By Any Other Name

[Gojira]

I watched this episode this past weekend and all in all I do like it except for one thing.

When the crush the block that was Yeoman Thompson at the beginning of the episode it really enrages me and pisses me off. I think because it is a female they kill that makes it seem very unjust. yeah I don't know why I have this double standard but I don't think I would have been as upset if a man had been killed instead.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

So is this a fault with the episode, or is it something else?

 

[Timo]

That's one of the things that endeared me to the episode from the get-go: they didn't hesitate with killing the cute girl and leaving the black boy alive merely because dramatic convention would call for doing the reverse. Plus, they didn't get their two polyhedrons mixed up - the one they crush really is the one that originally was the girl.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Rom's Sehlat]

Those were terrorists. If I were Kirk, I would execute the whole lot of them. Once you kill somebody, you're done for in my book. It's a good thing I'm not a starship captain...

 

[Warped9]

That's one of the things that endeared me to the episode from the get-go: they didn't hesitate with killing the cute girl and leaving the black boy alive merely because dramatic convention would call for doing the reverse. Plus, they didn't get their two polyhedrons mixed up - the one they crush really is the one that originally was the girl.

Timo Saloniemi

Exactly! They did the unconventional things which was very dramatic. And they also managed not to get the two mixed up. Awesome!

 

[SchwEnt]

As far as not mixing them up...

They had a 50/50 shot at getting the right polyhedron.
How do we know it was attention to detail or a lucky pick?

 

[Warped9]

As far as not mixing them up...

They had a 50/50 shot at getting the right polyhedron.
How do we know it was attention to detail or a lucky pick?

Who cares? It worked out and it's a nice touch to the story...for those obsessing about such detail.

 

[Pauln6]

This was the earliest example of a sci fi show not doing the obvious that I can remember and I think it is one of my favourite TOS moments. We do have double standards and it does, on some level, feel that little bit more unjust because it was the young yeoman instead of the security guard who bought the farm. The fact that the guy was black and it was filmed at a time when the civil rights movement was going on gave the scene an additional layer of deliciousness.

On another level, it highlighted the fact that the Captain will sometimes make decisions that lead crewmen to their deaths and that these crewmen are real people and not just nameless, voiceless redshirts. It prevents us from being desensitised to the crew deaths.

 

[SchwEnt]

I agree this eps took the unexpected course by killing off the cute white chick instead of the black guy.

But I wonder if they weren't hedging their bets a little bit.

The two were reduced to identical polyhedrons first, then randomly tossed and one selected for destruction, seemingly arbitrarily.

As if to say... they looked identical, couldn't tell them apart, we didn't know which one we really killed (and even THAT is a statement, really)

But what if Rojan (a white guy) simply stood the two up against a wall in human form, and consciously selected the white chick to die over the black guy, rather than random selection.

Would that have made a difference?

 

[Botany Bay]

Those were terrorists. If I were Kirk, I would execute the whole lot of them. Once you kill somebody, you're done for in my book. It's a good thing I'm not a starship captain...

I vaguely remember reading about an earlier draft of this episode where Shea agreed with you, and decided to go on some kind of Die Hard mission to take down the Kelvans.

I think he ended up meeting a nasty end on the hangar deck in that draft - Rojan ordered the doors opened with him inside there, if I remember correctly.

Another great touch in this episode : when going through the barrier, Spock repeats his lines from Where No Man Has Gone Before : "Density negative. Radiation negative. Energy negative". Nice work from the great D.C. Fontana and Jerome Bixby.

 

[GNDN]

As characters, they were both expendable Red Shirts of the Week, so it is actually fascinating how the protracted method of execution and the social and cultural mores attached to their respected gender and race affect the scene.

From the Kelvan's point of view, it was most probably a completely random choice (right hand or left hand). From the characters' point of view, Kirk and crew are appalled at the death of ANY crewmember (no indication as to how well either character was known on a personal or professional level) And as an audience of events taking place in the 23rd century, we have no stake in either character (would be an entirely different situation if the security guard were replaced by Chekov or Scotty)

So we are left with 20th or 21st century sensibilities and the knowledge that the outcome was scripted, in the 1960s. Any weight we attach to the event and the result illuminates American culture of the late 20th century more than anything else.

Was the show toying with audience expectations and conventions? Did the fact that both characters were expendable add to the danger of the scene since one or both could be killed at any time? And who did the audience root for, or consider more expendable? The choice says more about the viewer. The result says much about the writer.

Always a tense scene for me to watch, and definitely cool that they kept track of which was which. Thankfully no one thought to shade them different colors for any arbitrary reason. Half the audience probably lost track of which was which, and the other half waited to know if the actors and director actually paid attention. Powerful moment worthy of discussion.

 

[Pauln6]

It would have been even more impactful if Grace Lee Whitney had stayed on the show and she had been the yeoman who was killed.

 

[GNDN]

^Agreed. Happy that the character ultimately got to live on, but I've always thought that her disappearance in Charlie X would have been a highly dramatic exit had she not been restored.

 

[skylark14]

We do have double standards and it does, on some level, feel that little bit more unjust because it was the young yeoman instead of the security guard who bought the farm.

I can remember feeling more anguish following the Challenger disaster in the 80s for the schoolteacher who died. The crew members had been trained for the task and had to be aware that their lives were in constant jeopardy. On the other hand, she was a schoolteacher who won a contest for her place on the mission. I'm sure she thought she wouldn't be there unless it was perfectly safe no matter how many times they told her of the dangers involved. So, yes, I think we do have double standards always and that's a normal thing. The context always makes it hurt either more or less.

I remember watching this and being stunned myself when the man reappeared instead of the girl. As a t.v. viewer in those days, I knew a show would always do the expected thing, and they almost never proved me wrong. It wasn't like today when you can expect that they're going to go for the unexpected or most painful thing. As for why it was more painful, the man was a security guard, the woman was basically a clerk. Possible death was in his job description; in hers, not so much. Also, at that time, it was more unusual to see a woman in physical danger as there weren't yet women in the field in military or police work. I can remember being stunned at first, but then feeling that it made it seem much more real.

 

[plynch]

And in the end, the E crew doesn't defeat/kill the Kelvans - they befriend an "other" and will set them up with a nice little planet somewhere. No Kill I.

 

[ToddPence]

As a wee one, I actually believed that before the end of the episode, the heroic crew of the USS Enterprise was going to find a way to glue the pieces of the crumbled styrofoam block together and return poor Yeoman Thompson to normal. And then, when this didn't happen at the end of "By Any Other Name", I tuned into the next's night's broadcast, "Return to Tomorrow", confident that that would occur then. By the end of that broadcast it slowly began to dawn on me that it wasn't going to happen.

For some time thereafter, I had nightmares of a dayglow-orange-jumpsuited Warren Stevens coming into my bedroom and turning me into a decahedron.

 

[skylark14]

I don't recall any other instance of a female crew member being killed, or wounded for that matter. Nor can I remember any alien female killed or wounded. Can anyone correct me on that? No wonder it came as such a shock to us all at the time.


Whoops! I just remembered Korby killing himself and Andrea. Rayna dies but that's not the same as being deliberately killed to me. Whoa! I just remembered Miramanee, and Edith Keeler. I'm really embarrassing myself here.

I still think this case is more shocking, but why? Maybe just the sheer casualness and indifference of it. No passion behind it.

I can't believe I keep re-editing this thing. The rest of you might as well talk among yourselves. The reason this case is so shocking is simply the sheer randomness of who lives and who dies, which is too much like life for comfort.

 

[scotpens]

As a wee one, I actually believed that before the end of the episode, the heroic crew of the USS Enterprise was going to find a way to glue the pieces of the crumbled styrofoam block together and return poor Yeoman Thompson to normal.

Can you imagine what would happen if they got just a few fragments in the wrong places and then zapped her back to human form?

For some time thereafter, I had nightmares of a dayglow-orange-jumpsuited Warren Stevens coming into my bedroom and turning me into a decahedron.

A cuboctahedron, actually. (We’re geeks -- nitpicking is our job!)

 

[Pauln6]

I don't recall any other instance of a female crew member being killed, or wounded for that matter. Nor can I remember any alien female killed or wounded. Can anyone correct me on that? No wonder it came as such a shock to us all at the time.


Whoops! I just remembered Korby killing himself and Andrea. Rayna dies but that's not the same as being deliberately killed to me. Whoa! I just remembered Miramanee, and Edith Keeler. I'm really embarrassing myself here.

I still think this case is more shocking, but why? Maybe just the sheer casualness and indifference of it. No passion behind it.

I can't believe I keep re-editing this thing. The rest of you might as well talk among yourselves. The reason this case is so shocking is simply the sheer randomness of who lives and who dies, which is too much like life for comfort.

The ensign in Shore Leave was slammed into a tree wasn't she? Although in the end it was a fake tree and a fake broken neck.

 

[ToddPence]

I don't recall any other instance of a female crew member being killed, or wounded for that matter.

A female crew woman was stabbed to death by the Jack the Ripper entity, commandeering the body of Scotty, in "Wolf in the Fold."