Star Trek: The Original Series – “Errand of Mercy″
By stephanie - Saturday, December 16th, 2006
Kirk and Spock travel to the planet Organia to convince them to let the Federation take on their planet as a base instead of the Klingons. The episode consists of Kirk arguing a lot with the Organians, who are peace-loving and do not intend (or ultimately need) to fight the Klingons.
This is an important episode, as it is our first introduction to the Klingons. John Colicos of the original Battlestar Galactica plays the lead Klingon. He was sooo good at playing well-mannered bad guys.
Of course, in the original series, the Klingons didn’t have those special ridges on their heads. The discrepancy was joked about in the Deep Space Nine episode “Trials and Tribble-ations,” where the DS9 crew travels back into the past and sees the old-style Klingons.
Since that episode, an entire canonical explanation has been developed over the discrepancy, involving a genetic mutation and virus. If you ask me, going to such ridiculous lengths to explain what is obviously a costuming issue is a bit extreme. Though, I suppose it’s just as well. If they hadn’t made up a fictional explanation for it, someone would have tried to go back in and digitally add head ridges onto the old Klingon actors.
December 21st, 2006 at 1:55 am
I LOVE your site. It is very nice and well done. Adding it to my blog roll and rss reader. Be sure to check out my podcast sometime. It’s called Lipstick Aliens.
December 22nd, 2006 at 7:00 am
This is one of my fave episodes. Even though our Kirk gets his comeuppance for his macho ways, it’s still fun to get to the turnaround–the simple “peasants” aren’t all that simple and are more like gods.
Mir
December 22nd, 2006 at 9:14 pm
Thank you SciFi Ranter Girl…that is a wonderful compliment. You have a great blog!