Title: And The Children Shall Lead
Airdate: 10/11/1968
Plot Summary
And The Children Shall Lead starts with the crew coming to Triacus after answering a distress call. They find the scientists and their families all dead, exceopt for the children who seem unbothered by it all. They bring the children aboard to deal with the tragedy but it appears the kids are being controlled by an alien entity who gives the kids powers of illusion. Can Kirk stop this malevolent force and free the children from it’s influence?
Risk Is Our Business
Kirk does his best to work with the children and does a much better job than when he had to deal with Charlie X. When he almost feels like he loses command, he and Spock have a moment in the turbolift that inspires a lot of insipid slash fic.
Logical
Spock appears to be somewhat immune to the children’s powers, even able to free Kirk from their influence. But not completely, with Tommy able to stop him from working the controls at his station. Still, I swear, if Spock wasn’t around, the crew would’ve all been killed 3 episodes in to the first season.
He’s Dead Jim
McCoy loves nothing better than to see children cry. It’s a little disturbing.
Helm Sluggish Captain
Sulu is told to disregard what he sees on the screen and then completely shits himself when he sees what’s on the screen.
Nuclear Wessels
Chekov tries to arrest Spock and Kirk, reminiscent of when he tried to arrest Kirk in the mirror universe. No agony booth for him thank goodness.
Hailing Frequencies Open, Sugar
Uhura pretty much stares at an older version of herself in a monitor at her station and can’t seem to get out of the fetal position.
My Wee Bairns
Scotty sees that they aren’t orbiting in the auxiliary control room and has to beat up a subordinate to get back on track, to no avail. Later on, he’s under the same spell, whining that his instruments are just too delicate to let the captain touch them.
Canon Maker
I’d prefer it if And The Children Shall Lead wasn’t canon at all.
Canon Breaker
Why couldn’t they tell from the transporter room they weren’t in orbit before they beamed them down? They should be able to scan ahead for obstacles, lay of the land, etc. Surely the transporter would’ve shown there was nothing there? And don’t tell me it was the kids, there wasn’t any of them in the transporter room at that time, nor would they have known about the relief duty men.
Man It Feels Bad To Be A Red Shirt
Because no one realized that the Enterprise wasn’t still orbiting the planet, two poor redshirts get beamed into space. Yikes. Should’ve tried to at least beam them back as quick as possible, maybe they might have had a chance?
Hilariously when Kirk tries to give a redshirt an order and he can’t understand him, he just stares blankly. Not even a “What? Come again?” Nothing. I’m guessing so they don’t have to pay the guy if he has any sort of speaking part.
Technobabble
Apparently the bridge is recording all the audio all the time as Spock is able to bring up the chant at a moment’s notice.
I Know That Guy:
In And The Children Shall Lead, Melvin Belli plays the Gorgon who’s name Kirk seems to know somehow. Belli was a lawyer and either really liked Star Trek or his son did. Or both. In any case, I have no doubt some blackmail was involved for him to get this guest shot. His son played one of the kids.
Craig Huxely, whose real last name is Hundley, returns after playing Kirk’s nephew in Operation: Annihilate! I liked him better when he just sat in a bed an moaned. He did grow up to invent a musical instrument called the Blaster Beam. It would appear in the first three Trek movies, so that’s pretty cool. It was a long aluminum bar with piano wire and played with artillery shells.
Pamela Ferdin played Mary. She would go on to guest star in a lot shows in the early seventies including The Brady Bunch, and a main role in the last two seasons of Lassie. I had no idea that show went for so long. She also was the voice of Lucy in many Charlie Brown shorts and specials.
James Wellman played the doomed Professor Starnes.
Brian Tochi played Ray. He went on to do a lot as an adult actor including the voice of Leonardo in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles films, Nogata from the Police Academy movies, and of course as Takashi from the Revenge of the Nerds films. He was probably the biggest surprise, I never knew he had a Star Trek connection.
What It Means To Be Human – Review
Is And The Children Shall Lead the worst episode of Star Trek so far? Well maybe we need to define “worst.” If you look at The Alternative Factor, that episode was just incompetent. Poorly edited, bad attention to plot, hell even the make-up person couldn’t figure out the facial hair properly on the guest star consistently. But when I watch that episode, I don’t feel anything other than bafflement. It’s an OBJECTIVELY terrible episode.
And The Children Shall Lead however is competent enough. The plot is straightforward, the motivations are clear and the story makes perfect sense. And yet I absolutely fucking hate this episode. It’s a SUBJECTIVELY terrible episode. Although since everyone seems to agree with me, I suppose it could also be objectively terrible too.
Of course that doesn’t mean there aren’t a few head scratchers in the plot.
First off, let’s start with the lawyer in the room. Melvin Belli delivers all his lines with the intensity of an Amway salesman giving quarterly reports. His outfit looks like it was taken right out of a 1960s beauty salon. There’s no way I would believe these kids would follow him for any reason.
Secondly, I don’t get his powers. Can he takeover minds or not? Is it merely illusion or is there some telepathy there? Why does he need the kids to do stuff in the physical world since clearly they get their powers from him?
And the kids, don’t get me started on them. Huxley may be a fine and decent person but his character I wanted to shoot into the sun. It doesn’t help the tension when he derives his power by furiously masturbating.
I noticed the girl didn’t do the motion, or at least not that I noticed. Probably because it was a little ridiculous to have all the kids look like they are constantly jacking off.
Kirk throws off the spell. How? Because he’s just that awesome, that’s how. Maybe Spock did a thing but it’s not clear at all.
Again, the plot outline is actually fine. A weird alien presence brainwashes kids to do his bidding and take over the ship and Kirk and company must stop him. But the execution on this was so flawed and quite frankly so annoying that I hardly ever watch this episode and haven’t in years.
I thought, “Maybe it’s not as bad as I thought.”
It was. I’m giving And The Children Shall Lead a half star because there is an episode coming that’s worse and I want to make sure it knows it.
