THE PLOT
The Enterprise locates the Defiant, a missing starship, in a sector of space which is essentially folding in on itself. Kirk beams over with Spock, McCoy, and Chekhov to investigate. They discover a ship whose entire crew is dead, apparently having killed each other. They go about systematically gathering data, until the Defiant begins to dissolve around them.
The sector of space is affecting Enterprise as well. Warp power has begun to drain, with no discernible cause, and the transporter is malfunctioning (*drink*). Scotty is able to beam back Spock, McCoy, and Chekhov. But he isn't able to get a fix on Kirk. When the Defiant blinks out of existence, Kirk blinks out right along with it.
For Spock, the problem's actually a rather simple one. He calculates the next period at which the Defiant's universe will align, and prepares to beam Kirk back onto the Enterprise when that happens. This is complicated by the arrival of the Tholians, however, an aggressive race that has claimed this area of space as their own. When Spock fails to retrieve Kirk on the first attempt, the Tholians decide Enterprise is an invader. Spock fights off an attack, but the effort leaves the Enterprise drifting in space. As the madness which destroyed the Defiant begins to spread across the Enterprise crew, Spock finds himself having to deal with threats from both within and without - with no guarantee that he will be able to retrieve Kirk or save the Enterprise from destruction!
CHARACTERS
Capt. Kirk: This is a rare episode for TOS, in that it is very Kirk-lite. After the first act, Kirk goes almost entirely unseen until the very end. Given that, Shatner might have been forgiven if he had phoned his performance in. Thankfully, he doesn't. Shatner shows us Kirk at the height of his command powers, effortlessly in charge during the first act in such a way that we feel his absence later. If one had never seen an episode of Star Trek prior to this one, Kirk's presence in the first twelve minutes would still be sufficient for a new viewer to share the feeling of loss afterwards.
Spock: With Kirk sidelined for the bulk of the episode, this becomes Spock's show. Leonard Nimoy is, as ever, well up to the task. He puts us firmly on Spock's side, empathizing with him, without ever compromising Spock's repression of his emotions. Because we know Spock so well by this point, we know that Spock feels the captain's loss. We also know that McCoy's words at various points in the episode genuinely sting him, even if he doesn't show it. Spock clearly thinks of Kirk as the captain, even when he believes Kirk is dead. When Scott calls from engineering: "Captain!" late in the episode, Spock is slow to reply. When he does respond, he says, "Spock here," refusing to describe himself as "Captain." A nice touch, I thought.
McCoy: This episode sees McCoy increasingly exhausted. From almost the moment he and Spock return to the Enterprise, McCoy is working flat-out to find an antidote to the effects of "InterSpace." He becomes more and more easily frustrated and becomes increasingly hostile toward Spock. What makes their conflict work better here than in The Galileo Seven is that McCoy realizes at multiple points that he's gone too far and apologizes. That said, McCoy's confrontational streak is seriously overwritten in the bit just before he and Spock play Kirk's final message. But that scene is really the only major offender, with most of the rest of McCoy's irascibility clearly the result of extreme stress.
Chekov: When he is picked by Kirk to accompany the leads to the Defiant, his scientific background (built up in his early episodes, then largely forgotten) is actually uses for a change, as he is dispatched to investigate life support and engineering on the ship. Walter Koenig gets to do some rather good nonverbal acting, when he looks upon the bodies of the Defiant crew with evident horror. Unfortunately, Koenig's performance is much worse when Chekov goes mad. His growling and shrieking when he attacks Spock is horribly unconvincing, even unintentionally comical. In contrast, the silent attack on McCoy by his orderly is much more effective and dramatic.
THOUGHTS
The third season sees another shipbound episode, in which the standing sets get to double for two ships. With the bulk of it set on the bridge, in sickbay, or in engineering, it's pretty much a classic "bottle show." But within those constraints, writers Judy Burns and Chet Richards manage to deliver a very fine hour of television.
The Tholian Web is an episode with no real dead space. The teaser sets up two dilemmas: the power drain caused by this section of space, and the appearance of the Defiant. The first act holds viewer attention, as Kirk and his team investigate the Defiant. As Chekhov begins to be affected, there is already enough meat for an above-average episode. Then, at the first commercial fade-out, the writers do something that for most Treks would be unthinkable: they take away the captain!
This leaves Spock with multiple problems. The effects of this area of space on the crew are beginning to mirror what happened on the Defiant. The only sure way to prevent the spread of the madness is to leave, and Spock can't leave without condemning Kirk. Then the Tholians take away that choice, damaging the ship so that Spock can't leave. Bit by bit, the stakes are raised, the mark of a well-crafted teleplay.
The Remastered edition enhances the episode with far better effects for the Defiant's shimmering in and out of existence, and with more views of the web ensnaring the Enterprise. I appreciate that the remastered team stayed fairly true to the original effects, and it's effective to see the web truly encircling the Enterprise in this version. But the change in color, from a red tint to a gold one, makes the web seem less threatening somehow. It's a minor matter, and it's not the first time that I've felt replacement effects were not necessarily stronger than the originals. But I did feel it worth a note.
The episode is the best of the season thus far, just edging out The Enterprise Incident through the strength of the pace and the way in which multiple threats and complications are layered one on top of another. It's not quite up there with the likes of The Doomsday Machine, Balance of Terror, or The City on the Edge of Forever. But if it's not a "Top 5" episode of the entire series, it's at the least a contender for a spot in the Top 10.
In fact, I'm now a fair bit into Season Three, and I'm still not seeing this as "the turd season." There have been at least three very strong episodes and only two genuinely bad ones, which hardly seems like a disastrous average. Unless the overall quality truly plummets in the season's latter half, I'm finding the series' final year to be quite far from the disaster it's so often made out to be.
Rating: 9/10.
Previous Episode: The Empath
Next Episode: For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky
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I was disappointed that both Spock and McCoy pretended that they hadn't played the tape of Kirk's last orders. That tape was crucial to defusing McCoy's hostility, and both of them -- but Spock especially -- should have been very grateful for the tape's existence. I'm not surprised that McCoy wanted to pretend the tape hadn't been necessary, but I'm surprised that Mr. Vulcans-don't-lie was willing to back him up. I actually thought McCoy belonged in the brig, partway through the episode; his insubordination was way beyond his usual irascibility.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you; McCoy should know by now that Spock is not seeking the Captain's chair and that his calculations and choices are the best. His behavior was truly uncalled for. Makes me believe that the doctor has some deep seated hatred for Spock beyond his good natured teasing.
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