NOTES:
Viewmaster's picture shows Kirk and McCoy kneeling over a prone
Spock, with McCoy about to inject Spock with some kind of hypodermic.
No shot remotely like that appears in the episode, so would you
settle for a close up of McCoy kneeling?
You have to wonder why Viewmaster's version still has Meraks and
Lt. Raintree, when they took their pictures during production.
It's almost like somebody tossed the Viewmaster guy an old copy
of the script that nobody needed any more. Thank goodness they
didn't give him one so old that it still included the shtick about
Spock being immune to phaser fire because he came from a planet of
lovely fire and volcanoes.
"The phaser is a powerful persuader." Another great line.
"...hip-shooting his phaser Western style." Let us remind you
just one more time just how much this is like the most popular TV
genre of the day. It's just like a Western, Sam. They ride a
spaceship instead of a nag, carry ray guns instead of 6-shooters.
They drink Saurian Brandy instead of Brandy Brandy. They contract
X.Q. instead of V.D....
Again, Viewmaster has expanded the story a bit. In the televised
version, Tracy fires exactly ONE shot during the chase, vaporizing
an urn, before his phaser runs out of power. In the Viewmaster
version, he's blasting everything in sight. Not complaining, mind you!...
"Tracy shouted that the Merak "savages" had invaded the Kohm
village in human waves. He, alone, stood in their path! His words
seemed irrational to Kirk. Tracy appeared, more and more, a
madman." The beautiful little irony here is that the words that
seem like those of a madman here are in fact exactly what
really happens in the televised version. The Yangs are
attacking the village in human waves, Tracy is the only thing
that stands in their way. The whole conflict revolves around the
fact that the Prime Directive (more or less) allows the Feds to
accept any aid that the Kohms want to give, but requires them to
say "Tough luck, you're on your own" when they want anything in
return. But just to make sure you don't sympathize with Tracy,
they make him a pretty wild-eyed guy who did, after all, blow away
Lt. Raintree, so let's not question Starfleet's goals or mission here.
Which is too bad, because a story like that, that put the Federation's
own goals under the microscope for a change could have been one really
worth telling, no matter how they resolved it.
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