Giant black cats, wizards, and peacock puppets. I’ll bet you credits to navy beans you’ll enjoy this spooky episode of Star Trek!
A Groovy Star Trek Halloween (Manic Episodes)
Giant black cats, wizards, and peacock puppets. I’ll bet you credits to navy beans you’ll enjoy this spooky episode of Star Trek!
3 Comments Comments RSS
The “I bet credits to navy beans…” phrase is clearly a variation on “I bet dollars to donuts…” as in I bet something of real value against something of no value, ie like 10 dollars against 1o more cents if I win or something (ie something you are really sure is going to happen, so the odds are heavily skewed). Strangely I can’t see that there was an originally phrase like “dollars to navy beans” that they were space adventuring up, no source seems to suggest this (I admit I just checked the Star Trek wiki Memory Alpha).
The phrase “dollars to navy beans” only appears in the 21st century in Google Books (in about 5 books) no reference before then. My favourite is someone writing a Western novel has a character say “he’d bet silver dollars to navy beans” also good is “Canadian dollars to navy beans”.
Interestingly the phrase “credits to navy beans” gets used a little outside of Star Trek. Although I presume it is someone intentionally or unintentionally quoting Trek.
So it’s credits to navy beans that DeSallle managed to create an entire idiom with that “credits to nay beans”.
If you take away the spooky, silly space wizard trappings, this is one again THE most frequently used Star Trek TOS plot:
– The Enterprise is detained, attacked, or stumbles into a being(s) with god like powers that toy with Kirk and Crew. it comes in two flavors;
1) An actual being of amazing power or god of some sort that presents it’s threat through overt displays of supernatural god-like power.
2) A usurper of god-like powers using a device or artifact that allows them to create overt displays of supernatural god-like power, or trickster that uses illusions and mind manipulations to make the heroes believe they are being subjected to overt displays of supernatural god-like power.
This episode was a little of column and A lot of column B – Which brings me to the thing I do really like about the episode, and that is how incredibly alien and weird the true forms of the Space Wizards actually are… okay the design and construction haven’t aged well at all, but for 1960’s effects it’s an attempt at something different.
—–
The better version of this episode is “Who Mourns for Adonais?” Which is pretty much the same plot, but gives a female crew member Carolyn Palamas a romantic interest. It’s a bit less silly with an ancient Greek Gods that fled to the stars kind of setting instead of a haunted space wizard castle.
I can’t believe they referenced Satan. WTH. They’re supposed to be sci-fi (which makes the twist at the end make sense and yet not at the same time). Also, the “You like what you see?” joke cracked me up.