(by Collin R. Skocik)
Kirk, Spock, and McCoy beam down to Sigma Iotia II to study, and hopefully correct, the contamination caused by a visit by the spaceship Horizon a century ago, before the Prime Directive went into effect. What they find is a civilization of machine gun-toting gangsters. It seems the Horizon left behind a book, Chicago Mobs of the Twenties, which the imitative Iotians adopted as their Bible. Now their civilization is divided into “territories” run by “bosses.” The people pay their percentages, and in return the bosses “take care” of them.
This episode is a pure delight. Watching Kirk and Spock try to adjust to this culture is hilarious—especially the ever-logical Spock, awkwardly trying to follow Kirk’s lead in adopting stereotypical gangster mannerisms. Kirk even adopts Edward G. Robinson gangster talk. “Yo, Enterprise, this is Koik.” He confuses the daylights out of poor Scotty. “Find the man at the other end of the blower and give him a ride to this flop.” “What?!” “Find the man on the other end of the phone and transport him to these coordinates. Can do, schweetheart?”
By the end, Spock gets it! “I would advise ya’s to keep dialin’, Okmyx.”
The two main criminal bosses, Bela Okmyx and Jojo Krako, are two of the most memorable guest characters in the series, and based on this episode alone, Anthony Caruso and Vic Tayback are two of my favorite actors. I’ve only seen Caruso in one other thing, an episode of Adventures of Superman, but I see Tayback all over the place, from The Monkees to Bonanza to All in the Family, and I understand he became famous as a bartender in Alice.
One of the highlights of this episode is Kirk’s escape ploy of confusing Okmyx’s goon, Kalo, by making up a card game that makes no sense: Fizzbin. One of these days, I’m going to have to sit down with a deck of cards and try to play Fizzbin. The cards are normal Earth cards, undoubtedly copied from books left by the Horizon. It’s hard to tell, even on blu ray, but it looks like the gangsters are playing with some type of alien currency. This terrific scene is marred only by Kirk and Spock’s reference to Beta Antares IV. There’s no such star as Beta Antares.
It’s odd that this light-hearted, funny episode has been the source of more arguments between me and my wife than any of the heavy-handed, moralistic episodes. Does Kirk do the right thing in interfering in this civilization? Is he setting things to right or just compounding the contamination? Well, my opinion is that he had to do something. I think he handles the situation as well as he can; he stops the civilization from its self-destructive spiral, but minimizes his interference by leaving the criminal bosses in charge and the gangster civilization intact. My wife sees it differently; she feels the Iotians have chosen the lifestyle of twentieth century gangsters, for whatever reason the system works for them, and Kirk has no business interfering.
However, like Spock, I would be interested in seeing Kirk explain to Starfleet Command “that a starship will be sent each year to collect ‘our cut’.”
Just about anyone who has driven a standard-transmission car can identify with Kirk’s pathetic attempt to learn to drive. Actually, it’s pretty impressive he does as well as he does, considering he’s never been in a “flivver” before! Even after eighteen years of driving a standard, I would still occasionally stall because I let up on the clutch too quickly.
At the end, Kirk has the Enterprise fire its phasers on stun at the battling gangs in the streets, providing a convincing demonstration of Federation force. It’s interesting that the Enterprise’s giant artillery phasers can be set on stun. I also wonder what it does to the phaser beams to pass through layers of atmosphere.
I cannot watch this episode without thinking of Pizzolis. They were a frozen dinner my parents used to buy, microwavable pizzas folded up into a sort of biscuit. By a strange coincidence, we had Pizzolis for dinner every time this episode aired.
It’s a shame Star Trek didn’t have the budget to make most of its aliens very alien. On so many planets, the inhabitants are just…human. McCoy will often make comments about their physiology being different from humans, but most of the time their physical appearance is just…human. Not only is it vanishingly unlikely that we’ll find life forms elsewhere in the universe that look even remotely human, but I have to think this episode would be even funnier if it was a civilization of some sort of bug-eyed aliens running around in ’20s-style suits and hats, carrying machine guns and spouting gangster movie clichés.
According to Kirk, Chicago Mobs of the Twenties was published in 1992. I’m very disappointed that in 1992 no one actually wrote such a book. Come on, Star Trek fans, let’s get with it! If we don’t do something to fulfill Star Trek’s future, we’ll all be wearing concrete galoshes!
There was a Star Trek video game put out by Nintendo in the ‘90s that was a sequel to this episode. Because McCoy absent-mindedly left his communicator behind, the Iotians had copied Federation technology, developed a super civilization, and destroyed themselves.
This review has been brought to you by Bang-Bang, the makers of the sweetest little automatic in the world!
(Collin R. Skocik is a fan of the Star Trek franchise and has written synopses of all 79 episodes of Star Trek’s original series and the first six Star Trek films.)
Principled Thoughts 