re: Star Trek: TOS Watchers - Season 1 Wrapup *Page 25*

*THE CORBOMITE MANEUVER*

Sulu moves from the science section to the helm. Uhura premieres on the bridge in beige. I can see why there was a switch, later. Nichelle looks much better in red, and, with the exception of Spock, Scotty, (I think Leslie) and McCoy when he was briefly on the bridge, the rest of the bridge crew was all in beige in this episode. After all this was supposed to be "color" television. Scotty was in beige for WNMHGB, but had switched to his traditional red for this episode.

We had 2 primary guest stars - Anthony Call as Bailey and Clint Howard (little Ronnie Howards' little brother) as Balock. However, did anyone catch Ted Cassidy (The Addam's Family's Lurch) as the voice of the scary Balock robot? Apparently he and Roddenberry were good buddies - he will make a full appearance in "What are little girls made of?", and also voiced the Gorn captain in "Arena".

Jimmy Doohan (Scotty) would later do an number of these types of voices, and, in particular - did many, many of the male guest characters in TAS. But, we got Cassidy's big, booming voice in The Corbomite maneuver. Walker Edmiston provided the voice of Clint Howard's Balock.


This has a great introduction to Kirk and McCoy's relationship. Kirk starts off the episode with his shirt off. Spock was shouting a little too much on the bridge, but I don't think everyone had decided just exactly how this character was going to be, yet. Sulu's admonition "Don't cross brains with Spock" is good advice. Bailey's fear of the unknown is supposed to represent the average, ignorant person's initial response to differences or the "other". Kirk explains (albeit in a dialogue with Spock) the mission of the Enterprise is exactly these kinds of encounters.

In retrospect, this episode gets better with age - especially with the updated effects. Clint Howard does a good job for a young actor. Call's Bailey was convincing as a young officer, perhaps overpromoted, who was conflicted between his aversion to the unknown and his sense of duty. We're also supposed to see shadows of the young James T. Kirk here (because, apparently, Kirk does).