I'm going to start this one off with a relevant joke, because I keep noticing this and I find it funny and you all probably don't get it. There's a ship captain, and whenever an enemy vessel is sighted coming towards his ship, he always orders the first mate to bring him his red shirt. Every battle, as soon as the enemy appears, it's "bring my red shirt." One day the first mate asks him why, and the captain explains that it's important for morale, order, decorum, what have you that the crew not see him injured in the course of battle, as it would be a distraction from their duties, so he wears a red shirt to hide the blood.
One day they sight ten enemy vessels, and the captain asks for his brown pants.
Anyway, the point of the joke is that at our gaming table, we had a catch-all term for the NPCs and whatnot whose job was to show up and die as a measure of the stakes, a depiction of power, consequences, what have you. No hit points, no attack rolls, they'd just automatically go splat in the face of whatever peril was on the menu for the day. Since we never "saw the blood," so to speak, we started calling them "red shirts." The reason I'm finding this funny is because Star Trek is doing the very same thing, only the red-shirted personnel seem to be the ones immune to it. On Star Trek, it's the blue uniforms who are most likely to be killed bloodlessly for narrative convenience, then the yellow ones. I think only one red has died so far that I've seen, and it was the gent who was going to be married before the fight with the Romulans. I have to wonder why they didn't go with killing all the red-uniform personnel, since when something gigantic throws a spear into you I would expect a lot of blood, rather than THUNK dead. Shows what I know, though.
So Star Trek has their own record of NPCs getting thugged for the hell of it, a narrative convenience that the characters don't ever address again. I think Kirk lost, what, four men to this endeavor? And at the end they're still just making jokes about Mr. Spock's emotional state. Given Bowman's reactions to Spock, though, I'm inclined to feel like it's something the captain will deal with personally, and give them a pass on it.
This was an episode focused almost entirely on Mr. Spock and how he, as a part-alien, relates to the human crew. I still don't really understand why he's on an Earth ship to begin with except that he's part-human, so perhaps as a diplomatic gesture? Not to say that he doesn't deserve a spot on the crew - although the episode clearly demonstrates that he's not cut out for a solo command over humans. Even with Dr. McCoy there to counsel him, Mr. Spock is completely wooden. The id cannot help the superego without the mediating presence of the ego. I thought the episode would examine Captain Kirk bereft of his two advisors and friends, but the presence of High Commissioner Rectumface put a stop to that. Speaking of whom, how come he didn't show up to be a rectum again when they went back to transport out the missing crew?
Mr. Spock. So very fond of his logic, but he really does have an emotional core, doesn't he? It fascinates me that others are aware of it and yet he so highly values not using or even exposing it. I liked that the episode used Bowman as a sort of secondary McCoy, another emotional character who wore the angry, negative reaction to the logical Mr. Spock as opposed to McCoy, who has obviously known him far longer and attempts to honestly advise him on how to deal with humans, to say nothing of the idea that one should not expect logic from all other beings. It's that expectation that fails Mr. Spock, and shows why he's not cut out for command. Nonetheless, he proves himself capable of making an emotional decision, much as he denies it afterward, which saves the day. I love character development. It's cool to see McCoy interact with Mr. Spock without any Captain to filter them, and I like that they're friends of a sort as well.
On the second string front, Sulu and Uhura get nothing much to do this episode, Janice wasn't anywhere at all (or did I miss her?) and Scott gets to be part of the action. Mr. Scott might well be a sort of... I don't know, antipode to Captain Kirk? in the psych triangle. He's a machines guy who's also human and emotional; his work is all about logic, but he approaches it from an almost non-quantitative basis. He remains hard at work even when Mr. Spock makes a really cold call about Latimer's last rites, no comment on the matter, but is quick to call out Mr. Spock when logic doesn't work and he resorts to illogical decisions. I'll have to get more of Scott to decide.
All in all, a wonderful episode for exploring the character of Mr. Spock. Can I get one for Bones now, please? :D
I think your group probably did get the term "red shirt" from this show, even if somewhat indirectly. as it goes on I think it starts to skew towards them.
ReplyDeleteThe Enterprise isn't an Earth ship, exactly, they work for the Federation, an alliance of many planets, of which Earth and Vulcan are two of the founders and most prominent members. This is all sort of nebulous at the moment because they hadn't quite hashed out the wider universe yet, but as time goes on it'll be fleshed out a little more so once in a while you get a reference to something like the "United Earth Space Probe Agency" or some such thing. Most people in Starfleet are humans because humans have a greater cultural interest in exploration and discovery (and because it's cheaper than having to put everyone in alien makeup.)
This is around the time that Janice's actress got fed up and left the show, so that's why you haven't seen as much of her lately, I think.
That's really insightful about Scotty, I never thought of him that way.
Spock = brain, McCoy = heart, Scotty = hands? I like it. Scotty never becomes as pivotal a character as the other two though.
DeleteAccording to Wikipedia, Grace Lee Whitney (Janice Rand) was fired from the show because they did not want her character to become a long-term love interest for Kirk and they already had another blonde (Nurse Chapel) played by Roddenberry's fiance.
DeleteOn the other hand, it sounded like she did not have a particularly good experience while on the show (amphetamine use due to pressure to stay thin, an alleged sexual assault by a producer, the politics leading to her firing, etc).
She does make appearances in several of the movies, but I think the only one where she is identified by name is the first one when she is the tranporter chief.
Philip
It's harder to pinpoint a "McCoy episode" than it is for most of the cast. "Friday's Child" and "For the World is Hollow and I have Touched the Sky" probably aren't on your watchlist already, but they both give McCoy more to do. "The Tholian Web" explores Spock and McCoy's relationship like this episode does, and should probably be on your list already.
ReplyDeleteOh, "Shore Leave," which you've already passed, has a McCoy subplot.
DeleteThe notion of "redshirts" being disposable characters who die in order to raise the stakes of a situation definitely originated from Star Trek. Think about every mission where the three main characters would beam down along with "Ensign Smith" who was just so happy to be finally out in the field, before being eaten by a crystal plant alien or something. It's a very pervasive pop culture concept, so odds are your tabletop companions were aware of that, even if you weren't.
ReplyDeleteAlso, your joke was made on a recent Game of Thrones episode, which is why it has resurfaced on the net recently.
ReplyDeleteDon't know if you're a reader, but if so, try "Red Shirts" by John Scalzi.
ReplyDeleteIt might be better to wait until finishing TOS to read Redshirts.
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