This is one of my posts where I “review” Star Trek episodes. I will be giving each one a star rating. I sometimes will make some comments about non-political parts of them that I like or don’t like. I’ll sometimes use the issues raised in the episode to discuss similar issues in real life. And I will sometimes simply high-light the progressive politics of ST. ST is in-line with the three original themes of this blog, as I explain in the first ST post where I offer some general thoughts about ST.
I have been more or less ignoring this- the need for me to become familiar with The Original Series. In general I don’t like much of what I’ve seen. In any case, I am now watching it and will be doing reviews of those episodes. I will be giving pretty low scores, probably no higher than three stars out of five- I just don’t like TOS.
Lastly. multi-culturalism is such a pervasive theme in ST that I only comment on it when it goes beyond the norm (i.e. inter-species partners).
“What Are Little Girls Made Of?” See this for a plot summary.
There is one bit of politics. The android Kirk calls Spock a “half-breed” in reference to the fact that Spock’s father is Vulcan and his mother is human. Spock says it was unsophisticated. I don’t like that definition, because it implies that “sophisticated” (i.e. fashionable) people don’t use such offensive terms, only completely backwards people use them (obviously "Kirk's" statement is backwards, but I'm sure there are people who are in some ways sophisticated but nonetheless use such language).
“Miri” See this for a plot summary.
A non-political episode. I give it two stars out of five.
“Dagger of the Mind” See this for a plot summary.
There are some political aspects to this.
First, Spock comments on humanity, war, and crime: “Interesting- you Earth people glorify organized violence for forty centuries, but you imprison those who employ it privately.” I don’t know exactly what he meant, but it is often inconsistent for people to offer unwavering support to the State while it wages an unjust war, and on the other hand, support imprisoning people for often minor acts of violence. The problem isn’t so much the latter (I think it usually makes sense to put violent criminals in jail), as it is the former (sometimes-often it is justified and helpful to criticize one’s nation’s military).
At one point Kirk refers to prison inmates as having “sick minds.” Depending on which crimes are involved, I would be okay with this or offended by it. If they’re saying that people who steal have sick minds, that’s probably nonsense most/all of the time. On the other hand, it could be that since poverty, oppression etc. have been eliminated, the only people in prisons are some of the people with mental health issues; who need and receive treatment in prison.
Then there is the general theme of the episode, a horrible form of “treating” prisoners.
I give it one star out of five.
“The Corbomite Maneuver” See this for a plot summary.
There’s only one political aspect in this episode, and it’s not an example of progressive politics in ST. Kirk complains that he was assigned a female yeoman. In general, although it made some progress in this area, The Original Series is fairly-very sexist.
I give this episode three stars out of five.
“The Menagerie” parts 1 and 2 See this and this for a plot summary.
There were three political aspects to this episode:
1) We learned that only one very specific crime carries the death penalty, which is close enough to ending it that a good statement is made about it.
2) There is some talk about slavery.
3) This episode largely contains footage from the original pilot of ST about the Enterprise 13 years earlier, when Captain Pike was in charge of Enterprise. His Executive Officer is a woman. Sometimes it seemed like she was too... passive (or something like that) as a leader, but overall she was a good officer and that makes an important statement about equality for women.
I give this episode two stars out of five.
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