"Star Trek" Catspaw (1967)

Director:

Joseph Pevney

Writers:

Robert Bloch (written by)
Gene Roddenberry (creator)

TV Series:

"Star Trek" (1966)

Original Air Date:

27 October 1967 (Season 2, Episode 7)

Genre:

Adventure | Sci-Fi

Plot:

When Kirk and his landing party arrive on the planet below, they are met by eerie mists, a dark castle...

Plot Keywords:

Black Cat | Federation | Space | Starship | Computer

Cast

William Shatner	...	Captain James T. Kirk
Leonard Nimoy	...	Mr. Spock
DeForest Kelley	...	Dr. McCoy
James Doohan	...	Scott
George Takei	...	Sulu
Nichelle Nichols	...	Uhura
Walter Koenig	...	Chekov
Michael Barrier	...	DeSalle (as Mike Barrier)
John Winston	...	Transporter Chief
Rhodie Cogan	...	First Witch
Gail Bonney	...	Second Witch
Maryesther Denver	...	Third Witch
Jay D. Jones	...	Crewman Jackson (as Jimmy Jones)
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Antoinette Bower	...	Sylvia
Theodore Marcuse	...	Korob (as Theo Marcuse)

Runtime:

60 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.33 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Argentina:Atp

Filming Locations:

Desilu Studios - 9336 W. Washington Blvd., Culver City, California, USA

Company:

Desilu Productions

Trivia:

First episode produced for the second season.

Goofs:

Revealing mistakes: When Sylvia and Korob appear in their "natural forms," the wires animating the puppets are clearly visible. (Corrected in the Remastered Edition)

Quotes:

DeSalle: Maybe we can't break it, but I'll bet you credits to navybeans we can put a dent in it!

Movie Connections:

Edited into Bring Back... Star Trek (2009) (TV)

Why All the Mumbo-Jumbo?

This one's somewhat of an oddity among the Trek episodes of the original series, an episode cobbled together for no other reason than to fit a Halloween theme. There are no other reasons for its existence, no profound ideas explored, no stretching of the imagination. Bloch, the premiere horror writer of the time, penned the script (he also wrote "What Are Little Girls Made Of?" in the previous season). The paradox to this effort, though, is that there doesn't seem to be a sincere attempt to offer scares: the creators and actors approach this with a tongue-in-cheek attitude after the first and only death in the pre-credits sequence. This lightweight approach is most evident in the early encounter with the 3 witches: Kirk asks Spock for a comment; Spock's response, along with Kirk's and McCoy's reactive expressions, sends me into guffaws every time I see it - maybe the single most hilarious moment during the season (and that's saying something, as "I,Mudd" and "The Trouble With Tribbles" are coming up soon). Later, of course, we have the scene in the dungeon, when Kirk refers to 'Bones' and then notices the skeleton hanging nearby. BOO!

There is, admittedly, a half-hearted attempt at exploring the conflict between physical senses and pure mentality. There is a tendency in the Trek series to depict aliens who hunger for the potential of physical sensation we human beings represent. Usually, such aliens may take human form temporarily, as Sylvia & Korob do here, and the new sensations corrupt them - apparently, only we humans can handle the, ah, sensuous nature of the ability to touch something or someone physically (see also the later "By Any Other Name"). But, the episode never really makes it clear what these aliens want - all we get is the Halloween mumbo-jumbo: a foggy mist, the witches, a black cat, crew members turned into zombies, a dark castle with cobwebs and, finally, the warlock and sorceress with a wand. These aliens do prove to have impressive abilities, even by the standards of 23rd century technology, and it is explained that they tapped into our subconscious to produce this bizarre scenario, but otherwise, it's just those silly spooky elements interspersed amid a plodding storyline. There's a brief reference to 'the old ones' by Korob, the beings he and Sylvia serve, which conjures up images of Lovecraft, rather than aliens from another galaxy. The episode is capped by some of the worst FX, involving puppetry, of the series. This was, by the way, the first episode of the 2nd season to be filmed, and so is the first appearance of Chekov.