THE PLOT
Kirk, Spock, and Chekov beam down to scout a lush, jungle-like world. They helpfully bring along Yeoman Eye Candy and a couple of disposable red-shirted accessories. After one of the redshirts manages to get killed almost instantly, McCoy beams down with two more, just to make sure that this episode collects a proper body count. That body count mounts steadily as they investigate this world of disintegrator lightning, exploding rocks, and poison plants. Finally, they make contact with some primitive villagers.
These villagers live only to serve their god, Vaal, a large papier-mache serpent-head cave. Vaal derives energy from the villagers' labors, and is using its energy to drain Enterprise of all power. Now Kirk finds himself faced with having to break the Prime Directive in order to save his ship, by destroying both Vaal and the villagers' way of life.
CHARACTERS
Capt. Ham: Kirk, who seemed oblivious to the redshirt deaths in The Changeling, is all but paralyzed with guilt over the deaths in this episode. This allows Shatner to do some "emotionally anguished acting." On the one hand, it's nice to see a return to a Kirk who actually cares when his crewmen die. But the self-doubting bits in this episode go too far with it, as Kirk piles on so much guilt that one questions whether this variation of the character is actually up to command. Fortunately, he shrugs all of those concerns aside once they encounter the villagers. With most of the redshirts dead by this point, there is nothing to get in the way of the typical Kirk/Spock/McCoy banter, particularly regarding sex and children.
Spock: Doesn't think twice before putting himself in harm's way to protect Kirk and McCoy from a poison pod plant. Fortunately, his Vulcan physiology combined with McCoy's medicine allows him to recover quickly. He argues logically for the Prime Directive applying to Vaal's people, noting that their system clearly works for them. But once Kirk makes his decision that the Prime Directive doesn't apply, Spock lends his full support to defeating Vaal.
Scotty: As in Friday's Child, he is relegated to manning the ship while the main trio get all the action. Unlike that episode, he still gets some good character material. He does everything he can to fight against the pull of gravity, and gets some decent banter with Kirk. The "You're fired" and "You're re-hired" exchanges were one of two bits from this episode that I actually remembered.
Chekov: The other bit that I actually recalled involved Chekov kissing Yeoman Eye Candy, after spending the bulk of the episode making goo-goo eyes at her. When two of the villagers spot them kissing, they decide to experiment themselves - which leads the other villagers to decide to kill the strangers. Chekov also gets a decent comedy moment, when he and Spock "create a diversion."
Hot Space Babe of the Week: Celeste Yamall is Yeoman Eye Candy... er, Martha Langdon. She's blonde and very pretty, and is thus understandably confused by the discovery of a village full of people who know nothing about sex. She and Chekov stage a helpful demonstration... but it turns out the village elders don't approve of that sort of thing, and violence ensues.
ZAP THE REDSHIRT!
A redshirt-palooza! Redshirt count: Four. Hendorff doesn't even make it out of the teaser, getting shot by a plastic pod plant within about 2 minutes of beaming down. Kaplan apparently offended Zeus, because he gets struck by a particularly strong bolt of lightning. Mallory gets blown up. Marple gets his skull caved in by villagers.
THOUGHTS
And it was all going so well...
After a run of good to excellent episodes, I suppose it was time for Trek to yield up a loser. With The Apple, it certainly does. This is an extremely poor script, one which pads out its running time by picking off redshirts for half the episode before presenting a hackneyed "Garden of Eden" plot that seems barely connected to anything that went before. The scenes with the villagers are dreadful, and Kirk and McCoy's reasoning for why their society doesn't qualify for the Prime Directive seems to come out of the same school as Picard's "exceptions must be made" solution at the end of TNG's Justice - namely, that the Prime Directive doesn't apply when the situation is particularly incovenient.
There is some fun to be had laughing at the episode. The redshirt deaths that pile on in the first half (with one additional redshirt death in Half the Second) are frequently hilarious. I can't decide whether the plastic plant or the fake lightning was the funniest. Kirk all but weeping over each death is also the stuff of Grade A comedy, particularly with Shatner letting his hammier tendencies run amok. The villagers experimenting with kissing is also amusing, the two actors delivering wonderfully robotic and passionless performances that add that extra layer of cheesy perfection.
Plus, the villain is a papier-mache snake head!
The Apple easily wrests the crown for World Champion Bad TOS Episode away from The Alternative Factor. That episode may have been tedious, but it was at least presented with conviction and had a strong ending. Still, I can't quite give The Apple a "1." It's quite bad television, but it isn't boring, and it has a certain kitschy popcorn value.
Rating: 2/10.
Previous Episode: The Changeling
Next Episode: Mirror, Mirror
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