Title: The Savage Curtain
Airdate: 3/7/1969
Plot Summary
The Enterprise is checking out a molten hellpit of a planet where there might be signs of life but scans are inconclusive. Just as they are about to call it a day and head out, Abraham Lincoln appears in front of them and wants to talk. They beam him aboard to try to figure out what’s going on when a small area of the planet suddenly is able to support human life. They are instructed to beam down where they meet Surak, the long dead father of Vulcan civilization. A mushroom shaped rock monster wants them to fight evil people from history and is holding the ship hostage until they do. Win and they go free. Lose and everyone dies.
I guess nothing good was on Netflix so the rock monsters needed some entertainment.
Risk Is Our Business
When they ran across Apollo, Kirk was pretty disrespectful, and at the very least, impatient with him. With Lincoln, while he doesn’t believe this person is actually Lincoln (and is correct), he has people put on full dress uniforms and really puts his best foot forward. This clearly WASN’T Lincoln while the being called Apollo probably actually WAS Apollo. Not a god, granted. But still probably warranted more respect than a fake Lincoln. Maybe Kirk realized he could’ve handled it better and decided to change it up for Lincoln.
Logical
While Kirk gets to meet his historical hero, Spock gets to meet Surak, the father of modern Vulcan philosophy. He briefly displays emotion which is little more than a slight hushed tone in voice. Of course for a Vulcan, that’s pretty much the same as pants wetting hysterical screaming. He does ask for forgiveness from Surak who understands completely, given the situation.
He’s Dead Jim
McCoy is damn irritated by all this and nearly gets hit with an insubordination charge with his objections to Kirk and Spock beaming down with Lincoln. Given that this is probably a first contact situation and have beamed into much worse situations, I’m not sure why this got his dander up so much.
Helm Sluggish Captain
Sulu takes readings and starts to break orbit when he first sees Lincoln show up. Nicely, Sulu takes command with Kirk and Spock down on the planet until Scotty comes back up to the bridge.
Nuclear Wessels
Chekov is at his station and is pretty astonished by Lincoln just right there hovering in space. He later takes over the science station in Spock’s absence.
Hailing Frequencies Open, Sugar
Uhura has one of the best moments in all of Star Trek. When Lincoln calls her a “charming negress”, he realizes the term might have been offensive, even though no offense was meant. But Uhura, showing a maturity I pray our era starts learning soon, she simply replies that they no longer fear words. Wise advice that needs to be heeded now.
My Wee Bairns
Scotty is on McCoy’s side and really doesn’t like any of this. Also we see him for the first time in a dress uniform that is nearly 67% Scottish.
Canon Maker
This episode may not be a well regarded one, but the lore it introduced was pretty impressive. First you get Surak, his image would be used in Enterprise later and he will be referenced countless times throughout Trek.
Kahless was brought back in TNG, though as a clone. Worf would speak of his stories a ton and his clone became a sort of spiritual leader to the Empire. Colonel Green would also be referenced in Enterprise as well.
And on a side note, Robin Williams would wear Colonel Green’s space suit, slightly modified, for his stint on Mork and Mindy.
Canon Breaker
Lincoln asks if they still measure time in minutes, to which Kirk replies that they can convert to it. This is ludicrous as nearly the entire show the only time they talk about time in anything other than how we talk about time is in Stardates. Days, hours, minutes…it’s all still used but they wrote this line just to show how different it is in the future. Even though it isn’t.
Kahless doesn’t have ridges. Hoo boy, here we go. The ridges were for years just a thing you accepted that 60s budgets and make up wasn’t up to snuff and when they were introduced in the movies, we kind of all just agreed that they always had ridges and chalked it up to the limitations of TV shows at the time.
But then they had to make a note of it in Trials and Tribbleations in 1996. It was a throwaway joke and really didn’t answer why. They did HAVE to acknowledge it given how that show was done and I was fine with the little inside joke. But now they went down that road. The can of worms was opened and acknowledged.
Then in Enterprise they explained it as some sort of augment virus that many Klingons caught. This gave them more human like features, hence the removal of the ridges. It wasn’t a bad explanation.
UNTIL you look at this episode and you see Kahless has no ridges. Who lived many hundreds of years before any of that. So that’s all smashed to pieces.
Man It Feels Bad To Be A Red Shirt
No deaths! Except for Surak and Lincoln. I guess?
Technobabble
The Excalibans are not only nice enough to let the Enterprise view and hear what’s going on down on the planet, but to also do the best camera angles and editing to ensure maximum drama.
The ship was basically shut down and required a restart. Back in The Naked Time it was mentioned it took 30 minutes to do a restart which was a problem given they were going to fall into the atmosphere in 10 minutes. But there’s no hurry here and Sulu casually mentions that they are performing a restart and will have warp in 30 minutes. Nice touch.
I Know That Guy:
Lee Bergere plays Abraham Lincoln pretty darn well. He did a ton of guest shots in various shows and had a starring role in several seasons of Dynasty.
Phillip Pine plays Colonel Green. He did a lot of guest star and bit parts but in one of the most awesome “6 degrees from…” he starred in Dead Heat On a Merry-Go-Round which was the first speaking part for a young Harrison Ford. That would be a good one to pull out at parties.
Bart La Rue lends his voice once again to do the Yarnek the rock monster.
And finally Barry Atwater plays Surak. He was probably best known for this episode and establishing Surak as a character though he had a heckuva time trying to do the vulcan salute. Besides this, he also is well known for playing the vampire in the TV movie The Night Stalker.
What It Means To Be Human – Review
I like this episode, mostly because of the trippy nature of it. It reminds me a bit of Who Mourns For Adonais? with a giant green hand holding the Enterprise. Here we have Abraham Lincoln, sitting in his mobius chair (10 points to the commenter who gets that reference) in the middle of space, casually having a conversation with the crew on the viewscreen. There’s also a ton of lore introduced here as I mentioned earlier.
But a lot of it makes little sense. What are the Excalibans trying to accomplish here? Lincoln and Surak, as well the other 4 “evil” beings are in fact all other Excalibans. When Surak comes over to talk with Greene with no one to watch, why keep up the charade? True, they did show the Enterprise what was happening there but then you have to wonder if they did just so they could play out their parts.
To what end? At first they want to see which is stronger, “good” or “evil.” But after it’s all done and “good” turns out to be stronger, they move the goal posts and complain that they can’t tell the difference since they both use the same methods to achieve their goals. So was it about which is stronger or which uses different methods?
And really people being “good” or “evil” has nothing to do with strength, nor does it tell anything about the outcome. Strength of technology or even just muscle mass doesn’t make one good or evil. A stronger good will defeat a weaker evil and vice versa. Being one or the other doesn’t tell you who is stronger. We got millennia of history that bears that out.
And what do they mean by “good” or “evil” if they have no frame of reference themselves? Genghis Khan, for example, is no more good or evil than Alexander the Great. Both were conquerors in a long past time period where such things were far more common. Being a ruler doesn’t make one good or evil. I suppose by our standards but even that’s murky.
Then you got these guys just doing blindly stupid things. First you get Surak thinking he can go make a peaceful solution. They are all Excalibans, surely he knew that it wasn’t going to work, so why try? Now I would assume he’s not really “dead” and they are all playing a part. But was Spock’s expectations of Surak so faulty that they created this retarded version of him?
Lincoln wasn’t much better. An experienced woodsman, soldier, and leader should’ve figured out pretty quick that Surak was dead.
I don’t know if this was supposed to be a warmed over Arena but it just doesn’t work very well. The Excalibans claim they are seeking knowledge but it would’ve been more honest if they had just been betting quatloos or something for their own entertainment. Kirk even rightly points out they they rigged the game, so to speak. At least in Arena, there was a purpose to it all. Here it’s just some sort of half ass experiment that they really wouldn’t learn anything from.
Still, it did give us a lot of lore that would play out later and Uhura possibly one of the best lessons Star Trek could ever bestow on audiences. And I kind of like it in spite of all its flaws. So I’ll bump it up slightly over 50% just because it’s my review. So there. Nyaaa.
