Abraham Lincoln And Surak Of Vulcan Take Kirk And Spock Behind "The Savage Curtain!"

The Good: Basic idea is not bad, Yarnek is surprisingly cool, Moments of character
The Bad: Poor execution of pretty standard plot, Guest acting
The Basics: When the U.S.S. Enterprise meets Abraham Lincoln, he leads Kirk and Spock into a battle to illustrate what good and evil are to an alien race.


As Star Trek wound down, it seems at times like the producers knew it was on its way out. Creatively, the show seemed to sputter out near the end and there were moments that were derivative of earlier episodes, yet lacking in the punch or intrigue of the earlier ideas. The characters began to become blandly good and the actors seemed to relax some on their standards of pushing their performances in new and intriguing ways. Perhaps the best example of the late-hour lapses of genuine creativity came in one of the last three episodes, "The Savage Curtain."

The Enterprise has taken up orbit around a volcanic planet Excalbia when Abraham Lincoln appears on the main viewscreen and requests to come aboard. As Captain Kirk had been thinking of Lincoln - who happens to be a childhood hero of Kirk's - the captain opts to humor the being, who comes aboard and appears to be exactly who he says he is, despite the obvious reasons why he cannot be. Lincoln invited Kirk and Spock down to the planet surface and, much to their amazement, a habitable area forms. Beaming down, the trio meets Surak, the Vulcan father of logic, whom Spock respects, but refuses to acknowledge as anything other than the "Image of Surak." The quartet is confronted by Yarnek, a being made of living rock who introduces them to four of the galaxy's greatest villains: Genghis Khan, Colonel Green, Kahless and Zora. Yarnek wishes to study good and evil and sets them into a battle for survival with the Enterprise being leveraged against Kirk and Spock's winning!

"The Savage Curtain" bears a number of resemblances to "Arena" (click here for that review!) from the first season of Star Trek, with the only substantive difference being the number of people involved. Instead of a one on one battle with a little moral at the end, "The Savage Curtain" is a battle royale and the moral of the episode is somewhat twisted. Actually, the biggest detraction to this episode is its moral, especially considering how the episode gets there and that it is essentially the correct conclusion given the scenario.

Without giving away who wins in the great contest of good vs. evil that Yarnek compels Kirk and Spock to join in, the Excalbian ends up disappointed because good and evil ultimately use the same methods to achieve their goals. This is a ridiculous statement based on the mechanics of the specific contest Yarnek itself set up! In other words, given the resources at hand in the habitable section of the planet, the protagonists and antagonists both act essentially the same way, fashioning weapons out of what is available and fighting for survival against their adversaries.

"The Savage Curtain" is lame in virtually every one of its fight scenes. It's the Star Trek version of a cafeteria food fight with foam rocks and spears instead of milk cartons and gummy bears. The fight sequences and the strange absurdity to the absolutism of the pageant is enough to make the viewer cringe.

Honestly, "The Savage Curtain" could have been made better if even one of the villains had had an ounce of true villainy in him or her. While Surak takes the high road - like a Vulcan - and opts for pacifism and refuses to fight, it would have been great to see one of the adversaries do the same for a much more cynical reason. After all, if Kahless had been a Klingon like Klingons became once the franchise progressed, it would have been more than reasonable for him to say "There's no honor in killing these people!" Given that one of the villains is known for genocide, it would have been refreshing if they had said, "There's not enough of them for me to even bother with" or "eh, they're not the race I hate." But, alas, in "The Savage Curtain," Gene Roddenberry created a pretty monolithic front and the result is a somewhat monotonous episode.

Part of the reason for the episode feeling rather banal - other than the fact that fans of the series will have seen something remarkably like it before! - is that there is no genuine character development. For sure, we learn that Kirk has a childhood hero and he still gets giddy with the thought of meeting him in real life as an adult. Abraham Lincoln is not a bad choice for Kirk, but it's a pretty obvious and American ethnocentric one. Similarly, Spock's respect for Surak makes a great deal of sense. But as far as character goes, it's hard to say "The Savage Curtain" actually develops Kirk and Spock any. Indeed, if one were to guess which side of a fight involving good and evil the pair would end up on, most people would probably guess they represent the good elements. Therefore, they are put into a role where they are not truly challenged. If Kirk, Spock, Kahless and Colonel Green had been forced to wipe out the other four or else the Enterprise would be destroyed, that could have made the episode interesting and truly work!

The Abraham Lincoln character has more chance to express himself in a genuine fashion than Kirk and Spock do. Similarly, Colonel Green is characterized as conniving and manipulative in a way that makes him interesting, before he degenerates into simply throwing rocks.

What does work is Yarnek. Yarnek is one of the more intriguing alien villain-of-the-weeks that Star Trek created, though it is certainly one of the more neglected ones. It is a squat rock creature with claws that is just begging to be made into an action figure! Yarnek's eyes were lights that lit up when it talked and while it might sound '60's campy, it actually is a pretty well-executed costuming effect.

What is not well-executed is the bulk of the performances. "The Savage Curtain" relies on guest stars that are either lackluster (Barry Atwater's Surak) or window-dressing as in the case of Carol Daniels Dement's sneering villain Zora. While Lee Berger gives a fair enough performance as Abraham Lincoln, he does not quite sell the performance as convincing. In other words, Berger seems like a guy playing Abraham Lincoln instead of Abraham Lincoln. The difference is more than semantic; Berger's Lincoln lacks any sense of leadership qualities and it becomes difficult to believe in the reality of the Lincoln character as a result.

In a similar vein, William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy fail to bring their a-games to this episode. Instead, Shatner smirks through the opening and carries himself with a far too relaxed posture once he finds himself embroiled in the life or death struggle against the others. When the rocks star flying, Shatner actually looks like he might be having fun, which robs the scenes of their desired emotional resonance.

Leonard Nimoy seems to be going through the motions of acting the way Spock briefly takes up true pacifism with Surak. The usually dependable actor seems to sleepwalk his way through this performance and it takes a mediocre premise and sucks it down further.

Indeed, the only people who might like "The Savage Curtain" are the younger members of the audience, for whom the fight sequences might seem engaging and the lack of intellectual complexity to the episode might just be at the right speed for them. Fans of drama will expect more and fans of science fiction will likely be disappointed by the lack of a twist or any true plot (or at least one they haven't seen before). The only other people who might want to take in the episode are the Star Trek historians. After all, Kahless pops back up in Star Trek: The Next Generation's "Rightful Heir" and Surak appears in the fourth season of Star Trek: Enterprise. Devoted fans might enjoy seeing the contrast in characters.

But for the rest of us, this is a lot of talk about good and evil broken up by some of the silliest fight scenes to grace television ever.

[Knowing that VHS is essentially a dead medium, it's worth looking into Star Trek - The Complete Third Season on DVD, which is also a better economical choice than buying the VHS. Read my review of the third and final season by clicking here!
Thanks!]

5/10

For other Star Trek film and episode reviews, please check out my index page by clicking here!

© 2010, 2008 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.


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Star Trek Closes Season 1 With A Bang, The Parasitic Invasion From "Operation: Annihilate!"

The Good: Interesting idea, Moments of character and acting
The Bad: Some campy acting from the extras, Plot-convenient Vulcan anatomy
The Basics: In the final episode of Star Trek's first season, Kirk is sent to rescue his family from parasites that have decimated a colony's population and threaten to spread further!


Star Trek, ever on the verge of cancellation during its tenure on NBC, went out with a bang in 1967 when its first season ended with "Operation: Annihilate!", a bottle episode that once again puts the fate of the galaxy in the hands of James T. Kirk and the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise. In the recent wave of remasterings of episodes, "Operation: Annihilate!" fares well as one of the episodes with one of the fewest amount of alterations of any episode, which is interesting considering how the 1960s special effects were strained by having to create the flying parasites and yet they remain intact in the new version. As a result, the original version of "Operation: Annihilate!" seems to hold up well.

The U.S.S. Enterprise is investigating a rash of space madness that seems to have reached a colony planet, Deneva. Deneva, Kirk and his crew soon realize, may be suffering from the same outbreak of insanity as other planets nearby did before their populations all died, as witnessed by a Denevan flying his shuttle into the local star. Deneva is not just any colony, though, it is the home of Captain's Kirk's brother, nephew and sister-in-law. When the Enterprise arrives, Kirk's sister-in-law is agitated and infected with a parasite, as is Peter Kirk, Kirk's nephew. Dr. McCoy and Mr. Spock begin to study the parasites and determine that they are essentially pieces of a giant hive mind and that their use of host's bodies drives people insane. Unfortunately, while attempting to recover one of the parasites for study, Spock is infected and begins to descend into madness himself!

The basic alien in "Operation: Annihilate!" was not even a terribly new idea when the episode first aired. Robert A. Heinlein had written a book called The Puppet Masters over a decade prior (my review of the film is available by clicking here!) which had essentially the same idea behind it. The idea of parasitic aliens that infect a host and get them to do their bidding was something Star Trek - the franchise - would return to, though this was an important episode as it was the first time the franchise would go there. Still, the elements of an alien infection like this hive-mind creature were done far better in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Conspiracy."

"Operation: Annihilate!" is a decent hour of television, though. It is entertaining, has generally decent performances by the main cast, and a decent plot. The devil, though, is in the details and that is where the episode falls down a bit.

"Operation: Annihilate!" asks the viewer to suspend their disbelief such that we have to accept that Dr. McCoy's medical scans of Spock have never revealed something or that McCoy himself is completely incompetent. The only other explanation for the resolution to the episode is that the Vulcan people have managed to not share, for over a hundred years, a full sample of their physiology and biology with other members of the Federation, a premise that seems ridiculous. As a result, the end of the episode feels like a cop-out and a cheap resolution to plot events.

At least as bad as the lame plot bailout is the acting of guest actress Joan Swift, who plays Aurelan Kirk. Her performance is the epitome of horror/science fiction camp acting, with her flailing around mumbling incoherently as an "infected" person. Her performance is over-the-top and silly and it brings down the few scenes she is in. Similarly, the extras who make up the angry mob running through the street with comically oversized implements to hit people with look ridiculous and just seem silly when one watches the episode now.

What works, in addition to the mood of suspense that is effectively retained throughout the episode, is the character work for Captain Kirk and the acting performed by Leonard Nimoy. Captain Kirk is faced with two significant character problems in "Operation: Annihilate!" While dealing with a planetary epidemic, he must compartmentalize and not deal with his brother's death and he must come to terms with the possibility that Spock, infected by the parasite, may not be able to function as his trusted officer any longer. Kirk illustrates his professionalism with the first and his humanity by being truly conflicted over the latter. It makes the big, galactic events very personal and worthwhile to fans of the series on an individual and character level. It is gratifying to see the writer and director chose to prioritize those aspects of the story.

In order to make the idea of Spock going insane - and other changes later in the episode - believable, the episode rests heavily on the acting prowess of Leonard Nimoy. In "Operation: Annihilate!" Nimoy must portray Spock as tormented and seething from an outside force in a way that differentiates this instance from his prior "lose control" moments in the first season, like in "The Naked Time" and "This Side Of Paradise." As a result, Nimoy must play Spock as a man in constant pain, always in danger of losing control and lashing out at the people and things near him. He performs that masterfully and the apparent effort Spock is exerting to retain control from the moment he is attacked makes him still seem like Spock, so Nimoy's acting is very careful and well-delivered.

But more than that, "Operation: Annihilate!" succeeds because, even with its faults, it has a wonderful sense of mood. Unlike many episodes of Star Trek, this one has a very real sense of uncertainty to it. Kirk is forced to consider destroying an entire planet in order to prevent the parasites from spreading off-world and as the clock ticks down, that possibility seems more and more real! The tension throughout makes this a pretty thrilling action-adventure episode!

Fans of traditional drama are less likely to be excited by "Operation: Annihilate!" than fans of science fiction. While the episode makes an effort to include character development, its priority is often on advancing a strong science fiction plot. Fans of science fiction and horror are likely to enjoy the episode, though, for its mood and genre elements that are fairly well-executed.

[Knowing that VHS is essentially a dead medium, it's worth looking into Star Trek - The Complete First Season on DVD, which is also a better economical choice than buying the VHS. Read my review of the premiere season by clicking here!
Thanks!]

7/10

For other Star Trek reviews, please check out my index page!

© 2010, 2007 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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