Well this sort of confusion was precisely the problem. Keep in mind, the extremely militaristic Klingon culture of that era traditionally encouraged various bonding practices between warriors to reinforce loyalty and martial ties, especially during long space voyages. As a result, they regarded the Federation’s inappropriate use of terminology as the most dishonorable form of deception imaginable.
“Outrageous! These strangers claim to represent an “Agency of Probing,” and yet not once have they offered to probe a single member of our crew! Such an insult cannot be tolerated! Clearly, these people are nothing but a bunch of *gagh-*teasers.”
I’ll go with the space hippies myself. This Side of Paradise is all about the dangers of tuning in and dropping out.
BTW, this episode so pissed off sf writer and editor Ted White that he wrote a novel, By Furies Possessed where the spores win. Not set in the Trek universe, though.
IIRC, Roddenberry didn’t want too much continuity between episodes, so that each episode could stand alone, which they pretty much do.
Examples of limited continuity:
Spock’s parentage was often mentioned, the 'rents were actally only portrayed once (“Journey to Babel”).
Kirk’s brother was mentioned once or twice before he was actually portrayed. And once he was, he was dead. The actor playing the body was: William Shatner.
Sulu likes fencing and botany, but neither hobby was followed further that the one episode.
On the contrary, Roddenberry wrote a “bible” for the writers to help insure that there would be continuity. IIRC, that was a revolutionary concept which was used by exactly zero television shows prior to that point.
We can complain about these goofs, but when all is said and done, there would’ve been a lot more of them without Roddenberry’s staff.
There are two other examples, both early in Season 1, especially from a production point of view.
In Mudd’s Women, (I believe it immediately followed “Corbomite” which was the first non-pilpot episode.) we see Spock smiling in reaction to the power of the women. It seems to be as much a social signal as anything. he seems to be saying, Sure, they’re really something, but as a Vulcan I can easily handle it. (Later Mudd offers the opinion that the women would be wasting there time on a Vulcan, since they cannot affect one, unless he wants to feel the attraction. This is at least partially wrong, as Mudd does not know of Ponn Farr. Probably doesn’t know Spock is half-human either, though.)
Even more striking is his smiling at Uhura’s singing and improvised lyrics as he plays his Vulcan harp in “Charlie X.” He seems unconcerned about hiding what feelings he has.
As the series developed it became more and more a matter of Spock at least attempting to appear completely “computerlike” in addition to experiencing very little actual emotion compared to a full-human. The idea was that a half-human Vulcan would go out of his way to be “more Vulcan that the Vulcans.” So Spock ordianarily never gave even a mild distinct smile, not even as a social signal.
A few years ago I was reading one of those “Making of” books about Star Trek. [Humble apologies if I don’t get this exactly right.] Nimoy said that for a few episodes he wasn’t really sure of the approach to use with the Spock character until one particular moment in a scene. Something was happening on the view screen, and Nimoy yelled out “fascinating!”, but the director said something like “No, don’t yell it out like that, say it more quietly, with a sense of interest, like a scientist would”. He said at that moment he understood how he was going to approach the role of Spock.
He smiles at the end of Amok Time too doesn’t he? When he finds out that… well no spoilers here, he finds out Kirk isn’t dead. Calls Kirk “Jim” too which is something that usually only McCoy said (although I can think of Scotty doing it at least once, perhaps twice)
Scotty only did it once. I think it was in “The Doomsday Machine.” He said it just after Kirk ordered Scotty to abandon ship, so that Kirk could stay behind and manually pilot the booby-trapped Constellation straight down the doomsday machine’s maw.
Similar to that mentioned above, at the end of the episode, someone has to stay behind and make everything work, Kirk orders Scotty onto the transporter pad.
The field jacket was custom made, out of some synthetic fabric, probably acetate, that was turning into brown dust when I got it. But it still had Hunter’s name written in ballpoint pen on a piece of white tape under the collar.
