the m0vie blog

The first Star Trek pilot, The Cage, was produced in 1964. To celebrate its fiftieth anniversary, this December we are reviewing the second season of the original Star Trek show. You can check out our first season reviews here. Check back daily for the latest review.

Wolf in the Fold is Robert Bloch’s third and final contribution to Star Trek.

In keeping with What Are Little Girls Made Of? and Catspaw, the result is intriguing, bizarre and more than a little bit dysfunctional. More than any of the other writers drafted in to write for the science fiction show, Bloch’s fingerprints remain all over his script. Writers like Gene L. Coon and D.C. Fontana generally do a good job reconciling the work of science-fiction writers like Ray Bradbury, Theodore Sturgeon, Norman Spinrad or Harlan Ellison to make their stories fit within the frame work of Star Trek. However, even after re-writes, Bloch’s voice remains his own.

Of course, it’s quite clear that Wolf in the Fold has been through the standard re-write process. The script is a mess, struggling to tie together two basic plots (Scotty is accused of murder; the Enterprise is possessed by Jack the Ripper) in ways that don’t always work. There’s a really long and awkward expositional scene in the middle of the episode that consists primarily of Majel Barrett reading off weird-sounding words in order to assure viewers that Jack the Ripper really could be an immortal hate-fueled killing machine, given the rules of the Star Trek universe.

The are very serious problems with Wolf in the Fold. On a storytelling level, the pacing is a mess and the tone is all over the place. Bloch’s scripts continue to be even more problematic than usual when it comes to issue of gender – “Star Trek does slasher horror” is as borderline misogynistic as you might fear. However, there is something endearingly bizarre about the whole thing, as Bloch once again forces Kirk and his crew to confront an irrational universe that doesn’t necessarily conform to their understanding of it.

Although by no means as adventurous as something like Doctor Who, one of the joys of classic Star Trek is watching the show shift between genres. The original Star Trek was perhaps a bit more experimental than its successors, a lot more willing to to venture outside its comfort zone – perhaps because that comfort zone did not actually exist yet. Certainly, it is difficult to imagine any of Robert Bloch’s scripts being produced for Star Trek: The Next Generation or Star Trek: Voyager.

Some of these genre-shifting experiments would be successful enough to work their way into the show’s repertoire. Court Martial gave us “Star Trek does court room drama.” Later on, shows like The Trouble with Tribbles and A Piece of the Action would demonstrate that Star Trek could do comedy. Some examples remained relatively unique. Shore Leave offered “Star Trek does fantasy.” Some examples remained relatively unique. At the start of the second season, Catspaw served as a “Star Trek Halloween Special!”

Wolf in the Fold is Star Trek doing an occult horror slasher film. Of course, the very premise should give viewers pause. As a genre, slasher horror films have a long association with sexism and exploitation. As Peter Hutchings explains in The Horror Film:

… it cannot be denied that much of the more graphic violence in these films is directed against female teenagers, and that many slashers – although by no means all of them – place a remarkable emphasis on the terrorising of women. The issue of whether the slasher is an intrinsically or at least predominantly misogynist horror format is therefore still one that requires some consideration.

There are, of course, exceptions and subversions – although the nature of the genre means that quite a few of these are subject to debate or discussion. Still, while movies like Scream exist as clever subversions and twists of the basic slasher premise, these sorts of movies riff on the rather heavy sexist subtext of a genre where knife-wielding maniacs primarily stalk young women.

Star Trek has a somewhat awkward checkered history when it comes to matters of gender. In The Enemy Within, Spock made light of the attempted rape of Janice Rand. In Mudd’s Women, Kirk assists an intergalactic pimp to help him procure some dilithium. In Friday’s Child, it was made clear that all women are mothers. The show’s most significant female character is a glorified receptionist, taking calls for the main characters.

So the idea of Star Trek producing a slasher horror should give anybody pause. This is a show that hasn’t always handled its female characters particularly well, meddling in a genre that can be quite problematic in its treatment of female characters. After all, Catspaw had done little to suggest that Robert Bloch was well-suited to developing three-dimensional female characters. Wolf in the Fold is just as awkward as you might suspect.

As an aside, it is worth noting that Star Trek: Deep Space Nine did a much better job riffing on slasher movie horror tropes without being massively sexist. The Darkness and the Light featured a pregnant Kira Nerys managing to defend herself quite well against a disfigured Cardassian serial killer. In Empok Nor, a psychopathic Garak stalked a predominantly male repair crew. Both episodes had their problems, but they did a lot better with issues of gender than Wolf in the Fold does.

Wolf in the Fold opens on a sexy belly dancer named Kara. Kara has a total of two lines before she is murdered off-screen to get the plot moving. After her death, she is defined by the men in her life – the father for whom she used to dance and the fiancée who serves as the episode’s largest red herring. Unfortunately, Kara sets the tone for the rest of the episode, which is packed full of disposable women.

After Scotty has been found over Kara’s body with the murder weapon in his hand, Kirk sets out to prove his innocence. To that end, he orders Lieutenant Tracy to take a psycho-tricorder reading of Scott. A member of the science division, Tracy is left alone in a room with Scott after McCoy has explicitly suggested that Scott could be a crazy misogynistic slasher killer. There’s no security, no supervision. Tracy does not appear to be armed. Scotty isn’t drugged or restrained. As one might expect, Tracy is brutally murdered.

To be fair, Sybo gets a bit more to do. She gets a little more dialogue, a bit of character history, and a vital plot function; it is Sybo who first identifies the creature known as Redjac. However, Sybo still seems less important to the script than most of the male guest characters, is defined primarily through her relationship to Jaris – his anger serving as a way for the episode to raise the stakes, as if two murders weren’t enough – and she is killed off rather brutally as soon as she has filled her plot function.

The most significant female character who isn’t brutally murdered over the course of the episode is the stenographer at the trial/inquiry – and even she is held hostage and threatened with a knife. Wolf in the Fold doesn’t help matters by building this sexism into the plot logic itself. Asked to account for why the entity targets women, Spock suggests, “I suspect preys on women because women are more easily and more deeply terrified, generating more sheer horror than the male of the species.”

To be fair, this is arguably a result of the decision to use Jack the Ripper as the villain. Jack the Ripper targeted female victims, and so the episode is trying to maintain continuity with the historical slayings. At the same time, there are other ways the plot could have handled this. Spock could have observed that prostitutes were convenient targets in nineteenth century London due to the culture and society of the time, or acknowledged that Redjac’s hatred expressed itself through misogyny.

The script doesn’t do itself any favours when it tries to convince the viewer that Scotty could be a secret misogynistic serial killer. “Don’t forget,” McCoy helpfully reminds Kirk early on, “the explosion that threw Scotty against a bulkhead was caused by a woman.” Of course, the “woman” doesn’t get a name. We don’t find out if she is being disciplined or if she is receiving counseling to deal with almost killing Scotty. We don’t even find out how the accident happened.

“As a matter of fact, considerable psychological damage could have been caused,” McCoy continues. “For example, his total resentment toward women.” Of course, Kirk’s solution to the suggestion that one of his senior staff might have become a misogynist isn’t to have Scotty assigned to a therapist or to work through the issues with McCoy. Instead, Kirk decides to get Scotty laid. “Now that’s what I call a real Captain,” Scotty opines, as we wonder whether Kirk is doing the same for the officer who almost accidentally killed Scotty to help her cope.

There are other problems with the script. The tone veers wildly. Kirk seems legitimately more concerned about protecting Scotty than with the safety of anybody else – not a single security officer is seen to beam down to the surface or keep Scotty under watch. Similarly, Kirk seems quite eager to get back to his holiday, leaving the ship in the hands of a doped-up crew, and not at all bothered by the deaths of the three innocent women over the course of the episode.

Similarly, the extended sequence in the middle of episode where the show transitions from “Scotty might be a murderer!” to “Jack the Ripper in space!” is very long-winded and dull, as if the episode is working very hard to convince the audience that it can justify all of this within the context of Star Trek. There are quite a few sequences where the computer exists just to dump out strange names of organisms we’ll never see or hear about again as if to convey legitimacy upon the idea of a disembodied Jack the Ripper hijacking the Enterprise.

All of this is problematic. Wolf in the Fold is not a progressive episode of television. It comes loaded with a lot of the sexism that the original Star Trek tended to take for granted, and then heaps even more sexism on top of it. And yet, if one can look past all these truly terrible decisions, there’s a lot of interesting stuff happening here. Wolf in the Fold is one of the most brazen and absurd episodes of the original Star Trek.

There’s a decidedly campy aspect to the whole production. Despite the fact that the people of Argelius seem to dress for a warm climate, the streets are filled with fog. The costume design and the design of the internal sets seems to evoke Eastern Europe or even Turkey, but the exteriors look like nineteenth century London. When the stakes are made clear, Scotty is threatened with “death by slow torture”, because death itself is clearly not a serious enough stake.

William Shatner’s performance style here acknowledges the episode’s campy absurdity. Wolf in the Fold was produced around the time that Nimoy earned his first Emmy nomination for the role of Spock. Shatner has since admitted that he was jealous of Nimoy’s nomination. At the same time, Nimoy had secured a pay rise and creative control going into the second season, and it had been decided that the Spock-centric Amok Time would be the second season premiere.

There are several clear attempts by the production staff to help put some attention and focus back on Kirk during the second season. Wolf in the Fold feels like one such attempt. Nimoy is very consciously sidelined for the episode, even if Spock first (quick) appearance gets an absurdly overblown musical cue. Spock remains on the Enterprise, leaving Shatner to drive the first half of the episode, and Shatner embraces the heightened nature of the script.

Even in the teaser, it’s clear that Shatner is making no effort to reign it in. Witness his response to the scream, with his dramatic jump to attention – in contrast to DeForest Kelley’s more naturalistic response. Similarly, Shatner positively bounds into the alleyway where Kara lies dead, stopping just shy of announcing his arrival with “jazz hands.” Even later in the episode, Shatner turns everything up to eleven. When Hengist is interrogating a suspect, Kirk has no time for his rational approach. “Well get on with it, man! Just don’t stand there!”

Shatner’s performance style tends to attract a lot of criticism. And it’s easy to understand why that might be. Even outside of the reasons Shatner might have alienated his co-stars or Star Trek fans, his performance tends to be polarising. Shatner’s exaggerated delivery is ripe for parody and imitation – which has become one of the most mocked aspects of Star Trek. However, it is worth noting that a lot of these parodies are affectionate. Shatner’s style is just as much an iconic part of Star Trek as Nimoy’s ears.

After all, the world of the original Star Trek was decidedly theatrical. Lacking the budget or resources to build sets as sturdy and as detailed as those on The Next Generation or the later spin-offs, the sets on Star Trek frequently looked rather light and thin. This isn’t to dismiss the production design on the classic Star Trek. The show did wonders with the budget afforded to it, and the style was distinctive and unique – but the look and feel of Star Trek was very much grounded in theatre.

Producers like René Echviarria and Mike Sussman have discussed that the best performers on Star Trek tend to be those with backgrounds in theatre. Even on The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine, the lead actors had extensive theatre experience. Shatner’s performance is quite consciously calibrated to play up that aspect of Star Trek, to emphasise the hyper-reality of it all. Shatner is capable of wonderfully nuanced moments, but he’s also very much in tune with the show.

Shatner’s approach is arguably rooted in his history as a Shakespearean stage actor. As Bunny Ultramod reflects in Ultra-Actors – William Shatner:

Shatner got his start as a stage actor – specifically, a Shakespearean performer, with the Stratford Festival of Canada. Eventually he moved to Broadway with a play by Christopher Marlowe, Tamburlaine the Great. In fact, Shatner’s distinctive style of rattling off dialogue and then. just. stopping … for heightened drama … isn’t that unusual in Shakespearean performances. Listen to Rhino Records’ Living in a Shakespearean World, a collection of recordings of Shakespearean monologues by famed interpreters of the bard, and you’ll hear a lot of lines delivered in a manner that would make Kirk proud.

Despite Shatner’s documented temper and the difficulty of working with him, Shatner is an actor who works remarkably hard on his performance.

You could almost read his 1968 album, The Transformed Man, as a piece of post-modern performance art. Of course, all of this is open to interpretation, as RJ Smith cynically observes of Shatner’s infamous Priceline advertisements in Totally Warped:

After the Priceline commercials started running early last year, KCRW radio host Harry Shearer polled his listeners regarding Shatner’s intentions. Was he in on the joke? Shearer asked. Did he even understand that these commercials were, um, ironic? … But Shearer wanted to know, did Shatner mean to parody himself, or did he think he was sharing his awesomeness with his fellow humans? The tortured response from listeners – using postmodern back flips and Hollywood publicist-speak to ‘interpret’ the all too obvious actor – was mind-blowing. The consensus, I recall, was that he was somehow pulling a scam.

It is possible to read too much into these things. That’s the beauty of Shatner’s performance style – it is very difficult to tell when the performer is being entirely serious and when he’s being cleverly ironic.

Still, larger questions about Shatner’s performance style aside, the actor’s work here plays into the larger hyperreality of Wolf in the Fold. As with Bloch’s other scripts, there’s a sense that Kirk and his crew are brushing up agaisnt something that challenges their rational understanding of the universe. The universe does not necessarily conform to their understanding of it. It is a much more random – and potentially horrifying – place.

Wolf in the Fold is dripping with occult imagery. Kirk and company host a seance to deduce the truth about the killer. Redjac is a disembodied entity that drives people to do terrible things; despite the pseudo-scientific jargon, it is a demon. James Blish’s adaptation of the story goes one step further, confirming that the bizarre visions presented to the crew on the viewscreen are meant to be an image of hell itself.

This interest in the occult could be seen as an example of Star Trek engaging with youth counter-culture. After all, it was all tied together, as Gary Lachman writes in Politics and the Occult:

By the mid-sixties, the most famous people in the world – the Beatles and the Rolling Stones – advocated a grab bag of mystical pursuits: meditation, Eastern wisdom, magic, even Satanism, as the Stones’ song Sympathy for the Devil suggests. Among the faces included on the cover of the Beatles’ ground-breaking Sgt. Peppers’ Lonely Hearts Club Band are C.G. Jung, Aleister Crowley, and Aldous Huxley. Huxley’s gentle advocacy of the judicious, controlled use of hallucinogenic drugs to explore consciousness (as argued in The Doors of Perception) was soon hijacked by the psychedelic guru Timothy Leary, who notoriously championed a more widespread “democratic” approach that, ironically, led to lysergic acid diethylamide-25, popularly known as LSD, being made illegal.

Interestingly, Wolf in the Fold seems to perfectly capture this eclectic cross-section of counter-culture.

Argelius is presented as a planet that embodies the sexual revolution of the sixties. “The Argelians think very highly of their pleasure,” Kirk remarks. “That’s an understatement if I ever heard one,” McCoy responds. “This is a completely hedonistic society.” Confronted with a possible murder, Kirk asks, “What’s the law in these cases?” Jaris responds, “The law of Argelius is love.” Which isn’t necessarily relevant to the case at hand, but is nice to know. This is a world where jealous (and, it seems, monogamy) are almost unknown.

And it’s telling that Kirk effectively defeats Redjac by doping the crew up to the metaphorical gills. George Takei gets yet another chance to act stoned, and the Enterprise crew go on a good trip together to combat the bad trip that Redjac is trying to inflict upon them. The psychedelic viewscreen images, the freaky scary voices, the manic laughing; these are all imagery associated with drug trips in popular culture. This is, in a way, the sixties counter-culture boiled down to a fifty-minute episode – and much more enthusiastic than other episodes like The Way to Eden.

It is worth noting that the original episode was a lot more explicit about this. In his book about the production of The Trouble with Tribbles, David Gerrold recalls one heated disagreement between producer Gene L. Coon and the network:

I remember once overhearing Gene Coon on the phone to Stanley Robertson, Manager of Film Programming at NBD, talking about an episode titled Wolf in the Fold. In the teaser of that show, Robert Bloch, the writer, had postulated a nine-layered drink; each layer of liquid caused the imbiber to experience a different emotion. Kirk, Spock, Scotty and McCoy were sitting in a pub on Argelius II and drinking these concoctions – and experiencing grief, joy, rage, love, envy, unhappiness, etc. in unison.

The network thought this bore an uncomfortable resemblance to a psychedelic drug or narcotic. NBC’s Broadcast Standards said no. Gene Coon told them they were ‘full of horsesh!t.’ I’m sure he felt better for it – but the drink was excised from the script.

The drink would have been a rather direct evocation of counter-culture, but one wonders how the rest of the episode made it past Network Broadcast and Standards.

Of course, Wolf in the Fold is pretty hard to reconcile with a lot of later Star Trek. The “psycho-tricorder” and the “truth detecting computer” are obvious plot contrivances, but they do feel very much anchored in the same vaguely New Age sixties aesthetic that suggested humans had learned to accurately measure ESP in Where No Man Has Gone Before. They are an awkward fit with the explicitly rational and skeptical Starfleet that would becomes the norm in the later spin-offs. Still, it fits with the general counter-culture vibe of the episode.

This is to say nothing of all the weirdness happening around the drug trip imagery. John Fiedler plays a version of Jack the Ripper that seizes control of the Enterprise and tries to murder the crew. Although primarily known for his work on Twelve Angry Men, John Fiedler would also go on play the role of Piglett in Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day a few months after the broadcast of Wolf in the Fold.

The episode really flies off the handle as the entity jumps into the ship’s computer and tries to murder the crew. Fiedler becomes a disembodied voice, the whole set-up feels particularly surreal – the giddy sound of Piglett hijacking the ship and trying to murder the crew. Fiedler’s demented delivery really sells these scenes, which might easily come across as stock Star Trek bad guy clichés. (“You cannot stop me now, Captain! It will do you no good! I control all circuits! You cannot silence me! You cannot reach me! Your manual overrides are extremely limited in life!”)

Redjac itself is also an interesting creation. It is an entity that has inspired no shortage of exploration in various tie-in media, and it is easy to see why the creature holds a fascination. The idea of the disembodied consciousness of Jack the Ripper in the twenty-third century is bizarre and pulpy enough to sustain an episode, but Redjac also plays into the sixties counter-culture aesthetic of the episode.

However, Redjac could be imagined as a companion to planet-eater from The Doomsday Machine – a particular human anxiety or fear given form. In keeping the occult themes of Wolf in the Fold, Redjac could be considered an “egregore.” As Joscelyn Godwin defines the term in The Golden Thread:

There is an occult concept of the “egregore”, a term derived from the Greek word for “watcher.” It is used for an immaterial entity that “watches” or presides over some earthly affair or collectivity. The important point is that an egregore is augmented by human belief, ritual, and especially be sacrifice. If it is sufficiently nourished by such energies, the egregore can take on a life of its own and appear to be an independent, personal divinity, with a limited power on behalf of its devotees and an unlimited appetite for their further devotion. It is then believed to be an immortal god or goddess, an angel, or a daimon.

Although the non-corporeal entity from Day of the Dove fits the description just as much (if not more) than Redjac, it is still an interesting comparison.

In particular, Wolf in the Fold seems to suggest that Redjac originated on Earth. This isn’t some random cosmic entity that was drifting through space and decided to make itself at home in Whitechapel. Kirk explicitly suggests that Redjac is something that mankind introduced to the wider cosmos. “When man moved out into the galaxy, that thing must’ve moved with him,” Kirk reflects. Perhaps Redjac isn’t as alien as we may like to think.

Is it possible that Redjac isn’t simply an entity that evolved separately from mankind; but one that actually evolved from mankind? Mankind’s worst impulses manifested? That the creature was mankind’s hatred and anger and rage projected into non-corporeal form? An externalised expression of the evil that men do, living long after them? If Kirk and his crew represent an idealised vision of mankind’s future – the best that we may have to offer – then does Redjac serve as the inversion of that?

There are also some interesting background details. For example, Kirk insists that Scotty must face Argelian justice for his crimes, and that the Enterprise will not simply beam Scotty up and run away. “This happened under Argelian jurisdiction,” Kirk tells McCoy. “If they want to arrest him, try him, even convict him, I have to go along with it.” This is the same sort of attitude that would appear in later franchise episodes like Justice. However, Wolf in the Fold makes it clear that this is a pragmatic decision, rather than a moral one

Kirk describes this as his “diplomatic responsibility.” There is a sense that – were all things equal – Kirk would be reluctant to leave Scott to the Argelian authorities – not necessarily because he wanted to cover up Scott’s involvement in the murders, but because “death by slow torture” is a ridiculously inhumane punishment. This isn’t the reduction of a colleague’s life to an abstract philosophical question. Kirk’s dilemma is very much grounded.

It’s a small touch that make Wolf in the Fold feel like a product of the Gene L. Coon era. Kirk can’t protect Scotty because the Federation needs Argelius. “Argelian hospitality is well-known, as well as its strategic importance as a space port,” Kirk reflects. Jaris responds, “Yes. I believe it’s the only one in the quadrant.” Later on, when Kirk seems to hesitate, Jaris leans pretty heavily on this point. “You’re behaving very much like a man who is desperately trying anything to save his friend. Would you be as desperate to save Argelius as a space port for your Starfleet?”

This is one of Coon’s recurring themes. Indeed, there’s a valid argument to be made that Coon was a writer whose work on Star Trek largely foreshadowed Deep Space Nine. Coon is quite fond of the idea that the best interests of larger organisations often conflict with the individual best interests of their members – in Metamorphosis, Kirk values the happiness of Cochrane and the Companion above the Federation’s agenda, the Federation’s expansionism almost got the crew killed in A Taste of Armageddon and almost escalated war in Errand of Mercy.

Interestingly, Wolf in the Fold does not feature any original music. Instead, the episode is tracked from Gerald Fried’s previous compositions – drawing heavily on his work from Catspaw and Amok Time. It is the first episode of the second season to feature this approach to the soundtrack. It works surprisingly well, with the soundscape of Wolf in the Fold feeling suitably dramatic and sinister. It is a testament to Fried’s skill as a composer that even music written for other episodes and contexts works well outside of them.

Wolf in the Fold is far from the perfect episode of Star Trek. The pacing and tone are all over the place. The episode plays into the show’s tendency towards casual sexism. However, there is something absolutely fascinating and compelling here – a wonderful example of Star Trek letting itself go completely off the rails, and embracing a fascinating cross-section of sixties counter-culture.

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

• Catspaw
  • Supplemental: (Gold Key) #1 – The Planet of No Return!
  • Supplemental: (Marvel Comics, 1980) #4-5 – The Haunting of Thallus!/The Haunting of the Enterprise!
• Metamorphosis
• Friday’s Child
• Who Mourns for Adonais?
• Amok Time
  • Supplemental: Spock’s World by Diane Duane
• The Doomsday Machine
  • Supplemental: New Visions #3 – Cry Vengeance
• Wolf in the Fold
• The Changeling
• The Apple
  • Supplemental: (DC Comics, 1984) #43-45 – The Return of the Serpent!
  • Supplemental: (IDW, 2009) #13 – The Red Shirt’s Tale
• Mirror, Mirror
  • Supplemental: Deep Space Nine – Crossover
  • Supplemental: New Visions #1 – The Mirror, Cracked
  • Supplemental: (DC Comics, 1984) #9-16 – New Frontiers (The Mirror Universe Saga)
  • Supplemental: Mirror Images
  • Supplemental: Mirror Universe – The Sorrows of Empire by David Mack
  • Supplemental: (IDW, 2009) #15-16 – Mirrored
• The Deadly Years
• I, Mudd
  • Supplemental: (Gold Key) #61 – Operation Con Game
  • Supplemental: (DC Comics, 1984) #39-40 – The Return of Mudd
• The Trouble With Tribbles 
  • Supplemental: The Galactic Whirlpool by David Gerrold
  • Supplemental: Alien Spotlight – Tribbles
• Bread and Circuses
• Journey to Babel
• A Private Little War
• The Gamesters of Triskelion
• Obsession
• The Immunity Syndrome
• A Piece of the Action
• By Any Other Name
• Return to Tomorrow
• Patterns of Force
• The Ultimate Computer
• The Omega Glory
• Assignment: Earth
  • Supplemental: Assignment: Eternity by Greg Cox
  • Supplemental: (DC Comics, 1989) #49-50 – The Peacekeepers
  • Supplemental: (IDW, 2008) Assignment: Earth

Filed under: The Original Series | Tagged: acid trip, argelius, bad trip, counter-culture, demons, enterprise, Gene L. Coon, good trip, horror, jack the ripper, kirk, lsd, murder, occult, piglett, redjac, Robert Bloch, Shatner, slasher, star trek, William Shatner |