3.8 — “For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky”

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4 responses to “3.8 — “For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky””

1. 

   Randi Cohen

   March 25, 2014

   I really liked this episode – the main wonderful thing about it is that I actually like McCoy in this episode.  He is usually so histrionic that I find him annoying – but now when the bad news is personal he is pretty stone-faced about it and even wants to conceal it from the rest of the crew, which is a much more vulnerable and appealing stance.

   I also did quite like Natira and her scenes with Bones.  I like that she is the aggressor and that he willingly takes on her people’s culture in order to be with her (although the relationship could be more fleshed out… it seems like it is basically physical attraction only, although their scenes together are sweet).  It is an interesting role reversal.  Although it is slightly hard to swallow that a contrarian like McCoy would accept an implanted mind control device so easily, I guess an impending death sentence does strange things to a person.

   I think it’s great that she’s not dead at the end… and did I mention I love the “hollow generation ship” setup?  Although not sure if I missed the explanation of how it is the ancestors arranged for the fake sun and stars.  Anyway, it was a little lame how all of a sudden she and Bones have to part when nothing has really changed except in a positive direction.  Not sure I follow the logic, although I guess they had to keep him onboard the Enterprise somehow.  It might have been kind of cool if he had a wife onboard the ship though… although not exactly sure how Natira would have fit in it would have been interesting to see her try, since she seems intelligent and strong-willed.

   Natira poses an interesting question… why indeed would the ancestors choose to keep the people ignorant until landfall?  Does not really make a ton of sense and would not have been that hard to explain it as some kind of defect in the ship’s computer if the writers had bothered.  It’s also not clear how that room got set up to deliver so many punishments and why it would have been set up that way in the first place.  The whole religious zealotry thing doesn’t seem to really be needed from the point of view of the Fabrinis (terrible name by the way, sounds like a discount department store).

   Not sure what the overarching moral issue here is, and usually I like it when there is one.  But I like it for the cool setting even if not well-explained and for finally making McCoy likeable.  It’s very watchable for reasons I can’t exactly put my finger on.  

   Oh, I also really like that when her beliefs are challenged, instead of going along with Kirk’s plan to remove the mind control device or the ship computer’s wish to have Kirk destroyed, Natira actually chooses her own path and goes to confront the computer by herself.  A very independent, if not entirely smart, thing to do.  Perhaps she was trying to figure out whom she believed before taking such an irrevocable step as removing the control device.  And by the way, that procedure to remove it was remarkably easy, don’t you think?

   Rating: 4 out of 5 awesome fake hairdos (I’d like to get one like that for special occasions).

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2. 

   Kevin Black

   March 25, 2014

   I agree that it would be nice to know more about the backstory of the generation ship! Perhaps the Fabrini (sounds like Febreeze to me) were already a theocratic command culture, and the computer was programmed to replicate the role of the high priests on the home world. Maybe it was necessary to conceal some of the trappings of technology to preserve religious dogma? It’s a bit hard to envision the society evolving to this technological state under those conditions, but maybe they were gifted technology by a culture that does not observe the Prime Directive. Or, more likely, there was some sort of social collapse in the latter days (latter thousand years?) of the civilization:

   KIRK: Fabrini? Didn’t the Fabrini sun go nova and destroy its planets? 

   SPOCK: Yes. Towards the end, the Fabrini people lived underground, as these people do, to protect themselves. 

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3. 

   R. Alex Reutter

   March 28, 2014

   Nice opening.  Missiles are headed for the Enterprise; once the threat is taken care of, they investigate the source of the missiles.  Good hook… though do we find out why the missiles were fired?

   The subplot is that McCoy is dying.  Not much tension, though, because we know he lives.  Still, we can hope for a good Spock/McCoy scene (and we get it!).

   The Big 3 are captured by an amateur fashion show, McCoy falls in love with one of the strongest female characters we’ve seen on Trek, and there’s a ship full of people who don’t know they’re on a spaceship.  It should be a great episode, but it manages to drag, even during the otherwise touching McCoy/Natira scenes.

   I… I could do with less of Kirk shaking Natira and dragging her behind a partition.  “why should the truth be kept from us?  why should the creators keep us in ignorance?”

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4. 

   Randi Cohen

   March 28, 2014

   Good point!  That had completely escaped me about the missiles having no particular explanation!

   Yes.  Kirk does a little too much shaking and lecturing at crying women for my taste.  I would like to see him shaking and lecturing a crying man instead for variety.  Or perhaps a mongoose.

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