#barbara luna

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Barbara Luna

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barbara luna photographed by ralph dominguez, 1989.

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BarBara Luna

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Today in the Department of Before They Were Star Trek Stars, George Takei guest stars in "A Matter of Honor," episode 10 of the single season of Assignment: Underwater (original air date November 11, 1960).

There are a couple of caveats here. Firstly, the only copy I could find of this episode was a very lo-res kinescope, but I thought it was interesting enough to make up for the fuzzy images.

Secondly, I wanted to take a minute to talk about depictions of non-Anglo cultures in this series of posts. Sometimes, I'm comfortable just shrugging and saying "Times were different back then" and sometimes I'm not. I've skipped over episodes where the use of yellowface or redface seemed gratuitous to me, or where there aren't any other things going on in the episode that made me feel it was worthy of note. I'm still on the fence about other episodes, where the depiction of BIPOC aren't necessarily negative, but are just kind of ignorant, or reliant on stale storytelling tropes, where you can tell that the White screenwriters didn't really make much of an effort at research, or consultation with people in the culture they're depicting. (NB: I don't think any of this reflects on the actors involved; sometimes you just need to pay your bills and do the best you can with the scripts you get.)

This episode of Assignment: Underwater feels like it might be dipping its toe into that last category. Japanese and Chinese culture are kind of lumped in together, there's some "model minority" stuff going on with the Japanese-American family, and Italian-Americans don't exactly come out smelling like roses. But I thought the episode was interesting enough to make it worthwhile. It's available for free on The Internet Archive, so I encourage anyone who's interested to watch and make up their own minds.

Takei plays Ken Kitigawa, the oldest son of an immigrant family who are friends with the main character, who is in charge of some kind of U.S. Navy underwater rescue/civil defense operation. Ken has gotten involved with an organized crime syndicate, who are sending him to sabotage the boat of one of their rivals. The hero stops him in the nick of time, he agrees to turn state's evidence, and everyone lives happily ever after.

Other Trek Connections:

Takei's gangster boss is played by Stanley Adams, AKA Cyrano Jones in the Star Trek episode "The Trouble with Tribbles,"

And his girlfriend is portrayed by BarBara Luna, who played Marlena Moreau in the Star Trek episode "Mirror, Mirror," as well as appearing in two episodes of James Cawley's fan production Star Trek: Phase II.

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Barbara Luna as Marlena Moreau

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Wild Wild Reviews

The Night Of The Deadly Bed

Overall Score

Story: 4/5

Dame: 4.5/5

Villain: 4/5

Gadgets: 5/5

Disguises: 4/5

Bonus Points: Gay Subtext: 2.5/5

The Yikes Dated Factor: 0/-5

Score: 25/25

Tier: S (100%)

Previous Review • Next Review

FULL REVIEW UNDER THE CUT

The Story

This episode is up there as far as quality, it almost feels as though THIS should’ve been the pilot as opposed to TNOT Inferno. It’s finally got all of its limbs (meaning Artemus has his proper characterization which is what was missing in the pilot) and doesn’t have the same racist trappings as the previous installation. All the major elements pay off, the mystery isn’t sloppy, the villain and lady of the week are well written. The biggest drawback is that stupid unnecessarily complex death trap that gave the episode its name. Why does the hotel even have that?!Why didn’t Jim get sedated enough for that to even be an issue?! It’s so dumb that it borders on Batman series levels of comically avoidable. It’s just not quite a 5, gotta reserve that for the best of the best.

The Dame

Our lady of the week is Barbara Luna! Whom I know as Marlena from the Star Trek TOS episode Mirror Mirror!

Say it with my y’all, I. Love. Gatita!! She’s so awesome and one of the best female characters this show has ever had. Which is WILD cuz we’re like 2 episodes in and there’s a 102 more. She’s intelligent and brave, she’s got her own personality and motivations. She is working for the baddie to protect her people who’ve been enslaved by him. She even fights back in her own way by giving his girlfriend food when he’s trying to starve her, not to mention attacking one of the guards! The relationship she develops with Jim feels genuine and relatively well developed. The only reason she’s not getting a perfect 5 is because she gets treated and written as “exotic” in the first half of the episode but that’s not a fault of her as a character.

The Villain

Our villain of the week is played by JD Connor!

What a great and hateable villain, he is cruel to women and minorities, he’s got an overdeveloped sense of class, and he’s got delusions of grandeur. Also he’s idea of a train killing train to take over the US with is extremely unhinged and silly which is exactly what we need in our Wild Wild West villains. He’s not perfect though. He lacks a certain uniqueness that would have him stand out amongst other egotistical traitors and invading powers that frequently pop up in this show.

The Gadgets

They knocked it out of the park again with the gadgets this episode. Particularly the explosive coal which was such a fun Chekov’s Gun this episode, with satisfying high stakes pay off. We also see our good friend knock out gas featured, and the first but not the last instance of Artie accidentally getting KOed by his own invention lol. The ring was also a neat gimmick and I’m kinda disappointed we don’t really get to see it again.

The Disguise

Artemus’s disguise in this episode was fun, well thought out, and useful. He successfully infiltrated the labor camp where Jim and Gatita’s village were being held. He used it (and a drunken rendition of one of my fav Spanish folk songs “Malagueña Salerosa”) to rescue Jim, and he also exploited it as means to start a revolt while Jim planted the bombs! The only reason it’s not a 5 out of 5 is because he didn’t really do a specific character, he was just trying to blend in which isn’t as insane or enjoyable as his more fleshed out personas.

The Gay Subtext

(Don’t ship it? Skip it!)

A joke could be made about Artemus giving Jim a specially made ring and to “wear it in good health”. There’s also a moment where Gatita feels like she could be making a joke about Jim being bi when she talks about “looking for a girl, now you’re looking for a man” which I think is hilarious even if it wasn’t intentional. Then of course we have our regularly scheduled story beats of Artemus looking like the world just fell out from under him when he thinks Jim is dead, and looking bitter (or dare say jealous) and exasperated when Jim makes out with the woman of the week at the end of the episode.

The Yikes Dated Factor

When I put yikes dated at 0 that does NOT mean there was nothing problematic in the episode. However there was very little that was straight up cringeworthy that made me embarrassed on behalf of white people or made me wanna turn the episode off. There were microaggressions and casual nationalism for sure, but no shoe polish or wildly inappropriate caricatures. For the time this show was made it was very respectful and for that I will give this episode props!

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