In the final episode of season two of Star Trek TOS the Enterprise is in orbit
around Earth in 1968, engaged in ‘historical research’. They intercept a
transporter beam from deep space and the mysterious ‘Mister Seven’, and his cat
‘Isis’, materialize on the transporter pad. Having assessed the Enterprise and
its crew are from the future ‘Gary Seven’ wants to know why he has been
intercepted and that he has an important mission on Earth to prevent its
destruction. Kirk, unsure of his sincerity, has him placed in the brig. He
easily escapes and continues to transport to Earth. There he emerges from a
blue mist inside a large vault in a luxurious office in a high rise in New York.
A highly advanced, futuristic super-computer is revealed. He then meets ‘Roberta
Lincoln’, a dizzy blonde secretary (Teri Garr) who worked for two agents of his
whose disappearance he has come to investigate. She is unaware of Seven and his
associates’ unearthly motives. Discovering that his agents have been killed in
an auto accident Seven must take over their mission. Kirk and Spock have beamed
down to find Seven and after a cat and mouse chase and a nail biting climax
involving an armed nuclear warhead falling to Earth, it is revealed that... I’ll
stop there for the few that may not have seen it. At the close of the episode Kirk
and Spock leave with Spock commenting that Seven and Roberta would probably have
many more interesting adventures.
This
was clearly a ‘back door pilot’ for a spin-off, un-produced series. The
characters of Seven and Roberta are intriguing and leave you wanting to see
more of them, and his mission to prevent humanity from destroying itself (it
was 1968 remember) is well defined.
Getting
to my point, there are several aspects to this particular episode and concepts that
bear scrutiny. Gary Seven is an enigmatic alien/human hybrid that can travel
through space and time using the mechanism inside his vault (in the episode he
steps into the vault and reappears inside a hangar at a U.S. Air Force base);
he is paired with a young female human assistant; he can replicate documents
which allow him to enter any official facility; he has a ‘pen’-like device
which neutralizes force fields, locks/unlocks doors, zaps telephone lines and subdues
humans leaving them smiling blissfully and unconscious yet it also has the
capacity to kill.
Surely
a lot, if not all, of these concepts are very familiar. A space/time traveler
with a young female companion; a machine that can transport him anywhere in
space and time; a replicator of security documents which acts much like psychic
paper and to top it all he even has an equivalent of a Sonic Screwdriver.
Is
it possible that Gene Roddenberry poached a few ideas from what was then the fledgling
Doctor Who to create an American equivalent?
What
do you think?
