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The Apple

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Title :
The Apple
Series :
Rating :
1
Overall Ep :
39
First Aired :
13 Oct 1967
Stardate :
3715.3
Director :
Year :
Writers :
Season Ep :
2 x 09
Main Cast :
Guest Cast :
Stunts :
Bobby Clark as Native stunt double
Julie Johnson as Landon's stunt double
Paul Baxley as Native stunt double
Ron Burke as Native stunt double
Vince Deadrick as Native stunt double
YATI :
Landon says at one point that the planet would be a paradise without Vaal. I don't know about you, but my vision of paradise does not include exploding rocks and highly poisonous plants.
Great Moment :
Spock getting shot by poison darts, zapped by a force field and struck by lightning all in the space of a few minutes. The guy really earns his day's pay on this mission!
Body Count :
A bad day for the redshirts : Hendorf is killed by a poisonous plant shooting him, Kaplan is vapourised by a lightning strike, Marple is clubbed to death by a native, and Mallory is blown up by an exploding rock! Spock is not killed, but is shot by the poison plants, nearly blown up by a rock, and almost hit by lightning.
Factoid :
This episode features one of Kirk's several violations of the prime directive.

This is one of the foremost contributors to the "Redshirt death" meme of Star Trek lore. Of the four red shirted security personnel who accompany the landing party, one is killed by a poison plant, one is killed by lightning, one is blown up by an exploding rock, and one is killed by a native.

This episode gives us an idea of how much it costs to train a Starfleet officer. When Kirk asks if Spock knows how much Starfleet has invested in him in this episode, he gives a figure of about 122,000 - credits, presumably.

The original script called for the ship to use an emergency saucer separation. This was dropped for budget reasons, although there is a line of dialogue about jettisoning the warp nacelles if needed. Saucer separation would, of course, be a feature of Star Trek : The Next Generation.

Plotline

The Enterprise is visiting the planet Gamma Trianguli VI. A landing party finds the planet to be a paradise, with a planetwide warm climate. However, a call from Scotty on the ship brings trouble - the ship is experiencing a minor problem with the antimatter pods, possibly related to abnormalities in the magnetic field of the planet itself. Spock's tricorder detects underground vibrations coming from all directions, vibrations which he thinks are artificially produced. As the landing party scouts around they detect a life form nearby, apparently somebody watching them.

They proceed towards a nearby village, but along the way the planet offers up a few surprises. A rock explodes when tossed to the ground; a plant fires poison darts; a freak storm suddenly blows up and Spock is struck by lightning. It appears that Gamma Trianguli VI is not so pleasant a place after all!

Meanwhile on the Enterprise, the problem becomes worse - the antimatter pods have become completely inert, as if some external force had extinguished them. Without main power the ship is all but helpless and unable to beam the landing party up.

They reach the village, although two of the landing party are killed on the way by the planets strange dangers. Kirk manages to capture the native who is watching them, and they demand to know what is going on. The man claims to be the "leader of the feeders of Vaal." They continue on to the village with the man, who is named Akuta. He agrees to take them to Vaal - which proves to be a giant stone head reminiscent of a reptile. The head is surrounded by a powerful forcefield, making any approach impossible. They go back to the village to rest. Kirk notes that there are no children there - prompting confusion from the natives, who apparently have no idea what children are. Vaal, they say, has forbidden men and women to touch one another, and there is no reproduction allowed - much to McCoy's disgust. The Doctor scans the people and finds every one of them to be in perfect health, without any sign of ageing amongst them.

Vaal calls the villagers, and they bring supplies of food to place inside the head - the forcefield apparently allowing them in to feed their god. Kirk ponders whether Vaal might become weaker if it is denied the regular influx of food. Kirk and McCoy seem determined to destroy Vaal, claiming that it is stifling the right of the natives to a "free and unchained environment" and any chance to grow and develop as a culture. Spock warns that they are simply applying human standards to a culture which they may not apply to - the villagers surely have the right to choose a system that clearly works to provide them with long term stability.

Scotty reports that they are detecting a steady decrease in Vaal's power readings, possibly a result of the food being used up. He is working to boost the output of the ship's impulse engines, though this will take a good eight hours to accomplish. In not much longer than that the ship will fall into the atmosphere and burn up.

In the village, two of the natives observe Chekov kissing one of his female comrades and become curious as to what it is like. This apparently angers Vaal, who communicates with Akuta to tell him to kill the landing party. Vaal provides instructions on how to use violence, and the natives mount an attack. However, although one of the Enterprise crew is killed the natives are quickly defeated.

Scotty manages to complete his modifications and boost the ship into a slightly higher orbit, but he only gains an extra hour or so. Kirk decides to starve Vaal in an attempt to weaken it, and then orders the ship to direct a phaser barrage at the force field around it. Vaal is forced to expend its remaining energy to defend against the attack, and becomes inert. Without the field affecting the ship, full power is quickly restored.

Kirk tells the natives that the Federation will provide them with assistance until they can cope with life on their own. Although Spock expresses some concern with their actions the Captain is happy at the outcome, and the ship proceeds on course.

Analysis

This is one of those episodes where a potentially interesting premise is buried under too much silliness. The idea of whether it is really a good thing for a culture to live in a "perfect" state is an interesting one - the Vaal villagers don't age, suffer no illness or death, never go hungry, know no pain, no fear, no jealousy, no hatred. They have exactly what most people want - and yet, without anything to strive for, without anything to overcome, are they really even living at all? Perhaps not. On the other hand do Kirk and McCoy even have the right to make that judgment on their behalf? The villagers clearly want to live the way they do, they are not being compelled to do so. Is it really up to Kirk to tell them that they can't?

Imagine the following scenario : an alien race arrives at the Earth tomorrow. After some examination of the planet, they announce that computer technology on Earth represents an overall negative effect on human culture. They then proceed to blast every computer in the world to pieces, and forbid us from ever building another. You'd be pretty pissed off, right? Right. Of course, the complicating factor here is that Vaal is actively trying to destroy the Enterprise throughout. But then, we are frequently told that Starfleet officers pledge to give up their lives rather than violate the Prime Directive. Only they rarely actually do so, in practice. A rule followed more in the breach than the observance, as it were.

Still, at least the episode does depict this as a genuine dilemma by having Spock provide the other point of view and show us a little debate about it. No bad thing.

On the downside, much of the tension is generated by contrived means. The planet is littered with arbitrary dangers that make little sense. Exploding rocks? Poison dart plants? Random anti personnel lightning? It's only really there to give us a little action, and none of it makes any real sense. It is funny to see Spock taking the hits again and again, though, so at least there's that!

Special Edition

The remastered version has the usual improved effects, better planet, etc. Notably, the ship fired red phaser beams in the original episode - these have been corrected to the blue-white beams more commonly seen in the original series.
© Graham & Ian Kennedy Page views : 46,375 Last updated : 27 Jul 2022