2x06 The Doomsday Machine

I've never made an attempt to watch the entire Original Series. I'm certain I haven't seen all of the episodes in syndication so I recently purchased them on Blu-ray to watch them at my own pace. Now I don't have to worry about yet another streaming service sucking cash out of my wallet every month, only to drop the show before I can get through it.

Anyway, I decided to watch "The Doomsday Machine" because I recall being amazed by the planet killing machine, which looks like a big cornucopia basket. Actually, the enhanced special effects that have been created for the Original Series really helps make this episode even more appealing.

Spock is absolutely awesome here as he is forced to give over command of the enterprise to Commodore Decker. I've never been a fan of William Windom, who plays Decker in this episode. To me, he always seems like he's chewing scenery, which he does here. So much so that he makes Shatner look like a cast extra. That gripe aside, I love the episodes where the Enterprise has to battle an enemy that is malevolent with a purpose that is mysterious or even vague. So this one then, obviously scores very high with me. While I knew that no one of note would die during the battle with the super weapon, it sure managed to build a lot of suspense. Scotty is the unsung hero in this story. The dude is constantly coming up with solutions to bring the damaged U.S.S. Constitution back with just enough power to enable Kirk to save the day.

[8.6/10] It’s amazing what a difference one actor can make in an episode of Star Trek. Matt Decker is a brief but potent shot in the arm for “The Doomsday Machine,” one whose appearance in the first act immediately sells everything else he does that helps spur the plot for the rest of the episode.

Much of that owes to the actor, William Windom, who breathes life into decker. The scene where Kirk and company rouse him, and relays the terrible events that befell him and his crew is arresting from the word go. The disorientation, the distress, the regret in his voice, quickly tell the audience how harrowing what Decker experienced was, without needing to see the scope of the battle. It sells the terror of “that thing” out there better than all the dry “but there used to be three planets in this system” remarks from stoic crewmen and shots of rubble ever could.

It also sells the sense of survivor’s guilt that motivates Decker. It’s hard to make a character both terribly misguided – to the point that he makes foolish decisions that put hundreds of other lives at risk – but also sympathetic. “The Doomsday Machine” pulls that trick off by showing Decker as clearly rattled and a little unhinged, throwing the weight of his rank around and sending the crew on dumb maneuvers, but by having the reason for that be that he’s haunted by the mistakes he made that got his entire crew killed.

That fact clearly weighs on Decker at every moment. Windom plays his single-minded obsession – to either avenge his fallen crewmates or assuage his guilt by joining them – with just the right combination of insanity and capability. He’s not thinking clearly, and he’s disturbed, but he knows enough to take command and order sweeps and attacks. It creates a magnetic, unpredictable presence at the center of the episode that spurs more than a little of “Doomsday Machine”’s action, both inside and outside the Enterprise.

It also pays dividends for the main cast. For one thing, it helps Kirk, who often works best as a side dish rather than a main course. He’s definitely at his peak here – encouraging of his subordinates, but particularly with Scotty, maintaining that wry edge that makes him more than just another stuffed shirt. Too many of his sarcastic asides or too much of his too-cool-for-school wit and he starts to come off as smug and self-satisfied, but when those moments are sprinkled in like this, it presents Kirk as someone who tries to take the edge off of the severity of the situation everyone’s facing with humor rather than someone who doesn’t take those situations seriously.

It also gives him the chance to provide a nice counterpoint to Decker. Kirk is willing to sacrifice himself to save the galaxy as well, but he’s unwilling to endanger his whole crew to do so when it’s unnecessary. The use of the jerry-rigged U.S.S. Constellation to blow up the Doomsday device lacks a bit of intrigue given that, once you realize how far into the episode we are, it’s pretty much a fait accompli that it will work.

Still, the countdown to beam Kirk off of the ship before it explodes actually caught my attention despite the fact that Kirk obviously doesn’t die here. Credit where it’s due, much of that belongs to Shatner, who plays Kirk as remaining stoic with just enough concern in his voice to sell the moment when telling his crewmen to beam him over. Much of it is the score and the editing, which cuts nicely between the various panic points of the effort, but Shatner does his part and it’s worth lauding.

It is also, as usual, worth lauding Leonard Nimoy and Spock. For all the epic white whale-chasing drama going on with the titular Doomsday Machine outside the ships, one of the most compelling parts of the episode is the struggle for command within the Enterprise. Episode writer Norman Spinrad writes Spock particularly well as someone who is by the book, but willing to use every page of that book against Decker when he thinks it’s putting the crew at risk.

Nimoy, understated as usual, communicates Spock’s conflicting desires to follow the regulations he agreed to by becoming a Starfleet officer, and also working within those regulations and that system to protect his crew and his ship. One of the best scenes in the hot-tempered Bones imploring his frenemy Spock to “do something” and Spock grinning and bearing it (so to speak). A by-the-book guy like Spock is unwilling to break the rules, but also is looking out for the best interests of The Enterprise, and that creates both an interesting internal conflict for him and an interesting tet-a-tet between him and Decker for much of the episode. (Decker, meanwhile, continues the proud Star Trek tradition of every officer above the rank of captain being evil, insane, incompetent, or all three.)

But that power struggle is still in service of how to address the giant, Eye of Sauron-containing cornucopia that is attacking the two Federation ships and chewing through planets. It may simple stem from the fact that this is one of those episode where the “remastering” of the old footage is most evident, but “Doomsday Machine” has more of an epic, even cinematic feel than many episodes of The Original Series. The shots of the Enterprise and the Constellation firing on the machine, or careening into its fiery maw, offer the sort of thrilling space battle that are understandably few and far between in the Star Trek of the sixties.

The machine itself provides a great deal of the tension, even apart from the good character work being done all around. This massive, destructive device, that cannot be reasoned with, that prevents warning, and that is difficult to escape presents a real challenge to our heroes that mandates some creative thinking and desperation maneuvers. Sure, the thematic elements are laid on a little thick – “Can you tell we’re offering a cautionary tale about nuclear weapons?! Can ya!?” – but the titular machine serves its narrative purposes as well or better as it serves its thematic one.

That machine is the object of Decker’s Ahab-like fixation in this Moby Dick-esque tale. “The Doomsday Machine” is an episode centered around individuals who are devoted to their crew, and wondering which rules they can break, what principles are inviolable, and what parts of themselves they’re willing to sacrifice in order to save their ships or avenge their people. That’s the sort of character and narrative stakes that produces many of Star Trek’s best episodes, and “The Doomsday Machine” is no exception.