the m0vie blog

To celebrate the release of Star Trek: Into Darkness this month, we’ll be running through the first season of the classic Star Trek all this month. Check back daily to get ready to boldly go. It’s only logical.

It’s amazing to think that only now, almost half-way through the first year of Star Trek, the show is doing a Spock-centric episode. Spock is an iconic and instantly recognisable part of Star Trek lore, to the point that Leonard Nimoy’s version of the character served as the link between the classic series and JJ Abrams’ 2009 reboot of the franchise. The character appeared in The Cage, the very first episode of Star Trek ever produced. He is perhaps even more iconic than James T. Kirk himself.

So it feels slightly weird, then, that The Galileo Seven should serve as the first episode of the series completely devoted to Spock as a character, pushing Jim firmly to the background as we get a look at Spock’s first command experience.

Talk about carrying dead weight…

Of course, the classic Star Trek wasn’t quite as generous when it came to sharing screen time among the regular cast members. Sulu and Uhura, for example, would have to wait until the feature films to receive first names. (Uhura had to wait until 2009 to have her first name – Nyoto – confirmed on screen.) Sure, the show had done ensemble pieces before. Spock, in particular, had got significant development in his few scenes as part of The Naked Time.

However, The Galileo Seven is the first time that Kirk is very clearly pushed into a secondary plot so the story can focus on one of the officers under his command. As such, we get a really character-centred episode here, one devoted to exploring Spock’s rigid adherence to logic as a guiding principle. Even McCoy’s relationship with Nancy in The Man Trap didn’t really offer too much character insight, even if it provided an effective climax.

Alien go Boma…

“Well, I can’t say much for the circumstances, but at least it’s your big chance,” McCoy notes when the eponymous shuttle crashes on a barren rock. “Command. Oh, I know you, Mister Spock. You’ve never voiced it, but you’ve always thought that logic was the best basis on which to build command. Am I right?” Of course, Spock would never admit that he might harbour an interest in becoming a starship commander.

His general willingness to remain second-in-command to Kirk throughout the franchise’s extended history suggests that this isn’t just false modesty. The closest Spock came to becoming a commanding officer was when he supervised cadet training on the Enterprise during Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. It was hardly the most demanding of positions, and Spock was happy to surrender command to Kirk when the situation called for it.

Not conducive to a constructive working environment…

After that, Spock sort of fell back into the role of Kirk’s second-in-command. After Kirk “died” in Star Trek: Generations, we’re told in Star Trek: The Next Generation that Spock stepped away from Starfleet for a bit. He ended up working as a diplomat, and that’s where we join the character in Unification – and that’s how the character comes to be involved in the 2009 Star Trek reboot. While Star Trek: Nemesis would end with William T. Riker assuming his first official command, Spock never really grew in that direction.

It’s worth noting that, even though he eventually moved on, Riker’s perpetual position as second-in-command became a recurring plot point on The Next Generation. Whenever the show wanted a nice character beat for Riker, it would suggest that he had lost some ambition or that his enthusiasm had been tempered with experience. For some reason, Spock’s status as Kirk’s second-in-command never really became too much of a plot point. Perhaps breaking up the iconic duo of Kirk and Spock was too much for the franchise to ever truly fathom.

Yes, sending a shuttle into a big green glowy thing is a great idea…

Or perhaps The Galileo Seven really said all that needed to be said about Spock as a commanding officer. As you might expect, commanding a marooned crew, Spock behaves in an entirely rational manner here. And it doesn’t help at all. As the natives threaten to tear the shuttle apart, and as the crew seem to be on the brink of mutiny, Spock seems frustrated by it all. He’s not actually upset, in the way that most people facing a grisly death would be. Instead, he seems more confused, like somebody who made an early mistake in a crossword that is now stopping it all from coming together.

“Strange,” he muses. “Step by step, I have made the correct and logical decisions. And yet two men have died.” When McCoy laments the monsters banging against the ship, Spock concedes that he didn’t necessarily handle them well. “I do seem to have miscalculated regarding them, and inculcated resentment on your parts. The sum of the parts cannot be greater than the whole.” Nimoy is – as ever – fantastic here. Nimoy really is an integral part of the character’s lasting appeal, and his performance is masterful. The character is more intrigued by the fact that the pieces don’t add up than he is worried about how things might turn out.

A finely crafter episode…

One wonders if Starfleet has special courses for Vulcans who want to command. I imagine that commanding a ship full of Vulcans must be relatively easy, but I can’t help but wonder if Spock should probably have been trained for the realities of working with illogical species. He is confident that logic will win the day, but – as McCoy points out, “Mister Spock, life and death are seldom logical.” Sometimes that is literally the case.

Indeed, Spock bungles the death of the first crew member. The survivors want to hold a funeral. Spock thinks it’s more efficient if McCoy directs it. “Doctor, perhaps you know the correct words for such an occasion.” McCoy responds, “Mister Spock, that’s your place.” Although Spock takes great pride in his stoicism, the character is frequently characterised as stubborn (a point he concedes in the closing section of the episode). At points here, he seems to blame the situation on the creatures outside, as if they are trying to sabotage his experiment. “Doctor,” he protests, “I am not responsible for their unpredictability.”

Here there be fur…

(It probably doesn’t help that Spock’s first proper command announcement is that he will be leaving two or three of the crew behind on the rock. “As commanding officer, the choice will be mine,” he explains when Boma offers to draw lots. Spock’s inability to understand why his blunt assessment of the situation could cause trouble is one of the episode’s highlights. It’s a concept that fits Spock’s world view perfectly, but also demonstrates the gulf between him and the other stranded officers. Although it does foreshadow Spock’s whole “the needs of the many…” bit in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.)

Of course, the episode would seem trite if it were just fifty minutes of Spock learning that humans are just inherently better. There are several nice touches that demonstrate Spock is slowly learning from his experience. After witnessing the trouble caused by his decision to ignore the first burial, he risks his own life to recover the body of Gaetano. In a nice quick little shot, the episode establishes that Spock took the time to give the second casualty a proper and respectful funeral. Spock has learnt something from the experience.

Under the hood…

That said, there are some problems with the episode. The crew of the shuttle turns on Spock rather viciously. Even McCoy, whose jabs at Spock are usually good-natured, feels especially brutal. As Spock tries to put it all together, McCoy exclaims, “And you’ve brought our furry friends down on us!” While McCoy’s reservations about Spock are certainly in character, McCoy is generally presented as relatively professional.

McCoy voicing opinions like that in front of the crew feels a little strange, and it’s little wonder that Bomo and the others can be so casually disrespectful of their commanding officer. You’d almost expect McCoy to try to defend Spock to the rest of the crew. Despite their disagreements, the show has always suggested that McCoy and Spock harboured a great deal of respect for one another. The Galileo Seven seems to undermine that. McCoy doesn’t seem to be trying to use reverse psychology, he’s just openly undermining Spock.

Talk about a shake-down cruise…

As an aside, I do like how wonderfully professional Scotty is while all this is going on around him. He seems to trust Spock implicitly, in the way that you’d expect McCoy to. Scotty just gets on with his job of trying to save the crew and following the orders given by his commanding officer. Supporting characters like Scotty were generally established by small flashes of character like that, and I tend to think of Scotty as he is defined here – the quintessential “sound man” of the Star Trek franchise, which makes Wolf in the Fold all the more effective.

It is worth noting that writer Diane Carey would revisit The Galileo Seven in her first Star Trek tie-in novel, Dreadnought. In Dreadnought, it is revealed that Boma was court-martialed for his insubordinate behaviour here. We are told, somewhat fittingly, that it was Scotty who “pushed for” that disciplinary action – which is a nice touch. It adds a great deal of shading to the episode and remedies what is probably the biggest flaw with the adventure.

“I knew I should have brought a few more red-shirts… um… no offence, Mr. Scott.”

That said, I’m not entirely convinced that Boma should have been court-martialed while McCoy wasn’t. I suppose that even retroactive continuity cannot punish a regular character, so we have to settle for closure concerning a one-time guest star. Ah well, I suppose that counts for something. The crew dynamic within the crashed shuttle is still the weakest point of the episode, and one that undermines a lot of the good stuff about it.

Aside from Spock’s experience in command, I do like the pulpy feel to the adventure as the shuttle crashes in an abandoned sound stage and is menaced by a dry ice machine and some tall people wrapped in brown towels. It’s the kind of thing that only Star Trek could pull off, and I actually quite like it. The notion of a downed shuttle craft coming under siege from the monstrous primitive natives of some forgotten world is the kind of image that belongs on a trashy paperback cover, and I think The Galileo Seven does a wonderful job bringing it to life.

Another green world…

It is a nice touch that the episode actually subverts a lot of the conventions that you might expect. Despite the show’s (somewhat exaggerated) reputation for killing red-shirts, both members of the team dressed in red survive the episode. Of course, it probably helps that one of them is Scotty and the other was originally going to be Rand. It’s also nice that the black member of the cast doesn’t die first… or, you know, at all.

That said, the episode is still absolutely ridiculous, but then a lot of Star Trek is. That said, The Galileo Seven is one of those episodes that will test just how lactose intolerant your audience is. The obviously plastic spears – designed to mirror primitive hunting tools, apparently fashioned from wood on a barren planet – are very cheesy. It does seem a little strange that Spock cites an Earth reference for the weapon, right down to a handy trivia piece for the audience to note.

A rocky landing…

“There’s a remarkable resemblance to the Folsom Point discovered in 1925, old world calendar, New Mexico, North America,” he notes, hoping that the kids in the audience are paying attention. “A bit more crude about the shaft, I believe. Not very efficient.” That said, I do like the idea that the radical concept of attaching a sharp rock to the end of a stick is a sign of humanity’s ingenuity in the shared Star Trek universe. The monsters themselves are shot relatively well, but there’s no hiding the fact that they aren’t among the show’s best.

Kirk spends most of the episode playing mission control, trying to keep the episode’s obstructive bureaucrat from ordering him to abandon the search for his men. These scenes are far too frequent, and they aren’t helped by the fact that John Crawford is pretty much phoning it in as Ferris. Star Trek didn’t always have the strongest guest actors in the world, but it did well enough. Crawford isn’t terrible, but he’s just rather bland. It probably doesn’t help that his character already feels like a cliché, despite being the first example of this character type in the franchise.

The… um… commanders of command?

It does occur to me, though, that Kirk was kinda a little reckless in authorising this little away team at this particular moment in time, while the Enterprise was on that mission. “No problem, Commissioner,” he boasts. “And may I remind you that I have standing orders to investigate all quasars and quasar-like phenomena wherever they may be encountered. Besides, it’s three days to Makus. And the rendezvous doesn’t take place for five.” He does have a two-day margin of error, to be fair.

However, it’s also clear that the Enterprise is carrying vital supplies. “The plague is out of control on New Paris,” Ferris explains. “We must get those drugs there on time.” It isn’t as if they are carrying tea and crumpets. I would hope that – while carrying emergency supplies – the primary objective of the ship carrying the supplies was to get them to the destination as soon as possible. Even if that destination is just a way point, it’s still prudent. Getting there early leave room to deal with problems. Plus, you know, if the other ship just happens gets there early then less people die. Risking that, even slightly, seems a bit reckless.

I hate to think what the insurance premium is on those shuttles…

Okay, so The Galileo Seven isn’t necessarily the most robust episode of the first season. However, it is a nice pulpy adventure that shifts the show’s focus just a little bit. It gives us our first real episode directed to Spock as a character, and that makes it well worth a watch.

You might be interested in our other reviews from the first season of the classic Star Trek:

• The Cage
  • Supplemental: Vulcan’s Glory by D.C. Fontana
  • Supplemental: Early Voyages #1 – Flesh of my Flesh
  • Supplemental: Crew by John Byrne
• Where No Man Has Gone Before
• The Corbomite Manoeuvre
• Mudd’s Women
• The Enemy Within
• The Man Trap
• The Naked Time
• Charlie X
• Balance of Terror
  • Supplemental: My Enemy, My Ally by Diane Duane
  • Supplemental: Romulans: Pawns of War by John Byrne
• What Are Little Girls Made Of?
  • Supplemental: Errand of Vengeance: The Edge of the Sword by Kevin Ryan
• Dagger of the Mind
• Miri
• The Conscience of a King
• The Galileo Seven
• Court Martial
• The Menagerie, Part I
  • Supplemental: Early Voyages #12-15 – Futures
• The Menagerie, Part II
  • Supplemental: Burning Dreams by Margaret Wander Bonanno
• Shore Leave
• The Squire of Gothos
• Arena
  • Supplemental: Requiem by Michael Jan Friedman & Kevin Ryan
• The Alternative Factor
  • Supplemental: The Fantastic Four #108 – The Monstrous Mystery of the Nega-Man
• Tomorrow is Yesterday
• The Return of the Archon
• A Taste of Armageddon
• Space Seed
  • Supplemental: The Eugenics Wars: The Rise and Fall of Khan Noonien Singh, Volumes I & II by Greg Cox
• This Side of Paradise
• The Devil in the Dark
• Errand of Mercy
  • Supplemental: Spock Must Die! by James Blish
  • Supplemental: The Final Reflection by John M. Ford
• The City on the Edge of Forever
  • Supplemental: The City on the Edge of Forever by Harlan Ellison/Cordwainer Bird
  • Supplemental: Crucible: McCoy – Provenance of Shadows by David R. George III
  • Supplemental: Star Trek (Gold Key) #56 – No Time Like the Past
• Operation — Annihilate!

Filed under: The Original Series | Tagged: Doctor McCoy, Galileo Seven, gorn, J. J. Abrams, james t. kirk, kirk, Leonard McCoy, Leonard Nimoy, McCoy, Mister Spock, Naked Time, paramount pictures, spock, star trek, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Star Trek Into Darkness, star trek: the next generation, StarTrek, vulcan |