{"id":4825,"date":"2017-04-11T17:48:47","date_gmt":"2017-04-12T00:48:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/?p=4825"},"modified":"2020-10-18T11:46:36","modified_gmt":"2020-10-18T18:46:36","slug":"both-proud-of-our-ships-tos-the-corbomite-maneuver","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/2017\/04\/11\/both-proud-of-our-ships-tos-the-corbomite-maneuver\/","title":{"rendered":"Both Proud of Our Ships: TOS &#8220;The Corbomite Maneuver&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Enterprise encounters an enormous alien vessel that blocks its path and threatens its destruction.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net\/memoryalpha\/images\/d\/d1\/Enterprise_towards_Fesarius.jpg\/revision\/latest\/scale-to-width-down\/180?cb=20110329163635&amp;path-prefix=en\" width=\"580\" height=\"435\" \/><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Now watching the episodes in production order; this one is production order #2, after \u201cWhere No Man Has Gone Before\u201d; this was the first episode to feature DeForrest Kelley as Dr. McCoy, Nichelle Nichols as Uhura (wearing a tan uniform, though), and Grace Lee Whitney as Yeoman Rand. (And I have to say, in this and other early episodes, I\u2019m impressed by the subtlety and complexity of Kelley\u2019s characterization of McCoy. He was the equal of Shatner and Nimoy, even though he wasn&#8217;t given nearly as much to do.)<\/li>\n<li>Along with \u201cThe Naked Time\u201d, this has always been one of my favorite episodes, in part because it shows so much relatively routine interaction aboard the Enterprise; it details how things play out in a crisis, in ways elided in most later episodes.<\/li>\n<li>Example of this: how systematically Kirk orders various changes to the ship\u2019s speed \u2013 quarter speed, half speed, warp one, etc. \u2013 and thereby establishing the relationship between sub-light speeds and the warp speeds.<\/li>\n<li>At the beginning of the episode the Enterprise is \u201cstar mapping\u201d, a legitimate if rather routine task for such a big ship. Wouldn\u2019t a smaller ship do just as well? Or automated probe? Also, with the stars, as usual, passing by the viewscreen pretty quickly, you wonder how it works when they time a star mapping shot to a particular moment. Aren\u2019t they \u2018filming\u2019 or taking stills continuously? Bit of failure of imagination here, I\u2019ve always thought.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Trek effects<\/strong>: the turbo-lifts are famous people moving devices, and the impression of the lifts moving quickly is illustrated entirely by the moving bars of light that presumably represent floors, or decks. But in almost every scene inside a turbolift, we see way too many of those moving bars than can be plausible, considering the number of decks imagined in the Enterprise \u2013 even before detailed schematics were developed after the show ended.<\/li>\n<li>Bailey is a loose cannon, clearly unstable from the beginning, and I\u2019m surprised how long he lasts. At first encounter with the alien ship, he says \u201cI vote we blast it\u201d and Kirk replies sardonically about the bridge not being a democracy. More to the point, this shoot-first and ask questions later attitude is typical of crude media science fiction, and one arc of this episode is how this attitude can be overcome \u2013 Kirk\u2019s diplomacy and earnest appeals, trumping Bailey\u2019s panic &#8212; into one of understand and mutual comprehension. [Conservative fear vs. humanistic acceptance, I am inclined to think.]<\/li>\n<li>It\u2019s fascinating in two or three scenes to see Kirk, not so concerned about the apparent danger from the alien ship, as he is curious about Bailey\u2019s behavior, as Kirk eyes him.<\/li>\n<li>At the end of Act 1, this is the first time we see the Enterprise fire its phasers. In typical Trek FX, the resulting explosion knocks everyone around aboard the Enterprise, and we see shots of crewmen in a corridor being tossed over to one side, and then the other.<\/li>\n<li>In Act 2, more routine yet personal discussions, as McCoy counsels Kirk as they have a drink in Kirk\u2019s quarters.<\/li>\n<li>Yeoman Rand is introduced as bringing Kirk\u2019s lunch, a \u201cdietary salad\u201d at McCoy\u2019s direction. It was years after I first saw Trek before I understood that, in real life, a \u201cyeoman\u201d is not necessarily a woman. Kirk makes a remark here about how it\u2019s irritating that he was assigned a female yeoman, but as the series went on, *all* the yeomen were female.<\/li>\n<li>One of the great <strong>Trek FX<\/strong> shots is when the second ship, the Fesarius, approaches, appearing first as a small dot growing larger as it comes nearer\u2026 and keeps coming, until we realize that compared to the Enterprise, it\u2019s *enormous*. <strong>A terrific sense of wonder moment.<\/strong> (Let me see if I can link to this image from the Memory Alpha page <a href=\"http:\/\/memory-alpha.wikia.com\/wiki\/The_Corbomite_Maneuver_(episode)\">for this episode<\/a> &#8212; though this isn&#8217;t as big in this shot as it gets.)<\/li>\n<li>This episode has two great, memorable musical cues: the first, energetic and a bit frantic, when the initial cubical buoy is first seen; the second, a 2 by 4 note ominous theme, when the huge Fesarius appears. Music by Fred Steiner; I think the second theme may have been reused in later episodes, though I don\u2019t think the first one was. [Later edit: it was]<\/li>\n<li>The enhanced graphics versions of the Enterprise, from various interesting angles, and the Fesarius, are terrific; though I appreciate how the original cubical buoy was left deliberately fuzzy and multicolored, growing more and more fuzzy as it spun faster.<\/li>\n<li>Interesting though uncharacteristic compared to later episodes, are how Kirk, several times, makes general announcements to the ship\u2019s crew reminding them of the Enterprise\u2019s noble mission, how misunderstands can be overcome, and so on. They serve of course also to inform viewers of what this show is about, as distinct from most movies and TV SF before it. And we never saw any such similar announcements in later episodes, as the series went on.<\/li>\n<li>Balok, the voice from Fesarius \u2013 seen as a weird white bald head, through a fishy lens effect \u2013 informs the Enterprise that it will be destroyed. And it says, \u201c<strong>We make assumption you have a deity, or deities<\/strong>, or some such beliefs which comfort you.\u201d And so it gives them 10 minutes to prepare. This line represents a <strong>key theme<\/strong> throughout most of Trek, where time and time again we saw stories about how ideas of gods were obsolete, or how entities once thought to be gods were actually aliens, or computers, etc. (Though at least once there was dialogue in a later episode that implied an assumed monotheistic belief, as well.)<\/li>\n<li>Kirk\u2019s appeals to reason, to explain why the Enterprise is there, why they destroyed the buoy, and so on, grow frantic. \u201cIf you\u2019ve examined our records\u2026 you know this to be true!!\u201d<\/li>\n<li>It\u2019s nice how the Bailey\/McCoy\/Kirk character arc dovetails with Spock\u2019s reference to chess, to inspire Kirk to another game, poker, which inspires the episode\u2019s central conceit \u2013 the claim to Balok that the Enterprise is equipped with a special substance, corbomite, that reverses any attack on the ship to destroy the attacker. OTOH, his tone as he makes this claim (\u201cWe grow annoyed at your foolishness\u201d) is so different from his earlier appeals, that anyone sensitive to human speech might immediately suspect some dishonesty.<\/li>\n<li>Right after this there are a couple lines between Spock and Scott about Spock\u2019s father and his human mother. One senses the insertion of these lines (likely by Roddenberry) to establish this key aspect of Spock\u2019s character early on.<\/li>\n<li>In Act 4 we see, again, a much more detailed rendition of an extreme ship event, in this case straining the engines, increasingly for several minutes, in an attempt to break the tractor beam hold from the alien ship towing them to their doom. Spock recites dangerous engine temperatures; everyone on the bridge shakes slightly, then moreso, as the ship vibrates dangerously; in the corridors, those crewmen fall over.<\/li>\n<li>And so the threatening alien situation is redeemed: the Enterprise returns to assist the now disabled alien vessel that was towing it. The boarding party discovers that the weird white alien head was just a prop; the real Balok is a short little boyish creature. On the one hand, points here for supposing that the inside of an alien ship would not have the same dimensions as the Enterprise \u2013 the three who beam over and told to bend over, for the low ceiling at their destination, <strong>a consideration that I don\u2019t think ever happened again in the entire series<\/strong>. On the other hand, the alien commander *assumes* that the humans would not have been frightened by his real form, thus the weird puppet prop \u2013 but surely it assumes too much to imagine what an alien race would be frightened, or comforted, by.<\/li>\n<li>And while it\u2019s striking to be told that this small Balok is in charge, without additional crew, of the whole Fesarius \u2018complex\u2019, we get no clue as to the purpose of such an enormous complex; or why Balok is suddenly so eager to recruit a companion for his travels. There\u2019s a lot of unexplained backstory here \u2013 how big is his First Federation? When will they meet up again? And so on and on.<\/li>\n<li>Yet the ultimate payoff is the comity between Balok and the Enterprise crew, representing the successful testing of unknown intentions and the defeat of xenophobic thinking, to the point where Balok offers to give them a tour of his ship. Last line: \u201cYes we\u2019re very much alike, captain. <strong>Both proud of our ships.<\/strong>&#8220;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The Blish\/Lawrence adaptation, in ST12:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>This very late adaptation is literal to the point of absurdity; we get words about characters crossing the room, or how the turbo lift comes to a stop and starts moving horizontally, p106.<\/li>\n<li>And questionable wording, as in the first line: \u201cSpock was making a map of the galaxy\u2019s planet [sic] systems.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>And p110, \u201cin the bridge\u201d.<\/li>\n<li>And in places there are a few extra lines, as if lines from the script were omitted during filming or edited out later:\n<ul>\n<li>Sulu warns Bailey about both Spock and Kirk<\/li>\n<li>An explanation of what flypaper was (a reasonable thing to explain, in the 23<sup>rd<\/sup> century, perhaps)<\/li>\n<li>Sulu says \u201cthis is for real\u201d rather than, as broadcast, \u201cthis is not a drill\u201d.<\/li>\n<li>Near the end, Scott says \u201cOn your hunkers\u201d rather than \u201cBend low\u201d.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Most oddly, there are several passages that read as if the adapter is describing what was seen on TV, not what the characters were seeing, e.g. p117, referring to the bridge screen, \u201cIn the lower quadrant of its frame, the immense <em>Enterprise<\/em> hung motionless, and in the distance, the other ship (for it was a ship) was still small but was continuously growing.\u201d And a similar passage later as Balok\u2019s small ship tows the Enterprise. Just after that, the adaption has Kirk say to the bridge crew what he said, in the broadcast, as a captain\u2019s log.<\/li>\n<li>A striking scene not broadcast comes after Sulu utters the line, \u201cI knew he would\u201d [a continuity error; Sulu was responding to a line of Balok\u2019s that wasn\u2019t actually recorded], in which Kirk comments about Sulu not being \u201ca very inscrutable Oriental\u201d and Sulu responding\u2014for half a page\u2014about his watching movies from the time of the \u201cSino-Western trouble\u201d in which the villains were Oriental and how Sulu was unable to mimic them. Cut from the script or cut for time in editing? And was that really appropriate banter during the last 60 seconds of a countdown that might have ended in the destruction of the Enterprise?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Enterprise encounters an enormous alien vessel that blocks its path and threatens its destruction. Now watching the episodes in production order; this one is production order #2, after \u201cWhere No Man Has Gone Before\u201d; this was the first episode &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/2017\/04\/11\/both-proud-of-our-ships-tos-the-corbomite-maneuver\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4825","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-star-trek"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4825","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4825"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4825\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7215,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4825\/revisions\/7215"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4825"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4825"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}