Star Trek The Original Series 1×07 “What Are Little Girls Made Of?”

The seventh episode of Star Trek, The Original Series examines a scientist’s quest to ensure that he (and other humans) live forever. Titled “What Are Little Girls Made Of?”, features Nurse Chapel, a temporary assistant for Dr. McCoy who signed on to the Enterprise in order to find her missing fiancé, Dr. Korbey. And I just want to take a minute to discuss how confused I am by Nurse Chapel. Isn’t she the same nurse who professed feelings for Spock in “The Naked Time?” If she is, why is this the first mention we are hearing of her fiancé? Why wasn’t she all “hey guys, what we’re doing is interesting and all, but I’m here to find Roger. Can we stop what we’re doing and find him first?” several episodes ago? I was so confused to the point of being somewhat distracted from the rest of the episode of the plot.

But I digress.

So it turns out that Dr. Roger Korbey lives on an isolated planet. Because of the cold conditions at the surface of the planet, he moved to an underground cave system.

Kirk and Chapel beam down with two security guards. The guards mysteriously die. Kirik and Chapel find Korbey with androids in his service. It turns out, Korbey has found a way to enable humans to live forever – by transferring their consciousnesses to androids. One of the things that I didn’t quite understand is whether Korbey kept backups anywhere. Like, when the android version of his assistant, Dr. Brown was killed, Korbey didn’t seem all that upset. Did he have a backup Dr. Brown somewhere? Was he planning on making another Dr. Brown android? Or repairing the damaged one?

Additionally, Korbey kept insisting that Andrea wasn’t really human. Does that mean her personality and consciousness was manufactured?

It seemed weird to me that Korbey was so insistent that Andrea was “just” an android when it turned out Korbey himself was an android – I guess Ruk found his body dying and transferred his consciousness into an android for him. I guess that proves the hypothesis that Andrea’s personality and consciousness was completely manufactured and that’s what differentiated her from Korbey.

But I don’t know, you guys. I want to say more about this episode, but I don’t know what else to say. I’m almost caught up to where I was the first time I started watching Star Trek but then stopped. So I guess that’s something to look forward to – new (to me) episodes ahead!

Anyway. I guess that’s it from me today.