TOS S01E07, What Are Little Girls Made Of?

Dir. James Goldstone, Wri. Robert Bloch

The Summary: Mad scientist + artificial life = good sci fi. Finally, a sex episode that holds up to modern viewing! An obsessive scientist makes cloned android duplicates of people, and things (astonishingly) go badly!

The Good: There is a great, slowly building sense early in the episode that something is very wrong here. Andrea is (trying very hard not to negate all of my good SJW work in my last review) …very attractive. Three excellent guest stars. It features the best kind of mad scientist. Kirk does some legit brilliant leader action that doesn’t feel like cheating or Star Trek gibberish. Excellent ending.

The Bad: There’s a reason that Uhura is the only female character people remember from this thing–nurse Chapel is…very ok here. As usual, a little too much running around to no effect (I think Kirk tries to get away unsuccessfully one too many times).

The Review: Although it seems rather strange that they have androids that look far better than Data hundreds of years before his creation, this is still a great episode. As is so often the case, it is the writing and the guest stars that really make it stand out from the crowd. Doctor Korby (Michael Strong), an old flame of Nurse Chapel’s, is a scientist obsessed with immortality through artificial life. He is the absolute best kind of mad scientist, the kind that actually makes some sense and starts off from a reasonable position. While the ultimate twisted nature of his experiment is eventually revealed, he isn’t made into a giggling maniac at any point in the proceedings. He is aided in his work by Andrea (Sherry Jackson), a beautiful female android, and Ruk (the imposing Ted Cassidy), a hulking brute of an android. All three of these guest actors do amazing work. Strong almost convinces us to believe in Doctor Korby’s mad plan, Jackson manages to sell the entire ‘android becoming more human’ schtick in a single episode, and Cassidy is an imposing presence that gets to do a lot of the heavy lifting for the lore of the Old Ones. The three are all excellent, and largely account for the overall quality of the episode.

The writing is also an early series best. There are actually interesting questions about immortality, machine sentience, and ethics here that remind the viewer of a solid golden age sci-fi story. The slow evolution of what we understand about the androids is really interesting, and there’s great, almost Lovecraftian lore about the ancient and powerful civilization that originated this technology. Watching Andrea evolve (while a beat that Trek hits often) is fascinating, and also gives us one of the better jokes of season one Trek–her casual murder of someone just because he won’t kiss her is laugh-out-loud funny (and also slightly terrifying!). Kirk gets a chance to be a genius leader in an excellent ploy that I won’t spoil here, that legitimately feels like him thinking on his feet. It feels like the Kirk that people always have in mind when thinking about the character. As inconsistent as the characterizations can be throughout season one, this is the Kirk that everyone remembers.

The episode also does a great job with incidental detail. Some of the practical effects are surprisingly good for early Trek, and it’s not filmed quite as flatly as many TV shows of the day (the shot from above of the turntable android machine is particularly cool). Little touches, like the sound work done for Ruk’s voice imitation technology, also hold up really well. There are lots of smart little details that even go without comment–if Korby’s intentions are so innocent, why does Ruk walk around in a full suit while Andrea dresses…rather less formally?

The episode also builds to an excellent conclusion that is true to Trek’s ideals while still being tragic. The philosophical question is resolved through conversation, and brute force isn’t required to win the day. This is probably the first episode of Star Trek that might actually give a viewer pause to reflect while the credits roll. The episode makes a serious effort to explore what defines humanity, what defines personhood, and what the difference between the two are.

There are problems, yes. The entire episode centers around Nurse Chapel’s connection to Doctor Korby, and Majel Barrett has a difficult time with some of the dramatic material here. The episode is also a little padded for time (which is a problem that will come up over and over again in these 55 minute long episodes). To fill some of the middle, they have Kirk make a few too many attempts at escape. This wouldn’t really be a problem if he actually tried different techniques each time, but he doesn’t. About the third time he runs straight at the huge friggin’ dude only to be batted away like a child, you begin to think, “Really Kirk? That’s your best idea?” None of that can take away too much from the episode, though. It starts well, it end well, and it might even stay with you after the fact. Definitely worth a watch for anyone, even those not necessarily in love with Trek. It’s just solid sci-fi television.

The Score: