Here’s a confession that you might not hear from your average Star Trek fan…I have never touched TOS before this marathon. Not even the more famous episodes like The Trouble With Tribbles or Mirror Mirror. I haven’t had the inclination to sit down and watch a series that pushes the word melodrama to the limit and I had the mistaken feeling that it was all over the top fight scenes, fuzzy romantic lenses and simplistic morals. There is a lot of that too (certainly in this episode) but I am slowly coming to the realisation that I have been stubborn and basing my distance from TOS on the thought of bizarre production values – and I’m a huge fan of classic Doctor Who! So this is me rectifying that mistake and over the coming months you will see some serious reflection on TOS and what it has to offer.
Plot – ‘I cannot conceive it possible that Abraham Lincoln could have actually have been re-incarnated…’ – get Gene Roddenberry away from the typewriter! If this is the sort of dreck they were hashing out in the third season, then perhaps it was a wise decision to cancel the show not long after this episode. Season one (of which I have seen a smattering of episodes) was packed full of great drama, this is a farce posing as drama and perhaps and the biggest indication of how far the show had fallen from grace.
I’m not sure what I was expecting from this episode but to see Abraham Lincoln flying towards the viewscreen in all his bearded glory was so far down on the list you might say it wasn’t even considered. It’s one of those WTF Star Trek moments when your mind actively fights the madness of what your eyes are showing you (think the salamanders in Threshold). At the least the characters are having exactly the same problem as me.
A fight of good versus evil being played out for real with characters from history is an intriguing one but when scenes feature Abraham Lincoln and Genghis Khan on an alien planet slugging it out and getting murdered…I think the extreme lack of subtlety flings the theme somewhere out into the atmosphere never to be seen again. It is precisely the most simplistic approach that this episode could have taken. It’s how a six-year-old would write the episode: ‘who would win out of Lincoln and Khan on an alien planet?’ The fact that the end of existence is at stake is a little humiliating…imagine if this is where it all ended for Kirk and Spock?
‘There’s nothing immoral in fighting an illusion, Spock’ – when the episode boils down to dialogue of that nature I have to wonder if the episode was worth writing in the first place.
The morality that this episode boils down to – good and evil achieve the same results and that evil hides away when it is confronted are both questionable, unsophisticated and lacks any foundation. It’s usually best to start at the end and work towards that in a script if you are going to make such a grand statement.
Character – McCoy is such a prickly old curmudgeon – if any other character burst on the bridge and said that the detailed study that the science officer had done was ‘poppycock’ they would be on a charge. If Pulaski (McCoy’s alter ego) had behaved that way the fans would be suggesting she was beamed into space. And yet somehow Deforrest Kelly gets away with it because he is such a charming actor. I’ve worked with people like this, grumpy gits who through everybody else’s sheer enjoyment of their prickly humour get away with murder. He’s unique in Star Trek in that respect. He says at one point ‘I would be the last person to advise you on your command image’ and I was thinking, no, you would be the first person to do that! About 15 minutes in when he has been firing off inflammatory opinions non-stop, Kirk threatens him that he is one the verge of insubordination, which I do feel was necessary at this point (even if McCoy is actually making good sense at this point).
Fair play to Kirk who gets everybody in dress uniform to greet Lincoln, not only because it is a polite thing to do but also because he seems to be enjoying playing along. I’m certain they have met enough godlike beings at this point that a little common courtesy is a prudent response. The band playing a fanfare might be a tad too much, mind. It’s mentioned that President Lincoln has always been a personal hero of Kirk’s but I have no way of knowing whether that is true or not…or if it is one of those Star Trek occasions of having a character obsessed with something that fits in with the episode playing out (Tom Paris on Voyager is notorious for that).
Spock’s dismissal of Sulak’s cries of pain had me roaring with laughter. ‘He knew what he was getting into’ is what he essentially says, turning away without a care. Spock rules.
Performance – Sulu is left in command of the Enterprise and George Takei is going to enjoy every second of the opportunity.
Production – Kudos to the designers – despite being clearly studio bound, the planet’s surface that they create looks far less artificial than many a season one and two TNG planetary surface.
Have I been corrupted by classic Doctor Who and programmed to admire the design of bizarre monsters beyond the programmes budget because I found the weird mutant rock creature that talks to be a startlingly imaginative piece of design work. The way it folds into itself (or rather the actor sits down) is rather unusual and I love the smoke exuding from its head. It’s a far cry from Trek’s usual head bumps and that has to be celebrated. It does feel like the designers have started from the point of view of creating a steaming lump of shit that talks but on those terms they have done an authentic job!
Best moment – Spock grappling with some feral space witch from the annals of criminal history (or in our case, from the future) achieves a glorious kitsch grandeur.
Worst moment – I hate to be one of those snowflakes who can’t handle a little anachronistic political incorrectness but the line ‘what a charming negress’ to Uhura made me physically wince. No matter how charming Lincoln was after that, he couldn’t really recover from that.
I wish they hadn’t done that – Shoving a spear into the back of Abraham Lincoln might be the biggest misjudgement in a series of misjudgements in this episode. It’s certainly in poor taste.
A reason to watch this episode again – For the pre-credits sequence, which remains one of the most outlandish the franchise ever attempted. The rest of the episode cannot live up to the shock of Lincoln’s appearance, it’s trying to play with familiar Trek themes but they have been explored more proficiently elsewhere. The Savage Curtain might have made a quirky, one of episode of the Animated Series aimed more squarely at children but attempting to pull off something this bizarre and juvenile in such a deathly serious way is terminal viewing. And terminal for the show as well it seems. Bravo to the actors though, who play this with absolute conviction except perhaps Shatner, who at the last hurdle can’t quite resist smirking when he has to say how hard it was to watch Lincoln die again. Possibly because the scene itself was so hilarious.
*1/2 out of *****
Clue for tomorrow's episode:
https://www.theincomparable.com/randomtrek/
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