The Doomsday Machine (Star Trek)

Infobox Star Trek episode
name = The Doomsday Machine


The "Constellation" enters the planet killer.
series = TOS
ep_num = 35
prod_num = 035
remas._num = 20
date = October 20, 1967
writer = Norman Spinrad
director = Marc Daniels
guest = William Windom
Elizabeth Rogers John Copage Eddie Paskey William Blackburn Richard Compton Tim Burns Jerry Catron John Winston Vince Deadrick
stardate = 4202.9
year = 2267
prev = The Apple
next = Catspaw

"The Doomsday Machine" is a second-season episode of "". It is episode #35, production #35, and was first broadcast on October 20, 1967. It was repeated on April 19, 1968. It was written by Norman Spinrad, and directed by Marc Daniels.

Overview: The starship "Enterprise" plays a deadly game of cat-and-mouse with an alien planet-killing machine.

Plot

On stardate 4202.9, the USS "Enterprise" responds to a distress call and finds that several planets in a nearby system have been destroyed. They soon find their sister ship, the USS "Constellation" adrift and heavily damaged. Captain Kirk and a damage control team beam over to investigate and find the ship's commanding officer, Commodore Matthew Decker, holed up in the auxiliary control room – apparently the sole survivor. Mr. Scott reports that the ship's warp engines are damaged beyond repair and the weapons exhausted. Meanwhile, an incoherent Decker can only mutter about something attacking his ship.

The logs reveal that the ship investigated the break up of a planet and was soon attacked by an enormous machine with a conical shell miles in length and a giant opening at one end filled with sparkling energy. After the attack, Decker ordered his surviving crew to the surface of a nearby planet, but to his horror, the machine destroyed that world next. Spock theorizes the machine breaks down planets into rubble which it then consumes for fuel and adds that given its past trajectory, it is likely to have come from outside the galaxy.

Kirk has Decker beamed to the "Enterprise" while he and Scott remain on the derelict. On the "Enterprise" bridge, Mr. Spock is alerted to the approach of the alien machine which generates interference that makes radio contact with Starfleet Command impossible. As the machine attacks, Decker comes to the bridge, and quoting Starfleet regulations he pulls rank on Spock and assumes command. He then orders a full on attack against the machine ignoring Spock's warning that the ship's weaponry is ineffective against the doomsday machine's pure neutronium hull. As a result, the warp engines are disabled and the "Enterprise" becomes drawn by a tractor beam towards the machine's glowing maw.

Aboard the "Constellation", Scott has managed to restore partial phaser and thrust control, and Kirk creates a diversion to distract the planet-killer away from the "Enterprise". As the machine veers off, Kirk orders Spock to relieve Decker of command as he is in no condition to give orders. After protest, Decker finally yields, but he quickly heads to the hanger bay and steals a shuttlecraft. He then pilots it on a kamikaze course into the planet killer's maw despite the pleas of Kirk and Spock to turn back.

After learning the shuttle explosion registered a weakening in the planet-killer's power output, Kirk realizes Decker may have had the right idea. Kirk has Spock verify if detonation of the "Constellation" impulse engines, "inside" the planet-killer, would be sufficient in destroying the machine. Although strongly advising against the idea, Spock confirms and Kirk has Scotty rig the engines with a 30-second delay detonator. Kirk however, plans only to remain aboard the "Constellation" long enough to ensure the ship will enter the maw and he plans to beam back to the "Enterprise" before detonation.

Once everything is prepared, Kirk orders Scott and the rest party back to the "Enterprise" and steers a course into the planet killer's maw. Once close enough, he activates the explosives and calls for his beam out – however, having suffered damage in the first attack, the "Enterprise" transporter short outs and Scott rushes to make repairs. As seconds count down, Kirk nervously watches the inexorable menacing maw of the doomsday machine drawing closer. Scott's desperate repairs succeed and at the last second, Kirk is beamed off the "Constellation" as the ship enters the maw. The resulting explosion burns out the planet-killer, leaving its indestructible body shell drifting quite dead in space.

40th Anniversary remastering

This episode was remastered in 2006 and first aired February 10, 2007 as part of the remastered "Original Series". It was preceded a week earlier by "Journey to Babel" and followed a week later by "Amok Time". Aside from remastered video and audio, and the all-CGI animation of the USS "Enterprise" that is standard among the revisions, specific changes to this episode also include:

* The planet killer and the wreck of the USS "Constellation" have been rendered in CGI. This included giving the planet killer a more battered, metallic appearance.
* The "Enterprise" and "Constellation" are rendered in such a way that they are dwarfed by planet killer, giving an enhanced sense of massive size to it.
* In keeping with other episodes of the Original Series, "The Doomsday Machine" had several scenes cut to reduce the episode time for syndication. These include Kirk's "Blast regulations ..." to Spock's "Vulcans never bluff" scene, much of the fighting between Commodore Decker and the security guard in the corridor, as well as truncating the scene involving the sacrifice and destruction of the "Constellation". The DVD release includes the complete episode.

Trivia

* Episode writer Norman Spinrad had wanted actor Robert Ryan to play Commodore Decker, but Ryan was unavailable due to prior commitments. [http://trekmovie.com/2007/02/10/spinrad-videoblog-on-history-of-doomsday]
* William Windom largely improvised Decker's tale of what happened to his ship and crew. Director Marc Daniels simply left the set and let Windom ad-lib as much as he wanted. Out of a 10-minute speech, only about two minutes was actually used. Fact|date=June 2008
* The music for this episode was written by Sol Kaplan. Writer James Lileks notes that the music for this one episode "is the source of half the series' cues. But they're intended to belong together, and that’s one of the reasons the episode works like few others: it has a unique symphonic score. Played start to finish, it holds together." [http://www.lileks.com/bleats/archive/04/0904/092404.html]
* Commodore Decker is seen constantly fiddling with recorder tapes aboard the "Constellation". This is an homage to Humphrey Bogart, whose character of Captain Queeg did the same thing with ball bearings in "The Caine Mutiny".
* Actor James Doohan mistakenly delivers the line, "Thirty seconds later -- poof!" in his own accent, and not Scotty's familiar brogue. The slip-up made it into the final episode.
* In the Peter David novel "Vendetta" it is noted that the theory that the Doomsday Machine originated in another galaxy does not work given the massive amount of fuel required to power the machine. An alternative is presented, theorizing that the device is an early prototype of a machine designed by an advanced race to counter the Borg. This falls into the category of fanon.
* In an essay on the episode Peter David notes when Decker overpowers the guard escorting him to sickbay it was the only time TOS portrayed "a vaguely futuristic style of fighting." (though this neglects Spock's "Vulcan Nerve Pinch") [http://peterdavid.malibulist.com/archives/002096.html]
*Kirk's theory about the planet killer being a Doomsday Machine left over from an ancient war between long extinct races is identical to the mythos of Fred Saberhagen's Berserker universe. The planet killer is nicknamed Berserker in some publications such as the Star Trek Concordance.
*The library computer entry on the Planet Killer in the CD-ROM game Star Trek:Star Fleet Academy mentions a school of thought suggesting that the galactic energy barrier may have been constructed ages ago to keep such planet killers out of the galaxy. The entry does not postulate theories as to how it was built and by whom, or why it hasn't been effective.
*Dr. McCoy briefly describes the way the transporter works (or at least partially.) He says that the "crazy way to travel" does not teleport someone from one point to the transporter pad (or vice-versa), but instead " [spreads] a man's molecules all over the universe."
* Uhura does not appear in this episode. Lt. Palmer is the communications officer (one of only two appearances - the other being in "The Way to Eden").
* This is the only episode in which the camera pans around the front of the bridge (following Captain Kirk and Spock from the port side of the bridge, past the view-screen, approximately 180 degrees). There is a small editing error when this occurs - the disabled Doomsday Machine, visible previously, is suddenly absent. Instead, only a generic, static star field is shown.
* From the first moment of the episode, two "red shirt" guards are conspicuously posted standing at attention next to the turbolift on the bridge. This is inconsistent with other episodes. The sole purpose of the guards is so that when Spock threatens to arrest Commodore Decker later in the episode, the guards can step forward at the appropriate moment, ready to seize Decker as Spock gestures with his hand.

External links

* [http://www.startrek.com/startrek/view/series/TOS/episode/68730.html "The Doomsday Machine"] article at StarTrek.com.
* [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0708461/ The Doomsday Machine] at IMDB