• Welcome! The TrekBBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans.
    If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

They killed Hengist!

As the murders on Rigel IV were many years before I'd suggest that the entity had taken over Hengist around that time. Wether or not he was a willing collaborator in the murders we will never know, and it's a great idea but when Redjac left his body Hengist was deceased anyway so maybe he'd used his body for many more years than what we speculated.
JB
 
Wouldn't there be a way of everyone knowing that Hengist was already deceased?

Such as... the smell?
Like a stinking draught out of a slaughterhouse? ;)

I don't know. If I'm buying that a cosmic entity is possessing and/or reanimating people to make them commit horrible murders throughout the galaxy, I don't think it's that much more of a leap to also buy that they're staving off effects like rigor mortis and decomposition as well.
 
It might have been a more effective story if the suspect had been a guest crewmember rather than Scotty,
It was Sulu first then switched to Scotty because they felt a) they were underusing Doohan and b) at least one member of the staff felt he was a better actor than Takei.

A guest character would not have had high enough stakes. It had to be a series regular.
 
Redjac could have made for a great villain in a TOS movie. It would have been a departure for sure, but Trek has always had strong horror elements, especially in the first season. Maybe Star Trek V could have involved Redjac...interesting possibilities there.
 
We watch an episode, things get resolved, and then we move on to the next story.

But…

Just as Kirk and Spock wondered if there could be other massive planet killing robots wondering the galaxy you can’t help wondering whether there are other blood feeding vampire clouds and other entities of the same species as Redjac on the loose somewhere.
 
No, I'd say never having seen South Park makes you less likely to be annoying. (And I say this as someone who watched the show fairly regularly until 2016.)
It's extremely hard to stream the last four years of ROBOT CHICKEN (at least) and NOT be annoyed by the obnoxious repetoire of Seth Green's vocals. (Repertoire?)

Wouldn't there be a way of everyone knowing that Hengist was already deceased?

Such as... the smell?
You first. My characters have been known to clean supernatural houses of hell, but I shan't inhale.
It was Sulu first then switched to Scotty because they felt a) they were underusing Doohan and b) at least one member of the staff felt he was a better actor than Takei.

A guest character would not have had high enough stakes. It had to be a series regular.
Conversely, if Marc Cushman's book is accurate (what's that sniggering?) then the fall gal in THE DEADLY YEARS was originally set to survive.....since she was originally going to be Lt. Uhura instead of the one-shot Galway.
 
Conversely, if Marc Cushman's book is accurate (what's that sniggering?) then the fall gal in THE DEADLY YEARS was originally set to survive.....since she was originally going to be Lt. Uhura instead of the one-shot Galway.
I can't speak to that cuz I've not yet gone through the paperwork for that episode.
 
Agreed. I gave up on Stardate order for TOS when I saw that it put "This Side of Paradise" right after "Amok Time." So for two episodes in a row, the crew is going, "Hey, why is Mr. Spock acting so erratic and emotional?"
I remember Bjo Trimble's concordance likely listed the first two TOS adventures as MAGICKS OF MEGAS TU and PATTERNS OF FORCE, but where does that place WHERE NO MAN HAS GONE BEFORE?
 
Wouldn't there be a way of everyone knowing that Hengist was already deceased?

Such as... the smell?

Smell would be the result of decay. Perhaps the animation process Redjac used to control Hengist prevents decay. Perhaps it animates all life functions.

They beamed up to the Enterprise. Hengist must have registered as a human lifeform on sensors.

Perhaps possession is a slow death that takes much longer than a few seconds or minutes. This explains why Scotty or others could remain alive after Redjac left their bodies.

Wonder if Redjac is related to Crusher's boyfriend from "Sub Rosa"
 
Wonder if Redjac is related to Crusher's boyfriend from "Sub Rosa"
I thought he might've been one of the new aliens from season three of SNW between its love of inflicting psychological horror, it's brief creepy takeover of the computer, and the fact that it had a bone to pick with Scotty, specifically. The time-loopiness of it all meant it wouldn't have been an issue for it to have been loose hundreds of years before its escape (and a decade after its defeat).
 
It was Sulu first then switched to Scotty because they felt a) they were underusing Doohan and b) at least one member of the staff felt he was a better actor than Takei.

I did think of Sulu as a possibility, since he was probably the cast member who got the least development, so it might have been believable to make us wonder if he was capable of murder even without the stupid "accident caused by a woman."

On the other hand, making us suspect the show's lone Asian character of being secretly evil would've played too much into the Yellow Peril stereotypes that were still pervasive in the era (see "The Omega Glory"). So it's probably just as well they didn't go there.


A guest character would not have had high enough stakes. It had to be a series regular.

I wonder. I think that's back-projecting a modern assumption. In the sixties, it was still normal to build stories around guest stars of the week, to make us emotionally invested so we'd feel the stakes of what happened to them. Plenty of TOS episodes centered guest crew members in their dramatic arcs, like Gary Mitchell or Dave Bailey or Kevin Riley or Ensign Garrovick, or outside characters like Charlie Evans or Matt Decker or Richard Daystrom. It's just a matter of the episode doing the work to invest us in the character.

I mean, yes, I did say myself that the producers may have felt a regular character would have more investment for the audience than a guest character, but I think saying it had to be a regular is going too far. Rather, I'd say that going for a regular is the shortcut to investing the audience, so that you don't have to do the work of getting them to care about a guest character. It's the easier way; that doesn't make it the better way or the only way.



With the same backstory? (accident caused by woman might make him not like women)

No, I'm saying the whole advantage of going with a guest character would be that he wouldn't have needed that contrived excuse, because he'd be an unknown quantity and could've had a problem with women all along for all we knew. Much the same way that Styles in "Balance of Terror" turned out to have a problem with Vulcanoids.
 
In the sixties, it was still normal to build stories around guest stars of the week, to make us emotionally invested so we'd feel the stakes of what happened to them.

There were entire anthology TV shows with no recurring characters that managed to get viewers to care about the heroes of the week.

What about Chekov instead of Scotty?
 
What about Chekov instead of Scotty?

Hmm, maybe. "Wolf in the Fold" was only the 7th season 2 episode produced (though it aired rather later), so Chekov was still a fairly unknown quantity. And Walter Koenig has always been good at playing creepy and sinister (see "Mirror, Mirror" or "The Day of the Dove," and of course Babylon 5), so he could've made us wonder if Chekov might be guilty.
 
This comes from my 'M:I' behind the scenese book
Year Three - Episode 53: The Diplomat

A salary dispute kept Barbar Bain home for "The Diplomat", forcing producers Woodfield and Balter to find a replacement. "We wanted Greer Garson," claims Woodfield, "because 'The Diplomat' had Fernando Lamas in it and would have looked like an MGM movie. Greer Garson wouldn't do it. Lee Grant was next." Ms. Grant was expensive, but as Woodfield says, "We were told to cast it and we cast it. I phoned Barbara, who said, 'Oh my God, Lee Grant's perfect for that part. You had to get Lee Grant?'" Woodfield's strategy worked well, for Barbara and the studio came to terms shortly thereafter. "Lee Grant was costing them a fortune," he chuckles.
Grant's participation makes the overdose in the final act more suspensful than had it been Barbara, who we know would be back for the next show.
The producers actually considered killing off Lee Grant as a way of emphazing the unpredictable nature of the episode.​
 
If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Sign up / Register


Back
Top