The Apple
The Plot:
The Enterprise officers investigate a primitive society that
seems to exist to serve a godlike machine; guest David Soul.
You know, this is the episode that people who don't watch Star
Trek think every episode is like: Kirk barges in to a planet that's
minding its own business, fondles a scantily dressed woman of atypical
coloration, and overthrows the society on it for no good reason. But
it's atypical in quite a few ways, not least of which that the romance
subplot is given out to the minor player of Chekov, and there's no
direct romantic interlude between Enterprise and Weekian folks.
And then there's the curious plot structure: we start off with
the planet trying mightily to kill the landing party, presenting all
sorts of Menace, and then go into the rather placid meeting of the
locals who aren't any particular sort of threat to anything, really.
The intention seems to be that the audience knows that Vaal could kill
them anytime it wanted, but all this destruction is rained down on the
red-****rts before they've done anything to annoy Vaal, and at least the
flower and the land mine rock appear to be accidents.
We get the Enterprise-In-Peril jeopardy used with vague but
plausible success in The Return Of The Archons and in A Taste Of
Armageddon, and for that matter in Who Mourns For Adonais?, and they try
to ratchet up the tension by making it so severe they might ... throw
overboard the things we always thought produced the biggest amount of
power aboard ****p. Maybe warp drive is done by clever application of
energy rather than by harnessing massive quantities of it.
Somehow despite all these attempts to impose peril on the plot
it doesn't really feel threatening; it's almost a lighthearted story. I
think it may be the bringing of Spock to the Brink! Of! Sudden! Death!
twice in one story that makes sure it won't be an actually tense event.
It's certainly not a story which would fly on any of the later
Treks, largely because they just didn't have a delicate touch, but also
because, in part, decades of Trekkies analyzing the Prime Directive into
oblivion have declared the episode to be un-Trek in its philosophy.
However, Kirk was never one to overthrow a society just because he
didn't like it: it would require the planet's governing body deciding to
attack the Enterprise.
Memory Alpha claims the story outline was originally written by
A E Van Vogt, which makes it amazing the story is so predictable. If he
had written the final transcript it would probably have been revealed
that Kirk was Vaal and both were Level 2,038 hyperintelligences.
Despite all the oddnesses and weakneses of the story, though, I
think it's fair to call it part of the representative slate of Star
Trek: if you like this episode, it seems fair to say you're going to
appreciate most Original Series Trek, the good and the bad. It wouldn't
be a bad parlor game to identify the smallest number of episodes which
give an accurate representation of the Original Series as a whole.
Added note: people suspect this episode to be one of those which
inspired the classic Mystery Science Theater 3000 riff, ``What is kiss?'',
but that line isn't in this episode. The Gamesters Of Triskelion is
another episode suspected to have set the riff off, but it hasn't got
the source line either, just the theme.
Thoughts While Watching:
- The real Gamma Trianguli is about 120 light-years away from
Earth, for the record. It's a white, A-type dwarf star. There's also a
Gamma Trianguli Australis about 180 light-years away from Earth, also an
A-type dwarf star.
- Landing party's so big they have to beam it down in ****fts.
This is actually rather reasonable, although shouldn't there be more
blue****rts for a scientific survey?
- It's a contact mission, by explicit order.
- Apparently Russia has benefitted greatly from global warming.
So is Chekov pulling everyone's legs with his Garden of Eden line?
- They really don't train security in responding to suspicious
behavior.
- Written by Max Ehrich? Shouldn't he be off hyping up the
population bomb?
- ``We're losing potency in our antimatter pods.''
CROW: But we've received offers for all-natural potency
medication in our e-mail.
- ``There's a humanoid hiding directly behind us, moving with
remarkable agility.''
TOM SERVO: It's just the Monkees filming an episode on this set
too.
- Mallory doesn't really get this ``constant communication''
order, does he?
- They've found a place where the local fauna is about one
trillionth as deadly as every plant or animal in Australia.
- Hey, actually *trying* -- now that's a concept that could save
untold many lives!
- Spock is lucky his anatomy is closely geared to the needs for
cliffhangers.
- Spock says Star Fleet has invested in him 122,22- somethings;
the easy assumption is credits, although I don't think they'd
established credits yet. It could be man-hours.
- TOM SERVO: That's Gamma Trianguli VI. If you don't like the
weather just wait thirty seconds, so it can kill you.
- You know, even given that Mallory was stepping on the land
mine rock it's not that big an explosion by appearances. I mean, even
his skin is barely scarred. I presume some sort of concussive shock
went through his body and those can be quite nasty, but I'd still have
liked McCoy to, you know, look at the body.
+ Eep! I discover from looking on Memory Alpha that Jay Jones,
who played Mallory, *was* hospitalized for injuries from the exploding
rock trick. He was also hospitalized for injuring himself doing a back
flip as James Doohan's stand in in Who Mourns For Adonais?.
- ``For your information I have a very high efficiency rating!''
CROW: Apparently trash-talking was *not* invented in Russia.
- ``I won't hurt you.''
TOM SERVO: I'll slap you around some, wuss, but otherwise I
won't hurt you.
- Kirk is rather aggressive to Akuta considering that Akuta
hasn't actually done anything so far as Kirk knows.
- ``This is fascinating.''
CROW: He's still on VHF!
- The science computer is needed to project a falling orbit,
rather than this being on hand at the navigation station? I guess
that's consistent with other examples, though, giving Spock plot-heavy
lines to deliver.
- ``Vaal!''
TOM SERVO: Or the Dragon Walk trail on Sentosa Island, Singa****e.
- ``Very high order of workman****p, very ancient.''
CROW: You rarely see papier-mache made like this anymore.
- I really loved back when Akuta did the narration for
Biography.
- Kirk wants to see the children immediately on entering the
village. This is the sort of thing that gets him re****ted to Protective
Services.
- WOR cut out the Chekov romance subplot up until from Chekov
holding Yeoman What is Love? so that it looked even more random and
arbitrary.
- ``This house is your house. I will send you more food and
drink.''
TOM SERVO: Whatever's left over from the filming of Jungle
Goddess.
- Kirk suggests ditching the warp drive nacelles and getting out
with the main section, but he stops short of saying to separate the
saucer section, even though this episode is the one usually taken to be
the one showing saucer separation was possible in the Original Series.
- ``There's a complete lack of harmful bacteria in their
systems'' --
CROW: Or *was* until Ensign McSneezy had her coughing fit,
thanks.
The idea that lacking harmful bacteria would prolong life is a
pretty well-established one -- Asimov, who should know better, used it
as an essential plot point for the Spacer Novels -- but it's tough to
make really rigorous. The human body as it is requires some beneficial
bacteria for its survival, and one little mutation in *any* bacteria
anywhere, inside the body or in the rest of the ecosystem and you have a
virgin-population plague and great dying. Maybe most of what Vaal was
doing was genetic engineering sup****t and maintenance.
- Spock's pretty fast to assume there's no living being inside
Vaal, considering.
- Oh that McCoy, always going off on the ``liberty'' concept.
Actually, I wonder if Vaal hadn't been trying to shoot down the
Enterprise whether Kirk would have let them go on their way, in much the
way Kirk later didn't mind the Oracle ruling Yonada. (And there,
ironically, McCoy submits to the unquestioned rule of a computer-god.)
Or maybe Kirk felt less motivated to pick unnecessary fights after this
time around.
- ``It was generating alternating cycles totally 100 to the 20th
power Waltham units.''
TOM SERVO: So this thing is spreading all sorts of corrupting
images into the comic books of the youth, got it.
Were Waltham Units ever mentioned again? Given how Modern Trek
used Cochrane as a name all over the place you'd think other units
name-dropped here might get mentioned later. And by the way, a Waltham
unit had better be an unspeakably tiny unit of whatever it is.
- Suppose Kirk's first hint that something very wrong was going
on this week was that Chekov got the romance subplot?
- Hey, look, a scene where two guest characters of the week
interact alone! Can they *do* that?
- Once again, tyrants are threatened by kissing.
- And now *another* scene where none of the main characters are
around, and we have a melon standing in place for Our Heroes, probably
Chekov?
- ``This is the head of one of the strangers.''
TOM SERVO: [ As Vaalian ] I remember the strangers being taller.
CROW: [ As another ] Yes, and they had arms and legs and hair.
TOM SERVO: Vaal can't believe what a sack of doorknobs its
wor****ppers are.
- ``It will be done when the sun returns in the morning.''
CROW: And even Akuta has no idea why they're waiting that long.
- Spock gets hit by lightning, apparently because they forgot
they already almost killed him once this episode.
- ``They've learned to kill.''
TOM SERVO: They're just really bad at it.
- They broke the whole ****p? At once? Really?
- Kirk starts fussing about not seeing warning signs, however,
really, there weren't any warning signs until the sudden loss of
antimatter potency, at which point the Enterprise wasn't able to escape.
This is probably a part of his borderline-depression.
- So they put *everything* into the breakaway except the phasers
that could level a planet. Whoops.
- CROW: ``I've got it! We could just shoot Vaal!''
- Kirk calls for a cease fire, probably because he knows the
episode is getting near the end so this has to work. I'd find it hard
not to try shooting till the phasers were dry.
- ``Scotty, you're rehired!''
TOM SERVO: Even though shooting Vaal was all my idea and you
didn't put anything into it except breaking every system on the ****p.
- Kirk sets his phasers on jerk to razz Spock just because Spock
was pointing out that the people of Vaal were happy and healthy and now
have lives of toil and misery ahead of them. Usually these little tags
are amusing or at worst irrelevant, but this is one that really gets to
me because it's insulting with no character-redeeming moment.
|
