Star Trek: Forbidden Episodes

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Star Trek: Forbidden Episodes: "The Changeling".
Star Trek: Forbidden Episodes.

Star Trek: Forbidden Episodes is an archive of Star Trek episodes recovered from alien quantum states using techniques adapted from high-energy literature.

The archive is manifested as an anonymous transdimensional corporation, widely believed to be the work of rogue mathematician Fell Swoop.

In the News

Episodes

Tribbles for Ichneumon

The Ichneumon, an alien ambassador from the "Spock's Bug" parallel universe, is sterile, and will soon die without progeny, threatening the intra-universe treaty between Insects and Humans. In a desperate effort to save both universes from extinction, Doctor McCoy synthesizes an experimental fertility drug using compounds isolated from living tribbles, but The Ichneumon refuses to take the drug unless it can first sting its eggs into a living host, naming McCoy as its host of choice. McCoy is ready to sacrifice himself, but is knocked unconscious by a stunt double play Kirk, who is in turn neck-pinched by the actual Leonard Nimoy, who narrates the episode. During this human-on-human action, The Ichneumon grows increasingly impatient, finally stinging itself.

And thus does The Ichneumon bear its own young, which eat their progenitor and then sting themselves, sub specie aeternitatis.

Comparative literature

Compare "Flowers for Algernon".

"The Socialist Iteration"

Mister Spock, while conducting research on pre-spaceflight Socialism, observes:

The word "socialism", like the word "love", is understood completely by those who experience it — and completely misunderstood by those who do not. It appears impossible to prove its existence, yet we have assertions from nearly every society that love between individuals scales up to love within a society for itself as a whole.

The episode has been compared to "My Dinner with Andre", with Spock as Andre. TO_DO - cast Star Trek crew member as the other guy in "My Dinner"

The Socialist Iteration

"The Rosenbergs"

Mister Spock, while conducting research on Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, finds it curious that historical sources speak of "the Rosenbergs" in an almost collective sense, as if they were two halves of a single creature.

Disaster strikes when a rip in time causes the Enterprise to beam Ethel and Julius aboard the Enterprise, fusing their two bodies into a single blob of agonized protoplasm.

Doctor McCoy leaps in to euthanize the blob, but is himself caught in the time rip and thrown back to 1953, where he sees first Ethel, then Julius, executed by electrocution. The authorities then force McCoy to sign death certificates for both bodies.

Solemn music; fade to black.

Background

  • Template:Selected anniversaries/September 25 ||1915: Ethel Rosenberg born ... American spy.
  • Template:Selected anniversaries/May 1 ||1918: Julius Rosenberg born ... spy.
  • Template:Selected anniversaries/May 12 ||1918: Julius Rosenberg born ... American spy.
  • Template:Selected anniversaries/March 6 ||1951: The trial of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg begins.
  • Template:Selected anniversaries/April 5 ||1951: Cold War: Ethel and Julius Rosenberg are sentenced to death for spying for the Soviet Union.
  • Template:Selected anniversaries/February 11 ...Dwight D. Eisenhower denies all appeals for clemency for Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.
  • Template:Selected anniversaries/June 19 ||1953: Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are executed at Sing Sing, in New York.

"Treatment"

When a routine experiment in high-energy literature unexpectedly generates quantum plot holes, Doctor McCoy must write an entirely new story treatment about a doctor who must write an entirely new story treatment about a doctor who must, and so on, recursion within recursion, each iteration shouting "I'm a doctor, not a screen writer!". This makes up the bulk of the episode (about forty-one minutes).

In the closing scene, as the camera pulls back from deranged mind of McCoy, his eyes motionless and staring yet wild with despair, we see that his body, rigid with catatonia, lies strapped to a security bed in sick bay, the monitor overhead registering only a faint drizzle of static from what remains of the doctor's ruined brain.

Kirk and Spock stand nearby silently, mourning their friend.

Solemn music; fade to black.

Outakes

In a notorious outtake scene (staged by Nichelle Nichols and James Doohan), Scottie drinks alone in his quarters, playing dirge on the bagpipes, causing Uhura to bang on the dividing wall and shout "Keeping it down over there!"

"A Demon By Any Other Name"

TO_DO: plot summary.

See Demon (nonfiction). Compare "by all means necessary".

Dialog fragment

SPOCK: A rose by any other name would not be named Rose. And names matter, Doctor. Names matter.

MCCOY: Blast your Vulcan lustration, Spock. This is the scent of roses we're talking about, not some damned floral display show!

Dialog fragment

MCCOY: Well thank pointed ears and mutant magnolias, the Captain's nose was right after all. [Music: humorous exit theme.]

Dialog fragment

UNKNOWN: By all names necessary.

"The Cowbell Maneuver"

Screenshot from "The Cowbell Maneuver" showing the crew's reaction to The Cowbell.

The crew of the Enterprise must ring the greatest Cowbell in the galaxy before the Tholians complete their Cosmic Dirge.

Fiction cross-reference

Nonfiction cross-reference

External links