The Star Trek The Original Series Rewatch is devastated by the tragic death of Anton Yelchin, taken from us far too young. Rest in peace, good sir.
“The Empath”
Written by Joyce Muskat
Directed by John Erman
Season 3, Episode 8
Production episode 60043-63
Original air date: December 6, 1968
Stardate: 5121.5
Captain’s log. Kirk, Spock, and McCoy beam down to Minara II, which orbits a sun that is going nova. The Enterprise‘s mission is to retrieve the scientific team that is studying the nova, as the sun’s reaching a critical stage, but the scientists have responded to no hails, and the landing party finds all their equipment covered in dust.
A solar flare is approaching the planet. The landing party will be safe on the planet, as the atmosphere will protect them, but the ship is a sitting duck. Kirk orders Scotty to take the ship out of orbit, which means the trio are stuck there for at least 74 hours.
They play the most recent record tape, which is three months old. It shows the two scientists studying the nova, Doctors Ozaba and Linke, who suddenly hear a strange noise and then disappear one at a time. As soon as the landing party stops watching, the noise sounds around them, and they all also disappear one at a time. They awaken in a cavern, which Spock’s tricorder says is more than 120 meters below the surface, and they were taken there by a type of transporter.
Spock also picks up a life form, which turns out to be a woman on a slab. McCoy determines that she’s mute. She cowers from Kirk’s attempt to interrogate her, while McCoy decides to name her “Gem,” which, he explains to Spock, is better than “Hey you,” a fact that can be argued.
Two aliens who identify themselves as Vians appear, and tell the landing party not to interfere. They’re carrying weapons, and their very presence makes Gem cower. The Vians’ response to Kirk’s attempts to communicate are, in order, dismissal, weapons fire, and trapping the landing party in a force field that gets more powerful the more they try to resist.
While the landing party are trapped, the Vians examine Gem and then transport away.
Gem then notices a cut on Kirk’s forehead that he obtained earlier. She touches his forehead, and the cut heals, then appears on Gem’s forehead, and then it heals. McCoy theorizes that she’s an empath.
Spock has found technology nearby—which he didn’t detect up until now. They go to check it out, with Kirk insisting that Gem accompany them. They find a space that has bits and pieces of technology of various types—and a pair of tubes containing Linke and Ozaba. They’re dead, and apparently died while trying to strain against the tubes. There are also three empty tubes, one each for Kirk, Spock, and McCoy.
One of the Vians appears and says that they’re proceeding right on schedule. Spock neck pinches him, and Kirk takes his weapon while they head toward what Spock thinks might be an exit. But once they leave, the Vian stands up, unharmed, and nods to the other Vian.
They reach the surface and head to the research station. Scotty and two security guards are waiting for them there. Kirk sends Spock, McCoy, and Gem ahead to the research station, while Kirk stays behind when he sees the Vians watching them. The Vians hit Kirk with, I guess, a slow-motion ray? Kirk moves like he’s swimming in a vat of honey, veeeeeeery sloooooooowly collapsing to the ground.
As Spock, McCoy, and Gem approach, Scotty and the search party disappear. They go back to find Kirk moving in normal time again. The Vians announce that they only need one specimen and Spock and McCoy are free to go. Spock and McCoy are not happy about this, but Kirk doesn’t hesitate to sacrifice himself to save his people.
But then the Vians transport Spock, McCoy, and Gem away without telling Kirk where they’ve gone. They bring him back to the cavern, where Gem has reappeared. They remove his shirt (hey, it’s been a while!), and dangle him from the ceiling via wrist manacles, torturing him.
They insist they want no information as such. They’re curious to see their subjects’ passions, will, and so on. Gem does her best to use her empathy to ameliorate Kirk’s distress.
Spock and McCoy are back in the room where they first met Gem. Spock can no longer find an exit. Kirk and Gem appear while Spock and McCoy are put into a force field. Gem refuses to help Kirk, who is obviously in tremendous pain (and also wearing his shirt again).
Gem takes on all of Kirk’s wounds and pain and then is able to banish them, at great emotional and physical cost. She collapses when she’s finished, and only then does the force field dissipate around Spock and McCoy.
McCoy examines Gem, and she’s fine—as is Kirk, although he’s suffering, oddly, from nitrogen narcosis. While Spock wonders if he can examine the Vian weapon, which he still has, to tap into their power source, the Vians appear and inform Kirk that he will get to choose which of his two officers will be the next person they interrogate. The Vians add that McCoy has an 87% chance of dying, while Spock will probably survive, but has a 93% chance of going insane.
McCoy gives Kirk a sedative so he can sleep off the bends. Spock is now in command, and he intends to volunteer himself to be the Vians’ next subject. McCoy isn’t thrilled with that notion, so he gives Spock a sedative as well.
The Vians appear, and McCoy tells them that the choice has been made. He asks Gem to stay with his friends, assuring her that they’ll look after her (after they wake up, anyhow). The Vians take McCoy away.
Now it’s McCoy’s turn to hang from the manacles, though the Vians leave his shirt on.
Spock and Kirk wake up and are pissed at McCoy being all heroic and stuff. Spock has a way to let the weapon work for Spock—it’s attuned to a particular person’s brain patterns—but Kirk is suspicious of why the Vians are letting them keep the weapon.
Once Spock retunes the weapon, he transports them to the lab where McCoy is dangling from the manacles, badly battered and bruised, his shirt torn. Kirk and Spock get him down and determine that he’s dying.
Kirk and Spock argue over whether or not to ask Gem to help McCoy, for fear that she would die in the process. But before they can urge her to do so, Kirk and Spock are trapped in a force field and the Vians appear, urging them not to convince Gem, to let her work on her own.
The Vians finally drop the other shoe: they can save one planet in the Minara system from the destruction to be brought about by the nova. Gem’s people might be the ones saved, but only if she proves that her people are worthy. McCoy’s death won’t prove her worthiness—his life will. Kirk, Spock, and McCoy each proved their willingness to die for each other. The hope was that this would be felt by Gem—who does indeed go over to McCoy and take on his pain and wounds and injuries.
However, Gem only cures his surface wounds. His internal injuries are another matter, and Gem pulls away before she can get to them. The Vians are concerned that her instinct for self-preservation won’t overcome her instinct for self-sacrifice. But when she does try to continue what she’s doing, McCoy stops her, refusing to let someone die even to save his own life.
The force field feeds on emotion, so Spock is able to weaken it by suppressing his own emotions, and Kirk tries to do likewise. It’s enough to allow Kirk and Spock to escape and surprise the Vians, taking their weapons. But the Vians still refuse to heal McCoy. Kirk gives them back both their weapons and tells them to kill all four of them, because they won’t leave without a healed McCoy. Kirk accuses them of forgetting the very emotions they claim to be trying to engender in Gem.
The Vians, like, y’know, everyone, are totally swayed by a Kirk Speech, and cure McCoy. They pick up Gem and depart.
After the storm passes, the Enterprise is back in orbit. How they got the landing party out of the 120-meter-deep cave is left as an exercise for the viewer. Scotty compares Gem to a pearl of great price, which marks the second Bible quote of the episode (Ozaba is heard quoting a psalm on the record tapes).
Fascinating. Spock is able to make the Vian weapon work for him, but he’s not bright enough to figure out that McCoy would hit him with a hypo to save his life.
I’m a doctor not an escalator. As in “Amok Time,” McCoy proves himself more than happy to indiscriminately use his hypo in order to save his friends, though this time he pays an actual price for it, to wit, almost dying. He then doubles down on his heroism by refusing to let Gem save his life at the cost of her own.
Ahead warp one, aye. Sulu wonders if the landing party is okay down on the planet.
I cannot change the laws of physics! Scotty tells Sulu that the landing party is fine, and Kirk’s probably just worried about the crew, which he says right before we cut to Kirk being tortured. Good call, chief engineer!
Channel open. “The best defense is a good offense, and I intend to start offending right now.”
Kirk being all determined and stuff.
Welcome aboard. Kathryn Hays is very expressive, if a bit too floofy, as Gem. Davis Roberts and Jason Wingreen do a good job of showing the tedium of their lives in just one quick scene as Ozaba and Linke. They’re certainly more compelling than Willard Sage and Alan Bergman, who are spectacularly boring as the Vians. Plus we have James Doohan and George Takei doing almost nothing as Scotty and Sulu.
Trivial matters: For the second week in a row, we get a first-time screenwriter pulled off the slush pile by Robert H. Justman. This episode remains the only screen credit for Joyce Muskat.
The planet appears as gold in some of the Enterprise orbital shots, red in others. Maybe it’s the difference between night and day? Also after he’s tortured, McCoy is wearing a different style tunic.
This is the only episode helmed by veteran TV director John Erman.
We only learn the Vians’ names, Thann and Lal, from the closing credits, as their names are never spoken aloud.
The fate of Gem’s people is revealed in the Voyager short story “The Healing Arts” by E. Cristy Ruteshouser & Lynda Martinez Foley in Strange New Worlds II. The race was given the name the Anjurwan in the story.
To boldly go. “I’m a doctor, not a coal miner.” What a tiresome slog of an episode. This one is often given the same damning with faint praise as many other third-season turkeys that people try to find nice things to say about (cf. “The Enterprise Incident“), talking about what a great showcase it is for the Kirk-Spock-McCoy triad, to which I say, bushwa. Plenty of other episodes do a far better job of showcasing the triad, from “The Enemy Within” to “The Immunity Syndrome” to “The Tholian Web,” which we’ll tackle next time. This, though, just goes through the motions, particularly with Kirk, who doesn’t stand out in any way except in terms of copious use of wax on his bare chest, and Spock, who doesn’t really do anything.
It is a great showcase for McCoy’s heroism. He goes out of his way to make sure that his friends won’t suffer any more, sedating Kirk and Spock, refusing Gem’s assistance, and also frankly holding up a lot better than Kirk did under much worse torture.
But ultimately, it’s a lot of really bad acting by William Shatner, who looks ridiculous when the Vians use their slow-motion gun on him, and even more so when he’s being tortured while making sure we get to see his manly manly chest. Kathryn Hays has her moments, mostly in closeup, as she has a very expressive face, but her body language and gestures border on the comical. And as with far too many episodes this season, there’s not enough story for an hour, giving us way too much padding, particularly during the climax where we’re subjected to endless scenes of Kirk and Spock standing in the force field, Gem gesticulating bizarrely, McCoy lying around covered in bruise makeup, and the Vians just staring blandly ahead over and over again.
Warp factor rating: 2
Next week: “The Tholian Web”
Rewatcher’s note: Back in 1987, one of the best reference works of its kind, Mr. Scott’s Guide to the Enterprise, was published, and it is one beloved by many Star Trek fans. Its author, Shane Johnson, has since transitioned and is now Lora Johnson, and she’s having some major medical issues relating to a heart defect, and needs help. A GoFundMe page has been set up to help her with the massive medical bills. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Keith R.A. DeCandido urges folks to support the crowdfunding campaign for Altered States of the Union, for which there are only two days left! It’s an alternate history anthology edited by Glenn Hauman for Crazy 8 Press and ComicMix, featuring a story by your humble rewatcher about the Conch Republic of the Florida Keys, as well as stories by Trek scribes David Gerrold, Peter David, Michael Jan Friedman, Robert Greenberger, and Aaron Rosenberg, the first-ever fiction sale by regular rewatch commenter Meredith Peruzzi, and tales by Russ Colchamiro, Debra Doyle & James D. Macdonald, Brendan DuBois, Malon Edwards, G.D. Falksen, Alisa Kwitney, Gordon Linzner, Sarah McGill, Mackenzie Reide, David Silverman & Hildy Silverman, Ian Randal Strock, Ramon Terrell, and Anne Toole! The book will launch at Shore Leave 38 in July.
Wow, I do not remember this episode at all. That bad, huh?
*hopes people actually read the bio as there are only two days left in the Indie Go Go campaign*
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I’ll swing by IndieGoGo later today.
I think Linke and Ozaba’s contorted positions are meant to represent that they died in agony from the torture the Vians inflicted, not that they were straining against the tubes. Linke’s hands, at least, look more like they’re spread defensively than pushing against the glass.
I’m surprised at your reaction to this one, Keith, because “The Empath” has always been one of my all-time favorites. Sure, it’s kind of fanfictiony — the archetype of the “hurt-comfort” trope where characters’ friendship or love is explored through a scenario where one suffers miserably and the other, well, comforts them. But it works for me. I’ve always found it a potent exploration of the deep caring Kirk, Spock, and McCoy have for each other, and the lengths they’ll go to for each other. I like Hays as Gem; sure, she’s broad, but it’s a pantomime role, so that’s only fitting. And it works for her character, a member of a species that’s defined by emotion.
I love the minimalist sets, too. Like “Spectre of the Gun,” but even more so, this is an example of the show turning its budgetary limitations into a strength by embracing the minimalist aesthetic. Most of the story takes place in a black void that’s visually striking and very theatrical, and it does a good job of distilling the story to the essentials, keeping the focus on the characters and emotions. Gem’s muteness has a similar effect.
By contrast, George Duning’s score is lush and passionate and sad, and it’s a huge part of why I love this episode so much. Gem’s theme is so poignant, and its use here and its recycling in later episodes like “Requiem for Methuselah” really adds to the emotional power of the scenes it accompanies. It routinely brings tears to my eyes.
I also find the idea of the Vians effective. They’re trying to do something benevolent, but they’ve become so clinical about it that they’ve lost touch with the reasons why they do it. It’s a twisted idea — “Let’s teach her compassion by torturing people so she learns to care about them.” Kirk reminds them that if you want to promote compassion, you need to teach by example.
As I’ve remarked before, I suspect the Vians of being the Preservers from “The Paradise Syndrome.” They do have the same agenda, to relocate endangered populations. I’m surprised nobody else has ever made that connection. Probably because people get misled by the perception of the Preservers as an “ancient” race that must be long-gone, even though they couldn’t have taken Miramanee’s people earlier than about the 17th century.
I actually used to think Kathryn Hays must’ve been strictly a dancer or mime, since the role seemed to call for that rather than an actress. But then I saw her in The Man from U.N.C.L.E.‘s “The See-Paris-And-Die Affair,” in which she not only acts, but sings as well (“It’s a Most Unusual Day” by Jimmy McHugh and Harold Adamson). Her voice is nothing like I would’ve expected, a salty, brassy alto, and her manner there is totally unlike the sad and poignant Gem, bright and lively with a big, adorable grin that she deploys at the slightest provocation. It’s a startling transformation.
By the way, has anyone else noticed that Gem’s bed looks a lot like a giant version of the agonizer from “Mirror, Mirror”? Oddly fitting, that…
This wasn’t aired in Germany when I was a kid (none of the torture episodes was), so I didn’t get to see it until I was in my twenties. I remember that it baffled me. What did they think they were doing? This was exactly like bad fanfiction!
Many years later I learned that it had actually been written by a fan, so that’s kind of funny.
For all it’s flaws, this episode did a great job at portraying an alien who felt alien without makeup or funny clothes, and that’s worth an extra point.
(Was comfort fanfic even a thing in 1968? Who were they writing comfort and slash fanfic about before Star Trek?)
All it needed was Dr. Smith and/or Will Robinson to be a Lost in Space episode!
I hope people read the bio because hey, that’s me! :D
Not a big fan of this episode, I’m afraid. It was just…boring. But I really want to know if anyone else found Kathryn Hays’s eyes a bit…off kilter?
I agree with Keith’s harsh appraisal. With all due respect to Ms. Muskat, who was/is a fan, it reads like fan fiction with Gem as the Mary Sue. It’s a collection of Trek tropes. Big-headed, ugly, god-like aliens who need to be taught a lesson by James Tiberius Kirk? Check. Disposable minor characters? Check. (Figure Ozaba and Linke as stand-ins for redshirts.) Big 3 beam down to a planet with no security detail? Check. Opportunity for The Shat to overact? Double check.
It’s all been done before and more interestingly, too. This is the quintessential season 3 money saver, a bottle show written by a non-pro (which saved them $1500, because she wasn’t a member of the writer’s guild. Translates into a $10K-plus savings today). Also saved money on sets (was waiting for Batman, Batgirl and Nora Clavicle to show up) and props (oh, look, it’s the Lost in Space tubes from the Jupiter 2).
As others have said over the years, Gem needs to heal our pain from the torture of watching this ep.
RIP Anton Yelchin.
By the way, this makes me wonder, with the Star Trek 50th Anniversary coming up, who else of the first generation have we lost already? Because I know Leonard Nimoy is already dead and I think James Doohan and DeForrest Kelley are dead too. Nimoy’s was in early 2015 while Doohan’s and Kelley’s were in circa 2006, I think.
@9/J.P. Pelzman: On the “feels like fanfic” thing… Lots of things that were fresh at the time feel cliched to a later generation because of all the intervening works that have imitated them. Like how a lot of people reacted to the John Carter movie as “just another Star Wars knockoff” even though Star Wars was essentially a John Carter of Mars knockoff. I never read fanfiction, so I never saw “The Empath” as cliched. Yes, it does a lot of the things that fanfic became known for doing, but it did them first. And they wouldn’t have been picked up on and redone by so many others if they hadn’t been effective. The reason things become cliches is because they work. (David Gerrold once wrote, “Given enough time, all the world’s great wisdom will be expressed as cliches.”)
This one has always seemed to me like another attempt at a horror episode, and much like Catspaw and Wolf in the Fold, it just doesn’t gel. The Vians are basically a mad scientist trope, doing sadistic experiments for no justifiable reason. A dark creepy sets, people in test tubes– it all has a B-grade horror movie vibe.
I can barely remember the story – and I just read it! The only thing that stuck in my mind after watching the episode was the set design. I don’t know who designed it, but it reminded me a lot of the work of Maurice Noble of Looney Tunes fame. Maybe they took some inspiration from Duck Dodgers?
@13/Christopher, I respect your opinions a lot. I mean that. You obviously are way more versed in Trek than I am. But it’s not so much the fact that it’s fanfic that bothers me, it’s the fact that it’s repetitious. It hits so many of the beats that Trek already had used up until that time, as I noted. It feels like a Trek fan took a bunch of ideas that already had been used in the show, tossed them in a blender, and this is what resulted. I’ll give Muskat credit for exploring the fact that Spock and McCoy do actually care about one another’s well-being, beneath their bluster toward one another, but other than that bright spot, it just doesn’t do it for me as an episode. Too much territory that the show already had covered.
@10/Owlay – Memory Alpha does a nice job listing deaths of everyone who worked on Trek here. In addition to Kelley, Doohan, and Nimoy, we’ve also lost Grace Lee Whitney, Majel Barrett, and Mark Lenard.
When I was a child I loathed this episode when it came up in syndication and seemed to come up too damned often. It had no action, it was completely depressing, the antagonists get away with murder and torturing our heroes horribly with no comeuppance and for a barely comprehensible (especially to an eight year old) reason. They are not even really evil. They mean well but are morally retarded. I understand it a bit better as an adult, but I still don’t enjoy it. The nicest thing that I can say about it is Gem’s outfit is pretty and she is graceful, and the sets reflect the mood well.
@14/J.P. Pelzman: I see it less as repeating the tropes of earlier episodes as distilling them to their purest form. The whole story is designed to be a crucible for the friendship between Kirk, Spock, and McCoy, to bring out the depth of feeling between them like never before. Which, yes, is very fanfictiony, but that isn’t automatically bad. Any trope can work if it’s done well, and I feel the execution of this episode is excellent, although I’ll grant it is a bit padded at times. And I do wonder why only Kirk had to be tortured shirtless.
I’ll concede that I might have a lower opinion of the episode if I didn’t love the score so much. Really good music can make me like a story more, and bad music can undermine it. And for me, Duning’s music here totally draws me into the emotion of the story.
As Ron Jones will do on TNG twenty years after this, George Duning really conveys the story here with a very poignant score, thus saving the episode. Without it, and Kathryn Hays’ performance, this one would be really painful and boring. Yes the Big Three triad is wonderful and blah blah, but I was never a big fan of the focus on only the Big Three, so that means very little to me. I really liked Kathryn Hays’ performance, and Gem’s musical cue brought tears to my eyes, too. The score and Hays are the saving grace of this episode, at least for me.
One thing that has always struck me as a bit odd about this episode is its unconventional definition of “empath.” The usual SF meaning of the term (predating TOS by at least a decade) is someone like Deanna Troi — a being with a telepathic awareness of emotion rather than thought. Its use here to mean a being that can take on others’ physical pain and damage and heal them, while clearly related, is unique. I guess it isn’t entirely beyond the literal derivation of the term; “empathy” comes from Greek roots that can mean “feeling within” (i.e. to experience someone’s feelings as if from the inside, a deeper identification than mere sympathy, “feeling with”), but that can also mean “suffering within,” or even “disease within,” because it’s the same root as in words like “psychopathy” or “neuropathy,” or indeed “pathology.” So I suppose it’s not technically wrong to refer to a being that can share your injuries as an empath, but it’s still unusual — and it doesn’t cover the part where she can heal them too.
I actually think Keith is being too nice here. This episode is a 1 for me, and ranks as my absolute least favorite TOS episode. Whatever you want to say about Spock’s Brain or And The Children Shall Lead, they at least had one redeeming feature — they weren’t boring. The Empath fails that test — it’s so mindnumbing that I’d rather watch Shades of Grey.
** I hope people read the bio and go contribute to Altered States Of The Union too!
But I’m probably biased.
@6/StrongDreams: “Was comfort fanfic even a thing in 1968?”
I think it wasn’t, and that’s why the producers didn’t recognise the hallmarks and bought the script.
I’ve always found Gem and her mime vibe to be incredibly creepy. That’s just one of many reasons I loathe this episode.
On top of all the reasons mentioned above, there’s also the fact that everything about it screams “We’re saving money!” Infinity set: even cheaper than a bottle show. Fan script: we can pay her minimum. Lead guest star has no lines: union scale says we can pay her less.
@22/Jana: Again, just because something is like fanfic, that doesn’t mean it’s bad. That’s the same kind of elitist BS that people used to use to dismiss all science fiction as bad, or all television. (Sturgeon’s Law was actually coined in response to an elitist comment that someone made about Theodore Sturgeon writing for Star Trek. They said they couldn’t believe he’d lower himself to write for television, because 90 percent of television was garbage. Sturgeon replied that 90 percent of everything is garbage.) Fanfic isn’t intrinsically wrong. It’s a perfectly valid response to a fictional creation, and it’s often able to be transformative and deconstructive in ways the canon or official tie-ins can’t be. And sometimes professional authors or producers start out as fanfiction authors. For instance, Melissa Good, who was acclaimed for her classy, well-written Xena slash fanfic, was actually hired as a writer on the show’s final season.
@23/DemetriosX: Saving money isn’t automatically bad. Sure, plenty of third-season episodes look cheap, but this one, like “Spectre of the Gun,” uses minimalism to its advantage. (And it didn’t stint on the music. They saved money everywhere else, but they invested in a full original score for the episode — although recording it and the “Is There in Truth No Beauty?” score on the same day may have been an economizing move.)
I was a teenager when this came out. Gem’s waif-like appearance and demeanor were just what the puppy doctor ordered. I was in love, and I still like the episode a bit because it reminds me of those days.
The thing that always annoyed me about this one is the fact that everyone seems to be caught totally off guard by the impending nova. It’s not something that happens without warning. As a matter of fact, it’s a process that occurs over geologic time. The idea that a star that supports habitable planets, and this system seems to have three of them, will sudden;y explode in a matter of days is ridiculous. It may not rank up there with giant talking carrots but it sure ain’t based on science.
That makes the whole premise absurd. The Vians have centuries to save both planets and still have time to get in some torture on the side.
The minimalist sets worked in Spectre of the Gun because of the surreal quality they brought to the town. Paintings hanging in mid air, fronts with no insides. Here, as others have said, it just screams “We have no budget for this episode”.
Interesting thought of the Vians being the Preservers but I’d hope that the Preservers were a bit more on the ball than these guys. Of course, the preservers are the guys that put a group of people on a planet that’s menaced by asteroid impacts so often that they had to construct a deflector to divert them. Maybe they are an ancient race and are just suffering from super-dementia. They know what to do but have forgotten how to do it properly.
Gem is a mixed bag for me. I like the idea of a race of mutes but some of the motions she goes through are just too broad. It’s an interesting look back at the 60’s when three men show up and just take control of the single woman, as if she’s unable ;e to take care of herself. “You stay here. My friends will take care of you. They’re men.”
Yes, the music is quite nice but to me, music is something that adds to an episode. If the episode is weak, a score by Beethoven won’t save it.
It’s a 1 with a half point for trying a couple of new things. Round it up to a 2 since I’m feeling generous today. The sort of episode that people mean when they’re talking about the third season.
@24/Christopher: I didn’t mean that it’s bad because it’s like fanfic. I meant that it’s like a lot of bad fanfic, namely the kind where the whole backstory and plot are unimportant because it’s all about the characters getting hurt and taking care of each other and being noble.
The reason why I find it funny that this actually became an episode is that I’ve done very similar stories in my head when I was thirteen, without ever having read anything of the kind, and without ever having watched this episode. I assume a lot of other kids have done the same thing. It’s archetypical fan stuff.
@26/kkozoriz: It’s a big universe. One civilization can’t automatically know everything about every star system in it. Sure, the Vians’ and the UFP’s astronomers could’ve detected the near-supernova conditions of the star centuries ago, but they might’ve only recently discovered that the star’s planets supported sapient life. And even if you can predict that a star will go supernova sometime in the next million years, it’s hard to narrow down exactly how soon it’ll happen. The terminal warning signs don’t show up until very shortly beforehand. It’s like predicting earthquakes — you can know decades in advance that a fault is on the verge of slipping, but even with the most cutting-edge predictive techniques, you may only get hours’ or minutes’ warning when the process actually begins.
Why would an “ancient race” suffer from dementia? Even an ancient civilization is still made up of much younger individuals. Every generation would still start out fresh, whether there had been only a thousand prior generations or a million. Not to mention, as I’ve said before, it makes no sense to assume an entire race would exist solely to perform a single activity. Transplanting endangered civilizations would be the work of an organization. And that organization might be fairly new even if the civilization that established it is ancient.
kkozoriz: You’re misremembering the episode. The nova didn’t catch anyone off guard. The science team had been there for quite some time (they’d been kidnapped by the Vians three months earlier, and they’d obviously been there a while before that), and the Enterprise was evacuating them because their work was done and because things were starting to get unpleasant (viz. the solar flare that kept the Big E away from the planet for a few days). But while there was a general sense of urgency, it was never at any point expressed in terms of days. Indeed, the fact that the Vians’ testing of Gem was so long-term indicates that the nova isn’t going to blow up very soon, just eventually.
There’s a lot to dislike about the episode, but that, at least, isn’t one of the reasons. :)
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
29. krad – The point is that the process would take millions of years. The idea that a star about to go nova still has habitable planets is silly enough, Actually, a nova would involve a white dwarf companion that explodes when it accumulates has from the other star. A supernova would involve the core collapse of a star much more massive than the sun.
In the case of a nove, yes, there would be a specific timetable but not very likely determined on the order of days. Establishing a base six months prior would be ludicrous. Also, in order to have a nova, the white dwarf would have had to go through a red giant stage which would have scoured clean the planets in the habitable zone if not engulfed them completely. This would most likely have happened millions of years prior, nowhere near enough time for life to arise again.
A supernova is more like what we saw (or will see in the rewatch) in All Our Yesterdays. The explosion of the main star. Either way, habitable planets would be long gone.
Kirk does say that they are there to evacuate the planet so something big has happened.
In regards to the Prime Directive, it’s interesting that the Federation doesn’t even mention saving any of the people on the other two planets. They’ve obviously surveyed the system. They must know that the planets are inhabited. But they just drop a couple of guys there to watch the fireworks. So much for the idea that the Federation should save people from natural disasters.
And why do the Vians only decide to rescue one planets inhabitants? Why not half from one and half from the other? The way it’s expressed, they’re going to save all of Gem’s people and none of the others. If the Vians have enough time to save people on one world, they have enough time to save some of the other.
“Captain’s log, stardate 5121.5, orbiting the second planet in the Minarian star system. This star has long given evidence of entering a nova phase, and six months ago, a research station was established to make close-up studies of the star as its end approaches. Minara is now entering a critical period, and the Enterprise has been ordered to evacuate the station before the planet becomes uninhabitable. Yet our attempts to contact the station’s personnel have been, so far, unsuccessful.”
“LAL: No, it will not, but it may save Gem’s planet. Of all the planets of Minara, we have the power to transport the inhabitants of only one to safety.
THANN: If Gem’s planet is the one that will be saved, we must make certain beyond any doubt whatsoever they are worthy of survival.”
None of it makes much sense.
Maybe fan fiction is an unfair term, particularly to fans who are earnest in their attempts to create stories in their favorite universe, but it does make sense when you’re talking about it in the sense of checklist pandering to fans. Hey, there’s plenty of “professionally” written material that traffics in that as well. See almost any modern blockbuster film for example. “KHAAANNN!!!”
@30/kkozoriz: The usage of the terms “nova” and “supernova” has evolved over time. “Nova” was, of course, the original term used for all sudden brightenings of stars; “supernova” was only coined in 1931 as we began to realize there were different types of “nova.” The tendency in fiction to use “nova” to mean “supernova” was still quite common in the ’60s, and even persists to this day.
@31/AyeRobot: I don’t see any reason to interpret Joyce Muskat’s script as “pandering to fans” rather than simply being an expression of her own sincere fandom and love for the characters. You’re making the common mistake of looking back at something that was still new from the perspective of someone who’s been jaded by decades of familiarity with it. It’s always a dangerous bias to project a modern point of view on a historical event. It’s important to look past your own value judgments and expectations and try to imagine how people at the time would’ve reacted. The show was still in first run. Plenty of fans were writing letters, and probably fanzines, but I doubt there was much fan fiction yet; after all, the show itself was still coming out, so there wasn’t as much of a thirst for new material. Any fanfic tropes were still in the earliest stages of being invented, and the fanfic community was still in its most nascent stage. So nobody would’ve been “pandering to fans.” That makes no sense. They would’ve just been fans, expressing their own entirely sincere appreciation for the series and characters.
I’m surprised at Keith’s reaction. I actually appreciate this episode quite a bit. At least it feels different from a lot of standard TOS fare. Slower paced, with a very inspired and melodic George Duning music score. And I quite enjoy Hays in the role of Gem. Her eyes carry a lot of scenes and the lack of dialogue feels refreshing. As far as season 3 entries go, this is better than several of the preceding episodes.
Is it original? Not really. But the minimalist setting works quite well, allowing McCoy the spotlight. My only complaint lies with the Vians, who feel like a retread of the Talosians, given the studying humans for their own purposes plot angle. Since the episode is so centered on the guest star, I can overlook Shatner’s over-the-top performance for the most part.
It should be pointed out the events of this particular episode, along with next week’s Tholian Web, were worth a rare continuity reference in the series finale.
I really would have designed the Vian make up and costumes a lot different, they look too much like Talosians.
#32 It makes no sense, indeed, because you misunderstood the meaning of my previous rambling (and sorry if I didn’t make it clearly). At no point did I specifically refer to Joyce Muskat’s script as pandering to fans at the time. I was referring to the modern usage of the term fan fiction, what it may mean to us in 2016 and not in 1968. Because these reviews are done from a modern perspective, yes? The same reason KRAD calls out the series for its sexism and other flaws that might go unnoticed in the Sixties, there’s nothing wrong with pointing out writing that comes off as uninspired to modern eyes – and likewise using modern terms to describe it. Unfair, yes, but time rarely isn’t.
32. ChristopherLBennett – I’m aware of the changing usage but the point is that in neither case would there be a habitable planet in the system, Same with All Our Yesterdays. Wouldn’t happen that way. The planet would have been seared during the expansion to a red giant if not melted entirely. In the episode though, it’s just a perfectly normal star until it explodes.
It’s just slapping a “exploding stars are called nova” label on it without actually understanding what it means. Much like Trek’s use of nebulae. “We need a place to hide the ship. How about a nebula, they’re just big space clouds, right? Yeah, that’s the ticket!”.
@34/lordm: The Talosians and Vians looked like a lot of other sci-fi aliens of the era. There were a few similar-looking big-head aliens in The Outer Limits, and in various ’50s B-movies. It was one of the easier alien makeups to create with the technologies they had at the time, and it fit the trope of super-intelligent aliens with oversized brains. And it was a forerunner of the “Gray Alien” image that first popped up in the late ’60s.
@35/AyeRobot: I don’t understand your clarification, because the word “pandering” refers to the intention of the person being described. To pander is to cater to others’ desires, particularly their base urges or passions. It originally meant to procure prostitutes, to be a pimp. So if you say that an episode is “pandering to fans,” you are directly addressing its author’s intentions, specifically accusing its author of attempting to cater to the wishes of others in a mercenary or exploitative fashion. So if you meant to discuss modern reactions, that’s very much the wrong word to use.
Forgive me, jefe, if I could follow that pretzel I would. Different wavelengths and all. But I’ll try to use gooder words in the future.
@37 – Chris: Yes, I’m aware of that, but along with the costume, and the fact that they had already did the Talosians that way in Trek, it seems like a bad choice. They could have gone for different clothes, a slightly different make-up that still conformed to that trope but wasn’t as close to the Talosians’, etc.
@39/lordm: Keep in mind, though, that at the time, the show wasn’t in syndicated reruns, and they didn’t have home video. Most people wouldn’t have seen “The Menagerie” since two years before and probably wouldn’t have had a strong memory of it. The reason older shows were often more repetitive (and so light on continuity) is because older episodes were generally not still available and so newer episodes were not competing with them or at risk of being compared with them. Indeed, some older shows actually remade episodes later in their run. TOS’s sister show Mannix did a 6th-season episode with William Shatner that was a rewrite of a first-season Mannix script by John Meredyth Lucas, featuring Charles Drake (Commodore Stocker from “The Deadly Years”). Nobody back then expected that their shows would be rewatched and analyzed in detail decades after the fact.
Anyway, I think the Vians and Talosians are very distinct, as bulbous-headed ’60s aliens go. The Talosians were designed to be androgynous, frail, and veiny-headed. The Vians’ look is more skull-like and harsh, suggesting a death’s-head more than a superbrain, and more clearly male.
Keith, thanks for the link to Lora’s Gofundme. I have her Mr. Scott’s Guide To The Enterprise and it’s still one of the best works of its kind.
@23/Demetrios I’m not sure the fact that Hays had no lines necessarily means they could pay her less. That sort of thing tends more to apply in bit parts. For instance, in season 3 of Batman, a henchman with lines would be paid $600, one without $400. But I’m sure Hays’ agent would argue that having no lines made her part harder, rather than easier.
However, according to imdb, she did a Mannix that aired in October of that same year. That also was a Paramount show, so there could have been some savings there in that it might have been a package deal for Paramount. Trek often would do package deals with the two other Paramount shows, Mannix and Mission:Impossible, according to Marc Cushman’s These Are The Voyages books.
@42/J.P. Pelzman: As a rule, you shouldn’t trust anything the Cushman books claim. They’re very shoddily researched and full of assertions that misinterpret the evidence or are pure speculation. There’s a whole blog, Star Trek Fact Check, that’s largely devoted to addressing Cushman’s claims and comparing them against the archived evidence. They generally hold up pretty poorly. Although whether this particular claim is true or not would require more research to determine.
Cushman quotes the casting director, Joe d’Agosta, as saying he often would do package deals for Paramount shows.
So then you’re saying D’Agosta is lying or misremembering?
I apologize, that should be Joe D’Agosta, with a capital D.
@44/J.P. Pelzman: I’m not saying anything about that specific piece of information. I’m just saying that it’s been documented that Cushman’s books are fraught with inaccuracies and speculations and thus they should be read with a healthy dose of skepticism as a general rule. Of course, no single source should ever be trusted absolutely without corroboration, since even the most conscientious researchers are capable of error and bias; but Cushman’s books in particular have been shown to contain an abundance of falsehoods, mistakes, and pure guesswork presented as fact. There are some genuine new revelations in them, and that’s good, but unfortunately there’s so much in them that’s wrong that it’s very hard to know what parts can be trusted.
I understand what you’re saying. But I think the piece of information I referred to can be trusted.
I know that this is a bit nit picky and pedantic, but, nitrogen narcosis and the bends are two completely different things.
Nitrogen narcosis is caused by nitrogen dissolved in the bloodstream crossing the blood-brain barrier and entering the brain tissue. It’s affects are disorientation, inebriation and disrupted thinking. The best lay description would be drunkenness. The dissolved nitrogen disrupts neurochemical pathways in a manner very similar to narcotics (hence the name).
The bends, properly known as decompression sickness, is when nitrogen dissolved in the body’s tissues comes out of solution, turning back into a gas. Shake a bottle of coke and open the seal; the explosive fizzing is the carbon dioxide coming out of solution. DCS is the same thing only not as violent since there is much much more dissolved gas in solution in the coke (and there are no soft and hard tissues). The effects are extremely painful and debilitating if not fatal. The name “the bends” comes from the pain induced pugilistic pose where the victim is doubled over in agony.
While both of these illnesses are caused by breathing gasses while under pressure, that is about their only point of commonality. NN can be alleviated almost instantly by adjusting depth (even by as little as half a metre). DCS however requires re-compressing the victim to dissolve the nitrogen again and then slowly, very slowly, decompressing. NN causes no permanent damage to tissue, DCS will.
I suppose I’m with the minority of those who kind of liked this episode. While the execution may not have been crisp, the concept of sacrifice to help others is always a favorite of mine. I liked how the episode portrayed humans (and a Vulcan) as having a knack for sacrifice in the service of others, yet the Empath just couldn’t get her head around the concept. That is the opposite of what I would have intuitively expected.
The episode was also a visual feast. I’m a huge fan of minimalism. The visuals were so good that I didn’t even notice the great soundtrack that Christopher pointed out. I had to go back and watch it again to appreciate that.
I didn’t mind the portrayal of the evil advanced aliens as sadistic monsters that some people complain about. Their torture of Kirk and McCoy didn’t ruin it for me. Same goes for their irrational decision to save the inhabitants of only one planet and put Gem through a reality-TV-inspired ordeal even for that to be possible. It was believable that a super-duper advanced race would be out of touch with common sense and decency. Their behavior comports with their cruelty and incompetence. No one’s perfect.
Some things I didn’t like. As a physician, the unethical behavior of the good doctor when he administered sedating hypos to his friends without their consent bothered me more than the torture perpetrated by the Vians. Not only does that violate the Hippocratic Oath, it’s aggravated battery. It was also out of character for McCoy, although one could argue that he redeems himself when the purpose of the incapacitation of Kirk and Spock is taken into consideration. As a scientist, I also was bothered by the shoddy representation of a nova as a plot element.
I would give this episode a 5.
@50 That is the first time I have ever seen a comment removed on a tor.com message board. It came right after my comment and as a new participant in the tor.com community, I can’t help but feel self conscious that I said something controversial to trigger whatever it was that was said that warranted removal. I’m looking for some reassurance that it wasn’t something that I did wrong. It couldn’t have been because I liked an episode that is a third season stinker by consensus!
@51/heartlanddoc: Don’t blame yourself! Sometimes comments get removed because they’re insulting, but sometimes they’re just advertising or gibberish.
Oh, and you didn’t say anything wrong anyway. And my impression is that there’s no consensus regarding this episode – some people think it’s great, others think it’s terrible.
Never had much empathy for empaths. When Start Trek went off the physics rail, I tended to not believe the story line.
As mentioned above in the long excursion into the effects of a supernova, even though I have never experience one, hearing Scotty claim that the “atmosphere of the planet” will protect the landing party seemed overly confident. I would guess instead that the atmosphere would be stripped off the planet just from the nova’s solar flares.
McCoy: I’m a doctor not a coal miner.” Then right after he says, “I’m not a mechanic.” This guy needs to diversify.
Not one of my favorite episodes, but even Star Trek
@2/DemetriosX: Per the episode’s cast sheet (found in the Bob Justman papers at UCLA), Kathryn Hays was paid $2,500 for a maximum of seven days to appear as Gem.
This was a good rate. DeForest Kelley only earned $2,000 an episode during the show’s third season. Alan Bergmann, the next highest paid guest star on “The Empath,” only took home $1,500 (for 5 days work).
That said, it wasn’t the MOST anyone ever earned as a guest star on Star Trek. Robert Lansing earned $3,000 for Assignment: Earth (which makes sense, it was a backdoor pilot and he would have been the lead in the proposed series had it gone forward). Jane Wyatt earned $3,000 for “Journey to Babel” (she was still well-known and popular from Father Knows Best). I think $3,000 is the highest any guest star was paid, but don’t quote me on that — I haven’t reviewed the cast sheets for every episode to confirm.
I’ve always been fond of this episode because of Gem. I wonder about her, who exactly is she and how did the Vians get their paws on her? Is she a random innocent member of her species kidnapped by the Vians? Is she a volunteer who went with them willingly? Does she know that the fate of her people is riding on her? One thing is certain, she has no clue what the Vians want from her which must be frightening and frustrating. Not to mention the trauma of watching aliens who befriend her suffering and dying without a clue as to why.
Oh and BTW a fragile big eyed creature like Gem would bring out the protective instincts of another woman too.
But I have never understood why Kirk, Spock and McCoy are just fine with the Vians carrying Gem off. They should have tried to find out if she was willing to go or preferred to stay with the Enterprise men
This episode is the weirdest Star Trek ever and one of the weirdest episodes of any television show ever made.
Not the worst, at all. Just weird.
This episode was frustrating in that the two Vian bone heads end up with no payback for their evil deeds, even when they sort of gave in at the end there was no sorry for killing the 2 men and dragging Kirk and McCoy through the meat grinder. It would’ve been satisfying that after the Vians save Gem’s planet the Enterprise would deliver a gift of a a couple photon torpedo’s one for each of the bone headed a-holes. Somehow the crew of the Enterprise seem to run into one bunch of c-sucker(s) after another, those hot molten boulder freaks with the snapper fingers that joins Kirk and company with Honest Abe is another one similar to this episode.
@59/R Fleenor: Kill the Vians when they were about to save Gem’s people? That would have been a bad move.
I have always had problems with this episode. If the the Feds had not put a science station on the planet to study an impending supernova (?), the Vians would not have had any humans to experiment on. How did the Vians know that Kirk, Spock and McCoy would even make good exemplars of compassion for Gem? And, if Kirk, Spock and McCoy failed in their role as exemplars of compassion, what were the Vians going to do next? Find some other putative exemplars from the Enterprise or some other space-faring race? The set-up for the episode makes no sense.
@61/Paladin: “How did the Vians know that Kirk, Spock and McCoy would even make good exemplars of compassion for Gem?”
They didn’t know — that was why they were experimenting, to try to find out. Evidently Linke and Ozaba failed the test because they didn’t have a strong enough bond.
“And, if Kirk, Spock and McCoy failed in their role as exemplars of compassion, what were the Vians going to do next?”
They might have fallen back on saving one of the other Minaran populations, since they only had the means to save one and were trying to determine which one was worthiest. Or, since they were approaching the experiment coldly and ruthlessly without the very compassion they were trying to inspire, they might have just abandoned the effort.
I quite liked Ozaba, the little we saw of him.
“The Empath” was an episode I caught very late in my evolution as a Star Trek fan, but I liked it quite a bit since the first time I saw it. Indeed, I count it as one of my favorite TOS episodes and imo, the best episode of season 3. At the time, I was fully cognizant that the 3rd season didn’t have much budget to work with. I knew exactly why they had the minimalistic techniques and I thought it was very creative. If anything, the episode largely felt like a stage play on TV.
@krad/Captain’s log:
Since there was no way to know Gem’s real name at the time, I’m not sure how giving her a name can be arguably worse than “hey you.” That is just cruel and demeaning. She is a living being and McCoy was not about to treat her as anything but. Maybe ‘Gem’ was not the best name, but I applaud McCoy’s kindness in wanting to treat her with dignity.
@4/CLB:
I agree completely. One thing I’ve always noticed about this episode is how so many of the the visuals are stylized, some to better effect than others. We have the central chatacter doing a lot of pantomiming, the contorted positions of Linke and Ozaba, the (admittedly) ridiculous-looking slow motion movement of Kirk under the effects of the Vian weapons, the visceral scene of McCoy’s torture, and when the Vians disappear with Gem and just gradually shrink off into the distance.
@CLB: And yesss, I’ve always thought that about Gem’s bed having a very similar design to the agonizor!
@30/kkozoriz:
My theory is that the Vians only had enough power to concentrate it in one place and effectively beam the entire population of one planet to safety. They couldn’t divide that power up at such great distances and beam a little of this planet and a little of that planet. That’s why they had to make a choice and why it could be only one.
@63/princessroxana:
I agree, he seemed like he was a potentially compelling character.
I’ve wondered if the Vians plan to move the entire planet? That would effectively limit them to one.
Did poor Gem have any clue what was going on? How much did she understand of what was said around her? She obviously recognized that the Enterprise men were friendly and was equally obviously terrified of the Vians.
@65 When Kirk and Spock are discussing the use of the captured Vian device, Gem casts her vote by picking up McCoy’s medikit. It’s clear that she, like most Star Trek aliens, has command of American English.
Yet the Vians talk about her in front of her like she can’t understand them.
@66/BeeGee: It could be that, as an empath, she got the gist of their argument through their emotions rather than their words. Plus you don’t have to speak a language to learn to recognize personal names.
Complete agreement with Keith on this one. My attention kept wandering away; the lack of attention was the only factor that kept this episode from feeling endless. Boring and forgettable.
My notes from rewatching this are over a year old but apparently I quite enjoyed the score, the direction with its interesting shots from behind various objects, and the minimalist set design itself. Also: Like Christopher @19, I was surprised by how “empath” was not used here in a traditional sense — but how the powers very much echoed those of the empathic Raven in Wolfman & Pérez’s New Teen Titans over a decade later.
@70/Arben: Wouldn’t it be more accurate to say Raven’s powers echoed Gem’s? Marv Wolfman was writing and editing Marvel’s Star Trek comic at around the same time he created the New Teen Titans, so there’s no doubt he was familiar with Trek.
Well, I did say “over a decade later”… I actually wrote “prefigured” instead of “echoed” first but felt like that ascribed causality when I have no evidence of such a thing. Even though I likely saw this episode once before in my single digits, Raven is my reference point after decades of reading and rereading NTT from ages 10 through 50, so for me, experientially, “The Empath” resonated with my internalization of the comics.