That Which Survives

[evangelist6589]

You like the Stooges also? I love them as well. They have their own SCI-FI episodes from the later years. Which one is your favorite? Have Rocket Will Travel? Or one of the episodes with Joe?

I'm primarily a Curly Howard fan when it comes to the Stooges. I've had several books about them, but the only ones I have now are the Three Stooges Scrapbook and Book of Scripts Volume 2. Lately I've been watching "Hoi Polloi" a lot. Curly is even more hilarious if you're under the influence of a controlled substance.

I can handle Shemp in small doses, but was never a Joe Besser fan, and not much for Joe De Rita either. Though I did see the boys in person around 1961 when they appeared with the St. Louis Police Circus. I always liked Moe, and Larry was probably the best actor in the bunch with all the reacting he had to do.

Regarding "That Which Survives", my favorite moment is probably the rocking planet set.

I agree with you no doubt, however SCI-FI episodes and movies (Twilight Zone, TOS) only Joe Besser and Curly Joe got to do any. I guess in the Curly Howard and Shemp days Sci-fi was not big.

 

[LMFAOschwarz]

"Wait! You must not go!" Love that opening and the super long transporter sequence.

I was thinking of this very scene myself! The "Wait! You must not go!" part is all of, what, 1 1/2 seconds? Yet Lee Merriweather packed a lot of drama and seriousness into that plea. I love those little acting snippets that pack punch! I always wonder how they, in this case she, manage to pull that off so well!

D’Amato is a welcome addition to the landing party (even if he calls himself "lucky Dee-Amanto"): warm, personable, an all around nice dude. So when he dies, it’s actually sad. Unlike the majority of the anonymous security guys who get zapped by a laser bot of something. His death was actually pretty horrible and Kirk’s sadness is palpable.

Yeah! Kinda makes you wish D'Amato had been a recurring character. Like you pretty much said, instant likeability factor!

I enjoy this episode. The Spock/Scotty combo was a fun change of pace. The main thing that lingers without answer for me is just how Kirk managed to write Lt. D'Amato on that stone, considering the rocks were impervious to phasers, and I don't think any of them were carrying magic markers!

 

[Melakon]

The Spock/Scotty combo was a fun change of pace. The main thing that lingers without answer for me is just how Kirk managed to write Lt. D'Amato on that stone, considering the rocks were impervious to phasers, and I don't think any of them were carrying magic markers!

Maybe he used... D'Amato's blood! Mua-ha-ha-ha-haaaaa!

Actor Arthur Batanides was appearing on a lot of shows during the 60s, and I was familiar with his name before Star Trek. He always did good work.

 

[Commishsleer]

Spock was a bit of a jerk in this episode, but Scotty was on his game, as always, working in that horizontal Jefferies tube with his sonic screwdriver.

Weirdest Sulu line ever: "Get back, I don't want to have to kill a woman!"

This episodes sits in my bottom 5.
Spock is a jerk. Kirk is a jerk.
Spock never went around in other episodes even when Kirk wasn't there making everyone be precise as him and cutting out the metaphors. He used metaphors himself on occasion to illustrate points.
I don't know what Kirk's problem with Sulu was either except maybe for that hair. And why did Kirk beam down with McCoy and Sulu. Surely a science team would have been more appropriate for so amazing a planet?
I don't think the writer of this episode understood the characters of Kirk or Spock (it was probably GR )

Anyway can anyone tell me why was Scotty telling Spock to flush him out (into space? Can you do that from where he was?) if he touched something or other.? Wasn't the ship going to blow up anyway? Might as well stay there and try.

 

[LMFAOschwarz]

Actor Arthur Batanides was appearing on a lot of shows during the 60s, and I was familiar with his name before Star Trek. He always did good work.

Yeah. Every time I saw him he was always playing a gangster type. H's one of those actors who could look very different...in spite of looking the same (if that makes any sense!)!

 

[Wingsley]

Spock was a bit of a jerk in this episode, but Scotty was on his game, as always, working in that horizontal Jefferies tube with his sonic screwdriver.

Weirdest Sulu line ever: "Get back, I don't want to have to kill a woman!"

This episodes sits in my bottom 5.
Spock is a jerk. Kirk is a jerk.
Spock never went around in other episodes even when Kirk wasn't there making everyone be precise as him and cutting out the metaphors. He used metaphors himself on occasion to illustrate points.
I don't know what Kirk's problem with Sulu was either except maybe for that hair. And why did Kirk beam down with McCoy and Sulu. Surely a science team would have been more appropriate for so amazing a planet?
I don't think the writer of this episode understood the characters of Kirk or Spock (it was probably GR )

Anyway can anyone tell me why was Scotty telling Spock to flush him out (into space? Can you do that from where he was?) if he touched something or other.? Wasn't the ship going to blow up anyway? Might as well stay there and try.

No doubt about it: "That Which Survives" is an acquired taste. It is unusual, as a plot-driven, not-character-driven, story.

I believe the whole "push the button" option Scott was talking about was essentially a system-eject, where that entire section of the ship (and possibly the nacelles with it?) would be ejected into space. This might save the rest of the Enterprise, but the surviving part of the ship would be without warp drive and in need of immediate Starfleet assistance. It would also mean Scott and his engineers in that section would all be lost in the jettison.

As for Kirk and Sulu suffering from hoof-in-mouth disease, yes it is embarrassing. ("Are there men on this planet?" "Stop, or I'll shoot! I don't want to have to kill a woman!") As for Spock: he's an imperious Vulcan who's never wrong unless his mistakes come up and slap him in the face. That's just Spock. His exchanges with M'Benga and Uhura are hilarious. But the best moment of all is when Scott tells Spock off: "I know what time it is. I don't need a bloomed cuckoo clock!" For me, that scene is a wonderful follow-up to Spock's disastrous "first command" of "The Galileo Seven". At least this time, he wasn't responsible for the deaths of the personnel on-board.

 

[Wingsley]

BTW: did anyone here ever read the TREK novel based on this episode? I heard that there was a story about some cosmic design behind that alien super-transporter.

 

[Timo]

There are at least two novels dealing with the Kalandans and their supertech. The more recent is That Which Divides, with the TOS heroes and some guest stars squabbling with Romulans over control of another Kalandan outpost. I haven't read that one, but I trust Dayton Ward can do his usual world-building to bring the Kalandans (back) to life.

The older one is One Small Step, from the Gateways series. It was one of those crossover things, seven books in all IIRC. In the TOS segment, our heroes get tangled in the opening of mysterious teleports that might be Kalandan tech, or Tholian, or... - but in the TNG era, our various hero sets have to deal with a more massive outbreak of teleport opening, and they believe these to be Iconian tech. There are some interesting books in the series (for once, Peter David's Excalibur contribution isn't too over the top), but the TOS book by Susan Wright is a dull read and doesn't add much to the Kalandan story.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Robert Comsol]

I believe the whole "push the button" option Scott was talking about was essentially a system-eject, where that entire section of the ship (and possibly the nacelles with it?) would be ejected into space. This might save the rest of the Enterprise, but the surviving part of the ship would be without warp drive and in need of immediate Starfleet assistance. It would also mean Scott and his engineers in that section would all be lost in the jettison.

Here is my take regarding the location of the matter-antimatter integrator / reactor chamber. I think TWS was essentially the TOS episode that added a third M/AM reactor in the engineering hull (previously only two reactors in the warp nacelles) which then gave birth to the "Engineering" (TAS) or "Engine" (TMP) Core and finally, of course, the later "Warp Core" concept.

My impression was that Spock had two options: Risk that the matter-antimatter annihilation would destroy the entire ship or jettison the reactor (and Scotty along with it) and hope that the resulting velocity stress tearing the ship apart would at least give some crew members a chance to survive ("That Which Survives" ).

I also think this episode is a great example of Scotty's bragging:

SCOTT: I've sealed off the aft end of the service crawlway, and I've positioned explosive separator charges to blast me clear of the ship if I rupture the magnetic bottle. I'm so close to the flow now it feels like ants crawling all over my body.

SPOCK: Mister Scott, I suggest you refrain from any further subjective descriptions. (..."because your assistants sealed off the aft end of the service crawlway and you merely activated the explosive separator charges, which are in place on every starship for the case of an emergency such as this.")

Bob

 

[Sir Rhosis]

I will also admit to enjoying this episode a good bit, but for its ideas, not so much its execution. I'm a sucker for that whole "long dead ancient races which ruled the galaxy before the dawn of humankind have gone and left only mysterious ruins" sub-genre of SF. Pohl's Heechee books are fine examples of this.

Sir Rhosis

 

[LMFAOschwarz]

Of course, sorry guys, you haven't experienced the comedic potential of this episode unless you watched it in the original German version, titled "Dangerous Planet Girls"

Okay, I just had to see what that would look like!




Oh, another good thing in the episode was the very good job of body-doubling they did for the multiple Losiras. Seemingly an easy thing to do, but so often the double is obviously not the same person they are duplicating. Hard enough with one, usually...but here we get two convincing doubles!

 

[Wingsley]

Lest we forget in all of this: Lee Meriwether was Miss USA 1955. It would be neat to see that text in TREK font on top of footage in this ep.

 

[Robert Comsol]

Brilliant! Here is a rare shot of the original German font used for TOS, the episode titles were always presented on a starfield background at the end of the "swoosh" title sequence in the same font style.

Bob

 

[Borjis]

Actor Arthur Batanides was appearing on a lot of shows during the 60s, and I was familiar with his name before Star Trek. He always did good work.

He was hilarious in police academy.


That Which Survives has been a favorite of mine since child hood for many reasons other posters mentioned.

in particular the creepy music when Lee disappears and spock being a smart ass...especially the:


"Please Mr. Scott, RESTRAIN your leaps of il-logic"

 

[Mario de Monti]

Brilliant! Here is a rare shot of the original German font used for TOS, the episode titles were always presented on a starfield background at the end of the "swoosh" title sequence in the same font style.

Bob

Thanks Bob, haven´t seen THAT in a very long time. To tell you the truth I sometimes miss the German title sequence - too bad, it´s not included in the German blu-ray release, even if it were just a "bonus feature".

I really do like this episode. For one because of the hilarious German dialogue but also in the original version I think it´s quite an interesting story, especially the idea of an artificial planet. PLUS the episode provides a pretty good basis for calculating how fast warp speed actually is, since the Enterprise covers about 1000 lightyears in about 12 hours. The only instance in TOS I can recall where we get both values of time and covered distance.

Mario

 

[Timo]

There's something of a disconnect between the three variables in that episode, too. We learn of a 1000 ly distance - but it's a separate, later scene where the warp factor 8.4 is associated with the remaining travel time of 11.337 hours.

The definition of "remaining" is fairly vague here. Between Spock deciding to get going and the ship reaching warp 8.4, there's a scene where our castaway heroes have finished their preliminary survey of survival odds, and they list threats that would limit their stay to, oh, three or four days at most (say, total lack of water, save for whatever McCoy has in his little black bag). We don't know how long this initial surveying took, but it wasn't days, and it's pretty unlikely there would have been even a single night there between this scene and the one where the original stranding took place. And we don't know how long it took to perform the activity bridging the surface scene to the next one (the building of a tomb for D'Amato), but it's less than a day, as only a still later scene speaks of a "night" and a "tomorrow" following D'Amato's death.

Basically, the warp 8.4 scene could come at most a day after the 1000 ly scene - but that already throws a gigantic wrench in any attempt at deducing the speed corresponding to warp 8.4. Even sticking to Earth-length days on the planet, we might be off by a factor of two or three in assuming that the entire trip took place at warp 8.4, rather than speculating that the ship only hiked up the speed from the safe 8.0 to the potentially engine-busting 8.4 when there was only half a day of travel left.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Mario de Monti]

You´re right there of course - I thought about that, too. As you point out, the lack of water is an important clue as to how long Kirk & Co. could have been on the planet (I find it very doubtful, that McCoy would have a drinking bottle in his medical bag!). Taking into account how fit they still are at the end of the episode (which wouldn´t be the case after two or more days without water, they´d be seriously dehydrated by then) I think it´s safe to assume they don´t spend more than a day there. This also matches the structure of the episode having the (single) night more or less in the middle of the story.
So the time it takes the Enterprise to travel those 1000 lightyears can safely be estimated between 12 and 24 hours. While I agree, that this doesn´t permit an exact calculation of how fast warp (8.4) actually is, but you get an upper and a lower limit with a maximum error of factor 2. And that still is a lot more accurate than, and peferable to, mere guessing

Mario

 

[scotpens]

Spock was a bit of a jerk in this episode, but Scotty was on his game, as always, working in that horizontal Jefferies tube with his sonic screwdriver.

That would be your avatar you are describing. Scotty entered a different tube (and different set), somehow enabling access to the matter-antimatter integrator.

There was just one Jefferies Tube set, but it was modified, widened, and had more doohickies added to it over the three years of TOS production.

 

[Push The Button]

I meant "a" Jefferies tube, and not the specific one that we all know from my avatar pic. Geordi and others used the term in several TNG episodes, usually referring to those little conduits on Ent-D that they would have to crawl through to satisfy some plot point.