THE COUNTER CLOCK INCIDENT
When Star Trek ended the first time it was with a zany high-concept story mixed with strongly implied institutional sexism.
Now Star Trek is ending for a second time and the whacky science fiction elements have been turned up to eleven, being mishandled to the point of incoherence! However, at least the subject for social commentary (ageism) is treated with a bit more grace than before, although the effectiveness is a little muddled (see below).
There’s some fine addition to Trek lore as Commodore Robert April is introduced to the canon, along with his former CMO (and wife). Also that mandatory retirement age is 75 (which seems a little odd by today’s standards but probably seemed elderly in 1973)
Unfortunately some classic TOS sexism still peeks over the barricades as no-one ever addresses Doctor April by her title and McCoy’s “compliment” implies how unusual it is for a woman to have both brains and beauty.
We also get a bit of history on the ship - components of Enterprise were assembled in the San Francisco naval yards on Earth.
The discussion of Sarah's career makes the Federation seem very young and warp travel very new. She served as the first medical officer on a ship with warp drive. If she's 75 like Robert, then warp drive was developed in that time frame and not a couple hundred years earlier.
Sarah's not referring to the Bonaventure, is she?
It's an odd line and not very consistent with already established Trek, let alone the later incarnations. I prefer to interpret it as her saying that she was the "First Medical Officer" AKA "Chief Medical Officer". It's clunky, but sorta works.
The first act of the episode is pretty tense and exciting – the Enterprise tries to help and ship in distress and almost gets destroyed as a result, leading on to new adventures! Then we end up in what looks like a negative universe and everything goes very strange, very quickly. For unexplained reasons the crew all start growing younger at an accelerated rate and travel time across half the galaxy takes only a few minutes. This means that the aged Commodore April (now a strapping man in the prime of his life) must assume command and save the day, returning the Enterprise and her crew of babies back to our own universe. Commodore April solves the deaging problem faster than it would take Doctor McCoy to pick up a hyprospray and rounds the adventure off by making out with his hot, young wife.
The message of the show (that old people can still be useful) is a bit muddled, as April only steps up to the plate when his young, healthy body is restored. There’s also the issue that he retains no memory of his twilight years, believing himself at that time to be a Starship captain in his thirties.
This whole story is weird, even by TAS standards. And I wonder if Commodore April is the reason why…
A TALL TALE…
Even during the first act something is a little off – Commodore April’s declaration that “no natural object can travel Warp 36” is a redundant since NO natural phenomena can move faster than the speed of light (
Lights Of Zetar). Then the Enterprise locks a tractor beam onto it anyway (that must have been some pinpoint timing by Sulu) but remains being towed at a speed of Warp 22 at a distance of 13 seconds.
Even assuming the (slow) WF^3 formula, this means the Enterprise tractor beam has a maximum range of 191 billion kilometres (32 times the furthest distance of Pluto)
Details like this are indicative of an unreliable narrator, almost as if these events are being retold by someone who was present for the events but doesn’t recall them clearly or is maybe exaggerating them for sake of the audience. Someone like a Commodore regaling his companions at the retirement colony with a fantastic and overly embellished version of what happened on his “final mission”?
If so, this would justify the spoonfed nature of other details too – things like Kirk having to ask for Universal Translator to be engaged (instead of it happening automatically) and Uhura making reference to the impressive sounding “universal language” they speak instead of common English (numerous references in all 3 seasons of TOS)
This would also explain the incoherent mess that is the backwards universe since April is making most of it up on the fly. For example, time flows backwards but the crew hear speech normally because their brains are working in reverse too – so why would Scotty’s engineers have to “learn” to operate their machinery backwards? Why would the Enterprise be seen as moving backwards? If time flowing in reverse is normal to Karla’s people, why would she have a “son” that’s older than her under any circumstances? Then Spock says that it’s logical that people are “born old” – who is that physically possible? Or does he mean that corpses un-rot and then come to life? Why would Karla’s people see that as “coming to life”? Or is birth a time of sorrow as that person “dies”?
Then there’s the time and distance issues – Karla’s homeworld and the target supernova are shown on the map to be about half a galaxy away from each other, a map that perfectly corresponds in size to the Milky Way. Yet that half-galaxy trek is a mere 18 minutes! Did April get confused about what he’d described in the previous scene?
Additionally, the crew grow younger at an incredibly accelerated rate! I suppose this could be explained by the fact that they’re intruders from a different universe, but did Karla also experience the same phenomena in ours?
Then, as everyone de-ages they also forget the knowledge that they’d leaned previously, April even forgetting his rank and assuming he is a captain again. If knowledge of the past can’t be retained, how do any of them carry out their desperate mission?
Finally, the Transporter is the magical cureall for the 3rd time in 17 episodes. This time though it doesn’t just restore the physical pattern of those who last went through it, the magical machine can fix all 430 people on board, including restoring the memories which they lost IN A DIFFERENT UNIVERSE!!!
So much is explained if this is the faint recollections of a somewhat elderly Commodore, years after the events. There’s no information on how much alcohol was involved during the retelling…
OTHER THOUGHTS
- In a lovely nod to continuity the Enterprise returns the Beta Niobe supernova from All Our Yesterdays, an episode considered by many fans to be the “proper” TOS finale.
- Sarah carries the lovely “plot metaphor” flower from Capella IV. Hey, last week we met the Capellan power cat. Capella is rapidly becoming the new Rigel!
- Just as in That Which Survives the spaceframe of the Enterprise is shown to be incredibly tough, surviving speeds of up to Warp 22! This time they’re not providing the propulsion though so it’s quite justified by those standards.
- In his captain’s log Kirk describes the strange realm they’re in as an “antimatter universe”. All together now – “what of Lazarus”?
- In a rare piece of sensibly written plot development halfway through the episode, the overlay and calculations Spock uses to determine the next point of crossover is quite well realised. That large map table is pretty cool too.
- Last week the landing party got scared faces - this week everyone gets complete child versions of themselves!
- As a child Spock retains his adult baritone, even though we know from Yesteryear that he sounded different then. Maybe his voice just broke at a young age?
After saving the day, Commodore Robert April decides NOT to stay youthful, stating that he would not want to live his life again any other way. That’s all well and good, but he can retain his life lived AND live some more AND do it with Sarah by his side. More amazingly, Dr April agrees with her husband. I guess they really are the ideal couple!
Anyway, he’s still technically 75 so would Starfleet really allow him to keep working, despite his apparent young age? Later, Strafleet offers to reconsider his mandatory retirement, potentially allowing him to remain Federation Ambassador at large. I bet that job would be easier with a bit less arthritis in his bones!
If looked at as an interesting character driven story, focusing on the importance of a person in society as they age then it’s a pretty good outing – and such tales are pretty much a Trek staple. However, whereas in D C Fontana’s
Yesteryear the science fiction elements don’t hold up to much scrutiny, in this episode the SF elements positively collapse when given even a cursory examination! This is fine if the SF trappings are just there to set the scene (
Yesteryear) but when they form such an integral part of the plot more thought ought to have been put into the writing.
KIRK: I see your flower has blossomed again.
SARAH: Yes, our trip into the negative universe gave it a second life. It gave all of us a second life.
The adventure might have offered the Aprils a second life, but they turned that down! However, I don’t mind this line because it has a double meaning in relation to TAS – which also gave Star Trek a second life.
The series has had its ups and downs but was at its best when trying NOT to copy TOS or retread what had come before, instead exploring the potential of the animated medium to its fullest in terms of epic scope and creature design.
The limits of the format are unfortunately most evident in the human characters as so much of what the actors brought is stripped away when reduced to their voices and (mostly) static faces.
However, on balance TAS is a worthy addition to the canon and I will certainly be revisiting it in the future.
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