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Dagger of the Mind - episode #11

 
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Thu Nov 24, 2016 9:17 pm    Post subject: Dagger of the Mind - episode #11 Reply with quote

________________________________

This is a grim episode which shows us mentally ill hospital patients being tortured by a mind control device with disturbing capabilities.

But it does have one happy aspect that has thrilled male viewers for decades.

Marianna Hill holds the unique distinction of being the female Enterprise crewperson who shows her cute underwear more often then any other gal in the entire series — and she does it all in one episode!

She teases us outrageously throughout the whole episode while she walks around, bends over, and even crawls around in air ducts! The pictures below are just a small sample of the peep show Miss Hill provides. She's a gorgeous lady, and this episode deliberately shows off her lovely figure.















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PostPosted: Sun Nov 27, 2016 2:02 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Always felt that the script never did provide any answers or motivation as to why the doctor who headed this medical facility to treat mentally ill patients went & did what he did.

One minute he is a highly respected medical doctor, then the next he starts ruthlessly using this chair to control people.

I also never bought the logic of having such a facility completely underground or on such a barren planet.
Mentally & emotionally ill people need sunlight. They require nature to assist their treatments. Woods, a pond or fountains can provide these things.

I believe that this was the first episode to show us Mr.Spock doing his Vulcan Mind Meld on another person.
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johnnybear
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PostPosted: Mon May 13, 2019 2:18 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Marianna was sure gorgeous in this episode, but alas I had little interest in her when I first saw the show in the seventies!

I've always assumed that Dr. Tristan Adams went mad after some exposure to his own device or became a power hungry sadist after realizing it's full powers!
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Bogmeister
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PostPosted: Sat Jun 15, 2019 10:59 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

____________
_________ Classic Star Trek: Dagger of the Mind


__________





This episode deals with the future of penal colonies and the treatment of unstable criminals.

Though supposedly such places are much better run in the 23rd century, Dr. McCoy obviously feels we are still far from Utopian with such 'cages' still in existence — but he doesn't offer better solutions.

An escape from such a colony (Tantalus V) triggers a routine investigation by Kirk based on vague doubts by McCoy about how the famous Dr. Adams (James Gregory) runs the place. Once again, as in What Are Little Girls Are Made Of?, a starship captain enters the lion's den on his own, with no back-up, except for a female assistant (played by the gorgeous Marianna Hill).




Unlike that other episode, What Are Little Girls Are Made Of? — where the famous Dr. Korby was driven to lunacy by extreme circumstances — no real explanation is given for Dr. Adams' sudden shift to mad experimentation.

Early in the episode it's established that he's a well-known benefactor in the field of penology and psychiatric medicine, accomplishing more in his lifetime than all of mankind previously in these fields.

Was he just fooling everyone up until now, hiding such extreme sadistic tendencies as he puts on display in this episode? He comes across as someone on a childish power trip by the 4th act, but there seems to be no motive for this supposedly great man to behave this way. For some reason, he likes to have new subjects placed in a little room and then activate a sinister device, the Neural Neutralizer, to directly attack the subject's mind.

Psychiatry seems so . . . sinister in the future! Shocked




James Gregory is a fine actor and does what he can with a seemingly truncated role, but the one to watch again during this first season is Shatner as Kirk.

He's the one who defends Adams while debating with McCoy, almost indicating a kind of hero worship for a man who has made great advances in his field.

But once down in the underground colony, his detective instincts take over and Adams is now a target. Kirk proves to be very adept at studying human behavior, more so than his expert assistant. Almost immediately something doesn't smell right to him. He's probably convinced when Adams attempts to avoid the room where the Neural Neutralizer is located — Adams is smooth, but against Kirk he has no chance.




Also on hand is actor Morgan Woodward as Van Gelder, the one driven insane by the mind sapping device.

To say his performance is intense is putting it mildly. I still get tensed up watching him struggle against the brainwashing he has endured.

The actor showed up again in the role of a starship captain in the 2nd season's Omega Glory.

This episode will go down in history (or has already) as the first one in which Spock uses a Vulcan mind meld (on Van Gelder). It's a testament to Nimoy's acting ability that he infuses such mystique and focus into a scene which could have been sappy & trite.



There's also a great scene of Kirk going insane in the little torture room, his crazed laughter signaling the end of an act — it's kind of scary and the audience may think he's permanently damaged going into a commercial break, because we've already seen the loopy Van Gelder.

Otherwise, it's another one of those missions which wasn't really a mission, a case which may have been better suited to Starfleet's special investigations unit and is therefore a bit beneath someone who should be exploring the galaxy and looking for new lifeforms.

After all this time, I still wonder why Kirk himself was down there playing detective. Was he really the only one on board qualified for this duty?

For more insanity in the far future, see Whom Gods Destroy (in the 3rd season).

BoG's Score: 7 out of 10



Extra Trek Trivia:

~ In the remastered FX version of this episode, a new visualization (see above) of the entrance to the Tantalus V colony replaces the old one, which was a re-do of the station first seen in Where No Man Has Gone Before, the pilot episode.

~ The title of this episode is from Macbeth, Act II, Scene 1, line 38 (see The Conscience of the King for more Shakespearean influence).


_______________ Dagger of the Mind - trailer


__________






BoG
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PostPosted: Sat Jun 15, 2019 2:48 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Trivia } DOTM writer Shimon Wincelberg called the colony planet Tantalus for a reason. Tantalus, the son of Zeus, had been condemned for his crimes to rule in the deepest part of the underworld.

DOTM's title comes from Shakespeare's play "Macbeth."
"Or art thou but a dagger of the mind, a false creation proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain.''

Yeoman Janice Rand was originally going to be the crew member who was to accompany Kirk to the colony.

Van Gelder was originally going to be hypnotized. NBC sent a memo insisting it be done off-camera due to the possibility of accidentally hypnotizing a viewer of this episode.

Many of the sets used on the episode "What are Little Girls Made Of?'' were revamped and utilized for the Tantalus colony. Always admired the design for the insignia worn by the staff members of the Tantalus colony.

The original name in the teleplay for Dr. Tristin Adams (played by the terrific James Gregory) was to have been Dr. Asgard. In Norse mythology Asgard means "enclosure of the gods."

SW felt that Dr. Asgard would feel he was literally enclosed within the underground colony. And Asgard would feel as if he was a god due to the therapy chair.
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Sat Jun 15, 2019 7:15 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

I think Marianna Hill was better in the roll. If Kirk and Rand had shared such a highly charged experience, their working relationship would have been difficult afterwards.

But then that might have made for interesting situations down the road. Still, I must confess that Miss Hill overloads my dilithium crystals a bit more that Miss Whitney.

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PostPosted: Sun Jun 16, 2019 1:17 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Helen Noel was also trained in the area of psychiatry, so she made the logical crew member to accompany Kirk to the colony.

She could give him her expertise & easily converse with Dr. Adams & his staff.

And it was pointed out that when Kirk tries out the therapy chair you'd want someone who is adept in that field.

Janice Rand was a fine Yeoman but she had no credentials in the psychiatric profession.


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johnnybear
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PostPosted: Sat Jun 22, 2019 7:11 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

She knew how to prepare little red, green and blue cubes for supper though! Very Happy
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Sat Jun 22, 2019 10:49 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

Exactly! That's why 23rd century men are fond of saying, "A woman's place is . . . next to the replicator!"
__
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
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PostPosted: Fri Dec 24, 2021 5:42 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Nitpicker's Guide

Plot Oversights: This penal colony really needs better security. Dr. Van Gelder, in a crazed mental state, manages to escape in the only box beamed up to the Enterprise.

In addition, the living quarters of the institution have air conditioning ducts big enough to crawl through.

Once Captain Kirk is under the influence of the neural neutralizer, Dr. Adams orders Kirk to take out his phaser and drop it on the floor. Kirk brings the weapon out slowly, points it at the beam emitter in the ceiling, and then drops it. Next, Adams asks Kirk to do the same with his communicator. Kirk slowly pulls it out, opens it up, and tries to hail the Enterprise. Adams turns up the power. Even still, Kirk hails the Enterprise a second time. If Kirk had enough strength to call the Enterprise not once but twice, why didn't he have the strength to fire his phaser and destroy the infernal machine?

When Kirk discovers the effectiveness of the neural neutralizer, Adams decides to use it on the captain to its fullest extent. He wants to convince Kirk that everything is fine at the penal colony. There's only one problem with the scenario.
Everyone who has been treated by the neural neutralizer ends up acting like a zombie or a maniac.
Wouldn't the crew notice the difference when the captain returned? And if Kirk didn't return, wouldn't they send down more investigators?

My 2 cents: Yes they would. For an intelligent medical doctor, Adams makes some phenomenal blunders in strategy. He could never send Kirk, or Dr. Noel, back to the Enterprise after a serious treatment in the chair. Clearly the Enterprise crew would determine they were not acting normally, resulting in the crew beaming back to the colony.

And Adams couldn't simply keep Kirk & Noel prisoners.The Enterprise would want them returned. Sure, Tantalus V has a powerful force field shielding it. However, will it be able to withstand the Enterprise's phasers or photon torpedoes?

Adams illogical reasoning here doomed him and led him to defeat. Yet, he wasn't a foolish man.

Nitpicker's Guide: It is interesting that Mr. Spock refers to the Vulcan mind meld in this episode as a "highly personal" thing and a part of Vulcans' "private lives." But evidently it is not too personal, given that Spock uses it over and over again during the television series.

Note from me: Well, when your writers create such a nifty gimmick as the mind meld, you're just bound to reuse it a lot.

Equipment Oddities: In "The Naked Time," Dr. McCoy ripped Kirk's shirt to give him a hypo injection. In this episode and many others to follow, McCoy gives shots right through the uniform.

For some reason, the neural neutralizer room room has a regular twentieth-century hinged door. All the other doors in the complex are the automatic opening doors as seen on board the Enterprise.
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PostPosted: Sun Jul 24, 2022 11:46 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

NBC press release, issued October 17, 1966:

An escapee from a penal colony on another planet triggers a USS Enterprise investigation of alleged maltreatment of prisoners, in "Dagger of the Mind" on NBC Television Network's colorcast of Star trek, Thursday, Nov. 11....

The near-incoherent ramblings of Simon Van Gelder (Morgan Woodward), who secreted himself aboard the Enterprise in a cargo delivery from the prison, cannot be ignored by Captain James Kirk (William Shatner) despite his respect for the noted director of the colony, Dr. Tristin Adams (James Gregory). Accompanied by a medical aide, Dr. Helen Noel (Marianna Hill), Kirk goes inside the prison to learn the truth.

Thoughts: Now that's a good press release. NBC gives us just enough information to be intrigued by it without giving away any spoilers. NBC sometimes reveals more than they should with their press releases with some episodes. You never want to give too much info away, you want the fans left with a mystery that they will have to see in order to discover how it is solved.

I always admired the talents of James Gregory & Morgan Woodward, they did terrific performances in anything I've seen them in.

Woodward had a deep and powerful voice. When I first saw him in the scenes where he's in sickbay, I was wondering if this gent was truly acting, or had he really gone overboard and was having a total mental and emotional breakdown. Man, he was awesome!

Morgan was able to bounce back and forth easily in his career from playing heroes or heavies depending on the role.

Incredibly, for all the many, many film and television westerns Morgan appeared in, he only co-starred with John Wayne once! It was on an episode of The Lucy Show, where Wayne guest-starred as himself. On that episode he is "making a western movie" and Morgan, dressed all in black, naturally, plays the villain confronting Wayne in a frontier saloon. It's amusing, but how I would have loved to see Morgan really face off against Wayne in a western film.

James Gregory was a villain in the western Wayne film The Sons of Katie Elder.
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PostPosted: Sat Mar 16, 2024 3:22 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I've been having fun going back through writer James Blish's books that adapted the episodes from ST: TOS, and noticing the differences between the aired episodes and Blish's book.

Some fans found it inappropriate that the Captain of the Enterprise would have a fling with crew member Helen Noel. James Blish explains.

"He had had the impression then that she was simply a passenger, impressed as female passengers often were to be singled out for conversation by the Captain; and in fact, in the general atmosphere of Holiday he had taken small advantages of her impressionability . . . It now turned out that she was, and had then been, the newest addition to the ship's medical staff. Her expression as they met in the transporter room was demure, but he had the distinct impression that she was enjoying his discomfiture."

Nowhere in the episode is this explanation offered.

On the episode, we see Kirk & Helen enter a lone elevator on the surface of Tantalus in order to descend to the colony. James Blish's novel mentions some other structures that we do not see on the episode.

"Also as usual, the colony proper was all underground, its location marked on the surface only by a small superstructure containing a transporter room, an elevator head, and a few other service modules."

In the episode the treatment chair is referred to as a neural neutralizer. In the book it's a "neural potentiator, or damper."

We do not see any beam of light when the chair is used on the episode. In the book we do, "and from a small, complex device hanging from the ceiling, a narrow, monochromatic beam of light like a laser beam was fixed on the patient's forehead."

One of the weak points in this episode is that we are never given any reason for Dr. Tristin Adams to use the chair to turn people into mindless beings. After all, Dr. Adams had a stellar reputation in the field of mental health and its development.

The novel somewhat addresses this point. Dr. Adams, "I'm tired of doing things for others, that's all. I want a very comfortable old age, on my terms — and I am a most selective man. Should I simply trust mankind to reward me? All they've given me thus far is Tantalus. It's not enough."

I'm still not clear as to exactly how Adams will achieve his plan for a marvelous life. Is it to use his machine to make everyone on Tantalus his obedient slave? How will that get him everything he wants? Can the chair place people under his complete control, but not act like drones? Then he could possibly have these folks out in society obeying his commands to bring him anything he wishes.

This episode introduces us, for the first time, to the Vulcan Mind Meld. Mr. Spock uses it on Dr. Simon van Gelder in order to obtain accurate information as to what really happened to him.

The James Blish novels mentions none of this.
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Sat Mar 16, 2024 4:12 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

______________________________________________

Thanks for posting that wonderful analysis of Dagger of the Mind and the differences between the episode and the James Blish novelization.


Quote:
Some fans found it inappropriate that the Captain of the Enterprise would have a fling with crew member Helen Noel. James Blish explains.

I've always admired the way TOS presented a series that addressed serious science fiction concept and had a playful side. It featured a dashing starship captain who risked his life on a weekly basis — while romancing the lovely ladies that we male viewers were drooling over.

That makes him a little like a pirate captain in the Carribean! Cool

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scotpens
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PostPosted: Sat Mar 16, 2024 9:19 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Pow wrote:
Equipment Oddities: In "The Naked Time," Dr. McCoy ripped Kirk's shirt to give him a hypo injection. In this episode and many others to follow, McCoy gives shots right through the uniform.

In "The Tholian Web," McCoy gives Kirk an injection through his spacesuit! What good is a porous spacesuit?

Pow wrote:
For some reason, the neural neutralizer room has a regular twentieth-century hinged door. All the other doors in the complex are the automatic opening doors as seen on board the Enterprise.

Of course, the "automatic" pocket doors were manually operated by grips (stagehands) out of camera range.
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Sun Mar 17, 2024 2:28 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

scotpens wrote:
Pow wrote:
Equipment Oddities: In "The Naked Time," Dr. McCoy ripped Kirk's shirt to give him a hypo injection. In this episode and many others to follow, McCoy gives shots right through the uniform.

In "The Tholian Web," McCoy gives Kirk an injection through his spacesuit! What good is a porous spacesuit?

I'm just brainstorming here about 24th century technology, but suppose the spacesuits had the ability to seal up small tears and punctures. That would be an invaluable ability for spacesuits to have, and hopefully we'll develop those someday.

Knowing the suit could do that, McCoy was able to make the injection and then let the suit seal up the pin hole!

Sound reasonable?
Very Happy
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