WOLF IN THE FOLD has always been an unusual ST story. It's the 3rd (and final) one from Robert Bloch (
PSYCHO, THE HOUSE THAT DRIPPED BLOOD), and involves a serial killer, whose identity seems either all too obvious, or much stranger than anyone could ever have imagined.
Among the guest actors are Charles Macauley, previously seen as "Landru" in
RETURN OF THE ARCHONS, and John Fielder, the voice of "Piglet" in Disney's
WINNEY THE POOH cartoons, who much later was a regular on Dabney Coleman's series
BUFFALO BILL. This is probably the 1st time I ever took notice of Fiedler, everything else I've ever seen him in, I'm always reminded of this story. On the other hand, it took me decades (and looking it up on the IMDB) before I ever realized I'd seen Macauley in anything else. His appearances also include The Monkees' movie,
HEAD, where he has the wonderful quote, "
The tragedy of your times, my young friends, is that you may get exactly as you want."In production order, this was the 1st episode of the 2nd season that reused music from earlier episodes. This includes music from
THE CAGE (the Orion slave girl dance was reused here for the dancing girl at the beginning of the story) and cues from
CATSPAW.
I still recall the 1st time I saw this story, being totally thrown at the way the investigation proceeded, especially once it moved up to The Enterprise. I suppose it figures that the one person who kept objecting to it and making fun of it turned out to be the killer.
"Die, die, everybody die!" may be the most memorable line in the story.
THE CHANGELING, I have to admit, is the first episode I've watched this time out that I was really NOT thrilled with, at all. I guess I've seen it too much, and had too many of its plot points ridiculed over the years, and realized just how idiotic and repetitive some things in this one are. I really hate machines that don't work right, and I really hate supposedly "intelligent" computers that don't know their ass from a hole in the ground. "Nomad" keeps saying it's "perfect", and that it's programming is "whole", yet it refuses to recognize that its so-called "programming" was the result of itself being nearly destroyed in an accident and then rebuilt in a completely faulty, seemingly arbitrary way. About the only thinking machine even stupider than "Nomad" had to be "V'Ger", which didn't even recognize what living beings were.
I recall it being quite a shock when Scotty was knocked over on the bridge, and McCoy wound up saying, "
He's DEAD, Jim!" Crewmen have been killed before (including in the previous episode), but one of the main regulars? Of course that got turned around moments later. What happened to Uhura was really stupid, though. The whole sequence of her supposedly being "re-educated" was played too much for laughs in the middle of such a supposedly "deadly serious" story where billions of people have been killed, and billions more lives are at risk. I agree with whoever at the IMDB suggested her memories were probably just buried, and it took a certain amount of time and effort to re-connect them.
After Mr. Hengist was beamed out into space and DISPURSED in the previous episode, WHY didn't they do the same thing with Nomad? It seems a big chance they took that that thing would actually blow itself up. (Funny how you notice stuff like this if you watch in production order.)
THE APPLE was summed up by one IMDB reviewer as "Same ship, different day." I also agree with whoever suggested that the entire story seems to have been assembled by someone who looked at previous episodes, borrowed elements from several of them, and threw them together to get a new episode out of it. You've got a so-called paradise with plants that shoot spores (
THIS SIDE OF PARADISE), a planet with mindless people run by a computer that is using a tractor beam to pull the Enterprise down out of orbit (
RETURN OF THE ARCHONS), and the ship using its main phaser banks to destroy the menacing power source (
WHO MOURNS FOR ADONIS). You've even got one of the main characters, this time, Spock, getting killed-- NO, he got better (
THE CHANGELING).
The music in this episode, like the previous one, is also made up entirely of cues from previous episodes. Several previous episodes. I recognized cues from
CATSPAW (the ominous castle music and the action scenes),
SHORE LEAVE (the romantic theme),
AMOK TIME (both Spock's theme and the Vulcan planet music). Of course, since this was run by NBC 2 weeks before
CATSPAW, most people probably never had a clue that that episode was the source of so much terrific music that got endlessly reused in other stories.
And speaking of
CATSPAW... while that story reminded me of a
LOST IN SPACE type of story,
THE APPLE was actually very similar to a 3rd season
LIS story that aired ALMOST the same time--
SPACE PRIMEVALS. That was about a group of apparent cave men who worshipped-- I'm not kidding-- a COMPUTER!
SPACE PRIMEVALS aired October 4, 1967;
THE APPLE aired October 13, 1967-- 9 DAYS later!! Really-- what are the odds?
?
So many 3rd-season
LIS episodes seemed like
LIS remakes of 1st-season
ST stories, including
CONDEMNED OF SPACE, VISIT TO A HOSTILE PLANET, HUNTER'S MOON, SPACE DESTRUCTORS, THE HAUNTED LIGHTHOUSE, FLIGHT INTO THE FUTURE... seems to me the closest parallel I can come up with for
SPACE PRIMEVALS might be
THE GALILEO SEVEN, if only because of the "cavemen". I just find it bizarre that in its 2nd season,
STAR TREK was slowly becoming more like its dumber counterpart.
