Title: Bem
Airdate: 9/14/1974
Plot Summary
The Enterprise has an observer on-board for their current exploration and contact missions: Commander Ari bn Bem of the planet Pandro. He is rude and obnoxious and dangerously independent, but Kirk is under orders to treat him well to further relations with Pandro. After six months in his cabin Bem insists on going on a landing party. Trying to rescue Bem (who claims he is observing the primitive locals), Kirk and Spock are captured.
Bem has replaced their communicators and phasers with dummies to observe them under stress as well. He reveals he is a colony creature who can split his body into separate, individually independent parts. Meanwhile, a sensory anomaly is sweeping over the planet, and appears to be a “god” of some sort that claims responsibility over its “children” and insists they leave. Bem escapes and Kirk rescues him again by telling the “god” that he has the same responsibility to Bem it does to her children. A chastened Bem acquiesces and the planet’s natives are left to develop naturally.
Risk Is Our Business
Kirk calls out Bem for sitting on his ass for most of the trip until he decides to beam down to the most dangerous planet the encounter.
He also reflects on how often they end up in a cage. That actually made me laugh.
Logical
Kirk asks Spock to try a nerve pinch, even though they are in a cage and there’s no guards anywhere near them to pinch. Besides they are lizard dinosaurs, not even sure it would’ve worked. Spock replies “I’m only a vulcan.” It almost sounded like he was telling Kirk that he can’t save his ass every damn time.
He’s Dead, Jim
Bones is absent.
Helm Sluggish Captain
Sulu gets another away mission. He doesn’t do much but at least he doesn’t get imprisoned or mind-controlled.
Hailing Frequencies Open, Sugar
With Spock, Kirk, Scotty, and Sulu down on the planet, it appears that Uhura takes the con. And she has no patience for bullshit, telling Scotty that they better follow protocol and shut the fuck up. Scotty for his part is suitably cowed. Yeah I wouldn’t argue with her either. I saw her fire first and ask questions later in The Lorelei Signal.
My Wee Bairns
Bem sets the transporter to beam Kirk and Spock a few feet above a lake. Considering that Scotty double checked the beam down coordinates, I got to wonder if he wasn’t paid off by Bem or just was pissed at Kirk for some reason.
Three Arms Are Better Than Two, Ya Fuzzy Face
Arex takes second in command, I think. He certainly reports on what’s going on down on the planet when Uhura is in charge.
Getting Animated
New race was introduced in the form of Bem, a Pandronian. Pandron? He’s from the planet Pandro. Doesn’t matter, we’ll never see them again. I think. He can split himself in various pieces, detaching his torso, his arms, even his head. I don’t even want to speculate on how that would work. Spock calls him a colony creature as if that explains everything.
He is also an asshole.
So when is canon, canonized? The official canon confirmation that Kirk’s middle name is Tiberius is in Star Trek VI. But it’s first said here, in this episode. Recall in 1974, Trek isn’t really the juggernaut it became. It was slowly gaining traction in syndication, and through this little animated show.
Later the movies started but with it were a slew of novels in the 80s that teens (like myself) read voraciously. Those authors were as nitpicky and detail-oriented as most Trek fans (to a fault) and adopted that middle name in so many novels whenever it was referenced. It was so ubiquitous that the makers of Trek themselves just simply gave in and made it official in Star Trek VI.
So it was official in 1991. But it was canon in this episode, since it was never contradicted and then finally adopted. So it’s got that going for it. Which is nice.
Technobabble
You can take two communicators and slap them together to make a super communicator. It will burn through its batteries pretty quick if you do that. Except that it doesn’t and works perfectly through the rest of the episode.
What It Means To Be Human – Review
Yeesh. I’m not sure how much I can criticize this episode on the writers or not. Bem is written to be an asshole and as such Kirk responds to him as you might expect. So it was clearly supposed to be that Bem gets a lesson learned and don’t be a prick episode.
Except I have no idea what his end goal was. I guess it was to report on Kirk’s performance to his home planet but he says his home planet doesn’t really give a shit about him. He stays aboard in his cabin on numerous missions, only to pick this one specifically. I thought maybe there was something special about these natives, that he was going to have some connection and the big intelligence would have him stay but no. So him getting himself captured constantly made zero sense. If he had no idea if these natives were going to kill him or not and had no purpose in screwing with him, why do any of this?
Oh, to try to evaluate Kirk’s performance? But then when Kirk proves himself, Bem decides he’s the one who sucks and plans to commit suicide! Yeesh, dramatic enough?
Now all my problems with Bem aside, Kirk and Spock’s behavior was spot on. Once they realize they really shouldn’t be here, Kirk invokes the prime directive and quarantines the planet. He explains to the intelligence what their purpose is and resolves everything peacefully. So it’s a real Trek accurate way of doing things and I appreciated that.
All in all though, it’s not a great episode, mostly because Bem is just maddening. Yes, he’s supposed to be but even jerks have some sort of motivation that makes sense.
