Title: Friday’s Child
Airdate: 12/01/1967
Plot Summary
Friday’s Child see’s Kirk, Spock, Bones and deadshirt beam down to a planet that Bones has some prior experience with. The Capellans are a primitive but dangerous people but the Federation needs the planet for mining purposes. The Klingons have other ideas.
Risk Is Our Business
Kirk’s decisions go from bad to worse, though you totally understand his motives. First, he beams down to get a redshirt killed. Then the Capellans have a minor civil war and their leadership is changed. Then he grabs the former chief’s wife to prevent her from being killed, causing even more issues.
He also playfully plays a little reverse psychology on Spock when he suggest using the communicators to create a landslide. Spock plays along. Five minutes later he does the same with Bones who plays along just so he doesn’t have to deal with Kirk messing things up with the baby delivery.
Logical
Spock correctly muses that the Enterprise must’ve been called away or destroyed since they didn’t appear when the team was overdue to check-in. He’s also quickly in sync with Kirk when they need to escape.
Spock is also pretty miffed the baby was named Leonard James Akaar.
He’s Dead Jim
Bones is very familiar with Capellans, they even have some old videos of him on the planet. He has a tendency to let Kirk know about crucial information seconds before some horrible ritual would be brought down upon him.
Bones also gets to slap the shit out of a pregnant woman which makes her respect him and then only allows him to touch her. Definitely not a 2024 American woman. Kirk asks about it:
Kirk: How did you get her to allow you to touch her, Bones? Give her a happy pill?
Bones: No. A right cross.
Kirk: I never seen that before in a medical book.
Bones: It’s in mine from now on.
Given that it’s canon that McCoy did write some medical journals that were used in the 24th century, I wonder what chapter that was in.
We also get an “I’m a doctor, not an escalator!”
Helm Sluggish Captain
Sulu does what he does, plotting courses to the distress call. He also comments the top speed of a freighter, much to Scotty’s annoyance.
Nuclear Wessels
Chekov works the science station for most of the episode, taking on the Spock role to Scotty’s captaincy. He performs admirably. He also claims that Russia invented the “Fool me once…” saying, though his mischievous grin makes me wonder if he’s fucking with the crew every time he does that.
Hailing Frequencies Open, Sugar
Uhura does a lot to get the signal and relay the information on the freighter under attack. She also plays sounding board for Scotty.
My Wee Bairns
Scotty muses when Sulu asks if he thinks it’s a Klingon ship, “Who else would be playing cat and mouse with a starship?” Well tons based on this show. Last episode it was Orions. Balance of Terror it was Romulans.
Scotty makes the decision to leave the away team to respond to a distress call, though he’s not happy about it. He’s even more unhappy when he finds out he was duped. He really does a piss-poor job figuring out it’s an obvious diversion. Even when he gets proof when he realizes they called the Enterprise by name, he still fucks around with the search.
Canon Maker
Not much here, more things break canon than set it.
Canon Breaker
The fact that the federation is even here is a canon breaker, as clearly the Capellans are not a warp capable society. The Prime Directive is once again toilet paper to Kirk. In this case, to take devil’s advocate, the Klingons don’t have such limitations. A dilithium rich planet may make those rules moot.
Kirk mentions that since the Capellans never made bows and arrows and it would come as a big surprise as gunpowder on earth. Sure, if they hadn’t already seen people beaming down out of thin air and phaser beams maybe.
The Klingon is a terrible hand to hand fighter, a schemer, and shows fear. He talks the Klingon talk but doesn’t walk it. It really showed how the Klingons were completely different than when we get to the movie/Next Gen era, and not just the make-up.
Man It Feels Bad To Be A Red Shirt
One guy who when they beam down, sees a Klingon, pulls his phaser, and is immediately killed by a Capellan.
Technobabble
Two communicators can generate a sympathetic set of sound waves to create a rockslide. The physics on this are not that unbelievable but the execution here is.
I Know That Guy:
Micheal Dante plays Maab in Friday’s Child. He was a former minor league baseball player before switching to acting. He had a lot of work but also hosted his own syndicated radio show from 1995 to 2007.
Tige Andres plays the Klingon Kras, which is probably the worst Klingon ever portrayed on screen. He’s most known for playing Captain Adam Greer on The Mod Squad. He is the first Klingon to die on-screen.
Ben Gage plays the chief Akaar until he’s killed early on. He’s mostly remembered for being an announcer on various radio and TV shows in the 40s and 50s.
And finally, Julie Newmar plays Eleen, most known as one of the three actresses to play Catwoman on the Adam West Batman show. (Yes I know Lee Meriwether technically was only in the movie, not the show. Shut up.)
What It Means To Be Human – Review
Friday’s Child is a bit of a shitshow of an episode. I believe they were trying to do some sort of commentary on Vietnam but it all just comes across weird and dumb. DC Fontana wanted it to be about a woman who didn’t want her child but that adds up to nothing.
Add to that the canon that is just thrown in the dumpster. Sure, they didn’t know at the time that Trek’s lore would be polished and honed over the next 40 years but still, this breaks a lot of canon even for the time.
The non-interference policy was pretty much in place for these primitive civilizations and these tribes shouldn’t be able to understand mining rights. Then they just show off all their technology and get involved in a civil war, albeit a quick one.
Then the chief’s wife is insufferable with wanting to live but not allowing any help except from McCoy. If she only connected to him, why name the kid after Kirk too?
The Klingon is also so off-kilter from the magnificent John Kolicos as Kor. While you could say things weren’t quite canon in Errand Of Mercy, you certainly could see the beginnings and the groundwork laid out for the Klingons. Warriors, conquerors, etc. Here they stand in for the USSR and are sniveling little weasels. A Klingon ship gets a chance to have battle with the Enterprise and they turn tail run? Bullshit.
Ok, again, the writers could not have known what would happen with the Klingons 30 years hence but Kor pretty much established they love a glorious battle so I’m not letting them off the hook.
The trio mostly spends Friday’s Child wandering around Vazquez rocks trying to stay alive until the Enterprise can send reinforcements. Those reinforcements should’ve come a whole lot quicker if Scotty wasn’t dicking around looking for an obvious diversion that he himself sniffed out but still dicked around anyway. They could’ve shortened that part and then given us a Klingon space battle that would’ve made it a lot more palatable that it took so long.
Also, I’m sorry but I can’t take the Capellans seriously when their costumes look like they were made from sofas and old curtains. We’re told they are deadly accurate when throwing their glaives around but become imperial stormtroopers when aiming at Kirk and Spock.
It all adds up to a whole lot of not much. It’s not the worst episode at all but really doesn’t last in your brain.
