THE PLOT
The Enterprise responds to a distress call from a human colony under attack. They arrive to discover no signs of life - not even bodies or wreckage. As Kirk wonders what could have wiped this world out so completely, he receives a message from Spock. There is a heavily damaged Klingon ship in the vicinity. When Kang (Michael Ansara), the Klingon captain, beams down and takes Kirk's landing party hostage, Kirk is sure that he's found his answer.
Kirk manages to turn the tables, and he beams back to the Enterprise with Kang as his prisoner. But the situation is far from resolved. Spock reports that Kang and his Klingons could not possibly have destroyed the colony. The Enterprise is unable to contact Starfleet. Then the engines suddenly go to maximum warp and the emergency bulkheads shut the bulk of the crew in the lower sections. Kirk is left with only a handful of redshirts, against an equal mass of Klingons.
Do the Klingons have some new weapon, some horrifying technology that can explain this? Or is something entirely more alien at work here?
CHARACTERS
Capt. Ham: Shatner gets to do some very amusing "angry" acting in this episode, right from the pre-credit sequence when he kneels down and picks up a handful of dirt while gritting, "An entire human colony. 100 men. Women. Children. Gone!" He also gets to deliver more of his patented sentence fragement delivery when he realizes, of the alien, that "it feeds. On the hate. Of others." The good actor who thoughtfully underplayed much of the first season is becoming an increasingly distant memory.
For all of that, Shatner is never less than watchable. Kirk's ability to turn defeat into victory shows itself when he tricks the Klingons early in the episode, not only saving the landing party but turning his captors into captives. Once he realizes the nature of the alien, he takes the first steps toward showing trust for the Klingons, making the eventual truce possible.
Spock: When he succumbs to the alien's influence in a confrontation with Scotty, some of his buried frustration at dealing with irrational human crewmates surfaces. Really, with McCoy calling him a green blooded hobgoblin and the like on a regular basis, who can blame him for having a bit of buried resentment? With that one exception, Spock retains his control. He acts as the voice of reason, keeping Kirk focused on dealing with the alien rather than fighting the Klingons.
Chekov: Walter Koenig gets to go even more over-the-top than Shatner, as Chekhov is instantly influenced into imagining that he once had a brother murdered by the Klingons. He spends the entire episode in a delusional rage, lurking in corridors with a sword, looking for Klingons to ambush. In a particular disturbing moment, he is ready to rape Mara (Susan Howard), the wife of the Klingon captain. "You don't die... yet," he leers, followed by the sound of clothing tearing as he places a hand over the terrified woman's mouth.
Hot Alien Space Babe of the Week: What is interesting about Mara (Susan Howard) is how instantly frightened she is of the Federation humans. We learn, through her, that the Klingon government has happily spread propaganda to its citizens to make them believe that the humans are savage devils. One senses that when Chekhov is about to rape Mara, this is the treatment she expects at human hands. When Kirk saves her from that, and then doesn't fulfill his bluff to kill her, that is the surprise - and the tipping point toward her actually trusting Kirk.
Villain(-ish) of the Week: Kang (Michael Ansara) is an excellent warrior. He shows tactical excellence in his takeover of engineering, and in his shutting down of the rest of the ship's power and life support thereafter. I enjoyed Ansara's nonverbal beats, such as when he was standing next to the communicator, listening to Kirk trying to contact him. He doesn't speak but just stands there, sword at the ready, listening intently. With Ansara's considerable screen presence as an asset, Kang becomes the most multi-layered Klingon commander since John Colicos' Kor.
THOUGHTS
Jerome Bixby, who wrote the superb Mirror, Mirror and the enjoyable By Any Other Name, returns for this engaging episode. Bixby promplty re-uses one of his Mirror, Mirror concepts, as Kang has Chekhov tortured using... an agonizer! In fairness, there were a lot of similarities between the Empire in the mirror verse and the Klingon Empire, and it's the sort of device the Klingons would invent, so it's more an amusing thing to spot than a legitimate nit-pick.
Though the Klingons would not truly emerge into a fully-fledged culture until The Next Generation, Bixby's script deserves credit for presenting them in a more three-dimensional manner than most TOS episodes. Bixby sticks with the Soviet parallels of the Season Two episodes. But he also expands the parallel in interesting ways. Just as the Soviet citizenry was fed propaganda about the West during the Communist rule, here we learn that the Klingons have been subject to propaganda demonizing the Federation. It's an interesting beat, a touch of shading that turns these Klingons into characters for the first time since Season One.
The script does provide too many opportunities for overacting. I've already mentioned Shatner and Walter Koenig. We also get DeForest Kelly, raging full-throttle until you expect him to have an anyeurism, and James Doohan's Scotty becoming momentarily psychotic. Even Nichelle Nichols gets in on the act, throwing a (not very convincing) hissy-fit on the bridge. Who'd have thought there'd be a Klingon episode in which the actors playing the Klingons were the restrained ones?
It all ends a bit too easily. The creature's powers are so extensive it can create a false brother for Chekhov, devolve McCoy and Scotty into raving psychopaths, take control of the Enterprise engines, transmute matter... and yet it can do nothing against the hamtastic power of Kirk making a speech at it. Surely all this creature, with the power to bend the human (and Klingon) mind, needs to do is to tinker with the memories of Kirk and his bridge crew so that they forget it exists? But no - Kirk makes a speech at it, he and Kang laugh at it a bit, and it runs off whimpering. We then get no tag at all, creating one of the series' more abrupt endings.
Still, it's a well-structured episode with a strong villain in Kang, an interesting monster in the "Hate Creature," and TOS' most multilayered depiction of the Klingons. A good episode, despite my issues with the ending.
Rating: 7/10.
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