(by Collin R. Skocik)
The Enterprise travels backward in time to the year 1968 to do historical research, to find out how the planet survived the year 1968. (1968 was a bad year, for sure, but I’d be more interested in how we survived 2017!) Upon arrival, the transporter intercepts a powerful beam that’s transporting a man from a distant part of the galaxy. This man is Gary Seven, a human agent who has been trained by mysterious, unseen aliens to keep Earth from destroying itself. Escaping from the Enterprise, Seven teams up with 20-year-old secretary Roberta Lincoln in order to sabotage the launch of a suborbital nuclear warhead, with Kirk and Spock in pursuit.
If this episode doesn’t really seem like Star Trek, it’s because it’s not. With Star Trek’s cancellation virtually certain, Gene Roddenberry decided to see off the second, and likely final, season of the show with a backdoor pilot to another series, Assignment: Earth, which would have followed the adventures of Mister Seven and Roberta Lincoln as they would use his advanced alien technology to solve the crisis of the week. It’s impossible to tell from this one episode whether the series would have been any good, but fortunately or unfortunately, it never got off the ground.
From a Star Trek perspective, it’s an odd episode. All the dire peril associated with time travel that was hammered in in “Tomorrow is Yesterday” and “The City on the Edge of Forever” is cast into the wind in this frivolous mission to do historical research. Kirk and Spock are reduced to hapless pursuers, spending the hour chasing our real hero, Mister Seven, as he sets off to accomplish his mission. The prevailing sentiment in Star Trek has always been optimism that humanity is ingenious enough and good enough to solve our problems and forge ahead in peace and create the wonderful world of the twenty-third century—but now we see that only continuous alien intervention can save us from our reckless selves (which, judging from modern events, is probably true!).
Robert Lansing has magnetic screen presence, and in this single episode makes Mister Seven an intriguing character who you’d like to learn more about. Teri Garr, however, as wonderful an actress as she is, is pretty wasted as an airheaded ditz. For what was very nearly Star Trek’s last episode, it has to be said it’s disappointing to see our beloved Star Trek characters reduced to guest roles in another show, and rather ineffective ones at that. Kirk has never before or since seemed so helpless or indecisive.
A number of Star Trek fan fictions have pegged this episode as the point at which real history and Star Trek history diverged, but even as it is, many aspects of this episode bear little resemblance to the real world.
For one thing, the whole episode is built on a faulty premise, that one of the biggest problems of the era was orbiting nuclear warheads. That was not, nor has it ever, been a problem. It’s strictly against international treaty. Unless something’s been done in secret, not a single nuclear warhead has ever been launched into orbit.
The warhead launched in this episode is said to be a “suborbital nuclear platform.” Wow! Is that really a good idea? After two years producing a TV series about space travel, surely you’re not telling me these folks don’t know the difference between a suborbital and orbital flight! A suborbital nuclear platform is going to come right back down! No, not a good idea. Not at all.
But if you are going to launch a suborbital nuclear warhead, which you shouldn’t do…why in the world would you launch it on a Saturn V rocket??? The Saturn V was built for one purpose, and one purpose alone: to send men to the Moon! Your suborbital warhead is just a tad overpowered, no?
There’s no such place as McKinley Rocket Base, but the launch site we see on screen sure looks like Kennedy Space Center. I know KSC because I’ve spent a pretty goodly portion of my time there for the last ten years. And never, never would a nuclear warhead be launched from there. Well, it wouldn’t be launched from anywhere, but the point is, in 1968, Kennedy Space Center was used for the launches of the Apollo Program. All unmanned spacecraft were, and are to this day, launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.
Mister Seven gets out to the launch pad by hiding in the trunk of the launch director’s car. I can’t for the life of me imagine why the launch director would drive out to the pad right before launch. What could he possibly see there that an army of engineers who have been going over the thing for weeks wouldn’t see? Isn’t he needed in the launch control center anyway? You know, to direct the launch?
I’m sorry if these concerns seem pedantic, but it seems to me it’s just as easy to get these things right, considering Gene Roddenberry’s close relationship with NASA and the Air Force. I mean, if I know these things, it’s kind of inexcusable if no one on the Star Trek team did. And I’m betting many viewers know them too.
Kirk and Spock’s interference in Mister Seven’s mission results in the warhead detonated at an altitude of 104 miles. Spock says that the Enterprise record tapes show that a nuclear warhead was indeed detonated 104 miles up and resulted in “a stronger international agreement against the use of such weapons” (never mind that such a treaty already existed). So Kirk, Spock, and Seven agree that everything happened the way it was supposed to. But if the Enterprise changed history, wouldn’t its historical record tapes change? The way Marty McFly and his brothers disappeared from his photo? Perhaps not; even if history is changed, the Enterprise would still come from the original timeline.
At the end, Roberta catches a glimpse of Seven’s cat, Isis, in what I assume is her true form—a feline woman wearing a costume resembling Catwoman’s. Is Isis actually one of the aliens, along to observe Seven’s mission? Presumably the Assignment: Earth series would have gone into that. But we’ll never know.
At the end of its second season, Star Trek was removed from the TV schedule. Although it was not officially canceled, this was a pretty good sign that NBC did not plan on renewing it. This resulted in what I believe is still to this day the largest letter-writing campaign in television history. Star Trek was renewed for a third season—but was moved to Fridays at 10pm, the death slot. There was no doubt that the third season would be the last. Considering that most of my favorite TV series tend to run just one or two seasons—if that—I should be thankful that Star Trek got three full seasons. Still, the older I get, the more it seems like an all-too-brief run.
But here, at the point at which the show came so close to being canceled, it’s nice to know that we still have lots of Star Trek left to go.
(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 