Johnny Pez

Dog walk: 1/19/12

2012-01-19T19:24:00.002-05:00

It started snowing around five in the afternoon, and it looked as though the snow would be sticking around for a while, so I decided to take the basenjis to the dog park. It was fairly slow going, because none of the roads had been salted, and nobody wanted to risk spinning off the road and down some steep hillside.

As I was making my way up the final narrow, twisting road to the peak of Observatory Hill, I passed an SUV, whose driver hailed me. He had just come from the dog park, where his Akita, Sammy, had jumped the fence* and wandered off into the woods. The driver, whose name was Dennis, said he was going down to the base of the hill to look for Sammy there. He gave my his phone number and asked me to call him if I saw Sammy. I assured him I would, and continued on. At the top of the hill, Sammy was waiting.

I called Dennis, who asked me to leash Sammy while he worked his way back up the hill. I unleashed Klea, and leaving her in the Basenjimobile with Louis, I walked over to Sammy. I gave him my hand to sniff, and he growled at me. I tried again, and he growled again. At that point, Sammy decided to place the Basenjimobile between himself and me, and the two of us circled the car for a couple of minutes.

I paused by the front bumper for a couple of minutes, then decided to have another go at leashing Sammy. I made my way around to the back of the car, but Sammy was gone. He had apparently wandered off directly away from the car, and was now nowhere in sight. I called for him a couple of times, but to no avail.

With a sigh, I let the basenjis out of the car, and led them into the enclosure. Just after unleashing them, I saw Dennis's SUV drive up, and I headed back out of the enclosure to tell him the bad news.

Trotting along behind the SUV was Sammy.

When Dennis started around the SUV in my direction, I pointed behind him to where Sammy was walking up. He turned and saw the dog and immediately began scolding him for running away. I returned to the basenjis in the enclosure.

After securing Sammy in his SUV, Dennis came over to the enclosure to thank me for my assistance. The basenjis of course came trotting up to greet this new person, and I introduced them. We talked about our respective dogs for a minute or so, then he thanked me again, shook my hand, and returned to his SUV. The basenjis watched as he drove away.

*Unlike the dog park back in Newport, with its five foot high chain link fence, the dog park atop Observatory Hill has a fence that is only three feet high, and some of the larger dogs can, and do, jump over it.

Recap: Where No Man Has Gone Before (4 of 4)

2012-01-19T05:45:00.000-05:00

This is the fourth and final part of a recap of the second Star Trek pilot (and third aired episode), "Where No Man Has Gone Before", that I posted to the rec.arts.startrek.misc newsgroup back in November 2005 under the screen name Empok Nor. The first three parts are here, here and here.

The starship Enterprise under Captain James R. Kirk has discovered a ship's recorder from the S. S. Valiant, lost 200 years earlier. The Valiant encountered a strange energy field beyond the edge of the galaxy, and was disabled. Then, after looking up information on extra-sensory perception, the captain of the Valiant destroyed his ship. When the Enterprise encounters the same energy barrier, Second Officer Gary Mitchell and Dr. Elizabeth Dehner suffer some form of electrical shock. The shock has seemingly had no effect on Dehner, but has turned Mitchell's eyes silver.

While he's recovering in sickbay, Mitchell begins exhibiting paranormal powers: he can read a page of text in moments and recall it perfectly; he can stop his heart and start it up again; he can telekinetically operate controls on the ship's bridge. Dehner, who has always had a soft spot in her heart for supermen, fall in love with Mitchell. First Officer Spock, though, is worried. He thinks they either have to maroon Mitchell on a deserted planet, or kill him. Kirk orders him to set course for the deserted planet Delta Vega.

On Delta Vega, Mitchell is imprisoned behind a force field while the crew succeeds in repairing the warp engines. A worried Kirk has a self-destruct switch set up, in case he gets loose.

ACT FOUR
The lithium cracking station on Delta Vega. "Captain's log, stardate 1313.3," Kirk voiceovers. "Note commendations on Lt. Kelso and the engineering staff."

The mining station, as Kirk watches Kelso and the engineering staff at work: "In orbit above us, the engines of the Enterprise are almost fully regenerated." As the engineering staff all make for the door: "Balance of the landing party is being transported back up." Kelso seats himself on the console.

Mitchell is standing in his room. The hair on his temples has gone gray: "Mitchell, whatever he's become, keeps changing, growing stronger by the minute."

Dehner, Spock and Kirk stand outside the room. Spock still has the phaser rifle, and looks like he wants to use it, now. Dehner has an odd half-smile on her face. "He's been like that for hours now," she says.

"Have Dr. Piper meet us in the control room with Kelso," Kirk tells Spock. "We'll all transport up together."

"If he should try to stop us?" asks Spock.

"Kelso will be on the destruct button until the last minute," says Kirk. "I think he knows that."

"I'm staying behind with him," Dehner announces suddenly.

As we look at Mitchell, Kelso in the control room dissolves into view. Kelso is talking into a communicator: "Uh, fission chamber three checks out. The station seems to be running fine."

"You're a talented thief, Kelso," Scott's voice replies. On the floor behind the console, one of the cables rises up. Mitchell dissolves out of view. "Everything you sent up seems to be fittin' in place." Cut to a grinning Kelso as the cable rises into view behind him.

"I'm kinda proud of the job we've done," says Kelso. "Are we going to be ready to transport u--" The cable slips over Kelso's head and wraps itself around his neck. As his struggles grow weaker, we dissolve back to Mitchell.

"You're leaving with the ship, doctor," Kirk informs Dehner.

"He is not evil!" insists Dehner, oddly echoing Default Vina's "They don't mean to be evil" from the first pilot.

"I gave you an order, doctor," Kirk states.

Their dispute ends when Mitchell announces, "You should have killed me while you could, James." In the reverby voice, he adds, "Command and compassion is a fool's mixture." As Kirk steps closer, Mitchell does a little twiddle thing with his fingers and Kirk gets hit with another electrical shock. Spock levels the phaser rifle and gets hit as well. Both men are out of action.

Dehner slowly turns to face Mitchell, who waves his hand and makes the force field go away. He walks up to Dehner, brushes his hand against her face, then guides her into the room. He shows her to a mirror, and we can see that her eyes have become just like his.

We dissolve to a shot of Kirk and Spock lying on the floor outside Mitchell's room. Piper rushes up and checks the two of them for lifesigns. As Kirk starts to sit up, Piper gives him a pill. "It hit me too, whatever it was," he tells Kirk. "Kelso is dead -- strangled. At least Spock's alive."

"Dr. Dehner?" asks Kirk.

"She went with Mitchell."

Kirk stops Piper as he's about to revive Spock. "Don't give him a pill until after I'm gone. My fault Mitchell got as far as he did." A sigh, then, "Did you see their direction?"

"Why, yes. There was some morning light. They were headed across the valley to the left of the pointed peaks. There's flat land beyond."

Struggling to his feet, Kirk tells him, "When Mr. Spock recovers you'll both transport up immediately to the Enterprise." Ignoring Piper's attempt to interrupt him, and picking up the phaser rifle, Kirk continues, "Where, if you have not received a signal from me within twelve hours, you'll procede at maximum warp to the nearest Earth base with my recommendation," and here he pauses to give a dramatic snap to the phaser rifle's rotating barrel, "that this entire planet be subjected to a lethal concentration of deutron radiation." When Piper again attempts to speak, Kirk says, "No protest on this, Mark. That's an order." Hefting the phaser rifle, Kirk heads out.

***********************

Delta Vega, to the left of the pointed peaks. Mitchell and Dehner are walking casually through a windstorm. With its jagged, rocky surface and green-tinged cloudy sky, Delta Vega looks remarkably similar to Talos IV.

"It would take almost a miracle to survive here," Dehner observes.

"Then I shall make one," says Mitchell in his Burning Bush reverb voice. You know, it's never a good thing when a mutant superbeing starts using the word "shall" in casual conversation. Or "behold".

"Behold," he says, and with a wave of his hand, a stretch of barren ground acquires a pool of water, a bubbling fountain, and various plants. The wind dies away.

Dehner looks astonished. She and Mitchell walk forward into his little oasis. Mitchell flings his arms out wide and laughs. Another bad sign. Dehner picks a flower, while Mitchell kneels down, cups some water in his hand, and lets it trickle through. It occurs to me at this point that Mitchell should have just let Kirk maroon him here. Kelso would still be alive, and Kirk would have probably left Dehner behind anyway as soon as her eyes turned all shiny.

"You'll soon share this feeling, Elizabeth," says Burning Bush Mitchell. "To be like God, to have the power to make the world anything you want it to be."

Back to Kirk, toting his phaser rifle through the howling desolate emptiness of Delta Vega.

Back to Mitchell and Dehner as Burning Bush Boy looks up suddenly. Standing up, Dehner asks, "What's wrong?"

"A visitor," says Mitchell. "A very foolish man." I've got to agree with him on that one. The Enterprise should already be maximum warping its way the hell out of there. Who knows what Mitchell will be capable of twelve hours from now?

Back to Kirk, struggling his way through the pointed peaks. A nearby rock suddenly decides to roll past him.

Back to Mitchell and Dehner. "You'll enjoy being a god, Elizabeth." When she turns and looks at him, Mitchell sneers, "Blasphemy? No. Let there be food." Gesturing with his hand, he says, "Kaferian apples," and a Kaferian apple tree (or maybe bush would be a better word, it's pretty small) appears.

Back to Kirk, still making his way through the pointed peaks. He's spooked, now, looking around for any more rolling rocks. Vengeance is mine, saith Burning Bush Boy.

Back to Mitchell and Dehner, the former holding two halves of a Kaferian apple. "Whenever we visited that planet, I always favored these." He hands her half. Just like the last time, see, only this time, it's the man giving the woman the apple.

Back to Kirk, as he peers over a rock.

Back to Mitchell and Dehner, munching on their Kaferian apples. "Can you hear me, James?" reverbs Mitchell.

Kirk, toting his phaser rifle, can. "You cannot see me. I'm not there. You follow the right path, James, you'll come to me soon."

Back to Mitchell and Dehner. A smiling Dehner says, "I can see him in my mind too."

Taking the half-eaten apple from her (and what are the theological implications of that, huh?), Mitchell says, "Go to him, Elizabeth. Talk to him. Now that you're changing, I want you to see just how unimportant they are."

Kirk moves forward, then comes across Elizabeth standing there. Well, she looked at me, and I, I could see, that the way she looked was way beyond compare. Now, how could I dance with another when I saw her standing there? With her shiny silver eyes? "Yes, it just took a little longer for it to happen to me," she tells him. She approaches him, and he takes a step back.

After looking around for Mitchell, Kirk says, "You must help me, before it goes too far."

"What he's doing is right, for him and me," Dehner informs him.

"And for humanity?" asks Kirk. "You're still human." Dehner starts to contradict him, but Kirk insists, "At least partly, you are, or you wouldn't be here talking to me." He's got a point there. The urge to chatter on and on is definitely our most human trait.

"Earth is really unimportant," Dehner casually tells him as he prowls around. "Before long, we'll be where it would have taken mankind millions of years of learning to reach."

Kirk dramatically rushes up to Dehner's side. "And what will Mitchell learn in getting there? Will he know what to do with his power? Will he acquire the wisdom?"

"Please go back while you still can," Dehner warns him. Perhaps she's worried that he's starting to make sense.

"Did you hear him joke about compassion?" Kirk calls out to Mitchell, "Above all else, a god needs compassion! Mitchell!" When Mitchell doesn't answer, Kirk turns back to Dehner. "Elizabeth --"

"What do you know about gods?" Dehner demands.

"Then let's talk about humans," Kirk responds, "about our frailties. As powerful as he gets, he'll still have all that inside him."

Kirk is starting to make too much sense again, so Dehner tells him, "Go back." She turns to leave, but he grabs her arm. The fact that she doesn't just zap him then and there tells us that he's starting to get through to her.

"You were a psychiatrist once," he reminds her. "You know the ugly, savage things we all keep buried, that none of us dare expose. But he'll dare! Who's to stop him? He doesn't need to care." Kirk is practically pleading now. "Be a psychiatrist for one minute longer. What do you see happening to him? What's your prognosis, doctor?"

"He's coming," Dehner tells him, giving no sign that she's heard a word he's said. Kirk quickly lets go of Dehner's arm and brings up the barrel of the phaser rifle.

"Then watch him," Kirk tells her. "Hang on to being a human for one minute longer."

"I'm disappointed in you, Elizabeth," says Reverb Boy. Kirk goes into a diving roll and comes up pointing the phaser rifle at Mitchell. He fires. The effect (in both senses of the word) is just like the laser cannon Number One fired at the rocky knoll in the first pilot: splashes of animated backblast, and none. Mitchell just stands there smiling at Kirk until Kirk stops firing. Then, with a wave of his hand, Mitchell tears the phaser rifle out of Kirk's hands and sends it flying, leaving Kirk kneeling on the ground.

Still with that little smile, he says, "I've been contemplating the death of an old friend." He turns to look at a rock face to his left, focusing his attention on a big ol' slab of basalt. "He deserves a decent burial, at least." A wave of his hand, and there's an open grave in the ground. Another gesture, and a tombstone appears with the words JAMES R KIRK c1277.1 to 1313.7. (Since Mitchell was born on stardate 1087.7 and Dehner was born on 1089.5, that must make Kirk about five years old.)

Mitchell looks back up at the slab of basalt in the wall, gestures, and the slab detaches itself from the rock face and leans over the grave. Dehner, who apparently has indeed been watching Mitchell toying with Kirk with a critical eye, says "Stop it, Gary."

Now, if Mitchell was really smart, he'd say, "You know, Elizabeth, you've got a point. James, just to show there are no hard feelings about your attempt to kill me just now, I'll let you call the ship and beam up. I'll even throw in a bushel of Kaferian apples, just to show I'm willing to let bygones be bygones. You go on your merry way, and I'll stay marooned here on Delta Vega for the rest of my unnatural existence just like you wanted. Deal?" Instead, he just responds with an imperious "Morals are for men, not gods." Under the circumstances, not the wisest thing he could have said. Which also kind of proves Kirk's point.

Kirk stands up and says, "A god, but still driven by human frailty." He looks over at Dehner and says, "Do you like what you see?"

Proving he still doesn't get it, Mitchell says, "Time to pray, Captain. Pray to me." A gesture, and Kirk is forced forward.

"To you?" Kirk sneers. "Not to both of you?"

"Pray that you die easily," Mitchell tells him, and with another gesture sends Kirk down on his knees. A second gesture brings Kirk's head up.

"There'll only be one of you in the end," Kirk says. Another gesture from Mitchell brings Kirk's hands together palm to palm, a final one twists his face into an expression of adoration. "One jealous god," Kirk gasps out, "if all this makes a god. Or is it making you something else?"

"Your last chance, Kirk," says Mitchell.

Mitchell keeps Kirk's eyes fixed on him, but Kirk is speaking to Dehner. "Do you like what you see? Absolute power corrupting absolutely."

Convinced, Dehner slowly raises her hand and send a lightning bolt at Mitchell, then a second. Mitchell responds with several of his own, and the two trade lightning strikes back and forth. By the time they're done, both are on the ground, and Mitchell's eyes are back to normal. "Hurry," Dehner says, "you haven't much time."

Kirk belts Mitchell in the chops, and follows up with a left to the breadbasket and a double-handed club to the back of the head. Mitchell stumbles forward, turns, gets another left to the gut, one to the torso, and a karate chop to the neck. Kirk follows up the chop by throwing Mitchell over his shoulder. A roundhouse to the jaw sends Mitchell flying over a boulder, and Kirk dives over the boulder to bring Mitchell to the ground, tearing his tunic in the process to expose his left shoulder and some manly torso. Mitchell recovers enough to give Kirk a left to the jaw, then a right as Kirk starts to rise. Kirk recovers and charges Mitchell, buring his face in Mitchell's chest. Kirk's stunt double (Paul Baxley) slams Mitchell's stunt double (Hal Needham) with a powerhouse right to the kisser, leaps onto the prone Mitchell's stunt double, then grabs a nice big rock and lifts it over his head.

A shot of Kirk, scrapes on his right temple and right cheek, holding the rock above his head. "Gary, forgive me."

A shot of Mitchell, as his eyes go silver again. His hands shoot up and he arrests the fall of the rock. "For a moment, James," he says in his reverb voice, "but your moment is fading." He pushes.

A shot of Kirk's stunt double being thrown off of Mitchell's stunt double.

Kirk and Mitchell face each other across a prone Dehner. Kirk moves back and to the right until he comes up against the rock face. He aims a punch at Mitchell, which is intercepted. Mitchell sends Kirk spinning through the air to a hard landing. Mitchell picks up a much bigger rock, pauses (or poses) with the rock held over his head, then throws it. Kirk ducks under the rock, grabs Mitchell, and pulls him into the grave. Then he jumps out again, runs and grabs the phaser rifle, points it up at the basalt slab which is still hanging suspended over the grave, and shoots it. The ground shakes, pitching Mitchell back into the grave. The tombstone falls over onto him, followed by the basalt slab.

As the dust settles, Kirk crouches down by Dehner, the phaser rifle still cradled in his right arm. He sets the rifle down when he sees that she can't move anything below her neck. "I'm sorry," she says. "You . . . can't know what it's like to . . . be almost a . . . god." Sure he can, he's a starship captain, isn't he? At any rate, these are Dehner's last words before she closes her eyes and dies, thereby saving Kirk the trouble of killing her himself (as he was obviously prepared to do).

Kirk brushes a hand against her sleeve, then picks up the phaser rifle and stands up. He pulls out his communicator (which looks just like the ones Captain Pike's crew used), flips it open, and says, "Enterprise, from Captain Kirk. Come in."

***********************

THE TAG
Dissolve to a shot of Enterprise leaving Delta Vega.

Cut to a shot of the bridge, angle on the captain's chair. Yeoman Smith is standing nearby, while Scott mans the navigation console. Kirk, his right hand bandaged, adjusts the monitor on the gooseneck mount to face him. "Captain's log, stardate 1313.8. Add to official losses Dr. Elizabeth Dehner. Be it noted she gave her life in performance of her duty." As Spock joins Kirk, he adds, "Lieutenant Commander Gary Mitchell, same notation." He switches off the monitor. Kirk looks at Spock and says, "I want his service record to end that way. He didn't ask for what happened to him."

"I felt for him too," Spock states.

Still looking at Spock, Kirk says, "I believe there's some hope for you after all, Mr. Spock."

The two exchange a look, then resume watching the main viewscreen.

Cut to the main viewscreen, showing stars moving past.

Cut to a shot of the Enterprise moving off into the starry distance. The words DIRECTED BY JAMES GOLDSTONE appear, followed by WRITTEN BY SAMUEL A. PEEPLES, then CREATED AND PRODUCED BY GENE RODDENBERRY.

************************

CLOSING CREDITS
Shot of the Enterprise caught in the Galactic Barrier.
STAR TREK

ASSOCIATE PRODUCER ROBERT H. JUSTMAN

Shot of Damsel Vina approaching Captain Pike on Rigel VII.
MUSIC COMPOSED AND CONDUCTED BY ALEXANDER COURAGE

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY ERNEST HALLER, A.C.S. PRODUCTION DESIGNER WALTER M. JEFFERIES

Shot of Mitchell and Dehner looking out from the mirror.
GUEST STAR GARY LOCKWOOD

GUEST STAR SALLY KELLERMAN

Shot of the laser cannon shooting at the rocky knoll on Talos IV.
FEATURING GEORGE TAKEI AS SULU JAMES DOOHAN AS SCOTT LLOYD HAYNES AS ALDEN ANDREA DROMM AS YEOMAN SMITH

AND PAUL CARR AS LT. LEE KELSO PAUL FIX AS DOCTOR PIPER

Shot of the frozen engineer on PSI 2000.
ART DIRECTOR ROLLAND M. BROOKS FILM EDITOR JOHN FOLEY, A.C.E. ASSISTANT DIRECTOR ROBERT H. JUSTMAN SET DECORATOR ROSS DOWD COSTUMES CREATED BY WILLIAM THEISS SOUND MIXER CAM McCULLOUGH

POST PRODUCTION EXECUTIVE BILL HEATH MUSIC EDITOR JACK HUNSAKER SOUND EDITOR JOSEPH G. SOROKIN PRODUCTION SUPERVISOR JAMES PAISLEY WARDROBE PAUL McCARDLE SPECIAL EFFECTS BOB OVERBECK

MUSIC CONSULTANT WILBUR HATCH MUSIC COORDINATOR JULIAN DAVIDSON MAKEUP ROBERT DAWN HAIR STYLES HAZEL KEATS PHOTOGRAPHIC EFFECTS HOWARD ANDERSON CO.

Shot of Glistening Green Vina dancing.
A DESILU PRODUCTION IN ASSOCIATION WITH NORWAY CORPORATION

EXECUTIVE IN CHARGE OF PRODUCTION HERBERT F. SOLOW

**********************

EPILOGUE
It took a long time, days, before Mitchell was strong enough to escape from beneath the basalt slab. By then, the Enterprise was light-years away, well beyond his reach. As he stood in the clearing, pondering his options, there was a flash of light, and a man was standing in front of him. The man had short, dark hair and wore a Starfleet Captain's uniform. "Jim was right, you know, Gary," the man told him. "You were corrupted by your power. Absolutely."

"Who are you?" Mitchell wondered.

"I'm a member of an extremely advanced noncorporeal race that inhabits a realm we call the Q continuum. You can call me Q."

"Are you here to rescue me?"

"No, Gary. I'm here to imprison you for eternity."

With a gesture, Mitchell directed a bolt of energy at Q's body. Q vanished in another flash of light, then reappeared again. "That wasn't very friendly, Gary," Q observed. Q gestured in his own turn, and Mitchell found himself encased in a glass box. He smashed his fist into it, but it didn't break. He sent a bolt of energy into it, and it still didn't break. He threw his body against it, and it still didn't break.

Q sighed, then gestured. There was a momentary flash of light all around him, then Mitchell found that he was no longer on the surface of Delta Vega. Instead, he was somewhere in outer space. He was still inside the glass box, though, and the force of gravity was the same as it had been on Delta Vega. Spread out before him was a spiral galaxy, which he recognized immediately as the Milky Way Galaxy. There was an image of it on one of the walls of the transporter room, back on the Enterprise.

Q was still with him, a few feet away from the glass box, standing nonchalantly on empty space. Mitchell asked him, "Is this where you're going to imprison me? Inside this box, hanging here in intergalactic space?"

"Oh, no," Q assured him. "I'm afraid intergalactic space isn't nearly secure enough. I'm sure the Kelvans or somebody will come blundering along in a few centuries and set you free, and we certainly don't want that. No, I've just brought us here to get our bearings, so to speak. We were there," he pointed down towards the fringe of the galaxy, "on Delta Vega. Our destination is there," he pointed across to the center of the galaxy, "in the center of the galaxy."

"There's supposed to be a black hole at the center of the galaxy," Mitchell pointed out. "Are you just going to throw me into it, then? Won't that kill me?"

"Oh, that's not a black hole," Q assured him. "It might look that way to limited beings such as humanity, but it's not. It's actually a barrier. I like to call it the Great Barrier." Q gestured again, and the two of them were once again standing on the surface of a planet. Mitchell was still in the glass box. The surface of the planet was barren, rather like that of Delta Vega. The sky was clear, and held shifting blue curtains of light like an aurora borealis.

"Well, this is it," said Q. "Take your time, look around, get to know it. You're going to be staying here for the rest of your life. However long that is." With a final gesture, Q disappeared in another flash of light, and the glass box was gone.

Mitchell was free. And he was alone, on a desolate planet that was walled off from the rest of the universe. Come on, he told himself, think. You're God, aren't you? You can come up with a way out of this place.

Mitchell stood and pondered, for a long time.

**************************

Elizabeth Dehner opened her eyes, and saw a man standing over her prone form. He had dark hair, and wore the uniform of a Starfleet Captain. "Hello, Liz," he said.

"I prefer Elizabeth," she said automatically. "And why aren't I dead?"

"You aren't dead because you've been exposed to the energy of the Galactic Barrier," the man told him. "You cannot die."

"Are you from Earth? Where is Captain Kirk?"

"Earth? Hardly," the man said with distaste. "And Captain Kirk beamed back up to his vessel. He's convinced that you and Gary are both dead. As for me, I'm a member of an extremely advanced noncorporeal race that inhabits a realm we call the Q continuum. You can call me Q. I was observing your little drama with Gary and Jim, and I must tell you I was quite impressed with your actions. I'm here to invite you to join me in the Q continuum. You'll like it there. A much healthier place for you than among these mortals you've been living with." He reached down with a hand, and helped her to her feet.

"What about Gary? Will he be coming to this . . . Q continuum with us?"

"I'm afraid I wasn't nearly as impressed with Gary's behavior," Q confided. "Gary will be spending his days in . . . another place."

Dehner sighed. "I'm afraid he always was kind of an asshole. Very well, Q. Show me the way."

And he did.

**********************

Per the Okudas, filming on "Where No Man Has Gone Before" wrapped on Wednesday, July 28, 1965, with the fight scene between Kirk and Mitchell. Whitfield notes that this was one day more than had been originally planned. On Friday the 23rd, a heretofore unknown nest of wasps made its presence known on the soundstage, stinging Sally Kellerman in the back (according to Whitfield; Robert H. Justman implies that she was actually stung on her ass) and William Shatner on the eyelid. Fortunately, when filming resumed on Monday the 26th the swelling had gone down enough for Shatner to resume shooting.

GR was initially unable to devote much attention to postproduction work on "Where No Man Has Gone Before". He spent much of August 1965 producing a second pilot for Desilu called "Police Story" (no relation to the anthology series of the same name that eventually ran on NBC from 1973 to 1977), and much of September producing a third called "The Long Hunt of April Savage".

It was not until October that GR could devote his full attention to the second pilot. In addition, the Star Trek production team had an enormous amount of difficulty finishing the pilot's optical effects. What with one thing and another, it wasn't until the end of January 1966 that he managed to ship the second pilot off to the suits at NBC, after having taken ten months and $330,000 (Solow says $354,974) to produce it. In the middle of February, Herb Solow returned to Desilu with news that NBC had decided to buy the series.

Quite a bit of lore has grown up around "Where No Man Has Gone Before". The second half of Margaret Wander Bonanno's 1987 novel Strangers from the Sky is a prequel to the second pilot in which Kirk, Spock, Mitchell, Dehner and Kelso travel back to the 21st century. The first novel in the "Vanguard" series, David Mack's Harbinger (2005), which takes place shortly after the second pilot, has the Enterprise arriving at a newly-built Federation starbase after leaving Delta Vega.

Michael Jan Friedman's "My Brother's Keeper" trilogy (1999) follows the Enterprise's return to Earth after the events of the second pilot, though most of the trilogy consists of flashbacks showing Kirk's fifteen year friendship with Mitchell. (The third novel in the trilogy, Enterprise, begins its flashback with the Enterprise preparing to leave Dimorus and Mitchell still flat on his back in sickbay from the aftereffects of the poisoned dart.) As noted above, Friedman also related the story of the S.S. Valiant in his 2000 TNG novel of that name.

GR and Peeples were clearly trying to give their fictional universe a sense of historical depth, such as having the Enterprise come across a 200-year-old warning beacon, Tarbolde's 1996-vintage love sonnet, Kirk and Mitchell's history at "the academy" and Dimorus and Deneb IV. Nevertheless, to someone steeped in Star Trek lore, the stage on which the second pilot is played is a bare one. No United Federation of Planets, no Starfleet, no starbases, not even any food synthesizers or red and yellow alerts. We still don't know anything about Mr. Spock's background except for the fact that one of his ancestors married a "human female". The name "Vulcan" has yet to be mentioned. All we really have are the ship and its crew, and a handful of names: the Aldebaran colony, Delta Vega, Deneb IV, Canopus, Dimorus.

In 1965, Samuel A. Peeples was a 48-year-old writer with nine years' experience writing for television, mostly episodes of Western television series. He would go on to write an episode of the animated Star Trek series called "Beyond the Farthest Star", and contribute to the story for Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. He died on August 27, 1997.

Internal chronology: Per Memory Alpha, it is now generally accepted that "Where No Man Has Gone Before" takes place in the year 2265, placing it one year before the first regular season episode, "The Corbomite Maneuver", and eleven years after the first pilot, "The Cage".

Recap: Where No Man Has Gone Before (3 of 4)

2012-01-18T16:34:00.005-05:00

This is the third part of a recap of the second Star Trek pilot (and third aired episode), "Where No Man Has Gone Before", that I posted to the rec.arts.startrek.misc newsgroup back in November 2005 under the screen name Empok Nor. The first two parts are here and here.

The starship Enterprise under Captain James R. Kirk has discovered a ship's recorder from the S. S. Valiant, lost 200 years earlier. The Valiant encountered a strange energy field beyond the edge of the galaxy, and was disabled. Then, after looking up information on extra-sensory perception, the captain of the Valiant destroyed his ship. When the Enterprise encounters the same energy barrier, Second Officer Gary Mitchell and Dr. Elizabeth Dehner suffer some form of electrical shock. The shock has seemingly had no effect on Dehner, but has turned Mitchell's eyes silver.

While he's recovering in sickbay, Mitchell begins exhibiting paranormal powers: he can read a page of text in moments and recall it perfectly; he can stop his heart and start it up again; he can telekinetically operate controls on the ship's bridge. Dehner, who has always had a soft spot in her heart for supermen, fall in love with Mitchell. First Officer Spock, though, is worried. He thinks they either have to maroon Mitchell on a deserted planet, or kill him. Kirk orders him to set course for the deserted planet Delta Vega.

ACT THREE
"Stardate thirteen thirteen point one," Captain Kirk voiceovers as we see the Enterprise approach a red-tinted planet. "We're now approaching Delta Vega. Course set for a standard orbit. This planet, completely uninhabited, is slightly smaller than Earth. Desolate, but rich in crystalline minerals."

We cut to a view of the main viewscreen on the bridge, over the shoulders of Kirk, Alden and Kelso. The voiceover continues: "Kelso's task: transport down with a repair party, try to regenerate the main engines, save the ship."

Another angle on the bridge as Kelso and Alden pack up some equipment and head for the turbolift. Yeoman Smith is still standing next to the Captain's chair. "Our task: transport down a man I've known for fifteen years, and if we're successful, maroon him there."

In sickbay, Mitchell is back in his peach tunic. He punches a pillow into shape before lying down on the biobed. We cut to a shot of a cup bearing an Earth logo sitting on a counter. Back to Mitchell who mutters, "I'm thirsty." Back to the cup, which slides along the counter to position itself under a tap. Water pours into the cup from the tap.

Back to Mitchell on the biobed as the cup flies through the air to his waiting hand. The door to sickbay opens, allowing Kirk, Spock and Dehner to see the last few feet of its flight. The three enter. Dehner is carrying a rust-colored bag on her shoulder. Spock is wearing a silver belt with a phaser pistol attached. The phaser pistol looks just like the hand lasers used by Captain Pike's crew in the first pilot. Spock and Dehner remain by the door, while Kirk approaches the biobed.

Mitchell drinks from the cup, looks up at Kirk, then back to the cup, which he cradles in his hands as he says, "It's like a man who has been blind all of his life suddenly being given sight. Sometimes I feel there's nothing I couldn't do . . . in time." He lets go of the cup, which floats toward Kirk. Kirk catches it. Mitchell looks back at Kirk and continues, "Some people think that makes me a monster, don't they, Jim?"

After a moment, Kirk says, "Are you reading all our thoughts, Gary?"

"I can sense mainly worry in you, Jim," says Mitchell. "Safety of your ship."

"What would you do in my place?"

"Probably just what Mr. Spock is thinking now. Kill me . . . while you can." Mitchell smiles.

Kirk turns to face Spock, and takes a couple of angry steps toward him, before turning back to face Mitchell. As Kirk approaches Mitchell again, Mitchell waves his hand and an electrical shock sends him staggering back. Another wave, and Spock is shocked.

"Stop it, Gary!" Dehner insists.

A pause, which ends when Mitchell says, "I also know we're orbiting Delta Vega, Jim. I can't let you force me down there." This isn't going the way Kirk had planned. "I may not want to leave the ship, not yet. I may want another place. I'm not sure yet just what kind of a world I can use."

Musical sting.

"Use?" says Dehner.

"I don't understand it all yet, but if I keep growing, getting stronger, why the things I could do . . . like . . . like maybe a god could do --" Mitchell approaches Dehner. As he walks past Kirk, Kirk gives him a hard elbow to the ribs. (Why didn't Mitchell see that coming? Better not to ask.) Spock follows up with a left to the breadbasket (no Vulcan neck pinch yet), and Kirk lays Mitchell out with an uppercut to the jaw.

"I want him unconscious for a while," Kirk barks to Dehner as he and Spock hold him down on the biobed. Dehner responds with a hypospray to Mitchell's left arm.

***************************

The transporter room, and dammit, yes, that is the helm/navigation console that Scott is operating. Piper, holding a hypospray, approaches the door as Kirk and Spock drag Mitchell in and up to the transporter stage, with Dehner bringing up the rear. A musical sting as Mitchell comes to and starts to struggle. "You fools! Soon I'll squash you like insects!" Mitchell manages to snarl before Piper doses him again.

The five take up positions on the transporter stage, and Kirk gives the order to energize. As a tech in an olive green jumpsuit looks on, Scott does just that.

****************************

Delta Vega. We get a three-second establishing shot that shows us a building with a pentagonal entrance to the right, a line of five saucer-shaped tanks with a forest of pipework behind them, a dingy-looking building down a ways on the left, some jagged mountains off on the horizon, and some heavy greenish clouds in the sky. (Per the Okudas, the cracking station is a matte painting created by Albert Whitlock.)

We cut to the pentagonal entrance, where Kirk's group materializes. There's a sign on the wall to their right that says GALACTIC MINING DELTA-VEGA STATION. As Kirk and Spock prop up Mitchell, Kelso and a crewman in a blue tunic known only as the Guard show up. "Can you do it, Lee?" Kirk asks.

"Maybe," says Lee, "if we can bypass the fuel bins without blowing ourselves up."

"Take him," Kirk orders the Guard, and the Guard and Spock drag Mitchell into the building, followed by Kelso and Piper.

"There's not a soul on this planet but us?" Dehner says quietly, no doubt thinking of Mitchell being stranded here for the rest of his life.

"Nobody but us chickens, doctor."

Back to the establishing shot, with the tiny figures of Dehner and Kirk standing by the pentagonal entrance. Kirk goes in, and Dehner follows him.

****************************

Inside the mining station, we see Alden lugging a dismantled console across the control room, while jumpsuited techs work behind him. Setting it down on a pile of stuff next to Kelso, he says, "I think I got the 203-R set, Lee."

"Good, Alden," says Kelso. "Transport it up with you, will you?" Kelso has set up shop in front of a big window with a view of the rocky landscape of Delta Vega.

"Okay," says Alden as he carries off the 203-R set. Kelso walks over to Kirk, standing on the other side of the room.

"The fuel bins, Lee," says Kirk. "Could they be detonated from here? A destruct switch?"

Peering at a section of console, Kelso says, "I guess I could wire one up right there."

"Do it," Kirk orders. I predict Galactic Mining is not going to be happy about having their fuel bins detonated. The subspace channel to Earth is gonna be burning up when the home office on the Vega colony hears about this.

Spock has come up during this exchange, and he says, "He's regaining consciousness." He and Kirk exit stage right as Alden walks out with the 203-R set.

****************************

Mitchell is standing quietly in a room with a force field set up in the entrance. A buzzing hum comes from the force field. There's a sign on the wall next to it that says RESTRICTED AREA. Dehner and Piper are watching Mitchell as Kirk and Spock arrive. They pass by the Guard, who is monitoring the force field from a console about twenty feet away. Piper has a black bag on a strap over his left shoulder and a hypospray in his right hand. Kirk walks up to the entrance and watches Mitchell for a few seconds. Mitchell turns and stares at him, his eyes glowing silver. Kirk turns away and calls Piper over.

"I want only one medical officer here at any one time," he tells Piper, as Mitchell continues to stare at him. "The other will monitor him on the dispensary screen."

"I'd like to stay now," says Dehner. "Try to talk to him." Piper gives her a "fine with me" look, hands her the hypospray and walks out.

Kirk notices that Mitchell is looking at him.

"My friend, James Kirk," says Mitchell. When Kirk doesn't respond, he continues, "Remember those rodent things on Dimorus, the poisoned darts they threw?" (Btw, Dimorus is pronounced DIM-a-rus.) "I took one meant for you."

"And almost died," Kirk acknowledges. "I remember."

"So why be afraid of me now?"

"You've been testing your ability to take over the Enterprise," Kirk declares. "In the transporter room, you said something about us seeming like insects by comparison, squashing us if we got in your way."

"I was drugged then," Mitchell points out.

"Yes," Kirk admits. "In the sick bay, you said if you were in my place you'd kill a mutant like yourself." Now, strictly speaking, Mitchell isn't a mutant. Mutants are born different, whereas Mitchell became different as a result of an interaction with his environment.

"Why don't you kill me, then?" wonders Mitchell.

Because I'm not drunk with power like you, Kirk refrains from saying.

"Mr. Spock is right," Mitchell adds, "and you're a fool if you can't see it."

"You don't mean that, Gary," says Dehner.

"Man cannot survive if a race of true espers is born," Mitchell tells her. "In time you'll understand that." (Foreshadowing: your clue to quality drama.) He walks into the force field and turns interesting colors. Spock, taking no chances, draws his phaser pistol.

"Please, Gary," Kirk pleads. After five seconds in the force field, Mitchell steps back, takes a deep breath, and steps back into it again. "Gary, don't!" This time, less than a second passes before the force field throws Mitchell into the room, where he falls to the floor beside the bed. His eyes lose their silver sheen. The Guard hurries up from his console, phaser pistol in hand.

"Jim," Mitchell murmurs.

"His eyes went back to normal," Kirk points out.

"Fighting the force field drained his strength, for a while at least," says Spock. "He could be handled now."

Eight seconds after it went away, the silver sheen comes back, accompanied by a musical sting. Mitchell gets up off the floor and slowly approaches the entrance. "I'll just keep getting stronger. You know that, don't you?"

************************

The Enterprise orbiting Delta Vega.

On the bridge, Alden and Scott are fitting white components from the mining station into the black surface of the Engineering Sub-Systems Monitor. As Scott slots the last component into place, the Engineering Sub-Systems Monitor lights up, back in working order. Scott gives a little ta-da wave of the hand. Y'know, they don't call him the Miracle Worker for nothing. A smiling Scott sits down at the helm station and flips a switch, producing a communicator chirp. "It fits like a glove, Captain," he announces.

Down at the mining station's control room, Kelso and two extras are at work while Kirk holds a communicator. We hear Scott's filtered voice say, "Oh, did Mr. Spock get the phaser rifle we sent down?"

Kirk replies, "I didn't order any . . . " as Spock walks in toting the phaser rifle. He stands with the rifle in his right hand and the phaser pistol still hanging from his belt. Mr. Spock is ready to rumble. "Affirmative," Kirk finishes. "Landing party out."

Kirk leads Spock over to the window. Spock says, "He tried to get through the force field again. His eyes changed back faster. He didn't become as weak." The unspoken question: isn't it about time we finished him off?

"Doctor Dehner feels he isn't that dangerous," says Kirk. "What makes you right and a trained psychiatrist wrong?"

"Because she feels," Spock answers simply. "I don't. All I know is logic. In my opinion, we'll be lucky if we can repair this ship and get away in time."

Kirk walks back to Kelso, who gestures at a Big Red Switch and says, "Direct to the power bins. From here, you could blow up this whole valley." Kelso does not ask who will be manning the Big Red Switch. Some questions you don't need to ask.

Kirk turns and trades one last look with Spock, then says, "If Mitchell gets out . . . at your discretion, Lee, if sitting here, you think you're the last chance . . . I want you to hit that button."
Musical sting. Fade to black.

(continue to part 4)

Wandering Woo

2012-01-17T15:26:00.000-05:00

Our younger basenji Louis, whom my wife has nicknamed Woo, has the happy habit of going out into the backyard of our new house, no matter the weather, and doing his business, thereby freeing me of the need to take him out for a walk. This is basically a stop-gap measure; at least two other times a day he and his big sister/niece Klea either go for a walk through the streets of McKees Rocks, or visit the dog park in Riverview Park.

Yesterday afternoon, I let Woo out the back door, and he sniffed around the backyard for a bit before making his way down the alley to the front "yard" (actually a small area of mulch between the house and the street). He occasionally does this; when he does, I just go through the house, open the front door, and let him in there.

I did so now, and was a bit puzzled when I saw that he wasn't in the front yard, either. My puzzlement turned to fear when I noticed that the gate in our chainlink fence was hanging open. Obviously, the mailman must have neglected to close it when he delivered our mail that day.

I ran out to the street, and yes, there was Woo, sniffing at some Unidentified Ground Object about fifty feet away. Basenjis are known for their fearless nature, and one of the many things they don't fear are speeding cars. The chief cause of death among basenjis is being hit by passing cars.

I ran back into the house and grabbed my coat and Woo's leash, then hurried back out and looked around again. He had wandered further up the street. I did not run after him. If you run after a basenji, he assumes it's playtime, and he'll start running himself, and basenjis are fast runners even by canine standards. Instead, I walked towards him, calling his name from time to time.

Woo did not run away, but he didn't come when I called either. Instead, he continued his leisurely stroll along the street, and I followed at a walk. He ambled onto Camp Street, wandered its length, then turned onto Raymond Street. I was encouraged when he turned aside onto Fruit Way, since that street led back to our house.

I finally got lucky on Fruit Way, when Woo was distracted by something-or-other on a grassy verge running next to the street. As he was sniffing at it, I was able to quietly walk up to him and snap the leash onto his collar. From then on, we had a normal walk back to our house.

I've also learned a valuable lesson: no more letting the dogs out the back door until I've checked that the gate is closed.

UPDATE 1/17/12: The mailman left the gate open again today; fortunately, there were no dogs outside at the time. It looks as though I'm going to have to get one of those KEEP GATE CLOSED signs.

In the zone

2012-01-16T15:35:00.002-05:00

On the morning after moving into the new house in McKees Rocks, I woke up in my new bedroom. It was dark, and I found myself wondering what time it was (since I had yet to uncrate my digital alarm clock with the glowing red numbers). I fumbled around, found my wristwatch (us old people still use wristwatches instead of just looking at our cell phones), and lit up the display. It was 7am. I thought to myself: how can it be seven o'clock? It's still dark out!

I was face to face with one of the side effects of standardized time zones. Two hundred years ago, every city kept its own time, setting noon when the sun was directly overhead. However, after railroads became commonplace, it was necessary for large areas to all keep to the same time. Eventually, Congress adopted the Standard Time Act in 1918, creating the four current times zones of the Lower 48 States.

Back in Newport, near the eastern edge of the Eastern Time Zone, the sun was usually up by quittin' time, 7am. Even on the day of the Winter Soltice, the sun might not be up, but it was bright enough that I could drive home without using my headlights.

Then, that October morning, I woke up in McKees Rocks, 550 miles and nine degrees longitude west of Newport, but still in the Eastern Time Zone. The sun that was rising even then over the golden dome of Newport City Hall wouldn't be lighting up McKees Rocks for another thirty minutes. In McKees Rocks, it was still dark out.

And of course, to a hypothetical inhabitant of, say, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 200 miles and 3.5 degrees longitude further west, but still in the Eastern Time Zone, the effect would be even more pronounced. It would take the Earth fifty minutes to rotate our hypothetical Michiganian around to the terminator after Newport had passed through. If she traveled to Newport, our hypothetical Michiganian would wake to find sunlight pouring through her bedroom window, then would glance at the bedside clock and think in astonishment: how can it be light out? It's only seven o'clock!

Recap: Where No Man Has Gone Before (2 of 4)

2012-01-11T10:10:00.005-05:00

This is the second part of a recap of the second Star Trek pilot (and third aired episode), "Where No Man Has Gone Before", that I posted to the rec.arts.startrek.misc newsgroup back in November 2005 under the screen name Empok Nor. The first part is here.

The starship Enterprise under Captain James R. Kirk has discovered a ship's recorder from the S. S. Valiant, lost 200 years earlier. The Valiant encountered a strange energy field beyond the edge of the galaxy, and was disabled. Then, after looking up information on extra-sensory perception, the captain of the Valiant destroyed his ship. When the Enterprise encounters the same energy barrier, Second Officer Gary Mitchell and Dr. Elizabeth Dehner suffer some form of electrical shock. The shock has seemingly had no effect on Dehner, but has turned Mitchell's eyes silver.

ACT TWO
A shot of the Enterprise as she slowly crosses the screen from left to right. Kirk's voiceover says, "Captain's Log, stardate thirteen twelve point nine. Ship's condition: heading back on impulse power only. Main engine burned out. The ship's space warp ability, gone."

Shot of the bridge as various crewmembers try to repair various consoles. "Earth bases which were only days away are now years in the distance." Kirk approaches the helm/navigation console, where Alden and Kelso are doing repairs to the navigation controls. Kelso makes an unheard comment while shaking his head. "Our overriding question now is, what destroyed the Valiant?" As Kirk makes his way over to Spock's library computer station, we see Yeoman Smith standing next to the captain's chair. "They lived through the barrier just as we have. What happened to them after that?" Spock is looking up at the viewscreen above his station.

A shot of Spock's viewscreen, showing Dr. Dehner's medical record:

PERSONNEL MEDICAL RECORD - STARSHIP ENTERPRISE
Name: (last) DEHNER, P.H.D. (first) ELIZABETH
Present Address: (street) 1489 (city) DELMAN (state) NEWSTATE
Permanent Address: SAME
Birthplace: DELMAN Father's Birthplace (not visible)
Lineage: (blank) Mother's Birthplace (not visible)
Date of birth: 1089.5 Age: 21
Height: 5' 2" Weight: 116
Name: SAME
Father: DEHNER, GERALD

Interesting that her date of birth is given as a stardate, but no way is Dr. Dehner 21 years old. Perhaps this record page dates from when she graduated Starfleet. Also, note that her height and weight are given in English rather than metric terms. Next shot:

ESP RATING
ESPER RATING: 089. APERCEPTION QUOTIENT: 20/100.
DUKE - HEIDELBURG QUOTIENT: 256.
GENERAL KNOWLDEGE QUOTIENT: 654895-109.

ESPER RATING and quotients are better than average in all cate-
gories. Subject officer's history indicates an esper orientation
pattern since childhood, evidenced in superiority at "guessing games",
reading cards et cetera. Esper-orientation and abilities are evident
through both the maternal and paternal bloodlines, but in only one
case does the indicated tendency toward ESP go back more than three
generations.

Subject officer has been aware of the high ESP rating since
secondary school days and it is, in part, the basis for interest and
vocational training as a psychiatrist. Participation in tests and
studies of other esper-oriented beings are the subject of a thesis
now being published by this officer in association with the College
of Medical Science of the Tri-Planetary Academy and was, in fact,
the reason for this officer's posting to the Aldebaron Colony.
It must be stressed this officer's interest in esper-perception
has been in relationship and pursuit to vocation as a psychiatrist.

All the underlining in the body of this report, btw, was done by hand. Also, it occurs to me that this report must have been written either by Dehner's superior at the Aldebaran Colony, or by Doctor Piper after her transfer to the Enterprise. Next shot:

PERSONNEL MEDICAL RECORD - STARSHIP ENTERPRISE
Name: (last) MITCHELL, COMDR. (first) GARY
Present Address: (street) 8149 (city) ELDMAN (state) NEWSTATE
Permanent Address: SAME
Birthplace: ELDMAN Father's Birthplace (not visible)
Lineage: (blank) Mother's Birthplace (not visible)
Date of birth: 1087.7 Age: 23 Height: 5' 9" Weight: 167
Name: SAME

Again, no way is Mitchell only 23 years old. And his rank is given as full Commander, not simply Lt. Commander. Next shot:

ESP RATING ESPER RATING: 091. APERCEPTION QUOTIENT: 20/104.
DUKE - HEIDELBURG QUOTIENT: 281.
GENERAL KNOWLDEGE QUOTIENT: 679532-112.

ESPER RATING and quotients are well above average in all cate-
gories and exceptionally high in some. On planet Deneb IV, subject
officer showed a marked ability in sensing the telepathic communica-
tion used by the inhabitants of that planet. In at least three cases
(see notations on rear of report), subject officer carried on long
telepathic communication with selected Deneb IV natives and scored
80 percent or higher on comprehension.

History on subject officer from childhood shows a consistent
pattern of esper orientation, dating back to a better than average
ability at the usual childhood "guessing games", some grade school
interest and ability in elementary magicians' tricks, et cetera.
There is also a strong tendency through the maternal bloodline toward
esper-oriented abilities, dating back through at least six generations
to both males and females who dabbled in metaphysical studies and, in
at least one case, a female ancestor who was intersted in spiritual
readings.

As you can see, even better than Dehner. And some cool backstory on Mitchell's visit to the planet Deneb IV, and on that planet's telepathic natives. Which begs the question of why Mr. Spock, with his own marked Vulcan telepathic abilities, remained unaffected by the Galactic Barrier. Guess it doesn't work on Vulcans the same way as humans. The real reason, of course, is that it wasn't until the episode "Dagger of the Mind" that we found out that Spock was telepathic.

Cut back to Kirk and Spock on the bridge. Dr. Dehner emerges from the turbolift and says, "Autopsy reports, Captain." Handing Kirk a computer tape, she continues, "Each case showed damage to the body's neural circuit. An area of the brain was burned out."

"And you?" Kirk asks her. "Are you feeling all right?"

"Yes. Mitchell too, except for his eyes. We're trying to find a reason for that now, and why out of our whole crew only certain people were affected."

"I think we've found that answer, doctor," Spock interjects.

"You mentioned that tests show that you have a high degree of extra-sensory perception," Kirk reminds her. "So do the records of the others. Gary Mitchell has the highest esper rating of all."

"If you're suggeting there's anything dangerous --" Dehner begins.

"Before the Valiant was destroyed," Spock interrupts, "its captain was desperately searching for ESP information on his crew."

Dehner objects, "Espers are simply people with flashes of insight."

"Are there not also those who seem to see through solid objects?" Spock responds. "Cause fires to start spontaneously?"

"There's nothing about it that could possibly make a person dangerous," Dehner insists.

"Dr. Dehner is speaking of normal ESP power," Spock points out.

"Perhaps you know of another kind?" Dehner snarks. Well, as it happens, doctor, Spock does indeed know of another kind, but we won't find out about that until later.

"Do we know for sure, doctor, that there isn't another kind?" Kirk asks. Rather unfairly, IMHO. Of course we don't know that there isn't another kind. In fact, it's a common logical fallacy to assert the existence of some phenomenon by claiming that its existence has never been disproved. I'm surprised that Kirk's logical first officer doesn't point that out.

Is that a look of contempt on Dehner's face? It jolly well ought to be.

*************************

Close-up of a bio-monitor screen. We can see the words RESPIRATION and PULSE above circles that light up intermittently. A low beep keeps time with the pulse circle.

We cut to a wider shot of the bio-monitor screen, then pan down to Gary Mitchell resting on a bio-bed in sickbay. He's wearing a sleeveless blue jumpsuit that has an olive-branches-and-caduceus logo on the left breast. In his left hand is a small black control box with some silver buttons. His right hand is holding a monitor screen mounted on a jointed arm. The jointed arm, btw, has a niche in it that holds several computer tapes. We can see lines of text on the monitor screen. Mitchell eventually drops the control box on the bed and switches off the monitor. Picking up the control box again, he stretches, yawns, and turns over onto his side.

The door opens and Kirk enters. "Hello, Jim," says Mitchell without turning to see who it is. Finally, he turns to look at Kirk and says, "Hey, you look worried."

Kirk smiles and says, "I've been worried about you ever since that night on Deneb IV."

Mitchell laughs and says, "Yeah, she was nova, that one." Ah, this would be one of the telepathic natives of Deneb IV, would it? Hmmmmmm. "Not nearly as many aftereffects this time." Aftereffects? Double hmmmmmm. (Wikipedia notes that Deneb is a blue giant star in the constellation Cygnus, spectral class A2 Ia, and that estimates of its distance from Earth vary from 1600 to 3200 light years.) "Except for the eyes," Mitchell adds. "They kind of stare back at me when I'm shaving."

Approaching him, Kirk asks, "Do you . . . feel . . . any different?"

"In a way, I feel better than I've ever felt before in my life. Actually seems to have done me some good."

"How?" Kirk wonders.

"Well, I'm getting a chance to read some of that longhair stuff you like," says Mitchell as he hands Kirk some computer cassettes. He laughs and puts his hands behind his head as he reminisces. "Hey, man, I remember you back at the academy. A stack of books with legs. The first thing I ever heard from an upperclassman was, 'Watch out for Lieutenant Kirk. In his class you either think, or sink'."

Kirk laughs along with Mitchell and says, "I wasn't that bad, was I?"

"If I hadn't aimed that little blonde lab technician at you --"

"You what?" says a surprised Kirk. "You planned that?"

"Well, you wanted me to think, didn't you?" Mitchell chuckles. "I outlined her whole campaign for her."

"I almost married her!" says an outraged Kirk. And of course, the inevitable thought that occurs at this point is, are they talking about Carol Marcus? That would be spooky.

Still smiling, Mitchell says, "Better be good to me. I'm getting even better ideas here." He turns the monitor to face Kirk.

Kirk switches it back on and reads it, then says with a grin, "You? Spinoza?"

"Once you get into him, though, he's rather simple," says Mitchell. "Childish, almost. I don't agree with him at all." Among other things, Spinoza was a strict determinist who argued that free will was an illusion. Naturally, this is not an idea Mitchell is going to have much sympathy for.

"Go on," says Kirk.

Mitchell smiles again and says, "Hey, I'm trying to tell you I feel fine. When do I go back on duty?"

"I'm going to ask Dr. Dehner to keep you under observation for a while," says Kirk.

Mitchell is not pleased to hear this. "With almost a hundred women on board, you can do better than that, friend Captain."

Grinning again, Kirk says, "Consider it a challenge." Is this Kirk's way of getting back at Mitchell for pulling that lab technician stunt? Could be.

"That doesn't sound very friendly," Mitchell remarks. As Kirk turns to go, Mitchell adds, in a loud voice echoing with reverb, "Didn't I say you'd better --"

Kirk turns back around, shocked. Mitchell finishes in his normal voice, " . . . be good to me?"

Kirk tries to smile again, but it doesn't take. After he leaves, Mitchell returns to the monitor. He clicks through the pages about once each second, then faster and faster.

**********************

On the bridge, the pages from Mitchell's monitor also appear on the screen above Spock's station, flicking by faster and faster. As Kirk joins him, Spock says, "He's reading faster now than just a few moments ago. Is that Gary Mitchell? The one you used to know?"

Another shot of the screen, now showing Mitchell in sickbay clicking through pages.

Kirk orders, "Put a twenty-four hour watch on sickbay. Fullest possible range of examinations and tests." Spock nods and goes off to see that it's done. Kirk continues watching Mitchell. On the screen, Mitchell turns and looks back at Kirk.

*************************

Sickbay. Another shot of the biobed monitor. Piper pushes a button on the monitor a couple of times, then remarks, "Perfect. Perfect. I've never had a patient like you, Gary. Even the healthiest are generally off on some readings." Paul Fix plays Piper as completely oblivious. No wonder GR wanted DeForest Kelley to play the ship's doctor. Holding a little black bag to his side, Piper turns and exits sickbay, leaving Dehner alone with Mitchell. She's leaning against the wall next to the exit.

"I know you don't particularly like me, Mr. Mitchell," she says, "but since I am assigned to you, can we make the best of it?"

"I've got nothing against you, doctor," Mitchell says with a smile.

"Or against a 'walking freezer unit'?"

Nodding rather sheepishly for a mental superman, Mitchell says, "Well, yeah. Sorry about that." Enjoy that apology, doctor. Mitchell isn't going to be handing them out for much longer.

Smiling, Dehner approaches Mitchell, saying, "Women professionals do tend to overcompensate. Now let's talk about you. How do you feel?"

As he sits up, Mitchell says, "You know, everybody, everybody seems worried that I don't have some kind of a fever or something." Turning to look up at the biobed monitor, he adds, "Maybe if I could just change these dials . . . "

The readings immediately all shoot up, and the pulse beep sounds like a set of maracas.

Dehner is appalled, but Mitchell just has a "hmmmm" look on his face. "Now back to normal, I think," he says, and the readings do indeed go back to normal.

"How did you do that?" asks Dehner.

Looking troubled for the first time, Mitchell says, "I'm not sure." He perks up as he says, "I just thought of making it happen, and it does." With a chuckle, he adds, "Hey, uh, hey watch this, doc." The biomonitor readings all plunge to zero, and Mitchell collapses unconscious onto the bed. (This occurs at the 18:27 mark, for those of you keeping track.)

A flabbergasted Dehner looks up at the biomonitor, then down at Mitchell, then up at the biomonitor again, then down at Mitchell again. She takes his hand and says, "Stop it! Stop it!" She leans over to listen for his heart. Then she looks up at his face, at which point Mitchell's eyes open. (The time is 18:43. Mitchell has been "dead" for sixteen seconds.) As he smiles at her, she says, "You were dead for almost twenty-two seconds. There were no readings at all."

Mitchell brings his hand up to brush against Dehner's face before touching his own. Taking her hand and laughing a nervous laugh, he says, "You know, doc, there've been other things, too. Like going halfway through the ship's library in hardly a day. Yeah." Stroking her hand, he mutters, "Oh, what's happening to me?"

"Do you remember everything you read that quickly?"

Mitchell nods. "Yeah."

"On any tape?"

Nodding again, Mitchell repeats, "Sure, yeah."

Dehner picks up one of the cassetts, shows it to him, and says, "Try this one." She slots it into the reader and says, "Page three eighty-seven."

Mitchell recites, "My love has wings/slender feathered things/with grace in upswept curve/and tapered tip."

As Dehner looks over from the monitor, Mitchell notes, " 'Nightingale Woman', written by Tarbolde on the Canopus planet back in nineteen ninety-six." (Wikipedia notes that Canopus is a yellow supergiant star in the constellation Carina, spectral type F0 Ib, 310 light years from Earth. Incidentally, Mitchell actually pronounces the name "Canopius".) "It's funny you picked that one, doctor," he adds.

"Why?" asks Dehner as she switches off the monitor.

Mitchell grabs her by the arm and brings her face close to his. "That's one of the most passionate love sonnets in the past couple of centuries." Staring into her eyes, he says, "How do you feel, doctor?"

Dehner makes no attempt to pull away from Mitchell, simply responding with a dazed, "What?"

"How do you feel?"

"I just fell," Dehner says, referring to her episode on the bridge. "Nothing happened."

"Are you sure?" Mitchell whispers. "Are you sure?"

Whether Dehner is sure that nothing happened to her will never be known, because at this point the door opens and Kelso walks in, stopping short when he sees that his pal Gary is in the middle of another one of his conquests. Discreetly clearing his throat, Kelso says, "Uh, I was on my coffee break. I thought I'd, uh, check up on . . . "

As Dehner slowly straightens up, Mitchell gives Kelso an enthusiastic, "Yeah, that's okay, Lee, come on in. Don't let the light in my eyes bother you, pal. It's all for our, uh, our good looking lady doctor, here."

"Yeah, sure," says Kelso, plainly still uneasy.

"So, uh, so how go the repairs?"

"Well, the main engines are gone unless we can find some way to re-energize them."

"You better check the starboard impulse packs," Mitchell warns him. "Those points have about decayed to lead."

"Oh, yeah, sure, Mitch." That Gary, always with the funny remarks.

"I'm not joking, Lee!" Mitchell warns with an edge in his voice. "You activate those packs and you'll blow the whole impulse deck!"

Now Kelso is really freaked. "I'll, uh, I'll get on it right away. I just wanted to stop by and make sure you were okay. See you later." Kelso makes a quick exit.

"He's a fool," Mitchell says angrily as he leans back in bed. "A fool. He'd seen those points and he hadn't noticed their condition."

Dehner is staring at him. "How do you know?"

Mitchell is clearly torn between awe and fear. "The image of what he'd seen was still in his mind."

**************************

The briefing room. A close up of some gizmo lying on the table. We open out into a wide shot of the room as Kelso picks it up and says, "Well, it didn't make any sense that he'd know, but naturally I checked out the circuit anyway." Kirk and Spock are seated at one end of the table. Clockwise from Spock are Kelso on the left side of the table and Sulu, Scott and Piper at the other end. Carrying the gizmo over to Kirk, Kelso continues, "I don't know how, but he was right. This point is burned out exactly the way he described it."

You know, if you think about it, this is so straightforward it almost isn't technobabble. "Decayed almost to lead" means radioactive decay. The points on the power packs are made up of some transuranic element, and passing through the Galactic Barrier caused the rate of radioactive decay to speed up until the points were practically all lead. This prevents the energy stored in the rest of the power pack from passing through to the ship's systems. I'm not quite sure how this would cause the power packs to blow up if they were used, but that's a minor quibble compared to how much sense the rest of the explanation makes.

Anyway, as Kirk takes the gizmo from Kelso, Dehner enters and sits on the right side of the table, between Piper and Kirk, saying, "Sorry I'm late. I became so interested in observing Gary -- Mr. Mitchell -- "

"Our subject is not Gary Mitchell," Spock says. "Our concern, rather, is what he is mutating into."

Dehner doesn't like the sound of that. "I know those from your planet aren't supposed to have feelings like we do, Mr. Spock, but to talk that way about a man you've served next to for years is worse than even --"

"That's enough, doctor," Kirk interrupts her.

But Elizabeth Dehner, P.H.D. is intent on speaking her mind. "I don't think so," she tells Kirk. "I understand you least of all. Gary told me that you've been friends since he joined the service, that you asked for him aboard your first command." It would later be established that at this point, Kirk had only recently been given command of the Enterprise, though Spock had been serving on her for over ten years. However, Samuel A. Peeples couldn't know that, so he implies here that Kirk and Mitchell have been aboard, and serving with Spock, for several years.

"It is my duty, whether pleasant or unpleasant," Kirk informs her, "to listen to the reports, observations, even speculations, on any subject that might affect the safety of this vessel. And it's my Science Officer's duty to see that I'm provided with it. Go ahead, Mr. Spock."

Spock asks Dehner, "Have you noted evidence of unusual powers?"

Dehner pauses while she tries to put Mitchell's strange abilities in an unthreatening light. "He can control . . . certain autonomic reflexes." Like making his heart stop beating, and then starting it up again. "He reads very fast, retains more than most of us might consider usual." Like, everything.

Kirk drops his bombshell: "Mr. Scott, would you repeat what you just told us?"

"About an hour ago," says Scott, "the bridge controls started goin' crazy. Levers shiftin' by themselves, buttons bein' pushed, instrument readings changin'."

"And on my monitor screen," Spock adds, "I could see Mitchell smiling each time it happened, as if this ship and crew were almost a toy for his amusement."

Kirk leans forward and peers at Dehner. "Are they right, doctor? Has he shown abilities of such magnitude?" In other words, have you been bullshitting me about how powerful Mitchell is?

"I saw some such indications," Dehner weasels.

"And you didn't think it worth mentioning?"

"No one's been hurt, have they?" Dehner insists. In fact, Mitchell probably just saved a bunch of guys down in engineering. I'd say he's definitely ahead on points. You'd think they'd cut him some slack. "Don't you understand?" she continues. "A mutated superior man could be a wonderful thing, the forerunner of a new and better kind of human being!" Looks like Mitchell was right on the bridge about Dehner's desire to "improve the breed".

Of course, if Kirk wanted to, he could cite the Eugenics Wars for an example of the downside of having a new and better kind of human being around. But that, like Spock's telepathic abilities, is a bit of canon that hasn't been canonized yet. In any event, Dehner's outburst leaves everybody in the briefing room looking at her like she's just lost her mind (which is kind of ironic, actually). Eventually, Kirk says, "Mr. Sulu."

The blue-tunicked Asian astrophysicist responds by speaking his second line of the episode: "If you want the mathematics of this, Mitchell's ability is increasing geometrically. That is like having a penny, doubling it every day. In a month, you'll be a millionaire."

"In less time than that," Spock notes, "he will have attained powers we can't understand and can't cope with. Soon, we'll be not only useless to him, but actually an annoyance."

Kirk stands up: meeting over. "There'll be no discussion of this with the crew. Thank you."

As the briefing participants gather up their computer cassettes and head out, Spock pauses, then turns to speak with Kirk. "We'll never reach an Earth base with him aboard, Jim." Note that the Federation itself isn't canon yet. Enterprise is an Earth ship, visiting Earth bases and Earth colonies like the Aldebaran colony in between visits to alien worlds like Deneb IV. "You heard the mathematics of it," Spock continues. "In another month, he'll have as much in common with us as we'd have with a ship full of white mice."

Kirk, who hasn't bothered to turn around and actually face Spock, says, "What I need are recommendations, Spock, not vague warnings."

"Recommendation one: there's a planet a few light-days away from here, Delta Vega. It has a lithium cracking station. We may be able to adapt some of its power packs to our engines." A light-day is a little over sixteen billion miles, over four times the distance from Pluto to the sun. "A few light-days" is uncharacteristically imprecise of Spock, but presumably means that Delta Vega is about fifty billion miles away.

Which begs the question of just what a lithium cracking station is doing way out here on the edge of the galaxy, when the Enterprise is only the second Earth ship to make it this far out in the last 200 years. And what about that name, Delta Vega? Vega is a mere 26.5 light-years from Earth, just about as far from the edge of the galaxy as Earth itself. Maybe the station was set up by an automated mining ship sent out by the Vega colony (mentioned in the first pilot as Pike's original destination before he diverted course for Talos IV). Presumably, warp-capable automated freighters stop by every so often to load up some cracked lithium and haul it back to the Vega colony, where it can be processed and repackaged and sold to everybody in Earth's sphere of influence who needs some cracked lithium.

Anyway, Kirk responds, "And if we can't, we'll be trapped in orbit there. We haven't enough power to blast back out."

"It is the only possible way to get Mitchell off this ship," Spock points out. He doesn't point out that a much easier way to get him off the ship is to just transport him into space.

"If you mean strand Mitchell there, I won't do it!" Kirk barks. This, at last, is enough to get him to turn his head and establish a brief eye contact with Spock. Turning back, he adds, "The station is fully automated. There's not a soul on the whole planet. Even the ore ships call only once every twenty years." Wow, just how long has this place been in operation? And Earth is only now sending a starship out to have a look? The Vega colony has really got a leg up on Earth.

"Then you have one other choice," Spock states. "Kill Mitchell while you still can." Did I mention that the transporter can just beam him off the ship anytime you give the order? This, presumably, is Spock's recommendation number two.

Kirk turns and walks back to the table, still not looking at Spock. "Get out of here," he mutters.

"It is your only other choice," Spock insists. "Assuming you make it while you still have time."

"Will you try for one moment to feel?" says Kirk. "At least act like you've got a heart. We're talking about Gary."

"The captain of the Valiant probably felt the same way," Spock says. "And he waited too long to make his decision. I think we've both guessed that." Still, it wasn't a total loss. As revealed in Friedman's The Valiant, about 70 members of the Valiant's crew escaped from the ship before it was destroyed, and settled on a class-M planet on the far side of the Galactic Barrier.

Finally, Kirk makes his decision. "Set course for Delta Vega," he orders Spock, then sits at the table while Spock leaves the briefing room.

Musical sting. Fade to black.

(continue to part 3)

Recap: Where No Man Has Gone Before (1 of 4)

2012-01-10T14:58:00.006-05:00

This is the second in a series of recaps of the original Star Trek episodes that I first posted to the alt.startrek and rec.arts.startrek.misc newsgroups back in 2005. Today's selection: the second pilot, "Where No Man Has Gone Before" by Samuel A. Peeples.

Our story opens some time in 1965, when the suits at NBC, having rejected Gene Roddenberry's pilot episode for his Star Trek series, decide to have him make a second pilot. In an unusual moment of candor, the suits admit that they were the ones who chose "The Cage" story, so it's not really GR's fault that the resulting pilot is so "cerebral" (ie intelligent). The suits draw up a laundry list of changes to the series concept, rejecting most of the cast and asking in particular that the half-alien character Mr. Spock, with his Satanic pointed ears and upswept eyebrows, be dropped from the series. GR agrees to the rest of the suggested changes, but balks at losing Spock, and eventually he prevails. When Jeffrey Hunter turns down the role of the captain, it is (according to Wikipedia) also turned down by Jack Lord before being given to William Shatner. With a new actor playing the role, the character is renamed James Kirk. Mr. Spock is moved up a place in rank to first officer, and will be played again by Leonard Nimoy.

To make sure there's no repetition of the cerebral story fiasco, the suits ask Desilu to produce three complete shooting scripts for the second pilot. GR, Desilu and NBC get together and agree to hire two freelance writers, Samuel A. Peeples and Stephen Kandel, to produce two of the scripts, while GR himself will write the third. By early June the three scripts are ready: "Where No Man Has Gone Before" by Peeples, "Mudd's Women" by Kandel, and "The Omega Glory" by GR. The suits choose the first, and production is slated to begin on 5 July 1965.

Art director Matt Jeffries calculates that the starship Enterprise is 947 feet in length, rather more than his original estimate, and the ship's crew complement is boosted from 203 to 430. The remaining characters in the second pilot are finalized, and actors are chosen to play them. Doctor Philip Boyce is changed to Doctor Mark Piper, played by Paul Fix. Yeoman Colt is changed to Yeoman Smith, played by Andrea Dromm. The nameless communications officer is given the name Alden, and will be played by Lloyd Haynes. Two other new regulars will be chief engineer Scott, who will be played by James Doohan, and astrophysicist Sulu, who will be played by George Takei. Three guest stars will be Gary Lockwood, playing navigator Gary Mitchell; Paul Carr, playing helmsman Lee Kelso; and Sally Kellerman, playing psychologist Dr. Elizabeth Dehner.

There had been four Enterprise sets built for the first pilot: the bridge, the corridor, the transporter room, and the briefing room, which with suitable redressing doubled as the captain's cabin. For the second pilot, they also build a sickbay set. James Goldstone is chosen to direct, and filming of "Where No Man Has Gone Before" begins on 19 July 1965.

****************************

TEASER
A starscape, with the Enterprise approaching the viewer. A piece of background music that we can call the Enterprise theme is playing; it was actually the title theme for the episode, and might have become the title theme for the series had GR not switched back to the title theme used in "The Cage" when the series went into production.

We hear the voice of Captain Kirk: "Captain's log, stardate thirteen twelve point four. The impossible has happened." This is the first recorded use of the "captain's log" device for providing exposition, and also the first use of stardates. Stardates allowed GR to give a sense of the passage of time on the show without being tied down to an actual time period for the show's setting. After the show's run ended, it was decided that the series had been set in the 23rd century, but this wasn't established at the time. In the Star Trek Concordance, Bjo Trimble sets the original series in the 22nd century.

Cut to an Enterprise-view of the space ahead, as stars drift by. Kirk's voice continues: "From directly ahead, we're picking up a recorded distress signal, the call letters of a vessel which has been missing for over two centuries." We pull back to reveal that the starscape is on a monitor screen being watched by Kirk and Spock as they play three-dimensional chess in the briefing room. According to Stephen E. Whitfield in The Making of Star Trek, this scene was originally set in Kirk's cabin, but was changed to the briefing room to save money (there were other scenes set in the briefing room, but no other scenes set in Kirk's cabin, so changing the setting of this scene meant one less set to dress and light).

Kirk's voice continues: "Did another Earth ship probe out of the galaxy as we intend to do? What happened to it out there? Is this some warning they've left behind?" Kirk, Spock, and the crewmen watching them are all dressed in the same uniforms worn by the crew in the first pilot. Kirk and Spock are wearing muted gold tunics and black pants. Both have the starburst command insignia. According to The Making of Star Trek, this scene was the first to be filmed.

Kirk is watching the monitor. "Your move, captain," says Spock.

Kirk's mind is definitely not on the game. "Should have intercepted by now," says Kirk. "Bridge said they'd call."

"I'll have you checkmated your next move," Spock observes.

That's enough to get Kirk's attention. He turns back to Spock, laughs, and says, "Have I ever mentioned you play a very irritating game of chess, Mr. Spock?"

Spock looks momentarily puzzled, then brightens. "Irritating? Ah, yes, one of your Earth emotions."

Still smiling, Kirk moves a bishop up a couple of levels. Spock's look of smug superiority transforms into dismay. He's not quite as emotional as he was in the first pilot, but he's still not quite the stoic Vulcan of legend.

A grinning Kirk says, "Certain you don't know what irritation is?"

Still looking unhappily at the bishop, Spock says, "In fact, one of my ancestors married a human female." If you look behind Spock as he says this, you can see a woman wearing the same red sleeveless top and pleated white miniskirt who passed Captain Pike in the corridor in the first pilot. Man, you'd think she would have gotten a new outfit in eleven years.

"Terrible, having bad blood like that," says Kirk.

Any further comments Kirk might have chosen to make are interrupted by a comm whistle. "Bridge to briefing lounge," says Lee Kelso, in a muted peach tunic. Oddly, he has that round insignia that would later be science and medical, but is evidently engineering and support services here, since everyone in a peach tunic has one. The monitor switches to a view of Kelso sitting at the helm console on the bridge. We can see that the bridge is rather more colorful than it was in the first pilot, with the rails, turbolift doors, and helm-navigation console trimmed in red. Also, the video monitors on the gooseneck mounts are gone from the helm and navigation. "Object is now within tractor beam range."

"No visual contact, Mr. Kelso?" asks Kirk.

"No, sir," Kelso answers. "Too small to be a vessel. Only reads about one meter in diameter." A surprising use of the metric system, here. This is 1965 after all.

"Not large enough even for a lifeboat," Spock observes.

"Small enough to bring it aboard, sir, if you want to risk it," says Kelso.

"Lock on to it, Mr. Kelso," says Kirk. He and Spock rise from the table and head for the exit.

*************************

Close-up on the transporter console as a pair of hands in muted peach work the controls. We pull back to reveal that the hands belong to Mr. Scott. Kirk and Spock are already in the transporter room. "Materializer ready, sir," says Scott. As with the helm-navigation console on the bridge, the transporter console is now red with a gray top, and no longer has any video monitors on gooseneck mounts. (As the Okudas note in the DVD commentary, this is because the transporter console was the helm-navigation console. As they also note, there are no slide controls.) The wall to the left of the transporter stage has a large display of a spiral galaxy.

"Bring it aboard," orders Kirk. This, GR thinks, is going to be the viewing audience's introduction to the transporter. We hear a rising hum, the transporter stage lights up, and with the familiar sparkle and materialization sound, we see a tapering cylindrical object appear. It has a dome on top, and stands on three legs, and looks like it's seen some action. The name VALIANT can be made out on the top.

"Old style ship recorder," Kirk notes. "It could be ejected when something threatened the ship."

"More like destroyed the ship in this case," says Spock. "Look at it: burnt, pitted."

"Let's hope its tapes are intact," says Kirk. To Scott he says, "We'll feed it through Mr. Spock's computer."

"Yes, sir," says Scott.

The dome on the recorder begins flashing. "It's begun transmitting, sir," says Scott, accompanied by a dramatic sting.

"Flash to bridge," says Kirk decisively. "Put all decks on the alert."

As Kirk and Spock emerge into the corridor from the transporter room (there's a sign above the doorway that says TRANSPORTER), the alert alarm sounds, a single rising tone that's much more authoritative than the wimpy two-tone alert we heard in the first pilot. We pan left as Kirk and Spock make their way down the corridor, then cut to a flashing red light as a dramatic version of the Enterprise theme ushers us out of the teaser and into the

OPENING CREDITS
The opening notes of Alexander Courage's title theme. The Enterprise comes into view from the left and passes on the right as the first dramatic sting sounds. Cut to a view of a distant red planet as the Enterprise passes by on the left and heads toward it. Shot of the Enterprise orbiting the red planet. As the second dramatic sting sounds, we cut to a shot of space as the Enterprise flashes silently past. The synthesizer version of the title theme plays as the words STAR TREK come up in the familiar angular font. Another silently zooming Enterprise heralds the words STARRING WILLIAM SHATNER. Yet another silently zooming Enterprise brings us the words LEONARD NIMOY AS MR. SPOCK as the title theme ends.

***************************

ACT ONE
The Enterprise passes from left to right as the words "WHERE NO MAN HAS GONE BEFORE" appear. Cut to a shot of the corridor as crewmen pass back and forth. Cut to an overhead view of a turbolift door as Kirk and Spock enter. Just as the doors are about to close a third man, in a peach tunic, dashes in, saying, "Hold it, Jim."

Cut to the interior of the turbolift as the doors close. The man in the peach tunic is Gary Mitchell. A smiling Kirk says to him, "Getting into shape?"

"Yeah, well, I figured you weren't on the bridge," Mitchell responds. "Kelso's voice sounded a little nervous." Something I never noticed before: as the turbolift starts rising, the camera drops ever so slightly, adding to the impression that the lift is rising. A nice touch from Goldstone. Turning to Spock, Mitchell adds, "Well, uh, you finish the game?"

Spock nods. "He played most illogically. His next move should have been the rook." Kirk grins and makes a throat-cutting gesture accompanied by a shhhk noise. Note that this is Mr. Spock's first ever reference to logic.

The turbolift doors open onto the bridge. Yeoman Smith is standing to the left of the turbolift holding a computer tape. Kelso is seated at the helm console. A crewman in a blue tunic (a black man, btw) enters the lift from the left.

Mitchell steps up to the navigation console and says, "You're relieved, Mr. Alden."

"Acknowledged, Mr. Mitchell," says a blue-tunicked Alden. According to Michael Jan Friedman's "My Brother's Keeper" trilogy, Alden's first name is Daniel. Alden's insignia is the gearwork "e" that would later be the engineering symbol; everyone in a blue tunic has it. Alden moves to the communications console as Yeoman Smith follows Kirk to the captain's chair. Kelso smiles at Mitchell.

"Screen on," says Kirk as he sits. Shot of Kelso flipping a switch, then a shot of the main viewscreen over the shoulders of Kirk, Kelso and Mitchell. As in the first pilot, the main viewscreen has rounded corners and flashing lights above it rather than below. The screen comes on, revealing stars.

"Screen on," Kelso acknowledges.

Kirk, with Smith standing behind him, glances to his left. The helm-navigation console no longer has the gooseneck-mounted monitors it had in "The Cage", but the other stations do, as does the captain's chair. We see Spock at his library computer station, listening to the signal from the recorder. Another shot of Kirk, then one of Kelso as he says, "Approaching galaxy edge, sir."

"Neutralize warp, Mr. Mitchell," Kirk orders. "Hold this position."

Mitchell works his console. A shot of the viewscreen as the stars slow to a stop. We hear Mitchell say, "Neutralize warp, sir." A bit of treknobabble that didn't make it into the regular series.

"Address intercraft," says Kirk.

Mitchell waves his hand over his console, producing a transporter-like bleep, and says, "Intercraft open." The navigator opened intercraft in the first pilot, too. A nice bit of continuity.

"This is the captain speaking," says a reverbed Kirk. "The object we encountered was a ship's disaster recorder, apparently ejected from the S.S. Valiant almost two hundred years ago."

"Tapes are burnt," says Spock, as he lifts an earphone on a cord to his ear. "Now trying the memory banks."

"We hope to learn from the recorder what the Valiant was doing here and what destroyed the vessel," Kirk continues on intercraft. Behind him, the turbolift doors open to reveal Doctors Piper and Dehner, Mr. Sulu and Mr. Scott. The first three are wearing blue tunics. "We'll move out into our probe as soon as we have those answers. All decks stand by."

Mitchell turns and explains, "Our department heads, sir. You wanted everybody on the bridge before we left the galaxy." It would have made more sense for Kirk et al to meet in the briefing room, but dramatically that would have interrupted the momentum that's building for the big probe into the intergalactic void.

Kirk turns and looks at his department heads, then rises from his chair. Finding Yeoman Smith in his way, he says, "Uh, Jones?"

"Name's Smith, sir." Kirk gestures for her to get out of his way (well, I guess it beats bumping into her, like Pike did), then goes up to join the department heads.

"Astro-sciences standing by," says Sulu.

"Engineering division ready as always," says Scott with a slight smile, which Kirk returns.

"Life sciences ready, sir," says Piper. "This is Doctor Dehner, who joined the ship at the Aldebaran colony." (Wikipedia notes that Aldebaran is a red giant star in the constellation Taurus, spectral type K5 III, and that it is 65.1 light years from Earth.)

"Psychiatry, captain," Dehner amplifies. "My assignment is to study crew reactions in emergency conditions."

We hear a beeping sound coming from Spock's station. "Getting something from the recorder now," says Spock.

Kirk joins Spock at his station, and Dehner follows him, saying, "If there was an emergency, I'd be interested in how that crew reacted, too."

Mitchell says, " 'We're improving the breed', doctor, is that your line?" You know, even without any super mental powers, he's kind of an asshole.

"I've heard that's more your specialty, Commander," Dehner responds with a malicious smile. "Line included." Ouch!

Mitchell, confirming his asshole status, turns to Kelso and says, "Walking freezer unit."

"Decoding memory banks," says Spock. "I'll try to interpolate." Mr. Spock's ability to discern the information in the recorder by listening to its beeps has been compared to reading a teletype message by listening to it print out. "Valiant had encountered a magnetic space storm and was being swept in this direction."

"The old impulse engines weren't strong enough," Kirk notes.

"Swept past this point about a half light year out of the galaxy," Spock continues. "They were thrown clear, turned, and headed back into the galaxy here." (A fuller account of the Valiant's last days can be found in Michael Jan Friedman's Next Generation novel The Valiant.)

"I'm not getting it all," says Spock, "the tapes are badly burnt. Sounds like the ship had encountered some unknown force." Spock pauses, and we see shots of Kirk and Alden listening attentively. "Now orders, counter-orders. Repeated urgent requests for information from the ship's computer records for anything concerning ESP in human beings."

"Extra-sensory perception?" says Kirk. Spock nods. Kirk turns to his department heads and calls, "Dr. Dehner." A psychiatrist! Boy, talk about your lucky coincidences! "How are you on ESP?"

Dehner says, "In tests I've taken my ESP rated rather high." It's a bit of necessary foreshadowing, but Dehner misunderstanding what Kirk wants makes her sound dense.

"I'm asking what you know about ESP," Kirk clarifies. Also, we need some exposition for the audience.

"It is a fact," Dehner exposits, "that some people can sense future happenings, read the backs of playing cards, and so on." By an interesting coincidence, playing cards also play a minor role in Kandel's script for "Mudd's Women". "But the esper capacity is always quite limited."

"Severe damage," Spock relays from the recorder. "Seven crewmen dead. No, make that six. One crewman seemed to have recovered." Recovered from being dead? That's never a good thing. "That's when they became interested in extra-sensory perception. More than interested, almost frantic about it." Another pause, while we glance at the department heads standing in front of the turbolift doors. "No," Spock finally says, "this must be garbled. I get something about 'destruct'." A musical sting. Spock continues, "I must have read it wrong. It sounded like the captain giving an order to destroy his own ship." More dramatic music, accompanied by shots of Mitchell, the department heads, then back to Kirk and Spock.

We pan right as Kirk crosses back to the department heads. "Comments?" he says to them.

"The only fact we have for sure is that the S.S. Valiant was destroyed," says Piper.

Kirk nods and says, "That's probably the best argument to continue the probe. Other vessels will be heading out here someday and they'll have to know what they'll be facing." Seating himself in the captain's chair, Kirk announces, "We're leaving the galaxy, Mr. Mitchell. Ahead warp factor one."

Mitchell operates his console, and we hear the engines ramping up. On the viewscreen, the last few stars pass out of view. More shots of crewmembers looking at the screen. Back to the screen, where we see a shifting reddish haze. The energy barrier theme plays.

"Forcefield of some kind," announces Spock.

"We're coming up on it fast," says Mitchell.

Kirk glances at Spock, who calls out, "Sensor beam on."

"Sensor beam on, sir," acknowledges Kelso.

"Deflectors full intensity," calls Spock.

"Deflectors full intensity," acknowledges Kelso.

Another shot of a concerned-looking Kirk. Another shot of the ever-growing reddish haze.

"Deflectors say there's something there, sensors say there isn't," Spock calls out. Nimoy has since acknowledged that his loud readings of Spock's lines here were a mistake. "Density negative. Radiation negative. Energy negative."

"Whatever it is," Kelso says, "contact in twelve seconds." As an aside, I'll note that Kelso makes this statement eight minutes and forty-eight seconds into the episode.

Shot of Mitchell taking hold of Smith's hand. Hmmmm. I guess Dr. Dehner wasn't kidding about Mitchell's efforts to "improve the breed", one female crewmember at a time.

Shot of the Enterprise approaching the swirling red haze. The Enterprise theme joins the energy barrier theme.

Wide angle shot of the bridge. Mitchell is still holding Smith's hand. At 9:05 the engines start to slow down. At 9:07 the bridge lights flicker and go dim.

Shot of the shifting red haze filling the viewscreen.

At 9:20 the first sparks start flying. "Gravitation on automatic," Kirk orders.

At 9:31 the first console blows up. It's the one just to the left of the main viewscreen. (According to Franz Joseph's Starfleet Technical Manual, this is the Engineering Sub-Systems Monitor.)

At 9:32 a second console goes up, this one is second to the left of Spock's station. (Per Joseph, the Defense and Weapons Station.) "Emergency stations," Kirk orders. "All decks at fire alert."

More sparks are flying. "Neutralize controls," Kirk orders. "Kelso, put it on manual."

9:43: shot of Kelso waving smoke away from the helm console.

Kirk turns to Spock. "Any radiation? Anything?"

"Negative."

The department heads are standing there, watching the mayhem around them.

"Helmsman," Kirk shouts, "take us out of here!"

Shot of Mitchell, who is still holding Smith's hand.

Shot of the viewscreen, showing the swirling haze turning yellow.

9:51: shot of Dehner getting zapped. Scott grabs her as she falls over.

9:56: shot of Mitchell getting zapped. His hand comes loose from Smith's as he falls to the deck.

"Mitch!" Kelso calls to Mitchell.

"Helmsman!" Kirk calls to Kelso as he takes Mitchell's place. "Lateral power!"

Spock crosses to the navigation console and replaces Kirk there.

Shot of the Enterprise as she heads out of the energy barrier.

Shot of the bridge. Sulu is hanging on for dear life to the railing. Spock and Kelso are struggling with their controls. Kirk steps up next to Spock and orders, "Take damage reports."

"Damage control reports, all stations," Spock calls out.

As the faint voices of damage control reports make themselves heard, Kirk joins Scott and Sulu as they assist Dehner. "Something . . . hit me," she says. "Like an electrical charge."

Piper joins them, nods toward Mitchell. "He's alive. Appears to be in shock."

As Kirk passes by navigation Spock arrests him with a hand on his arm and says, "Main engines are out, sir. We're on emergency power cells. Casualties, nine dead."

Kirk kneels down next to Yeoman Smith, who is cradling Mitchell's head in her hands. "Gary," he says, "Gary, are you all right?" As Kirk takes over from her, Smith leaves.

"I'm a little weak for some reason, Jim," says Mitchell, who is lying on his right side with his face turned away. "But I feel all right now." He turns his head, opens his eyes, and we zoom in for an extreme close-up of Mitchell's brightly glowing silver eyes. The picture slowly fades to black, leaving only those glowing silver eyes, then they fade out too.

(continue to part 2)

Dog walk: 1/6/12

2012-01-07T15:07:00.002-05:00

Today, Winter makes a down payment on Spring. It's twenty degrees warmer than it was yesterday, and there is Not. A. Cloud. In. The. Sky.

It's time to walk some dogs.

I'm not the only person to decide that today would be a good idea. While walking down Broadway in Stowe, we pass a man walking his two dogs, whom he describes to me as "purebred mutts", and Klea pauses to greet them. A few minutes later, we pass a woman walking her dog, and she smiles at the basenjis as we do so.

Walking down Frederick Street, we pass by a woman standing just outside her house's chainlink fence, and she's petting a brown pit bull inside the fence whom she introduces as Buddy. While the basenjis and Buddy sniff at each others' faces through the fence, a boy comes up to introduce himself as Michael, state that he is 12 years old, ask if the basenjis are chihuahuas, ask if the basenjis bite, ask if the basenjis like children, ask if the basenjis like strangers, ask if he can pet the basenjis, and ask how old the basenjis are. While I explain about the basenjis, Klea walks up to Michael and gives him her customary "do you have any food for me?" sniff. Having established that there is no food forthcoming, she leads us back up the street, and we make our way home.

Dog walk: 1/5/12

2012-01-05T13:52:00.003-05:00

The sun made one of her* rare appearances today (they tell me Pittsburgh is the fourth-cloudiest city in America), so it was time to take the basenjis out for a walk. Despite the sunshine, the temperature was only a few degrees above freezing, so we did not have one of our usual leisurely afternoon walks. Also contributing to the brevity of the walk was the rock salt scattered across the roads and sidewalks in the wake of a recent snowstorm; dogs find walking on rock salt painful.

Nevertheless, the dogs took their time, stopping to sniff at the roadside litter that is an omnipresent fact of life in McKees Rocks. Klea found a paper bag from Wendy's that had been discarded by a passing car on Churchill Street some time before, and was preparing to gorge herself on french fries before I pulled her away. I also had to pull her away from some discarded chicken bones on Fruit Way. Ever since Buffalo Wings have become a fast food staple in this country, discarded chicken bones have become the bane of every dog owner's existence. They're everywhere, and any time a dog gobbles one up, there's a risk of bone shards getting caught in its throat.

But despite its short duration, and despite the hazards we met along the way, it was good to get out into the sunshine with the dogs, a faint echo of better days.

*All Tolkien aficionados know that the sun is feminine, and the moon masculine.

Recap: The Cage (4 of 4)

2012-01-04T14:51:00.003-05:00

This is the fourth and final part of a recap of the original Star Trek pilot, "The Cage", that I posted to the rec.arts.startrek.misc newsgroup back in November 2005 under the screen name Empok Nor. The first three parts are, as Vina would put it, here and here (and here).

The starship Enterprise, under Captain Christopher Pike, has been lured to the planet Talos IV by a fake distress call, and Pike captured by the telepathic Talosians. The Talosians are making Pike relive past episodes in his life via telepathic illusions, accompanied by a young woman named Vina who insists that she is not an illusion. The Talosians finally hit on the idea of tempting Pike with a life he can't have: selling wild animal-women as sex slaves (and with Vina, as always, in the starring role). We pick up the story in

ACT FOUR
A corridor of the Enterprise. Spock and the Geologist are getting kitted out in their field jackets. Spock says, "We've located a magnetic field that seems to come from their underground generator."

"But could that be an illusion too?" wonders the Geologist as Tyler and Garison walk past. Spock doesn't answer. The two of them follow Tyler and Garison (who has his backpack on again) into the transporter room. Colt and Number One are already inside.

"You all know the situation," says Number One. "We're hoping to transport down inside the Talosian community."

"If our meansurements and readings are an illusion also," Spock observes, "one could find oneself materialized inside solid rock."

"Nothing will be said if any volunteer wants to back out," says Number One.

Nobody wants to back out, and they all take their places on the transporter stage.

Pitcairn motions to Yamata, and the transporter hum rises.

Number One and Colt dematerialize, but the other four do not.

"The women!" Spock exclaims. You've got to give him credit for not saying "the girls!"

Pitcairn and Yamata frantically press various buttons. Spock rushes off the transporter stage, looking worried.

Let's take a moment now to speculate on how the Talosians managed this. There was nothing illusory about what took place: Number One and Colt beamed down, and the others didn't. At this point, the Talosians haven't demonstrated any telekinetic ability, although they might have it. In that case, they might have disabled all but two of the transporter pads. OTOH, the Talosians seem to prefer to manipulate minds rather than machines. In that case, they would have manipulated Pitcairn and/or Yamata into switching off the other pads without realizing they were doing it.

***********************

The cell, as Number One and Colt materialize. Number One turns and exclaims, "Captain!"

We pan left to see Default Vina putting the moves on Pike. "Captain?" Number One repeats.

Vina removes her hands from Pike, looks up, and shouts, "No! Let me finish!" Given that it's been 18 years since she's been with a man, you can see her point. She storms off.

Number One is puzzled. "But, we were a landing party of six."

"We're the only ones transported," Colt observes.

Vina, who knows exactly what's going on, snarls, "That's not fair, you don't need them."

With startling swiftness, Pike tears open Colt's field jacket and pulls out her laser pistol. Then he turns and looks at Number One, who already has hers out. She hands hers over, and he checks both. "They don't work," he says.

Once again, a pause while we consider what's actually going on. The Talosians might have telekinetically disabled the lasers, but most likely, they're keeping Pike and Number One from seeing that the lasers are still operational.

"They were fully charged when we left," says Number One. She pulls out her telecommunicator and fiddles with it. "It's dead, I can't get the signal." Did Number One actually activate her telecommunicator, or did she only think she did? Probably the latter. Looking up at Pike she wonders, "What is it?"

Pike shakes his head. "Don't say anything," he tells her. He walks over to the stone block wall and lets the laser pistols drop onto the floor in front of the sliding stone. "I'm filling my mind with a picture of beating their huge misshapen heads to pulp! Thoughts so primitive they block out everything else. I'm filling my mind with hate." The thought he's hiding from the Talosians is: I know these laser pistols are still fully charged, and you're keeping me from seeing it. They're still dangerous, so I'm dropping them next to your little trap door and hoping you'll try to take them. And then . . .

"How long can you block yourself?" Vina chides him. "A few minutes? An hour? How can that help?"

"Leave him alone," Colt tells her.

"He doesn't need you," Vina insists. "He's already picked me."

Colt is mystefied. "Picked her?" she says to Pike. "For what? I don't understand." Pike, though, is too busy hating the Talosians to answer her.

"Now there's a fine choice for intelligent offspring," Vina snarks.

"Offspring?" says an even more puzzled Colt. "As in children?"

Nodding toward a busily hating Pike, Number One observes, "Offspring as in he's Adam, is that it?"

"You're no better choice," says a catty Vina. "They'd have more luck crossing him with a computer."

Number One isn't going to stand for this sort of nonsense. "Well, shall we do a little time computation? There was a Vina listed on that expedition as an adult crewman. Now, adding eighteen years to your age then . . . "

Number One is interrupted by the arrival of the Keeper.

"It's not fair," storms Vina. "I did what you asked!"

The Keeper ignores her and addresses Pike. "Since you resist the present specimen, you now have a selection."

Pike is still busy hating the Keeper. "I'll break out of this zoo somehow and get to you. Is your blood red like ours? I'm going to find out."

The Keeper ignores Pike's unfriendly response, determined as always to keep the conversation on track. "Each of the two new specimens has qualities in her favor. The female you call Number One has the superior mind and would produce highly intelligent children. Although she seems to lack emotion, this is largely a pretense. She often has fantasies involving you." (These last two sentences are spoken in a different voice. They redubbed the Keeper's voice for the televised version of "The Menagerie" because the owner of the original voice, Malachi Throne, was a guest star in the episode. Since these two lines didn't make it into the original, they've still got Throne's dub.)

If someone told me Number One often had fantasies involving me, it would definitely make me lose my train of thought, but Christopher Pike is made of sterner stuff. "All I want to do is get my hands on you," he tells the Keeper, and you can tell he doesn't mean it in a good way. "Can you read these thoughts? Images of hate, killing."

Undeterred, the Keeper continues, "The other new arrival has considered you unreachable, but is now is realizing this has changed." Colt is staring at the floor. "The factors in her favor are youth and strength, plus ususually strong female drives." Which presumably means that Colt is jonesing to find a man to marry and start a family. Ah, Gene, I love you, but you are such a pig.

"You'll find my thoughts more interesting," Pike snarls. "Thoughts so primitive you can't even understand. Emotions so ugly --" Pike cuts off as a wave of pain passes through his body. We don't know what he's experiencing, but it looks bad. Number One and Colt look helpless. Vina looks dismayed.

"Wrong thinking is punishable. Right thinking will be as quickly rewarded," says the Keeper, channelling Big Brother. "You will find it an effective combination." He turns and leaves. Asshole.

Pike comes back panting for breath, and finds himself being held up by Number One and Colt. As Number One starts to speak he says, "No, don't help me. I have to concentrate. They can't read through hate."

The elevator doors open again, revealing the Keeper. Vina looks sadly at Pike.

***********************

The Enterprise bridge. Spock enters from the turbolift, followed by Boyce and the Geologist. Tyler has moved to the helm station, and Vincent is at navigation. Valdini, still standing next to the turbolift, comes to attention as Spock passes, then returns to at-ease.

"Address intercraft," says Spock as he sits in the captain's chair.

"Open, sir," says Vincent.

"This is the Acting Captain speaking," says Spock. "We have no choice now but to consider the safety of this vessel, and the remainder of the crew. We're leaving."

Tyler turns and starts punching controls.

"All decks," says Spock, "prepare for hyperdrive. Time warp factor --"

"Mr. Spock, the ship's controls have gone dead!" Tyler exclaims.

The lights on the bridge start going out.

"Engine room," Spock calls out.

"Open," says Tyler as he rushes to the engineering station.

"Mr. Spock here. Switch to rockets, we're blasting out."

"All systems are out, bridge," says an anonymous voice from Engineering. "We've got nothing."
Rushing to the captain's chair, Tyler exclaims, "There's nothing! Every system aboard is fading out!"

Acting Captain Spock looks around the darkened bridge, helpless.

And again, we're left with the question: were the Talosians able to shut down the ship's power, or does the crew just think they have?

************************

The elevator opens, and the Keeper steps out. A soft version of the Talosian theme is playing.
In the cell, Vina is asleep on the comma-shaped bed, Number One (still in her field jacket) is sitting on it, slumped over, and Pike and Colt are on the floor leaning against it. Pike is the only one still awake. He catches sight of the moving block rolling slowly open, but presumably he's still blocking the Talosians enough to keep them from knowing about it.

The Keeper reaches in for the laser pistols, and Pike springs into action, grabbing him by the arm and jerking him into the cell. This is the first time we've seen the two of them in physical proximity, and the Keeper is surprisingly small. (GR cast a woman as the Keeper.)

The women are all awakened by the ruckus, and watch as Pike wrestles the Keeper to the ground and grabs him by the throat.

"Now you hold still or I'll break your neck," Pike warns the Keeper.

"Don't hurt him, they don't mean to be evil," Vina pleads.

"I've had some samples of how 'good' they are," Pike growls.

The Keeper turns into the ape creature from Act Two and snarls at Pike. Pike keeps his hands firmly around the thing's neck and warns, "You stop this illusion or I'll twist your head off!"

The Keeper can read Pike's mind, so he knows the captain's not kidding. He resumes his real appearance. "All right," says Pike, "now, you try one more illusion, you try anything, and I'll break your neck." The Keeper knows Pike's not kidding about that, either.

Next comes Plan B: "Your ship," the Keeper gasps. "Release . . . me . . . or . . . will . . . destroy . . . it."

****************************

The Enterprise bridge is still dark. There are a couple of portable lights pointed at the helm-navigation console, which is in a state of partial disassembly as the crew try to figure out what's wrong.

"Nothing," says a frustrated Spock as he sets down a bag of tools. "Without the batteries we lose gravitation, oxygen."

There's a sudden burst of noise. "The computer," Tyler exclaims as he rushes over to the library station, displacing the crewman manning it.

We see the computer's screen as it flashes brief pictures of satellites, re-entry vehicles, the Earth's moon, maps of the Earth.

"I can't shut if off!" Tyler exclaims. "It's running through our library: tapes, micro-records, everything! It doesn't make sense!"

"Could be we've waited too long," says Spock.

We see the computer's screen as if flashes brief pictures of starscapes, human anatomy, a man on horseback, the Monitor duking it out with the Virginia, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln.
"They're collecting all the information stored in this fly. They've decided to swat us," Spock continues.

More presidents: Washington, Lincoln, Eisenhower, Kennedy, LBJ. Plants, animals, Chesapeake Bay, Earth's solar system, more satellites . . .

**************************

The cell. Pike jerks the Keeper to his feet.

"He's not bluffing, Captain," says Vina. "With illusion, they can make your crew work the wrong controls or push any button it takes to destroy your ship."

Looking at the Keeper, Pike says, "I'm going to gamble you're too intelligent to kill for no reason at all." He drags the Keeper over to Number One, and leaves her with her arm around his throat while he picks up the laser pistols. He points one at the transparency and fires, with no effect. The transparency remains undamaged. He tosses the laser onto the bed and fires the other one, adjusts the setting, then fires again.

Walking over and pointing the laser pistol at the Keeper's head, he continues: "On the other hand, I've got a reason. I'm willing to bet you've created an illusion this laser is empty. I think it just blasted a hole in that window, and you're keeping us from seeing it. You want me to test my theory out on your head?"

A hole appears in the transparency.

"Captain," says Colt, gesturing at the transparency.

Smiling, Pike leads the Keeper through the hole, followed by Number One, Colt and Vina. They get into the elevator.

*****************************

The surface of Talos IV. The rocky outcrop now has a great big notch in it. The metal doors are gone, and so is half of the elevator itself. As they exit the elevator, Pike orders, "Make contact, Number One." Vina walks off, and Pike and the still-captive Keeper follow her. Number One and Colt remain standing by the elevator.

Glancing at the damage, Number One remarks, "They kept us from seeing this, too. We cut through and never knew it." She takes out her telecommunicator and opens it, but nothing happens. Hurrying over to join Pike, she says, "Captain," and shows him the nonfunctional telecommunicator.

"As you see," says the Keeper, "your attempt to escape accomplished nothing."

"I want to contact our ship," says Pike.

"You are now on the surface, where we wished you to be. With the female of your choice, you will now begin carefully guided lives."

"Start by burying you?" says Pike.

"That is your choice," says the Keeper coolly. "To help you reclaim the planet's surface, our zoological gardens will provide you with a variety of plant life."

"Look," says Pike, "I'll make a deal with you. You and your life, for the lives of these two Earth women."

Again, the Keeper refuses to allow the conversation to move away from his preferred subject. "Since our lifespan is many times yours, we have time to evolve you into a society trained to serve as artisans, technicians --"

"Do you understand what I'm saying?" Pike interrupts. "You give me proof that our ship is all right and send these two back, and I'll stay with Vina."

Number One glances down at her laser and twists a control on the barrel. A low hum starts to build up. Colt's eyes bug out. "It's wrong to create a whole race of humans to live as slaves," Number One says levelly.

The Keeper looks appalled. "Is this a deception? Do you intend to destroy yourselves?" Despite her outward composure, Number One must be really, really pissed if the Keeper can't tell from reading her mind that she means it.

"What is that?" asks Vina.

"The weapon is building up an overload, a forced-chamber explosion," Pike explains. "You still have time to go underground." When Vina doesn't move, Pike shoves her toward the elevator and barks, "Well, go on!" Glaring at the Keeper, he adds, "And just to show you how primitive humans are, Talosian, you go with her."

"If . . . if you all think it's this important," says Vina uncertainly, "then I can't go either. I guess if they have one human being they might try again." It looks like the Talosians don't own Vina any more.

Pike notices the elevator returning to the surface with Beavis and Butthead. "Wait," he tells Number One, and she ratchets her laser back down to normal.

"Their method of storing records is crude and consumed much time," Butthead thinks at the Keeper. "Are you prepared to assimilate it?"

The Keeper nods, then stands there while the veins in his head get all throbby. After twelve seconds spent assimilating crudely stored records, a thoroughly appalled Keeper turns to look at Pike. "We had not believed this possible. The customs and history of your race show a unique hatred of captivity. Even when it's pleasant and benevolent, you prefer death. This makes you too violent and dangerous a species for our needs."

"He means that they can't use you," Vina explains. "You're free to go back to the ship."

Pike is nonplussed. "So that's it? No apologies? You captured one of us, threatened all of us . . . "

"Your unsuitability has condemned the Talosian race to eventual death," Butthead points out. "Is this not sufficient?"

"No other specimen has shown your adaptability," the Keeper adds. "You were our last hope."
Pike, being the good guy that he is, starts trying to figure out some way to help his former captors. "Wouldn't some form of trade, mutual cooperation . . . ?"

"Your race would learn our power of illusion, and destroy itself too," says the Keeper.

Number One's communicator signals. "Captain," she says, "we have transporter control now."
Pike looks at the Keeper, looks up at Beavis and Butthead, and says, "Let's get back to the ship."
Vina shakes her head. "I can't. I can't go with you."

*************************

A close-up of some flashing lights on the transporter console. Pitcairn is saying, "Sir, it just came on, we can't shut the power off."

We pull back to see Spock and Vincent standing in the transporter room as a comm whistle sounds. "Mr. Spock here."

The voice of Tyler announces, "All power has come on, Mr. Spock. The helm is answering to controls." I guess they put the helm console back together again. Or else they only thought they disassembled it.

Spock and Vincent are hurrying out of the transporter room when they are brought up by the sound of the transporter operating. Colt materializes on the transporter stage, then steps off and turns to watch as Number One does the same. She also steps off and turns to watch, but nothing else happens.

"The Captain," exclaims Vincent.

****************************

On Talos IV, we see Vina standing by the rocky knoll. The Keeper turns to look at her, and his veins start throbbing.

Vina's hair slowly turns from blonde to gray and her face starts getting wrinkled. Her nose literally gets bent out of shape, a scar runs from her forehead across to her right cheekbone, another twists her mouth to the left. Her spine twists to the right, and her left shoulder becomes a huge, misshapen lump. Her hair fades from gray to white.

Pike looks appalled.

"You see why I can't go with you?" Real Vina whispers.

Pike looks at the Keeper. "This is the female's true appearance," he confirms.

"They found me in the wreckage," says Real Vina, "a dying lump of flesh. They rebuilt me. Everything works. But they had never seen a human. They had no guide for putting me back together." She turns and hobbles back to the elevator as a minor key version of the Vina theme plays.

The Keeper says, "It was necessary to convince you her desire to stay is an honest one."

"You'll give her back her illusion of beauty?"

"And more."

The full Vina theme returns as we see Default Vina turn and take the hand of an illusory Christopher Pike. She leads him up to the elevator, which is flanked by Beavis and Butthead.

"She has an illusion, and you have reality," the Keeper says to Pike. "May you find your way as pleasant."

Pike watches as Default Vina and Illusion Pike descend in the elevator.

***********************

The Enterprise transporter room. Colt is sitting on the transporter stage, and Spock is standing next to her, as Pitcairn says, "Mr. Spock, the system is coming on again." Number One joins Spock by the transporter console. Say, since Number One is in there, shouldn't Pitcairn have addressed his comment to her?

Colt turns around and watches as Pike materializes.

"What's happened to Vina?" asks Colt.

"Isn't she coming with us?" asks Number One.

"No," Pike says. "No, and I agreed with her reasons." He steps off the transporter stage, leaving the two women to exchange puzzled looks.

*************************

THE TAG
The Enterprise bridge. Pike, Number One, Colt and Spock emerge from the turbolift. Valdini comes to attention. Boyce comes up to Pike and says, "Hold on a minute."

"Oh, I feel fine," says Pike. "Just fine."

"Yeah, you look a hundred percent better," says Boyce suspiciously.

"Well, you recommended a rest and a change of pace, didn't you?"

"Mm hm."

"I've even been home," Pike says. "That make you happy?"

Boyce is puzzled, but doesn't respond. Turning away from the doctor, Pike bumps into Colt again. "Yeoman," he says.

"Yes, sir," Colt says with a long-suffering look in her eyes.

"I told you that when I'm on the bridge I want . . . " he trails off as Colt holds up a clipboard. "Oh yes, the, ah, report. Thank you." Pike notices Tyler watching them, and a brief but intense glare sends the navigator on his way.

Summoning up her reserves of courage, Colt asks, "Sir, I was wondering, just curious. Who would have been Eve?" Tyler, standing next to Vincent, is looking back in their direction.

Number One says sharply, "Yeoman, you've delivered your report."

"Yes, ma'am," says Colt stiffly, then to Pike, "Yes, sir." She turns and heads back to the turbolift.

Tyler, on his way back to navigation, pauses by Pike and says, "Eve, sir?" Another glare from Pike sends him on his way with another "Yes, sir."

As Pike takes a seat Boyce comes up. "Eve as in Adam?"

"Eve as in all ships' doctors are dirty old men," Pike answers. Boyce grins and claps Pike on the shoulder as he heads for the turbolift.

"What are we running, a cadet ship?" Pike demands. "Number One, are we ready or not?"

"All decks show ready, sir."

"Engage." Pike returns his attention to Yeoman Colt's report as Clipboard Guy resumes his position to the left of the captain's chair and the Star Trek theme comes up. In the viewscreen, Talos IV recedes into the distance.

The Enterprise vanishes into the starlit distance.

CLOSING CREDITS
DIRECTED BY ROBERT BUTLER
WRITTEN AND PRODUCED BY GENE RODDENBERRY
CO-STARRING LEONARD NIMOY AS MISTER SPOCK
MAJEL BARRETT (as Number One) JOHN HOYT (as Doctor Boyce)
PETER DURYEA (as Tyler) LAUREL GOODWIN (as Yeoman Colt)
A DESILU PRODUCTION

(In addition, Meg Wylie played the Keeper, Georgia Schmidt and Serena Sands played Beavis and Butthead, Jon Lormer played Dr. Theodore Haskins, Leonard Mudie and Anthony Jochim played survivors #1 and #2, Ed Madden played the Geologist, Adam Roarke played C.P.O. Garison, Clegg Hoyt played Transporter Chief Pitcairn, Mike Dugan played the Kaylar, Robert Philips played the Fleet Officer, Joseph Mell played the Orion Trader, and featuring Tango the Wonder Horse as himself.)

Stephen E. Whitfield reports that filming of "The Menagerie" took twelve days (so that filming ended either on 9 December or 23 December 1964, depending on which source you rely on). Postproduction ended in February 1965 after a total of $630,000 was spent. When the pilot was eventually screened for the suits at NBC, they liked it, but thought it was "too cerebral", which was suitspeak for "way too smart for the dimwits who watch network television", so the pilot was rejected.

Eventually, Star Trek did make it onto the air, with an almost entirely new cast. As the first season wore on, the production crew found themselves coming closer and closer to punting a scheduled airdate. In desperation, GR dug out "The Menagerie", wrote a two-part episode around it, filmed roughly forty minutes' worth of new footage with the new cast which he intercut with the old footage, and sent the result off to NBC. The two-part episode also bore the title "The Menagerie", so it became customary to refer to the original, unaltered pilot by its former title, "The Cage".

With the broadcast of the two-part episode, the story of Captain Pike's visit to Talos IV entered Star Trek canon. Until the premier of Star Trek: The Next Generation in 1987, "The Menagerie" was the only Star Trek story featuring a crew other than Captain Kirk's: something of an anomaly. TNG, though, redefined Star Trek: it was no longer a show (and series of movies) about Captain Kirk; it was now a franchise about a wider universe, of which the adventures of Captain Kirk were only a part. In the wake of TNG, Pocket Books began publishing original novels featuring Captain Pike and his crew, the first being D.C. Fontana's 1989 novel Vulcan's Glory. This was followed in 1991 by Michael Jan Friedman's Legacy and Peter David's The Rift, in 1998 by Jerry Oltion's The Captain's Table: Where Sea Meets Sky, and in 2006 by Margaret Wander Bonanno's Burning Dreams. Fontana's novel takes place two years before "The Cage", the first section of David's novel takes place a few days after "The Cage", and the novels by Oltion and Friedman seem to take place a few months after "The Cage", while Bonanno's novel covers Pike's entire life.

As with any non-canon works by different authors, there are inconsistencies among these novels, most notably concerning Number One's actual name. According to Fontana, the people of Number One's planet have no names, only ranks, so that Number One's name, to the extent that she has one, is literally Number One; according to David, Number One does have a name, but one that her crewmates find unpronounceable, hence the reliance on her title; and according to Oltion, Number One's name is Lefler. In contrast to Number One's real name (or lack thereof), David did choose to follow Fontana's lead in naming Pike's chief engineer Caitlin Barry.
Apart from the obvious differences in terminology and crew complement, "The Cage" is notable for what it doesn't have: the Starfleet and the Federation. Number One notes the absence of Earth ships or colonies near the Talos star group; the survivors ask the Enterprise crew about Earth; Boyce's jumpsuit has the Earth on its breast pocket. Instead of going to a starbase for medical assistance, the Enterprise is headed for "the Vega colony".

Some other observations: it's become commonplace to refer to the green women Vina appeared to be as Orion slave girls, but from the context it's apparent that Orion is actually an Earth colony. Pike suggests that he might become an Orion trader, and the Orion Trader in Pike's illusion seems to be a human. Boyce refers to "green animal-woman slaves", but doesn't refer to them as "Orion slaves", suggesting that the animal-woman slaves are simply the Orion colony's stock in trade; the green animal-woman slaves might very well come from some other world. On the other hand, the Fleet Officer does remark that the planet's inhabitants "like being taken advantage of", implying that the green women are indeed native to Orion, and that settlers from Earth have taken over the planet and are enslaving and selling its green-skinned native inhabitants. (If you think about it, this is a much darker picture of the future than we're used to seeing from Star Trek.) In subsequent episodes of various Star Trek series, of course, it's become canon that the green slave girls are indeed from Orion.

Where did the images of Dr. Haskins and the other survivors come from? The logical answer is that they came from Vina. She was part of the complement of the S.S. Columbia; after the Talosians rescued/captured her, she would have spent the next eighteen years re-living various memories, including presumably memories of her time aboard the Columbia. Haskins and the others must be suitably aged versions of Vina's memories of her crewmates.

Much of "The Cage" is presented to us from Pike's point of view. We see what he saw, including the various illusions the Talosians projected into his mind. This raises the question of what an objective outside observer would have seen. He would, for instance, have seen the first landing party from the Enterprise interacting with various bits of thin air. Was Vina physically present? The fact that she disappeared along with the rest of the "survivors" seems to indicate that the real Vina remained underground in her own cell; while the Talosians projected an illusion of Survivor Vina into the minds of Pike and the others, they were also projecting an illusion of the landing party into Vina's cell: two interactive illusions.

The Enterprise crew really did beam down the laser cannon, and really did fire it at the rocky outcrop, because Number One noticed that the outcrop had been blasted when they returned to the surface. Did the Enterprise really lose power when Spock tried to leave orbit, or was that an illusion? Possibly the former, because the Talosians did demonstrate some telekinetic abilities when they operated the transporter to beam Yeoman Colt, Number One and Pike up from the surface, and when they operated the library computer on the bridge. Also, if the loss of power was an illusion, presumably the Talosians would have preferred to maintain that illusion by hiding the fact that they were accessing the ship's records. The fact that the bridge crew saw the library computer station come back online strongly suggests that it really had been offline, along with the rest of the ship's systems.

When did Vina enter Pike's cell? She didn't seem to be there at first, but when Pike's Rigel VII illusion ended, she was. Then, when the Talosians punished her, she vanished again. Did she enter through the back wall, unnoticed by Pike, and then leave the same way, or was she an illusion the whole time? When the Mojave/Orion illusion began, Pike was alone, but when it ended, he was with Vina. Vina remained with him until his escape, when she joined him on the surface, so presumably she was definitely physically present in his cell at the end of the Mojave/Orion illusion, unless Vina never left her own cell in the Talosian menagerie at any point, and was always an illusion, including during Pike's escape to the surface. If Vina had beamed up to the ship with the others and returned with them to Earth, that would settle the matter; as it is, we'll never be entirely certain if she was ever physically present with the others.

Internal chronology: Per Memory Alpha, it is now generally accepted that "The Cage" takes place in the year 2254, placing it eleven years before the second TOS pilot "Where No Man Has Gone Before" and ninety-nine years after the Star Trek: Enterprise episode "Terra Prime" (and ninety-three years after the events depicted in Riker's holodeck program in the Star Trek: Enterprise episode "These are the Voyages", though the episode itself is set in the year 2370).

Recap: The Cage (3 of 4)

2012-01-03T21:30:00.004-05:00

This is the third part of a recap of the original Star Trek pilot, "The Cage", that I posted to the rec.arts.startrek.misc newsgroup back in November 2005 under the screen name Empok Nor. The first two parts are, as Vina would put it, here and here.

The starship Enterprise, under Captain Christopher Pike, has been lured to the planet Talos IV by a fake distress call, and Pike captured by the telepathic Talosians. The Talosians are making Pike relive past episodes in his life via telepathic illusions, accompanied by a young woman named Vina who insists that she is not an illusion. We pick up the story in

ACT THREE
The cell, later. Pike is testing the stone blocks for weak points again. He doesn't see one of the blocks open like a sliding door. Only when he hears a glassy click does he look down and see it closing. He tries to get to it before it closes, but he's too late. On the floor below the block is something that looks like a cross between a test tube and a brandy snifter with a couple inches of blueish-green liquid in it. Then he looks toward the picture window and sees the Keeper standing outside it.

Instead of just thinking at Pike, the Keeper actually opens his mouth and speaks. "The vial contains a nourishing protein complex."

"Is the Keeper actually communicating with one of his animals?" snarks Pike. In the original series, they almost never got into the question of how members of Starfleet were able to communicate with alien races. They always spoke English, and nobody remarked on it. Here, though, it makes sense to assume that the Keeper has picked up English from reading Pike's mind.

"If the form and the color is not appealing, it can appear as any food you wish to visualize," the Keeper continues.

"And if I prefer --" Pike begins.

"To starve? You overlook the unpleasant alternative of punishment."

Pike's eyes close and his hands clench. Suddenly he is surrounded by flames and kneeling in a bubbling fluid while he screams in pain.

Pike is back in his cell, the vial in his hand. "From a fable you once heard in childhood," the Keeper notes. "You will now consume the nourishment."

Pike gasps, "Why not just put irresistible hunger in my mind? But you can't, can you? You do have limitations, don't you?"

The Keeper is starting to look annoyed. "If you continue to disobey, from deeper in your mind there are things even more unpleasant."

Pike looks down at the vial, thinks things over for a moment, then drinks it. Glaring at the Keeper, he stands up, then suddenly throws himself at the transparency. Bwong! The Keeper, startled, jumps back.

Pike is grinning. "That's very interesting."

"Now, to the female," the Keeper says as he regains his composure. (A bit of advice for any future space travelers out there. Never trust anyone who refers to a woman as "the female".)

"You were startled," Pike points out. "Weren't you reading my mind then?"

The Keeper, though, doesn't want to pursue that line of inquiry. "As you've conjectured, an Earth vessel did crash on our planet, but with only a single survivor." The Talosians presumably picked this bit of conjecture out of Pike's mind.

"Now, let's stay on the first subject," Pike insists. "All I wanted for that moment was to get my hands around your neck."

The Keeper refuses to be swayed from his topic of conversation. "We repaired the survivor's injuries, and found the species interesting."

"Do primitive thoughts put up a block you can't read through?"

The Keeper is starting to sound pissed as he steps on Pike's lines. "It became necessary to attract a mate."

Pike finally gives up and says, "All right, all right, let's talk about the girl. You seem to be going out of your way to make her attractive, to make me feel protective."

Approaching the cell again, the Keeper says earnestly, "This is necessary in order to perpetuate the species."

"It seems more important to you now that I begin to accept her, like her."

"We wish our specimens to be happy in their new life."

Pike isn't buying it. "Assuming that's a lie, why would you want me attracted to her? So I'll feel love and a husband-wife relationship? That'd be necessary only if you intend to build a family group, or perhaps a whole human community."

Turning away, the Keeper says, "With the female now properly conditioned --"

"You mean properly punished," Pike says angrily.

The Keeper turns to look back at him.

"I'm the one who's not cooperating!" Pike snarls. "Why don't you punish me?"

"First, an emotion of protectiveness. Now, one of sympathy. Excellent," smirks the Keeper. He turns and enters the elevator with a pling. Yeah, he's an asshole all right. And it isn't hard to figure out where Matt Groening got the model for Homer Simpson's boss.

Pike stands there and glares at him, then the background behind him blurs with a vroon sound. Pike is now wearing a denim jacket over a blue turtleneck. Behind him are two horses standing next to a small tree.

"Do you want some coffee, dear?" The scene opens out to a picnic lunch set in a wooded clearing. Domestic Vina, with wavy shoulder-length hair and dressed in a white riding outfit, kneels next to a blanket as she removes items from a picnic basket. "I left a thermos hooked to m' saddle," Domestic Vina continues.

To the sound of birdsong and a western acoustic guitar, Pike approaches the horse. The horse neighs, and Pike realizes that he recognizes him. "Tango! You old devil, you. Sorry, I don't have any . . . " Feeling the pocket of his denim jacket, Pike removes a couple of sugar cubes. "They think of everything, don't they?" he remarks to Vina as he gives Tango the treat.

As he starts to approach her she reminds him, "Honey, the coffee." Giving her an okay whatever look, Pike goes back to Tango and unhooks the thermos from his saddle.

"Isn't it good to be home?" says Domestic Vina.

"They read our minds very well," Pike remarks. "Home, anything else I want. If I cooperate, is that it?" Putting a hand to her head, Domestic Vina gives him a warm smile combined with a warning look as she says, "Have you forgotten my headaches, darling? I get them when you talk strangely like this."

Handing her the thermos, Pike says, "Look, I'm sorry they punish you, but we can't let them --"

"My!" Domestic Vina interrupts, "It turned out to be a lovely day, didn't it?"

Relenting, Pike says, "It's funny, about twenty-four hours ago I was telling the ship's doctor how much I wanted something that's not very different from what we have here. Escape from reality, life with no frustrations, no responsibilities. And now that I have it, I understand the doctor's answer."

"I hope you're hungry," says Domestic Vina. "These little white sandwiches are your mother's recipe for chicken tuna." Good lord, do people actually eat chicken tuna sandwiches? That sounds gross.

"Because you either live life, bruises, skinned knees and all, or you turn your back on it and start dying."

Domestic Vina is not at all happy to hear Pike talking like this. Tango and the other horse, meanwhile, continue to stand placidly by their tree.

"The doctor's gonna be happy about one part of it, at least," says Pike as he takes in the vista through the trees. "He said I needed a rest."

"It's a lovely place to rest," Domestic Vina points out.

"Yeah, I used to ride through here when I was a kid. It's not as pretty as some of the parks around the big cities, but . . . " Nodding toward a city off in the distance, he says, "That's Mojave, that's where I was born."

With a smile, Domestic Vina says, "Is that supposed to be news to your wife?"

This clearly creeps out Pike. He turns back and glares at Domestic Vina.

"You're home," she insists, giving it the old college try. "You can even stay if you want. Wouldn't it be nice to show your children where you once played?"

"These 'headaches', they'll be hereditary, you know," Pike points out. "Would you wish them on a child, or a whole group of children?"

Domestic Vina is getting annoyed. "Foolish," she mutters.

"Is it? Look," he says as he kneels next to her on the blanket, "first they made me protect you, and then feel sympathy for you. And now we have these . . . familiar surroundings and a husband-wife relationship. Well, they don't need all this for just passion. What they're after is respect and mutual dependence."

Domestic Vina really, really doesn't want to hear Pike talking like this. Desperately she breaks in with an artificially chipper, "They say in the olden days all this was a desert, just blowing sand and cactus."

"But we're not here, neither of us," Pike insists. "We're in a menagerie, a cage."

"No!" growls Domestic Vina.

"I can't help either one of us if you won't give me a chance. Now, you told me once that they used illusions as a narcotic. They couldn't even repair the machines left by their ancestors. Is that why they want us? To build a colony of slaves?"

Now Domestic Vina's the one getting frustrated. "Stop!" she implores him. "Don't you care what they'll do to us?"

But Pike presses on. "Back in my cage it seemed for a couple of minutes that our keeper couldn't read my thoughts. Do emotions like hate, keeping hate in your mind, does that block off our minds from them?"

Resigned, Domestic Vina admits, "Yes. They can't read through primitive emotions. But you can't keep it up for long enough. I've tried. They keep at you and at you, year after year, tricking and punishing. And they've won. They own me. And you must hate me for that."

The Vina theme slowly comes up as Pike takes her hand and says, "Oh, no, I don't hate you. I can guess what it was like."

"That's not enough," says Domestic Vina. "Don't you see? They read my thoughts, my feelings, my dream of what would be the perfect man, and that's why they picked you. I can't help but love you. And they expect you to feel the same way."

"If they can read my mind," says Pike, "then they know I'm attracted to you." We suddenly pull back from Pike, showing him on the Talosians' monitor. "I was from the very first moment I saw you in the survivors' camp." A shot of the Keeper and Butthead as they look on. "You were like a wild little animal."

"A curious species," Butthead thinks to the Keeper. "They have fantasies they hide even from themselves."

Back on the Talosians' monitor, Domestic Vina observes, "I'm beginning to see why none of this has worked for you. You've been home; and fighting, as on Rigel, that's not new to you either. A person's strongest dreams are about what he can't do. Yes, a ship's captain, always having to be so formal, so decent and honest and proper." A shot of the Keeper, Beavis and Butthead as they look on. "You must wonder what it would be like to forget all that." The Keeper waves his arm, and there's a vroon sound.

Back to Pike, as the background behind him blurs into the main hall of a palace. Pike is now wearing a shimmery magenta and teal outfit with a torc of woven gold around his neck. The music is a vaguely middle-easternish mix of flute and percussion with the occasional chord from a harp. Pike is reclining at a low table laden with food, and reclining along with him are a chubby balding guy in an elaborate robe with an earring in his left ear (the Orion Trader, the Star Trek Concordance calls him), and a guy in a gold-edged uniform with gold shoulders boards (the Fleet Officer). Both of Pike's companions have knowing smirks. The table sits next to a pool, on the far side of which are four musicians in middle-easternish outfits and a green dancing girl in an outfit that's mostly bare skin with patches of fabric. Behind the musicians and the dancing girl are some fountains and a couple of burning torches.

"Nice place you have here, Mr. Pike," the Fleet Officer smirks.

We get a close-up of the dancing girl's green face and bright red lips, then back to Pike as he realizes: "Vina!"

The Orion Trader smirks, "Glistening green, almost like secret dreams a bored ship's captain might have."

Back to Glistening Green Vina, moving in a way that says, come and get it, big boy!

"Funny how they are on this planet," observes the Fleet Officer with a leer, "actually like being taken advantage of."

A wide angle of Pike and the others watching the entertainment as the Fleet Officer drinks from some weird-looking cornucopia-looking goblet.

A shot of Vina dancing up a storm, then a brief glimpse of Pike as he goes gulp!

"Suppose you had all of space to choose from," remarks the Fleet Officer, "and this was only one small sample."

"Wouldn't you say it's worth a man's soul?" remarks the Orion Trader.

Extreme close-up of Pike getting really hot and bothered. More shots of Glistening Green Vina, then Pike jumps up from the table and takes off, and good lord, he's wearing red shoes with pointed toes. Yes, Captain Pike, you are in Hell.

Pike rushes through a door and down a hallway, and the silk hangings on the wall quickly give way to bare rock illuminated with torches. Back when I was twelve years old and watching this scene in "The Menagerie Part II", this next bit would really creep me out: the music is still playing back in the main hall as Pike looks around at the rock walls, then suddenly fades out. Pike rushes back to find the doors gone and a rock wall in their place. Creepy.

Pike peers around for a few seconds at the rock-walled tunnel he now finds himself in, then turns around to see Glistening Green Vina standing there holding a torch. The look on her face says, come and get it, big boy!

(continue to part 4)

Recap: The Cage (2 of 4)

2012-01-02T13:24:00.003-05:00

This is the second part of a recap of the original Star Trek pilot, "The Cage", that I posted to the rec.arts.startrek.misc newsgroup back in November 2005 under the screen name Empok Nor. The first part is here. The starship Enterprise, under Captain Christopher Pike, has been lured to the planet Talos IV by a fake distress call, and Pike captured by the telepathic Talosians. We pick up the story in

ACT TWO
Pike wakes up in a cell. He's lying on a silver bed shaped like a comma, with a thin silver blanket covering him. Behind him, taking up one whole wall of the cell, is a big window showing a corridor with a bunch of other cells facing it. The cell's other walls are rough stone. The soundtrack is the Menagerie theme, a quiet, percussive version of the Talosian theme.

Pike throws off the blanket, sits up, and looks around. He notices that his sparkly jacket, harness, laser pistol, and telecommunicator are gone. He stands up and knocks experimentally on the window. Then he throws himself against it, producing a bwong sound. Looking out, he sees an ape creature in one of the neighboring cells, and a bird creature in another. A Talosian appears down at the end of the corridor. Closer at hand, an elevator opens with a pling sound, the Menagerie theme gives way to the Talosian theme, and the Keeper and his posse enter. They approach his cell. Looking at them from behind, it's hard not to notice how much the backs of their heads resemble asses. It's true: the Talosians are the original buttheads.

The Keeper and a member of his posse, whom I'll call Butthead, stand in front, while the other two Talosians, Beavis and Stuart, remain a few steps behind them. Pike and the Talosians stare at each other for a couple seconds before Pike asks, "Can you hear me?"

No response from the Talosians.

Pike continues, "My name is Christopher Pike, commander of the space vehicle Enterprise, from a stellar group at the other end of this galaxy. Our intentions are peaceful. Can you understand me?"

The veins in Butthead's head start pulsing, and though his lips don't move, we hear him say, "It appears, Magistrate, that the intelligence of the subject is shockingly limited."

The Keeper's veins pulse in reply and we hear: "This is no surprise, since its vessel was baited here so easily with a simulated message. As you can read in its thoughts, it is only now beginning to realize that the survivors and encampment were a simple illusion we placed in their minds."

"You're not speaking, yet I can hear you," Pike points out.

"You will note the confusion as it reads our thought transmissions," the Keeper smugs.

The Captain is starting to get ticked off at the Talosians' attitude, and who can blame him? He crosses his arms as he says, "All right, then, telepathy. You can read my mind, I can read yours. Now, unless you want my ship to considering capturing me an unfriendly act --"

Still smugging for all he's worth, the Keeper interrupts with, "You now see the primitive fear-threat reaction."

Cut to a shot of Pike, showing him becoming even more annoyed.

Back to the Keeper: "The specimen is about to boast of his strength, the weaponry of his vessel, and so on."

A frustrated Pike readies himself for another body-blow against the glass wall, but pauses as the Keeper continues, "Next, frustrated into a need to display physical prowess, the creature will throw himself against the transparency."

Pike does so, producing another bwong sound, then again, and again. Bwong. Bwong. The Keeper smiles a particularly smug smile. God, what an asshole.

"If you were in here, wouldn't you test the strength of these walls too?" Pike snarls. "There's a way out of any cage, and I'll find it!"

"Despite its frustration," the Keeper observes, "the creature appears more adaptable than our specimens from other planets. We can soon begin the experiment."

Musical sting as we get a close-up of Pike glaring at the Talosians.

********************

We see a drawing of a planet as Mr. Spock provides voice-over: "The inhabitants of this planet must live deep underground."

Cut to a wide shot of the briefing room. At one end of the table we see the planet, Talos IV, on a bulky video monitor. Talos IV looks suspiciously like the Earth's moon. Seated around the table are Tyler, the Geologist, Number One, Spock and Boyce. Yeoman Colt is standing behind Number One with her hands behind her back. Number One has her chin resting on the backs of her hands again. Spock continues, "Probably manufacture food and other needs down there."

A shot of Spock, Boyce and the video monitor as Spock manipulates a control. The drawing of Talos IV is replaced by a photograph of the barren surface. Spock says, "Our tests indicate the planet's surface, without considerably more vegetation or some animals, is simply too barren to support life."

Shot of Number One and Colt as the former says, "So we just thought we saw survivors there."

Back to Spock and Boyce as Spock nods. "Exactly. An illusion, placed in our minds by this planet's inhabitants."

"It was a perfect illusion," Boyce notes. "They had us seeing just what we wanted to see: human beings who'd survived with dignity and bravery. Everything entirely logical, right down to the building of the camp, the tattered clothing, everything."

Cut to a shot of Number One leaning back in her chair.

Cut to a close-up of Boyce: "Now, let's be sure we understand the danger of this," he explains to the viewers at home. "The inhabitants of this planet can read our minds. They can create illusions out of a person's own thoughts, memories and experiences, even out of a person's own desires. Illusions just as real and solid as this tabletop," Boyce raps on the tabletop to make his point, "and just as impossible to ignore."

Number One asks, "Any guesses on what they might want one of us for?"

Spock answers, "They may simply be studying the Captain to find out how Earth people are put together. Or it could be something more."

"Then why aren't we doing anything?" Tyler demands, as the Geologist looks on. "Now, that entry may have stood up against hand lasers, but we can transmit the ship's power against it, enough to blast half a continent!"

Spock looks uncharacteristically amused at Tyler. "Look," he says as he flips a switch, causing a rough drawing of a Talosian to appear on the video monitor. "Brains three times the size of ours. If we start buzzing about down there," he continues rather flippantly, "we're liable to find their mental power is so great, they could reach out and swat this ship as though it were a fly."

Tyler isn't convinced. "It's Captain Pike they've got," he reminds them. "He needs help, and he probably needs it fast." He looks to Number One, as do the rest of them.

She sighs and says, "Engineering deck will rig to transmit ship's power. We'll try blasting through that metal."

Wide angle of the briefing room as Number One rises, followed by the others. They troop out of the briefing room stage right with the Geologist bringing up the rear, a binder in his hand. He may not have many lines, or even a name, but the Geologist has all the cool props.

**********************

Pike in his cell, pacing. We can see that the back wall of the cell consists of stone blocks, rather than the rough stone of the walls bordering the transparency. Pike is probing the stone blocks for a weak point when we pull back to show that he is being watched on the Talosians' irregularly shaped monitor. The Talosian theme resumes. We cut to a shot of the Keeper and Butthead. Butthead thinks out loud, "Thousands of us are already probing the creature's thoughts, Magistrate. We find excellent memory capacity."

The Keeper nods and thinks back, "I read most strongly a recent death struggle in which it fought to protect its life. We will begin with this, giving the specimen something more interesting to protect."

Back to Pike, still testing the stone blocks in his cell. There is a vroon sound as the background behind him shimmers, changing from his cell to a hillside with red tumbleweeds mixed among some rocks. Pike himself looks the same, except that he's now wearing a field jacket over his gold tunic. He looks around as the Talosian theme gives way to a quicker-paced version of the Vina theme with a beat behind it.

We get a Pike's-eye view of a landscape dominated by a huge walled building with golden cupolas and silver minarets standing on the rocky shore of a still body of water. A huge cratered world hangs in the sky behind the building, with a much smaller ringed world to its left. The sky is purple, shading to pink near the horizon.

Cut back to Pike as a female voice offscreen calls, "Come on! We must hide ourselves!"

Cut to another shot of the building, slightly closer now. We see the tiny figure of Pike, his back to us, standing in the road while the equally tiny figure of a woman in a billowing white and orange dress approaches him from the building. The female voice continues, "Come! Come! Hurry!" The woman reaches Pike and takes him by the hand, saying, "It's deserted. There'll be weapons and perhaps food."

Cut back to Pike as he says, "This is Rigel VII." Yup. Remember that conversation he had with Boyce in his cabin? He was trapped in a deserted fortress and attacked by a Rigellian warrior.

Cut to the woman. It's Vina, in damsel-in-distress mode. Her blond hair is longer and done up in a braid looping over her head. The white dress has a floral design and a low neck. Behind her, we see a gate flanked by two blue-painted columns. Damsel Vina, a look of terror on her face, says, "Please! We must hide ourselves!"

Back to Pike. "I was in a cage, a cell, in some kind of a zoo. I must still be there."

Damsel Vina, tugging at his arm: "Come on!"

Pike, still not coming on: "They've reached into my mind and taken the memory of somewhere I've been."

Damsel Vina looks fearfully to her left as we hear a gutteral roar. "The Kaylar!" she exclaims, and turns to run back into the fortress.

Pike keeps hold of her as he says, "It's starting just as it did two weeks ago."

Damsel Vina gives Pike one last terrified look before freeing herself from him and hightailing it for the fortress.

"Except for you," Pike finishes, before following her.

Shot of Damsel Vina and Pike running for the gate.

Shot of Pike as he passes the gate and enters the courtyard. There are more red tumbleweeds, as well as various broken swords, maces, spears and whatnot littering the ground. Pike looks around before spotting Damsel Vina and joining her behind a cart. "Longer hair," he says, "different dress, but it is you, the one the survivors called Vina." There's another gutteral roar and Damsel Vina starts looking around for somewhere to hide. Pike, though, ignores the approaching Kaylar. "Or rather," he continues, "the image of Vina. But why you again? Why didn't they create a different girl?" A third gutteral roar. Pike and Damsel Vina both look up.
Shot of the gate as the Kaylar enters. He's got a big round fur hat with metal cheekplates and a horsetail (or perhaps his own hair) coming out of the top. A fur jerkin with a wide metal belt, baggy animal-hide pants, and tall furry boots complete the ensemble. He's carrying a triangular golden shield on his left arm and a nasty-looking axe in his right hand.

The Vina theme gives way to dramatic music dominated by horns. We cut back and forth between the Kaylar stalking into the courtyard and Pike and Damsel Vina crouching behind the cart. Damsel Vina tells Pike, "Quick! If you attack while it's not looking . . . "

"But it's only a dream," Pike insists.

Back to the Kaylar, who roars again just before tearing a door off its hinges and stalking into the chamber beyond.

"You have to kill him, as you did here before," Damsel Vina tells him.

"You can tell my jailors I won't go along with it," Pike answers. "I'm not an animal performing for its supper."

"It doesn't matter what you call this," Damsel Vina says. "You'll feel it, that's what matters! You'll feel every moment of whatever happens to you!" She accidentally knocks over a shield, and an uh-oh expression crosses her face. Women, huh?

Cut to the now-doorless doorway as the Kaylar stalks back out into the courtyard. We get a close-up of the Kaylar's bearded face, and boy, is he ugly! He's got narrow slitty eyes and a set of sharp, crooked teeth that would put a Ferengi to shame.

Cut back to Pike. "Please!" pleads a distressed Damsel Vina. "Don't you know what he'll do to me?"

Keeping Damsel Vina behind him, Pike edges back from the Kaylar. The dramatic horns build to a climax as he propels Damsel Vina over to a stairway, then picks up a mace from the ground, holding it double-handed in front of him. The Kaylar approaches Pike and swings the axe at him as the dramatic horns go into overdrive. Pike ducks under the axe and slams his mace against the Kaylar's shield, driving him back a few paces. As the Kaylar recovers, Pike picks up a round red shield with a six-pointed gold star. The Kaylar charges at Pike and swings the axe again, which Pike again avoids, giving the Kaylar another slam on the shield with the mace. This time the Kaylar stands his ground. He takes another swing at Pike, then another, with Pike dodging each one. Pike, though, is backing up, and we see Damsel Vina behind him, retreating up the stairs. Pike throws the mace at the Kaylar, beaning him with it, and the Kaylar bounces off an ugly statue and falls to the ground.

Pike takes advantage of the respite to ask Damsel Vina, "Why would an illusion be frightened?"
Glaring at him, Damsel Vina says, "Because that's the way you imagined me."

"Who are you?" Pike wonders. "You act as if this is real to you, too."

"Careful," she exclaims, and heads up the stairs.

The Kaylar gets back on his feet. Pike picks up a spear and levels it at the Kaylar. The Kaylar doesn't seem to notice. His eyes are wide, now. Wide, and bugfuck crazy. A swing of his axe chops Pike's spear in two. Pike drops his half of the spear and throws some dirt into the Kaylar's eyes. As they reach the top of the stairs Damsel Vina picks up something that might be an oversized cricket bat and shawns it at him, but the Kaylar stops it with his shield.

Pike and Damsel Vina are backing down a landing, throwing things at the Kaylar as he advances on them. Pike picks up a scimitar and hacks at the Kaylar, to no effect. The Kaylar knocks it from his hand, then pushes him off the landing, leaving Damsel Vina at his mercy. Pike lands in the dirt of the courtyard and lies there, stunned by the fall.

Damsel Vina picks up a morningstar on a chain and swings it at the Kaylar, to no effect. The Kaylar throws away his shield and axe and grabs Damsel Vina, who screams. Pike staggers to his knees and grabs a dagger, throwing it into the Kaylar's back. A pissed-off Kaylar turns to glare at Pike, grabs the morningstar from Damsel Vina, and prepares to jump down. Pike grabs a jagged spearhead and plants it in the ground. The Kaylar, thrown off balance by a last-second shove from Damsel Vina, impales himself. The dramatic horns climax, the Kaylar tumbles over, and Damsel Vina turns around.

The quieter Vina theme returns. As Pike looks up at Damsel Vina, the background behind him shimmers, accompanied by the vroon sound (which is different from the bwooby sound made by the disappearance of Survivor Vina and the encampment). We dissolve to a shot of Vina, her back still turned, her own background shifting to the cell. She turns around, looks at the cell, exhales, smiles in relief, and says, "It's over." This is Default Vina. Her neatly brushed blonde hair reaches down to her neck, and she's wearing a sleeveless scoop-necked minidress in Talosian metallic gray. Default Vina approaches Pike, who is now standing in the middle of the cell, wraps her arms around him, and rests her head on his shoulder. Pike doesn't react. Default Vina glances to her left, stiffens, steps back from Pike, and straightens her dress.

We cut to the Keeper and his posse, looking in at them as the Talosian theme resumes. The Keeper and Butthead join Beavis in the elevator. The elevator door closes with a pling sound as Stuart heads back down the corridor.

Pike turns to look at Vina. "Why are you here?"

Default Vina gives him a girly smile and says, "To please you."

"Are you real?"

"As real as you wish."

Pike isn't buying it. "Oh, no, no, that's not an answer." He moves away from her. "I've never met you before. I've never even imagined you."

Vina gives him another girly smile. "Perhaps they've made me out of dreams you've forgotten."
"What, and dressed you in the same metal fabric they wear?"

"I have to wear something," she says with a little shrug. "Don't I?"

Pike rolls his eyes.

"I can wear whatever you wish," Vina continues, "be anything you wish."

Pike is starting to get angry. He approaches Vina again. "So they can see how their specimen performs? They want to see how I react, is that it?"

Vina is starting to sound a little desperate. "Don't you have a dream, something you've always wanted very badly?"

But Pike has something else on his mind. "Or do they do more than just watch me? Do they . . . feel with me, too?"

Vina isn't giving up that easily. "You can have whatever dream you want. I can be anything, any woman you've ever imagined. You can have anything you want in the whole universe." Turning him to face her, she takes him by the shoulders and adds, "Let me please you."

"Yes," says Pike. "Yes, you can please me. You can tell me about them." A disappointed Vina draws her hands away from him as he continues, "Is there any way I can keep them from probing my mind, from using my thoughts against me?" Vina's starting to look scared. "Does that frighten you? Does that mean there is a way?"

Vina shakes her head. "You're a fool."

"Since you're not real, there's really not much point in continuing this conversation, is there?" Pike turns and walks away from her again.

************************

Back on the surface, we can see Number One and four other Enterprise crewmen, including Tyler and Vincent. They're all wearing jackets, and they all have goggles hanging from their necks. Two of the crewmen are operating controls on a device of some sort. Number One is on the telecommunicator, saying, "All circuits engaged, Mr. Spock."

We hear the filtered voice of Spock respond, "Standing by, Number One."

As we pan around to get a better look at the device, Number One calls out, "Take cover." She and the other crewmen (including, we now see, Boyce), pull their goggles up over their eyes and duck behind some rocks. Number One ends up kneeling down next to Boyce. As the device starts to hum, we see it's some sort of big-ass gun, and it's pointed at the rocky outcrop. We hear the filtered voice of Spock counting down from ten as the hum gets louder. When he hits five some flashy lights start going on and off in the barrel. When he hits one a blue beam shoots out and hits the rocky outcrop, blasting away more rock. The hum continues to get louder, sounding now like the warp engines ramping up to maximum speed.

"Increase to full power," Number One calls to Spock.

More rock blasting out. When all the rock is done being blasted, we can see the metal doors of the Talosians' elevator. They're glowing red, but that's it.

"Can you give us any more?" she calls.

The beam gets brighter, and the metal doors are glowing white, but that's it.

"Our circuits are beginning to heat," Spock calls down. "We'll have to cease power."

"Disengage," she finally calls out.

The blue beam cuts out, and the hum dies down. The doors quickly fade from white to red to dull gray.

Number One and Boyce pull off their goggles as Tyler leads the other crewmen back to the device. "The top of that knoll should have been sheared off the first second," she says.

"Maybe it was," says Boyce. "It's what I tried to explain in the briefing room. Their power of illusion is so great we can't be sure of anything we do, anything we see." He gets up and joins the other crewmen, leaving an uneasy Number One.

****************************

Default Vina is standing in a corner of the cell, saying, "Perhaps if you ask me some questions I could answer." She walks over to join Pike, who is sitting on the comma-shaped bed.

"How far can they control my mind?" he asks.

"If I tell you," Default Vina bargains, "then will you pick some dream you've had and let me live it with you?"

Pike turns to look at her and says, "Perhaps."

Not the firmest of committments, but it's good enough for Default Vina. "They can't actually make you do anything you don't want to do."

"But they can try to trick me with their illusions," Pike guesses.

Nodding, she says, "And, uh, they can punish you when you're not cooperative. You'll find out about that."

Pike reflects on this for a moment, then asks, "Did they ever live on the surface of this planet?" She nods.

"Why did they go underground?"

"War, thousands of centuries ago."

"That's why it's so barren up there?"

Default Vina nods again. "The planet's only now becoming able to support life again."

"But the Talosians who came underground found life limited here," Pike hypothesizes, "and they concentrated on developing their mental powers."

Another nod from Default Vina. Her tone of voice becomes analytical. Clearly, she's given the Talosians' lifestyle a lot of thought. "But they found it's a trap, like a narcotic. Because when dreams become more important than reality, you give up travel, building, creating. You even forget how to repair the machines left behind by your ancestors. You just sit, living and re-living other lives left behind in the thought-records."

"Or just probing the minds of zoo specimens like me," Pike adds.

"You're better than a theater to them," Default Vina assures him. "They create an illusion for you and watch you react, feel your emotions. They have a whole collection of specimens, descendants of life brought back long ago from all over this part of the galaxy."

Pike is starting to put two and two together. "Which means they had to have more than one of each animal."

Default Vina realizes she's said too much. "Please . . . "

"They'll need a pair of humans, too. Where do they intend to get the Earth woman?"

While Pike is asking this, the elevator door opens and the Keeper emerges, accompanied by the Talosian theme.

Default Vina objects, "You said that if I answered your questions --"

"But that was a bargain with something that didn't exist. You said you weren't real, remember?"

Default Vina catches the Keeper's eye. Does he nod at her, giving her permission to tell Pike the truth about her, or is he giving her a "this is your last chance" look? It's difficult to say. At any rate, she says, "I'm a woman, as real and as human as you are. We're like . . . Adam and Eve. If we --" Abruptly, Default Vina looks up at the ceiling as a look of terror crosses her face. "Don't! Please! Don't punish me! I'm trying! I'm trying!" She collapses onto the bed and starts writhing in pain, then vanishes in a blur, leaving her dress behind.

Pike prods at the empty dress before turning and catching sight of the Keeper. The Keeper turns and walks back to the elevator, which closes with a pling sound.

(continue to part 3)

Recap: The Cage (1 of 4)

2012-01-01T12:46:00.004-05:00

Recap: The Cage (part 1 of 4)

Back in late 2005, I decided to celebrate my acquisition of the original Star Trek on DVD by doing episode recaps which I posted to the alt.startrek and rec.arts.startrek.misc newsgroups. For reasons that I'm no longer clear on, I posted these recaps under the screenname Empok Nor. Now, as part of my policy of trying to post everything I've ever written on this blog, I now reclaim these recaps. I chose to recap the episodes in the order they were filmed rather than the order they aired, so that meant starting with the original Star Trek pilot, "The Cage".

Some background: In 1963 Gene Roddenberry was producing a TV series at MGM Studios called The Lieutenant that was airing on CBS. The suits at MGM figured CBS wouldn't pick up The Lieutenant for a second season, and they asked GR to come up with an idea for a new series. The series proposal he pitched them was one he had been working on since 1960: Star Trek, a science fiction series set on a spaceship. After several months went by with no reaction from the MGM suits, GR started shopping the series proposal around to the other TV studios. In April 1964, Desilu hired GR to produce TV pilots for them, on the basis of the Star Trek proposal and some other series ideas he outlined verbally. Within days, GR did a meeting with the suits at CBS to pitch Star Trek. They heard him out for two hours, then told him that they had already decided to go with Lost in Space.

Early the next month, the Star Trek proposal was sent to NBC, which liked the idea well enough to pay Desilu $20,000 to come up with three story outlines based on the series format. By the end of June, GR had cranked out the three outlines, and NBC picked the one called "The Cage" to be developed into a shooting script. GR spent the next several months writing the script, and also planning the design of the spaceship model, sets, props, costumes and so forth. At the end of September, GR submitted his script to NBC, which greenlighted the pilot. Preproduction required several more months, and in November construction of the sets began. Stephen E. Whitfield notes that the bridge set took six weeks and almost $60,000 to build. Filming of the pilot, now renamed "The Menagerie", began on 27 November 1964 (according to Memory Alpha) or 12 December 1964 (according to Whitfield).

**************************

OPENING CREDITS
We open with the first notes of the title theme and shots of the spaceship flashing across a starfield. This version of the title theme includes the "singing woman" motif. The first title appears, faintly blue: STAR TREK. The spaceship zooms across the screen again. Next title: STARRING JEFFREY HUNTER. Again the zooming ship. Next title: GUEST STAR SUSAN OLIVER. Next title: STAR TREK CREATED BY GENE RODDENBERRY as the spaceship cruises onto the screen from the left, and we approach the top of the saucer section. We linger momentarily over the words USS ENTERPRISE, then continue to close in on a bubble at the top of the saucer. A little window on top of the bubble opens into the bridge, which is done up in black and gray. Most of the stations (including the captain's chair) have small video receivers mounted on gooseneck supports. The crew wear black pants and tunics in muted colors.

Captain Christopher Pike, in a gold tunic, sits in the center chair. Number One, also in gold, sits at the helm position, while Lt. Jose "Joe" Tyler, also in gold, mans the navigation console. A crewman in a blue tunic stands by the turbolift doors. (In his novel The Rift Peter David states that this crewman's name is Valdini, and that he was killed in action on stardate 3619.2.) A crewman in a gold tunic mans the engineering station, while another blue-tunicked crewman stands to the right of the captain's chair holding a clipboard.

TEASER
Mr. Spock, in a blue tunic, approaches the captain's chair from behind, then takes up position to its left. "Check the circuits," Spock orders. Spock's race hasn't been established at this point. The series format described him as "probably half-Martian". He was also supposed to look even more satanic than he already did, with a "heavy-lidded face" and a "slightly reddish complexion". The red makeup didn't work out, so they ended up making him slightly greenish.

"All operating, sir," Tyler responds.

"Can't be the screen, then," Spock remarks.

We cut to the main viewscreen, showing stars. A ripple blurs across it, accompanied by the bleep sound that will later become the prelude to operating the transporter.

A two-shot of Spock and Captain Pike. "Definitely something out there, Captain," says Spock. "Headed this way." He turns to look back at the screen.

A shot of the main viewscreen over the shoulders of Pike, Tyler and Number One. "Could be these meteoroids," says Tyler as several meteoroids shoot past on the screen.

"No, it's something else," says Number One. "There's still something out there."

Back to the two-shot of Spock and Pike as they stare at the screen.

A shot of the screen over Tyler's shoulder as another ripple and bleep shimmies across it.

A quick shot of Pike, then a shot of Tyler as his red navigation alarm starts flashing. The alarm sound is two alternating tones, rather that the one tone we're used to. It's actually kind of wimpy sounding.

Back to the two-shot of Spock and Pike.

A profile shot of Tyler and Number One as the former says, "It's coming at the speed of light. Collision course."

A quick shot of Pike looking unruffled.

Back to the screen over Tyler's shoulder as another ripple crosses it.

A quick shot of a guy in a pale pink tunic at Communications turning to look at his instruments. (In The Rift, the Communications Officer's name is Vincent. Jerry Oltion mentions another comm officer named Dabisch in his Christopher Pike novel Where Sea Meets Sky, but Dabisch is a Galamite, while this fellow is clearly human, so Vincent it is).

A wide angle of the bridge as the wimpy two-tone alert alarm continues to sound.

A shot of the screen as another ripple disturbs the stars.

Back to the shot of Tyler as he says, "Meteoroid beam has not deflected it, Captain."

A shot of Number One as she turns back toward Pike and says, "Evasive maneuvers, sir?"

Two shot of S & P. "Steady as we go," says an impassive Pike.

The screen over Tyler's shoulder: more ripples.

Wide angle of the bridge. A shot of Pike as he glances at Spock.

The screen over Tyler's shoulder: one last ripple blurs the stars. The alarm stops sounding.

Vincent peers at his instruments and listens to a steady beeping: "It's a radio wave, sir. We're passing through an old-style distress signal."

Two shot of S & P: a still-impassive Pike exposits: "They were keyed to cause interference and attract attention this way." That sly dog knew what was going on the whole time. Spock moves away from him, on his way to the library computer station.

Vincent: "A ship in trouble making a forced landing, sir. That's it, no other message."

Wide angle of the bridge as Tyler works his board and says, "I have a fix. It comes from the Talos star group." He seems to have a little trouble with the name. The guy with the clipboard approaches Pike with a piece of paper for his attention, but the Captain shakes his head.

"We've no Earth ships or colonies that far out," Number One notes.

Shot of Spock as he stands next to his library computer station: "Their call letters check with a survey expedition. S. S. Columbia."

Switch to a shot of Spock's back as he looks at a viewscreen showing the Talos star group, which looks suspiciously like an astronomical photo of the Pleiades. "Disappeared in that region approximately eighteen years ago."

Profile shot of Tyler and Number One as the navigator nods and says, "It would take that long for a radio beam to travel from there to here."

Back to Spock as he waves his hand over his library computer, causing the screen to shift to a drawing of a planetary system. The caption in the bottom right reads 092 07 5083 TALOS GROUP. There are two stars very close together, and five planets orbiting them. The fourth planet out has a highly inclined orbit, way out of the system's ecliptic. Spock says, "Records show the Talos group has never been explored. Solar system similar to Earth's. Eleven planets." During this exposition, we shift back to a shot of a still-impassive Pike. Clipboard Guy is still waiting next to him.

Spock in profile. "Number four seems to be Class M." Spock turns to give Pike a significant look as he adds, "Oxygen atmosphere." It should be noted that this is the first time someone says "Class M" on Star Trek. Much, much later, on Star Trek: Enterprise, this expression is retconned as an abbreviation of the Vulcan term "Minshara-class planet."

Shot of Number One as she also turns to look at Pike, saying, "Then they could still be alive, even after eighteen years."

"If they survived the crash," Pike notes.

A puzzled Spock says, "We aren't going to go? To be certain?"

"Not without any indication of survivors, no," Pike insists. Glancing at Number One and Tyler, he orders, "Continue on to the Vega colony and take care of our own sick and injured first."

A quick shot of Number One, looking back at Pike again.

"You have the helm," Pike says as he rises from his chair. "Maintain present course." From offscreen Number One says, "Yes, sir." Clipboard Guy watches in annoyance as Pike strides past him to the turbolift without so much as a glance, then shrugs and resumes standing next to the Captain's chair. Number One and Spock share a concerned look.

****************************

ACT ONE
A ship's corridor. A casually dressed couple passes by, he in a blue striped shirt and white shorts, she in a sleeveless red top and white pleated miniskirt. They pass by Pike, who enters a door to the left. A sign next to the door reads CAP. PIKE.

We see a close-up of a telecommunicator (as it's called in the series format) as a pair of hands twist a knob and flip it open, resulting in the familiar TOS communicator sound. A metallic filtered voice says, "Boyce here." Pike's voice responds, "Drop by my cabin, doctor." The hands close the telecommunicator.

We follow Pike as he crosses his cabin and drops onto his bunk with a weary sigh. There's an odd-looking three-sided wooden cabinet in the middle of the cabin with a television screen on one side. sitting on top of the cabinet are a hand laser and a uniform cap. A niche in the wall across the room holds some bound volumes, what seems to be a trophy with four handles, a clipboard, and a few other unidentifiable odds and ends. A nightstand next to the bunk has another video receiver on a gooseneck mount.

We cut to the cabin's door as Doctor Philip "Bones" Boyce (as the series format calls him) enters, an elderly man wearing a blue jumpsuit with an Earth logo on the left breast pocket. He's carrying some sort of leather-bound case. He walks up to a counter, turns on an overhead light, and opens up the case. ( The Memory Alpha entry on "The Cage" notes that this scene between Pike and Boyce was the first to be filmed.)

Back to Pike, as he sits up: "What's that? I didn't say there was anything wrong with me."

Boyce spares Pike a glance as he continues to fiddle with the case. "I understand we, ah, picked up a distress signal." He removes some glassware from the case.

Back to Pike: "That's right," he says, as he rises from his bunk and crosses over to the wall niche. Picking up the clipboard and opening it, he continues, "Unless we get anything more positive on it, it seems to me the condition of our own crew takes precedence." Looking over at Boyce he adds, "I'd like to log the ship's doctor's opinion, too."

"Oh, I concur with yours, definitely," Boyce says as he continues to fiddle with his case.

Pike looks a little surprised at this, as though he were expecting Boyce to voice an objection. "Good, I'm glad you do," he says. Returning to sit on his bunk with the clipboard, he adds, "We're going to stop first at the Vega colony and replace anybody who needs hospitalization. We can also . . . " Pike trails off as he stares at Boyce. "What the devil are you putting in there, ice?"
Boyce smiles as he walks over and hands Pike a shot glass. "Who wants a warm martini?"

Well, Pike did tell Number One she had the helm, so I guess that means he's off duty. Taking the martini from Boyce, he says, "What makes you think I need one?"

Gesturing with a glass mixing rod, Boyce chuckles and says, "Sometimes a man will tell his bartender things he'll never tell his doctor." Picking up another shot glass, Boyce makes a little "cheers" gesture with it before sitting in a chair across from Pike's bunk. "What's been on your mind, Chris? The fight on Rigel Seven?"

Tossing the clipboard on his bunk, Pike says, "Shouldn't it be? My own yeoman and two others dead, seven injured."

"Was there anything you personally could have done to prevent it?" Boyce asked pointedly.

Pike isn't buying it. "Oh, I should have smelled trouble when I saw the swords and the armor. Instead of that, I let myself get trapped in that deserted fortress and attacked by one of their warriors!" Boyce sips from his glass during this exposition.

Shot of Boyce as he looks sorrowfully at Pike: "Chris, you set standards for yourself no one could meet! You treat everyone on board like a human being except yourself."

Shot of Pike, looking down at his drink, as Boyce continues, "And now you're tired, and you --"
Pike looks up suddenly and interrupts. "You bet I'm tired! You bet!" Reclining on his bunk, he continues. "I'm tired of being responsible for two hundred and three lives. I'm tired of deciding which mission is too risky and which isn't, and who's going on the landing party and who doesn't. And who lives . . . " glancing back down at his drink, "and who dies." Shaking his head and sighing, Pike adds, "I've had it, Phil."

Shot of Boyce: "To the point of finally taking my advice, a rest leave?"

Back to Pike: "To the point of considering resigning."

Boyce leans back in his chair in dismay. "And do what?" he says sarcastically.

Defiantly, Pike answers, "Well, for one thing, go home."

Boyce looks unconvinced.

Pike continues, "Nice little town with fifty miles of parkland around it." Another glance down, then up at Boyce. "Remember I told you I had two horses? We used to take some food and ride out all day."

Boyce takes another drink and snarks, "That sounds exciting. Ride out with a picnic lunch every day."

Back to the two shot of Pike and Boyce as a miffed Pike sits up again and insists, "I said that's one place I might go. I might go into business on Regulus or in the Orion colonies."

Boyce is incredulous. "You? An Orion trader, dealing in green animal-woman slaves?"

Gesturing with his hand, Pike says forcefully, "The point is, this isn't the only life available. There's a whole galaxy of things to choose from."

"Not for you," says Boyce.

Shot of the doctor as he leans back and ruminates. "A man either lives life as it happens to him, meets it head on and licks it, or he turns his back on it and starts to wither away."

Shot of Pike as he smiles and says, "Now you're beginning to talk like a doctor, bartender."

Smiling back, Boyce says, "Take your choice. We both get the same two kinds of customers: the living, and the dying."

Shot of Pike as he briefly reflects on the doctor's words before being interrupted by the page whistle.

Close-up of the video receiver as Pike switches it on. Spock appears and says, "Mr. Spock here. We're intercepting a follow-up message, sir. There are crash survivors on Talos." Spock fades away again. (So now we know that this character is called Mr. Spock.)

******************************

Close-up on a control panel. We pull back a bit to reveal orange paper scrolling out of a printer. Two hands reach in to grab the paper.

Cut to the bridge, as Vincent reads from the paper. An auburn-haired woman in a pale pink tunic is seated at the station, Vincent and Pike are standing on either side of her. Number One and Tyler are at their stations, Spock is standing next to Number One, Valdini is still standing by the turbolift doors, Boyce is standing in front of them, and Clipboard Guy is back to the right of the Captain's chair. "'Eleven survivors from crash,'" reads Vincent. "'Gravity and oxygen within limits. Food and water obtainable. But unless . . .' The message faded at that point, sir." The woman had been staring straight ahead, but now she looks up at Vincent. As Pike takes the paper from Vincent, the Redhead's eyes shift to him. (We never see her again. I wonder who she is?)

Shot of Pike as he reads the message for himself, then we pan around as he makes his way to stand by the Captain's chair and Vincent returns to his station. For the record, there are fourteen people scattered around the bridge.

"Address intercraft," Pike orders.

Tyler presses a button and says, "System open."

"This is the captain," states Pike, his voice slightly reverbing. "Our destination is the Talos star group."

Medium shot of Pike with Boyce and Valdini behind him. Pike continues, "Our time warp, factor seven."

Side shot of Tyler, Number One and Spock as Tyler works his controls. "Course computed and on the screen," he announces. Number One adds, "All decks have acknowledged, sir."

Back to Pike: "Engage."

Back to Tyler and Number One as they both work their controls and Spock moves off.
Wide angle on the bridge as the engines hum and the title theme comes up. The bridge shot starts to fade in and out as a starfield comes up and starts sliding past. Pike moves forward to stand next to Tyler, who holds up seven fingers to indicate they've reached time warp factor seven. Pike nods, and the bridge fades out.

Starfield drifting to the right.

The bridge fades in. Pike is still standing next to Tyler, who says, "On course, sir."

In the background, the turbolift doors open to reveal Yeoman J.M. Colt, a pretty young woman in a pale rose tunic with bright coppery hair carrying a clipboard. (She's not the Redhead we saw earlier -- her hair was darker.) As Pike turns around he almost runs into her. "Yeoman," he barks.

"Yes, sir," says Colt, standing stiffly at attention.

"I thought I told you that when I'm on the bridge that I expect --"

"That you wanted the reports by 0500," she finishes for him, with a hint of fear in her wide blue eyes. "It's 0500 now, sir."

Pike blinks, then glares up at Clipboard Guy. Clipboard Guy turns and leaves. "Oh. I see," Pike mumbles as Colt hands him the clipboard. "Thank you," he mumbles again as he looks through the reports, and she turns and walks off. Pike glares after her, then turns back to Number One.

Shot of Number One as she says with a smile, "She's replacing your former yeoman, sir."

"She does a good job, all right," Pike grudgingly admits to her. "It's just that I can't get used to having a woman on the bridge." (Pike has apparently not noticed that there were already two women on the bridge before Colt showed up.)

Number One looks up sharply at this.

Sighing, Pike says, "No offense, Lieutenant. You're different, of course."

Initially pleased, Number One frowns again when she realizes that Pike is implying she's not a real woman, then turns back to her console. (Presumably the Redhead is also different, somehow.)

****************************

Starfield, with the planet Talos IV approaching. We hear the opening notes of the title theme.
Shot of the main viewscreen, over the shoulders of Tyler and Spock. The screen is filled with a cloud-covered planet. "We've settled into orbit, sir," says Tyler.

Shot of Pike leaning on the bridge railing. Behind him, the turbolift opens to reveal a blue-tunicked crewman holding a sheet of white paper in a clear cover. The Star Trek Concordance identifies this man simply as "the Geologist". He hands Pike the paper, saying, "Geological lab report complete, Captain."

Spock steps up and hands Pike another paper, saying, "Preliminary lab survey ready, sir."

"Spectography?" says Pike as he skims the two reports.

"Our reading shows an oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere, sir," the Geologist responds. "Heavy with inert elements, but well within safety limits."

"Gravity?" Pike asks.

"Zero point nine of Earth," says the Geologist.

Shot of Tyler and Number One as the navigator reports, "Captain? Reflections, sir, from the planet's surface."

As Pike and Spock approach Tyler, he continues. "As I read it, they polarize out as rounded metal bits."

Back shot of Spock and Tyler facing the screen, which is still filled with a view of Talos IV. Tyler turns his head and adds, "Could be parts of a spaceship hull." From offscreen, Pike says, "Equip a landing party of six."

Shot of Pike looking at Spock and Tyler. "Do you feel up to it?" the Captain asks them.

"Yes, sir," says Spock.

"Yes, sir!" exclaims Tyler.

As the two men make for the turbolift, Number One looks put out as she rests her chin on the backs of her hands. Pike looks back at her and says, "Sorry, Number One. With so little information on this planet, we'll have to leave the ship's most experienced officer here covering it."

"Of course, sir," says a disappointed Number One.

Pike heads for the turbolift, where he joins Tyler, Spock, the Geologist, and a crewman in a pale rose tunic that the Star Trek Concordance identifies as C.P.O. Garison.

************************

The transporter room. We see Tyler and Spock attaching equipment to silver harnesses worn beneath sparkly gray jackets. There's a loud, rhythmic humming sound filling the room. GR originally intended this scene to be the viewing audience's introduction to the transporter concept, so director Robert Butler and he made an elaborate production of the transporter's use here. As it turned out, the audience's first sight of the transporter process was when Kirk, McCoy and Crewman Green sparkle in out of nowhere at the beginning of "The Man Trap".

As Pike enters, we pan right as he passes Boyce and approaches Transporter Chief Pitcairn, a heavyset crewcut man in a khaki coverall. Standing next to Pitcairn is an Asian man, also in a khaki coverall. (In The Rift the Asian man is named Yamata.) Ever since I first saw this scene back in the mid-70s, something struck me as odd about it. Now I've figured it out: Yamata is wearing glasses, the only person we've seen wearing glasses on Star Trek (except for Kirk in The Wrath of Khan). Pike says to Pitcairn, "There's no indication of problems down there, but let's not take any chances."

In a deep voice, Pitcairn says, "Yes, sir. There's a canyon to the left. We can set you down there completely unobserved." Say, shouldn't the chief have given some cardinal direction rather than "to the left"? Oh well; I suppose he meant "to the west".

"All right," says Pike as he turns and steps up onto the transporter stage, where he joins Spock, Tyler, Boyce, the Geologist and C.P.O. Garison. The Geologist has various bits of equipment hanging from straps, and the noncom, of course, gets to carry a big, heavy backpack.

We cut back to the transporter console, which has no less than two video monitors on gooseneck mounts. Yamata is no longer wearing glasses. The two men operate the controls as the transporter whine rises.

We cut back to the landing party as the transporter whine grows to a climax, and they all fade away accompanied by sparkles and a tinkly sound.

We cut to the surface of Talos IV as the landing party fades into view, accompanied by sparkles and a tinkly sound. They look around at Talos IV, which is a pretty desolate place full of jumbled rocks. Jagged mountains loom in the background, and clouds fill a green-tinged sky. The Geologist is inspecting one of the rocks.

Cut to a Pike's-eye view of the terrain ahead: more rocks, more jagged mountains, more cloudy green sky. There is a scrubby-looking plant on the right with red leaves.

Cut back to the landing party as they start forward. As they walk along, we become aware of a humming sound in the background. Tyler is in the lead, with a laser pistol in his hand. Spock follows him, also packing heat, and we notice his limp for the first time; his left leg was presumably injured during the fighting on Rigel VII. Pike is next, followed by Garison and Boyce, with the Geologist bringing up the rear. The humming becomes louder, and Pike and Spock approach a wiry plant with flat, shimmering blue leaves. Pike grabs a couple, and the humming dims. Spock grabs two more, and the humming dims even more. Spock grins briefly (yes, he does), then they release the leaves and Spock motions the others forward.

We dissolve to another shot of the landing party walking along, with the Geologist in the lead this time. He passes behind a boulder with more humming plants growing on it, leans on it, takes a look around, and spots something. Turning back to Pike, he whispers, "Sir," and looks forward again as Pike and Spock approach. Pike takes the lead and Spock stands just behind him.

A musical sting comes up as we cut to a Pike's-eye view of the survivors' encampment. There seems to be a still in the foreground and a ten-foot radar tower off to the left, along with makeshift shelters scattered about. A handful of white-haired people in ragged clothing move around in the background.

A shot of the landing party as they move forward.

A shot of two of the survivors. The one on the left, whose name we never learn, says, "They're men! They're humans!"

Pike and Spock lead the way into the encampment. Shaking hands with one of the survivors, Pike says, "Captain Christopher Pike, United Space Ship Enterprise."

"Doctor Theodore Haskins, American Continent Institute," says the survivor.

Shot of a group of six survivors, including Haskell: "Is Earth all right?" asks unnamed survivor #2.

Shot of Pike, Tyler, Boyce and Garison: "Same old Earth," Pike assures him."And you'll see it very soon."

"And you won't believe how fast you can get back," Tyler interjects. "Why, the time barrier's been broken! Our new ships can --" He breaks off, and stares past the survivors.

Back to the six survivors, who all turn around.

Shot of Survivor Vina stepping forward. She has unkempt blonde hair, and is wearing the frayed upper half of a blue coverall for a top and a burlap sack for a skirt. Her bearing is oddly distant, as though she's looking at everything through a telescope. She moves next to Haskins, who cheerfully introduces her. "This is Vina. Her parents are dead. She was born almost as we crashed."

As Haskins is speaking, we cut to a shot of a fascinated Pike. We pull back to see that Pike is being viewed on an irregularly shaped monitor.

A shot of the three beings watching Pike. These are the Talosians: frail, with big veiny heads, dressed in metallic gray robes. One of them, the Keeper, is wearing a gold medallion around his neck. The spooky Talosian theme is playing.

A shot of two Talosians flanking the monitor, on which we see the Enterprise crew and the survivors shaking hands and getting chummy.

A close-up of the Keeper.

A close-up of Pike on the monitor.

Another close-up of the Keeper. Yeah, his expression says, I got my eye on you, boy.

On the monitor, Pike and Survivor Vina are giving each other the eye.

The Keeper turns to look at the other two Talosians, nods, and off they go. The Keeper turns and peers out of the TV set at the viewer.

Cut to the survivors' encampment, as the landing party are helping the survivors pack up their stuff. Pike opens his telecommunicator and calls, "Enterprise." The voice of Number One replies, "Landing party, come in." As Pike moves offscreen, we see Survivor Vina following him.
We follow Survivor Vina as she joins Pike and Haskins. Pike is still talking to Number One: "We'll begin transporting the survivors and their effects up to you very shortly."

"Quarters are being prepared, sir," we hear Number One respond. "Have I permission to send out scouting and scientific parties now?"

"That's affirmative on the . . . " Pike trails off as he becomes aware that Survivor Vina is staring at him.

A close-up of Survivor Vina, with her disconcerting blue eyes and disheveled blonde hair. She's giving Pike that far-end-of-the-telescope look, and as she speaks, the eerie Vina theme insinuates itself into the soundtrack. "You appear to be healthy and intelligent, Captain. A prime specimen."

Back to an uneasy-looking Pike as Number One says, "I didn't get that last message, Captain."

"Uh, affirmative on request," he mumbles distractedly into his telecommunicator. "Landing party out."

Back to a three shot of Pike, Haskins and Survivor Vina as Boyce moseys on up. "You must forgive her choice of words, Captain," says a jolly-looking Haskins. "She's lived her whole life with a collection of aging scientists."

Boyce says to Pike, "If they can, ah, spare you a moment, I'd like to make my medical report."

Another close-up of telescope-look Survivor Vina as she says, "I think it's time to show the Captain our secret."

Back to Boyce and Pike as Boyce says, "Their health is excellent. Almost too good."

A two shot of Haskins and Survivor Vina as Haskins says, "There's a reason for our condition. But we've had some doubt if Earth is ready to learn the secret." Y'know, in a sense, he's telling the truth. "Let the girl show you," Haskins continues. "We'll accept her judgment."

A shot of an uncertain-looking Pike, then back to Haskins and Survivor Vina. We pan left as she moves away from Haskins, and Pike follows her.

Survivor Vina leads Pike through the desolate landscape of Talos IV, still accompanied by the Vina theme. "You're tired," Survivor Vina tells Pike as she takes his hand. "Don't worry, you'll feel much better soon." She leads him up to a rocky outcrop. Pike stands there for a moment, not getting it. Survivor Vina moves around a bit, gesturing with her arms, looking for all the world like a shabbily-dressed Vanna White. "Don't you see it?" she says in a pixieish voice. "Here, and here."

Pike is still wondering what's going on. "Uh, I don't understand."

"You will," says Survivor Vina, and now her voice is all business. "You're a perfect choice." She ripples out of sight with a bwooby sound, taking the Vina theme with her.

A shot of the survivors' encampment, as the survivors and their effects suddenly vanish with another bwooby sound.

Back to the rocky outcrop. A hidden door in the rockface opens. Pike turns to look. The Keeper's two buddies emerge from the hidden door, along with an up-tempo version of the Talosian theme. The first Talosian points something at Pike, which produces a crackling sound and a stream of orange smoke, and Pike is down for the count.

Back at the area formerly known as the survivors' encampment, the five members of the landing party are looking stunned, until Tyler whips out his laser pistol and runs off, shouting "Captain!" The others follow, Spock having unholstered his own laser pistol. C.P.O. Garison leaves the heavy backpack lying on the ground.

Back at the rocky outcrop, the Talosians have managed to drag Pike into the hidden doorway, which turns out to be an elevator. They start moving down as the camouflaged doors close. The landing party finally arrives, and Tyler tries to force the doors open. When that fails, he leaps off the rocky outcrop, and he and Spock fire their lasers at it. They blast away some of the rock facade, but have no other effect. The Geologist then fires his laser, and more facade is blown away, but that's it. Tyler cranks up his laser to full power and fires another blast. More rock facade gets blasted away, but the doors remain undamaged. Tyler keeps firing at full power for sixteen seconds, but all he gets is a red glow from a small circle of door. When he stops firing, the glow quickly fades.

Spock activates his telecommunicator and says, "Spock here."

"Landing party, come in," says Number One.

"There is no survivors' encampment, Number One," says Spock. "This is all some sort of trap. We've lost the Captain. Do you read?"

(continue to part 2)

Penmanship

2011-12-30T10:42:00.000-05:00

Back in the early 1980s, John M. Ford wanted to write an alternate history novel where Julian the Apostate succeeded in disestablishing Christianity in the Roman Empire. He also wanted to write an alternate history novel where Richard III won the Battle of Bosworth. He also wanted to write a historical fantasy about a world where magic worked. Being John M. Ford, he did all three at once and the result was The Dragon Waiting, winner of the 1984 World Fantasy Award for best novel.

It goes without saying, of course, that a world without a Roman Catholic Church isn't going to have a Richard III. It might not even have an England; that's how great the magnitude of the change would be. And a world where magic really worked would be completely unrecognizable.

Nevertheless, Ford's imaginary 15th century is so vivid that you forget how impossible it is. And like any historical novelist worth his salt, Ford included an author's note pointing out where he had changed history, and where he hadn't.

I picked up The Dragon Waiting at the Bookateria in Newark, Delaware sometime in the late 1980s, and I was sufficiently intrigued by the premises that I was inspired to read other books. One was Julian by Gore Vidal, and another was The Sunne in Splendour by Sharon Kay Penman. I was hooked by The Sunne in Splendour, and its 886 pages went by way too quickly. Somehow I always managed to get it back after loaning it out to other members of my family, and I brought it with me from Delaware to Rhode Island to Pittsburgh. I found other books by SKP, about Simon de Montfort, and the Empress Matilda, and Matilda's son Henry, and they joined The Sunne in Splendour on my bookshelves.

Finally, I found my way to SKP's website and blog, posting the occasional comment in the latter whenever I found something to contribute. As it happens, SKP has been giving away autographed copies of her latest novel, Lionheart, to randomly selected blog commenters, and to my utter astonishment, the latest random commenter to win a copy was me!

I've already thanked Sharon for this unexpected Christmas gift by email, and again on her blog, but third time's the charm, so once again: thank you, Ms. Penman. You are now the queen of my library!

Kulkuset

2011-12-25T01:47:00.002-05:00

Shamelessly stolen from Eschaton. It's Finland's own Rajaton performing their immortal rendition of "Jingle Bells":

The Joy Formidable Glastonbury 2011

2011-12-07T07:29:00.002-05:00

Purely for my own amusement and edification, I've decided to embed videos of The Joy Formidable performing at the Glastonbury Music Festival on June 26, 2011.

"A Heavy Abacus"

"Austere"

"The Greatest Light is the Greatest Shade"

"Cradle"

"Whirring"

Re-watching Star Trek: The Next Generation

2011-11-24T16:51:00.005-05:00

So, you say you don't have enough to occupy you on the internet? You say you're looking for somewhere to talk about Star Trek: The Next Generation? Well, Torie Atkinson and Eugene Myers have got the solution to both of your problems at The Viewscreen. They'll be re-watching the first season of TNG, one episode per week starting ~~today~~ a week from now with "Encounter at Farpoint", and they'd like you to join them! Re-live the glory days of the late 1980s, and the rebirth of the Star Trek franchise. Picard! Data! Wesley! Tasha!

It's waiting for you ~~now~~ soon . . .

Leave me right here

2011-11-14T02:49:00.001-05:00

It's embedded music video time! Today's selection comes from 1997: "Volcano Girls" by Veruca Salt.

A portrait of James Street

2011-11-13T23:34:00.004-05:00

Somehow or other, I wound up owning a copy of Life in a Putty Knife Factory, a collection of humorous anecdotes published in 1943 by journalist H. Allen Smith. In addition to reminiscences of celebrities such as H. L. Mencken and Tallulah Bankhead, Smith also talks about some of his fellow journalists and writers.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that one of the writers he talks about is James Street, author of Good-bye, My Lady, the quintessential basenji novel. As a service to my fellow basenji enthusiasts, I now present, in full, Smith's account of Street. (Is Life in a Putty Knife Factory still under copyright? I eagerly await word from Smith's literary executors.)

* * *

(the following excerpt is from Chapter IX: Taking Pride in My Profession)

One of my best friends among authors is James Street, whose typewriter erupts novels, short stories, movies, magazine articles, and indignant letters. Mr. Street is forever working himself into an elevated dudgeon, usually over some fatheaded Yankee's gross misinterpretation of the War Between the States. He is from Mississippi, and most of his writing is about the South, and he spends long hours worrying over the Dred Scott decision, the Missouri Compromise, and Harriet Beecher Stowe. When he has achieved a proper degree of anger, he leaps to his typewriter and lets go with a long letter full of bitterness and invective. He seldom mails one of these letters. He writes them, signs them, thrusts them into envelopes, puts stamps on the envelopes, then lays them on a table and sits and glowers at them for an hour. Then he tears them up.

Like myself, Mr. Street attends the movies regularly. Whenever he happens into one involving the habits or history of the South, he comes away in a tremendous fury. I remember when he went to see Gone with the Wind. He came out of the theater cursing David O. Selznick and everyone else connected with the production. Mr. Street's violent dissatisfaction with the picture was based on one single detail: he said that in the burning of Atlanta the fools had the smoke blowing in the wrong direction.

He is a neighbor of mine and works in a room where he pursues one of his hobbies -- collecting potted plants. He has a couple of hundred plants, of all shapes, colors, and sizes, in that room, and on entering it a visitor sometimes finds difficulty in locating Mr. Street and his typewriter. Whenever I find myself in the place I unconsciously begin making Tarzan noises and start peering through the foliage for Dorothy Lamour.

I first met Mr. Street in the winter of 1933 at a Santa Claus convention. He had just come up from the South and was writing feature stories for the Associated Press, whereas I was doing the same for the United Press. One day a note came in the mail saying the department-store Santa Clauses of New York City would hold a convention at Grand Central Palace the following afternoon. This was the period of the NRA Blue Eagle codes and the Santa Clauses were assembling for the purpose of drawing up a program of ethics. A novel spectacle! By the very nature of his calling a department-store Santa Claus has to be a proficient liar -- a man as fundamentally dishonest as a real-estate agent. Moreover, I know it to be a fact that the average department-store Santa Claus hates and despises his customers -- the little ones -- and would enjoy nothing so much as running amuck in a crowd of tots.

At Grand Central Palace I wandered around in the various exhibition halls, finding no Santa Claus convention, and at last I sat down near the elevators to rest my feet. I was sitting there when an elevator door opened and a short young man stepped out. He glanced all around and then approached me.

"Begya pahdon, suh," he said, "but I'm lookin' for a bunch of dad-blamed Santy Clauses."

It was Mr. Street, and soon we were sitting down comparing notes and swapping newspaper experiences, and after a while we went wandering and found the convention. The Santa Clauses were in a little room far off in one corner of the building. There were about a dozen of them, and they had a keg of beer on a table. They were dressed in their Santa costumes, all but their whiskers which had been laid aside to facilitate the taking in of beer. If you have ever seen such an assemblage of Santas, minus their whiskers, you have seen something. And if you have ever heard them talk, you have heard something. They came in all shapes and sizes and there wasn't a jolly one in the group. Since that day I have never believed in Santa Claus.

So that was the beginning of a long and interesting friendship. Mr. Street and I sometimes go adventuring together, and while our roamings occasionally prove trying to organized society, sometimes even offending the body politic, we have fun.

There is one story I want to tell about Mr. Street but to get into it I've got to bring up the matter of the round chickens. One day in 1942 I chanced to meet a citizen of Peoria, Illinois, who was visiting in New York. He turned out to be a chicken fancier, and he said he had come East to acquire some round chickens.

"Round chickens," he said, "come originally from India. They got practically no necks and almost no legs. A hen will weigh as much as fifteen pounds and a caponized rooster will weigh as much as twenty. If they scrooched up a little and bounced, you could almost dribble them like a basketball. The poultry growers of the country are going to get wise to these round chickens. They got almost as much meat on them as a hog, and it's wonderful white meat. Once we get going with them, you won't go into a restaurant and order fried chicken or half a broiled chicken. You'll order a chicken steak."

It is the clear duty of a writing person, when he hears such a thing as this story of the round chickens, to get to work and find out all the facts, so I got to work. After a couple of hours at the Public Library I concluded that the Peorian had reference to the Cornish game chicken, or one of its kinsfolk.

Next I telephoned the Department of Agriculture's poultry division. They dug up their best chicken expert and I told him the story.

"Well," he said, "I think the man from Peoria is pulling your drumstick. If he says these hens grow to fifteen pounds, he must have hens with some ostrich blood in them. And the roosters -- if they got to weigh twenty pounds -- would be unmanageable. You'd have to build a steel-and-concrete fortress to hold roosters that big. They'd tear down an ordinary chicken house and they might even turn on their owners and murder them."

On my way home I stopped at Mr. Street's house, having remembered that in his early days he had been a chicken fancier. If these round chickens existed anywhere on earth, I figured Mr. Street would know about them. Having swallowed a good dose of quinine, I took my machete and hacked my way through the jungle of his study until I found him at his desk. We made our way back over the perilous trail until we reached the living room, where I laid the results of my research before him and did him the honor of asking his opinion.

He grinned at me and said he had never heard of round chickens and that, moreover, he was willing to make a confession.

"I was never actually very handy with chickens," he said. "It all dates back to an unhappy experience I had with chickens in Mississippi."

It appears that when Mr. Street was first married, down in Mississippi, he was a preacher -- the youngest clergyman in the country, known as "The Boy Preacher of the South." Under provocation he can still loose a sermon that'll curl the wallpaper. As a preacher he had a house and time on his hands so he decided to raise chickens. He built his own chicken house and made an elegant structure out of it. He bought a tribe of Rhode Island Reds and a flock of Plymouth Rocks, and then somebody told him that he should be careful never to let the breeds mix. He should never, they said, permit the Rhode Island Red roosters to raise dust around the Plymouth Rock hens, and the same went for the Plymouth Rock rooster and the Red hens.

So Mr. Street constructed his chicken house carefully with an eye to segregation. The building had two sections and there was a long chicken run with a fence between. This was certainly all correct, and he moved his flocks into their respective quarters.

He was extremely careful to keep Rocks separated from Reds at night. In the daytime he simply let all the chickens out into the yard together.

"Somehow," he said, "the notion was in the back of my mind that if I kept them apart at night, everything would be okay. I had this idea in my head that they only did that sort of thing at night. Before I knew it the whole thing was a mess. That's how much of a chicken expert I am."

Digital Day 111111

2011-11-11T04:52:00.001-05:00

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And that concludes the digital days for this calendar cycle. Be sure to stop by for the next cycle of digital days, beginning on January 1, 2100.

Digital Day 111011

2011-11-10T16:51:00.001-05:00

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Dog walk: 11/7/11

2011-11-07T22:01:00.002-05:00

By long custom, the basenjis know that the afternoon dog walk is long, slow, and leisurely: I amble along and enjoy the sun, while the dogs cast about looking for Unidentified Ground Objects. The afternoon dog walk typically takes one or two hours.

By equally long custom, the other two daily dog walks -- in the evening before I prepare for work, and in the morning after I return from work -- are different. There's not enough time for a long walk, so instead we all pile into the car and drive to the local no-leash dog park. There, the basenjis can sniff around unencumbered, and get to know any other dogs that happen to be around, before getting down to the serious business of doing their business. A trip to the dog park usually only lasts about ten minutes.

Back in Newport, the municipal dog park was a brief five-minute drive away. When I learned about the move to McKees Rocks, I went a-Googling, and found the nearest dog park fifteen minutes away at Riverview Park, across the mighty Ohio. There, atop Observatory Hill, the dog park sits beside the Allegheny Observatory.

Tonight, unusually, instead of making their standard inspection of the grounds of the small dog park, the dogs seemed intrigued by something out in the dark, beyond the park's chain-link fence. Louis in particular was fascinated, staring out into the darkness at I-knew-not-what. After about five minutes of this, Louis finally gave up his staring contest with whatever-it-was, and took care of business. I wondered what it was all about. Was there another dog hidden in the darkness? A skunk? Who could say?

We got back into the car, and started making our way down Old Barn Road, the much-patched single-lane road that leads up to the observatory. Looming in the headlights on our right, I saw three deer munching on the observatory's back lawn. After slowly passing them by (with the basenjis' attention rivited), another hundred yards down the road brought another set of three deer into the headlights. I stopped and waited for them to move away from the road (with the basenjis staring avidly), then continued on my way.

Digital Day 110111

2011-11-01T23:54:00.002-04:00

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Life in the slow lane

2011-10-27T18:43:00.001-04:00

Sorting through the boxes containing two recently-uprooted households takes a lot of time. Learning a new job also takes a lot of time. So, for the time being, I'm not going to have a lot of time to blog.

Seen on Facebook

2011-10-22T09:53:00.002-04:00

Dog walk: 10/13/11

2011-10-15T13:12:00.002-04:00

A street map of McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania doesn't do the place justice. You have to look at a topographic map to see just how steeply the land rises from the Ohio River floodplain. The new house is perched on a hillside, facing west down the Ohio Valley.

It rained almost nonstop on the evening of the 12th, and as basenjis aren't noted for their enjoyment of getting wet, there was no chance to walk them then. At 5 AM on the morning of the 13th, the rain had stopped, and I decided that it was time for a walk.

We went south up a street rising at a 20 degree angle, the night sky overcast and the pavement still wet from the night's rain. There was an occasional car or truck passing by along Island Avenue at the bottom of the street, but no traffic up on the hillside.

Today was garbage day, and the dogs were inevitably attracted to the trash cans sitting in front of the houses. As we made our way up the street, they made frequent stops to sniff at plastic trash cans that all leaned slightly out of true, sharing the sidewalk's gradient. Most of the houses were decorated for Halloween with skeletons and jack o' lanterns.

The dogs were still uneasy about the unfamiliar streets, and within twenty minutes they were ready to return home. Ten minutes after we returned to the house, it began to rain again.

Dog walk: 10/10/11

2011-10-13T05:39:00.002-04:00

After we realized that we couldn't avoid forclosure, my wife arranged for us to move in with some friends of hers in a remote house in the Lehigh Valley. It was while she was there, making preparations for the move, that she (and they) were informed that the house was scheduled for demolition, and that both households would have to find new quarters.

A frantic search eventually resulted in the purchase of an astonishingly low-cost house in McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania, just outside of Pittsburgh. And so it was that around 11:30 AM on the morning on October 10, we packed up the last of our belongings and left Newport for the last time, mere minutes before our street was closed off by the Columbus Day Parade.

Due to the odd circumstances surrounding the move, our first day's journey ended at the remote house in the Lehigh Valley late in the afternoon. By the time we had ordered a dinner of take-out pizza, night had fallen. I was ready for bed then, but the basenjis needed one last walk for the night, and so I took them.

It was overcast that night, and there were absolutely no street lights along the thousand-foot driveway leading from the house to the nearest road. Dark woods lined both sides of the driveway, and what sounded like a million birds filled them with noise. The basenjis were two dark shapes moving back and forth across the driveway, most of their motion filled in by my mind's eye from memories of a thousand such walks in the bright Newport sunshine. On each side were strange new scents to be sampled, and sample them they did. The only distinct features I could make out were the white fur of Louis' collar and legs; everything else was shadows against the deeper dark of the night.

We went slowly down the driveway to the road, and then just as slowly back up again. The dogs had all the opportunity they needed to relieve themselves for the night, though the darkness kept me from learning whether they had taken advantage of it. Then we were back in the house, and it was time for me to sleep, momentarily suspended between past and future.

Digital Day 101111

2011-10-11T15:58:00.000-04:00

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Digital Day 101011

2011-10-10T15:57:00.000-04:00

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A Convenience Store Chistmas

2011-10-09T21:21:00.004-04:00

I spent Christmas Eve 1999 working the graveyard shift at a 7-Eleven. It was dead quiet, so I whiled away the hours composing the (until now untitled) poem below on a piece of scrap paper. That scrap paper hung from our refrigerator door for twelve years, until this afternoon, when my wife's cousin came and carted our refrigerator away in preparation for our departure from Newport tomorrow. I noticed the tattered, filthy piece of scrap paper sitting on the kitchen counter just now, and I decided that my work deserved, at long last, a wider audience than could be found in my kitchen. So I now present to my vast global blogging audience, just as I wrote it so long ago:

A Convenience Store Christmas
by Johnny Pez

Twas the night before Christmas
And all through the store
Not a customer bothered
To walk in the door

The newspapers lay
In their well-ordered stacks
And the drink fountains nestled
By beef-jerky snacks

While cigarettes stood
Upon multi-tiered shelves
In red and white boxes
Like cancerous elves.

When out of the frigid
Millenial night
My eyes were repulsed
By a hideous sight

A huge tractor-trailer
Had pulled up outside
MCLANE boldly stood out
Upon its vast side.

And out of the monster
Came two seedy men
In filthy gray jumpsuits.
They came in and then . . .

The bigger one walked up
And said with a sneer,
"Your order for ten tons
Of sunscreen is here!"

I spoke up in outrage,
"The devil you say!
We sent in that order
For sunscreen in May!"

"Take it or leave it,"
The evil man said
I wanted to take it
And bash in his head.

Instead I accepted
And signed his receipt.
He said "Merry Christmas"
And made his retreat.

Then as they departed
And drove off their truck
I called "Merry Christmas!
I hate you! You suck!"

Dog walk: 10/8/11

2011-10-09T15:26:00.004-04:00

Sunny skies, temps in the mid-70s. If you live in a northern climate like New England, global warming has its positive side. And as if to match the summerlike weather, Newport has summerlike crowds of tourists thanks to Oktoberfest at the Newport Yachting Center.

Today's first "Are those basenjis?" encounter took place in front of Newport City Hall, when a tourist stopped me to tell me about the pet basenji he had in his youth, and to remark on how good-looking my own were, which is certainly true enough. The second took place on Lower Thames Street, in front of Ben & Jerry's, when a couple stopped me so they could point out to their daughter what the basenji half of their basenji mix looked like.

The basenjis and I were crossing Aquidneck Park when I got a call from my wife telling me that she had just made reservations at Sardella's restaurant in half an hour. As I've noted before, I received a Sardella's gift card for Christmas, and since we're leaving town for good in two days, this would be our last chance to use it. It was a near-run thing, but the dogs and I managed to make it back home in time for me to dress for dinner, and we turned up at the restaurant at the exact time we had reserved. I had the pasta marinara with a side of garlic bread, and it was delicious.

A going-away present

2011-10-08T06:15:00.000-04:00

I had a particularly unpleasant experience last night with some Skeptical Drunks. There were four of them, and they wanted to go outside for a smoke, but none of them was able to come up with a light. Since we're a smoke-free establishment, we don't keep matches or cigarette lighters around, and when they came up to the front desk for a light, I had to tell them that I had none.

Being Skeptical Drunks, they continued to stagger into the lobby and ask me again for a light, and I continued to tell them no, and they continued to go back out. A couple of them got tired of taking no for an answer; one of them began swearing at me, while the other began rifling through the desk of the hotel's concierge. Both refused to stop, so I ordered them out of the hotel. Instead of leaving, the one who was swearing began to add threats and homophobic slurs, and I decided to call the police and have them throw the two out. While I was on the phone, the one at the desk came over and spit at me. Hotel security arrived then, and after spending a couple more minutes spewing abuse at me, the drunks left for their room.

The police arrived and escorted three of them out of the hotel, telling them that if they returned, they'd be arrested; the fourth was apparently passed out in the room and couldn't be roused. An hour later, the three returned to the hotel, and the one from the room, apparently no longer unconscious, let them in through the fire door. I called the police again, but they did not arrest them. Instead, the two abusive ones were driven to a donut shop and dropped off there, while the other two were allowed to stay in their rooms. It turned out that the drunks were all off-duty cops from out of town, and the local cops wouldn't arrest them.

Eventually, the two abusive cops came back from the donut shop with two of their friends, and the four of them marched back up to their room. I called the local cops again, and was told that they had no grounds for arresting the drunks, and advised me to let them sleep it off before telling them to leave later on. One of the hotel managers showed up then in the normal course of events, heard the whole story, and also advised me to let the abusive drunk cops sleep it off. I gave in and did so.

I'm suddenly a lot less sorry to leave Newport than I was.

Dog walk: 10/7/11

2011-10-07T16:42:00.003-04:00

Sunny, with temps in the low 60s. Still good dog walking weather.

The basenjis and I were walking up Thames Street, across from the Brick Alley Pub, when I heard the words, "Are those basenjis?" A women was smiling at the dogs, and I assured her that they were, indeed, basenjis. She told me that she had had a tricolor basenji as a pet years before; unfortunately, he bit the paperboy and had to be put down. She adored Klea and Louis, though, as well she might.

We stopped in at the Black Dog store on Bannister's Wharf, where the basenjis are often given treats by the staff. They're having their "Black Dog lookalike contest", and though the basenjis are red dogs, I entered them anyway, since every contestant receives a free bag of dog treats, and it's against the Guild Rules for basenji owners to turn down free dog treats.

In Perrotti Park, a long line of cruise ship passengers was waiting to embark on MSC Poesia. Twice, a passenger stopped me with the words "Are those basenjis?"and of course I had to let the dogs enjoy some well-earned praise. Such is the hard life of a basenji owner.

Dog walk: 10/4/11

2011-10-04T18:18:00.002-04:00

Partly sunny, temps in the 60s. Still good dog walking weather.

We were coming down Tilden Avenue when we ran across a woman who was also walking her dogs, a pair of Jack Russell terriers. She was just entering Governors Graveyard with her dogs, who were off leash, and the basenjis and I followed her. We had crossed paths with her before, but never had a chance to stop and talk. It turned out that her dogs were recent acquisitions, one from the Potter League for Animals, the other from a shelter in Arkansas. Her previous dog, another Jack Russell, had been attacked and killed by a pair of German shepherds while she was walking him. She was still horrified by the memory, as you might imagine.

I mentioned to her that I would be leaving Newport in six days due to foreclosure, and she said that her home was facing foreclosure too. She had been trying to get a mortgage modification for five years, and had never managed it. After losing her job, she had been forced to stop making mortgage payments, and was only a couple months away from losing her house.

I wished her luck, and she wished me luck, and the basenjis and I went on our way.

Two founding Time Lords are better than one

2011-10-03T17:29:00.004-04:00

WARNING: Blog post contains hardcore Doctor Who geekery! Read at your own peril!

I was reading Charlie Jane Anders' review of the Doctor Who season six finale at io9, and was intrigued by her mention of something call the Cartmel Masterplan, which I had never heard of. Basically, late-1980s script editor Andrew Cartmel wanted to retcon the Doctor's backstory in order to restore some of the mystery that had been a feature of the series' early years. To this end, he decided to make two of the founders of Time Lord society, Omega and Rassilon, into contemporaries.

Omega was first introduced in "The Three Doctors", a 1973 serial which celebrated the series' 10th anniversary by bringing back Third Doctor Jon Pertwee's two precedessors, Richard Hartnell and Patrick Troughton. As revealed in the story, Omega was a legendary figure among the Time Lords -- so legendary, in fact, that he was widely regarded as a myth until the Doctors learned that he A) was real; and B) had been trapped in an antimatter universe for untold ages. Omega died at the end of "The Three Doctors".

Rassilon was first mentioned in "The Deadly Assassin", a 1976 serial where Fourth Doctor Tom Baker returns to Gallifrey to prevent an assasination. Rassilon himself was revered as the ancient founder of Time Lord society, and two relics associated with him, the Sash and the Rod of Rassilon, play a part in the story's finale.

Note the different ways the Time Lords viewed them. Omega was a mythical figure whom nobody believed had been a real person. Basically, he was the Time Lord King Arthur. Rassilon, OTOH, was a thoroughly historical person. In the 1980 serial "State of Decay", the Doctor is able to read a document written by Rassilon himself, and in the 1983 20th anniversary special "The Five Doctors" much of the action takes place in Rassilon's tomb. In other words, Rassilon was the Time Lord Alfred the Great.

So, you had a mythical Time Lord founder from a time of legends, and a historical Time Lord founder from ancient history. And that was a good thing. It gave Time Lord society a sense of depth. And then Andrew Cartmel had to go and spoil it by trying to make the two men contemporaries for no good reason. Fortunately, the original series ended before Cartmel could make his stupid idea canon, and the new series has killed off all the Time Lords except the Doctor himself, so the question is moot.

But the idea is out there. There's always the chance that executive producer Steven Moffat, or one of his successors, will run out of ideas for the show, and decide, in desperation, to bring this one back from the grave. I live in fear of that day.

Digital Day 100111

2011-10-01T06:39:00.001-04:00

10111011011010001011001010010110
01011101000101010010011110100101
10001011101001101000101011101100

Dog walk: 9/29/11

2011-09-30T17:31:00.003-04:00

A foggy morning has given way to an overcast day, but with temperatures still in the 70s, it's a good day to walk some dogs. As usual, the basenjis spend some time early in the walk policing the front lawn of Newport City Hall, just in case someone has left something edible on municipal property. By law in Newport, all food found on municipal property must be left in place for passing dogs to consume.*

Three people were sitting on the bench in front of City Hall, and one of them happened to be a young army veteran. The three found the basenjis fascinating, as people so often do, and the vet asked if the dogs would like half an oatmeal cookie from his MRE. I saw no reason not to, so he broke the cookie in two pieces (with some difficulty), and gave each to one of the dogs. While they were enjoying the treat, the vet remarked on how fitting it was that the dogs enjoy them, given how similar the cookies were to dog biscuits. When the cookie was gone, I thanked the vet, and set off with the dogs.

Perrotti Park was again full of cruise liner passengers, this time off the ms Eurodam, which was on the final leg of a twelve-day cruise from Quebec City to Ft. Lauderdale. It may have seemed like a good idea to someone at the Holland America Line to combine the names Europe and Amsterdam for their latest cruise liner. Apparently nobody told them how amusing the name sounds to Anglophones.

Later in the walk, I was approaching Mary Street when my phone rang. It was my wife, and she wanted to know if I would like to go out for dinner as a belated birthday present. I remembered receiving a gift card for Sardella's restaurant for Christmas, so I suggested that we eat there. My wife couldn't find the Sardella's gift card, but she did find one for the Brick Alley Pub, so that became our new destination.

I brought the dogs home, and joined my wife in her car for the drive to Thames Street. Just as we were pulling onto Broadway, I saw the army vet coming up the sidewalk. He recognized me, and we waved to each other.

*Not intended to be a factual statement.

I take a chance

2011-09-29T07:43:00.002-04:00

It's time for another embedded music video. From 1993, it's Eve's Plum with "I Want It All".

A message from Fred Hiatt

2011-09-28T10:58:00.003-04:00

Gud day.

As yoo no, we heer at the Washenton Poast hav alweez bin in the forfrunt of Amercan jernalism. So ime plezed to anouns that we hav takin the next step in craften are paper in too the ledin news sors in Amerca. Yestrday, i lade off are last remanin copy editers. Becos the Washentin Post is in the news biznis, not the copy edit biznis.

This importint step haz freed up the resorses too alow us to hier wun of the ledin jernalists of are time, Ms. Pamela Geller of the Atlas Juggs blog, as a weekle commist. Sum may say that a blogger haz no plas in sirios jernalism, but my frend John Bolton asherd me that Ms. Geller haz the nesasary ~~kwalificshns~~ ~~cualaficashuns~~ skilz, + after a lenthee personl intervyu with her ime convinsed that she duz. Ms. Geller wil be bringin her ecksport nollej of Midl ~~Erth~~ Estern afarz to the Post, + we heer coodnt be hapier.

With the adishun of Ms. Geller, the Washintn Poast wil kintinyoo its prowd tradishun of seeries jernalism.

Fred Hiatt
Editeral Paj Editer
Washintin Post

Strange

2011-09-27T10:29:00.003-04:00

Via the House of Two Bows:

Dog walk: 9/25/11

2011-09-25T17:10:00.003-04:00

The calendar says we're three days into fall, but the thermometer says otherwise. It's 78 Fahrenheit, cloudy and humid in Newport. But lest you think all is perfect, there are also clouds of gnats floating around. Ugh!

There aren't as many tourists in town as you'd see in the summer, but there are still some. The Caribbean Princess does a week-long round trip cruise at this time of year, stopping at Newport every Sunday. The liner's shuttles dock at Perrotti Park, and you can always find some passengers chilling at the park. A walk through the park always results in passing comments on how cute the basenjis are.

While passing by the Newport Bay Club, we met Ariel the Jewelry Girl, who informed me, sadly, that this was her last day of handing out coupons. Since the dogs and I will be moving to Pennsylvania next month, and Ariel will be moving to Kentucky in November, this is our last visit with her. She knelt down on the sidewalk, took Klea in her lap, and gave her a long, last goodbye hug.

Crossing Spring Street near the Newport Public Library, the basenjis attracted the attention of a couple who had also just crossed the street. They were very taken with the basenjis, particularly with how well-behaved they were compared to their own Jack Russell terriers.

We passed by a woman trimming her lawn on King Street who asked whether the dogs were Shiba Inus. I explained that, no, they were African basenjis. I occasionally get asked if the dogs are Shibas, because the two breeds are about the same size, with pointy ears and curly tails. However, when you see the two breeds together, they don't really look that much alike.

The final highlight of the walk (for the dogs, at least), was a stop by one of the parking lots flanking the Brick Marketplace, where Louis and Klea got a milkbone each from the parking attendant. This is the reason the basenjis are so fond of parking lots; even lots that don't have attendants attract their attention, just on the off chance that treats might materialize anyway.

Still a good idea

2011-09-23T19:10:00.001-04:00

Spreading santorum.

Because some pages can never have too many links.

Executing the innocent

2011-09-22T16:21:00.001-04:00

It's how we remind Those People that they're still Those People.

Overheard on Facebook

2011-09-21T10:49:00.000-04:00

"I'll believe corporations are people when Rick Perry executes one."

And it might be . . .

2011-09-20T19:05:00.002-04:00

Going back to 1993 for today's embedded music video: "Here and Now" by Letters to Cleo.

Dog walk: 9/18/11

2011-09-19T17:10:00.002-04:00

A change in the weather has switched us from t-shirts and shorts to polo shirts and long pants during the dog walks. Today saw a couple of "are those basenjis?" incidents during the walk. The first was from a woman sitting outside the One Eighty restaurant on Broadway, who told me that her brother and sister-in-law had a basenji, and remarked that you didn't see many of them. The second was from a staffer from the International Boat Show as we were walking down America's Cup Avenue, who told us that a neighbor had had a basenji when she was growing up. The basenjis also got to meet a pair of baying basset hounds who were tied up outside Jonathan's Cafe in Washington Square.

Prophecy 8

2011-09-18T12:20:00.003-04:00

The Prophecies of Johnny Pez continue, sowing confusion and fear among the troubled nations of the world:

In forty-nine years no judgment will bend
The silent dog in his exile will roam
No power in earth or heaven can send
A guardian angel to guide him home

The world trembles on the brink of oblivion, my friends. Do not doubt it.

Why should I vote for Obama after his banker friends take my house away?

2011-09-17T17:55:00.003-04:00

This AP article on the political costs of the housing crisis makes a point that too many Democrats would like to ignore: the threat to President Obama's re-election isn't from liberal purity trolls, it's from ordinary people who have been hurt by Obama's policy of favoring a handful of financial institutions over everybody else.

As the article notes, there are a lot of people who have lost their homes, or are in danger of losing their homes, in swing states like Florida, Ohio, and Michigan. And I'll be one of them, after Bank of America takes away my home next month and I move from Rhode Island to Pennsylvania. For them, as for me, the question they're going to be asking themselves in the voting booth is, "Why should I vote for this guy after he let the bank take my home away?" The only answer the Obama apologists seem to have is "Rick Perry would be worse", but The Other Guy Is Worse is not a winning campaign slogan. Besides, it wasn't Rick Perry who let the bank take my home away. It was Barack Obama.

The problem, ultimately, is with Obama himself, who is the very model of a "big picture" guy. He prefers to focus on institutions rather than people. Indeed, he seems to regard people as an annoyance. When dealing with the housing crisis, Obama's concern was always focused on easing the pain of the financial institutions rather than the homeowners.

Unfortunately, Obama's lack of interest in people makes him probably the worst politician to occupy the White House since Herbert Hoover, another "big picture" guy who was more worried about institutions than people. And like Hoover, Obama is going to learn that it's people, not institutions, who re-elect presidents.

Stalemate your way to prosperity

2011-09-16T22:17:00.004-04:00

Ingrid Robeyns at the Crooked Timber blog posts her latest piece on the political situation in Belgium. It's been fifteen months since the last election, and the country's political parties still haven't managed to form a regular government. The most fascinating aspect to the situation comes up in the comments, where it turns out that Belgium has the healthiest economy in the Eurozone.

The reason? Due to the political stalemate, nobody in Belgium has the authority to institute the austerity programs that are all the rage in the rest of the industrialized nations (including ours). Government spending in Belgium hasn't been slashed in the name of "fiscal responsibility", and as a result, the economy there is growing more than twice as fast as our own.

The lesson? Conservative government is worse than no government at all. We already knew that, but it's nice to have concrete proof.

Library in an eighteen-wheeler

2011-09-15T18:19:00.001-04:00

I saw this parked outside the Newport Public Library last week while I was walking the dogs. How come nobody ever tells me about these things?

9/11 and the cult of evil

2011-09-11T17:15:00.003-04:00

There have always been people who think that evil is more effective than good, and who want to dispense with ethical behavior in the name of "practicality". The 9/11 attacks were a god-send to these people, because it gave them the perfect excuse to pursue their evil agenda. "The terrorists are the worst enemy America has ever faced," they claimed. "The terrorists are pure evil, and the only way we can fight back is by being evil ourselves." It helped that one of the most evil politicians in the country, Dick Cheney, was basically running the government.

So it was that the American government embraced the cult of evil: torture, and aggressive warfare, and the deliberate targeting of innocent victims. 24 gave the cult of evil a prominent place in popular culture, and introduced a new American "hero": Jack Bauer, the man who is always ready to torture a suspect, and who is always right to resort to torture.

The cult of evil has also spread to economic policy. Our political commentariat has nothing but praise for politicians who make the "hard choices" to make ordinary people suffer so that the wealthy can become even more wealthy. The willingness to inflict unnecessary pain on the helpless has become the cardinal political virtue of our times.

And now we've reached the point where the crowd at a Republican candidates debate not only cheers Rick Perry for exectuting hundreds of people, they cheered him for executing an innocent man, because "it takes balls to execute an innocent man".

So, welcome to the post-9/11 America: a land in thrall to the cult of evil.

Watch her move in elliptical patterns

2011-09-11T13:58:00.002-04:00

Time for another embedded music video. From 2009 comes "1901" by Phoenix.

Confronting "The Menace from Andromeda"

2011-09-10T10:06:00.000-04:00

There's nothing like a good alien invasion story, unless it's a good alien invasion story with an unusual twist. And that's what Nat Schachner and Arthur Leo Zagat gave the readers of Amazing Stories magazine when they picked up the April 1931 issue and read the cover story, "The Menace from Andromeda".

Space aliens invading the Earth was already a well-established science fiction trope when Schachner and Zagat wrote their story in 1930. The subgenre was established, as so many were, by H. G. Wells. The War of the Worlds, first serialized in 1897, set a pattern of alien invasions that was followed by G. McLeod Winson's Station X (1919), Edgar Rice Burroughs' The Moon Men (1925), Edmond Hamilton's "The Other Side of the Moon" (1929), and Harl Vincent's "The War of the Planets" (1929).

Schachner and Zagat gave the familiar story a twist, by replacing the invading alien race with Alcoreth, a single creature traveling through space as a cloud of spores, in a fictionalized version of Svante Arrhenius' panspermia hypothesis. Alcoreth was not looking to conquer the Earth so much as colonize it; and the most menacing aspect of the Menace from Andromeda was Alcoreth's complete indifference to the existence of humanity. As a collective being, Alcoreth may not even have been aware of the concept of individual life forms. The second section of the story is told from Alcoreth's point of view, and this is the story's most sustained bit of invention. Sadly, Schachner and Zagat never return the story to Alcoreth, so we never learn how she sees the new world she has settled on.

As my friend David Mix Barrington has noted in comments, Schachner and Zagat's view of the world nine years in their own future is considerably more advanced than the reality turned out to be. In their 1939, Columbia University has relocated to a 100-story skyscraper in Central Park, and New York City has a new City Hall Tower of 150 stories. Civil aviation is also more advanced, as Donald Standish owns a twin-engine aircraft that can apparently travel across North America without refueling. Finally, the various wars that plagued the real 1930s are absent from Schachner and Zagat's version. I think Schachner and Zagat, writing in 1930, expected the economic crisis of the time to right itself in fairly short order, which was what pretty much everyone from President Hoover on down expected to happen.

The President of the United States in 1939 was not a third Adams, but was a second Roosevelt, which counts as a near miss. In the story, the head of the U.S. Army (the actual title is Chief of Staff of the United States Army) in August 1939 was named General Black; in reality, it was General Malin Craig, like the fictional Black a grizzled veteran of World War I. On September 1, Craig was replaced by General George C. Marshall.

In the story, Alcoreth is finally defeated when Douglas Cameron infects her with cancer, in an echo of the defeat of Wells' Martians. This may count as one of the earliest descriptions of bacteriological warfare.

To a modern reader, one of the most appalling things in the story is the offhand treatment of Mary Cameron. After the trio return to Douglas Cameron's laboratory in Colorado, the two men send her off to bed after promising her that they'll bring her up to speed on their deliberations after she wakes up. They do no such thing. In fact, not only do they break their promise to Mary, they take off in Standish's plane while she's still asleep, leaving her completely in the dark about what's going on. One can imagine her waking to the sound of Standish's twin-engine plane taxiing out of the hanger, and rushing outside just in time to see it take off, cursing her faithless brother and fiance as it vanishes into the east. After that, it would take a greater miracle than the defeat of Alcoreth for Standish to convince Mary to go ahead with the marriage.

Talking about jobs

2011-09-09T08:45:00.002-04:00

So, Paul Krugman was favorably impressed with Obama's jobs speech, which he described as "significantly bolder and better than I expected." I am less impressed, because I don't think Obama means a word of it.

Whenever Obama gets into trouble, he tries to speechify his way out, and that's what he's doing now. Obama knows that most of the fourteen million Americans who are out of work now voted for him because the expected him to help them. However, Obama has no intention of helping them. Obama and his fellow neoliberals have decided that the unemployment crisis is "structural" in nature, which is a fancy way of saying that a ten-percent unemployment rate is the new normal. What Obama really wants to do is shred the social safety net and turn America into an oversized Bangladesh. If he comes out and says so, though, it will leave his re-election campaign in the doldrums. So instead, he's making noises like he actually wants to do something about unemployment, knowing perfectly well that he can count on the Republicans to stop it from happening.

Make no mistake: if Obama is re-elected next year, his concerns about unemployment will vanish quicker than you can say "hope and change", and he'll be back to his deficitmania and his perpetual cycle of tax cuts and spending cuts. His talk about jobs is just that: talk, with no promise of any action.

Dog walk: 9/7/11

2011-09-07T11:15:00.002-04:00

In theory, the summer will continue until the autumn equinox on September 23. Practically, it ended two days ago on Labor Day. Reservations at the hotel have fallen off, and most of the tourists are gone from the streets of Newport.

As if to acknowledge the change, the bright, warm days ended on Monday, and since then it's been heavily overcast and raining off and on. During one of the recent no-rain-right-now periods, I took the dogs out for a brief walk. Despite the lack of tourists, despite spending most of our time in residential back streets, and despite only being out for twenty minutes, I still had two people ask me what kind of dogs the basenjis were.

"The Menace from Andromeda" by Schachner and Zagat, part 9

2011-09-07T03:38:00.003-04:00

(part 8) (review)

This is the ninth and final installment of "The Menace from Andromeda", the third published story by Nat Schachner and Arthur Leo Zagat. It originally appeared in the April 1931 issue of Amazing Stories magazine, and has never been republished.

As we join our story, the brilliant young astronomer Donald Standish has discovered that a planet in the Andromeda nebula he named Alcoreth is actually composed of living matter. However, since Alcoreth has disappeared, he is unable to prove it to the scientific community. He decides instead to discuss the matter with his fiancée Mary Cameron and her brother Douglas, a cancer researcher in Colorado.

Meanwhile, in the Andromeda nebula, Alcoreth is a self-aware mass of undifferentiated protoplasm occupying the entire surface of a planet. Facing starvation, she decides to convert her mass into countless spores and launch them into space to seed other planets. After millions of years, a cloud of spores from Alcoreth reaches Earth and comes to rest on the surface of the Atlantic Ocean. Eight months later, ships begin disappearing from the Atlantic and the world's trade is paralyzed. Then Alcoreth invades the East Coast of North America, consuming everything in her path.

Standish learns that Mary is in New York City, and he flies off to rescue her. Mary becomes trapped at the top of Columbia University's new 100-story skyscraper campus building, with Alcoreth eating away at its foundations. In a daring exhibition of stunt-flying and wing-walking, Standish rescues Mary, and they all fly west to Doug's laboratory in the Colorado Rockies. Once there, Doug comes up with a plan to drive Alcoreth back into the sea with ultraviolet lamps, then finish her off using cancer cells. The two fly to Allentown, Pennsylvania, where the first phase of the plan is a success . . .

* * *

From all the endangered nations came the glad tidings of complete triumph. Everywhere the crawling life had been forced into the waters.

Wild celebrations took place among the people of the earth. The names of Cameron and Standish were broadcast to the joyful millions as the saviors of humanity.

But the menace was by no means over -- though temporarily subdued. Orders were issued that no one was to approach within ten miles of the seaboards; and the armies of the world were placed on sentry duty to see that the orders were enforced.

At a conference at Pittsburgh, the temporary capital of the United States, Douglas Cameron told of his discoveries in cancer research; his activating principle; and outlined his plan of scattering the tissues of cancer into the floating masses of protoplasm. He was listened to with the most flattering attention. When he finished, President Adams arose, and grasped his hand and then that of his co-worker.

"Gentlemen," he said, his voice quivering with emotion, "you have already placed the world under an incalculable debt of gratitude to you; if you succeed in your present undertaking, and rid the earth of this frightful scourge, your names will go ringing down the ages as long as life exists on this planet. I have placed at your service a cruiser of our air fleet, fully manned and provisioned for a cruise of ten thousand miles. Go and God bless you!"

They bowed their thanks and left the meeting. In less than an hour they were seated in the cabin of the air cruiser, with their precious cabinet at their feet -- the crew sprang smartly to their posts -- and they took to the air.

The coast was reached in slightly over an hour, and they soon were winging their way out to sea.

The captain came into the cabin for instructions. "Drop to within five hundred feet of the water, and have your crew on the look-out for any traces of the beast. Have the first one to sight it sing it out."

"It shall be done," and he retired. The great plane glided down, and whirled over the surface of the ocean. All eyes were strained in eager search.

A shout from an excited lookout.

"The Thing's directly below, sir!" All hands rushed to the side. Sure enough -- the surface of the ocean to the east was heaving, and tossing -- a weird green light flickered and flared -- the sea crawled with the shiny evil Thing.

Quickly Cameron opened his cabinet and gingerly removed one of the dishes. Carrying it to the side, with one quick scoop, he ladled out the contents and threw it overboard. Down it spattered into the jellied mass -- scourge set to fight scourge.

For two days, the plane cruised over the broad Atlantic, dropping the seeds of destruction into the bosom of the visitation. When the last dishful had been dispatched on its errand, the cruiser turned homeward. Its work was done. The rest was in the lap of fate.

The people of the earth waited in deep anxiety. Men of science -- great biologists -- broadcast learned opinions to the listening multitudes.

Daily, clouds of speedy pursuit planes were flung over the broad bosom of the Atlantic to observe and report. Daily they reported no signs of disappearance. If anything, the areas of infestations seemed to be actually increasing. Once more fear reared its hideous head -- if the cancerous growths proved ineffectual -- it was only a question of time before the horrible Thing would once more approach the shores.

But, ten days later, an observation plane reported seeing hard fibrous growths, like huge warts, covering the surface in one area. Then, in quick succession, other reports came in. The cancer had commenced its deadly work. Within a month the ocean was covered with dead, cancerous masses -- the menace was a thing of the past. Slowly they heaved on the ocean tides, and slowly they sank beneath the waves. The earth was free of its hideous nightmare. The race was saved.

* * *

On a mild October morning a little group filed into the rustic church near the laboratory. A little group -- but every broadcast receiver, every television screen was attuned to the waves which were carrying each sound and sight in that church to every corner of the globe. All the people of the earth joined in a prayer for the good fortune of the couple whose wedding rites were being celebrated there. And as Mary Cameron became Mary Standish, all the earth joined in the hymn which welled out in a mighty chorus of thanksgiving whose echoing vibrations must have been heard even in far distant Andromeda.

(part 8) (review)

"The Menace from Andromeda" by Schachner and Zagat, part 8

2011-09-06T13:33:00.005-04:00

(part 7) (part 9)

This is the eighth installment of "The Menace from Andromeda", the third published story by Nat Schachner and Arthur Leo Zagat. It originally appeared in the April 1931 issue of Amazing Stories magazine, and has never been republished.

As we join our story, the brilliant young astronomer Donald Standish has discovered that a planet in the Andromeda nebula he named Alcoreth is actually composed of living matter. However, since Alcoreth has disappeared, he is unable to prove it to the scientific community. He decides instead to discuss the matter with his fiancée Mary Cameron and her brother Douglas, a cancer researcher in Colorado.

Meanwhile, in the Andromeda nebula, Alcoreth is a self-aware mass of undifferentiated protoplasm occupying the entire surface of a planet. Facing starvation, she decides to convert her mass into countless spores and launch them into space to seed other planets. After millions of years, a cloud of spores from Alcoreth reaches Earth and comes to rest on the surface of the Atlantic Ocean. Eight months later, ships begin disappearing from the Atlantic and the world's trade is paralyzed. Then Alcoreth invades the East Coast of North America, consuming everything in her path.

Standish learns that Mary is in New York City, and he flies off to rescue her. Mary becomes trapped at the top of Columbia University's new 100-story skyscraper campus building, with Alcoreth eating away at its foundations. In a daring exhibition of stunt-flying and wing-walking, Standish rescues Mary, and they all fly west to Doug's laboratory in the Colorado Rockies. Once there, Doug comes up with a plan to drive Alcoreth back into the sea with ultraviolet lamps, then finish her off using cancer cells . . .

* * *

When they awoke, it was dusk. Mary was still asleep -- a peaceful smile flitting over her lips. Donald looked at her tenderly. "Let's not disturb her. Poor girl -- she has been through hell." He brushed her forehead lightly with his lips, and the smile grew into ecstacy, but still she did not awaken.

"Now to work!"

They hurried into the laboratory. Cameron opened the door of a huge glass-lined oven, thermostatically controlled at blood heat. In the interior were twenty or more glass dishes, each containing a mass of tissue floating in culture media.

"These are my cancer growths," he explained. "They will live indefinitely in the cultures. Now to activate them so that when we cast them into the protoplasmic horror, they will grow and proliferate with extreme rapidity."

He turned to a row of glass stoppered bottles on his laboratory shelf, and took one down. It was filled with a pale green liquid. Carefully, with a pipette, he dropped five drops into each dish. A slight bubbling ensued -- and then ceased.

"Bring that cabinet in the corner over here," he ordered, "and all the cotton wool you find in the end cupboards."

The cabinet was opened -- a layer of cotton placed on the bottom -- the cancer dishes placed carefully between layers of the soft material, and then the whole affair hermetically sealed.

"Now we're ready to go."

The two men quickly and silently donned their flying suits, and in short order the plane was trundled out of the hanger; the cabinet was carefully lifted into the cockpit, and they took their seats. The motor roared; and the plane took off on its flight across the continent.

Next morning, as the first rays of dawn appeared over the serried tops of the Alleghany Mts., the haggard, wearied travelers descended stiffly from their plane after landing on the air field outside Allentown.

For a moment they gazed about them in dazed astonishment. The place was seething with activity. Hundreds of planes were landing on all sides; tractors were lumbering and roaring over the field, soldiers and vast crowds of workmen swarmed in organized disorder.

"Where is the commander?" asked Donald of a big burly sergeant actively engaged in expending a stream of profanity at a company of men unpacking a huge searchlight.

"Over there!" He jerked a thumb over his shoulder toward the hanger at one end of the field, without deigning to turn around; and with hardly a pause in his flow of lurid objurgations.

"Come on, Doug, let's report at once, and see what we can do."

At the door, they gave their names to the guard, and were ushered in immediately.

Seated at a rough pine board table, hastily built to function as a desk, was General Black, grizzled veteran of the World War, now commander-in-chief of all the American Armies! Officers dashed in -- came to stiff salute -- reported in staccato accents -- received their orders even more crisply -- and dashed out again. A field radio receiving set whined. The general put the phone to his ear. "What's that -- only thirty miles away! All right -- report every fifteen minutes on its progress."

Turning around, he saw the two scientists. "Yes, what is it? Make it snappy!"

They introduced themselves, and the general's attitude became more cordial.

"I hope your ideas are correct -- if not, we're all doomed." He sighed. "Frankly, I'm not used to this sort of thing -- out of my line. Artillery -- machine guns -- gas -- yes! But not this new-fangled stuff.

"However, we'll soon find out," he continued grimly, "my air scouts report it as only thirty miles away. At the rate it is traveling, it will be here in forty-eight hours. We'll be ready for it in about thirty-six hours -- and then --" he shrugged fatalistically. "In the meantime, I'll get some quarters for you, and you can make yourselves comfortable until we're ready to start." He turned to an orderly, and soon the scientists were installed in a barrack-like room -- their plane with its precious freight wheeled into the hanger, and placed under guard.

The next thirty-six hours were filled with feverish activity. All through the day and night, tractors kept coming in -- apparatus and the requisite machines were deposited from planes -- railroads -- automobiles -- every conceivable method of transportation.

In the meantime the radio reports were becoming more and more alarming. Inexorably the living tide was moving forward -- swallowing everything in its path. Twenty miles away -- fifteen miles -- activity becoming frantic -- ten miles -- five miles -- the last feverish touches -- and all was in readiness for the supreme effort.

As far as the eye could see, stretched serried ranks of tractors. Along the whole Appalachian range, thousands of tractors were ready to go at the signal of command. On each was perched a powerful searchlight or violet ray machine capable of casting directional beams over a ten-mile radius. The final orders were given -- everyone not directly concerned in the management of the apparatus was sent to the rear.

It was the zero hour!

Already in the distance, the horizon was glowing with the dreaded greenish light -- the vast menace was flowing -- flowing forward.

A hush fell on the embattled array. Could they stop it -- was it victory or disaster? The bravest among them felt clammy hands clutching their hearts.

The radio command roared its voice along the far-flung line. The motors roared -- the current snapped on -- and a blaze of light -- intense -- penetrating -- flared out up and down the line. Another command -- and the tractors moved forward -- slowly -- steadily. A ten-mile zone of intense illumination -- blinding in its glare -- moved ahead. It approached the green luminescence. Still the monstrous life flowed forward.

Nerves tensed to the snapping points -- blood pounded in thousands of hearts -- God! -- would it have no effect -- the life of the planet hung on the next few moments.

The wall of light reached the oncoming wall of alien life -- touched it -- overlapped it -- swung over the top and over its viscous waves. Only three miles separated the opposing forces!

Was it a delusion? Did they see aright? A rustling murmur grew on the scene -- a confused Babel of voices -- and then -- a mighty shout blasted the air -- a pean of deliverance -- the world was saved!

The oncoming mass had definitely ceased moving -- the front reared high into the air -- writhing and twisting as though in agony -- and then -- recession -- slow at first -- then faster and faster -- the monster was in full retreat -- vainly seeking to escape the deadly rays.

Immediately the jubilant army moved forward -- ever concentrating the dazzling light on the discomfited foe. Who thought of food -- or sleep or stopping -- back into the sea with the monster! For two days and a night, the front of war advanced -- steadily the enemy was driven back -- remorselessly as ever it had advanced -- agonized, writhing before the avenging glare. Once more the face of the earth appeared -- but strange, alien in aspect -- more like some desolate moon aridly moving through space, than this fair, smiling world of ours. No trees -- no houses -- no verdure was left; the very surface of the earth was eroded away -- pitted and scarred with deep holes and gullies, through which the tractors floundered and pitched.

Back -- back through the ruin of what had once been New York -- into the sea it was driven -- and the world was temporarily saved from overwhelming disaster.

(part 7) (part 9)

"The Menace from Andromeda" by Schachner and Zagat, part 7

2011-09-05T18:11:00.001-04:00

(part 6) (part 8)

This is the seventh installment of "The Menace from Andromeda", the third published story by Nat Schachner and Arthur Leo Zagat. It originally appeared in the April 1931 issue of Amazing Stories magazine, and has never been republished.

As we join our story, the brilliant young astronomer Donald Standish has discovered that a planet in the Andromeda nebula he named Alcoreth is actually composed of living matter. However, since Alcoreth has disappeared, he is unable to prove it to the scientific community. He decides instead to discuss the matter with his fiancée Mary Cameron and her brother Douglas, a cancer researcher in Colorado.

Meanwhile, in the Andromeda nebula, Alcoreth is a self-aware mass of undifferentiated protoplasm occupying the entire surface of a planet. Facing starvation, she decides to convert her mass into countless spores and launch them into space to seed other planets. After millions of years, a cloud of spores from Alcoreth reaches Earth and comes to rest on the surface of the Atlantic Ocean. Eight months later, ships begin disappearing from the Atlantic and the world's trade is paralyzed. Then Alcoreth invades the East Coast of North America, consuming everything in her path.

Standish learns that Mary is in New York City, and he flies off to rescue her. Mary becomes trapped at the top of Columbia University's new 100-story skyscraper campus building, with Alcoreth eating away at its foundations. In a daring exhibition of stunt-flying and wing-walking, Standish rescues Mary, and they all fly west to Doug's laboratory in the Colorado Rockies . . .

* * *

Physically exhausted as they were by the long journey, there was yet no thought of sleep. They were still shaking with the horror of those frightful scenes they had so recently witnessed.

Mary was tottering with weariness, but held herself bravely. Not for worlds would she permit her lover to see how near the verge of hysteria she was, now that the danger was past. She looked around the long comfortable room -- cheery fireplace and all -- with a shudder. How peaceful and quiet everything was -- and over there -- nameless horrors out of hell -- the indescribable stampede of maddened humanity -- the hideous screech of some poor devil engulfed by the advancing monster -- no, no! -- that way lay madness -- she must stop.

Donald was watching her anxiously. "Mary, you must get some sleep at once."

"I'm all right -- just a little attack of nerves," she smiled wanly. "Don't trouble yourself about me; I want to help, too."

"We'll puzzle this out ourselves, and when you wake, if we've evolved any ideas, we'll let you in on it. Now, be a good girl and go to bed. Haven't you something soothing in your lab?" he turned to Douglas.

"Certainly; just the thing for you, Mary. Douglas went to the cupboard and poured out a small tumbler full of a pale liquid. "Just drink this down, and you'll slide so smoothly into the arms of Morpheus, the next thing you know the birds will be twittering in the trees. Here you are; take it."

Mary looked at them both for a moment -- saw the worry in their eyes, and capitulated. "All right, boys, if you insist; though I'm sure I can be of help." She drank the potion, and retired to her bedroom.

The two men filled their pipes, and settled back in their chairs. Their bodies were poisoned with fatigue, but their brains were racing keenly. For a while they smoked in silence, gratefully inhaling the fragrant fumes.

Standish was the first to break the silence.

"As you know, Doug, I have a theory that accounts for this demoniac visitation, but when I sprang it on the conference, I was laughed at for my pains."

Douglas looked at him keenly. He knew his chum, and knew that he was not given to hazarding wild hypotheses unless they contained a solid substratum of truth.

"Go over it again," he said quietly. "I promise to listen with an open mind."

Donald launched again into his tale -- the strange living star in the island universe -- its explosive disintegration into space -- the queer dust cloud of tiny globules reported by the fishing smack -- followed by the appearance of this horrible amorphous life-mass that was threatening to engulf the earth.

Cameron listened intently. Thoughtfully he drummed with his fingers on the arm of his chair. He, too, was familiar with the hypotheses of Clerk-Maxwell and Arrhenius.

"There is a good deal of plausibility about your theory," he acknowledged thoughtfully, "and it accounts also for the vast proliferating powers of this monstrous mass -- no life as we know it on this planet could even approximate the uncanny speed of its growth, nor have our primitive life-forms the ability to subsist on inorganic matter to quite the extent that it has," again absently drumming on his chair.

He relapsed into brooding thought. Standish looked at his friend, but forebore to say anything. When Cameron was on the verge of something brilliant, he always drummed. So the astronomer waited.

The break was not long in coming. Douglas' brow suddenly cleared -- a look of triumph in his eye.

"By George, I have it!" he almost shouted. "I believe your fantastic story, old man, and I'm going to rid the world of this menace. Listen to me for a moment."

"You have my closest attention."

"Suppose we assume the truth of your hypothesis. Then this living world, moving in the Andromeda universe, shining by its own luminosity, separated by unthinkable distances from any hot gaseous star, would naturally be accustomed only to the faint starlight of the heavens. No such blaze of light as even our ordinary sunlight ever came within its ken. Now you've heard of phototropism?"

Standish nodded his head, but his friend went on heedlessly, absorbed in the plan maturing in his mind.

"It's the reaction of protoplasm to light," he explained. "If you take any unicellular animal like the amoeba, and expose it to a strong light, it will shrink away from the source of the light, and try to get out of its path. If you use a powerful ray of concentrated ultraviolet light -- the reaction will be much more apparent -- the amoeba will literally run for its life -- and if exposed long enough to the rays, will die.

"Now if we can obtain such drastic results with life forms inured and habituated by constant exposure to the sun's rays continually beating on our planet, what about this alien protoplasmic mass, unaccustomed to strong light of any kind, and no doubt feeling irritable even during our normal sunshine?"

Standish sat up excitedly. He was beginning to catch the drift of Cameron's reasoning.

Douglas went on. "My plan is this. Have the nations of the world concentrate their technicians and engineers in the power plants and factories most remote from the menace. Construct huge searchlights of the utmost candle power; and machines for casting enormous beams of ultra-violet light. In the meantime have the people of the areas endangered by the billowing march of the monster retreat to the mountain fastnesses. That can be done fairly easily -- its progress from all reports is approximately ten to fifteen miles a day. When all is in readiness, mount our machines on tractors, and drive them in front of the encroaching fiend. When it comes within striking distance, turn on the juice full blast. The power will come by tuned radio waves from the power plants operating in the hinterland. If our theories are correct, on the impact of our rays, the viscid mass will react much more violently than an amoeba or paramecium would. Retreat would be all it would think of, and the more exposed masses would be killed off. In that way, we could get rid of the menace, or at least drive it back into the ocean, by following it steadily all the way."

Standish got up in enthusiasm, and wrung Cameron's hand. "Boy, you're a wizard! That's a marvelous scheme! You'll be the savior of the world!"

"Hold on a moment," Douglas smiled protestingly, "it may work and it may not. Remember, I'm basing my scheme on your hypothesis."

"It'll work all right," retorned Donald confidently, "and now I know I'm right, too."

"Don't run away so fast," warned the bacteriologist. "Remember, at the best, we shall only have managed to drive it back into the ocean. Once there, we can do no more. There, in the vast depths of the sea, with what we know of the rapidity of its procreation, it will once more overwhelm the world."

Donald groaned. "There you go -- get me all excited, and then you let me down. I forgot that part. So what's the good of your swell scheme?"

"Ah! but I have something else up my sleeve," grinned his companion. "You know, of course, that I've been working my head off trying to find a cure for cancer. I haven't succeeded as yet -- though the outlook is promising. But in the course of my researches, I've invented a technique for excising cancer growths from the living organism, and growing them independently in special culture media. I have also discovered a method of activating them so that when replaced in living tissues they will multiply with unbelievable rapidity. At present, I have on hand here in the laboratory about fifty pounds of activated cancer cultures, and that is sufficient for my purpose.

"Now to get back to your theory again. If this visitation is in truth from an alien world, it is highly improbable that it was ever exposed to the disease of cancer. If that is so, then it lacks whatever immunity our life has obtained through constant exposure, and the cancer cells will spread like wildfire through the whole vast organism -- and this malign influence will be eradicated from the face of the earth."

"Man, I repeat -- you're a wizard!" The astronomer pumped his hand violently. Then an idea struck him. "But why not spray it with cancer immediately -- why bother with ultra-violet light to drive it into the depths of the sea."

"Because," explained Douglas patiently, "cancer is no respecter of persons, and once let loose on land, it is liable to spread to all forms of earth life, and we shall only have succeeded in destroying ourselves too. In the ocean, however, the range is sharply limited -- we shall instruct the people of the earth to remain inland until the danger is passed. Once killed, the whole mass will descend to the floors of the seas and there the cold and pressure will destroy the cancerous tissues."

"You've thought of everything," was the admiring retort.

"Now to get into immediate communication with the conference chairman and unfold our plan."

"Right -- there's not a moment to lose. The fate of the world is in the balance."

In a few minutes, the radio transmitter was sputtering out the code call signal of the conference. A lapse of five minutes and word came back. "Radio Emergency Conference talking -- what is it?"

"Standish sending from the laboratory of Cameron in Colorado. Plan for combating menace has been evolved. Please connect me with the chairman." Then, for a solid hour across the ether vibrated the saving word.

Back came the answer. "Sounds all right. Our last hope anyway. Broadcasting immediately to all the nations to mobilize tractor, searchlights, ultra-violet apparatus. United States will mobilize on eastern length of Appalachian within twenty-four hours. Both of you report for service immediately at Allentown, Pa. Last reports show inundation extended as far as Scranton. Signing off."

"We need some sleep -- let's snatch a few hours -- and start," suggested Standish.

"Righto, we can get there in fifteen hours. We'll need only an hour or two for assembling our material here. That gives us plenty of time for a snooze."

Almost instantaneously, both were sleeping -- drugged.

(part 6) (part 8)

Dog walk: 9/4/11

2011-09-05T08:08:00.000-04:00

Technically, Labor Day itself is the last day of Labor Day weekend, but the Sunday before is the last "I don't have to go to work tomorrow" day for most people. It's basically a second Saturday.

Walking the dogs on Sunday afternoon, I was able to take part in the second Saturday of Labor Day weekend. It was a mostly-overcast day in the 70s, pretty much ideal for dog-walking. All the debris from Hurricane Irene had been cleared away, and everybody was out having a good time. Walking down Thames Street, we could hear the sound of the Newport Waterfront Irish Festival going on at the Newport Yachting Center. The festival was responsible for the bumper-to-bumper traffic that turned America's Cup Avenue into a parking lot (something that always gives me a schadenfreude lift when I'm on foot).

In front of the Newport Bay Club, the dogs and I ran into Ariel, a girl who hands out buy-one-get-one-free coupons for the Jewelry Boutique there. Ariel has fallen in love with the basenjis, and we always stop and say hello to her so she can hug and pet them. She hasn't quite managed to convince them to give her kisses, but she's working on it.

We don't usually walk all the way down to King Park, but today we did, and we found a Beatles cover band called Abbey Rhode giving a concert there. The dogs and I wandered through the crowd while listening to covers of "Honey Don't", "Nowhere Man", and "I'm Only Sleeping" among others.

Coming back down Thames Street, I was astonished to run into another basenji, a red-and-white boy named Sasha. Sadly, Sasha did not get along with other dogs, so Louis and Klea weren't able to say proper hellos to him.

The day's musical theme continued on the Long Wharf Mall, where we found a woman performing a solo violin with a recorded accompaniment. The music followed us all the way up Washington Square.

How not to book a hotel room II

2011-09-04T23:33:00.003-04:00

From the daytime staff comes the following story:

Yesterday, a guest who was due to check out asked if he could extend his stay by another night. When he was informed that the hotel was booked solid and that he could not, he became very angry, to the point of threatening to burn down the hotel. Strangely enough, this argument failed to persuade the management to allow him to stay.

"The Menace from Andromeda" by Schachner and Zagat, part 6

2011-09-04T13:39:00.001-04:00

(part 5) (part 7)

This is the sixth installment of "The Menace from Andromeda", the third published story by Nat Schachner and Arthur Leo Zagat. It originally appeared in the April 1931 issue of Amazing Stories magazine, and has never been republished.

As we join our story, the brilliant young astronomer Donald Standish has discovered that a planet in the Andromeda nebula he named Alcoreth is actually composed of living matter. However, since Alcoreth has disappeared, he is unable to prove it to the scientific community. He decides instead to discuss the matter with his fiancée Mary Cameron and her brother Douglas, a cancer researcher in Colorado.

Meanwhile, in the Andromeda nebula, Alcoreth is a self-aware mass of undifferentiated protoplasm occupying the entire surface of a planet. Facing starvation, she decides to convert her mass into countless spores and launch them into space to seed other planets. After millions of years, a cloud of spores from Alcoreth reaches Earth and comes to rest on the surface of the Atlantic Ocean. Eight months later, ships begin disappearing from the Atlantic and the world's trade is paralyzed. Then Alcoreth invades the East Coast of North America, consuming everything in her path.

Standish learns that Mary is in New York City, and he flies off to rescue her. Mary becomes trapped at the top of Columbia University's new 100-story skyscraper campus building, with Alcoreth eating away at its foundations . . .

* * *

All this time the yellow sport plane had been rushing across the continent, sliding down the radio beacon from New York. Intent on the path ahead, the two leather clad figures bent over the dashboard. No talk, for the muffler had been cut for greater speed. No talk, but the thoughts of the two were identical. "What's happening in New York? What's happening to Mary? Is she safe?" Over and over these thoughts reiterated themselves in the weary brains. These two great scientists, in whose intellects lay perhaps the saving of the world, had forgotten everything save that wisp of a girl in New York, sister of one and sweetheart of the other.

At last the Appalachians appeared, passed beneath them, fell away behind them. Night had come. Donald who had yielded his place at the stick to Cameron, suddenly clutched his companion's arm and pointed ahead. On the horizon there pulsated a greenish glow. Standish's mind flew back to that star in Andromeda, whose passing he had watched months before. Here again he saw the light whose components he had analyzed in his gas spectroscope! The plane was headed directly for New York, and straight ahead of them the luminescence was at its brightest!

Ten minutes now, and they were circling over the great city. From the bay to Westchester, from the Palisades east to the sea, the city was invested. As far north as the ridge of giant erections about 42nd Street the smooth expanse of the phosphorescent sea told of the progress of destruction.

Cameron reached for the lever which silenced the roaring exhaust of the twin engines.

"If only we're in time; if only she is still in my lab. I'm going to go past the windows and see."

Throttled down to its slowest flying speed, the little plane dipped gracefully past the doomed tower rising high above the glowing rectangle of the park. Not twenty feet from the tower it glided. And there, in the window which both men sought so eagerly, was the figure they had hardly hoped would be there!

Up again then for consultation. "Doug, how close can we get to that window?" "I'll get within a foot, or we'll all go to hell together." "Then do it, and I'll get her out, but first tell her what we plan. Get a flashlight; she knows the Morse Code. Remember how I used to signal her in the old days?"

"A long slow glide now, about 500 feet away, lucky that your window faces the park." Cameron obeyed, while the astronomer flashed his dots and dashes. "On the sill, ready to jump." A wave of the brave little hand signalling understanding. Then up again.

Up to 5000 feet and a mile away. Then while Standish creeps out to the end of the wing, the motor is shut off and a long glide begun. Down, on a long slant, straight for that pinnacle rising sheer ahead. Down, ever down, with increasing speed hurtles the plane. A miracle of accurate steering, another miracle of perfect timing, and sheer muscular strength are required. Stark courage from all three, or the gallant attempt at rescue must end in disaster. Will they, can they do it? Too near -- and a crash; too far and a new attempt cannot be made. For see, already the great tower sways with approaching dissolution.

Perfect aiming, the plane almost grazes the side of the tower. Perfect execution -- a hundred feet from the window on whose sill Mary stands, one hand clinging to the sash, the other outstretched; the ship dips, then suddenly rising, almost stalls directly opposite the opening. Perfect timing -- the hand of the man on the wing grips the hand of the girl on the sill; a leap, a tug, and there are now two on the wing. Frantically Cameron works at the controls; frantically the lovers cling to the taut surface of the fabric on which they sprawl. Overbalanced, the craft reels drunkenly. Then the roar of the motor, the wings grip the air, and all is safe.

As Cameron zoomed upward, the hundred-story University rocks in ever-widening arcs; then slowly, slowly it begins to fall. Intact, entire, as it had for so short a time soared over the City, so it falls. Slowly at first, then with gradually increasing speed the great structure falls, until with a rush almost too fast for the eye to follow, it crashes into the lucent tide.

Into the little cockpit tumble the lovers, trembling, exhausted with their supreme effort. Cameron too, is trembling, but he must guide the ship with its precious freight. Westward now they turn, westward through the horrible night.

And now for the first time, they can look about them and take stock. The air is thick with darting planes, fleeing westward from the scourge. Below them not a house that is not ablaze with light, not a highway that is not jammed with rushing conveyances, not a railroad which is not crammed with hurrying trains, westward every one. Looking behind, from north to south, in the wide sweep which their height of 7000 feet allowed them, nothing but that terrible spectral green light, nothing but that immense sea, not of water, but of all-devouring jelly, come across that vast infinity of interstellar space to harry the earth and conquer it. And overhead the black velvet sky, and the stars, gleaming still in the wide arch of the heavens as they did when Earth was a whirling mass, as they still shall when this ball is nought but a cold, dead thing.

"Switch on the communication receiver C; let's hear what the news broadcast says."

"U.S. News Service. Bulletin 1248.

"The entire eastern coasts of North and South America are now completely covered with the jelly. Extent of the investment from ten miles to twenty-five. Spain and southern France are being slowly covered; the rest of the western coast of Europe penetrated only from a mile to five."

"U.S. News Service. Bulletin 1249.

"The scientific conference is still in session. No solution has as yet been arrived at, but the chairman wishes to announce that the people of the earth need not despair; progress is being made. Donald Standish, the noted astronomer, is still unaccountably missing. It is requested that any one having information as to his present location communicate at once with 2 AG, the government intelligence station."

Mary turned to Donald, in whose arms she was still being tightly held. "Oh, Don, why did you leave your post for me. The world needs you, why did you leave it for me?"

"Dear, if you had gone, the rest of the world could have followed for all of me. But now, now that you're safe, we must get back. I've got a hunch that Doug and I together can arrive at the right thing to do. We can't land now. Once down in that mob we'd never be able to take off again. Besides, neither of us can think straight just yet; too much has happened in the last thirty hours. We'll soon be home now, and we'll get busy. Drive her, Doug."

Now the sun had overtaken them and a new day was begun. Close ahead rose the peaks of the Rockies, among them the mountain on which perched Cameron's wilderness laboratory. A long spiral, and the little ship of the air dropped gently on the landing field at its door.

The passengers debarked stiffly from the flight plane, then Douglas taxied it into the hanger. Emerging promptly, the three of them entered the house.

(part 5) (part 7)

How not to book a hotel room

2011-09-03T23:20:00.003-04:00

It's Labor Day Weekend, 11:00 PM on a Saturday night in Newport, Rhode Island.

Here's a tip from someone who knows: it's too late now to book a hotel room for the night. They're all gone.

"The Menace from Andromeda" by Schachner and Zagat, part 5

2011-09-03T08:17:00.001-04:00

(part 4) (part 6)

This is the fifth installment of "The Menace from Andromeda", the third published story by Nat Schachner and Arthur Leo Zagat. It originally appeared in the April 1931 issue of Amazing Stories magazine, and has never been republished.

As we join our story, the brilliant young astronomer Donald Standish has discovered that a planet in the Andromeda nebula he named Alcoreth is actually composed of living matter. However, since Alcoreth has disappeared, he is unable to prove it to the scientific community. He decides instead to discuss the matter with his fiancée Mary Cameron and her brother Douglas, a cancer researcher in Colorado.

Meanwhile, in the Andromeda nebula, Alcoreth is a self-aware mass of undifferentiated protoplasm occupying the entire surface of a planet. Facing starvation, she decides to convert her mass into countless spores and launch them into space to seed other planets. After millions of years, a cloud of spores from Alcoreth reaches Earth and comes to rest on the surface of the Atlantic Ocean. Eight months later, ships begin disappearing from the Atlantic and the world's trade is paralyzed. Then Alcoreth invades the East Coast of North America, consuming everything in her path. Standish learns that Mary is in New York City, and he flies off to rescue her . . .

* * *

In New York the streets were packed with pale-faced throngs. Although every home had its receiver, the desire for the companionship of others had sent the entire population into the streets. The public loud-speakers, the newspaper bulletin boards were the nuclei of the masses. As one item after another of disaster was broadcast by the news-purveying agencies, a groan would rise from the crowds and then silence would come again. For these were silent crowds; the magnitude of the calamity had stricken the people dumb.

Forcing her way through the packed masses and into the hundred story tower which Columbia University had just occupied, was Mary Cameron. Astounded on her arrival bby the terrific news of calamity, she was anxiously intent upon completing her errand and speeding her plane back to her brother. But tremendous difficulties had delayed her. Traffic was well-nigh suspended. It had taken an enormous bribe to persuade a taxi-driver to undertake the journey from the Governor's Island landing field, through the vehicular tunnel and up Broadway to the new educational centre in what had been Central Park. Held to a snail-like pace by the masses which packed the streets from building line to building line, the trip had taken hours. But now, at dusk, she had reached her goal.

The great building was deserted. But the doors of an elevator stood open and she could operate the simple mechanism. Swiftly she rose through the hundred floors of this latest apotheosis of education to where, in the very tip of the soaring tower, Cameron's home laboratory was located. She unlocked the door, and entered the room. Quickly dropping her close-fitting cap and leather flying suit she began to assemble the bottles and jars listed on the slip which she had brought from the mountain retreat she had left the night before. But the strain of twenty-four hours of flying by sight and of the terrific scenes she had just witnessed suddenly told on even her wiry constitution, and she dropped into a chair for a moment's rest. She closed her eyes -- in a moment she was sound asleep.

Startled awake by a roar which, ascending from a thousand feet below, rattled the windows with the force given it by millions of throats, she found the room glowing with a green and spectral light. The usual murmur of the great city had changed to a terrific tumult in which she could sense a terrible agony of fear even at this alpine height. She ran to the window. Night had fallen, but it was not dark. From far below came the green light, a glowing luminescence, which reminded her of some rotting fungus which she had one night found in the woods near Cameron's laboratory. The glowing material made a gridiron there beneath, filling the streets south and west, till it merged in sheets of green flame where she knew the harbor and rivers lay. Immediately beneath her the streets were still clear, but bathed in that unearthly light she could see black streams. In the cupboard she knew her brother had a pair of binoculars. Quickly getting them, she focussed them on the black streams. She saw people, thousands, tens of thousands, rushing north, shouting in a frenzy of terror, and there, only a little south, the glowing green light pouring up the streets, towering far above the hurrying struggling mobs, moving with incredible swiftness, engulfing the stragglers. The menace had reached New York!

She swept the glasses north whence came a rolling as of thunder. Far up the Sound she could see flashes -- the forts at the upper end of the city were fighting their big guns. South again, and below, quiet now, the glowing jelly had filled the streets. New York was dead.

"Well, I'm in a fine fix now! I'm safe enough here, but how am I going to get away. Probably starve to death. Well that's better than being swallowed up by that thing down there."

A terrific crash downtown came to her startled ears; then almost before she could turn, another, and another. Down on the tip of the Island, where first Manhattan had reached toward the sky, there was a clear space where the 85-story Bank of Manhattan building had been. Woolworth too was gone, and all the mountainous structures below. As she gazed, she saw the 150-story City Hall Tower, just completed, sway, then, like some giant of the forest felled after centuries of growth by the woodman's axe, topple over, and gathering speed, crash into the lambent sea which bathed its foot. As it struck the surface of the quivering flood of light there was a tremendous splash, and through the air for hundreds of feet flew huge glowing fragments. They fell on the roofs and the serried façades of the buildings for blocks around, and then, to Mary's horror, they spread, and wherever the patches of light lay the sturdy structures of steel and granite began to melt.

"Good God! I'm not so safe after all. The ghastly stuff eats even the material of which these buildings are made. I wonder how long this place will last. I guess it's finish for me."

(part 4) (part 6)

"The Menace from Andromeda" by Schachner and Zagat, part 4

2011-09-02T09:22:00.001-04:00

(part 3) (part 5)

This is the fourth installment of "The Menace from Andromeda", the third published story by Nat Schachner and Arthur Leo Zagat. It originally appeared in the April 1931 issue of Amazing Stories magazine, and has never been republished.

As we join our story, the brilliant young astronomer Donald Standish has discovered that a planet in the Andromeda nebula he named Alcoreth is actually composed of living matter. However, since Alcoreth has disappeared, he is unable to prove it to the scientific community. He decides instead to discuss the matter with his fiancée Mary Cameron and her brother Douglas, a cancer researcher in Colorado.

Meanwhile, in the Andromeda nebula, Alcoreth is a self-aware mass of undifferentiated protoplasm occupying the entire surface of a planet. Facing starvation, she decides to convert her mass into countless spores and launch them into space to seed other planets. After millions of years, a cloud of spores from Alcoreth reach Earth and come to rest on the surface of the Atlantic Ocean. Eight months later, ships begin disappearing from the Atlantic. Soon, the world's trade is paralyzed . . .

* * *

On the thirty-first of July the first faint intimation of the nature of the menace reached the world. The United States naval station at Arlington reported that while in communication with the U.S.S. Texas it had received the following messages:

"From NXL Lat -- Long -- 10:12 A.M. July 31, 1939.

"First officer reports iridescence covering entire surface of ocean to east and extending north and south as far as horizon. We are proceeding closer."

"From NXL Lat -- Long -- 10:15 A.M. July 31, 1939 -- are now nearing iridescence. It is sweeping toward us ----"

Here communication ceased. The Texas had joined the long list of missing ships.

Hurriedly summoned into radio conference, the scientists of the world discussed this meagre report. A veritable babel of conflicting ideas, of fine-spun theories, of concepts old and new wove back and forth across the ether.

The least regarded explanation of the phenomenon, the most derided, was the exposition by the astronomer of Mt. Wilson of his theory of an invasion of protoplasm in spore form.

In the streets of the cities wild-eyed ranters appeared at every corner. To excited, pallid crowds they raved of the judgment of God upon an evil world, of the second coming of Christ (or Buddha or Mohammed), of the end of the earth. As yet only those whose intelligence was of the lowest took stock in their dire predictions, but Hysteria, with staring eyes and wind-tangled hair, strained at the chains with which civilization had bound her.

The world will long remember the morning of August 5, 1939, when the full nature of the Menace burst upon it. All that had passed before paled into insignificance at the startling news from Florida. That state of palms and oranges, that winter playground of the idle rich, no longer exists. But its name will long remain in the minds of man as the region where first the Menace came upon the land.

Baking in the glare of the August sun, terrifically hot, though still but an hour above the horizon, a small group waited on the platform of the ramshackle station of St. Nicholas, a few miles inland. Southern railway schedules were proverbially elastic and thus little thought was given to the fact that it was a full half hour past the time when the west-bound "number 9" should have made its appearance. The station-master (baggage-man, telegrapher, porter, etc.) had reported that the wires were down to the east but this was a none too rare occurrence. The talk was, of course, of the vacant Atlantic (for now even the searching warships had been withdrawn) and the horror which had cleared it of shipping.

"It's my idee," quote the village druggist, who was on his way to Jacksonville for his monthly buying trip, "It's my idee that the Germans are gonna start another war and they've got millyuns of submarines out there. If I was President -- What the heck is that up the track?"

The oracular dictum was interrupted by the appearance to the east of a hand-car on the rails, traveling at the uttermost speed of which this conveyance was capable. It was being operated by one man, and his frantic heaving at the pump handle gave evidence of more than ordinary haste. The four-wheeled platform fairly flew along the steel pathway -- "Jingo Neddy, he's clippin' it some!" "Who is it, kin you make out?" "It's Bob, the agent at Pablo Beach -- musta been a wreck!" "What's he yellin'?"

There was time for but a few startled observations when the hand car had already reached the station. Its operator, pale, disheveled, staring with panic, shaking in an ague of fear, was shouting, "Run, run, it's coming. All gone, all gone, wiped out. Oh my God. Get 'im all out. Run, run!"

That fateful morning of August 5th, the little town of Pablo Beach; one of the many which once dotted the East coast of Florida, just waking to another day of toil, had been overwhelmed by a tremendous mass of quivering jelly suddenly heaving itself out of the ocean. "It was higher than the biggest house in town, and it stretched along the shore as far as I could see. It quivered like jelly, and it rolled -- it rolled on up the beach and over the houses and the people. Everybody run toward it at first, only me, and I would have only 'number 9' was due, and I had to stick by my key. Everyone run toward it, and it just rolled on and over them. It 'peared to move slow, but it must have been coming fast 'cause, when folks started to run away from it, it just kind of sent out part of itself a bit faster, and it caught them. God, it was terrible. Just before I grabbed the hand-car and got away it caught Pop Saunders, the postmaster. I saw it catch him. It just kind of heaved, and swallowed him up. I saw him inside of it, just like a fly in calf's foot jelly, just as clear, with his mouth open, and his eyes staring, and his legs kicking and his arms working, but his kicking and squirming didn't bother the thing any. And then his face kind of run together till it was just a blotch -- and that's all I saw!"

In London, in Berlin and Paris men stopped their midday occupations to read aghast the story of the Florida station-agent. In New York, Boston and Baltimore the wheels of industry never started that day, as the office workers, the laborers, and the corporation presidents were halted on their way to their day's occupations by the dread tale. Sleeping Denver and 'Frisco waked to nightmare terror by the shouting of the extras in the streets.

In the Mt. Wilson observatory Donald Standish, keeping his sleepless vigil at the eyepiece of his beloved telescope, was startled by the ringing of the "emergency news" bell on the broadcast receiver in a corner. Hurriedly switching on the speaker, he heard the terrible tale. "Gosh! I was right."

The stars were forgotten now. Standish joined the world in anxious waiting for the next report. It came:

"U.S. News Service. Bulletin 25 -- The governor of Florida has mobilized the militia and troops are already moving rapidly toward Pablo Beach. Federal aid has been called for. The Secretary of War has ordered all available regulars with railroad artillery, flame-throwers, and gas projection apparatus to the threatened region. It is confidently expected that all danger will be over shortly."

"U.S. News Service. Bulletin 26.

"Troops have now
arrived within a mile of the infested territory. Infantry is being deployed, armed with gas bombs and flame throwers. The 16 inch railroad guns are being prepared for action."

"Bulletin 26a.

"Artillery is now firing high explosive shells into the advancing mass. Infantry is rapidly approaching within range."

"U.S. News Service. Bulletin 27.

"Artillery fire is utterly ineffective. Its only result is to hurl great globs of jelly into the air. They fall on the advancing infantry and envelop them. The loss is appalling. Indescribable scenes of horror are being witnessed. Even before the enfolded soldiers cease their struggles against asphyxiation their forms begin to melt away. They appear to be digested by the jelly. The big guns have been ordered to cease fire. The effect of the poison gas which is being released in great clouds is now being observed.

Donald could restrain himself no longer. "Fools," he burst out. "All their big guns and their gases will never stop that stuff. Some scientific method of attack must be found."

The next bulletin proved him right.

"Poison gas has no effect. Flame-throwers wither the jelly when they reach it, but on both sides of each point of operation the mass continues its relentless march. Reports reach us now that the east coast as far north as Charleston has been invaded."

Donald burst out again. "We must find a way to stop the advance of the jelly, and then to kill it. Perhaps Doug will have a notion. He ought to, he's been working with cells long enough. I'll call him. Besides, I haven't spoken to Mary since noon yesterday."

As the astronomer made his way to the personal communications set, the call light on that device began to flash. He answered it. "Mt. Wilson Observatory, Standish speaking."

"Professor Standish, this is President Adams' office. There will be a radio conference of scientists in half an hour. You are requested to listen in."

"Right."

"Now to get Doug," rapidly whirling the dials to Cameron's wave length.

Quickly the connection was completed. "Hello Doug, did you get the news? They know now that I was right. What, you haven't heard! Might have known nothing matters to you but your blasted cancer. There soon won't be anybody left for you to save from cancer. Get this --"

In quick, succinct phrases the savant outlined to the bacteriologist the tale of horror which was echoing round the earth. He did not get very far, however, for an exclamation of horror stopped him. As he listened to the broken phrases of Cameron, the tanned face of the astronomer paled with horror. His knuckles whitened with the force of his grip on the receiver.

"What's that? Mary flew to New York yesterday to get you some pigments. Man, don't you realize that it's a matter of hours till the protoplasm visits New York. Get Mary back at once.

"Damnation! You can't? The radio on her phone is out of order? How was she flying, by sight? Can't you reach her? No? Then I'm going after her. The devil with the conference. One hair on Mary's head is worth more than the rest of the world to me. You'll go with me? Get ready then, I'll make it as fast as I can."

In a trice Donald's flying suit was on, the hanger's doors were opened, and the trim little sport plane zoomed up to the 5000 foot speed level, then like an arrow flew to the east.

Meanwhile message after message of terror had been winging its way into the ether. All the east coast of Florida, Southern Georgia, the Carolinas, Virginia, in rapid succession had seen the creeping, iridescent terror. Resistlessly out of the sea it was heaving, twenty-five feet high, hundreds of miles long, this vast jelly-like tide of destruction. It was as if the sea had congealed and was making a final triumphant drive for mastery over its eternal enemy, the land. With the inevitableness of fate itself the thing rolled up, enveloping all that opposed it, enfolding the shrieking mobs which tried to flee before it, and most horribly of all, digesting them.

(part 3) (part 5)

Pour your misery down on me

2011-09-01T16:38:00.003-04:00

It's time for another embedded music video, so in honor of the recent spate of bad weather, the Johnny Pez blog now presents Garbage's 1996 hit "Only Happy When it Rains".

"The Menace from Andromeda" by Schachner and Zagat, part 3

2011-09-01T08:21:00.004-04:00

(part 2) (part 4)

This is the third installment of "The Menace from Andromeda", the third published story by Nat Schachner and Arthur Leo Zagat. It originally appeared in the April 1931 issue of Amazing Stories magazine, and has never been republished.

As we join our story, the brilliant young astronomer Donald Standish has discovered that a planet in the Andromeda nebula he named Alcoreth is actually composed of living matter. However, since Alcoreth has disappeared, he is unable to prove it to the scientific community. He decides instead to discuss the matter with his fiancée Mary Cameron and her brother Douglas, a cancer researcher in Colorado.

Meanwhile, in the Andromeda nebula, Alcoreth is a self-aware mass of undifferentiated protoplasm occupying the entire surface of a planet. Facing starvation, she decides to convert her mass into countless spores and launch them into space to seed other planets. After millions of years, a cloud of spores from Alcoreth reach Earth and come to rest on the surface of the Atlantic Ocean . . .

* * *

"Missing fishing vessel safe in port!

"Lunenberg, Nova Scotia, Sept. 27th AP. The fishing smack Ellen Morse, two weeks past due, docked here this morning with a record catch. The vessel was blown off its course during the storm reported three weeks ago by the remainder of the fleet, and, on the abatement of the gale, ran into an unusually large school of haddock 100 miles of the Banks. She remained to take advantage of the unexpected good fortune. All on board are well.

"The crew report that during the catch a peculiar shower composed of small brown globules fell on and about the vessel. As this occurred at the height of the catch, no specimens of the 'dust' were preserved."

The early editions of one or two newspapers that September morning of 1938 carried this small squib. A commuter or two, traveling long distances, having exhausted the headlines, the sport pages, the stock reports, read it. Then it passed into the oblivion which awaits all such space filling items. No sixth sense, no intuitional alarm bell, warned any reader of the horror which this dust cloud, so casually observed, had brought to earth.

Only in the Mt. Wilson Observatory did one man start on reading the report. Standish, alone in all the world, saw here more than a mere unusual occurrence. And even he could place no great stress on it. A careful clipping of the two inch account, a reference to data jotted down a few weeks before, then the clipping and the notes in than neat scientific script were filed away.

It was a fair world that the dust cloud had entered. All the nations were at peace and had been for twenty years. The great strides in mechanical and scientific progress of the first two decades of the 20th century had somewhat slowed down. Not yet had the commerce of the world taken to the air. While swift passenger and mail services across the continents and the seas had become commonplace, as yet aerial navigation had not been cheapened sufficiently to remove from the surface the carrying of freight. The life-blood of the nations, the foodstuffs, the textiles, the myriad varied components of commerce, still coursed in the old arteries along the surface of the seas. Still were the harbors of the world crowded with shipping, still across the seven seas plodded in the old slow way the gleaming freight-liners and the tramps. Still across the continents streamed the long freight-trains, mile-long caravans bearing ore, coal, grain, food, and raiment that the race might be fed, and be clothed, that man might be housed, kept warm, might live and work.

The year 1938 was ushered out in the age-old flare of horns and carousal, the age-old watch-night prayers, and the fateful twelve-month of 1939 began. Again a newspaper item noted by but few signalled the approach of horror.

"New York -- April 3rd -- The Hardin Line officers here report that yesterday afternoon, while their private radio station was receiving the routine daily report from the Hardin freighter, Ulysses, communication suddenly ceased and could not be reestablished. At the time the Ulysses was 50 miles due east of Cape Hatteras. Vessels in the vicinity have been requested to investigate."

Thus it began. The Ulysses was never heard of again. Other ships cruising over the position from which it was last reported could find no trace of the freighter, nor any of the usual evidences of marine disaster. Ten thousand tons of steel and wood, thousands of tons of freight, one hundred men, had disappeared without trace.

A month later, another great ship broke suddenly off in the midst of a wireless dialogue and vanished as completely as though it had never been. In quick succession a third, a fourth, a fifth abrupt vanishment caught the attention of the world within a week. No longer was the news relegated to the inside pages of the daily papers, but glaring front page headlines broadcasted the tidings of disaster. Marine insurance rose to exorbitant rates; the navies of the earth were scouring the Atlantic; only the most essential traffic was proceeding. At last the world was aware that something brooded out there in the ocean which threatened the very life-blood of the earth.

One peculiar feature of the disappearances was early noted. The tragedies had occurred in no localized region of the ocean. Plotted on the maps which now appeared on the front page of every paper, it was seen that a broad belt of waters, extending from Nova Scotia on the north to the Caribbean on the south was dotted with the black crosses of disaster. It was as if some tremendous power was erecting a fearful barrier across North and South Atlantic, a barrier which would end the commerce of the centuries between the Eastern and the Western Hemispheres, saying to the trade of the world: "Thou shalt not pass!"

And now indeed the barrier was complete. So rapid had been the multiplication of casualties that by the end of June over a thousand vessels had unaccountably vanished. On July 1, a general order was issued by the Admiralties of every nation forbidding all commercial traffic across the Atlantic. Supplies of food and other necessities were routed across the Pacific, across Asia and Europe to England and the seacoast countries of the Old World. Now, on the broad expanse of the Atlantic, unwonted quiet reigned, broken only by the gray war-craft searching, searching, for what they knew not.

A pall of horror overspread the world. The sole topic of conversation on the street, in business places and in houses was the mysterious barricade across the ocean and speculation as to its cause. In the capitals of the world the heads of government conferred about nothing else. In the universities, in the headquarters of the scientific organizations, theory and counter-theory were spun as to the nature of this thing which had paralyzed commerce. The attention of all the earth was centered on the great radio towers and the word that came through them from the gray war vessels out on the tossing waters, searching, searching, ever searching for the thing which so swiftly, so relentlessly swallowed up the great vessels and small which ploughed the waves.

Ever there was the same news. Each day the tale was -- "Battleship So and So, while reporting all well at such and such time ceased communication. Other vessels in the vicinity have been ordered to investigate." And then, one by one, the other vessels, too, would drop out of sight, never to be heard of again.

On teh newspaper maps it wasa noted that the belt of black crosses widened and lengthened, extending ever closer to the shores of the Atlantic. And the horror deepened -- blacker was the dread of the people.

(part 2) (part 4)

Dog walks: 8/28/11

2011-08-31T18:46:00.005-04:00

1:00 PM

The power went out in our house around ten AM, so no television, no radio, and no internet. So I did what I usually do when I'm cut off from the world: I went to sleep.

When I woke up at one PM, my options had expanded slightly. The rain had paused, so I was able to walk the dogs. (Trying to walk a basenji in the rain is like trying to drive a car with the parking break on. You can do it, but you'll wish you hadn't.) The dogs didn't seem to mind the gusty winds, so we were able to make our way through town like it was a normal walk. Newport was even more deserted today than it was yesterday. All the tourists had cleared out, and only we townies were left. The power was off throughout Newport, so the few businesses that hadn't chosen to close had the choice made for them. The only exception was Benjamin's Raw Bar on Thames Street, which had managed to keep busy by attracting everyone who was still in town and was looking for a place to go.

While I was passing by the hotel where I worked (which was closed for the weekend due to the storm, and now also due to the power outage), I noticed a man struggling to close one of the gates. As the dogs and I passed by, I recognized him as the hotel's general manager. I asked him how the building had weathered the previous night's storm surge, and he told me that the sea hadn't quite made it over the sea wall, and everything was still unflooded. However, there would be another storm surge during the next high tide, and it was expected to be higher.

The dogs and I went on our way, passing through the wind-tossed trees, which were shedding leaves and twigs at a fantastic rate, with the occasional good-sized branch thrown in. When we got back to the house at two-thirty, the power was still out.

7:30 PM

If you can't watch television and you can't surf the internet, you can still read books, and that's how I spent most of that stormy Sunday afternoon, perched in a chair next to my bedroom window. I finished Murray Leinster's Twists in Time and started Edmond Hamilton's Battle for the Stars. I was four chapters into Hamilton's space opera when the light from the window grew too dim to see by. It was seven-thirty in the evening, and I decided to take the dogs for another walk.

I walked the dogs through the dimming light. Most of the street lights were out, but apparently the city has a few that are hooked up to an emergency generator, and those provided an occasional island of artificial light. More light was shed by the headlights of passing cars, which acted like moving spotlights running through the otherwise almost-unlit city. Perrotti Park fronts on Newport Harbor, and as the dogs and I were passing through, I could see the sea, which was heaving like a freshman at his first kegger. We must still have been a few hours from high tide, because the sea was at least three feet below the top of the sea wall. I thought then that there was a distinct chance that the hotel would make it through the hurricane unflooded.

We were going up Thames Street towards Washington Square, and it was all dim night, lit by occasional car headlights and even more occasional street lights, and then . . . suddenly, there was an island of light and noise. The Brick Alley Pub had its own emergency generator, and it was lit up like Times Square and open for business. The sheer normality of it made it the strangest thing of all on that strange night.

Eisenhower Park was so choked with fallen branches and so dark that I passed it by. The dogs and I made our way up Broadway entirely by the light of passing car headlights, until we reached City Hall, which also had its own generator, and was also lit, though not as extravagantly as the Brick Alley. The dogs and I paused there for a minute before starting on the final leg of our journey home. Back in the house, I fixed dinner for the cats by flashlight, then went upstairs to my bedroom with the dogs, lying down in the dark room and listening to the gusting wind and the occasional emergency vehicle rushing through the night.

Dog walk: 8/27/11

2011-08-27T17:52:00.002-04:00

Hurricane Irene seemed reluctant to start raining on Newport this afternoon, so I decided to take the dogs on a final pre-sucky-weather walk through the town. The sky is overcast, and there's some fog hanging around parts of Aquidneck Island, and it's really muggy, but temps are in the mid-70s, so it's actually not bad dog-walking weather.

It's the weekend before Labor Day weekend, and normally a Saturday afternoon would see Newport swarming with tourists. Today, the sidewalks were practically deserted. In the course of our walk, I only had two different groups stop and ask me what kinds of dogs these were, and only two children asked if they could pet the dogs (the answer is always yes, because the basenjis always enjoy being petted). Most of the businesses were closed, and had their windows boarded up in anticipation of the storm, though there were exceptions like the Barking Crab restaurant. One of the plywood boards I saw had been spraypainted with the message GOODNIGHT IRENE.

I stopped in at my workplace along the way, and discovered much to my astonishment that it was shutting down today. I knew that we were going to be closed tomorrow night, due to fears that it would be flooded by the coming storm surge, but I thought I would be working tonight. Not so, and nobody had thought to inform me. So, for the next two nights, it'll just be me, the basenjis, and Irene.

"The Menace from Andromeda" by Schachner and Zagat, part 2

2011-08-27T09:03:00.004-04:00

(part 1) (part 3)

This is the second installment of "The Menace from Andromeda", the third published story by Nat Schachner and Arthur Leo Zagat. It originally appeared in the April 1931 issue of Amazing Stories magazine, and has never been republished.

As we join our story, the brilliant young astronomer Donald Standish has discovered that a planet in the Andromeda nebula he named Alcoreth is actually composed of living matter. However, since Alcoreth has disappeared, he is unable to prove it to the scientific community. He decides instead to discuss the matter with his fiancée Mary Cameron and her brother Douglas, a cancer researcher in Colorado.

* * *

Alcoreth heaved herself in long undulations that caused a plashing of luminous vibration in the surrounding ether. For Alcoreth was hungry. Eons of slow starvation stretched everlastingly ahead. Already huge vacuoles were dotting her interior, as the plasmic matter shrank and shriveled away. The food supply was disappearing -- no more did rocky crags of green and purple hue rise above Alcoreth's bosom. Only the inner core of minerals remained -- and that was wearing dangerously thin over vast alcorethean fires.

Never to be forgotten was that frightful time when, questing for food to still the retching hunger, she had greedily absorbed too large a section of life reaching bottom rock, and torn through the thin layer.

In an instant, the devastating flames had leaped and seared through the protoplasmic tissue. The very thought of it caused vast shudders to course through Alcoreth. For ages, the hellish fire spewed and roared -- devouring, incinerating -- bringing the tortures of the damned to her viscid frame. In agony, she heaved and twisted, but to no avail. Her sister spheres gazed on in helpless pity, but could render no aid. That final period -- when annihiliation seemed imminent -- and almost welcome -- a slipping of the rocky substratum had miraculously closed the gap, and once again imprisoned the ravaging fires. Slowly, painfully, and with difficulty, Alcoreth recreated sufficient plasma to cover the wounded surfaces; but her marvelous powers of reproduction were lessened. Since that fateful time, she only nibbled gingerly at the food rocks, and the pangs of hunger grew and grew.

Message after message for assistance was sent on ethereal vibration to her sister spheres in that vast universe, and ever and anon some being kindlier than the rest would disrupt a fragment of the precious mineral, and cast it meteor-like through space towards the starving world. But these were mere sops. Alcoreth foresaw the inevitable. Already had protoplasmic worlds come to the end of their food supply, and either broken through to the central fires, and flamed through space like blazing torches to imponderable dust; or, cannibal-like, devoured their own substance -- until the last pitiful bit of plasmic intelligence curled up on itself and died.

Alcoreth was determined to avoid either of these fates. But how? For an eon her highly developed intelligence, diffused throughout her structure, brooded over the problem. Speculatively she vibrated in unison with the etheric waves from the galaxy of the Milky Way, of which Earth was so minute a member. A quiver ran through her -- causing a strange luminescence to run riot over the surface of her body. The solution was found -- desperate, fantastic -- failure meant annihiliation -- but then, so eventually did the present state. So Alcoreth set to work to do what was needful for the great adventure.

In this strange universe, electrons and protons had whirled just as naturally into the rhythmic forms of life -- protoplasm -- primitive plasm, as in our universe they had danced into the common rocks and minerals. Here, the first bits of plasma were causal in their beginnings; taking sustenance out of the abundant mineral elements; slowly and laboriously evolving and growing more and more complex through differentiation of structure and function; and culminating in highly complex man. There the cooling mist of electrons patterened overwhelmingly into diffused plasm, with enough of other elements to create a normal food supply. Each world was a living entity; there was no necessity for differentiation of parts; intelligence was inherent and diffused throughout the entire mass, just as is found in the primitive unicellular animals and plants on earth.

The early forms of terrestrial life were able to absorb and digest mineral matter directly. In the universe of Andromeda, evolution had advanced further in that direction. Solid rock was ingested and digested rapidly and easily. Through eons of time, the vast inchoate consciousness of the mass developed into a highly energized intelligence, that could grasp intuitively problems far beyond our highest flights -- and could communicate with other life-worlds by etheric vibrations. Mental states were marked by tremendous luminosity over the surface of the plasma, which in turn set the ether into rapid vibration.

Alcoreth was busily at work. All over her body, she was rolling up into globules of protoplasm. The surfaces of these hardened into cell walls or cysts. Alcoreth was now dissociated into countless trillions of spores -- as we call them. Each spore was in itself a unit of life, in a state of suspended animation; capable of resisting the frigid cold of space; capable of existing thus through countless ages; and expanding into life anew under favorable conditions.

Clerk-Maxwell, the great English physicist, toward the latter part of the nineteenth century, proved that light had a definite propulsive force, and that particles of matter, if minute enough, could be propelled through the ether with tremendous velocities by the electromagnetic rays of light. Svante August Arrhenius, the eminent Swedish biologist, used this discovery as a basis for bold speculation. Was it not possible -- he argued -- for minute spores of life to pass through interstellar space from world to world, and germinate anew on barren, uninhabited worlds?

All this Alcoreth knew as elemental truths. If only some of her spores could land on some far-off world, unaccountably and strangely formed of mineral matter solely -- there to burgeon and grow with lightning-like rapidity in the midst of such plenty -- what a marvelous rebirth! For inherent in each spore was the intelligence of the mass, and Alcoreth would exist anew in the alien universe.

Finally all was in readiness. The time for the perilous emprise had come! The teeming aggregate of spores concentrated their mighty intelligence. They heaved and swelled. Weird radiances played over their surfaces. Huge luminous masses propelled themselves into space. Cloud after cloud of spore forms tore themselves loose, and shot forward. The tremendous journey was begun! Never in all the history of the universe was there a stranger migration!

Criss-crossing the illimitable void were innumerable light vibrations. Instantly the spores were scattered in all directions, caught up by onrushing waves, carried along with the speed of light, scurrying towards the uttermost confines of space-time.

On -- on -- through the illimitable void! Ages -- eons -- thousands and hundreds of thousands of light years -- never ceasing -- never slackening in their headlong flight! Past mighty suns -- past strange planets -- past pale nebulosities -- past pallid shapes of interspacial denizens -- past rushing comets with hair afire -- past meteors, debris of uncounted worlds -- on -- on! Whole universes waxed great and waned to pin pricks in the darkling void! On! On!

The Milky Way -- a bend of light waves past the Sun -- the earth planet loomed vast -- a gravitational pull was exerted -- and a cloud of spores had reached the end of their tremendous flight. Slowly through the warm air they settled and floated and dropped to the surface of the Atlantic Ocean.

(part 1) (part 3)

"The Menace from Andromeda" by Schachner and Zagat, part 1

2011-08-26T13:26:00.006-04:00

It's been way too long since the Johnny Pez blog revived a lost-and-forgotten science fiction story from the Gernsback Era. Starting today, therefore, we will be posting "The Menace from Andromeda" by Nat Schachner and Arthur Leo Zagat, from the April 1931 issue of Amazing Stories.

Schachner and Zagat were a pair of lawyers who decided to start writing pulp fiction together. Their writing partnership only lasted two years, after which both continued to write pulp fiction separately. Schachner eventually branched out to writing historical novels and biographies until his death in 1955, while Zagat remained a pulp writer until his own death in 1949.

"The Menace from Andromeda" was the pair's third published story, and their first appearance in Amazing. In the eighty years since its initial magazine publication, it has never been reprinted. As always, the story will be posted in a blog-friendly multi-part format. And now, without further ado, part 1 of:

The Menace from Andromeda
by Nat Schachner and Arthur Leo Zagat

With a puzzled frown, Donald Standish looked up from the photographic plates in front of him to the patch of dark blue heaven visible through the half-opened dome of the Mt. Wilson observatory. There floated the enigmatic nebula of Andromeda -- the huge telescope probing directly toward it -- as if to pluck out the very secret of its being. He arose, and paced the confines of the huge room. Under thirty, clean cut in features, he had already earned an enviable reputation as an astronomer, which had won him a coveted place in the world famous observatory. From the very beginning, the great nebula had exercised a peculiar fascination over him. In some inexplicable way Standish had always felt that there lay the secret of the universe waiting for him in the rôle of a Perseus to deliver and bring forth.

In truth, many other contemplative observers had speculated about that faint, dusty patch of light sprawled athwart the enchained and enchanted body of the legendary daughter of Cepheus and Cassiopeia. For centuries men had pondered in vain, seeking the nature of the faint light-cloud which so persistently evaded their probings. It was not until recently, with the great advance in the manufacture and use of precision instruments and telephoto lenses, that the astounding truth had been revealed to startled astronomers -- this faint glimmer in the skies is a great island universe of stars; far beyond the confines of our own galaxy -- millions on millions of suns and attendant planets, careening through the outermost reaches of space-time, so inconceivably remote that a ray of light traveling 186,000 miles per second would take nearly a million years to reach the earth.

Standish turned once more to the sheaf of photographs. Yes -- there was no doubt about it, the faint pin-prick of light labeled on the sky charts as 12478, which he had himself named Alcoreth, showed an unmistakable increase in brightness in this most recent of his photographs.

For over a year, on every clear night, he had photographed the great nebula. The minute pin-pricks of light, representing huge stars, had been laboriously ticketed and compared. This queer behavior on the part of Alcoreth, hitherto a placid, ordinary star, aroused his interest.

"Something interesting happening to the constellation of that old lady," Donald remarked to himself, meditatively stroking his chin. "I'd better turn the prisms on her and see what's going on in her innards to account for it."

Deftly he adjusted the great spectroscope, and swung it on the errant orb. As he gazed, a startled "Whew" escaped him. These were not the spectral lines and bands customarily associated with hot gaseous stars in eruption.

"This is becoming more interesting -- better verify it," he thought. Quickly he took out his series of comparison spectra. None of them checked with this spectrum.

Again he arose, and paced the room. This was evidently not a burning sun. Apparently it was a relatively cold mass. What then was it? Was it shining by reflected light? But, he argued with himself, there was no sun within billions of miles to produce such a vast outpouring of reflected light. There must be some other cause for its luminosity. Excitedly Standish paced about. Luminescence -- phosphorescence. This must be a world composed of some radio-active mineral! He strode back to the spectroscope. No, these were not the characteristic lines of any radio-active mineral known to science. Again he took up his restless pacing. The word phosphorescence brought to his mind pictures of the fields at night alive with the darting sparks of fireflies -- of the forests, and the glow of rotting fungus and decaying wood -- of the tropic seas under the Southern Cross, criss-crossed with pallid witch-fires.

He stopped in his tracks. By George, that was it! Life forms -- protoplasm -- under certain conditions would become strongly luminescent. But no -- that was too fantastic for serious consideration. And yet -- and yet. Try as he would to dismiss the thought from his mind, it occurred again and again, until it obsessed him. He must check it, and that this very minute.

In the course of his researches, Standish had discovered that by causing the light of luminiferous protoplasm to pass through a series of gases, the spectroscope was capable of resolving the constituent elements. As yet the process was a guarded secret, but the material was at hand.

With trembling hands the astronomer set up four thin walled transparent chambers, put into each a definite quantity of a rare gas -- different for each chamber -- attached them in series to the great spectroscope in such a fashion that the light from Alcoreth passed through them, before reaching the prisms that would cause it to yield up its secret.

"What an idiot I am to waste my time on such a crazy idea!" he scoffed aloud, at the same time looking around guiltily. "It's damn foolish, all right, but what's the odds. Let's take a look-see." He inserted a comparison spectrograph of the organic elements, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, sulphur and phosphorus -- the essentials of life as we know it on this planet.

With elaborate carelessness, hardly masking his inner trepidation, he gazed into the aperture. The spectrum appeared. A quick look, a longer one, then a concentrated stare -- a feverish scribbling of calculations -- then he arose with a mighty shout, that echoed from the great white dome. "Eureka, I have found it!" The cry of Archimedes on making his famous discovery. The impossible was true. The life elements were all present on that distant star, and what was infinitely more, its spectrum showed the peculiar arrangement of lines and bands which his research had shown was invariably associated with living protoplasm.

His immediate impulse was to broadcast his discovery to the scientific world. But then a thought sobered him. So fantastic a theory would never be accepted unless supported by impregnable proof. Premature publication, and he would become a laughing-stock. No, he must wait until his spectroscopic research was perfected. In the meantime, keep on observing this strange new world.

For three weeks he took innumerable photographs, barely pausing for sleep and food. The star increased in brightness, then tiny streamers shot forth intermittently, then slowly it waned. From a fifteenth magnitude star it passed gradually down the scale, till finally a last plate failed to show any trace of it. Alcoreth was gone, and with her, Standish's hope of everlasting fame.

The astronomer was in despair. How now could he convince the scoffers that he had witnessed the impossible -- a world of living protoplasm! His proof was gone.

Yet, when he pondered over it -- it did not seem impossible. Life -- protoplasm -- was only a particular combination of five or six elements. These elements are found throughout the universe. Was it inherently impossible, or even wildly improbable, for these elements to combine in some other world to form living matter, just as on our own earth various elements combined to form the rocks that constitute the structure of the world?

So Standish argued, and thought wistfully of Douglas Cameron, his chum of college days, now a research worker on cancer in an isolated laboratory in the fastnesses of Colorado. He thought of Douglas and his sister and assistant Mary. Those two would listen to his tale of discovery. How he wished Mary was with him now! Well, another month and she would be with him always, his wife and helpmate. He could see her now, the laughing eyes, tilted nose, puckered lips. She was fair to look upon, his Mary, but wiry and strong, and behind that clear brow was a brain which made her fit sister to one scientist and wife to another.

"Well, to work again," he sighed, and continued the search for living worlds.

(continue to part 2)

Prophecy 7

2011-08-25T17:32:00.004-04:00

The Prophecies of Johnny Pez resume, as I am once again seized by the prophetic trance. Will this nightmare never end?

The days grow dark and the nights last for years
When the demon sun blights the telescope
Radio waves are shedding tears for fears
As nations ride down the slippery slope

Awful as these quatrains may be to contemplate, rest assured they are even more awful to compose.

(continue to Prophecy 8)

Rocky Jones Chapter Nine

2011-08-24T11:42:00.003-04:00

My ongoing project to novelize the 1954 television space opera Rocky Jones, Space Ranger continues. Chapter Nine is now up at the Rocky Jones blog. This chapter covers episode two of the series, "Beyond the Curtain of Space, Chapter II" from the 15:08 mark to the 17:36 mark.

Turn the dial

2011-08-23T20:03:00.004-04:00

Time for an embedded music video. Today it's "Whirring" by The Joy Formidable.

UPDATE October 4, 2011: because I just can't get enough of TJF, here's "The Greatest Light is the Greatest Shade" recorded live at WFUV New York on March 1, 2010.

Dog walk: 8/21/11

2011-08-22T08:09:00.004-04:00

I took the basenjis out for a walk yesterday afternoon, as I always do when the weather permits. There were the usual comments from passers-by, but a couple stand out, and I thought I'd mention them.

I was passing by the People's Cafe on Thames Street, and two women sitting at a table out front asked me what kind of dogs I had. I brought them over for the women to see, and one of them took out her iPhone and began to take pictures of them. It turned out that she had lost her own dog to old age the month before, and she was looking for another dog to replace her. I sat down at the table with her and talked about where the basenjis were from, where I had got them, and what it was like to own one. Every few minutes, a passer-by would stop and ask what kind of dogs they were, which the woman found charming. Klea spent the time trying to get at a bag of kettle corn in the woman's purse, while Louis became bored and kept trying to get out of his harness (and succeeding once), which the woman also found charming. By the time I left her fifteen minutes later to resume my walk, she had just about decided that she would be getting herself two basenjis.

Later during that walk, I was on William Street, and a woman who was just getting out of a parked car said, "Are those basenjis?" It turned out that she had owned a black-and-white basenji back in the 1950s, and she still had fond memories of the breed. She was very pleased at the chance to stop and pet Louis and Klea, and to reminisce about her own basenji.