Assignment: Earth (2)

DVD, Star Trek S2 (Assignment: Earth) (2)

Out of the blue the good ship Enterprise has decided it's necessary to perform the 'light-speed breakaway factor,' as Kirk calls it in his log, and head back in time to the year nineteen hundred and sixty-eight. Why? Because of it being some kind of important time for humanity, things might have gone wrong so they want to have a look-see. Never mind about the dangers associated with time travel itself, or with messing up the timeline, or not being able to get back - no, it's just pop back for a view of history. It makes the Temporal Investigations Department look entirely necessary and the idea that time travel wasn't used on a regular basis until the 26th Century is flown in the face of (not that they knew that when making 'TOS'). It makes sense that time travel was going to be regulated much more severely if starships were taking it on themselves to do such things in the 23rd Century, and it's just the sort of wacky, silly idea of Trek that the modern versions take as their inspiration after years of much more sophisticated and sensible approaches had made the history of the future more believable. But I ask again, why go back to 1968? The real reason was production related. I'm not referring to the fact that going around 20th Century rocket bases and swish Sixties apartments, plus the use of significant minutes of NASA stock footage, was likely a big budget saver and they were right at the end of a long season, no, I'm talking about killing two birds with one stone.

They were concluding Season 2 of 'TOS,' but were also hoping to create a spinoff of sorts for the new characters of Gary Seven, his ditzy secretary, Roberta Lincoln and the mysterious black cat woman, Isis. I don't know whether this was purely Gene Roddenberry's idea as he may have felt Trek was naturally winding down, or if he merely wanted to expand his eggs to an additional basket, and seeing the success of 'Mission: Impossible' (and perhaps the James Bond films, too), wanted a piece of that contemporary-set spy-fi pie (and that series did, unaccountably, outlast 'TOS' by more than double its length, seven seasons!). The Cold War era was certainly breeding plenty of spy series' in both the US and UK ('The Champions' is what came to mind). It may have been a suggestion by the studio that they wanted something new? Whatever the motivation, however, it wasn't the best use of Trek's time to try and set up what would have been a very loosely connected spinoff. Not to say it doesn't have intrigue about it, Robert Lansing is charismatic as this brooding presence, matter of fact, yet full of surprises, what with his intelligent cat and his super-gadgets, as well as a computer with attitude. He's certainly a unique fellow, almost Vulcan in his reserve and quick-wittedness and I can imagine him being a likeable lead. Not so sure about Teri Garr, whose young woman, though full of non-nonsense and initiative, is also more of a comedy character than someone you could take seriously. Isis the cat was the best role in the episode, very impressed with her (even the Transporter Room door opens only wide enough to allow her through)!

I don't think I've ever really warmed to this episode. Coming as it does, right at the end of a season there's somehow more expectation, for no other reason than Season 1 had such a powerful couple of episodes to end with, and generally, the later Treks tended to bow out on a high with some big cliffhanger or some exciting conclusion, so I may have been conditioned to expect that. But primarily the problem is that our regulars are defanged, have very little agency in the story, and are shown to be in the wrong in their attempts to prevent Seven from carrying out whatever mission he's trying to accomplish. The supporting cast, and even Dr. McCoy, who don't forget was bumped up to the main titles this season, are largely ignored - it's nice that they all appear, Uhura, Chekov, Sulu and Scotty. No Chapel, sadly, and Majel Barrett didn't even get to do the voice of the Beta 5 computer - it was Barbara Babcock, uncredited, also as the voice of Isis, who had various roles on 'TOS' before and after this, as did Paul Baxley in his last role here as the Security Chief, and Bruce Mars, too, who'd memorably been Finnegan in 'Shore Leave,' this time a mere policeman. The supporting cast have a few short scenes from their stations on the Bridge or in Scotty's case, the Transporter Room (which features both a Science Viewer as we've seen before, and now a Viewscreen, too, purely for the purposes of Scott scouring the NASA rocket for signs of Seven's presence!). I really want an episode that ends a season on a high and features all the cast - whenever guests are given the main focus it tends to be less enjoyable.

Even Kirk and Spock are relatively muted, and right from the moment Seven takes on everyone in the Transporter Room to try and escape, somehow able to resist a Vulcan Nerve Pinch and throwing off the superior Vulcan strength of the First Officer as easily as the humans there, we see this guy is more powerful than any of them. We find out that he's not some superman like Khan, he's actually an agent of some aliens that have chosen him and others from the 20th Century to be some kind of guardians of their planet and deal with things that are likely to upset the balance. That's the impression I get, anyway. He's been conditioned, presumably altered (it takes a Phaser Kirk appears to use on wide beam to stun him, plus he can overload the forcefield at the door of the Brig), and given a host of tech toys to achieve his benevolent objectives, but he is still a human from that century - he has knowledge of other races, he recognises Vulcans and knows from this that humans and Vulcans on a ship together means they're from the future, so he's well up on galactic events (though perhaps not in detail as he mentions the nuclear rocket must be stopped to prevent World War III, which would eventually happen around a century later), but his focus is on the here and now, and his calm acceptance of all these facts makes him seem cooler than Spock himself. And that's a problem since it does take away from Spock.

Even the setting isn't that new and different, though it is one of the first times Trek visited the era in which it was made, with various series' and films doing the same over the years ('Enterprise' visited the 21st Century, 'DS9' the 20th, 'Voyager' went to the very year they were in production in 1996, and 'Star Trek IV' was all about a trip to 1986, the year the film came out), because they'd already done the same thing in Season 1's 'Tomorrow Is Yesterday' (although that was actually after this, 1969, so they should know already that everything turned out fine!). They even pull the same trick of beaming up police when threatened by them. One scene that was reused for 'Star Trek IV' is when they're captured by the authorities and held for questioning with their Phasers and Communicator before them, so you can see the episode's influence on other Trek, it's just that as a whole it all seems rather inconsequential and clumsy. Perhaps if it had begun a successful spinoff as was planned, we might be looking back on it with more fondness - I can't imagine there would have been much connection with the wider Trek universe had it gone to series, since Seven is so squarely positioned in this precise time and on this exact planet, but if it had lasted a while they might have found ways to bring in familiar Trek races or characters with time travel always a possibility. I don't think I would want it to have existed, and it doesn't bother me that it didn't come to anything, my concern is only that it didn't make for the best Trek story.

One possibility, through retconning, obviously, as 'Enterprise' was over thirty years in the future when this was made, could be that Seven was part of the Temporal Cold War and that he was being used to fend off a front that had opened in this delicate era of human technological development. Now that does tally with Trek and makes for juicy speculation, so much that I wish 'Enterprise' had dealt with it, maybe even brought back the character, and preferably the actor (if Lansing was still acting then). Maybe the mythical Season 5, the panacea for all woes since it can be as amazing as our imaginations allow, would have held just such an episode? Lansing himself is clearly being treated well as we can see from the amount of the screen time he's afforded, as well as a rare post-titles credit, which never happens! His technology is little more than gimmickry, what with a little handheld device that can give people a ray of happy pill sleepiness, unlocks doors and does just about everything. A voice recognition typewriter, the Beta 5 computer (built to the same sort of specifications as Dr. Daystrom's own from 'The Ultimate Computer' as we see from the same outputs, though arranged differently), which also has a portable module in the shape of a glowing green cube, which you can imagine Roberta taking with her and arguing with at inopportune moments in the series. And not forgetting a vault that has some kind of advanced Transporter within it, in the form of a blue cloud… He even has a kind of Replicator as part of the computer which creates fake CIA and NSA documents and ID.

It's not just Gary Seven (which we also learn is a codename, adding more mystery to his identity), who has advanced technology - the Enterprise herself is somehow able to avoid visual detection by using its deflector shields, which I don't think quite tallies up with what we've seen before or after. Sure, shields would make it impossible for scans to penetrate, but they should still be visible to satellites and the naked eye, it's not a cloaking device, after all! Perhaps it's just sleight of hand, much like Mr. Leslie showing up in four different roles in the episode, adding credence to the idea there's a whole family of Leslie brothers serving together! How else could we explain him showing up on the Bridge in red, in a corridor in gold, wearing a technician's outfit in Engineering, and then appearing later as a Security Guard? Unless he's actually not human and never needs any rest so they get him to pull different shifts for different roles. Or he's a clone. Or the production just wasn't that bothered about keeping track of what the extras were doing… I like it, it means that when he was killed off in 'Obsession,' as sad as it was, he had at least four brothers to carry on the family name aboard the Enterprise! Someone else that has more than one role is James Doohan, lending his voice to NASA control, giving out information like 'intruder alert,' that sort of thing, as well as being Scotty, who mainly stays in the Transporter Room - it's odd that he and Spock are both in there when they intercept Seven's beam, but they were clearly not wasting any time whatsoever in getting to the story, we're already back in time when the episode begins, probably so Seven had more exposure.

We began the season with a woman who also takes the form of a black cat, and we come full circle here as Isis is revealed to have a female form (was Catwoman from the Sixties TV series of 'Batman' in their minds?), no doubt to give Roberta Lincoln pangs of jealousy over Seven, as well as arguing with the computer. If only the season had come full circle in better ways, though, as it did somewhat peter out when (aside from the first episode), it had a generally strong opening that cemented the main trio often, but also explored the other characters, too. All that is lost in this episode, I don't even remember seeing Kirk, Spock and McCoy together and in an episode when we really could have done with a scene on the Bridge where they all laugh off this latest escapade and set course for new adventures, to nicely round things out, we don't get one! Kirk sparkles as he tells Seven and Lincoln they're going to have all kinds of adventures, which he can't tell them about (how would he know when he didn't even know who Gary Seven was at the start of the episode?), then leaves them to it - it's odd that they don't mind letting Roberta in on the knowledge they're from the future and Spock's an alien, but I suppose if she was going to be any use to Seven she had to know all. Interesting that they believe what happened was what was supposed to happen, which I think is known as a temporal causality loop.

Everything works out right in the end, except there are things which are hard to accept, granted they're only small, but would Spock really advise Kirk he must trust his intuition on whether to allow Gary Seven to carry out his mission? It could be seen as some kind of development for Spock, except I'm sure it was all forgotten in the gap between seasons - if McCoy had been there he'd have given Spock a hard time, and that's really what the jokey ending should have been, discussing Spock's reasoning, to which he would undoubtedly reply that when all logical courses have been removed what remains must be a leap of illogic. Something along those lines, anyway. The other thing that didn't make sense was Lincoln whacking Seven on the back of the head with a small metal box and him collapsing to the floor, stunned, if not unconscious - earlier in the episode we saw him take on Redshirts, Kirk and Spock, and here all it takes is a little lady with a small box! Perhaps she hit him right on his Achilles heel, the one spot where he's vulnerable to attack (a stretch, admittedly!). And while I might have complained about the stock footage, I actually found it quite fascinating, the sheer awesome power of the boosters somehow putting Trek's depiction of powerful starships to shame. It may have been some of the footage from this rocket that was actually used in the 'Enterprise' opening titles, too, which is a fun connection, although I'm sure one launch is much the same as another.

I can't say I didn't like this episode, it's just, as I mentioned above, the things about it that mean I don't like it as much, and wish it had been a traditional Trek story rather than having ulterior motives. It has been enjoyable to go back over Season 2, there have been some episodes I liked slightly less, and others slightly more, but the general feeling is that it was a success. My personal favourite is Season 3, perhaps because it had less coverage, is talked about less, and often in a negative way, but none of the three seasons of 'TOS' are bad, they all have a high proportion of good episodes and memorable moments. It's amazing that the Trek name goes on even to this day and is a tribute to both what they set up in this original series, and what they were able to do in later films and TV. Especially in this time when Trek seems to have been hijacked by those who appear to have specific agendas to dumb down and appeal more widely, it's reassuring to go back and see the relative sophistication of the world that was created, one that feels so much more contained and realistic than the fantasy perpetrated so much today. Of course, this episode isn't the best example with which to counter that style, since they use time travel so coolly and without fanfare as if it's an everyday occurrence, but that may be one more reason I'm not entirely sold on this particular story. On the whole it's been satisfying to get a good, strong dose of proper Trek in my viewing diet. I don't know if I'll review Season 3 since I was starting to write more detailed reviews by the time I got there originally, whereas the first two seasons either weren't reviewed or were very basic appraisals, but maybe, one day.

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