Star Trek: Friday's Child   Rewatch 
April 25, 2015 10:11 AM - Season 2, Episode 11 - Subscribe

Captain Kirk, along with fellow crew members Spock and McCoy, must find a way to bring peace to a race of aliens whose lives revolve around a dichotomy of honesty and savagery. Adding to their difficulty is the presence of the Klingons, whose sole desire is obtaining what they need through guile and/or violence.

"Friday's Child" is episode #40, production #32, and was broadcast December 1, 1967. It was written by D.C. Fontana, and directed by Joseph Pevney. Julie Newmar guest stars as Eleen.

This episode explores several concepts: multi-culturalism, negotiation, intimidation and, ultimately, the fight between good and evil.

The episode has had mixed reactions from Trek fans.

Memory Alpha Link

The episode can be viewed on Netflix and YouTube.
posted by Benway (6 comments total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
When did Klingons go from shifty Red Menace stand-ins to warriors of honor? Was it just the superb novel The Final Reflection or something in-canon?
posted by infinitewindow at 1:05 PM on April 25, 2015


Astute observers of 1960s US television will recognize the Klingon Kras in this episode as Captain Greer from The Mod Squad. The question is, which is Tige Andrews real hair: that of the balding Klingon or Captains Greer's comb-over?

Solid.
 
posted by Herodios at 8:37 PM on April 25, 2015


infinitewindow, clearly they needed a different take on Klingons when Worf was added to TNG, but Ronald D. Moore explicitly credits the novel as an influence when he began writing for the show, starting with certain critical Worf-centered stories.

Anyway, stupid color-coded alien costumes aside, this was another attempt to delve into the complexity of dealing with an alien culture, and narratively, another Cold War/proxy war/Vietnam metaphor. Still, never a favorite of mine.
posted by dhartung at 10:40 AM on April 26, 2015


As an unmitigated Trekkie, I must have seen this episode 8 times since I was a kid. But the title wasn't calling up a strong memory, and I clicked on the Memory Alpha link and the guys in the weird suits were only vaguely familiar. Most TOS episodes are great or awful in a great way, but a handful are just deeply blah. I suspect this is one of those.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 2:12 PM on April 26, 2015


Those have to be the worst alien costumes. I never believed the warriors were wearing the hides of purple-haired animals, I just believed they had fake fur as bad as Earth's fake fur.

The Capellans are described as being 7 feet tall and then everyone pretends they are tall, even though they aren't really. In the same way, the episode pretends that Scotty is being clever and canny figuring out he had been lured away, when really, he could have figured it out much earlier. Then the episode pretends that the Federation are clearly the good guys. Are they? First they contact a people not ready for it. Then Kirk interferes with the culture. In the same way that DC Fontana thought she was writing a pro-feminist story, she seems to have thought she was writing an anti-imperialist story, and in both cases, she was wrong.

I liked the guy playing the Klingon, though. He seemed to be enjoying himself.
posted by acrasis at 1:00 PM on February 15, 2021


The McCoy school of medical consent is quite concerning in this episode.

But otherwise, the dialog was a lot better in this one than usual.
posted by pwnguin at 8:11 PM on December 6, 2023


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