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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 13, 2018 at 3:43 PM
Apparently the only Star Trek DVD she owns is that two episode disk featuring That Which Survives and Let That Be Your Last Battlefield. She likes the latter episode because it stars her buddy Frank Gorshin. She gets a kick out of watching those two episodes, but is indifferent to the rest of the show.
Reply by Knixon
on November 13, 2018 at 10:35 PM
No, it was established in the episode that it was some kind of transporter used on the whole ship.
Reply by jxh13
on November 14, 2018 at 5:53 AM
Affirmative.
SPOCK: The Enterprise was put through a molecular transporter and reassembled slightly out of phase.
Reply by sukhisoo
on November 14, 2018 at 2:44 PM
Fair enough. She didn't use the Enterprise's technology. She manipulated its molecules. I still think this Losira was "for the Enterprise" and did not have the capability of effecting Kirk, McCoy, Sulu, or D'Amato in any fashion.
Reply by Nexus71
on November 14, 2018 at 5:00 PM
It could become a problem you could mix up Losiras.I can already hear Scotty moping about using the right Losira for the right job.
Reply by sukhisoo
on November 14, 2018 at 5:31 PM
We've got the comfort girl Losira and the "disrupt every cell in your body" Losira. You'd best not get the two confused.
Reply by Nexus71
on November 14, 2018 at 6:27 PM
Reply by jxh13
on November 19, 2018 at 6:36 AM
To be clear, the Losiras were not androids; McCoy, standing two feet away with a tricorder, says, "That would give a mechanical reading. I'm getting nothing." She is basically a projection, a hologram, a 3d copy.
Hmmm. That Losira was for Watkins, right? She used her knowledge of the Enterprise and the power of the computer to fuse the blah blah circuit thingy. I don't interpret this as her being "for" the Enterprise.
If Nine hundred and ninety point seven light years was the extent of the computer's transport range, I suppose it stands to reason it could create a Losira projection that far away.
Since the computer doesn't have a weapon to give her, the only damage she can do is cellular; the mysterious "matching chromosome patterns" are what limit their damage to one person. After scanning the target, the computer matches some cell pattern, and creates a projection that can disrupt that pattern and no others.
I've often wondered if this episode would have benefited from Season One production standards - specifically, location shooting, and a better explanation of the science involved with the Losiras.
But, yes, it has some wry dialogue -
"A planet even Spock can't explain."
"Mister Sulu, if I'd wanted a Russian history lesson, I'd have brought along Mister Chekov."
" The occipital area of my head seems to have impacted with the chair."
"That position, Mister Scott, would not only be unavailing but also undignified."
It was John Meredyth Lucas' eighth episode of TOS; "Michael Richards," of course, was the alias of DC Fontana.
Reply by sukhisoo
on November 19, 2018 at 3:15 PM
I was thinking about the Losira that initially moved the Enterprise beaucoup light years away from the planet. The one that pleaded with Kirk and company not to beam down.
I don't think they specified which member of the crew she was "for".
Reply by Knixon
on November 19, 2018 at 7:53 PM
It wasn't said, but since she killed the transporter chief/operator, evidently she was for him.
Reply by Nexus71
on November 20, 2018 at 7:57 PM
I think that most viewers would have arrived at that conclusion after what happened to D'Amato.
Reply by Knixon
on November 20, 2018 at 9:11 PM
Indeed.
Reply by Nexus71
on December 3, 2018 at 4:37 PM
Not Julie Newmar?
Reply by jxh13
on December 5, 2018 at 6:10 AM
Gotta say, that was my first thought, as well.
Reply by Nexus71
on December 5, 2018 at 1:00 PM
What happened to Jet 's reply?