STAR TREK
WHAT ARE LITTLE GIRLS MADE OF?

From Wikipedia:

"What Are Little Girls Made Of?" is a first season episode of Star Trek: The Original Series. It is episode #7, production #10, and was first broadcast October 20, 1966. It was repeated two months later, on December 22, 1966, and was the first episode of the series to be repeated on NBC. It was written by Robert Bloch and directed by James Goldstone. The title of the episode is taken from the fourth line of the 19th century nursery rhyme "What Are Little Boys Made Of?".

Overview: Nurse Chapel searches for her long lost fiancé, and uncovers his secret plan for galactic conquest.

More here.

Not one of my favorites, but that doesn't mean it's not worth watching. Indeed, I don't return to this one again and again the way I do with episodes like "The Naked Time" or "Where No Man Has Gone Before," but when I do watch it, I have fun. I probably stay away from "What Are Little Girls Made Of?" because, like a number of other first season episodes, it feels less like Trek and more like 50s and 60s science fiction in general. On the other hand, sci-fi film and television from that era is pretty damned good stuff--Twilight Zone was great, as was Invasion of the Body Snatchers, as was Forbidden Planet. This episode's got some really cool themes placing it right smack dab in the middle of the genre at the time, evil robots, friends and lovers as secret enemies, subversive galactic conquest, and on and on.

And, in spite of its non-Trek feel, it's got some good Star Trek motifs. To the best of my knowledge, this is the first time we see the classic "death of red shirts" scene, that is, Enterprise security guards who show up only to die quickly and violently. It features Nurse Chapel prominently, and fleshes out her character a bit. Dr. Korby is a classic and well played mad scientist. Ruk, the alien android played by the same actor who played Lurch on the old Addams Family TV show, Ted Cassidy, is a well executed evil robot.

Okay, now that I've gone through all this I'm thinking I ought to go ahead and watch it again. You should too.



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