What Are Little Girls Made Of? (1966) Star Trek episode - My Rating: {>>>-} (Continuity!!!) {{ Previous - Next}}
Please note that this review is laden with spoilers.
This Star Trek episode is all about Nurse Chapel's past, and it is the only original series episode that I can ever remember focusing on her as an actual key plot element. Most early episodes tended to use Yeoman Rand more than Nurse Chapel, even though Nurse Chapel was the better character.
Body count: Six. Both red shirted ensigns do their usual vanishing act, with one of them falling down a bottomless pit mere minutes into the episode. Four androids are also killed in various ways.
Plot Outline:
The episode "The Naked Time" had already established the fact that Nurse Chapel (Majel Barret) was secretly in love with Mr. Spock. What that episode didn't bother to mention was the fact that Nurse Chapel was actually engaged to a scientist that she had not seen in several years. His name was Doctor Roger Korby.
The Enterprise has come to the last planet Doctor Korby worked at in search of him. They actually locate him almost immediately. He is living and studying in the deep underground caverns built by "The Old Ones". You see he is an Exo-biologist who specializes in archeological medicine. Apparently the Star Trek universe is vast enough that it has people specializing in such fields.
Doctor Korby requests that Captain Kirk and Christine Chapel beam down, as he has a great discovery that must be handled with extreme delicacy. The red shirted ensigns vanish and die as usual, leaving the Captain and Christine alone with Doctor Korby and his assistants.
They quickly find out that Doctor Korby's assistants are all androids, even the young, attractive Andrea that Christine was so jealous of. One of the androids is left over from the planet's original population, while the others were produced by the Doctor using the technology left behind by the long dead race.
Few and far between is the science fiction writer who would write in an android production facility without creating an evil clone. So before you know it there are two Captain Kirks running around. The android Captain does not need to eat, sleep or breathe, but is somewhat meaner than the real Kirk. Of course this android is immediately sent to take command of the Enterprise.
But Mr. Spock was able to spot the duplicate easily, because Kirk was able to plant false ideas in the android's head by means of his thoughts during its creation. The android Kirk is very insulting, and is prone to the use of racial slurs.
Eventually it all comes to a head in a confrontation that destroys the androids and reveals that Doctor Korby himself was also an android, and the man Christine Chapel loved had actually died years before.
My Opinion:
I really like this episode. They never paid enough attention to Nurse Chapel. I think she was a great character and I enjoyed every episode that featured her. She was a real woman, and not a little girl in a grown up body like Yeoman Rand was. She seemed all professional on the surface, but underneath she was a sex bomb just waiting to explode. Years later Majel will play a much more openly sexual character on Star Trek (Lwaxana Troi), but by that time she is a bit too old to really play the babe.
Notes
- This episode recycles footage from The Man Trap. Specifically the part where Captain Kirk walks away from the safe.
- McCoy, Scotty and Sulu are all absent for this episode.
- Captain Kirk successfully chokes a person who later turns out to be an android who does not need to breathe and therefore cannot be choked.
- The android technology used in this episode seems to be quite different than the technology used in Data and Lore decades later. It creates androids that are far superior to the TNG androids, but without the walking encyclopedia effect.
- Andrea the android uses a prop recycled from the pilot, it was a laser rifle in the pilot, but it functions as a phaser in this episode.
Cast and Guest Stars
Directed by: James Goldstone directed this episode along with several other first season ones.
Writing credits: Robert Bloch was responsible for this script. He also wrote Miri, The Conscience of the King, Catspaw, and Wolf in the Fold. He is sometimes regarded as one of the weaker writers on the show.
Sources: Star Trek.com, my head, and watching the sucker multiple times. A big thanks to weasello
for the format used.