Star Trek: Season 2, Episode Six “The Doomsday Machine”

Stardate: 4202.1 (2267)
Original Air Date: October 20, 1967
Writer: Norman Spinrad
Director: Marc Daniels

“Gentlemen, I suggest you beam me aboard.”

The Enterprise receives an automated distress call from the partially destroyed ship, the USS Constellation. When they arrive, the Enterprise discovers that something has destroyed system L-370 (a system of seven planets) and system L-374 (where only two planets remain). Only a “nova” could cause such destruction. Spock notes that the U.S.S. Constellation is suspended in space with limited power but it is still capable of sustaining life. In order to investigate the derelict ship, Kirk, Bones, Scotty, join a damage control team and beam aboard the Constellation while Spock is left in command of the Enterprise.

The damage control team finds one person lying alone near the Constellation’s controls, a badly shaken Commodore Matt Decker (William Windom). Once he comes to his senses, Commodore Decker recounts a harrowing situation. The Constellation had attempted to contact Starfleet when it arrived in L-374 but the fourth planet seemed to be breaking apart and the resulting interference prevented any communication to Starfleet. Most of his crew (four hundred people) had beamed down to the surface of the third planet when it was suddenly destroyed along with everything else in the system. Apparently the solar system was subsumed by a giant machine, miles long, using beams of antiproton to destroy entire planets, with a “maw that could swallow a dozen starships.” In a word, it is a doomsday machine –a mindless robot which travels throughout the cosmos destroying planets and ships alike.

While Kirk and Scotty attempt repairs aboard the Constellation, the doomsday machine appears and suddenly attacks the Enterprise disabling its transporter. Kirk and Scotty are left stranded on the Constellation as Commodore Decker assumes command of the Enterprise, very much against the wishes of Spock and Bones, and he proceeds to lead the Enterprise on a maniacal quest reminiscent of Captain Ahab to attack and destroy the doomsday machine. This leads to a wild chase which nearly destroys the Enterprise but eventually Spock relieves Commodore Decker under Kirk’s direct orders from afar. Embittered and questionably sane, Commodore Decker hijacks a shuttlecraft and leads it on a solo kamikaze suicide mission into the mouth of the doomsday machine but it tragically fails. The exterior of the machine is made of solid neutronium, and thus Kirk attempts a similar mission –Scotty rigs the full force and power of the ailing Constellation to detonate the power of a Hydrogen Bomb (equivalent to a fusion explosion 97 megatons) which manages to destroy the doomsday machine. At the last possible moment, Kirk is beamed back aboard the Enterprise. He and Spock are then left to wonder if any other “Planet Killers” like this exist out in the far reaches of deep space.

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My Thoughts on “The Doomsday Machine”

“The Doomsday Machine” is classic Trek at its best –a derelict ships adrift in space, dark secrets, an all-powerful monster destroying solar systems, danger in outer space– these are all the hallmarks of a great episode. It bears striking similarity to episodes like “Space Seed” and echoes of others like “Balance of Terror.” Literary allusions also abound in this episode, from Moby Dick to The Bhagavad Gita. I cannot level enough praise upon this installment! One lingering question I have for this episode is: who built the doomsday machine, and why?

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Writer/Director

Writer Norman Spinrad (1940-Present) was a prolific science-fiction author. Unfortunately, this was the only produced episode of Star Trek he contributed though he worked on several other Sttar Trek related projects that were never completed.

Director Marc Daniels (1912-1989) was a World War II veteran and notable television director for a number of different shows. During his career he was nominated for several Emmys, two Directors Guild of America awards, and four Hugo Awards. He is tied with Joseph Pevney for most TOS episodes directed.

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Star Trek Trivia:

• This episode was nominated for a Hugo Award in 1968 as “Best Dramatic Presentation” (it lost to “City on the Edge of Forever”).
• “The Doomsday Machine” features a completely original score by Sol Kaplan. It is a brilliant score with early echoes of the iconic score for Jaws.
• This episode often ranks among the best of Star Trek by fans, though curiously D.C. Fontana once remarked it was her least favorite.
• Episode writer Norman Spinrad based the script for this episode on his novelette “The Planet Eater” which had been rejected by a number of publishers. He later expressed disappointment in the casting selection for Commodore Decker and the “Planet Killer.”
• William Windom also took inspiration for his performance from Humphrey Bogart’s role as Captain Queeg in The Caine Mutiny (1954). In the film, Queeg fidgets with a pair of ball bearings while in the episode, Windom’s character fidgets two small square-shaped data/cassette disks.
• Some sources claim that the episode was influenced by Fred Saberhagen’s Berserker series.
• This is Tom Hanks’s favorite episode of Star Trek.
• Interestingly enough, in Gene Roddenberry’s novelization of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Willard Decker is identified as Matt Decker’s son.