The Infinite Vulcan

DVD, Star Trek: The Animated Series (The Infinite Vulcan)

The consolation prize for Walter Koenig's exclusion from the series on budget grounds was this opportunity to write a script for it instead, adding another string to his CV's bow. And it's not bad, a colourful, in more ways than one, adventure on an alien planet: Philos, home of not just a race of planet people, but the refuge of a criminal of the Eugenics Wars. One thing I like about the series is that although it gets details wrong, it does try to include the series' established history on occasion, as seen by the mention of the 1990s conflict which birthed Khan as a megalomaniacal warrior-ruler in the mythos. Koenig even gets the time period correct, with someone mentioning Stavos Caniclius (or Caniculus, depending on who's pronouncing the name - Captain Kirk seems to be the only one saying it wrong, which might be because they recorded the dialogue separately from each other), would be over two hundred and fifty years old, placing the series definitively in the 23rd Century for the first time, I believe - I don't think they were ever sure of the exact time period while they were making 'TOS,' so this would appear to be the starting point for all dates - certainly a decade later 'The Wrath of Khan' gave us the onscreen canon that this was taking place in the 23rd Century, but apart from that…

Koenig's influence can be seen in full force in the way he makes a lot of use of the lesser characters instead of concentrating almost entirely on Kirk, Spock and McCoy as would be the norm. 'TAS' managed to use all the characters, to be sure, but here it's even more in evidence, Sulu along on the Landing Party, and Scotty and Uhura having things to do in support back on the ship. Perhaps as an effort to show Chekov-level characters were important. They also continue their additional work as other characters, with Nichelle Nichols as the computer voice usually reserved for Majel Barrett (who didn't appear to be involved in this episode, though she gets the usual end credit that never seems to vary), and James Doohan as everyone else - he plays Agmar, leader of the Philosians, as well as Caniclius, and I found myself so involved in the story that I actually forgot it was him and had to go back and check what he sounded like just to confirm! Strangely, despite the title, Spock barely features, even more strange considering by the end there are two of him, but he does get to expound on that old Vulcan symbol, the IDIC (and it's badly thought-out philosophy! - basically accept everything, no matter what, which is not logical at all).

Other lore touched upon (literally), is the Vulcan 'Mind Touch' as Sulu calls it - in other words, the Mind Meld, though this time it's the only one-fingered version ever performed since it's done by a giant clone of Spock who's finger is the size of normal Spock's head! I did say it was colourful, and alongside a verdant, multicoloured world full of interesting shapes and bizarre creatures (I wasn't so keen on the purple 'swoopers'), we also get clones who are giant-sized for no reason. I suppose it was to make them more threatening, and there's certainly an Apollo impression given (from 'Who Mourns For Adonais?'), with Caniclius even wearing the same skirt/robe bare-chested. He was clearly a mad scientist and I suppose this was a way to break out of the usual mould of crazy-haired, lab coat-wearing loons of old-time sci-fi.

A few things put it on the right track, partly the ensemble feel of the main crew, but also the use of Starfleet ingenuity when their weapons, both hand and ship Phasers, don't work (Kirk even orders a different use for the ship's Phasers when he goes for a wide area stun setting to disable a building on the planet's surface, something you don't hear often), McCoy coming up with an old gardening recipe for weed spray, which deals with the plant-based attackers. There's also the continuance of Vulcan values when Kirk reminds the giant Spock clone that his people don't condone the meaningless death of living beings - but you could see as soon as you realise there's another version of Spock being used that this was Caniclius' biggest mistake, since if you duplicate the body you're also duplicating the mind, a mind that is logical and can be appealed to (as Kirk did to Mirror Spock in the Mirror Universe), so he was always going to turn against a plot to create a master race that will spread peace through the galaxy through force.

A peace, it turns out, that is not required, at least in the Federation. While Caniclius talks of the 'depredations of the Romulans, the Klingons and… erm, that well-known race the 'Kzinti' (you've always got to have one new species when reeling off a list!), and mentions the Eugenics War and the 'Galactic War' (did he mean the Earth/Romulan War, or perhaps it was the previously unknown 'war' with the Klingons, as 'seen' (barely), in 'Discovery' Season 1?), he doesn't realise that for a large portion of space peace does reign thanks to the agreement between species that resulted in the Federation. Which is all very nice, even if his plan was a bit ridiculous. The one wrong note that sounds is Kirk saying there'd been peace in the Federation for over a hundred years. It's not that he's not right, because as we'd later find out (much later on 'TNG'), the Federation came into being in 2161, which is a bit over a hundred years before this episode, it's just the way he says it makes it sound like the Federation had had trouble internally before then, when he should have said it was created a hundred years ago. Maybe the 'TNG' writers got the rough date from working out the time from this episode?

It's fairly entertaining, pretty true to 'TOS,' and once again I find myself fair warming to this series because it has so much more of a Trek feel than that which has been produced in the last decade. It may be a little too silly in places (giants; mobile plants that look like Tribbles; action sequences with pterodactyl-type monsters), but it was fun and mostly made sense. And I always love the music!

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