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#80: Star Trek: The Animated Series, season 2, episode 2 "Bem"

Written by David Gerrold, directed by Bill Reed.

Stardate 5537.3 (early 2269)
(Using the novelization Stardate)

"How come we always end up like this?" - Kirk

The Enterprise is sent to observe primitive life on Delta Theta III with an official observer from the planet Pandro; Commander Bem. After months of sitting by and watching the crew work, and despite the dangers involved, Bem insists on joining Captain Kirk and the away team down to the planet. Unfortunately, Commander Scott's coordinates were slightly off, beaming Kirk and Commander Spock directly over a body of water and they both fall in to the waist-deep water. Bem immediately jumps in to offer assistance. While doing so, Bem's lower half separates from the rest of his body under the water, as he is a colony creature, and replaces Kirk and Spock's communicators and phasers with fakes without their knowledge. Moments later Bem runs off, losing the away team in a thicket and getting captured by a local tribe. Kirk and Spock try to rescue Bem then realize their equipment doesn't work and also get captured. Kirk struggles to understand the situation as the Enterprise tracks an unknown energy source on the planet surface.

Originally released: 14 September 1974

"Bem" on Memory Alpha (mirror)

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What did you think?

That whole species is just dickishly meddlesome.

If you look at the Stardates for the last few episodes, even with the fixes from the novelizations, the last several mission occur almost back to back to back of each other. But Kirk mentions that Commander Bem has been onboard for a while, refusing to act as an observer until the events of this episode.

This hilariously suggests that Bem was just sitting in his quarters while: Mudd kidnapped Nurse Chapel, Lucifer came aboard, the ship was attacked by Orions, everyone (including himself) started aging backwards, and a baby elephant slug comandeered the ship to get back to its mother. But only NOW does he want to come out go an away mission.

I first got introduced to the acronym "BEM" via the great Amore Y Cohetes series, back in the 80's. As I understand it, the classic definition is "bug-eyed monster," which goes back to campy-classic 50's sci-fi movies at least. I like that there's a lineage of the term that hops between series over time, even if it's only seldom used.

Actually, looking it up just now, it seems "BEM" goes back to 20's sci-fi pulp.