Host John Newland begins by telling us that, in this age of reason, the old tales about sea monsters and sirens have been debunked or explained by science. Dubious unsourced tales of precognition and life after death are still totes for real, though, I guess.

Kudos again to One Step Beyond for looking great!

Stewart the cook Cookie, the steward, knocks on First Mate Blake’s cabin and tells him he has 10 minutes until his watch.  Cookie reports they are “moving like lightning now that we have the sea at our back.” Wait, they’re at sea.  The sea is at their back, front, and both sides, so what does that even mean?  Google provides no clear examples of the phrase, so either it is not a thing or it was somehow deemed to benefit Trump, and was suppressed by the algorithm. ^[1]

It clearly means something to Blake, though, because he runs up to the deck.  He tells Cookie to have Captain Peabody meet him there.  Blake chews out Ensign Dibble for changing course from NNW without orders, because that’s how the Navy works.  Dibble points to the chalkboard where orders are logged — it says the course is WNW and the Soup of the Day is Navy Bean for the 400th day in a row.

Blake shows the elderly Captain the board.  Captain Peabody orders the helmsman to correct back to the original course.  He then chews out Blake for the error because that’s how the Navy works.  Dibble suggests someone sneaked in and changed the course during the last change of watch.  The Captain notes that the course change has steered them into a dead calm lack of wind, and ice in the water.

Captain Peabody assembles the small crew and tells them the culprit made a mistake.  The new heading was written on the chalkboard, but the chalk was not returned to its holder.  He orders each crewman to empty his pockets.  He finds no chalk, but does finally find those strawberries that went missing.  The officers search the rest of the ship.  In the cargo hold, Blake finds a stowaway.  He has the chalk.  

The Captain shakes him, demanding to know how he got there, why he changed the course, and if he knows any new way to prepare Navy Beans.  The haggard man says nothing, so they chain him up.

From the calm water, the crew hears men shouting for the ship to save them, or to send some girls.  The crew can’t see them because of the fog.  Finally they find four men on a piece of wreckage the size that Kate Winslet hogged in Titanic.  They are survivors of The Flying Eagle which hit an iceberg.  

There is also a dead man.  Blake pulls him on board to give him a decent funeral — presumably at sea, so a good shove would have accomplished the same thing.   Blake recognizes the dead man as the man he caught and chained up in the cargo hold of the ship.  He runs to the cargo hold, and sees the chains are now empty.

This was a fine episode.  The ship was believable and the performances were good.  If I have a beef with this episode, it is with the fickle nature of the universe.  Great, God relaxed the rules and allowed the man to transport to the other ship and trick the crew into sailing toward the four survivors.  You know, he could have just moved the iceberg and saved them all.

Other Stuff:

• [1]  Algorithm = some 23 year old punk.
• For those keeping score, this is 7 out of 13 episodes set outside the USA.
• Amazingly, Robert Ellenstein (the elderly Captain Peabody) went on to play the Federation Council President in Star Trek IV (and was still younger than Joe Biden).  But then, ST IV was made only 27 years after this episode aired.  By comparison, it has been 34 years since I saw ST IV in a theater.  OMG, I’ve wasted my life!  This mathematical oddity is also enabled by the fact that the ancient mariner, Captain Peabody, was portrayed by a 36 year old actor. 

I will often look to see what historical events happen on the day an episode aired.  I almost never find anything significant.  Check out this list of things popular that week: 

Pope John XXIII was leading the Catholic Church. In that special week of April people in US were listening to Come Softly To Me by The Fleetwoods. In the UK, Side Saddle by Russ Conway was in the top 5 hits. The World of Apu, directed by Satyajit Ray, was one of the most viewed movies released in 1959 while Nine Coaches Waiting by Mary Stewart was one of the best selling books. On TV people were watching Lili. 

A little before my time, but I have heard of none of these things except the pope, and that is probably just because they name those guys like a 3-Card Monte scam.

Draw your own conclusion . . . all art is ephemeral, memories fade like the evening sun, Epstein didn’t kill himself.  Seriously, wouldn’t he have waited for Cuties?

I didn’t even want to link it.