Instant Replays

All Star Trek followers have their favorite episodes. In discussing this with people connected with the show I discovered that we of course have our favorites too. The choices are arrived at for personal reasons. In some cases there is an overlap where we all agree that a particular episode or group of episodes stood out as "special." In other cases the favorites have to do with some personal identification with the content or perhaps because that particular episode was especially meaningful in the development of the particular character we played.

At the risk of slighting some very fine writers and directors, and chancing the possibility that I will overlook some titles which are personal favorites of the fans, I'll try here to give a brief summary list of those shows which mean the most to me today.

"This Side of Paradise," written by D. C. Fontana, dealt with the loss of the work ethic on an earth colony. The inhabitants have been infected by a spore which is native to the planet, which has eliminated their motivation for accomplishment. They are happy just to indulge themselves by passing the time in a placid state. Mr. Spock is affected by the spores in quite a different way. He becomes reacquainted with a young lady that he has known for some years and when he is exposed to the spores his conscious defenses are reduced to the point where he becomes aware that he has loved this lady and still does.

With the exception of Captain Kirk, all of the crew members, including Mr. Spock, would be quite ready to abandon their duties on the Enterprise and remain in this blissful state on the planet. Of course, the crew must get back to work and again pick up their duties to the space service and to society. In a tender parting scene Mr. Spock's first name was almost revealed. When Leila, the young lady in question, points out to Spock that she doesn't know his first name, Spock responds with, "You couldn't pronounce it."

This is a very special episode for me for obvious reasons and particularly because, where Spock was so totally adult in most of his attitudes and reactions throughout the series, this episode provided a chance to expose the complete child within. We saw him loving, picnicking, romping and literally swinging playfully in the trees. It was a total exposure of the internal Spock that so many people have always suspected was there.

"City on the Edge of Forever" was a beautifully constructed love story for Captain Kirk, written by Harlan Ellison. The female role was played by Joan Collins. The story took place in the earth 1930s during the Depression. On a trip back in time Captain Kirk meets and falls in love with a very lovely social worker. The story is exquisitely constructed in its tragic design in that the Captain and the girl are deeply in love and we discover that the girl is to die in a street accident.

Knowing that she is to die, of course the Captain is tempted to save her but we realize that if he does this, the flow of future time will be disrupted. Therefore, the participants in the love story are caught in a classic tragic construction. The story was beautifully written and wonderfully produced and directed. I also happen to believe that it was one of Bill Shatner's finest performances.

"Amok Time," a lovely, poetic script by Theodore Sturgeon, was a very special story again for Mr. Spock, in that it was the first time we visited his home planet of Vulcan. It was great fun to explore the possibilities of seeing Mr. Spock in his own culture among his peers. The storyline dealt with the fact that once every seven years Vulcans come into the mating season and Spock's time had come. He was on his way home to fulfill a match which had been made for him as a youngster. The story was rich in Vulcan ritual arid was the first time the Vulcan hand salute was used. This consisted of holding the hand up, palm outward, the thumb outstretched with a separation between the second and third fingers. This salute was introduced during the moment when Spock first arrives on the planet and is met by T'Pau, the Vulcan matriarch played by Celia Lovsky. She is carried in on a sedan chair and verbal greetings are exchanged.

At this point I felt that there was an opportunity to establish something a little special in the way of a Vulcan greeting. The greeting that I chose came from my Orthodox Jewish background. The hand symbol is that used by the Kohanim, who are the priests of the Hebrews, who bless the congregation during the High Holiday services. Saying, "May the Lord turn his countenance unto you and give you peace, etc." While doing so they extend both hands out toward the congregation in the configuration that I described.

There are many interpretations of this symbol but the one which seems most obvious is that the hand, when held in that shape, forms the shape of the Hebrew letter Shin. This is the first letter in the word Shadai, which is the name of the Almighty. Therefore, the Kohanim are using this symbol of the Almighty's name in blessing the congregation. This then became the appropriate exchange when Vulcans were to greet on Star Trek in the future. It has also been picked up by thousands of fans and I am greeted with the Vulcan hand salute wherever I travel.

Another landmark episode would have to be "Dagger of the Mind." Not because it was in itself what I would consider a major Star Trek episode, but because it was the first time that we introduced a very special talent for Mr. Spock . . . the Vulcan mind-meld. This was a brilliant innovation by Gene Roddenberry. In the episode we were dealing with an emotionally disturbed individual who had some information that we needed. Because of his unstable condition he was unable to give us the information verbally. Rather than have a long, torturous and dull dialogue sequence, Gene conceived the idea that Spock, through a hand contact to the individual's face, would be able to meld his own mind with that of the subject and get past the disturbances which were at the conscious level. In this way he could probe into the subject's mind and read out the necessary information.

It was established that this was a difficult and taxing process for Spock. It was another one of those magic effects which captured the imagination of the audience. Unfortunately, later in the series this particular technique was used in a less dramatic form which made it seem almost like an everyday occurence, thereby somewhat reducing the magic and the tension of the moment. Too often a writer will use a device to get himself out of a difficult plot situation. However, the idea was extremely effective and "Dagger of the Mind" served to introduce it.

Of course, a list of favorites would be incomplete, to say the least, without mention of "The Menagerie." This was again a sample of Gene Roddenberry's working at his best. It was a two-part episode constructed essentially out of material which had been shot as the first pilot for Star Trek. The story very simply dealt with Spock hijacking the Enterprise in an effort to return his former Captain to Talos IV—Captain Pike was paralyzed as a result of a radiation accident. On Talos IV he will be able to live out a full life in spite of his physical limitations because the Talosians have a highly developed capability for cerebral illusions.

Roddenberry took the original pilot material and reconstructed it with some additional shooting to include the present day crew of the Enterprise and created a pair of Star Trek episodes which were at least among the best, if not actually the best of the shows, we ever put on the air. I doubt that any other television series or even television special has ever achieved the level of production, texture and ideas that were contained in this pair of shows.

"Devil in the Dark" was an episode written by the late Gene Coon, who functioned as a producer and writer for the series for approximately a year. In this episode some miners have been killed by an unknown attacker while working in the tunnels below the planet surface where they are extracting a valuable mineral. Their fear has escalated to hysteria. Investigation reveals that they have been unwittingly destroying the eggs of a native of the planet, a silicone creature known as a Horta. The creature has been responding in the only way she knows how in an effort to protect her young.

The major thrust of the story was that we fear the unknown and the unexplored in much the same way that people in ancient times felt the earth was flat and were convinced that explorers would fall off the edges if they went too far. The successful relationship eventually established between the Horta and the miners suggests that when both sides come to know each others' needs and each others' intent it is often possible for them to work together harmoniously. In a crucial scene in the plot, Mr. Spock communicates with the Horta creature through the Vulcan mind-meld. Through this procedure Mr. Spock discovers who and what the creature is and the story is brought to a successful resolution. This is probably the only time in my life that I've ever been asked to establish communication with a living rock.

"The Enemy Within," written by Richard Matheson, would be another one of those that must be mentioned here because it was a landmark episode again for Spock. This was the episode in which the Vulcan neck pinch, described in a previous chapter, was first introduced.

These are just a few of the ones which most frequently and most specifically come to mind. Obviously, there are many other shows which were excellent for the series as well as for the Spock character. It goes without saying for example, that "Miri," "The Naked Time," and so many others were really excellent scripts, beautifully executed. All I've tried to do here is outline some of those which are my lasting personal favorites for very subjective reasons.

I was finishing a question and answer session after a lecture one night in Asheville, North Carolina. I said, "One last question," and looked around at the raised hands to make a choice and the audience started chanting, "The little boy, the little boy." There was a small boy standing in the aisle who had had his hand raised for some time and I hadn't called on him. I did, and his question was, "Would you tell me what's really happening when you beam down to the planet and back up on to the ship?" The place burst into applause because evidently the question had been on the minds of the entire audience. Young and old alike had wanted to hear the answer.

The "beaming down" process is the procedure we use to leave the ship and arrive on a planet surface and then to return to the ship. The process was the result of a creative idea growing out of a problem. It was decided during the preproduction stages that it would be too expensive to show the ship landing or taking off from planets. Therefore, the Enterprise would never land. Of course, it was necessary to get us on to planet surfaces and back to the ship so the transportation process was created by Gene Roddenberry.

It is a very simple process technically. It can be shot very quickly and is not terribly expensive to execute. Therefore, it was useful for us. But something about it has captured the imagination of audiences. Theoretically we are converting matter, in this case the human body, into energy, transporting that energy elsewhere and reconverting it to matter. In actual fact we're using a very simple process known as a film dissolve. Anybody who watches a motion picture or TV show, will see a film dissolve take place and probably not be conscious of it. It is that moment when a scene comes to an end and gradually fades out while the next scene is at the same time fading in. So, what the audience is seeing is an overlapping of the end of one scene and the beginning of the next. This same process is applied in the "transporter effect." The film is shot of the empty transporter room and then some footage shot with the characters in the transporter room. By overlapping these two pieces of film/footage the effect of appearing and disappearing is created visually with a minimum of cost and time expanded. If the empty room is shown first, then we fade into the scene with the footage with the characters present and get the effect of the actors "appearing." If the footage is used in reverse, that is, the characters in the room, and then the empty room, and gradually dissolve from one to the other the effect of disappearing is created. The same is true on the planet surface. A simple and classic demonstration of the old adage that "necessity is the mother of invention."

There is no doubt in my mind that, with the possible exception of the bridge set, visitors to the Star Trek stages were usually surprised and let down by what they saw. A few small sections of corridor, the Captain's quarters, sickbay, transporter room, etc. The quality of the set design by Matt Jefrries, and the photography by Jerry Finnerman and later Al Francis, created a look on the TV screen that led visitors to expect to walk on board a mammoth ship. Their work, together with the talents of the special effects department and the sound effects people, created an amazingly believable environment.

To my knowledge, the sets were dismantled and discarded to make space available for other TV productions.

Date: 2015-02-28; view: 751