(by Collin R. Skocik)
The star Beta Niobe is about to supernova. The Enterprise travels to Beta Niobe’s only planet, Sarpeidon, once the home of a thriving civilization and now mysteriously, devoid of intelligent life. Kirk, Spock, and McCoy find only one person on the planet, alone in a library—Mr. Atoz (what a perfect name for a librarian!), who has saved everyone on the planet by sending them backward in time through a device called the Atavachron. Kirk hears a scream through the time portal and impetuously rushes through it, finding himself in a 16th century-type world where he is accused of witchcraft. Spock and McCoy follow, ending up in the planet’s ice age.
We don’t learn a whole lot about Sarpeidon’s history—it had an ice age, there was a time its people believed in witches and spirits and wore Three Musketeers clothing, and it was once ruled by a tyrant named Zor Khan. But still, that’s a lot more information about a planet’s history than we usually get in the course of an episode. The strategy of escaping the destruction of a world by traveling into its past is problematic—and not just because of the risk of changing history. No, the real problem is, you’re not saving the civilization. Sarpeidon is coming to an end. Once that nova occurs, it’s all over, and even if you save yourself by traveling to your favorite place and time in its past, that knowledge is going to haunt you. There’s no future, absolutely nothing for your civilization to strive for. There’s an incontrovertible ending. So what’s the point of all the rich history of the planet? That’s got to hang over you for the rest of your life. On the other hand, there’s no particular need to worry about changing history; in fact, you might want to change history to ensure that by the time of the nova the planet has a fleet of spaceships that can transport the people to safety.
Kirk’s storyline in which he is accused of speaking to unseen spirits (it doesn’t do him any good that he talks to a disembodied voice named “Bones”!) is fascinating, and I wish they had done more with it. But he escapes fairly quickly with the help of a prosecutor who has also come backward in time through the Atavachron. We spend more time on Spock and McCoy’s ordeal in the ice age, where Spock grows increasingly irrational—he falls in love with Zarabeth, a woman exiled to the frozen waste by Zor Khan. He violates Vulcan tradition by eating meat. He grows irritable and jealous. He even tries to kill McCoy. “The Vulcan you know won’t exist for another five thousand years,” McCoy tells him. “You’re reverting into your ancestors, five thousand years before you were born!”
In “The Immunity Syndrome,” Spock could feel the death of the four hundred Vulcans aboard the starship Intrepid. Apparently there is a permanent telepathic link between all Vulcans. Having traveled to a time before Surak, before the discipline of logic, when Vulcans were “warlike barbarians,” Spock loses his self-control. He becomes, in effect, a Romulan! At one point, McCoy says, “Listen to me, you pointed-eared Vulcan—“ Spock grabs him and says, “I don’t like that! I don’t think I ever did, and now I’m sure!” A lot of McCoy’s insults toward Spock are surprisingly racist. What if he routinely called Sulu “You slanted-eyed, yellow-skinned Jap!” Really not acceptable. But as a Vulcan, Spock has, up to now, had the discipline not to take offense. Really, though Kirk should have stepped in and stopped such comments—or, more truthfully, McCoy ought to know better than to say such things in the first place. Of course, this is the twenty-third century, when people don’t fear words—but it’s also the century of tolerance, where people delight in diversity.
I’m curious about how Mr. Atoz “prepares” people through the Atavachron. People’s cell structure and brain patterns are altered to make life natural in the new era to which they travel. Therefore neither the prosecutor nor Zarabeth can return to the present—if they do, they will die. Since Kirk, Spock, and McCoy have not been prepared, they can only live for a few hours in the past. But they’ve traveled into the past numerous times before, and spent a great deal of time there. Especially in “The City on the Edge of Forever,” in which they spent days, if not weeks, on 1930s Earth. There must be something different about time travel through the Atavachron than the other methods of time travel we’ve seen.
Although Vulcan is a hot and arid planet, and Spock is equipped to deal with heat but has difficulty with cold, he has no problems handling the extreme cold of Sarpeidon’s ice age. It’s McCoy who collapses with frostbite. I suppose that’s because of Vulcan stamina. The cold probably bothers him, but he is able to handle it.
The final shot in the episode is both sad and beautiful, with Beta Niobe swelling up as the Enterprise warps away, and Sarpeidon, with all its rich history, glowing white-hot and disappearing. It’s one of the cases where I feel the original visual effect works better than the enhanced CGI of the remastered version. The new effect is more technically accurate, but the scene is too crowded to absorb the emotion of watching the planet vaporized.
In the 1970s, the animated Star Trek did an episode in which the Enterprise travels through the Beta Niobe supernova into a parallel universe where time flows backwards. I suspect this is related to the Atavachron.
Zarabeth is played by Mariette Hartley, who I’ve seen in scads of films, including Marooned, in which she played Gene Hackman’s wife and appeared alongside Nancy Kovack (Nona in “A Private Little War). Mr. Atoz is played by Ian Wolfe, who also appeared as Septimus in “Bread and Circuses,” as well as numerous films and TV series from the 1950s to the 1980s, often as a priest or minister.
Although we hear Scotty’s voice over the communicator, Kirk, Spock, and McCoy are the only Star Trek regulars to appear in this episode. It’s also the only episode in which we never see the bridge of the Enterprise, or any Enterprise interiors.
(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 