Star Trek: The Original Series 2-26: Assignment: Earth - Part 1

Episode:

55

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Writer:

Art Wallace

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Director:

Marc Daniels

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Air Date:

29-Mar-1968

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm watching the infamous Assignment: Earth, the Star Trek episode that was blatantly a backdoor pilot for a spin-off series. A series that ultimately never got made.

Assignment: Earth the TV show was Gene Roddenberry's project, and the idea had apparently been around for a while. In fact he'd come up with initial story outline in 1965, shortly after the first Star Trek pilot got rejected. Star Trek's second pilot had a lot more luck, but Roddenberry continued working on Assignment: Earth's pilot as well, coming up with a first draft in 1966. By 1967 Trek's chances weren't looking good; even if it got a third season it likely wasn't getting a fourth, so Roddenberry decided to rework his script into a Star Trek episode. This would allow him to use Star Trek's resources to make his pitch in the form of a backdoor pilot.

(Though writer Art Wallace presumably did a lot of the rewrite work on it as well, seeing as it's his name on the teleplay. Wallace joined forces with Roddenberry after he pitched a similar series and got told that someone else had beaten him to it.)

Personally I'd say that the season finale is usually (but not always) the wrong time to give half the episode away to the guest stars. Though if things had worked out differently this could've been the last episode of Star Trek and the launch pad for the wildly successful Assignment: Earth! Decades later people could've been amazed to hear that the the series had been a spin-off of some long forgotten cult sci-fi show, and they'd be arguing over whether the Tom Cruise movies are better than the original series.

Alright I'll be going though the whole episode scene by scene, attempting to summarise what happens and what I think about it, while also finding room to sprinkle in a bit of trivia. This means that there's going to be SPOILERS, but only for the first two seasons of TOS.

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The episode starts with a shot of the Enterprise orbiting a world that's obviously Earth! Okay it doesn't have to be Earth, in fact the original un-remastered version of the episode recycled footage of the unnamed planet from Miri, which just happened to be identical to our own world. Duplicate worlds with familiar props and sets were actually a part of Star Trek's original premise.

Anyway Captain Kirk's captain's log assures us that this actually is the Earth. But we're not going to get our very first glimpse of 23rd century society today, as thanks to the 'light speed breakaway factor' they've ended up back in the 60s again. Only this time they did it deliberately! You'd think episodes like Tomorrow is Yesterday and The City on the Edge of Forever would've been a lesson about how easy it is to do massive damage to your own history, but Starfleet just couldn't resist sending a ship time travelling to find out how humanity survived desperate problems in the year...

...

...

... 1968.

People mock Shatner for his line delivery sometimes, but that pause was so awkward it had to have been in the script. Wait, 1968? But that's this year! Well it would've been when the episode first aired in the US.

(Not a real screencap)

An earlier draft of the script had the bridge crew sitting around watching Bonanza on the viewscreen, until Kirk enters the room and catches them, but that's not the case here.

In the actual episode Kirk's sitting on his chair, recording his captain's log. Though the moment Kirk presses the button to stop recording, the ship is hit by something powerful enough to shake the bridge. They get a call from Spock telling them it seems like they've accidentally intercepted an incredibly powerful transporter beam.

Wait, why is Spock in the transporter room instead of the bridge? They're supposed to staying out of the way and listening in on communications not beaming down.

Hang on, has Spock been banished to the transporter room for some unrevealed transgression? Is that why they added the box down here for him to look into?

A subtle flame effect appears on the back wall of the transporter room and someone starts beaming in, right through their shields! Kirk's confused, as they shouldn't have transporter technology in this century, but it's not coming from Earth! In fact they're able to determine that the transporter beam is originating at least 1000 light years away, which is pretty far. It's about 10 times further out than the Klingon homeworld, to give it some context. Starfleet transporters of the time seemed to max out at around 30,000 kilometres, which will get you about 0% of the way from Earth to Kronos.

I like all the purple by the way. Though the colour grading is all over the place in this remastered teaser.

Sometimes the wall behind them is grey with a brown stripe, sometimes purple with a grey stripe, switching from shot to shot.

Anyway, we find out that their mysterious visitor is...

A bloke and his cat.

This is the dramatic end of the teaser so he just has to stand there perfectly still, staring at them, until the scene fades to black.W

hen the opening titles are over we learn that this is Mister Seven, played by Robert Lansing. Because for the first and only time in the Original Series he gets a special on-screen credit to identify him. Usually we just get the writer and director at the start, but here his name comes first. I suppose because this is the first epic crossover between Star Trek and Assignment: Earth, a series that doesn't exist yet but surely will when everyone falls in love with this story and its characters (spoiler: it never got made).

ACT ONE

Mr Seven asks them to identify themselves. Kirk replies that they're from Earth and now it's Seven's turn to be confused as "in this time period there weren't..." Interesting use of the past tense there, especially as he claims to be a human from the 20th century.

In the first version of the story, the one with no Kirk and zero Spock, Seven was explicitly from the future, born in the year 2319. In fact we would've gotten narration explaining his backstory. Humanity had encountered an alien race called the Omegans who were totally into evil. They started a temporal war by sending agents back into Earth's past to corrupt history, and Seven was sent after them to put right once went wrong. None of this carried over to the final episode.

Seven tells Kirk that he's been sent by aliens to help Earth and if his crew interferes with his work they'll change history. But he could be lying. In fact this is the question that drives the whole episode: is this person really a part of their history or not? Kirk decides to lock him up for the time being...

... so Seven and Isis decide to fight their way out of this! That's his cat's name by the way. Other famous Isises include the Egyptian goddess, the DC comics superhero, Catwoman's cat in Batman: The Animated Series, and the spy organisation Sterling Archer works for in Archer. The name went out of fashion a few years ago however, for reasons.

Someone's clearly thrown the cat at this guy and he pretends to wrestle with it for a second before it cuts away to Seven. This is the point where Spock uses his superior strength and Vulcan abilities to take their inadvertent intruder down with a casual neck pinch... but it doesn't work! In fact Seven kicks both his and Scotty's asses simultaneously.

Phasers work on Seven just fine however, as Kirk leaps into the frame and zaps him. Escape attempt averted.

Then we get a weird briefing room conference where it's just Kirk, Spock and Isis in the room and everyone else us doing a video chat from their station. Must have cost a lot more money to film it like this. Unfortunately the remastering team didn't have the money or time to add in a reflection from the screen onto the table.

Kirk and Spock are here to see what facts they have to work with and they don't have many. Their systems were messed up by the beam so they can't determine if it did come from a long distance or a distant time. Their starcharts show nothing at the apparent origin of the transporter beam, but Seven did said his world is hidden. 

Spock lists some of the events that will be happening soon: an important assassination, a dangerous government coup in Asia, and a launch of a nuclear warhead platform. He doesn't mention any names but we could assume he means the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. six days after the episode aired, the unmanned Apollo 6 Saturn V launch on the same day, and the coup in Iraq that left Saddam Hussein in charge a few months later. Though in real life Apollo 6 wasn't carrying a nuclear weapon... or was it?

After a completely superfluous shot of McCoy in sickbay getting a call to be somewhere else, the episode heads to the brig to see what Seven's up to.

Turns out that the crew didn't think to search him, which is a bit of a mistake as he's carrying a sonic screwdriver! Or something. It's a handy little cylindrical gadget with all kinds of uses, like turning off brig forcefields and hypnotising guards. So he's gotten loose now.

The question is: did Assignment: Earth rip off Doctor Who or did Doctor Who rip off Assignment: Earth? Well the sonic screwdriver first appeared in Doctor Who on 16th March 1968, two weeks before Assignment: Earth aired in the US. But Assignment: Earth's first script was written in 1966 and the device is in it. So the answer is... neither series could've possibly copied the other.

But they were probably both inspired by the gadgets in spy stories, as they were huge at the time.

The camera does a weird little pan here to check on Isis as she makes a run for it, then darts right back to the others again, so I made this widescreen image out of it for you. This weirdly desaturated image. I think someone should've reminded the director of photography that the show was supposed to making people run out and buy colour TVs

McCoy's dropped by the briefing room to tell them how unusual Seven's readings are. His health is about as good as human gets, almost too perfect. No one thought to scan the cat though! In fact they don't even care that it's running loose on the ship. I suppose they have more to worry about, with the security alert that Seven's broken out.

This is far from the first time they've had someone loose aboard their ship however, and they've had a lot of practice at failing to catch intruders.

I like how the transporter room door opens just wide enough to let the cat through. That's some precision door operation by whoever was pulling the rope.

Seven and Isis are reunited just in time to beam down to the planet. Which means all the Enterprise action in the episode is over by the end of act one.

ACT TWO

Here's another a rare Original Series widescreen image for you, as I couldn't resist stitching the panning shot together.

I'm not sure what exactly I'm looking at here though to be honest. I believe the shot was inherited from the series The Man from U.N.C.L.E., which had ended earlier that year, but how they got it I don't know. Is it actual footage of New York? Is it an absurdly detailed model shot? A painting?

Inside one of those buildings there is a pretty nice looking set, with a hidden vault which apparently contains Seven's transporter. It doesn't look like a transporter effect, but the guy beamed down from the Enterprise using a regular transporter beam so it has to be.

The episode makes a point of showing the vault close again, with the shelves sliding back into place to cover it up. I guess when you spend a bunch of money on a nice set with moving walls you want to show it off.

Seven looks out of the window, giving us a nice view of the street below. One of the few times you'll ever get to look straight down at 1968 New York... or whenever/wherever this was filmed. It looks like the classic Grand Theft Auto game down there, except with slightly less mayhem.

Isis meows her dismay about the state of human civilisation and Seven replies "You're right Isis, it is primitive". Nice of him to let us know what she's saying. In fact he finds that "it's incredible people can exist like this". You know, walking around on streets and driving in cars.

The two of them won't have to live like this for long however, as despite everything Seven just said to Kirk about having to complete his work here or humanity is doomed, he's just a supervisor who's come to Earth to check on some other agents and then leave again!

Seven activates another moving wall and starts chatting to a computer that looks a little bit too Federation for me. In fact it looks like they borrowed the blinky lights from the M-5 multitronic unit from The Ultimate Computer. You gotta have the blinky lights or some sounds or else viewers won't know it's a computer talking.

But the computer needs Seven to answer the security question before it'll give him access, so he has to tell it the mission he's on. Man it's lucky there isn't an audience listening in on this or they'd know the whole premise for his spin-off show! The computer accepts his summary, though it does point out he's left something out. Seems that one of his directives is classified.

He explains that his agents were descendants of human ancestors taken from Earth 6000 years ago, who have been training for generations for this mission. Yep, 200 generations of parents teaching their children to teach their children to teach their children how to wear a suit and use a screwdriver. Anyway it turns out that both his agents are missing so now it's up to Seven to do their job! Which is to help Earth to avoid blowing itself up while its political and social knowledge catches up with its technology and science. No Prime Directive in this show.

Hey the episode cut away for a moment and Seven sneakily changed his clothes!

The computer explains that the the US are putting a nuclear weapon in sub-orbit today in response to the Soviet Union other major power doing it earlier. Turns out his two agents were sent out on a mission to sabotage the rocket, but they didn't get the job done. Now there's just 1 hour 27 minutes and 12 seconds before the rocket takes off. Isis is so agitated by this she runs up and jumps on his lap for a hug. That's some good cat training.

So now we know that Seven was telling the truth and does have Earth's best interests at heart... and it's only 15 minutes into the episode. Our heroes Kirk and Spock are going to be nothing but obstacles for the rest of the story. That's not necessarily bad storytelling, however. There can be plenty of twists and turns as they're continually one step away from catching him, while also piecing together what he's actually up to.

Speaking of Kirk and Spock, they've risked beaming down to 60s New York to track Seven down. They decided not to wear their uniforms this time, instead they've got some period costumes from the ship's stores. The idea of them keeping clothes in stock for every era just in case of time travel seems kind of ridiculous... but to be fair Starfleet sent them to 1968 on a mission this time, so it's not so crazy that they'd have some 1968-style clothing prepared just in case.

This is the present day by the way. This is what people who watched Star Trek would've been wearing at the time. Well, on a cold day in New York anyway.

The series is usually so isolated from the real world that it's weird to finally get a glimpse of when exactly it was was filmed. It was a time of hats.

That's guest star Teri Garr in the orange dress by the way. This is basically where the original pilot episode for Assignment: Earth would've begun, after a bit of opening narration.

Her character gets the comedy music right away, though the only 'funny' thing she does is get stuck trying to step around a guy who's trying to step around her. She rushes inside a building and it's probably fairly obvious which one.

Then we get to see a rare use of a replicator on TOS, as Seven makes himself some fake IDs. He's also got a map of the rocket base he'll be visiting. 

Just then the mysterious woman arrives and Seven mistakes her for Agent 201 (she's not). We're firmly in pilot script territory for this scene, with all of this playing out just as it would've done if Kirk and Spock had never been written into the plot.

Seven's impressed with how well she's pretending to be clueless, but insists it's not necessary. It's not until she freaks out over his speech-to-text typewriter that he finally starts to realise that maybe she's not one of his missing agents.

The first time I watched this I didn't even give the typewriter prop a second thought, but they would've had to do something to make that thing appear to operate by itself. So I've done a bit of a research and it seems to be a Royal-Typer automated typewriter. Which is basically a Royal Emperor typewriter that plugs into a tape player base loaded up with reels of paper tape containing text saved as a pattern of punched holes. Like they have on those old self-playing pianos. That desk with the flowers on top is actually part of the unit and has the tape mechanism inside. So all they had to do was load it up with the actress's lines and have her say them just before it typed them out.

In the first draft of the original pilot she's in here alone and discovers the typewriter herself while looking for a way to leave a note. In that version Seven's agent had died in an accident while saving her life. She'd found this address in the agent's purse and wanted to let them know what had happened to her. Also she got over the automatic typewriter pretty fast.

Originally she sees Seven teleport in, he mistakes her for his agent, she proves she's not by showing the typewritten message, and he realises that she was supposed to have died in that accident. In fact the woman who saved her was chosen as an agent because resembled her enough to assume her identity.

Then she's nearly killed again when a package for Seven explodes and blows up the office! This doesn't happen in the episode.

The woman just wants out at this point, but Seven uses his sonic screwdriver to lock the door from across the room and then activates the green cube, which turns out to be a cross between a tricorder and Wikipedia. In the original script it's referred to as the Calculator and it's a fountain of knowledge.

Soon we've learned that she's called Roberta Lincoln (Roberta Hornblower in the original pilot script, Roberta London in another draft), she's a secretary employed by his absent agents, and she's actually very intelligent. Then it starts listing her birthmarks. She just thought they were researching an encyclopaedia, but that's clearly not the case with all these gadgets around. So Seven turns on the manipulation, saying that she can help him serve her country and then claims to be CIA.

Seven goes into the other room and receives some more new info: his agents died in a car crash 10 miles away from that rocket base. He doesn't think it makes sense and I agree: the office contains a teleporter they could've used instead! If this was a modern series I'd say that the suspicious automobile incident was intended as a mystery to be explored later, but for a 60s adventure show from the US that seems less than likely.

Anyway Kirk and Spock finally arrive!

And Roberta pulls Spock's hat off, revealing that her office is being invaded by extra-terrestrials! Fortunately the fake ears didn't come off with it or else that would've really slowed down production.

The reason he's grabbing her is because she keeps doing stuff like phoning the police. She bought Seven's story about being CIA and is trying to help the guy. Seven ignores her screams and disappears into his vault.

Turns out that the lock isn't made of anything that can't be cut through with a phaser, though it creates an impressive amount of smoke. In fact the door's still smoking when it cuts to the other room, which is a nice touch. But Kirk's too late.

Seven steps out of his office and into the fictional McKinley Rocket Base (Cape Kennedy in the first draft), presumably about 900 miles to the south. These doors get pushed open by the portal and then close again afterwards once he steps through, so it seems like his teleporter needs an open door at the destination to work. Maybe it works both ways and this is how he's planning to get back.

There's 60 minutes before the launch so he's running out of time, and the Enterprise crew are hot on his trail, so he... walks over to a food truck.

Then we get a nice shot of the Saturn V rocket towering over them in the distance. Well it's nice for a shot composited in 1968. It probably wasn't so obvious on the TVs at the time that the live action scenery is jittering all over the place while the photo used for the background remains perfectly still. I'm a little surprised they didn't fix this for the remaster, or at least clean up some of the marks on the photo.

The bottom half of the image actually comes from the opposite coast, as they just filmed studio buildings on the Paramount lot. It also looks like it might have been filmed with the light coming from the opposite direction.

Okay I've basically hit my picture limit and I'm only halfway through. Who knew Assignment: Earth had some much happening in it. Or anything happening in it.

TO BE CONTINUED IN PART TWO

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COMING SOON

If you'd like to read about the last 20 minutes of Assignment: Earth then you're in luck as that's what I'll be covering next. Otherwise I can only apologise.

Leave a comment if you feel like it!