Hey, I never noticed that before...Have we (Trek BBS) done a previous analysis of the meaning of the 13 stars on the UFP flag? Were there 13 original planets when the UFP were formed?
Not that I know of, and that's great point, the flag's stars...
...sadly, none of those represent Richard Dawson, Brett Somers, Charles Nelson-Reilly, etc, but I digress...
And it's 13. Cue the song, "♪ ..from the 13 original colonies... ♪♫..." Dang, those better not have anything to do with the Cylons (from 1978 or 2004!)
Also, we only see seven dead bodies, but the tombstone scene at the end of the episode show five family tombstones
with ten heaps of dirt suggesting ten parents. Three more dead bodies must have been off screen? Also, Starnes logs a Professor Wilkins in the party, but he gets no tombstone; surnames are
Yup, I was counting as well. Naturally, my third thought was "Who was the really lucky one?", followed too quickly by "or was that one the unlucky one?" Granted, being 1968 and season 3, it's closer to just being "We don't care, just plop another extra mannequin out there to save the $50 screen time fee."
"Starnes, Janowski, O'Connel, Tsing Tao (a great beer
), and Linden". Maybe Wilkins had no children, hence, his tombstone was not shown and there were four more dead bodies off screen.
Tsing Tao also part of the title of a fun episode of the 1965-68 NBC series "I SPY" as well.
I noticed "O'Connel" (sic) as well - accidental misspelling because it's in the future?
How come the kids could saunter into any department, even auxiliary control, and do their mindwarpery against the crew? It's been established before that the doors are voice controlled and people have to announce their presence before being allowed in. Maybe they managed to get someone to open the doors for them and that didn't need to be shown, so it's not too egregious a nitpick. .
Still my number one worst episode.
There were a couple scenes early on in the episode that had promise but, wow, the episode is a true inescapable stinker with the least amount of redeemable bits. Fewer than 'The Alternative Factor", which just mucks up treknobabble and whose danger felt inconsistent then inconsequential. But no Trek episode is devoid of a fascinating idea, no matter how badly executed. "And The Children" just feels like one fumble after another in the script department, and the kids' acting was excellent.
