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Little Girls are Made of Sex Droids: Star Trek asks the Android Question
Trek Through Trek – Part X
Clearly a sex bot.
Extremites, what are little girls made of?
That is the central question at the core of today’s Trek Through Trek. According to the episode, that uses this question as a title, little girls are made of sex droids.
….. What?
Original Series episodes fall into three categories: culturally important, charming sixties camp and bat shit terrible. What Are Little Girls Made Of? falls somewhere in between the latter two.
The Enterprise is on a mission to discover the whereabouts of Nurse Chapel’s scientist husband Dr. Korby. Korby has been kept alive in the tunnels of the planet by androids left over from an extinct race that used to populate the planet’s surface. These androids don’t wish to leave the planet when the rescue team, headed by Kirk, arrives. Instead, their intent is to kill off human Kirk and replace him with an android. Why they wish to do this is unclear, but this is the 1960s and in the Sixties androids were evil by virtue.
Androids have always been a favourite ‘go to’ in science fiction. Questions like “what constitutes individual thought?” and “what does it mean to be a human?” have shaped this genre since its conception. This episode begins Star Trek’s storied legacy of discussing these most frightening of inventions.
Even though this episode was the beginning of a legacy that would drive story lines right up to Next Gen, it almost never happened. Unlike the others in the first season, the final script seen on-screen had very little similarities with the first draft. Gene Roddenberry read the first submitted script and tossed it in the garbage. He claimed that androids capturing Kirk and replacing him with an android version was so cliché that it bordered on copyright infringement. Gene’s answer was to rewrite the whole thing. Instead of capturing Kirk and taking over the Enterprise, the androids would talk about doing that but never get there.
Roddenberry is a brilliant idea man, but he’s a terrible writer. He enjoys lofty conversations rather than heightened action. Sometimes this pays off, but most of the time a Roddenberry story becomes a meandering directionless mess, full of philosophical speeches and civil dinners.In this episode there are tons of those. A debate over the nature of intelligence occupies a full act while each character tries and fails at distracting the audience from the obvious coloured blocks of painted wood they are pretending to eat.
Am I the only one that sees a styrofoam penis? Is that odd?
Ignoring all the nepotism and pedantic dialogue, this episode does present some compelling ideas. Andrea, an underused character, is a creation of Korby’s for the single purpose of companionship. One of the inevitable reasons we will create androids in the future is to use them as sex toys. What will this do to relationships? How will human interaction change? This is an underlying powerful discussion of the episode but it is never touched on beyond passing reference.
The passive ignorance of the female characters in this episode upsets me. They become watchers of the plot rather than participators in it. There are so many questions they could pose as women that are ignored because of zeitgeist misogyny.
…Little Girls… was written fast. It was also rewritten during filming to the point the show went over deadline and budget.
Sometimes poor execution can destroy any good ideas.
Until next time, Extremites, I remain Julian Munds.
The Episode We Are Watching: What Are Little Girls Made Of? (Episode 9 of Season 1 of The Original Series: October 20th, 1966)
My Rating Out of 5 Tribbles: 2 Android Tribbles That Are There To Serve You.
My After Episode Thoughts: “So much eating and talking…. eating and talking.”
Pros: Some wonderful philosophical conversation. Charmingly cliché ending.
Cons: The sexism. The nepotism. The boringism.
—> PART XI
Related articles
Muddy Waters
My Trek Through Trek – Part IV
What we’re watching: Mudd’s Women Episode 6 of Season 1 TOS (October. 13, 1966)
My Rating Out of 5 Tribbles: 1 Tribble, which thinks that a miner’s kitchen is liberation.
My After Episode Thoughts: “Original Series sexism at it’s best with a space pedophile to boot.”
Pros: Wonderful cinematography, The Venus Drug.
Cons: Harry Mudd, The Space whores, soliloquizing for no reason, just about everything.
The space whores!
Today my trek takes me to Mudd’s Women, the fourth produced TOS episode and, dear god, what a mess!
Star Trek is famous for its strides in feminism with the inclusion of women in places of power yet judging by this episode you would never know it. The plot concerns a space pimp and his three whores. I use the word whore because that is what these women are. They do not even resemble real women. Somehow these space whores don’t even seem to breathe and, what really grinds my gears, is that they walk the same halls with Uhura and the liberated women of the Federation. It is strange that Uhura appears in the cold open yet disappears from the bridge entirely for the rest of the episode. Are we to believe that she was not needed for the four or so days in which this story takes place? Has she been given an extended vacation because there are now other women on board? I think not. Perhaps, Stephen Kandel and Gene Roddenberry (the writers of this episode) were somehow embarrassed to have her on the same ship with these gross over sexualized caricatures. Perhaps, and more likely, they just plain forgot about her.
Blatant sexism aside there are plenty more faults in this one. The episode veers wildly from tragedy to comedy: one moment I’m (meant) to laugh at a humorous quip from McCoy and the next moment I am (meant) to feel the turmoil of three lost women who are used as a commodity in a transaction for Lithium crystals. Excuse me? One must first be presented humans to empathize with, not gratuitous ‘butt-shots’ with a semblance of emotions.
I am not sure what Shatner is doing with his performance in this episode. I am sure he didn’t even know. At a particularly tense moment of the story Kirk tears Scotty to bits over the Scotsmen’s need to present the facts about orbital time and how long the core has power. Two lines later Kirk inexplicably and easily apologizes. Why was this written into the episode? Scotty is the ship’s engineer for pete’s sake! It is his job to look out for the ship and therefore the crew inside of it. The majority of Kirk’s motives in this episode are bipolar. One minute he is as cold as a Klingon prison moon and the next he is as warm as a supernova.
Sidebar… I have noticed when the writing becomes particularly bad, like the aforementioned Scotty dress down, Shatner’s iconic choppy melodramatic rhythm becomes prevalent. This must be how he muscles through the writing abortions that sometimes are present in the show. Shatner is not a terrible actor as so many believe, on the contrary, he is one of the very best. He knows how to make terrible writing interesting and bold. The dress down, though it makes no sense, is a piece of damn interesting interaction. Kudos, Shatner, you magnificent bastard!
Lest this post become a bitch fest, I’ll talk about the pros of the episode and there are some. While this episode may be a mess thematically it is shot fantastically. In the cold open there is a brilliant tracking shot that sinks from the science station to Sulu at helm. Magnificent. Worthy of the cinematography of Michael Ballhaus. There are some equally interesting shots throughout the halls and in the prison even though it is capturing an odd soliloquy where Harry expounds his dastardly plans to dupe the Captain. Not to mention this all happens within ear shot of two security guards.
Uh… Harry they can hear you. You may not wish to share your half baked plan in front of two guys that can walk over to the Captain and say “Sir, that space pirate dressed like a Quentin Crisp Australian cowboy fantasy is trying to con you.”
The space pimp!
Let’s look at this Harry Mudd. On paper he is interesting. A space pirate who is wanted for fraud who inexplicably gets caught in an asteroid field (wait a minute… Han Solo? Is this your fabulous alter ego?) Alas, interpreted by Roger C. Carmel, this space rogue becomes a jolly joke with a huge Santa Clause belt buckle that evokes more space pedophile then dangerous fraudster. He talks literally like a pirate. No kidding. Carmel borrowed the West Country dialect of Robert Newton to form Mudd’s annoying cadence. Someone should have seen that this episode is all too hokey.
Carmel is at least 50% to blame.
I should also note the fascinating Venus Drug. It’s a drug that makes you grow younger or appear younger or uh… act younger (this is confusing as different characters say different things about it.) The way the Venus Drug is used reminds me of the actual way pimps and sex traders use heroin and other drugs to placate their victims into staying in the trade. This is a marvelous observation about the sex trade and were this episode shot in 1996, instead of 66, something would have been made of it. Though they get close. One of the only enrapturing moments occurs when the women first go into withdrawal and realize the hold Mudd has over them. This is a startling moment and shows that this supposedly jolly Mudd is not all he is cracked up to be.
I could go on for pages about what is wrong with this episode. It is certainly bottom of the barrel. I wont. Instead I leave you with a summation that Paula M. Block presents in her and Terry J. Erdman’s massive reference book Star Trek: The Original Series 365 when she addresses the disgusting anti-feminist theme of “How to marry a millionaire” which is prevalent through out the original series:
“Take Eve, the most rational of the three women. After spending most of her life cleaning up after a bunch of unappreciative male siblings, all she wants is the opportunity to connect with a good man. Even after learning that she doesn’t need the Venus drug to appear desirable, Eve can’t foresee a future that doesn’t involve snaring a man. The thought of serving aboard a starship never occurs to her – except perhaps as the captain’s wife. So she consigns herself to life on barren Rigel XII, cleaning up for another unappreciative male (miner Ben Childress) and listening to the winds blow day and night.” (pp. 039, 126)
It is hard to believe that this is the same world that would later give us Captain Janeway.
<— To Part III
—> To Part IV
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- “Beam Me Up Scotty” was Never Said in the Original Star Trek (todayifoundout.com)
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- Richard Branson says Captain Kirk is afraid to fly? BullShatner (metronews.ca)
Going Where No Man Has Gone Before
My Trek Through Trek (Part II)
Every Trekker owes a debt to Lucy!
When I conceived of this journey through Star Trek I debated for a long time, 3 or four hours which is a long time for a guy like me, in what order I would tackle the episodes and movies. There are three different ways one can travel through Trek, canonically, chronologically by broadcast date and chronologically by production date. Each order poses different problems. If I chose to view canonically, I would have to begin with Enterprise, which would mean I would jump into a fresh series for me as I didn’t watch it when it was on TV. I decided against this because I am not sure if I will like the show and therefore ultimately abandon my project before it has begun. The broadcast order poses its own problems as it confuses the development of the series. Following that order would make this episode the fourth in succession. This position is incorrect as Where No Man Has Gone Before was intended as a second pilot. I ultimately decided to go ahead and view Trekdom in its production order. This order may not be optimal if I want guidance and illumination into the history of the Federation, but it does offer insight into how this world developed. It’s a far more interesting order for a young director in training like myself. This will cause a problem when I enter The Next Generation when the episodes loose canon when watched in production order, but we’ll navigate that Nebulae when and if we cross it.
To understand the monumental importance of Where No Man Has Gone Before, one must first ask Lucille Ball. No kidding here. Fricken Wah Wah Lucy. Without Lucille Ball there would be no Star Trek past the Jeffrey Hunter sweater epic that is The Cage. The story is as follows: after the failure of The Cage, Gene Roddenberry continued to shop around his idea for a Sci-Fi epic. No one was buying, until Lucille Ball, a friend of young Gene, somehow saw the pilot and said in passing to the president of NBC that they should greenlight a second pilot and actually air it to get sample of an audience’s reaction. This testing was not done with The Cage which wasn’t broadcast until 1988. Long story short, NBC did. Gene under NBC guidance overhauled the show, hired a young Canadian actor cutting his teeth on Sci-Fi on shows like The Twilight Zone to replace Jeffrey Hunter who had returned to his career as a matinee idol and the rest is history. Trekkers love Lucy indeed.
All right, boring nerd history aside, let’s talk about pilot deux.
Right at the top one can tell that this is a different beast then the terrible first pilot. It does not overwhelm with the pretension of Jeffrey Hunter and Martian Spock. Instead we are greeted with a comedic battle of wits between the colder more logical Spock and a charismatic Kirk. Snide jokes are being traded back and forth between two friends. Friendship is the core of this episode and indeed every good Star Trek episode hence forth.
From this point forward, the vision of the future is very different. It is cleaner, more sleek and spartan. This is reflected in the redesign or, perhaps, clean of up of the Enterprise set. As the episode progresses it becomes well understood that this is not a cluttered claustrophobic war vessel but a visionary bastion of human exploration.
You may recall, if you read the last entry, that I in my ineloquent manner, made a big storm of the inefficient women on the bridge. I put the blame in no small manner on psychedelic sexualization of every skirt. The women of this episode’s Enterprise are night and day (as far as can be under the moral lens of the 60s). Dr. Elizabeth Dehner is a woman of wry humour, with a constant upturned grin that seems to suggest that she is secure with her womanhood and her life. When Gary Mitchell throws some 60s style degradation at her, she easily makes mince meat of the crass helmsmen. However, you can still see the 60s female role peep through this episode though. When the Enterprise crosses the forcefield, a sleek and suspenseful sequence that evokes thoughts of ancient mariners falling over the edge of the Earth, the young blonde clad Yeoman raises her hand inexplicably to hold onto the strength of a male courageous limb. Even the damsel in distress exists on the bridge of the Enterprise.
The bridge is populated by many other firsts. George Takei makes his first appearance as Sulu, but is curiously in charge of physics, Jimmy Doohan sits at the helm in his Pseudo-Scottish presence as Scotty and there is even an unnamed man of colour sitting there pushing buttons. Spock stands for the first time in his mainstay location just to camera right of the Captain’s chair. His performance bares more similarities to iconic Spock, yet at one point he yells in a very un-Spock-like manner. (Un-Nimoy-Spock-like, for Quinto is all over the place vocally.) It is clear that Nimoy and perhaps Trek itself is still unclear as to the role that this character will play.
What the creatives of Star Trek are sure of is: the role discussion will play in this world. All the characters clearly parse out the issue of sudden powers in a human and this conflict
“You cannot kill me, so, let’s discuss why.”
is not one centered on the destruction of a threat, but rather the ramifications of evolving before our time. Gary Mitchell is a human who is suddenly given the ability to grasp all the information that his brain can handle and then some. This occurrence demonstrates what may happen if humans were suddenly offered a surplus of information. Can we handle too much information? A timely question for us now that we have all the thoughts of human kind at the touch of our finger tips. It’s obvious Gary cannot handle this as his mind explodes in a myriad of godlike powers conveyed in some cheesy yet surprisingly effective effects sequences, most noticeably in the really good and probably simple telekinetic sequences.
Where No Man Has Gone Before is not without its flaws. The final act is hampered by self important dialogue that seems to slow the conflict between Kirk, Mitchell and Dehner into a staring contest (at least we get great views of the expensive contact lenses). The final standoff plays as a thought experiment of the evils of an imperfect god, a debate upon the illogic of praying to deities that ask for obedience for no reason and are perhaps political allegories of deflection of human inadequacy on their creations. A common anti-religious theme that pops up many times later, even in the feature films. This “climax” takes the teeth out of an otherwise fascinating episode, but manages to satisfyingly convey a timely criticism of human development.
Flaws in an unfocused climax aside, Where No Man Has Gone Before is a grand episode that makes it obvious why this show was able to greenlight a full first season. What can be said is the greatest element that adds to the future success of Star Trek, is the addition of William Shatner’s Kirk. Say what you will about the man but he is willing to go for it. Throwing himself convulsing when he wishes and essentially oozing charisma, where Jeffry Hunter oozed nothing but an eel like aura. Certainly Hunter would not throw himself to the floor in flailing turmoil. The Trek trek is on!
“I don’t get, green blooded humour.”
<— To Part I – “The Cage“
—>To Part III- “The Corbomite Maneuver”
Related articles
- Where No Man Has Gone Before (uncommongeek.com)
- Kirk, Old Friend – A Character Study of Khan (comparativegeeks.wordpress.com)
- Star Trek Continues… on the Web (sqwabb.wordpress.com)
Julian R. Munds 
