STAR TREK
By Any Other Name

From Wikipedia:

"By Any Other Name" is a second season episode of Star Trek: The Original Series, first broadcast February 23, 1968 and repeated May 31, 1968. It is episode #51, production #50, written by D.C. Fontana and Jerome Bixby, and directed by Marc Daniels. The title is taken from a line in Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet, in which Juliet says, "...that which we call a rose / By any other name would smell as sweet".

Overview: Beings from another galaxy steal the Enterprise in an attempt to return home.

More here.

No awards for artistic excellence, nor for brilliant acting, nor for special effects, no new ground broken, nothing to really turn you on to Star Trek if you're not already a fan or into science fiction more generally. But if you do like Star Trek, check this one out. It's very solid, a good story, with lots of nice little touches.

It's all very standard. Technologically advanced aliens from another galaxy, scouts for a potential intergalactic invasion to take place centuries in the future, take human form in order to hijack the Enterprise as a replacement for their own wrecked ship. In spite of their superior technology and intellect, these people are self-glorifying conquerors, morally inferior to our Star Fleet heroes, very much in the tradition of Flash Gordon villains. Indeed, their pompous leader, Rojan, is a pasty faced wooden creep seemingly pulled right out of a 1950s Justice League comic book--his acting isn't what I'd call good, but he is interesting; you kind of can't stop looking at him as he declaims his way through the episode. Rojan's sidekick, Kelinda, is something of a 1960s Bond babe--actually, the actress who plays her, Barbara Bouche, really was something of a Bond babe, playing M's secretary Miss Moneypenny in the 1967 Bond parody film Casino Royale. At first you want to dismiss her as just another hot chick for Kirk to seduce, but she ends up giving one of the better performances of the episode.

At any rate, given the charming touches of old school sci-fi, the net effect, as far as the episode's overall feel goes, is very Wally Wood, not unlike this pic here. And, yes, the episode feels just as weird as the picture.

But "By Any Other Name" isn't simply an exercise in science fiction nostalgia and strangeness. There are some extremely well executed moments. For instance, in the wake of a foiled escape attempt, one where Kirk inexplicably shows expert knowledge of unique Vulcan physical abilities, Rojan metes out a sort of Nazi justice, randomly choosing two members of the Enterprise landing party, morphing them into their chemical components, crushing one to death, and then turning the other back into a whole and healthy person. Rojan's casual, nonchalant affect all the while is truly disturbing. Very clinical and psychologically creepy.

Of course, this chemical component state ends up being the fate for most of the crew back on the ship--the previous set up makes this later sequence all the more effective.

The ease with which the aliens utterly dominate the Enterprise puts Kirk into a manic, listless, and impotent frame of mind, which ramps up the episode's weirdness all the more. By the time Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and Scotty, the only crewmen left in their natural biological forms by this point, have hatched a plan to regain the ship, however, the Captain is back to his usual confident self. That leaves him completely ready to execute his part of the plan, seducing Kelinda, which you knew was going to happen from the moment she first appears on screen. But the other three have their part to play, as well. McCoy hops up one of the aliens on amphetamines. Spock gets under Rojan's skin while playing three dimensional chess.

And Scotty has his greatest moment in all of Star Trek, getting one of the aliens drunk in an hours long marathon boozing session, going through, by my count, four bottles of liquor. It takes Saurian brandy, another unidentified spirit of some sort, a third bottle of something Scotty describes simply as "green," and, finally, an "old, old, old bottle of Scotch...whiskey!" Scotty drinks the guy under the table, taking him completely out of action. The Chief Engineer takes himself out of action, too, but only after he has accomplished his mission.

In the end, as you would expect, the crew takes back the ship, convincing the now emotionally unstable aliens to stay in our galaxy instead of reporting back to their superiors. Yeah, I know, that's a plot spoiler, but, like I said, the story's pretty standard. It's all in the execution, and this one is really well executed.

Go see how they get it done.


Breaking the intergalactic barrier last seen in "Where No Man Has Gone Before."

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