CAPTAIN KIRK PLAYS "MEET THE PARENTS" WITH SPOCK

Episode Title:  Journey to Babel 

Air Date: 11/17/1967

Written by Dorothy C. Fontana

Directed by Joseph Pevney

Cast: William Shatner as Captain James T. Kirk    Leonard Nimoy as Commander Spock             DeForest Kelley as Dr. Leonard H. McCoy AKA “Bones”              Nichelle Nichols as Lieutenant Nyota Uhura          Eddie Paskey as Lieutenant Leslie                 James X. Mitchell as Lieutenant Josephs                        Frank Da Vinci as unnamed Vulcan Aide          Bill Blackburn as Lieutenant Hadley         Majel Barrett as Nurse Christine Chapel          Walter Koenig as Ensign Pavel Chekov                 Jerry Catron as Crewman Montgomery Jeannie Malone as Purple-Skinned Delegate            Mark Lenard as Ambassador Sarek                     Jane Wyatt as Amanda Grayson           William O'Connell as Thelev           John Wheeler as Ambassador Gav           Reggie Nalder as Ambassador  Shras                   Billy Curtis as Small Copper-Skinned Ambassador             Russ Peek as unnamed Vulcan Aide                        

Ships: USS Enterprise NCC-1701, Galileo NCC-1701/7, unnamed Orion ship

Planets:  Vulcan, Babel

My Spoiler filled summary and review:  The episode begins with the USS Enterprise providing a ferry service to delegates that will be attending a conference on a neutral planet named Babel.  The conference is to decide the admission of the planets of the Coridan system to the Federation, which are rich in dilithium but poorly defended.  Its dilithium stuffed surfaces has led to many competing claims to these planets some of them from fellow Federation members.  Coridan itself wishes to be part of the Federation as a full-fledged members.

Kirk meets Spock's Mom and Dad

As the shuttlecraft Galileo drops of the Vulcan Ambassador and his human wife. Kirk, Spock, and McCoy go down in dress uniforms to meet the couple and there is a funny moment where McCoy tries to learn the Vulcan hand salute.  The Ambassador introduces himself as Sarek and his wife Amanda Grayson.  Sarek seems to rudely blow off Spock as first officer extends the traditional greeting, and refuses to have Spock be his tour guide. Kirk, taken back by Sarek’s refusal to have Spock as his tour guide, asks his first officer if he like to go down to the planet to see parents before they leave Vulcan.  Spock then informs his Captain that the Ambassador and his wife are in fact his parents.  (More on that point in my “additional thoughts” section.)

Kirk decides to give the Sarek and his wife a tour himself and in the engineering room tries to spark up a conversation between the father and son, however Sarek cuts it short.  After the two Vulcans leave Amanda explains to Captain Kirk the source of the trouble. Spock went off to Starfleet instead of his father’s chosen occupation through the Vulcan Science Academy.  Kirk tries to point out that Spock can better explore the universe in Starfleet, but Amanda says that Sarek despises the potential for violence.  So he will no longer speak to Spock.

McCoy with Spock's parents

Kirk hosts a feast in the officers’ lounge for the dignitaries and two important things happen while they are there.   The first is the Tellarite Ambassador Gav demands to know Sarek’s position on the issue of Coridan.  Sarek refuses to tell him anything to which Kirk backs him up.  Also we have Dr. McCoy meeting with Spock’s parents.  We learn from McCoy’s questions that Sarek is over 100 and retired relatively young.  More importantly McCoy learns from Amanda that Spock, as a child, had a sehlat that she describes as a type of teddy bear.  This delights McCoy until Spock informs him that these “teddy bears” are alive and have fangs. 

Sarek not getting long with the Tellarite Ambassador 

Later on the bridge, Spock discovers that the Enterprise is being followed by a mystery ship.  It matches no known configurations of anything they have seen before.   It passes them at warp 10 but does not fire.  The ship is going to become and ongoing annoyance for the rest of the episode.

In their quarters Sarek chastises Amanda for telling personal stories about Spock.  Amanda is rather pleased at Sarek’s defense of their son.  She even tells him that she believes he is now proud of Spock.  Sarek says his feelings are immaterial and logically a first officer of a Starfleet vessel is entitled to respect, regardless of their relationship.  Sarek returns to the reception where he is once again confronted by Gav, which ends in a physical altercation that Kirk breaks up. 

Sarek defending his son to Amanda's surprise

A security officer later discovers that Gav has been murdered.  The method of death was identified by Mr. Spock as tal-shaya, a Vulcan fighting technique.  Spock bases this on the precision in how the neck of Gav was broken.  Given their earlier encounters suspicion falls on Sarek.  Captain Kirk and Spock then confront Sarek.  Sarek actually agrees that he is mostly likely suspect, and he was off mediating by himself at the time.  It looks bad as Sarek has no alibi; however he then has a heart attack.

Dead

So it turns out Sarek does have an alibi and a good one.   Sarek isn’t as healthy as he let on.  He has a heart condition, hence his earlier retirement, and he off having another heart attack while the Tellarite was being murdered.  McCoy confirms this and confirms that Sarek needs heart surgery now.   McCoy can do it, in theory, but they are going to need a blood donner.  Fortunately Spock is a match but he needs to take a drug that will make him produce more blood.  This is will take Spock out of active duty for a little while almost like an organ donner.  Spock of course will do it.

In the corridors of the Enterprise Kirk is attacked by the Andorian aide Thelev , who we later learn is the actual murder.  He isn’t fighting an overweight Tellarite now, Thelev is combating James T. Kirk one of the greatest fighters in the galaxy.  Thelev finds himself outmatched fighting an opponent with such speed and grace that he needs to cheat.  He pulls a knife and with pure luck happens to connect and stabs Kirk right in the back.  A lesser fighter would have then fallen and been another murder victim but this is Captain Kirk.  Even with his stab wound he manages to beat his opponent unconscious and then calls for security to take him away. 

A sick Sarek, can't be the killer

With Kirk now recovering from his injury in sickbay Spock realizes that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.  With the Captain undergoing treatment it is up to him to assume command and defend the ship against the unknown attacker.  His father will therefore have to wait and that means he will most likely die. His mother tires to argue from logic which fails because Spock is already convinced of his logic.  She then tries to appeal to his emotion which is useless. 

                

Kirk and his would-be-murder

Kirk realizes that in order to save Sarek he needs to go back on duty and convince Spock that he is fine.  Kirk gets up, gets dressed, and heads to the bridge.  Spock is convinced and goes down to sickbay.  Kirk is then about to call Scotty to the bridge to take over when the Enterprise is then attacked.  Kirk decides to stay and fight wounded.  Their opponent is speedy and all the Enterprise’s phaser shots miss.  The crew learns from their security division that their prisoner is not really Andorian and has been communicating to the other ship with a device in his fake antennae.  Kirk orders him brought to the bridge, and Thelev gets to watch his side lose.  Kirk decides to play possum.  He orders the ship to cut power and act like they are dead.  As the enemy ship goes in for the kill the Enterprise launches a surprise attack of photon torpedoes crippling their opponent’s ship.   Kirk was about to have the other ship boarded but then it self-destructs.  Thelev said they were under orders to do that it was a suicide mission from the start. With that Thelev dies having taken a suicide pill from before. 

While Kirk is winning the space battle McCoy is winning the medical one

While Kirk had his impressive space naval victory, McCoy completed Sarek’s surgery all while the ship was shaking under attack. Spock uncovers that this was all an operation conducted by the Orion Syndicate trying to start a war and sell dilithium.  The reason the ship seemed so powerful is they were giving all their energy to the attacks with no attention of returning.  When all was said and done Kirk, Spock, and Sarek were all in sickbay recovering and the family from Vulcan had a fun family together, and McCoy gets to tell everyone to be quite and lay down happy with the fact that he got the episodes last word.  This is the only time in Star Trek that I can remember that a character seems to break the fourth wall when they are not doing a log entry.  I assume he was talking Chapel.     

Additional thoughts: So earlier this year the crew of the Enterprise discovers that Mr. Spock had a betrothed who he never mentioned before; and now after preparing for this conference, which must have been weeks, Spock knew his parents were coming and never bothered to tell anyone.  I am sensing a pattern.  Spock has family members that he does not want talk about or even acknowledge.  To be fair he did mention that he had a father and mother and gave their occupations however he had to work up to that.  When we first see Kirk and Spock together Spock says he had a human ancestor.  I suppose one’s parents are their most immediate ancestor but when one talks about an ancestor we assume you mean ancient grandparent with too many ‘greats’ to count.

Amanda, a surprise Spock family member and not the last

One of the great misconceptions about Vulcans is they don’t have emotions.  They have emotions they just maintain absolute control over them.  We have at this point of the series seen Mr. Spock lose control of his.  In “The Naked Time” the virus caused him to confront his guilt of never telling his mother that he loved her.  In “This Side of Paradise” the spores allow him to openly express love and infatuation.  The episode “Amok Time” his pon farr erodes his control.  

While Mr. Spock seems to display emotion only when something causes him to lose control Sarek, despite his stoic demeanor, seems to actually driven by his emotional state while pretending to driven just by logic.  For example the first thing we learn about Sarek is that he engaged emotional blackmail of his son by cutting him out of his life trying to make him quit Starfleet and attend the Vulcan Science Academy.

Sarek a Vulcan led by emotions that he pretends is logic

Being driven by his pride and emotions isn’t something that Sarek has limited to his son, but he also applies it to his career as well.  He undertakes this mission to Babel knowing that he is very ill. Yet because of his pride and desire for privacy, he does not bring a Vulcan physician that would be familiar with condition, nor does he bring a backup diplomat who could take over if his health becomes an issue.  Even worse when suspicion falls upon him for potentially being the murderer of Gav, instead of informing Kirk and Spock that he was off having a heart attack at the time of the murder that Dr. McCoy could probably verify with a quick exam, he lies and says he was meditating in private.  Instead of admitting weakness he allows himself to continue to be a suspected murder, slowing down the potential of catching the real killer who was still on the loose at this time.  Not to mention failing to get justice for the family of Gav.  Then it all became pointless because he had a heart attack right in front of everyone so his privacy didn’t even last long enough to justify the deception assuming you ever could.

This episode was particularly insightful to the inside workings of the mind of Mr. Spock.   Throughout the series we have seen Mr. Spock a challenge by various members of the Enterprise crew on his outsider status of being a Vulcan. Sometimes is done playfully like with Mr. Spock’s rivalry with Dr. McCoy, conversations with Captain Kirk or even Lt. Uhura.  However there are other times where it’s more of insidious attack like Stiles in “The Balance of Terror ” or Boma in “The Galileo Seven.”  In this episode however we learn through his mother that when he was a child he was harassed by other Vulcan children for being half human.  Not only was he verbally harassed but he was often bullied and beaten by his classmates.  Since Vulcans control their emotions as adults he does not have to worry about unapologetic harassment and humiliation, however there is always the lingering thought that they do not truly accept him.  We learned in “Amok Time” that Mr. Spock in his voyages on the Enterprise has become something of a legend on Vulcan. 

The irony is that it took him leaving Vulcan to truly become accepted amongst his people.  That probably was not part of the plan but for it was also how he became accepted by his own inner psyche.  As a child Spock was labeled a human by Vulcans and as an adult when he surrounds himself with humans he is labeled a Vulcan.  This is the reason why he left Vulcan and this is the reason why he chooses to be among humans.  In “I, Mudd” Mr. Spock told Dr. McCoy that he didn’t know of any other place in the universe where he was much more needed than on a starship full of irrational humans.  However it is not their need to why he chose to be there, but his own.  Only in being surrounded by humans can he ever feel Vulcan.  

In this sense Spock always wins his conflicts with Dr. McCoy.  For whenever Dr. McCoy starts on his whole teasing of Mr. Spock on his Vulcan characteristics he only pleases Mr. Spock in ways that he can't understand.  Mr. Spock must get in the small arguments with Dr. McCoy on purpose for his own psychological therapy.  No one makes Spock feel more Vulcan than Dr. McCoy.

                    On a side note this is a great Captain Kirk episode as well.  We could see Kirk engage in hand-to-hand combat with the assassin and win despite the fact that the assassin stabbed him with a knife.  We could see a weakened Kirk take control of the bridge when the ship is under attack by a strange and foreign adversary and prevail in that situation as well.  Kirk kicks butt all the way through.

Kirk to take command despite injury

Despite the fact that he’s talked about a lot Mr. Scott never makes it apparent since entire episode.   To be fair there wasn’t much for him to do; they were only going to a conference there were no great feats of engineering that needed to be done on screen.  However I could see a fan forgetting and thinking he was in this episode is seeing how often his name is dropped.

When I was watching this once with my father, who himself has had two heart surgeries, he found McCoy’s describing the condition and necessary steps to fix it absurd.  Particularly, the part about needing so much blood.  I tried to explain to my father that they are aliens so it is probably different.   He is probably right about the show’s writers not really researching the subject.

Meeting the many aliens of the United Federation of Planets

This episode has long been a fan favorite and he can easily see why there a lot of fun and interesting things that happen.  This is an episode that truly begins to explore what it means to be in the United Federation of Planets.  We meet all sorts of different aliens for the first time and we get to watch them interact amongst each other.  As Star Trek grows this is something we see much more of but the foundation is here.   And of course that final scene is one of the great scenes of the franchise.  With Kirk, Spock, and Sarek all laid up in sick bay and McCoy trying to control everything so his patients can focus on getting better. There is a Star Trek novel I once read that took place shortly after this episode and scene with the three patients was continued.  I can’t remember which book it was however.

FINAL GRADE 5 of 5