Discuss Star Trek
Discuss → TV Shows → Star Trek → General
That Which Survives -- The sum of its parts are greater than the whole
posted by sukhisooSTAFFMOD on November 9, 2018 at 3:30 PM
That Which Survives has a number of worthy elements.
The low budget effects depicting Losira going from three to two to one to zero dimensions as she blinks out are quite effective.
D'Amato's demise is amusing and a little bit spooky. "I am for you, Lt. D'Amato." "Lucky D'Amato." Yeah, lucky until every cell in your body gets disrupted. I bet that woman's touch wasn't as pleasant as you hoped, huh?
Watkins dies a slightly more noble death. He's not mesmerized by the appearance of a good looking woman coming out of nowhere. He tries to get sneaky and lie to her rather than give out critical information. She doesn't buy it, but he tried. He also has the presence of mind to warn Scotty that there's a strange woman aboard who knows all about the Enterprise. But, she is for him. Cell disruption is imminent.
Good stuff. In childhood, my brother and I were genuinely concerned for Sulu. She was for him and he wasn't Kirk or Spock. He didn't have an iron-clad guarantee of survival. "I wouldn't want to hurt a woman." Don't worry, Sulu. You won't hurt her.
This episode has one of the better Scotty Saves the Enterprise sequences on the show. He cuts it close, doing his best while overly pedantic Spock berates him for using colorful language. It's amusing and a little bit tense.
There are all sorts of little nuggets like this in the episode, but the overall story doesn't go anywhere satisfying. They try to shoehorn in a message at the end about beauty surviving or somesuch, but it doesn't really connect. It's basically two concurrent stories about our heroes in peril. They escape peril. The end. Not much substance there.
Sukhi's attempt to put in a backstory: The Kalandan's were a benevolent race. They needed a defense system, but didn't really want to kill anyone. After some debate, they settled on a precision algorithm. Why use a battle axe when a scalpel could do the job? An intruder would be evaluated. If it was deemed to be an enemy, a defender would be created. This defender would be given the power to absolutely destroy its target. But, the pacifists in the group insisted there be no collateral damage. So the defender would be built to annihilate the specific intruder and only this intruder. It would be absolutely helpless against all others. The programmers shook their heads. This will be a lot of work to make something that really wouldn't be very efficient. But the customer had spoken. Specs were laid down. The developers got to work....
Reply by sukhisoo
on November 9, 2018 at 3:39 PM
Oh. I give this episode a B by the third season standards, but a C- by the standards of the series overall.
Reply by Knixon
on November 9, 2018 at 7:41 PM
Well, in the recording Losira (the real one) did say that the defense system would "selectively" defend against anyone but their own kind. But it didn't seem like the killing part of it was that pre-planned. Maybe if it had been, there wouldn't have been the "regret" taken from Losira that burdened the defense enough so that Kirk and McCoy and Sulu survived.
It also doesn't really explain what they did to the Enterprise, or why Kirk and the others weren't simply put back on the Enterprise before it was "sent away" but I suppose that's a separate issue. And "Because Plot" probably answers both.
Reply by Jetfire59
on November 10, 2018 at 1:29 AM
I successfully entered this on IMDB's Goofs section.:
Three Enterprise crew members are murdered through "cellular disruption". When their bodies are discovered, their hands and faces are strategically hidden from view, However, if every cell in their bodies had been "blasted from inside", their clothes would have been drenched with blood as would the shoulder area of Sulu's shirt.
Reply by Nexus71
on November 10, 2018 at 8:00 PM
Isn't this another episode where the Enterprise gets into a time warp?
Reply by Knixon
on November 10, 2018 at 8:25 PM
Time warp? No, they were just hurled nearly a thousand light-years from where they had been.
Reply by Nexus71
on November 10, 2018 at 8:58 PM
But wasn't Enterprise hurled back so fast (past Warp 10) that she traveled back in time?
Reply by Knixon
on November 10, 2018 at 9:46 PM
No, they exceeded warp 10 because of the sabotage supposedly by one of the Losira replicas, but in TOS that didn't make you go back in time or turn into a lizard or whatever.
Reply by Nexus71
on November 10, 2018 at 10:13 PM
Them I was probably thinking of "The Naked Time"
Reply by Knixon
on November 10, 2018 at 10:24 PM
Yes that was very different, the experimental mixing of matter and antimatter "cold" (hard to see how it would make a difference, but okay) etc. Also different from using the "slingshot effect" around a star (e.g., the sun) which resulted in "time travel" for Tomorrow Is Yesterday, Assignment: Earth, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home...
In the TNG finale we're shown that warp 13 is common in their future, I guess nobody told the Voyager writers about that.
The common problem, though, is that even at the speeds they claimed, nothing could happen as quickly as it did in the shows (or movies). The Enterprise series didn't even START OUT well in that regard. Supposedly they could get to Kronos (or Q'onos or whatever) in a few days. But at warp 4, just getting to Proxima Centauri takes WEEKS. And that's the closest star to Earth. Everything else is MUCH farther away.
Reply by Nexus71
on November 10, 2018 at 10:28 PM
The common problem, though, is that even at the speeds they claimed, nothing could happen as quickly as it did in the shows (or movies). The Enterprise series didn't even START OUT well in that regard. Supposedly they could get to Kronos (or Q'onos or whatever) in a few days. But at warp 4, just getting to Proxima Centauri takes WEEKS. And that's the closest star to Earth. Everything else is MUCH farther away.
I guess but hey it's meant to entertain not to educate (per se)
Reply by sukhisoo
on November 12, 2018 at 1:00 PM
HAHA. NBC's BS (broadcast standards) department wouldn't let them show a corpse with its eyes open since it might disturb younger viewers. I think it dubious they would show clothes drenched in blood.
Reply by sukhisoo
on November 12, 2018 at 1:02 PM
I'm pretty sure the Losira bots didn't have the technology to "simply" put Kirk and company back on the Enterprise.
Reply by Knixon
on November 12, 2018 at 7:12 PM
But they had the technology to send the Enterprise almost 1000 light-years away, and then still put more Losira bots onto the Enterprise even at that distance?
Reply by sukhisoo
on November 13, 2018 at 10:01 AM
That Losira was for the Enterprise. She had the know-how to send it flying beaucoup light years away, possibly by manipulating some of its technology. She had no knowledge of humans or how they work. All she could do was warn them to stay away from the planet.
Reply by Jetfire59
on November 13, 2018 at 3:28 PM
Totally off topic: Lee Merriwether is my favorite Cat Woman,