On one hand I feel bad about always doing the Killdozer joke. Sturgeon was so much more than that. On the other, I just can't help myself. When the roll call of great titles is taken, Killdozer will be in the top 5.
Script / Story: (8 / 8) The Enterprise approaches a planet in the Omicron Delta system that may be suitable for badly needed shore leave. The Captain in particular is off his game. In these two screencaps below, he for some reason mistakes Yeoman Barrows for Spock.
Spock seems confused by this, too.
Is it standard procedure for the first officer to knead out the knots in the Captain's back?
What first seems ideal quickly turns deadly.
The fantasy-planet idea is great. Very iconic. Not unique to this episode, of course, but Sturgeon knew what he was doing. A planet controlled by a sophisticated computer designed by aliens-unknown to externalize the images, fears and fantasies from the minds of those who walk upon it makes not just for fun TV/ fun Trek but also a funhouse mirror for 60s-America to ponder itself, primarily its sexual mores.
Kirk daydreams of getting even with the upperclassman who bullied him,
while Sulu...well.
This was one of my favorites as a kid. Then, whether from watching it too much or changing tastes I don't know, from around 1995 to 2009 I cooled on it substantially. But I've come back around to loving it in recent years. It's structured like a Shakespearean comedy, where every Jack gets his Jane, everyone ends up where they should be, and the social order is temporarily scrambled, then put back together.
While Kirk walks off into the sunset with Ruth,
it's Bones' interrupted romantic interlude with Tonia Barrows that takes center stage. Rare that McCoy gets to upstage Kirk in this department. (The Captain is busy grappling with Finnegan, so his passions are divided.)
The Bones/Barrows arc, however, is a bit of a nightmare as romantic interludes go, which has the added effect of making the story resemble some sort of swinging 60s couples therapy. Very revealing. The planet externalizes their neuroses, which allows them to explore their feelings and romantic arrangement in new ways, which immediately include rape fantasies, wife-swapping, and screamtherapy. All things very much associated with the psychological chic of the 60s, couples therapy or otherwise.
Barrows barely escapes a sexual assault before her and McCoy's big date.
She is terrorized from that point on, up to and including seeing Bones killed in front of her.
But surprise! Bones returns from the underworld with some new ideas on how to enliven their relationship.
(Shakespeare Space Sex Comedy)
Barrows ain't buying it.
Before any permanent damage is done, the controller appears and tells them all was a dream. Session over. Use these techniques at home.
Interesting composition. Spock looks directly at Kirk, while Kirk, knowing he's being looked at, plays it cool, looking straight ahead, while all others gaze at Spock betraying their own post-coital states. "Couples Weekend Seminar" is over, wink-wink.
This extends to Esteban and (Angela) Martine, as well, whom you may recall was the widowed-at-the-altar lady from "Balance of Terror" which aired the week before this one. She flirts with him, he ignores her, apparently starts lecturing her on funny old flying machines (!), at which point they are strafed from above.
Esteban tries to do the action-movie guy thing and drag her along with him while they run.
But he's not so good at it.
No matter, though. She'll always love him. Spock's blocking this shot of their reunion, alas, best I could do.
All told, it's a multi-layered exploration of relationship dynamics.
One thing that struck me about the end this time around: no distinction is made between "real" hook-ups (Bones and Barrows, Martine and Esteban) and imaginary or replicated ones (Kirk and Ruth.) In the world of tomorrow, with its sexual menagerie of aliens, robots, fantasies, and holograms, are people more pansexual? This may have been less prominent in Sturgeon's original draft. I sense the hand of Roddenberry here. Though maybe not: Sturgeon was married three times with two other long-term relationships and fathered seven children. Probably no stranger to pondering the couples dynamics of the era, particularly among writers of science-fiction. Title: (2)
Kirk and the Gang: (33) Extra points for Bones. It's one of his stronger performances in the series, probably because he gets so many different things to do. First contact with the weirdness of the planet, death, resurrection, and the romantic lead, something he does surprisingly well. He always seemed to me too old to be romancing this girl (or perhaps the other way around) but such is life. Particularly fantasyland.
Unfortunately, I was unable to get a proper screencap of Bones yelling for Sulu after seeing Alice and the White Rabbit. For a split second, he cocks his head back and bellows, beagle-like, "Su-luuu!"
At this point in the series, Sulu has two firmly established hobbies: botany and 20th century firearms. Luckily for the show, since familiarity with both comes in handy so often.
Kirk's running around and his fight scenes with Finnegan are pretty epic.
This above isn't it, but keep an eye/ ear out for the scene where Kirk runs away from Finnegan the first time, after hearing the gunshots. It's such an oddly-paced run but timed so perfectly to the long tracking shot. Screencaps don't give it justice. But it must have been fun. And it showcases Shatner's uncanny syzygy with the camera during this phase of his career.
Internal Logistics: (2) I'm unsure why no one mentions the possibility of using the shuttlecraft after Spock tells them the transporters aren't working. It'd already been introduced in the series.
I'd be remiss not to point out that the policeman's special that Sulu finds holds only 6 rounds, but 7 shots are fired in all. It's possible (and probably reasonable to assume) the gun is magically animated, as everything else is, so who's to say it doesn't just reload automatically?
Visual Design: (2.5) Great use of location shooting, and many memorable images.
Guess it was Sulu who was thinking of the plane, too, eh? (i.e. the close-up is a Japanese zero fighter.)
Not a Zero.
Guest: (3.75) First and foremost, we have Emily Banks as Yeoman Tonia Barrows:
You may recognize her from Bewitched, as well.
Or Knight Rider.
While casting about for info on here, I came across this site about the Miss Rheingold tradition. I misread that as "Das Rheingold" originally, something quite, quite different. Fascinating - I had no idea.
Maybe it's not "fascinating," okay, but I love retro Americana.
Bruce Mars plays Finnegan:
Good to know that the future is not bereft of Lucky Charms-esque pranksters.
A friend and I used to fall out of our chairs imagining an extended sequence of the "my back... ye've broken it" bit:
In our version, Finnegan would do the fake-out, as he does here, then Kirk would, fooling Finnegan, whereupon Finnegan would, again, then Kirk, and so on. This would go on for 20 minutes or so. We were in 8th grade at the time; this was the funniest thing we could possibly imagine.
Seth MacFarlane got rich from doing the same joke, ad infinitum, on a weekly basis. Further proof that I'm an idiot.
Speaking of idiocy, when Kirk believes Finnegan may indeed be injured, for some reason he grabs his foot - I guess to see if he can move his foot? Though he's clearly moving it? - and says "Can you feel that?" First Aid is not Kirk's strong suit. But, we know this:
Ruth's musical cue is played about 85,000 times in this episode. But it's such an indelible part of the experience for me I can't imagine it / wouldn't have it any other way. The musical cues all around are lots of fun in this episode, particularly the wind chimes audio and the bits associated with the tiger and the samurai. (Don Juan, that whimsical rapist, even gets one.)
"Star Trek works best when it tackles an issue of conscience over the parameters of plot." - Walter Koenig, Warped Factors.
I agree with his overall point, but my favorite Treks are the ones that combine both in a compelling way. Add in some good character dynamics, and this brings us tidily to today's installment:
Title: (2)
This article was recently brought to my attention. This jumped out at me:
"After Trek was on the air, the producers used the network's concerns
about sexuality to their advantage — they would deliberately put sexy
stuff into episodes for the network to freak out about, so the censors
wouldn't notice other things. For example, in the episode "A Private
Little War" * the producers deliberately put in a scene of Kirk having an
open-mouth kiss with a half-naked woman, so the network could throw a
fit about that — and not notice the blatant Vietnam allegory."
If this is true, I can only imagine what depravity was taken out of "Armageddon," because what made it to TV screens on February 23, 1967 is basically a molotov cocktail through the window of your local draft registration center.
It's difficult to conceive of a time when it was a bridge too far to show an interracial kiss, but an episode that blatantly states that the moral, logical imperative is to resist the draft by any means necessary - up to and including violently overturning an entire way of life - was okay. Reminds me of something from Jerry Rubin's acid-drenched 60s memoir Do It! During one anti-war march, he wore a t-shirt with the North Vietnamese flag on it. He was marching with Abbie Hoffman, who wore a t-shirt with the American flag on it. Hoffman was arrested; Rubin was not.
* Speaking of "A Private Little War," it's hard to square the sentiments expressed in that episode with the perspective on display here. But as that one is still to come down the pike, I'll cover it when we get there.
Script and Story: (8.5 / 9)
"I didn't start it, Councilman. But I'm liable to finish it. "
- Kirk's answer to Billy Joel
Some variation of "Old men send young men to fight their wars" has likely been invoked since the first group of hairless apes started stockpiling rocks to hurl at their neighbors. One interesting aspect of "Armageddon" is how it neutralizes this sentiment somewhat.
The old men might still be in charge,
but no one is marching off to war on Eminiar 7 or Vendikar. They're marching into disintegration chambers, sure, but the leaders share the risk equally with the led. When Vendikar's computers launch an attack on Eminiar 7's computers, the names of the Division of Control and the names of their loved ones stand just as much chance of being on the roll call of the damned.
If war is inevitable, as is said several times in this episode, then this is certainly a superior model to the 20th century's. Which makes Kirk's dismantling of it so interesting. It's easy to understand where he's coming from. Given the principles the Federation stands for and the culture which has reared him, he can present the choice of Peace or Destruction to Anan 7 with a more or less straight face.
But to audiences of the 60s Kirk's insurrection must have been an interesting abstraction. Of course, as with "Archons," "The Apple" or any Nice culture... I'll smash it! episode his motivation is clear: save his ship. Who can fault him for that? Everything else (i.e. the I'm a barbarian stuff, we're killers but we don't have to kill... to-day! etc.) is of secondary concern, more for the viewer's consideration. (Ditto for the aforementioned other episodes.)
Where I'm going with this is that contrary to many of the Captain's statements, the episode is less an indictment of war itself but of the brainwashing and cultural mythmaking necessary to maintain a self-defeating war mindset over many generations.
"My people have a high sense of duty."
It's unclear whether Anan 7 alone has the gift of mimicry or if that's a characteristic of the whole race. (Eminiarians? I don't think they ever refer to themselves in the plural in the script.) Nevertheless, the point is (hopefully) clear: deliberate deception is necessary for the Division of Control. (Especially timely, this week in 2013.)
Visual Design: (2) Memorable costumes. Not the best set of the series, but I love the huge computers with the Missile Command-esque graphics.
According to David Gerrold,
the computer tally of war dead was a visual nod to the
Vietnam War deaths that began to be registered on nightly newscasts in
1967.
If I owned an office building, this would be the mural in the lobby.
Kirk and the Gang: (28)
The young lady back and to the right of Kirk is Yeoman Tamura, played by Miko Mayama. More on her in "Guest."
As a lieutenant in the Royal Canadian Artillery, James Doohan was threatened with court martial for real for saying "No sir, I will not," to a visiting colonel when he realized a training exercise order would entail blowing the heads off some of his own men. - Memory-Alpha.
"The haggis is in the fire for sure." - Montgomery Scott
Guest: (3.75)
STAR TREK CONFESSIONS: I spent a significant portion of my childhood thinking this guy (David Opatoshu) was a young Gene Hackman.
Barbara Babcock's (Mea 3; incidentally, I love that everyone on Eminiar 7 has numerical designations) first on-screen appearance in TOS.
Yeoman Tamura doesn't get a whole lot to do except stand around, but she gets a significant amount of screen-time throughout.
She briefly dated Burt Reynolds. (Shown here in Impasse.)
And starred in The Hawaiians, which is the better of the two adaptations (and annoyingly difficult to find) of James Michener's Hawaii.
Gene Lyons plays that popinjay Fox, and very well. I like that he gets a moment of redemption and a story arc that extends beyond the end of the episode.
Interior Logistics: (2.25) Spock's through-the-wall mind-meld was a fair enough evolution of the concept, if a bit convenient.
Dooooo-doo-de-dooooo, dooo-doo-de-doooo 
