Apart from one of the dead bodies on Memory Alpha looking like The Frankenstein monster the other notable point was the lady on the floor (Libby Erwin) who I'm sure was really Margaret Armen!
JB
JB
Episode of the Week : The Lights of Zetar
- Thread starter Botany Bay
- Start date
Scotty's attempts at romance are incredibly embarrassing. He comes across as a complete fool. And in all instances, these women are way too hot for him, which is definitely the case, here. We are left with the very strong impression that he's being used a crutch, maybe, or a Stepping Stone. Outside of all that, this episode is so strange that it's not hard to buy into the alien aspects of it. If not for Scotty's persistent sighs and shows of devotion, I'd rank this episode a solid seven, or eight. But, as it is, I gave it a 5.
I agree, but I voted 7 anyway. I'd push this to an 8 without that. I don't know why anyone would need Scotty to be in love with anything but his engines. He does work on his off hours because he's that into it. At least, though, I can see that Mira actually seems to care about Scotty back, Palamas just seemed to act like he was more of an older brother, I see your point about Carolyn, but I don't think Mira would treat Scotty that way. It would have been nice if Scotty mentioned his wife Mira was in the Federation Archives in TMP, but whatever.
This is another situation where I think there's a clear duty of Kirk and his crew to eliminate this threat to the Federation. This colony creature totally devastates Memory Alpha and is unconcerned about any other creature beyond itself. I just wonder how they figure out that pressure can hurt an energy construct. And Shat's "Pressure!" toward the end annoys me a bit.
A mean, but dramatic, idea would be to have Bones state that enough pressure to work would kill Mira and have Scott deal with it. Jim could have had an "what of Mira/if only" type scene at the end.
The funny thing about Scotty is what happens whenever he tries to protect a woman. In "The Changeling", "Who Mourns", and "Zetar" he gets flung through the air. At a certain point he has to say to himself, women are great in theory, but they are not worth this.
And that's not even counting the time he got hit off-screen by a woman-caused explosion in "Wolf in the Fold." But he may have disregarded that event as a simple case of bad writing.
And that's not even counting the time he got hit off-screen by a woman-caused explosion in "Wolf in the Fold." But he may have disregarded that event as a simple case of bad writing.
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I thought this episode was kind of boring.
There are women who are attracted to older men, especially ones in senior positions. It was a little hard to believe how demonstrative they were in public, though.
Scotty was clearly intended to have women issues, which I believe started with Wolf in the Fold. I just remember it being said that Scotty had some resentment of women, which was probably only there to make him even more suspect in the murder case. It was likely never meant to go beyond that, but it did. Every attempt Scotty made at getting with a female proved incredibly awkward and there had to be some reason for that. My guess is that it was so as not to compete with Kirk's status as the resident studd. But Scotty seems to have been in his mid-forties, at least. He should've picked up some sort of a clue, by now. For Mira's part, women who like older Men seem to be looking for someone worldly, confident and experienced ... not so much because he was actually old.
Scotty was like a lot of guys who never got a look in with the other sex growing up! They suddenly notice someone noticing them and it goes to their head and a little...or a lot!
JB
JB
Wasn't it either mentioned or in the background that Mira came from a family of engineers? So that her and Scotty shared a common deep bond.
Yes, McCoy says her father was a Starfleet chief engineer. Maybe that was put in to kind of explain why she loves Scotty.
Always liked this one for the horror aspect. It scared me as a kid and really creeped me out as a teen watching this during the Saturday night reruns at 1 am. Third season Trek was always good for some chills and this episode was one of the best in that regard. The coldness of Sandy Courage's music from WNMHGB really added to it.
It's funny that (apparently) the romances were done to try to bring in a larger female fanbase in that third year (I heard that long before the Cushman books). I think someone quoted Frieberger saying "research" stated women were "frightened" of space or some such crap. So what do they do? They put a Scotty romance in what is clearly a ghost/posession story. With corpses strewn in the shadows of a research facility. Well played!
7
It's funny that (apparently) the romances were done to try to bring in a larger female fanbase in that third year (I heard that long before the Cushman books). I think someone quoted Frieberger saying "research" stated women were "frightened" of space or some such crap. So what do they do? They put a Scotty romance in what is clearly a ghost/posession story. With corpses strewn in the shadows of a research facility. Well played!
7
And they littered the script with embarrassing male chauvinist gaffes. That's why I only gave it an 8. Mad Men was a parody, but there really was some chauvinism back then.
Regarding our childhoods, "Zetar" was my first-ever glimpse of Star Trek. This was either the first run or the NBC first re-run. I was six, and the woman gurgling with her face turning colors, and then dying with her eyes open, really disturbed me. I didn't like the show that first time out.
During an Enterprise fly-by, I remember my older brother pointing to the saucer section and saying, "That's where the people ride."
Eventually Scotty figured out that he was Imperial units and the women were all SI. Their threads would never match.
(But it's not all bad. With ounces as both a weight and volume measure, Scotty was ready for all those Galactica crossovers where a centon is a distance unit and a time unit, always of varying scale depending on context.)
It would have been nice to see more of Memory Alpha than just a couple of rooms. Even when they stranded Gary Mitchel on Delta Vega they showed a wide shot of the dilithium cracking station - they could've showed us some exteriors of Memory Alpha.
Mr. Scott was apparently a late bloomer - 16 year old behavior from a grown man. Although I suppose he was drunk as usual....
Mr. Scott was apparently a late bloomer - 16 year old behavior from a grown man. Although I suppose he was drunk as usual....
I'm not sure what you're talking about there.
This.
"Zetar" was another of TOS' third-year half-baked stories that clearly had the potential to be much better than what we got.
Maybe I would not have fit in during the '60's (I was born then), but if this script had passed my desk, it would have been subject to a heavy re-write. The Scotty romance would vanish. Jan Shutan (Lt. Romaine) was clearly a more capable actress, who could've tackled a more challenging script. Get this: she was also 37 when this episode was made/aired. She obviously could've brought a more commanding presence to the story. Maybe it would not have been allowed in the '60's, but I would've made her at least a lieutenant commander, on her way to Memory Alpha to either audit the station or to take command of it; it's not like they didn't have female head librarians in the '60's.
The sexism in "Zetar" was pretty blatant and nauseating, bringing down an otherwise interesting story that could have served as a springboard for future sequels or even a spin-off. Memory Alpha could've become a repeat stop-off for Enterprise in "season four".
I agree with others in this thread: the remastering job bombed on this one.
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I don't know about the rest of you, but the whole Libby Erwin / Memory Alpha woman dying right in front of you scene scared the daylights out of me as a kid. I thought that was really a graphic way to show someone being killed. To this day, I find that scene disturbing.
Me too. That and the alien voices when they take over Mira are very scary, almost Exorcist-like. Definitely one of the more unsettling moments in all of TOS.
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