Star Trek 040: Journey to Babel

40. Journey to Babel

WHY WE LIKE IT: Scenes between Spock and his parents are excellent, and we meet more Federation members.

WHY WE DON'T: Those Tellarite rubber masks!

REVIEW: There's a lot going on in this episode! You have the political infighting between Federation members, the murder mystery, and a space battle. But at the core, there's Spock's relationship with his parents and Sarek's illness. Any of these elements might have made an episode interesting, and I'm glad having them all together doesn't create a mess, but a rather memorable story.

Once we meet Sarek and Amanda, we start to understand why Spock acts as he does. The pressures of never being good enough for a Vulcan father's standards have pushed him to the Vulcan end of the scale. In Journey to Babel, he's more Vulcan than ever, constantly trying to prove himself to his father. Even Sarek indulges in a smile here and there, a man that has married a human woman and does love her. Real Vulcans aren't as black and white as Spock would have us believe. It's all marvelously acted too.

And it's a testament to that acting (and writing) that whenever we get back to the so-called A-plot about the murder engineered by the Orions, we can't wait to get back to the Vulcans. Not that these elements are badly done, even if the Orion spaceship almost doesn't qualify as a ship design, they stand up and are necessary to create Spock's dilemma. The action always supports the Vulcan story.

Journey to Babel is also the show where Andorians and Tellarites make their first appearance, and we get to know a little more about the Federations' founding fathers. It's really too bad these races weren't featured more, and indeed, not until Enterprise. I imagine that was because of the make-up effects, which were either terrible (the Tellarites' pig masks) or very involved (the Andorians). Still, their characterization was strong enough that the presented cultures remained pretty intact when they were finally used.

LESSON: Your mom is always your mom, but your dad can really screw your life up.

REWATCHABILITY - High: A tightly-written story that creates very memorable characters, scenes and alien species. It can be used as inspiration for countless more stories (and has!).