As Star Trek began production on its first season, elements of the series were refined. Sleeker uniforms were designed, more color was added to the sets (reportedly to encourage viewers to buy color TVs). Kirk and Spock had been established as the series leads in “Where No Man Has Gone Before,” but an ensemble began to take shape around them.
- DeForest Kelley as ship’s doctor Leonard McCoy. Kelley had been passed over for the doctor role in both Star Trek pilots, and finally got his chance to shine. Used to playing horse thieves and cattle rustlers in Westerns, he was delighted to finally be one of the good guys.
- James Doohan as Scotty. He had been a background crewmember in “Where No Man,” but credited only as “Engineering Officer.” With his promotion to recurring character, he gained a name. Doohan was skilled at dialects; during his audition, he volunteered a few, and when the producers asked him which he’d choose, he replied, “If he’s an engineer, he should be a Scotsman.”
- George Takei as Sulu. He had also hung around the background in “Where No Man,” and now he was elevated to helmsman.
- Nichelle Nichols as communications officer Uhura. Though Nichols was a newcomer to Star Trek, she’d appeared on Gene Roddenberry’s previous series The Lieutenant.
- Majel Barrett as Nurse Christine Chapel. Gene Roddenberry’s future wife had played the Enterprise’s first officer in “The Cage,” but the network raised objections to having a woman as second-in-command.
Roddenberry had a talent for casting. Within a few weeks, the ensemble had jelled, with an obvious on- and offscreen camaraderie. Which leads me to my second choice for “essential Star Trek episode,” the first time that the ensemble truly clicked and gave the characters their moment to shine: “The Naked Time.”
Building the Ensemble
It’s often been said that Roddenberry intended for Star Trek to be a more ensemble-driven series, but the charisma (and egos) of William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy turned it into a star vehicle. Early in the series, this dynamic had not yet formed, and for the first half of the first season especially, the show spread its focus much more evenly throughout the cast.
In “The Naked Time,” the Enterprise arrives at a frozen, decaying planet to pick up a scientific research party, but finds them dead, apparently from mass hysteria. Soon, the same disease that killed the scientists begins wreaking havoc among the crew by removing their inhibitions. This premise allowed the series to explore its new characters by presenting their deepest desires and inner torments. Even the characters who aren’t deeply explored have wonderful, defining moments:
- Scotty has his famous, much-parodied line: “I canna change the laws of physics!”
- Uhura gets one of the cleverest lines in the original series. When a swashbuckling Sulu bursts onto the bridge, pulls Uhura behind him, and boasts: “I’ll protect you, fair maiden!” Uhura protests, “Sorry, neither!”
- Spock and McCoy begin their eternal bickering relationship with a pair of lines as McCoy gives Spock a checkup. McCoy: “Assuming you call that green stuff in your veins blood.” Spock: “As for my anatomy being different from yours, I am delighted.”
- Riley and Tormolen, both of whom were being considered as recurring characters, play large parts in the story.
And most memorably, Sulu picks up a fencing sword.
Writer John D.F. Black had already decided that an intoxicated Sulu would charge through the Enterprise halls with a sword. But he couldn’t decide whether it should be a samurai sword or a fencing foil, so he asked Takei, who suggested a fencing foil because “by the 23rd century, a man’s cultural heritage should be greater than just his ethnicity.” Black agreed, and Takei committed 100%. Not only did he spend every spare moment for three days bulking up for the shirtless scenes, he even sought fencing lessons on his own time from the fight choreographer of Errol Flynn’s The Adventures of Robin Hood! Thanks to Black and Takei’s open-mindedness, and Takei’s sheer enthusiasm, Sulu’s scenes are a delight. Takei later said about the character:
“Sulu is a genuine 23rd-century human being… a person who considers the heritage of human culture, human history, his heritage.”
It’s a radical notion: that all of human history could be everyone’s heritage, no matter your racial or ethnic background. Star Trek is the place to dream big dreams.
Production Troubles
I’ve never bought into the notion that the original series looks “cheap.” Especially if you watch it on Blu-Ray, or Netflix with full streaming quality, the colorful, dynamic work of cinematographer Jerry Finnerman gives the show constant visual variety. Producer Robert Justman gave Finnerman a lot of leeway: “No one can tell you how lighting works in the future [find exact quote]” and Finnerman responded by using every color in the spectrum to make the Enterprise’s flat grey walls come to life. A striking example from “The Naked Time:” after Nurse Chapel tells Spock she loves him, he moves into the hallway, which is bathed in a gorgeous magenta hue. Sickbay is lit in delicate shades of green and blue which suggest healing, sections of the bridge in bold, aggressive orange that suggest decisiveness. For many years, all copies of the original series were based on the 16mm prints prepared for broadcast, which washed out many of the colors. But for the Blu-Rays, the 35mm negatives were scanned, bringing to life the full range of color that had been hidden all along.
Nevertheless, there are some seams around the edges of “The Naked Time,” signs of a dedicated production team struggling to create a world from scratch and occasionally coming up short.
- The environmental suits that Spock and Tormolen wear to the planet are laughably insecure. Couldn’t they at least duct tape the helmets closed?
- The dead woman they encounter is clearly a mannequin. The bust size gives it away.
- There’s no attempt to make Tormolen’s stab wound look realistic, though granted, you couldn’t show a realistic stab wound on TV in 1966.
- Most infamously, the chintzy analog clock that counts backwards and forwards during the time warp has an error, slowly and obviously counting from 7:59 to 7:00 to 8:01. In the remastered version, these shots are fixed with a digital clock.
Still, the ingenuity of the team is on display. The “decontamination” scene and McCoy operating on Tormolen are both suggested through lighting and sound effects, saving the need for visual effects. Though Star Trek was the most expensive TV show ever made at the time, every dollar counted.
Some More Observations
- The odd dual treatment of women continues from “Where No Man.” But this time, only when the characters are drunk! Riley ogles a female crewman in the hallway a la Gary Mitchell, but only when he’s so smashed he can barely stand. The women are cast in subservient roles: nurse, yeoman, communications officer, but still treated like professionals, especially Uhura, who comes off very strong. In one of the episode’s best small moments, Kirk snaps at Uhura, she yells back at him, then the two have a wordless moment of apology. Both Uhura and Rand even take the helm! The episode still conveys an anxiety about having women on the Enterprise crew (“That’s what I like to see! Let the women work too!” Riley says), but it does a better job of integrating them than the pilot.
- In “Where No Man,” we saw a series about limitless exploration put limits on that exploration. Now we have a crewman openly questioning the Enterprise’s mission! Tormolen’s rant about the evils of space exploration can only be interpreted so far since he’s infected with the disease, but it’s still pretty remarkable to hear the series challenge its own premise so early on: “What are we doing out here? Good? What good?”
Kirk and Spock’s Big Moment
For all the fun the episode has with the ensemble, Kirk and Spock’s big scenes are the heart of the episode. After Spock is infected, he retreats to an empty briefing room and has an emotional breakdown, the first time the audience sees the conflict between Spock’s logical and emotional sides dramatically illustrated. It’s a striking scene; holding back tears, Spock repeatedly tries to pull himself together by citing his duty, responsibilities, then reciting mathematical patterns: “2, 4, 6, 6 times…” Leonard Nimoy gives a stirring, vulnerable performance, letting us see the torment that Spock carries beneath his cool exterior. It’s all the more incredible because it happened spontaneously. Feeling that the episode lacked a defining moment for Spock, Nimoy asked director Marc Daniels to let him improvise one last scene at the end of the shooting day. Daniels enhanced the action with a slow tracking shot that gradually moves closer to Spock, as if we’re zooming in on his soul. The scene was done in one take. Nimoy would make many contributions to his character, and this was one of the most important.
When Kirk storms in, trying to rouse Spock so they can save the ship together, the chemistry is electric, a perfect example of Nimoy’s point about Spock’s calm playing off Kirk’s energy. Shatner lets loose in his trademark performance style that would soon become a cliché, but here feels fresh and justified. Kirk bares his soul in a monologue about his attachment to the Enterprise: “She won’t let me live my life. I’ve got to live hers.” We see how lonely Kirk is, how his almost romantic devotion to his ship pushes every other relationship out of his life. Both Kirk and Spock pull themselves together even before McCoy administers the cure (of course they do. They’re the leads!), but the secrets they reveal will always lurk behind the characters: Spock’s admission that “when I feel friendship for you, I’m ashamed.” Kirk’s solitary vow to the Enterprise: “Never lose you. Never.”
The Climactic Scene
Over the course of the Star Trek franchise, the Enterprise (and Deep Space Nine, and Voyager, and other starships) will be threatened with destruction countless times, but a bold, last-minute plan will save the ship from the brink of death. The beats will come to feel familiar, like a ritual. But this early in the original series, the danger feels real, the scenario fresh. When the characters unite on the bridge, ready to enact Scotty’s desperate plan to save the ship from burning up in the planet’s atmosphere, there’s a real sense of finality. A sense that this could be the end, that we have no idea what happens next. The effect is enhanced by Alexander Courage’s thundering, dynamic score and Marc Daniels’ gorgeous crane shot that starts on a level with Kirk (shirt heroically ripped, of course) and ends looking down on all the characters: small, vulnerable, facing death together.
The ending is a slight non sequitur, and it breaks the spell a little. When the crew awakens, they discover they’ve been flung three days backward in time. There’s no discussion of what just happened, the trials they’ve been through. The crew just continues, on toward their next mission. (Legend has it that “The Naked Time” was intended as part one of a two-part episode, the second of which would deal with the consequences of traveling back in time. But the script for the latter wasn’t ready, and it morphed into the episode “Tomorrow is Yesterday” later in the season.) But when you think about it, it makes sense. What else do you do after an intense, emotional experience? You pick up and move on. You don’t necessarily need to talk about it. “The Naked Time” shows us the characters’ humanity, then hits a reset button and makes them mythic again. In 1960s TV, characters needed to be the same week after week so viewers tuning in would get the same experience every time. There wasn’t much room for growth or change. Star Trek didn’t challenge that norm. But it did give us a glimpse of its characters’ inner lives, so we could read them into their future actions. Until TV norms shifted and story arcs became not just common, but necessary, that was enough.
Next: A Cold War allegory produces some of the original series’ tensest action, as the Enterprise and Romulans maintain a “Balance of Terror.”