It's such a perfect little mini-scene portrayal of the way Spock views the world. He is solving a problem, he needs certain things, he has a fix on a realistic schedule. The practical availability of something like platinum doesn't enter into his psyche. He only evaluates what must be done and what is needed to solve the problem.
It's one of the corollaries to Scott's law (famously, reinforce your image as a miracle worker by multiplying your repair estimates by a factor of 4). In this case, it's "formulate all estimates using by-the-book means & methods - you'll look awesome when you have to toss out the book and cut corners"
It shows he's prepared for anything! I guess he read the logs of Cpt. Archer-and his encounter with Crewman Daniel-from the episode of 'Shockwave' (on "Enterprise"). Archer had to look for platinum as well. Did the writer get ideas from 'City on the Edge of Forever' for 'Shockwave'?
Spock thinks like Scotty. Never tell the captain exactly when you can do something if you want to be a miracle worker. ( he makes exceptions sometimes though, like here! ) ruclips.net/video/t9SVhg6ZENw/видео.html
Shatner could really be very funny when scenes called for that. His actually "underplayed" (this time) slow-burn of wry astonishment at Mr. Spock's impossible ask for 5-6lbs of platinum, was perfectly played. Mr. Spock of course, is not quite tuned into the fact of platinum's exorbitantly expensive rarity in earth year 1930 - That relative cost was as much as 250% higher than gold around that time, about $50 per ounce. Thus, Spock would need at least $4000.00 1930 dollars - about $8000.00 1967 (year of episode airing) or about 3333 day's work cost, (over 13 yrs worth) for the two of them at the rate they were being paid in 1930's earth, which was like 15 cents an hour...$2.40 a day for 2 men X 8 hrs each (Ouch!)...not quite enough for the platinum, but they did sort things out somehow to find their way back to the future and more adventures...For many Trek fans "City on the Edge of Forever" the best TOS episode ever.
Marty, I'm sure that in the 23rd century, 5 pounds of platinum is available in every corner drugstore. But in the 1930s, it's a little hard to come by. 😂
Before 1800, so far as scientists knew aluminum did not exist. From 1825 up to the 1880s aluminum was more precious than gold. The Washington Monument was topped with 6 pounds of it. By the 1920s people began wrapping their leftovers in it. By the 1960s they made disposable beer and soda cans out of it. Platinum would be in use at the end of the 20th and beginning of the 21st centuries, on the platters of hard drives and in catalytic converters. Some could be procured at this time from garbage dumps for electronic refuse and car junkyards, although a 5-6 lb brick would still be unreasonable to expect. Perhaps there's a revolutionary new way to synthesize or extract platinum in the near future, such that it will transform the platinum market as dramatically as synthetic diamonds and bauxite hydrolysis revolutionized the diamond and aluminum markets respectively. Spock can be forgiven for being off on his understanding of Earth's commodities industries and technological advances by a century or so.
It took humans perhaps more than half a million years to go from stone knives to vacuum tubes, yet only a few hundred from vacuum tubes to matter-antimatter energy, warp drive and transporters. I think Spock needs to reevaluate the validity of this idiom.
I believe Mister Spock takes into consideration the fact that technological growth is exponential. The jumps in complexity are faster and faster as communication and infrastructure improve. Basically, don't think of it in terms of how fast we got to a technology. Think of it in terms of how easy it would be to speed run that technology in a Doctor Stone situation.
Did you notice Kirk switched the device off. Later, as Kirk and Spock are talking you can hear the Jacob's ladder buzzing in the background. When Edith enters, we sees it is on.
As a kid I always wondered what Spock was building because he already had the Tricorder. Years later I figured for larger data dumps into the tricorder such as the readings from the Guardian you needed an interface that could access compressed data stored in the tricorder. Kind of like zipped files requiring more storage space before you can uncompress them.
@@WPM_in_ATL Yes I agree, it is probably one of the few or only character that was totally innocent, most of her other characters were nasty girls or cougars even though they were supposed high class like in Dynasty.
@@WPM_in_ATL You are correct Joan Collins never was innocent, in fact she probably dropped out of her mother's womb as a nasty girl. But I mean the character she played was an innocent pacifist who believe mankind could resolve things peacefully and we know that ain't true.
In 1966, that "stone knives and bearskins" comment was a joke (the '30s were only 30 years old then, and that tech was current). In 2024, his comment seems accurate.
There's a Voyager episode where Chakotays says to Tuvok (regarding some task) something like -- "I didn't know Vulcans were so good at improvisation". What the...
There's still a MAJOR plot hole in this story. McCoy had a phasor and some middle aged man played around with it and blew himself up. Someone with enough curiosity to explore such a device was TAKEN OUT by McCoy's little accident! Who knows what DAMAGE was done to the ORIGINAL TIME LINE that was abandoned here? That's the plot hole! Some might say, "he was a bum who never did anything, not even have a kid". I can counter that argument with that time travel episode showing a pilot from the past that Spock said was a "nobody". He was important! He could have been a genius down and out, too smart for his own good. Maybe HE SAVED Edith Keebler, married her, had kids, spawned a new age for mankind 🤦♂️
5 hours of work at 22 cents an hour! Wow, that's a whole dollar and ten cents! Enough to buy something at the dollar store as recently as just 2 years ago!
Inflation is a bitch. That is what happens when you take a gold backed, and therefore historically essentially zero inflation US dollar, and remove the backing of metal from its value. The little man gets crucified on a cross of inflation, every day and every year. Including his meager attempts at savings.
@@duckduckgoismuchbetter And that’s what happens when you would ignore economics and try to pretend the gold standard would protect everything. What do you think $.22 would be after 2% inflation for 100 years. What did you think a gold backed economy would never have inflation. I’m also not sure how you deal with the increase in population we were would we be getting all this gold?
@@neilkurzman4907 Good God, you don't understand the first thing about economics! Your whole comment is comically laughable and pig-ignorant. 1) The gold standard IS economics. Everything else, simply put, is not. 2) Inflation is a creature of nonmetallic based fiat currency. In ~5000 years of using gold and/or silver, inflation has not existed. In a properly managed gold/silver backed monetary system, it (inflation) cannot exist today either. 3) The same quantities of the same basket of commodities costs the same, or less, today in ounces of gold, as it did in 1910. 4) In fact, given the vast technological productivity improvements in the past 100+ years, this basket of commodities would cost radically less than it does today, in ounces of gold, but for the radical amount of gold price manipulation by the corrupt central banks of the world, in their continuous reckless and desperate attempts to shore up the value of their rapidly failing unbacked fiat currencies. 5) The very fact that you think that the current quantity of gold/silver in the free market is incapable of representing the (fake) "value" of the amount (intrinsically worthless) paper currencies, is proof of your shallow understanding of how economics works. And is undervaluing of gold is, in itself intrinsic proof of the radical underpricing of every single ounce of gold in terms of worthless fiat currencies. And therefore proof of the intentional downward manipulation of the value of gold. The fact remains, the price of gold and/or silver can be whatever it needs to be, in terms of fiat currencies. $10,000 per ounce of gold, $30,000, $100,000. Whatever the necessary value in order reprice/reback the dollar with gold, given the supply of gold, and still represent the same transactional value in the whole economy; is what the TRUE value of the noble metal is, in terms of the vastly overproduced dollar. The true value of the dollar, versus an ounce of gold, is truly horrifying these days. The true value of the US dollar, and every other paper fiat, is infinitesimal, compared to its current propped up value. Even considering how much monetary, and consumer inflation has happened since fiats were taken off the gold standard. Monetary inflation, and the more recognizable "consumer PRICE inflation", while related, are actually two DIFFERENT things. Inflation of the money supply (of our Monopoly money fiats), leads to "consumer PRICE inflation". The latter of which is what we the people usually think of when we refer to "inflation". Inflating the money supply, leads to "price inflation". Since the money is being printed excessively. The fiscal and economic discipline introduced by requiring a unit of currency to retain its value vis-a-vis every ounce of gold, in effect, "crucifies" the would-be big government spenders on a "cross of gold", so that they cannot waste money as they would like to. It prevents them from introducing the hidden tax of inflation on people, and thereby sucking out the value of every unit of paper currency, by overprinting the paper currency! And thereby, they crucify the little man on a cross of consumer price inflation. They debase his earnings and savings, and ultimately crucify his hopes and dreams. All to keep the big spending going. The US dollar, even with the gold price manipulation and repression by the central banks, has still lost ~99 percent of its value, next to the same quantity of the same basket of commodities, since 1910. That same ounce of gold will, otoh, buy approximately the same quantity of the same commodities today as it would back then. This is inflation incarnate! The debasement of the value of your savings, and mine. And, as stated before, this does not properly take into account the dramatic technologically driven productivity increases over the past ~110+ years. 6) Gold and silver are radically underpriced by an unknown percentage, vis-a-vis the true value, given the manipulation of the market value of gold by central banks, and the lack of cachet of silver versus gold, in the minds of most people who invest in either, as a hedge against the inevitable hyperinflation devaluation endstage of all metallic unbacked paper currencies. 7) Paper fiats have a short lifespan. Pure gold and silver, by the ounce, have indefinite lifespans in value. Having never lost their value, by the ounce or any other honest measure, in the eyes of all of humanity, since we began using them thousands of years ago. Nor are they ever likely lose their value.
USA of 1935 had about 1 trillion GDP and 127 mln population, with average salary of roughly 480 USD / year -> 40 / month -> 0,23 USD per hour if counting 168h (21x8). Considering it is average wage and we talk about work for supposedly disfranchaised low class men - good deal indeed.
Spock was so confident when he was telling kirk the list of things he needed like he was actually going to get them.
It's such a perfect little mini-scene portrayal of the way Spock views the world. He is solving a problem, he needs certain things, he has a fix on a realistic schedule. The practical availability of something like platinum doesn't enter into his psyche. He only evaluates what must be done and what is needed to solve the problem.
@@cowsongs Yes perfect analysis. 👍
It's one of the corollaries to Scott's law (famously, reinforce your image as a miracle worker by multiplying your repair estimates by a factor of 4). In this case, it's "formulate all estimates using by-the-book means & methods - you'll look awesome when you have to toss out the book and cut corners"
I like how Spock quickly reaches for the hat when Kirk comes into the apartment.
Well logically he should keep it on all the time to hide their identities. So the fact it's off at any time is kinda funny 🤣
It shows he's prepared for anything! I guess he read the logs of Cpt. Archer-and his encounter with Crewman Daniel-from the episode of 'Shockwave' (on "Enterprise"). Archer had to look for platinum as well. Did the writer get ideas from 'City on the Edge of Forever' for 'Shockwave'?
Spock: I think I can reach the first memonic circuit in about a month
Kirk: You have three days
Spock: Ok
Kirk is the worst manager ever.
@@manco828 Better than Steve Jobs by an easy mile.
Spock thinks like Scotty. Never tell the captain exactly when you can do something if you want to be a miracle worker.
( he makes exceptions sometimes though, like here! )
ruclips.net/video/t9SVhg6ZENw/видео.html
The duo dynamic core in less time
Scott response
Shatner could really be very funny when scenes called for that. His actually "underplayed" (this time) slow-burn of wry astonishment at Mr. Spock's impossible ask for 5-6lbs of platinum, was perfectly played. Mr. Spock of course, is not quite tuned into the fact of platinum's exorbitantly expensive rarity in earth year 1930 - That relative cost was as much as 250% higher than gold around that time, about $50 per ounce. Thus, Spock would need at least $4000.00 1930 dollars - about $8000.00 1967 (year of episode airing) or about 3333 day's work cost, (over 13 yrs worth) for the two of them at the rate they were being paid in 1930's earth, which was like 15 cents an hour...$2.40 a day for 2 men X 8 hrs each (Ouch!)...not quite enough for the platinum, but they did sort things out somehow to find their way back to the future and more adventures...For many Trek fans "City on the Edge of Forever" the best TOS episode ever.
One of the best episodes for it's unique content
I wanted to see Spock eating his vegetables and Kirk enjoying his bologna and hard roll.
As a teenager watching this, probably younger. I never appreciated how funny this scene actually is ! Great TV!
5 or 6 pounds of platinum! Spock you really do have a sense of humor, LOL!
Six pounds of 99.95% Platinum bullion is worth
$93,123.20(USD)
He's not that intimately familiar with Earth history, not being a native. I expect platinum is likely a lot less rare on Vulcan.
Spock humour! Got to love it!
Good thing he didn't need plutonium! ruclips.net/video/f-77xulkB_U/видео.html
Marty, I'm sure that in the 23rd century, 5 pounds of platinum is available in every corner drugstore. But in the 1930s, it's a little hard to come by. 😂
In the 23rd century, people can make platinum by using replicators.
Before 1800, so far as scientists knew aluminum did not exist. From 1825 up to the 1880s aluminum was more precious than gold. The Washington Monument was topped with 6 pounds of it. By the 1920s people began wrapping their leftovers in it. By the 1960s they made disposable beer and soda cans out of it.
Platinum would be in use at the end of the 20th and beginning of the 21st centuries, on the platters of hard drives and in catalytic converters. Some could be procured at this time from garbage dumps for electronic refuse and car junkyards, although a 5-6 lb brick would still be unreasonable to expect. Perhaps there's a revolutionary new way to synthesize or extract platinum in the near future, such that it will transform the platinum market as dramatically as synthetic diamonds and bauxite hydrolysis revolutionized the diamond and aluminum markets respectively. Spock can be forgiven for being off on his understanding of Earth's commodities industries and technological advances by a century or so.
It took humans perhaps more than half a million years to go from stone knives to vacuum tubes, yet only a few hundred from vacuum tubes to matter-antimatter energy, warp drive and transporters. I think Spock needs to reevaluate the validity of this idiom.
I believe Mister Spock takes into consideration the fact that technological growth is exponential. The jumps in complexity are faster and faster as communication and infrastructure improve.
Basically, don't think of it in terms of how fast we got to a technology. Think of it in terms of how easy it would be to speed run that technology in a Doctor Stone situation.
The higher science goes, the faster it goes higher.
The best Star Trek episode.
In his example, Spock displayed the use of metaphor.
, and humor!
@@sarahfullerton6894 His human half.
I love this episode,,stone knifes and bear skins 😬
That Jacob's ladder would look good on top of a gaming computer, to go with the RGB lights inside. I guess Spock saw the need for bling.
Is that what it's called? I never heard that before. Interesting.
Did you notice Kirk switched the device off. Later, as Kirk and Spock are talking you can hear the Jacob's ladder buzzing in the background. When Edith enters, we sees it is on.
"...a pound will be sufficient."
So in the 24th century, we're still using English measurements. "I'd like to buy a fifth of Saurian brandy, please."
I HAVE bologna and a hard roll. I don't have any Platinum, Silver, Gold. It's too funny I can't take it ! 😂😂
The shopping bags have the prerequisite loaf of French bread and leafy greens poking out of them. No points deducted here.
If I was only able to save 1 episode , it would have to be this one ,,,
One of three episodes denoting Spock as a vegetarian. The other two are “By Any Other Name” and “All Our Yesterdays”.
I've got you some assorted vegetables- Baloney and a hard roll for myself!
As a kid I always wondered what Spock was building because he already had the Tricorder. Years later I figured for larger data dumps into the tricorder such as the readings from the Guardian you needed an interface that could access compressed data stored in the tricorder. Kind of like zipped files requiring more storage space before you can uncompress them.
This is my favorite line from Star Trek. I use it at work all the time. You got to love!!!!! 😄😄😄😄😄
It's my favorite episode, period. Joan Collins' presence has a lot to do with that! 😍
@@WPM_in_ATL Yes I agree, it is probably one of the few or only character that was totally innocent, most of her other characters were nasty girls or cougars even though they were supposed high class like in Dynasty.
@@ambrosephill9 Joan Collins was NEVER innocent! 😍 That's her "secret sauce"!
@@WPM_in_ATL You are correct Joan Collins never was innocent, in fact she probably dropped out of her mother's womb as a nasty girl.
But I mean the character she played was an innocent pacifist who believe mankind could resolve things peacefully and we know that ain't true.
That must drive your coworkers crazy.
In 1966, that "stone knives and bearskins" comment was a joke (the '30s were only 30 years old then, and that tech was current). In 2024, his comment seems accurate.
Janeway comments "It's like using stone knives and bearskins" when she tries using a 1996 computer keyboard in "Tomorrow's End." Deep cut.
The episode was entitled "Future's End". An enjoyable two-part episode of Voyager, featuring Sarah Silverman as guest actress.....
@@valtrus901Tuvok commenting on California beach that they could have gone unnoticed in their Starfleet Uniforms was absolute hit.
Joan Collins was such an attractive beautiful woman in her day lol....
In any day. Especially in this day of tattoos and piercings and people being very out of shape.
Several pounds of platinum. Yeah, right.
Superb stuff.
There's a Voyager episode where Chakotays says to Tuvok (regarding some task) something like -- "I didn't know Vulcans were so good at improvisation". What the...
Ummm, Spock. Please turn off your Van de Graff electro-static generator before you leave the flop-house.
Ellison thinks he's so bad-ass for coming up with this story, but it would never have worked without Leonard Nimoy.
There's still a MAJOR plot hole in this story. McCoy had a phasor and some middle aged man played around with it and blew himself up.
Someone with enough curiosity to explore such a device was TAKEN OUT by McCoy's little accident!
Who knows what DAMAGE was done to the ORIGINAL TIME LINE that was abandoned here?
That's the plot hole!
Some might say, "he was a bum who never did anything, not even have a kid".
I can counter that argument with that time travel episode showing a pilot from the past that Spock said was a "nobody". He was important! He could have been a genius down and out, too smart for his own good.
Maybe HE SAVED Edith Keebler, married her, had kids, spawned a new age for mankind 🤦♂️
Dr. Cruel, and it couldn't have worked without William Shatner, either .
@@sarahfullerton6894 And Joan Collins (!) as the throwaway guest star. And Deforest Kelly as Bones, to set up the end zinger. Lightning in a bottle.
@@SciHeartJourney I believe Dr Richard Sanchez goes over this ground sufficiently.
Agreed, I read his script and it was very far from a "good episode", Roddenberry and his crew fixed it.
Stoneknives bearskins the mid 20th century was like the Stone age to kirk and Spock
I love this scene because I indentify with Spock; it's as if am also trying to construct innovative software using stone knives and bearskins.
small block of platinum about 6 pounds . radio. my hobby.
Man, what $1.10USD could buy in 1934! But not enough to buy platnum!
It's a good thing this story didn't take place during wartime, cuz Edith would've immediately assumed they were enemy spies.
5 hours of work at 22 cents an hour!
Wow, that's a whole dollar and ten cents! Enough to buy something at the dollar store as recently as just 2 years ago!
I wonder if he was inspired by doc browns work on time circuits in 1885. lol lol
22 cents per hour....lol .. wow ..
Inflation is a bitch. That is what happens when you take a gold backed, and therefore historically essentially zero inflation US dollar, and remove the backing of metal from its value. The little man gets crucified on a cross of inflation, every day and every year. Including his meager attempts at savings.
@@duckduckgoismuchbetter
And that’s what happens when you would ignore economics and try to pretend the gold standard would protect everything.
What do you think $.22 would be after 2% inflation for 100 years. What did you think a gold backed economy would never have inflation.
I’m also not sure how you deal with the increase in population we were would we be getting all this gold?
@@neilkurzman4907
Good God, you don't understand the first thing about economics! Your whole comment is comically laughable and pig-ignorant.
1) The gold standard IS economics. Everything else, simply put, is not.
2) Inflation is a creature of nonmetallic based fiat currency. In ~5000 years of using gold and/or silver, inflation has not existed. In a properly managed gold/silver backed monetary system, it (inflation) cannot exist today either.
3) The same quantities of the same basket of commodities costs the same, or less, today in ounces of gold, as it did in 1910.
4) In fact, given the vast technological productivity improvements in the past 100+ years, this basket of commodities would cost radically less than it does today, in ounces of gold, but for the radical amount of gold price manipulation by the corrupt central banks of the world, in their continuous reckless and desperate attempts to shore up the value of their rapidly failing unbacked fiat currencies.
5) The very fact that you think that the current quantity of gold/silver in the free market is incapable of representing the (fake) "value" of the amount (intrinsically worthless) paper currencies, is proof of your shallow understanding of how economics works.
And is undervaluing of gold is, in itself intrinsic proof of the radical underpricing of every single ounce of gold in terms of worthless fiat currencies. And therefore proof of the intentional downward manipulation of the value of gold.
The fact remains, the price of gold and/or silver can be whatever it needs to be, in terms of fiat currencies. $10,000 per ounce of gold, $30,000, $100,000. Whatever the necessary value in order reprice/reback the dollar with gold, given the supply of gold, and still represent the same transactional value in the whole economy; is what the TRUE value of the noble metal is, in terms of the vastly overproduced dollar.
The true value of the dollar, versus an ounce of gold, is truly horrifying these days. The true value of the US dollar, and every other paper fiat, is infinitesimal, compared to its current propped up value. Even considering how much monetary, and consumer inflation has happened since fiats were taken off the gold standard. Monetary inflation, and the more recognizable "consumer PRICE inflation", while related, are actually two DIFFERENT things. Inflation of the money supply (of our Monopoly money fiats), leads to "consumer PRICE inflation". The latter of which is what we the people usually think of when we refer to "inflation". Inflating the money supply, leads to "price inflation". Since the money is being printed excessively. The fiscal and economic discipline introduced by requiring a unit of currency to retain its value vis-a-vis every ounce of gold, in effect, "crucifies" the would-be big government spenders on a "cross of gold", so that they cannot waste money as they would like to. It prevents them from introducing the hidden tax of inflation on people, and thereby sucking out the value of every unit of paper currency, by overprinting the paper currency! And thereby, they crucify the little man on a cross of consumer price inflation. They debase his earnings and savings, and ultimately crucify his hopes and dreams. All to keep the big spending going.
The US dollar, even with the gold price manipulation and repression by the central banks, has still lost ~99 percent of its value, next to the same quantity of the same basket of commodities, since 1910. That same ounce of gold will, otoh, buy approximately the same quantity of the same commodities today as it would back then. This is inflation incarnate! The debasement of the value of your savings, and mine. And, as stated before, this does not properly take into account the dramatic technologically driven productivity increases over the past ~110+ years.
6) Gold and silver are radically underpriced by an unknown percentage, vis-a-vis the true value, given the manipulation of the market value of gold by central banks, and the lack of cachet of silver versus gold, in the minds of most people who invest in either, as a hedge against the inevitable hyperinflation devaluation endstage of all metallic unbacked paper currencies.
7) Paper fiats have a short lifespan. Pure gold and silver, by the ounce, have indefinite lifespans in value. Having never lost their value, by the ounce or any other honest measure, in the eyes of all of humanity, since we began using them thousands of years ago. Nor are they ever likely lose their value.
USA of 1935 had about 1 trillion GDP and 127 mln population, with average salary of roughly 480 USD / year -> 40 / month -> 0,23 USD per hour if counting 168h (21x8). Considering it is average wage and we talk about work for supposedly disfranchaised low class men - good deal indeed.
And yet Data was making better progress in the wild west.
Kirk and Spock living together at last