Star Trek: By Any Other Name (1966)

Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.

Star Trek opening narration

Star Trek, of course, needs no introduction. The story of the failed sixties series and its remarkable resurrection is the stuff of legend, as is the life of its - somewhat controversial - creator Gene Roddenberry.

The Episode

(For notes, quotes and relevant links go to the next page.)

Warren guest-starred in the 1966 first season episode By Any Other Name. It has always been one of my very favourite classic Trek episodes. I love the ones with a good dose of humour in it, and this one has a neat idea to boot. It was written by Jerome Bixby and D.C. Fontana from a story by Bixby, and directed by Marc Daniels.

Lured to a planet by a distress call Kirk and his trusty companions find themselves on the wrong end of an Andromedan scouting party. The latter are bent on returning to their own Galaxy with news of suitable planets to conquer yahoo! and hijacking the Enterprise for transport. Being advanced compared to Milky Wayans, they fix up the ship to go at the speed of ... well ... BLOODY fast, so that the proposed journey is cut down to a mere 400 years or so. This comes as a bit of bad news to Kirk and company, who had already made other plans for the evening. Everyone not considered "essential" is promptly turned into these multi-sided blocks, which probably have a better name but, what can I say, I always failed maths. I does come as a bit of a surprise just how many of the crew aren't essential!

This is where the neat idea I mentioned comes in. The catch - for the Andromedans - is that in order to survive on the planet and in the ship they had to take human form. (Why didn't they become Vulcans or Gorn or whatever instead? Because the script said so, OK? Not to mention the budget, I imagine.) As a result, the poor aliens find themselves subject to all our foibles and failings. Kirk, Spock, McCoy and Scotty, the Enterprise's "essential" crew members, quickly realise that this can be used to their advantage. They set out to stimulate and exploit the aliens' awakening human senses and emotions in various amusing ways.

Warren plays the leader of the Andromedans, Rojan. His crew consists of two "men" and two "women". McCoy finds a reason for injecting one of the men with a kind of stimulant which makes him increasingly irritable, while Scotty shoulders the momentous task of drinking his alien under the table, sadly depleting his precious stock in the process.

The Andromedan women, needless to say, are decked out in some Theissian almost-costumes - all the rage in the galaxy back then - and very beautiful. Cue seduction-by-Kirk scenario, only this time, the woman turns the tables on him by cottoning on to the surprised Captain's tactics and taking the lead. Turns out that Rojan has a bit of eye on her, though he denies it ("she's just a female"). Artfully goaded by a straight-faced Spock Rojan develops a bad case of jealousy.

With his crew in various states of inebriation, rebellion and sexual experimentation, and his authority fast eroding, poor Rojan finds himself worked up into a fine state with a little help of Spock's beautifully timed gibes about his inability to hold on to his woman. The end result is an undignified brawl with Kirk during which Rojan forgets all about his cool state-of-the-art paralyser gadget. Naturally, Kirk wins and gives the now-subdued commander a good talking-to for good measure.

The Enterprise turns back, the Andromedans are dropped at the planet they were found on, Starfleet's going to send robot probes to Andromeda to invite the rest of the gang over, the end. Well, it does strike me as a bit irresponsible to contact an alien race hellbent on taking what they want by force just because you managed to talk sense to their scouting party. But I'll defer to Kirk's judgement.

A really cool episode, with plenty of laughs and some great lines. Kirk's womanising actually helps the plot along, and the characters' familiar traits all come in handy. I love the way Spock digs at Rojan while never stepping out of character. I suspect him of enjoying himself. It's nice to see that the prospect of a hostile takeover of the Milky Way galaxy doesn't frazzle our heroes at all. Those poor Andromedans never stood a chance. Of course, by the next episode the improvements made to the Enterprise engines are completely forgotten, never to be mentioned again. I suppose Scotty dismantled them before his hangover cleared up and he could think straight again.

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For notes, quotes and relevant links go to the next page. For more images go to the Gallery page.

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