The Counter-Clock Incident

DVD, Star Trek: The Animated Series (The Counter-Clock Incident)

I'm so pleased the series ended on a good note and had a fitting end for the last ever episode to star the 'TOS' cast. They didn't know they'd be back for six films to come (more in some cases), so this was the second ending of Trek, though one that never really began, in the sense that it was all animation and the cast recorded their lines separately. But I'm glad it exists if only to show what Trek might have been like in the Seventies, the lost decade before the slow, gradual, but epic revival into a vast empire of stories, characters, and of course, the money-making merchandise, that Trek would encompass. I only have a couple of problems with this episode: that we got so little time to see the cute li'l child versions of the characters, and the tragic underuse of Dr. McCoy. Other than that the whole cast were well used, with James Doohan and Nichelle Nichols especially fortunate to get so much to do, both as their main characters and voicing all the guests. McCoy's lack of presence was a big disappointment, you could almost believe he wasn't in it at all except he gets a scene at the beginning walking onto the Bridge praising Mrs. April's pioneering work in developing medical equipment, and he's seen in a shot of the whole Bridge, but otherwise he remains silent.

By the end I expect he was relieved he had travelled by Transporter on occasion (often he was against it), as otherwise he'd never have been able to be reverted back to his normal age! That's the thing, though, McCoy's position is taken over by the husband and wife duo of Commodore Robert April and Sarah, and with so little time in an animated episode's running they didn't have room for our Doctor, sadly. It's a big shame, because, as Spock says about himself ageing slower as a Vulcan, so he's going to be the one to take command, McCoy was older, so he'd also have been in a suitable position to retain knowledge and adult ability for longer, but he wasn't used. I take issue with Spock's assertion because although, yes, Vulcan's do age at a slower rate in the sense that their lifespans are a good double portion to that of a human's, he himself is only supposed to be about the same age as Kirk, early thirties, so theoretically, if they're ageing backwards then he only has the same amount of time as them - if he'd been of much greater age I could agree, but there's always handy 'mysterious Vulcan physiology' to consider, so I didn't mind.

The joy of the episode is in seeing the 'first' Captain of the starship Enterprise (though now we'd say the first of the Federation Enterprises, not forgetting Jonathan Archer who commanded the Enterprise NX-01 before the Federation came into being), Robert April, a historical note that had long been thought of, but until this point had never been mentioned, let alone seen, on screen! In fact, he wouldn't be officially added into canon for a further four decades, when the 'DSC' episode 'Choose Your Pain' gave us a list of the best Captains in Starfleet history to that point, and April was there for all to see, alongside Matthew Decker, Jonathan Archer, Phillippa Georgiou and Christopher Pike, the last of which was much more famous as the 'first' Captain of the Enterprise. Robert April was actually a name that had been considered for the Captain when Roddenberry was making a list of potential names, so it didn't come out of nowhere and has the ring of historical truth to it which adds so much to the reality of Trek history, both in-universe and out of it.

Talking of in and out of universes, not content with introducing the original Captain, we also get a parallel universe story where our ship is unavoidably pulled into a reverse universe, an antimatter universe, a negative universe, to put it in the three different ways it was described. Long before 'Tenet' gave us physical travelling through time (as opposed to leaping to moments in history or future), 'TAS' did the same sort of thing. Sort of. And long before 'Voyager' gave us 'Innocence,' an episode in which they discover a race that ages backwards from adult to child. And long before 'TNG' gave us 'Rascals' in which we saw existing characters revert to childhood… Yes, 'TAS' gave us them all, and while those later episodes go into more detail and explore the concepts a little more fully, they were great additions to an already packed episode here. I already knew a little about the episode, that April was in it and that the crew were turned into children, so I did wish we could have had more of that, but it was just great fun to see them shrink and begin to lose their understanding of the controls - Arex was the funniest, a shame we didn't get M'Ress in this last episode, but you can't have everything - would have been nice to feature the voice of Majel Barrett, though, whether the Caitian or Nurse Chapel, but both Chapel and Barrett would have plenty to do in future.

On top of the obvious pleasure of adding April and his wife into the series, there are some fun references, such as their destination being Babel at the start of the episode, a location also headed for in 'TOS' ('Journey To Babel'), and 'Enterprise' ('Babel One'). We get another mention of Capella IV (as we did in the previous episode), which is where Sarah's flower comes from, there's a good view of the Engine Room, and there's talk that the mystery ship which flies past was going at Warp 36! This is all in the old warp scale, which later Trek altered to a maximum of 10, but in 'TOS' I think they may have gone as fast as Warp 14 on one occasion. In this they go up to Warp 11, then all the way up to 20, but that's because they're being pulled along by their own Tractor Beam held on the other ship as it heads for apparent destruction. Kirk gets close to panicky - maybe it was the thought of not just losing his ship and four hundred and thirty crew-members, but also losing a revered dignitary and his wife, and not only that, but a former Captain of his vessel, all in one go! Ambassador April even wears the great dress uniform Kirk wore in 'TOS,' though in one scene I did wonder if he was afflicted in some way, much as Pike had to move around in a special wheelchair - April had no legs in one scene where he's standing next to Kirk's Captain's Chair, you just see his upper body above it, but nothing below, so I wondered if he was hovering in something, like Rygel in 'Farscape,' but it was just a visual error. Funny, though!

What is much more serious about the episode is Ambassador April's situation: he's sad that he's going to a retirement do. He's reached Starfleet's mandatory retirement age of seventy-five, but he'd rather remain active. In later Trek there's the impression humans live much longer than they do now (or when the episode was made), so that retirement age doesn't sound quite as dramatic as it would have done. I think the retirement age would have been sixty-five then, though now people are living longer it's creeping up. The important message of the episode isn't so much that old people can still contribute to society if they want to, but that April has the chance to live life over again by the de-ageing effect of the other universe, and though he feels the vigour of youth back in his bones, and the thrill of taking command of the Enterprise, he's satisfied with his life and doesn't want to live it again. The closest parallel I can think of is in the 'TNG' episode 'Too Short A Season,' a story I've always liked a lot, in which an Ambassador takes a drug to recover his youth, while his wife remains an old woman. It makes you think there could be some great stories to tell which explored such things - what if Sarah decided she did want her youth back, for example. I like that they're satisfied with the life they've had (they even share a kiss, something I don't think Kirk ever did in 'TAS,' despite being a trope of 'TOS'), although I did wonder if they were heading towards some message of euthanasia, the evil practice of ending someone's life rather than waiting until natural death, but they never skirted that controversy.

The idea of the Transporter keeping a person's pattern is a sketchy one. There are all kinds of ethical issues around it, plus there's the impression that it could give eternal life, or eternal youth, but fortunately it's all left vague so we don't know exactly what was done or the requirements to be able to do it. 'Picard' has already set up issues difficult to get past for subsequent Trek in that area and the makers were usually very good at going well into detail on the universe in general, while keeping certain things vague and mysterious in order to preserve some kind of identifiable reality rather than going off into fantasy, which sadly seems to be the way of Trek these days. 'TAS' was an antidote to modern Trek for me, a reminder of the days when Starfleet structure, story structure, societal structure, were all set, instead of being bent and even broken by modern writers intent more on a kind of fantastical teen soap style that has lost most of what Trek meant. 'TAS' wasn't perfect, many of the episodes aren't even that good in themselves, but they do stand for the original way Trek represented, and that no doubt many younger viewers would consider 'old-fashioned' and irrelevant. For me it was like breathing air compared to the stuffy room of the current generation and I've enjoyed going through it and getting to see all the episodes when I'd only seen certain ones before.

James Doohan, the stalwart voice artist that gave us Scotty, as well as so many other characters across 'TAS,' goes out on a high with two guest roles: Robert April and Carl 4, the elderly son of the woman flying the mysterious ship, Carla 5 (while her Father is shown to be a toddler in a crib!). Nichelle Nichols also gets to play two other roles than Uhura, portraying Sarah April and Carla 5. There did seem to be a mistake in the dialogue when they're talking about Carla 5 not being understandable (she's speaking backwards). For one thing wouldn't the Universal Translator automatically be used at all times when a message comes through? And worse, it sounded like Kirk says the UT can tell them what 'he's' speaking, when it was clearly a woman, Uhura even confirming that in the reply she gives! And lastly, we also hear that components of the Enterprise were built in the San Francisco Navy Yards since April witnessed it, so perhaps the 'Star Trek XI' tomfoolery of building the Kelvin Timeline version of the ship on Earth wasn't so ridiculous? No, it was still ridiculous, and in this case it's said 'components' were built, so I can imagine parts being flown up to put it all together above Earth in Spacedock, as we saw in 'TMP.' Either way, 'TAS' will forever remain non-canon, but when they do elevate certain aspects of it into canon by a reference in a live-action series, it's always pleasing and a tribute to some of what they created here.

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