"And the Children Shall Lead" wasn't all that bad...

[T'Girl]

What do you mean, "knowing"? From the looks of it, Kirk invented the name.

Within the canon of the show, this makes for
the best explanation.

Kirk just as easily could have said "dragoon"
or "beast" in his address to the monster.

Kirk: "I did ... Gorgan." Kirk was being familiar,
maybe he could have channeled TJ Hooker and said: "I did ... Punk."

 

[scotpens]

. . . There is no competing name for the beast, so Kirk is fully entitled to invent one by himself. And he does pick up a fairly good generic monster name - gorgons are real classics in Earth history.

Except that the spelling is different — and the Gorgons of Greek mythology were female.

 

[Timo]

There's no such thing as "spelling" in Star Trek: spoken dialogue doesn't differentiate between the various vowels, and even the written form tends to be, uh, fluid, to put it nicely.

The original gorgons may have been female, but the concept really took flight after that, giving us things like "gargantuan" that has no gender specificity - and of course the ultimate monstrosity, the gorgonzola...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[KHAAAN]

There's a bit in the film "Zodiac" where Melvin Belli (played by Brian Cox) is about to appear on a TV talk show, and the host says something like "Saw you in Star Trek. Thought you were great."

When he said that, I thought "Liar".

 

[ToddPence]

What do you mean, "knowing"? From the looks of it, Kirk invented the name.

This is kind of like in "The Alternative Factor" where they cut the line where Lazarus introduced himself and gave his name. So in the episode, it looks like Kirk just makes up that name as well.

 

[Mytran]

In fairness, when Kirk first calls out "Lazarus" (second planet scene) a good deal of time has past, allowing plenty of occasions for an off-screen introduction. It also means Lazarus spends his first scenes as a "nameless stranger" - perhaps this was to heighten the mystery about him?

Compare that to ATCSL, where barely 30 seconds goes by between the first meeting and Kirk addressing the creature as "Gorgon".

 

[Timo]

...After which Kirk remains the only person to call the creature "Gorgon". The creature itself never indicates familiarity with the name.

Lazarus in turn seems to agree to being called that. But this could be another case of Kirk giving an unnamed and perhaps unnameable character a fitting name - the guy did appear to have "the recuperative powers of a dinosaur", coming back from near death several times.

Still, in that case, the drama nicely caters for an off-camera scene where the character gives his name. Unlike "And the Children", as pointed out above.

Timo Saloniemi

 

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

Who says the villains have to introduce themselves? Kirk's the captain, he can call anyone whatever he wants! Have we not in our lives created names for people who have antagonized us?

If the censors would not have objected (or had the role of Kirk been played by Joe Pesci), he might have called him "hey you ugly fat bastard in a moo-moo gown."

 

[Grant]

I love that they leave the security guards dead in space....

Kirk--"Screw it, they're frozen they'll keep."
Spock-- "Agreed Captain."

 

[Timo]

What, as opposed to them beaming them back in, then putting them in torpedo caskets, then firing them to space again?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Grant]

from 'Man Trap'

Kirk--"Darnell's body is down there."
Trans chief--"We'll bring him home sir."
Kirk--"And then beam him into space."

 

[JWD75]

As a fan of both horror and scifi, I liked the basic premise of ATCSL. It had the possiblity of being cultivated into a very dark and hard-hitting episode. Unfortunately, a perfect storm of bad writing, bad acting and bad directing caused it to fall flat on its face.

 

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

What, as opposed to them beaming them back in, then putting them in torpedo caskets, then firing them to space again?

Timo Saloniemi

Well, would they even have been able to beam back the two guards they beamed out into space, seeing as how they were speeding away at warp speeds?

What about the security detachment already on Triacus that were being relieved? Did they ever go back to get them, or are they still there feeling really anxious and playing volleyball on the planet's sandy surface? A potential Rosencrantz & Guildenster Are Dead a la 23rd century in the making there, I think.

 

[HarryM]

Seems like if you thought you were beaming them to a fixed spot, but were at warp, they would just be scattered.

 

[Timo]

It seems the Gorgon would have to have been influencing the transporter operator to ignore various failsafes to begin with. It wouldn't be too much of an extra effort to tell the transporter operator to ensure the deaths of the security men, by deliberately scattering them or something like that.

Agreed that beaming at warp should already do the trick, of course. Not much left to retrieve, I guess.

Even assuming that the two guys were beamed out intact and merely suffocated and could have been resurrected with 23rd century medicine, I'm not sure 23rd century sensors would have been able to locate them. There's no precedent for finding lone non-emitting man-sized objects in a random spot of space, not even with 24th century tech. Lore somehow survived being beamed out through shields in "Datalore", yet our heroes did not notice this survival; apparently, very deliberate effort would have been needed to locate an android sitting less than a kilometer away from the ship...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Talos IV]

I think it's just terribly done. An embarrassment, really. ... Worst episode ever made in the Star Trek franchise, IMHO.

Watched this episode yesterday, since I'm re-visiting all of the third season now before volume 3 of Marc Cushman's THESE ARE THE VOYAGES book comes out next month.

Worse than I remembered! There are other episodes that are more dated ("The Way to Eden"), goofier ("Spock's Brain"), or heavy-handed ("The Omega Glory") -- but none as downright unpleasant to watch as ATCSL.

George Duning's music score has some nice moments, though.

Ironically this was the one episode that my local UHF station in Dallas refused to air back in the '70s and early '80s. They were a CBN affiliate, and determined it might lead kids to believe they could conjure up evil spirits.

Today there's a better reason for censoring the episode -- its sheer awfulness!

 

[CrazyMatt]

As a fan of both horror and scifi, I liked the basic premise of ATCSL. It had the possiblity of being cultivated into a very dark and hard-hitting episode. Unfortunately, a perfect storm of bad writing, bad acting and bad directing caused it to fall flat on its face.

How right you are. This episode makes me cringe.

 

[FormerLurker]

Crazy, you know better than to respond to necrothreads! Shame on you!

 

[CrazyMatt]

Crazy, you know better than to respond to necrothreads! Shame on you!

?

 

[Maurice]

Meaning cadet Talos IV revived a thread which is 3.26 years old.