#1.16 The Galileo Seven | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

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Star Trek Episode 1.16: The Galileo Seven

AKA Lord What Fools These Humans Be

Our episode begins with a captain’s log telling us that the Enterprise is traveling to a planet called Makus 3, or Mockus 3 according to the subtitles. Specifically they’re going there to deliver some medical supplies, but they happen to be passing by a phenomenon called Murasaki 312, which Kirk describes as being a quasar-like formation, and “a priceless opportunity for scientific study.” It’s pretty, I’ll give it that. Especially in the remastered version.

[ID: 1. A swirl of bright blue-green vapor glowing in the middle, in the midst of a starfield. 2. A large green cloud with a disc-like formation in the middle of it shot through with a beam of white light.]

Also, they have onboard one Galactic High Commissioner (now there’s a hell of a title) Ferris, who’s overseeing this whole medicine delivery business. Ferris has just now come up to the bridge, where Kirk is communicating with a shuttlecraft (you know, those shuttlecraft that they’ve definitely had all this time) about to launch, and boy, he looks like a fun guy.

[ID: Ferris, a white man with very short graying brown hair, wearing a blue uniform with an elbow-length cape on the back. He is standing just in front of the lift doors on the bridge, looking off to the side and somehow managing to look both grumpy and smug at the same time.]

Ferris is not happy about the Enterprise stopping to look at the glowy space cloud when they’ve got medicine to deliver, and on a tight schedule too. They’re supposed to be having a rendezvous with...somebody...to hand over the supplies so they can be transferred to the New Paris colony. Kirk says that that’s all very well, but he also, for some reason, has standing orders to investigate all quasars and quasar-like phenomena. Anyway, it’s a three day trip to Makus 3 and the rendezvous isn’t scheduled for another five, so they’ve got a two-day window, time enough for a roadside stopover.

This whole thing strikes me as odd. Not that such a formation would be scientifically interesting, I’m sure it would be. But the way Kirk talks about it, it’s as if this was some unexpected opportunity that they have to take advantage of because it won’t come again. But quasars (and, presumably, quasar-like phenomena) aren’t exactly the kind of thing that pop up one day and are gone the next. Also, they’re pretty hard to miss, and there’s no indication that they’re out in unexplored space or whatever. You could perhaps pass this off as the writers not knowing what a quasar is—likely--except that the thing has a name, which indicates that whatever it is, it’s been officially noticed and has stuck around long enough to be cataloged. So there’s no apparent reason why the Enterprise wouldn’t have been well aware, in advance, that this thing was going to be along their way, and no apparent reason why they have to study it right now. Are Kirk’s ‘standing orders’ so important that they supercede anything else the Enterprise happens to be doing at the moment? If the Federation cares about quasars (and quasar-like phenomena) so much, why not have dedicated science ships out there studying them instead of just making other ships stop and look at them whenever they get the chance?

To compound the problem, Ferris tells Kirk that he doesn’t want to take chances with this medicine delivery because “the plague” is out of control at New Paris and they really need these supplies. We’re obviously supposed to view Ferris as your standard unpleasant interfering bureaucrat, and he certainly doesn’t exactly have a charming personality, but to be honest, I think he kinda has a point on this one. It’d be one thing if the Enterprise was delivering some non-time-critical supplies and he was just being a grump about meeting a schedule, but, assuming The Plague lives up to that name, they’re delivering crucial life-saving medicine, and Kirk is being real dang cavalier about it. Yeah, they’ve got time until the meet-up—even though there’s no given explanation as to why the rendezvous has to be at that time and they couldn’t make it earlier, which would surely be preferable under the circumstances—but a lot of things can go wrong in space, which Kirk oughta be very well aware of by now. One would think they’d want to leave that window open in case they’re delayed by something unexpected, but no, let’s just go fly into a quasar, I guess, what could go wrong. This is like if they stopped in the middle of Balto to investigate an active volcano.

Kirk waves Ferris off and tells the shuttle, Galileo, that they’re cleared for takeoff, so off they take. Inside the shuttle is Spock, flying it; a male goldshirt; a female redshirt; Scotty; a male blueshirt; McCoy; and a male goldshirt. That’s seven alright. Seems like a bit of an odd selection. Given it’s a scientific expedition you’d expect a primarily science-focused crew, but here we’ve got Spock (makes sense), one blueshirt (cool), McCoy (for...whatever reason) two goldshirts (one is helping fly the shuttle, which makes sense, but the other one is just...there), a yeoman (who frankly has no business being there whatsoever) and Scotty. Scotty’s always good to have along, but what, specifically, they thought he would need to be doing on this trip, I don’t know.

As they fly towards the big green glowy thing, one of the goldshirts—Latimer—gives Spock a reading, then takes it back, saying the indicator’s gone crazy. The blueshirt, Boma, says that this is because quasars are really disruptive like that. The yeoman then reports that radiation is increasing.

With things already going wrong real bad, Spock tells Latimer to stop their forward momentum. Latimer gives it a shot, but nothing happens. Spock then tries to call the Enterprise, but gets only static. Man, it sure didn’t take long for this trip to go belly-up.

On the bridge, Uhura is likewise having radio trouble, unable to pick up anything from the Galileo except scattered fragments about them being pulled off-course. Kirk wants them to get a fix on the shuttle, but Sulu says the scanners are blank and that they’re getting “a mass of readings I’ve never seen before, nothing makes sense.” So...they’re blank or there’s a mass of readings? Which is it?

The ship computer chimes in with some technobabble that apparently means Murasaki 312 has ionized the entire sector. In a nutshell, their sensors are out, along with your choice of plot-relevant ship systems. Kirk looks mournfully out into the void and says, “At least four complete solar systems in the immediate vicinity, and out there, somewhere, a twenty-four foot shuttlecraft, off course, out of control. Finding a needle in a haystack would be child’s play.” What, you mean sending a lone shuttlecraft out to investigate a giant mysterious and dangerous space phenomena that said shuttlecraft was never equipped to handle, while on a time limit, didn’t turn out well? Who could have guessed!

After the titles, Kirk gives a log that just reiterates the situation: Murasaki 312 ate our shuttlecraft and now we can’t even look for it because our sensors are busted. Ferris is going on about how he told them so, which obviously is not endearing him to anyone. Kirk says they still have two days to find it, but as Ferris points out, you can’t search four solar systems in two days. At that point Uhura interrupts to say that there’s one inhabitable type-M planet in the solar system (she does not specify which solar system). It’s called Taurus 2, and it’s right in the middle of that big glowy mess out there. Oh, that’s convenient. Of course, they have no evidence that the Galileo landed on any planet, let alone that one—it could be anywhere in the vast amount of empty space in those solar systems, or it could have landed on one of the uninhabitable planets and they’re all going to die if they haven’t already. Lots of lovely possibilities! But they gotta start somewhere, so it’s off to Taurus 2.

By sheer coincidence, it turns out that in fact the Galileo has landed in the one place survivable enough to make an interesting episode out of. The outside of the shuttle looks okay, but from the inside it’s clear they had a rough landing. Everyone’s tossed all over the place clutching their heads and so forth, and a control panel is sparking pretty badly. McCoy goes into doctor mode and starts checking everyone out, but it looks like the only casualty was a bloody nose for Boma.

So what happened? Over a handkerchief, Boma says his best guess is that “the magnetic potential of the effect was such that as we gathered speed, it was multiplied geometrically,” causing them to be shot into Muraski 312 like a bullet. Scotty’s got a hell of a job ahead of him getting the shuttle back into shape. Man, it sure is lucky that they brought the chief engineer along on this trip. For whatever reason that they did.

McCoy does a scan of the atmosphere outside and says that it’s breathable—you wouldn’t want to run a marathon in it, but it’s breathable. Spock says they’d better clear out of there so Scotty has room to work and tells Latimer and the other goldshirt, Gaetano, to take some phasers and go scout around. They do, but no one else leaves. So much for giving Scotty room to work. Instead, McCoy sits in a chair the wrong way to talk to Spock.

[ID: McCoy and Spock sitting inside the Galileo. McCoy is sitting sideways with his back to the wall and one arm propped against the back of the chair, looking over at Spock, who is sitting forward and looking at his tricorder.]

McCoy, sitting sideways in chairs like a man after my own heart.

Spock and McCoy talk about their chances of being found. They don’t look good. Spock figures the ionization effect that hit them is going to be widespread enough to affect the Enterprise too, leaving them without instrumentation to search with, which is going to make it damn hard for them to find the Galileo.

Sure enough, back on the big ship they’re still having no luck with the sensors, even after Sulu tried hooking them up to auxiliary power. Kirk calls the transporter room to see if they’ve got the transporters back online but the operator says that they beamed down some test material and it came back “in a disassociated condition” so they don’t dare try sending any humans through it yet. Yeesh. Yeah, I quite prefer being in an associated condition myself. In the meantime, Kirk tells the flight deck to get the other shuttle, the Columbus, ready to fly out and do a search of the planet’s surface.

Having a shuttle named Columbus is a bit unfortunate, since the most prominent explorer-type person named Columbus that comes to mind was an enormously terrible guy and one would hope we would have stopped giving him any kind of honor this far into the future. But then, the show never specifies that the shuttle is named after Christopher Columbus. Three hundred years from now there could easily have been another person named Columbus that did something significant, like a really cool astronaut or scientist. That’s my theory and I’m sticking with it.

While the Columbus gets ready, Uhura regretfully tells Kirk that communication is still impossible as both their transmission and reception are out. Ferris is still hanging around making a nuisance of himself, asking whether Kirk really thinks they’re going to find anything out there. Kirk says that he’s going to keep looking until the last possible minute and damn the odds (never tell Kirk the odds!), and Ferris says alright—but only until the last possible minute and not one second after.

Columbus heads off on its search, while down on the planet Spock goes outside to do some readings or whatever. McCoy follows him and comments that for as lousy as this situation is, it’s Spock’s big chance to get his command on. Spock says that he isn’t particularly enthused by the idea of being in command, but he’s not afraid of it either; it’s just a thing, neither good nor bad. But since he is in command now, he’s going to do it logically.

Inside, Scotty is elbows-deep in the shuttle’s dashboard. Things aren’t looking good. It seems they’ve lost a lot of fuel, so much that they don’t have any chance of reaching escape velocity and making orbit unless they lighten the load by about five hundred pounds. That’s the weight of three grown men, Spock points out. McCoy is all “uhhh how about we drop some equipment instead of some people” but Spock says that there’s just not that much non-essential equipment on the Galileo to begin with. The passengers are pretty much the only excess weight they have to lose, so either some people get left behind or it’s time to go build a refinery.

Boma is not happy with the turn this discussion has taken and asks who’s going to decide who has to stay behind. Spock says that, well, he’s in command, so it’s up to him to make that call. And no, despite what Boma suggests, he’s not planning to draw lots; he’ll make a logical decision based on logical means, logic logic.

Leaving the conversation on that cheerful note, Spock says they better go outside and make sure they haven’t overlooked any minor damage. Boma watches him leave and says, “If any minor damage was overlooked it was when they put his head together.” “Not his head, Mr. Boma,” McCoy says in the most dramatic manner possible. “His heart.” Thanks Bones.

Meanwhile the goldshirts are off scouting around in a ravine while some scary growling noises echo all around them. They decide to climb up the rocks nearby, because you know what would be a great idea right now: to expose themselves as much as possible. Sure enough, as they get to the top, something big and furry throws a giant spear at Latimer, impaling him in the back and knocking him into the ravine.

The rest of the party over at the Galileo hear Latimer’s scream and Spock and Boma go running to investigate. Gaetano climbs down the rocks while shooting his phaser wildly in various directions, as poor Latimer lies dead in the ravine with the spear shaft sticking up like a tree.

[ID: Gaetano, a white man with short dark hair, sitting on an outcropping in the side of a ravine and staring at a spearhaft that extends out of frame in both directions, while Spock approaches from around the corner.]

After the break, Spock and Boma arrive on the scene to find Gaetano sitting mournfully on a rock and staring at Latimer. He says he didn’t see the attacker clearly; he only knows that it was “something huge and terrible.” But he thinks he got it with one of those phaser blasts so Spock goes off to investigate. Gaetano tells Boma that the thing was “like a giant ape” and then, when Boma says, “Poor Latimer,” Gaetano optimistically says that at least Latimer was fortunate enough to die quickly. Thanks man. Really keeping up the team spirit there. But hey, on the plus side, now we only have to pick two people to leave behind.

Spock comes back and says that he didn’t find anything. Gaetano insists that there was something there and he’s sure that he hit it, which is more certainty than he had about one minute or so ago; Spock says he’s not doubting Gaetano, but the fact is there’s nothing there now. Then he pulls the spear out of Latimer—honestly I have no idea how the thing was even staying up in the first place—and examines it, saying that it resembles a kind of ancient Earth spear, but cruder and not very efficient. Boma gets upset at this, irate that Spock can focus on things like the efficiency of the spear when there’s a man dead on the ground. The nerve of the man, gathering information about a dangerous and unknown situation. Spock points out that no amount of mourning is going to bring Latimer back to life. Gaetano, now also ticked off, says that they at least shouldn’t leave Latimer’s body there. Spock offers to help them carry the body back, but the two men coldly refuse and haul him off themselves.

[ID: Gaetano and Boma, a black man with short hair, carrying the body of Latimer between them through the ravine. Latimer’s shirt is pulled up exposing a black undershirt.]

Well, there’s at least one goldshirt who wears an undershirt.

On the Enterprise, Kirk notes in his log that their searching has turned up nothing, and he’s beginning to feel “a sense of utter futility, and great loss.” The transporters are still not safe to use, and Engineering is working on getting the sensors back online, but without Scotty around they’re real short on miracles, and not making much progress. But Kirk, of course, is not about to give up, and as soon as the Columbus comes back from searching a quadrant he orders them to start on the next one. Ferris is still hanging around pointedly reminding Kirk of how little time he has left, kind of like an annoying quest marker in a video game that pops up every five minutes to remind you to do the thing that you’re already doing.

Kirk orders the Columbus to expand its search radius by two degrees. Sulu points out that means they’ll be overlooking a dozen miles with each loop they make, but Kirk responds that it’s the only way they have a fighting chance of actually covering the whole planet in the time left to them. Ferris exits the bridge, but not before turning around in the lift and saying, “Twenty-four more hours, Captain,” as dramatically as he can.

Down below, Spock is offering some jury-rigging suggestions to Scotty, but of course Scotty’s already thought of all that and says it won’t work. Meanwhile, McCoy and the Yeoman are hauling some stuff out of the back of the shuttle, which should take off about fifty pounds of weight, and the yeoman thinks they can clear out another hundred pounds. A hundred and fifty pounds? What happened to there being nothing nonessential on this shuttle? Sure, that might not be much compared to the overall weight of the shuttle, but it’s a heck of a lot when you’re talking about having to leave people behind. Still, as Spock points out, even if they lose all that they’ll be another hundred and fifty pounds overweight. Hm, okay, if everyone loses twenty-five pounds we’ll be good.

McCoy can’t believe Spock is still planning to leave someone behind now that they know there are big dangerous furry guys out there with spears, but Spock points out that it’s a matter of saving one life, or six. In other words, the trolley problem. Or the shuttle problem, in this case.

Boma sticks his head in the door and says that they’re ready. Spock is confused about what, exactly, they’re ready for, and Boma says they’re doing a service for Latimer. Spock doesn’t want to lose any of their very limited time, but Boma insists that he should at least come and say a few words. In some desperation, Spock says that perhaps McCoy would be better for that, but McCoy insists it’s Spock’s place to do that, and Spock turning it down is met with hostility from everyone (except Scotty, who has bigger fish to fry, and the yeoman, who doesn’t seem to have any opinions on anything).

Call me a Vulcan, but I don’t entirely understand why this is a problem. McCoy would be the best person there to give any kind of funeral service. He’s a doctor, so he surely has more practice speaking about the recently deceased in a compassionate but formal way than anyone else there; he would be generally familiar with human funeral customs, unlike Spock, who would have an entirely different cultural background for such things; and he can more afford to spare the time because he’s really not urgently needed for anything at the moment. It might not be the most orthodox way of doing things, but under the circumstances I think we’re gonna have to skip the full formal ceremony with honors anyway.

But we don’t find out exactly how they resolved the funeral situation, instead skipping ahead to some time later. Spock and Scotty are still in the Galileo, Scotty digging through the innards of the shuttlecraft while Spock watches. Scotty grimly announces that a line has broken, meaning that they now have no fuel at all. So uh. Yeah, that’s bad. Spock tells him it’s time to start considering alternatives, to which an incredulous Scotty replies, “We have no fuel, what alternatives?” “Mr. Scott, there are always alternatives.” Like what? Black magic? “Alright, squad, I didn’t want to do this, but we’re gonna have to sacrifice Gaetano.”

At that moment, McCoy and the yeoman come running in, saying there’s something happening outside. Everyone runs outside, except Scotty, who can’t be bothered with any damn aliens or whatever when there’s an engine to be fixed. Gaetano and Boma are hiding behind a nearby rock while unsettling scraping kind of sounds echo all around them. Spock says it’s the sound of wood rubbing on leather, which Gaetano thinks means the aliens are about to attack. Boma points out that this could just be some kind of simple tribal rite, but Spock says that the artifacts prove these guys are too primitive for that. Um, artifacts? You have one. Or had one, more likely, that you looked at for like, fifteen seconds, before Boma started pitching a fit about it. There’s only so much anthropology you can do in that amount of time.

Boma thinks that if the aliens have any kind of tribal system, attacking one of them might drive the others off. Spock is like “oh, now we’re okay with having no sentimentality about life?” But Gaetano, raring to go phaser some cavemen, insists that “at least we’re practical about it.” Practical. Sure. You haven’t been practical about a damn thing since y’all landed on this rock, but now you want to start, huh?

When asked, McCoy says that Boma’s plan seems logical to him, which is a bit unusual—he’s usually the last one to be okay with any plan that involves killing, though at least he doesn’t exactly seem enthusiastic about this. Boma tries to invoke majority rules and Spock has to remind him that this isn’t a democracy. Man, Starfleet crewmembers seem to have to be reminded of that a lot. You’d think they’d go over this at the Academy.

Obviously they’ve gotta do something, but Spock is still uncomfortable with the idea of murdering the locals and decides to take a third option. McCoy and the yeoman (whose name, we finally learn, is Mears) are sent back to the shuttle to help Scotty, while Boma and Gaetano are to go with Spock. He tells them very sternly that they’re going to follow his orders to the letter and fire only at the targets he designates, which, again, doesn’t seem like a concept they should need a refresher on but here we are. Boma and Gaetano are all over this plan until Spock says that they’re only going to fire to frighten the aliens, not to kill them, at which point they go right back to sulking.

So the three of them head off into the Emyn Muil over there, skulking along through the ankle-high mist with phasers at the ready.

[ID: Spock, Boma and Gaetano approaching cautiously through the ravine, the floor of which is blanketed with white vapor.]

“Careful, boys, we’re in the land of dry ice machines now.”

Another giant spear comes flying at them, but luckily this one doesn’t hit anyone. They dodge behind some rocks and Spock fires his phaser, causing a nearby giant to drop a shield into the ravine. A shield that rather dramatically changes size between shots.

[ID: 1. Spock stands in the ravine with his phaser out, Gaetano and Boma crouched at his side. A large, crude leather shield has fallen to the ground in front of them. 2. The three men crouching in front of the shield, which is now so large all three of them can stand alongside it with room to spare.]

They get into position at Spock’s specifications, and he tells them to fire at designated angles on his command, but even now, Gaetano still wants to argue about it. His protests notwithstanding, Spock has them fire for a bit. Figuring the giants should be frightened off for now, he goes back to the Galileo with Boma, leaving Gaetano on sentry duty. He seems a bit too far from the shuttle to be serving as effective sentry duty, but maybe Spock just wanted to not have to deal with him for a while.

Back at the Galileo, Scotty has, what do you know, conjured up an alternative: he thinks he can adjust the shuttle’s main reactor to function with a substitute fuel supply. What substitute fuel supply do they have? The phasers! Of course, if they use all their phasers to fuel the shuttle, they won’t have any means of defense, but if they don’t, they’re all gonna die anyway, so there’s not much of a choice in the matter. Scotty says that if he uses up all the phasers he can achieve orbit with all remaining hands, although he won’t be able to maintain it very long.

As Spock points out, the Enterprise is going to have to leave in less than twenty-four hours now, so if they don’t achieve orbit in that time they’re screwed anyway. The general assumption seems to be that they have no chance of surviving on the planet long enough to be rescued, even if the Enterprise came right back. Which could well be true—I doubt they have much in the way of survival supplies on the shuttle, and there are hostile aliens all around. On the other hand, they haven’t yet tried actually defending themselves to their fullest capability, and the presence of those big guys would seem to indicate that there’s something to eat around here. I’m not saying they could definitely survive long enough for a later rescue, it just seems odd that everyone takes it for granted that staying on the planet will be a death sentence.

So Spock tells McCoy to hand over his phaser, which for some reason prompts a dramatic musical sting, even though they literally just went over their plans to do that, and anyway it’s not like McCoy gets a lot of use out of the thing. Scotty takes McCoy’s phaser along with Spock’s and sets about transferring their power to the shuttle reactor, which he seems to be doing by just sticking the phasers down in there and firing them at said reactor.

Up on the Enterprise, the transporter guys run a test on some objects that come back intact, and the operator tells Kirk that in his opinion, the transporter is now safe for humans. Which is not a statement that I think I would find terribly comforting if it was me going through that thing. Kirk seems alright with it, though, because he immediately orders landing parties to start going down. The transporter operator points out that he’s talking about searching a planet on foot in less than twenty-four hours, which, y’know, is really unlikely to work, but Kirk isn’t interested in hearing it.

In the ravines, Gaetano is stumbling around nervously amidst sounds of growling giants. A rock comes flying at him, hitting his hand and knocking away his phaser, followed by another spear. Rather than attempt to pick up the phaser, Gaetano tries to climb up the cliff wall, a course of action that very quickly peters out. He falls back down and cowers against the cliff while a giant slowly approaches from the end of the ravine.

I question the decision to actually show the giant onscreen because, frankly, he’s just not that impressive. Sure, he’s big, but he’s like, Andre the Giant big, not as big as you would be thinking from the size of the spear and shield. Seriously, that spear was like three times the size of Gaetano.

Also, for some reason he’s walking with his arms straight out like Frankenstein’s monster.

[ID: Gaetano backed up against a cliff wall in fear while a large furry man with arms extended walks towards him.]

Gaetano just kind of sits there whimpering while the giant slowly closes in on him and grabs him. He screams as the scene cuts to black, which is probably for the best because I don’t think there was ever a good way to resolve that particular bit of choreography.

After the break, Spock, McCoy and Boma are examining the ravine, where there is now no trace of Gaetano except his fallen phaser. Spock retrieves the phaser and gives it to McCoy to take back to Scotty. Boma is, shockingly, outraged by how Spock is “acting like nothing’s happened at all.” Yes, thank you, Boma. Spock then gives McCoy his own phaser as well to take back in case he doesn’t return—he’s going to go look for Gaetano, alone. The other two men watch him head off into the ravine. One might expect this to prompt some “oh I guess he really does care” response, but instead McCoy is just kind of like “yeah I don’t know he’s weird” and then they leave.

Spock heads through the land of fogginess and soon discovers poor ol Gaetano dead and laid out on a rock. The seriousness of this situation is somewhat undercut by Spock’s reaction, which is not so much that of a man discovering a dead comrade or even the stern stoicness of an inscrutable alien, but more a look that suggests that he just spilled a drink on the floor and is annoyed about having to clean it up.

[ID: Gaetano’s dead body slumped over a rock while Spock stands over him with his hands on his hips.]

Nimoy, my man, I love you, but why

Well, no man left behind and all that, so Spock hoists Gaetano into a fireman’s carry and takes him back to the Galileo. Along the way the giants return to throw more and more spears at him, but fortunately they are all terrible shots so none of them hit and despite having to go slow Spock makes it back just fine.

McCoy and Boma help him get Gaetano into the shuttle, and they’re not happy. McCoy points out that Spock’s super logical plan of frightening away the giants didn’t work out so well. Spock expresses open confusion about this because logically the giants should have retreated in the face of superior weaponry. McCoy snaps back that Spock’s downfall was only considering the possibility of a rational response and not an emotional one.

The whole conversation is, to be honest, kinda stupid. Spock’s handling of the situation is portrayed as a downfall of his prioritizing logic and not considering anything else (the writing of which doesn’t really fit Spock’s actual character, but we’ll get to that later). He expected the giants to react logically and the episode lets us know that that was the wrong option. The problem is, they’re dealing with a completely unknown, unstudied, alien race here. There’s no way, logically or emotionally, to know how they would react to anything. Sure, Spock assuming that they would retreat in fear rather than retaliate in anger turned out to be wrong, but they have absolutely no way of knowing whether following Boma’s plan would have worked any better. It’s entirely possible the giants would have been more angered by one of them being killed. Hell, it’s possible that none of this had anything to do with either fear or anger; it could have been motivated by something else entirely. For all they know the giants are just hungry. McCoy’s response isn’t necessarily surprising; McCoy’s always going to have a strong reaction to someone dying while he’s around, which he often expresses by lashing out, and Spock’s the closest possible target. But in the context of the arc of the episode we’re clearly supposed to take this to mean that Spock screwed up, when really, any choice in this situation was always going to be a gamble.

Anyway, things are quiet for the moment, and Yeoman Mears wonders why. Spock thinks the giants are probably studying the Galileo. Of course, as soon as he says that, the shuttle starts to shake. Aww, it’s like a mini Star Trek Shake. Adorable.

Turns out the shuttle is shaking all over the place because a giant is hitting it with a rock.

[ID: The shuttlecraft Galileo sitting among cliff walls while a giant stands over it with a large boulder poised to strike.]

Spock is just really surprised by all this, musing that he’s “made the correct and logical decisions all along...and yet two men have died!” And now the giants are attacking! And McCoy and Boma are mad at him! How strange! He seems to just be kind of mildly perplexed about all this, as if it’s a crossword puzzle he can’t quite figure out.

Up on the ship, there’s a brief interlude in which Kirk laments that the landing parties haven’t found anything, the instruments still aren’t working, there’s really nothing they can do, and then Ferris reminds him of how much time he has left. About the only purpose it serves is to tell us how much time has been passing, which I’ll admit is helpful because there’s absolutely no way to tell that from the rest of the episode. Apparently it’s been almost two days, but you’d never guess that if you just watched the sections taking place on the planet, which really give no indication at all that they’ve been down there that long.

Back in the still-shaking shuttle, Spock abruptly seems to get an idea and asks Scotty what shape the shuttle batteries are in. Scotty says they’re fine, but the batteries aren’t going to be making that shuttle take off in any circumstance. That’s not what Spock is up to, though. He wants to know if the shuttle batteries could electrify the exterior of the shuttle. Scotty immediately catches on and gleefully says that oh yes, they can. Really? Why can they do that? Who designed this?

So while everyone huddles on the floor carefully not touching anything metal (good thing this shuttle is carpeted), Scotty takes a panel off the wall and whacks the batteries with a wrench a few times. Sure enough, this causes quite a lot of electricity to go sparking across the outside of the shuttle. The giant is remarkably persistent even while being electrocuted, but eventually the shaking stops.

They’re clear for the moment, but there’s no telling how long the giants will stay away. In the meantime, Spock tells them to keep on clearing out the shuttle and lighten the load as much as absolutely possible. Of course, there’s one non-essential thing on board that comes immediately to mind: Gaetano’s body. It’s unfortunate but they’re going to have to leave him behind.

Boma insists on at least having a burial for him, but Spock points out that’s a big risk since the giants are not very far off. They’d be risking the safety of those who are still alive. But Boma starts getting really worked up about this, coldly telling Spock that, “I would insist upon a decent burial even if your body was back there.” McCoy and Scotty immediately reprimand him for going too far, but Boma doesn’t seem deterred.

Seriously, you gotta wonder what the deal is with Boma and Gaetano (or what was the deal with Gaetano, rather). Of course the situation is bad and they have every right to be uncomfortable or upset about it. But throughout the episode the two of them act like this is the first time they’ve ever had to even consider that they might have to make sacrifices or do hard things for the sake of getting as many people out alive as possible. If they were civilians thrust into this situation it’d be understandable. But we’re talking about trained military personnel. You’d kind of expect them to have at least some familiarity with ideas like “sometimes you may have to leave a dead man behind for the sake of those who are still alive.” Spock’s decisions throughout this episode are sometimes harsh but they are, well, logical for the situation they’re in. Sure, he could be more tactful about it. But tact is not a priority here! Boma and Gaetano seem to have just decided in advance to take issue with everything Spock does, and we’re supposed to see this as some conflict of emotion versus logic instead of them just being totally unwilling to deal with anything they don’t like.

On the Enterprise, one of the landing parties beams up with one dead crewmember and two injured ones. The leader of the party reports to the bridge over a viewscreen and tells Kirk they ran into some big furry cavemen; the dead crewmember got speared while another one somehow dislocated their shoulder. If the planet is populated by such aliens, the party leader points out, things don’t look real good for the Galileo crew.

Kirk is still loathe to give up hope, but at that point Ferris comes onto the bridge to tell him that the forty-eight hours are up and he’s assuming the authority granted to him by a special ordinance. In other words, they gotta go. Kirk doesn’t want to, but he has no choice but to call the search parties and the Columbus back and lay in a course for Makus 3.

After the break, Kirk gives a quick log to say that I don’t wanna leave but I guess we HAVE TO UUUUGHH. Uhura says that their sensor beams are now working, but everything else is still dead. Their course is set, and they have twenty-three minutes left before the Columbus gets back onboard.

On the Galileo, the yeoman is trying to contact the Enterprise, but predictably is not getting an answer. Scotty tells Spock that if they take absolutely everything they can out of the shuttle they can achieve orbit for a few hours, and if they’re real careful they might be able to manage a controlled re-entry—but, of course, the only place they would be re-entering is this dumb planet, so that’s not really an appealing backup plan. At any rate, Scotty figures they can take off in eight minutes—precise--so Spock gives the rest of the crew ten minutes to bury Gaetano. Not much time for a service, but it’s the best they’re gonna get. Meanwhile the Columbus has returned to the Enterprise and everyone’s ready to go, so it looks like Kirk can’t delay any longer. He tells Sulu to proceed to Makus 3...at space normal speed (whatever that is). Oh, and to direct the sensor beams behind them as they go. After all, he has to leave, but he doesn’t have to leave quickly. I mean, except for the plague victims and all that.

The Galileo crew gather in front of a couple of mounds, all set for their speedrun funeral service. (I have no idea what they dug the graves with.) Before anyone can even break out a eulogy, though, the proceedings are disrupted by the return of the giants. Oh, it’s almost like Spock was right about this being dangerous. Fancy that.

Spock yells at everyone else to get back inside the ship while he throws one of the spears back at the giants in an extremely last-ditch move that fails to accomplish anything. He promptly gets hit by a boulder that pins his leg, and tries to order the rest of the crew to leave him behind. They don’t, of course; McCoy and Boma run back to move that terribly heavy and definitely not polystyrene boulder off of Spock, and the three of them beat it back to the Galileo.

As soon as they’re inside, Spock immediately chastises them for not leaving him behind, as if McCoy would ever let anyone out-martyr him that easily. Unfortunately, the delay has given the giants time to surround the shuttle, and now they’re holding it down so it can’t take off. Spock has no choice but to activate the boosters, which gives them enough power to break free...but the spent fuel cuts down on the amount of time they’ll be able to maintain orbit. As he grimly tells McCoy and Boma, by saving him they may have destroyed their own last chance for survival. McCoy tells him to zip it.

Incidentally, I note that for all the talk of lightening the shuttle as much as possible, they didn’t remove the seats. I’d say that was for safety reasons, but since the things don’t have seatbelts I don’t really know how well they’re actually going to keep anyone from bouncing around the cabin.

According to Scotty they can make one orbit and then they’re going down, and since they used the boosters, they don’t even have enough fuel to make a controlled landing. That is one heck of a quickly decaying orbit. I’m no astrophysicist, but I think once you actually make it into orbit you’re usually good for a while.

Yeoman Mears protests that she doesn’t want to die up there. Well, no. I doubt anyone else does, either. Scotty reminds Spock of that thing he said about how there are always alternatives, and Spock admits that he may have been mistaken about that.

[ID: Spock sitting in the foreground while behind him McCoy, one hand on his chin, looks off to the side and says, “Well, at least I lived long enough to hear that.”]

For all that McCoy is usually the first one to protest at length about how space is gonna kill them all, when it looks like he actually is going to die in space, he’s remarkably calm about it.

They reach orbit, and Scotty says they have forty-five minutes, so you’ve about got time to write a will if you don’t own too much. Spock makes one last effort to contact the Enterprise, but nothing. Then he notices a switch. What’s this? ‘Fuel jettison’? I wonder what that does?

Spock flips the switch, jettisoning and igniting all their fuel. Naturally everyone is all wtf man. But on the Enterprise, Sulu looks up and sees a bright green line suddenly streaking across the planet behind them. Kirk immediately tells him to TURN THIS SHIP AROUND MISTER.

[ID: The viewscreen of the Enterprise, showing a rocky planet shrouded in green clouds, with a single bright green line trailing across it near the equator.]

All our sensors still no match for looking out the window.

As the crew of the Galileo waits for their doom, Scotty realizes what Spock’s idea was. It was well done, he says, but Spock doesn’t think there was anyone there to see. Their orbit begins to decay, and things start burning.“It’s getting hot,” Mears says. Thanks, Yeoman Obvious.

But then, amid the smoke filling the cabin, there is at the last moment a sparkle of gold. On the bridge of the Enterprise Kirk sits tensely in his chair, waiting, waiting—and then the transporter officer reports in. Moments before the Galileo disintegrated entirely, they beamed up five people.

Five people. It’s good news, of course, but seven people went out on the Galileo. I wonder what went through Kirk’s head in the time before he found out who didn’t make it back.

Well, we’re never gonna know about that. They head off to finally deliver that plague medicine, and sometime later McCoy’s up on the bridge chatting with Kirk, seemingly quite chill about that whole near-death experience they just had. As Spock walks by, Kirk flags him down to ask about that whole igniting the fuel business. After all, there was virtually no chance of them being seen. So it had to be an act of desperation, and desperation is an emotion, right? You did something emotional, right?

Spock says no, it was a logical act. And, well, it kinda was? Sure, it had barely any chance of working, but they had absolutely no other options, and it was the only thing that had any chance of working at all. It was either do that and risk dying soon, or not do it and definitely die in about forty minutes. But everyone is all ha ha, we got ya, you did something emotional! And the episode ends on a group laugh. Could be a stress laugh, I suppose, but it feels distinctly awkward considering we’ve still got two men dead, whose families will never get their bodies back.

No one really gets served well in this episode. The writing for Spock especially feels skewed distinctly out of character. Yes, he’s all about the logic, and sometimes he struggles to understand humans and their whole deal, but this episode takes it to an extreme. Spock’s far from completely ignorant of emotions—much as he might like to claim otherwise—and he’s certainly not stupid enough to think that doing things logically always guarantees success, not when you can’t control all the variables. His bewilderment that rational thinking didn’t automatically work just comes off as outright silly. The episode tries to set up this whole arc in which Spock tries to solve problems only with logic, fails, and then finally succeeds by committing an emotional act, but it fails for multiple reasons: first, because most of the emotion vs logic conflicts in the episode feel contrived and overwrought and make everyone else look way more unreasonable than Spock; secondly, because the final ‘emotional’ act is actually pretty logical; but mostly, because it feels far too simple a lesson for Spock to need to learn at this point. Yes, it’s his first command, but he’s an experienced Starfleet officer who’s been living and working with humans for over a decade. I could easily see him having some difficulty commanding humans for the first time, and that would have been a good episode if it was done more subtly, but as Spock Learns That Some Things Are Illogical For The First Time Ever, it just doesn’t work.

Meanwhile we’ve got Kirk, for whom arguing with bureaucrats and bending rules to save his crew is hardly out of character, but the urgency of their larger mission makes his flippancy about it seem uncharacteristically callous. McCoy complaining about things and arguing with Spock is perfectly on track, but some of his comments edge uncomfortably out of ‘vitriolic friends’ territory and into just plain vitriol, especially him being willing to go along with some of Boma’s nonsense. Maybe I’m biased about that, but this episode feels as if the writer was given descriptions of the characters but didn’t really understand what made them actually work in practice.

Well, except for Scotty. Scotty was alright.

TREK TROPE TALLY: We have two goldshirt deaths in this episode with Gaetano and Latimer. Next time we’re in for some serious fop with a side of dandy in The Squire of Gothos.

#Star Trek #Star Trek TOS #Star Trek TOS Season One #1.16 The Galileo Seven

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