Episode of the Week : Is There in Truth No Beauty?

The Barrier didn't seem to do anything to Miranda Jones in this episode, either coming or going. (Or to Spock at any time - see the parallel thread. But Spock isn't an "esper", he's just naturally telepathic.) So the risk may be very small, or perhaps time-dependent or location-dependent.

Timo Saloniemi

 

Always loved this one, a solid example of the third season's penchant to embracing weird sci-fi concepts. It's got a lot in there, and none of it is dull. Fantastic music, great effects, and wonderful new camera angles, such as when we first see the bridge after Marvick takes over and Kirk's fantastic line: "explain, Lt. Sulu." Not to mention them hauling out a fast clip of the Enterprise seen previously only in The Cage (but used in the Animated series).

David Frankham is hugely impressive in his insane scenes and his taking over the ship is fantastic. Diana Muldaur is excellent here as well. Shatner is outstanding when he confronts Miranda in sickbay.

KIRK: The smell of hatred, the stench of jealousy permeates you. Why don't you strangle him while he lies there?

Nimoy is brilliant as Spock/ Kollos and his freak out is well done (only Sulu's fall backward into the chair being laughable). And, of course, the IDIC. I get it, Roddenberry wanted to sell these things, but the idea behind them is exactly what Star Trek represents. The final dialog is great and it's more than welcome in the episode.

Crazy dudes? Weirdspace? Emo-Spock? Kirk spitting venomous insults? Screaming music? What's not to love? The third season gets an unfair rap, this is great Trek. I give it an 8.

 

I think there's no harm in mentioning something brought up on some earlier thread for this episode:

In the final scene, Spock uses the red eyeshade when operating the transporter. Kirk is also there, and gives no indication of having looked away when the transporter was operated. Indeed, our last view of Kirk shows him looking toward the transporter pad (our guest stars having just beamed down) and then turning to leave the transporter room. Music swells; end of episode.

So is he insane thereafter? (It might explain some of his later, not-well-judged actions...)

 

The love of a good Starship cures all ails.

 

The director himself talks about that error:
http://senensky.com/is-there-in-truth-no-beauty/

 

The Barrier is used so well here, or was in the original, that it's heartbreaking when they throw away those great Barrier visuals in the "remastered" version, just to work out what was, for the remastered team, an inconsistency between dialogue and visual effects.

They had to change it so the ship first goes through the Barrier, and then immediately into some other sort of space. Or so they assumed. Never mind what it looks like. Literal accuracy matters more than any dramatic or artistic considerations. They shouldn't have thrown away the original Barrier at all, since it was one of the most compelling and inspired images ever in television. But then to have them leave the Barrier in a nanosecond or two, going into an area less interesting than a stormcloud, is unforgiveable.

Another problem, at least with season 3, is the pushing of music into the background by lowering its volume and level of "punch", I suppose to make it more like the more detached Next Gen or Voyager or DS9.

 

I can't agree with the desirability of reusing trite old footage when the option exists for doing something new instead. It's doubly impossible to agree with footage recycling when it so obviously goes against written intent and the logic of the story. If one thinks it fine and well storywise that a Medusan navigator should be vital for getting out of the anomaly this time when nothing of the sort was required the previous couple of times, one probably has stared at Kollos a bit too long...

Timo Saloniemi

 

Credit my being unobservant in asking the question, as you explained your meaning in the first sentence of the post I referenced!!! Still it seems a bit of an unworthy conceit to count each trip as two entries. From the standpoint of gauging differences in their experience in doing so, why would there be any variation, say, in the entry from either direction in By Any Other Name? Perhaps the reason that the encounter in that episode was without incident, aside from the entire crew save our 4 stalwarts being cuboctahedron shells, was that the Kelvans made other changes to the ship, other than the obvious one to the engines, that would prevent the type of damage that they themselves experienced upon their arrival from Andromeda. What is interesting to consider is that none of their crew was mentioned as having been killed or other wise affected Mitchell-style, Rojan may have just omitted admitting that possibility, but I guess that the reason is that their prodigious mental faculties don't extend to the realm of esper abilities, or at least as humans understand the phenomena

 

I took that as Kirk never taking his eyes off Miranda. He simply didn't see Kolos.

 

Why do polls have to close?! I would vote 10 in it.

The music is absolutely beautiful, and very fitting for the episode.

Here is Diana Muldaur as Dr. Jones. Both are great. Even more interesting is that Dr. Jones, who is "colder than Spock", is secretly blind and wants absolutely nobody to know about it. She hates pity and does not want any pity. Instead, she tries to join the Medusans (a form of life that can't bother her be cause she can't even see them. And The Medusans won't treat her differently just be cause she is blind.)

This episode is a very good example of my life story. (and much more entertaining example instead of telling my life story. I have had a terrible past that perhaps nobody will understand. And even worse, some might have pity. ... which I hate.

If anybody wants to know my life story (and if I believe that they will watch an "old" TV episode) It is much easier to just tell them to go watch "Is There No Truth In Beauty?" among several other various episodes. I won't mention them here be cause they aren't Star Trek. I might in some Off Topic forum at Trek BBS. To a lesser extent I also can relate very much to the character Worf and also Seven Of Nine. And Tasha Yar ... I guess. I have never been killed by a Q-like tar pit.

I still like "Is There No Truth In Beauty?" as the best example be cause it is written the best. The episode explains everything quickly why somebody would act somewhat misanthropic towards others that quick line:

I love when TV & Film is philosophical. There are many in Star Trek.

"... pity, which I hate."

It is the silliest reason to like an episode of Star Trek lol.

 

That must be such a hard thing for her to deal with because as a telepath she feels or senses the pity even if the other person doesn't articulate it. I'd imagine the experience is more intense than a non telepathic person dealing with it.

 

I'll have to pull out the "no soul" argument... the Barrier is the visual climax of the story. It's one of the most alien and otherworldly effects ever designed. Hard to rebut a simple five letter adjective, "trite"... except to say that if you prefer a bland, dull, generic sort of cloud of dark gas in space, just because it corrects a small dialogue inconsistency, then art and design must be lost on you. Maybe you just see matter-of-fact information, facts, things to be nitpicked over.

Would they really have put the Barrier into the story if it was not meant to be the visual highlight?

Yes, it sounds a bit like they're supposed to go through the Barrier and then a void, which is a different place. People in a rush speak sloppily sometimes. I always saw it as being that it's a Barrier, but also it's so vast that you could get lost in it, especially if you go into it and then just stop, as I think happened here. Perhaps on the other occasions they basically punched through it like a projectile, fast... maybe that's the only way to do it and not get lost in it. I don't remember for sure.

There's a sort of Voyager mentality sometimes, with the remasterers. An effect like that generic stormcloud would be very much at home in Voyager. It's just dull conveyance of information over trying to excite and stretch the spirit and imagination.

 

I engaged in the pedantry of individual through-trips chiefly to prompt discussion on this very thing, I guess. There is this massive difference between in and out in that episode, but also the subtler differences vis-á-vis the other two episodes; our explanations can be categorical, episode-specific, or passage-specific, then, and it would be nice to explore all three.

Facts on the issue are few indeed - at most, we might speculate that a generational ship would have to have more crew, especially if the procreative roles of the Kelvans reflected those of their human disguises.

But Kelinda actually refers to multiple ships, and makes it sound as if she is speaking of the ships involved in the Milky Way expedition ("our ships were..."). Single-person ships don't sound like generational designs, so the implication would seem to be that there were multiple larger ships, of which the only known survivors are these four, probably from one and the same ship given their shared lifeboat. Were all the other ships destroyed or presumed destroyed at Barrier entry? Or did different ships attempt entry at different points? (Even in the latter case, our arrogant quartet would probably assume all the others were lost anyway, being no better than their own.)

The odds are in favor of Kelvan casualties IMHO - possibly even massive ones. But whether those involved any Mitchellification, we have no way of telling. The Kelvans themselves acknowledge an inability to communicate across the Barrier, so news of unwelcome divinity would be unlikely to reach the four survivors.

I have no great emotional involvement in the specific type of art chosen. The only thing that matters is that the effect be distinct. So both versions of the episode could be declared flops in this respect if you wish.

In the pilot episode, the heroes went in, found it was too much for them to cope with, and had no trouble finding their way back out again, all at low warp and without getting through to the other side. So that's one rationalization ruled out. (And unfortunately, rationalization is all we have, as the writers themselves clearly weren't interested in keeping detail like this consistent.)

At least it is new art, rather than footage recycling. Opinions vary on art. Opinions on lazy xeroxing vary less, although there's always Andy Warhol...

Timo Saloniemi

 

I liked this episode. I had wondered how the visor was forgotten. I can understand Spock was the ambassador so it was not important to him. But it was sitting in plain sight where Sulu could see it and certainly Kirk.

Also why Kirk was not wearing a visor at the end didn't make sense. There was still a danger to him of going mad.

 

I had no problem with Kirk not wearing the visor at the end. It was only a danger if Kollos opened his box. He didn't and it was a safe bet he wouldn't. He opened it against Marvick in self defense. He was just careless when joined with Spock and was too overcome with emotion. At the end, all was well. He was friendly and had made the mind link with Miranda. He wasn't gonna open up and hurt anyone. Spock wore his and it was obviously symbolic.

As for the barrier, I never took the original footage to mean it was the energy barrier seen two episodes previously. It was just stock footage used to save a little money and it was close enough to the weird space to get away with it. Footage fakery was common in those days.

 

I had heard about fighting on the set, and Bill mentions it in his tribute book to Leonard. It's hard to believe Star Trek even lasted 3 seasons with the constant struggle between Roddenberry and Leonard and Bill. I rather like the IDIC symbol and its ideals. It's hard to read about what went on behind the scenes (the negative stuff anyway) with Paramount and NBC not standing behind the show and the fighting..... well I am just glad for the 79 episodes we did get. It would have been nice if the series had gone 5 years (though with better scripts, like the first two seasons)

 

In my opinion the sheer weirdness of some of the third-season scripts is what elicited such great music to accompany them. I'm thinking in particular of Jerry Fielding's "Spectre of the Gun" and all three of George Duning's third-season episodes: "And the Children Shall Lead," "The Empath," and "Is There in Truth No Beauty."

I guess what I'm saying is that I'm grateful for the third season we did get. (However, those were the first episodes I saw - on NBC, on our year-old first color TV - so perhaps I'm inclined to view those episodes through the proverbial rose-colored glasses.)

 

The hypothetical danger was that the box might de-materialize before its occupant. That was the basis of a 1970s fanfic which continued the episode, now with Kirk going insane. I wish I could find that story; I think it was mentioned in one of the Marshak-Culbreath-Lichtenberg-Winston books. I just have a vague memory of it.

Anyway, Ralph Senensky was livid when he saw that the film editor had put Shatner in at the end. It was standard protocol to close on the most important actor, but Senensky considered it a story error.

 

I guess the danger would have been proven false after the first, thoroughly successful transport. But Spock would be doubly unlikely to wear his own visor in that case: not only would he recognize the futility of futile gestures and unnecessity of unnecessary precautions, but he's quite the self-destructive daredevil at heart, paying very little attention to personal safety, always rushing into the fire first...

But Kirk looking away when the camera looks away solves all the problems, so why worry?

Timo Saloniemi

 

I would love to know which fanfic had a story of Kirk going insane. I think Kirk should not have been there in the transporter room