Star Trek: The Enemy Within (or how two Kirks are not greater than one)

Anthony: 0:00

Hey everybody. Before we begin this week's episode, we wanted to give you a heads up that towards the end of the show, we have a brief segment where we discuss a scene from the star Trek original series episode that we'll be talking about today that involves sexual assault. We wanted to be sensitive to our listeners about that subject matter. We don't get into any graphic detail or anything like that. And it's a fairly brief segment, but we did want to give you a heads up. Thanks and enjoy the show.

Ethan: 0:45

Welcome, everybody, to another episode of Father and Son's Guide to the Galaxy. I'm your host, Ethan. And I'm your co host, Anthony. And today, we will be going over episode 5 of Star Trek, the original series, which is titled, The Enemy Within. Yeah.

Anthony: 1:01

Great episode, a psychological deep dive into human nature. So at the beginning of the episode, some of the crew are down on a planet doing a geological exploration and one of the crew members is injured and so Kirk tells him to beam back up to the Enterprise and go get checked out at sickbay. And so Mr. Scott in the transporter room beams this crewman up. And there seems to be some issue with the transporter, but it ends up working and the guy materializes on board the Enterprise. But Mr. Scott notices that there's like some dust on the guy's uniform of some ore samples. And he Posits that maybe that's the reason that the transporter was acting a little funky. And after that, Kirk goes to beam up and when he materializes in the transporter room, he's kind of like disoriented. He seems to have a headache. And so Scotty sees that and he He said, let's go see Dr. McCoy. So Scotty leaves with him to take him to sick bay. And so nobody's in the transporter room. And then shortly after that Another Captain Kirk materializes in the transporter room. But this Captain Kirk is clearly very evil. We'll call him the bad Captain Kirk or the evil Captain Kirk. And so he leaves and, and goes off to start. doing bad stuff on the ship which we'll get to in a minute. And then after that, an alien dog that was found on the planet it looks like a dog. It was a real dog, but they made it kind of look like an alien. And so it was native to the planet that they were doing this geological exploration on. They wanted to beam the dog up to the Enterprise. And it ends up that two dogs get beamed up to the Enterprise. The dog splits. And one of the dogs is very sweet and kind of docile, and the other's clearly very aggressive and vicious. And so Scotty theorizes that the transporter malfunction is what caused the split of the dogs. And so we now have two of the same dog with opposite personalities, so to speak. And, and of course nobody knows at this point that evil Kirk or bad Kirk is on the ship. And so, evil Kirk begins behaving badly is very aggressive. And he actually tries to sexually assault Yeoman Rand. She ends up getting free, scratching his face. And then eventually, Goodkirk and Spock and McCoy figure out what has happened. That there's this other version, alternate version of Kirk on the ship. But. In the meantime, as they're trying to decide how to deal with this problem, the good Kirk, is kind of indecisive and weak, and he can't seem to make command decisions. Yeah,

Ethan: 4:09

so then, in the meantime, the away team that was on the planet, they end up not transporting them back to prevent future incidents with the transport that would, like, split them again, and it would be a bunch of chaos and trouble up for the Enterprise. So they tell them to stay down there, but the problem is, is that this planet, when it gets dark, will reach about 120 degrees below zero. And so now, in addition to finding the bad Kirk and, like, figuring out what's going on with good Kirk, they are also on a race against time to fix the transporter to get the away team back on the Enterprise. So then while they're doing that Scotty ends up believing he's fixed the transporter and has found out a way to merge the the dog back together as well as good and evil Kirk. And so then Scotty decides to go and test it on the dogs first. But then, the dogs end up dying, and then Spock theorizes that the dogs died of shock because they didn't have a logical explanation for what was happening. And Dr. McCoy was saying we should do an autopsy first to see if there was a malfunction in the transporter that killed them. Eventually, what, after some debating in between Spock and Dr. McCoy, They tell Captain Kirk it's his choice whether you want to go through with this or Wait a little longer to see if it was a transporter cause of death and not Just shock from the dog not knowing what was going on

Anthony: 5:52

Right, which would possibly risk the death of the away team if he waited too

Ethan: 5:56

long. Yeah, so the indecisive Kirk, the good Kirk is left with a really big and important choice So, that was a very interesting scene. Especially because he was agreeing with both sides at the same time. While they were trying to convince him which one to do. So then Goodkirk ends up making the choice that he wants to go through with the transporter thing. So, he goes and finds Badkirk, who They had found previously and had managed to restrain him to sickbay with like the physical restraints because they didn't know if they would be able to put him on like a drug or something to keep him under. So then he's talking with Badkirk for a bit and Badkirk eventually agrees. But then he goes and attacks Goodkirk. And then tries to impersonate Goodkirk, which then leads to him taking over the bridge. And then there's this whole conflict in between Goodkirk and Evilkirk on the bridge of who's the real one. A classic clone thing that happens. Nobody knows which one's the original. So then, finally, Good Kirk manages to convince Bad Kirk that they aren't whole without each other because you can't be human without the bad things about yourself. So, Bad Kirk reluctantly agrees after some convincing that he will still live through the regular Kirk. When they are merged back together. So eventually they get them together and they merge them through the transporter. And Spock's theory that the dog died through shock was correct. And Kirk is back to normal. And they manage to beam up the OA team. And Dr. McCoy says a line about how they have severe exposure and hypothermia, but they'll live. Yeah.

Anthony: 8:02

Yeah. So pretty interesting episode, I thought. Obviously, it seems to have been inspired by the classic novel, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson. There's a lot of this Jekyll and Hyde thing going on throughout the episode. And it, it explores this idea of duality in human nature. What was your take on that theme and how they addressed it?

Ethan: 8:30

I just thought it was really interesting how they addressed the theme of, like, you can't be all good to be, like, actually able to execute things. Like, Kirk's issue when it was just the good Kirk, he lost his ability to command a crew properly. He was indecisive, he couldn't make the choices, but his so called evil counterpart was extremely decisive and could make quick choices. And it just showed that he needed his quote unquote evil side to be whole and to be able to function properly in society.

Anthony: 9:12

Yeah, I thought that was a really interesting take on the idea of duality. That you need that evil aspect in order to make decisions and, like you said, be functional in society, but it has to be balanced with The good tendencies that you have as a human.

Ethan: 9:36

Yeah, and that was One thing I thought they explained pretty well was the negative side of Kirk was extremely impulsive, and that made the positive side of Kirk's job mainly to, like, keep the impulsive side under control. So it could be managed in such a way to be useful. Right, right.

Anthony: 9:58

And Kirk's split, if you will, was kind of a literal interpretation of the internal conflict that each of us has. Right? Because each of us deals with different aspects of emotion. And we have tendencies to maybe be impulsive or aggressive or Or mean but we also have tendencies to be good and kind and compassionate. And sometimes that's a real rustle. Sometimes for example, people dealing with mental health issues, that can be a real challenge, right? Right. To try to deal with those, those polar opposites pulling you from one extreme to the other. What did you think about this idea that good and bad are necessary aspects of humanity? Do you agree with that?

Ethan: 10:52

Well, I mean, yeah, I can agree with that because I can't really think of any human being that I know that would have, like, zero good or zero bad in them. I mean, like, Even the worst person you could possibly think of probably had some form of good in them. Cause that's just what humanity is. Is that sort of balance between good and evil. And sometimes it sways more one way than the other. But you can't be human if you don't have the aspects of being both good and bad.

Anthony: 11:25

Yeah. Yeah, I thought about an example where extreme goodness could actually be a negative thing, so let's say you, you want to help the homeless or help some underserved population or marginalized population, and you want to do that by Giving away all of your money and all your belongings and you spend so much time,, being philanthropic that you end up losing everything that you have because you can't make money to survive on your own and you end up, you know, just spending it on what you think is a good cause, but you're not thinking enough of yourself to where, Eventually, you can't function in society, does that resonate at all?

Ethan: 12:16

I would think of it more like in airplanes with the sort of like safety instructions they give you, and if they tell you to like put those masks on in the plane they tell you put yours on first before you put on anyone else. Because if you don't put yours on, but you start putting it on other people, You're more likely to pass out, and then you can't help people. Yeah,

Anthony: 12:40

yeah, that's a really good analogy there. Another thing that I thought about was it seemed like this this idea of our different natures or duality was really part of a larger theme of Star Trek. And, and that's this idea that the Differences that we have are valuable, right? So on a crew of a starship, you have a diverse crew with different abilities and skills and backgrounds and cultural experiences, and then across the galaxy, you have interspecies relationships that strengthen the galaxy, right? And there is a great strength in this kind of diversity of skill sets and ideas and cultures and so forth.

Ethan: 13:36

Yeah, I can see the perspective on that. One thing that intrigued me about the episode a lot was just the use of the dog, cause you know, I like dogs. I thought the costume design on it was really funny. Because you could visibly see that it had the face of a dog and it acted like a dog and it sounded like a dog. But then it had this really weird like tail and like a lion's mane. It was, it was really funny.

Anthony: 14:02

Yeah, that was kind of cute. I liked that they used like a real dog for that part. It was sad that he died though. Another

Ethan: 14:11

thing that I thought was really funny is When they had the evil dog and they had to tranquilize it to bring it to the transporter I could, I could visibly see that it was like a little stuffed animal Just based on how it was grabbed and like how much it like squished in Yeah, and then you notice in the scene the actual dog Starts like sniffing it and like because they placed it next to each other So he's kind of like sniffing it and he's like, what is this? So it was just a really funny little thing I noticed. For

Anthony: 14:44

sure. The transporter malfunctioning as a plot device. I wondered if that was kind of a metaphor for, For us, like, when we malfunction you know, with our own emotions or dual natures if one part of us is too dominant versus the other, like we were just talking about a minute ago, did that strike you at all as maybe symbolic of our own disfunction of humanity?

Ethan: 15:16

Yeah, I, I think that makes a lot of sense because there's just things in your life that go wrong and then you, you have this mental stimulus, like things tend to shut down sometimes and you lose some rational thought, your emotions take over and sometimes you have more emotions take over than. Others would, like, if you're frustrated about something, your anger is gonna take over. And, unless you know how to properly cope with that, your anger is gonna have some kind of outbreak, depending on how bad the cause was. Yeah.

Anthony: 15:57

What role does our intellect play in all of this?

Ethan: 16:02

When it comes to the intellect, I would say there's, there's times in like, mental crisis, and your emotions are just like, completely taken over. If you're able to take a step back, a deep breath. And, like, start trying to think rationally about things. That's what kind of tames the, the emotions. Yeah. And brings you back to a, a state of normalcy in a way. Right.

Anthony: 16:33

And Spock in the episode kind of touches on that idea, right? Because he says, he has this own, Dual nature, being half human and half Vulcan, and those two halves are, are battling with each other. But he says he can control it through his intellect. And so his use of logic is what allows him to, kind of, keep the extreme human emotions at bay but also continue to be compassionate and, and thoughtful, and, a good person.

Ethan: 17:04

Yeah. And that was also present in Captain Kirk because the good Kirk was saying, like, What do I have? And Spock kind of tells him, like, The good Kirk, he has his logic and reasoning, While the bad Kirk has the ability to command, the decision making skills, But it's also hyperly aggressive, and angry and things like that.

Anthony: 17:32

Yeah, yeah. And I thought it was, I thought it was a bit ironic that the good Kirk was the one who does make the decision to go forward with this experiment with the transporter at the end, right? He's, he's indecisive the whole episode pretty much, but he realizes that He needs the other Kirk, and, and the other Kirk realizes that they need each other. And it's the good Kirk that, you know, that makes it makes it happen to where they go back to the transporter and are eventually merged back into one. So, he didn't totally lose his ability to make decisions, but it was very, very difficult for him to do

Ethan: 18:21

so. I think the choice was based more on, like, an emotional response, like a response of compassion more than anything else because he made the choice after hearing that transmission from Sulu that they couldn't hold on much longer and they needed to be transported back to the ship as soon as possible. And I think that sort of triggered the compassionate side of Goodkirk, because that was another one of the qualities he had, even with the instant before the dog died, and they were trying to tranquil tranquil tranquil tranquilize tranquilize it. I still can't say it. Trying to sedate the dog. There you go. They said he he told them not to hurt him, cause I mean, they even explained it earlier that he was extremely compassionate, and so it was that compassion that drove him to make that choice. Yeah,

Anthony: 19:22

that's a really astute observation. I think that's spot on. Once he allowed his compassion to kind of take the lead, if you will, he was able to make the necessary decision. To see if the transporter would Function so that they could save the away team

Ethan: 19:42

Yeah, so, Kirk's compassion is definitely a really good feature about him being a it's what makes him a great captain, right? And so, I don't know, just thinking about that kind of reminded me of this, of a line, I don't remember in which like Star Trek content it was said, or like what show or movie it was from, but there was this line I heard in in a piece of Star Trek content that was like, Vulcans usually don't make good captains because of their lack of emotion. And I, I think like, that's one of the reasons we never really see Spock become captain in Star Trek unless you take the J. J. Abrams movies where he was for a bit. Right. It's like, because he doesn't necessarily feel the compassion necessary that captains have, but it's also I feel it's good to have, like, a Vulcan high in your chain of command because they will provide the logical response in a time of, like, emotional turmoil and

Anthony: 20:52

Yeah. Yeah, I can see that. And what we really learn about Captain Kirk in this episode is that he's sort of the ultimate leader, right? Like the, the, or the ideal leader, like he has the type of characteristics that you would want to have if you were you know, in charge of a military unit or leading a big company or you know, whatever kind of leadership in a church or community organization, those characteristics of compassion but also decisiveness and rationality. And a tamed sense of aggression, you know, aggression maybe is too strong of a word, but a sense of you know, wanting to move forward and wanting to get things done. Like, that's, that's the kind of leader that we love, right? We love to work for, we love to be around he, he's sort of the ideal of leadership.

Ethan: 21:51

Yeah, I think they've, like, even called him in Star Trek something along the lines of Starfleet's Golden Boy or something.

Anthony: 21:58

Yeah. So, yeah what else did we learn about Kirk's character through this whole ordeal in the episode?

Ethan: 22:07

I, I think one thing we learned is when it comes down to the wire, I mean, Kirk can really, He can make the hard choice. I mean, we kind of just talked about this earlier with his being able to make the choice with his compassion, but It kind of just proves Even when his mind isn't sound or it isn't there completely, part of him's missing He can still make the important choice. He also refused to give up his captaincy, which I thought was really interesting He wanted to stay in command even though he was losing his ability to command.

Anthony: 22:41

Yeah, I thought that was interesting too because I actually thought that he was going to relinquish command of the ship and have Spock take over because he was struggling so much with making decisions and figuring out the next step to deal with this problem of the bad Kirk. So I was actually a little surprised by that. And I think it just drives home that point that Captain Kirk is the real deal when it comes to leadership and being in charge, like he, he's the one that you want to be your captain to get you through the hard times. And, and he understands that about himself. Right. And he understands even When he was in this vulnerable state, and feeling indecisive, and all that, he understood the weight of that responsibility. We've talked about that in other episodes, I think, the weight of taking care of his crew, and making sure that everybody's safe, and that they're being successful in their missions, and

Ethan: 23:34

all that. Yeah.

Anthony: 23:36

So, one other aspect that I thought It was interesting to explore was there was the scene in the episode that we mentioned where evil Kirk goes into Yeoman Rand's quarters and At first she's like kind of surprised to see him. She doesn't realize that it's bad Kirk. She thinks it's the real Kirk right and then he gets really aggressive with her and he he basically starts to try to rape her and she's able to get out of it. She's, I think she scratched his face and he, you know, reacted to that and she jumped up and was able to get out of the situation. Thank goodness. And then later when she's telling McCoy and Spock and the Goodkirk what happened, thinking that the Goodkirk was the the one that tried to assault her. She was met with a little bit of skepticism, right? And I wonder if that same storyline was shot today in 2024. How would that be different with our, kind of, modern sensibilities, our, our more progressive understanding of the, the issues that women face in you know, in the workplace, and in other, other parts of life the pervasiveness of sexual assault in particular, how, how, if, if at all, would that be different if it was shot today?

Ethan: 25:07

Yeah, one thing I found interesting about the whole interaction, like, afterwards with the aftermath is she went to the superiors, but they also had Kirk in the room when they weren't aware that evil Kirk existed yet. So that kind of just struck me as a little bit odd in that scene.

Anthony: 25:30

that she went to her superiors?

Ethan: 25:32

No, no, not that she went to her superiors. The fact that Kirk was in the room listening in

Anthony: 25:37

on it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a good point because he's the accused, right? And so how could she fairly be able to report what happened if he's there, right? He's still the captain of the ship. He's got this authority on the ship over her and she thinks it was the good Kirk that tried to do that to her and, and he's there when she's discussing it. That's a, that's a good point. So yeah, maybe that would have been shot differently. I don't know. I, I, I think for the time this was 1966, so I think for the time it was probably a fairly thoughtful way of exploring the issue of sexual assault and, and some of the challenges that women faced. I, I think it might have been done with a little more sensibility if it was shot today, but overall, I thought they, they handled it fairly well.

Ethan: 26:33

Yeah, I could agree with that. But I wasn't really You weren't alive in that time either, but you were closer than I was. Yeah, I'm not that old. Whatever you say, old man. Yeah, so you probably have a little bit more of like a kind of frame of reference to that time period than I do. So I don't really Yeah, know what how that kind of stuff happened back then in comparison to how it happens today, you know, right, right Yeah,

Anthony: 27:04

that's that's a good point. That's what makes this podcast interesting, right? We have different perspectives because we come from different generations

Ethan: 27:11

generational differences from A modern youth to an old man.

Anthony: 27:16

That's right. We're diverse in our in our life experience so Overall, I really enjoyed the episode. I gave it an A minus and the only reason I gave it an A minus is because some of the acting was a little cheesy. Kirk. In particular, I, I, I, William Shatner, I actually think is a really good actor, and he's gotten kind of some slack over the years for maybe not being a great actor, but I, I actually think he's a very talented actor, but in, in this episode, he did a great, good job, but I thought at times when he was playing the evil Kirk, he was just a little over the top, it was more of a caricature than a you know, a real, yeah, Person and so that's why I knocked it down for you know to an a minus, but I still really liked the episode I thought the themes were interesting and certainly certainly a one worth Watching and revisiting from time to time. Yeah,

Ethan: 28:14

and one thing I noticed odd about evil Kirk It I don't know if you notice this it kind of looked like he was wearing like Eyeliner. Yeah.

Anthony: 28:22

Yeah, you could see his makeup

Ethan: 28:23

for sure. I think that the goal was to make their faces look visibly different Yeah, cuz like Good Kirk kind of had this just like, dazed, confused face, while Evil Kirk had a very brooding face, I guess you could say.

Anthony: 28:41

Yeah, yeah, it was, the makeup job wasn't great. But, you know, it was the 1960s, so they were limited on what they could do. So, yeah,

Ethan: 28:52

so they put all of Starfleet in spandex. Right.

Anthony: 28:57

So what, what letter grade did you give

Ethan: 28:59

it? I, yeah, I'd probably give it like the B plus A minus range. Like it was a good episode. I liked the concept, but I had sort of the. same issues you did with some of the acting like I feel like they they did they played bad Kirk to like a little Bit too much of the extreme like he is supposed to be the extreme negative side, but not like that far Yeah,

Anthony: 29:24

yeah Yeah, I think that's fair. I think that's a fair assessment of the episode, but but still, good stuff Star Trek, we love it even when it's bad, we love it, right? There's something about Star Trek that's, that's so great. So. Yeah, so I think that's all we've got for today's episode. So we'll look forward to being back again next week. In the meantime, we hope you guys have a great week. We appreciate everybody that's listening to the show. Our downloads continue to grow and that's exciting to see. We've noticed that we've had some listeners Even from outside the United States. So thank you, thank you, thank you for listening. And we hope you keep coming back and we'll keep doing our best to create good content. Please follow us on social media in the show notes. It's got our social media handles and you can also email us if you have any comments or ideas of things you'd like us to discuss on the show. We'd be more than happy to hear your thoughts on that.

Ethan: 30:22

Yeah, so we will see you all in the next episode. Have a good rest of your day. Take care.