I got to meet Walter at trek Ticonderoga this year. Super nice guy. Going through the set tour he was telling stories about when they were shooting the original series. An amazing experience. 100% would recommend for trek fans

I always excused the fact that sometimes a different officer would be on the bridge (Uhura not being on the bridge in this episode) by the fact that there must be multiple shifts for most jobs on the ship. The bridge must have had a minimum of three 8 hour shifts daily (not sure how they managed to get days off for weekends) and sometimes officers might trade shifts for various personal or professional reasons. What’s truly amazing is how the primary shift with the crew we know is *always* the one that’s on the bridge when something of note happens. Maybe there are two additional shows that you could have that details the adventures of the other two crews?

It was my very first episode I ever saw I was six yrs old living in Atlanta Ga, sitting in my dads lap..I've been hooked on trek ever since I'm now 57 yrs old..

Great review of a great episode-- thanks @The 7th Rule !

I can’t express how much I enjoy these reviews with Walter. I’ve always loved The 7th Rule reviews, but each “Walter” one, it’s just on a whole new level. I love this man!!

Loved seeing you all review this episode! It's such a classic episode that lives on so many years after it originally aired! I love hearing the thoughts of those who have watched it many times and then seeing the reactions of those who are seeing it for the first time!

With Cirroc wearing a Def Leppard shirt, Ryan with a Guns and Roses, I feel like Walter needed an AC/DC shirt for this review!

About Shatner's lighting, I remember reading somewhere that Shatner was aware of lighting and sometimes, it was him. He deliberately "worked with it."

Apparently Nichelle Nichols was unavailable for this episode. Wikipedia says she was in NY for a concert performance or something.

The percentage of television households that had color televisions in Jan. 1st 1968 was roughly 25%, with the tipping point of more color than b&w televisions happening at the end of 1971.

A classic, and always a blast to hear Walter's takes!

We should all be so spry at 87 😮 star trek passion keeps people young

The subtext of this episode about nuclear war can not be understated.

Totally agree with what everyone had to say here! Great episode then and now!

My favorite episode next to the Changeling. I found a video of The Doomsday Machine on KZfaq and Balance of Terror and listen to them every night to fall asleep by.

Thank you for sharing this! It is awesome to hear a conversation with one of my childhood heroes!

“Where’s your crew?” “On the third planet.” “There is no third planet!” “Don’t you think I know that? There was but not any more! They called me they begged me for help 400 of them! I couldn’t! I couldn’t!” And Decker breaks down crying. Very powerful.

Star Trek New Voyages got William Windam to come back to play Commodore Decker in a sequel to this episode. Episode 1 (which is the second episode) he was sent back in time after his incident with the doomsday machine. They were keeping his beat up shuttle in a garage in present day (about 20ish years ago) earth. There were a whole bunch of doomsday machines and they had to fix the timeline. It was very early on for this fan film so it's still a bit rough but I always enjoyed it.

The Green Tunic was used because Color TV was new. They wanted people to see vibrant colors on the show. It was just a new design they tried to use. A Commodore is equal to a 1 Star General, or as we now have a Rear Admiral Lower Half. Another Star Fleet rank that is rarely used is Fleet Captain. This episode of Doomsday Machine may work in non SCI FI stories, but it really works great as a Star Trek Episode.

A great episode of Trek. A wonderful discussion, thank you all. The Star Trek: New Voyages fan film (which I think is 20 years old this year) was a bit of a follow-up to both this episode and "The City On The Edge of Forever" (with just a touch of "The Menagerie" thrown in). For an early 2000s fan production, I thought it was well done.

Those cards were portable storage. In fact I remember when 3.5" floppies became a thing. I'm like.....these look like those TOS "tapes". Officially they were called tapes.

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Hey you guys, this is without a doubt one of the best episodes of the series. The music, the writing, the director and most importantly the guest star William Windom all coalesced to make this one the most riveting and exciting adventures the series ever had.I got to meet William Windom once and he was a joy to talk to with all his acting resume to reflect on. You were asking what those two cards he kept sliding in his hand were. Those were record chips that have stored data on them. They had the last log entries from the Constellation that were sent to Spock for analysis. According to Windom he was doing an homage to Humphrey Bogart who in The Caine Mutiny movie was figiting with steel marbles in his hand while being questioned in an inquiry on his performance during a crisis that occurred during his command.

“With a maw that could swallow a dozen starships.”

ohhhh I loved it as a kid. It was one of my favorites. I may not have understood what I was watching, but I'm like "ooooohhhhh look at that thing right out of the flintstones!!" LMAO

This is my favorite episode of any kind of Star Trek, ever. Especially with the original SPFX instead of the fake CGI ones that are a slap in the faces of the Trek effects artists of the 60s. And the Wagnerian score by Sol Kaplan is epic.

I think the point of why Decker lost his life has been missed a bit. He had the right idea but not enough explosive power in the shuttle craft to try to deactivate the Doomsday machine. He started the process since no weapon could hurt the thing on the outside. And Kirk got the bright idea that if the Constellation’s engines, which were a mess anyway, we’re overloaded and went into the Doomsday Machine with more megatons of power they could stop the thing and they did.

Walter, pick up the phone, Walter!

The Doomsday machine also reminds me of the worms on Dune!

The budget constraints showing the rear angle of the Constellation approaching the machine really shows up. The syndication sometimes cuts out little pieces of episodes ( for more commercials? ). For this episode the "Vulcans never bluff" line is often gone. Ghastly, I tell ya. Ghastly!😀

fabulous and fascinating review

William Windon - one of MANY Trek actors who later appeared on Murder, She Wrote! As the town doctor, he was a big-time rregular and co-investigator for the episodes set in Cabot Cove.

I loved this, thanks guys... And I also understand why Walter got impatient with the discussion sometimes. When you go down an obscure thread, you should know when to get out.

I kinda liked sometimes characters disappearing and others taking their place. To me it kinda improves the realism because obviously there would be multiple communication officers, multiple navigators, multiple helmsmen etc. And the main characters aren't gonna be on the bridge 24/7. I like to imagine maybe they're off in a different part of the ship doing some other part of their job description that we don't really see. Maybe Uhura was off helping/supervising an engineer adjust the communication system since shes the head communication officer or something and the situation didn't necessarily require her to be on the bridge cause she knows that other lady can handle it while she's away

TOS was TOS around the time TNG started. In fact I remember the 3 letter name for each being a thing even back in TNG season 1.

Good Review Great Episode!

I never realized that Geordi was a Commodore in Picard season 3.

Commodore Decker wanted to destroy the Doomsday Machine because it was on its way to the Rigel Colony to do what it does to planets inhabited or not, ripping them apart and digesting it for fuel. It came from another galaxy. But it left two planets alone because one was a gas planet and the other one was hot enough to melt lead if you saw the episode where they didn’t cut dialogue. Decker ramming the shuttle craft into the Doomsday Machine was the only to begin to try to destroy it because it’s shell was solid neutronium impervious to any weapon. Scotty set the Constellation’s engines to overload and once Kirk pushed the button nothing could stop it and it destroyed the inside mechanism of the Doomsday Machine and ‘killed’ it. Good on Scotty for fixing the transporter in time because time was ticking before the ship blew up inside the thing. The special effects and sound effects in the Doomsday Machine were really good. You really felt like you were burning up along with Decker. Loved McCoy’s line when asked if he knew what a doomsday machine was. “No, I’m a doctor not a mechanic.”

William Windom was great as Commadore Decker.

Y'all should pay attention to Sol Kaplan's perfect score, complete with Courage quote. Deserved an Emmy. Also, y'all might want to watch "Land of the Lost" Saturday morning kids' TV show, created by David Gerrold (uncredited). The earlier eps have other Trek writers like Theodore Sturgeon and *D.C. Fontana!* Norman Spinrad's episode, "Tag Team," has characters tag teaming dinosaurs, like Enterprise and Constellation did to the Doomsday Machine. Hey, if it worked once, do it again!

what Decker was holding was equal to what would be a floppy disc-Spock would print out readings on these colorful discs.

I saw a pod cast today and they discussed it. Nichelle had a singing gig so she wasn’t in it. And when it came to Khan, how could he recognize Chekhov when he came down to Ceti Alpha 5 to explore with another guy and Kahn’s people brought them to him, Chekhov wasn’t even in Space Seed.

I was looking it up and was very confused about the Angel One comment. The correct episode he directed is "Haven".

1969 the book "Star Trek Concordance" started using abbreviations to designate, shows and episodes. 1972 Star Trek: The Animated Series. (ST:TAS) 1979 Star Trek: The Motion Picture (ST:TMP) as I remember it, that was pretty much when it started

Most of our sets were black and white. We only had one TV down in the basement black and white, my brother had a mini TV that was black and white. I saw my first color TV from someone else in 1972 and we didn’t get a color TV until 1974 for the Den and then in 1977 when the basement TV went dark. Why fix it when you can just get a new one. Probably others had color TV’s sooner. In 1950 came the first TV remote control and 1956 was the first wireless remote control for TV by Zenith. We never had a remote. You had to get up to change channels. Some TV’s had the rabbit ears you had to adjust to get rid of a bad picture then everyone had an antenna on your roof, we had a UHF converter for the basement TV but when the wind blew or it was rainy you got a static like picture jumping which was annoying and then years later came Cable and it didn’t matter how bad the weather was picture was always clear. Shame we have to pay now to watch TV.

In Where No Man Has Gone Before, Gary Mitchell took a tape from the literary library to read whatever book and with a button you could advance it. The wonders of futurized stuff. McCoy used lasers for surgery that eventually became a reality. Kirk’s communicator, bingo flip phone type of construction.

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I've always thought Doomsday Machine, original Borg and Lore's Crystalline Entity were Inter- Galactic threats that just kinda wandered into our Galaxy and stayed for the prey.

Those cards as you aptly describe them were tapes they could put information on. For instance in the Changeling in order to resurrect Scotty, Spock had one of those square tapes, slipped his computer to transfer data on human nervous system data for Nomad. It was played at high speed for Nomad to absorb. I guess you could equate them to the old floppy disk but but solid and sturdier. In Court Martial these tapes were put into the computer, flip a switch and the computer’s voice would read what was on the tape of who the people were in name rank, serial number, commendations. Who knows how much information you could squeeze onto one tape. Who knows why they were different colors.

Kirk was joking about Scotty getting his pay for the week being able to salvage enough to even get the Constellation to even move.

Com badges didn’t come into being until Next Generation. You’re talking about just the uniform insignias which were sewn on and of course each ship had a different insignia on uniforms.

The only other time a Commodore was used was Commodore Stone in the old series in Court Martial where Kirk was put on trial.

walter wasn't present in space seed , yet khan says in star trek 2 , yet i think the rest of the crew where on other decks and during a scene khan bumps into chekov , the nexus pulled kirk out of the ship to later be bumped off on that lousy planet with that crazy mad man , doomsday machine one many good written episodes 23:47 the apple , and walter/chekov was in that episode 28:38 i sort of noticed it and there other episodes that had sort more serious ending tone ,, maybe the episode , the alternative factor , or space seed , the happy music ending for , the trouble with tribbles , thou thought it was funny the creatures beamed onto the klingon spaceship i like it when kirk realises the constellation was attacked and orders red alert with the dramatic music builds up the tension for the episode

Decker was obsessed with making sure the Doomsday Machine couldn’t go further. I suppose his intense guilt about his crew would be considered a mental illness. The thing was indestructible on the outside but not the inside. And he felt he should’ve died along with his crew. Survivors guilt must be awful to endure.

Some probably grew up never seeing the original series that started in the 60’s. I didn’t until three years after it was cancelled in 1969. It was syndication of the original series that sparked all the other Star Treks from TV to movies. I always felt that the ones coming after just weren’t the same. Always having to modernize everything. Now of course the show Enterprise was before Kirk’s time. But the original series started the ball rolling especially with syndication. Where I live the channels changed. Star Trek the original series had to be dragged in with UHF converter to get our channel 61. Then it moved to channel 43. There is no more ch. 61. Now that Cable is around, it’s on a completely new channel not 43 and without Cable you can’t get anything on TV. There was no such thing as cable or having to pay to watch TV when the original series came out. You were lucky to have a color TV. First time I saw Star Trek original series in color I was amazed. I was living with a teacher’s family at the time in 1972 briefly and she had the first color TV I ever saw and found Star Trek the original series flipping channels to see what was on. But On Demand to snarl your way through so many Star Treks including the movies, you have to specifically pick Star Trek series and that’s the original.

The things Decker was playing with were "computer tapes".

Kirk was going to put in a special log entry for Decker for his start in destroying the Doomsday Machine giving his life to save others! Guess ya missed that part! I listen to it every night so I know every inch of the episode. Kirk saying he’d put in a special log entry for Decker’s sacrifice how could you miss that unless some parts were cut out. There were a several things that were cut out of the version I have I got off KZfaq.

Excuse me! The shuttle craft a diversion? No it wasn’t Decker realized finally that the Enterprise’s phasers couldn’t cut through the hull of the Doomsday Machine so he figured if he rammed the shuttle craft down its throat the explosion would deactivate it. He had the right idea but not enough power as the shuttle craft engines were much smaller. A starship has more power in its engines set to overload so that’s what killed it and Decker had a lot of guilt being unable to beam his crew back up because the transporter was no longer working. He didn’t want it to go destroying Rigel and its population. Decker was obsessed to destroy it and almost made the same mistake with the Enterprise that he made with his own ship until Kirk made Spock relieve him since Decker decided to use his rank as Commodore to take command. Poor Red Shirt security guard got beaten up trying to take Decker to Sickbay. Poor guy couldn’t defend himself well. Beats the usual of red shirt security guys getting killed.

Decker cited regulations that made him take command. It was Kirk who ordered Spock to relieve Decker so he wouldn’t put the Enterprise in the same condition as the Constellation. McCoy hadn’t examined Decker to relieve him and no records to prove it. Decker pulled rank on Spock until Kirk ordered him to relive Decker. Decker never though Spock would arrest him, and discovered Vulcans don’t bluff and he was to be escorted to Sickbay for an examination when he turned on the security guy and decided to steal the shuttle craft to try to destroy the Doomsday Machine from the inside since it was impervious to weapons on its outside.

One thing that bugged me. The man just lost a ship and crew. Shouldn't there be a required evaluation before he can take command unless a ranking officer of the ship grants him authority (like kirk)? If I was captain of a ship, I'd tell my crew, under my personal authority no one from outside the ship takes command if there is any possibility that they aren't fit without an evaluation. This would certainly quality as a possibility.

LMAO when I was a kid I wondered if there was a relation to these Commodores and my C64 computer. And the answer is yes. Commodore the brand was intended to be named after the rank. I think it was going to be "Admiral" or something, but they settled on Commodore.

LG! ❤

I loved him more as Bester, much more fleshed out charactor, even if a villian. though he never would've gotten the role without Star Trek

Frankly, how can a Captain be a Captain without full immunity? We can't have Captains second guessing themselves worrying about getting prosecuted for their choices! Even though no Captain has ever before in the history of Starfleet needed complete and full immunity for them to function at full capacity, we'll just give them that complete and full immunity, because, it's not like anyone would ever abuse absolute power.

The TOS moniker came about from fans on usenet in the 80s.

Mr Bester was Walters best character.

How is it that these guys had never seen the episode before? Seriously?

A little humor from Kirk at the end was bad? I think it took away the tension a little. Decompress a little. One Doomsday Machine was sufficient in the hopes that no more are roaming around traveling in from another galaxy. Granted Decker’s crew losing their lives on a planet they didn’t know would be a target and the transporter went out wasn’t happy, but Decker’s death started the process of destroying the machine from the inside whose outside was impervious to any weapon fired as it was solid neutronium breaking up the tension a little I thought was a slight relief.

WINDOM WIN-DOM. 53 episodes as Dr Hazlitt on MURDER SHE WROTE. He was an acclaimed actor throughout his career. This isn’t a one off.

The colored squares were computer data disc.

William Windom not Windham!

He was a surviving Commodore! Rank above Captain.

Spock did NOT step up on his own taking control! Kirk saw from the Constellation his ship getting too close to the thing! He didn’t want Decker doing the same. Decker had said “We’re going to turn an attack!” And Kirk said “Not with my ship you don’t!” He impressed on Spock that as Captain of the Enterprise he was ordering Spock to relieve Decker who wanted to use regulations to take over and go after the thing. Only after Kirk ordered it did Spock take over. He needed to be ordered to take over. Kirk felt he was still the Captain and he wasn’t gonna allow his ship to be trashed in Decker’s obsession to destroy the Doomsday Machine and driven by guilt about his crew he was not really in his right mind. Without Kirk’s order I don’t think Spock had the authority to relieve a Commodore on his own being a subordinate.

Would one call Kirk’s green uniform shirt lounge wear? The dress uniform shirts for the old series for Kirk Spock and McCoy were long sleeved, looked shimmery, thicker gold collars for Kirk and Spock, a thin gold collar for McCoy and down the front on Kirk and Spock was a thick gold column of material down the front while McCoy had a thin one down the front. Kirk’s was green and his has a thin gold piece of material each side where the long sleeves were sown to the shirt that Kirk and Spock didn’t have, Spock’s and McCoy’s were blue and had on their left, our right, their medals. There are no rank braids on the the sleeves. I did an image search.

The old effects were better in the Doomsday Machine because that’s how I first saw it.

How can you talk about Star Trek the original series without seeing the series in the first place? Walter, you never watched this one? Or any of them? Just wondering.

The problem is that Kirk wasn't a main character and having Kirk dying while trying to save the Enterprise would be a cheap knock off from Star Trek 2(my favourite Star Trek film of all time!). Kirk falling with the bridge after shutting down the shield surrounding the missile was considered a selfless act, sometimes writers get pinned in a certain place during the process and while avoiding a bigger problem, the cheap knock off scenario. With Tashas first death scene was not popular because she died in a heroic way, the second time Tasha died while saving the Enterprise must have made Kirk's death more important to be realistic. Having a blaze of glory death with franchises devalues that type of death, writers must be careful upon how to kill off any character.

Lots of opinions about the green Kirk outfit can be found online. Some even think it was to disguise that he was putting on weight. I bet William Shatner knows the truth but he probably won't ever tell us.

Using the original series reference untangles everything since there are so many Star Trek spin offs that wouldn’t be without the original series. If the second pilot didn’t sell, who knows if a third try would’ve happened or if they just moved on.

Walter Koenig is easily the most intelligent actor from all the Star Trek franchise. You guys know almost nothing about Star Trek and made this too painful to watch. What a wasted opportunity.

Maw=mouth.

first contact was the 2nd movie. Generations was the 1st one. I didn't care for it.