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: 10; 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 fiancĂ©. 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.

No comments: