Wanderlust

2.7 -”Catspaw”

2.7 -”Catspaw”

Plot: Spookiness! A dead body is beamed back to the Enterprise and an emanating voice warns the ship that it must leave, for it is cursed. Kirk, Spock, and McCoy beam down to rescue the rest of the landing party and find a Halloween castle, skeletons, and a highly suspicious-looking black cat. What does Korob the wizard want from them? Does his colleague Sylvia have a different agenda? Will they ever be allowed to leave?

Thoughts: A very special Halloween episode, “Catspaw” was first broadcast on October 27, 1967. I get a kick out of it. This was one of the more memorable episodes from watching TOS as a kid long, long ago.

The rather thin excuse that the macabre images were plucked from the crew’s subconscious gives the producers license to pile the Halloween on thick. The reference to the Old Ones comes from H.P. Lovecraft, however. Teleplay writer Robert Bloch also worked in a shout out to Lovecraft in his first season episode, “What Are Little Girls Made Of?”

What’s not so great is the lack of motivation for Korob and Sylvia. What’s their objective? Why are they there at all? If they don’t want to be found, surely they have better ways of hiding, even if their understanding of human psychology is so poor that they think the warning in the teaser has a chance of working.

I am a fan of the special effects used to make the cat look gigantic. Although it doesn’t look “real,” it looks plenty real enough to get the point across. In our house we have conversations fairly often about how screwed we would be if the relative sizes of the cats and humans were suddenly reversed.

Poor Sulu didn’t even get a chance to talk. Chekhov in his wig looks terrible–this was the first episode produced of second season, so they were still working on his look (and he was still growing out his hair). I don’t have too much else to say–this episode is fun, but also exemplifies a new willingness in second season to go for far out groovy concepts, rather than chasing as much after realism. Second season is a little less Frankenstein and a little more Bride of Frankenstein.

I do like the ending bit with the revelation of the true forms of Korob and Sylvia.

2.5 out of 5 spooooky torture chambers!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catspaw_(Star_Trek:_The_Original_Series)

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7 responses to “2.7 -”Catspaw””

  1. Bill Testerman Avatar
    Bill Testerman

    I’m with you that this is mainly a fun one. Robert Bloch said he was specifically asked to write a Halloween episode, so I think this should be seen in that way. I thought that Bloch did quite well in combining Halloween symbols with a legitimate science fiction story. About every 2 years I watch this again near Halloween, so I jumped ahead and watched it a couple of weeks ago.

    Yeah, it’s never entirely clear what Sylvia and Korob are up to. There is the diversion that Sylvia takes an interest in Kirk and says she wants to experience human emotions and sensations. Then when she finds out that Kirk is trying to trick her, she’s on the warpath and that soon leads to the end of the story. That doesn’t answer what they were originally up to, but at least it keeps us going.

    Did you catch the cute little nuances that Shatner added to his performance when Kirk Spock, and McCoy were chained in the dungeon? At one point Kirk calls McCoy “Bones” as usual, but when he notices the skeleton hanging near them he changes that to “Doc,” then only calls him “Doc” or “McCoy” after that (although maybe that was written that way and not something Shatner added.) At another point Shatner tilts his head over to mimic the skeleton, so I guess he at least added that on his own off-script. Funny!

    Here’s another example where the remastering made a big difference. Originally at the end the alien forms of Korob and Sylvia, which I thought were appropriately weird-looking, were very clearly puppets since the black wires moving them were painfully obvious. That pretty much ruined the episode for me since it made the whole thing seem phony. But after remastering this episode the wires are now GONE!!

    Since it’s not a great sci-fi concept, but is spooky and fun, I’ll give this 3 out of 5.

    Reply
  2. Kevin Black Avatar
    Kevin Black

    It is too bad we just missed hitting this episode for Halloween! It could certainly have been done worse–vampires and werewolves could have turned up.

    Reply
  3. Bill Testerman Avatar
    Bill Testerman

    Luckily, I saw “Catspaw” coming up soon on our itinerary, so I jumped ahead and watched it right before Halloween. Yeah, not sure how they would have explained vampires and werewolves, so it’s better that they left those off. Indeed, it’s good that all the Halloween elements of the episode were done within a scientific context, and not done as fantasy elements.

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  4. Randi Cohen Avatar
    Randi Cohen

    I don’t know, it just seemed kind of slow to me.  Not much dialogue, plot development is glacial, characters not particularly interesting, Kirk seducing another woman he doesn’t care about (ugh).  Halloween theme would have been fine if something more creative had been done with it. Only neat moment was when we saw the aliens revealed.  

    I give it 1.5 out of 5 disintegrating blue chickens.

    Reply
  5. R. Alex Reutter Avatar
    R. Alex Reutter

    All I can say is, I got a lot of work done during this episode.

    Reply
  6. Bill Testerman Avatar
    Bill Testerman

    Yeah, well, it’s too bad that “Catspaw” didn’t have a great script. But I disagree with some of you that it’s a bad one. I think they were mainly going for a weird and fun one for Halloween, and it was OK for that purpose.

    Reply
  7. R. Alex Reutter Avatar
    R. Alex Reutter

    It may be unfair, but my jaded 80’s kid brain can’t help but compare every Halloween episode of any other show to Quantum Leap’s “The Boogieman” http://quantumleap.wikia.com/wiki/The_Boogieman_(episode) and find them wanting.  🙂

    Reply

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