A Piece of The Action (2)

DVD, Star Trek S2 (A Piece of The Action) (2)

Due to the comedic nature of this episode there isn't as much to dig into as there might be in the average example of 'TOS,' but it does have connections to other Trek that seem most pertinent to address considering even the most recent production history concerns this episode. I'm talking most specifically about the proposed fourteenth feature film, the follow-up to 'Star Trek Beyond,' which didn't exactly sink the film franchise, but didn't encourage Paramount to jump straight into the next instalment, something I've come to be quite pleased about since I'd rather they don't continue with the Kelvin Timeline knock-offs of the original characters, plus I don't want that portion of the series to equal or even surpass that of the 'TNG' foray, which was a four-film saga (which should have been five). It seems inevitable they will bring back that 'Kelvin' cast just because they're a known quantity, and one of the options that has been bandied about is for famed Director Quentin Tarantino to supply the idea: a revisit to the gangster planet of this very episode (not the first time the idea was floated - it was considered before 'The Trouble With Tribbles' became the 30th Anniversary episode to revisit on 'DS9'). I don't know if it was ever fully confirmed this is what he planned, and I don't really care, because the last thing I would want to see Trek lower itself to is the kind of gory, sweary style that mark this particular director's approach. Before the current crop of Trek 'TV' shows ('DSC' and 'Picard' so far for me), I couldn't have imagined Trek taking such a swerve away from the moral, thoughtful and edifying-for-all-the-family stories that had been its calling card, but now, having seen the disappearing of the utopian Federation world and the addition of the most base swearing and damaged people I can see Tarantino's vision only the next step on the path the makers of Trek have taken to fit it into the negative world we live in, far from the inspirational beacon it had been.

It's still up in the air whether the Tarantino idea will see the light of day, but I really hope not. Other offshoot connections of this episode into Trek are, happily, more enjoyable than the prospect of a violent remake: it's great fun seeing Quark in 'DS9' playing a form of this fictional game that was made up on the spur of the moment as a distraction before Kirk and his men overpowered their gangster captors. It shows it had become a real game, not hard to believe when the whole premise of the episode is how closely the Sigma Iotians imitated whatever outside influence came their way. If they could change their entire culture based on a book (written in 1992, twenty-four years after the episode was made - I wonder if anyone actually had a book published that year called 'Chicago Mobs of The Twenties'?), there's no reason the mob members Kirk scammed with his invented game wouldn't have regaled their fellows with the tale of how da big boss of da Feds taught them to play a real man's game and when questioned on the exact details probably had to come up with something that would actually work, modifying the rules to suit a genuine card game! When they joke at the end about McCoy (called 'Sawbones' by Kirk for once, confirming the implication 'Bones' is based on the old name for a surgeon and not Karl Urban's talking about his bones in 'Star Trek XI'), leaving his Communicator behind, just how the Horizon had caused contamination in the first place by abandoning books on the planet, you have to wonder whether this could lead to them advancing their technology to untold levels, and Kirk's unconcerned musing that perhaps they'll be coming out into space demanding a piece of the Federation's action could be a real threat…

Leaving aside the implications of that, the line about McCoy's Communicator actually came to pass, in a manner of speaking, becoming the inspiration for a whole episode of 'Enterprise' (despite being set a century before the events of this episode), with Malcolm Reed losing his Communicator down on a pre-warp planet and then Archer and his team returning to retrieve it. It wasn't one of the best episodes (within what was not one of the best seasons of not one of the best series', though I'd much rather watch it than most modern Trek episodes!), and it either shows the writers were at their wit's end by that time, unable to find sufficient new Trek stories to tell, or they were making a tribute to 'TOS,' depending on your perspective. Another reference is much more obscure, though from the same series (and the same season), when Travis Mayweather's family ship, the ECS Horizon, sharing its name with the vessel which visited Sigma Iotia II a few years later, features a book with a similar title ('Chicago Gangs'), sitting on a shelf. It wasn't the same book (and I think they should have made it that, even though it wouldn't have been the same ship), but it was a fun connection way back to the parent series. According to the 'Star Trek Encyclopedia,' the ever-useful tome(s) of Trek lore, there were two books on the shelf and only one of them got the title wrong, so maybe it was the same ship?

The strange thing is that 'Enterprise' was actually set in a close timeframe (the 2150s), to the historical events described in this episode, although there are some quite glaring inconsistencies which the later series chose to ignore, sadly. The obvious one is that Transporters were not in use at this time, which is implied by the fact that Kirk glosses over how they're going to arrive at Bela Oxmyx' designated location because he doesn't think the Boss will understand. We also see evidence of the Iotians being in wonder at the sight of this technology in action and best of all when Jojo Krako, or another, lesser Boss are transported, they're completely bewildered by the experience. This could be explained away as these people not being alive when the first starship visited (a reasonable assumption given that it occurred in 2168, a century earlier, and there's no indication they live longer than a human lifespan), and perhaps the stories of people beaming down were not widely told, or believed if they were. And although we saw Transporters used a bit on 'Enterprise' they weren't nearly as common as on other series' and were only officially rated for materials and produce rather than people, so the technology may not even have been employed when Horizon visited, preferring a shuttle landing or beam-in outside of visual contact.

That solves that issue, but then there's the problem with subspace radio as Kirk says it wasn't in use then, the reason the ordinary radio signal took so long to reach the Federation, who tasked the Enterprise with undoing the cultural damage. But we see subspace relays being seeded by the NX-01 over a decade before the Horizon's visit, as early as the first season of 'Enterprise,' which also goes against a reference in 'Voyager' that subspace radio wasn't invented until after 2210, which rather messes up the time period in a big way, unless we say that the NX-01's mission was never completed (perhaps due to the onset of the Earth/Romulan War), or that it took more than half a century to place enough relays to get a wide enough coverage for subspace messages to be viable. It's one of those times they dropped the ball and we have to bend over backwards to twist things into a solution that can explain such things, though if we were modern Trek we simply wouldn't care about such technical details! Oh to be so carefree and callous, free from the 'restrictions' of canon that bind Trek together. Yeah, no thanks.

A very minor, and technically non-canon connection is that the USS Horizon was a Daedalus-class ship (something sadly never seen in Trek, though postulated, unless you count the USS Pasteur of the alternate future in 'All Good Things…' though that was a tribute), information garnered from none other than Sisko's office aboard DS9 where he had a model of the Horizon in this class. I don't believe we ever saw it closely enough for the camera to establish its designation, sadly, as in the strict rules of canon law (and they must be strict!), only what is seen on screen (in live-action, so forget it 'TAS,' 'Lower Decks' and 'Prodigy,' sorry!), can be considered true. But I love that even the props were thought out and connections made, back when the production really cared about Trek's past and internal reality. One thing that did make sense, not undermined by 'Enterprise,' but supported by it, was that the Horizon's lack of care when dealing with an alien species came about because there was no non-interference directive at that time, commonly known as The Prime Directive. On 'Enterprise' Archer mentions that until some kind of 'directive' is introduced for them to follow they have to rely on their own judgement, so that backs up the lack of it in the following decade (and let's put it in context, the Federation had only existed for seven years in 2168, though the makers of 'TOS' hadn't tied any such chronology down at that time and had no idea their decisions would be gospel for a good half-century of TV and film!). How Krako knows about their laws of non-interference, is another matter, unless he picked it up from what Kirk said.

I've always liked the idea of the parallel planet development as a source of human-like eras that starships can visit - it's like time travel, but with a twist, and in this case it is that the residents of Sigma Iotia, while being inferior technologically, are cunning and understand the nature of the galaxy in terms of other worlds being out there (whom they'd no doubt love to subjugate for a piece of their action!), starships which can travel the void and people that will behave honourably, which they use to their advantage - in some ways they're like the Ferengi, always out to get an edge, an angle on everyone else, greed and power their motivations. When you think about it, that's what makes this episode less harmlessly humorous than it appears on the surface because what if McCoy's Communicator is successfully reverse-engineered? What if they are intelligent enough to apply the processes of the 'transtator' upon which all Starfleet technology is built (it's referenced in 'Enterprise' and the later time period of 'DS9' and 'Voyager,' showing how integral it is), and develop their technological understanding from this in a fraction of the time it would have taken a normally developing world? Kirk's flippancy on the subject at the end, as much as the intention was to provide light relief and close out the episode in a funny way, could be quite sinister when you think about it: it would be interesting to visit this planet again in, say another hundred years to see what space seed had sprung up… except that they might be venturing out in their own starships and coming to get that piece of the action much sooner!

We hadn't had many parallel planet stories this season, only 'Bread and Circuses' would fit into that category, but we'd be seeing more to come before the season ended, perhaps they were running out of ideas or the strain of producing so many episodes meant they needed to think of stories fast, since I don't remember 'the Nazi one' or 'the American Civil War one' being particularly strong, more an excuse to use existing costumes and props. This one is like that, too, but because this is so much fun you don't mind - we see Kirk being Jason Bourne and extricating himself out of a situation using only what he finds around him (stringing a tripwire in front of the door of the room he's being held in, then putting the bag on, sorry, a blanket over, his captor's heads when they rush in - though when he tried to make a lot of noise the bin he threw to the ground didn't sound very loud!), and violence. It is actually quite a violent episode with Kirk punching people out several times and I counted a good four Vulcan Neck Pinches from Spock. The city streets full of hurrying pedestrians and motor vehicles made it seem like they'd gone back to 'The City On The Edge of Forever' and perhaps there was a chance to recall that terrible day when Kirk had to allow Edith Keeler to be run down in the street to protect the future, except that it wouldn't have fitted the tone of the episode and they might not have wanted to remind the audience of 1) a superior episode (as much as I like this one), and 2) probably the same backlot they filmed in!

You wouldn't have thought Kirk would be interested in owning a car (is this where the misjudged excuse for an action scene in 'Star Trek XI' originated, where tiny tearaway Kirk drives his Uncle's prize antique into a canyon?), but he does want one after his driving experiences here (which recall the comedy of 'Star Trek IV' for Kirk and Spock's interplay, which runs through the episode, Spock not keeping up very well with the improvisation and not enjoying Kirk's relishing it), something we now associate more with Captain Picard (thanks to 'Nemesis' and another ill-judged excuse for an action scene!). The props themselves get a lot of play, even if when the main three pick them up at the Transporter console before beaming down, they can't help but clatter them together, sounding like the wooden blocks that they in fact are! Whoops. Spock gets to play with a 1930s-style radio again (another throwback to 'City On The Edge' - I was half expecting him to make the comment about stone knives and bearskins), and I'm sure that was James Doohan's voice doing the advertisement he and McCoy hear. Doohan gets to play Scotty in command again, this time sitting firmly in the Captain's Chair, though it makes a change for him not to get the gist of someone else's words when I'm sure his own accent has been mentioned before - Kirk speaks in Chicago Mob talk, throwing himself into the part (all this talk of 'pally,' especially from Bela's Lieutenant, made me think of Vic Fontaine, another character not of 'this' time who knows how things stand about the facts of the universe). Scotty actually calls Lieutenant Hadley by name for once, which was good to hear as he's one of those non-speaking characters that appears so much.

We get a sign of the way Starfleet chooses to operate now, as opposed to the more free days of the Horizon's time, assisted, no doubt, by Mr. Spock's Vulcan tendencies towards caution as opposed to Kirk's more bombastic approach - he decides not to use the force at his command to recover the Captain, in the interests of avoiding contaminating the culture further which a show of squads of Redshirts packing hand Phasers beaming down in the street might have had, instead agreeing to work with Oxmyx as their contact on the planet (he tells Uhura to put the Boss on audio - does that mean they could have got a visual connection even though he had no camera down there?), though it also shows their naivety in being duped by Bela who has no intention of honouring the truce. But the Iotians are equally as capable of being tricked as Kirk shows when he requests his Communicator so he can say goodbye to his ship and instead orders Scotty to stun an entire block of the street outside as a show of force in case the Iotians still don't get that they're ants dealing with an elephant here. That was great to see as it's so rare for ship's Phasers to be used with such specific accuracy or to blanket an area. This is the kind of thing that impresses the power-hungry Iotians (where even the women carry guns as standard and the children play with knives - that wouldn't be allowed in a TV show aimed at a family audience today, I'm sure, while other things that audiences then would have found abhorrent are allowed now, which shows how fickle the morals of society are). It can't be that lawless a place since we see Kirk's car, complete with tommy guns is right where they left it when returning from Krako's - perhaps cars and guns are ten a penny and not worth stealing?

The surprising thing is that Spock agrees with Oxmyx's (or should it be 'Okmyx' - either Krako can't spell or he deliberately got his knife-throwing target poster printed wrong as a sign of no respect for his enemy), view on the situation, that someone needs to take control to form a single governing entity because otherwise there'll be anarchy and the civilisation won't develop (but not his methods). Instead of condemning the planet and its people, lost in their violent ways, Kirk uses those ways to direct them into a more profitable path, bringing all the Bosses into a syndicate, warning that a starship from the Federation will arrive annually for its forty percent cut, though he later admits to his men that they can put it in the 'planetary treasury' and use it to guide the Iotians toward a better system of society over time, so there is the implication that Starfleet won't just move on from this planet and leave them to work it out for themselves - they may be a pre-warp culture, but they've already been contaminated and some gentle prodding towards a better society seems to be the best way forward. It shows again that Starfleet still uses money (though how they'd convert the currency of an inferior planet into any use outside of it, I don't know), in case the various references to it this season weren't enough. I almost bought a twin pack of Kirk and Spock action figures in their gangster guise, released by Playmates as part of their famous range in the Nineties, but it cost too much, pally.

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