Captain's Blog pt. 71: The Gamesters of Triskelion

I have no hard data to back this up, but I'd wager a good amount of quatloos any recurring sci-fi series of the 20th century had an episode that resembles "The Gamesters of Triskelion."

There seemed to be something irresistible to sci-fi writers about the concept of heroes being captured and pitted against one another in gladiatorial combat while unseen flabby bits of brain sponge bet frantic amounts of imaginary currency on who would emerge victorious. Almost as much of a go-to as "captured as breeding stock." (Looking at you, Richard Blade.)

As such, the title (2) is perfectly satisfactory. That's where and who they are all right. I can easily imagine reading it on the cover of any of the Men's Adventure magazines of the pulp era. Like:

I imagine "Zenith Rand" was an ancestor or future descendant of Yeoman Rand.

Script / Theme: (4 / 6) Not the episode's strong point, really. The script is kind of dumb - there are a few nice lines here and there but I mean more its structure and overall point/ cohesion - and there's really no grand theme being explored, no "oh zing" insight into American culture that isn't applicable to any number of cultures. Unless it's secretly some bizarre S-and-M Hollywood confessional. (Which would be awesome.)

What the story does have, though, is mad re-watchability. It always brings to mind preteen sugar-spiked afternoons playing make believe in the backyard.

I'd love to see the Max Fisher Players tackle this as an adaptation.

Uhura's near-sexual-assault jumps out nowadays, of course, and rightly so.

It jumps out then, too, especially since Kirk mispronounces her name so prominently:

"What's happening to Lieutenant You-hrrra!?"

Some of the re-watches I've read go a little over-the-top on the subject, though. Verily I say unto you again and again: I come here as an anthropologist first and an archaeologist second, never a missionary. I'm as opposed to rape being used distastefully as a dramatic device to heighten tension onscreen as anyone, and I don't mean to gloss it over. I do wonder, though, if people's ability to ascertain the difference between a cheap storytelling trick (i.e. put the woman in danger) and actual danger erodes the more you focus on image and incident over substance and context. So far, the 21st century makes a strong case that it might indeed. This worries me.

Kirk and the Gang: (25) Some of Shatner's most Shatner-esque stuff in this ep.

"It's an unproductive purpose, unworthy of your intellect."

"YOU'RE KILLING HER!"

This part was originally written for Sulu, but Chekov makes out again due to the shoot for The Green Berets going long.

Spock, McCoy and Scotty get their usual B-plot of trying to figure out where the principals of the A-plot went. (And do their usual fine job at it.)

Memorability: (4.5) Any episode that has this many Kirk fight scenes, the crew writhing in imagined torture, and the iconic fight-theme music is going to be high on the memorability scale.

There's also this semi-famous bit re: Kirk's seduction technique:

Kirk's "I'm... sorry, Shahna" after the above always makes me laugh. Oh, the wearisome burden of command. Kirk is a master manipulator throughout this episode.

Interior Logistics: (2.5) Pretty solid. Well, as "solid" as this sort of thing can be. It is kind of odd that the Enterprise leaves no advisors behind to assist the newly liberated folks with their completely unfamiliar self-determination like they did in "Archons" or "Miri."

But maybe that was just a Season One thing; they don't in "Piece of the Action" or "The Apple," either. By the time they get to Season Three, they care even less.

Guest: (3)

John Ruskin plays the Warden. He has quite the Trek c.v. (from Memory-Alpha:)

I had no idea of the post-this-episode career she had. (Some of those pics NSFW.) "Mad Doctor of Blood Island" sounds promising, but it's likely terrible. Apparently she had a cameo in Repo Man, as well, but this is unconfirmed by imdb.

Jane Ross plays Chekov's drill thrall.

This nugget of info from Memory-Alpha cracked me up: "Despite rumors to the contrary, Jane Ross was not a pseudonym used by Bea Arthur, and they are not the same person." I'd neither heard nor considered that before, but now it's what I choose to believe.

Visual Design: (2.25)

Thank you for being a friend...

I'm still singing the "Golden Girls" theme in my head. You?

Your heart is true; you're a pal and a confidant...

Total Points Awarded: 49.25

Captain's Blog pt. 70: The Omega Glory

March 1st, 1968

Title: (1.5) Not one of my favorite titles, but certainly memorable. "Omega" refers to the planet (Omega IV) but it also signifies the end of the Greek alphabet, and as we know, much of what Starfleet/ the Federation is about "came from a worship of such beings." ("Who Mourns for Adonais?") I kid. But it is a word associated with endings to be sure, and adding "glory" brings to mind both the Bon Jovi song for Young Guns 2 and "Old Glory." Both of which, oddly enough, are not exactly unrelated to the goings-on here. The Comms are going down in a blaze of glory, and Old Glory will wave over their mass graves.

The episode of Gomer Pyle USMC that aired opposite it was called "The Price of Tomatoes." I almost wish I could swap that title with this one. I am serious, here - calling this episode "The Price of Tomatoes" has a Dylan-esque effect on my brain. I am puzzled by the metaphor, and my brain immediately starts buzzing to suss out the connections... visions of the US Marines invading Guatemala on behalf of the United Fruit Company, genetically modified crops protected by men with phasers, crates of tomatoes being picked by migrant workers and canned in giant factories. Cross-reference to black and white footage of men in haz-mat suits walking through cornfields with voiceover from the episode: "I'm convinced that once there was a frightening biological war that existed here. The virus still exists. Then over the years, nature built up these natural immunizing agents in the food, the water, and the soil." Omega Glory, indeed.

Rest assured, I won't try to convince you this is an episode about international trade regulation and American activity in Latin America. (I'd sure like to read that essay, though. If it had a sense of humor about itself, that is.)

Memorability: (6) Well, it has to be one of the most memorable Treks going, doesn't it? Perhaps not for the best reasons, but, unlike, say, "The Savage Curtain" - an episode equal in notoriety, perhaps - "Omega Glory" has a bit more going on under the surface.

I don't mean to beat up on "Curtain." Just that it's ultimately rather silly. I still kind of love it. Story of my life.

But yes, if anyone were to distill "TOS Insanity" into an energy drink, I imagine this episode would be one of the first ingredients on the label.

On a personal level, the scenes on the Exeter at the beginning always freaked me out as a kid and still have an eerie quality about them, years later.

Visual Design: (2) Nice use of color and shadow throughout.

This could also go under "Interior Logistics," but by the point this appears in this episode, it's a free-for-all, so hey. Cool drawing, though. This, by the way, is my threshold for being impressed with your tattoos. 

Or this dude. Otherwise (shrug)

Script/ Theme: (7 / 7) Of all TOS, this may be the episode that gives the critic the most rope with which to hang himself. In that spirit - and boldly going - quotes galore coming your way.

Daniel Bernardi wrote a book entitled Star Trek and History: Race-ing Toward a White Future wherein he reads the entire story through the academic lens of white privilege, a perspective I do not share. I don’t mean there’s no merit in this approach. It just seems a bit imperialist to me. And isn't this the very crime of which Captain Tracey is guilty in this episode?

"Interesting that the villagers know about fireboxes."

So when Bernardi writes that "the episode not only reveals an unwillingness to be critical of the hegemony of racist representations but also systematically participates in the stereotyping of Asians," I'm just not convinced there's a sound enough premise, there. Is it rational to read this episode as a white man vs. Asians thing? I mean, considering the ethnicity and political persuasion of a billion of the United States’ enemies at the time, mightn’t there be a more specific and relevant read on the Comms?

And mightn't it be a little less black-and-white? And wasn't the f**king Cultural Revolution going on in China at the time? And didn't Gene Roddenberry's old Pan Am buddy Noonian - that's where that name comes from, in case you didn't know - get disappeared in such?  

He goes on to say: "As the story progresses, the Yangs are constructed as noble savages; their cause to annihilate the Comms is established as justified. The Comms, on the other hand, are constructed as brutal and oppressive; their drive to suppress the Yangs is established as totalitarian. This more hegemonic articulation of race is made evident when Kirk and Spock realize the extent to which the Yangs and Comms parallel Earth's civilizations. In this light, the Yangs are no longer savages, but noble warriors fighting for a just and honorable cause. They want to regain the land they lost in a war with the Asiatics."
 
Again, it's not that I find this interpretation to be wrong or anything. I’d be content to leave it there if I didn’t see real-world consequences of this sort of thinking, i.e. every-and-anything can be reduced to unexamined racism on the part of the white people writing it / talking about it. I think this approach obliterates a lot of relevant details.

I’m more partial to Allan Austin’s perspective in Space and Time: Essays on Visions of History in Science Fiction and Fantasy Television: "'The Omega Glory' consciously and unconsciously reflects a number of deep American anxieties that grew out of more than two decades of the Cold War. By the mid-1960s, some Americans began to critique what they saw as mindless nationalism. This unthinking patriotism had coalesced as part of a liberal consensus grounded in confidence in the essential soundness of American society as well as the assumption of a pervasive communist threat to the U.S. and its allies."

"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." - Goethe

I think a good pulp poster for this episode would be NATIONALISM IS THE DISEASE; KIRK IS THE CURE. 

Consider all the contamination talk of the episode, the sub-plot to generate a serum, etc. All covered by the quest for eternal youth element but suggestive, in this context, of something else entirely.

"There's no serum!" Kirk erupts. "ALL OF THIS IS FOR NOTHING!!"

Austin doesn’t dismiss the racial stereotypes angle altogether but puts a different spin on it: "Instead of considering the Yangs as noble savages, they can be seen as nationalism run amok, albeit still salvageable in Roddenberry’s ever-optimistic view of the future. Many of the qualities ascribed to the Yangs mirror terms used to describe the ‘Yellow Peril’ (in U.S. history.) (These Yangs) are vicious and deceptive enemies who cannot communicate intelligently."

Interesting in this light that a renegade Starfleet Captain threw his lot in with the communists, while (as Michael Chabon notes in his excellent essay:) "all the Yangs needed was a Captain Kirk to come and add a little interpretive water to their freeze-dried document (i.e. the Constitution), and the American way of life would flourish again."

"I didn't recognize the words; you said them so badly."

I suggest that all of these perspectives are valid in their own way and that Roddenberry may be doing what he liked to do throughout TOS: give the viewer simultaneous multiple perspectives to generate discussion and reflection.

When he wasn't orchestrating cosmic sex syzygy, I mean.

That’s what I’ve got for theme. The script itself has many fine moments, particularly some of the jailhouse banter between Spock and Kirk. 

"Good, Captain. Try to reason with them."

"Their behavior is highly illogical."

Interior Logistics: (-10) I went with 7s above because intriguing as it all is, this episode makes some extraordinary leaps into absolute insanity. I don't particularly care that it does - in fact, I rather enjoy it - but whatever Venn Diagram of messages is meant to be conveyed, above, at first strains under the snowballed Parallel Earth Syndrome, then explodes.

It's certainly not the only episode to do that, but what finally does is in for me is the late-innings Super Spock Syndrome (i.e. the expansion of Mister Spock's abilities to resolve a contrived plot conflict, i.e. Tracey's and Kirk's mano-a-mano.) 

Depending on which of the interpretive approaches you prefer, you could read this sequence as implying the Yangs (we have met the enemy, and it is u.s.) are easily mind-controlled. 

Not to mention their convenient supersitition of a pointy-eared devil. Though perhaps it's that nationalism needs a boogeyman? 

Oh God. I give up.

Kirk and the Gang: (25) If you're organizing your Trek collection along the Shatner Principle, then this is a must-have.

But Bones gets some fine moments, as well. This screencap doesn't do the sequence justice, but when he thinks his guard is sleeping and reaches for the knife only to pretend he was reaching for this drink all along is great. I like his flirting with the lady who brings him the food, as well, and the guard's reaction.

Guests: (2.5)

Morgan Woodward as Captain Tracey. Last seen as "My name is... UKK!" in "Dagger of the Mind."

His line delivery is effective. At times crazed ("We killed thousands and they still came...") and at times he sounds completely sane/ justified. He goes for broke at the end and flips the crap out. But I think this gets lost in the general craziness of the last twenty minutes

Roy Jenson plays Cloud William.

Interesting, too, that Roddenberry gave the "Yankee" an American Indian designation.

Johnny Geronimo - has that name ever been taken? If not, I call dibs.

Irene Kelly plays Sirah.

Taking a page out of Zarabeth's fashion magazine, I see. (Though both were likely "cut from the same cloth" as One Million Years BC.)

Oh, all right.

Lloyd Kino plays Wu. 

If I ever travel back in time and join the French Resistance, "I have seen 42 years of the Red Bird" will be the code-response that gets you through the door.

Not sure if it's a truly great episode, per se, but an important one and definitely one for my desert island scenario. It's also the sort of metaphorical roller coaster that is desperately needed on the small screen today.

Total Points Awarded: 41