I originally posted this on Christmas Specials Wiki:
The very first time I heard anything about the characters and situation of 'Here Come The Brides', I didn't even know I was reading about them, and the first time I heard something from it, I didn't realize what I was hearing.
Full stop. Sometime around 1979, a NYC-area radio station with talk and music would sometimes play 'Seattle' by Perry Como. I liked this song, and still do, but I had no idea it had once been the theme for a 1968-1970 Western drama called 'Here Come The Brides'. To be accurate, the version on the show never had Como's version and HCTB actor Bobby Sherman sung his own version, although Perry Como had the hit with it, this in an era (1969) when an older-school crooner like himself was not really the sort lighting up the charts. Also to clarify: the episode I watched was from the first season, when the theme was instrumental.
Then came 1985, and I began reading all the Post-TMP Star Trek novels they had published up to that point, breaking off somewhere around # 50. An early novel was called "Ishamael!" and had Mister Spock displaced back in time to late 1800's Seattle, where, amnesiac, he came under the care of a man named Aaron Stemple. Perhaps unsurprisingly for a time-travel story, Stemple turned out to be an ancestor of Spock's via his Human mother. We were also introduced to a very well developed set of local characters, all of whom Spock befriended before his memories returned and he was rescued. Mind you, this was an officially published Star Trek novel, not fanfic. Even though pro-novels weren't canon, this was endorsed by Paramount et al so it wasn't the work of some surly fanzine operator.
Problem was, it should never have been published. The writer didn't know such crossovers needed legal permission or he thought somehow it wasn't an issue. The editor wasn't familiar with the crossover characters from 'Here Come The Brides'. When it was found out, payments were made and procedures put in place to ensure it never happened again. Later still, when I found out about all this well after reading and liking the story, I found out the real reason why the writer would have Spock and Stemple becoming friends. Actor Mark Lenard, who played Stemple, also played Spock's father Sarek on the TV series and original movies.
So in a way I had been wanting to actually watch HCTB for decades. But it was out of syndication for a long while, not having enough episodes to make the cut for most stations. It wasn't such a compulsion I wanted to buy DVD's or seek it out...elsewhere on the web. But then I heard it had an Xmas ep, and when I saw the premise, I was now compelled to watch and summarize it.
The synopsis can be found here: But I'll boil it down. Two local girls, pre-teens, believe that a newborn baby who arrived on Christmas Day is in danger of meeting the same fate as Christ come Easter, and so kidnap him to protect him.
When I first heard of this premise, I scratched my head. How could these girls assume such a thing, and think that stealing the child would make things better? I wondered (before watching the episode) if they were in fact very little girls, but then wondered how little ones would spirit away a baby. Nope, they were pre-teens, one a little older than the other.
Okay. So maybe they were raised ignorantly, given some reading of Scripture that would have both believers and non-believers alike shaking their heads? Nope. Their Dad was a widower trying his level best and not any kind of bellowing ogre, making up false Bible quotes like Carrie's mother. In fact, he was played by a noted actor named Michael Bell, best known for voices on Smurfs, GI Joe, Voltron and hosts of others, as well as a live action resume that's also nothing to sneeze at. He was a bit befuddled by some of their theological questions, but he never said anything odd or off. Now, the girls had lost their mother when she miscarried a year back, and maybe she was more hands on with any Bible questions, but nothing of that was ever said.
So a local couple who'd suffered through some crib deaths were waiting for the big day in two senses of the word, only to have their hopes dashed not by illness but by the well-meaning but badly misguided efforts of these two kids. The town is in both a frenzy and a depression, and meanwhile the baby's wrong-headed guardians are trying to smuggle it from Seattle to San Francisco via ship, since no one there will know it's a Christmas baby. It should be mentioned a pre-birth encounter between the girls and the baby's father just cement their bad ideas. The plot seems to have them just curious enough to get worried, but never enough to realize how wrong they were. At one point, the older of the two girls (who began to remind me of Walking Dead's Lizzie in terms of her single-mindedness) shifts her questions about the fate of Jesus from the Crucifixion to the Innocents' Slaughter by Herod. The father shrugs it off by saying 'we don't do that anymore' but saying he might do it to whoever took the baby. At this point, I honestly feared the girls might try to ditch the baby out of fear.
This seems to clear their heads, and they end up leaving the baby in the Church, where it is found and a happy ending enabled. But not for me.
The girls were never punished for their actions. Doing this was never even brought up. No mention of their backsides being sore in the near future, nor of their ears ringing from being yelled at, not even Bible lessons to maybe avoid this kind of fiasco in the future, at least based on their 're-imagining' of the Good Book.
Now, did I want to see two little girls punished? Did I want to see them even so much as lose their Christmas gifts (a rag doll their Father lovingly made)? Of course not. But mind you, none of this is even broached as a possibility. If their father had said 'I'll give them a Post-Christmas talking-to' or if the baby's mother had seen them approach while crying and forgave them, great. But the ending had the girls standing by the crib, smiling at the baby while the mother called them 'her two little nursemaids'.
I personally would not let those girls anywhere near my kid. They meant well, but they put two anxious parents and a whole town through the wringer, well-intentioned or not. If I were their father, I might consider leaving town. This wasn't an antic or a prank. That the baby wasn't harmed and was cared for is or should be immaterial. The worst part is, the rest of the episode was good bordering on great. The characters were well crafted, behaved as one might in a crisis, and showed fears and foibles. Only the little girls were absurd, and by this I mean well past allowances one might make for the era it depicted, the era it was made in and the way kids of any time or place can jump to conclusions.
I think this episode could have been saved by a starker reason for the girls' bad assumption (like they thought something they did killed their mother) or a firmer response to their actions--really any response. I suspect Executive Meddling, but lacking confirmation, I just shake my head.