A Piece of the Action (TOS episode)
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| Star Trek: TOS episode | |
| "A Piece of the Action" | |
 Kirk and Spock face off with mobsters to get A Piece of the Action. |
|
| Episode no. | 46 |
|---|---|
| Prod. code | 049 |
| Airdate | January 12, 1968 |
| Writer(s) | David P. Harmon Gene L. Coon |
| Director | James Komack |
| Guest star(s) | Anthony Caruso Vic Tayback Lee Delano Steven Marlo John Harmon Buddy Garion Jay Jones Dyanne Thorne Frank da Vinci Sharyn Hillyer Eddie Paskey William Blackburn Roger Holloway |
| Year | 2268 |
| Stardate | 4598.0 |
| Episode chronology | |
| Previous | "The Gamesters of Triskelion" |
| Next | "The Immunity Syndrome" |
"A Piece of the Action" is a second-season episode of Star Trek: The Original Series first broadcast on January 12, 1968. It was repeated on August 30, 1968, the last episode to air in the 8:30pm time slot on Friday nights. It is episode #46, production #49, written by David P. Harmon and Gene L. Coon, and directed by James Komack.
Overview: The Enterprise visits a planet with an Earth-like 1920s gangster culture.
Contents |
[edit] Plot
On stardate 4598.0, the starship USS Enterprise, under the command of Captain James T. Kirk, is exploring space near Sigma Iotia II, where the USS Horizon was reported missing nearly 100 years earlier. Upon reaching orbit, the ship receives a message from Bela Okmyx, who invites the command crew down for a welcoming party.
Mr. Spock and Dr. McCoy are concerned with interfering with the inhabitants, who are reported to be a pre-nuclear industrialized culture. Kirk suggests that if any cultural contamination had occurred it started with the Horizon's visit, since the Prime Directive had not yet been established at that time.
The three beam down in the middle of a busy city street, which resembles Earth's, more particularly the USA's, 1920s era. Most of the people around them seem to be armed with tommy guns. Two men approach holding the party at gunpoint and order them to remove their weapons and communicators. The men lead them to meet Okmyx, but as they walk, a car drives by and opens fire, killing one of the men. The other thug, Kalo, fires back as the car drives off, and then orders the landing party to continue as if nothing out of the ordinary has happened.
The group finally meets with Okmyx, and Kalo informs him of the drive-by shooting. Okmyx then orders his men to make a retaliatory hit on the rival gangster Jojo Krako. Spock finds a curious book perched on a lectern entitled Chicago Mobs of the Twenties, which was left behind by the crew of the Horizon (and is now viewed as a holy relic, regarded by the Iotians with religious reverence). It seems to be the source of the "contamination" around which the local inhabitants have built an entire culture.
Oxmyx gets to the point of summoning Kirk, demanding that Kirk supply him with their advanced phaser weapons, which he refers to as "heaters". Kirk refuses, so Oxmyx threatens to kill them in eight hours if Kirk doesn't come clean with the goods. The landing team is led away, and Oxmyx picks up a communicator and calls the Enterprise. A confused Mr. Scott hears Oxmyx's explanation of what will happen to the Captain if he doesn't comply.
Meanwhile, Kirk butts in on a game of poker that Okmyx's thugs are playing. He asks if they would like to be introduced to a new card game, and then explains a very confusing version he calls "Fizzbin", actually making up the rules as he goes along. While the guards are being distracted, Spock and McCoy sneak up from behind and overpower them.
Kirk orders Spock and McCoy to make their way to the local radio station and try to send a message to the Enterprise, in the meantime he will go after Okmyx. Spock and McCoy manage to get a message through and return to the ship, Kirk however, is captured by Jojo Krako's men. Krako offers Kirk the same deal as Okmyx; he wants phasers, but he adds that he will cut Kirk in on a "third of the action". Kirk tries to offer a peaceful solution, which annoys Krako, and has Kirk locked up until he changes his mind.
Back aboard the Enterprise, Spock and McCoy try to figure out how to free the Captain, but then Okmyx contacts them and offers assistance in rescuing Kirk. Seeing no alternative, Spock agrees and he and McCoy return to the planet only to be captured by Oxmyx again. Meanwhile, Kirk manages to find his own escape, and heads to Okmyx's office where Spock and McCoy are being held. Kirk surprises the guards and subdues them, obtaining their weapons and their clothes. Kirk and Spock then disguise themselves as the gangsters and head back to Krako's.
They ask a newspaper boy to arrange for them to enter Krako's headquarters bloodlessly, promising him "a piece of the action". Upon entering, they find the rival gangster and hold him and his men at gunpoint. Kirk announces that the Federation is taking over this town. If Krako helps, they will cut him in on a percentage of the action. Kirk informs him that they want one man to lead the Iotian people, with the Federation "pulling the strings". Krako agrees. They then "put the bag" on Krako by having Mr. Scott beam him up to the ship.
Kirk and Spock then set out to find Okmyx and make the same demands. Okmyx also agrees to a change in leadership and helps round up all the gang bosses to his office by calling each one on the telephone while the Enterprise transports them to his office as they answer the calls. Kirk tells them all that they are going to combine in a single operation with the Federation taking a forty percent cut.
Krako's men then attack the building, but they are stunned from orbit by the Enterprise's phasers. Witnessing this show of force, the mob bosses are at Kirk's mercy. With their full attention, Kirk arranges for Okmyx to be the "top boss" with Krako as his "first lieutenant". He says that the Federation will stop by once every year to collect their "piece of the action".
After returning to the Enterprise, Spock is curious to know how Kirk plans to explain to Starfleet why a ship will need to be sent to Sigma Iotia II every year to collect the Federation's "cut". Kirk proposes using the funds to finance the necessary projects to reorient the planet's society to a civil manner. McCoy admits that he has forgotten his communicator down in Okmyx's office. Kirk jokes that in a few years, the Iotians may figure out the piece of Federation technology, and then they may be demanding a piece of "our" action.
[edit] Production
The episode was based on a story idea in an Roddenberry's original pitch for Star Trek, in which it was entitled "President Capone".[1]
An early draft of the script was known as "Mission into Chaos", and featured the Romulans.[2]
[edit] Sequels
- Author David Gerrold once wrote a sequel to this episode for possible use on Star Trek: The Next Generation (but which was never actually filmed). In this episode, Captain Jean-Luc Picard and the crew of the Enterprise-D visited Iotia, and found it a greatly changed world - due to Dr. McCoy leaving behind his communicator, Iotian society has transformed into a duplicate of Starfleet as it was in Kirk's era! Everyone wears Starfleet uniforms, communications are on Starfleet frequencies, and the technology is identical to that shown in the original Star Trek series. Picard and crew are subsequently arrested and tried for being "anti-Kirk", owing to the Iotians' tendency to attach religious significance to outside influence on their culture. The producers of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine considered revising this idea for their show as well, but this was changed to a revisiting of the Tribble idea, in the episode that eventually became Trials and Tribble-ations. Outside of Gerrold's recollections and those of Ron Moore and Ira Stephen Behr, the only licensed print reference to Gerrold's sequel plot exists as a reference to Iotia in Shane Johnson's Worlds of the Federation book.
- During Peter David's acclaimed tenure as writer for the DC Comics licensed continuation of the Star Trek movie era stories, Bela Oxmyx makes an appearance during the "Trial of James T. Kirk" arc. In true character, with no signs of any technological advances beyond the 1930's, Oxmyx threatens the President of the Federation, promising to "lean" on him if they don't ease up on Kirk and his crew. Shortly after the "testimony", Oxmyx surprises everyone - including the reader - by tossing McCoy's communicator back to the embarrassed doctor. Betraying more common sense than one would expect, the Iotians did not repeat their previous actions with the technology left behind by the Horizon crew, and simply put McCoy's communicator away for safekeeping until it could be returned.
- There was a non-canon comic book "sequel" featuring the Enterprise-E. The "newspaper boy" acquired the communicator and helped transform the society into a blend of 1920's Chicago and Kirk-era Earth. After a failed attempt to seize control of the Enterprise-E, the old gang leader died in a heart attack in a Holodeck, after "talking" to his boyhood idol, James T. Kirk.
[edit] Trivia
- No stardate is actually logged in the episode. The stardate shown, 4598.0, is from the Star Trek Concordance by Bjo Trimble, and a fotonovel based on this episode gives a concluding stardate of 4598.7. This make the episode both stardatewise and production-wise the episode that takes place just before By Any Other Name.
- This episode gave rise to the phrase "Planet of Hats" describing a planet, race or society in fiction which is apparently defined by a single characteristic – in this case, the fact that everyone wears a hat.
- It is unknown whether the vessel Horizon, mentioned (but not seen) in this episode, is the same ship which Travis Mayweather's family (from Star Trek: Enterprise) owned and operated. Travis did have a copy of Chicago Mobs of the Twenties in his quarters, but there is no overt evidence to suggest that they are the same ship; indeed, "A Piece of the Action" strongly implies that its Horizon is a Starfleet vessel (the Mayweathers' ship is clearly a civilian cargo freighter), and in several episodes of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Benjamin Sisko has a model of a Starfleet Daedalus-class starship labelled USS Horizon in his quarters.
- The episode was directed by James Komack, who would be seen again in a regular role as Norman Tinker in the series The Courtship Of Eddie's Father.
- In 1971 William Shatner starred on an episode of Mission Impossible "Encore" as an aged gangster who thinks he's been transported back to the 1930's.
- Vic Tayback would later become known to TV viewers as Mel Sharples on Alice.
- Scotty's erroneous use of concrete galoshes to mean the traditional cement overshoes has entered pop culture and the two terms are actually used interchangeably.
- A Star Trek video game for the NES by Konami in 1992 featured a storyline that ties in with this episode. The game begins with the Enterprise being thrown beyond the Romulan Empire by a time rift. Upon tracing the source of that rift towards the end of the game, it is learned that it originated from Sigma Iotia II, where duplication of Starfleet technology eventually lead to an advanced civilization, whose time travel experments devastated the planet and caused frequent space-time ruptures, like the one the Enterprise fell victim to. The game is ultimately won by using their time device to return to the planet shortly after the first visit, and play a game of Fizzbin with marked cards to win back McCoy's communicator, preventing them from developing the dangerous time travel technology in the first place. Oxmyx and Krako make appearances in the game.
[edit] References
- ^ Herbert F. Solow and Robert H. Justman (1996). Inside Star Trek: The Real Story. Pocket Books. ISBN 0-671-00974-5.
- ^ Asherman, Allan (1987). The Star Trek Compendium. Titan Books. ISBN 0-907610-99-4.
[edit] External links
- A Piece of the Action at StarTrek.com
- A Piece of the Action article at Memory Alpha, a Star Trek wiki.
| Last produced: "The Immunity Syndrome" |
Star Trek: TOS episodes Season 2 |
Next produced: "By Any Other Name" |
| Last transmitted: "The Gamesters of Triskelion" |
Next transmitted: "The Immunity Syndrome" |
