Trek-a-Week #10: A Piece of the Action

Ben:

So, I have to admit, I’d not really given much thought to A Piece of the Action being the closing TOS episode of our viewing list. I wanted to include it since it’s always been a guilty pleasure of mine, but admittedly it makes an odd bookend to our first ten Original Series episodes.

That said, there’s more to A Piece of the Action than laughing at Kirk’s bizarrely-furry purple/pink fedora. Like a lot of Trek (and SF in general), if you’re willing to just buy into the basic premise (a planet society based on a “contamination” — a book about Chicago gangsters of the ‘30s), there’s a lot of nicely-done stuff here. For example: the campaign posters scattered through the city of gangster-ish guys with Tommy guns pasted up on walls, or the radio ad we overhear for “the sweetest little automatic in the world!”

Ultimately, despite its goofiness, the episode does a fair job of positing what a lawless but criminally-organized society might look like. At the risk of delving back into overtly political territory, on this re-watching the whole idea of organized crime as a basis for government — with countries as “territories,” leaders as “bosses,” etc. — couldn’t help but remind me of current political goings-on, where we’re seeing a deliberate effort to dismantle a lot of executive functions of our government while at the same time empowering corporate/capitalist interests that will likely fill those power voids. The episode seems to posit that, absent a formal government, some structure — rather than abject chaos — will evolve to take its place. In the government-less Sigma Iotia Two it’s ’30s organized crime.

A Piece of the Action is rife material for Prime Directive gags, given Kirk’s rolling in and “taking over” for the Federation, but it’s curious that everyone seems agreed that the role of the Enterprise is to “unite” the various factions on the ground under a single, central government. There’s a pie-in-the-sky “United Nations” aspect to this that seems very Trek-ish, but there’s also a weird not-Trek fascistic element to it that seems out of place. As in:

SPOCK: You yourself have stated the need for unity of authority on this planet. We agree.
OXMYX: Yeah, but I got to be the unity.

At the end Kirk just doles out “cabinet positions.” If there’s any angle to analyse this episode in the way I usually do with these posts, this is it: what’s the difference between “unity of authority” (under a handful of people, as with this episode) and a dictatorship?

All that said, this is admittedly not a great episode. The cast is, though, genuinely funny here — as they proved they could be with The Trouble With Tribbles — but the story’s not really strong enough to support it. And there are some bits that definitely fall flat. The Kirk/Spock “driving a stick shift car” gag is stale on arrival, for example, and gets worse as it continues ad nauseam through the episode. It does have one of my favorite funny Kirk/Spock exchanges, though: KIRK: “Spock, what are the odds in getting a royal fizzbin?” SPOCK: “I have never computed them, Captain.”

And yet, despite all its dumbness, I still really love A Piece of the Action. Why? Because it shows that great well-established, well-written characters can make an enjoyable experience out of a lame premise and a less-than-stellar script. Shatner and Nimoy here seem to be having the time of their lives, and when you watch this episode, you can’t help but join in.

A few observations:

• I love that people have actual plaques outside their offices for things like, “Jojo Krako, Southside Territory.”
• Where can I purchase a fuzzy gangster hat? Please advise.
• I’ve internalized this episode so much that “fizzbin” has always been a term in our household for any kind of argumentation that involves minute nitpicking about details — especially if the aggrieved party feels those details are being made up on the spot.
• VIC TAYBACK, BABY!!!

Katherine:

So here’s an episode that has no spaceship battles, no feats of engineering, no weird looking aliens and no SCIENCE. Boo! It starts with the Enterprise approaching a planet called Sigma Iotia Two (this name will be the only cool thing to pop up). They receive a transmission from someone referencing himself as “Boss.” When Kirk, McCoy and Spock beam down to meet him, the scene is a planet styled like 1920s Chicago, teeming with men in pinstriped suits, women in drop waist dresses, and everybody’s wearing a hat and packing heat, whether it’s a trendy leather holster slung around the hips or a full-on Tommy Gun pointed at your chest.

We learn that a previous visit from another Federation ship a hundred years ago has “contaminated” the inhabitants, you know, before the “Non-interference Directive” went into effect. There’s some mention from Spock of the Iotians being an intelligent and “somewhat imitative” people. And when the Enterprise crew transport there to repair any damage done by the first visit, they find a book — placed prominently on a display stand and clearly revered by the denizens — dating from 1992 that’s about Chicago and mobsters. Aha! The source of the contamination.

The only thing really Star Trekian here is the duty they feel to make things right on Sigma Iotia Two. Looking back at our own (Western Civilization) history we can acknowledge mistakes made in conquest of new lands and interference with foreign cultures. Kirk and his crew feel responsible for at least setting the Iotians on a path to a better future. So they work to merge the rival crime bosses into a single organized unit, presumably assuming this will lead to a unified government of sorts and fewer drive-by shootings.

Really it’s all just a setup for Kirk and Spock to wear ties and fedoras and amuse the audience as they try to adapt to the language and mores of the planet’s adopted culture. They call guns “heaters”! Watch Kirk try to drive a car! A young boy offers to help them in exchange for “a piece of the action”! It’s really just too much. I can only imagine that Ben selected this episode solely for the scene in which Kirk dupes his captors by roping them into a made-up card game. Called Royal Fizzbin, the game has overly-complicated rules that Kirk keeps adding to confuse and divert the kidnappers. Royal Fizzbin has become the standard term in our household for any sort of Rube Goldberg series of intentionally convoluted events. “But that’s only every other Tuesday during Lent when it’s raining… Royal Fizzbin!”

A Piece of the Action offers Shatner a chance to act his heart out. And by the end of the episode he is reveling in the mob-style dialogue peppered with his signature dramatic pauses, “That’s… peanuts.” And, yes, there is a tumblr for the William Shatner School of Over-Acting in case you’re interested. His scheming with the crime bosses is, of course, very clever and achieves the intended solution to a problem that the ship’s computer could come up with no rational answer for. One does wonder why they don’t just leave another book — Plato’s Republic? something?? — instead of going along with the whole mob routine.

In any case, this wacky episode was not to my taste. Perhaps the imitation game, of the Iotians and then of Kirk, was deeper than I’m giving it credit for. But the complete departure from sci-fi themes and the over-the-top gangster repartee made me embarrassed for the crew. Put it on ice, boys!

P.S. A shout-out to Chrissie in the UK who has transcripts online for all the TOS episodes that help me tremendously in remembering what was said. I am in awe of the energy and devotion of true Star Trek fans!

Next week: The Measure of a Man