What Are Little Girls Made Of? (Episode 10)
Robert Bloch, the author of the 1959 novel "Psycho," brought his taste for the macabre to the final frontier.
William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy were interviewed while filming “What Are Little Girls Made Of?” Video source: Bobby Cole YouTube channel.
"I really have the heart of a small boy. I keep it in a jar on my desk." — Robert Bloch
In the spring of 1966, Gene Roddenberry desperately needed writers to develop scripts for the first thirteen episodes of his Star Trek TV series. He sought out writers familiar with the science fiction genre, but few of them had written for television, where scripts had to be delivered on deadline and tell a tale that was affordable for the medium. He needed writers who could do both.
Roddenberry found one in Robert Bloch, a prolific writer in the horror and mystery genres. To the general public, Bloch was best known at the time as the author of the 1959 novel Psycho, the source material for the 1960 Alfred Hitchcock film. To those who read speculative fiction, horror in particular, Bloch was a revered name.
According to the website maintained by Bloch’s estate, at age ten an aunt bought for him a copy of Weird Tales, one of the earliest speculative fiction magazines. The biography states, “The young Bloch thrilled to the bizarre and fantastic tales contained within and over the years came to particularly favor those of (the now) renowned writer, H.P. Lovecraft.”
It was in the pages of Weird Tales that Lovecraft first published stories about what is now known as the Cthulhu Mythos. The first story, “The Call of Cthulhu,” was published by the magazine in February 1928. When Bloch wrote his first script for Star Trek, he would borrow the term “the Old Ones” from the Mythos.
Bloch wrote a fan letter to Lovecraft in 1933. They continued to correspond until Lovecraft passed away in 1937. By then, at age 20, Bloch had already sold stories to Weird Tales and other publications. The Bloch estate’s website calls Weird Tales Bloch’s literary “home.” The bio page comments:
Much of Bloch’s early work emulated Lovecraft’s style and subject matter, often employing the use of Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos …
In the 1940s, Bloch evolved beyond the Lovecraft template to find his own voice. According to the biography:
By mining the psychology and inner workings of the human mind for material, Bloch brought a level of realism to his work that was all the more chilling for now hitting close to home — for the monster in the room was no longer the vampire or ghoul of old but could well be the very person standing next to you.
Bloch evolved an interest in the late 19th Century London serial killer, Jack the Ripper. He sold several stories based on the Ripper, including one to Star Trek, “Wolf in the Fold.”
By the late 1950s, Bloch was at the peak of his profession. He won the literary speculative fiction Hugo Award in 1959 for Best Short Story, “That Hell-Bound Train.” 1959 was the same year Psycho was published.
Bloch’s IMDB webpage shows that by the early 1960s he was regularly selling scripts to network television. Many of his sales were to suspense genre shows such as Thriller and Alfred Hitchcock Presents, but he also sold to spy shows such as I Spy and The Girl from UNCLE, as well as the drama series Run for Your Life. He even sold to a short-lived detective Western, Whispering Smith.
At the time his career intersected with Roddenberry’s, Bloch’s horror film screenplay The Psychopath was in post-production in the United Kingdom. It premiered in the United States in late July 1966, around the same time Roddenberry and Bloch were wrapping up rewrites for “What Are Little Girls Made Of?”
The trailer for Robert Bloch’s 1966 horror tale “The Psychopath.” Video source: Classic Movie Trailers YouTube channel.
It appears that Bloch met Roddenberry through Sam Peeples, a veteran TV producer and writer who happened to be a science fiction aficionado. As discussed in earlier articles, Roddenberry researched Peeples’ archives looking for story ideas as well as starship design concepts. Peeples wrote the second Star Trek pilot, “Where No Man Has Gone Before.” According to Roddenberry biographer Joel Engel, in June 1964 he was considering eight science fiction writers, one of whom was Robert Bloch.
In These Are The Voyages, Marc Cushman wrote that Bloch attended a screening of the second pilot in March 1966. Since episode writers had no concept of the Star Trek format, Roddenberry was showing them the second pilot as a foundation. The writers guide was still a year in the future, so Roddenberry was pretty much making it up on the fly, with constant memos to his stable of free-lance writers as he fleshed out the Star Trek universe.
According to Cushman, Bloch’s original pitch was based on a 1936 Lovecraft novella called “At the Mountains of Madness.” That story was set in the Cthulhu Mythos universe. An Antarctic expedition team discovers inside an ice cave six biological specimens of monstrous creatures estimated to be forty million years old. The Old Ones appear here in that story as well, ancient dwellers of a long-abandoned city discovered by the expedition.
“What Are Little Girls Made Of?” borrows the ideas of a doomed expedition, an ice cave hiding remnants of a lost civilization, and the Old Ones, but that’s about it. On its limited budget, Star Trek wasn’t capable of painting on a canvas as vast as Lovecraft’s. A legal complication arose during pre-production, when a research company found that Bloch had borrowed not only from Lovecraft, but also from himself. Three Bloch stories were cited, in particular “Queen of the Metal Men,” published by Fantastic Adventures in April 1940. According to Cushman:
In that story, a scientific exploration team discovers a lost underground city beneath the ice, filled with machines and robots. They also encounter a beautiful youmg woman who, it turns out, is also a robot.
The research company also concluded that the story was too similiar to an episode of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. Allan Asherman’s The Star Trek Compendium identifies that episode as “The Cyborg,” the fourth episode of Voyage’s second season, which aired on ABC in October 1965. The cliché mad scientist creates a duplicate of Admiral Nelson, just as Roger Korby creates a duplicate of Captain Kirk.
Oops.
Desliu studio executive Herb Solow was more concerned about their ABC rival than Lovecraft or Bloch. Associate producer John D.F. Black suggested making Korby an android, to distinguish from the Voyage script. Cushman wrote, “the big ending that made [the episode] pay off … was added only as a legal defense.”
“The Cyborg” was the fourth episode of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea’s second season. Video source: ssosmcin YouTube channel.
As we’ve discussed in prior columns, NBC constantly warned about stories being too cerebral. The network wanted more action-adventure. This was yet another story told largely through exposition, unfolding on interior sets instead of boldly going somewhere. Cushman wrote that Roddenberry and NBC were reluctant to ask Bloch for wholesale rewrites, because they knew having Bloch’s name attached to the show was a promotional plus. Significant revisions were written by Roddenberry after Bloch was compensated for the drafts required by the Writers Guild contract.
In the final version, Korby is sought by Christine, an Enterprise nurse character used once before in “The Naked Time.” In that episode, her inhibitions dropped by an alien virus, Christine expressed her love for Spock. But that’s all forgotten here, as she’s looking for her lost fiancé, Roger Korby.
The early draft of this episode had a different character named Margo, a wealthy woman who hires the Enterprise to look for her missing fiancé. John D.F. Black changed Margo to a nurse initially named Christine Baker, who transfers to the Enterprise because it’s patrolling the region of space where her fiancé was lost. In a subsequent draft, Christine’s last name changed from Baker to Ducheaux, a character Black had just added to “The Naked Time.”
In Roddenberry’s final rewrites, Christine’s last name was changed yet again to Chapel. He cast Majel Barrett, his semi-secret paramour, in the role. Majel dyed her hair blonde, not only distinguishing this character from her Number One in the first pilot, but also hoping to fool NBC, which had asked that she be dropped from the series. (They weren’t fooled.)
Actor Michael Strong was cast as Roger Korby. As had many Star Trek cast members, Strong appeared in Roddenberry’s predecessor series, The Lieutenant. He acted in the series’ second episode, titled “Cool of the Evening.”
Ted Cassidy was cast as the android Ruk. He was well-known as the butler Lurch on The Addams Family, the sitcom series just cancelled by ABC.
Roddenberry’s revised final draft dated July 27, 1966 is available online at The Daily Script. It’s not the exact final shooting script, but it’s close. Filming began the next afternoon. Nurse Christine Chapel was third on the cast list, after Kirk and Spock, but before the rest of the characters. McCoy, Scott, Sulu, and Rand are not in the episode; each actor was on an episodic contract, so no reason to pay them if their characters weren’t important to the plot.
Let’s delve into the tale.
The Enterprise arrives at Exo III. Wearing a huge blonde wig (as does Yeoman Rand), Nurse Chapel stands on the bridge next to the captain’s chair. Kirk comments that he heard she gave up “a career in bio-research” to join the Enterprise. (I note this because, at the end, we’ll talk about the current Korby-Chapel story arc in Strange New Worlds.) Five years have passed since anyone heard from Korby.
Despite all odds, a signal is received from Korby. He asks Kirk to beam down alone. Spock asks Chapel, “You’re certain you’d recognize his voice?” Chapel replies, “Have you been engaged, Mister Spock?” (SNW Chapel is well aware that Spock was engaged to T’Pring.) Korby permits Christine to join Kirk on the surface.
It’s not in the script, but Uhura and Chapel embrace as Christine leaves the bridge to beam down with Kirk. I have to wonder if that was improvised on the day. Nichelle Nichols and Majel Barrett knew each other very well; at one time, both were Roddenberry’s lovers while he was still married to his first wife. Nichelle wrote in her autobiography Beyond Uhura that the affair ended before Star Trek began; she bowed out in favor of Majel. I have to wonder if the bridge smooch was some sort of inside joke. We’ll never know.
Uhura kisses Chapel. It’s not in the script. Spock seems indifferent.
Come to think of it … Much fuss has been made over the years about the first “interracial kiss” on television, between William Shatner and Nichelle Nichols in the third season episode “Plato’s Stepchildren.” But it appears that Nichols and Barrett pulled it off two seasons earlier.
Kirk and Chapel beam down into the cavern, just inside the entrance, apparently protected by a force field. Even though it’s -100° (Fahrenheit, presumably) outside, they’re wearing their standard issue uniforms. (Chapel is wearing the Starfleet miniskirt.) Korby isn’t there, so Kirk calls Spock to request two security men, Rayburn and Matthews. Methinks we’re about to lose our first redshirts.
Rayburn remains to guard the entrance while Matthews joins Kirk and Chapel as they descend into the cavern. Instead of Korby, they find Brown, Korby’s assistant. They hear a scream off-camera; Matthews has fallen into an abyss. Matthews has the honor of becoming the first redshirt killed in a Star Trek episode. (A bit of trivia for you to dazzle guests with at parties.) We see Ruk slink off into the shadows, implying that the android gave Matthews a toss. It then chokes to death Rayburn, the second redshirt to die, establishing the running joke about landing party redshirts being doomed the moment they step on the transporter pad.
Security officer Matthews, the first redshirt to die in a Star Trek episode.
For those keeping score, Matthews and Rayburn are the seventh and eighth crewmembers to die so far in Season One. We’re not counting the two pilots.
The small party arrives at Korby’s study. We meet Andrea, eye candy for the young adult male demographic. Christine is not pleased. Korby enters, sees Christine, and the two passionately embrace.
When Kirk tries to reach Rayburn, Brown pulls a phaser and points it at the captain. Kirk fires his own phaser and burns a hole in Brown’s belly, exposing wiring. Brown is a mechanism. Ruk disarms and restrains the captain.
With Kirk’s communicator, Ruk make a false broadcast to the Enterprise. Using Kirk’s voice, it orders Spock to stand by and take no further action. Spock is doubtful. (I suspect it may have been after this that Kirk and Spock decided they need some private safe word for moments like this, e.g. "Queen to Queen's Level Three.”)
We now enter Act Two, which is laden with exposition. It’s somewhat evocative of the Lovecraft format emulated by Bloch, passages laden with backstory. Ruk explains that it was left by the Old Ones; Korby found it tending to their ancient machinery. Korby and Ruk built Brown, and then Andrea. Christine is even less pleased to find out that Korby built a “mechanical geisha.” Korby has Andrea first kiss and then slap Kirk to show she has no emotion; she just follows orders.
A scene seems to be missing, because we go from this one to another where a strapped Kirk is lying naked on a turntable opposite what the script calls “a huge plasticized, roughly molded shape” that vaugely looks like a human. Think of it as People Play-Doh. How did Kirk wind up on the table? He certainly didn’t volunteer. The script offers no clue. Show, don’t tell, I guess. Shatner earned his pay this day.
Act Three begins with the table turning. After some spinning and more Korby exposition, the table comes to a stop, with the Play-Doh now a duplicate android Kirk.
The final step is to duplicate Kirk’s mind. As the process begins, he utters a racial slur directed at Spock. Um, okay, we have a safe word now.
The android Kirk says to Christine, “How do you do, Miss Chapel?” This is the first time her last name has been used in an episode. As noted upstream, her last name was in flux, which may explain why it wasn’t used until now. In “The Naked Time” credits, Majel was credited as just “Christine.” At the end of this episode, she’s credited as “Christine Chapel.”
The two Kirks sit with Chapel at a dining table. The real Kirk challenges android Kirk to name his brother. “George Samuel Kirk,” he replies. “Only you call him Sam.” If you’re watching SNW, you know that “Sam” is a recurring character. We learn that Sam will see off Kirk on this mission, along with his wife and three sons. At this time, Sam is doing unspecified research and wants to be transferred to Earth Colony Two. I guess we’ll have to wait and see if SNW honors this bit of trivia.
Korby tells Kirk that if he were to continue the process, he could transfer a person’s consciousness or “soul” into an android body, giving the person immortality. I’m not sure that’s true, because the android is merely a duplicate. In Star Trek Picard, Jean-Luc ends season one in a synthesized body, so I’d argue that the Picard in seasons two and three is a duplicate, not the “real” Picard, but that’s just my opinion.
Korby proposes programming out undesirable human traits such as greed and hate. He wants Kirk to transport him to other worlds where he can start to seed android duplicates into the general population.
Kirk escapes into the caves, pursued by Ruk. In the revised final draft, the scene plays somewhat differently, with Korby ordering Ruk to destroy Kirk. “I have no further use for him.” But in the scene as filmed, Korby says, “Ruk, protect!” Rewriting until the day of shooting, Roddenberry must have decided to tweak the script one last time to keep Korby’s motive more vague.
Needing a weapon, Kirk breaks off a stalactite from the cave ceiling. It’s one of the more infamous props in Star Trek history, looking very much like a styrofoam phallus.
Is that an icicle, or are you just happy to see me?
Kirk’s attack fails. He nearly falls into the abyss, but Act Four begins with Ruk rescuing the captain. The android Kirk, meanwhile, beams aboard the Enterprise and shouts the programmed slur at Spock. Message received.
This episode establishes not only the redshirt cliché, but two other tropes. One is Kirk seducing an enemy female. He forces a kiss on Andrea, confusing her attractions to both Korby and Kirk. The other is Kirk out-talking a sentient machine, in this case Ruk. The captain goads the android into remembering that its kind destroyed the Old Ones in self-defense. “That was the equation!” Ruk shouts, but Korby vaporizes it with a phaser before it can attack him.
Kirk jumps Korby, whose hand catches in a door, ripping off his skin. His circuitry is exposed — Korby is an android. (Smoke wafts off the damaged hand, a nice bit of business to sell the gag.)
One would think that Ruk knew this, so why did it attack Korby? Perhaps the Korby android still had the emotions Ruk viewed as flawed.
Off-screen (to save money), Spock beams down with a security detail. Korby orders Andrea to “protect.” The hidden phaser she grabs is actually a prop used in the first pilot. When she encounters the android Kirk, he refuses to kiss her, so she phasers him into nothingness. A life lesson, there.
Andrea embraces and kisses Korby. In the revised final script, Korby tries to pull away and, in the struggle, the phaser goes off, vaporizing them both. In the scene as filmed, Korby’s hand grasps Andrea’s trigger finger and destroys them.
The closing scene is on the bridge. Chapel thanks Kirk for letting her make the decision to stay with the ship.
So how does this episode reconcile with Strange New Worlds?
According to the 1993 Star Trek Chronology by Mike and Denise Okuda, the first pilot episode “The Cage” occurred in the year 2254. When that episode was remade into “The Menagerie,” Spock stated that the Talos IV events occurred thirteen years ago, placing the first season of The Original Series (TOS) in the 2267.
In the Star Trek: Discovery second season episode “If Memory Serves,” when the Burnham and Spock go to Talos IV, it’s stated that five years have passed since Pike and the Enterprise were there, so that would be the year 2259.
That puts the current events of Strange New Worlds sometime in the early 2260s. If in 2267 Korby has been missing for five years, then he disappeared in 2262 — so we’re right on schedule.
SNW, however, conjures relationships and events that at times conflict with TOS canon. In SNW, Spock’s engagement to T’Pring is on hold. He’s had a romantic relationship with Christine, and is now in a relationship La’an Noonien-Singh.
Other than the one corridor scene in “The Naked Time,” there’s no evidence that Spock and Chapel ever had an intimate relationship.
In SNW Season Three, Chapel is not only Korby’s student but also his girlfriend. In “Through the Lense of Time,” Spock, Korby, Chapel, and others are part of landing party investigating ancient ruins hiding a horrific secret — perhaps a nod to Lovecraft and Bloch. But the TOS Spock shows no hint of having ever met Korby, much less gone on a landing party with him, or having had a romantic triangle with Christine.
(Nor did Michael Strong have Cillian O'Sullivan’s Irish accent.)
My final nit to pick is that there’s no evidence that Chapel ever served on the Enteprise before the events of her first two TOS episodes.
We’ll have to see how SNW plays out. We know Korby will disappear, and Chapel will leave to go look for him. I suspect that “Through the Lense of Time” is intended to give us a Cthulhu Mythos-style story arc; if you haven’t seen that episode, go watch. If I’m right, it would be nice nod to this episode’s writer, who was inspired by one of the earliest writers of science fiction a hundred years ago.
Sources:
David Alexander, Star Trek Creator: The Authorized Biography of Gene Roddenberry (New York: Penguin Books, 1994)
Allan Asherman, The Star Trek Compendium (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1981)
Marc Cushman, These Are The Voyages: TOS Season One (San Diego: Jacobs/Brown Press, 2013)
Joel Engel, Gene Roddenberry: The Myth and the Man Behind Star Trek (New York: Hyperion, 1994)
Nichelle Nichols, Beyond Uhura: Star Trek and Other Memories (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1994)
Michael Okuda and Denise Okuda, Star Trek Chronology: The History of the Future (New York: Pocket Books, 1993)
Robert Bloch is the toastmaster for the 1984 Hugo Awards, held at the Anaheim Convention Center. Video source: FANAC Fan History YouTube channel.