Plot – This notorious episode has a pretty intriguing (as Spock might say) teaser with the landing party discovering a massacre on Triacus of what looks like mass suicide and a group of sinister children playing amongst the corpses. It suggests something goofy is about to play out because the juxtaposition between the two things is so extreme but at this point it is just jarring enough to be shocking.
The basic premise is that Captain Kirk and the crew of the Enterprise have to babysit a bunch of psychotic children for an episode after they have murdered their own parents. Imagine the riveting high jinks that might ensue…the premise of the kids being able to break the will of the crew and make them see their greatest fears might have happily filled an episode of the Animated Series but at 50 minutes this features a hell of a lot of repetition. After the 100th fist shake you might feel as if you have entered a form of purgatory where this episode never ends.
Character – Kirk, quite frankly, shows the patience of a saint. After the third conversation with one of the children trying to prompt some kind of emotional response out of them, I would have just outright asked them how they felt about the fact that their parents are dead.
The fears that the crew reveal are hardly built into their characters and so I’m not sure what the writers were trying to say about them. Uhura sees a scraggly old woman staring back when she looks in a mirror so are they trying to say that her greatest weakness is her vanity? Sulu sees a bunch of knives on the viewscreen…does he fear being skewered to death?
There is a moment just before the last act where I thought they might be able to salvage something from this camp-fest when Kirk suggests that they might have to kill the children. It’s exactly what DS9 did with their child friendly episode and it made the whole thing so much more tolerable. I don’t think the audience was ready for a child massacre in the late sixties but it sure as hell would have made for a memorable ending.
Performance – You would imagine that it would be the performances of the children that bomb this episode but they are merely interpreting what the script is asking of them and how far the director was willing to let them go. They’re really not that bad, especially Craig Huxley, who is trying to behave in as innocuous a manner as possible whilst trying to manipulate the crew (the strange masturbatory fist gesture that he does whilst doing so makes me chuckle every time).They are really let-down by a production that is trying to be too cute and too pantomime. It’s Melvin Belli who commits the cardinal sin in this episode – it’s a performance of unbelievable stiffness. He never trained as an actor and you can tell, every line of dialogue is spoken as though it is being read off a cue card.
A breakdown of epic proportions occurs in the lift when Kirk believes that he has lost command of the Enterprise that cements William Shatner’s reputation as an actor of the hammiest proportions. It has to be seen to be believed – I watched it back four times and it made me laugh (and cringe) more each time.
Production – The most irritating thing about an episode that has all the appeal of a tropical rash is the soundtrack which feels the need to sound a trumpet blast every time one of the children shakes their fist and works their magic as if watching them indulging in a pre-masturbatory action wasn’t a sign enough that something was afoot. It becomes headache inducingly annoying before the end of the episode. I love loud and proud music (The Wrath of Khan is one of my favourite scores from anything) but this is a painful experience.
Worst moment – Why would you scream ‘the enemy from within!’ rather than ‘it’s the children!’ If Starnes had done that then the silly crew of the Enterprise might have realised a lot sooner that this sinister brood is the problem.
The whole thing culminates in your usual fistfight in the corridors of the Enterprise, crewmembers at loggerheads and screaming at each other, insane overacting from everybody (aside from Nimoy who steps back and watches this all play out with disdain) and a trumpet blasting soundtrack that tries to convince you that something dramatic is going on. It’s so far over the top it’s lost in the stratosphere. Eventually Kirk picks a child kicking and screaming off his chair and holds her in the air. That’s how low this episode sinks.
Even worse is that weird, weird climax that sees Kirk showing the children images of them happy with their families, which reduces them to tears and turns Gorgan into a crusty old pizza. We are so far into bizzaro land at this point my brain just switched off entirely. It ends with McCoy walking on the bridge and celebrating the fact that the kids are traumatised by their parent’s deaths.
I wish they hadn’t done that – There’s probably a really good episode of Star Trek to feature children who are suffering from the trauma of losing their parents…but that episode is called The Bonding (or even better, The Visitor) and not And the Children Shall Lead. The children here are written so amateurishly that they come across as lacking any empathy whatsoever. Scene after scene of children running around playing like lunatics lacks any tension or interest or anything…it’s like hanging out a creche for 45 minutes. If that sounds enjoyable to you then knock yourself out.
A reason to watch this episode again – I’m not entirely certain why, time after time, that producers think that episodes featuring a ton of children are a smart idea. TNG sunk with a similarly dismal episode featuring a bunch of snotty brats in When the Bough Breaks, VOY got stuck in the mud with a loathsome piece featuring Tuvok looking after a trio of whining adolescents. The nearest DS9 got was an episode featuring a bunch of kids that were almost blown up in a school explosion or older kids running a Defiant style ship who all got massacred, so I’ll give them points for that. And the Children Shall Lead is the worst of the bunch though; a tiresome, repetitive, agonising episode of TOS which trades common sense for cuteness, suspense for irritation and lacks any kind of logic. Most crap episodes of TOS have a novelty kitsch value but this is one that is simply painful to endure. I bet all those fans who wrote letters to keep Star Trek on the screen were appalled that this was the result of their efforts. I’m not sure how the third season managed to salvage anything after Spock’s Brain and this.
½ out of *****
Clue for tomorrow's episode:
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