#73 (3-18): The Lights of Zetar

Scotty falls in love with Mary Sue, who is then threatened by lens flare.


THE PLOT

The Enterprise is en route to Memory Alpha, a planet that acts as the Federation's library, storing data from all the Federation planets. Aboard the ship is Lt. Mira Romaine (Jan Shutan), a young lieutenant on her first deep space assignment. Mira has caught the eye of Mr. Scott, who trails after her like a lovesick puppy.

They are almost at Memory Alpha when the ship is struck by what at first appears to be a space storm, but is actually an alien assault. Every crew member on the bridge has a different part of their brain paralyzed during the attack - Kirk can't speak, Uhura can't move her hands, Chekov can't move his eyes. Mira is the most affected, blacking out after the attack passes. The entity, which Spock determines is a collection of life forms, moves on to Memory Alpha, and Enterprise watches helplessly as it wipes out the library. But as it turns to attack the ship again, its apparent connection with Lt. Romaine gives Kirk a single, desperate chance to turn the tables on it.


CHARACTERS

Capt. Kirk: In an episode where characterization of the regulars does not appear to have been a priority, Shatner's Kirk at least remains recognizably himself. The scene in which the Enterprise attempts to evade the entity is a particularly strong one. As a note of fear enters Sulu's and Chekov's voices, Kirk continues to sit in the chair, calmly delivering orders. His posture tenses up, but he never loses his cool. In one of the worst episodes of the series, Shatner somehow manages to deliver one of his strongest performances of the season.

Spock/McCoy: Given that this episode is not particularly interested in the regulars, it's perhaps not suprising that Spock and McCoy are more or less interchangeable. Both get to take turns delivering technobabble exposition about the entity, which enables Kirk to pluck a solution out of thin air.

Scotty: Scotty falls in love.  Much like the last time this happened, all of his working brain cells immediately dribble out his ear. His romance with Mira is even less convincing than his romance in Who Mourns for Adonais. At least that episode had the sense to treat Scotty's affections as largely unrequited. Here, we are meant to believe that Mira fully reciprocates. This despite a substantial age difference, a lack of chemistry, and a script that has Scotty constantly talking down to her. When he sits with her in sick bay, he literally treats her like a small child! Scotty also discourages her from going to the captain with the things she senses about the entity, even after he witnesses first-hand her anticipating an attack. Finally, even after Mira and Spock point out that if he touches the possessed Mira, she will kill him, Scotty still can't keep his self-control. A truly dreadful showing for our chief engineer.

Hot Space Babe of the Week: Jan Shutan is Lt. Mira Romaine, the focus of this episode. The entire episode revolves around her. The Lights of Zetar want to use her as a vessel in which to live. Scotty wants her... well, just leave it at that. For all of that, she is a fairly thin character. The only noteworthy character quality attributed to her is that she is "extremely pliant." There's an extremely pliant space babe on the ship, and this week it's Scotty who gets her? No wonder Kirk seems a bit terse.


THOUGHTS

Kirk's opening voice-over, which sounds less like a command log than like an extract from a particularly bad bodice-ripper, sets the tone. The Lights of Zetar is not simply bad. Cheap-looking, leadenly directed, mispaced, unimaginative, and poorly written, this is a serious contender for 1960's Trek's worst hour.

This is the second attempt in five episodes to do "horror Trek," and the second failure. But as bad as it was, at least That Which Survives had a decent guest performance and a couple of creepy moments. The direction here is strictly "point-and-shoot," with no atmosphere at all. When the landing party beams down to Memory Alpha, McCoy makes a remark about how unsettling it is to beam down into darkness... even though the lighting is brighter than it is in some shipboard scenes!

The ending sees Kirk saving the ship by coming up with a brilliant plan to trap the creature in a pressure chamber. Great thinking, Kirk! So, um, where did that idea come from? It's entirely possible that I nodded off for a few minutes and missed something. Nonetheless, I saw nothing in McCoy and Spock's data tapes, and nothing in the very brief interview with Mira, to give Kirk the needed inspiration for this plan. I guess he just read the script (punishment enough, in this case).

Lastly, given that the phasers were having an impact against the entity, I'm disappointed that not one member of the command staff voiced the reality of numbers. If they continue firing phasers at the entity, it will kill Mira. That's a shame and all... but there are 430 people on the ship! Kirk should have left orders to fire if the entity approached, regardless of the consequences to the pretty young lieutenant. Kirk's not that sentimental. And even if he was, Mr. "Kill Mitchell While You Still Can" Spock should have been ready to at least make the obvious recommendation.


Rating: 1/10. Bad. Very bad.

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#69 (3-17): That Which Survives

THE PLOT

The Enterprise investigates a planet with an Earth-like atmosphere, whose very existence appears to be impossible. Kirk, McCoy, Sulu, and Geologist D'Amato (gee, I wonder what's going to happen here...) beam down to the surface. Before they leave, they observe Losira (Lee Meriwether), a mysterious woman, appear from nowhere and kill the ensign operating the transporter.

After they beam down to the planet, there is a severe tremor. When it subsides, the Enterprise has vanished. Now Kirk and his landing party must find a way to survive on a world with no apparent sources of food or water. Meanwhile, the Enterprise - hurled a substantial distance from the planet - must set course back to where they started.

When Losira reappears both on the ship and on the planet, leaving a trail of bodies in her wake, it becomes apparent that both the ship's crew and the landing party will have to fight for their very survival!

I suspect I've made it sound a lot more exciting than it actually is...


CHARACTERS

Capt. Ham: "Something... or someone... killed him," Kirk declares over the body of a dead redshirt (OK, blueshirt). Brilliant deduction, captain. Kirk spends the episode largely just trying to find a way for himself and the rest of the landing party to survive. He does earn some mild tactical points by playing Human Keep Away with Losira later on. Even so, there's nothing new or particularly interesting here for Kirk. At least he doesn't suffer outright character assassination, unlike...

Spock: Written to be as annoying as humanly (or Vulcanly) possible. He prances about the bridge, ramrod poked perpetually up his backside, correcting estimates about how many minutes are left ("14.87 to be precise"). Long before the point at which he berates Scotty for daring to speak figuratively, I found myself actively wanting to reach into the screen and slap him. This script seems to have been written by someone who has no idea who Spock is, and the result may just be his worst characterization in the entire series.

Scotty: After the ship is thrown off course, he is the one who notes that it "feels wrong" - earning him a chastisement from PodSpock. Once the ship has been sabotaged, Scotty volunteers to go into the Access Tube of Death to attempt to override the sabotage. Gets one of the few good lines of the episode when, in response to Spock's ongoing countdown, he grumbles that he doesn't "need a bloomin' cuckoo clock."

Sulu: When he beamed down with the landing party, I had hopes that we might actually get some decent Sulu scenes, for possibly the first time since Mirror, Mirror. This was not to be. Sulu stands around uselessly in the background, delivering such illuminating lines as that a shipmate suffered "a terrible way to die" (Kirk's rejoinder, equally pithy: "There are no good ways").

Hot Alien Space Babe of the Week: Lee Meriwether is Losira, the lethal projection which selectively kills anyone viewed as an invader. Garbed in a ridiculous harem gear, Losira is hard to take seriously as a threat. Still, Meriwether gets a certain amount of mileage out of the projection's regret over killing, and it's an effective moment when we see the recording of the "real" Losira at the episode's end.


ZAP THE REDSHIRT!

Redshirt Count: Three. The transporter operator gets to lead us into the teaser by being fatally touched by Losira. Geologist D'Amato (Arthur Batanides) lasts a full 15 minutes... but as the only non-regular to beam down to the planet, his fate was inevitable, and his prone form leads us into the next commercial fadeout.

Finally, Crewman Watkins sees the mysterious woman, and it's curtains for him. Still, if his name and position title really did amount to "everything about (him)," as he says when the woman identifies him, then I suppose it wasn't much of a loss.


THOUGHTS

After a run of fairly strong, or at least entertaining, episodes, I suppose it was time for another episode in which the third season would live down to its name. That Which Survives is an episode which resorts to having Spock do a running countdown in order to try to milk tension out of a situation that we know the ship is going to survive. The script characterizes even the series' leads in only the broadest of strokes. The treatment of Spock is appalling, but Kirk and McCoy fare better only in that they are written blandly instead of outright badly.

The story lacks any substance. It's difficult to find anything interesting that Losira and her artificial planet are standing in for, or any message being given here. That isn't in itself a bad thing. There's nothing wrong with a nice, creepy episode simply being a nice, creepy episode. But even on that basis, the episode is a failure. It's bland and lacks any atmosphere at all.  Cheap and tedious, this isn't even bad enough to be funny.  The episode is just sort of... there.

It all leads to a limp ending in which Spock and an anonymous security guard blast a disco cube, followed by the regulars pontificating about whether or not "beauty survives." As the end credits rolled, I had no trouble seeing why this was an episode I barely remembered. I suspect that by this time next week, I will have forgotten most of it all over again.


Rating: 2/10.

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#50 (2-22): By Any Other Name

THE PLOT

The Enterprise responds to a distress call... and falls right into a trap set by the Kelvens, aliens from the Andromeda galaxy. The ship is quickly taken by the aliens' superior technology, with Kirk given an ultimatum to cooperate in taking his captors back to Andromeda (a 300-year voyage, even with the aliens' technology) to prepare the way for an invasion of the Milky Way galaxy!

Kirk's efforts to turn the tables on his captors by force fail, resulting in the death of a crew member. Scotty and Spock attempt to rig a self-destruct mechanism in Engineering. Kirk, however, refuses to use the device, which is detected by the Kelvens anyway. With the Enterprise crew reduced to balls of matter, the only crew members left are Kirk, Spock, Scotty, and McCoy - and it is up to them try one last, desperate gamble to retake control!


CHARACTERS

Capt. Kirk: This episode again sees Kirk outmatched, left to get by solely on his wits. We do see him lean perhaps a touch too heavily on his appeal to the opposite sex.  If Kelinda didn't find him attractive, his entire plan would go up in a puff of deflated ego.  Still, he does resist - and keeps resisting - with any means at his disposal. I was not pleased by the writers' decision to have Kirk reject Scotty's self-destruct mechanism, however. Given the potential stakes, Kirk should have been willing to use it. Since we later find out that the device had been detected anyway, Kirk using it and having it fail would have been both more in-character and more interesting than the script choice made here.

Spock: Repeats his psychic trick from A Taste of Armageddon, to substantially less successful effect. However, he is able to sort through the impressions he received to identify the clue that leads Kirk to his last gamble. He also displays a dry wit throughout, acting as a particularly calm Iago to Rojan (the head Kelvin)'s Othello in the last portion of the episode.

Scotty: Asked to "stimulate" the Kelvens, he falls back on his most tried-and-true mode of stimulation: alcohol! It's not necessarily great character work, but the scenes with Scotty and Random Kelvin #2 are hilarious, jointly drinking their way through Scotty's entire, quite prodigious, stock. "What is it?" the Kelvin asks at one point of the latest bottle Scotty has produced. "It's... erm..." Scotty scrutinizes the bottle. "It's green." And then pours.

Hot Alien Space Babe of the Week: Barbara Bouchet is Kelinda, the second-in-command of the Andromedans. She shows no acting ability whatsoever, mostly standing around stiffly or being kissed by William Shatner or Warren Stevens. Then again, who cares? A gorgeous woman, whose flat line deliveries are at least well-served by playing a clinical, unemotional alien. And did I mention? Gorgeous.

Villain of the Week: Warren Stevens gives a quite strong performance as Rojan. He is calm and reasonable through msot of the episode. He fully understands and sympathizes with Kirk's devotion to duty and determination to escape. And he cannot tolerate it, as discussed below:


ZAP THE REDSHIRT!

Redshirt Count: One. But what a one! In one of the most chilling scenes of the series, Rojan doesn't even blink an eye as he pulls aside two redshirts, transforms them to balls of matter, then crushes one in a demonstration of his power. He kills the young crew member not out of malice, but to demonstrate to Kirk that rebellion will have consequences. It's a simple effect: a cutaway to a fragile ball, which is then crushed to powder in Rojan's hand.  It is also one of the most memorable death scenes in all Trek.

This particular death scene also plays with the redshirt conventions that had built up in the series by this point. Two redshirts accompany the Away Team: a fairly flat, almost anonymous black security man who wants to get out of the situation through violence, and a very appealing, frightened (but not annoyingly useless) young yeoman. Both are reduced to balls of matter, one is killed, the other restored. Expectations of viewers of previous episodes are upturned by the yeoman being the one killed, when most episodes would save "the girl" and kill "random security guy."

Her character, while hardly memorable, is both appealing and likable.  She is frightened, yet still does her duty, even when separated from the team to await her fate (with a single, memorably plaintive, "Captain!").  These combine to make for a very simple scene that nevertheless I remember from my first viewing, back in my childhood, to the present. Strong direction from Marc Daniels, and good casting of the young actress (you just instinctively want to protect her) aid a scene that is, on its own, already well-scripted.

A redshirt masterpiece, and by far the most memorable moment in this episode.


THOUGHTS

The episode sees a peculiar movement from being very tense and suspenseful in its first half, to being largely comedic in its second half. It could almost be argued that this is two 25-minute episodes in one: a planet-bound thriller, followed by a ship-bound comedy. To the script's credit, the transition to humor is done gradually enough, and with sufficient consistency in tone, as to not feel jarring. Kirk's solution to the problem is ingenious, but  also quite dangerous. If Rojan figures out what Kirk is doing at any point prior to it actually being effective, all he needs to do to put Kirk in his place is start crushing more reduced crew members.

One problem is that the "redshirt death" is so good, and so memorable, that I couldn't quite manage to forget it in the more comedic second half. As a result, I wanted to see Rojan punished - which ultimately doesn't happen. Perhaps it's a case of one very good scene overshadowing the rest of the episode, but it does end up seeming like Rojan and company escape justice.  Still, given the level of their technology, I'd be hard-pressed to come up with any way for Kirk to have administered any kind of justice on them!


Rating: 8/10. Hugely entertaining.

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#49 (2-17): A Piece of the Action

THE PLOT

The Enterprise makes a follow-up visit to a world last contacted 100 years previously by an Earth ship known as the Horizon - before the Prime Directive went into effect. Upon beaming down to the planet's surface, Kirk, Spock, and McCoy discover that the planet has taken a book left as a gift by the previous ship, and modeled their entire society after that book. The book in question? A reference book on Chicago gangsters of the 1920's.

Now the Enterprise crew must find a way to undo the damage done to this society, and turn a world of rivaling mob bosses into a peaceful system. The challenge may well be staying alive long enough to do it!


CHARACTERS

Capt. Ham: For the first half of this episode, Shatner gives his usual, enthusiastic but reasonable performance. He's having fun with comedy pastische elements, but it's fairly low-key. That is, until Kirk finally gets the upper hand. Once the script has Kirk imitating gangster lingo, Shatner hams it up relentlessly, delivering every line in a bad Chicago gangster accent that was making me cringe in my seat. I would rate this as the first episode to actually be made less enjoyable due to Shatner's hammier tendencies.

Spock-Logic: Which, in this instance, bears no resemblance whatever to real logic. "The first time we trusted Bela, we ended up his prisoners. We escaped, and now Bela wants us to trust him again. Therefore, it is logical that we should walk into the same trap twice." An "I-told-you-so" look from Bones turns an iffy script turn into a good comic moment, but this has to be one of the more tortuous examples of Spock's bizarre logic turns. Nimoy does have fun with the general scenario, though, and manages to do so in a way that's genuinely funny - neatly upstaging Shatner even though he has less than half as much dialogue. His explaining that he will cut the gangsters in for "a miniscule piece" is particularly fun.


THOUGHTS

One of the contrasts between the series' first season and its second is that the second season has seen several episodes that have indulged the series' lighter side. The Trouble with Tribbles is the most famous example, but there are several other Season Two episodes that veer far more toward comedy than drama.

A Piece of the Action is a comedy pastische of 1930's gangster films. Like those films, it is set in a world that bears no resemblance to any reality that ever actually existed. It's set in a world in which the most powerful men alive are the "bosses," each of whom has a squeaky-voiced moll ready to perch on his lap. The two main rivals even seem to extend that rivalry to their molls; Oxymx has a (very pretty) brunette, while Krako prefers blondes. "Hits" are a daily occurrence, and police are effectively nonexistent. There's even a scene featuring a Dead End Kids-style urchin. All you'd need to do is throw in a trusty Irish priest, and you'd have the model for half of James Cagney's 1930's filmography.

Taken on this level, it's fun. It moves quickly, the guest performances are generally strong, and the production design is vastly above the series' usual standards. Bonus points for a bit of metahumor when one of the gang bosses (a young Vic Tayback) is transported up to the Enterprise in order to "put a bag over him" while simultaneously showing him the ship's power. He ultimately fails to be impressed. "All I saw was a room and three guys. Maybe there ain't no more!" In the case of many episodes, he might as well be speaking for the audience.

Minus points for Shatner's performance in the episode's last 20 minutes, though. His ill-advised attempt to be James Cagney, Edward G. Robinson, and Paul Muni all rolled into one pitch the comedy a bit too far across the line between amusing and annoying. The joke is funny when the leads' reactions to this world are played straight. It becomes a lot less funny when Shatner is too clearly in on the joke.


Rating: 6/10.

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#43 (2-25): Bread and Circuses

THE PLOT

The Enterprise traces the wreckage of a long-lost merchant ship to a pre-Warp planet modeled after ancient Rome, yet enjoying technology equivalent to Earth in the 1960's. After intercepting a television transmission that shows one of the missing ship's crew being killed in a gladiator contest, Kirk, Spock, and McCoy beam down (in full uniform, with full gear!) to see if they can find any other survivors of the crew - all while being careful to obey the Prime Directive, of course.

It isn't long before they are captured and taken to the city, where they discover that Merik (William Smithers), the captain of the derelict ship is now First Citizen, enjoying a life of luxury after having sold out the members of his own crew to Procounsel Claudius Marcus (Logan Ramsey). Marcus knows exactly who Kirk, Spock, and McCoy are, and demands Kirk accede to the same terms that Merik did. When Kirk refuses, Marcus attempts to force his hand by making him watch Spock and McCoy fight for their lives in the arena. With the Prime Directive blocking Kirk from ordering a rescue, it is left to Scotty to find another way to improvise without actually interfering with the planet's culture...

CHARACTERS

Capt. Kirk: Continues to defy his fan image of a reckless maverick who only stuck to the Prime Directive when it suited him. Here, we see that the value Kirk places on the Prime Directive is such that he is willing to sacrifice himself and his friends to uphold it, even when - as Marcus observes - his ship could easily rescue him from people who are comparative savages. Though he may be willing to sacrifice himself, he's not eager to, and does seize upon efforts to escape. He seems to hold Merik in as low regard as Marcus does, not even bothering to mention Merik's acts to save him in his final log entry... which oddly makes me think a bit less of Kirk.

Mr. Spock: Leonard Nimoy has a particularly good scene in the prison cell, in which he confesses his fear of revealing his own emotions. Despite his lifelong battle to suppress them, he isn't quite the master of his own "humanity" that he would like to be. His Vulcan strength and coordination allow him to hold his own in the arena without harming his opponent - though he does incur Marcus' ire when he "breaks the rules" to save McCoy from his opponent.

Scotty: Mr. Scott is one of the few characters outside of "The Big Three" who has actually been better-used in Season Two than in Season One. Scotty understands why Kirk issues the "Condition Green" order, and respects and obeys it. But he isn't content to simply accept helplessness, and insists on finding a solution to get the captain, Spock, and McCoy off that world rather than leaving them to their deaths.

Hot Roman Babe of the Week: Lois Jewell is Drusilla, the slave girl Marcus uses both as a "courtesy" to Kirk before his execution and, despite Marcus' claims to the contrary, a last-ditch hope on the procounsel's part at securing Kirk's cooperation. The tinfoil "slave girl" outfit is ludicrous, not terribly enticing despite the amount of skin shown.  Hint to costume designers everywhere: tinfoil is not sexy, no matter how little of it you use.  Jewell is, however, more than lovely enough to fill out her role as Kirk's, ah, present. It is somewhat disturbing that, given a sex slave for the night, Kirk's response is to enjoy his present and thank his captor for it, rather than make any attempt to free her. Still, it is Kirk we're talking about here...

Villain of the Week: Though it's virtually impossible to see him in anything now without thinking of his role from the MASH episode The Incubator, Logan Ramsey was a mainstay of television villainy in the '60's and '70's with good reason. His frame, voice, and bearing all speak of corruption even before he bothers giving a performance. It helps that his performance is rather good. Marcus is a villain through and through, but he's also quite shrewd. He knows exactly which buttons to push when dealing with Kirk. His open disdain for Merik betrays his fatal flaw - arrogance. By needling Merik over and over about how much of "a man" Kirk is and how weak and spineless he considers Merik to be, he probably helps prompt Merik's action at the show's end.


ZAP THE REDSHIRT!

Although a Roman gladiator arena would seem ready-made for a Trek Redshirt-palooza, I am disappointed to report that no redshirts were harmed in the making of this episode. I'm starting to think that, post-Apple, the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Redshirts stepped in and insisted on some kind of probationary period for poor old Kirk. No matter - I'm sure he'll contrive to get some more redshirts gruesomely killed any episode now.


THOUGHTS

The first-produced of Season Two's "parallel Earth" episodes. I gather these episodes became so common in the latter half of Season Two that they became to it what superbeing episodes became to Season One, which is probably why this episode (the first-produced but last-aired of the "parallel Earth" bunch) tends to earn rather middling regard. After the Planet of the Chicago Mobsters, the Planet of the Nazis, and probably a few others I'm not remembering offhand, the Planet of the Romans seemed stale. "Another planet just like a past Earth culture? Yawn."

Viewed in production sequence, that isn't a problem. I found it quite easy to enjoy Bread and Circuses. It wasn't a great episode. There are several logic gaffes, notably that Kirk, Spock, and McCoy happily beam down to a pre-Warp planet in their uniforms, with their weapons and communicators. Surely they should be trying to blend in with the citizenry, not stand out from it? I'm also not sure that mounting a rescue of Kirk and company would have actually constituted cultural interference, but I'll give the episode that much simply because there is no show without that (somewhat contrived) conflict.

As with Doctor Who's Vengeance on Varos, the episode gets some mileage from being set substantially in a television studio. This allows for a bit of commentary on the part of co-writers Gene Roddenberry and Gene Coon on the nature of networks in building ratings by going for the lowest common denominator of violent bloodsports, and even to use such TV studio standbys as canned applause.

Though hardly first-rank Trek, this episode is better than it's probably held up to be. It has a decent pace, a pretty good villain, and some good scenes for the main regulars. Not one I'd rush to re-watch, and I only barely remembered it at all. But it's solid, and suffers only by comparison with some of the truly strong episodes surrounding it.


Rating: 6/10.

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#37 (2-3): The Changeling

THE PLOT

The Enterprise responds to a distress call in a heavily-populated star system. No sooner has the ship arrived than it comes under fire - and it's quickly apparent that the ship has no chance of surviving this attack. Kirk hails the attacker, identifying himself... and the shooting stops, just as abruptly as it started.

The source of the assault is NOMAD, a probe whose mission is to destroy all life that it finds to be imperfect. It has confused Kirk with its creator (whose name was also Kirk), and wishes to study its creator's new vessel. Kirk beams it aboard, and does his best to contain the damage it can cause. But all he can do is stall for time while investigating NOMAD's origins and searching for a weakness. If NOMAD should discover that he is not its creator - or worse, that he is himself imperfect - then there will be nothing to do to save the Enterprise!


CHARACTERS

Capt. Ham: In his final confrontation with NOMAD, Shatner gets to display some of his patented. Line reading. Style. I'm not sure whether the machine self-destructs due to Kirk's computer-defying logic, or whether it self-destructs while attempting to rearrange sentence fragments into sentences. Either way, this episode sees Kirk again talking a deranged computer into destroying itself.

For the most part, Shatner has an excellent episode. Kirk attempts to deal with NOMAD through a variety of methods, placating it while also trying to minimize any damage it might do. Mostly, he is stalling for time, counting on the machine's error in believing him to be its "father" to gloss over his own imperfections.

That Vulcan Voodoo You Do: To get information about how NOMAD evolved from a harmless probe into its current state, Spock mind-melds with it. He does get the information, but has difficulty extricating himself afterwards. Nimoy seems to enjoy indulging his inner ham while reciting, "I am NOMAD!" over and over again at the end of the mind-meld scene. Spock doubtless also feels ever so slightly smug that NOMAD finds him to be "well-ordered," quite a compliment given the machine's very exacting standards!

Uhura: In a rather insulting subplot, Uhura is mind-wiped by NOMAD. We are specifically told that her mind has been irretrievably emptied of all memories. But no worries! Her brain is intact, so she can be re-taught all the basic skills. Rather than having to be taken back to Earth to be cared for in a home as she runs through childhood all over again, she can apparently re-learn everything needed for her job in just a few weeks!  I suppose "Hailing frequencies open" isn't particularly taxing. More than that, the annihilation of everything Uhura was, every memory she ever had, is treated as the subject of comedy relief. "Blue-ee?" In an episode I otherwise really enjoyed, this subplot struck an extremely sour chord.

Villain of the Week: The wonderful thing about NOMAD is that it isn't designed to look like a doomsday anything. It's just a basic probe, small and physically unthreatening. Completely featureless, its voice is equally expressionless. It isn't good, it isn't evil. It's just a machine that has gotten its wires crossed thanks to a space accident, and is fulfilling the wrong function, with no real thought or care about it. The episode's progression is a little like Charlie X, in that the machine is initially reluctant to go against Kirk, its surrogate father. But this is the opposite extreme, with absolute emotionlessness replacing the irrational emotions of Charlie.


ZAP THE REDSHIRT!

Redshirt count: Four. NOMAD zaps two security guards in a corridor. More cannon fodder is supplied so that later in the episode, NOMAD can zap two more.


THOUGHTS

Only a couple episodes after The Doomsday Machine (a couple episodes earlier, in broadcast order), we get another in which the Enterprise must deal with a planet-destroying machine. Fortunately, while the story backgrounds are similar, the plot mechanics are completely different. The opening makes it clear that Enterprise is completely outclassed by NOMAD in terms of space battles, leaving Kirk to probe for weaknesses of a different kind, while having to pretend to be the enemy's "father."

This set-up allows for a reasonably high amount of tension. There is never any question but that the machine can destroy the Enterprise at any time. Any point at which we forget the threat it poses, we get a sharp reminder of its awesome power. It kills Scotty, then revives him at Kirk's request. It wipes Uhura's mind, not in response to any threat but simply because it hears her singing and does not understand the logic. It also vaporizes security guards for target practice. I can only imagine that Kirk's security assignments are based on which redshirt cut in front of him at the mess hall. "Ensign Sanders took the last brownie when I went back for seconds - Assign him to guard NOMAD, Spock."

Aside from the thoughtless handling of the Uhura subplot, this is an extremely well-crafted episode. Kirk's stalling for time is well-portrayed.  I enjoyed his attempts to deal with NOMAD on the ship - tentative enough to show awareness of the machine's power, but without once compromising his own authority. Kirk's probing of NOMAD's mission and its background sees Kirk taking reasonable steps and reasonable risks at every stage. And even though I made fun of Kirk's final facedown with the machine, it is actually quite a good scene. Shatner may let his inner ham show through, but it's still a good ham - enjoyable ham, rather than groanworthy ham.

The only things keeping this from a "9" are the Uhura subplot (which truly grates), and the stupid comedy tag scene in which Kirk muses about "my son, the doctor." OK, I get that you're relieved at having disposed of NOMAD. But more than 4 billion living beings are still dead. I'm not sure levity is the correct response.

Irritating comedy relief aside, this is another very good episode. By this point, Season Two is easily threatening to overtake Season One in terms of quality. I do question why the remastering team couldn't have made the security guards' attempts to phaser Nomad a little bit more convincing. Phaser effects in other episodes were fixed; why not in this one? Ah, well.


Rating: 8/10.

Previous Episode: Wolf in the Fold
Next Episode: The Apple

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#36 (2-14): Wolf in the Fold

Kirk vs. Jack the Ripper. Guess who wins?


THE PLOT

After a female crew member's error results in a head injury for Scotty, Dr. McCoy prescribes shore leave to the sexually-permissive Argelius II, where he believes the delights easily available to a man will cure the engineer's resentment toward women. It certainly seems to be working. As the episode opens, Scotty is enchanted by a beautiful dancer's act, and quite happy at the thought of going off alone with her for a "walk in the fog" (wink-wink-nudge-nudge). Kirk and McCoy head off to another club, in hopes of finding some companionship for themselves, when they hear a shrill scream. Running to the site, they find Scotty... a bloody knife in his hand... standing over the dancer's body.

Scotty cannot remember the actual stabbing.  Though all the evidence points to him, Kirk refuses to accept that his friend and engineer could be a killer. Others left the club at the same time, including the dead girl's jealous fiance. But every new revelation just makes Scotty look all the guiltier, even to the engineer himself. As more young women are murdered, Kirk is left to fall back on an Argelian ceremony to try to bring the truth to light.


CHARACTERS

Capt. Kirk: We get a little of leering, "Lothario Kirk," as he happily ogles the dancer, then suggests to McCoy that it would be fun to go to this club he knows "where the women are so..." (amusing gesture). For most of the episode, though, Kirk is put in the position of acting as advocate for his crew member. He is careful to stay on the side of working with the local government, rather than overriding them, and it is clear that he wants to find the truth as badly as the Argelians do.

Spock: Barely even featured until the second half of the show. He does get some good material late in the episode, figuring out the nature of the killer. His reaction to Kirk's suggestion of accompanying him to the aforementioned club "where the women are so..." is also quietly hilarious, as is Kirk's deflated reaction to Spock's befuddled expression.

Scotty: A Scotty-centric episode, but not really in the sense of developing his character.  The episode derives its concept largely by having something happen to him offscreen that makes him unlike the Scotty we know, simply in order to make it halfway feasible that he even might be the killer. This does, at least, give James Doohan a chance to do some rather good bewildered acting, as Scott is left more afraid of not knowing what could have happened during his blackouts than he is of the threatened punishment should he be found guilty.


ZAP THE REDSHIRT!

Virginia Aldridge is Lt. Karen Tracy, a medical officer beamed down to scan Scotty's memory. Because the best person to leave alone with a potential woman-killer who is definitely suffering from blackouts is going to be a pretty young woman. As soon as she's alone with Scotty, she ends up predictably dead. And even though the memory-scanning capability presumably still exists once she's dead, Kirk never even suggests a more secured second attempt, opting for a seance instead (leading to a third death - though this one not an Enterprise crew member, so it doesn't fall under this particular heading).

(And before someone gets pedantic - yes, I know that her uniform was blue.)


THOUGHTS

The third of Robert Bloch's three Trek scripts, and it falls somewhere in the middle for me. It's better than Catspaw - which fell far in my estimation of it on this viewing - but not as good as What Are Little Girls Made Of (which itself was a flawed script). Bloch is a competent writer, but I've come to the conclusion that he perhaps wasn't intrinsically suited to Star Trek. Still, he always turns out a reasonably well-structured story, and his episodes are all quite watchable.

More than perhaps any other episode, Wolf in the Fold has a very stagy feel to it, made up of long scenes in limited settings. The first act takes place entirely in a nightclub.  The second act is entirely in a house, and mostly in just one room.  The third act moves the action to the Enterprise - and again, mostly to just the conference room. If you were to modify this for the stage, by the way, it would be no great task to adjust the third act so that it was still set in the house. I'm not sure whether this was a deliberate attempt to capture the spirit of some of Vincent Price's Edgar Allen Poe movies, which were often similarly stagy, or whether it was simply a script that was tailored to be very budget-conscious.

The theatrical nature of the episode actually works more in its favor than against it. The theatricality brings with it a certain level of atmosphere. The seance scene is particularly effective, with the dimming of the lighting and the increasingly frantic cries of Sybo (well-played by Pilar Seurat), as she senses the evil in the room.

Still, this is decidedly a "B" episode, with several limitations that seem built into the script. The only thing making Scotty an even halfway plausible suspect is an incident that happened off screen, which we are told has made him behave in a way that's completely out of character.  We never actually see him display any hint of resentment toward women, making this crammed-in backstory feel all the thinner. This is a casualty of the "each one-hour episode in total isolation" standard of 1960's television. A more modern show might build to this, by having the accident happen on-screen a few episodes earlier, and then actually showing in the next few episodes Scotty displaying some of this resentment, leading to McCoy prescribing shore leave. But with each episode being its own "movie," any backstory has to be crammed in, rather clumsily in this case.

Another problem is that, while the structure of the piece is that of a stage mystery with Gothic overtones, it's an extremely thin mystery. The villain is easy to spot, with no real attempt made to disguise his identity. I couldn't picture anyone who's even halfway familiar with the mystery genre failing to I. D. the killer. There's also an abrupt shift to comedy in the last ten minutes.  Some of the comedy bits are entertaining, but it genuinely does jar with the overall tone of the piece.

Still, even if it's a flawed episode, it is an enjoyable one. I have no problem giving this one a recommendation, albeit with a rather dead-average rating of...


Rating: 6/10

Previous Episode: The Doomsday Machine
Next Episode: The Changeling

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#33 (2-2): Who Mourns for Adonais?

THE PLOT

The Enterprise is trapped when a huge green hand made of energy materializes in space and grabs hold. A man appears on the scanner, threatening to crush the ship and extending an "invitation" for Kirk and members of his crew to beam down. Kirk beams down with McCoy, Scotty, and the pretty young Lieutenant Palamas, an anthropologist. When they meet the man in person, he claims to be the ancient god Apollo. He is offering the Enterprise crew a life of simple pleasures, in exchange for their unquestioning worship of him. But he also offers the vengeance of a god if they refuse him!


CHARACTERS

Capt. Kirk: Unable to abide captivity, he sets about trying to find a way to free his crew from Apollo's grip from pretty much the instant the hand appears. He is not foolhardy. He recognizes Apollo's powers, and urges the others to behave cautiously and courteously, retaining courtesy even in his own direct defiance. But he also remains keenly observant, probing constantly for weaknesses and using the resources of his crew and his ship to find a way to break Apollo's grip on them.

Spock: Completely in sync with his captain, and operating - like Kirk - from the starting point of Apollo not being a god, but simply an alien with an energy source. He uses the ship's sensors to find that source, while directing Uhura to work around Apollo's interference to restore communications.

Scotty: This is the first of a couple of "Scotty in Love" episodes. For Scotty, this means that his common sense, and the bulk of his IQ, trickle down out of his ears in gray, gooey lumps.  From a sensible officer, he becomes generally useless, putting himself repeatedly in jeopardy. Kirk finally has enough of his middle-aged engineer behaving like a mooney 16-year-old, and gives him an appropriate dressing down. Still, even with Kirk finally snapping at him to "do (his) job" and even with James Doohan's best efforts, there is nothing in any episode to date to suggest that Scotty is prone to the level of unprofessionalism, even outright idiocy, on display here. I might also idly suggest that he find a more age-appropriate object for his amorous pursuits.  Somehow, even though I had absolutely no problem with the even less age-appropriate McCoy relationship in Shore Leave, I was able to believe that pairing while I was unable to believe this one.  Perhaps it's because McCoy actually remained McCoy in that episode, instead of turning into a pod-person.

Hot Space Babe of the Week: Leslie Parrish is Carolyn Palamas, the anthropologist who is pursued by both Scotty and Apollo. Palamas' choice near the climax turns out to be the key to the crew's escape. The Scotty/Palamas relationship isn't convincing for a second, save perhaps as a middle-aged man's unrequited midlife crush, but the Apollo/Palamas one works far better. Palamas' background, and Apollo's approaches to her, make it convincing that she would be attracted, and Parrish plays the rejection scene quite well.

Villain of the Week: Michael Forest does a solid job as Apollo, capturing the mix of the powerful and the pathetic the episode requires very well. He's a bit stiff in the person-to-person interactions on the planet's surface. Then again, I suppose a god would be used to one-way conversations. He plays well opposite Parrish, adequately opposite Shatner, and manages to extract just enough sympathy to be something other than a black-and-white baddie.


THOUGHTS

As with a few Season One episodes, I liked Who Mourns for Adonis? significantly better as an adult than I did as a child. The episode's musings on what was gained when ancient superstitions was abandoned, and what was lost at the same time, hold a distinct appeal to me. I enjoyed the presentation of Apollo as a being who is past his time and unable to accept that he no longer fits in the modern age. In the late 1960's, with technology starting to run away with itself, more than a few slightly older viewers of the time could probably relate to that on some level.

The episode is very well-directed. Marc Daniels was almost certainly Trek's best director, and his confident hand lends a peaceful and pastoral air to the forest during early scenes, and a very menacing atmosphere to the same setting later. Daniels does a particularly strong job with what had to have been a problematic scene, by late 1960's standards. After Palamas rejects Apollo - on Kirk's orders, and against her own desires - Apollo takes his revenge. We get the usual storm effects, and see her mounting fear. Then we see Apollo's form appear, his face pushing forward toward a screaming Palamas in a series of quick, close shots. The staging of the scene suggests a rape, but does so in a way that some viewers (particularly younger viewers) won't catch the suggestion at all, thus sidestepping potential censorship issues. At the same time, it's extremely effectively executed, both eerie and disturbing.

The episode did apparently have two alterations imposed on it by the networks. One was the removal of a tag which would have revealed that Palamas was pregnant with Apollo's child. I have mixed feelings on the alteration. On the one hand, the cut scene certainly backs up my reading of the scene in which Apollo assaults Palamas. On the other hand, it was clearly a jokey tag scene... and I'm just as happy not to have Trek be among the late '60's/early '70's shows that were happy to find humor in rape scenes or rape threats.

The other change was a slight addition to a line in which Kirk offers his initial dismissal of Apollo, telling him, "We have no use for gods." The network asked for a slight follow-up, so in the televised episode he adds: "The one is quite sufficient." This is a change I wholeheartedly favor. It may work against Gene Roddenberry's vision of a future in which humanity has discarded all of its superstitions. But, much like J. Michael Straczynski and Babylon 5, I never can quite buy that utopian future in which humanity is free of crime and conflict, let alone religion. Besides which, the addition is just a better line, snappier and more quotable than what would otherwise be a throwaway. And in drama, one should never let one's worldview get in the way of a good one-liner.


Rating: 7/10.

Previous Episode: Friday's Child
Next Episode: Amok Time


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#23 (1-23): A Taste of Armageddon.

THE PLOT

The Enterprise is on a diplomatic mission to Eminiar VII, the principal planet in a star cluster that has resisted attempts to open up contact. When the planet's leaders request the Enterprise to stay away at all costs, Kirk's inclination is to honor that request... but his guest, Ambassador Fox (Gene Lyons) insists on ignoring the request and continuing to the planet.

Once they arrive, the planet's High Council extends every courtesy. The head of the council, Anan 7 (David Opatoshu), politely rejects diplomatic overtures, explaining that their world is in the midst of a generations-long war with a neighboring planet. While Kirk's team is meeting with Anan, an attack occurs. Anan declares massive casualties, even though no damage appears to have been done to the planet's surface. That is when Spock reaches the only logical conclusion, which Anan confirms: the war is being fought in purely theoretical terms, by computers, with calculated casualties then ordered to report to disintegration chambers. In this way, Anan explains, the war can go on without the cultures of the two planets being destroyed along with the people.

Then Anan drops a particularly big bombshell on Kirk. In the last attack, the computer declared the Enterprise destroyed. Kirk and his team are made hostages, with Anan declaring that the entire Enterprise crew must beam down for disintegration!


CHARACTERS

Capt. Kirk: He is outraged by the antiseptic "war" Anan is waging, and even more outraged that the people of this world simply meekly walk into disintegration chambers. To Kirk, going to one's death without a fight - without at least attempting to live - is incomprehensible. In a moment of inspired ruthlessness, Kirk actually threatens destruction on the surface of the planet, ordering Scotty to fire on this world if the Away Team is not released. Anan believes it's a bluff - and in later seasons (or with any later captain, except possibly Sisko) it certainly would be. But here, it is never made clear if Kirk is bluffing. Scotty certainly seems appalled at the order, and there is never a quick exchange between Kirk and Spock or Kirk and Scott to indicate that "General Order 24" is anything other than what it seems. To viewers of the time, to whom the Prime Directive had yet to become a staple of the series, it may well have seemed plausible that Kirk's threat was genuine.

That Vulcan Voodoo You Do: Spock's telepathic abilities now do not require physical contact, or even visual contact, with a subject. He can plant suggestions in the minds of their captors from inside a locked room. Spock can appreciate the logic behind the planet's peculiar method of warfare, but supports his captain in his efforts to stop it. He also displays a very straight-faced sense of humor here, as when he orders a yeoman to prevent the female guest star of the week "from immolating herself. Knock here down and sit on her if you have to," or when he tells Ambassador Fox that the time has come to practice "a peculiar variety of diplomacy," while destroying a disintegration chamber.

Scotty: Refuses to be bullied by the irritating Ambassador Fox into dropping the ship's shields, and agrees to Kirk's radical "general order" with only the slightest of hesitations. His loyalty to his captain and ship is unswerving, and he does not seem particularly impressed by the authority of an ambassador he clearly views as an outsider.

Hot Alien Space Babe of the Week: Barbara Babcock is Mea 3, who provides Kirk with a very attractive reception upon the Away Team's arrival. Mea is declared a casualty of the attack, and considers it her duty to report for disintegration. Kirk will not allow that, and rescues her against her will.  Unusually for a Trek episode, she does not become a romantic interest for Kirk... probably because with the amount going on in the episode already, there would simply have been no time for it.

Pompous Starfleet Bureaucrat of the Week: Gene Lyons' Ambassador Fox is not a million miles removed from the irritating Starfleet official in The Galileo Seven. He is quite arrogant, and so completely certain of himself that he cannot seem to imagine the possibility that he could be wrong in anything. He does end up coming across a bit better than the one in Galileo, if only because when the situation becomes clear, he willingly participates in Spock's rescue of Kirk.  He also volunteers to stay on Eminiar to negotiate a true peace between the warring planets, making him a pompous pain in the neck, but ultimately a sincere man.

Villain of the Week: Sincerity is the order of the day, as David Opatoshu's Anan 7 gives us the most interesting and implacable of foes: a villain who genuinely believes that what he is doing is right. Anan makes a reasonably persuasive argument for why this method of warfare is necessary. The individuals die, but the culture, its architecture, its infrastructure and accomplishments all survive. Anan values the continuity of the culture above its population, and is ruthless in doing whatever he has to do to ensure that continuity. The prospect of a real war terrifies him - something Kirk capitalizes on at the episode's end.


THOUGHTS

Though not quite up there with, say, Balance of Terror, A Taste of Armageddon is a fine episode. On the one hand, it succeeds as an action story, cranking its plot along at a cracking pace. Kirk, Spock, and the Away Team effectively fight their own war against Anan and his disintegration chambers even as Anan fights his antiseptic war against Vendakar. At the same time, Anan fights a losing war against the Enterprise, using deception to attempt to lure the ship to lowering its defenses.

The "armageddon" of the title pervades the episode's content. A generations-long war between the two planets has resulted in the loss of millions (possibly billions) of lives over time.  The casualty count is staggering, and itself seems like a vision of hell, with generations raised to believe it is their duty to walk like sheep to the slaughter. The reason for this? A fear of the armageddon that would result from a real, physically-destructive war. The savage irony, which Kirk can see but which the people who have been raised to believe in this system cannot, is that this "clean war" allows the two worlds to fight on and on, without end, when a real war would have ended long ago, with ultimately far fewer dead. Anan 7 wants armageddon for the Enterprise, prompting Kirk in his turn to threaten to unleash a genuine armageddon against Anan's world. For an episode with a comparatively low casualty count (only a few extras are disintegrated on camera, and no speaking characters), it is one of the most destructive of the entire series.

An intriguing science fiction vision of war, a fast pace, and a set of characters who ultimately are all sincere in believing that they are right in what they do. And Kirk gets to make one of his best speeches at the end. "We are not going to kill... Today!" What more could any Trek fan possibly ask?


Rating: 9/10.

Previous Episode: Return of the Archons
Next Episode: Space Seed

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