Review

An escape attempt by a criminally insane man that isn't what it seems. Certainly an original plot for Star Trek so far and during the first twenty minutes of the episode the plot is well paced and intelligently constructed. It's unclear whether or not McCoy's suspicions will be validated until almost halfway through the episode. Unfortunately, once it becomes clear that Adams is up to no good, the pacing of the episode crashes as the episode begins to focus solely on slowly revealing the exact nature of what specific evils Adams is up to. Of particular note are the frequent, lengthy scenes where Spock and McCoy attempt to access Gelder's memory. Likewise, I would have preferred fewer and/or shorter Kirk-in-the-brainwashing-chair scenes.

Kirk's interactions with Noel were considerably more interesting. While her character was a bit annoying at times for being all too eager to defend Adams even after the originally all too trusting Kirk had moved on from that attitude, the rest of her characterization was well done. I'm amused that Kirk and Noel apparently had some sort of fling at a Christmas party and that while she clearly wishes it had been more than that, she's a great deal more comfortable with the reality of those events than Kirk is. Their sexual tension is well played, tasteful, and relevant, unlike similar scenes in some previous episodes.

What doesn't play as well are Adams' motives. Since the episode offers us little to go on, we can only conclude that he somehow went mad with the power to enslave people with his beloved brainwashing machine. While it's never made clear just what his plans for Kirk and Noel were once they discovered what he was doing, it stands to reason that he was attempting to wipe their memories of what their investigation had revealed. But if that was what he was trying to do, then why was he wasting his time planting so much other nonsense in Kirk's mind when he could have just planted the memory of an uneventful investigation and sent him on his way? Once again we're forced to just accept that another dignified Earth celebrity suddenly went inexplicably crazy. This is already becoming quite a cliche.