How many ways...

[Christopher]

^Or rather, the priority of the scriptwriter and producers was the story involving the high-paid stars of the series, not the subplot involving one recurring player and a few extras. So with only 50 minutes to tell the story, they only had so much time to devote to establishing the situation on the planet, and thus they kept the problem fairly simple. It just wasn't what the story was really about.

 

[Therin of Andor]

The caffeine in the coffee turns into cocaine.

No wonder Janeway was addicted.

"There's coffee in that nebula."

 

[Therin of Andor]

Alright, let's say that all of the Enterprise's shuttlecraft were "down" for service at that point, and none available. (What a ridiculous scenario.)

In Diane Duane's "The Kobayashi Alternative" text-based computer game, which coincidentally is also about rescuing Sulu, you can roam the whole ship and enter various rooms to collect things you might need for a landing party but, if you enter the shuttlebay, you are told that you see the ship's shuttle fleet "damaged beyond repair".

 

[T'Girl]

They missed survival class at Starfleet Academy the day that stuff was being taught.

The instructor didn't arrive until Tuesday.

 

[Wingsley]

^Or rather, the priority of the scriptwriter and producers was the story involving the high-paid stars of the series, not the subplot involving one recurring player and a few extras. So with only 50 minutes to tell the story, they only had so much time to devote to establishing the situation on the planet, and thus they kept the problem fairly simple. It just wasn't what the story was really about.

The more I consider this ep, the more I'm inclined to criticize the writer and the creative management of TOS for letting this one through half-baked. The freezing of the stranded explorers on the planet was a lame plot device. I don't see where it was necessary for the entire Enterprise crew to appear to be so incompetent like that. At least when Gilligan and the Skipper fumbled around, it was funny. Here, it just looks like an early attempt at "Spock's Brain". What a shame.

The freezer subplot was not necessary. Just stranding them in a storm would have been enough to make the point. And there was ample throwaway dialogue that could've been used to show that attempts had been made to airdrop help to the team on the ground.

I don't know how many participants on this board have ever experienced extreme temperatures, but I've seen minus forty. The whole "one hundred seventeen below" in a blanket thing really irritated me. The dog with the horn was a step up from that.

But I digress...

 

[Christopher]

I've just remembered something... the reason they couldn't beam down blankets or tents or coffee or whatever wasn't because they'd be duplicated, but because by that point in the story, Evil Kirk had blasted the central transporter circuitry in engineering and nothing could be beamed down until they repaired it.

The freezer subplot was not necessary. Just stranding them in a storm would have been enough to make the point.

Wind machines and rain machines cost money, and it would be time-consuming to clean up and reset for new takes. Coating the actors in fake frost and telling them to shiver is more affordable. They were doing this on a budget, you know.

 

[A.V.I.A.F.]

^Or rather, the priority of the scriptwriter and producers was the story involving the high-paid stars of the series, not the subplot involving one recurring player and a few extras. So with only 50 minutes to tell the story, they only had so much time to devote to establishing the situation on the planet, and thus they kept the problem fairly simple. It just wasn't what the story was really about.

Real-world explanation for my in-universe one. That is quite possibly the reality of it. However, are we being too hard on the writers here? I am not up on the whole air-date versus production order, but is it possible that shuttlecrafts were not yet part of the TOS universe when The Enemy Within was written/slashed produced?

 

[Christopher]

I am not up on the whole air-date versus production order, but is it possible that shuttlecrafts were not yet part of the TOS universe when The Enemy Within was written/slashed produced?

Not just possible, but certain. "The Enemy Within" was only the third post-pilot episode produced, and they didn't have the budget to build a shuttlecraft and hangar miniature until they wrote an episode requiring them, "The Galileo Seven," which was produced three months and nine episodes later. (And in fact it was aired 11 episodes after "Enemy" was aired, so "Enemy" comes way earlier in both orders.) And of course, as such an early episode, it was written for a universe that was still in its formative stages, and a lot of the stuff we later came to take for granted hadn't been established yet.

 

[A.V.I.A.F.]

I am not up on the whole air-date versus production order, but is it possible that shuttlecrafts were not yet part of the TOS universe when The Enemy Within was written/slashed produced?

Not just possible, but certain. "The Enemy Within" was only the third post-pilot episode produced, and they didn't have the budget to build a shuttlecraft and hangar miniature until they wrote an episode requiring them, "The Galileo Seven," which was produced three months and nine episodes later. (And in fact it was aired 11 episodes after "Enemy" was aired, so "Enemy" comes way earlier in both orders.) And of course, as such an early episode, it was written for a universe that was still in its formative stages, and a lot of the stuff we later came to take for granted hadn't been established yet.

I suspected as much, thanks for backing it up with some hard data. So really, we are being unfair for criticizing the whole Sulu rescue. However, in G7, no one makes a big deal about the shuttlecraft (as though it were something new); thus implying that the ship always had them. Maybe in G7, they should have treated shuttlecrafts as though they were something new, possibly being tried out for the first time as an alternative to beaming.

Here's another way of looking at it. Why bother even using a shuttlecraft in G7? Was there something about the planet's atmosphere that precluded beaming down?

 

[Christopher]

It's not that they weren't supposed to have shuttles yet in "The Enemy Within." It's simply that a) they couldn't afford to build one yet and b) the drama required that the transporter be the only way of rescuing the team. And since the viewing audience wouldn't have known about shuttlecraft yet, there was no dramatic need to explain why shuttles weren't being used. A bit of a cheat, yes, but it's the nature of short-form storytelling that you need to be efficient, that if something isn't relevant to the story, you don't waste time on it.

These days, having been raised in a world of reruns and home video and reference books and websites, we've grown accustomed to looking on television series as unified wholes, thinking in terms of the big picture and how it all fits together. But in 1966, that wasn't the case. Episodes would air once, occasionally twice, and then rarely be seen again. So the focus wasn't on how an episode fit into the greater whole of the series. The focus was on the story needs of that specific episode. So continuity with other episodes was not a primary concern. It just wasn't important, by the storytelling logic of 1960s episodic television, to explain why they didn't have shuttles in one episode but did in a later episode. All that mattered was the needs of each separate episode as an independent whole.

As for "The Galileo Seven," the shuttle crew's mission wasn't to explore a planet, it was to survey the "quasar" Murasaki 312, a space-based phenomenon. The planet was just a landing place they happened to find after their systems were damaged. As for why a shuttle crew was needed to survey the quasar, that wasn't made clear. Given the turbulence and radiation, you'd think it would make more sense to use the Enterprise itself.

 

[A.V.I.A.F.]

we've grown accustomed to looking on television series as unified wholes, thinking in terms of the big picture and how it all fits together. But in 1966, that wasn't the case. Episodes would air once, occasionally twice, and then rarely be seen again. So the focus wasn't on how an episode fit into the greater whole of the series. The focus was on the story needs of that specific episode. So continuity with other episodes was not a primary concern.

Of course that's true, but a big part of what we do in this forum is seeking that continuity. So, are we engaging in a fruitless endeavor?

 

[Christopher]

^I was responding to your specific question about why the producers of the show didn't explain the lack of shuttles vs. their later presence. That's a separate subject from whether we can come up with explanations after the fact.

 

[A.V.I.A.F.]

^I was responding to your specific question about why the producers of the show didn't explain the lack of shuttles vs. their later presence. That's a separate subject from whether we can come up with explanations after the fact.

Oh I totally get where you're coming from. My question was not directed at you specifically. I am simply pondering the question of seeking continuity in a TV series for which continuity was a non-issue.

 

[Wingsley]

Wind machines and rain machines cost money, and it would be time-consuming to clean up and reset for new takes. Coating the actors in fake frost and telling them to shiver is more affordable. They were doing this on a budget, you know.

I think you may have misunderstood what I was saying.

The situation the expedition should have faced could have been similar, but just not stated as a "117 below" threat. If memory serves, they did use fans to produce wind. So the team was being pounded by a wintry wind storm. But the whole "they're going to freeze to death!" crisis seemed silly.

The crew could have simply said, "the nights on Alfa 177 are brutal; sub-zero temparatures and high winds. Looks like the team on the surface is in for a rough night" and then Sulu could've reported later that one of his team was gathering rocks for phaser-heat, and he was injured and in need of medical attention. That would've made sense.

 

[Christopher]

I don't understand why you think freezing to death is a silly crisis. There are plenty of places on Earth where you could freeze to death, and on alien planets the conditions could easily be far more extreme.

 

[Wingsley]

^ It is if you assume there's nothing a faster-than-light starship can do to stop it from happening. And have you ever experienced minus-40? I have, wearing a full winter suit, and I couldn't stand it. The notion of someone wrapped in a blanket, laying against a rock, at negative-117, is absolutely ludicrous. At that point, Sulu should have already long-since been dead anyway. It looked so fake, like someone had no idea what arctic-like conditions would be like.

And they can't at least have Spock say "we tried airdropping shelter kits unsuccessfully; they all landed over 12 kilometers away". Instead, the Enterprise just circles above, fretting because the transporters don't work. Forget shuttlecraft. The notion that the crew was that helpless and Sulu and his boys are doomed is ridiculous. The notion of anyone having any life left in them at all at that temperature is over-the-top fake.

If you look at the plot, they could've used a similar situation without saying "117 below" and showing Sulu and company struggling, without making it so ridiculous. So, as I see it, there were three ways (hindsight being 20-20) to make this ep more rational.

1: Spock tells Kirk the Enterprise takes a chance by air-sropping shelter-kits, but the kits miss the target by, say, 12 KM. Sulu and company opt to stay put, but the storm drops temps to 0˚ C. They use phasers on rocks, but a crewman is injured carrying rocks to the camp site.

2: Let's assume it gets a little colder than 0˚ C. Let's say that it's -10˚ C or -20. Spock air-drops the shelters, but only one lands nearby. Others are too far away. Everyone tries to take turns in the shelter, but a crewman on the surface is injured carrying rocks to the site for phaser-heating. This provides a little more realistic jeopardy, and shouldn't affect the budget.

3: Alright, let's assume that Alfa 177 does indeed get to -117. At this level of danger to the expedition, the Enterprise crew should be resourceful enough to find a way to air-drop shelters off-camera. You can assume the shelters reach the target. Instead of showing Sulu using a phaser, we see Sulu and his team happily reporting to Spock that the airdrop worked; we see Sulu on the surface and a parachute flapping above the rocks behind him. We don't need to see the shelters. From then on, we hear Sulu report on the radio of how they're all cramped in the shelter-capsules, and one of his team was injured in the wind storm. They're alright, being kept warm by body heat. But one of his men needs medical attention. This allows the team to face danger without it being over-the-top silly or fake-looking.​

 

[Christopher]

The story wasn't about the technicalities of a rescue operation. It was about the drama of a man split between his positive and negative selves. The stuff about the landing party was secondary, just a McGuffin to create a ticking clock. So there was only so much attention and dialogue that they were going to devote to it. Sure, maybe they could've set it up a little better, but they wouldn't have gone into that much detail about a secondary element of the story. The episode was called "The Enemy Within," not "Stuck on a Freezing Planet."

 

[Wingsley]

More like "Stuck on a Really, Really Fake-Looking Freezing Planet".

The "A" story was a bit cheesy, but the "B" side was unbearable. I just feel it didn't have to be that way, and it did not have to cost any significant amount to do a more convincing job. Maybe just the cost of a parachute.

 

[Therin of Andor]

Maybe just the cost of a parachute.

Sulu shivering in a silver blanket vs SPFX team dropping a parachute in a snowstorm in front of a bluescreen, hoping it lands in the right place. Clean up. Repeat. Clean up. Repeat. Etc.

 

[Christopher]

^They probably would've just used stock footage of a parachute drop. That's what every other show did.