In the twenty-ninth and final episode of the first season of Star Trek, everything is super messed up, and this ends up being a damn fine way to end the first season of this show. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to watch Star Trek.Â
Trigger Warning: For discussion of issues around body horror/consent.
I admit that I feel like I’ve reached a milestone, albeit one that is fairly minor when I think of the sheer scope and length of the Star Trek universe. I’m now aware that there were folks deeply worried I was going to hate Star Trek or find it utterly boring or that since I’ve never really written about anything this “old” for Mark Watches, I’d be unable to appreciate it. From the standpoint of a fan of things like The Twilight Zone or The Prisoner, trust me, I GET IT. SO MUCH. I’m fond of things that seem to have fandoms that have all but disappeared.
But with Star Trek, the fandom has only gotten more vast and far-reaching than it was nearly fifty years ago. This is not a show or a series or a fictional universe that has sunk to irrelevancy or obscurity. I’m sure that the reboot films have brought even more people to this community. So it’s not lost on me how huge this is, nor am I unaware of the cultural impact a show like this had on decades of television and literature that came after it. I know I’ve touched on that in the past, but I still feel like I’m watching history! I suppose that there’s an element to Mark Watches Star Trek that makes this particular project feel like some of my earlier work because I’m so invested in finding out why people like Star Trek as much as they do. I didn’t know! And this could be the very biggest series I’ve ever covered aside from Harry Potter, you know? (I don’t know how you could possibly measure that, so don’t take too much stock in this.)
It’s over the course of this season that I’ve met Spock, Kirk, Bones, Uhura, Sulu, Scotty, and many other characters; I’ve gotten introductions to Vulcans and Klingons; I learned what the Prime Directive is; I’ve realized just how ridiculous it was to describe the Enterprise as a giant pizza with two breadsticks on the side of it. AND THE HOLY OT3 OF SPOCK, KIRK, AND BONES. OH MY GOD.
Being able to understand these sort of things – to gain the context that I’ve lacked my entire life – is a fulfilling thing. I don’t want to deny that this is part of the fun of doing. Decades after these episodes first aired, I’m finally feeling like I can join the club, you know? Yeah, I have barely made it through all 750+ episodes in this universe, but there’s still a joy here that’s palpable for me. I get it. I understand the appeal of the very first Star Trek series, and I’VE STILL TWO MORE SEASONS TO GO AND THEN FOUR MORE SERIES. HUZZAH.
But here’s the thing: understanding inside jokes or references or ships or characterization is just one aspect of this experience. Merely gaining a cultural context isn’t enough for me on a personal level. I enjoy doing Mark Does Stuff because I have such an intense love and need for fiction. It’s my e v e r y t h i n g. So it’s been important for me to also get a chance to experience the narratives in the original series, to get a chance to find out what was so compelling about the stories that Star Trek told. I certainly feel like the writing clearly progressed over the course of the first season! But it is in these final four episodes – “Errand of Mercy,” “The Alternative Factor,” “The City on the Edge of Forever,” and now, “Operation: Annihilate!” – that I get a sense for the sheer scope of what Star Trek was able to achieve.
I’ve had to constantly remind myself to re-think how I write these reviews because of the difficulty in determining whether Star Trek was recycling a trope or acting as the unintentional torch bearer, and I’m at a point where I think I can appreciate how groundbreaking this show really was. One of the things that quite a few folks have latched onto and heavily quoted from my review of the first aired episode of Star Trek was my observation that in “The Man Trap,” we saw a crew that was more diverse than practically every science fiction show currently on the air. My opinion has not changed, and I am utterly pleased and thrilled that there’s been such a constant and intentional effort to make the crew on the Enterprise FEEL like they came from all over the world. Sure, I’d definitely appreciate a more international feel. (More accents! More languages than English!) But in the context of what this show was able to pull off in 1967, I can’t deny how satisfying it is to watch this.
That doesn’t mean this has been a perfect, flawless viewing experience, and I hope I’ve done a decent job off engaging with the stories here to show what does and does not age well. Even then? The glimpse of the future that we get from this show is so REFRESHING. There’s a hopefulness to watching Star Trek that’s undeniable to me. And that’s rooted in the way the crew is organized, the visible diversity, the general respect for these characters, and the emotional power of these stories. Ultimately, that’s what I want to focus on here. While I don’t want to deny the importance of many of these other factors, the story in “Operation: Annihilate!” is a great way to discuss why Star Trek has captivated me over the course of this first season.
It’s not like this is the kind of tale that’s particularly unknown to this show. Invasion scenarios, mind control, mysterious alien creatures, untrustworthy crew members – we’ve seen all of these aspects in one form or another over the course of this season. But there’s an intensity to this episode that we’ve never quite seen before, and I think that’s largely due to how many risks this script takes. To introduce Captain Kirk’s relatives in the cold open, and then to introduce them to the audience AS EACH OF THEM DIE is a harrowing, upsetting thing. Hell, we meet Sam Kirk AS A CORPSE! That’s… that is so goddamn bold, y’all. In rapid procession, Aurelan dies after she cannot fight the pain that the parasite inflicts upon her, Peter Kirk is stuck into a medically-induced coma, and then Spock is infected by the flying amoeba pancake from Hell.
SPOCK. Of all characters, the writer of this script brilliantly chose Spock. One of the things I enjoyed so much about this episode was how the parasitic threat allowed us to learn more about Spock and the Vulcans. After demonstrating just how ruthless and powerful this creature was, the episode makes this struggle even more personal than it already was. And thankfully, the writing respects how this conflict affects both Spock and Kirk. Too often in fiction, a character suffers for another character’s development. ( :: cough cough :: WHEDON :: cough cough :: ) Here, the narrative gives both characters equal importance. We get a chance to better understand the compartmentalization that Spock must go through in order to deal with being half-Vulcan, half-human. We get a chance to see how Captain Kirk leads his crew after losing his brother, his sister-in-law, and nearly loses his nephew and best officer. (BEST FRIEND. THAT, TOO.)
It gives us a richer experience. For a story that’s largely simplistic, this felt like a dense episode, you know? On top of watching Kirk be sad (TAKE IT BACK, I CAN’T DEAL WITH IT), he’s got to deal with one of the worst decisions he’s ever been dealt. If he cannot figure out a way to eradicate this parasite from the bodies of the Denevans, must he logically and ethically kill everyone in order to prevent it from spreading? What’s even more disturbing about this is how ubiquitous this threat is. Because we’re essentially led to believe that these flying amoeba pancakes from Hell are all cells of a larger organism, we know how easily they can overwhelm a population. We know the threat is real. And through Spock, we learn just how insidious these parasites are. They control the nervous system and utilize pain to threaten their hosts. It’s terrifying.
At the core of the big finale of “Operation: Annihilate!” is the depressing power of logic. It’s a sadly heroic thing that Spock does here. His dedication to the perfection of logic is what initially leads him to conclude that they must exterminate all the Denevans – himself and Peter included – to save the galaxy. But then, his logic leads to a much more personal sacrifice, though it is a temporary. However, at the time? Even I was utterly shocked at HOW FAR THIS EPISODE WENT. Having Kirk face such a deeply upsetting choice was extremely intense as it was, but to have Spock logically conclude that exposing himself to a blast of light COMPARABLE TO A SUN just to maybe save millions of people? AND THEN IT BLINDS HIM? AND THEN MINUTES LATER, BONES FINDS OUT THAT HE DIDN’T EVEN NEED TO DO THAT TO SPOCK? Y’all, this show got SO DARK for a moment. I admit that there’s still the whole magical healing of a disability here, and I think that avoiding this would have been far more compelling. I know it’s an unintentional commentary, but I think it’s important to point out because it happens so often in fiction.Â
“Operation: Annihilate!” does provide us with a vehicle for the exploration of Vulcan biology and culture, as well as a means to tap into a more emotional portrayal of Captain Kirk from William Shatner. For me, this was a stunning episode, and while Star Trek doesn’t follow the same sort of serialization that a lot of shows do nowadays, I still got the sense that this was a season finale. There’s no cliffhanger here of any sort, but I found this to be one of the best episodes of all twenty-nine episodes that I’ve seen. It’s exciting to think about how much more of the original series remains because if this is what the show can do now, what else is there to come? I don’t know shit about the next two seasons, and goddamn, that’s such a wonderful thing.
I will have a few things to predict in Wednesday’s post, so I’ll refrain from speaking about them here. But oh lord, y’all, I DID IT. I made it through my first season of a Star Trek show! SHOUT OUT TO THE MILLION MORE SEASONS TO GO.
The video for “Operation: Annihilate!” can be downloaded here for $0.99.
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