The Women Of Star Trek: Psycho Marta

by Laura Goodwin

Marta:  she's GREEN!  (Yvonne Craig)

Marta is the famous sexy green dancing babe you have all heard so much about. We met her in Whom Gods Destroy. In her own utterly alien way, she is a beautiful woman - but she is also a compulsive liar and a psychotic, homicidal maniac.

Lots of fans erroneously call her an "Orion slave girl", but she was nobody's slave, and nobody called her an Orion in this episode. We don't know that the green people are Orions - perhaps it's the Orions who enslave the green people.

The duplicious and bloodthirsty Marta was one of the inmates of high-security madhouse Elba two. Garth, another inmate who's well acquainted with Marta, described her as "dangerous as a poisonous serpent", which is frankly an insult to serpents. Serpents only kill to hunt, or in self-defense, but Marta would do it just for the fun of it, or indeed, for no reason at all - even when it would be against her own best interests.

After Kirk was tortured by Garth, she came to him in his cell and told him she loved him. Kirk tried playing along for a half-minute, obviously hoping he could use her to somehow escape his captivity. Immediately after Kirk promised her needed medicine, if she would help him, and just as she was promising to cooperate with him when the time was right, she pulled out a knife and tried to stab him. Garth (in the form of Mr. Spock) stopped her, as she raved that Kirk was her lover so she had to kill him.

Kirk was NEVER her lover. He was actually not attracted to her at all. During her big dance scene, while she climbed all around Kirk and squirmingly beckoned, he just cringed and waited for it to be over. He did not encourage her, at all.

Early in the episode, she complained about not being allowed to use her phaser to blow off "just one" of Spock's ears. She also tried to kill Kirk with a knife. She'd be utterly despicable if she wasn't such a sad case.

Supposedly Garth was her boyfriend, but he really didn't like her, and it's possible that her ideas about that relationship were purely delusional. In any case, just to demonstrate his homemade explosive to Kirk, Garth used a bit of it to blow Marta to smithereens, while Kirk was forced to watch. Kirk didn't apparently mourn her loss. In fact, nobody did. All things considered, that shouldn't surprise anyone.

Marta did have one genuine virtue: She was a fantastic dancer. That, and the price of a token, will get you a ride on the subway.


All site contents Copyright L. Goodwin 1990 - 2003

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