Deep Focus Ep. #7: The X-Files: I Want to Believe (2008)/Director's Cut (2026)

 

60 Years Ago: Star Trek: "The Corbomite Maneuver" (November 10, 1966)

Stardate 1512.2

On the third day of a star mapping mission in previously uncharted space, The U.S.S. Enterprise is blocked by a cube: a border marker, apparently, left behind by some unknown alien race.  

Captain Kirk (William Shatner) is forced to destroy the cube when it emits dangerous levels of radiation and threatens the lives of his crew and the safety of the ship.

Before long, however, the powerful force behind that cube arrives to confront the Enterprise. Commanded by the fearsome Balok (Ted Cassidy) is a colossal vessel -- the Fesarius – hailing from a society called The First Federation. 

Balok threatens to destroy the Enterprise for trespassing in restricted space. No escape is possible. No plea is acceptable, he says.

On the bridge of the Enterprise, Balok’s uncompromising behavior rattles the nerves of a young navigator, Bailey (Anthony Call), and stymies Kirk’s attempts at diplomacy. There seems to be no way to escape destruction, at least until Mr. Spock (Leonard Nimoy) off-handedly mentions chess.

Inspired, Kirk realizes he is playing the wrong game with this opponent. He adopts a different game -- poker -- and then, with the straightest of poker faces, attempts to bluff Balok.

This ploy succeeds, and opens up a channel of communication between the Enterprise an Balok.

Some months back, I was asked by a reader here on the blog to pick just one episode that I felt could represent the totality of the Star Trek (1966-1969) experience.

I selected “The Corbomite Maneuver.”  

Without a doubt, this is one of the greatest episodes of the series -- one of the ten best -- and an installment that delivers drama, suspense, and most importantly, a distinctive and uplifting philosophical world view.

First of all, “The Corbomite Maneuver” presents the idea that the greatest enemy in space is not alien races, but fear itself.  In other words, human psychology.  The problem is how we respond to that which we don't fully comprehend or know.

“The greatest danger facing us is ourselves,” Kirk announces to the crew in this episode. He then discusses “an irrational fear of the unknown,” and notes that there is actually no such thing as the unknown, rather merely “things temporarily hidden, temporarily not understood.”

This is a remarkable monologue, and a perfect distillation of Star Trek philosophy. 

The men and women of the 23^rd century and aboard the Enterprise are equipped to handle new frontiers, new civilizations. And what is unknown or seems different, in due time, becomes understood, explainable. They are explorers who -- if they can conquer their own demons -- are ready to meet the universe.

This is a great affirmation of mankind, and our potential. Star Trek shows us who we can aspire to be, if we put anger and fear behind us.

Kirk’s assertion of this philosophy is developed in the episode on an individual basis too; by Bailey, the young navigator who finds it difficult to control his fear, his emotions when Balok threatens the Enterprise. 

Bailey is young, and inexperienced, and unlike the senior crew has not yet learned how to manage his fear. He is well-trained, responsible, and capable...but personally, he grapples with the unknown.

At the end of the episode, Kirk notes that he “owes” Bailey a look at “the face of the unknown” and it’s a remarkable moment. Kirk has taken him under his wing, and shows Bailey that as captain he does not just mouth a philosophy of exploration, peace and understanding…he practices it. He lives it.

In my opinion, this quality is what makes Kirk (and certainly Kirk of the first season) an extraordinary captain and role model.

The very idea of fear is reinforced in the episode through the character of Balok as well.  

He has constructed a menacing puppet (replete with menacing voice…) as his “alter ego.” This is the face he shows the world...the universe.

Balok is so fearful of alien contact that might go wrong, that the very face he puts on is one of sheer terror.  At the end of the episode, Balok declares it "was a pleasure” testing the Enterprise and her captain (a common Roddenberry theme, actually), but it is clear that the First Federation (Balok's governing entity) operates from a position of fear, hiding behind technology and masks to suss out the characteristics of other races. Given their diminutive personal stature, this is perhaps an understandable philosophy too.  They present as terrifying, lest they be seen as weak.

The first episode of Star Trek filmed following the second pilot, “The Corbomite Maneuver” also establishes a long-lived Kirk/Spock character dynamic. Specifically, Spock makes an observation or analysis about a current situation or dilemma, and that remark inspires Kirk to concoct a brilliant, but spontaneous strategy for success. 

Here, Spock is reminded of chess, noting that Kirk and Balok keep making effective counter-moves.  That notation gives Kirk the inspiration of a different game, poker…and bluffing.  

As late as The Wrath of Khan (1982), and Spock’s observation of Khan’s “pattern” indicating “two dimensional thinking,” we see this character dynamic re-asserted.  Spock observe and assesses; Kirk synthesizes that work into purposeful, life-saving action. One man is all about knowledge and information. The other man is all about improvising survival from that analysis.

There are so many grounds upon which one can commend “The Corbomite Maneuver.” It is excellent entertainment, first off, with a surprising ending.

More trenchantly -- and like other early episodes of the series (namely “The Man Trap,” “Charlie X” and “The Naked Time,”)  -- this episode creates the impression of real people functioning on a real vessel. 

I termed this the “the lower decks” paradigm in my reviews of those episodes. Here, for instance, we see Yeoman Rand bringing Kirk dinner (while he gripes about a diet), and meet a young surrogate for the audience: Bailey.  

Bailey, like the audience, doesn’t quite know the ropes. This episode is his journey. In a way, he is really the central character of this work of art. No, he’s not a captain, a CMO or exec.  He’s just a kid promoted to a job of great responsibility. But importantly, he is a individual who has no practical way of grappling with his fear. When Kirk mentors him, he is really mentoring us too.

I also find this episode exceptionally tense, and, indeed, a template, perhaps, for many of the most challenging an remarkable episodes of Star Trek.  

Much time is spent on the bridge, as strategy is discussed and executed, and there are no planets to visit. 

Think about how much Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) resembles this story type. The crew --from their workaday control room -- grapples with alien contact.  In the midst of an emergency, the crew must face their fear of the unknown, and puzzle out the rationale behind an intelligence beyond human experience.

And of course, the answer in both cases is not violence. It is not hostility. It is not to kill that which is different.  

Instead, an episode such as “The Corbomite Maneuver” suggests that we can control all those impulses and meet the unknown with the best angels of our nature.  Bailey sees the face of the unknown, and fear disappears.

Put aside your fear, says Star Trek, and that which is dark an mysterious, becomes illuminated and known.

Do You Remember Colonial Safari Park? Abnormal Fixation Takes You Inside the Ruins...

 

30 Years Ago: Millennium: "Dead Letters" (November 8, 1996)

“For the thing I greatly feared has come upon me. And what I dreaded has happened to me. I am not at ease, nor am I quiet. I have no rest, for trouble comes.”

-Job 3:25.26

While young Jordan (Brittany Tiplady) is plagued by nightmares of an evil clown, Frank (Lance Henriksen) embarks on a new case in Portland. 

Specifically, he investigates a serial killer who leaves messages for the police in strange places (including a victim’s hair follicle), so as to prove his superiority over the authorities.

While Frank attempts a profile, he also works with another detective, Jim Horn (James Morrison), whom the Millennium Group is considering for admission.  Horn is undergoing a marital separation, and is filled with rage.  

That rage, unfortunately, threatens Frank’s case.

“Dead Letters,” an early episode of Millennium (1996-1999’s) first season, is another story in which an investigation actually provides a lesson, or an insight for Frank Black.  

Usually, the serial killers and their mode of operation cause Frank to reflect on some aspect of his life, or American society. Here, Frank meets someone that, but for the Grace of God, could be him.

That person is detective Jim Horn, a man who is undergoing a  marital separation from his wife, and has a two-year old boy, T.C. Jim is a mirror for Frank. Ominously, Frank actually says in this episode “I’ve never been separated,” but that’s actually precisely what occurs in the second season.  And like Horn here, Frank has a young child whom he loves more than life itself.

James and Frank work on the case of the Portland serial killer together, but it is an uneasy partnership. This awkwardness is demonstrated in a scene that could be described basically as a profiler pissing contest. Frank explains his view of the killer, (a man who has never been married or had sex), and then Horn offers his own competing version. He sees a killer who has a terrible rage towards women.

But importantly, Horn is actually imposing his own feelings on the profile he creates.

What Frank realizes in "Dead Letters" is that where he tries to empathize with the killer, and imagine what goes on in the killer’s head. Horn merely projects his own emotional state onto the violent criminal. In other words, it is Horn who feels the rage towards women; particularly his wife.  He has unresolved feelings about her, because of their marital problems.

Frank suggests to Horn that he should take a “step back,” but Horn can’t. “As a father,” he tells Frank, “I risk adding nothing” to T.C.’s life.  Jim feels his fatherhood of the boy is like the “dead letters” of the title: a dead end.  Dead letters have no home, and no destination. They ultimately don't connect with the readers/people that they should. The killer in the episode is someone who wants to remain significant, and ironically, that’s precisely Horn’s dilemma too. However, Jim sees no way to remain significant or meaningful, and even ends up arguing with the telephone company because he feels that he undervalued. The business-like, non-personal interaction makes him feel dehumanized.

On a related note, in this episode we get a really good sense of how Frank reacts when challenged. In the profiler pissing contest I tagged above, he and Horn go at it, but Frank is never personal, and he never rises to take the bait. He doesn’t show offense. He is preternaturally calm, instead. This is a key aspect of the Frank Black persona, and one reason I find the character so appealing. Instead of being petty, instead of rolling in the mud over something like this, Frank simply says his peace -- without attitude -- and lets his expertise stand.

What others do with his expertise, he factors, is beyond him. Frank can only give others the benefit of his insight and knowledge.

This is an attitude Horn might adopt. As the episode continues, he lets his rage get the better of him, and goes off the rails. He interferes with a sting Frank has set up to catch the serial killer. He spoils the arrest and taints the evidence.  He is a basket case of inefficient emotion and directionless rage. By trying to avoid becoming meaningless, he becomes useless.

Why does he do it? Well, Horn looks at a picture on his desk, of his son, and conflates that image of innocence with the murders of a crime scene. He personalizes the crime scene to the extent that he thinks the killer is going to murder his son.  He loses perspective. 

And a good investigator needs perspective.

Frank tells Horn, at the end of the episode “You put them in your head,” referring to the criminals he profiles. This is not what Frank does. 

Frank empathizes. 

Frank seeks to understand, and this is something that Horn cannot fathom. But because of “Dead Letters” the audience starts to understand how Frank approaches a profile, and how delicate that process can be.  Horn tries to achieve the same magic, but can’t do it. He can’t put aside his ego or his emotions, and the result is a faulty profile.  The result is also, for Horn, a professional failure. It is made clear at the episode’s denouement that the Millennium Group will not again show interest in him.  He lacks the temperament to do what Frank does.

In terms of series mythology, this episode is so important because in season two Frank goes astray in “The Beginning and the End” much the way that Horn does here, in "Dead Letters." He acts impulsively, on his own (to rescue his family), and his wife, Catherine, separates from him. He loses his paradise and sanctuary of the yellow house because he loses the very equilibrium that serves him so well in episodes like “Dead Letters.”

I don’t think there was necessarily a plan, when “Dead Letters” was made, to send Frank down this path over the course of the series. Gut if one watches “Dead Letters” and “The Beginning and the End,” together, it is amazing to see how the same “flaws” that destroy Horn threaten to undo Frank, and his gift of insight (which is lost, for a time, in Season Two).

“Dead Letters” also continues to develop Jordan’s story line beautifully. Throughout the series, she is shown to be a sensitive, and somewhat fragile child. She is often taken to the hospital, or sick from some inexplicable illness. She can detect things in people and places, too, which others don’t.  Here, she encounters in a nightmare a clown that terrorizes her, and sees her Father descending an endless staircase.  

What is that clown? It’s hard to say exactly, what significance it plays in Jordan’s psyche, beyond being, simply, a childhood vision of terror.

But we can speculate about what it means to see Frank on the endless staircase in perpetual unseeing descent. 

Knowing how sensitive Jordan is, I wonder if she sees her father descending, further and further, towards a destination he can’t control. She can’t get his attention as he descends.  He's locked ona path; locked in a form of tunnel vision.

Gazing across the seasons of Millennium, it is not difficult to detect the overall path as one of Frank’s descent, losing his certainty about family, friends, his gift, and the Millennium Group itself.

Pointedly, Jordan ask Frank if he knows bout bad dreams, and he responds that he does; or at least that he “knows enough to keep them away” from her.  Frank’s descent, in some way is a mirror of Horn's descent, but for Frank it’s not that he desires to be significant or meaningful to his family. It’s that he wants to protect the ones he loves, and he takes ardent, sometimes violent responsibility for that job of protection.

So many Millennium episodes concern the serial killers and what they symbolize about the nature of our society. “Dead Letters” is a twist on the formula, from early on, because it asks the same question, but of an investigator.  Jim Horn is lost, and can't "see what the killer sees."  All he can see is his own rage.

What does Horn’s dilemma tell us about our culture, and our families?

If I had to answer that question, I’d focus on some key points. 

Both Jim Horn and Frank Black are men driven to protect their families. This drive forces them to see and experience things that jeopardize, for them, the overall experience of family.  They have to lie and keep secrets about what they’ve seen. They have to pretend the darkness isn’t there.  They are absent, for long stretches, from the ones they love, making them seem, to their children and spouses, distant and uncaring. Not surprisingly, because of their choices, they begin to be disconnected from their families.

Society asks men to be strong and silent, but if that’s the rule, where can men like Horn put the rage they feel? The killer reports in "Dead Letters" that people in our society are like “animals in a caged shelter” and in a way that is true of Horn.  He has rage and anger, feels rejection and loss, and has no place to pour out all that, except into his job.  

We hope the same isn’t true of Frank. But as Millennium continues, we see, sometimes, that it is. 

25 Years Ago: Buffy the Vampire Slayer: "Once More With Feeling" (November 6, 2001)

Although there are many outstanding episodes of Buffy, it is "Once More With Feeling," the all-singing, all-dancing musical episode, that shines today as something truly amazing, and transcends the both its genre and the medium. Critic David Klein called this 2001 installment "absolutely captivating," and "like nothing" he'd seen on regular series television, which he's watched and written about for more than twenty years. (Electronic Media, July 9, 2002, page 6.) He wasn’t exaggerating.

 

Buffy the Vampire Slayer has been called a "post-feminist parable on the challenge of balancing one's personal and work life," (Time Magazine, December 29, 1997, page 137), and a "literal scream and always a hoot," (TV Guide, January 2-8, 1999, page 23). "Just about the best horror show on television" according to Cinefantasique (October 1997, page 137), Buffy has also been praised for the fact that "no other show balances so many elements as deftly, without a trace of corniness or melodrama" (Ken Tucker, Entertainment Weekly: "Oujia Broads," November 6, 1998). "Once More with Feeling" boasts all those strengths, and more.

 

Some background: for its sixth season, Buffy the Vampire Slayer moved from its long-time home at the WB to UPN. In the fifth season finale, Buffy died while saving the world from an evil God named Glory, and for the sixth season she was resurrected by her friends (including Willow and Xander), but something went terribly wrong. Our stalwart slayer had been pulled out of a heavenly after-life -- not a hell dimension, as her friends feared -- and now our mortal coil was all pain and suffering for Buffy. She felt disconnected, alone, and out-of-touch, but the gallant Chosen One just couldn't express these uncomfortable emotions to her friends, and so she bore the pain in silence and isolation. At least until, that is, "Once More with Feeling," a musical treatise about communication, about the songs we sing to ourselves, about the secrets we hide and yearn to share.  So if “Hush” was a dissertation on non-verbal communication, “Once More with Feeling” was about how we song and dance can also reveal character.

 

"Once More with Feeling" features original music and lyrics by this Joss Whedon, with songs produced and arranged by Jesse Tobias and Christopher Beck. Choreographer Adam Shankman was responsible for not just fight scenes in graveyards, but the dance numbers too. 

 

The episode's action starts when a demon called Sweet (Hinton Battle) arrives in Sunnydale, summoned by someone close to Buffy. He casts a spell on the town that makes every inhabitant sing and dance about their innermost emotional issues. That doesn't sound so bad, except that the urge to release the singing and dancing also happens to cause murderous spontaneous combustion, and consequently townies are dropping like flies. Buffy and her friends -- including the lovelorn vampire Spike -- investigate the crisis, but all the while sing their own tunes. Spike sings "Rest in Peace," imploring Buffy to stop toying with his emotions, or leave him alone. Buffy sings "Going through the Motions," about her detachment from the world. Giles (Anthony Stewart Head) croons about holding Buffy back ("Standing"), and Xander and Anya sing a duet, a 1930s-style "pastiche" called "I'll Never Tell," that reveals their fears about their romantic relationship and marriage plans. 

 

In the end, Buffy's secret emotions about being brought back to life are revealed in the final confrontation with Sweet, and her friends know, at last, what is up with the Slayer. The honesty and hurt evidenced in this crescendo is practically jaw-dropping. It's devastating, but in the style of the old-fashioned movie musical, the episode climaxes not with psychology, but with a kiss and curtain dropping. "Where do we go from here?" The cast sings, and as viewers of this fascinating series, we are aware that, again, the characters are headed to new and dangerous places. Nothing on Buffy remains static; everything changes, and "Once More with Feeling" is a turning point not only in the continuity, but in the series’ legacy, as viewed nearly two decades later.

"The thing about musicals," Joss Whedon told me in an interview for my 2004 book, Singing a New Tune: The Re-birth of the Modern Film Musical (which features a chapter on "Once More with Feeling"), "is you sing what you can't say. In the same way as shutting up [in "Hush"] caused everybody to open up in ways they hadn't before, singing did the same thing...The heart of the matter - what the person is feeling, what the person needs to communicate, the great revelation, the denouement, whatever it is - all of this should be expressed through song."

 

Buffy the Vampire Slayer has always concerned language, and how characters use it to conceal, dissemble, reveal, lie, deny or express love. How the Scoobies sometimes look at Buffy (as a superhero) and themselves (as sidekicks) in dialogue ("Avengers Assemble!" Xander quips in one episode) is one of the perpetual joys of the program, and "Once More With Feeling" takes the characters in exciting new directions and lays bare their emotions in another manner of communication - not psychologically-adroit patter, but the simplicity and elegance of song. It's a bit amazing that a show this good -- boasting a dozen full-fledged musical numbers -- could be made on a TV budget and within TV time limitations. Yet every single song in "Once More with Feeling" brings out new facets of the characters, and gives the series a wind behind its back for the remainder of the sixth season; one of my personal favorites. The sixth season remains controversial because of the sometimes degrading, perverse nature of Buffy and Spike’s sexual relationship, but it is an ambitious season too, in which “Life,” not some made-up demon, is the “Big Bad.”

The musical is a form that's perpetually out-of-fashion in the twenty-first century but Joss Whedon did the seemingly impossible here. He made the artificial, theatrical form not just palatable to an increasingly "reality" obsessed world, but actually irresistible - especially to genre fans  "Once More with Feeling" is not only the finest and most involving episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, it's one of the great hours in TV history, with a brilliant soundtrack to match the action on screen.

 

"It's such an alchemy, Whedon explained to me "It's so hard to get it right, but if a musical really does hit people, they'll love it more than any damn thing in the world. Because music speaks to people more than anything else does...When you put in exciting lyrics, characters you love, and all that good stuff, everything heightens. It takes you to another level of existence."  Fortunately, the cast was up to the challenge and took on the difficult challenge of singing.

 

“I knew Tony was my ballad guy. I knew James was my rock-and-roll singer, and Michelle wanted to dance a little. I knew what everybody’s strength was,” Whedon told me. “What I didn’t know was how good Emma was going to be. That was a revelation, but I knew she was my musical-comedy girl.”

 

"Once More with Feeling" proves Whedon's thesis in spades. It is an installment of Buffy and genre television that transcends standard episodic television, and just about everything else out there too. Of course, just because Buffy was a success as a musical, that did not mean Whedon wanted to apply the genre formula to his other TV series. 

 

“I was asked, 'Do you want to do a musical episode of Angel or Firefly?' And I said, 'Not in a million years.' Those shows don't lend themselves to it.  The thing about Buffy is that you do the musical episode without violating the reality of Buffy.  That's the most important thing to me.  What's hilarious about working in fantasy is that you can say 'The evil twin thing? That's not reality, that's bullshit! Who buys that? But the dwarf going out of someone's head is fine.'...You have this seemingly arbitrary, but in fact very strict sense of what can go on in this world.  And Buffy is so sophomoric, romantic, colorful, tense, sexual...I think half the episodes feel like they're about to burst into song anyway...So to say a demon has come [to Sunnydale] who causes musicals makes perfect sense in that world.  It doesn't make sense in the Angel world to me.  It definitely makes no sense in the Firefly world.  It's a different kind of choice."

 

One might note that Angel is Whedon’s neo-noir, and Firefly his neo-Western. If that’s the case, then Buffy is his neo-musical: a series characterized by big emotions, colorful performances, and carefully choreographed action. If this is so, then “Once More, with Feeling” represents, actually, Buffy’s great act of “becoming” what it was always meant to be.

Abnormal Fixation Teaser

 

90 Years Ago: Tarzan Escapes (1936)

The cousins of Jane Parker (Maureen O’Sullivan) -- Rita (Benita Hume) and Eric (William Henry) -- are brought to the Great Escarpment by safari master Captain Fry (John Buckler). 

Their mission is to convince Jane to return to England with them, so that she can claim a vast financial inheritance on all their behalf.

Jane is happy to see her cousins, but Tarzan is deeply disturbed by the fact that Jane will have to leave the jungle, even for a while. 

Fry sews further discontent, claiming that Jane has grown tired of Tarzan and that if he loves her, he should let her leave.

Fry then arranges to capture Tarzan in a cage, and put him on display in England.  At the same time, he plans to sell Rita, Eric and Jane into slavery to a local tribe.

With Cheetah’s help, Tarzan escapes, and attempts to rescue Jane and her cousins.  Fry, meanwhile, meets an unpleasant end in a bog…

The domestication of Tarzan begins in earnest with Tarzan Escapes (1936), an enjoyable and solid entry in the MGM franchise. Not only is Jane wearing a much less revealing dress in this film, she and Tarzan are now playing ‘house.’

We see, early in the film, a vast tree-house compound that Tarzan has constructed for the family.  There’s an elephant-powered elevator to the house, for example, a water-wheel pumping pond water up to the kitchen area, and even a ceiling fan. Tarzan and Jane’s bedroom is reachable by a suspension bridge.

Home sweet home...in the jungle.

Clearly, the film series is moving towards the ideal of a “nuclear family,” and the next film in the cycle, Tarzan Finds a Son (1939) goes further down this road.

Alas, at the same time that Tarzan Escapes makes a Tarzan a family man with a family home (and an honest woman, I suppose, of Jane), it succumbs to formula.  

By now, many ingredients featured here have become quite familiar. 

For example, in all three of the Tarzan movies produced thus far, a character falls from the Great Escarpment’s mountains, and dies. In all three movies thus far, we hear Tarzan’s yell before we see him. 

And in all three films, we get a climactic encounter with a hostile/dangerous tribe. The creative formula or equation is locked in cement.

Unfortunately, Tarzan Escapes also features much stock footage, as though the production could not afford new animal encounter scenes.  Exhibit A is Tarzan’s battle with the crocodile in the river, from Tarzan and His Mate (1934). It is rerun in its entirety here.

Similarly, the footage of Tarzan killing an animal and cutting it for purposes of cooking meat, is also rerun footage, but from Tarzan the Ape Man.

Like all the MGM Tarzan movies, Tarzan Escapes also involves duplicitous white civilization. 

In this case, Eric and Rita are both liars. Although they are pursuing their acquisition of wealth (as was the case with Arlington in the previous film), Jane need not return home with them, as they claim.  

Fry is also duplicitous, seeking personal wealth. He tries to trap Tarzan and rid himself of Rita, Eric and Jane in the nastiest way imaginable; selling them into slavery to a local tribe.

Needless to say, the events of Tarzan Escapes probably don’t make Tarzan feel particularly good about white civilization. 

On every occasion of intersect, the white people try to trick Jane into leaving Tarzan, and kill or capture him so as to acquire that elusive and invisible thing they term “wealth.” It is no wonder that, at first, Tarzan forbids Jane to see the white people.  

They universally bring strife.

Some aspects of Tarzan Escapes are authentically impressive. I love the shot, for instance, that introduces Tarzan to the movie.  We move back, beyond a high tree branch, and see him silhouetted there, watching Eric, Rita and Fry from above. 

He has been there all along, observing their actions, but has remained silent. This shot beautifully captures his stealth, intelligence, and also his status as outsider.

I also love that shot of Fry dying in the bog, his hand slowly sinking below the surface.

Tarzan Escapes is still a top-flight adventure film, but one can't help but to long for a bit more of the Tarzan and Jane dynamic, and some fresh plot lines.

My favorite scene here is the one in which Jason and Tarzan reckon with saying goodbye, and Jane informs him exactly how many passages of the moon will occur in the sky before her return. Weismuller and O'Sullivan still make magic together.

Deep Focus Episode 6: The Man Trap (Star Trek)

 

60 Years Ago: Star Trek: "Dagger of the Mind" (November 3, 1966)

Stardate: 2715.1

On a routine mission beaming down supplies to the penal colony on Tantalus V, the Enterprise becomes embroiled in an unexpected crisis.

A mad-man, Simon Van Gelder (Morgan Woodward) -- formerly a doctor at the facility -- has smuggled himself aboard the starship during the cargo transfer, thus escaping the penal colony’s security force field.

Van Gelder is captured quickly, but the incident requires Captain Kirk (William Shatner) to conduct an investigation of the colony. He is sheepish about doing so, because he deeply respects the director of the Tantalus Colony: Dr. Tristan Adams (James Gregory), and his life’s work.

In particular, Adams has “revolutionized and humanized” the treatment of prisoners in the Federation, transforming prisons into “clean, decent hospitals for sick minds.”

While Mr. Spock attempts the Vulcan mind-meld on Van Gelder, to learn what happened to him on Tantalus.

Meanwhile, Kirk and ship’s psychiatrist, Dr. Helen Noel (Marianna Hill), beam down to the facility for an extended tour.

There, they learn from Adams that he has been experimenting with a rehabilitation beam -- “a neural neutralizer” that is supposed to help “incorrigibles.”

In fact, as Captain Kirk learns the hard way, the neural neutralizer is a method of control, and even torture.

The creative template for “Dagger of the Mind,” is rather obviously, and disappointingly, an installment from two weeks back: “What are Little Girls Made Of.”  

Consider: in both narratives, Kirk beams down to an isolated planetary location with a beautiful female medical practitioner at his side, and is experimented upon there by a deeply-respected individual who is using new technology to bend others to his will.  Kirk's idealism is shattered as he realizes that his idol is no paragon at all.

In “What are Little Girls Made Of,” Kirk and Nurse Christine Chapel visit the treacherous caves of Exo III, where the “Pasteur of Archaeological Medicine,” Dr. Roger Korby, is working on a plan to have androids infiltrate the highest levels of the Federation. Korby experiments on Kirk, making an android duplicate.  Fortunately, Kirk is able -- from the planet surface -- to send a message to Spock, so that the half-Vulcan first officer can intervene and save the day.

In “Dagger of the Mind,” Kirk and Dr. Helen Noel beam down to a penal colony protected by a force field, where a great humanitarian, Dr. Tristan Adams is controlling minds using the neural neutralizer. Kirk is forced to submit to the device. Meanwhile, on board the Enterprise, Spock uses the Vulcan mind-meld to determine what is happening on the surface, intervenes, and saves the day.

Sound familiar?

In both cases, deeply respected professional men go off the rails, and become monsters. Yet “What Are Little Girls Made Of” is a much superior episode because Korby possesses a reason to go off the rails. His consciousness has been transferred to an android body and his “humanity” didn’t survive the transfer.  He is no longer himself, and the message that viewers glean is that man is not meant for immortality, or mechanical bodies  Something vital -- something compassionate and beautiful -- is sacrificed.

There is a reason, or motivation, in other words for Korby's anti-social behavior. We pity him, because we understand he is not really evil, and not really,  even, at fault.

And Dr. Adams in "Dagger of the Mind?" 

There is no reason or motivation even suggested in the episode that such a deeply-respected humanist would change his nature, jeopardize and his reputation and life’s work, to act as the monster we encounter.  

His plan doesn’t even make sense, when one considers it. 

Dr Adams is going to experiment on Kirk and torture Kirk, a starship captain? 

Well, Dr. Noel will be able to testify what happened to him, even if Kirk can’t.  Or is Adams planning on keeping her prisoner...an act which would the Enterprise would surely respond to. 

If not, let’s assume Adams takes the extra step and tortures and plays with Noel’s memory too.  If this is his plan, he’s still taking an enormous risk that the Enterprise crew will discover the truth.  After all, even while in orbit of Tantalus for just a few hours, the crew has determined the identity and history of Van Gelder.  

Why on Earth would Adams not believe that the crew, especially with a Vulcan involved, could not discover what happened to its beloved captain?

The truth would come out, sooner rather than later.

More so, it simply isn’t clear what Adams has to gain by torturing people, particularly a starship captain. There is no plan in place here to take the neutralizer out into the universe and turn people into zombies, so it is difficult to understand, exactly what Adams’ agenda really is, besides being purely and simply evil.

Even assuming Adams is purely and simply evil -- that he has cracked under the pressure of his difficult vocation -- why would he torture and abuse his biggest fan? 

Captain Kirk treats him with tremendous deference and respect. He's looking for a reason, any reason, to exonerate a man he admires. And so what does Adams do?  He makes a friend and a supporter into an enemy.  

Instead of torturing Kirk under the neural neutralizer, Adams could have stuck with his story that the device is a failure, and the room is closed down.  He would simply not use it again, until Kirk left. Then, with the Enterprise long gone and the investigation closed, he could resume torturing the inmates at his leisure.

The character’s lack of real motivation makes Adams a poor guest start, and a poor villain.  Usually on Star Trek, when a character commits what is considered an evil act, his or her motives are examined. The agenda is understood, even if we don’t agree with it.  “Dagger of the Mind” fails that benchmark rather egregiously. Even assuming Adams is purely and simply nuts, his behavior makes no sense. It’s silly and self-destructive.

So not only is "Dagger of the Mind" structurally a rehash of “What are Little Girls Made Of,” it is an inferior one, in terms of the details.  

In a three week period, essentially, Star Trek has twice proposed that great, respected leaders in their field actually possess feet of clay, and can be transformed into monsters by their quest to push the limits of science. 

Again -- and I make no moral judgment or political preference about this -- the message is undoubtedly conservative in nature.  It is better not to broach a new frontier -- like the creation of androids or an experimental beam -- because doing so will make slaves or inferiors of the human race. 

Progress, in both cases, is arrested so that the status quo remains in effect.  I find it odd not that Star Trek would (wisely) question the pace of new technological development or the impact it might have on humanity, but that it would repeat this same idea over three episodes in three weeks.  "Miri" had the same theme of over-reaching scientists causing havoc.

If scientists are such dangerous, irresponsible folk, how did the Federation ever get to this point of space exploration? Isn't some advancement good?  Doesn't it sometimes improve the human condition?

I guess I'm saying it would be nice to see a little variation in the messaging. Let's have some conservative wisdom, but let's also talk about pushing boundaries too, occasionally.  Fortunately, next week's episode ("The Corbomite Maneuver") adopts that approach so Star Trek's message doesn't feel so consistently in favor of the status quo.

Sadly, “Dagger of the Mind’ is not made any more effective through its visualization. 

If you were Dr. Adams, hoping to keep your real work a secret, would you house your prisoners in a room with a giant vent shaft leading right to the power generator controls that feed into your security field?  

Again, you can’t assume there’s nowhere else to house Kirk and Noel, because this is a penal colony, presumably with housing units (cells?) for all the inmates.

But let's assume, for argument’s sake, that there is no other room to use but the one with the biggest vent shaft opening in cult-TV history.  

Would you not attempt to seal it off so your prisoners can’t use it?

I mean, it’s not like a starship captain and his psychiatrist aren’t going to notice a gigantic vent shaft right there, at eye level, in their quarters.

Although “Dagger of the Mind” makes no sense from a story or character perspective, and opts for easy ways out, in terms of narrative solutions (see: the giant vent shaft), it nonetheless does boast some strengths that should be note.

I like the idea, for instance of the “Devil’s Island” setting; a realm reachable only by elevator, and once a shield is de-activated.  In concept (but not design; again see: vent shaft) Tantalus should be an inescapable prison.  It is always fascinating to have characters cut off from the power and technology of the Enterprise, forced to manage their own escape.

Also, I admire the performances of Morgan Woodward and Marianna Hill. Both Van Gelder and Helen Noel are welcome additions to the Star Trek universe. Van Gelder must overcome his own mental demons to help the Enterprise crew, and Noel is truly ‘tantalizing,’ a gorgeous and smart love interest for Kirk.

Most notably, “Dagger of the Mind” introduces the Vulcan mind-meld to Star Trek, and for that development the episode deserves, certainly, to be remembered and lauded. Star Trek’s first season is such a great time of invention, especially for Vulcan culture, given that we see the nerve pinch in “The Enemy Within” and the mind-meld here.

It’s just a shame that Spock’s ability to mind-fuse with other beings is featured in a rehash story notably lacking in any other brand of invention.  

Also, it's intriguing to note how the concept of the Vulcan mind-meld being a very private, intimate matter falls by the wayside in franchise history. By the time of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991), Spock performs, without hesitation, a mind-meld on Valeris (Kim Cattrall) in front of the entire bridge crew!