What Are Little Girls Made Of?

The USS Enterprise, under the command of Captain Kirk, travels to the icy planet Exo-III to search for the exobiologist Dr. Roger Korby (played by Michael Strong). Korby is the fiancé of Dr. McCoy's temporary assistant, Nurse Christine Chapel, who signed on to the Enterprise to search for Korby.

At Korby's request, Kirk and Chapel beam down alone to a cavern entrance, but Korby is not there to meet them. Finding this suspicious, Kirk has two security officers beamed down from the Enterprise. One is instructed to stay at the entrance and keep a look-out, and the other accompanies Kirk and Chapel. The three begin to descend into system of caves. When passing over a deep chasm, the security officer disappears. Shortly after, they meet Korby's aide Dr. Brown. Chapel recognizes him but is surprised the man does not remember her. Brown assures them that the security officer fell by accident and is dead, and the three continue on. Kirk contacts the remaining security officer and tells him to contact the Enterprise for reinforcements, but a strange creature kills the officer before he gets the chance. Meanwhile, Kirk, Chapel and Brown find Korby, who tells them that the caves were left by an extinct race. Korby shows Kirk and Chapel machinery which creates androids. With the help of Ruk (played by Ted Cassidy), a still functioning android from the time of the original inhabitants, Korby has created more androids, one being a lovely woman he calls "Andrea". In reality, Brown is also an android created as a prototype for Korby's plan to replace key personnel in the Federation with android duplicates under his control. It is also revealed that Ruk was the one who killed the security officers.

Korby proceeds to create an exact android duplicate of Kirk as Chapel looks on. As Kirk's personality is imprinted on the android, the real Kirk imagines himself insulting Spock as a "half-breed". Korby has the duplicate Kirk beamed aboard the Enterprise with orders to begin the spread of android duplicates throughout the galaxy. When Spock questions the Kirk-android's orders, it repeats the insult Kirk had used. Spock, realizing that this is not Kirk, forms a security team and follows the Kirk-android back down to Exo-III.

Meanwhile, the real Kirk, guarded by Ruk, convinces the android that Korby is a threat to his continued existence and must be destroyed. Ruk begins to recall the clash between the "Old Ones" and the androids that led to his civilization's demise centuries ago, and concludes that conflict is again inevitable. Korby enters and Ruk confronts him, but Korby destroys Ruk with a phaser. Shortly afterwards, in a struggle with Kirk, the skin of Korby's hand is torn, revealing that he is also an android.

It is now revealed that Korby, dying of frostbite, had transferred his mind to an android body. He begs Chapel to believe that he is still the same man, but Chapel is repelled by what he has done to himself. Andrea, realizing she loves Korby, kisses him, and in despair, Korby fires Andrea's phaser between the embracing pair, destroying them both.

Spock arrives with the security force, but finds that the crisis has passed. When Spock inquires about Dr. Korby's whereabouts, Kirk replies, "Dr. Korby was never here." Chapel decides to stay on with the Enterprise and finish out her tour of duty. Spock tells Kirk about his dismay of using the term "half-breed" to warn his first officer about his android duplicate. The captain then tells his first officer that he will remember his remark should he find himself in a "similar situation."

The episode was written by Robert Bloch, but received rewrites during shooting by Gene Roddenberry. The director of the second pilot Where No Man Has Gone Before, James Goldstone, was hired to direct this episode but due to problems with the script shooting went two days over schedule and Goldstone was never re-hired.[1]

Sherry Jackson who plays the android woman Andrea said that they had a censorship person on the set to make sure that her costume fully covered her breasts and side cleavage was not visible. She also said of William Shatner "I must say when he kissed me on screen, he really kissed me!" and that Shatner's chest had to be shaved for his nude scenes in the android machine because Gene Roddenberry felt that Captain Kirk wouldn't be hairy.[2]

Reference to the works of H. P. Lovecraft was briefly made in Bloch's script, with its mention of "the Old Ones" and the look of the trapezoidal doors in the caverns.[3]

Zack Handlen of The A.V. Club gave the episode a "B+" rating, noting that the "repetitive plotting" took away any real sense of threat and that without Spock or McCoy to play off, Kirk's character is less interesting.[4]

• Ship of Theseus
• Allegiance (Star Trek: The Next Generation)
• Redshirt (stock character)

Wikiquote has quotations related to: "What Are Little Girls Made Of?"

• "What Are Little Girls Made Of?" at StarTrek.com
• "What Are Little Girls Made Of?" at IMDb
• "What Are Little Girls Made Of?" at TV.com
• "What Are Little Girls Made Of?" at Memory Alpha (a Star Trek wiki)
• "What are Little Girls Made Of?" Final revised draft July 27, 1966; report & analysis by Dave Eversole
• "What Are Little Girls Made Of?" Side-by-side comparisons before and after remastering at TrekMovie.com