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| Kirk is forced into a fight to the death against the Gorn! |
Original Air Date: Jan. 19, 1967. Teleplay by: Gene L. Coon. Based on the short story by: Fredric Brown. Directed by: Joseph Pevney.
"Welcome to Thunderdome!"
THE PLOT
The Enterprise arrives at an observation outpost commanded by Commodore Travers, an old friend of Kirk's. The crew expects a relaxing break- until Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and a couple redshirts beam down and find only ruins. The landing party almost immediately comes under attack. They manage to hold out until the ship can rescue them, but the colony has been completely wiped out.
Back on Enterprise, Kirk obsessively pursues the enemy ship, determined to avenge the lost colony. Then both Enterprise and the other ship are frozen in space. Kirk is transported to a planet below, where a super race (*drink*) makes Kirk do battle with his enemy - the lizard-like Gorn captain. Whoever wins, will be allowed to go on his way. Whoever loses will not only die, but lose his entire ship as well!
CHARACTERS
Capt. Kirk: In the early scenes, at the destroyed outpost, he prioritizes his ship, insisting to Sulu that he must protect the Enterprise first, and worry about the landing party second. Once he's back in command, he indulges his inner Ahab in his obsessive pursuit of the Gorn ship. He insists that the attack must be a prelude to an invasion and shuts out all other possible explanations. The last part of the episode demonstrates his resourcefulness. The Gorn is clearly stronger, making a direct fight into suicide, so Kirk instead relies on his wits to turn the tables.
Spock: Acts as the voice of caution and reason, trying to break through Kirk's anger by pointing out that there are multiple possible explanations for the attack. He gets much less to do in the second half, reduced to watching Kirk's combat on the viewscreen with the rest of the crew. Still, he puts the pieces of Kirk's victory together even as the captain does, an effective way for the script to let us know Kirk's plan.
Villain of the Week: The Gorn are most effective in the first half of the episode, as an unseen enemy attacking relentlessly and mercilessly. The creature loses much of its effectiveness in the second half, when it's unveiled as a guy in an unwieldly lizardman costume! The remastered edition tries to offset the artificiality of the costume by having the Gorn blink, which sells the effect a bit better than in the original version.
LET'S PLAY... ZAP THE REDSHIRT!
Redshirt count: Two. Crewman O'Herlihy barely survives past the titles, zapped by a disintegrator ray after leadenly intoning, "Captain, I think I see something!" Well, at least he got a line in. That's more than can be said for Crewman Lang, who is zapped off-camera, with another redshirt reporting "They got Lang."
THOUGHTS
OK, I'm officially tired of superbeings. In first season Trek, Gene Roddenberry apparently had an obsession with advanced, superior, godlike beings. At this point, it's getting repetitive. What's more, this episode doesn't actually need them. Kirk could have gone one-on-one with the Gorn on the outpost world, with the two ships away, to much the same effect and even with much the same solution. We might have lost the "Ahab Kirk" bit in the middle, but I think I would have preferred that to the intervention of yet another superrace.
This bunch of would-be gods is also a bit capricious. The rules are laid out for Kirk and Gorn at the start of the encounter: Kill the other, and live; fail to kill the other, and your crew dies along with you. Then, at the end, after Kirk refuses to finish his opponent off, the superbeing conveniently reveals that this was a test. If Kirk had killed the enemy, then Kirk and his ship would have been destroyed. Oh, nice - so if Kirk had placed the 400+ lives aboard the Enterprise above the life of the vicious lizard creature and had killed the Gorn out of simple necessity, then he and Enterprise would have been zapped? I get that TOS is often a series of morality plays, but this instance feels less like "morality" and more like "Gotcha!"
These grumbles aside, though, Arena it's clear enough why Arena is a fan favorite. The lizard suit doesn't hold up that well, but the episode does. The pace is intense, with both encounters carrying a distinct sense of danger. I admit to finding the destroyed outpost to be a more interesting setting to the generic planet, but both battles are well-realized.
This episode also does well by demonstrating Kirk's resourcefulness. The Gorn is much stronger than he is, so he has to rely on his wits just to survive in the short term, let alone actually win. The action is well-directed, and we are able to follow Kirk's reasoning at every stage. The last parts of this are explicitly sold, with intercuts to Spock. However, Kirk's earlier attempts to deal with the Gorn are conveyed mostly through well-chosen POV shots and close-ups of Shatner's face, both noticing opportunities and reacting to failures (and one apparent success).
All of this is extremely well-executed, and the episode stands as one of William Shatner's better performances in the series. It's the most action-intensive episode of Trek up to this point, but it's never dumb action.
I originally scored this a "7," mainly because I felt burned out on morally superior superbeings. But while that is a failing of Star Trek's otherwise excellent first season, it's not actually a fault in the episode itself, so I'm bumping the score up to...
Rating: 8/10.
Previous Episode: The Squire of Gothos
Next Episode: The Alternative Factor
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I gave this episode a 9.
ReplyDeleteIn the 1960s when the ep aired, we viewers were willing to be tolerant of the cheap reptile costume. We knew that they couldn't do much better on a TV sized budget--the monsters on shows like Outer Limits and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea were no better designed. (In fact, Wah Chang was the designer of both the Gorn and a number of creatures for Outer Limits.) It's willing suspension of disbelief--ignore the costume and focus on the story.
The first act of this ep featured some dandy ground war action, with disrupters against hand phasers until Kirk finds a grenade launcher.
Meanwhile, Sulu commands the Big E against the Gorn ship, firing both phasers and photon torpedoes (one of the few eps where both are employed).
The action and suspense in this ep are definitely above par.
9/10