Title: Journey To Babel
Airdate: 11/17/1967
Plot Summary
Journey To Babel starts with the Enterprise is transporting dignitaries to the planet Babel for an important peace conference. But a mysterious vessel is following them along with a murderer on board doing their best to disrupt the conference. One of the suspects is the Vulcan Ambassador Sarek, who is revealed to be Spock’s father.
Risk Is Our Business
Kirk gets good and stabbed by an Andorian(?) and spends a lot of the episode in sickbay. Still he takes the most human method of solving a problem. He works out the plan to get Spock back into sickbay by simply lying to him.
Kirk has one of his best moments on the show, when he puts on a good show of being in good health to let Spock do the transfusion. The minute the doors close, he falls into his chair saying “get Scotty up here, Jesus this effing hurts!”
But when they get attacked, he stays in the big chair and outmaneuvers the Orions with some pitch perfect possum playing.
Logical
Spock has to balance his duty and his love of family and makes the most logical choice he can, much to his mother’s anger. However if he did save his father, even though he would not at all be punished for it by Starfleet, his father would never have respected him again.
Nimoy’s ability to portray emotion from an emotionless being is fantastic here. When his mother berates him, he is clearly hurt but shows very little, except for squeezing his eyes tightly closed for a moment.
He also rightly tells his mother “How can you live among Vulcans, marry a Vulcan, without understanding what it means to BE Vulcan?” His problem is that he doesn’t understand the human part. Amanda may understand all those things but it all gets thrown out the window when her husband’s life is in danger.
He’s Dead Jim
Bones first asks rather brusquely how that Vulcan salute goes to which Spock just simply shows him. He also takes great delight in finding out embarrassing “when Spock was a kid” stories.
He also gets to do doctor stuff, performing the surgery that saves Sarek’s life, not to mention patching up Kirk after a stabbing. He does miss the opportunity to say “He’s dead, Jim” at least twice.
And finally, he gets the last word by telling both Kirk and Spock to shut their mouths and stop talking.
Helm Sluggish Captain
Sulu is not in this episode.
Nuclear Wessels
Chekov spends most of the time at his station, ready to destroy the Orion ship. He finally has to take the science station since Spock is incapacitated. He does however fire the shot that destroys their ship. Well ok, they self-destructed but it was broken up in a pile of parts from Chekov.
Hailing Frequencies Open, Sugar
Uhura genuinely effs up in this episode, forgetting to set her scanning settings properly to find out where the signal is coming from. It happens to everyone. But she does finally find the signal from the disguised Andorian in the brig.
My Wee Bairns
Scotty is mentioned but never seen.
Canon Maker
Ok so much to list out here.
Spock had a sehlot when he was a youth. That will actually be seen in The Animated Series. We also find out that he was bullied as a boy. Vulcans are kind of dicks when you get right down to it. This would be explored more in Enterprise.
The Tellarites and Andorians are introduced here as part of the Federation. Although it’s not clearly mentioned in this episode, the Andorians, Tellarites, Vulcans, and Humans would be the founding members of the Federation and how that came about was shown throughout Enterprise.
The Orions are introduced here. Well, ok not exactly as we’ve had Orion slave girls but it wasn’t really set into stone that the Orions are pirates. Ridiculously, it turns out that the women are the real power in the Orion Empire, the men are just horny slaves but the women use their pheromones to control the men. Oh wait, I’ve seen the Democrat Party and OnlyFans, I guess that isn’t so far-fetched after all.
The other races are not identified, but I’m pretty sure two are the Golden Shriners. I really wanted to see those two riding tiny cars in the corridors.
Vulcans do have a method of killing called Tal Shia. (sp?). Spock and Sarek have T-negative blood, a rare blood type.
The touching of two fingers as an expression of affection between Vulcans is introduced here and would be seen throughout the movies and TV shows.
The Galileo transported Sarek and Amanda along with some other Vulcan delegates to the Enterprise. Glad something horrible didn’t happen to them given Galileo’s track record.
Canon Breaker
There’s so much canon created in Journey To Babel that’s it’s hard to call anything a breaker. What is probably true is that subsequent episodes across many series probably break the canon that gets laid down here.
There are some minor things. Amanda walks out the door which opens as they always do. Spock walks to the door but stops. The door somehow knows dramatic timing and does not open.
The Andorians later on would show their antennae coming out of their foreheads instead of from the sides of their heads.
Sarek mentions retiring at the young age of 104. This was probably due to his illness. Given that he makes a full recovery, we can see later that he does not retire and continues on ambassadoring to the 24th century.
Man It Feels Bad To Be A Red Shirt
No redshirts die, but we do lose a Tellarite and a disguised Orion as an Andorian.
Technobabble
Bones and Spock are able to make a machine that filters out Vulcan blood and runs it through an experimental drug to make sure they don’t drain Spock like a balloon.
The power utilization curve is mentioned in Journey To Babel. In essence, a ship can’t use that much power as it wouldn’t have enough power to get home. An overpowered ship isn’t really overpowered, it’s just not conserving energy.
I Know That Guy:
John Wheeler plays Gav, the Tellarite ambassador. He played a ton of mostly bit parts, like a reporter in Apollo 13.
William O’Connell played the duplicitous Andorian Thelev. O’Connell didn’t have a well-known career however he played in a lot of Clint Eastwood movies, from Paint Your Wagon to Any Which Way You Can.
Jane Wyatt plays Amanda. She of course was in Father Knows Best and would return to the character in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.
And finally, making his second and final appearance on TOS, but not his final appearance as Sarek, is the late, great Mark Lenard. Not enough can be said about his performance.
What It Means To Be Human – Review
Journey To Babel is a great episode for the lore and really has a lot going for it simply because Trek is such a rich tapestry of lore. As an actual episode, the plot is ok at best. But I love it nonetheless.
The character moments are what make it work so well. Spock and Sarek’s contentious relationship that is shown throughout the series, the movies, and even through the Next Generation, is laid out here.
Spock and Sarek’s relationship is quite complex and although Sarek doesn’t approve of Spock being in Starfleet, he is secretly proud of him. I always wondered where Sarek’s animosity came from as he clearly has a soft spot for humans, having married one. Perhaps he has a little shame in himself for finding the emotional humans fascinating and transferred that on Spock to be a better Vulcan than he was.
I mentioned Amanda tosses out logic where her husband’s health is at stake. Sarek would do the same thing in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock. Sarek is such an interesting character, full of contradictions. It was fittingly tragic that he ended up contracting a disease in his old age that would unleash his emotions fully.
Amanda shows that she is pretty quick on the uptake, figuring out Spock’s plan before McCoy. It’s easy to see why Sarek would be taken with her.
Much has been made about Mark Lenard’s portrayal of Sarek and rightly so. He plays the character so well and takes his cues from Nimoy’s performance to make it his own. He’s definitely the best Vulcan portrayal save for Nimoy himself.
Not enough is made about Jane Wyatt as Amanda. She has a grace and dignity about her but not afraid to get emotional, Vulcan customs be damned. She only makes two appearances as Amanda, here and in Star Trek IV. Both were so good that no one questioned her as Spock’s mother. Much better than Wynona Ryder. She should get a lot more credit than she does but is always overshadowed by Lenard.
The episode’s plot is kinda secondary to the character conflicts. Spock must take over the ship in a hostile situation. He has to take his mother’s anger, right down to her slapping him across the face. If any doubt existed that Vulcans only repress emotions, not excise them, this puts that to bed. Spock’s pain of disappointing his mother is in conflict with his desperate need to get his father’s approval that he would never actually get if his father died. Jeez talk about a conundrum.
The tellarites may be a founding member but they never really caught on in Trek. We do see them fleshed out a bit more in Enterprise as a race that loves to argue.
The Andorians get a bit more, especially in Enterprise with Shran as a mostly honorable race. In many ways, they are the closest to humans, with good and bad people. They value family and are willing to do what it takes to make things happen, willing to bend the rules as necessary. They also have a pretty striking design, it’s a shame it took over 30 years to really explore them.
Overall I just love all the lore Journey To Babel has. It’s too bad the story itself regarding Korridan and plot to start a war is not that compelling. The choices Spock has to make, however, and really exploring his relationship to his mother and father is great. In a way, those relationships are thematic of his overall relationships with Vulcans and humans. He argues with his mother, but he desperately wants his father’s approval. Like his father, he chooses to be with humans rather than with Vulcans. It’s part of what made Spock one of the greatest fictional characters ever created, the contradictions.
I’m not dinging Journey To Babel for its weaknesses, the strengths are just too great.
