Assignment: Earth

"Assignment: Earth" is a second season episode of the original American science fiction television series Star Trek. It was first broadcast on March 29, 1968, as the last original episode in the second season, and repeated on August 9, 1968. It is episode #55, production #55, written by Art Wallace, based on a story by Wallace and Gene Roddenberry, and directed by Marc Daniels. Engaged in "historical research", the Enterprise time travels to 1968 Earth where they encounter an interstellar agent who is planning to intervene in 20th Century events with motives uncertain to Kirk and Spock. This episode served double duty, not only as an episode of Star Trek, but as a backdoor pilot for a proposed spin-off television series, that would have been produced by Roddenberry, under the same name, Assignment: Earth. The guest performers in this episode, Robert Lansing as Gary Seven and Teri Garr as Roberta Lincoln, would have continued in the new series had it been commissioned. ==Plot==Using a controlled gravitational slingshot maneuver around the sun, the Federation starship USS Enterprise time travels to 1968 Earth for historical research. The ship orbits Earth using its deflector shields to avoid detection. Suddenly, the Enterprise intercepts a highly powerful transporter beam from one thousand light-years away. A man dressed in a 20th-century Earth business suit materializes on the transporter pad carrying a black cat named Isis. He introduces himself to Captain Kirk (William Shatner) as Gary Seven (Robert Lansing).Gary Seven,asked why transport beam was interupted.Captain Kirk tell,that are members the United Star Ship Enterprise,on a peaceful mission,to observe Earth history.Mister Seven believes,that impossible,since Earth or anyone has a star of this type,at this time period,until he notices humans working Vulcans and realizes,the Enterprise and crew at from the future. Seven tells Captain Kirk that he is a man taken from Earth over 6,000 years ago to an advanced world and there trained to intercede to help Earth survive. Seven refuses to reveal his home planet and warns Kirk that history will be changed and Earth destroyed if he is not released immediately. Kirk demands more proof, but Mister Gary Seven refuses.He tells the captain of the Enterprise,that the planet is hidden-even unknown to the Federation,in their own time.Jim Kirk orders him taken into custody but Seven evades attempts to subdue him, even shrugging off First Officer Spock's (Leonard Nimoy) Vulcan nerve pinch. When Seven tries to beam himself down,Jim Kirk stuns him with a phaser. Kirk has Gary Seven taken to the brig and asks Spock to search the history database for any critical events that will soon occur. Spock finds that the United States will launch a nuclear weapons platform from McKinley Rocket Base. The launch is scheduled in a few hours and Spock speculates that it may be the reason for Seven's visit,as the black cat jumps off Mister Spock's lap and exites the Enterprise Breifing Room,sliding doors. Meanwhile, Seven awakens and finds himself in a holding cell. He removes an advanced "servo" weapon from his pocket, disables the force field and stuns the guard.Isis rejoins Mister Seven,after he places the Security Guard on the deck floor. His escape is detected, but not before Seven and Isis make their way to the transporter room, stun the technicians and beam down to New York City.Gary Seven appears inside a grey bank vault,whose door automatically opens up,as he appears out of a swirle of blue smoke.The safe appears to a more advanced time space transport,that the Enterprise possesse,hidden behind a wall counter,that splits in two,at Mister Sevens his office in Apartment 12B at 811 East 68th Street in New York City. Kirk and Spock, camouflaged in local attire, follow them using the sensors aboard the Enterprise,monitored by Mister Scott. Seven enters his office and activates a sophisticated computer.Here he makes use of his Beta 5 computer,with circular veiw screen,hidden behind a sliding book case,rolves into the wall which speaks with a female voice and has broad, though limited, powers.Mister Seven,after some difficulty to overide the computers stubborness,the Beta 5 which reports that agents "201" and "347" have not been heard from in three days. With only an hour until the launch, Seven decides to complete their mission. A young woman arrives and Seven mistakes her for agent 201, so he asks her to dictate a report to an electric typewriter with speech recognition. This is technology well past the state of the art in 1968, so she becomes very flustered. Seven finally asks the computer to identify her: she is Roberta Lincoln (Teri Garr, credited as Terri Garr), a secretary employed by the missing agents. Seven, realizing his blunder, appeals to her patriotism and tells Roberta he is a secret government agent and that she should remain quiet about what she has seen. An intelligent woman, she realizes something very odd is happening. The Beta-5 computer then informs Seven that agents 201 and 347 have died in a car accident. Kirk and Spock track Seven to the office. Gary Seven has Roberta Lincoln stall them while he enters a powerful transporter and dematerializes. As Kirk opens the door with a phaser, Roberta manages to call the police. The police arrive and the two officers are inadvertently beamed to the Enterprise along with Kirk and Spock. The two confused officers are quickly beamed back down. Seven and Isis materialize,out of the blue smoke at McKinley Rocket Base,behind two sliding doors of hanger like building. With fake identification, Seven easily stuns a guard and stows away in the launch director's car as he makes a final check of the pad. Riding the elevator to the top of the gantry Seven, carrying Isis, climbs an access arm to the side of the rocket. He opens a panel and begins to rewire the circuits within. On the Enterprise, Kirk, Spock and Chief Engineer Scott (James Doohan) try to locate Gary Seven. Meanwhile, a curious Roberta explores the office and discovers the transporter. On the Enterprise, Mr. Scott locates Mister Seven on the rocket gantry and tries to beam him up.Seven realizes,whats happenning stops he is doing and grabs Isis in the process. But Roberta Lincoln, randomly operating the office transporter controls, intercepts the beam-up and Seven materializes instead in the office. Briefly furious at being beamed away before he was done, the computer tells him he can still take manual control of the rocket after launch. Kirk and Spock beam down to McKinley Rocket Base, are quickly captured and the missile is launched shortly thereafter. In the office, Mister Seven takes control of the missile, arming its warhead and targeting it to the heart of the Euro-Asian continent. McKinley Base controllers frantically try to destroy the missile without success. Every major power on the planet goes on alert, ordering retaliatory strikes as soon as the missile warhead explodes. Roberta, extremely perturbed by Seven's actions, tries to call the police. Seven severs the phone line with his servo pen. He then turns back to the computer, allowing Roberta to hit him on the head with a cigar box and seize the servo. Roberta threatens Seven with it, excitedly telling him to stop whatever he is doing. Seven replies, "You've got to let me finish what I started or in six minutes, World War III begins!" Scotty beams Kirk and Spock away from base security and sends them to Seven's office. Roberta, now utterly confused, points the servo pen at Kirk. Seven manages to take it from her and hands it to Jim Kirk, adding that it was "set to kill". Spock tries unsuccessfully to destroy the missile with Gary Seven's computer. Seven pleads with Kirk to let him complete his plan to destroy the missile at a safe altitude to scare the world's leaders out of their insane arms race.Jim Kirk not sure what Gary Seven's mission is,ask his Science Officer,can dissarm the warhead in time,but says,if he had the time.Seven imforms the captain,Spock is only guessing and he can preform the task in time.Reberta Licoln tells Kirk and Spock,Gary Seven is telling the truth.Mister Spock,imforms his captain,without facts,he'll have go on human intuition. Captain Kirk decides to trust Gary Seven,having no other choise,as the Beta 5 computer counts down toward the remainning minutes of the warhead missile plummetting toward Earth. Seven retakes control of the computer and safely detonates the warhead at 104 miles altitude, only 4 miles above the safe minimum. In the epilogue,Gary Seven completes his first Earth mission,while recling in a chair to automatic typewriter,stating all went as planned,despite the interuption from the Earth ship from the future. Spock and Kirk,dressed in duty uniforms explain to Seven that the Enterprise was meant to be part of the day's events. Meanwhile, Roberta Lincoln sees that Isis has turned into a slinkily dressed woman. When she demands an explanation, Seven answers "That, Miss Lincoln, is simply my cat." When Roberta looks again, Isis is once again a cat.Gary Seven decides to keep Roberta employed as his assistant for any future missions.At the end of the episode, Captain Kirk informs Seven and Lincoln that he has checked Federation records, and found that the new team would have "many adventures."James Kirk and Mister Spock beam back to the Enterprise, much to Roberta's continuing astonishment. Gary Seven is the major character in the last episode of the second season of the original Star Trek television series, "Assignment: Earth". He is portrayed by Robert Lansing. =="Assignment: Earth"==The episode "Assignment: Earth" was a television pilot for a proposed series about Gary Seven, a human who is undertaking a mission on Earth in 1968 but who was raised on another planet. The crew of the Starship Enterprise, who have been sent back in time by the United Federation of Planets to find out what actually had occurred on Earth in 1968, accidentally intercept the transporter beam which is sending Seven to Earth. (According to Scott Dutton's sources, "Gary Seven is a man sent back in time from the 24th century, the only Earth man to ever survive the transit." ) Seeing humans and Vulcans together, Seven realizes that the starship has come from the future, while the crew suspect that Seven is also a time traveler. Mister Seven, assigned by his planet's agency as a Class One Supervisor known as Supervisor 194, has been sent to determine why two resident agents, colleagues Agent 201 and Agent 347, had stopped reporting to their superiors. When he discovers that they had been killed in a traffic collision, he takes over their immediate task of sabotaging the launch of an orbital missile platform by the United States to prevent nuclear war on Earth. Gary Seven uses the Enterprise transporter and beams back to Earth into a teleporter that looks like a safe on the outside. The transporter is hidden behind a counter located within his office in Apartment 12B at 811 East 68th Street in New York City. Here he makes use of his Beta 5 computer, which has a circular view screen and is hidden behind a book case. The computer speaks with a female voice and has broad, though limited, powers. He also revealed several technological devices he employed such as his servo, the Beta 5 computer, the transporter chamber. The desk also has a blue green cube on it and a typewriter that types whatever is spoken. His colleagues, Agents 201 and 347, had been using the cover of researching for a new encyclopedia, and had hired Miss Roberta Lincoln (Teri Garr) as their secretary. She is originally unaware of Seven's origins, but as she "possesses high I.Q.,", she realizes swiftly that he is not what he seems; she even guesses that he is alien or from the future. Seven also had a constant companion in Isis, who at first appears to be an ordinary cat, but is shown to have great intelligence and in fact turns out to be able to alter its shape to become what appears to be a human female, which Miss Lincoln discovers during one scene as Isis changes shape into a human female and then back into a cat.Though apparently Seven's pet, Isis was more : she communicated with him through a rudimentary telepathy, and understood his spoken words. She accompanied him wherever he went and watched out for him. Isis was also able to take Human form – though which of the two might be her original form remains a mystery. The one thing that never changed was the collar around her neck. Although Miss Lincoln had earlier tried to foil Seven (thinking him to be a spy), the two begin to work together. At the end of the episode, Captain Kirk informs Seven and Lincoln that he has checked Federation records, and found that the new team would have "many adventures." ==Powers and abilities==Although Seven is human, he manifests at least one non-human feature: he is insensitive to the impact of the Vulcan nerve pinch, an ability very few human or humanoid characters of the Star Trek universe ever manifested. Seven utilizes a small pen-shaped device called a servo which is a tool capable of almost anything. It functions as a communication device, a remote control to his personal transporter, a handheld weapon with both stun and kill settings and enough precision (and restraint) to cut a telephone wire from across a room, a remote manipulator to circuitry and machinery (used to deactivate the force field keeping him in the brig of the USS Enterprise), and a mechanical manipulation device (unscrewing screws, unlocking doors, etc.). ==Other references== ===Star Trek novels===In Greg Cox's "Eugenics Wars" novels, Gary Seven had numerous dealings with Khan Noonien Singh and initially hopes to train Khan as his successor. Along with his now-partner Roberta Lincoln, Seven tries to prevent World War III in a variety of ways. Seven leaves Earth in 1996, after sending Khan on the DY-100 sleeper ship SS Botany Bay. Cox also wrote a 1997 novel, Assignment: Eternity, featuring Seven. In this novel, the alien agency which Seven works for is called the "Aegis," though whether this refers to Seven's organization or the alien race is unclear. Seven is mentioned, but not seen, in the Watching_the_clock|DTI novels. ===Star Trek comics===According to several issues of the Star Trek comic books released by DC Comics in the 1990s (written by Howard Weinstein and Michael Jan Friedman), Gary Seven and Isis were sent by a force known as the Aegis, who took individuals from many worlds to selectively alter historical events. They gave their agents long lifespans, estimated to be as long as 1,000 years. Not all of these interventions went well—at least one led to an agent becoming the sole survivor of his homeworld—leading to a small rebellion against the Aegis. Several agents go so far as to injure or murder innocent beings who stand in their way. Gary Seven later went against the wishes of the Aegis when he tried to stop the Devidians from altering the timeline so that the Federation would fall to the Romulans. Seven died in an initial attempt to rescue Spock from the Devidians, but was pulled from the timeline by the Aegis prior to the moment of his death after Exana (another agent of the Aegis, who was romantically involved with Seven) stopped the Devidians with the aid of Captain Kirk and Captain Picard. In 2008, IDW Publishing launched an Assignment Earth  comic book series written and drawn by John Byrne. ==See also==* *  ==References== ==External links==* * Link to synopsis of original script    ==Guest stars==This was the only episode in which a guest star's name (in this case, Robert Lansing) was listed after the initial opening credits.This was because of the need to introduce Robert Lansing as Gary Seven-a potential star of own spinoff series. * Robert Lansing* Teri Garr, then largely unknown, went on to have a successful movie and television career.* Victoria Vetri as Isis in human form. * Barbara Babcock, who had parts in several other Star Trek episodes, had a very unusual role here: voicing over Isis the cat's "meows". She also provided the voice of Gary Seven's "Beta 5" computer. ==Spin-off series pilot==The proposed spin-off series was not picked up. Six years later, Roddenberry returned to this theme of an outside force benevolently aiding human development. The Questor Tapes was a television film and pilot for a series about an android (portrayed by Robert Foxworth) who is searching for his creator and his purpose, which turns out to be (like that of Gary Seven) to help mankind avoid disasters. Conceived by and executive produced by Gene Roddenberry, the script is credited to Roddenberry and fellow Star Trek alumnus Gene L. Coon. This series was also never produced. ==Comic book==In 2008, IDW Publishing launched an Assignment: Earth five-issue comic book series written and drawn by John Byrne. One story shows Seven and Roberta's peripheral involvement in the events of a prior episode, "Tomorrow Is Yesterday". The stories show the characters' lives from 1968 up to 1974, and includes an epilogue set in 2008 during an annual reunion between Roberta and Isis (in her humanoid guise) at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial to honor a character from that story killed in the conflict. The characters appear also in 2010 in issues #3 and #4 of Star Trek: Leonard McCoy Frontier Doctor. ==Novels==Author Greg Cox has included Gary Seven and Roberta in three of his Star Trek novels, Assignment: Eternity and the two-part novel, The Eugenics Wars: The Rise and Fall of Khan Noonien Singh. In the latter two novels Gary Seven and Roberta Lincoln go on to eventually stop Khan Noonien Singh and his fellow genetically engineered humans from taking over the planet. These novels also include many humorous references and inside jokes alluding to TOS, TNG, DS9 episodes, and the TOS movies, as well as references to some popular 1960s and 1970s television series not related to Star Trek (for example, meeting Jaime Sommers from The Bionic Woman.) At one point, Roberta even uses the alias "Veronica Neary" a reference to Teri Garr's role in the film Close Encounters of the Third Kind. ==Notes== ==References== ==External links==* * * * * Synopsis of original pre-Star Trek pilot script