When Kirk is explaining the rules of Fizzbin to Kalo, he deals him two jacks and says that that is half a Fizzbin. When Kalo asks if he needs another jack, Kirk says no, that that would disqualify him. Yet what happens? Kirk immediately deals him another jack and Kalo isn't disqualified, instead Kirk acts like it's a good thing! (I guess this was all part of the idea, to confuse the guy)

Like "The City on the Edge of Forever" and "Patterns of Force," this episode is given a stardate by the video box (as well as other sources) even though no stardate is actually given during the episode itself.

Er, given that the "Rules" of Fizzbin seem to change from day to day, and are dependant on weather conditions, I'd say he's just trying to baffle the poor chap with the Jacks business...

When Kirk and Spock had returned to Krako, pretending to offer him a deal, they persuaded him to step into his office to discuss it. Two of Krako's guards came in with him, the rest were left outside. Kirk had Krako beamed up to the ship, then knocked out the guards. (Spock always looks so efficient doing this, compared to the others!) What do they do then? They go springing out the office door without even peeking to see if the other guards were still out there! (And they had to be close by, because when one of the office guards came to, he yelled and the others appeared very quickly.)

During one of the scenes showing Kirk & Spock driving in a car, Kirk says something to the effect that he'd like to have one himself. Now, as we all know, the Trek crews are notorious for having practically nothing to do with ground transportation of any kind. The last time Kirk was involved with a car he saw Edith Keeler killed by one. I know he wouldn't simplemindedly "blame" automobiles for this--but I find it hard to believe he'd feel that much affection for them either. Along the same lines--even though the scene of him trying to operate a clutch was very funny--knowing that cars are potentially lethal devices should have made him a little less cavalier about trying to drive one himself.

On a related note, why dosen't Spock drive? He knows more about cars anyway.

Why use ground transportation at all? Why don't Kirk and Spock just beam over?

The element of suprise, perhaps? Krako is expecting Kirk to beam in, not walk in. It dosen't explain why they didn't beam back.

When Kirk tries to explain to Krako that the development of his planet's culture is arrested, Krako responds "I ain't never been arrested in my life!" It's a cute line, but it suggests that there's a law enforcement agency which operates outside gangster rule, which doesn't jibe with what we've seen in this episode.

GUEST STAR PATROL (proud sponsor of National Fizzbin Tournaments)

Victor Tayback (Krako) might be the same Vic Tayback that was Mel on "Alice".

Not being a gun control advocate, I'm puzzled as to why the bosses allow the population to own firearms. It's a lot easier for bosses (or government) to maintain power where the people are unarmed than where the people have access to weapons and know how to use them. An armed population could eventually challenge the leadership of the bosses.

Might be? There's no "might" about it--that is the same Vic Tayback. I've seen him do guest shots on lots of things. He seems to specialize in criminals, so he fit in great here.

He played a cop in an episode of TJ Hooker. So did Nimoy.

Why would a 22nd century spaceship be carrying an antique book on the Chicago Mobs of the 20's? Even if there were a history buff on board, wouldn't a cheap paperback have been as good? Why did the people on the ship decide to leave this antique book on the planet anyway? Did the ship run out of cheap baubles and trinkets to give to the simple natives? And how did the Iotians learn to read English anyhow? Was the Horizon also carrying school supplies? (Well, that would certainly explain a number of nits in Classic Trek. 22nd century spaceships leaving English primers and dictionaries on various planets, so the aliens can learn to speak English.)

It has been 100 years since the Horizon left, but the clothes, weapons, cars and telephones haven't changed? Boy, those Iotians must regard that book as gospel and assumed that the pictures and/or descriptions were the perfect shapes for these items since less than 100 years has passed on Earth and none of these things looks the same as the 1920's model. (Although, I must admit that I do have a fondness for the look of cars from the 20's & 30's.)

It seems odd that the ship's phasers would have a "Stun" setting.

Spock says to Kirk, "As a taxi driver, you leave much to be desired." I would have expected the phrase taxi driver to be extinct by the 23rd century.

Where did Kirk learn some of these 20's slang phrases, like "blower" for phone?

My nephew, Jon, wondered why the ship couldn't lock onto McCoy's communicator and beam it back to the ship.

About the Book, it might have been a practical joke on the part of the one of the crew of the Horizion.

Why does it seem odd that the ship's phaser has a stun setting? Stun is probably a matter of power modification. Having that ability from the ship would be great for riot control.

It wasn't that the ship's phasers could be set that low, it's just that I had a mental image of the ship's phaser control with the word Stun written on it. I believe in Hero Worship Picard asks for a very low phaser setting, but he specifies a percentage, not "Stun."

"Klingon ship attacking, captain."
"Stun them, Mr. Sulu."

Since the religious musings board has died...

Does anyone else see this episode as a knock against Christianity?

Here's a book. Base your whole culture and way of life on this book. Do not question anything that is in the book. Do not think for yourself, just do what the book says.

Comments?

Well, if you want to put it that way it's a knock against all forms of unquestioning belief, be it Christianity, Islam, Darwinism, Einsteinism, etc., etc.
I don't think this was the intent of the episode though. I think it was just a way to poke fun at The Untouchables TV show.

Regarding "The Book"--I don't think that that was the literal original copy. It was all bound up like a Bible would be, and I doubt if a book on mobs would have been so fancy. I don't recall if they showed it on the episode, but in the Blish version, all the bosses had copies of the Book. The original would probably have been carefully stored somewhere, like countries do with historical documents.

When Kirk and Spock steal the car, Spock identifies it as a "flivver". How would Spock know a bit of Earth slang that is long since out of date in the 1990s, much less the 23rd Century?

After Scotty beams Tepo to Bela's office, Spock turns his Tommy gun on Bela and says "I would advise youse to keep dialin', Okmyx!" While this does make for a funny moment, can you imagine a logical, rational Vulcan like Spock using a word like "youse"?

In order to impress a group of Chicago-style mobsters, Kirk affects a Brooklyn accent. Does this seem right? Then again, his knowledge of the 20th Century is likely fairly spotty. (I think he did a little too much LDS).

Maybe and Kirk and Spock learned the jargon of the period by reading the "antique book on the Chicago Mobs of the 20s" (whatever it was called) before they set off on the mission?

Isn't it possible that people in the 23rd (or 24th) century might still occasionally watch a twentieth century gangster movie? We've seen them watch a Shakespeare play in "Conscience of the King," and we've seen Rom watch an old movie in the Holosuite on Deep Space 9. Just because a form of entertainment is old doesn't mean people still don't enjoy it.

Chris, Let us not forget Dixon Hill and Cyrus Redblock!

Not to mention Tom Paris' "Captain Proton" program.

Wasn't it Nog who was watching the old black and white film when he staying with Vic Fontaine?

Yes, you're right. Temporary brain cramp.

Re. 'taxi driver', I can't see a time in the future when they'd be non-existent. Kirk and crew are probably used to beaming to and from whatever Earth city they want, but us lowly citizens, that don't have access to such equipment would have to settle for our own surface transportation, whether they be our own vehicle, public transportation (monorail.bus, etc) or private-public transportation, like taxies.
As for the Book, who's to say how much stuff the Horizon left behind besides it and, as Oxmyx says, books on radios. It could have been a mistake to leave it behind or a practical joke on the part of the Horizon crew. They couldn't know what the Iotians would copy. For all we know, there's a sub-culture on the planet that's based on the adventures of the Coyote and the Roadrunner.

Will - I've always imagined that there'd be these large transport centers, say one in every neighborhood, operated either by private enterprise or the government...
I also imagine private companies and retailers would have ground to satelite transporters.

True, but not everybody, as McCoy has demonstrated, would like the idea of being turned into a beam of energy and reassembled somewhere else.

CUTE MOMENT....

Kirk says something along the lines of...

"The Feds are taking over"

Making it sound like the Federal Government!

What type of car was Kirk "driving?" If you look at the radiator, there is a V-12 emblem at the very top. I think that either Cadillac or Packard were the builders of V-12 cars in that day. (Sigma Iotia must have dug up old car brochures left by the Horizon.) I liked the way he parked it-just left it in the middle of the street. (In Brooklyn, they think that type of parking is legal, as do they think that double parking and blocking your driveway is legal.) Anyway, this has to be the most overrated episode of all. Nine years later, I still don't see how it rated number two in the 25th anniversary poll.

Does anyone know if Anthony Caruso (Bela Oxmyx) is still alive? I saw him as a guest at a convention around '75 or '76. Vic Tayback (Jojo Krako) died a number of years ago.

I believe the car Koik is driving is called a "Flivver"

"Flivver" was '20s slang for an automobile. Adam was asking for the make.

I believe Michael was makin A FUNNY

"Introducing, the 1920 Fliver, from Ford, where quality is job one!"

"With rich, Corinthian leather...."

If you check back with the Blish novelization of this one - based on the first-draft script - it explains quite a few things. Like where Kirk learned the slang - Krako locked him in with a copy of the Book!
And as to why the whole population has guns - they don't. The gangsters have the guns, and local citizenry are kept in line - shades of the Mafia - via a system one of Oxmyx's thugs describes as "If they pays their percentages, the Boss takes care of 'em." In this version, an irate woman's complaint to the thug that the garbage hasn't been picked up is Spock's first clue that Iotian society's disintegrating. (This scene was actually filmed - it appears in the FotoNovel - but cut later.)
One other interesting bit: When Kirk's revving up the 'fizzbin' game (much less elaborate in book form, BTW; I have a feeling that Shatner was improvising his way thru that scene!) Blish has him saying something like "Now this last card we call the cronk, but it's home name is klee-eet" -i.e. one of the Vulcan weapons used in 'Amok Time'.
One thing it doesn't explain is just why Spock (of all people) doesn't bother to take guards with him on his second meeting with Oxmyx. Is there a phrase in the Nitpicker lexicon for 'Really big plot hole that can't be fixed without shooting the whole episode to pieces?'
The ep as a whole is so funny and delightful (LOVE that learning-to-drive sequence!) that I can almost overlook it's flaws...almost.

From the Glossary we have:
ICBN - "Intercontinental Ballistic Nit"
"Any nit that not only contradicts the events of episode, but renders that episode impossible."
Submitted by Sara Green

Close enough, KAM (and Sara). Thanks

For those who were wondering...Victor Tayback & Vic Tayback are the same.

It'd be fun to do this episode over again and have a mobster girl named "Alice" as Krako's sidekick (Like Bonnie & Clyde) and have her say, "Kiss my grits, Krako"

James Komack, who directed this episode, produced such diametrically opposite series at the low key "Courtship of Eddie's Father" and the loud, boisterous "Welcome Back Kotter." Kerriem is right about about the driving sequence, it is delightful, with great, relaxed interplay between our two heroes. However, this is an average episode, Shatner is a bit too relaxed while he is walking on top of the table (in the chalk stripe suit and his uniform boots, BTW. Maybe Red Redding [Morgan Freeman in "The Shawshank Redemption"] is right-how often DO you look at a man's shoes?)

Another funny moment:

The spur of the moment alias of Spock...."Spocko"



Hilarious!

Spock trying to master the underworld slang is a hoot, too...an early foreshadowing of his 'colourful metaphor' dilemma from STIV!

I think Phil might rest a bit easier tonight knowing that what he saw on the "Wanted Poster" was correct....it's "OKMYX" not "OXMYX".

How do I know the wanted poster is right?

CUZ' THE "END CREDITS PERSON" CAN'T SPELL TO SAVE HIS LIFE!!!!!!

And the reason why the Comendium & the Encyclopedia is wrong is because they followed the end credits too closely instead of watching the show more closely!

I can not help but wonder why future Starship Captains didn't try and confuse other alien species with the "Fizzbin" game....

It'd make the Borg's brains short out, thereby removing any future threat from ever happening again!

FUNNY MOMENT: Kirk's driving is hilarious! He goes into reverse, then drive. He then putters along the road like a drunken turtle.

When Kirk has one of the bosses beamed into the office, the guy is supposed to be on the phone. Yet when he materializes, he's not holding a phone. Why didn't the transporter beam in the phone too?

At one point, Kirk is locked in a room by himself and there's a typewriter in the background...HEY! That's Miri's typewriter! Return that at once!

GREAT LINE: "Riiiight!" "Spocko" acknowledging Kirk.

MISSED OPPORTUNITY: The creators should have invited Frank Gorshin as one of the mob leaders...he does a great James Cagney.

BEST LINE: "Captain, you are an excellent Starship commander, but as a taxi driver, you leave much to be desired." Spock after witnessing Kirk's "driving".

John, Frank Gorshin was a cop in "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield". That would have made him both a cop and a mobster

I may be wrong but is this the only time we've seen automobiles on a planet besides 20th century earth?

Sorry...there was also automobiles in "Bread & Circuses". (The Jupiter 8 to be specific)

Also there was a car in "Patterns of Force"

Which brings up another nit/question; the Ekosians are driving an old 1940's car... does that mean that they came up with the design themselves, or did Gill give them schematics, so they could recreate not just a Nazi government from a German environment, as well? We know that the gangsters of 'A Piece Of The Action' took 'The Book' as gospel, as must have used its photographs as a template for their culture and cars, etc. but did the same thing happen here? Did Gill have books with photos of old cars and give them to Ekos, or was Gill a specialist in history AND a part-time car mechanic?

In the Transporter room, before McCoy & Spock beam back down to Okmyx's office (or Oxmyx's office) there's a beeping noise...if I'm not mistaken, that's the signal for someone trying to reach the Transporter Room to relay a message.
It is possible it was from Kirk (who just escaped) signaling the ship not to beam anyone else down...but the scene was cut because Kirk didn't have his communicator...THE CREATORS ACTUALLY CAUGHT A BLOOPER BEFORE IT WENT ON THE AIR!!!!!!!! (Gasp!)

NOTE: In Oxmyx's office (or Okmyx's office) there's a real tacky lamp on the stand...it appears to be a statue of St. Mary (dressed in the traditional blue veil & cloak) made into a lamp.

CUTE MOMENT: Kirk puts his feet on the desk and then invites Spock to do the same...and he does! Spock really seems to be enjoying himself.

Here's an amazing one I wish I'd sent to Phil, and I wonder why he didn't see it. And you guys haven't mentioned it!
Kirk is held prisoner in that room, and he uses a cord to stretch across the doorway so the guard can trip over it. So he ties one end to a desk leg, I think. Then he looks over at the floor on the other side of the doorway and he doesn't find anything to tie the other end of the cord to, and he SETS THE END OF THE CORD ON THE FLOOR! HE DOESN'T TIE IT TO ANYTHING!!!! Pardon me for shouting, but what was Shatner thinking??

I did notice it the first several times I saw the episode, but it all happens so fast, and I forgot about it. But I viewed it on slow-motion, and it's true! The prop guys didn't give Shatner anything to tie the other end of the cord to!
I guess they didn't think we'd be using VCRs and looking at every detail.


Anti-nit:
Krako says, he ain't never been arrested in his life. Somebody thinks that suggests the existence of police who might have arrested him. Either Krako was making a joke, or, in his youth, he might have been arrested by the men of one of the other bosses, or the men of the boss Krako replaced.

Interesting scene: In real life, it's common for kids to have access to guns. But in this episode, a kid doesn't have a real gun, he's just pretending to have a gun. So although the bosses are gangsters, they seem to have strict gun control. What do you think of that?

Actually, if the Iotians are (as the ep seems to indicate) following 'the Book' to the letter, wouldn't it have to follow that they'd have some type of police force/legal opposition to the bosses? After all, 'the book', by it's very nature, would have to make clear that these mobs were lawless elements operating outside of society's rules.
(I can't imagine a book called Chicago Mobs of the Twenties that didn't include mention of Eliot Ness, at the very least.)

Of course, this would essentially wreck much of the ep's premise, so... In fairness, it's possible that the Iotians were more selective in their adaptation, that they liked the guns 'n' fedoras stuff so much they just ignored the criminal part (the ep certainly indicates that they're enjoying themselves!)

As for the 'kids with guns' thing, Stephen...while it may be a common thing now, in 20's America - back when childhood was still considered inviolate - i'm pretty sure it would have been almost unthinkable for a kid to use a gun (unless you counted hunting rifles & such, which I don't think you were.) At most the junior Capone wanna-bes would've been armed with knives or lengths of pipe.

Actually lengths of pipe can be used to make the barrel of a crude gun, Kerrie. It might not be as effective or accurate as the real thing, but it could do serious damage.

True, KAM. And thanks for reminding me of a recent read, Caleb Carr's The Angel of Darkness, in which the reformed-street-kid narrator describes the same thing in detail.
But that only goes to prove my argument - that actual sophisticated ammunition wasn't within reach of your average junior gangster at the time, nor would the great majority of adults have considered giving it to them.

Additionally, getting back to Stephen's original statement that 'the gangsters have strict gun control'...well, of course they do! How else do they expect to stay in control of their 'territories'?
(The actual balance of power on Iotia - never actually made clear in the ep, but explained in some detail in Blish - makes this a lot clearer. In print, Kalo tells Kirk, 'If they [citizens in Oxmyx's territory] pays their percentages, the Boss takes care of 'em.')

Maybe I should have labeled the note about gun control, Not Necessarily A Nit, Just an Observation.
Something else I should have mentioned: At the beginning, we see lots of respectable-looking men and women walking around. The men have large guns, machine guns I think, holding them ready to aim and fire. The women have dainty little pistols in colorful holsters. Later, two women complain about the street lights, but I can't tell if they have the pistols? Maybe they're underneath their blouses. The fact that the men are holding their guns ready is odd because when that shootout starts, everybody's running and screaming--it's hard to tell, but it appears that only Oxmyx's men shoot back. Maybe the civilian men do shoot, we just didn't see it.
What conclusions, if any, can be drawn from all that?
Aside from that the director was thinking of comedy, not logical consistency.

Got it in one.
Most aspects of this ep are unworkable if real-life logic is applied. In this case, I'm guessing the fairly carefully-worked-out Iotian sociology of earlier drafts (the ones Blish was working from) eventually morphed into 'Hey, wouldn't it be even funnier if EVERYBODY had guns?'

Also, I didn't realize the scene with the two women complaining actually appears in the ep. I knew it was filmed, but I've never seen it and thought it had been left on the cutting-room floor. (*&#$%* syndication, anyway...)

Anyway, sorry if I overreacted to your 'gun control' comments.

No problem
I've been making notes for an article and story about the planet and what was going on there. I think there have been so many aliens postulated in Trek that any planet could have been visited dozens of times.
So Sigma Iotia was visited by aliens so many times that they got used to it, and they change their entire society very easily. So when the Horizon crew came along they said, "Neato! Let's all change our society and try a totally new social system based on this book!" Just like their ancestors had done once every few generations for hundreds of years. It would take a rather alien psychology and outlook for that to happen. Does it sound plausible to you?

I took a tape of the episode and put it on pause to do a tracing of the planet, whose image appears at the very beginning of the episode. It surprising how much detail I was able to get. We see the planet twice more but unfortunately it's nothing but ocean both times. One hemisphere is almost all ocean, the other is half ocean. So I'm gonna be drawing conclusions from that. Presumably the Preservers put them on that planet, but how do the Bosses exert their control over regions thousands of miles away? Maybe everybody on the planet lives on the same small peninsula, so nobody lives more than a few miles away from each other. Or the Bosses all live in the same city and their territories extend over large areas of the continent.

Actually, the little kid who helps Kirk & Spock has a knife.

When Kirk Spock and McCoy beam down and are captured by Kalo and his henchman. They stand there on the street and converse. Clearly the three of them are standing together with nothing between the three of them. But when Kalo tells them to go down the street. The scene shifts and now Spock has the bench between he and the others.

At the end of the episode, Spock calls the Iotians 'very bright and imitative'. Yes, imitative, but bright? They turned their entire society around and based it on a long-dead culture (gangsters) that only lasted a few years on Earth, they were tricked time and time again by Kirk (Fizzbin, help from the kid, Kirk's gangster persona), and lack astronomical knowledge about the galaxy (Oxmyx doesn't know his planet is near the edge of the galaxy).

1. They based their society on a culture that didn't last long.

I have a theory about that which I'm trying to get into story form, but briefly, they seem to have made changes and adaptations to make their society more stable. That takes some pretty good skills.

2. They were tricked time and again; Spock must have been doing some research when we weren't looking, and was talking about averages, and tendencies; what we saw were the exceptions, shown for comic effect. That's 48 minutes and a few dozen people out of a population of--how many??

Oxmyx doesn't know where his planet is in the galaxy; well, politicians aren't known for their science savvy. Not a good example.

The people Spock says are bright, are the people who managed to convince the Iotians to go along with this sudden change in their society, without any wars, rioting, mass defiance, general social upheavals.

I have very little evidence that the transition was peaceful, beyond the generally optimistic tone of the episode. A traumatic, catastrophic transformation wouldn't be comedic.

Is that convincing?

They seem to have created exact duplicates of cars, guns, clothes, and slang with only written descriptions and perhaps a few pictures. I'd say thats pretty bright!

If they had carts with wheels & motors to power them when the Horizon arrived then all they would need to do is copy the external appearance of the flivvers. (Did we see the car engines?)

Guns... how hard are they to make? A cylinder, a propellant force & an object to be propelled is all it takes. Again all they really needed to do was match the external appearance.

Clothes... if there were enough pictures in that book...

That's not to say there isn't evidence of their brightness. Motors, working lights & telephones tend to indicate some form of industrial revolution & inventiveness. If they didn't have that before the Horizon arrived then the Iotian culture might look like a cross between the 1920's & the Flintstones.
Kirk: Spock, this flivver doesn't have an engine.
Spock: It also doesn't have a floor captain. And have you noticed how well developed the Iotian leg muscles are?

Is this the smallest part given to Chekov in any episode? He gets only one very brief scene at the very beginning, with only one line! One wonders why they bothered to put him in the episode at all. Usually he fills in at the library-computer but this time Lieutenant Hadley takes his place.

Speaking of whom, how come Lt Hadley is mentioned in the end credits? He too gets only a very brief scene, and no lines! (Something cut, perhaps?) A little unfair considering that none of the crewmen who go mad in The Tholian Web are credited.

I thought Chekov's smallest part was in Space Seed when he meets Kahn.

I was going to say "well, the smallest part in an episode where he appears". I was! Silly KAM.

I've seen Chekov's smallest part, and you're right, it hasn't appeared in any episode.

NNANJAO: When the ship's phasers knock everybody out for one block around, either Kirk and the others are on the edge of the circle, or they use a doughnut-shaped beam with Kirk and the others in the middle of the doughnut.

I just know somebody's going to impersonate Homer and say, "Did somebody say doughnuts! I want some doughnuts!"

Is there anything they can't do?

Just WHY did the Transporter technician beam our intrepid heroes INTO THE STREET? There's a SIDEWALK no more than 10 feet from where they are standing! Sure enough...they almost get hit by a car! What if that car came to that intersection right as they were beaming?

In "Patterns of Force" they use transponders to locate the landing party...Why didn't they do that to their communicators in this episode?

In the drive-by shooting, the hat on the man holding the machine gun in the car almost falls off.

Another great line: "I suggest 'you'ze' keep dialing" Spock to Oxymx (sp?)

"YOU'ZE" LOL!

The Ice Cream Wagon prop is the same one that was used in "The War of The Worlds" (another Paramount feature, BTW)

Having never driven a standard, does anybody out there have an explanation why Kirk's car keeps accelerating and breaking all the way to Krako's place and back? Or was this just a sight gag?

Spock says he's familiar with the culture (singular, not plural) on Beta Antares IV. Makes me wonder how small the population is there, since one could hardly say that Earth has just one culture. Nearly every planet should have a multitude of cultures on it, since some people would live in hotter climates than others, in places with different forms of vegetation, possibly different ideas about religion or government.

T'was a sight gag to set up Spock's line, "Captain, you are an excellent Starship commander, but as a taxi driver, you leave much to be desired."

"Spock says he's familiar with the culture (singular, not plural) on Beta Antares IV. Makes me wonder how small the population is there, since one could hardly say that Earth has just one culture. Nearly every planet should have a multitude of cultures on it, since some people would live in hotter climates than others, in places with different forms of vegetation, possibly different ideas about religion or government." - Will

This is, for me, a common nit for TREK in general. I mean, the Klingons, the Romulans, the Ferengi, the Andorians, the Cardassians, pretty much you name 'em, that alien race is made out to be a mono-cultural one. Yet, realistically, I think, every race in the STAR TREK Universe should be a pluralistic society and one that features a greater racial variance such as the one found here on Earth; i.e., there should be say, the Klingon equivalent of blacks, white, Hispanic, Asian, etc. Yet, we never see such presented in the TREK Universe, or if we do, it tends to be an anomaly.

Yet, realistically, I think, every race in the STAR TREK Universe should be a pluralistic society and one that features a greater racial variance such as the one found here on Earth

Um, why? Race is an artefact of geographical and social separation. Why would visibly distinct races survive on a planet with widespread and frequent global travel, absent racism and/or the accompanying "racial purity" laws (i.e., anti-miscegenation laws and laws that prohibit or discourage cross-racial adoption)?

Except that even without the "artefact of geographical and social separation", we here on Earth still see variances in skin, eye and hair colorations. Yet, throughout the TREK Universe, all Klingons, for example, have long brown-black hair, brown eyes, dark brown skin, the men all have beards, etc. ("Blood Oath", a DS9 ep, did feature "The Albino", but he seemed to be more of an extremely rare anomaly than albinism is in our society.) Why aren't there any blonde haired Klingons? Blue-eyed Klingons? This is the sort of thing I'm talking about.

There really is no reason why the car should be stop/starting/jerking as it does unless Kirk is constantly changing gears and popping the clutch to make it lurch. This bit of nonsense is there just to be amusing, imo.

Sir Rhosis

Actually if you drive a stick shift and cant quite get it in first or get the hang of letting the clutch out while pushing the gas in the car will stutter and jerk like that. Believe me I tried to teach my wife to drive a simple chevy citation with a 4 speed in it and the car performed exactly the way it did in this episode.

Makes for a funny scene in the episode!

LESLIE ALERT: Leslie walks past Hadley when Bela calls up the ship. He can also be seen at the helm at the start of the episode.

RE: Kinggodzillak...

Correct! The first time we see Mr. Leslie, he is wearing yellow and is at the Helm....the second time we see Mr. Leslie wearing red and walking about the Bridge with a PADD.

That guy REALLY gets around!

When Kirk and Spock leave their flivver to make the "hit" on Krako, they leave their guns in the open car. Not too smart.

And when they get back to the car, the guns are still there!

Of course, the real joke wouldbe if somebody had come by and stolen their ammunition!

Stephen Mendenhall wrote on November 5, 2001 that he watched the scene several times and came to the conclusion that Shatner tied the cord to a desk leg on one side, but didn't tie the cord to the other side, saying that the prop guys didn't give Shatner anything to tie the other end to. I watched this scene, too, and could clearly tell that the cord was ALREADY tied on the left side to a coat stand. Kirk looks back at it, after he finishes tying the right side to the desk leg, and you can hear a 'boing' sound indicating his testing of how taut the cord is. It's definitely not lying on the floor-- the cord is a foot or so off the floor, so there's no nit there to nit pick! Sorry, Stephen!

Also, the spelling of 'Oxmyx' can't be a misspelling of 'Okmyx', because everyone pronounces Bela's name as 'Ox mix', not 'Oc Mix'.

Remastered version airs this weekend. There should be the usual updated orbital shots, and the promo shows some slightly upgraded phaser shots.

I'm almost 100% positive that the car that Kirk "drove" in this episode is a 1932 Cadillac. Check these photos out.

My bad. The car is (probably) a 1931 Cadillac. The '32 had wings on the crest on the top of the radiator; the crest on the '31 was a plain circle, which the car in the episode had. More here.

A reply to steve McKinnon (Steve)--"It's definitely not lying on the floor-- the cord is a foot or so off the floor, so there's no nit there to nit pick!"

Thanks, I didn't see it.

In the remastered episode--
They cut part of that scene from the remastered episode!

Also, the funny look on Spock's face when he's listening to the radio.

And they cut a line at the end when Kirk tells Spock what the word "somber" means.

kerriem claims only the bosses have guns. No, I saw a lot of citizens having guns as well. But the two women who say "the streets ain't safe" don't seem to have guns. Maybe they can't afford them, or don't qualify for a gun license?

Also, the lines "Write them a letter."
"I did, they sent it back with postage due."

Maybe letters of complaint require a higher postage?

John asked, a while back: Just WHY did the Transporter technician beam our intrepid heroes INTO THE STREET? There's a SIDEWALK no more than 10 feet from where they are standing!
TPTB probably wanted the gag of Kirk, Spock and Bones nearly getting hit by the car. By the way, haven't you seen two, three (or more) people walking in the street, when the nearby sidewalk was empty?
I called this episode "overrated" a few years back, but I guess it's grown on me; it's pretty amusing. And, the actors looked like they had a good time filming it.
TV Land cut a few seconds out of the "Fizzbin" game, and they dropped part of the scene at the radio station - the part where the anouncer cuts in as Spock is trying to call the Enterprise.
All the men wear double breasted chalk stripe suits. As opposed to pinstriped suits; chalk stripes are wider and further apart than pinstripes. I remember John Molloy's 1970's book Dress For Success. He advised that businessmen avoid chalk stripe suits, as they have the "Chicago Gangster" look, not the Wall Street look that pinstripe suits have.
Any truth to something I heard ages ago - that the costumes were first used in The Untouchables?

In order to impress a group of Chicago-style mobsters, Kirk affects a Brooklyn accent.
That ain't no Brooklyn accent that Kirk puts on. Schmitter in "The Devil in the Dark" has more of a Brooklyn accent than Kirk does here. My ex-wife's sister - now there's a Brooklyn accent for you. Seeing that my ex and her sis were born and raised in Brooklyn, it's only logical. But - Sis has always had a stronger accent than my ex has.

Adam, I first saw the ep when I was about 11 or so, part of the top 10 Classic Treks for the 25th anniversary. Didn't get it as much than as I do now. Shatner's over the top hammy acting style was never better suited than when he's acting like a 1920s mobster.

the radio voice was Jimmy Doohan's for anyone interested (Memory Alpha).

Here's an analysis of the original story for the episode, titled "Mission Into Chaos." The card game was not "fizzbin" but "farfel."

I just noticed this last night upon rewatching:
I believe this is the only episode that ends with the actors in a moment of freeze-frame.

"By Any Other Name" is another

Watching this the last time I found myself wondering why Kirk & Spock think it's so important that this world be united under one boss. They seem to think that it's more important than getting rid of the mobsters.

Does the Federation simply not care about what kind of government a world has just that it only has one government for them to deal with?

Next weekend's remastered episode is "A Piece of the Action", followed by "Turnabout Intruder" the week after.

When Krako is seen shooting pool, he shoots
the colored balls DIRECTLY with the cue stick,
instead of hitting them with the white ball.
However, I believe it is not a nit, because
I think he (and the other Iotians) learned the
wrong way of playing that game. At any rate,
I do not think it was a mistake of the actor
or the director.

While the Iotians may not have learned the proper way to play pool, or invented their own variations, I think it probably was a production nit.

TV productions don't usually have a lot of time for too many takes & sometimes actors will just act like something is right even if it isn't.

So at one point the pool balls may have been in the right position, but in the take that was used the actor may have just decided to hit the most convenient ball rather than ruining the take.

After all, if the actors are doing their job the audience should be watching them, not the props. (Darn us nitpickers!) ;-)

the powers that be cut up the enhanced episode again Scotty voice on the radio and small cuts like Kiok with the sexxy girl in red..

Martin mentions above that the Iotians probably don't know how to play pool, so Krako could believably hit a colored ball with his stick, and I suppose that makes sense.

But that said, the entire pool sequence is some incredible sloppy continuity work. The balls jump all over the table and sometimes the cuestick is set to hit the white ball in one shot, then cuts to another angle where the white ball isn't even in the shot!

Additionally, Kirk is standing in a different spot in the two shots. If you focus on the pocket in the foreground of the Krako POV shots, this is obvious.

Also, it looks like maybe they're using a random number of balls, because it looks like there are more than one of certain colored balls.

I don't know why this bothered me so much. It's kind of Phil's major premise for the books that in many ways the show took itself very seriously, so it's a bit vexing that they didn't make the extra effort to make this scene work.

Remember the timeframe: the original Star Trek was not shooting for an audience for which home video recording and replay devices did not exist. They had no conception that future viewers would be able to watch every scene in slow-motion on their blu-ray players at their lesuire, and thus be able to note and point out this stuff.

You know, Todd, you're right now I think about it. Hmmmm. I'll lighten up in the future. That said, I didn't replay or pause the scene or run it in slow motion. This was just something I noticed during a "straight" viewing. I wasn't looking for a nit, it just took me out of the scene so it bothered me. Again, though, your point is well taken.

KAM - "My nephew, Jon, wondered why the ship couldn't lock onto McCoy's communicator and beam it back to the ship."

I can only assume that if allowing the Iotians to discover the nature of the transtater, that Kirk ordered the Enterprise to turn around and quietly return to Sigma Iotia and beam up the missing communicator.

D.K.Henderson - "I don't recall if they showed it on the episode, but in the Blish version, all the bosses had copies of the Book."

They did show The Book in Jojo's office. In the long shots, you can clearly see the big white book behind Jojo's desk, between the chairs that Kirk and Jojo are sitting on.

John A.Lang - " When Kirk has one of the bosses beamed into the office, the guy is supposed to be on the phone. Yet when he materializes, he's not holding a phone. Why didn't the transporter beam in the phone too?"

That's the question, isn't it? How does the transporter know what to beam up with you? It knows enough to keep your clothes on, to keep the communicator or phaser in your hand, but not Teppo's telephone. Maybe because it's connected to a telephone wire which is plugged into a wall. Perhaps if he'd been holding a vacuum cleaner, that wouldn't have been beamed up with him, either.

stephen - " Later, two women complain about the street lights, but I can't tell if they have the pistols? Maybe they're underneath their blouses".

Both have guns in small decorative holsters, attached to their belts. You can clearly see the one attached to the girl's belt who flips up Kalo's gun so she can walk away.

And speaking of the girls, they had to come by those Bronx/New Yorker accents some how, if they didn't already sound like that on Sigma Iotia.

I'm guessing that in edition to The Book, the Horizon left them a bunch of gangster movies on DVD (subspace-DVD? United Earth Space Probe DVDs?), and that's how the Iotians took on the mannerisms of 20th century gangsters, something The Book might not be able to provide.

Kalo looks so confused during the Fizzbin game, but he's totally lost it with Kirk and Spock using words like 'astronimical' and 'computed'. Kinda explains Kalo's complete lack of brains in that scene.

Check out Kirk and Spock's boots when they prop them up on Jojo's desk-- they have absolutely no treads or grooves. Seems to me they'd be very slippery on smooth surfaces.

The book Chicago Mobs of the Twenties was re-used as the "Book of the People" in "For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky".
Krako said "I ain't never been arrested in my life". Of course not; Sigma Iotia has no police force.

Todd M. Pence on Sunday, October 25, 1998 - 3:08 am: Like "The City on the Edge of Forever" and "Patterns of Force," this episode is given a stardate by the video box (as well as other sources) even though no stardate is actually given during the episode itself.

A stardate of 4598.0 appeared in Bjo Trimble's Star Trek Concordance, apparently using an earlier script version, (This stardate also features in the Nitpicker's Guide), and the fotonovel provides a closing stardate of 4598.7.

I wonder who the Iotians worshipped in Church. Al Capone

When Kirk is locked up in the office, he ignores the chance to grab a sharp letter opener on the desk. It might have made a useful hidden weapon.

Spock knows that Oxmyx wants to use Starfleet weapons against the other mob bosses, so what does he do when he beams back down with McCoy? He beams down with the more powerful phaser # 2 pistols!

After watching the ridiculously-long, complicated negotiations regarding Brexit and NAFTA/USMCA in our world, I wonder how simplistic the agreement between the Feds and the Iotian Syndicate must have been?

For once James Doohan's voice is a little more recognizable, when he's used as a radio DJ offering 'the sweetest little automatic in the world'.

After watching the ridiculously-long, complicated negotiations regarding Brexit and NAFTA/USMCA in our world, I wonder how simplistic the agreement between the Feds and the Iotian Syndicate must have been?

Looks like Kirk pretty much did it himself. When he showed the Iotians what the Enterprise was capable of, they caved pretty fast.


For once James Doohan's voice is a little more recognizable, when he's used as a radio DJ offering 'the sweetest little automatic in the world'.

I recognized his voice as well.

He (and Majel Barrett) did a lot of voices on the animated series.

In 1999, Marvel Comics did a TNG sequel to this episode:


https://readcomiconline.to/Comic/Star-Trek-Unlimited/Issue-10?id=84920

It's established at the beginning of the episode that the HORIZON visited the planet before the non-interference directive went into effect. Yet later in the episode Kracko says "I thought you guys had laws! No interference!" How would he know this?

Once again, Phil got there first with his book in regards to this nit.

I forget what Phil said, so here's my explanation.
Krako told Kirk that he bugged Oxmyx's office, and that's where Kirk basically said that he couldn't interfere or hand over weapons for Oxmyx's hits.

Could be.

Phil missed it.

Spock notices that everybody around them are carrying firearms out in the open, and this is shocking and strange to the landing party, as well as the viewer.
At least, it USED to be.
I'm guessing that present-day viewers in Texas (and Florida?), with their obvious holstered guns for all to see, would say, "Yeah? So?" to Spock's revelation.
Pretty sad state of affairs if you ask me.

Spock notices that everybody around them are carrying firearms out in the open, and this is shocking and strange to the landing party

Wasn't the landing party wearing phasers?

"Wasn't the landing party wearing phasers?"

Oh!
My!
GOD! :-0
And they do that ALL THE TIME!!!!! :-0
What the heck is Spock's problem, then?!

The difference being: Tommy guns don't have a stun setting.

They're beaming down to an unknown world. Phasers are SOP.

And,as M said, said phasers ave a stun setting.

Two women complain, "When are they going to fix the streetlights? A girl ain't safe?"
"Send 'em a letter!"
"I did. They sent it back with postage due!"
Complaint letters probably require more postage. But it is inconsistent.
Either guns are expensive, or the training and licenses are expensive--but it would make sense to have gun control laws.
Or they aren't the right "type" of women to be allowed guns. Earlier we see at least one woman with a holster and gun.
Why don't they have guns?

Gun control? In this society?

I don't think so.

"The difference being: Tommy guns don't have a stun setting."

No, but phasers can completely DISINTEGRATE people and objects, unlike regular guns.

Yup.

No, but phasers can completely DISINTEGRATE people and objects, unlike regular guns.

Dead from a bullet, or dead from a phaser: you're still dead. At least our Starfleet heroes have the option of non-lethal force.

Yeah, they only kill when they absolutely have to.

What the heck is Spock's problem, then?!

That people can shoot back? ;-)

No, Spock wouldn't think that. Although it has had me rethinking all those Stargate episodes where the teams go through the Stargate looking like the first wave of an invasion force. ;-)

"We come in peace. Shoot to kill, shoot to kill, shoot to kill." - Star Trekkin'

Funny.