What do you think of Steven W. Carabatsos' TOS episodes?

[JonnyQuest037]

It seems to me that Steven W. Carabatsos is not a guy who's discussed in relation to Trek very often. He was a Story Consultant on TOS for a good chunk of the 1st season, and yet I never hear him brought up with the frequency that Gene Roddenberry, D.C. Fontana, David Gerrold, or Gene Coon are.

Here are the Trek episodes produced under Carabatsos' tenure, according to his IMDB page*:

- The Alternative Factor (1967) ... (script consultant)
- A Taste of Armageddon (1967) ... (script consultant)
- The Return of the Archons (1967) ... (script consultant)
- Court Martial (1967) ... (script consultant)
- Tomorrow Is Yesterday (1967) ... (script consultant)
- Arena (1967) ... (script consultant)
- The Squire of Gothos (1967) ... (script consultant)
- The Galileo Seven (1967) ... (script consultant)
- Shore Leave (1966) ... (script consultant)
- The Conscience of the King (1966) ... (script consultant)
- The Menagerie: Part I (1966) ... (script consultant)
- Operation -- Annihilate! (1967) ... (written by)
- Court Martial (1967) ... (teleplay by)

A lot of decent episodes, but hardly any we would call stone cold classics. I feel like almost all of these episodes have story problems that could've been solved at the rewriting stage, but weren't.** And yet, I don't think that he gets nearly the amount of grief that, say, Fred Freiberger does. Is that just because he worked on the 1st season, when the show was still relatively fresh fresh and less campy than it became in the 3rd? Is he just overshadowed by being in between Gene Roddenberry and D.C Fontana? Something else?

* According to Memory Alpha, Carabatsos also did a rewrite on "Miri," and was one of the many people who rewrote Harlan Ellison's version of "City on the Edge of Forever." This was also confirmed by D.C. Fontana in Ellison's book about COTEOF.

** I'll expand on this thought a bit in the thread. If I did it here, I feel like this might come off as a "Let's Bash Steven W. Carabatsos" thread, and that's not really my intent. I just want to discuss him a bit.

 

[Greg Cox]

"Arena" isn't a stone-cold classic? "Shore Leave" and "The Galileo Seven" and "The Squire of Gothos" and "Tomorrow is Yesterday" and "The Conscience of the King" aren't classic, first-rate Trek episodes?

Those are some of my favorite TOS episodes. Heck, I've written sequels to two of them.

But you're right that Carabatsos tends to get overlooked when the making of TOS is being discussed.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

"Arena" isn't a stone-cold classic? "Shore Leave" and "The Galileo Seven" and "The Squire of Gothos" and "Tomorrow is Yesterday" and "The Conscience of the King" aren't classic, first-rate Trek episodes?

Okay. I was going to wait on this until the conversation got going a bit more, but since you're bringing it up, I'll write up my thoughts on what brings most of those episodes down a notch or two, IMO. Just so you can better see where I'm coming from.

It'll probably be on the longish side though, so please feel free to discuss Carabatsos and his episodes in the meantime.

 

[Greg Cox]

Sounds interesting. I'm also intrigued to find out what people do consider "classics" if not "Arena" and the like.

And I confess I know next to nothing about Carabatsos's stint on the show.

 

[Poltargyst]

Arena's always been one of my favorites.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

OK, so here are my general thoughts on Carabatsos’ episodes, in the order they were listed above (To clarify, when I say “Stone Cold Classics,” I’m thinking of stuff like COTEOF, Mirror, Mirror, Trouble With Tribbles, Doomsday Machine, and Devil in the Dark. Those are the crème de la crème of TOS, IMO):

1) The Alternative Factor - I really don’t have to talk much about what a mess this one turned out to be, do I? We had a whole thread about it recently. Really, the whole plot doesn’t make much sense, and it’s pretty goofy overall. And it’s weird how both this episode and Space Seed were going to use the same “female crewmember falls in love with villain” device (I’m not sure which episode was planned first, though).

2) A Taste of Armageddon – I actually enjoy this one. One of the better “metaphor-planet” episodes, and an overlooked one, IMO. No big criticisms. I like the twist of the Jerk Diplomat helping out Kirk & Co. at the end.

3) The Return of the Archons – This one is a bit hazy in my memory, as I haven’t re-watched it too much. It’s Roddenberry’s typical story of “The Insane False God That Must Be Destroyed”, but it was one of the first times TOS did it, so it was okay, I suppose.

4) Court Martial – This has a teleplay by Carabatsos, and it piles up a LOT of contrivances. Kirk is accused of being responsible for the death of a crewman who just happens to be one of Kirk’s Academy instructors, whose daughter just happens to be named after Kirk, and the prosecutor on the case just happens to be one of Kirk’s old flames. That’s a lot to swallow in 60 minutes’ time. And that “one to the fourth power” thing at the climax is kind of sloppy.

5) Tomorrow Is Yesterday – The “Let’s beam Captain Christopher into his own past self” thing doesn’t make a damn bit of sense, but I enjoy this episode until it gets to the ending.

6) Arena – If there are any episodes on this list that are stone-cold classics, I’d say it’s probably this one. And judging from the other episodes that bear his name, I’d guess that’s largely due to Gene Coon.

7) The Squire of Gothos – Trelane. Another one I haven’t re-watched in forever, but I remember it being a fun romp that’s largely redeemed by William Campbell’s great performance. Another Roddenberry “Insane God” story, with God being a playful child instead of a malfunctioning computer (An ending which works better, IMO).

8) The Galileo Seven – As I just noted in the thread about it, I like this one in concept more than in execution. Right off the bat, it’s weird being asked to buy that Spock is only commanding his first mission when he’s the first officer of the entire ship. And Boma and most of the other officers really cross the line from being critical of Spock to downright insubordinate. And it recycles the “Jerk Diplomat” thing from A Taste of Armageddon not long after the previous episode.

9) Shore Leave – Another one I unabashedly like. This episode brought me Emily Banks as Yeoman Tonia Barrows. I could never hate it. It’s another fun romp.

10) The Conscience of the King – Another one I consider to be FULL of contrivances. A Governor of an entire colony who somehow was largely unseen by the colonists, and only seven survivors who can identify him, and TWO of the seven just happen to be assigned to the Enterprise? (And while you could certainly make a case that Kirk was “watching over” Kevin Riley & made sure he was assigned to his ship, that’s more fan supposition than anything else. Kirk and Riley don’t seem to have any sort of close relationship, and Kirk seems as surprised as anybody that Riley also knew Kodos, IIRC).

And Kodos the Executioner is regarded as a mass murderer, but he decides to hide out as a touring actor? A lot of this doesn’t make much sense once you start thinking about it.

11) The Menagerie: Part I – The whole “Spock is on trial for a death penalty” thing doesn’t make much sense. Why, outside of giving the story some false jeopardy, is visiting Talos IV a death penalty offense? And like a lot of episodes that SC supervised, it reuses a device from not very long before (crewmember on trial).

12) Operation -- Annihilate! - WHOO-Boy. This one. This one was written by Carabatsos, and IMO, it shows. From the random coincidence of Kirk’s brother and his family living on Deneva, to the totally arbitrary “Spock’s inner eyelid” solution at the climax, this one is pretty sloppy. Thank God that cutesy scene with Kirk’s nephew Peter in a mini-Starfleet uniform was deleted.

------------------------------------------

…So it’s a bit more of mixed bag for me than I thought at first.

Three I love with no reservations (Arena, A Taste of Armageddon, Shore Leave)

Two that I vaguely recall as being pretty good (Return of the Archons, The Squire of Gothos)

Six episodes that have some plot holes and contrivances that keep them from being 100% successful (Court Martial, Tomorrow Is Yesterday, The Galileo Seven, The Conscience of the King, The Menagerie, Pt. 1, Operation – Annihilate!)

and One outright disaster (The Alternative Factor).

I guess that’s not too bad of an average for a working Story Editor on a weekly TV series, but still a few too many mediocre episodes, repeated devices, contrivances, and plot holes for my liking. I guess I wouldn’t really call Carabatsos a bad writer, just an occasionally sloppy one who tended to take the easy way out a lot. I would say that both D.C. Fontana and Gene Coon had better batting averages when it came to both the variety of stories and the overall quality of stories on the episodes they supervised. YMMV.

What do you think, Greg Cox? Do I have a point or am I totally off my rocker?

 

[JonnyQuest037]

Oh, and with Miri (an episode that Carabatsos rewrote, according to Memory Alpha), it leaves that whole "exact duplicate of Earth" thing entirely unexplained, which is a plot hole in my book. Heck, if you happened to miss the teaser, you could have no idea the episode involved a duplicate Earth at all!

 

[plynch]

So the 60s viewers didn't "touch that dial!" No need to explain it once they're sticking around for Act I. And, yeah, there are a lot of plotholes and coincidences, but I still like most of those. Several are among my faves.

EXCEPT - Sturgeon was right - that early reveal of the antennas really ruins the suspense of Shore Leave imho. Whose insistence was that?

 

[Maurice]

...Thank God that cutesy scene with Kirk’s nephew Peter in a mini-Starfleet uniform was deleted.

Have you read that scene? The dialog is pretty damned serious and not cutesy. The only cutesy thing was the uniform.

The problem is as "script consultant" he hardly had the power of someone like Coon who was the Producer through much of this, so outside of reading the production memos it;s difficult to say how much of little influence he had.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

Have you read that scene? The dialog is pretty damned serious and not cutesy. The only cutesy thing was the uniform.

Yes, I have. And IMO the uniform would have killed the drama of that scene.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

3) The Return of the Archons – This one is a bit hazy in my memory, as I haven’t re-watched it too much. It’s Roddenberry’s typical story of “The Insane False God That Must Be Destroyed”, but it was one of the first times TOS did it, so it was okay, I suppose.

4) Court Martial – This has a teleplay by Carabatsos, and it piles up a LOT of contrivances. Kirk is accused of being responsible for the death of a crewman who just happens to be one of Kirk’s Academy instructors, whose daughter just happens to be named after Kirk, and the prosecutor on the case just happens to be one of Kirk’s old flames. That’s a lot to swallow in 60 minutes’ time. And that “one to the fourth power” thing at the climax is kind of sloppy.

9) Shore Leave – Another one I unabashedly like. This episode brought me Emily Banks as Yeoman Tonia Barrows. I could never hate it. It’s another fun romp.

10) The Conscience of the King – Another one I consider to be FULL of contrivances. A Governor of an entire colony who somehow was largely unseen by the colonists, and only seven survivors who can identify him, and TWO of the seven just happen to be assigned to the Enterprise?

3) Seeing "Archons" many times as a kid probably had a lot to do with me ending up an atheist. The Irwin Allen shows and Batman weren't going to do that. Star Trek had a big impact.

4) "One to the fourth power" was unfortunate wording, but he meant "One unit of loudness," not the numeral 1. He should have said "X to the fourth power" to get exactly the same idea across without triggering static from math nerds.

9) Agreed on "Shore Leave" and Emily Banks.

10) Kodos wasn't a famous politician who'd been governor all along. He was the revolutionary who seized power when the food crisis struck. And he kept the cameras at bay because he specifically intended to kill half the colony. The big coincidence is that Tom Leighton summoned the Enterprise when he recognized Kodos. That really put some ducks in a row for Lenore Karidian to do her work. She couldn't have predicted it, and on top of that she was a pretty sharp cookie to know that Riley was aboard. But sometimes great stories depend on unlikely events.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

10) Kodos wasn't a famous politician who'd been governor all along. He was the revolutionary who seized power when the food crisis struck. And he kept the cameras at bay because he specifically intended to kill half the colony. The big coincidence is that Tom Leighton summoned the Enterprise when he recognized Kodos. That really put some ducks in a row for Lenore Karidian to do her work. She couldn't have predicted it, and on top of that she was a pretty sharp cookie to know that Riley was aboard. But sometimes great stories depend on unlikely events.

I don't remember any of that Kodos background being in the episode itself. Perhaps I need to rewatch it to see if I forgot something.

I don't consider the Tom Leighton thing to be a coincidence at all. Leighton was obviously still in touch with Kirk in some fashion and specifically sent Kirk a message to draw the Enterprise to Planet Q before the Karidian Players departed. I suppose it was pretty convenient that the Enterprise wasn't weeks or months away from Planet Q and were close enough to get there quickly, but that's honestly not something that I ever thought about until just now. Since that's not a plot hole that's immediately obvious, I can forgive it.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

Hmm. Interesting note that I just saw on Memory Alpha about "Conscience of the King":

• A line scripted, but cut from the episode established that Kirk was a midshipman, fresh out of the Academy when he was stationed on Tarsus IV and witnessed the massacre. Since it happened twenty years before the events of this episode, this would have indicated that Kirk is somewhat older than what was later established in "The Deadly Years". (It should be noted, however, that while Academy cadets enter as midshipmen, they graduate as ensigns.)

That makes a lot of sense, as Riley says several times that he was a child when the massacre happened, but Kirk never does. I think most Star Trek chronologies put Kirk at about 13 when he was on Tarsus IV.

I wonder how the various timeliners would resolve that discrepancy if that line had remained in!

 

[UnknownSample]

I disagree so totally and completely with the idea of this thread that I'd be here a week trying to rebut everything here, and why do it? I've already done a bit of that on the Galileo thread, and that didn't make a difference.

We disagree on what's good and what's bad, what's solid and what's lightweight. A lot of your "obvious" classics are what mine are to you... good but hardly great. I mean, Tribbles is good for a few laughs, and well don e for what it is.

You've done me the favor of starting to educate me on Carabatsos, a name I'm always curious about, when I see it flash by on the screen in Annihilate, because it always seems I should know the name, but it's not in other writing credits. I had the feeling he should be one of those great names I need to appreciate more from that incredible first season. I think this when I've just seen Annihilate again, because I love that one so much.

Based on his history, I wonder if he worked best in a team, as an influence, rather than an idea man? He was a big presence when ST was at its most adult. That started to seep away, once he was gone. I'm going to say his influence was 3-dimensional human depth, an d a more literary touch that he probably gave to scripts.

 

[Warped9]

I've long since accepted that notion that Kirk wasn't in his right mind when he said he was 34 in "The Deadly Years." I think he was about 34 when he got command of the Enterprise, which helps line up a lot of other things for Kirk's backstory.

So in "The Deadly Years" Kirk could be anywhere from 36-38.

 

[UnknownSample]

I consider anything involving numbers in ST to be more fluid and less nailed-down than facts stated in words. Like... you can 't just say the Eugenics Wars never happened, as inconvenient as that is. However, it seems possible for me, for us to play with the numbers. It's probably best for us to keep that one vague, but let's say it wasn't the 1990s. It may have sounded like "1990s" but whoever said that was having a seizure of the epiglottus, or something. I agree, late 30s Kirk makes much more sense.

I can go for a Kirk who was never from Earth in the first place much more easily than a Kirk who grew up in Iowa. I'd rather not try to form a story in my head of an Iowa farm boy uprooted to settle on a remote colony planet.

 

[tim0122]

Oh, and with Miri (an episode that Carabatsos rewrote, according to Memory Alpha), it leaves that whole "exact duplicate of Earth" thing entirely unexplained, which is a plot hole in my book. Heck, if you happened to miss the teaser, you could have no idea the episode involved a duplicate Earth at all!

They also never explain why (as Spock notes) the town looks 1960s in style. It's almost as if they wanted to use the modern sets available on the backlot...hmmmmm...curious.

Seriously, though, all they needed to say was that it was an old Federation colony that had issued an SOS or one that hadn't been heard from for a while. Maybe not as good a teaser as the duplicate Earth thing but makes a lot more sense.

 

[Warped9]

They also never explain why (as Spock notes) the town looks 1960s in style. It's almost as if they wanted to use the modern sets available on the backlot...hmmmmm...curious.

Seriously, though, all they needed to say was that it was an old Federation colony that had issued an SOS or one that hadn't been heard from for a while. Maybe not as good a teaser as the duplicate Earth thing but makes a lot more sense.

Which is exactly the backstory used in James Blish's adaptation.

 

[TREK_GOD_1]

4) Court Martial – This has a teleplay by Carabatsos, and it piles up a LOT of contrivances. Kirk is accused of being responsible for the death of a crewman who just happens to be one of Kirk’s Academy instructors, whose daughter just happens to be named after Kirk, and the prosecutor on the case just happens to be one of Kirk’s old flames. That’s a lot to swallow in 60 minutes’ time. And that “one to the fourth power” thing at the climax is kind of sloppy.

The entire plotting structure of the Star Wars movies say hello.

 

[Botany Bay]

Great thread.

Carabatsos has always interested me, mainly because of the paucity of information about him.

This is what I know of him (mainly, I have to say, from a source with plenty of problematic facts, so I don't present this as gospel truth, and I'm happy to see any of this corrected if needed) :

When Coon came on board following the resignation of Black, Coon wanted writing support : that role was given to Carabatsos, who signed a contract for thirteen episodes.

After the thirteen, he was gone for whatever reason, replaced by D.C. Fontana, but was obligated to write a full length script part of his deal, which he hadn't had time to do, working non-stop on rewrites during his thirteen weeks. His full length script became Operation Annihilate, which Carabatsos said came from an outline Roddenberry assigned him.

He seemed, in the short interview snippets I've seen, to downplay his work on Trek, recalling it as just another job, and he thought he wasn't as well versed in SF as the people around him.

My local comic book store is going out of business, and I managed to pick up a dusty pile of ancient Starlog magazines last week. When I get some time I'll try to find an interview or two with him and see if I can find out any more.