But Spock knows Christine roofied him.
You mean Thelin from Yesteryear? Nah. Spock has the biggest brain ever.
Production Order Group Viewing 2018
- Thread starter Archivist13
- Start date
Now that makes sense.Chapel will be back soon as her old self after a few sessions under the neural neutralizer.
It wouldn't slow mine.Installation of the device in the psychiatric department hasn't slowed traffic through Helen Noel's office.
THE SLAVER WEAPON
Now this is a novel situation – Spock, Sulu and Uhura are the only regulars in this entire episode! I suppose in live-action it could have been done as an A/B plot structure (not that TOS really did that sort of thing). However, even if they did I can’t imagine for one minute William Shatner would have been happy to be relegated to a boring shipboard subplot of the week!
Unlike most other scripts in Trek this started as an existing story from a completely different science fiction franchise, imported into the Star Trek universe. As a result it feel totally new and original, unlike so many other episodes of TAS (and even later TOS). It also expands on the world of Star Trek considerably:
Female autonomy gets some more knocks in this episode:
The Kzinti as presented are quite a viable threat. Although overconfident the Chuft-Captain is clearly intelligent and wily. He’s not fooled by Uhura’s pretence. He has a telepath which he uses effectively, although within reason (he allows time for the telepath to rest after each scan). The peace treaty mentioned seems to be the only real way of keeping the Kzinti race in check.
Spock’s amazing genius saves the day of course but at least the steps he takes in reaching his conclusions are logically laid out.
His closing speech about the deadly influence of superweapons remains a relevant one to this day.
OTHER THOUGHTS:
All in all, a strong outing for TAS and the unusual format works really well. The limited cast of regulars helps the story to feel much better paced than some other episodes.
I would happily watch some more stories structured like this. Perhaps we could start a petition to CBS for some Shorter Treks?
Now this is a novel situation – Spock, Sulu and Uhura are the only regulars in this entire episode! I suppose in live-action it could have been done as an A/B plot structure (not that TOS really did that sort of thing). However, even if they did I can’t imagine for one minute William Shatner would have been happy to be relegated to a boring shipboard subplot of the week!
Unlike most other scripts in Trek this started as an existing story from a completely different science fiction franchise, imported into the Star Trek universe. As a result it feel totally new and original, unlike so many other episodes of TAS (and even later TOS). It also expands on the world of Star Trek considerably:
- A mysterious race called “The Slavers” ruled the galaxy a billion years ago
- Slaver tech is the source of artificial gravity on starships (perhaps explaining why it’s such a reliable technology).
- Two centuries ago the humans and Kzinti fought FOUR wars, apparently
(The years just before and after Cochrane’s warp test were a busy time indeed!)
Female autonomy gets some more knocks in this episode:
- Kztinti women ARE dumb brutes, it seems.
- Uhura needed to be explained the importance of playing along, to fool their captors
- While attempting to escape Uhura gets stunned not once but twice! She’s really not on her game today.
The Kzinti as presented are quite a viable threat. Although overconfident the Chuft-Captain is clearly intelligent and wily. He’s not fooled by Uhura’s pretence. He has a telepath which he uses effectively, although within reason (he allows time for the telepath to rest after each scan). The peace treaty mentioned seems to be the only real way of keeping the Kzinti race in check.
Spock’s amazing genius saves the day of course but at least the steps he takes in reaching his conclusions are logically laid out.
His closing speech about the deadly influence of superweapons remains a relevant one to this day.
OTHER THOUGHTS:
- Oh no, space cats! They look pretty good and have cool digigrade legs, too (only possible in animation)
- The Slavers’ mystery box reminds me of a Loot Crate - the Chuft-Captain gets a photo, some food and a new toy!
- Those police webs are pretty effective – and just as budget-friendly in live-action as well
- Spock seems impressed with the “total conversion beam” but the ability to convert matter into energy is exactly what antimatter does. Maybe it’s just the compact size that impresses him?
All in all, a strong outing for TAS and the unusual format works really well. The limited cast of regulars helps the story to feel much better paced than some other episodes.
I would happily watch some more stories structured like this. Perhaps we could start a petition to CBS for some Shorter Treks?
Maybe her muscles were still a little stunned from her first stunning.
Sounds plausible to me. Probably found on the moon during the late 1960's or early 1970's to be in service for Khan's SS Botany Bay ship by the 1990's.
<Side Note: Nurse Chapel must have been still in the brig getting her neural brain treatments. When will she be able to resume her duties?
>
Actually I think that her first escape attempt (before she got stunned) was worse than the second!Maybe her muscles were still a little stunned from her first stunning.
She probably joined Spock and McCoy during their smoke breaks.
The Slaver Weapon
I have no recollection of this episode whatsoever. It's like watching a new episode of TAS here in 2020!
That is a WAY cool shuttle design. Go on with your bad self, Copernicus!
I need to sit down, because Uhura's exposition is mind blowing. A billion years ago there was a race that enslaved all the intelligent life in the galaxy. WHOA! Then there was a war resulting in the deaths of all intelligent life so that intelligent life had to evolve again. The scope of this week's story is HUGE.
I wonder what makes Beta Lyrae such a tourist attraction.
Hold on. Somebody found a stasis box with an antigrav belt in it, and that's the basis for the technology of artificial gravity in starships???? Mind blown again.
So who found this belt? The Vulcans? They had interstellar technology before humans did. What did they do for artificial gravity before that? Just float around their ships?
Cool use of the life support belts. But obviously they are not phaser proof.
When I was a kid, I had most of the Mego 8 inch Star Trek dolls. I'm sorry, ACTION FIGURES. I remember the Klingon had a red phaser. Seeing the Kzinti running around with red phasers reminded me of that.
It occurs to me that those dolls, ahem, action figures were based off of TAS not TOS like I always thought. Huh.
Did Spock and company not sensor the planet to see if there was life before they landed?
Spock just knows by looking that the bedraggled Kzinti is a mind reader?
I was going to wonder how Spock knows that the Kzinti would only want to deal with Sulu, but they explain it. Because Uhura is a mere female, and Spock is a wussy hippie granola eater.
So our heroes know about the Kzinti because they've had four wars against the Kzinti in the past, the most recent two hundred years ago. Wouldn't these wars have had to have taken place before humans had warp drive?
CHUFT-CAPTAIN: Fool! Human females are intelligent.
If they know human females are intelligent, then why wouldn't they read Uhura's mind too?
And what the heck is a chuft-captain anyway? Is that a rank I can attain here on the Star Trek BBS?
Turns out Uhura was a track star.
Seems like Spock and Sulu should be killed in the aftermath of that nuke beam they fired.
I feel like I don't have a whole lot to say about this one. I can tell it was adapted from another story. It doesn't feel like a Star Trek story. Kirk's not in it at all, which gives us a chance to see Spock in command again. It was good to see Spock reason his way through the story, particularly in explaining to Uhura at the end why he knows the Kzinti are about to go boom. We also get to see Sulu in a faux-leadership position as he takes the lead in talking to the Kzinti.
My biggest takeaway, though, is that the Kzinti are UTTER MORONS. They are outwitted by our heroes at every turn. Our heroes escape repeatedly, the Chuft-Captain wings his telepath's life support suit, they underestimate their opponents, their method of testing the Weapon is ridiculous and haphazard, and for a coup de grace, they blow themselves to bits with it. No wonder they lose to humans every time. I'm not really worried about the Kzinti defeating the Federation anytime soon. I mean I'm sitting here with a cat on my lap realizing that the Kzinti are indeed about the same level of intelligence as my cat. Sheesh!
Alien Watch! Let's hope M'Ress is smarter than these guys.
Season One
The Glommer
Arex*
Retlaw Plant
Agmar and his Phylosian posse
Swoopers
Yellow winged bird guy (Aleek)
Spock's teddy bear with fangs (sehlat)
Green cat thing that sounds like Godzilla (le-matya)
300 million year old alien on viewscreen log
Green energy Redjac wannabe
The Vendorian
Lt. M'Ress
Remarkably human-looking Taureans.
The planet-eating, Majel Roddenberry-voiced cloud from another galaxy.
Alien miners of Arcadia
Rigelian hypnoid
Giant rock creatures
Remarkably human-looking (when they want to be except for that rebel Lucien guy) Megans
Assorted heretofore unseen aliens on the Delta Triangle's ruling council
The Kzinti (whom no one will mistake for Mensa candidates)
*by request
I have no recollection of this episode whatsoever. It's like watching a new episode of TAS here in 2020!
That is a WAY cool shuttle design. Go on with your bad self, Copernicus!
I need to sit down, because Uhura's exposition is mind blowing. A billion years ago there was a race that enslaved all the intelligent life in the galaxy. WHOA! Then there was a war resulting in the deaths of all intelligent life so that intelligent life had to evolve again. The scope of this week's story is HUGE.
I wonder what makes Beta Lyrae such a tourist attraction.
Hold on. Somebody found a stasis box with an antigrav belt in it, and that's the basis for the technology of artificial gravity in starships???? Mind blown again.
So who found this belt? The Vulcans? They had interstellar technology before humans did. What did they do for artificial gravity before that? Just float around their ships?
Cool use of the life support belts. But obviously they are not phaser proof.
When I was a kid, I had most of the Mego 8 inch Star Trek dolls. I'm sorry, ACTION FIGURES. I remember the Klingon had a red phaser. Seeing the Kzinti running around with red phasers reminded me of that.
It occurs to me that those dolls, ahem, action figures were based off of TAS not TOS like I always thought. Huh.
Did Spock and company not sensor the planet to see if there was life before they landed?
Spock just knows by looking that the bedraggled Kzinti is a mind reader?
I was going to wonder how Spock knows that the Kzinti would only want to deal with Sulu, but they explain it. Because Uhura is a mere female, and Spock is a wussy hippie granola eater.
So our heroes know about the Kzinti because they've had four wars against the Kzinti in the past, the most recent two hundred years ago. Wouldn't these wars have had to have taken place before humans had warp drive?
CHUFT-CAPTAIN: Fool! Human females are intelligent.
If they know human females are intelligent, then why wouldn't they read Uhura's mind too?
And what the heck is a chuft-captain anyway? Is that a rank I can attain here on the Star Trek BBS?
Turns out Uhura was a track star.
Seems like Spock and Sulu should be killed in the aftermath of that nuke beam they fired.
I feel like I don't have a whole lot to say about this one. I can tell it was adapted from another story. It doesn't feel like a Star Trek story. Kirk's not in it at all, which gives us a chance to see Spock in command again. It was good to see Spock reason his way through the story, particularly in explaining to Uhura at the end why he knows the Kzinti are about to go boom. We also get to see Sulu in a faux-leadership position as he takes the lead in talking to the Kzinti.
My biggest takeaway, though, is that the Kzinti are UTTER MORONS. They are outwitted by our heroes at every turn. Our heroes escape repeatedly, the Chuft-Captain wings his telepath's life support suit, they underestimate their opponents, their method of testing the Weapon is ridiculous and haphazard, and for a coup de grace, they blow themselves to bits with it. No wonder they lose to humans every time. I'm not really worried about the Kzinti defeating the Federation anytime soon. I mean I'm sitting here with a cat on my lap realizing that the Kzinti are indeed about the same level of intelligence as my cat. Sheesh!
Alien Watch! Let's hope M'Ress is smarter than these guys.
Season One
The Glommer
Arex*
Retlaw Plant
Agmar and his Phylosian posse
Swoopers
Yellow winged bird guy (Aleek)
Spock's teddy bear with fangs (sehlat)
Green cat thing that sounds like Godzilla (le-matya)
300 million year old alien on viewscreen log
Green energy Redjac wannabe
The Vendorian
Lt. M'Ress
Remarkably human-looking Taureans.
The planet-eating, Majel Roddenberry-voiced cloud from another galaxy.
Alien miners of Arcadia
Rigelian hypnoid
Giant rock creatures
Remarkably human-looking (when they want to be except for that rebel Lucien guy) Megans
Assorted heretofore unseen aliens on the Delta Triangle's ruling council
The Kzinti (whom no one will mistake for Mensa candidates)
*by request
Last edited:
Not entirely. However, it is pretty clear that certain elements of the Mego action figure line were inspired by the animated series which was being aired while the figures were in production. The Klingon is heavily influenced by the animated series, as is Spock. Kirk, though, is based more on his look during the initial 1966 production period.
See "The Galileo Seven".
I forgot to mention that - and it comes complete with conference table! A precurssor to the Runabout perhaps? Regardless, another excellent addition to Starfleet ship designs courtesy of the animated format (I couldn't resist)
Rotating sections are a viable solution but if we are going to allow ST8 to be retconned into the trek universe, that ship did not look like it had any mobile sections. Also, the way it eased onto the ground in front of Cochrane practically cried out "antigrav"
So I guess it was the Vulcans who found it!
Of course! Spock is a telepath too and probably has a faint connection to fellow mind-readers when they are in the room
If so, she's definitely slowed down a lot. Too many ciggy breaks?
Indeed! Especially as it has been established in TOS that Zephram Cochrane "discovered the space warp" at around that time. Maybe the Kzinti were sublight sleeper ship invaders to our solar system? Wars tend to spur on technological development after all!
I think he just forgot until that moment and was trying to cover his mistake.
All good points, although it's worth remembering that these are just a bunch of pirates and maybe not representative of the militarisitc cream of the species.
Maybe
Fair point - even though Kirk didn't have a whole lot to do in that episode other than verbally spar with Comissioner Ferris, yet he managed to come off looking cool and heroic which is probably why Shatner allowed it to happen...once
Most other occasions though Kirk is on the exciting mission, leaving command of the ship to Sulu or Scotty (sometimes Spock)There's several superficial similarities with Galileo 7 in fact, what with Spock off the ship on a shuttlecraft and that being where the exciting action takes place. I can't help wondering what sort of B-plot Kirk would have had in this story and without playing the "evil ambassador" card again I think the most likely is something like what Scotty had in Metamorphosis and similar episodes - scenes on the Bridge, searching through space for the missing crew.
Or maybe Kirk could have a subplot searching for what Scotty's favourite fruit was for a birthday cake? Yeah, that sounds fun!
Scott would be fine with an old bottle of Highland Scotch. Me, too for any of my friends who want to give me a birthday gift.Or maybe Kirk could have a subplot searching for what Scotty's favourite fruit was for a birthday cake? Yeah, that sounds fun!
An invasion from aliens might have united earth (hence "United Earth"). This may explain why our last world war occurred in the mid-1990's if the Kzinti invasion occurred a little after that, say in the 2010's. One result could be recovered alien tech from the Kzinti so sleeper ships were no longer needed by 2018.
Another thought is that the Eugenics Program was devised to fight the Kzinti earlier than the 1990's for the first Kzinti War. After the First Kzinti War, the eugenic supermen rebelled against the governments who controlled them igniting WW3. (Sounds like a TNG episode
). Again, recovered alien tech introduced artificial gravity to Earth, hence artificial gravity on Khan's sleeper ship by its 1996 launch. Either just TAS is in an alternate timeline, or maybe both TOS and TAS are in an alternate timeline than TNG, etc.Another stranger thought is that somewhere before TNG, a time travel event occurred changing Earth's history so Kirk's adventures were moved from only ~200 years in the future, to exactly 300 years in the future.
<edit. @MAGolding needs to do a TAS timeline analysis for us.
>
Last edited:
A point about Mudd's Passion is that it's the only episode that Christine Chapel meets Harry Mudd!!!
JB
JB
If there were known alien attacks in the 1990s I think it would change the reactions of the humans in 2363 when a new bunch of off-worlders landed! However, I have no problem imaging that the first Kzinti "war" was a more contained affair and the "hideous" invaders explained away as "mutants" from early Eugenics experiements.
I like the idea that a Kzinti invasion could have given rise to WWW3 though - maybe the final offessive to defeat them by one country was mistaken by another country as an attack, giving rise to full on interplanetary conflict?
By the 23rd century of course, the true facts of the Kzinti presence in that time would be well known.
Damn, I'd forgotten about the AG on the Botany Bay!
Ah well, back to the notion (I've seen suggested elsewhere) that in the Trek timeline Apollo 18 was never cancelled and it was this mission which uncovered the stasis box with the flying belt inside.
Perhaps the Vulcans were simply using a less efficient form of AG on their ships prior to making contact with the humans?
That would be an especially specific alteration to change the date but leave everything else the same! I'd call parallel universe shenanigans insteadAnother stranger thought is that somewhere before TNG, a time travel event occurred changing Earth's history so Kirk's adventures were moved from only ~200 years in the future, to exactly 300 years in the future.
Silly script writing yields silly theories...
If we're talking silly ideas, then the Gold Key Comics deserve at least their own parallel universe as well...
Worrying about the timeline got me doing some web searches. Only decent TAS timeline I found: http://www.danhausertrek.com/AnimatedSeries/Timeline.html
It glosses over most TOS history issues, especially discussions about WW3 and artificial gravity by 1996. I guess the flying belt was never resolved, either.
It glosses over most TOS history issues, especially discussions about WW3 and artificial gravity by 1996. I guess the flying belt was never resolved, either.
That we know of mwa ha ha (re: androids).A point about Mudd's Passion is that it's the only episode that Christine Chapel meets Harry Mudd!!!
JB
I thought the Slaver Weapon was an excellent episode and would have loved it to be a live-series episode.
I thought it was well written, made sense. I liked the way the Enterprise team worked together and there was a clever solution not involving macho posturing.
And the only Star Trek segment not to feature William Shatner? 
JB
JB
Well theres 'The Cage' as well.And the only Star Trek segment not to feature William Shatner?
JB
You wouldn't want too many episodes without Shatner but the very rare one is OK.
Similar threads
