“Wolf in the Fold”

Although, I generally believe Jammer's reviews of the second season are good ones, I take exception with the Wolf in the Fold rating of three stars.

I think it is a very weak episode and contains many weaknesses.

The main problem with the story is the way women are portrayed. The role of women in Star Trek was always a little weak, but in Wolf in the Wolf it is out and out chauvinism.

I always had a problem with Star Trek stories that tried to say Scotty was a womanizer, which I feel was stupid. I just never beleived that Scotty would have behaved like that.

And for Captain Kirk to say that the best way to "heal" a man under his command was to set him up with the nearest woman was beyond belief. And for Dr. McCoy to go along with the plan only compounded the problem.

And then to make matters worse Mr. Spock jumped on the male chauvinist band wagon when he explained about the entity that was killing women, "And I suspect it preys on women because women are more easily and more deeply terrified, generating more sheer horror than the male of the species." This was the most rankest form of male chauvinism and something I do not beleive Mr. Spock would have ever said. It isn't logical.

Near the end of the story instead of taking control of Captain Kirk or Mr. Spock, which would have been the logically thing to do, the entity choose the weakest people to inhabit. Nothing about this story made sesne.

Wolf in the Fold was actually a sheep in wolf's clothing.

I liked the review of Wolf in the Fold, but had to comment about its light hearted ending. If you want inappropriate levity, look at the Galileo 7 episode. Several crewman have died, Spocks command abilities on the planet were lacking and yet the final scene is a rip-roaring, rib tackling laughter session. If this was vaudeville, they be rolling on the floor or slapping each other on the back. Its almost as if the deaths and so on were irrelevant.

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD!!!
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Piglet was Jack the Ripper? It's always the one you least suspect, isn't it?

This one produced a moment of unintentional humor the first time my wife and I watched it together. There is a scene on the ship where the killer is revealed and a fight ensues. The character was being played by a short (not much over 5 feet I'd say) actor, but the stunt double in the fight was well over 6 feet tall. This discrepancy led to my wife (who didn't know about the limits of 1960's TV production) to shout "Look honey, he's changing!" After I stopped laughing, I explained to her that it was a problem of bad editing, though her idea would have been a lot cooler. Yes, bad editing can be funny.

Although this episode overall was reasonable entertaining, I too was bothered by the multiple instances of sexism Mike Meares points out above.

One thing I do like about the murder mystery side of things, is that early on they put in a subtle hint, which they never come back to and thus leave it up to the viewer to pick up on it or not. Either that, or it was an unintentional slip up by the writer(s). After the second murder when Hengist tries to put the blame on Scotty he says that Scotty was found with both the victims when they were found. But how would he know that Scotty was with the second victim? No one told him that yet at that point, I think? Subtle clue or inconsistent writing?

One of those annoying episodes full of blatant sexism.

I keep hearing that TOS was so far ahead of its time, well maybe it was, in some ways, but the writers certainly lacked imagination when it came to womens' roles.

Depressing.

As others have noted, this is a pretty great and tense episode, but the sexism displayed by the Enterprise crew is disgusting (the entire season is sex obsessed), especially in light of the episode's broader story, which is ABOUT the sexism and violence of a crazy serial killer. In essense, the good guys are portrayed as being no better than the bad guy, but we're positioned to accept this because they're only "casually sexist" and dont kill people. Oh my.

I thought that Scotty's blackouts were explained -- it's stated by Kirk or Spock that Redjac (or whatever one wants to call it) would have some ability to create blackouts in order to shield itself from everyone but its victim, and that is how it managed to survive in London. Why it doesn't use this power at the episode's end, when it's cornered, is anyone's guess. (...it panicked?)

Given that Redjac seems to have the ability to possess individuals, and eventually threatens to possess various characters, particularly male, I think one can read the episode's metaphor as being about the *potential* for evil within all people, a common theme within TOS (see, for instance, "The Enemy Within," suggesting Kirk has a big and even important dark side, or "Mirror, Mirror," which suggests that different circumstances could bring out incredible cruelty in our beloved cast). In that sense, the sexism of the Enterprise crew is not necessarily a function of 1960's attitudes, but is making a point: in strong emotions, and resentment, "Redjac," or, the drive toward evil in general and hatred of women in particular, can take hold. This is why, the Argelians point out, jealousy is so heavily frowned upon in their culture, because it can develop and erupt into violence. And I think this is why the first thing we learn about Scotty is that McCoy and Kirk think, or at least jokingly think, that as a result of a recent injury from an explosion apparently caused by a woman, Scotty could develop a "resentment toward women." In some ways I wonder if the episode would be stronger if Scotty, or, at least, that jealous Argelian man, were "possessed" by Redjac, to strengthen the idea that this rage can take hold -- rather than just introducing the possession abilities only at the episode's end once it becomes convenient to have it possess the computer.

In this read, Redjac is the exaggerated form of the objectification which Kirk, McCoy and Scotty happily engage in, and the crew's defeat of it represents their triumph of that side of themselves. It makes sense that at the very end of the episode, the crew stay on the ship rather than go down to where "the women are so...so..." etc. This still doesn't explain Spock's statement about the female being the more easily terrified of the species.

There is something delightfully mid-to-late-60's about the way to defeat hatred and misogyny being, basically, drugs. TOS rules out the hippie lifestyle as a long-term sustainable project in "The Way to Eden," but for this particular episode all you need is loooove.

The episode doesn't actually tell us anything about Scotty, unfortunately, which is...fine, I guess, because there's no reason the episode *has* to, though it's a bit disappointing considering how underdeveloped the main cast is save the Big Three, with Scotty as the most important of the second tier of cast members.

I hadn't really thought this episode held together when I started writing this, but I think I've talked myself up to a marginal 3 stars.

This has to be one of the worst episodes of Star Trek I've had the misfortune to watch... and that is not something I say lightly.

- As Mike noted above, Wolf in the Fold is hilariously chauvinistic: women are terrified "more easily and more deeply"? Really? Where does this little gem of wisdom come from?

- Therapeutic qualities that scantily clad womenfolk have on head injuries are indeed something I'd like to test myself. If I bang my head against the wall right now, is there a curved and padded female specimen reading this that is willing to advance the cause of medicine with me?

- So tranquilisers, huh? The word must have changed meaning in the future.

- Wolf in the Fold contains one of the most brilliant examples of level-headed reasoning I've ever encountered. I hope that all homo sapiens in the 23rd century attain such mastery of unsurpassed, and indeed unsurpassable, logic. The thing goes like this, literally: Scotty, suffering from partial amnesia, is the prime suspect in the murder of three women, but the polygraph indicates he's telling the truth when he says he either didn't commit those murders or that he doesn't remember committing them. A psychic helping with the investigation manages to say "Jack the Ripper" before she too dies. Kirk's immediate conclusion? Why, it must have been Jack the Ripper, of course! However, as those London murders happened hundreds of years ago, the only reasonable explanation is that both Jack the Ripper case and the "Scotty case" were committed by the same centuries-old non-corporeal entity that can manipulate memories and assume physical form at will! Duh! Great, innit?

- After successfully solving the grisly triple murder case, Kirk's first order of business? Let's go to the nearest nightclub and continue the sex party that was so inconveniently cut short by that bothersome and inconsiderate spectral murderer. Good times!

This episode was too sexist for me to really enjoy it. Too bad, too- the murder mystery thing could have been entertaining or interesting under other circumstances. It seemed like unfortunate type-casting that the effeminate man ended up the villain, especially when his reasons for targeting women- them being generally smaller and weaker and thus more easily victimized- seemed of convenience rather than the misogyny that our main cast so shamelessly exhibited.

I'm convinced the events leading up to this episode didn't quite happen the way they are described. See, I'm assuming Scotty woke up in sickbay after the accident, declaring himself fine and wanting to get back to work. Bones agreed, and everything was all set until someone realized there was a Starfleet regulation requiring Scotty to undergo psychotherapy for the accident. Scotty insists it's pointless; he has no emotional trauma. Bones agrees, assuming this is all some ridiculous pansy bureaucratic rule made by stuffed shirts in their ivory towers not understanding what life was actually like out on the frontier, but rules are rules... Scotty continues to argue, while Bones realizes that while psychotherapy is required, the precise form of this psychotherapy is up to the ship's doctor. So he throws his hands up in the air and declares strippers and booze to be the best therapy he knows, and Scotty decides he can get on board with that idea...

Hey, it's better than the ridiculous excuse they had in the actual episode...

As for the story itself, it... didn't really work. I mean, the mystery aspect should have been a success, and as long as you didn't think too much worked well enough to be entertained. But it just didn't help that everyone kept carrying the idiot ball around. The fact that the two follow up murders occurred showed a distinct lack of foresight on the part of Kirk and company, who despite seeing women stabbed left and right never thought to maybe, I don't know, stop leaving the knife lying around in broad daylight... Seriously, as soon as the hearing on the Enterprise convened with all the cast members and guest stars and front and center is a nameless female redshirt, I was convinced she was doomed (congrats for surviving the episode!) Also, the revelation that the knife came from the same planet as Piglett came way too late, after we already knew it was him. Why wasn't that fact disclosed earlier? Still, it was a semi-acceptable murder-mystery story...

...That then turned into a weird problem-solving episode at the end. A mystery's climax is supposed to be the revelation of the murderer, but here we have the last quarter of the episode switch genres and be about trying to defeat a ghost that feeds on fear and is possessing the ship. Fine, the resolution to that - hopping everyone up on happy pills (guess Psychiatrist McCoy didn't have enough booze and strippers on hand to prescribe that to everyone...) - was somewhat interesting to see, but the mood swings in the last 10 minutes kind of ruined whatever good will you might have had from the mystery part. At least, it all seemed messed up to me, and not really a satisfying payoff to the story.

OK guys ,most of you must be products of a younger (and overly sensitive) generation.
Yes,Star Trek TOS did hold onto some traditional male/female values but hey it was the 60's and audiences had to relate.
Having said that I think they did a fine job of trying to achieve equality across the board with gender and race for the time period.
As for the episode it was an interesting way of explaining Jack the Ripper (before they knew a local butcher was to blame.)

Trek's take on Jack the Ripper is interesting given the enduring mystery about the murders in London. Other shows have also used this piece of history for their own purposes.
Plenty of comments here about sexism - I didn't get the sense of being bombarded with that given the nature of Jack the Ripper's murders and staying true to that story.
I thought the ending was a bit of a letdown when the entity gets into the computer and then goes back into Hengist who was declared dead. The entity possesses the head Argelian but it doesn't do the blackout thing to try and kill somebody and generate terror. It seems to act differently from how it did on the planet.
The murder investigation on the ship was interesting - thought it was acceptable how it led to the entity.
Other than that - pretty much in agreement with Jammer's review here. Could have been a deeper examination of evil. Good episode that I remember from my childhood - not a classic by any means but certainly not one of TOS's duds. "Wolf in the Fold" just gets up to 3 stars our of 4 IMHO.

Scotty got caught in an explosion on the Enterprise. And because it was caused by a female he now resents half the Human race. McCoy and Kirk decide the only logical thing to do is get him laid and call it therapy. This is a rather weird episode.

I must say that the Internet must have spoiled me, because I found the dancer in the beginning to be rather dull instead of provocative and the close ups on her lower front awkward. especially the creepy smile that Scotty sports the whole time.

I do find it hilarious that after solving the case, Kirk's first instinct is to go back down to the planet to continue the sex party. Kirk is a horn dog.

Painful to watch, all the characters were so unlike theirselves, were they all possessed by Jack the Ripper lol?

I don't usually care much for star treks sexist out-dated humour/styles of writing but it was more of how unbelievable the characters were behaving thought the episode, especially Spock. Cringy, the only star trek episode I haven't rewatched!

Cringe-worthy sexism aside, surely the fact that we're treated to a triple header of "S/he's dead, Jim!" from Bones makes this episode a stone cold classic?

The redjac creature is a metaphor for misogyny and sexual conquest. As mankind moved out from Earth and colonized space, they were able to create a classless and moneyless society (the Federation). But they couldn't rid themselves of heterosexuality and thus subjected women to the same cruelties, subjugation, humiliations and violence they always had. This analysis explains and makes congruent the behavior of all the characters. That's why after confronting a sexual terrorist they go back to a strip club to enjoy women as objects.

Sexism this, Sexism that, Sexism Sexism Sexism, are you all so soft and cuddled that the idea of women not being portrayed as the absolute equal to men is too much for you? What does it say about you that you appreciate a piece of art on just your god forsaken agenda, what about the acting? Or the sets, of the costume design, or the narrative itself outside of your obsession with Sexism, you people honestly are as narrow minded as Klingons.

I go back and forth on "Wolf in the Fold." As a kid, I thought (spoilers) the Jack the Ripper reveal in the guise of Piglet was super cool and chilling, but as an adult I find the spiritualism (i.e. the seance scene) a bit hokey. However, I think Jammer's 3 star rating is fair, as there's some good tension here and it's genuinely hard to guess the killer until the big reveal. It's a good Halloween episode.

As for the "sexism' accusations, I would just point out that the episode combines the slasher film genre (of which Robert Bloch is a master, coming from his work on "Psycho") and the sailors-on-leave setting in a sci-fi cocktail, and both of those genres depend on gender stereotypes. Anyone who watches a slasher film, even in recent years, knows their dependence on "women in terror" tropes. Not that I'm a huge fan myself, but that's the genre. And I don't understand why so many readers are shocked that the Enterprise officers taking shore leave on a pleasure planet act like, well, sailors on shore leave. That's because they ARE essentially sailors on shore leave, 23rd century space setting aside, and their behavior differs little from that of the TNG/DS9/etc. crews on Risa in the later shows. Personally, I find the "sexism" claims toward TOS to be self-righteous and anachronistic.

Having said that, the murder mystery here remains compelling and intriguing, including the spiritualist aspects of the story and the culminating reveal. John Fiedler is a strong guest star and the plotting unfolds with good pacing beats. But it's not a terribly rewatchable episode once you've seen it; the story depends on the viewer not knowing where it's going. As such, like many slasher stories/murder mysteries, it weakens on further scrutiny and re-watches. It's a good show, and good to see Scotty featured in a story as James Doohan does a nice job of conveying befuddled anguish, but it's not one on my top ten list. I like Robert Bloch's work on Trek, but I tend to like his other episodes a little better than "Wolf in the Fold."

It would have been prudent to have Scotty detained in a cell after the first murder.

"Wolf in The Fold" has one great sequence, and that's when everyone's in the briefing room and slowly realizes that one of them is Jack the Ripper. It's brilliantly creepy and twisted.

Otherwise, yes, the episode is clunky. I think its gender politics actually try to be ahead of the times, though. Remember, TOS characters are often treated as absolutely bastards to make a point, Kirk and company removed of their heroism, morality and righteousness depending on the political whims of the writer.

Here, as LT.BLT points out, we have an alien who is a metaphor for misogyny and sexual conquest. The Enterprise crew - in a parody of contemporary sailors on shore leave - are themselves horney guys subjecting women of other cultures (and coworkers) to cruelties, subjugation, humiliations and violence. The tension of the episode is whether man's (the episode ends with the crew destroying a sex fiend and then going to a strip club to enjoy and objectify women) behavior itself constitutes a kind of "wolf in the fold" than can be tamed or need be banished.

Ok, just going to zoom through these and try to catch up.

A good concept, but the realization is lacking. It was pretty obvious who Redjac was going to be, and the Scotty set up was weak.

Interesting theory from other commentors that the Kirk and company, seeking out a strip club at the end, is meant to be an indictment of this sort of humiliating, subjugating behavior - hard to believe given how frequently the show indulged in it. But Bloch may have snuck it in there.

Below average.

Has it occurred to anybody else that maybe Next Generation should have made the hedonistic pleasure planet so popular for shore leave Argelius, instead of making up Risa?

Or Wrigley's Pleasure Planet, mentioned in "The Man Trap." I like to imagine that that actually was Risa -- Wrigley briefly purchased the naming rights in the 23rd century but they lapsed after the chewing gum marked declined.

This was one of the least morally wrong episodes for me. I don't really get the whole sexism issue as it was literally not about the women but the murders. Think people were focusing on the wrong thing.

Love this take on Jack the Ripper. My husband and I agreed this is one of the best episodes we've seen on tos for a while. Good job!

Entertaining episode but not one of the best. Great to think that jack the ripper is basically an evil entity travelling the galaxy living off fear and terror, but the episode as a whole was rather weak. I agree the lighthearted ending does rather clash with the general mood that has gone before. The victims are forgotten rather quickly once we realise scott is okay.

ok for some reason I never caught the whole therapy idea until now, and yes it is horrible. I still maintain that TOS was way more sexist than it needed to be, and 'hey it was the 60s' just doesn't cut it. There's just no excuse for a line like "*A woman* caused an accident" and everything that comes after that.
What's worse, I think that story is supposed to serve as a potential motive for Scotty, to let the viewer think for a second that maybe he did do it?

But trying to look past that, I still like this episode and I agree with everything in the review. It's still genuinely creepy after all these years - the psychic screaming seemingly meaningless words, the creature showing itself and possessing different characters... and as much as I hate all things courtroom in TV shows - The Deadly Years being a particular offender - even that works in this case.

If anything, the way this is packed with classic horror cliches, I would have guessed it was another Halloween episode. But apparently it aired around christmas, so interesting choice ;)

Besides the kooky psychology, I think this is a fairly interesting one which finally puts a spotlight on Scotty. TOS is better with investigation scenes than courtroom scenes, so it pays well that we spend most of the time on the forensic side. And yes, it's somewhat outrageous that there's a spirit who possessed men, but I think the episode makes the concept plausible by presenting the being as more of a material entity that can be explained by science. Trek will go on to do other shows with beings like this, and at least in this show there seems to be an interesting payoff between the actions of the being and the violent thoughts of men.

John Fledler is great as the wormy wolf in the fold (he played a similar role in 12 Angry Men, another legal episode) and effectively plays up the naysaying administrator. Kelley was also brilliant in this one; I love the way he already knows about the nightclubs Kirk brings up. You have to wonder what kind of life Bones led before his career on the Enterprise.

I'll go with 3 as well.

Just seeing Scotty leering at the exotic dancer in the opening is worth watching this episode. I honestly wasn't surprised she was dead within five minutes of going off into the fog

Bones prescribes sex for Scotty and tranquilizers for the crew. I’ll throw in a couple stars just for that!

But seriously, if I wanted to watch a bunch of guys in a room asking Siri who murdered a bar dancer, I’d watch, er - the point is, I don’t want to watch that!

I give the sucker 2 1/2 stars (I threw in half more for the nice dance at the top of the hour), and let’s all head to this great place I know where the women are just so… you’ll see!

https://youtu.be/fvhV245SLgs

@Mal

Yeah, I don't think you can be too hard on this episode. It's the original Among Us.

“S/he’s dead, Jim “

Ludicrous on so many levels... yet fun to watch. I wouldn’t give 3 stars, maybe 2.5?

Points of question:

1. All the people are human not aliens- yet hundreds if not thousands of years have passed on Orgelius. Yet it’s only the 23rd Century.

2. A sedative that acts as a narcotic? LOL

3. Crew members of a starship are employed mainly to walk the corridors? (Continuity error: they’re seen walking with aimless happy grins BEFORE the sedative is given)

4. Scott is sent to a basement room with an attractive lieutenant after being accused of misogynistic murder?

5. Hengist was an obvious choice of villain early on.

Oh well. Trek benefits from non-Trek episodes now and again. And the belly dance was good to watch.

Yes, 3 stars--good Trek entertainment. I don't get the silly comments about sexism. But a few quibbles, like it seemed there was hardly enough time for Sybo to be killed when the flame went out. And you would think that after she was killed, her husband Jaris would appear to be emotionally affected, but he didn't appear that way. Other than that, the episode had a good sci-fi premise and some good "courtroom" drama. I liked the psychedelic 60s light show on the computer monitor when the entity gets into the ship's computer. And fun dialogue, like McCoy saying "I've got some stuff that would tranquilize an active volcano", and Sulu under the influence.

Terrible first half of this episode gives way to gripping ending. A spooky concept of mass murderer as an alien that moved out into space with man.

As a 38 year old TNG kid, I always have a great laugh at TOS episodes.

Even considering the time it's always an over the top parody of itself.

People who say it doesn't age well...I wonder what the limits are to a person's sense of humor if they can't appreciate irony or unintentional sarcasm on the unique levels Star Trek delivers it.

So bad it's good is an understatement. Every time Uhura's eyes do a subtle twitch in genuine disgust with some of the awful stuff they say directly to her (unabashedly) or two female cast members quickly look at each other in disillusioned solidarity. Those are the gems of the series. Where you see them embarassed for each-other, the script was so bad.

"Hahaha, silly women trying to do man stuff with all that weakness and nurturing." You can't make gold like this up, it takes a team of writers that smoke a pack a day in a beige room and use typewriters. I think I heard "male and female are universal constants," in three different episodes this season. Not that I subscribe to modern definitions but it's a big universe and we have examples on our own planet.

TNG is much worse. They pretend to be so much more enlightened because of advancements in makeup and spandex technology. Riker's worse than Kirk. Bold male libido didn't age well, pardon the double entendre.

This episode is ST at it's "best" if you can stomach all the fast assumptions and poor reasoning they try to just usher past the audience so Kirk can hurry and murder Piglet with one punch.

This episode can bring me to tears for so many reasons. I mean, obviously it's Jack the Ripper and he's somewhere in this room.

"Fascinating, captain. It was your plan all along."

And Scotty was totally gonna kill those girls anyway.

What is evil? I have always wondered if evil actually exists, or our primitive minds are just evolutionarily mis-adapted to imagine it.

This episode theorizes that "true evil" is an entity that feeds off of fear. If we leave the technobabble aside, the episode may be theorizing the existence of such persons, persons who psychologically (not physiologically) draw sustenance from fear, terror. If such persons exist, it would be a possible explanation of the phenomenon of serial murders, which the episode directly links to.

Sometimes, we forget to recognize that the core theory the episode is propounding may have been way ahead of its time when the episode was first aired.

I am shocked at the praise for this episode. The leaps of logic are ridiculous: they assume Scotty is innocent, so therefore Jack the Ripper must have been an alien life form that feeds on the emotion of terror. And all of the questioning and theorizing by the computer goes on for far too long.

This was weak and hokey. The sexual psychology was just stupid. I don't get bothered by the sexism of the late 60s - but this one pushed my tolerance.

Kara's dance was impressive. Too bad it was the same music as in The Cage.

The prefect actor was very good until he failed to react to the murder of his wife.

1.5 stars.

1--Tranquilized Sulu seemed more like the public latter-day George Takei than any other Sulu.

2-- Am I the only one bothered by sci-fi lke Star Trek frequently attributing evil to supernaturalish energy-demons rather than genetics, social conditions, or individual character. (cf.The Day of the Dove demon.)?

3---All the folks prattling on about sexism n the episode (justfied, conceded), it's getting like criticising an Agatha Christie mystery because of the classism and imperialism in the background.

I am a huge fan of the CBS show Criminal Minds. In fact, its recent reboot season is threatening my family’s Star Trek viewing opportunities. The series is intense, violent, relentless and exists in a particularly mean and skewed alternate universe where there are enough unspeakably evil and psychopathic serial killers for the team to have a different job *every single week.* Basically, a rollicking good time! What I like best about that show is its psychological examinations of evil. It’s willing to fearlessly get down into the literal mud of humanity and analyze it. You think the salt sucker from “The Man Trap” was bad? How about a demented, laughing nitwit who uses chemicals to burn away people’s eyes or their nostrils in order to take away their senses? For Criminal Minds, that’s Tuesday. For Star Trek, an episode like “Wolf in the Fold” is at best an outlier, something completely unusual. There are no space battles, shuttle missions or superbeings to be found here (okay, maybe still a superbeing). And while it’s somewhat clumsily written, it at least goes for broke in terms of creating an inspired adversary with solid science-fiction trappings. Most mystery shows are rooted in frank reality. Criminal Minds is all about what’s in front of us. “Wolf In the Fold” earnestly asks us to look beyond that.

This episode has a foundation with quite the pedigree. As @Trek fan pointed out, Robert Bloch (who’s penned a few other episodes before this one) is the writer of Psycho, so it makes sense that he’s written, essentially, a Star Trek slasher flick. He was also part of H.P. Lovecraft’s inner circle (and you can clearly see a lot of Lovecraftian atmosphere pop up here in there in “Wolf in the Fold”), so esoteric horror is clearly his thing. He conceived of a time travel story involving Jack the Ripper and the Marquis de Sade (yikes). In 1984 he penned the Victorian novel Night of the Ripper, which detailed a fictionalized attempt to nail--Jack the Ripper. Clearly, “Wolf in the Fold,” in which none other than Jack the Ripper is perceived as an evil near-immortal alien entity, might just be a kowtow to Bloch's Ripper fetish.

The thing is, I firmly believe that science fiction and horror are natural bedfellows. They mesh well together, as both have fantasy roots and sensibilities. One of my guilty pleasures is the Paul Anderson movie Event Horizon. If we ever do make it to deep space, I tend to think that what we’ll find there will have more in common with that film, The X-Files, the Alien franchise, the Predator franchise, Independence Day, Signs and Arrival than Star Trek or The Orville.

So it’s high time Star Trek tried something darker like “Wolf in the Fold.” What I like best about this episode is that it does its best to resemble a straightforward and typical whodunit detective story, but uses a totally otherworldly, alien unsub to turn that trope completely on its head. Here we have Administrator Barney Fife approaching this case with all the logic one can muster. Scotty was caught red-handed with the murder weapon in front of the dead woman’s corpse. Cut and dry. Yet, we know Scotty’s not a murderer (he’s a main character in a 1960's show) and so Kirk, standing in for us, is therefore willing to entertain any other possible explanation even if it strains credulity (A line so bad it’s good: “Captain, you’re behaving very much like a man who is desperately trying anything to save his friend.”). I love the conceit here--it's not that Scotty is lying to cover his guilt when he says he blacked out, it's that an alien influence is truly causing him to do so! Fife, it turns out, is the alien killer that has been framing Scotty. (Why doesn’t he throw Scotty in jail right after the first kill? It’s deliciously simple--he would then have to frame *someone else,* meaning everyone would suspect that something really screwy is going on. Keeping Scotty free makes his framing job consistent, and that much more believable).

Fife insists on appealing to ironclad logic throughout the investigation, and continuously does so, to keep the deflection up. It’s scary to think about -- in our world, in 2022, if an alien like this really existed and was framing people for its murders, the framing ruse would work perfectly. But because Kirk has seen everything, including psychopathic gas clouds and salt vampires, he’s perfectly willing to *see logic as the enemy,* treating Fife like a schmendrick the whole time. His utter resolve to prove that everyone’s eyes are lying to them is Star Trek just being a science fiction show, getting us to open our minds to things that exist beyond what we can program, categorize and easily reference.

Unfortunately, “Wolf In the Fold” does have a ridiculous kooky side that’s all too pervasive. For one thing, the idiotic smiles are back, @Peter G! (Of all the Star Trek tropes, I’m starting to think that this one is my favorite.) This time, McCoy’s laughing gas is able to literally repel fear. Also, the Magic Lie Detector from “Mudd’s Women” makes its ignominious return, and now they also introduce the vaunted Psycho Tricorder. While this lazy MacGuffin works for this plot, I can’t wait for a future episode where I can take the opportunity to say in my write-up, “Wait, why didn’t they use the psycho tricorder on that guy?” Or, “Gee, this problem would never have been possible if they only used the psycho tricorder.” I’m willing to bet that this is the one and only case that Star Trek will play this card, because even for science fiction, it’s patently absurd. My guess is, the writers hoped everyone would forget about psycho tricorders after this episode. “Psycho tricorder.” Fuck me! Even the name is goofy.

When Jack the Ripper’s jig is finally up, it leaves Fife’s body and invades the computer, taunting the crew by listing a whole bunch of its ideas on how it can use the ship to kill them, instead of just killing them. [Oh right, it needs to create terror in people first before it murders. My bad.] It’s now a race against the clock to get the damn thing out of the Enterprise’s system, with scenes that have Spock ordering the computer to compute pi, the crew cheesily succumbing to McCoy’s laughing gas trick, and Jack the Ripper spewing full-on cray-cray murderous nonsense (“You’ll die, die, die! Everybody will die!”) as Kirk carries it to the transporter and beams it into space. “Wolf in the Fold” basically degenerates into a parody of itself here. [My son, who loves to make fun of TV and movie scenes that he finds silly and absurd, promptly got up from the couch at the end of the episode and grabbed his brother, wailing, “Die! Die! Everybody die!” To which his brother, adept in wrestling techniques, promptly got him up over his shoulder (just like Kirk did) and carried him out to the kitchen as he continued on with, “Die! Die!! Kill you all!” And I’m hollering after them, “Uh-oh, your brother’s about to beam you into oblivion.” I have a silly family.]

There's one last thing I need to address, as it’s something many commenters above have mentioned. Yes, the sexism. The sexism. The smexism. The schmuckism. Yawn.

1.) @Matthew H, @William B, @Trek fan and @Rahul all have it exactly right. A show like “Wolf in the Fold,” most pulp mystery novels, or any given episode of Criminal Minds, have a certain trope of victimized women buried right into their DNA. Particularly for Robert Bloch, who wrote Psycho for God’s sake, the idea here is more about illuminating the psychology of the misogynistic cretinous villains than it is about catering to 1960’s demographics.

2.) On that point, is it really worth complaining about how women were depicted or objectified in the media almost sixty years ago? It’s 2022 now, folks. Does it really offend you that much? I doubt it. Those that are so quick to insist that this bothers them are probably lying to us, if not to themselves. They don’t care about sexism, really. What they care about is advertising their willingness to jump onto the virtue-signaling bandwagon for karma points.

“Wolf in the Fold” may have some truly out-there sensibilities and ideas, but I at least respect it for putting a science fiction twist on the forensic procedural drama. If you’re looking for a realistic, logically accurate, typical murder mystery based in cold hard reality, there’s always Criminal Minds.


Speak Freely:
Scotty (watching the belly dancer) -- “Captain, I think I’m going to like Argelius.”


My Grade: C+

@ PCP.

Re: sexism, I think one difficult thing is that 'sexism' is an abstraction, and as such means that any talk about it is analysis rather than observation. And once we're into analysis things get tricky because we enter the post-modern black hole of context-within-context-containing subtext-etc that can go on forever. You can posit a theory, add one factor, and then it reverses the theory like a dipole moment. And what postmodern theory should teach us by now is that you can always add another factor. Let me give an example.

You have an episode like this, showing women subject to the power of men, in this case being both idolized and then killed. They are idolized on a physical basis, but in the case of Sybo for example also for their special gifts. And it is perhaps these traits that also attract the desire to kill them in the mind of the killer; maybe it's more than just the fact that Jack T.R. thinks they will get more scared than men will. Anyhow, the women are killed one by one. On its face this is just a tired trope. But let's do analysis and assume there's more to say about it than that. Level 1 analysis: since women being killed is a trope, this is an example of sexism, since once again women are portrayed as scared and weak. Level 2 analysis: maybe the show knows that it's a trope, and it's trying to show the trope for what it is. Therefore - not sexism, since it's making a comment on sexist portrayals in media. Level 3 analysis: But since it is employing sexist tropes in talking about sexism, it is once again sexist. And the charge flipping could go on from here. Level 4 could include the fact that the Ripper isn't human, therefore cannot be sexist as we know it (human male vs human female), and this is just as story about an alien. And so on. The same problems of analysis I've just illustrated are also present in modern analysis of actual society, but I won't go into that here. We can look at Robert Bloch, or even Alfred Hitchcock for that matter, and ask whether they were sexist for having a penchant for killing off attractive women. To me that's a rabbit hole. I'm not even sure if either was particularly interested in actual human psychology. It's more like demonology or something, like a look at distortions so hideous yet having a beauty to them. Do we not find the criminals in Strangers on a Train and Dial M for Murder fascinating and engaging? Or Tom Ripley in Highsmith's books? I am not sure it's the human qualities they posses that make them interesting, but perhaps the inhuman qualities, the things that do not resemble us as we know it.

Just a small mention about Criminal Minds, I did watch a season of it, and I hesitate to make a final pronouncement but I verge toward Patinkin's view that there is a difference between an examination of evil and wallowing in it. The reason he quit may be the same reason I stopped watching.

Btw I forgot to mention this, but I found your post interesting. I should have written that first.

@ Peter G

Great, great points, and well stated. I tend to accept genre staples as a given, so when I'm presented with 1960's-70's Hitchcock, or Lovecraft, or in this case, Robert Bloch, I expect certain "victims," if you will, to simply be a part of the landscape. I admire your attempts to analyze the specific intentions of the writer here, and it indeed leads to some thoughtful questions while also pointing out the rabbit hole you so aptly describe. My guess is, Bloch was trying to say something about how most mysteries and horror stories have a perpetrator with a significantly imbalanced, skewed outlook on women as part of their psychopathy (McCoy remarks in an early scene that he suspects Scotty's concussion may be causing him to have a resentment towards women because it was a woman that caused the accident that inured him). It's out of proportion and wrong. For that, you simply need to put "the sexism" on display to make the point work. But I'm not sure. It does seem to me that Star Trek highlighted our faults to make us think critically about them more than it wallowed in them, so I tend to stick up for it a bit.

You know, I could see Mandy Patinkin's point and I respected him for it. It's clear, especially in the second season of Criminal Minds, that he was shading his performance of Gideon to reflect his own displeasure and horror about the stories crossing his desk every day. Most actors would simply internalize it, shut up and keep collecting the paycheck, but he didn't. The writers appeared to be bitter and unkind to his legacy over the next couple of years, having the other characters referring to Gideon as a basket case who ultimately succumbed to his weaknesses, blaming everybody around him (though I have to give them credit--Gideon finally got a decent resolution to his story in a much later episode called "Nelson's Sparrow," which was one of those rare Criminal Minds episodes that was so moving it made me cry). In the show's defense, I think Patinkin was slightly oversimplifying things, as there were plenty of male victims and various other types of stories even during his tenure. And while Criminal Minds is designed to be horrifying (lots of escapist entertainment is), I think that the reason it's endured for over fifteen years is that, beyond its incredible cast that created a bunch of characters you'd actually want to hang out with every week, it always finds ways to hold the viewers' hands through the misery. The classic "Mosley Lane" (Season 5), for example, is sickening and ruthless, but it was one of the most adult meditations about "hope" that I've ever witnessed and was deeply moving at the end. The show is worth a second look if you're interested.

@ Peter G:
"Btw I forgot to mention this, but I found your post interesting. I should have written that first."

And likewise, I forgot to thank you for this offering in my own reply.

I always enjoy your fascinating insights.

@ PCP,

Have you watched Hannibal (the series)? That is an example of a show too depraved for me to entertain re-watching it, to the extent that its actual positive qualities are irrelevant. I can't say I remember Criminal Minds being as horrific as Hannibal was, but perhaps you can offer a comparison. If it's anything as 'ruthless' as that then I really couldn't possibly watch it. Those days for me are over. I used to think that facing down evil things could be important and educational, but I have changed my mind.

@ Peter G

I've not seen the Hannibal series yet, but I've always been meaning to get to it. I for one would be fascinated to see what Mads Mikkelsen does with that role. I'll keep you apprised.

I can say this though -- Criminal Minds is often tame compared to a lot of these true crime docuseries and newer horror offerings coming out lately. It's a product of the times I suppose, but the strategy of most execs and check-signers now seems to be, "If it doesn't shock them, they won't watch." I, at least, hope for a well-told story with my shock value.

"On that point, is it really worth complaining about how women were depicted or objectified in the media almost sixty years ago? It’s 2022 now, folks. Does it really offend you that much? I doubt it. Those that are so quick to insist that this bothers them are probably lying to us, if not to themselves. They don’t care about sexism, really. What they care about is advertising their willingness to jump onto the virtue-signaling bandwagon for karma points."
Always nice to hear this argument from our right wing citizens. You see, if people have a problem with a media product then they are not serious, no. They are virtue signalling.
A guy like right wing star Andrew Tate just got arrested for sex trafficking dozens of women. He had a following of 4 million on twitter and gave courses on how to groom young women. That was a guy who through punishment and coercion wanted to control women. Then there is the abortion ban where now millions of women's bodies are controlled by the state also thanks to the right.

So why is it so often that it's beautiful women who are murdered. These women are not just beautiful, they made an effort to look good. That's connected to the old question after a rape/murder. Did she deserve it somehow? Was she a slut?

What is murder? The ultimate form of control. So yeah all these things like Tate or abortion or good looking women murder being a trope are about the desire of heterosexual men to control women.
In other words sexism is all around us still. That is why people are offended by certain cultural tropes. Is a black American virtue signalling if he/she sees a racist movie from 80 years ago and is offended by that? The problem is still exists like sexism and people like PCP are helping by saying that people who are offended by sexism are insincere or in other words lying.

So yeah PCP sign yourself a sexism free pass if you must but keep in mind that all the right wing people constantly screaming virtue signalling, virtue signalling, virtue signalling sound brainwashed. Well, I'm looking forward to the next right wing moral panic.

@ Booming,

Your equation of murder with a sex trafficking cult and with the abortion topic is logically unworkable. I'm not sure it should be necessary to connect all bad things and to call them all sexisms; that sort of reductionism makes it hard to discuss the sexism that actually does exist. It's like trying to have a discussion about social nuance and then having WHAT ABOUT JACK THE RIPPER thrown in. These types of hyperbole just explode the capacity for clear thinking.

Sexism is a broad concept that involves many things.

"to connect all bad things and to call them all sexisms; that sort of reductionism makes it hard to discuss the sexism that actually does exist."
Actually does exist?!
Sex trafficking, murder by serial killers of women (almost all serial killers are men and most victims are women) and the abortion ban are all about sexism.

@Booming, I have the perfect solution for you! Don't bother trying to cancel / erase all scenes of murder from television shows and movies. Fret not about "racism," "sexism," or any of the other "isms" perpetuated by the males of the species (especially the white males, amirite?), really. Sex crimes will be a thing of the past. All you have to do is get together with like-minded folks and breed out all men from the species. India, after all, has figured out how to grow test-tube babies that completely bypass the necessity of sperm. Ergo, males are useless now. Problem solved!

@Pig Being triggered into automatically equating "criticisms of sexism" with "a desire to eradicate all men" is to unconsciously promulgate the sexist belief that all men are sexist.

@Karl
The cognitive dissonance of right wing guys is glaring. Constantly vilifying and complaining about women or minorities who point out actual discrimination on one hand. What they call VIRTUE SIGNALLING. But when somebody points out some general facts about heterosexual men then they immediately jump to antisemitic conspiracy theories about white genocide. Here are some facts. Heterosexual men commit the most murders, the most crime in general, they do the least amount of voluntary work and are the most intolerant. But instead of thinking about making some changes, these right wing guys rather focus on vilifying LGBT people and watch two man in underpants fight in a metal cage who give each other brain damage in the process. I saw a segment on Tucker Carlson (he also had Andrew Tate on his show) in which a guest called all LGBT people evil and that they want to groom kids. Carlson agreed. It is really no wonder that violence towards LGBT people is at an all time high in the US.

One would wish that these right wing guys reflect on it but I rarely see it happen. It actually seems to get worse. On a positive note, the rest aka the majority of heterosexual men seems to finally make some changes that will benefit them immensely when it comes to emotional bonds with their kids and general emotional well-being to name a few areas.

Agree with you to a point. But... Not all are bad. Some even play harpsichords!
https://youtu.be/-W4LvJ2tdvk

Happy New Year!

@Booming what are you hoping to accomplish with such a post? And do you talk that way to men you know in real life?

@Sigh2000
Ok, maybe there are some good ones. ;)

@Jason
What do you mean? Just the truth without the sugar coating. When people like Matt, Rahul or PCP vilify LGBTQ people based on paranoia or blabber on about virtue signalling then I find it useful to mention that heterosexual men are worst in any metric I can think of. Just a little reality check.

Whoa. Eliminate all evil by getting rid of men? To say it with one of Spock’s phrases: “That thought has occasionally crossed my mind…”

Joking aside, this is one of the very few episodes I’ve decided not to watch again. Firstly because it is, as others have described, the TOS version of a slasher movie, and that genre is really not my idea of entertainment… so that’s a personal thing. But secondly, the episode’s starting point is really, really dumb. So Scotty got injured in an accident caused by a woman, and that’s why he suddenly resents the female half of humanity? I totally understand why viewers might find this offensive, but beyond that, it’s mind-numbingly stupid. Just replace “woman” by any other random category, and you’ll see why… what if Scotty’s injury was caused by someone with blue eyes? Or someone who likes football? Would anyone think it was remotely reasonable to blame all people with blue eyes or football fans all over the world? I know that Scotty isn’t supposed to be reasonable, due to the blow to his head, but even McCoy and Kirk are talking about his condition as if it were a medical fact, a well-known and consequential symptom – Kirk even calls their pub-crawling a “therapeutic shore leave” IN HIS CAPTAIN’S LOG! I guess I could live with this if it were played for fun… if at some moment it became obvious that Kirk and McCoy invented their “treatment” of getting Scotty involved with a girl in order to have an excuse for going down to the Pleasure Planet themselves… but everyone seemed to be completely serious about it. And that’s why for me, the episode didn’t work at all… being deadly serious about something so utterly silly.

The 'hedonistic' Society is an obvious reference to the Las Vegas of Space.

While I don’t think this is the worst episode of TOS, it might be my least favorite. I’m not a big fan of horror as a genre to begin with, and I really hate the “hot babe gets murdered” trope that tends to permeate both horror stuff and crime shows in general, so this just isn’t my cup of tea. But mostly I dislike this episode because our normally intelligent characters act really dumb for the needs of the plot.

First we have the whole “Scotty got injured in an accident caused by a female crew member, therefore he resents all women now” thing, which is a dopey thing to think under any circumstance but is also just a hamfisted setup to try to give Scotty a possible motive for stabbing a random girl he just met. In Scotty’s defense, he never says or does anything to imply that any of this is true. He seems like he’s just having a great time at the 19th-century-Bulgarian-peasant-themed strip club, goofily unaware that his boss and his doctor both think he’s a fucking idiot. It’s Kirk and bones who need to work on their reasoning skills, I mean Scotty isn’t a developmentally challenged five year old, he can make the distinction between an individual and a demographic.

Next, we have a series of bad decisions such as not keeping Scotty under guard. I know Kirk trusts him and doesn’t believe he committed murder, but you don’t just guard a person in this situation because they’re a suspect, you also guard them because they themselves might be in danger. Revenge seekers or overly aggressive local law enforcement could decide Scotty’s guilt and take a shot at him. Also, unless Scotty brought a dagger with him from the ship, it seems clear that someone else planted the murder weapon on him, implying that someone might have it in for him, so maybe watch his back. Maybe don’t send him into dank, secluded basement rooms with sexy, unarmed crew ladies. Any episode that has our crew think and act stupider than they ever should/would is not an episode for me.

I’m sure there we’re supposed to be insights about the nature of evil and stuff that maybe I missed because I was kinda freaked out by piglet’s voice coming out of that little guy, but something about this episode just didn’t do it for me.

1.5/4 evil foiling pi calculations

This has never been a favorite episode of mine. Just a number of little irritants. Each individual speck in the cloud of itching powder may have been nearly microscopic, but each of them rubbed another nerve the wrong way.

I could see the sexism issues from the time I was a kid (and yes, there are some): Scott's misogyny based on the person who caused his injury having happened to be a woman rather than a man. The doctor's acceptance of this illogical leap as perfectly natural. The prescribed "remedy" for that being a trip to a red light district (as if one way of objectifying women were the cure for another). The "more easily terrified" claim about the female of apparently every intelligent species galaxy-wide, treated as just a fact, with the only lone screen time for the female stenographer being a reaction shot in which she apparently accepts this "fact" without the slightest doubt, discomfort or surprise.

But also some other things that just didn't seem to go together: Spock (he of the mind meld and the ability to sense a shipload of Vulcans dying all at once) being the one to denigrate the seance-like psychic session as unreliable superstition, but also being the one to calmly expound on the idea of a terror-eating witness-hypnotizing being as a perfectly reasonable scientific and historical possibility. At the opposite pole from the woo-woo, the shipboard lie detecting and memory scanning technology that would basically eliminate all mysteries, if it were consistently instead of just conveniently present. The Rigelian cop being familiar with a serial murder case from 19th-century London (well, of course, because it was him, but no one else thinks that's odd even before they know that). Said Rigelian cop being thrown out an airlock without trial even though it's clear that he was possessed by a being that hopped from person to computer to person rather than actually being the interstellar serial killer.

By the time the episode was reaching what was supposed to be its climax, I had just one nerve left, and that disembodied voice wildly screaming about murder to a bunch of drugged-up people was getting on it.

@Trish
“Said Rigelian cop being thrown out an airlock without trial even though it's clear that he was possessed by a being that hopped from person to computer to person rather than actually being the interstellar serial killer.”

When the killer entity first left Hengist’s body and went into the Enterprises’s computer, McCoy examined the body and said the famous “He’s dead Jim”. That implies Hengist had been dead for quite some time and the entity was just using him as some kind of puppet. In that case, all Kirk did was dispose of a corpse containing the entity.

As for the rest of the episode, while I really liked some of the ideas (an energy being serial killer feeding on fear throughout the centuries) and some of the execution (the trial scene on the Enterprise, mostly), the blatant sexism and misogyny in the episode is just too much. I can normally overlook some of the casual sexism of TOS as a product of when it was made (and because the rest of the show is so well done and forward thinking), but this time I just can’t. Still some good ideas in there though.

2 out of 4 stars

@Jeremy A

Yeah, I did think about the "He's dead, Jim" implications, but it seemed just as possible to me that the serial killer being might have been dragging the unfortunate detective's consciousness around.

I remember also wondering why they seemed convinced that killing the body it had returned to would kill it, given its demonstrated ability to hop around.

I might have cut slack for one or two things that didn't make complete sense, but by that point in this particular episode, I'm never really in the mood to give the writer the benefit of the doubt.

I'll do you people one better: "Sexism" doesn't exist, and all the views that you would consider "sexist" are in fact correct generalizations about women.

Oh, and this episode was incredibly stupid. D+.

I'll do you one better: why is sexism.

Okay, that made me laugh.

The one thing I found ridiculous about this episode is how everyone totally ignored the fact that Scotty had no motive whatsoever to kill all the women. It's also insane how they would be willing to let him get tortured to death regardless of what really happened. People shouldn't have to respect every single culture especially if the morals come from the dark ages. The concept that such a planet is "peaceful" is ludicrous. If I was a captain I wouldn't let the crew beam down to such a planet. Since when would a pre-warp society be selected as a spaceport? I don't get the whole idea of a creature feeding off an emotion. It's feeding off of the experience itself(which would make it supernatural) or just feeding off of the brain wave pattern for some reason? How does an EM field just move through space on its own free will? This aspect seems just as nonsensical as the Lights of Zetar episode.

While this episode is indeed extremely sexist, it's far from being the worst TOS episode in that regard.
My problem with the episode is with how BORING it is. Court Martial at least had an interesting plot and had world building that would go on to later inform Federation legal proceedings. "Wolf" on the other hand is built on a lame premise and in turn has so little steam, it falls flat immediately.
And how creepy does Scotty look with that dead eyed grin of his? When he smiled at the girl during the "erotic" dance scene, I almost believed he WAS a deranged killer. LOL.

If this thread has taught us anything at all, it’s that it’s best not to over think this episode, folks - just don’t go down that rabbit hole. It’s the only true horror episode in TOS (it terrified me as a child) and it’s a lot of fun. A solid 3 stars from me.

Having said that, I do have to over think just one thing. :)
Knowing that someone has the ability to kill women in the blink of an eye when the lights go out - and pretty much knowing that the murderer is among them, they have a woman in the courtroom??? In a RED SHIRT no less? Anybody else screaming at their TV for her to get out of there? The call is coming from inside the courtroom! LOL….