What Are Little Girls Made Of?
- FIRST SHOWN (US)
- 20 October 1966
- ON
- NBC
- STARDATE
- 2712.4
- DIRECTED BY
- James Goldstone
- PRODUCTION NO.
- 10
WRITTEN BYWritten by Robert Bloch
Nurse Chapel's search for her missing fiancé, the brilliant Dr Roger Korby, leads Kirk deep beneath an icy world, where Korby has found something extraordinary.
Red alert: the full plot, ending included. Haven't watched yet?REVEAL SYNOPSIS
The Enterprise reaches the frozen planet Exo III, searching for the missing exobiologist Dr Roger Korby, fiancé of Nurse Christine Chapel. Korby is alive in caverns below the surface, but two of Kirk's security men are soon killed by Ruk, a towering android left by the planet's vanished civilisation. Using its technology, Korby has learned to build lifelike androids, including the beautiful Andrea, and he plans to spread them across the galaxy. He creates an android copy of Kirk and sends it to the ship, but Spock sees through it. Below, Kirk works to unsettle the machines, reminding Ruk of how his makers died and confusing Andrea with a kiss. When Ruk turns on Korby, Korby destroys him. In a struggle Korby's hand is torn open, revealing that he too is an android, his dying mind moved into a machine. He embraces Andrea and fires, ending them both. Chapel chooses to stay aboard the Enterprise.
- 01Roddenberry rewrote Robert Bloch's script during filming, with new pages arriving on set. The shoot ran two days over and director James Goldstone was not hired again.
- 02Bloch nods to H.P. Lovecraft, with references to “the Old Ones” and the trapezoid-shaped cave doorways.
- 03Before the series aired, Roddenberry previewed Star Trek at the 1966 World Science Fiction Convention in Cleveland, where a model wore Andrea's costume.