Star Trek – A Piece Of The Action

★★★★ January 12, 1968 Season 2 Episode 17

If you want to see where we are…and you missed a few…HERE is a list of the episodes in my index located at the top of my blog. 

This show was written by Gene Roddenberry, David P. Harmon, and Gene L. Coon

This is more of a comedy episode but I love the plot. It’s almost as if they made a parody of Star Trek…but it works and works well. I’ve given it 4 stars…not because of the sci-fi plot…but because it’s very entertaining. You just have to watch it with that in mind. 

A society of people who imitate whatever they are exposed to. Someone on a ship 100 years before left a book about Chicago mobsters of the 1920s. When the Enterprise arrived.. that is what they found. A society of mobsters and submachine guns of the twenties and thirties. 

This is one of those episodes which could quite easily have turned out to be an embarrassing disaster but instead, it is an amusing triumph. Seeing Kirk talking like a cliché gangster was priceless as was the reaction of a rather confused Scotty as he tried to understand him.

William Shatner was clearly enjoying himself in these scenes. Guest stars Anthony Caruso and Vic Tayback do fine jobs as the rival bosses, the delightfully named Bela Oxmyx and Jojo Krako, taking the roles just seriously enough to make this episode as good as it is. There are plenty of hilarious moments such as Kirk inventing the convoluted card game ‘fizzbin’ and later demonstrating that the ability to captain a starship doesn’t qualify him to drive a car. Overall this is a great comedy episode…definitely a lot of fun to watch.

It’s also funny watching Spock try to act/talk like the mobsters. Scotty pretty much didn’t try. My favorite scene is when, like I mentioned before, Kirk is driving a car with Spock as an unwilling passenger. They jerk, stop, and weave down the road. This conversation starts the second time Kirk asks Spock to ride with him. 

Spock: [balking at the prospect of another ride in a car with Kirk at the wheel] Captain, must we?

Kirk: It’s faster than walking.

Spock: But not as safe.

Kirk: Are you afraid of cars?

Spock: Not at all, Captain. It’s your DRIVING that alarms me.

And

Spock: Captain… you are an excellent starship commander. But as a taxi driver, you leave much to be desired.

Kirk: It was that bad?

From IMDB:

This is the only time in TOS in which the Enterprise’s phasers are used to stun, and not to kill, destroy or damage. It is also the only time the Enterprise’s phasers are used for a wide proximity shot, as in this case when they are set to blanket a one city block area around a central point in order to stun a dispersed group of people.

After filming wrapped, the studio received a letter from Anthony Caruso, who played Bela Oxmyx. It was a letter from “Oxmyx” thanking the crew of the Enterprise for creating the “syndicate” and things were proceeding nicely on Sigma Iotia II. As he goes on in the letter, it is now the 1950s and he is sporting a crew-cut. He also mentioned wanting to visit Las Vegas, remarking “It seems like my kind of town”.

James Doohan provided the voice of the radio announcer.

Marvel Comics published a sequel story to this as part of their ‘Star Trek: Unlimited series’. The story, “A Piece of the Reaction”, featured the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise-E (from Star Trek: First Contact (1996)) returning to the planet to discover that its society had gone on to model itself after 23rd Century Starfleet, thanks to the communicator that McCoy left behind. The planet is now led by the tough kid Kirk and Spock met in the street, who wishes to hijack the Enterprise-E and finally gain command of a starship, just like his idol, James T. Kirk.

The car that Kirk drove to “put the bag on Krako” had a V-12 engine, as a V-12 emblem is seen on the radiator. It was a Cadillac, probably a 1931 model. Note the winged radiator cap, which Cadillacs of that vintage had. It is a nod to Chicago crime boss, Al Capone, who had a 1928 V-12 Cadillac. It also represents the only time that a member of the Enterprise crew is seen operating any kind of land vehicle within the original series.

Kirk makes up the rules of the card game “fizz bin” as he goes along. William Shatner ad-libbed the rules, so his pauses to think and the other actors’ confusion are all genuine. In Diane Duane’s novel “The Empty Chair”, McCoy invents a new version, Tournament Fizzbin, with the help of Kirk, Sulu, Scotty, and a great deal of Romulan ale.

In Star Trek: Enterprise: Horizon (2003), a hard-bound copy of a book beginning with the title ‘Chicago Gangs’ can be briefly glimpsed on a bookshelf in Travis Mayweather’s quarters on board the ECS Horizon, suggesting that Mayweather had some connection to the group which contaminated Iotian culture.

Gene Roddenberry, in his original 1964 Star Trek pitch, included a one-sentence idea for an episode titled “President Capone,” in which the Enterprise crew land on a planet which is a parallel version of 1920s Chicago where Al Capone is president. George Clayton Johnson later developed the idea into an outline titled “The Syndicate” which later became a treatment titled “Chicago II”. The concept was abandoned until producer Gene L. Coon found the treatment and worked on a script with David P. Harmon titled “Mission Into Chaos”.

This is the only episode of TOS that ends with a freeze-frame.

One of several “parallel Earth” plots in the series, contrived in part to save money, by avoiding the necessity for “alien” sets, costumes, and makeup.

The last script is credited to series writer-producer Gene L. Coon. He would, however, contribute two more scripts to the third season, but these were under the pseudonym of Lee Cronin.

John Harmon (Tepo, one of the lesser bosses) previously appeared in Star Trek: The City on the Edge of Forever (1967) as the bum Rodent. He had also appeared 20 years earlier in Fear in the Night (1946), which starred DeForest Kelley.

Ronald D. Moore wanted Deep Space 9’s tribute episode to involve returning to Iotia to see that the planet was now imitating the 23rd-century era Federation as a form of commentary on how the show became a global phenomenon in the intervening decades. Instead, the tribute episode was produced as Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Trials and Tribble-ations (1996), sequel to Star Trek: The Trouble with Tribbles (1967).

This is the only episode in which Kirk calls McCoy “Sawbones” instead of “Bones”.

The script originally featured Romulans with whom Kirk has to compete in making a deal with the Iotians.

The street set is on the Paramount lot and can be seen in many television series. The steps leading up to Oxmyx’ headquarters were used in Dear John (1988).

This episode contains Chekov’s smallest speaking part in TOS, with only one line of dialogue, “Approaching Sigma Iotia II, Captain.”

The exterior street set used for Krako’s office is the same exterior of the Washington Square portion of the Paramount backlot used for Laverne & Shirley (1976) (1976). The Pizza Bowl exterior can also be seen as the Billiard Hall outside Oxmyx’ window. These exteriors were destroyed or severely damaged during the 1983 backlot fire.

Bill Blackburn’s character, Hadley, is given his name in this episode. It is also the only episode in which Hadley is referred to by name.

In the remastered version, the planet Sigma Iotia II was given a CGI-makeover, now a more Earth-like planet. Aside from orbital establishing shots, new phaser effects were created’ depicting the block-wide stun implemented from the Enterprise, replacing the more cartoonish aspects of the original.

The scene when Kirk puts his feet up on Krako’s table and declares that now the Federation is “taking over the whole ball of wax” is reminiscent of a similar scene in the classic gangster film Little Caesar (1931).

This is listed as one of the “Ten Essential Episodes” of TOS in the 2008 reference book “Star Trek 101” by Paula M. Block and Terry J. Erdmann.

In the 1990s, British science fiction authors Eugene Byrne and Kim Newman wrote a series of stories entitled “Back in the USSA,” imagining a world where Al Capone became the US President, as in Gene Roddenberry’s original TV proposal. The stories are jammed full of TV and film spoofs, including a humorous Russian soldier who closely resembles Pavel Chekov.

The ‘Star Trek Encyclopedia’ confirms that the Horizon was a Daedalus-class ship. It is later seen as a model on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1993) in Sisko’s office.

“Chicago Mobs of the Twenties” was published in 1992.

This is the first episode in which a site-to-site transport is performed – although due to the events of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986), it is not the first time from a historical perspective.

This was one of a few times in TOS where any character is depicted using ground transportation. Another was in Star Trek: Assignment: Earth (1968), when Gary Seven hitched a ride in the trunk of a 1966 Dodge Coronet.

That big gun all the men carried was the Thompson Submachine Gun invented in 1918. It became a favorite of both gangsters and Feds during Prohibition. The big metal cans under the barrels are magazines holding 100 rounds of .45 ACP ammo, enough firepower to cut a Cadillac in half.

No stardate is logged in the episode. Stardate 4598.0 appeared in Bjo Trimble’s ‘Star Trek Concordance’, apparently using an earlier script version, and the fotonovel provides a closing stardate 4598.7.

Summary

The Enterprise visits the planet Sigma Iotia II, the first time in 100 years a Federation ship has called there. The U.S.S. Horizon was the first to visit but was soon thereafter destroyed. Their message, sent by regular radio, was only recently received. Little is known about the Iotians other than they are fast learners and very imitative. The Horizon’s visit also predated the Prime Directive, so it’s wondered to what extent cultural contamination has taken place. What they find on arrival is that the entire planet has patterned itself along the lines of violent Chicago mobs of the 1920’s, with two bosses in particular, Bela Oxmyx and Jojo Krako, both out to take control.

CAST

William Shatner as Capt. Kirk
Leonard Nimoy as Mr. Spock
DeForest Kelley as Dr. McCoy
Anthony Caruso as Bela
Vic Tayback as Krako
Lee Delano as Kalo
James Doohan as Scott
Nichelle Nichols as Uhura
Walter Koenig as Chekov
John Harmon as Tepo
Sheldon Collins as Tough Kid
Dyanne Thorne as First Girl
Sharyn Hillyer as Second Girl
Buddy Garion as Hood
Steven Marlo as Zabo