This mostly forgotten episode came towards the end of the second season of Star Trek, sandwiched between two more famous episodes, Patterns of Force (a.k.a. the one with the planet of Nazis) and The Omega Glory (a.k.a. the one with the Yangs and the Kohms). There's not much to make By Any Other Name stand out on its own merits, except perhaps for one line of amusing dialogue, but it is possible to draw an interesting parallel between its plot and a similar one (although handled much better) in the second season of Blakes 7.
The episode wastes no time getting to the (piece of the) action, with not even time for Captain Kirk to make an establishing Captain's Log entry. Along with Mr Spock, Dr McCoy and two other mannys, Captain Kirk has already beamed down to a planet answering a distress signal. They find two mannys, Rojan and Kelinda, are there already. Rojan thanks them for coming so quickly, and then immediately demands Captain Kirk surrender. Uh-oh!
Captain Kirk thinks it is a joke, bu then Rojan and Kelinda press their belt buttons and this pewpewpews our heroes so that they all have to do standing-still acting. This is a cliffhanger, which for Star Trek means it is time for the title sequence.
Rojan releases them and tells Captain Kirk he needs his ship to take them
"To your neighboring galaxy, which you call Andromeda."
because
"It is our home."
They are not really mannys, they are alien Kelvans.
When asked why they came here to this galaxy, Rojan tells them that "within 10 millennia" there will be too much radiation in their galaxy for them to live, so they needed to boldly go where no Kelvans had gone before to find another galaxy to live in or, as Rojan puts it, "conquer and occupy."
On the Enterprise we see more of Rojan's Kelvans teleport in (accompanied by a silly, bouncy sound effect) and pew all the mannys there.
Even Lt Leslie, so we know it's serious!
Back on the planet, Rojan says they have the leet technology skillz to speed up the Enterprise so that it can reach Andromeda in only 300 years, instead of the "thousands" that Captain Kirk thinks it would take them. Mr Spock is impressed and says it is "fascinating."
The Kelvans' own ship was destroyed by the "energy barrier at the rim of your galaxy." Captain Kirk quietly mentions that
"I know, we've been there."
which is a continuity reference to the early episode Where No Manny Has Gone Before. The galactic barrier would go on to appear once more in the third season episode Is There in Truth No Beauty? so that they could reuse the same SFX yet again.
Captain Kirk tries to make friends with Rojan and offers the possibility of assistance from the Federation and uninhabited planets to colonise. But Rojan is a baddy, and he says
"We do not colonize. We conquer. We rule!"
Captain Kirk and his landing party are put in prison. Mr Spock attempts to use a "Vulcan mind probe" (no, not the Vulcan mind probe) to trick Kelinda, who is guarding them. She comes in and Captain Kirk knocks her out, and they steal her pewpewpew device from her belt and then escape. They are then pewed and recaptured straight away by Rojan.
Rojan decides to "punish" Captain Kirk by executing the two non-regular characters, both of whom are, of course, wearing red - this became a Star Trek cliché for a reason, after all. When Captain Kirk protests, Rojan says
"I think we're somewhat alike, Captain. Each of us cares less for his own safety than for the lives of his command. We feel pain when others suffer for our mistakes."
As evidence that this is an overlooked episode, I offer that this example isn't mentioned (at least at time of writing) on TV Tropes, even though many more flimsy examples are.
Rojan's minion Hanar pews the mannys and turns them into irregular dodecahedrons. Rojan takes them and crushes one, saying that manny is now ded, but the other gets unpewed and "restored" to life.
The remaining mannys are put back in the prison, where Captain Kirk takes time to make a Captain's Log entry before talking to Mr Spock about his experience from when he Vulcan mind probed Kelinda. Mr Spock thinks the Kelvans aren't really mannys - something confirmed to us viewers when we saw Rojan talking to Hanar and asking "How do humans manage to exist in these fragile cases?" - and Mr Spock says they are really
"Immense beings, a hundred limbs which resemble tentacles. Minds of such control and capacity that each limb is capable of performing a different function."
I think my friend Cthulhu would like that bit, but he is having an eternal lie-in and so he missed it.
When Dr McCoy asks why they look like mannys, Captain Kirk jokes
"Immense beings with a hundred tentacles would have difficulty with the turbolift."
That also explains why they didn't choose to become cats even though cats are best. That and to avoid drawing comparisons between this episode and Catspaw I suppose, mew.
Kelinda asks Captain Kirk about flowers, and says that on their planet they had crystals that grew and looked like flowers, called "sahshir." Captain Kirk says
"'A rose by any other name.'"
Clang! He goes on to explain:
"A quote from a great human poet, Shakespeare: 'That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.'"
By the next scene they are on the bridge of the Enterprise and heading towards the galactic barrier. Mr Spock, with Scotty backing him up, suggests blowing the ship up to stop the Kelvans, but Captain Kirk isn't keen.
Captain Kirk makes a Captain's Log entry in which he says that
"Spock and Scotty have devised a suicide plan to stop the Kelvans. They have rigged the ship to explode on my signal."
Even though Rojan and another Kelvan were beside him the whole time, they are good sports and pretend not to hear him. Later on Rojan claims to have detected Mr Spock's plan - he doesn't say how, but I think we can guess...
The ship flies into the barrier, cue lots of flashing lights and shaking of cameras. Once through, the Kelvans start turning all of the crew who they don't need to make the ship go into irregular dodecahedrons, starting with Uhura, then Chekov, then the non-regular characters - most of whom get pewed off-screen. Only Captain Kirk, Mr Spock, Dr McCoy and Scotty remain unpewed.
Mr Spock figures out the Kelvans' weakness, which he sums up for Captain Kirk's (and our) benefit as
"They have taken human form and are therefore having human reactions."
This is shown to us in the form of one of the Kelvans really enjoying his noms, to which Dr McCoy quips
"If he keeps reacting like that, he's going to need a diet."
Captain Kirk's plan is to confuse the Kelvans by stimulating their senses, until they are distracted enough to steal all their pewpewpew devices. Do they have any catnip on board?
Scotty starts by getting one of them drunk, resulting in the most famous line from this episode - although even this is largely because of callbacks to it in later Star Trek.
"What is it?""Well, it's... er... it's green."
We see inside Scotty's quarters in this episode, and they are as stereotypically Scottish as you might expect, with him having a kilt and a set of bagpipes on his walls. Even the incidental music tries to sound Scottish when in this room.
Meanwhile, Captain Kirk has a different approach:
Captain Kirk: "I wish to apologize."Kelinda: "I don't understand, Captain."Captain Kirk: "For hitting you. I'm sorry."Kelinda: "That is not necessary. You attempted to escape as we would have."Captain Kirk: "Yes, well, I don't usually go around beating up beautiful women."Kelinda: "Why not?"Captain Kirk: "Well, there are better things for men and women to do."
We can all see where this is going. Well, all except Kelinda...
Kelinda: "Like what?"
Naughty Captain Kirk. Even though Kelinda figures out that Captain Kirk is trying to seduce her, she still likes it, and kiffs him back until Rojan comes in. When Captain Kirk leaves, Kelinda demonstrates the kiff on Rojan, leading him to say
"Very odd creatures, these humans."
Lol. Rojan then goes to talk to Mr Spock about it, who suggests that Rojan is jealous. Rojan denies it.
Mr Spock: "Captain Kirk seems to find her quite attractive."Rojan: "Well, of course she is!"Mr Spock: "You are not jealous?"Rojan: "No!"Mr Spock: "Nor upset?"Rojan: "Certainly not."
The Kelvan protests too much, methinks. The rift widens when Kelinda goes to Captain Kirk and asks him
"Would you please apologize to me again?"
Mr Spock stirs things further by telling Rojan they are together - Captain Kirk and Kelinda are together, I mean, not Mr Spock and Rojan. The plan might have succeeded that way round, but I suppose we'll never know, mew.
Rojan goes to Captain Kirk and starts a fight with him. While they are still fighting, Captain Kirk tries to persuade Rojan that he has become too used to being a manny to return to his own planet and be accepted.
"Look what's happened in the short time you've been exposed to us - what do you think will happen in three centuries? When this ship gets to Kelva, the people on it will be human. They'll be aliens. Enemies!"
He again offers Rojan help from the Federation, but this time Rojan replies
"You would really do that? You would extend welcome to invaders?""No. But we would welcome friends."
So the episode ends with Captain Kirk making new friends, and Kelinda says she owes an apology to Rojan. Naughty Kelinda.
The Kelvans, aliens from the galaxy of Andromeda who wish to invade our galaxy to conquer the Federation and who have taken on the form of mannys even though that is nothing like their true form, share a lot of similarities with the aliens from the Blakes 7 episode Star One.
Did Blakes 7 copy this idea from Star Trek? Are they maybe even supposed to be the same aliens? If you wanted Star Trek and Blakes 7 to be set in the same universe (presumably so that you could have Avon and Captain Kirk meet without having to jump through too many hoops) then they could be, and you could take Orac's line about the Federation building their space minefield because of "a contact, sometime in the past" as referring to the events of By Any Other Name. However, for all the similarities between the two series, there are differences too - no galactic barrier is in evidence in Blakes 7 to help keep the aliens out, for a start.
And even if the resemblance isn't coincidental, so what? Star Trek spinoffs would later borrow from Blakes 7 in much the same way in return - the most famous season-ending cliffhanger of Star Trek: The Next Generation is extremely close to Star One's season-ending cliffhanger.
Anyway, it's not as if Chris Boucher could only have gotten the idea from watching Star Trek. Monty Python's Flying Circus had Blancmanges from the planet Skyron in the galaxy of Andromeda invading the Earth as well. And while they didn't look like mannys, Mr and Mrs Samuel Brainsample did.
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