"Wolf in the Fold" Full Reaction! - Star Trek: The Original Series Season 2
Added 2024-05-03 18:00:13 +0000 UTCHow do you rate this episode?
Comments
I suspect that the trained officers perform their job in spite of their fear. They wanted to remove any possibility that the entity would have any fear at all to feed on.
Stephen Marino
2024-06-20 14:15:22 +0000 UTCThe Transporter became a device that was too tempting for writers to ignore, as Trek coninued over the years with different series. It will become the cause of or the solution to many unique problems in the Federation universe, some of them also having moral issues. BTW "Wolf in the Fold" was an episode that was screened at the first Star Trek convention I ever attended back in 1974. It was on film projected on a larger screen. It was just like seeing it in high definition, fifty years ago!
Dave Riley
2024-05-11 23:49:02 +0000 UTCI've always enjoyed this episode with the Jack the Ripper reveal being really cool but just noticed something really dumb about it. We are supposed to believe that highly trained officers that have to perform while Romulan plasma bolts and Klingon disruptors are peppering the ship need a tranquilizer to deal with taunts coming from the computer? Come on.
Chas Summers
2024-05-06 21:37:07 +0000 UTCAh! I didn't make the Piglet connection!
bunnytails
2024-05-05 15:45:01 +0000 UTCI do believe Time After Time has been recommended before. I'll add it to my list!
bunnytails
2024-05-05 15:43:28 +0000 UTCOh yes! I watched "The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh" anyway. And Piglet was always my favorite :)
bunnytails
2024-05-05 15:40:42 +0000 UTCI like this quirky episode. It has a great premise with an entity that feeds on fear and death with a splash of woo-woo. It made an impression on me when younger. As an adult, I can only hear Piglet as a mass murdering entity. The actor, John Fiedler, played the voice of Piglet in the Winnie the Pooh films. Once you make the connection, you can't unhear it. 'Oh, dear, it is a blustery day for a murder'. So, I always get a laugh hearing Hengist/Redjac yelling, "Die, die, die. Kill, kill, kill you all."
Mark Gosine
2024-05-05 14:49:40 +0000 UTCIf women are delicate flowers why put them on a starship? I definitely wouldn't call Chapel or Uhura that. Don't even think about calling Yeoman Rand that. Anyway if someone is carving me up fear is the least of my worries.
William Terry
2024-05-04 15:34:15 +0000 UTC"Sexism" was not a thing back in the mid '60s. And by that I mean if you used the word "Sexism" as a pejorative back then, you would have been laughed off the planet... by both men and women.
Carlos Stevens
2024-05-04 04:56:52 +0000 UTCOk... Blue Shirt/Skirt (alas Lt. Tracey) count +1
Carlos Stevens
2024-05-04 04:15:58 +0000 UTCThe production team definitely had to jump through some narrative hoops to make Scotty even potentially a murderer, and IMO they didn't quite succeed. I don't think it was necessary to establish some incident with a female crew member to set things up, nor do I think Scotty would have blamed her irrationally for his injury in any case. But it is what it is. In addition to the two other Star Trek episodes mentioned earlier, Robert Bloch also wrote the novel Psycho, upon which the Alfred Hitchcock movie of the same name was based. He was quite fascinated by the legend of Jack the RIpper and wrote several stories in a supernatural vein about him. The first of these (in 1943!) posited that he was immortal and needed to kill in order to sustain himself, which isn't far from the plot of this episode. There was a returning guest star: Charles McCaulay, who played the Prefect, appeared in the first season episode "The Return of the Archons" as Landru. Finally, Bunny, I'd like to recommend a Jack the Ripper movie with multiple Star Trek connections. The two lead roles were performed by actors who co-starred in subsequent Star Trek movies, and it was written and directed by the same man who directed The Wrath of Khan and The Undiscovered Country. The movie is called Time After Time, and it's a perfect blend of horror, suspense, romance, and time travel. In fact, I'm going to make it my pick for this month in your poll. Cheers!
Lee
2024-05-04 03:01:07 +0000 UTCMy main issue with this episode--right of the bat--is a degree of sexism that pops up throughout. The initial motive for the murders, which is "Scotty's total resentment toward women because of a concussion caused by a woman" is asinine even for the 1960s, and I feel that Scotty was done dirty here by the writer. I understood that whole concussion subplot was introduced as a red herring. But I think the same thing could have been accomplished more gracefully. Perhaps Scotty was dumped by his girlfriend or lover? And Kirk takes him to Planet Hooters to take his mind off things? Other than that, there is sooo much weird stuff here. We got belly dancers. Jack the Ripper alien. Seances. Happy drugs. Lie detector tests. "I wouldn't be afraid of a supernova"-line from George Takei. Interesting that you didn't know much about Jack the Ripper. He's been depicted dozens of times in film and TV. Sometimes even in comedies. There's a 1979 film of Sherlock Holmes vs Jack the Ripper. And a Jackie Chan film.
SuicuneSol
2024-05-03 22:33:45 +0000 UTCOof... I couldn't stand this episode as a kid. Now, after watching it with you, it comes off a little better. I don't know. Kirk seems a bit aloof after the first murder and then snaps to when his crew member is murdered. Kind of reminds me of his attitude after the first death in "The Apple". Seems a little too complacent, considering Scott is the likely suspect. Just my opinion. And, not sure if you're a Disney fan, Bunny, but if Administrator Hengist sounds familiar, John Fiedler was also the voice of Piglet in "Winnie the Pooh". What a range this guy had, lol. Lastly, and this has probably already been mentioned a zillion times, as James Doohan had lost his middle finger during WWII, you can see Scotty avoiding putting his whole hand on scanner (except for a hand-double in the close up).
Skyman's Follies
2024-05-03 22:15:11 +0000 UTCAhh, there u are, welcome back!
3dbadboy1
2024-05-03 22:02:13 +0000 UTCI've always had mixed feelings about this episode, for many of the same reasons you pointed out while talking about it, Bunny. That said, taken as a whole, I do like this episode and I feel like it's unique in looking at some interesting ideas. The good: the acting was really solid, and you really feel for Scotty about what is going on. A good murder mystery, and a chance to see the crew relax before all of the serious stuff happened. Interesting ideas and concepts, and taking something that happened on Earth and putting a sci-fi twist to it, and also lightening it up as you mentioned. And a great performance by John Fiedler as the administrator, who I guess was actually dead all this time and was being controlled by the entity? The bad: A lot of folks, myself included, take issue with the line that Spock said about "women are more easily and more deeply terrified, generating more sheer horror than the male of the species." But this was the 1960's, after all. It also feels like someone had the overall plot ready to go but could not find a good way to express it, when Star Trek came along and they decided they could just shoehorn it into the show. The overall effect makes some of the plot points and what happens in this episode kind of forced. Also, since I can't say it any better myself, I'll just quote another reviewer on another part I disliked: the "Psycho-Tricorder. Seriously? All this time they've had a piece of technology that reads and records memories, and they've been using these archaic court martials? Why ever investigate anything? This is easily the most ridiculous invention-of-the-week that Star Trek has thrown out there so far." And then the whole hearing on the ship with the computer was really just an advanced lie detector test, which is very unreliable. The writer for this episode, Robert Bloch, also wrote two other 'horror themed' episodes of Star Trek with "What Are Little Girls Made Of?" and "Catspaw" Finally, I want to point out that a conversation between Kirk and Spock informs us for the first time that when Starfleet members are on a planet, they are subject to the laws of that planet. This is a very interesting concept, with repercussions throughout all of the Star Trek series. It has a real world counterpart, in that if a US citizen or a member of the military engages in a crime in another country, for the MOST PART, they will be subjected to that country's laws and rules. There are exceptions, of course, and I could go on for a long time in another article about that. Overall, despite all these nagging issues, in the end I think the good outweighs the bad and I can give this one a thumbs up.
Greg Polander
2024-05-03 19:12:45 +0000 UTC
