Title: The Corbomite Maneuver
Airdate: 11/10/1966
Plot Summary
The Enterprise meets the largest Christmas tree ornament ever created and it’s being run by a scary ass alien. It captures the Enterprise and will destroy it unless Kirk can discover the mystery behind this alien race and what their true motive is.
Risk is our Business
Kirk shows himself as the most bad ass captain with his gaming skills. First it was 3d chess and now poker.
Logical
Spock wryly responds to Baily’s assertion that he wasn’t scared but had a very human adrenaline reaction. “Sounds inconvenient, you should consider having it removed.”
He’s Dead Jim
McCoy says “What am I, a doctor or a moon shuttle conductor?” This is the clumsiest prototype of his famous line “I’m a doctor, not a _____” that he would use later.
Canon Maker
Though this was the tenth episode released it was actually the third episode produced, after Where No Man Has Gone Before and The Cage. If you want to count The Cage. As such there’s a lot things still being established but we get the first look at the uniforms, even though we’ve already seen them. It’s more of an early pass at these uniforms with collars looking weird and too thick on some cast members, normal on others.
One thing they do is commiserate in a conference room, something that will never really become habit, though it does happen occasionally. It does become a Next Generation staple 20 years later.
Canon Breaker
Of course Uhura is seen once more in a gold uniform, thankfully never again. Baily fires the phasers from the navigation station, Sulu would be doing this duty for most of the rest of the series, aside from a few notable exceptions.
Man It Feels Bad To Be a Red Shirt
No one dies, though Baily does leave the ship to stay with Balok for a few months. He’s never seen again leading me to believe he met a horrifying end in my head canon.
Technobabble
This is the first mention of a tractor beam, something that seems so obvious and such a part of Trek, it’s kind of fun to realize this is the first.
They also run the engines nearly to exploding, thousands of degrees above safety limits to break out of an alien tractor beam and Scotty needs only a few hours for repairs, no big deal. This is very different from when they have to chase Mudd’s piece of crap cargo ship and destroy every dilthium crystal they have in the reactor.
I know that guy:
Baily is played by Anthony Call, someone who did quite a lot of TV and then fell out of acting for a decade or so. But he’s still working, even at the ripe old age of 84.
Ted Cassidy, who we just saw on the episode What Little Girls Are Made Of provides the voice of the alien puppet. Walter Edmiston provided the voice of Balok, he would return to voice roles in Friday’s Child and The Gamesters of Triskelion.
But the real guest star is little 7 year old Clint Howard, who’s gone on to a big career getting roles in his brother’s movies but also has come back to Star Trek in Deep Space Nine’s Past Tense, Enterprise’s Acquisition, and two episodes of NuTrek which do not exist in this dojo.
What it means to be human – Review
This is probably the first truly good episode of Star Trek, at least that’s not a pilot. I say “good” not “great” as it has some issues. But the strengths are really strong. First we have Kirk’s relationship with Spock and Bones, how he relies on Spock’s logic and Bone’s more emotional reasoning. He works with Spock on the bridge, they have good conversations, but an air of formality between them. Bones however is in Kirk’s cabin, they enjoy a drink together.
When Spock and Kirk disagree, it’s tempered, restrained. When Bones and Kirk disagree it comes nearly to blows, but equally as warm when they reconcile. This is the first episode really with the crew as we came to know them in place, and the first episode with Bones and they nail the relationships right from the start.
Then there’s the idea of the weird, scary monster alien turning out to be friendly. It’s a little ham handed, with Balok doing all this to test the earth ship. Was it necessary to go through all that?
Baily acts like probably you or I would in a situation when you think you’re going to die in eight minutes. I’m a bit torn as this provides interesting conflict for Bones and Kirk. But a Starfleet officer in navigation on the flagship of the Federation (actually, I’m not sure the Enterprise was in the original series, but I choose to believe it was the flagship) should be more composed.
Still he got his shit together as he should and maybe a momentary lack of control for a green officer isn’t really that big of a deal.
The huge starship followed by a tiny one helps lend to the strangeness of the alien. The puppet doesn’t look all that convincing as an alien but turning out to be an actual puppet as part of the story was clever.
Overall I just love what this episode set down. It feels like a dry run of the best episodes to come.
