Review

While it's annoyingly unoriginal to frame another episode around a Kirk double and another guest star with a hidden agenda, I quite liked Kirk's method of making Spock aware of the impostor by filling his thoughts with hate for Spock during the creation of the Kirk android. Kirk couldn't have known for sure that his tactics would work, so the entire attempt was just one big lucky guess. Nevertheless, that sort of boldness is exactly what makes a good captain.

However, the real meat of the episode lies with Dr. Korby's discovery of technology from an extinct alien civilization capable of manufacturing androids. This technology is even capable of transferring the human consciousness into an android, a capability that he uses to save his life, after which he apparently makes no attempt to contact Earth because he's afraid that his people would find his discovery somehow distasteful. This seems like an irrational notion up until the point when the Enterprise arrives and Kirk and Chapel seem to validate Dr. Korby's irrational fears by reacting with horror at the very idea that Korby has created androids. Kirk even compares him to Hitler at one point without much of a reason.

At about 32 minutes into the episode Korby proposes seeding androids incognito to Earth and its colonies in secret as a means to avoid what he believes would be mass hysteria if their existence were to be widely known. But rather than relieve Korby of his paranoia by explaining to him that that would be unnecessary and that Earth would welcome him, his discoveries, and his android counterparts into the fold, Kirk spends the entire episode overreacting to Korby's overreaction. The ensuing conflict results in the deaths of everyone on the colony and then Kirk goes about his merry way as if nothing of consequence has occurred.

In so doing, the implications of the existence of this android technology are wasted and forgotten. Kirk makes no attempt to retrieve or preserve the technology and the episode itself seems to condemn the very existence of such a technology. At several points, the episode goes out of its way to make the argument that an android which thinks it's superior to a human is a threat which must be destroyed. The episode also demonstrates that the androids were emotionally unstable and not very good critical thinkers, seeing as how Kirk was so easily able to exploit conflicts between their emotional states and their programming. While it's clear the technology has flaws, none of this is enough to support the episode's apparent condemnation of the very idea of androids.

Instead what I can only assume the episode intended us to believe is that Korby was lying to Kirk and that his real intent was to replace key personnel on Earth and its colonies in order to take them over. This is certainly a possibility, given the Kirk double and Korby's admitted desire to keep his discoveries a secret, but at no point in the episode does this premise become conclusive. At best, Kirk could only have a reasonable suspicion of Korby intending to do such a thing and it was as irresponsible for Kirk to act on such a suspicion without proof as it was for him to make no effort to preserve or retrieve any of the technology found on that planet for further study. Overall a pretty lackluster episode.