Saturday, January 3, 2026

Rewatching Star Trek (The Original Series, 1966-1969)

Episode o' the Day
"What Are Little Girls Made Of?" (season one, episode seven; production code: 010; 20 October 1966): Wikipedia-link.

Commentary: "What Are Little Girls Made Of?" marks the first time that red-shirted security personal (Wikipedia-link) are killed on Star Trek. A number of crewman were killed by the Salt Vampire in "The Man Trap," but they all wore gold or blue shirts; all the security officers in "The Man Trap" survived.

"What Are Little Girls Made Of?" also answers some questions about the nature of man & the difference between man & machine that are relevent to later
Star Trek. In the episode, our heroes encounter an android that claims to be Dr. Roger Korby, Nurse Chapel's long lost fiancé. Years earlier, Korby's body was failing & he transferred his memories—what he erroneously calls his "soul"—into an android body. The Korby android insists that it is Roger Korby, but Chapel & Kirk convince it that its plans for violent galactic conquest prove it isn't the pacifistic, humanitarian Roger Korby. The Korby android then destroys itself & a gynoid called Andrea, further proving the point.

*** SPOILER ALERT ***

At the end of the first season of
Star Trek: Picard (2020-2023), Jean-Luc Picard dies. His "consciousness" is than transferred into a Soong-type android body, like Data. The Picard android belives it is Jean-Luc Picard, just as the Juliana Tainor android did in the T.N.G. episode "Inheritance" (season seven, episode ten; 22 November 1993), but that's no different than the Korby android initially believing it was Roger Korby. Picard series creator Michael Chabon calls himself a lifelong Star Trek fan, but that is no more true than the Korby android's claim to be Roger Korby; if Chabon had paid the slightest attention to "What Are Little Girls Made Of?," he would have known his end to the first season of Picard was invalid.

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