Saturday Morning Cult-TV Blogging: Star Trek: The Animated Series: "The Practical Joker" (September 21, 1974)

STARDATE: 3183.3

The U.S.S. Enterprise conducts a routine geological survey of “Type 4” asteroids, but comes under surprise attack from Romulan forces. 

The Romulan commander accuses the Federation starship of violating its territorial space, and Captain Kirk (William Shatner) engineers a dangerous escape by ordering the Enterprise through an “unidentified energy field” of “highly-charged subatomic particles.”

Although Kirk’s ship and crew are safe from further Romulan attack, his ship begins to suffer from a series of strange practical jokes.  Spock (Leonard Nimoy) ends up with black-eye circles on his lids after gazing through his library computer hood, and the food dispenser throws a pie in Scotty’s (James Doohan’s) face.

Meanwhile, Bones (DeForest Kelley), Uhura (Nichelle Nichols) and Sulu (George Takei) become trapped in the Enterprise’s rec room, which is able to create any environment known to man by rearranging matter and energy.  Soon, they find themselves moving from one environment to the next, including a blizzard, in an attempt to stay alive.

Kirk and Spock soon realize that an alien entity from the space cloud -- a practical joker -- now inhabits the Enterprise’s main computer.  Worse, the Romulans are back!

The Star Trek: The Next Generation plot-device of the “holodeck malfunction” gets its first try-out in this Star Trek: The Animated Series episode from 1974. 

In “The Practical Joker,” the audience witnesses members of the Enterprise crew visiting the so-called “rec room,” and there’s even an early version of the control arch seen in various frames (though it is a stand-up console, and not a door-arch.)

I’ve always considered the holodeck to be a writer’s crutch on The Next Generation, so I’m not thrilled to see it here, but this episode undeniably forecasts the use of the plot device (and the idea of crew men being caught in a blizzard, a notion re-visited in “The Big Goodbye.”)  In a sense, this plot-line actually goes back to Original Trek, and the episode “Wolf in the Fold.”  There, a non-corporeal life form (Jack the Ripper) “possessed” the ship’s computer.  Virtually the same thing happens here, except the entity is not evil, merely naughty.

Impressively, “The Practical Joker” also manages a budget-buster that only the format of animation could have achieved and afforded in this era.  One scene reveals the Enterprise crew experiencing weightlessness when the alien being begins to play with the starship’s gravity control.  Star Trek fans would have to wait for Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991) to see a starship crew (Klingon in this case…) rendered weightless in live-action..

Less enjoyable by far is the underwhelming depiction of the Romulans in “The Practical Joker.”  In this story, they attempt to start a war with the Federation, even though the Enterprise never wandered into the Empire’s territory.  In “The Survivor,” the Romulans used a similar gambit, with the same lack of success.  It seems odd that the Romulans of the Animated Series are so hell-bent on luring the Federation into a war, and using the Enterprise as the flash-point of such a conflict. 

Finally, the episode’s valedictory conceit, that the alien cloud/practical joker should be transferred to an enemy, the Romulans, is a clear reflection of the resolution in the original “The Trouble with Tribbles.”

Next week: “Albatross.”