Space Monsters: Purveyors of Cosmic Splatter Punk

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?