![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/annihilate.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n- \n
- The last episode of the 1st<\/sup> season, both in production order and airing order.<\/li>\n
- This is a somewhat grim episode<\/strong>; it has a solid SFnal premise, and it benefits from location filming in an urban setting, but its resolution involves a huge, unforgivable scientific blunder.<\/strong><\/li>\n
- We begin as the Enterprise approaches the planet Deneva — note the planet itself has a name<\/strong>, instead of being referred to via its star, as designations like Beta V or Omicron City III — which has gone radio silent. Spock provides relevant background: how a pattern of planets has suffered mass insanity over the past few hundred years, with Deneva, a human colony world, being apparently next in line.\n
- \n
- Spock illustrates this by pointing to a \u2018star map\u2019 of sorts on the screen above his station. It\u2019s very crude; a photo of several clusters of stars, each slightly differently colored, which Spock points to, one by one, as being different planets.<\/li>\n
- It’s curious how this pattern goes back *hundreds* of years; is this within the awareness of the Federation or Starfleet? Or are some of these from archaeological records?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n
- The episode has a personal angle<\/strong> in that, as McCoy recalls and Kirk confirms, Kirk\u2019s brother Sam and his family are stationed on this planet. This kind of personal angle was used perhaps a bit too frequently in Trek; it’s a useful device for writers to heighten the stakes of whatever drama or threat that ensues, but used too often it becomes improbably coincidental.<\/li>\n
- The opening teaser ends with a dramatic scene involving a Denevan ship flying directly into the sun<\/strong> \u2013 with its pilot crying out, \u201cI\u2019m finally free of it!\u201d just before his ship incinerates. (In the enhanced graphics of the remastered episode, we see a tiny image of the ship, which I don\u2019t think was there in the original.)<\/li>\n
- Trek physics:<\/strong> As the Enterprise, trying to rescue the Denevan ship, approaches its sun, Spock advises that the \u201cgravimetric pull is increasing\u201d and then when they pull away, that gravimetric pull is \u201capproaching tolerance level.\u201d Trek writers and producers never took physics 101.<\/strong>\n
- \n
- (To spell it out: there\u2019s no such thing as \u201cgravimetric pull\u201d from being close to the sun that would tug at the ship, as Spock seems to imply; there is only the effect of the sun\u2019s gravity on the Enterprise\u2019s path through space near it. No one aboard would feel increased \u2018pull,\u2019 nor would the ship experience any kind of \u2018gravimetric\u2019 strain.)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n
- Kirk\u2019s log at the beginning of Act 1 mentions that the planet Deneva is \u201cone of the most beautiful in the galaxy,\u201d a claim which ties to the production filming on location<\/strong>, at the TRW site in Redondo Beach, a campus facility with modern buildings surrounding grassy plots and ponds. More about that in a moment.<\/li>\n
- Kirk has Uhura try a private transmitter channel, and gets snippy when contact is broken. That personal angle.<\/li>\n
- Kirk and his landing party beam down, into the center of that TRW office park. (See image above.) What I didn\u2019t realize until seeing the episode in high-definition Blu-ray (and seeing it for the first time in 30 years or so), is that those futuristic sculptures<\/strong>, the red spiral and the white teardrop shapes, are actually small structures<\/strong> *on top of a roof* in the immediate foreground. They are not on the ground, and scaled to the size of the buildings we see in the background, as I’d always thought. It seems obvious now, but on ’60s TV my impression was this was a beautiful city with huge sculptures the rivaled the surrounding buildings.<\/li>\n
- There\u2019s a moment when Kirk points to a building and says that\u2019s where his brother\u2019s lab is. There\u2019s a short establishing shot of the building \u2013 and it\u2019s not at the TRW office park, it’s the Knudsen Hall of Physics at UCLA<\/strong>, which I recognized when watching this episode ever since I attended UCLA in the \u201870s (and took many physics classes in that building). Here\u2019s an image: http:\/\/www.publicartinla.com\/UCLAArt\/knudsen1.jpeg<\/a>. You can recognize the building by the panels of tiles along the top between the columns.<\/li>\n
- They walk around the seemingly empty area, until attacked by four men with clubs, and subdue them. They hear a woman scream, and follow the sound, into a building, where they find (coincidence!)<\/strong> Aurelan, Kirk\u2019s brother\u2019s wife, screaming about the invaders, as Kirk\u2019s brother lies dead on the floor, and his nephew Peter lies still barely alive. It\u2019s a heart-rending scene<\/strong>, as Shatner expresses Kirk\u2019s grief, yet determination to duty, effectively. Shatner really was, in those days, a terrific actor.<\/li>\n
- Aurelan is subdued and is beamed up, along with Peter, to the ship, where in sickbay she provides background:<\/strong> the creatures appeared 8 months ago, carried by a vessel from another planet, Ingraham B (the same Spock identified earlier as last before Deneva), by taking over the vessel; not their [the crew’s] fault<\/strong>, she says; the creatures control them through pain. And then she herself gives up to pain, and dies.\n
- \n
- There\u2019s a striking angle<\/strong> here: the creatures were an *invasive species*<\/strong> brought by a ship from one environment [planet] to another. The same thing has been happening on Earth, over the past few centuries \u2013 the past century especially, with air travel \u2013 and the effects have been almost equally disastrous, on smaller scales. See Elizabeth Kolbert.<\/strong> (my review: https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/2015\/06\/30\/elizabeth-kolbert-the-sixth-extinction\/”<\/a>)
\n<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n- Kirk returns to the landing party, as it tries to locate the invaders. We see an interior room, with a short flight of steps down into an anteroom, as they follow a buzzing sound. Pull back and we see the creatures: flat, pancake-sized white globs, pulsing, adhering to a ceiling in the foreground.<\/strong> One of them flies into the air and hits Spock flat on the back, and he collapses in anguish.<\/li>\n
- Act II: Back in sickbay, McCoy and Chapel operate on Spock<\/strong>, lying back-up, until McCoy gives up, to Nurse Chapel’s distress. He takes a specimen to the bridge to explain to Kirk: the creature implanted a stinger, like a wasp or bee, that grew tentacles entwined throughout the body, impossible to remove by conventional surgery.<\/li>\n
- Spock loses control, breaks out of sickbay, makes his way to the bridge, and tries to \u201ctake the ship down\u201d by overpowering Sulu, until Kirk and the others overpower him, and return him to sickbay.<\/li>\n
- Where Spock,<\/strong> being a Vulcan with (as always) superior physical and mental abilities than humans, learns to control his pain<\/strong>, and insists he\u2019s able to return to duty. Kirk hesitates. Spock prevails; he makes his way to the transporter room, insisting on beaming down, and convinces Kirk and McCoy that a specimen must be captured and he\u2019s the only man for the job.<\/li>\n
- Spock returns to the surface. There\u2019s a lame act break<\/strong> as a local threatens Spock with a club, until after the commercial, when Spock subdues and pinches him. He gets a specimen.<\/li>\n
- Back on the ship, we\u2019re in a new set, a new medical lab (perhaps the decompression chamber from \u201cSpace Seed\u201d is off the left side?), with a containment device into which Spock has placed the specimen. He explains that it\u2019s like a single brain cell<\/strong>, one that connects with all the others. Kirk says, \u201clike something from a different galaxy\u201d; Spock replies, \u201cor from a place where our physical laws do not apply.\u201d Ecch. Both comments are unjustified or nonsensical.<\/strong>\n
- \n
- To spell it out: First, there\u2019s no reason something unlike anything ever seen before need be from another galaxy; it might as well be from the next planet. (Somehow \u2018galaxy\u2019 just seems more intense, I guess.) The second comment is a cop-out, since there\u2019s no reason to expect that any such place exists, and every reason to think such a place is logically impossible. Unless we\u2019re talking alternate branches of the multiverse, perhaps, a concept ahead of Trek\u2019s time.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n
- In any event, several scenes go by as McCoy tries to find ways to kill it, unsuccessfully<\/strong>. He gets exasperated. \u201cI\u2019m sorry, Captain. I\u2019ve tried everything I can. Varying radiation, intense heat\u2026\u201d Effects which would kill the human hosts, anyway.<\/li>\n
- Kirk realizes if they can\u2019t find a way to kill this infection, he\u2019ll have to wipe out the million people on the planet<\/strong>, lest it spread to yet another planet.<\/li>\n
- And so they brainstorm\u2014what else was there about the sun, that the Denevan who flew his ship into it seemed to become freed? Maybe\u2026light?!<\/strong> So McCoy rigs up a chamber to pour \u201ca million candles per square inch\u201d of light on\u2026Spock, who\u2019s the only logical test candidate. Spock enters the chamber.<\/li>\n
- McCoy hesitates\u2014they realize what this will do to Spock, right? He tells Kirk, \u201cMr. Spock\u2019s the best first officer in the fleet.\u201d Kirk tells him to proceed.<\/li>\n
- The test is successful. Spock emerges from the chamber, free of the creature. But he is also… Blind. Stumbling into a table.<\/strong><\/li>\n
- Now, this is inexcusable <\/strong>since, boys and girls, light *is* a kind of radiation.<\/strong> If McCoy tested all types of radiation, he would have tested all types of light. Worse, as the screenplay acknowledges moments later, as Nurse Chapel walks in with \u201cresults of the first test on the creatures,\u201d visible light is only a very narrow band of the electromagnetic spectrum. The story here ratchets up the tragedy<\/strong> of Spock going blind by having McCoy realize that he didn\u2019t have to throw the \u201ctotal spectrum of light\u201d at Spock. As we learn a bit later, only UV light is needed to kill the creatures.<\/li>\n
- Kirk stares daggers of hatred at McCoy for this blunder.<\/strong> It is McCoy\u2019s fault, but it\u2019s really the scriptwriters’ fault<\/strong>, for making such a boneheaded mistake<\/strong>. McCoy had already tried \u201cradiation,\u201d but apparently the scriptwriters didn\u2019t realize that radiation would have included, oh, say, UV light. This is the kind of mistake a bright high-schooler<\/strong> would have caught, had he read the script before filming. (I made a similar comment about the boneheaded scientific mistake in Danny Boyle’s 2007 film Sunshine.)<\/strong><\/em><\/li>\n
- And so the Enterprise, very quickly!, deploys 210 UV satellites<\/strong> in orbit about the planet, to project the light that will disinfect the million inhabitants there.\n
- \n
- Sulu explains they\u2019re put in orbit at 72 miles altitude<\/strong>, \u201cpermanent orbit\u201d. This isn\u2019t plausible\u2014it\u2019s too low. Typical \u201clow Earth orbits\u201d begin about 100 miles up (https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/List_of_orbits<\/a>). This is ironic<\/strong> since Trek is always worried about the Enterprise\u2019s orbit decaying if the ship isn\u2019t kept under power. A 72 mile altitude orbit would indeed decay pretty quickly; a typical Enterprise orbit, suitably high, would not decay and would not need ship\u2019s power to maintain itself indefinitely.<\/li>\n
- The remastered episode\u2019s enhanced graphics<\/strong> visualize the scene of the Enterprise deploying these satellites \u2013 a scene only implied in the original episode. But the new scene is a prime example of intuitive, wrong, Trek physics.<\/strong> A panel opens at the very bottom of the ship\u2019s lower hull \u2013 like a bomb bay door on a plane \u2013 and these little satellites drop out, as if dropped downward in gravity, and then sorta bob into place<\/strong> behind the ship, like objects being dropped into the ocean from an aircraft carrier and following in its wake. Wrong in so many ways.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n
- The satellites work, of course, and soon all is well<\/strong> on the planet below.<\/li>\n
- Even Spock is well<\/strong>. The tragedy of him going blind wasn\u2019t just the result of a stupid scientific blunder, it\u2019s also a dramatic cheat<\/strong>. We knew<\/em>, in a 1960s TV series like this, that the major characters will survive each episode, in order to return fresh for the next. Knowing this, even a viewer at the time might cynically wonder, without worrying in the slightest that Spock will be OK, what explanation the writers will concoct for taking back the consequences of that earlier tragic scene.<\/li>\n
- Why, it\u2019s the little-known fact that Vulcans have an inner eyelid, because of their planet\u2019s bright sun, of course!<\/strong> So Spock\u2019s blindness was temporary.<\/li>\n
- The writers even seem to acknowledge this handy Vulcans-are-special gambit<\/strong>, as McCoy mutters to Kirk, \u201cI might have known he\u2019d turn up with something like that.\u201d<\/li>\n
- And, to conclude\u2026 there\u2019s a mild Gene L. Coon joke about what McCoy said about Spock earlier, and Spock’s hearing.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Blish adaptation, in ST2:<\/p>\n
- \n
- This is likely the best example of how very different Blish\u2019s stories could be from the broadcast episodes<\/strong> \u2013 and now that we have Cushman\u2019s books, the best verified example of how those differences were due to Blish being sent early drafts of the scripts<\/strong>.<\/li>\n
- (One wonders why the people at, where?, presumably Desilu, would not have taken care to send only final shooting scripts. My guess is that TV in the \u201860s was ephemeral<\/strong>, no one at the time had any idea Trek would become an eventual hit<\/strong>, or that it would quickly attract fans who would notice the discrepancies between Blish\u2019s versions and the broadcast versions, and complain, as they did. In contrast, about the same time there were paperback versions of Time Tunnel<\/em> and Lost in Space<\/em> that had nothing to do with their show\u2019s scripts, but with stories, only vaguely consistent with the shows they were based on, invented by their authors. For that matter, there was a Trek<\/em> book like that too, by Mack Reynolds \u2014 https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Star-Trek-Horatius-Mack-Reynolds\/dp\/B000EX7CAO\/<\/a> \u2014 but it was marketed as a kids\u2019 book and no one cared.)<\/li>\n
- In Blish\u2019s version, there\u2019s a character named Aurelan on Deneva, but she\u2019s not the wife of Kirk\u2019s brother or the mother of a son; the family connection to Kirk<\/strong> was added late in rewriting by Gene Roddenberry.<\/li>\n
- More substantially the story here doesn\u2019t end with the experimental blinding of Spock<\/strong>, and the deployment of UV satellites around the planet, and the silly cop-out ending of Spock not really being blind. Rather, the theorizing of the nature of the creatures leads them to conclude that they are all connected to some central core, light years away<\/strong> at the far end of the pattern of mass insanity described at the beginning. So the Enterprise heads off for this planet, launches two (in Blish\u2019s words) \u201cfully-armed planet-wreckers,\u201d and destroys the planet, whereupon the infestation in Spock dies \u2013 and the same thing happens back on Deneva, they verify, its inhabitants fully recovering.<\/li>\n
- Cushman\u2019s Season One book (https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/These-Are-Voyages-TOS-Season\/dp\/0989238105\/<\/a>) describes this and other earlier drafts of the script, including the final additions by Roddenberry of the family connection and Spock\u2019s blindness.<\/li>\n
- There are some nice concluding lines in Blish, presumably from the earlier script, about the nature of parasites and evolution.<\/li>\n
- This version was<\/em> better<\/strong> than the broadcast version, I think.<\/li>\n
- Cushman\u2019s Second Season book, pp310-312, describes the production staff\u2019s reactions to James Blish\u2019s first two Trek books<\/strong>. They were not pleased. D.C. Fontana<\/strong> \u2013 story editor and writer of several of Trek\u2019s best scripts, including \u201cThis Side of Paradise\u201d \u2013 wrote a long memo to Roddenberry, in which she complained especially about this episode<\/strong>, but also about the lack of action scenes<\/strong> at the ends of \u201cTomorrow Is Yesterday\u201d and \u201cCourt Martial.\u201d TV writers have different priorities than prose writers.<\/li>\n
- Roddenberry had a Desilu exec send Blish a copy of the Trek Writers\u2019 Guide<\/strong>, along with an admonition not to downplay Dr. McCoy\u2019s character, as Blish had done. (McCoy, not Uhura, should have been the third major character described inside the front cover of Blish\u2019s second book.)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Enterprise comes to the aid of a colony planet \u2013 where Kirk\u2019s brother lives with his family \u2013 that has been invaded by alien neural parasites that cause mass insanity. The last episode of the 1st season, both in … Continue reading
- (One wonders why the people at, where?, presumably Desilu, would not have taken care to send only final shooting scripts. My guess is that TV in the \u201860s was ephemeral<\/strong>, no one at the time had any idea Trek would become an eventual hit<\/strong>, or that it would quickly attract fans who would notice the discrepancies between Blish\u2019s versions and the broadcast versions, and complain, as they did. In contrast, about the same time there were paperback versions of Time Tunnel<\/em> and Lost in Space<\/em> that had nothing to do with their show\u2019s scripts, but with stories, only vaguely consistent with the shows they were based on, invented by their authors. For that matter, there was a Trek<\/em> book like that too, by Mack Reynolds \u2014 https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Star-Trek-Horatius-Mack-Reynolds\/dp\/B000EX7CAO\/<\/a> \u2014 but it was marketed as a kids\u2019 book and no one cared.)<\/li>\n
- The remastered episode\u2019s enhanced graphics<\/strong> visualize the scene of the Enterprise deploying these satellites \u2013 a scene only implied in the original episode. But the new scene is a prime example of intuitive, wrong, Trek physics.<\/strong> A panel opens at the very bottom of the ship\u2019s lower hull \u2013 like a bomb bay door on a plane \u2013 and these little satellites drop out, as if dropped downward in gravity, and then sorta bob into place<\/strong> behind the ship, like objects being dropped into the ocean from an aircraft carrier and following in its wake. Wrong in so many ways.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n
- Kirk realizes if they can\u2019t find a way to kill this infection, he\u2019ll have to wipe out the million people on the planet<\/strong>, lest it spread to yet another planet.<\/li>\n
- Kirk returns to the landing party, as it tries to locate the invaders. We see an interior room, with a short flight of steps down into an anteroom, as they follow a buzzing sound. Pull back and we see the creatures: flat, pancake-sized white globs, pulsing, adhering to a ceiling in the foreground.<\/strong> One of them flies into the air and hits Spock flat on the back, and he collapses in anguish.<\/li>\n
- The opening teaser ends with a dramatic scene involving a Denevan ship flying directly into the sun<\/strong> \u2013 with its pilot crying out, \u201cI\u2019m finally free of it!\u201d just before his ship incinerates. (In the enhanced graphics of the remastered episode, we see a tiny image of the ship, which I don\u2019t think was there in the original.)<\/li>\n
- This is a somewhat grim episode<\/strong>; it has a solid SFnal premise, and it benefits from location filming in an urban setting, but its resolution involves a huge, unforgivable scientific blunder.<\/strong><\/li>\n
![http:\/\/www.publicartinla.com\/UCLAArt\/knudsen1.jpeg<\/a>. You can recognize the building by the panels of tiles along the top between the columns.<\/li>\nThey walk around the seemingly empty area, until attacked by four men with clubs, and subdue them. They hear a woman scream, and follow the sound, into a building, where they find (coincidence!)<\/strong> Aurelan, Kirk\u2019s brother\u2019s wife, screaming about the invaders, as Kirk\u2019s brother lies dead on the floor, and his nephew Peter lies still barely alive. It\u2019s a heart-rending scene<\/strong>, as Shatner expresses Kirk\u2019s grief, yet determination to duty, effectively. Shatner really was, in those days, a terrific actor.<\/li>\nAurelan is subdued and is beamed up, along with Peter, to the ship, where in sickbay she provides background:<\/strong> the creatures appeared 8 months ago, carried by a vessel from another planet, Ingraham B (the same Spock identified earlier as last before Deneva), by taking over the vessel; not their [the crew’s] fault<\/strong>, she says; the creatures control them through pain. And then she herself gives up to pain, and dies.\n\nThere\u2019s a striking angle<\/strong> here: the creatures were an *invasive species*<\/strong> brought by a ship from one environment [planet] to another. The same thing has been happening on Earth, over the past few centuries \u2013 the past century especially, with air travel \u2013 and the effects have been almost equally disastrous, on smaller scales. See Elizabeth Kolbert.<\/strong> (my review: https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/2015\/06\/30\/elizabeth-kolbert-the-sixth-extinction\/”<\/a>)\n<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\nKirk returns to the landing party, as it tries to locate the invaders. We see an interior room, with a short flight of steps down into an anteroom, as they follow a buzzing sound. Pull back and we see the creatures: flat, pancake-sized white globs, pulsing, adhering to a ceiling in the foreground.<\/strong> One of them flies into the air and hits Spock flat on the back, and he collapses in anguish.<\/li>\nAct II: Back in sickbay, McCoy and Chapel operate on Spock<\/strong>, lying back-up, until McCoy gives up, to Nurse Chapel’s distress. He takes a specimen to the bridge to explain to Kirk: the creature implanted a stinger, like a wasp or bee, that grew tentacles entwined throughout the body, impossible to remove by conventional surgery.<\/li>\nSpock loses control, breaks out of sickbay, makes his way to the bridge, and tries to \u201ctake the ship down\u201d by overpowering Sulu, until Kirk and the others overpower him, and return him to sickbay.<\/li>\nWhere Spock,<\/strong> being a Vulcan with (as always) superior physical and mental abilities than humans, learns to control his pain<\/strong>, and insists he\u2019s able to return to duty. Kirk hesitates. Spock prevails; he makes his way to the transporter room, insisting on beaming down, and convinces Kirk and McCoy that a specimen must be captured and he\u2019s the only man for the job.<\/li>\nSpock returns to the surface. There\u2019s a lame act break<\/strong> as a local threatens Spock with a club, until after the commercial, when Spock subdues and pinches him. He gets a specimen.<\/li>\nBack on the ship, we\u2019re in a new set, a new medical lab (perhaps the decompression chamber from \u201cSpace Seed\u201d is off the left side?), with a containment device into which Spock has placed the specimen. He explains that it\u2019s like a single brain cell<\/strong>, one that connects with all the others. Kirk says, \u201clike something from a different galaxy\u201d; Spock replies, \u201cor from a place where our physical laws do not apply.\u201d Ecch. Both comments are unjustified or nonsensical.<\/strong>\n\nTo spell it out: First, there\u2019s no reason something unlike anything ever seen before need be from another galaxy; it might as well be from the next planet. (Somehow \u2018galaxy\u2019 just seems more intense, I guess.) The second comment is a cop-out, since there\u2019s no reason to expect that any such place exists, and every reason to think such a place is logically impossible. Unless we\u2019re talking alternate branches of the multiverse, perhaps, a concept ahead of Trek\u2019s time.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\nIn any event, several scenes go by as McCoy tries to find ways to kill it, unsuccessfully<\/strong>. He gets exasperated. \u201cI\u2019m sorry, Captain. I\u2019ve tried everything I can. Varying radiation, intense heat\u2026\u201d Effects which would kill the human hosts, anyway.<\/li>\nKirk realizes if they can\u2019t find a way to kill this infection, he\u2019ll have to wipe out the million people on the planet<\/strong>, lest it spread to yet another planet.<\/li>\nAnd so they brainstorm\u2014what else was there about the sun, that the Denevan who flew his ship into it seemed to become freed? Maybe\u2026light?!<\/strong> So McCoy rigs up a chamber to pour \u201ca million candles per square inch\u201d of light on\u2026Spock, who\u2019s the only logical test candidate. Spock enters the chamber.<\/li>\nMcCoy hesitates\u2014they realize what this will do to Spock, right? He tells Kirk, \u201cMr. Spock\u2019s the best first officer in the fleet.\u201d Kirk tells him to proceed.<\/li>\nThe test is successful. Spock emerges from the chamber, free of the creature. But he is also… Blind. Stumbling into a table.<\/strong><\/li>\nNow, this is inexcusable <\/strong>since, boys and girls, light *is* a kind of radiation.<\/strong> If McCoy tested all types of radiation, he would have tested all types of light. Worse, as the screenplay acknowledges moments later, as Nurse Chapel walks in with \u201cresults of the first test on the creatures,\u201d visible light is only a very narrow band of the electromagnetic spectrum. The story here ratchets up the tragedy<\/strong> of Spock going blind by having McCoy realize that he didn\u2019t have to throw the \u201ctotal spectrum of light\u201d at Spock. As we learn a bit later, only UV light is needed to kill the creatures.<\/li>\nKirk stares daggers of hatred at McCoy for this blunder.<\/strong> It is McCoy\u2019s fault, but it\u2019s really the scriptwriters’ fault<\/strong>, for making such a boneheaded mistake<\/strong>. McCoy had already tried \u201cradiation,\u201d but apparently the scriptwriters didn\u2019t realize that radiation would have included, oh, say, UV light. This is the kind of mistake a bright high-schooler<\/strong> would have caught, had he read the script before filming. (I made a similar comment about the boneheaded scientific mistake in Danny Boyle’s 2007 film Sunshine.)<\/strong><\/em><\/li>\nAnd so the Enterprise, very quickly!, deploys 210 UV satellites<\/strong> in orbit about the planet, to project the light that will disinfect the million inhabitants there.\n\nSulu explains they\u2019re put in orbit at 72 miles altitude<\/strong>, \u201cpermanent orbit\u201d. This isn\u2019t plausible\u2014it\u2019s too low. Typical \u201clow Earth orbits\u201d begin about 100 miles up (https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/List_of_orbits<\/a>). This is ironic<\/strong> since Trek is always worried about the Enterprise\u2019s orbit decaying if the ship isn\u2019t kept under power. A 72 mile altitude orbit would indeed decay pretty quickly; a typical Enterprise orbit, suitably high, would not decay and would not need ship\u2019s power to maintain itself indefinitely.<\/li>\nThe remastered episode\u2019s enhanced graphics<\/strong> visualize the scene of the Enterprise deploying these satellites \u2013 a scene only implied in the original episode. But the new scene is a prime example of intuitive, wrong, Trek physics.<\/strong> A panel opens at the very bottom of the ship\u2019s lower hull \u2013 like a bomb bay door on a plane \u2013 and these little satellites drop out, as if dropped downward in gravity, and then sorta bob into place<\/strong> behind the ship, like objects being dropped into the ocean from an aircraft carrier and following in its wake. Wrong in so many ways.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\nThe satellites work, of course, and soon all is well<\/strong> on the planet below.<\/li>\nEven Spock is well<\/strong>. The tragedy of him going blind wasn\u2019t just the result of a stupid scientific blunder, it\u2019s also a dramatic cheat<\/strong>. We knew<\/em>, in a 1960s TV series like this, that the major characters will survive each episode, in order to return fresh for the next. Knowing this, even a viewer at the time might cynically wonder, without worrying in the slightest that Spock will be OK, what explanation the writers will concoct for taking back the consequences of that earlier tragic scene.<\/li>\nWhy, it\u2019s the little-known fact that Vulcans have an inner eyelid, because of their planet\u2019s bright sun, of course!<\/strong> So Spock\u2019s blindness was temporary.<\/li>\nThe writers even seem to acknowledge this handy Vulcans-are-special gambit<\/strong>, as McCoy mutters to Kirk, \u201cI might have known he\u2019d turn up with something like that.\u201d<\/li>\nAnd, to conclude\u2026 there\u2019s a mild Gene L. Coon joke about what McCoy said about Spock earlier, and Spock’s hearing.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nBlish adaptation, in ST2:<\/p>\n\nThis is likely the best example of how very different Blish\u2019s stories could be from the broadcast episodes<\/strong> \u2013 and now that we have Cushman\u2019s books, the best verified example of how those differences were due to Blish being sent early drafts of the scripts<\/strong>.<\/li>\n(One wonders why the people at, where?, presumably Desilu, would not have taken care to send only final shooting scripts. My guess is that TV in the \u201860s was ephemeral<\/strong>, no one at the time had any idea Trek would become an eventual hit<\/strong>, or that it would quickly attract fans who would notice the discrepancies between Blish\u2019s versions and the broadcast versions, and complain, as they did. In contrast, about the same time there were paperback versions of Time Tunnel<\/em> and Lost in Space<\/em> that had nothing to do with their show\u2019s scripts, but with stories, only vaguely consistent with the shows they were based on, invented by their authors. For that matter, there was a Trek<\/em> book like that too, by Mack Reynolds \u2014 https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Star-Trek-Horatius-Mack-Reynolds\/dp\/B000EX7CAO\/<\/a> \u2014 but it was marketed as a kids\u2019 book and no one cared.)<\/li>\nIn Blish\u2019s version, there\u2019s a character named Aurelan on Deneva, but she\u2019s not the wife of Kirk\u2019s brother or the mother of a son; the family connection to Kirk<\/strong> was added late in rewriting by Gene Roddenberry.<\/li>\nMore substantially the story here doesn\u2019t end with the experimental blinding of Spock<\/strong>, and the deployment of UV satellites around the planet, and the silly cop-out ending of Spock not really being blind. Rather, the theorizing of the nature of the creatures leads them to conclude that they are all connected to some central core, light years away<\/strong> at the far end of the pattern of mass insanity described at the beginning. So the Enterprise heads off for this planet, launches two (in Blish\u2019s words) \u201cfully-armed planet-wreckers,\u201d and destroys the planet, whereupon the infestation in Spock dies \u2013 and the same thing happens back on Deneva, they verify, its inhabitants fully recovering.<\/li>\nCushman\u2019s Season One book (https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/These-Are-Voyages-TOS-Season\/dp\/0989238105\/<\/a>) describes this and other earlier drafts of the script, including the final additions by Roddenberry of the family connection and Spock\u2019s blindness.<\/li>\nThere are some nice concluding lines in Blish, presumably from the earlier script, about the nature of parasites and evolution.<\/li>\nThis version was<\/em> better<\/strong> than the broadcast version, I think.<\/li>\nCushman\u2019s Second Season book, pp310-312, describes the production staff\u2019s reactions to James Blish\u2019s first two Trek books<\/strong>. They were not pleased. D.C. Fontana<\/strong> \u2013 story editor and writer of several of Trek\u2019s best scripts, including \u201cThis Side of Paradise\u201d \u2013 wrote a long memo to Roddenberry, in which she complained especially about this episode<\/strong>, but also about the lack of action scenes<\/strong> at the ends of \u201cTomorrow Is Yesterday\u201d and \u201cCourt Martial.\u201d TV writers have different priorities than prose writers.<\/li>\nRoddenberry had a Desilu exec send Blish a copy of the Trek Writers\u2019 Guide<\/strong>, along with an admonition not to downplay Dr. McCoy\u2019s character, as Blish had done. (McCoy, not Uhura, should have been the third major character described inside the front cover of Blish\u2019s second book.)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Enterprise comes to the aid of a colony planet \u2013 where Kirk\u2019s brother lives with his family \u2013 that has been invaded by alien neural parasites that cause mass insanity. 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