"Her life could have been as rich as any woman's, if only, if only." - Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner) in "Turnabout Intruder"
Star Trek: The Original Series: Season Three DVD Review
By Kate Heilman
Both fans and the creative team involved in Star Trek: The Original Series: Season Three recognize the problematic nature of the last season of the series. After fans waged a historic and successful letter-writing campaign to save Star Trek from being pulled from NBC's line-up (an effort that has become legend in Star Trek and TV mythology) they found it was a pyrrhic victory. NBC moved Star Trek from its coveted slot of 8:00 pm on Monday night to the deadly 10:00 pm Friday night schedule. This meant a significant audience loss from Star Trek's younger demographic, and was a clear sign that NBC had very little interest in a season four. Understanding this reality, Gene Roddenberry, the creative life-force driving the show, put most of his efforts into developing new series and all but withdrew from Star Trek, only retaining his Executive Producer title. Not surprisingly, with increasingly smaller budgets, the loss of Roddenberry from the day-to-day production of the show, and a shrinking audience, the third season is the most uneven and weakest year in the life of the series.
Unfortunately, there is stiff competition in Star Trek: Season Three for the dubious honor of worst episode. The competitors range from the irredeemably silly ("Spock's Brain" and "Elaan of Troyius") to the seriously flawed episodes that critique hypocrisies and tensions within American society ("Let That Be Your Last Battlefield" and "The Way to Eden"). "The Way to Eden," otherwise known as "Hippies in Space," certainly wins my vote. While I can respect Roddenberry's exploration of the perils and attraction of utopia, no one ever needs to see a man in skin-tight boots that practically go to the crotch. Really.
As in the two previous years, season three dutifully presents Roddenberry's dream of what humanity can achieve when hatred, bigotry, greed, intolerance and aggression are rejected. In episode after episode, the crew of the Enterprise illustrates how they have overcome the problems confronting a 1960s (and sadly a 21st century) audience - racial injustice, war, disease, poverty - while also flying about the universe urging and instructing "alien civilizations" to do the same. While continuing to present this optimistic blueprint of the future, the third season has a darker and more somber tone than the others. Gone is the formulaic "upbeat" ending filled with good-natured laughter that permeated previous years. Each of the main three characters experience serious relationships and the pain associated with their loss. In addition, the issue of race and the dangers of racial hatred are given a prominent place in season three.
Tolerance for all life, and all people, is a central tenet of Star Trek, and nowhere is this issue more prevalent than in "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield." This episode is classic Trek - warts and all - where Roddenberry's praiseworthy polemic against racism is unfortunately obscured by the silliness factor of two actors running around with paint on their faces that makes them look like Seinfeld-esque black-and-white cookies. The conceit of the episode is simple: the Enterprise encounters two humans that are literally half black, half white, who share an unbridled hatred for each other. At first glance, the crew can detect no difference between them, until the black and white cookie men indignantly point out that they are different races - one is black on the left side and white on the right and vice-versa (can someone say Sneetches on the Beaches?). Their intractable and extreme perspectives - the "master race" versus "the oppressed slave" - and their inability to overcome their hatred, eventually leads them, and their planet, toward destruction. After centuries of fighting, when even the reason to fight is gone, the only thing they have left is hatred. The show ends on an apocalyptic note, with the aliens' locked in an unending struggle set against the backdrop of their dead planet.
On the other hand, Roddenberry successfully warns against falling prey to the fatal cycle of racial fear and hate in the darkly disturbing episode, "Day of the Dove." An alien being that thrives on violent emotions is able to manipulate the crew of the Enterprise and the surviving Klingons from a destroyed ship, fanning the flame of fear, distrust and xenophobia. Each believing the other responsible for an atrocity (destroying the Klingon ship and a Starfleet colony), Klingons and humans are given primitive weapons such as swords and knives and pitted against each other to hate and kill. As members of his crew start spewing neo-Nazi-worthy racist epithets against Klingons, Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner) realizes that both crews are pawns in a game that never ends - the alien will keep everyone alive so the blood lust of killing and the never-ending cycle of war will continue. No one (except Kirk, of course) is free from the effects of this racial hatred - Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy (DeForest Kelley) advocates for genocide, Spock (Leonard Nimoy) and Mr. Scott (James Doohan) almost trade blows, and most disturbing of all, Mr. Chekhov (Walter Koenig) attempts to rape a Klingon woman. For the Star Trek universe that places such faith in humanity and its ability to evolve, epitomized in the actions of the Enterprise crew, "Day of the Dove" presents a stern warning against the perils of war-mongering and bigotry. It is chilling that almost forty years later, Kirk's anti-war message easily applies today: "Has a war been staged for us? Complete with weapons and ideology and patriotism and drum-beating? Even racial hatred?" In the end, Kirk and the crew are able to persuade the Klingons, and each other, that if the violence does not end, it will lead to destruction for all.
The struggle for equality, not only among races, but between genders, is another central belief in the Star Trek universe. The 1960s witnessed the rise of many new challenges to traditional American society that had dictated rigid roles for all according to class, race and gender. Not surprisingly, many episodes in season three grapple with the problem of re-defining male-female roles in this brave new world where women are equals in the workforce and on the battlefield. Appropriately, as Roddenberry sought to use the destination of space as a safe venue to hold a mirror up to 1960s, his views on women strike the modern viewer as very dated. Aside from the skimpy alien costumes that serve mainly to titillate, women in the Trek universe are often guided by their emotions and thus cannot be counted on to perform as well as the male crew of the Enterprise. In addition, while seemly equal in Starfleet, women do not hold command positions and do not stray from the professional realm that women have traditionally been relegated to - that of nurses, secretaries and receptionists. To be fair, an occasional female scientist and engineer make an appearance in a guest role - usually as a love interest for one of the male crew.
When women do occupy non-traditional professional roles, there is an inherent tension as both genders try to adapt to this "unnatural" circumstance. Interestingly enough, it is the men of Trek that have the most difficulty adjusting to the new gender roles. In "The Enterprise Incident," Spock and Kirk match wits against a female Romulan commander to steal new technology from the Romulans. In a reversal of stereotypes, it is the woman who pursues Spock and it is the man who uses sex to manipulate the situation for advantage. The idea that power is masculine also finds voice in this, and other, episodes. When Spock reacts to the female commander's military dress and bearing, she replies, "If you give me a moment, this officer will transform herself into a woman." Roddenberry recognizes the opposing and often conflicting demands that modern society impose on women and believes that women do lose a bit of themselves, an element of femininity, when they assume traditionally male roles.
The toll of a woman trying to make it in a man's world is the strange theme of the last show of Star Trek: Season Three and of the entire series, "Turnabout Intruder." The episode is a painful and inglorious end for Roddenberry's tribute to humanity living up to the promise of the Enlightenment. In fact, on previous occasions I had purposefully avoided it, as it is very troubling to watch. Responding to a distress call, Kirk encounters a dying Dr. Janice Lester (Sandra Smith), with whom he had a serious relationship in the past. Dr. Lester, we soon learn, has been driven mad by her consuming hatred for her own gender; as a woman she could not become a starship captain since Starfleet does not accept women. So much for equality in the 23th century! With the help of an alien device, Dr. Lester switches bodies with Kirk, thus allowing her to attain that which she most desires: power. Soon, however, the crew starts to notice Dr. Lester/Kirk's strange behavior - prone to bouts of hysteria, illogic, emotional instability, and violence. Aside from the vaguely amusing aspect of watching William Shatner affect being "female" by using a slightly high-pitched voice, filing his nails and mood swings, the episode is almost unredeemable in its sinking to the most obvious of stereotypes. The final insult is when Kirk regains his body, he patronizingly comments, "Her life could have been as rich as any woman's, if only, if only." If one wants to be charitable, one can see this episode as Roddenberry's effort to sympathize with the injustice of gender bias and how it can destroy a person's hopes and dreams. If not, one is left to draw the unfortunate conclusion that Roddenberry, in all his utopian dreams, accepted that certain limits still apply where women are concerned.
The twenty-four episodes that make up Season Three are arranged in airdate order on six discs. The discs are housed in miniature translucent plastic compartments (roughly the size of CD cases), the kind that are normally affixed to cardboard to form digipaks. In this case, there is no cardboard. Instead, the plastic holders are attached book-style via a clear strip of tape along the left hand side that functions as the binding. Each disc is decorated with an individual member of the Enterprise crew. Also listed on the disc faces are the episode titles, stardates, and original airdates. The case slides into a paper sleeve featuring a still from the episode, "The Tholian Web" with Spock and Kirk. A foldout brochure (about the size of a CD insert) gives plot synopses, a brief written introduction to Season Three that focuses on Engineering, and two brief essays on "The Changing Face of Klingons" and "Space: the Final Frontier." The plastic DVD holder and the brochure fit into an outer plastic blood red capsule (which splits down the middle and is hinged on the bottom). It perfectly captures the series' retro futuristic look, simultaneously of the future and hopelessly mired in the 1960s. The capsule stands upright on its own. On store shelves, it is shrink-wrapped into a disposable cardboard base on which the DVD's specifications are printed. All in all, the packaging is a winner - it manages to be a conversation piece without being overly bulky.
The DVD menus begin with William Shatner intoning "Space, the final frontier" while a computer animated Enterprise swoops by. The ship turns, and we venture into the bridge. We are now at the helm of the Enterprise, and the episode choices are listed on its view screen. Choosing an individual episode (there is no option to "play all") causes our perspective to shift. Our episode options are located on the starship's control panel. From here, we can change the audio and subtitle settings by accessing the "Communications" menu, view the "Chapter Log," view a "Preview Trailer" of the episode, or simply play the episode. The animation on these menus is cartoon-like rather than photorealistic, but it again seems perfectly in line with the series.
