Star Trek Retrospective: Episode 60 Is There in Truth No Beauty?
This is another episode that I found kind of confusing as a kid. I guess I didn’t really get Marvick’s motivation to kill the Medusan ambassador or his obsession with Miranda. I mean, she was super hot of course (Diana Charlton Muldaur) but I was so buried under hot Star Trek women that she seemed kind of run of the mill at the time. I think the episode is pretty amazing now, but I always have a hard time enjoying episodes wherein they make Spock act like a happy, emotional human. It feels like a caricature to me and I can’t deal. Do not denigrate the patron saint of the Church of Spock.
I will say that Diana Muldaur is singular in that she played two different characters on Star Trek TOS and another one on TNG. All her characters were doctors of one type or another. As far as I know the only other actor to pull that off was Mark Lenard, who played Sarek Spock’s father in Journey to Babel and the Romulan commander in Balance of Terror. He later resurfaced again as Sarek in TNG, the Search for Spock, the Voyage Home and Star Trek: The Motion Picture as the Klingon Captain (you really have to have your Trek chops to catch that one. Damn I’m Star Trek sexy! Trexy?).
Anyway, the one thing that was funny to me was the idea of someone so ugly it would drive you insane. What if you were really, really, really drunk? Imagine waking up the next morning and finding that in bed with you asking where you keep your coffee. Although to be fair for the first time you would have a legitimate excuse to ask her to put a bag over her head (image courtesy of the funny t shirt category).
For the record the title comes from a poem called Jordan by George Herbert.
Dave
