50th Anniversary Rewatch Thread

[CorporalCaptain]

This one and "Wink of an Eye" have always reminded me more than a little of each other...Kirk finds himself more or less alone on the Enterprise with a mysterious blonde woman who needs something from him...

You are not alone in that. I always have to check myself that "Wink" is the one with Kirk explicitly putting on his boots.

It's very thin that the Gideonites won't consider preventing conception, but have no issue with spreading fatal disease.

That element I have no issue with. The basic problem that the "Gideonites" suffer from is their ideology, which mirrors real-world ideologies. The episode correctly anticipated [edit - and/or corrected assessed] that real people adhering to ideologies that value life from conception onward but that are against contraception would have no ideological problem failing en masse to take effective measures to prevent the spread of certain fatal diseases, or would dig elsewhere into their ideologies to justify the failure to take such preventative measures.

Why would the Gideonites' transmission cut to an insert shot of Hodin hitting a button? [...] other than DRAMA?

DRAMA for that one, too! Or, maybe it's an etiquette thing so the party on the other end knows that the communication was deliberately ended and there is nothing wrong with the equipment.

 

[Henoch]

It's very thin that the Gideonites won't consider preventing conception, but have no issue with spreading fatal disease.

It looks like it is too late for contraception. Their resources will be gone by the time they wait for a couple of generations to die of old age. The population en masse is not aware the looming fatal disease, they would be appalled by it because of their sanctity of life. It is a secret government program by a group of elitist who think they should make the decisions for the whole. A better choice is to colonize off planet with the surplus population. Something the Federation is able to provide. Even if the population doesn't want to leave, it would be better to force them to a new world needing people, than kill them.

 

[Discofan]

It looks like it is too late for contraception. Their resources will be gone by the time they wait for a couple of generations to die of old age. The population en masse is not aware the looming fatal disease, they would be appalled by it because of their sanctity of life. It is a secret government program by a group of elitist who think they should make the decisions for the whole. A better choice is to colonize off planet with the surplus population. Something the Federation is able to provide. Even if the population doesn't want to leave, it would be better to force them to a new world needing people, than kill them.

It seems like they'd need a lot of planets to colonize!

 

[Henoch]

It seems like they'd need a lot of planets to colonize!

More the better. Over on my "Cloning for Colonization" thread, Old Mixer almost has me convinced that there's not that many human colonists out there. Wait 'til he sees this crowd get out there. Instant billions!

 

[Phaser Two]

You are not alone in that. I always have to check myself that "Wink" is the one with Kirk explicitly putting on his boots.

Yup. MOG has a slightly less suggestive scene of them leaving Kirk's cabin looking like they just, uh, got acquainted. As a bonus, both blonde women aren't just gorgeous - they're smart. And both actresses did a very good job.

 

[wayne66]

Mark of Gideon is a good episode to me. I also felt that it was very similar to Wink of an Eye. The Gideon Ambassador is really irritating. Kirk's dialogue near the end of the episode suggests something did happen between him and Odonna. Kirk talking about contraception always fascinated me. it must have been one of the first times that it was mentioned on American television.Finally, Odonna's statement asking Kirk if he was going to stay on the ship, I felt was a strange question. Of course Kirk is going to stay, I thought he had made that perfectly clear. Good episode with Sharon Acker played Odonna very well. "How can you look at me? You should shouting in anger." I like her.

 

[johnnybear]

Yes, it is odd that the Gideonites and Kirk himself never mentioned the possibility of taking a large contingent of the peoples into outer space and settling them on another planet with Federation assistance of course!
JB

 

[dahj]

When people talk about how progressive Star Trek was, they always mention stuff like the kiss in Plato's Stepchildren, or the not so subtle "racism is bad" of Let That Be Your Last Battlefield, but this one often gets left out even though it is openly talking about birth control, which is weirdly still a taboo for some people, and then there's also...

"Yet you can kill a young girl."

I very much doubt this was actually intended, but if you take that conversation between Krik and Hodin out of context, Kirk is essentially arguing pro-choice there. That short exchange highlights the hypocrisy of protecting life from conception, when young women are forced to die as a result, here because of a "lack of space", but in the real world from the lack of availability of legal and safe abortion.

Again, I don't think this was consciously written in, indeed it does seem like just a side effect of a poorly thought out take on the dangers of overpopulation, but it is a possible reading of material, and for all the flak I've given Star Trek for being inadvertently sexist, I feel it needs to be mentioned when it's inadvertently pro women's rights as well.

On a little less serious note, I'm headcanoning that this is actually a prequel to Logan's Run, for a while the kids on Gideon were volunteering to die, and then at some point it becomes mandatory...

Also, Kirk apparently had a case of the Vegans, but got better. So eat your meats kids!

 

[Henoch]

On a little less serious note, I'm headcanoning that this is actually a prequel to Logan's Run, for a while the kids on Gideon were volunteering to die, and then at some point it becomes mandatory...

Volunteer, then mandatory ... will it be random or selective? As I said earlier, its too late for any type of birth control. Their resources (land is a resource) are about to run out and they need to quickly unload a sizable percent of the population. The ruling political party wants to use a disease to kill their own people. Kirk says:

KIRK: ...You have many methods available. I've mentioned only a few.​

Was Kirk also thinking that the disintegration chambers on Eminiar Seven are now available?

 

[CorporalCaptain]

I'm not sure of the origin of the name of the episode, but I'd suppose it has something to do with the Biblical military leader Gideon, whose story is told in Judges 6-8. There is a point when Gideon is forming an army to fight the Midianites when God tells him that his army is too big for the victory to be perceived as divine salvation. So, Gideon has to reduce the size of his army. Maybe that's where it's from.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gideon

 

[dahj]

I'm not sure of the origin of the name of the episode,

I heard Barry Allen created the planet...

 

[Henoch]

So, Gideon has to reduce the size of his army.

Does Gideon do it with birth control or suicide by virus? No, he probably told some of them to go away. Mass immigration seems more humane than killing your friends and family.
What was the final solution in the episode? Odona going back to her planet to be the instrument of viral death or did Kirk open her eyes that they can go to other planets in the galaxy. Hmmm.

ODONA: It is not like our ship.
KIRK: Oh, yes, it is. It's exactly the same. Only this one works.
ODONA: It goes to many other planets?
KIRK: Yes, it goes to the whole galaxy.​

 

[Discofan]

I am curious. Doesn't "Gideon" have something to do with religion? That name seems strangely familiar in a non-StarTrek context.

 

[Phaser Two]

Good episode with Sharon Acker played Odonna very well. "How can you look at me? You should shouting in anger." I like her.

Absolutely; I do too. I think she's really, really good. When you learn at the end that she was playacting for her people, it adds a whole nuance to her performance.

 

[johnnybear]

So she wasn't really infected, Phase?
JB

 

[Phaser Two]

MOG and WOE share another similarity: they are often dismissed by fans who just can't get past a major central aspect of the episode. Specifically, the Scalosians' acceleration in WOE and the duplicate Enterprise in MOG.

For me personally, that viewpoint is more understandable with MOG than WOE, because WOE presents more of a science problem and MOG more of a logic issue. WOE detractors often talk about sonic booms and friction, but for some reason accept all sorts of other episodes with (just off the cuff) the phasers making sounds in space, the Enterprise turning or stopping on a dime, and the like. Heck, Mirror, Mirror makes absolutely no sense at all if you think about it for a minute - - how were the same people in all the same positions (literally and figuratively) on the I.S.S. Enterprise and why were they visiting the Halkans at the exact same time? Yet Mirror, Mirror is beloved (and justifiably so) and WOE and especially MOG receive the opposite treatment. The same suspension of disbelief seems to be a bridge (heh) too far for the latter two.

And I do think that MOG's problems are distracting. All of the (substantial) logical issues with the duplicate Enterprise were caused by the necessities of the budget, but you either stew about them and just close the book on this ep, as many do, or you can just sort of accept that problem and see if the ep has anything else to offer. Which it does, in spades.

dodge is right: MOG explores some really liberal themes. I actually do think that most of them were intended by the writers and editors; they seem to have taken Stanley Adams' story idea and imported a lot of other ideas, some of which I can't believe made it on to network TV in the 60s. Shatner is great and Nimoy is excellent, and the episode has good dialogue, including a sarcastic line from Sulu that I love (not going to check, but something like "The captain's missing, and that's the best they could come up with?"). And David Hurst and Sharon Acker are very, very, very good.

Shorter version: MOG is unfortunately overlooked, not unfairly so because of the very serious logical issues with the plot, but regrettably.

 

[Phaser Two]

So she wasn't really infected, Phase?
JB

She was, JB; getting infected and serving as the Typhoid Mary was the whole point of the Gideons' plan, I believe.

But she was also in on the plan and deceiving Kirk the whole time.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

No, he probably told some of them to go away.

Yeah, it's a metaphor.

Mass immigration seems more humane than killing your friends and family.

I think you mean emigration.

 

[The Old Mixer]

She was, JB; getting infected and serving as the Typhoid Mary was the whole point of the Gideons' plan, I believe.

One of the many logic flaws of the episode...having Odona serve as Typhoid Mary wasn’t their original plan. Once she was infected they kept her in isolation on Fake Enterprise. They intended for Kirk to stay with them to continue providing the disease.

 

[dahj]

By the way, among many nonsensical things about the Gideonites (Gideonians?) they mention that Gideon has always been germ-free and that's why they're super tough and they need this ultra rare Vegan space meningitis, but that's the opposite of how immunity works. If they've never seen germs they shouldn't be super resistant to them, they should have gone the way of War of the Worlds' Martians at the sight of the Common Cold...