Welcome back to our Star Trek: The Original Series re-watch with your hosts: Me and Cookie Monster…
Me: The Enterprise is enroute to planet Exo-III to check on the health and welfare of researcher Dr. Roger Korby who hasn’t been heard from in five years. Roger’s fiancee, Nurse Chapel, is on the bridge, hopeful that the love of her life is still alive – despite the planet’s minus 100 degree surface temperatures. Chapel has confidence in Roger’s ability to persevere. Kirk, not so much. As they approach Exo-III, he asks Spock: “Do you think there’s any chance of him still being alive?”. Hey, Capatain Sensitive, the presumed-dead-guy’s girlfriend is standing three feet behind you. “Uh, Jim. I can hear you. I’m standing right here.” Oh. Right.
Cookie Monster: Dey beam down to entrance of underground cavern and, despite planet’s minus 100 degree temperature, dey nice and toasty warm in deir Alpaca fur-lined Starfleet uniforms.
Me: But Kirk is suspicious and asks for a security detail: two redshirts. Finally! Actual redshirted redshirts! One, providing back-up for Kirk and Nurse Chapel, ends up falling off a ledge. Roger’s assistant informs Kirk that it is a bottomless pit. “He’s dead, I assure you,”he says. Whoa, wait a minute. If it’s an actual bottomless pit, then he’s still alive. Why not order the Enterprise to lock onto him and beam him back up? Good idea? Worth a try? Yes? No?
Cookie Monster: Ah, plenty more where dat redshirt came from.
Me: Still, Kirk is even more suspicious now.
Cookie Monster: What tip him off? De Addams Family butler walking around in his bathrobe?
Me: Kirk and Chapel are escorted into a room by the assistant. A door slides open and Roger steps out and his eyes light up – at the sight of Kirk. Seriously. He seems more excited to see him than his fiancee…who seems to notice a full three seconds after the fact: “Oh. Didn’t notice you standing there. Two feet to my left.”
Cookie Monster: Den, Roger introduce his other “assistant”: Andrea.
Me: Okay, I’m going to stop here a moment to proclaim actress Sherry Jackson the most gorgeous guest star in the history of Star Trek – and probably scifi television.
Cookie Monster: Back to de review…
Me: I mean, seriously. If they had cast her in the last episode, Mudd’s Women, all my nitpicks about how and why the men were falling head over heels would have been addressed.
Cookie Monster: Moving on…
Me: I googled the actress to find out if she’s still working and came across a video interview with her. She’s apparently 72 but she doesn’t look a day over 50. And she’s still gorgeous.
Cookie Monster: No offense, but monster need to move dis review along so he have time to go pick up half-price remaindered fireworks.
Me: Okay. So it turns out Andrea is a robot. And so is Roger’s assistant – who Kirk’s shoots, exposing his circuitry.
Cookie Monster: After Kirk execute patented pointless dive roll.
Me: No doubt to confuse his opponent.
Cookie Monster: Den Lurch walk in and grab Kirk.
Me: Robot Lurch.
Cookie Monster: Who, it turn out, it addition to being super strong and stealthy, also do really good impressions of Kirk, Chapel, and Stewie from Family Guy. He be Exo-III’s resident Rich Little!
Me: Roger makes a robot version of Kirk – to prove he can. He is like Kirk in every way, possessed of all of his memories – but, in the end, susceptible to racist rants.
Cookie Monster: Robot Kirk even fool Nurse Chapel – but, to be fair, she not demonstrate best judgement. Referring to Roger, she say: “What’s he’s done may seem wrong…” Seem? SEEM?! He responsible for death of two redshirts. Me understand, dey only redshirts but still. Somewhere, back on Earth, dere be little redshirts waiting for den to come home!
Me: The real Kirk is brought in and he converses with Roger while surreptitiously unfurling some twine from the back of his chair. I’m not sure what I found more amazing, Kirk’s resourcefulness in fashioning a weapon out of his chair or the fact that Lurch and Andrea were standing right behind him and didn’t notice what he was doing.
Cookie Monster: Kirk jump Roger, den make run for it.
Me: Leaving Nurse Chapel behind (“I’m going to get help!!!”). But he is no match for Lurch who corrals him and brings him back. In retrospect, kind of a dumb move on Kirk’s part. Moments earlier, Roger offered him the opportunity to play along with his little charade. Instead of turning him down, why didn’t Kirk just say “Yeah, sure. ” instead of opting for the ridiculous high-tail into the meandering caverns?
Cookie Monster: But Kirk resourceful. He such a player, he even able to seduce a robot!
Cookie Monster: Dis harder den it look. Me suspekt he was practicing on Enterprise toaster oven.
Me: And, later, he turns Lurch against his creator by using suspect logic (“If I’m a danger to you and I’m here because of Roger, then Roger is the problem, isn’t he?”).
Cookie Monster: Chase ensue. Roger get injured and, in big reveal, we discover…he a robot too!
Me: Meanwhile, Andrea sees robot Kirk and asks for a kiss. He turns her down, so she disintegrates him. Guys, let this be a lesson.
Cookie Monster: It turn out she in love wit robot Roger. Dey kiss, and commit suicide because robot love not meant to be, like comedians hooking up. Remember Roseanne and Tom Arnold?
Me: All in all a solid episode…with a tremendous guest star in Sherry Jackson. Did I mention her?
Cookie Monster: Yes, me tink you did.
Me: Anyway, for those who weren’t able to watch it, here is an abbreviated version of the episode:
Okay, Kirk’s mind games with the robots just weren’t up to “the next words out of my mouth will be a lie: I’m lying” standards I expect of him. The mind games were just nonsense and the robots doing his bidding because of them was nonsense, too.
Of course, the issue on everyone’s mind is: was the rock Kirk is holding intentionally phallic? The answer is a resounding “yeeaahbuddy!”. I say this because it wasn’t the only phallic rock. Earlier in the episode, when Lurch is creeping around, he passes a phallic stalagmite.
I paused the show to take a phone call and there on the screen was Lurch splitting the frame perfectly symmetrically with his “mirror” image, some kind of visual hint of Lurch’s origin as a faceless lump of clay no doubt. I tried to pull up the same image from google and just found the image of Kirk holding one and I dared not google anything more specific than the episode’s name and “phallic” so I won’t be producing proof that I found the other one. Kirk’s tool was a stalactite so two in one episode just isn’t a happenstance of innocent scenery sculpting.
My eight year old son had a lot of questions about why Andrea’s uniform was different than the other uniforms of the same color. Quite a lot of questions. It kept coming up despite the story continuing to move along. Do you have any theories?
Well I’m glad (sort of) you showed that last clip because I couldn’t find this episode anywhere. It probably got pulled and put on the (very) back shelf because of that object Kirk was holding. Were you watching a bootleg copy? The only thing I remember about this one is “Lurch” doing the voice impressions. It was weird. And the title of this one is dumb.
Okay, confession time. The whole “I killed the robot by giving it a problem it couldn’t solve” canard just miffs me. It’s been overused, but of course, this was the earliest incarnation of it in Star Trek (later we had The Changeling, I, Mudd, and of course V’ger in Star Trek The Motion Picture).
In this case it was the Android Andrea that kills herself and Android Roger because she can’t solve the issues behind human romance. It was probably innovative for the time, but I’m a little tired of it now. So maybe not my most favorite episode.
I did get to watch a part of this episode tonight while drinking a jalapeño margarita with my dog Lucy cowering at my feet due latent fireworks. At least one of us is relaxed.
Sherry Jackson is foxy, but Diana Ewing had a lovely Grace Kelly thing going in Cloud Minders, more impressive because she manages to look graceful and demure in the skimpiest Trek dress of all time . And BarBara Luna was memorably foxy and sassy as the Captain’s woman in Mirror Mirror.
So Joe, have you CAST that scifi series yet..? There must be a “sexy-granny” part in there some where!
You know, TODD always reminded me of LURCH… [Bug-Lurch?] – just saying…
BTW, about Andrea’s Outfit… – [Some of you “older”-Fans probably already know “this”, but, for the “Youngsters”..] – “Notice” that her NAVEL is “covered”? And, in all *other* episodes, you should also NOT see any FEMALE “BELLY-BUTTONS”. Why? Well, because, “back-in-the-day”, the Network-“SENSORS” were pretty much a bunch of prudes! – [Have a look at other TV shows in the 60s/70s and those HIGH-waisted shorts!] – Weird prudes at that, come to think of it… SHORT-shorts were fine, as was Cleavage, but flashing an “INNIE” was totally “OUTIE”!
I do not argue with your characterization of this guest star, Sherry Jackson. Star yes, I can think of a couple of outfits from later StarTrek series I would think would be positively fitting. Although that 60s Matt Helm outfit is very becoming, But after that kiss and with Kirk holding something from a Austin Power’s movie, he seemed a bit disorientated or going blind. Can’t explain. Yet despite all the positives, this episode did creep me out. I was put off by the making of android and the bald Lurch fellow who obviously did not spend much time outside the cave. The drone fighter pilot in a certain SG1 episode had the same facial expression.
The new anime season has pretty much begun in earnest.
Sword Art Online 2 is out now too and confirmed to be 24 episodes in length, but considering they’re really pushing the Gun Gale Online arc and they only have 2 books worth of material for that, opinion seems to suggest that they will cover the Caliber side story that comes after, and the Asuna focused book Mothers Rosario afterwards.
That or they could start on the currently ongoing and hugely long Alicization Arc, and if they did, I have a feeling they would end that on a major cliffhanger.
I love this opening, some studios pretty much always use the ending to premiere the opening with their first episode(And this was the best quality I could find on Youtube).
This was an interesting episode. Sherry Jackson was beautiful and I’m glad she’s still doing well. I wonder how many “wardrobe malfunctions” Ms. Jackson had with her costume? 😉
I was a fan of Ted Cassidy (lurch). Looked up the actor and was sad to see Ted died when he was only 46.
Loved the clip! 😆
We are packing up to drop our son off to college. He’s excited and I can tell because he got up early (without me waking him).
Enjoy Sunday!
I liked this episode a lot. Sure, there were the usual plot holes and logic bombs but mostly it was a reasonably solid story and, yes, Sherry Jackson was a highlight. She was ably assisted by her costume but I think she could have been dressed in a hessian sack and still looked stunning.
The title of this episode was very stupid, though. What are little girls made of? Transistors and servos?
If I’d had a mouthful of liquid I would have spat it out all over the TV when I saw the shot of Kirk with the stalactite. What were they thinking?
Great to see Ted Cassidy. And he even managed to do some acting in this episode.
Probably the best episode we’ve seen so far.
LOLOLOL! @ the clip! 😀
das