I watched "The Tholian Web", a personal favorite of mine, recently and thought carefully about it. Several things came to mind.
While I love EXETER's "The Tressaurian Intersection" and ENT's "In A Mirror, Darkly", one flaw I see in both of these spin-offs of "The Tholian Web" is that they seem to assign powers and motives to the Tholians that simply weren't in the TOS episode. The message behind "The Tholian Web" was very clear: the environment that starship crews will find on some frontiers will be both unusually dangerous and incompatible with standard science and technological applications, much as what was seen in "The Immunity Syndrome". Spock's command wasn't just about Spock coping without Kirk, it was about learning to adapt, APOLLO 13-style, to unconventional circumstances where you have to think outside the box. "Tressaurian" and "Darkly", as much of a fun romp as they were, seem to make the Tholians incredibly powerful, assigning them nefarious motives that weren't originally there. The Defiant and her crew clearly were not the victim of evil aliens. It was the victim of badly warped space that trapped the ship and caused the crew to go mad. The Tholians simply wanted to confront the Enterprise for territorial reasons.
The transporter breakdown was a critical plot device, but it was indicative of the breakdown of the fabric of space. It wasn't a "deus ex machina", because it wasn't just the transporter being affected; the Defiant itself was taken away. ("There's nothing out there to grab a hold of and bring in.") But there is one question that puzzles me: while the Defiant was still in the "Prime" Universe, why couldn't Kirk and company try using the Defiant's transporters to beam back to the Enterprise? It would make sense that, since Spock declared that "the ship is still functioning", that using the Defiant's transporters to help beam back would make things easier, right? (Sensors and torblifts still worked, anyway.)
I always wondered why a functioning ship would not be able to sustain the boarding party without spacesuits. Did the Defiant's atmosphere leak into deep space due to interphase? Possibly. Then it hit me: the Defiant's crew had gone insane because of the spacial-distortion sickness, turned violent, and someone on-board got the bright idea to shut off the life support systems. Ergo: anyone still left alive was killed anyway because they ran out of breathable air.
Even when I first saw this one in reruns back in the 70s, I could see the lapses in production values. Characters seemed to talk over each other on a few occasions. This was sad, because there's a good story here, great scenes and great dialogue.
The only other issue I see with this episode is that Kirk's "last orders" seemed a bit silly. It works, barely. If they had dropped the issue after the viewing of Kirk's video and not mentioned it directly again, instead replacing the conversation with Kirk leading a ceremony to pay respects to the Defiant's crew, this one would've been (and should've been) a much stronger episode.
Interesting, how the producers agreed upon naming Enterprise and her sisterships after World War II aircraft carriers (Constellation, Lexington, Exeter, etc.) and yet they forgot their naming scheme and named this derelict Defiant.
Despite the tendency in recent years to interpret the Tholians as solid, corporeal creatures, I would have preferred that they remain mysterious. Woud've been fine with me if Loskene was just a large (head-sized) crystal with no limbs, grown in-place and never moves more than a little bit. Actually, I prefer to think the Tholians are energy creatures, like the Tycho IV vampire cloud. Whatever. Barbara Babcock was great in her voiceover.
Was it just me, or was the musical score for this one flawless? This ep actually showcased musical passages from all three years of TOS.
Anyone else notice that the familiar transporter room hum was misapplied to Engineering? How about how loud the hum was in the transporter room?
The scene where Chekov freaks out and Spock KO's him with his pinch always grabs me. Never gets old. And the music is perfect.
Having recently viewed "The Tholian Web" and TNG's "Cause and Effect", I will say this: while being able to see the temporal distortion as an actual special effect was useful and interesting, the lack of any similar effect in "The Tholian Web" doesn't hurt the ep in any way. The Defiant's weird halo and creepy gradual fade-away are more than enough. TOS relied more on the viewers' imagination, and here it worked. Maybe it would also be said that "Cause and Effect" is a logical descendent of "The Tholian Web", as both stories are similar in how the crews cope with a sudden, very unusual environmental danger.
While I love EXETER's "The Tressaurian Intersection" and ENT's "In A Mirror, Darkly", one flaw I see in both of these spin-offs of "The Tholian Web" is that they seem to assign powers and motives to the Tholians that simply weren't in the TOS episode. The message behind "The Tholian Web" was very clear: the environment that starship crews will find on some frontiers will be both unusually dangerous and incompatible with standard science and technological applications, much as what was seen in "The Immunity Syndrome". Spock's command wasn't just about Spock coping without Kirk, it was about learning to adapt, APOLLO 13-style, to unconventional circumstances where you have to think outside the box. "Tressaurian" and "Darkly", as much of a fun romp as they were, seem to make the Tholians incredibly powerful, assigning them nefarious motives that weren't originally there. The Defiant and her crew clearly were not the victim of evil aliens. It was the victim of badly warped space that trapped the ship and caused the crew to go mad. The Tholians simply wanted to confront the Enterprise for territorial reasons.
The transporter breakdown was a critical plot device, but it was indicative of the breakdown of the fabric of space. It wasn't a "deus ex machina", because it wasn't just the transporter being affected; the Defiant itself was taken away. ("There's nothing out there to grab a hold of and bring in.") But there is one question that puzzles me: while the Defiant was still in the "Prime" Universe, why couldn't Kirk and company try using the Defiant's transporters to beam back to the Enterprise? It would make sense that, since Spock declared that "the ship is still functioning", that using the Defiant's transporters to help beam back would make things easier, right? (Sensors and torblifts still worked, anyway.)
I always wondered why a functioning ship would not be able to sustain the boarding party without spacesuits. Did the Defiant's atmosphere leak into deep space due to interphase? Possibly. Then it hit me: the Defiant's crew had gone insane because of the spacial-distortion sickness, turned violent, and someone on-board got the bright idea to shut off the life support systems. Ergo: anyone still left alive was killed anyway because they ran out of breathable air.
Even when I first saw this one in reruns back in the 70s, I could see the lapses in production values. Characters seemed to talk over each other on a few occasions. This was sad, because there's a good story here, great scenes and great dialogue.
The only other issue I see with this episode is that Kirk's "last orders" seemed a bit silly. It works, barely. If they had dropped the issue after the viewing of Kirk's video and not mentioned it directly again, instead replacing the conversation with Kirk leading a ceremony to pay respects to the Defiant's crew, this one would've been (and should've been) a much stronger episode.
Interesting, how the producers agreed upon naming Enterprise and her sisterships after World War II aircraft carriers (Constellation, Lexington, Exeter, etc.) and yet they forgot their naming scheme and named this derelict Defiant.
Despite the tendency in recent years to interpret the Tholians as solid, corporeal creatures, I would have preferred that they remain mysterious. Woud've been fine with me if Loskene was just a large (head-sized) crystal with no limbs, grown in-place and never moves more than a little bit. Actually, I prefer to think the Tholians are energy creatures, like the Tycho IV vampire cloud. Whatever. Barbara Babcock was great in her voiceover.
Was it just me, or was the musical score for this one flawless? This ep actually showcased musical passages from all three years of TOS.
Anyone else notice that the familiar transporter room hum was misapplied to Engineering? How about how loud the hum was in the transporter room?
The scene where Chekov freaks out and Spock KO's him with his pinch always grabs me. Never gets old. And the music is perfect.
Having recently viewed "The Tholian Web" and TNG's "Cause and Effect", I will say this: while being able to see the temporal distortion as an actual special effect was useful and interesting, the lack of any similar effect in "The Tholian Web" doesn't hurt the ep in any way. The Defiant's weird halo and creepy gradual fade-away are more than enough. TOS relied more on the viewers' imagination, and here it worked. Maybe it would also be said that "Cause and Effect" is a logical descendent of "The Tholian Web", as both stories are similar in how the crews cope with a sudden, very unusual environmental danger.
