1.7 — “What Are Little Girls Made Of?”
This episode is really cool–and the source of our purple “stalagmite” icon. The first thing you have to talk about is the design. The bold use of geometric shapes and light, and the hulking monster Ruk, remind me of the expressionist strain of Universal Horror movies from the 1920s and 30s, in films like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Son of Frankenstein. How appropriate, as this is our first “mad scientist” Star Trek episode. I really love the way the show changes from week to week, with a format flexible enough to do all kinds of stories, and the ambition to make it happen stylishly. I had some fears based on the picture y’all made me use to represent us, but I have to say this episode looks great. I love the costume choices (I understand Andrea’s was a favorite at conventions), the purple lighting and makeup, the adventurous camera angles, and the wild centrifuge android-making contraption. Bonus points for including a bottomless pit and the unusual verticality of sets for a television show. They even did great work on the remastered special effects. Everything in this episode is beautiful.
I was right! Ted Cassidy, who played Ruk, also played Lurch on The Addams Family (1964-1966). IMDB quotes Ted, who died in 1979, as saying that he’s not proud of any of his screen roles. “If I’m up for a part . . . I really worry what I’m going to be because they always make fellows like me the big dumb galoot, the oaf who doesn’t know anything, who trips over himself. We are apparently idiots, all big men. . . . You end up holding people, while the boss hits them in the face . . . Well, that kind of thing doesn’t appeal to me at all.” Who will cry for the big men? It may be stunt casting, but I love how huge his hand looks when it reaches out to throttle the redshirt.
Delightfully, this is a Nurse Chapel-centered episode. My delight turned to depression reading this nugget of trivia from IMDB: “The only episode to prominently feature Nurse Christine Chapel.” Nevertheless, we learn much about her, her scientific background, and the basis of her choice to serve on the Enterprise, which is different at the end of the episode than it is in the beginning. The acting of both Majel Barrett and Shatner in the teaser is masterful, adding volumes to the scripted dialogue.
So, did Korby have sex with an android? (Chapel asks, “Did you?”) The writers imply more darkness than is shown. “My legs were gone!” “I am now programmed to please you also.” I think the reference to “raw materials” in the colony world Korby hopes to infiltrate refers to the humans, not minerals and ores. And it doesn’t get much darker than referencing the Old Ones!
This episode has only grown on me since first viewing. The life of an android is tragedy. Andrea and Ruk must die because they are too human; Korby, because he is no longer human enough. Which he doesn’t know–how could he? We have the first redshirt deaths of the series. Two of them! And we learn Kirk has a brother. Good one.
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