant villainess.
I know she had an iconic turn in another Trek episode, obviously, but I always pictured Joan Collins in this role, given that she actually played a character on Batman called The Siren. But Joan the hologram probably would have relished killing too much!
@15/CLB: The nominal explanation is that TOS warp velocities were the cube of the warp factor times the speed of light, while TNG warp velocities up to 9 went as the warp factor to the 4/3 power, and just increased asymptotically to infinity between 9 and 10. So, for instance, warp 6 would be 216c in TOS and 392c in TNG
I hadn’t heard before that there was an actualy formula used…cool! But are you sure about the TNG formula? Because 6 to the 4/3 power is about 10.9, not 392.
@48/Robert B: Sorry, my mistake. I meant to the 10/3 power, or the 3 1/3 power. I’ll fix that.
@47/J.P. PELZMAN: Here’s a photoshopped pic of what Joan Collins looks like as Losira.
It’s quite a remarkable likeness to Lee Meriwether, wouldn’t you say?
The advanced Kalandan technology that generated Losira’s lethal holographic images is very likely the very same photonic technology that was reversed engineered by Federation scientists in order to create the holodecks and EMHs seen 100 years later, in the 24th Century.
This alone, should set aside a special place in Star Trek lore for Losira and an episode like “That Which Survives.”
@47 JP Pelzman “I know she had an iconic turn in another Trek episode”. As far as I know, Lee Meriwether ONLY appeared in this episode. To which episode do you refer?
@52: The “she” to whom J.P. was referring was Joan Collins.
@52 What CLB said in @53. I set it up clumsily, I admit, but the clause does refer to Joan Collins.
@50 That’s very interesting. Thanks for sharing! As I said, would have been fun to see Joan as Losira.
@54 J.P. Pelzman: I read an interview with actress Lee Meriwether, where she says that she has no memory as to how she got the role of Losira. Lee is sure that she did not audition for the part, and believes that she was instead, offered the role.
http://www.startrek.com/article/where-are-they-now-tos-guest-star-lee-meriwether
Lee Meriwether also happens to be a beauty queen, being a Miss America pageant winner. With an episode titled “That Which Survives,” where, as Captain Kirk states, “Beauty Survives,” I can easily understand why the producers and casting crew at Star Trek offered the role of the mesmerizingly beautiful Losira to her.
Another of the remarkable points that sets this memorable episode apart from all other Star Trek TOS episodes is the ethnic diversity found in “That Which Survives.”
Women?
Lt. Uhura
Helmswoman Lt. Rahda
African/African-Americans?
Lt. Uhura
Engineer Watkins
Doctor M’Benga
South Asian?
Lt. Rahda
Italian?
Chief Geologist D’Amato
Latino?
Doctor Sanchez
Asian?
Lt. Sulu
What’s even better is that all of them were portrayed as competent, active members of the crew, and not just simply background filler. Whether it was Uhura and Rahda diligently manning their bridge stations, or Watkins warning the rest of engineering of a mysterious woman, after having failed to deceive her about the intricate workings of the emergency bypass control of the matter-antimatter integrator.
The Enterprise has over 400 active and competent crew members aboard her, but sadly, without Star Trek episodes such as “That Which Survives,” you probably wouldn’t really know it.
@54 Sorry, JP. As a writer myself, I should have taken a moment and/or come back to your post and read your phrasing correctly.
Ironically, this is what I do when composing questions for my game show, so that it does not confuse the contestants and will/should generate only one unique answer.
My apologies.
@56 Thanks for sharing the link to that interview. And yes, typically episodic TV shows don’t have time for casting calls, interviews, etc. They try to figure out a guest performer suited for the role and then contact him/her. Or sometimes they write a role with a specific person in mind. Writer Stanley Ralph Ross once said he wrote the Batman villainess called The Siren specifically for Joan Collins, who then was given the role.
@57 No apologies necessary, Lou. I’m also a writer and like I said, I should have phrased it a bit less clumsily. But that’s why I broke it up into separate ‘grafs’ to try to lessen any possible confusion.
@58 Maybe it works differently in the US, JP. I’ve done a few series and I have ALWAYS had to audition to check my look, suitability and performance.
@59 Yeah, it must be different in the States, Lou. From everything I’ve read, it rarely is done for guest performers in episodic TV, unless maybe for a pilot.
I’ve often played with the idea of different actresses starring as the Women of Star Trek TOS.
For example, what if Catwoman & Eleen of “Friday’s Child” actress Julie Newmar had instead been cast as Shahna, in Star Trek TOS 2nd Season episode, “Gamesters Of Triskelion,” instead of actress Angelique Pettyjohn? Or perhaps Julie Newmar as slave Drusilla in 2nd Season episode, “Bread & Circuses,” instead of actress Lois Jewell?
Or perhaps if actress Nancy Kovack had instead been cast as Losira, instead of Lee Meriwether? Or maybe even having Nancy Kovack as Marlena from “Mirror, Mirror,” in place of actress Barbara Luna?
One thing’s for sure, the original Star Trek contained the most incredible number of glamorous actresses, as well as the most tantalizingly unforgettable costumes.
Julie Newmar as Eleen
Angelique Pettyjohn as Shahna
Nancy Kovack as Nona
Lois Jewell as Drusilla
Lee Meriwether as Losira
Barbara Luna as Marlena
@12 – Jana: I have to agree with you on the spelling of Rahda’s name. My country is full of people whose ancestors’ last names were spelled incorrectly by immigration officers, and now are spelled differently from what they were originally. A guy who went to high school with me has the last name Dymenstein, since his father was a Polish Jew. His uncles came to the country separately, and all three of them ended up with different spellings of it. Plus, we have a family of musicians with the name Rada (though I doubt it’s Indian in origin).
@39 – Chris: I love 5 year old you’s assumption that there had to be an actual bridge.
@62/MaGnUs: I think I was probably thinking of my neighborhood library from when I was a kid. The whole lower floor is dedicated to children’s books, and at the base of the stairs there’s a short “bridge” over a long, narrow goldfish pond that it’s traditional to drop pennies into (no doubt for the librarians to harvest periodically as contributions to their operating expenses). I’m not sure whether the pond actually goes under the “bridge” or if there are two ponds on opposite sides, but it gives the impression of crossing a bridge over a small stream, which is really charming. And yes, I’m using the present tense, because I was just there last week and it’s all still there, just as I remember it from my childhood. I checked their website, and the pond’s been there since the 1970 renovation. So I should’ve been familiar with it by the time I first saw Star Trek in January 1974. (At least, I think that was my neighborhood library back then. There’s another branch a bit closer to where I lived at the time, but I don’t remember going there. Maybe I went to both.)
So it’s possible that I didn’t just imagine a bridge on the other side of the doors — I may have imagined it going over a small brook with fish in it.
@63/Christopher: This story is getting better and better! (And what a great design element for a children’s library.)
Although the Enterprise goldfish would be in mortal danger every time the ship is shaken.
@64/Jana: I just checked with my sister (who’s a couple of years older and thus remembers better), and she confirmed that we did routinely go to that library when we were kids, not the other one. (Apparently we had our own little bookcase just for library books, and we’d ritually go to the library every three weeks like clockwork to return one set of books and pick up another. I’d completely forgotten that.) So that probably is where my “bridge” assumption came from. I had regular personal experience of going across an indoors “bridge” to get to a destination, so that’s where my mind went when they talked about going to the bridge on the Enterprise.
Indeed, the story keeps getting better. Thanks for sharing. It also reminds me of something slightly unrelated: I was playing a Star Wars roleplaying campaign, and one of my friends was more used to Star Trek than Star Wars; the characters were in Millenium Falcon style ship and his character says he wants to go to “the bridge”. We had to explain to him that this was no flying hotel like the Enteprise, and that all we had was a meager cockpit.
@62/jacenyolo Sorry for the much-belated reply, but yes, it is fun to imagine Star Trek females played by a different actress. Your two ideas for alternative roles for Nancy Kovack are very interesting, indeed.
Dunsel @19: I’m not so sure it’s out of character for Kirk to be a little blade about security at weird times. In the episode where Frank Gorshin was running around being able to mind control everything on the Enterprise, Kirk just lets him run around bumping into crewmen and chasing that other guy because he says there’s nowhere for them to go.
I would add at least a point to the rating because there’s a redshirt who quickly obeys Kirk’s order to shoot the computer, thereby saving the day. Then subtract the point again because Kirk never acknowledges that the redshirt did anything, instead he ignores him and walks up to Spock and thanks him instead.
i call this episode “Silly Sulu”. Everyone on the planet spends their time just telling him off.
Sulu: “The enterprise must have blown up. That would explain-” Kirk: “Shouldn’t we stop guessing Mr. Sulu.”
Sulu: “Once in Siberia there was a meteor-” Kirk: “If I wanted a Russian history lesson I would have brought along Chekhov.”
“What a terrible way to die” Kirk: “there are no good ways Sulu”. Lol. Silly Sulu.
“Beings intelligent enough to have destroyed the enterprise?” Kirk: “That’s the problem Sulu, we have only questions.”
Captain tells him to examine the earth now that Deomato is dead. When Sulu calls out for help we see Kirk and McCoy lying down against a rock, just chilling.
Kirk: “…the question is, why are you alive [talking about Sulu]?”
Then at the other end Spock is lecturing everyone like they’re children.
Spock: “Interesting.” Scott: “I find nothing interesting in the fact that we’re about to blow up.” Spock: “No, but the method, is fascinating.” Yo Spock, they are going to impale you with pitchforks and roast you, buddy.
I die laughing at this episode. “Are there men on this planet?” Who wrote this episode??? Lol. Like i know who, but “who”?
Just rewatched… First time I realized that it was the same actress that played Catwoman even though I have probably seen the episode 5 or 6 times , Also of note the fact that red shirts were not dying. I know both of these facts are mentioned in your initial review. The other thing I noted was Spock’s personality , usually his counter puns to human emotion are 1 or 2 per episode, this one was very annoying, every other sentence out of his mouth.
To be fair, Meriwether only played Catwoman in the 1966 Batman theatrical film. During the TV series, the character was played by Julie Newmar (seasons 1 & 2) and Eartha Kitt (season 3) — though Newmar also appeared in Trek, in “Friday’s Child.”
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Great review KRAD. I have not seen this episode since high school (l977- 81). Interestingly, I have all the TOS episodes on DVD except TWS.
@11: Why does everyone seem to forget that Lee Meriwether has a real sci-fi background starring in The Time Tunnel for two seasons? She even works with Michael Ansara in one not-too-bad episode!
@73/Ron: And she co-starred in TTT with Whit Bissell (“The Trouble with Tribbles”).
Meriwether also had a recurring role in season 4 of Mission: Impossible alongside Leonard Nimoy, appearing in six episodes. There was no regular female agent that season, only a succession of guest actresses, but Meriwether’s Tracey was the only one to appear multiple times.
Nothing special, other than the admirable cast inclusion on display. I just couldn’t feel invested in what was going on with the planet and Losira. It was cool seeing Dr. M’Benga again though.
Is the name D’Amato normally pronounced as it is here (“dee-amato”)? In Japan it’s pronounced “damato” so that’s how I’ve been pronouncing it. As an aside, I love writing Italian names in Japanese, such as デカンディード.
@75/Fujimoto: It’s “damato” in the German dubbed version too. From what I know about Italian, that’s how it should be pronounced. Perhaps it’s different in the US. Or perhaps his name is really “Di Amato”.
I checked, and former US Senator Alfonse D’Amato pronounced it “Duh-mah-to.” But I don’t know if that’s typical.
I just love the little bellybutton covering flap on Losira’s pants. What was it with the networks and bellybuttons??
Speaking as an Italian American, pronunciation of Italian names in America is not always consistent. I’ve seen, for example, D’Amato pronounced both “dee-uh-MAH-toh” and “da-MAH-toh.” (For that matter, a segment of my mother’s family pronounces the name Andreassi as “an-DRESS-ee” rather than “an-dree-AH-see.”)
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Pronunciations are often hit-and-miss on Star Trek. Lt. Kyle became Cowell for one episode, Dr. Keniclius was Keniculus, Benecia was stressed on the second syllable in one episode and the third in another, and McCoy responded to learning of Spock’s pet sehlat with “Sell it?”
BeeGee: Yeah, and everyone pronounced Balok’s name “BAY-lock” except for McCoy, who pronounced it “BAH-luck.”
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
As another of Italian descent, I agree with Krad, Jana, and CLB. Pronuciation would vary, but would generally be close to dah-maht-toh. I’ve never heard anyone in my family emphasize the D’ as Di, though I suppose it might be possible.
And, like anyone, its not uncommon for pronunciations to start “sliding” toward the majority population’s over time. Some of us try to fight that (in a non-fanatical sense of fight).
Even among fresh immigrants you are likely to get variation. My family is from Lindini in Sicily. The differences in pronunciation can be dramatic compared to mainland Italy, becoming greater toward Rome and the northern border. I’m sure the same differences would appear in any other country. Look at the variations in the US.
Di “something” is another form of Italian last names, I’ve seen both D’Andrea and Di Giacomo in my country, but I’ve never seen the same name with Di and D’; though I guess it’s possible.
@83/MaGnUs: I found both names on the Internet. It surprised me too, I would have expected “Di” before consonants and “D’” before vowels.
Back on the Enterprise, it takes two doctors and a complete autopsy to determine the cause of death, but McCoy waves his salt shaker for a few seconds and comes to the same conclusion. He’s just that good. Likewise, Kirk and Spock figure out what their trained geologist completely misses. That must be why the senior officers are always the ones to beam down; nobody else can do anything.
@81 – McCoy’s never one to go by, though: he mispronounces “Sarek” as “Surak” (which is great, because Surak hadn’t been created at that point), “sehlat” as “sell-ut,” and in the movies, “Seleya” as “Sell-eh-yuh.” I don’t know if that was a bit that DeForest Kelley came up with, or if De just couldn’t wrap his mouth around alien names.
clayinca: They also changed the gumato in “A Private Little War” to the “mugato” because Kelley just could not pronounce “gumato.”
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
To be fair, DeForest Kelley got the pronunciation ofmedical terms right, as far as I know. Xenopolycythemia, acetylcholine and choriocytosis didn’t slow him down.
I remember I once mimicked Kelley’s pronunciation of “crystalline” as “crys-TAL-lin” and got a weird look from my father.
This was the TOS episode that made me realize that creators had no concern for consistency regarding warp factors.
What I appreciate about this jab, in an episode that is full of them from Spock, is that it’s… well, whatever the opposite of a backhanded compliment would be called. It’s not an insult concealed in a compliment but a compliment concealed in what’s likely to be taken as an insult. Spock’s acknowledging that the doctor’s guess is more valuable than Spock’s, because Spock is not a trained physician, so any guess from Spock would be so poorly-informed as to be without value at all. Of course, he’s couching the compliment as a correction that buries any good feelings in aggravating condescension, but, also of course, Spock wouldn’t care about “good feelings” much.
I can see our rewatcher’s point here about Spock’s most annoying traits being kicked into overdrive by the script, but I always found this episode to be extremely well-written for the third season—product that it was of writers’ room lead Fontana’s story and accomplished TV writer John Meredyth Lucas’s screenplay—and this line is, without a doubt, one of the more subtle ways the show ever demonstrated that Spock wasn’t good with other people, but it wasn’t because he believed himself superior to each of them in every way. Another bit I appreciated was the very end, where McCoy all but wolf-whistles at the deceased template for the planet’s defense system, while Kirk instead admires the strength of moral character needed for her personality to fight the system’s program, and Spock, her remarkable nature as an individual. It’s solid writing that captures each character well and goes against the later re-imagining of Kirk as an irrational horn-dog.
I’ve always liked this episode, but what I found strange about it is that both Kirk and Spock treat their underlings very badly throughout. Perhaps the pressures of command are getting to them? Kirk keeps cutting off Sulu, while Spock is even worse, berating and ridiculing Scotty, Uhura and especially Lt Radha. Was this intentional? Usually the commanders do not behave so badly, but this made the episode more unpleasant than necessary.