Catspaw
- Episode aired Oct 27, 1967
- TV-PG
- 50m
Very alien visitors to our galaxy attempt to connect with human consciousness but miss, winding up tapping into the regions of human nightmares instead.Very alien visitors to our galaxy attempt to connect with human consciousness but miss, winding up tapping into the regions of human nightmares instead.Very alien visitors to our galaxy attempt to connect with human consciousness but miss, winding up tapping into the regions of human nightmares instead.
- Korob
- (as Theo Marcuse)
- DeSalle
- (as Mike Barrier)
- Crewman Jackson
- (as Jimmy Jones)
- Lieutenant Hadley
- (uncredited)
- Yeoman
- (uncredited)
- Lieutenant Leslie
- (uncredited)
- Director
- Writers
- Gene Roddenberry
- Robert Bloch
- D.C. Fontana(uncredited)
- All cast & crew
- Production, box office & more at IMDbPro
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaThe voices of the little creatures in the final scene are the sounds made by newly-hatched alligators calling for their mother.
- GoofsThe initial landing party makes no sense. Kirk almost always leads the landing party himself. The planet is seemingly uninhabited and has sparse plant life. If he doesn't go himself, he would send Spock with a team of professional scientists with a heavy concentration in geology and meteorology. Instead, Kirk sends an engineer, an amateur botanist, and a command-track officer. Not a blueshirt in the bunch.
- Quotes
First Witch: Wind shall rise.
Second Witch: And fog descend.
Third Witch: So leave here, all, or meet your end.
[wailing witches cackle and vanish]
Captain James T. Kirk: Spock. Comment.
Mr. Spock: Very bad poetry, Captain.
Captain James T. Kirk: A more useful comment, Mr. Spock.
Mr. Spock: What we've just seen is not real.
Captain James T. Kirk: That's useful.
- Alternate versionsSpecial Enhanced version Digitally Remastered with new exterior shots and remade opening theme song. Highlights include a wider establishing shot showing the entire castle, not just the front door.
- ConnectionsEdited from Star Trek: Where No Man Has Gone Before (1966)
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.
- Bogmeister
- Aug 30, 2006
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