There are Always Titles for Those Who Want to See Them
Many Battles Have Been Fought and Won by Soldiers Nourished on Subtitles
This is the fifth edition of Assorted Nonsense, the Official Newsletter of Donovan Street Press.
So, I decided to update the cover for my science fiction novel A Time and a Place. We all know the power of a good cover. I’m not saying the current cover is bad, but I believe a different cover might more accurately convey the novel’s appeal.
With this in mind, I approached an artist I know about doing an illustration for a new cover.
“I’ve got a great idea,” she said. “Let’s put a gorilla on the cover.”
“Um, there are no gorillas in A Time and a Place,” I told her. “Not anymore.”
“What happened to the gorilla?” she asked.
“We got rid of the gorilla.”
“No!” she exclaimed. “You didn’t get rid of the gorilla! I loved the gorilla!”
My artist friend, you see, had read an early draft of A Time and a Place in which a gorilla figured prominently.
What happened to the gorilla?
Well, my novel A Time and a Place had two editors, you see.
It had two editors because these days manuscripts have to be in excellent shape before submitting them to publishers.
So after I wrote it, I approached an editor friend of mine, Arleane Ralph, about editing it. She’s a professional, does that sort of thing for a living, and I knew she would do an excellent job. Which she did. She improved the novel enormously. Her name is in the finished book as one of the editors. And she liked the scene with the gorilla, so her version of the edited manuscript included the gorilla.
I submitted this draft of the manuscript to several agents and publishers. Finally Robert Runte, who was senior editor of Five Rivers Press at the time, made me an offer. I thought about holding out for a bigger publisher but I really like Robert and finally decided to go with this small press that obviously liked my book and promised to do well by it. I accepted Robert’s offer. But although the fact that A Time and a Place had already been edited no doubt helped Robert and his team choose the book, it still needed to be edited to Robert’s taste. So he did another pass for Five Rivers and guess what: he didn’t like the scene with the gorilla.
I believe myself to be a collaborative person. I think there’s always a winning position in the room. So I worked with Robert to alter the scene to his satisfaction. Arleane was dismayed. I don’t blame her. I had liked the gorilla scene too. I wrote it, after all. To be clear, though I appreciated Robert’s edits as well. I was enormously lucky to have two talented, professional editors work on the novel.
Over the years I’d forgotten many of the details of that version. I dug it out and reread it just now. It’s quite a bit different than the published version, but it does have a certain charm, I think.
I present it here, in public, for the first time ever: the original Chapter 13 of A Time and a Place, entitled Monkey Business. (In the published version, Chapter 13 is called A Matter of Life and Death.)
I’d love to know what you think of it in the comments.
Here’s the set up: Barnabus J. Wildebear and Dr. Peter Humphrey have accidentally travelled back in time two years. There, Wildebear realizes he has an opportunity to save his sister Katerina, who died tragically in a motorcycle accident. Here Wildebear explains to Humphrey what happened:
“You know as much as I do, Doctor. She swerved to avoid hitting some kind of animal. Hit a car instead.”
“Some kind of gorilla, wasn’t it?”
“That’s what they say. Don’t know if I believe it. Somebody said they saw an ape or a monkey or something run out in front of her, but it took off afterward. Nobody ever saw it again.”
“Odd,” Humphrey reflected. “And yet, when you think about it, fairly straightforward. All we have to do is keep your sister off her bike. And keep an eye out for apes.”
Skipping ahead a bit, we arrive at Chapter Thirteen, in which Wildebear and Humphrey set out to save Katerina:
XIII
Monkey Business
The accident had occurred in downtown Summerside on Water Street in front of a popular haunt called Chez Jack’s. Chez Jack’s was about a half hour walk from Katerina’s house. It had started drizzling again, so we borrowed a couple of umbrellas and wandered down to have a look. Between the weather and the way I was feeling, I would much rather have crawled into the comfy bed I knew lay in Katerina’s guest bedroom, but there was no time to lose—it was already well past nine o’clock, a mere two and a half hours before the accident.
It had been a while since I’d spent any time in downtown Summerside. The waterfront had always been a popular tourist destination and as we approached Chez Jack’s I saw that this hadn’t changed. The drizzle had done little to dampen the usual lively atmosphere. Along the boardwalk in front of Spinnaker’s Landing, a Celtic band entertained a smattering of hardy souls in bright yellow rain slickers while others darted in and out of the many fine gifts shops, art galleries, and restaurants that Summerside had to offer.
North of the boardwalk, Humphrey and I skirted a large puddle in which two little girls were splashing gleefully. They carried green umbrellas with pictures of kittens on them. When we stopped to watch, a young couple that had been patiently standing by stepped forward to hurry the girls along. Shortly after the rain graduated from cats and dogs to considerably less domesticated animal fare and Humphrey and I soon found ourselves alone on the sidewalk. Undeterred, we moved west along Water Street to the scene of the accident where we spent a long moment staring at the road where Katerina had met—would meet—her tragic end.
“It was a wet night, I remember,” I told Humphrey, speaking for no reason other than to keep my spirits up.
I watched as the raindrops exploded against the asphalt, each of them shattering upon impact. Only when Humphrey spoke, and his voice was an octave lower than usual, did I realize that I had unwittingly invoked the gate, speeding myself up relative to everything else, allowing me to more fully appreciate the destruction of each individual raindrop —
“Wildebear.”
The rain resumed its normal pace. “I’m sorry, Peter. What did you say?”
“I said I’m soaked and starving. We need to figure out our next step. Why don’t we do it inside, over a burger.”
Inside Chez Jack’s we dripped all over the floor and waited to be seated. Anxious at the delay, I distracted myself by studying the décor, which was all yellows and reds and stained glass lamps and glossy photographs of French movie stars. Just as I was about to suggest to Humphrey that we try someplace else, the hostess arrived. Though I would have preferred one of the big red booths for privacy, she ushered us to a tiny table with wobbly legs. Humphrey placed a folded napkin beneath one of the legs to eliminate the wobble.
Our waitress was an attractive blonde woman with worry lines creasing her forehead. She introduced herself as Karin with an “I”. I asked her for a hamburger, a large root beer, and a side order of fries. Not to be outdone, Humphrey ordered two hamburgers, a baked potato, a large Coke, and onion rings.
“Boy’s too smart for his own good,” Humphrey said, as we waited for our food to arrive.
Ridley had refused to divulge the whereabouts of his mother.
“Too smart for Katerina’s good,” I said. “We don’t have a whole lot of time to get her off that bike, and I don’t have a clue where to start.”
“Which direction was she travelling—will she be travelling—when the accident occurred? Occurs.” Humphrey grimaced.
“Toward the marina. She came from the west. She was travelling too fast to have turned off Water onto Granville. So we know where she’s coming from.”
“Best bet might be to flag her down before she gets to the intersection.”
“She’d just ignore us. Or worse, we might distract her and cause an accident ourselves.” I sighed. “Doctor, if we do manage to save my sister—
“When we save her.”
“When we save her it’s going to change things. I’m concerned that—I mean, now that the opportunity’s presented itself it would be unthinkable not to save her, but what about…” I trailed off, not sure I wanted to pursue the thought.
“You’re concerned about the greater implications.” Humphrey reached into a pocket of his tattered suit and retrieved a cigar, which he toyed with for a second before abruptly looking up and seeming to remember where he was, which was in a public restaurant that did not permit smoking. He sniffed the cigar and put it back in his pocket.
He leaned forward, his expression intent. “If your sister doesn’t die, then she’ll live to touch the lives of others for as long as she remains alive. We have no way of determining whether the net impact of her life will be good or bad so it doesn’t enter into the equation. We do know that if she remains alive, Ridley won’t go to live with you. He will not find the book, and he won’t go through the gate.”
“And neither you nor I will go through the gate after him,” I said.
“Exactly. Katerina will be alive and Ridley will be safe—all good. However, I will still find the book at a used bookstore and give it to Joyce for Christmas. Joyce will bring it with her when we visit you in February. She’ll leave it in your guest bedroom. Ridley won’t be there to find it but someone else might. Iugurtha could well get her clutches on someone else—you maybe.”
I waved a hand in the air. “So long as she leaves Ridley alone. But…”
“But what?”
I was thinking about Cat, and Sweep, and Half Ear and his troop, and the rest of the T’Klee. Iugurtha had taken Ridley to help save Cat’s people from the Necronians.
“Forget it,” I said.
My responsibilities extended to Ridley and my sister and that was all. What could a boy like Ridley possibly do to help save a race of alien cat creatures anyway?
Karin with an “I” returned with our order. I removed the lettuce and tomato from my burger and ate each separately. Humphrey made short work of his burgers and onion rings. Sebastian was impersonating an ordinary wristwatch. According to him it was nine-thirty three—a little over an hour and a half until Katerina motored down Water Street to her untimely demise.
The people at the table next to ours got up and left a paltry amount of change for a tip, prompting me to check my wallet, at which point I remembered that I didn’t have my wallet. I had not anticipated requiring money on the other side of the gate.
“Humphrey,” I whispered. “Do you have any money?”
“Don’t worry about it,” he assured me. “It’s on me.”
I breathed a sigh of relief.
Karin appeared. “Care for anything else?”
Humphrey wiped sour cream off his face with a napkin. “Those hot fudge sundaes on the menu look pretty good.”
“They’re very popular,” Karin agreed. “Care for a couple?”
“One is plenty,” I said.
It didn’t take Karin long to make the sundae appear. It took even less time for Humphrey to make it disappear. Shortly afterward the bill appeared. Humphrey paid Karin with a couple of crisp brand new twenties. “Keep the change,” he said.
We lingered for a bit before making our way out of the crowded restaurant.
“Not another step,” a man boomed as we approached the exit.
Judging from the man’s deep baritone I expected to see someone with tattoos and bulging biceps and a Harley waiting in the back parking lot. Rarely have my expectations been so confounded. This man couldn’t have weighed more than one hundred pounds soaking wet. He stood about eye level with my belly button, allowing me a bird’s eye view of a bald scalp ringed with curly black hair. Skewering me with a pair of piercing blue eyes beneath a bushy black unibrow, he strode purposefully forward brandishing the two twenty-dollar bills Humphrey had used to pay Karin.
“Problem?” I asked.
Leonard Poirier, Manager of Chez Jack’s (according to the nametag pinned to his ill-fitting white shirt), shook his head slowly. “We don’t accept Monopoly money.”
He placed himself between me and the door as he spoke.
It took me a second to realize what the problem was. The brand new bills were legit. They just weren’t good now—two years before they had been withdrawn from a banking machine.
Humphrey had made good his escape. I considered dashing after him, but opted instead to cling to what was left of my dignity. I wouldn’t get far with my bad leg anyway. Also, I needed to stay close to Chez Jack’s and the scene of the accident.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t have any other money.”
Leonard wrinkled his nose. Probably I smelled of sweat and alien soil. Maybe he thought I was homeless. Maybe he would take pity on me and let me go.
His eyes came to rest on Sebastian. “Tell you what—give me your watch.”
Was it going to be that easy? I had no qualms about parting with Sebastian. I handed him over.
“That will do for the cost of one meal,” Leonard said. “As for the other…” He motioned for me to follow him.
I didn’t budge. “That watch is worth a fortune. I think we’re even.” I didn’t want to get trapped into doing dishes. I needed to be able to slip away when the time came.
Leonard looked sceptical. “For all I know, you got this thing in a dollar store.”
“What, then?”
I allowed Leonard to lead me to the back of the restaurant, through a door labelled “Staff Only,” into a room that felt damp and smelled of carrots. It was cluttered with rickety shelving units holding cardboard boxes. Leonard rooted around and pulled a large plastic bag out of one of the boxes. Inside the bag was an outfit of some sort, large and furry.
“I have no idea if this will fit you,” he said. “But try it on. Then come out and see me.”
I looked the outfit over. It consisted almost entirely of thick brown fur, and came with a headpiece that sent a chill coursing through my body.
It seemed Leonard wanted me to promote his restaurant.
Dressed up as an ape.
###
Leonard patently didn’t need to promote Chez Jack’s—the mobs waiting to get in earlier had made that abundantly clear. The job he was offering was an act of charity. It had been intended for someone else, Leonard informed me, a hard-luck case who was supposed to have started this very night, but who hadn’t shown up (he wasn’t a hard luck case for nothing). When I showed up, to all appearances another hard-luck case, Leonard figured he might as well offer the job to me, at least for an hour or two. Pacing the sidewalk in front of the restaurant dressed up as an ape would allow me to work off my debt honestly. Whether it had occurred to Leonard that such work was also a means of humiliating his charity cases I couldn’t quite tell, but given that he could have called the cops instead, I figured I’d give him the benefit of the doubt.
I limped out of the restaurant wearing the ape suit with a placard in one hand and a banana in the other. “You’ll go bananas for our burgers,” the placard read.
The rain was still spitting down. I found Humphrey lurking beneath a large Maple tree near the front door. “That explains the ape,” he said when he saw me.
Inside the mask I felt feverish. It was difficult to see. My voice sounded as hollow as I felt. “So I was the ape? I killed Katerina?”
Humphrey did not respond, unless you count taking the banana from my hand, peeling it and eating it.
“I can’t stay here,” I said, taking the mask off. “Katerina’s going to show up any minute, and when she does I’m going to step out into the street and kill her. I can’t let that happen.”
“Of course you can’t.” Humphrey tossed the banana peel at the foot of the tree. “Which is why we’re not going to let it happen.”
“How?”
He leaned in confidentially and said, “We’re going to burn it.” Taking me by the shoulder, he propelled me around the side of the restaurant to the back parking lot.
“It’s not enough to put the costume in a garbage can somewhere,” he explained on the way. “We need to make sure no one else can wear it.”
He was right. It had to be done. No one could be the ape that killed Katerina. Yes, we would be destroying property belonging to Leonard Poirier, but saving a life would surely justify such an act. Leonard had Sebastian as compensation for both the costume and the food we’d eaten, and he’d told me himself he’d never actually used the outfit before. There was nothing to feel guilty about, absolutely nothing.
So why was I feeling guilty?
It wasn’t difficult to figure out. It was because I’d made a promise to Iugurtha, a promise I wasn’t keeping. And because I was still plagued by thoughts of Cat. I had been a prisoner in her mind only a few short hours ago. It was strange—despite never having actually seen Cat (aside from distorted reflections in pools of water) I could picture her furry countenance clearly. Like a cat she didn’t have much in the way of facial expressions, but to someone who understood what they were looking at, she could convey a great deal with one well-placed blink. Thinking of her now I imagined her shaggy head lowered, her azure eyes narrowed, and her top lip drawn back to reveal a hint of yellow teeth: an expression of distinct disappointment. I was doing nothing to help her or her people.
But I was only one man with troubles of his own. I couldn’t help her any more than Ridley could. What could I be expected to do about a race of hideous slime creatures invading a planet of alien cats? I refused to feel guilty about something I could do nothing about. And it was tragic, but Cat was as good as dead anyway, subsumed into the creature Iugurtha. You couldn’t help someone who was dead, could you?
But that was exactly what I was trying to do now. If I could save my sister Katerina from death, then why not Cat and her people? I could use the gate to completely sabotage the Necronian invasion of Cat’s planet. And why stop there? If I wanted to I could spend the rest of my life using the gate to undo every wrong ever committed.
Hunched in the shadows between a convertible and a mud-stained Jeep, I was able to slip out of the ape suit in a matter of seconds. Divesting myself of a growing unease was not so simple. It seemed too easy, this changing of the past. Yes, it required the use of the gate, a fantastic piece of machinery of unknown origin, not exactly the sort of thing found on the shelves of your local hardware store. But what if such tools were more common than I supposed? What if beings all over the universe were capable of changing the past, and actively doing so? What then could be said about the nature of reality? Was Katerina’s death reality? Or would saving her be reality? What if somebody came along after Humphrey and me and changed that reality?
The ground beneath my feet did not feel quite so stable anymore. I almost reached out to Humphrey to steady myself. It changed nothing, though—stable or not, the asphalt successfully conveyed us across the parking lot. History might well be infinitely mutable, but I still had to save my sister.
Soon we stood across the street from the boardwalk. When traffic let up we made a dash for it. Skirting the lone streetlight there, we plunged into the darkness beyond.
###
West along the boardwalk, on the outskirts of town, we moved onto the beach beyond the lights. Humphrey set the costume down on the sand where a fire wouldn’t be likely to spread. In my knapsack was a small can of lighter fluid, part of the provisions that Rainer had provided. I took it out and poured the fluid over the entire outfit. I had a lighter too, but Humphrey beat me to it. He had a cheap Bic lighter that he used to light his cigars. He took it out now and carefully set fire to the costume. The costume was a bit damp but coated in lighter fluid it didn’t matter.
We stepped back to watch it burn. With any luck it would be ashes before anybody happened along. There weren’t a whole lot of people about. Folk were only just beginning to re-emerge from the shops and restaurants where they had taken refuge from the rain.
Without Sebastian I had no idea what time it was, but it had to be drawing close to Katerina’s arrival. The costume wasn’t burning nearly fast enough. Worse, it began to produce a lot of black smoke. We couldn’t have drawn more attention to ourselves if we’d been jumping up and down and screaming obscenities.
We heard the distinctive sound of footsteps on the wooden boardwalk. The footsteps stopped as whoever it was left the boardwalk. Glancing at one another in alarm, we began frantically stamping out the fire. There was nothing to be done about the smoke. We had not quite finished our stamping when the walker was upon us: an elderly gentleman out for a late evening stroll with his Golden Retriever. The dog sniffed around the remains of the costume, helpfully extinguished the few remaining flames with two well-placed shots of urine, and dog and master continued on their way.
Humphrey kicked at the costume with his foot. Some of it was still intact, but the charred condition of the rest ensured that no one would be using it to pass themselves off as an ape any time soon.
“Well done, sir,” I said.
Humphrey inserted a celebratory cigar in his mouth and mumbled something vaguely congratulatory. We made our way back into town toward Chez Jack’s.
I had no intention of getting too close to the restaurant lest Leonard decide to press charges, but I wanted to be close enough to see Katerina whiz safely by on her motorcycle. By now I was experiencing a heady feeling of wonder at having altered history. Doctor Humphrey and I had actually managed to cheat Death itself, fate proving no match for two ordinary men determined to— Humphrey clutched at my arm. His cigar plummeted earthward, forgotten.
A creature was standing on the front porch of Chez Jack’s, a creature that looked for all the world like an ape. I shook my head to clear my vision but it didn’t help. The creature on the porch remained an ape.
Reality had felt fragile earlier but that had been nothing compared to this. Now I felt as though the fundamental operating laws of the universe had been completely altered in favour of a set of esoteric alien principles. I would not have been the least bit surprised had gravity suddenly ceased to function and cast Humphrey and me into the sky.
With a jolt I remembered the other hard-luck case—the one Leonard had originally intended to promote his restaurant. That’s who was standing on the porch now. Just how many damned ape outfits did Leonard own? We’d have to burn the lot of them. Except there wasn’t time—Katerina would be arriving any second now.
Humphrey slapped me hard on the back. “Don’t be spooked. We’re going to save her. We’ll figure out a way.”
I was barely listening. I couldn’t take my eyes off the figure on the porch. I started off across the street. Cars whizzed by me in both directions. I paid no heed. The man in the ape suit began to retreat as it became obvious that I was headed his way.
He was shorter than me. A pronounced stoop didn’t help. I smelled alcohol on his breath. “What do you want?” he asked.
“Your outfit.”
His eyes widened behind the mask. “What?”
“The costume. Give it to me. Here, I’ll buy it from you.” I held out the twenties Leonard had returned to me.
He shook his head. “It’s not mine to sell.”
“I’ll cover for you. I’ll tell Leonard you had to go, that you had an emergency or something.”
He stared at the bills. It was too dark to tell that they weren’t quite legit in this time. I hated myself for tempting the man. Temptation would be a daily battle for him, one I suspected he frequently lost.
“No,” he said.
Ordinarily I would have applauded his moral courage. I would have encouraged him, did whatever I could to help him. Not today. Today I had to have that outfit. If I didn’t, my sister would die.
I grabbed him by the shoulders. “I’ll give it back. You just need to—” I tried to pull the outfit off him. “I just need you to—give it to me!”
He broke free of my grip and lurched down the steps, bumping shoulders with Humphrey. Somehow he managed to stay afoot. He made for the sidewalk with Humphrey and me in hot pursuit.
Humphrey cried out. Had he fallen? No—now I saw what he saw: Katerina’s motorbike, headed this way like a kick in the gut with a steel-toed boot.
I yelled after the man in the ape suit: “Don’t move! Stay where you are! I’m not going to hurt you!”
He kept going but made the mistake of looking back at me.
I knew only too well what would happen next.
Chased by two shabby lunatics, clumsy from drink and half-blind because of the ape’s head piece, our quarry stepped onto Water Street. The curb took him by surprise and he tripped. As Katerina’s motorbike bore down on him, he threw his hands up in the air as if a thin layer of flesh might somehow ward off half a ton of screaming metal.
Katerina faced an awful choice. She could continue on her current heading and mow the ape-man down, or she could bear right onto the sidewalk and quite possibly crash into a light pole or garbage can. Or she could steer left into the oncoming traffic.
With a fraction of a second to decide my sister chose left. She successfully avoided the ape-man but failed to save herself. A Chrysler Newport struck her bike head on. Katerina flew over the handlebars like a large, wingless bird and bounced off the windshield of the Chrysler Newport with such force that I clearly heard the breath expelled from her body.
“Iugurtha,” I said.
The book burst from my knapsack, propelling me forward and almost off my feet as it blossomed into the gate. Mentally, I adjusted a few parameters and everything appeared to freeze, just as it had in Ridley’s room.
Katerina hovered in the air mere inches from the asphalt. The ape-man cowered as still as a bug on a wall. Humphrey stood with his mouth agape, his eyes wide, and his right arm thrust forward as if to snatch Katerina from the air.
The silence, as they say, was deafening.
Nothing had changed. My sister was going to die. Worse, now it appeared that Humphrey and I were responsible for killing her.
Desperate to forestall the inevitable, I concentrated on the gate. It seethed and roiled on the sidewalk before me. I willed it to change pages, to flip back over the events of the last hour. Locating the moment that Leonard had offered me the monkey suit, I entered the gate in a single bound.
The gate did not deposit me where I wanted to go. Instead it placed me inside a dark and empty room. Beyond the door I could hear the sounds of a crowded restaurant: Chez Jack’s, I assumed, though I couldn’t be sure. I tried to open the door but it was locked or stuck.
No matter. There were an infinite number of points leading up to Katerina’s death. I could change any one of them. I opened the gate and chose Water Street shortly before Katerina’s arrival. I found myself across the street from Chez Jack’s. Traffic was too heavy to jaywalk. I limped to the lights but they were not with me. I heard the roar of a motorcycle, saw Katerina cresting the hill. The ape-man lurched into the street.
Not to worry. I opened the gate again. This time I went to Katerina’s house the day before the accident. She didn’t answer the door. No problem. I transported to a phone booth. The phone didn’t work. I tried another booth. She never picked up. I tried to break into her house, to leave her a note, to warn her, but a police car showed up and I was forced to flee.
I travelled further back in time. To my surprise I successfully arranged to meet Katerina for lunch. We ate at a charming little café near the Loyalist Hotel, where I revelled in her company. I tried to warn her. She laughed at me. You need to take better care of yourself, she told me. You look terrible. Seeing her young and healthy and alive, I choked back the tears until I could bear it no longer and fled back through the gate.
That was the last time I ever saw Katerina alive. I visited the past countless times afterward but never made it that close to her again. Finally I could deny it no longer: I could visit the past, and be a part of it, but I could not change it. It has been written that what’s past is prologue, and it is so, with my sister’s fate a bitter prologue indeed. The future was all that was left to me now, to shape as best I could.
End of Chapter Thirteen
And that’s the original version of Chapter Thirteen.
What do you think? Should we have stuck with the gorilla? Let me know in the comments.
Star Trek: The Naked Time
Those of you who have been following along know that I’m rewatching classic Star Trek more or less in the order that they were originally broadcast. I’m jotting down my impressions as I go along.
Why?
I have no idea. Except that I’m enjoying doing it.
Time enjoyed is time well spent. Is it not?
This week’s episode was The Naked Time, by John D. F. Black, in which, after an Away mission, Lieutenant Junior Grade Tormolen infects the crew of the Enterprise with a virus that lowers everyone’s inhibitions with potentially catastrophic results. It’s a fun episode, a fan favourite, and George Takei’s favourite because he gets to run around shirtless with a rapier as an uninhibited Sulu.
You know what was great about the original Star Trek series? The sound effects. Douglas H. Grindstaff was the series Supervising Sound Effects editor for the show’s entire show’s run. He worked his butt off, and it paid off. The transporter sounds fantastic. The general ambiance is sublime. I think a large part of the original Star Trek’s appeal is the sound effects.
In The Naked Time, the replicator shows up for the first time. (I guess they fired the galley chief after he carelessly allowed Charlie X to turn the meatloaf into turkeys.)
Actor Bruce Hyde plays one of the infected crewmen, O’Riley. He plays him brilliantly. Blowing on the ship’s interior doors to open them was a brilliant piece of business. Why did Hyde not go on to greater things? Apparently he was considered for a recurring role. That should have happened.
In this episode we see Spock’s Vulcan nerve pinch for the first time. Speaking of which, Spock is STILL yelling at everyone from his console on the bridge, apparently unaware that the rest of the crew is only about four feet away from him.
There’s a terrific scene near the end when Spock, infected by the virus, starts losing control of his emotions, hinting at great resevoirs of emotion not far beneath that stoic Vulcan surface. But although Nimoy’s performance is terrific, and apparently done in a single take, I was more impressed by the camera work. There’s a great truck on Spock as he’s losing control (a truck moves the camera from side to side, as opposed to a dolly, in which the camera goes in and out.) The entire episode is staged creatively by the by the episode director, Marc Daniels, along with stellar work by the cameramen.
Part of the reason I love William Shatner in the role of Captain Kirk is because he’s so comfortable and natural as Kirk. But he gets into a bit of trouble at the end of this episode. John D. F. Black’s script (or maybe Gene Roddenberry’s rewriting of that script) gets a bit overwrought and unnatural. Even the gifted Shatner struggles to make it real. This never bothered me before; it’s only now, watching the episode with a critical eye, that I notice it.
The Enterprise is under an awful lot of stress when things go south in this episode but there’s little sign of it, other than one scene of everyone on the bridge being violently knocked off their feet. The sound insulation and artificial gravity field do a fantastic job of protecting the Enterprise from the speed it’s travelling and the gravitational forces it’s under. They sure made starships well in the year 2266.
There are some dodgy graphics at the end as the Enterprise recovers from its uncontrolled deteriorating orbit around the planet. That and the music do some heavy lifting to convey the appropriate sense of drama.
And then, as though the conceit of the episode wasn’t enough, they introduce time travel, almost as an afterthought. But that’s okay. It’s not like time travel is any less realistic than warp drive. And this obviously sets up some terrific episodes later, such as arguably the best episode, City on the Edge of Forever, and the best movie (in my view), Star Trek IV, The Voyage Home.
So anyway, at the end of The Naked Time, thanks to some inadvertent time travel, the crew of the Enterprise find themselves three days in their respective past. But they never think about warning their past selves about what they just went through. Maybe it wouldn’t have been possible (see Chapter 13: Monkey Business, above). But shouldn’t they have at least tried? It would have been a great part two.
As it turns out, The Naked Time was originally intended as a two parter. Part Two was supposed to have been the episode that eventually became Tomorrow is Yesterday. I’m not sure why they didn’t go through with this but it does explain why the time travel business feels unnecessarily tacked on to the end of this episode.
The Blish Version
I’d been starting to wonder about the value of reading the James Blish versions of these episodes because for the last few they’d hewed pretty closely to the televised versions. Not The Naked Time. It’s markedly different. This is in part because Blish was working off the original scripts without ever seeing a finished episode, at least until 1969. But it’s also due, possibly, to Roddenberry heavily rewriting John D. F. Black’s original script. There’s a bit of trivia posted on IMDB that states, “Black was later outraged when he discovered that Gene Roddenberry rewrote his script without consulting him or even telling him about it.”
Blish’s version is filled with technical details. I wonder if they came from Black’s script or if he put them in himself. He refers to the planet the Enterprise is orbiting as ULAPG42821DB, which the crew have nicknamed La Pig. He gets technical about the planet’s impending disintegration, having Spock spout terminology like “we’ve got a 2 per cent fall increment.” Kirk bark orders about firing “ventral verniers.”
The ending is completely different. McCoy saves the day by releasing “poison” throughout the ship to “combat the catalyst.” There is a lot of talk about cactuses. There is no big scene with Spock battling his emotions or Kirk referring to the Enterprise as “she.” Nor is there any hint of time travel. The episode concludes with Spock tucked away in his quarters strumming away on a “Vulcanian musical instrument” while unleashing a “peculiarly Arabic howl.”
“Rijii, bebe, p’salku pirtu, Fror om—” croons Spock.
“Great galaxy,” exclaims Kirk, upon hearing it through the intercom.
Which apparently he can use to eavesdrop on his crew whenever he likes.
Upcoming Appearances
I’ve been invited to appear at the Dieppe, New Brunswick location of Chapters (just behind the Champlain Mall) for a signing event on February 25th between noon and 4pm.
I’ve invited myself to Curt’s General Market at the Riverview Lion’s Club March 2nd (my birthday!)
And I’ll be at the Riverview Lion’s Club for the Athena’s Touch Craft Fair March 23rd
C’est tout for this time around. Have a great week!
Joe