Episode 8 – TOS 1×07: “What Are Little Girls Made Of?”

This week’s episode asks the (largely-unrelated-to-the-plot-of-the-episode) question: what are little girls made of? Some of you may have you automatically answered “sugar and spice and everything etc.”, but you’re wrong.

It’s robots. The answer is robots. Because spoiler: everyone in this episode is a robot.

We could also call this the “Christine Chapel is pretty fuckin’ great” episode, because it turns out she signed on with a starship, abandoning a high-flying research career, to travel the stars in search of her fiance. Said fiance, the famous space archaeologist Roger Korby, has been missing for five years. Apparently accepting the verdict of two space expeditions to far-flung-ice-hell-planet is for chumps.

To Nurse Chapel’s delight, they approach Planet Exo-3 (aka: Yet Another Wretched Hell Planet, Ice Edition) to hear the sound of Dr. Korby’s voice transmitting from the surface. He asks that only one person beam down – the captain – and then, when he learns that his beloved Christine is aboard, he asks for her to beam down as well. Kirk agrees, because that’s a totally legit request, right?

Fortunately, Christine Chapel aka: Our Queen Majel Barrett is around to save the day, which is a real stroke of luck, because Kirk is really not bringing his A-game to either escaping or hostage-taking.

This episode is a bit slow, being one of the TOS episodes without a B-plot but does contain the seeds of some interesting future Trek conversations about artificial intelligence, the nature of the soul, and what it really means to be human. I mean, somewhere in there. They tried.

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