Title: The Galileo Seven
Airdate: 01/05/1967
Plot Summary
The Enterprise loses several crewman including some who are listed on the opening credits in a shuttle crash. Finding them is a needle in a haystack and the crew, stranded on a hostile planet with giant natives trying to kill them, are running out of time.
Risk is our Business
Kirk really doesn’t have nearly as much to do here, other than looking worried on the bridge. He does get to tell a commissioner to stick it many times before he finally has to follow orders and abandon the search.
He also, hilariously, is maliciously compliant with Ferris’s order to leave the system, at about 3 miles per hour to keep looking for as long as he possibly can.
Logical
Spock gets a lot of character development here. His actions are completely logical and he makes generally good decisions. However he is simply unable to understand why it doesn’t work. It really puts him in a place where he’s open to ideas he’s never thought of before, thanks to these emotional humans.
This is also the first time Spock says “There are always alternatives.” This would be paraphrased frequently as “There are always possibilities.”
He also makes some good points about how low regard humans have for life, even though he’s forced to agree with them from a logical standpoint. He shows some actual emotion here, disgust and revulsion at having to take these actions and desperation to come up with a third option.
He’s Dead Jim
McCoy’s alternatively is supportive and critical of Spock. Without Kirk between them, watching these two play off of each other is a real treat and cements their frenemies status.
His assessment of Spock’s motives of wanting command however proves to be false as time would go on. Spock is content to always be support for Kirk whenever the situation demands it.
Canon Maker
Finally we see a shuttlecraft, the first time in Star Trek. Ok, yes there was one in the Menagerie, however it wasn’t really clear that the Enterprise carried its own fleet of shuttles. Damn would’ve been nice to have in The Enemy Within. Maybe they didn’t get installed until Tuesday.
This also brings the well-used trope of the crappy federation bureaucrat who is there to basically get in the way. Some would wise up, like in A Taste Of Armageddon, and others would be terrible to the end like in The Trouble With Tribbles. Commissioner Ferris is somewhere in between. His duty is not unreasonable and there is a case that Kirk shouldn’t have sent them out in the first place. It’s not like something goes wrong a lot on this ship *snrk* but still.
Kirk talks to Lt Kelowitz on one of the other viewers on the bridge above Spock’s station. This is never really done again as most of the time they only use audio communications intraship, something that would continue even through TNG era.
Canon Breaker
The crew doesn’t seem to understand Spock very well even though Vulcan and Earth are the two founding members of the federation. The other members of the crew have served with Spock for quite a while and yet are just flabbergasted and kinda nasty about his logical nature.
I’m not sure this is a canon breaker however. Spock was the first Vulcan to serve in Starfleet. (T’Pol on Enterprise was technically a Vulcan loan. Which she did join the crew later on, it wasn’t called “Starfleet” yet.) Given that Spock is the first, I imagine the Earth crews may have known about and met a Vulcan or two but that’s very different than working with one day in and day out.
Kirk asserts that Spock will not admit for the first time in his life, he committed an entirely emotional act. This is absolutely true and everything Strange New Worlds has done is, in my mind, a canon breaker. F*** that show.
Technobabble
You can eject and ignite shuttlecraft fuel to leave one helluva bright streak. I wonder if this is the similar method used to make the Kolvoord Starburst a hundred years later that got a cadet killed and made Wesley interesting for the first time.
Scotty really shows how good he is. He’s up to his neck in gear and equipment.
The transporters don’t do well with all the ionizing radiation but the crack squad of not-Scotties are able to get around that. I liked that as they showed the rest of the crew is competent and resourceful even though they aren’t in the main credits.
I know that guy:
John Crawford plays Commissioner Ferris with a mix of snottiness and concern. Don Marshall play Lt. Boma, most known for his role in another 60s Sci Fi show, Land Of The Giants. Peter Marko plays poor Lt. Gaetano, Rees Vaughn as Lt. Latimer and Grant Woods as Lt. Kelowitz.
What it means to be human – Review
This is a great episode. While the plot is somewhat basic, -rescue the shuttle against a ticking clock while crew is in great peril- the strengths are the character development of Spock.
One of the cliché’s of Star Trek is that silly old Spock gets a lesson from those crazy emotional humans. This episode actually does that, where Spock does an act of pure emotional desperation that goes against all logic and it works. However his arguments against killing the giant savages and making points about the choices they need to survive are good ones.
Draining the phasers will leave them defenseless but if they don’t get off the planet, the Enterprise will have no hope of finding them. He nearly has the equivalent of a nervous breakdown when every single choice he makes seems to backfire on him. But he never wavers, he makes logical decisions, and completely does whatever he has to in order to keep the crew safe.
The humans don’t always endear themselves to the viewer. While it’s completely understandable that they would be irritated with Spock’s seeming over analysis of the situation, the insistence to have burial when it’s dangerous as hell outside makes no sense whatsoever. It’s a purely emotional play to contrast with Spock’s logic.
Scotty also has a few moments with Spock, playing the wry observer occasionally rather than making any actual critiques. Mostly he’s just looking at solving the engineering problem. He also correctly figures out Spock’s signal flare and congratulates him on his gamble.
The tension ratchets up suitably as the episode continues and you do wonder if they will actually get out of this, even though you know most will, especially Spock, Scotty, and McCoy.
Spock’s decision to burn up the fuel is inspired and lucky. He makes a mostly emotional decision but it’s not unwarranted. The coda at the end when he steadfastly refuses admit to having any emotional decision but also that he’s stubborn, a trait motivated by emotions, is priceless.
