the m0vie blog

This July and August, we’re celebrating the release of Star Trek Beyond by taking a look back at the third season of the original Star Trek. Check back every Monday, Wednesday and Friday for the latest update.

The Enterprise Incident is generally regarded as one of the masterpieces of Star Trek‘s much troubled third season.

The third season of Star Trek has cultivated a reputation as a failure or a disappointment, a collection of episodes that are wildly disjointed at best and openly frustrating at worst. This disappointment is largely justified. While the third season struggled with a number of problems beyond its control, there were also a number of serious self-inflicted wounds. The production team consciously chose to bury Spectre of the Gun deep in the running order while pulling Spock’s Brain forward to be the season premiere.

However, the third season of Star Trek is not the disaster that many would claim. Taken as a whole, the season is much weaker than the first two seasons, but it also has its share of strong and classic episodes. There are classics upon which everybody agrees, like The Enterprise Incident or The Tholian Web. However, there are also any number of delightful oddities like Spectre of the Gun or The Empath. Still, there is a sense that the show is not everything that it once was, and that things have changed.

In some respects, The Enterprise Incident is the most conventional and “classic” of the third season episodes, the episode that feels the most “of a piece” with the first two seasons. It is also the last Star Trek episode of the original series to be credited to franchise veteran Dorothy Fontana.

To be clear, The Enterprise Incident is not the last Star Trek script to be written by Dorothy Fontana. Fontana would oversee production on Star Trek: The Animated Series. She would work on the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation. She would even contribute a script to the first season of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Even in the context of this troubled third season, Fontana would be involved in the production of That Which Survives and The Way to Eden, although she would ask to be credited under the name “Michael Richards.”

The third season of Star Trek haemorrhaged talent. Among the most notable absentees from the day-to-day running of the show were Gene L. Coon and Dorothy Fontana. Gene Roddenberry was also largely absent from the management of his series, having relocated to the other side of the production lot. All three remained involved in the production in some way; Coon and Fontana contributed scripts and stories, while Roddenberry was still involved in stories and scripting. Still, there was a sense that the series had been diminished through their absence.

There were a number of reasons for why these key creative individuals had begun the process of moving on. Gene L. Coon had taken a job with Universal television, working on It Takes a Thief. Given the limited long-term viability Star Trek, which had narrowly escaped cancellation, it is hard to fault Coon for seeking security and steady employment elsewhere. Gene Roddenberry had tried to leverage his involvement in the show to secure a more favourable time slot for the series from NBC. When they refused to budge, he followed through on his threat to leave the show.

The details of Dorothy Fontana’s absence are somewhat more complicated, and shrouded in the backstage politics of the third season’s troubled production. Years after the show went off the air, Fontana became embroiled in a war of words with third season producer Fred Freiberger. With a franchise as popular as Star Trek and a season as troubled with this third season, there was a lot of controversy and a lot of apportioning of blame. It is not uncommon for key figures to trade blows in the press, and there is a sense of that happening with the third year of Star Trek.

In this case, it was Freiberger who fired the first volley. Talking to Starlog in 1980, Freiberger suggested that the issue had been unprofessional behaviour concerning her second script of the season:

We were desperately trying to get it. We were picked up late for the third season, and she was told, “We need it, please, quickly.” She disappeared. We couldn’t find her. We checked with everybody. I called Gene Roddenberry. We finally got to her agent, and I told my story editor, “You tell her agent if we don’t get her back here, this assignment’s gonna be vacated!” Her agent told us she went to Hawaii! We said to get her back. We finally had to vacate that assignment to another writer. I called Roddenberry and said, “We can’t be the victims of this kind of non-professionalism.” And he said, “Okay, let her go.”

There is a lot to unpack in Freiberger’s accusations, but perhaps most striking is the appeal to Gene Roddenberry; Freiberger seems to invoke the name of the show’s creator to legitimise his version of events and to justify his decision to cut ties with one of the most beloved and influential writers on the show.

Fontana vigourously denied these accusations, and offered an alternative narrative about her departure from the series. Responding to Freiberger’s comments through Starlog, Fontana insisted that she left the show of her own volition:

I had told Gene Roddenberry that I did not wish to continue on Star Trek as story editor because I wanted to freelance and write for other series. I did, however, want to continue to do scripts for Star Trek. Gene was agreeable to this, and I was given a contract in February of 1968 which called for a guarantee of three scripts, with an option for three more. Whenever anyone has asked why I chose to leave Star Trek’s story editorship, I have always given this reply.

Even years later, there is some lingering ambiguity about the particulars of what happened and why it happened. Whatever the fine details, The Enterprise Incident sits right in the middle of the controversy.

In many respects, The Enterprise Incident is very clearly a Dorothy Fontana script. It is a very conventional episode, in many respects; which stands in stark contrast to the episodes around it. In terms of basic production and plotting, it could easily have been produced during the second season. The themes and plot mechanics feel quite removed from the funereal tone that permeates so much of the third season as a whole, which is really saying something about an episode in which Spock pretends to murder Kirk in self-defense.

Much like Gene L. Coon, Dorothy Fontana has something of a Star Trek writer’s shorthand; The Enterprise Incident is populated with little recurring details that demonstrate the author’s particular interests. Even the sequence in which Spock appears to murder Kirk, only for this to be revealed as a ruse involving McCoy, is lifted pretty heavily from Amok Time. The intimacy of Vulcan hand gestures comes from Journey to Babel. Spock’s conflicts between duty and desire echo The Naked Time and This Side of Paradise.

It is no surprise that Fontana’s original outline for The Enterprise Incident would have featured Mark Leonard returning in the role of Sarek from Journey to Babel. In Fontana’s original story, Sarak would have been cast in a role similar to the one played by Spock here, effectively stalling for time as Kirk and his crew enact a daring espionage mission. Along with Gene L. Coon, Fontana was one of the writers most responsible for cultivating a sense of continuity to the larger Star Trek universe, suggesting connections tying together these episodic adventures.

It is very easy to take the Star Trek canon for granted from the perspective of 2016, when the franchise is fifty years old and the concept of a “canon” has permeated popular culture. However, it should be remembered that it took Star Trek quite a long time to figure out basic continuity concepts like the colour of Sulu or Uhura’s uniform. “Starfleet Command” did not exist until Court Martial. The Federation was not named until Arena. The original Star Trek show was not always consistent in terms of its settings or its history.

This speaks to the realities of sixties television production. Nobody working on Star Trek imagined that they were building something to last five decades. Nobody was even sure that the show would get a second season, let alone more than twenty-five seasons of spin-off media. The best that the production team working on Star Trek could have hoped for was that the show would sell into syndication, where the episodes ran the risk of being jumbled around and any notion of continuity from episode to episode would be treated as a barrier to accessibility.

So what little sense of continuity crept into the show mostly crept in by accident. Gene L. Coon helped to create the Klingons and championed them as recurring antagonists for the Enterprise. Indeed, Coon even wanted a recurring Klingon nemesis who might square off against James Tiberius Kirk, perhaps even Koloth from The Trouble with Tribbles. It had been Coon who introduced the concept of the Federation into Star Trek, and who cultivated the idea of the Star Trek universe as more than just an impossibly vast space filled with random wonders and terrors.

Dorothy Fontana did her own bit to ensure continuity and development across episodes. This is most obvious in her stewardship of Spock as a character. Spock’s poignant monologue about his family life in The Naked Time clearly paves the way for the exploration of that family dynamic in Journey to Babel. To demonstrate that this sort of organic character development was the exception rather than the rule, the death of Samuel Kirk in Operation — Annihilate! went absolutely nowhere in terms of defining or shaping Kirk as a character.

The Enterprise Incident is a very rare episode of the original Star Trek in that it leans heavily on existing continuity. It is too much to describe the story as serialised, but it is definitely a narrative that rewards long-term fans. The Romulan cloaking device was a major plot point back in Balance of Terror, and The Enterprise Incident hinges on a significant technical improvement to that device. The episode’s dialogue casually posits an alliance between the Klingons and the Romulans, the show’s primary recurring antagonists.

To be fair, there were undoubtedly production realities that dictated that minor detail about a possible alliance between the Klingons and the Romulans. The storytelling decision was likely made to justify the inclusion of the Klingon attack cruiser from Elaan of Troyius in the episode, although there has been considerable debate about why the original cut of the episode did not include the Romulan Bird of Prey from Balance of Terror:

After filming, the Bird of Prey model disappeared, which may account for the Romulans showing up in Klingon D7 cruisers in the third-season episode The Enterprise Incident. It may also have been the case that the producers wanted to display the D7 model as much as possible as a courtesy to the model kit company Aluminum Model Toys, which actually paid for it. In any event, the model’s whereabouts remain unknown.

Exactly what happened to the Romulan Bird of Prey model (if anything) is a matter of some speculation. William McCullor reported gossip that the model was held by a private collector unwilling to exhibit it for the public. Memory Alpha provides an account of a National Public Radio interview with designer Wah Chang who claims to have smashed the model in his own backyard. Notably, the remastered edition of the episode includes a Bird of Prey.

Whatever the reason for inclusion of the Klingon ship, the decision to tie its appearance to broader political wrangling involving two major non-Federation powers represents a clear progression in the development of the shared Star Trek universe. The first season had thrown the Federation and Klingons into conflict with one another over Organia; the second season had suggested a simmering cold war between the two major powers. The Enterprise Incident expands upon that by suggesting that the Klingons and Romulans have agency outside that seen by our heroes.

Fontana very much uses The Enterprise Incident as an opportunity to cultivate the sense of the Star Trek universe as something that exists beyond what is experienced directly by out protagonists. The Enterprise Incident consciously builds upon the key revelation in Balance of Terror that the Romulans and the Vulcans share a common ancestry. In Balance of Terror, that detail seemed to exist primarily to serve the themes of the story as an allegory about racism with obvious echoes of Japanese internment during the Second World War. Here, it is something more.

The Enterprise Incident uses the common ancestry between Vulcans and Romulans as an opportunity to build a Star Trek universe that does not centre around Earth, to suggest that  other people have their own agency and their own history quite apart from that of direct relevance to Kirk. The Commander’s reference to the Vulcans as “distant brothers” and Spock’s reference to “the combined Romulan-Vulcan history of obedience to duty” suggest complex long-term relationships that stem beyond those of Earth.

The Romulan Commander all but explicitly states this in her conversations with Spock. “For someone with your capabilities and accomplishments, opportunities are made and will be,” she states. “I will see to that, if you’ll stop looking on the Federation as the whole universe. It is not, you know.” This is a very important thematic point, and it is something with which the Star Trek franchise will grapple over its extended life cycle. The Federation is very much an extension of liberal American values into the future, but those values are not the only way to look at the universe.

Dorothy Fontana and Gene L. Coon will never get enough credit for building that ambivalence into the franchise’s foundations, perhaps owing to the narrative of Star Trek cultivated and crafted by Gene Roddenberry that portrays the Federation as an unequivocal paradise. Gene L. Coon deserves a lot of credit for being openly critical of these aspects of the Federation in his scripts, daring to ask if extrapolating contemporary American politics into the future is a good thing. Fontana deserves a lot of credit for being willing to look beyond the Federation.

This attitude towards political and historical continuity would pave the way for later Star Trek shows to develop and explore these ideas. In fact, Deep Space Nine would often reduce the Federation to observers watching complex historical dynamics play out between different races; the Romulan and Cardassian attack upon the Dominion in The Die is Cast comes to mind, as does the Klingon invasion of Cardassia in The Way of the Warrior. In building on what came before, Fontana sews the seeds for that approach to Star Trek in The Enterprise Incident.

 

This idea of Romulan and Vulcan agency is not just a world-building affectation. It very clearly plays into the themes of the episode. It is interesting that The Enterprise Incident chooses to focus on the Romulans instead of the Klingons. In many ways, the Klingons were the breakout alien species on Star Trek. They appeared with much greater frequency than the Romulans, perhaps because gold face paint and fake beards were most cost effective than pointy ears. The show had recently invested in a model Klingon war ship, and they would appear multiple times this season.

In contrast, the Romulans were a low-key Star Trek antagonist. The Romulans only physically appeared in two episodes of the original Star Trek series; Balance of Terror and The Enterprise Incident. They had a small background role in The Deadly Years, but nothing compared to the coverage the Klingons get in episodes like Friday’s Child or A Private Little War. In fact, while the Klingons would play major roles in the film franchise, this is the last major Romulan appearance until The Neutral Zone twenty years later.

It is strange to think of the Romulans as an iconic Star Trek baddie, because they have historically been underserved and underrepresented by the franchise. While alien species like the Klingons, the Borg, the Cardassians, and even the Ferengi have their own larger narrative arcs across the franchise’s history, various production teams have often struggled with what to do about the franchise’s other pointy eared hobgoblins. However, the Romulans endure. They remain an essential part of the franchise, despite the fact they are hard to pin down.

Perhaps the key to their longevity is to be found in these early episodes. In terms of the original Star Trek series, the biggest difference between the Romulans and the Klingons is that the Klingons are most transparently bad guys. Although Gene L. Coon introduced the Klingons in Errand of Mercy as a way to critique Kirk’s warmongering ways, the Klingons were very clearly presented as a yellow peril menace. The Klingons would not really become sympathetic until The Day of the Dove made a conscious choice to subvert this dynamic.

In contrast, the Romulans came with some measure of sympathy built in. Part of this is down to the make-up design, in that the Romulans had the luxury of looking both more human than the Klingons and resembling Spock. However, it was also largely down to how Balance of Terror had treated its antagonist. Kor and Koloth were great characters, but they lack the humanity and compassion of the anonymous Romulan Commander. Although he lacked a name, Kirk felt a strong sense of kinship to him. The two were mirrored.

Although the Klingons serve as a direct commentary on the Cold War, with their spheres of influence and their proxy wars, the Romulans served as a more abstract anti-war allegory. Although the major Romulan characters of the original Star Trek series were kept consciously anonymous, they were afforded a dignity and humanity that rendered them more than convenient two-dimensional antagonists. The Romulans were a constant reminder that even an anonymous adversary is still a person.

The plot of The Enterprise Incident was loosely inspired by the Pueblo incident, the capture of the USS Pueblo by North Korean forces in January 1968. The crew were accused of espionage, and were only released after confessing. The ship is still held by the North Korean government. Fontana acknowledges that this international crisis was the genesis of the episode:

I proposed [The Enterprise Incident] as kind of a parallel to the Pueblo incident, which was major news at the time [and] was one of our ships, our navy ships, intruding into, in essence, someone else’s space and being nailed for it. So, I tried to bounce that idea off the Enterprise. What is the Enterprise doing? What is it after?

Fontana takes this basic premise and builds an espionage thriller around it. The episode opens with Kirk leading the Enterprise into Romulan space, with McCoy worried that Kirk has finally cracked under the pressure. The Enterprise is subsequently surrounded by Romulan ships who demand the immediate surrender of the ship and crew. Things go from bad to worse, with Spock appearing to sell Kirk out to the Romulans and even killing him.

Naturally, nothing is as it appears to be. Kirk has not cracked under the mental strain of command, or under the combination of earlier episodes (going be production order) like Elaan of Troyius or The Paradise Syndrome. Spock has not been tempted to align himself with the Romulan Star Empire against his fellow crew. Most obviously, Spock has not murdered James Tiberius Kirk, despite how it may appear. It is all a cunning ruse, part of an elaborate con game, authorised by Starfleet Command, to secure a new and improved Romulan cloaking device.

In any other context, all of these reversals would seem like contrivances, a script backing away from a number of potentially series-breaking premises and retreating to the easiest possible resolution. It is to the credit of Dorothy Fontana that she understands this. Of course Kirk hasn’t gone insane. Of course Spock hasn’t betrayed the Enterprise. Of course Spock hasn’t killed Kirk. Any audience member with any degree of televisual literacy would know that these premises could never be allowed to stand on a weekly sixties television show.

Fontana plays into her audience’s televisual literacy, counting on the viewer to understand that things are not as they appear to be. The Enterprise Incident is never particularly coy about the twists that are coming. In fact, it signposts them quite heavily. The Romulan Commander effectively guesses the whole ruse in her first conversation with Kirk. The thrill is not in the twists of themselves, but in watching those twists play out. There is a sense that The Enterprise Incident avoids spelling all this out from the start simply to avoid exposition, not because it is a big twist.

The Enterprise Incident is a great Cold War espionage thriller. The episode is anchored in an incident involving North Korea that was not sanctioned by the Soviet Union; in fact, it arguably damaged the relationship between the two powers. Still, The Enterprise Incident skilfully evokes the general mood of the era. There are two major powers dancing with each other, testing limits and engaged in shell games. Indeed, the portrayal of Spock as a would-be traitor even evokes attitudes in the American media to downed U2 pilot Gary Powers following his own capture.

In The Paranormal and the Paranoid, Aaron John Gulyas argues that The Enterprise Incident endorses the top secret mission undertaken by Kirk and Spock to steal the Romulan cloaking device, pointing to the episode as a relic of an era before Watergate and Vietnam had made the American people more sceptical of their would-be guardians:

True to the series’ 1960s roots, the Cold War metaphor casts the Federation/Starfleet characters in the role of heroes, doing what needs to be done to safeguard the home front against all enemies. The cloaking device – which allows Romulan ships to disappear and reappear at will – is a destabilising technology that would give the Romulans a significant military advantage; acquiring it for the Federation restores stability to the galaxy. Kirk and Spock’s violation of interstellar law and treaty is presented as acceptable, in the sontext of the episode, because their superiors have sanctioned it in the interest of the greater good. They are, in The Enterprise Incident, willing tools of a conspiracy that never question the rightness of their actions. The episode aired, however, in the fall of 1968; within a few years, the end of the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal would leave Americans less tolerant of government secrecy than they had been at the height of the Cold War. A story like The Enterprise Incident would have been difficult to replicate in the 1980s or 1990s, when the public was less likely to assume good intentions on the part of governments.

While this is perhaps an over-simplification of the political themes of Fontana’s script, it should be noted that later episodes of The Next Generation exploring similar plot points and confrontations adopt a more openly sceptical approach to such political manoeuvring.

In The Defector, Picard strays into the Neutral Zone and finds himself surrounded by Romulans demanding to haul the Enterprise home as a trophy. However, in this case, the intrusion into the Neutral Zone is revealed to be an elaborate con orchestrated by the Romulans to trick the Federation. Picard is never implicated in the intrusion in the same way that Kirk is. Similarly, in Pegasus, Federation attempts to develop a new more advanced cloaking device are presented as conspiratorial; Picard ends the episode by coming clean with the Romulans.

However, The Enterprise Incident is openly sympathetic to the Romulan position. It is difficult to imagine the episode working anywhere near as well had Fontana employed the Klingons rather than the Romulans, and not just because that would have meant altering the subplot focusing on Spock. Dating back to Balance of Terror, the Romulans has been portrayed as sympathetic mirrors to the Federation. That shines through over the course of The Enterprise Incident, which declines to treat the Romulans as unreasonable or explicitly villainous.

Indeed, the Romulan willingness to exchange hostages for Kirk and Spock is presented as a gesture of good faith that goes beyond what might be expected in this scenario. “Granted, we do not easily trust each other, Captain, but you are the ones who violated our territory,” Tal reflects. “Should it not be we who distrust your motives? However, we agree to simultaneous exchange.” After all, the Romulans would arguably be entirely justified to use overwhelming force to take or destroy the Enterprise.

When Kirk pleads his case to the Romulan Commander, she quite rightly refuses to accept his explanation at face value and to allow him to go on his way. “Captain, if a Romulan vessel ventured far into Federation territory without good explanation, what would a starbase commander do?” she ponders. “You see, it works both ways. I hardly believe you are the injured party.” She is entirely correct. Indeed, the entire purpose of Kirk’s mission is to militarily undermine a foreign power. Kirk is very much the injuring (rather than the injured) party.

Indeed, The Enterprise Incident is ultimately quite cynical about what exactly this mission will accomplish in the long term. “You realise that very soon we will learn to penetrate the cloaking device you stole,” the Romulan Commander reflects. Spock concedes the point. “Obviously. Military secrets are the most fleeting of all.” Indeed, the capturing of the Romulan cloaking device in The Enterprise Incident seems to have very little long-term impact on the technology; the cloaking device is again largely impenetrable by Star Trek III: The Search for Spock.

If the long-term political impact of this elaborate ruse is ultimately minimal, Fontana suggests that the personal consequences are much greater. Lives and careers are damaged and destroyed in this game of political brinksmanship. Much as the tragedy in Balance of Terror is that Kirk and that anonymous Romulan Commander might have been friends, the tragedy in The Enterprise Incident is that Spock destroys a potentially healthy interpersonal relationship with this anonymous Romulan Commander.

“It is regrettable that you were made an unwilling passenger,” Spock confesses towards the end of the episode. “It was not intentional. All the Federation wanted was the cloaking device.” Spock and the Romulan Commander are reduced to pawns in this larger chess game. Personal desires are secondary to broader concepts of “duty.” Defending his betrayal, Spock reflects, “Clearly, your new cloaking device is a threat to that security. I carried out my duty.” The Romulan Commander responds, “Everyone carries out his duty. You state the obvious, Spock.”

The result is that The Enterprise Incident plays like something of a tragedy. Lives are effectively destroyed, and nothing is gained. The Enterprise Incident is not as explicit in its criticisms of the personal costs of statecraft as episodes like Balance of Terror or The Defector, but the theme bubbles through the episode in a way that is hard to avoid. Although The Enterprise Incident is structured as a playful Cold War espionage heist story, it is also quite cynical about the toll that these games take upon the pieces move across the board.

The relationship between Spock and the Romulan Commander would be one of the major bones of contention between Fontana and the production team working on the third season. In his interview with Starlog, Fred Freiberger insisted that Fontana had been very unprofessional in taking production notes on the script:

The story, dramatically, I felt, didn’t work. I wanted to get dramatic stories. There were some very good elements in it. She probably had a better grasp of Spock’s character than I did. One of the things I really wanted to do with Spock’s character was to explore the areas Gene had built into the character about a Vulcan father and an Earth mother, which I didn’t see too much of. He was just playing that cool guy all the time from what I saw. I wanted to use the other aspects of the character… which were not germaine to her [Fontana’s] script. So we kept working on trying to get her to rewrite that script. She was very resistant. She was not at all cooperative. She wrote it and then we rewrote the script… extensively. Now she had a choice. If she didn’t like what was there, she could use a different name, which is a procedure the Writer’s Guild has set up for writers who feel this way. She didn’t have to put her name on it. I’m not putting her down as a writer. She’s a pretty good writer. I’m talking about professionalism. So we rewrote the script, and I think we got pretty good reactions on it.

To be entirely fair to Fontana here, it should be noted that when Freiberger talks about “the areas Gene had built into the character“, he is largely talking about the character as defined by Fontana in her rewrite of The Naked Time or This Side of Paradise or Journey to Babel.

For her part, Fontana was openly critical of the way that new producer Fred Freiberger and new script editor Arthur Singer. As she explained to the fan magazine Enterprise Incidents:

I took my name from those last two you mentioned. The Romulan Incident — The Enterprise Incident — was heavily rewritten much to my alarm, and I wanted to take my name off it. Gene talked me out of it, but I ended my contract shortly thereafter because I did have a contract to do three or four. And when they—the producer of the show—told me that Dr. McCoy was Kirk’s contemporary and was not old enough to have a daughter at twenty-one years old, I realised they hadn’t even read the Writer’s Guide. I didn’t want to work for anybody who didn’t even have a working concept of the show. In fact, the story editor some three months later wandered onto the set and asked our set decorator, “By the way, what does that transporter thing do again?”, at which point most of the crew gave up caring. Because when you do not have people doing the stories who are knowledgeable about what the entire show is about, you can’t keep up pride in your work because you’re being given drek.

Indeed, one of the big issues with The Enterprise Incident for certain technical-minded fans is all the transporting that takes place when most of the ships should have their shields up; a violation of a basic Star Trek principle.

Talking to Marc Cushman for These Are the Voyages, Fontana explained that her big issues with the changes that were made to The Enterprise Incident concerned the relationship between Spock and the Romulan Commander:

What I didn’t like was the more or less sexual tension that was put in between the Romulan commander and Spock, because I thought, ‘Ughh, I wouldn’t believe it.’ If I was the commander of that Romulan ship and a Vulcan approached me, I wouldn’t trust him for a minute. So, I felt that was not valid, that it was unbelievable. It was put in after I finished my work.

It is not an unreasonable complaint about the episode. After all, the Romulan Commander is effectively undone by Spock’s sex appeal. At one point, Spock is able to communicate with the Enterprise while she puts sexy clothes on.

Freiberger serves as something of a lightning rod in this controversy, because he was the producer working on the third season and because he is the creative voice that engaged Dorothy Fontana on the matter. However, it is worth noting that Freiberger is not necessarily the only person responsible for the changes. Freiberger was in regular contact with Star Trek veterans Gene Roddenberry and Robert Justman, either of whom could have interjected on the point. Indeed, These Are the Voyages credits Justman with the idea for the romance in the first place.

There is something uncomfortably sexist about the romance. After all, the show would never allow Kirk to be undercut in such a manner. Elaan of Troyius provides a a helpful counterpoint; Kirk was able to resist a woman who had bound him to her on a biological and chemical level. The Romulan Commander has no such excuse. It seems like one look at Leonard Nimoy is enough to make even the most professionally-minded woman forget basic security procedures. Ultimately, Spock is only discovered by Tal, the Romulan Commander’s male second-in-command.

This is an example of how frustrating the third season of Star Trek can be on matters of gender. The Romulan Commander is in many ways one of the most overtly feminist figures in the season. It is telling that The Enterprise Incident introduces a female Romulan Commander in the same season that The Turnabout Intruder insists that there are no female Starfleet captains. At the same time, it is hard to argue that The Enterprise Incident is more sexist than drek like Elaan of Troyius or The Paradise Syndrome or Spock’s Brain.

The result is an episode that feels positively feminist in comparison to the episodes around it by virtue of featuring a rare female character in a position of authority, while still being anchored in a number of unpleasant sexist stereotypes about how professional women cannot be trusted to keep their personal and professional lives separate. It is a perfect example of the problematic progressiveness that defines so much of the original Star Trek series, where even the most forward-looking aspects are anchored in troublesome elements.

Still, the Romulan Commander is an intriguing character. It is no surprise that the Romulan Commander has become such an iconic Star Trek character. Diane Duane’s Rihannsu novels focus on the aunt of the character in question. The character herself plays a key role in novels like The Fate of the Phoenix, Vulcan’s Heart and Killing Time. The Next Generation considered bringing back the character for Face of the Enemy. It is a shame that there were not more female characters like her in the original run of Star Trek.

Despite the troublesome implications of the relationship between the Romulan Commander and Spock, The Enterprise Incident perhaps demonstrates Freiberger’s efforts to attract new audiences to the show. The Enterprise Incident is more overtly built around the sex appeal of Leonard Nimoy as Spock than any other episode of Star Trek, including the episode where Spock gets so horny that he strangles Kirk to death in a hot sweaty wrestling match. The Enterprise Incident is designed to emphasise the sensuous mysterious aspects of the show’s science officer.

After all, Spock was the breakout sex symbol on Star Trek. A profile in People Magazine reported that “the sacks of Spock mail reached 10,000 letters a month, mostly from women, much of it torridly erotic.” In an interview with The Pittsburgh Press, Leonard Nimoy recalled being confronted with his sex symbol status:

“Sometimes, Cleveland,” Nimoy smiled, “it’s fun. I remember at Bowling Green University in Ohio a young woman got up and said, ‘I am going to do something for your ego. Are you aware that you are the source of erotic dream material for thousands and thousands of women around the world?'”

What did he do? “I toasted her, with water, and said, ‘May all your dreams come true.'”

In 1967, Isaac Asimov wrote an article in TV Guide outlining the key to the character’s sex appeal. Asimov argued that Spock had been able to make smart seem sexy. He was very much a contrast to the rugged and conventional masculinity of James Kirk.

Henry Jenkins contended that it was Spock’s restraint and composure that made him so appealing to fans:

“Spock is sexy for a large number of people, male and female,” Jenkins says. “Many of the female fans I studied really are attracted to the emotional depths of this character.” Like many men, Spock “represses outward signs of emotion,” Jenkins says. He’s a character “who tries to hold it all in, but who seems to be sensitive, sensuous at certain times.”

And Spock’s intense relationship with Captain Kirk only complicates his character.

“He seems to have a deep affection and even passionate relationship to Captain Kirk,” Jenkins says. “This character, then, became the embodiment of the mystery of masculinity.”

Spock is a rather unconventional male lead, but that makes him all the more striking in context.

In a 1996 interview with Andrew Duncan for The Radio Times, Leonard Nimoy weighed in with his own thoughts on what made Mister Spock so sexy:

He had an attraction because he was smart and quite sexy. He was unavailable, mysterious, exotic with hidden passions. Sensitive, I went through some awareness of that in the early years and it was very flattering, but I didn’t take advantage. It was so unexpected for me to be treated as rock stars are in their 20s. Here I was, at 35, having this adulation, screaming, fawning, fan magazines. It was interesting and at times quite scary, but I was old enough to handle it.

Whatever the precise reason, there is no denying that Mister Spock was the show’s breakout sex symbol. Dorothy Fontana’s work on The Naked Now, This Side of Paradise and Journey to Babel undoubtedly contributed.

In discussing Elaan of Troyius, Fred Freiberger talked about his efforts to attract female audience members to Star Trek. In an interview with Starlog, writer Margaret Armen claimed that The Paradise Syndrome went down very well with “sponsor’s wives.” As such, it made a great deal of sense to build an episode around Spock’s latent sex appeal. In the context of the third season, The Enterprise Incident seems like a conscious attempt to capitalise on Spock’s allure. This is Fred Freiberger trying to save Star Trek by trying to broaden the audience.

Indeed, The Enterprise Incident offers a much more conventional and safer “sexy Spock” story than the consciously queer Amok Time. After all, Amok Time had emphasised the unconventional aspects of Spock’s biology while stressing his relationship to Kirk; Theodore Sturgeon’s script tied Spock’s sex drive into a wrestling match with Kirk. In contrast, The Enterprise Incident offers a much more heteronormative view of Spock’s sexuality. There is no mention of a seven-year cycle, just a female love interest to gently caress.

In fact, it could be argued that the relationship between Spock and the Romulan Commander is a form of “pandering” that takes away a lot of what made Spock so sexy and alluring to the fanbase in the first place. Fontana noted as much in a memo on these rewrites, as reprinted in These Are the Voyages:

Frankly, our fans — especially the vocal ones who write a lot of letters to networks — are very hip to what is and what isn’t “Vulcan.” They write whole treatises and fanzines — for a large circle of subscribers — based on Vulcan psychology, physiology, emotions, mores, and what Spock eats for breakfast. And they will tune us out if the “business” in this seduction scene goes unchanged.

In many ways, this represents a key conflict in the third season of Star Trek. Fred Freiberger had been drafted in to help save a show that could not be saved. Freiberger’s philosophy seemed to be an attempt to push the show towards more mainstream audiences, occasionally at the cost of neglecting what made it Star Trek in the first place.

It should be acknowledged that Freiberger’s efforts to popularise the show were often unsuccessful. Elaan of Troyius and The Paradise Syndrome are terrible episodes of television. However, they were also doomed from the outset. The narrative that has developed around the third season of Star Trek tends to avoid the real issues with the season – budget cuts, the departure of key creative personal, scheduling. Instead, Fred Freiberger has become a convenient scapegoat for all of the flaws with this season of television.

Fan narratives of the third season treat Freiberger and Singer as an external colonising force seeking to transform Star Trek into something alien. Freiberger and Singer are portrayed as television producers with no real interest in Star Trek as an institution, and no respect for the show’s underlying values and philosophies. This narrative has been cultivated by key writers who worked on the third season, writers like Dorothy Fontana, Margaret Armen and David Gerrold. The abiding narrative is that Freiberger and Singer neither knew nor cared about Star Trek.

In some respects, this would set the tone for the occasionally fraught relationship between the production team working on Star Trek and the audience watching at home. Any deviation from the established template would be treated as hostile until proven otherwise; witness the intense and extreme reaction to the Bad Robot films by certain vocal elements of the fandom who would argue that Star Trek Into Darkness is somehow a worse film than Star Trek V: The Final Frontier.

JJ Abrams and his writers were treated as interlopers without the proper respect for the show or its fans. Although history has somewhat vindicated them, it should also be noted that producers like Nicholas Meyer and Ira Steven Behr were also criticised by certain vocal segments of the fandom for daring to imagine their own takes on the Star Trek mythos that deviated from the templates outlined by Gene Roddenberry. A lot of that knee-jerk fan reaction and sensitivity can be traced back to this point in the franchise’s life cycle, the ghost of Fred Freiberger.

Indeed, it is interesting to note that this happened in the wake of the high-profile fandom campaign to “save” the series. It could be argued that the campaign served to give fandom a sense of “ownership” and “entitlement” to the show, something that would be consciously cultivated by Gene Roddenberry in the years that followed to help him craft his own narrative of the show’s history and production. Fred Freiberger was an outsider to that fan circuit, a producer who would be unlikely to list Star Trek as the crowning accomplishment of his television resume.

Of course, such criticisms tend to overlook the fact that Freiberger was drafted in at the last minute because Gene Roddenberry resigned when the network refused to ascede to his demands about the scheduling of the show. Freiberger was not a usurper or a hostile invader laying claim to a beloved institution, he was a producer in an impossible situation trying to find a workable solution at a point when many of the show’s veteran production team had already thrown in the towel.

The Enterprise Incident is not quite perfect. However, it feels a lot more like the first two seasons of Star Trek than the rest of the third season around it. If not for the influence of the Pueblo incident on the story, The Enterprise Incident might easily be mistaken for a script carried over from the previous season. As Dorothy Fontana’s last credited contribution to the original Star Trek show, it is a reminder of just how much the show has lost through the absence of key figures like Fontana and Coon in its third year.

Still, The Enterprise Incident holds up well. It is a highlight of a very troubled season.

 

Filed under: The Original Series | Tagged: D. C. Fontana, dorothy fontana, enterprise, romulans, star trek, the enterprise incident, the original series |