Tag: By Any Other Name

★★★★ February 23, 1968 Season 2 Episode 22

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, D.C. Fontana, and Jerome Bixby

The Enterprise Crew finds themselves being conquered by a superior alien race (Kelvans). A small group of superior alien beings takes the form of humans in order for them to hijack the Enterprise.

They need the ship so they can return to their old world which is beyond the Great Barrier. They turn almost the whole crew into these clay balls, except for Kirk, Spock, Scotty, and Bones, whom they need to help them run the ship. The only weakness the hijackers seem to have is that since they’re in human form for the time being, they’re vulnerable to human emotions.

Once the senior crew realizes the Kelvans are susceptible to human weaknesses things get quite amusing as Scotty gets one of them drunk, McCoy gives injections saying they are vitamin supplements but actually, they just make him very irritable and, perhaps inevitably Kirk sets about seducing the beautiful Kelinda causing Rojan to get jealous.

In human form, they cannot resist the emotions that they are getting. Will it be the Achilles heel that Kirk has been looking for? This is a good solid episode…not a classic one but not all of them can be. 

***Spoiler***

The only thing I didn’t like about the episode is… there was no action or punishment for the death of  Yeoman Leslie Thompson.

From IMDB:

While drinking with Tomar, Scotty finds a bottle of unidentifiable alcohol, and when Tomar asks, “What is it?” Scotty hesitates for a moment and finally says “It’s green.” This has become an iconic Scotty moment, and is even spoofed in Star Trek: The Next Generation: Relics (1992).

Direct references to two previous episodes were made. After Rojan mentions the galactic barrier, Kirk says, “We’ve been there.” (Star Trek: Where No Man Has Gone Before (1966)); Even Spock repeats his analysis of the barrier word for word: “Density negative. Radiation negative. Energy negative.” When the landing party is detained in a cave, Kirk recalls their imprisonment on Eminiar VII and Spock’s use of a mind-meld to fool the guards. (Star Trek: A Taste of Armageddon (1967)).

Jerome Bixby’s original script was much darker than the filmed episode. The Kelvans (then called the Dvenyens) executed ten Enterprise crew members by opening the shuttle bay doors and letting them be blown out into space. (Technically, they would be blown out by escaping air. This could have been a goof because, even in the Orignal Series, the shuttle bay had force fields to prevent this happening, unless the Kelvans deliberately lowered them.) Kirk was put through “hellish torture”. Also, crew members were chosen to mate with each other (Kirk was paired with Yeoman Leslie Thompson) to breed slaves for the Kelvans. NBC objected to all these, which led producer Gene L. Coon to order a heavy rewrite. The production staff also deemed the mating aspect too similar to Star Trek: The Cage (1966).

Kirk mentions that an intergalactic voyage by a 23rd century starship would take “thousands of years” to reach the Andromeda Galaxy. For the Kelvans, intergalactic travel is a three-century journey. In the 24th century, as seen in Star Trek: The Next Generation: Where No One Has Gone Before (1987), Federation technology has apparently matched the Kelvans, perhaps due to this encounter, when it is discussed that a return trip to the Milky Way from the Triangulum Galaxy would take three hundred years at maximum warp.

A three-dimensional chess set is often seen in the series, but a three-dimensional checkers set can be seen in the rec room in this episode. It is later destroyed in a fight.

The Kelvan word for flower is “sasheer.” Actress Sasheer Zamata of Saturday Night Live (1975) fame was named after it by her Trek-loving parents.

Scotty’s quarters are only seen in this episode. Decorations include a tartan kilt, a sporran, bagpipes, a Scottish targe (shield), medieval armor, and a wall plaque. Although the plaque apparently depicts stylized drafting tools, they also resemble part of a three-dimensional chess set and the primary hull of a Klingon battle cruiser.

A shot in the end credits is an outtake from Star Trek: Return to Tomorrow (1968), which was produced one week earlier and aired two weeks later. It shows actor Bill Blackburn removing his latex make-up as one of Sargon’s androids. It was from a clip later used in the second season blooper reels: Blackburn gratefully peeled off the makeup as assistant director Tiger Shapiro said, “Well, son, you wanted show business. Goddammit, you got it!”

The basis of this episode can be found in Gene Roddenberry’s first ever produced science fiction script, Chevron Hall of Stars: The Secret Weapon of 117 (1956). The episode featured a pair of aliens (the male played by Ricardo Montalban, Star Trek’s “Khan”) who disguise themselves as humans to study Earth people, get overwhelmed by the sensations and experiences of their new host bodies, and decide to remain human.

When Mr. Scott offers to fill the glass of the Kelvan Tomar from his bottle of prized Scotch whisky, on pause you can clearly see that the middle finger on his right hand, which he always tries so hard to cover up, is missing. Doohan lost the finger in battle on D-Day.

Second appearance of the Galactic Barrier at the edge of the galaxy. The first was Star Trek: Where No Man Has Gone Before (1966).

The title is from William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet: “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet.”

Stewart Moss (Hanar) played Joe Tormolean in Star Trek: The Naked Time (1966).

Robert Fortier (Tomar, one of the Kelvans) had played a small role in the earlier William Shatner vehicle Incubus (1966), a novelty horror film famous for being “the Esperanto movie.”

The remastered version of this episode premiered in syndication on the weekend of 8 March 2008. It featured new effects shots of the Kelvan outpost from space, an expanded matte painting of the planet’s terrain as the landing party beams down, a swirling Andromeda Galaxy, and the galactic barrier’s new look.

Julie Cobb (Yeoman Leslie Thompson) was married from 1986 until 2006 to James Cromwell (Zefram Cochrane in Star Trek: First Contact (1996), and numerous other Trek roles).

This was the only episode lensed by cinematographer Keith C. Smith, replacing Gerald Perry Finnerman, who was apparently unavailable for an unknown reason. Smith was the director of photography on Mission: Impossible (1966), filmed next door to Star Trek at Desilu Studios at the time.

The Saurian Brandy container makes an appearance in this episode. The distinctive-shape bottle was actually a modified George Dickel 1964 commemorative edition “powder horn” whisky bottle.

Jerome Bixby based his teleplay for “By Any Other Name” on a short story he wrote and published in 1950, “Cargo to Callisto.” In the story, four Martian criminals, with the ability to take over human beings and assume their shape and mannerisms, use that ability to escape from a Martian prison and flee the planet. The story’s protagonist realizes that his wife and two friends have been taken over, finds the Martians’ bodies, kills them and thus restores to normal the humans that they’d taken. Before Bixby wrote this story, the idea of a hostile alien being able to shape-shift into any human form was used by John W. Campbell Jr. in his novella “Who Goes There?”, the basis of The Thing from Another World (1951), The Thing (1982), and The Thing (2011), although the 1951 version left out the shape shifting element.

As Scotty, Spock, and Kirk left engineering to head to the bridge in the turbolift, it is seen going sideways prior to going upwards to the bridge.

A similar, if not identical, green drink to the one shared between Scotty and Tomar was also seen in Star Trek: Enterprise: In a Mirror, Darkly, Part II (2005), aboard the Defiant.

The swiveling biobed normally situated in sickbay was removed to allow McCoy and Tomar to roll the gurney carrying Spock to the biofunction monitor.

Tomar’s name is the Spanish word for ‘to drink’.

This is the tenth consecutive episode from which Sulu is absent, but he returns to the series in the next episode to be produced, Star Trek: Return to Tomorrow (1968).

According to guest star Stewart Moss after filming was complete, he asked fellow guest star Barbara Bouchet out for a date. She replied, “But for what purpose? You’re an attractive man, but what can you do for me? Six months later Moss married actress Marianne McAndrew, and Bouchet eventually married Italian film producer Luigi Borghese.

This takes place in 2268.

Michael Jan Friedman’s novel ‘The Valiant: The Untold Story of Picard’s First Command’ (2000) is a sequel to both Star Trek: Where No Man Has Gone Before (1966) and ‘By Any Other Name’. After a prologue set in 2069, the main story takes place in the 24th century, in the decades leading up to the start of Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987).

Warren Stevens (Rojan) played Dr. Oslow in Forbidden Planet (1956), one of Gene Roddenberry’s stated inspirations for Star Trek.

Summary

The Enterprise is taken over by Kelvans, an advanced race from the Andromeda galaxy that is intent on making the 300-year journey home. Their leader, Rojan, immobilizes all of the crew but for Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and Scott. As the trip progresses, however, Spock realizes that having taken human form, the Kelvans are now developing emotions. Kirk introduces romance into the equation by purposely wooing Kelinda thereby rendering Rojan insanely jealous.

CAST

William Shatner … Captain James Tiberius ‘Jim’ Kirk
Leonard Nimoy … Mister Spock
DeForest Kelley … Dr. McCoy
Warren Stevens … Rojan
Barbara Bouchet … Kelinda
James Doohan … Scott
Nichelle Nichols … Uhura
Majel Barrett … Christine
Stewart Moss … Hanar
Walter Koenig … Chekov
Robert Fortier … Tomar
Lezlie Dalton … Drea
Carl Byrd … Lt. Shea
Julie Cobb … Yeoman Thompson
Bill Blackburn … Lieutenant Hadley (uncredited)
Frank da Vinci … Lt. Brent (uncredited)
Roger Holloway … Lt. Lemli (uncredited)
Eddie Paskey … Lieutenant Leslie (uncredited)