Spock's comment at the end of 'The Enemy Within'

[Nerys Myk]

. . . Now that's out of way, we can delve into the most frustrating aspect of The Enemy Within: with the landing party freezing to death, and the transporter out, why didn't they send the shuttlecraft down? Were all them getting their oil changed?

Shoot, I thought every Trekkie knew the answer to that by now. The shuttlecraft mockup, filming model and miniature hangar deck hadn't been built yet!

In-universe: They wouldn't arrive till Tuesday.

 

[Brutal Strudel]

I have a dimmer view of human nature. I'd say most of those fantasies fall under the “this would horrify me if it happened in real life and I was then caught and punished for it” category.

Then you really don't know very much about human nature. Lots of men are excited by fantasies involving rape and brutality toward women. That doesn't mean they'd commit such acts in real life if they knew they could escape punishment. The whole subculture of BDSM is about acting out these kinds of fantasies in the context of consensual role-playing.

Yes, because without the consensual role-playing part, there's a good chance they'd be doing hard time.

When those constraints are taken away, when such brutality is countenanced, a (not)surprisingly (to me) high number of people will gladly rape and stomp and worse. Or maybe, along with my lack of understanding of human nature, I imagined much of human history. You know, the Middle Passage, the Holocaust, the Rape of Nanking, the Rwandan Genocide, all of your garden variety sexual assaults, those recurring delusions. I guess it was all just role play and the participants forgot their leather, latex and ball gags.

 

[Captain Kirk]

. . . Now that's out of way, we can delve into the most frustrating aspect of The Enemy Within: with the landing party freezing to death, and the transporter out, why didn't they send the shuttlecraft down? Were all them getting their oil changed?

Shoot, I thought every Trekkie knew the answer to that by now. The shuttlecraft mockup, filming model and miniature hangar deck hadn't been built yet!

In-universe: They wouldn't arrive till Tuesday.

Given that the shuttlecraft had yet to be introduced into the show, I always wondered why then didn't just beam down materials for them to construct a shelter. They could huddle inside with body heat keeping them warm like an igloo. And the materials would have duplicated, so they would have two shelters for the price of one. What, would the second shelter be "evil" or something?

 

[Pauln6]

Major plot hole - they beamed down blankets after all. I guess the budget couldn't stretch to tent props.

 

[barnaclelapse]

Once upon a time, it wasn't unusual to be married at 14 and have a brood of kids before you turned 20. Still happens in some cultures.

Indeed, the very concept of “adolescence” is a fairly modern invention, the result of increased lifespans and the longer period of education necessary to function in a complex technological society.

Like the song says, age ain't nothin' but a number. Just don't try telling that to the judge!

That's a rather horrifying thought, although as someone who works at Anime conventions I tend to run into a lot of girls who are sexually more aggressive than I was at their age or even at the age I am now.

It's quite frightening.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Once upon a time, it wasn't unusual to be married at 14 and have a brood of kids before you turned 20. Still happens in some cultures.

Yep. Even ours. For example, Loretta Lynn (the singer) was married at 13, and a grandmother by 29.

 

[scotpens]

. . . Loretta Lynn (the singer) was married at 13, and a grandmother by 29.

And can anyone say "Jerry Lee Lewis"?

 

[skylark14]

Oddly enough, as many times as I've seen this show, it never struck me as cruelty. His role to that point had been as protector - the one she called for help, the one who stood by her side as she confronted Kirk, physically helping her from her chair at the end of that scene. She was leaving sick bay, so she must have been scared but otherwise uninjured. The women in TOS were usually shown as passive, but they always seemed to stand up to fear quite well. This woman had already been threatened and "disappeared" by Charlie X and recovered.

I always saw the final comment as flowing out of the lines immediately before it, where Rand tries to speak in a personal way to the captain and gets shut down, kindly but firmly. The unattainable Kirk is back, but it's already been made pretty clear in other scripts that both Rand & Kirk wish it could be otherwise. I just saw it as part of the final bantering that usually ended the show, reinforcing for the audience that Janice not so secretly pined for Kirk, Kirk secretly pined for Janice, and Spock was a keen observer and student of his human shipmates.