Gatorman9

It has always been painful to read the majority of the reviews on this website for this episode, and never more so than today in 2025, when the democratic system of the United States of America IN REAL LIFE literally teeters on the brink of complete collapse, something inconceivable to patriotic, God-fearing young minds such as my own in the 1960s or '70s.

This episode, like the vast majority of episodes of not only of Star Trek but also of almost any dramatic series on American television when it was made, was a morality tale -- a fable -- and it has a message which has never been more pressing for appreciation as at the present moment in American history. It is very decidedly not about frankly juvenile and fantasy-bound ideations of a "prime directive" or convenient cheap trick science-fiction plot workarounds like "parallel development" laws of evolution. If you are a mature adult who has actually bothered to learn actual adult history, you can see how it was a direct reaction by World-War-Two combat heavy bomber pilot Roddenberry to the excesses of right-wing extremist jingoism of McCarthy era of the 1950s, something evidently still resonating within his mind, and surely within the minds of many other intelligent people, when he put this on paper in 1964 or '65. The metaphor is palpable, just as with any decent morality play of any time or place. "Cloud William" and his followers are not aliens on another world, but classic McCarthyites, filled with fear, anger, hate, ignorance, stupidity, vengeance, and violence, while worshiping flags, books, and hoary documents as "holies" without having the slightest idea what they actually say and mean that would make any of them worth rendering at all sacred in the first place. Kirk's inspired speech at the conclusion is to attempt to remind neither Cloud William nor his cohort, but rather the American television audience, about the core American ideas and values of democracy, justice, peace, shared welfare, and the continuity of the same, rather than mere empty icons and historical relics, that Americans not only have fought and died for but must live for, too, every day.

That this message has clearly fallen on utterly deaf ears in the shamefully immature and morally underdeveloped world of science fiction fandom of the 21st century is patently illustrated not only on this website but across the internet. Wikipedia cites such authoritative, hallowed and erudite sources as "Whatculture", "Screenrant", and (my personal favorite), "Den of Geek" for the lack of merit of this episode.

Fortunately, better-grounded (not to mention actually capitalized, i.e., professional) sources such a Entertainment Weekly and Syfy will back up my review here, the former noting that Kirk's speech is one of the most important moments in the character's life. And in that vein, and in terms of real life, this is the finest and most important thing Roddenberry ever wrote in his career.

This is a 1940s-style wacky treatment in the comedic mode of ARSENIC AND OLD LACE (1944). Indeed, as I watched it I saw many moments where I imagined Cary Grant handling the same scenes, and given the non-stop onslaught of clever, clever tropes developed in the writing (somebody should have gotten an award for this) it is not hard to imagine a Cary Grant treatment being one of his greats alongside the later movie.

That said, comparisons with BEWITCHED, despite the film's title, are rather overblown. Rather, the dynamic here is much, much more reminiscent of I DREAM OF JEANNIE. Like Barbara Eden's Jeannie, Veronica Lake's little blonde character, a relic of the distant past, has absolutely no idea about how the modern world works and could care less; all she knows is that she must have whatever it is her heart desires, and she engages in a series of playful antics accordingly, whether to the distress or to the merely distressing benefit of the object of her attentions. When in the end she winds up in gooey-eyed love, naturally things take a turn for marriage. Her counterpart, like Jeannie's, is a very conventional, conservative, serious, often stiff, even stodgy fellow caught up in something he way over his head, and in the end all he can do is yield to all her cuteness and affection.

Given the really perfect writing and essentially flawless execution, this is highly recommended. Intelligent viewers should not miss it when they get the chance.

Well, they've done it again. I gave this a chance when it showed up recently on Youtube and I saw the cast listings. I was especially interested when I saw it had George C. Scott as the vessel's master, Captain Smith, as though this might be giving some focus on that party's role in this event, something that is always given seemingly barely minimal treatment in other renditions of the TITANIC disaster.

But, as with every other movie version of the sinking except for A NIGHT TO REMEMBER (and not the least the James Cameron version, which for much the same reason I have savaged elsewhere), *it fundamentally disrespects the source material*. It is just another tawdry, shallow soap opera exploitatively linked to one of the most bitter and horrifying tragedies of all time. The pairing is egregious. Most of the plot material of this misguided effort could just as easily but surely more appropriately have been set in a run-of-the-mill Ramada Inn on a snowy night in Milwaukee while the characters are waiting for the airport to reopen. One wonders what this kind of filmmaker will find for the basis of their next soap. The 9-11 attacks? The Kennedy assassination (either of them)? Martin Luther King? The crucifixion of Jesus Christ! The mind boggles.

Were that not bad enough, they then choose to push out even that envelope with some of the most explicit sex I have ever encountered on broadcast network television, including, regrettably, an entirely gratuitous and frankly disturbing rape scene in the third-class women's shower room about half-way through the "story".

The result is, I am doing something here that I never have done before on this website, and writing a review about something which, after about that point, I couldn't see any point in watching any more and never bothered to finish. While it is true they did try to get some mileage out of Captain Smith's participation for a change, the truth is he is normally given little in TITANIC movies because so little is known about his activities on this final voyage of his career, leaving the writers here to interpolate, extrapolate, speculate, and possibly even agitate to try to come up with things for the legendary Mr. Scott to do. Tim Curry likewise turns on all his so often surprising talents in his part as a diabolically crooked steward (is there anything that guy can't do in an entertaining way? I bet even he could have turned in an interesting Captain Smith) rather overlooking the fact that there is no point in his character's patently evil activities dragging down the essentially noble TITANIC disaster story in real life to a basely degenerate version of a LOVE BOAT plot. Probably the nicest thing I can say about this choice of treatment is that at least it lacked the arrogance (not to mention the incidences of nauseating geeky nerd "humor") of the Cameron movie. And with that I could not care less about any of the other potential merits of this tiresome exercise, either the mostly competent production values or the once-cuddly Merilu Henner or Catherine Zeta-Jones notwithstanding. Instead I think I will log off this site in preference to spending the remainder of the evening rescreening the vastly more mature NIGHT TO REMEMBER, a movie that is actually about the actual sinking of the TITANIC and what happened to those aboard, and not a bunch of contrived silly nonsense.