Axiom’s Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy

(Part of our ongoing series covering all aspects of the Star Trek franchise)

By Sam Christopher

Star Trek, like all the best sf, is more about the characters than the technological advances. Sure, the transporters and warp drive and phasers and replicators are all cool, but it’s the characters that make people tune in. It’s not the Enterprise computer and sensors that people talk about after a show, it’s Mr. Spock’s coolly logical approach to things. It’s not the Universal Translator that people hope to see more of every week, it’s Lt. Uhura. It’s not even the space battles and cool sfx (for the time and budget) that people care about week after week, it’s the interaction of Captain Kirk, Dr. McCoy and Mr. Spock. So I thought it might be fun to take a look at the characters of Star Trek individually, starting this week with The Original Series.

The hard part for me is deciding first on balance. I mean, it’s only right if I’m going to have a Favorite Characters list I should also have a Least Favorites one to go with it. And, with that decided, then we move on to actual numbers. How long a list should I make for each? I’ll settle on five of each for TOS. That’s an easily manageable number. Except… how do I pare down my favorites to just five? I could take the crew of the Enterprise off the table on both lists, or maybe just regular ship’s crew for the series. That frees me from having to decide between Spock, McCoy, Scotty, etc. but still leaves me free to pick Mira Romaine or Gary Mitchell. So that’s what I’ll do. (You do realize, of course, that this could all change with other series. It’s easier to cheat when you make the rules—ask your Congressman.)

5 Favorite Characters from TOS:

5. Trelane, The Squire of Gothos:

If you love Q from TNG (and how many Trekkies don’t?) you have to love TOS’s own version of the character. William Campbell played this role with such a Q-like air that I’ve always thought (although I’ve never heard anyone connected with Trek say it) that John DeLancie was chosen for Q because he reminded GR of Campbell’s turn as Trelane. Later, Peter David would write the novel Q Squared in which he posited that Trelane was a Q. I just always thought it would have made more sense if Trelane and Q were one and the same.

4. Harcourt Fenton Mudd, smuggler/thief

Harry Mudd, who we first meet taking wives to miners on some distant world, is easily the funniest character from TOS. “Mudd’s Women” was all right, establishing him as a con artist willing to do virtually anything to make a buck, but he really rose to the heights in the delirious “I, Mudd”. Here we see him as the “monarch” of a world filled with androids which only want to help humanity. These androids “helped” their builders into extinction evidently and now they have their sights set on the Federation itself. And, in order to gain his freedom from them, Harry Mudd is only too willing to help. This ep simply must be watched.

3. Captain Christopher Pike, former Captain of the Enterprise:

The captain of the ship in the original pilot, “The Cage”, Pike was also seen in the series itself in the two-part episode, “The Menagerie”. In “The Menagerie”, Mr. Spock, the only regular series character to have appeared in “The Cage” (Majel Barrett, who played Nurse Chapel in the series, also appeared in The Cage but as the coldly logical First Officer known only as Number One), steals the Enterprise in order to take his crippled former captain to the only world in the galaxy where Pike can have a chance at a “normal” life. Jeffrey Hunter played Pike in the pilot but the role was played by Sean Kenney in “The Menagerie”, except for footage from “The Cage”. I’ve always enjoyed reading books with this character; he’s different from Kirk but still close.

2. Mr. Spock, First Officer of the ISS Enterprise:

Ah-ah-ah—this Spock was only shown in one episode. This is the Spock we saw in the greatest of all TOS episodes, “Mirror, Mirror”. The strange thing about this character was that while he was harder and a little more ruthless than “our” Spock, they really were essentially the same character. He truly had no desire to command the ship, preferring, he said, to remain a lesser target (officers moved up in rank by assassination). That was in the episode, but in the book Glass Empires (see my review) we see that he did indeed take “our” universe’s Kirk’s advice and take over as captain before moving on to… well, you really should read it.

1. Romulan Commander/ Sarek, Two very different characters played by the same man:

Told you I could cheat. These two characters were both very important in TOS and they were both played by Mark Lenard. The Romulan Commander—and that really is all he’s called in TOS, although the ST CCG has a card and name for him—is in command of the first Romulan ship we ever see and is the first known Romulan to ever be seen in Federation history. Besides, “Balance of Terror” is one of the best TOS eps ever. Sarek, Spock’s father from the ep “Journey to Babel”, is a pivotal character in this episode but becomes more important in the films, and even in TNG where we eventually see his death. In ST III he explains the concept of the katra—in other words “gave us the back dorr through which Spock could return to the storyline”—and in IV he argues with the Klingon Ambassador before the Federation Council. I just love both of these characters.

Now for the hard part…

5 Least Favorite Characters from TOS:

5. Apollo, The Greek God of Light and Irritating Me (evidently):

Okay, maybe this isn’t Apollo’s fault but this episode, Who Mourns for Adonis? (and the first ST ep I ever saw, btw), is one of the worst ever and someone has to answer for it. Besides, Apollo’s bellowing and bleating while trying to force the crew of the Enterprise to worship him really was nerve-wracking after the first, oh, twenty seconds. But the most annoying thing about the episode for me was how they treated Scotty. The Chief Engineer of the Flagship of the Fleet spent the entire episode whining like a love-sick schoolboy and generally acting like a teenager.

4, Gorgan, The Friendly Angel:

I know I’m giving these characters a number and this one is only fourth on this list, but this may be the single worst character ever conceived for any episode of any series of Star Trek. I still have no idea where the hell he was supposed to have come from. What, was he just hanging around that planet for all eternity hoping someone would come along and live there? I know, I know, they probably said on the ep how he got there but, really, who could sit through more than a minute or two of that crap without running screaming out into streets? Just awful.

3. The Space Hippies:

This, to me, is the single worst ep of TOS: “The Way to Eden”. Yeah, yeah, you can whine to me about “Spock’s Brain” and “Is There in Truth No Beauty”? all you want but TWTE has everything that’s dumb and inane about those eps and that horrible hippie sing-along besides. “Headin’ out to Eden, yeah, brother” <shudder> And watching the crew of the Enterprise snapping their fingers to the beat of this… this… AAAARRRGGGHHHHH! I just hate this episode and I blame the Space Hippies for it!

2. Commissioner Ferris:

This is the clown who wanted Kirk to give up the search for Spock, McCoy and others on the shuttlecraft in “Galileo 7″. What, precisely, was so damned important about him getting to wherever it was he needed to go that it would be acceptable to lose seven (if I remember right) members of the crew—including the First Officer, Chief Engineer and Chief Medical Officer—and a shuttlecraft? Of all the self-important, egotistical jerks! I hated this guy from the moment he opened his mouth.

1.    Stiles/ Boma, Two Bigots, No Waiting:

Finally, we have these two, and the reason there are two is that they pretty much perform the same function in two different episodes, that function being to show that as enlightened as Man may have become by the 23rd Century there will still be room for petty bigotry in our hearts. Mr. Stiles comes from a long line of military men, many of whom died in The Romulan War. And when he finds out that Romulans have pointed ears like Vulcans do… well, obviously that means that Mr. Spock is a traitor, a Romulan spy sent to destroy the Enterprise. Kirk, of course, lets him know very quickly how much bigotry the captain will tolerate on his bridge (it’s somewhere in the negative numbers) but that doesn’t keep this clown from making a jackass of himself until Spock risks his life to save Stiles. Then we have Mr. Boma, from the aforementioned “Galileo 7″, who also gives us a study in bigotry as he questions and argues every single decision Spock makes. Later, Diane Duane, in her novel Dreadnought, would show us what happened to Boma after Scotty put him on report for his conduct in this episode: busted out of Starfleet. Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.

Well, that’s it. I know there will be argument, and there is a lot of room for argument here. I myself could easily change these lists: how did I leave off the Guardian of Forever or Edith Keeler or Redjac from the favorites list, just off the top of my head. But that’s okay—I enjoy talking Trek whenever I can.