Review

Despite what the episode's title may imply, this story is anything but cerebral. On the contrary it's pretty goofy but in ways that are entirely intentional and the comedy is quite effective. The central amusement of the story is how well Spock takes being disembodied. He spends the whole episode reveling in the novelty of the experience and even objects to his own rescue at one point on the grounds that the odds for success are too low and pose too great a risk to the landing party. Unfortunately the episode's rather simplistic tone is its greatest weakness as well, as a deeper exploration of the cost-benefit analysis of whether or not to attempt a rescue of Spock could have made for some interesting drama.

For instance, throughout much of the episode McCoy objects to the rescue attempt in a sort of half-hearted way on the grounds that he lacked the surgical knowledge to restore Spock's brain to his body. Kirk simply barrels on ahead assuming that the people who did this to Spock could undo it, which was by no means certain, and that in addition he could also somehow convince them to undo the brain theft even after all the painstaking work they went through to perform that surgical strike in the first place. A better episode would have forced Kirk to truly wrestle with the possibility that Spock's best chance for survival was to remain disembodied rather than have Kirk never lose faith in his own abilities to coerce surgical magic out of the aliens of the week.

There are a whole host of other smaller flaws as well. It's never quite explained why the aliens of the week took such great care to extract Spock's brain without doing irreparable damage to his body, which turned out to be rather convenient! Likewise, when they follow the ion trail to the Sigma Draconis system they conclude rather hastily that none of the remarkably three M class planets in the planetary system are capable of launching an interstellar flight despite obvious evidence to the contrary. Then another awkward line emerges when it's claimed that the crew lacks the time to search three different M class planets in the same planetary system. Why not send three landing parties?

And then there's Kirk's silly requirement that they tote around Spock's zombie body with them wherever they go. Why not locate the brain first and then beam down Spock later if he needs to be down there for some reason? It's also stated that the Federation lacks ion propulsion, which seems unlikely as the technology was already beginning to mature in the real world by the time this episode was produced. Granted, the exact term used was "advanced ion propulsion" so maybe the fact that it's "advanced" should connote something more stunning. Also McCoy at one point injects a stimulant into a humanoid alien on the planet. Is it really safe to use human drugs on an unknown alien? I guess that looking exactly like humans thing sometimes goes further than just skin deep!

Setting aside the smaller flaws, there was one other larger issue with the story. At the end the motives of the aliens of the week are finally established. It's stated that they periodically go hunting for presumably highly evolved alien brains to power their Controller computer. This leads to a moral dilemma nearly as interesting but just as poorly explored as the risk analysis of whether or not to rescue Spock. Is the need for a Controller for the aliens greater than Spock's need for his freedom? The obvious answer is that Spock's freedom should not be subverted against his will for the benefit of any group of people, no matter how large. But the episode barely explores this question at all and Kirk's solution is needlessly cold.

At the end of the story Kirk simply condemns the aliens of the week to living in the harsh conditions of the planet's surface with little more than a pat on the ass and an insistence that natural selection will take care of the rest. Given how painfully stupid the aliens were, what with choice lines like, "Brain and brain! What is brain!" I have my doubts that Kirk's faith in their survival is terribly justified, especially seeing as how it's established that a biological atrophy of their mental faculties has taken place due to generations of non-use. That, and the males who were already inexplicably condemned to the surface didn't seem much smarter.

However, while this story certainly had themes with the potential for greater depth, despite that missed opportunity the episode is funny and entertaining largely because it doesn't take itself too seriously. Watching Spock comment on his disembodiment is highly amusing and none of the flaws of the story add up to the sorts of show stopping technical problems that a few noteworthy episodes from the previous two seasons have delivered so what we get in the end comes off merely as slightly below average.

Review

An exciting episode packed with intrigue and several layers of deception. Throughout the story you're left wondering who is playing who and only midway through the episode do we finally learn that Kirk's confusing array of behaviors were all part of an act designed to deceive the Romulans and that only Kirk, Spock, and McCoy had foreknowledge of the details of the mission. And what a bold mission indeed! The Federation ordered them to steal technology from the enemy. This is only the second time we've seen Romulan characters on screen and it's been two years since their first appearance. Since then, much has changed in the political landscape. The Romulans' shared ancestry with the Vulcans has been unmasked and since the cat is out of the bag the Romulans make no attempt to avoid visual contact any further. In fact, the Romulan commander openly discussed her shared ancestry with Spock, referring to his people as "distant brothers." That leaves me wondering which planet the two species evolved on. Vulcan? Romulus? Or somewhere else?

One curious oddity was the brief mention that the Romulans are now using Klingon ship designs. This hints at a possible alliance between the two empires, but there is no mention of that and outside of that quick one liner the concept isn't explored at all. Other oddities included the mention that English is a difficult language for Romulans to learn which seems strange seeing as how the universal translator would seem to mitigate the need for the Romulans to learn English in the first place. Also it seems unlikely that Kirk could walk around the Romulan ship and especially interact with the crew without being recognized as Kirk, despite his altered appearance. Likewise it seemed rather convenient that the Romulan ship's shields just so happened to be down, allowing Kirk and Spock to be beamed off the ship at just the right moment. Finally I found it a bit strange that the cloaking device could be so easily plugged into the Enterprise, despite Scotty's whining about its alien oddness.

On top of that, the whole idea of a hostage exchange seemed like a poor thing for the Romulans to agree to given that they had the Enterprise completely surrounded and quite frankly held all the cards by that point. But in any case, Kirk and Spock's time aboard the Romulan vessel was the centerpiece of the story. It's a bit annoying that the Romulan commander falls in love with Spock so quickly and easily without much of a substantiation, but despite the strangeness of her obsession with winning him over, the whole plot point is well played. I was intrigued by how well the story played on Spock's half human and half Vulcan nature, as the fact that Spock's human ancestry makes him more like a Romulan than a Vulcan is distinctly ironic. The Enterprise Incident is a fine piece of storytelling overall with only minor flaws. More episodes of Star Trek should be like this one!

Review

The Paradise Syndrome tackles basically the same "captain burnout" issue as Shore Leave except it attempts to do so dramatically rather than comically. The drama is effective, but the episode overall doesn't work as well as its funnier predecessor for a few key reasons.

The most annoying gaffe in the story is pretty much anything that comes out of McCoy's mouth up until close to the end. In the beginning he fails to understand the most elementary concepts about their asteroid deflection mission and Spock is forced to take considerable time in the middle of a crisis situation to explain these basics to him. Then McCoy has the audacity to complain to Spock about failing to destroy the asteroid, putting the ship at risk, and leaving Kirk on the planet despite the fact that 1. McCoy creating delays only made their problems worse and 2. Spock's decision to immediately attempt deflection of the asteroid was the right move. If McCoy had been paying attention he'd know that. Luckily, McCoy swallows his pride and admits that he was wrong late in the episode, but after all that the apology feels somewhat hollow.

Unfortunately as annoying as McCoy was, he was partially right about one thing: why didn't they keep looking for Kirk? Granted McCoy wanted the whole ship to stay and search for Kirk, but there is a middle ground between McCoy's position on the issue and Spock's: they could have simply left a search team on the planet, then immediately warped out of orbit to deflect the asteroid while the search team searched for Kirk. Perhaps Starfleet regulations prohibit such a course of action, or perhaps there was not sufficient time to properly equip a search team, but someone should have mentioned this.

Another point of vagueness was how Spock cracked the language of the obelisk to begin with. The eureka moment is when Spock claims the language is more music than language, but that doesn't really explain anything at all. Musical notation is a form of written language like any other, so since he couldn't know which symbols corresponded to which musical notes, the problem is analogous to not knowing which letters in an alphabet correspond to which phonetic sounds. Thus, I have a hard time believing Spock could have cracked any of that language based solely on what exposition is in the plot. I suppose some universal translator magic could have done most of the work for him once Spock simply asked the computer to translate it as music rather than language, but that seems like a stretch.

And then there's the almost-but-not-quite Hodgkin's Law moment in the teaser. After all the Earth-like planets we've seen by this point it's vaguely ridiculous for the characters to be spouting lines about how incredibly improbable it is for the planet of the week to have flora so closely mirroring Earth's. I groaned when McCoy saw the natives and referred to them as "American Indians" and Spock replied that they were, without wondering even for a moment how Native Americans could have ended up on some random planet far from Earth. As the episode progresses it does offer us a coherent explanation though: the aliens are actually humans descended from Native Americans. They were brought here by an alien race called "The Preservers" ostensibly to save them from extinction.

As McCoy points out, the historical existence of The Preservers goes a long way towards explaining why there are so many human-like races throughout the galaxy. In that sense, this episode joins Return to Tomorrow in rationalizing that unlikely fact of the Star Trek universe. Perhaps many ancient races have seeded humanoids throughout the galaxy. The Preservers went the extra mile though, furnishing our Native American friends with an asteroid deflector! Handy. I was amused that they integrated the technology into their religious superstitions and I enjoyed how Kirk's foggy recollection of his society's technology made him seem godlike to them.

However, there is something of a dark side to that story point as well, as the episode at times verges on racist stereotyping. For starters, the Native Americans are referred to as American Indians and their entire society is portrayed mostly as noble savages while the plot goes out of its way to make Kirk, the white character, seem superior with numerous scenes depicting how the natives are amazed by such simple things as Kirk's improvised lamp or even the construction of his uniform. Even with amnesia Kirk is regarded as godlike for his superior abilities and when the tribe realizes Kirk is not a god, they react violently and irrationally, even killing one of their own. I don't know if the writers meant it to come across this way, but the sheer number of questionably stereotypical details is hard to miss.

That said, sometimes stereotypes can be amusing and the one I'm most fond of is Kirk's machismo womanizing. This time he even got the girl of the week pregnant! Way to slip one past the goalie, Kirk! Indeed, like the pregnancy, the episode has a lot of highly original details. Kirk's amnesia, the asteroid deflection mission, the sheer amount of time covered by the plot, and even the episode's score (for once) were all refreshingly original. Overall if you can withstand the racial stereotypes and McCoy's borderline incompetence, the episode is a fun and refreshing change of pace.

Review

This episode is essentially Miri without the absurd technical problems. That, however, does little to enhance a blatantly bad premise. The slow, plodding plot just makes most of the main characters look stupid, as it takes 39 minutes into the episode before it finally dawns on Kirk and Spock that the children must be having some kind of mind control effect on the crew and thus must be neutralized in order to regain control of the ship.

Ten minutes before that scene, I was already shouting "just phaser the damn kids already!" at the screen, as by that point the crew had more than enough evidence to draw that conclusion themselves, not the least of which was the scene when the children summoned the entity in front of the entire bridge crew, prompting him to rattle off his entire secret plan to all the main characters. That's the moment when I'd have phasered the kids right there.

But we didn't even get that moment, as all it took to neutralize the children was to show them a video of their bizarre behavior from the beginning of the episode so that they'd finally face the fact that their parents are dead, start crying, and deprive the entity of its power over them. McCoy had been clamoring for them all to do something like that since the beginning of the episode, and yet nobody ever bothered to try the video thing until Kirk got desperate. No wonder McCoy was insisting that they take the kids to a starbase for a proper psychological examination. Maybe they've got counselors over there worth a damn.

But thanks to the converging interests of both Kirk and the evil entity, neither of which wanted to go to the starbase for no coherent reason, they never did. Kirk should have authorized going to the starbase to gain access to the child specialists that were there. The entity should have authorized going to the starbase to attempt to fool the specialists and to gain false legitimacy so the children could less conspicuously request transport to a Federation colony. A better story would have shown us these competing tactics, but alas, that would have required more sets, more characters, and more entertainment value. We can't have that.

Review

An episode with a lot of intriguing ideas but so poorly executed that they fall flat for the most part. The delightful actress Diana Muldaur having already played Ann Mulhall in Return to Tomorrow returns to Star Trek for a second time to play the blind telepath Miranda Jones in this episode. This time around she is given a much stronger character to play, but unfortunately while Miranda was well conceived and stunningly original, her central motivation of jealousy wasted much of her terrific potential.

Adding to the list of disappointments was the entire concept of an alien that is quite literally too ugly to be observed. While I'm glad the writers attempted to do a truly alien alien, their goal for this plot point of trying to make a commentary about human vanity didn't quite play, as in order for the concept of insanity induced by the mere sight of something to make any kind of sense at all, we have to assume the harmful exposure somehow induces some kind of neurological damage rather than the insanity being caused simply by some component of human shallowness as the episode repeatedly tries to imply.

In that regard, introducing a character like Larry, a man who participated in the design of the Enterprise, was a wasted opportunity. Aside from some quick lines of admiration from Scotty, Larry turns out to be little more than a throw away character to make the Medusan ambassador and Miranda seem dangerous. He spends much of the episode acting clingy toward Miranda in ways that stretch the character's authenticity to the breaking point.

I can certainly see why Miranda wouldn't want to return the affections of a man acting like that, but she acted nearly as irrational throughout much of the episode too, which came as a surprising disappointment for a human character so well versed in Vulcan mental discipline. Especially disappointing was the scene when she misinterpreted Spock's display of the Vulcan IDIC as some kind of personal attack. From that moment forward, her character started to go downhill.

The climax of absurdity for Miranda's character is the moment when Kirk resigns himself to distracting Miranda in the garden while Spock attempts to merge with the Medusan ambassador. The whole scene is premised on the idea that everyone expects Miranda to be too overpowered by her jealousy to allow Spock and the Medusan ambassador to save the lives of everyone on the ship. Once again, like the children from the previous episode, I'm wondering why they didn't just phaser or sedate Miranda if they were so afraid of her presence being that disruptive in a crisis situation.

While I enjoyed that Miranda's layers of complexity were revealed slowly over the course of the plot, the cleverly late revelation of her blindness in particular, her character flaws ended up being flaws in the story rather than the successful establishment of a tragic character. By the end, I felt that the rose metaphor applied more to the episode itself than to the character of Miranda as the writers intended. It's the episode itself that had the beauty and potential for profundity but was marred by the thorns of poor plotting.

Aside from the mixed impact of Miranda, another notable detail was the unusual cinematography of the episode. The Spock POV fight scene was especially interesting to watch and there were a few other similarly oddly shot scenes throughout the episode too. But unfortunately not all of them worked. Much of it felt as though the trippy cinematography was an attempt to distract the audience from a story that verged on incoherence at times.

Last but not least, I'm left to wonder what is it with telepathy episodes and the ludicrous fictional barrier at the edge of the galaxy? This annoying barrier first featured in Where No Man Has Gone Before makes an unwelcome recurrence in this episode, complete with new annoying details to further assault the realism of the story, such as the fact that only a few minutes moving past warp 9 was sufficient to take the Enterprise past the barrier. They must have coincidentally already been pretty close to the edge of the galaxy already for that to happen.

When they cross the barrier, Spock utters perhaps the most ridiculous line ever written for him, when he says, "When we exceeded warp speed factor 9.5, we apparently entered a space-time continuum." Seriously? Something tells me the writers didn't know what a space-time continuum is and were hoping the audience would share their ignorance about one of the most basic concepts in theoretical physics.

Anyway, while this episode definitely has some fun concepts, it could have used a lot more polish before it ever got in front of cameras. A shame.

Review

The Enterprise encounters a xenophobic race, brazenly ignores their warnings to go away, and faces the consequences they rightly deserved. Kirk's decision to arrogantly ignore the aliens' wish to be left alone was bad enough, but setting foot on their frigging planet on top of that was downright unforgivable. Though without Kirk's brazen act of trespassing, this wouldn't have been much of an episode, now would it?

That said, this episode is the first to explore the power of illusions in a sufficiently novel way since The Cage and does so just as masterfully, if not better. Unlike The Cage, the landing party is well aware that they're inside an illusion right from the beginning, so the focus is instead on figuring out how deep the illusion goes. The delightfully incomplete nature of the sets reflect this conundrum in a strikingly visual way, as the illusionary town of Tombstone is comprised of fragments of buildings missing most walls, exposed to an eerily alien red sky. I suppose it's pretty obvious that this stylization was a budget saving move, but I'd say it's a well earned one, as it added a surrealist quality to the drama which enhanced the discomfort and out of place feeling that the characters struggled with.

The most striking detail of the story is Spock training the landing party to disbelieve the illusion, thus robbing it of its power. This nice piece of writing manages to be both the episode's most dramatic story point when it climaxes in the gunfight scene as well as the episode's funniest story point when we discover at the end that Chekov hadn't in fact died because he never took the whole situation seriously to begin with. The constant sense of dread the rest of the landing party experiences as the episode builds to its climax was overall well played; I enjoyed seeing them try so many different things to avert their fate with each attempt failing in rapid succession as the clock ticked closer and closer to five o'clock.

Unfortunately for the plot, however, the gunfight at the real OK Corral didn't actually occur at five o'clock. It took place near the hour of three o'clock instead. There were other historical inaccuracies as well. For instance, the gunfight is depicted as taking place just outside the OK Corral, but in reality it took place some good distance away near Fly's Photographic Studio. Also a sign visible in this episode at one point noted Wyatt Earp as the marshal of Tombstone. However it was actually his older brother Virgil instead in reality. Wyatt was only a deputy marshal. Finally Kirk during one part of the episode made a big point about how Billy Claiborne (the character Chekov played) was the only one of their crew to survive the gunfight, but apparently Kirk had forgotten that his own character, Ike Clanton, also survived.

I suppose all of those historical inaccuracies could be chalked up quite easily to the aliens having created the scenario from Kirk's inaccurate recollection of history, but unfortunately nobody else seemed aware of all of these errors either, even despite Spock's apparent expert knowledge of the period. Not all of the errors in the plot logic are confined to historical inaccuracies though. Another notably odd detail was the whole subplot when the landing party refused to trust their illusionary guns so they resorted to trusting the other illusionary resources at their disposal instead, which is a striking error in reasoning because if you can't trust the illusionary guns, why would you think you could trust anything else in that illusionary world?

I was also a bit put off by the scenes when the landing party all mourned Chekov's death. There's a ticking time bomb about to go off in their faces and they're all more interested in talking about their feelings for an extended period of time? How silly. Spock had every reason to be annoyed with them all. A final odd detail of the plot was that curious scene when the alien message is noted as having been broadcasted in the native languages of everyone on the ship. It's implied that the alien telepathy enabled that. However, what I find curious is the fact that the crew could tell the difference between an alien speaking in an alien language with the universal translator translating it as opposed an alien speaking the native language of various crew members. This implies that however the UT works, it isn't entirely seamless. Whenever it's translating an alien language on the fly for you, you can tell when it's working its magic and when it's not.

As for the ending, I felt that it was weaker than The Cage's. In The Cage, the aliens learn something. In this episode, the aliens are just engaging in some bizarre test of the Enterprise's resolve and the plot grants little insight into their motives. By the end of the story a magic switch is flipped and they suddenly go from being xenophobic to welcoming a Federation delegation simply because the landing party saw through the illusionary danger they created. But even though the aliens of this episode were less well conceived than those of The Cage, this episode managed to be a bit more entertaining simply due to all the fun aesthetics and psychological tricks noted above. As such, I would declare this episode the superior story of the two, by a hair.

Review

A great idea for an episode with only a few flaws. The central success of the story is pitting the Klingons and the Federation against a common enemy. A similar theme is hinted at in Errand of Mercy when Kor briefly proposes to Kirk that they work together to defeat the Organians, but this episode takes that idea and crafts an entire story out of it; quite a good one at that.

Aside from simple pleasures like watching Kirk outmaneuver the Klingons using the transporter buffer and taking in the ridiculousness of sword fights on a starship (Sulu always seems to find a sword to go rampaging with, doesn't he?), the story has some measures of intelligence and depth as well. I was particularly fond of the hints of propaganda influencing bias of both sides against the other and I was fond of the characterization of Kang's wife in that she would not trust Kirk until he proved by not executing her that not everything she believes about the Federation is true. Likewise, the moment Kirk and Spock both briefly questioned whether their own judgement could be trusted due to the entity's mind-altering nature was a nice touch.

The biggest flaw in the story, not unlike so many other Star Trek episodes, is that it takes them all so long to figure out that the entity is responsible for their conflict. The climax of absurdity here is the moment when swords start appearing in the rec room and nobody questions it at all. Everyone just picks up a sword and starts fighting. Even after the Klingons have a moment to reflect on that event, they don't bother to question their good fortune. They just keep plotting against the Enterprise crew seemingly oblivious to the fact that something was terribly wrong.

But it wasn't just the Klingons who were slow on the uptake there. Not long after that scene, Kirk starts rattling off a hypothesis about how the Klingons could have transformed ordinary objects into weapons. Spock quickly brings some sanity back to the discussion by pointing out that it's ridiculous to assume that the Klingons could have done that. One of my favorite lines was when Spock said "if they had such power, would they not have used it to create more effective weapons and only for themselves?" Thanks Spock for stating the obvious. Apparently Kirk needed to be slapped around with elementary logic today.

There are a few other smaller groan-worthy details in the story too. Scenes when characters talk to the computer are almost always annoying and Spock's conversation with the computer analyzing the entity in its shrill, monotone voice and drawing obvious conclusions was no exception. Kirk also had a few choice awkward lines in this episode too, such as telling Kang to "go to the devil" and declaring (sarcastically?) that it's "stardate armageddon" at one point.

Though this sort of awkwardness is not uncommon for Star Trek by this point and it's easily forgiven. With more polish, better plotting, a faster pace, and perhaps a more compelling common enemy for the Federation and the Klingons to engage, this episode easily could have earned a perfect score. Certainly one of the better installments of the series thus far.

Review

A society of people living on a ship disguised as an asteroid from the outside and disguised as a planet from the inside so the people within won't know that it's a ship. A complex and intriguing premise that unfortunately suffers mightily due to the fact that the plot at no point ever answers this simple question from Natira: "Why should the truth be kept from us? Why should the creators keep us in darkness?" Kirk dodged the question and although he was quite busy at the time trying to save her life, I honestly don't think even the writers knew the answer. For some reason it was all set up for the ship's population to be oblivious and that's just the way was. Don't ask why. Knowing why might make the story more interesting, and we can't have that!

While we're at it, let's not ask why we have yet another alien race that looks exactly like humans, why a civilization that clearly was highly advanced 10,000 years ago would voluntarily reduce itself to this, or why the writers decided to afflict McCoy with both a terminal illness and a marriage only to erase both by the end of the story. Oh wait, I already know the reason for that last one. On Star Trek, the writers have an aversion to main characters growing, changing, living, and dying. This show could learn a thing or two from a soap opera.

Granted, I wasn't the biggest fan of McCoy's romantic scenes with Natira anyway. They were verbose and, frankly, pretty damn boring. But McCoy grappling with a terminal illness and looking to make a change in his life so he can maximize the enjoyment of his final days was a compelling piece of drama. Had it not been manufactured drama with a manufactured cure, it would have been far more compelling. But even with that, there was at least one terrific scene enabled by the manufactured drama. When Kirk, Spock, and McCoy were struck down by the shock and McCoy was the last to wake up, I greatly enjoyed McCoy trying to play off his weakness only to be rendered speechless when Kirk informed him that "Spock knows." Wonderful character moment.

But outside of its intriguing premise and some decent, albeit forced character drama, this episode has little to offer. It's not the worst episode of Star Trek, but it's far from the best.

Review

The Tholian Web is a cleverly written story which makes prominent use of an unusually large set of characters and multiple plot threads. While the Enterprise is engaging in an already dangerous rescue mission and investigating what befell the crew of the Defiant, an aggressive alien race called the Tholians attacks them for trespassing into what they claim is their territory. Interestingly, neither of these two events seem related to one another, which is a nice surprise. Whatever happened to the Defiant is clearly implied to be the result of a natural phenomenon. The intolerant Tholians are just an inconveniently timed distraction.

But while battling the Tholians Spock must also battle McCoy whose characteristic and predictably endless criticisms of Spock's command decisions rear their ugly head once again. Toward the end of their bickering McCoy crossed the line several times by claiming that Spock had no good reason to fight the Tholians and that Spock's only motive was to secure permanent command of the Enterprise from Starfleet. Luckily, Kirk's "last orders" recording brought some sanity back to their work relationship.

There are a few other unsavory details as well. For instance, early in the episode it's mentioned that while the crew can visually identify the Defiant, that sensors are reporting that it's not there. Once again like my complaint from Operation: Annihilate! do sensors just not measure visible light? What a silly line. Likewise, at one point McCoy uses a hypospray on Kirk through his space suit! Must be a powerful device. Finally, toward the end of the episode Uhura looks over to Chekov who is screaming like an idiot. She looks over to McCoy and asks him "will I become like Chekov?" No Uhura, you won't. Because your character is better acted!

The two biggest gaps in the story though are the fact that we never learn what exactly befell the Defiant and its crew as well as the murkiness surrounding how the Enterprise escaped the Tholian web. I was actually pretty damn annoyed with how they escaped the Tholian web. All that's said is using the ship's power somehow propelled them out of it. We see some brief visuals which might indicate they passed into the alternate dimension which claimed the Defiant, then suddenly the Enterprise is back in normal space, thrown clear of the Tholians. How convenient and vague.

All things considered though The Tholian Web was a terrific episode. The pacing was great, the judicious use of minor characters was a welcome surprise, the Tholians with their unique (if oddly slow) weapon made an intriguing enemy, and trapping Kirk off the ship during the crisis added heightened drama. I certainly wouldn't mind seeing the Tholians again or seeing a followup episode that tells the story of what happened to the Defiant. All in all with a bit more polish and attention to detail, this already terrific episode could have been worth even more points.

Review

Another alien race that looks exactly like humans with some kind of connection to ancient Earth and extremely powerful abilities who decide to capture the cast and make them do things for their own entertainment. The cliches abound but the episode certainly could have been worse. For a while there I was worried that this was going to be another Who Mourns for Adonais? but luckily it wasn't. For once the aliens weren't openly malicious from their first scene, which was a nice touch. The distress call was genuine, the need for a doctor was genuine, and their thanks was genuine. It doesn't take long for things to go downhill though, as it never made a lot of sense for the aliens to abduct McCoy when they could have simply requested a volunteer doctor from the Federation to attend to their population.

I'm sure that in the entire Federation there would be at least one doctor who would want to do it willingly, and since these folks have been putting off medical treatment for centuries, I'm sure it could have waited another few weeks. Although it's a little hard to believe that in all the centuries they've been here, no one has ever cut themselves before until now. Likewise, McCoy once again engages in one of my favorite medical cliches to pick on: administering medical treatment to an unknown, undocumented alien species with no knowledge of their anatomy, complete with giving them injections!

The episode is not without its charms, however. Any excuse to disrupt Spock's emotional control is always welcome. The scene when Spock starts laughing uncontrollably without seeming provocation comes as such a surprise that it almost looks like a blooper! Likewise, much of the episode's protracted puppetry scenes are so ridiculously awkward that you can't help but laugh because it's so hard to take seriously. Indeed, these aliens don't really seem to take anything seriously, thus their casual cruelty. I felt for Alexander when he broke the pottery with the intent to use a shard to murder all the Platonians.

But when you combine the cliches with the Platonians' poor critical thinking skills on the subject of the easiest way to acquire medical care and the fact that nobody from the Enterprise's crew ever bothers to make note of the fact that a planet where everyone can develop psychokinetic powers might be pretty damn useful to the Federation, the episode certainly loses some points. There's a bit of good stuff in here, but the episode definitely falls short of its potential.

Review

A once thriving civilization of 900,000 is reduced to only five people due to a natural catastrophe related to volcanic eruptions and increased radioactivity. Somehow the anatomy of the aliens of the week (which sadly once again look exactly like humans) reacted in an odd way, producing a hyper acceleration effect. The hyper acceleration concept is highly intriguing and the episode explores its implications well, although I was disappointed with the decidedly comic book superhero (or supervillain?) way that these aliens acquired their superpowers. Volcano-induced radiation makes them move really fast! What's next, a radioactive spider bites Captain Kirk? Once you're substantiating your plot off of crap like that, it's not science fiction anymore. It's fantasy.

Nevertheless, it's a lot of fun to watch the plot explore the implications of two different groups of people experiencing time at different rates of speed. A better written story with better production quality could make this concept shine even brighter I'm sure. But what we have isn't so bad on its own. The idea of creating a buzzing effect to connote the existence of the hyper accelerated aliens was clever, as was Kirk writing it off at first as alien insect life. Seeing the crew frozen in time while Kirk walks around dumbfounded was eerie and Deela stepping out of the way of the phaser beam was one of my favorite science fiction moments of the whole series so far. Granted, we don't really know why the phaser wasn't accelerated too, but whatever. It was a cool scene.

Likewise, you've got to wonder how much relative time passed between Kirk and Deela during the scenes when the Enterprise crew was busy figuring things out at their normal, slow pace. But I never got the impression that at any time the plot stretched the parallel realism of the two timeframes beyond the breaking point. There were a few scenes when I was wondering if perhaps days or weeks had gone by on Kirk's side and it would have been nice to hear some lines indicating that, but it isn't strictly necessary.

Unfortunately, much like the comic bookish premise, the aliens' motives were similarly poorly conceived. Summoning starships to their planet to take mates by force? Seriously? When Kirk suggested to Deela that they seek out the Federation's medical assistance and she wrote it off with a vague statement implying that they've tried things like that already, I didn't buy it. Why not send a few Federation exobiologists with expertise in fertility and genetic engineering to their planet, hyper-accelerate them, and get that research done in no time? For that matter, why not solicit a few volunteers for the original breeding plan? Compton was certainly all for it with minimal convincing. I'm sure there are at least a few other folks in the Federation ready and willing to help these poor souls breed too. Especially given the promise that they'll live in luxury.

The climax of absurdity though was the rapid decline of Deela's character in general. After her first few scenes, her conceptual intrigue shifted into a plodding idiocy. It doesn't take long at all for Kirk to convince her that "he's made the adjustment," after which Kirk betrays her with ease. She respond to this with, "you are very clever, captain. You tricked me. I should have known that you would never adjust." No kidding. It was obvious to just about everyone except you, Deela. I'm not sure which moment was more painful: Deela's obliviousness, or Spock once again awkwardly asking the computer to analyze the situation, complete with a request for command advice. Who needs command officers when the computer clearly knows everything?

I suppose the only scene even more ridiculous than all of that was the ending. Kirk and Deela essentially condemn Deela's people to death since neither side seems willing to explore alternative solutions and in a moment of rare insight Deela realized that their failure to execute on their forced breeding plan would ruin its effectiveness forever. And there you have it. Captain Kirk more or less ushers in a minor genocide. Though are aliens this stupid really worthy of survival to begin with?

Review

This episode is sort of like an inferior version of The Cage. Two large-headed, intellectual super aliens with the power of illusions entrap the cast for their own seemingly selfish motives which turn out to be rather benevolent in the end, or at least somewhat well intended. While this episode has some strikingly original austere aesthetics from a directoral perspective, unfortunately this version of The Cage's themes doesn't work quite so well from a storytelling perspective.

For starters, the Vians' methods were not terribly scientific and their cruelty remained poorly substantiated even by the end of the story, not the least of which was because there at no point ever appeared to be any consequences for the Vians killing two Starfleet officers. The Vians simply wrote it off as "their own imperfections killed them. They were not fit subjects." And "we did not kill them. Their own fears killed them." Kirk never appeared to follow up on these ridiculous explanations and the Vians never appeared to answer for their crimes.

While it's certainly true that they're from an alien culture guided by an alien philosophy, not much of the story's time is spent on developing their philosophy. We know that they had the power to save the population of one of two planets in this planetary system and were trying to decide which of the two were worthy of survival, but unfortunately that's a rather bold claim for the episode to ask us to simply accept at face value, as it seems rather contrived that it's simply impossible to save the populations of both planets. It would make sense for the Federation to refuse to save the populations of either planet on the grounds of the non-interference Prime Directive, but no mention is made of this. As for the Vians, they clearly were not guided by a similar philosophy and I have a hard time believing that the resources they spent setting up this ridiculous experiment couldn't have been used to save the populations of both planets instead.

What's worse is most of the episode boils down to unsubstantiated torture scenes and long, boring Gem-stares-significantly scenes which brought back bad memories of The Corbomite Maneuver. At one point during the torture scenes a Vian tries to console McCoy by implying that if there was any other way for them to accomplish their purpose, they'd be seeking those means instead. Golly, had the Vians shared their purpose with the landing party any earlier than 39 minutes into the episode, perhaps the landing party could have educated the Vians as to the many possible alternatives!

Aside from that, plenty of other little details add up to a pretty big stinker of an episode as well. Unlike the Vians, Gem is yet another alien race that looks exactly like humans. She is referred to as an "empath" but McCoy incorrectly acts like that term automatically implies and substantiates her remarkable healing powers. When the Vians allowed the landing party to keep one of their devices, Spock makes the ridiculous claim that the only logical explanation is that the Vians let them keep the device so they could reverse engineer it and escape so the Vians could keep McCoy. Why would the Vians do that? If their intent was to let them go, why do it through such indirect means? Why not just... let them go?

Finally, the most obnoxious part of the episode is that the whole thing is Christian theology in (a poor) disguise. In Gem's first scene, she's laying on a bed shaped like a cross. Her healing powers and her theme of self sacrifice mirror the story of Jesus Christ. The Vians play the role of god watching Jesus (Gem) self sacrifice for his (her) entire race. On two occasions the episode even makes direct references to the bible. Early on, Ozaba says "in his hand are the deep places of the earth. Psalm ninety five, verse four. Looks like he was listening." At the end of the episode, Scotty says "I would say she was a pearl of great price. [...] Do you not know the story of the merchant? The merchant, who when he found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had and bought it." That's a quote from the Gospel of Matthew, 13:45-46.

As I wrote in my review of Bread and Circuses, this sort of writing is hardly in the spirit of Star Trek which, for the most part, would seem to advocate a progressive future without superstition guiding society's laws and moral code any longer. A few religious characters or a few biblical references here and there in the spirit of realism and good literary referentiality is all well and good, but this episode went well beyond that. The episode itself feels preachy. Its very theme oozes Christian evangelism, which is shameful.

Review

This episode strongly resembles Journey to Babel although lacks some of the terrific details and layers that made that episode shine so bright. Nevertheless, Elaan of Troyius still stands out as one of Star Trek's better stories. The character of Elaan was both well conceived and well acted. Her outrage at being little more than a bribe to stop a war was certainly understandable and her childish behavior was consistent with what one would expect from an over-privileged elitist.

It was amusing to see her demean just about everyone around her, going so far as to explicitly refer to everyone around her as "inferior" which is a distinct irony given that her people don't even possess warp drive. The fact that her people lack warp drive is an odd detail, as it would seem someone in the Federation broke the Prime Directive long ago, since Elaan's people clearly have knowledge of the inter-stellar nations which do possess warp drive and the Federation is more than happy to engage in diplomatic missions with this warp-incapable species.

I was sad to see that her people are yet another alien race which looks exactly like humans, although I was glad to see the Troyians sport a unique look. I enjoyed Petri's character just as much as I enjoyed Elaan's. Both were stuck up and self righteous in their own charming ways such as when Petri after having been stabbed resolved himself to have nothing further to do with the mission even if it ended the ceasefire, or when Elaan asked Kirk to completely obliterate Troyius with the Enterprise so there would be no need for the marriage.

And yet both of them had an innate understanding of the larger issues plaguing their people and how they must personally sacrifice in order to serve the greater good. Petri got over his disgust for Elaan and Elaan resigned herself to a life of "only responsibilities" and "obligations." Elaan and Petri faced death together at the hands of the Klingons and that trial by fire ultimately helped bring them and their people together perhaps once and for all.

Adding to the intrigue of the episode was the amusing detail of Elaan using her tears to seduce Kirk. Perhaps someone should have let Elaan know that Kirk needs no magic potion to fall for the hot alien woman of the week! In any event, I was kind of annoyed that no one briefed Kirk on the danger of her tears, but regardless of whatever plot contrivance it took to get Kirk hooked on Elaan, the drama induced by this trope was fun. By the end of the story, Kirk had to deal with a lot more than his annoyance with the guests aboard the Enterprise and the looming threat of an armed conflict with the Klingons. He also had to allow his heart to be broken by seeing to it that Elaan was married off to another man, for the greater good of the Federation.

The battle with the Klingons was certainly among the finest of the episode's many highlights. Everything from Kirk's bluff to the open combat to finally Kirk's daring maneuver using Elaan's dilithium necklace was terrific tactical fun. The only detail I felt was missing from the episode was a more firm geo(astro?)political basis for the territorial conflict between the Klingon Empire and the Federation. It certainly makes sense that the natural resources in dispute are a fine basis for such a conflict, but we see very little in the way of setup or consequences for the skirmish that takes places in this story. Does open combat with the Klingons abrogate the Organian treaty? Why were the Klingons willing to risk the treaty over a single planet's natural resources?

With a tighter story and more attention to detail on the larger scale political motivations of the nations involved, this episode easily could have been worth as many points as Journey to Babel or perhaps even a perfect score. Although what we got instead was certainly a fun ride.

Review

A rehash of Dagger of the Mind, complete with another impersonation of the warden and another agony chair. This agony chair is even the same prop that was used in Dagger of the Mind. It seems a number of medical breakthroughs have been made since the first season regarding the treatment of the criminally insane, as the asylum featured in this episode is stated to be the last of its kind. These remarkable breakthroughs are said to be enabled by a wonder drug that the Enterprise is on a mission to deliver to this asylum, only to be thwarted temporarily by the coup.

The existence of a miracle cure to general insanity sounds like a scientifically implausible idea up until you see how the ending of this story defines that: drug-induced amnesia. Taking a page from the nurture-always-trumps-nature book, the Federation has apparently decided that all insanity is caused by the accumulation of traumatic memories and that wiping away those bad memories will fix everything. The ethical concerns raised by this course of action are as fishy as the underlying scientific premise and certainly do much to assault the episode's credibility.

Setting that aside though, this episode isn't really about wonder drugs, miracle cures, scientific implausibilities, or poor medical ethics. If anything, that's all just a very poorly thought out afterthought of a premise for the real story which is about Kirk confronting his fallen hero. Garth effectively carries the whole episode. The actor does an excellent job building a character that is both menacing and funny. You can see what must be shades of his former greatness in him at times as he formulates tactics and commands his madmen while he prances around in a silly, regal fashion.

The episode is well paced and at times even profound. I greatly enjoyed the scene when Kirk pleads with Garth, trying to get him to remember his former self and insisting that he's not really responsible for the terrible things he's done. This is counterpointed brilliantly by impulsively terrifying actions by Garth, such as when he blew up Marta with a bomb after having spent nearly the entire episode flirting with her.

In this sense the episode succeeds at half its goals. Garth is successful in portraying a character who is compulsively irredeemable. The other half of the episode was an attempt to espouse a philosophy that Star Trek strives for which is that all people are redeemable. In this case the episode attempts the aforementioned poorly conceived scientific redemption drug but glosses over what the true consequences would be for deploying such a drug as a long term strategy.

I think it's safe to assume despite the fact that the Federation acted on this horribly unsound premise and seemed to see apparent success from it over a protracted time, that this strategy will eventually implode on them and relapses will take hold at statistically significant enough rates to get them to backpedal on the drug, as drug-induced amnesia won't necessarily address the underlying medical cause of some patients' insanity. Either that or the shady medical ethics will catch up with them and they will decide to stop doing harm in order to curtail their social problems. Or at least I hope so because if I see this obnoxious drug show up in another episode, I'm going to get pretty damn irritated.

There are other niggling issues with the story too, such as the totally ridiculous science behind Garth's shape shifting. We're expected to believe that all humans are capable of this "cellular metamorphosis" given enough study and training from a suitable master. Either that, or Garth isn't really human. At one point he referred to the landing party as "you Earth people," which I believe was meant to accentuate his craziness. However, there are so many aliens in Star Trek that look exactly like humans, maybe Garth isn't human!

Probably the most annoying part of the plot though is the two Kirks scene. Why Spock even bothered to talk to either of them is beyond me. The most obvious course of action is to simply stun them both and sort it out later. Kirk even orders Spock to do that by the end and rather than doing so, Spock simply shoots the false Kirk, confident that he has identified which is which. That seems like a pretty cavalier attitude for someone like Spock!

Overall the episode fits pretty solidly into the mixed bag category. You'll probably enjoy it if bad science doesn't bother you too much and Garth's breed of goofiness works as well for you as it did for me, but there certainly have been a whole bunch of better episodes aired by now.

Review

This episode is an intriguingly stylized satire of racism; black vs. white racism of the real world in particular. The half-moon aliens do a nice job of demonstrating the innate silliness of racial prejudices by creating a racial difference between the aliens that seems so insignificant to us and yet so significant to them as to automatically shame us for ever having acted like them. That's the power of a science fiction story on society: the power of analogy. These aliens would have been a ridiculous analogy in a real world 19th or 20th century debate on race relations, but in the world of Star Trek where many more things are possible they're not so ridiculous after all.

Sure, the whole idea that such a skin pigmentation would ever be favored by natural selection seems patently ridiculous, but Spock wastes no time pointing that out early in the episode. As long as the story itself acknowledges how unlikely such a thing should be before brazenly going with it, I suppose I can live with it. The layers of absurdity are even nicely staggered. At first Spock assumes that Lokai must be one of a kind for his species. Then when the commissioner comes aboard, Spock is amazed and struck with near-disbelief that all their people must have evolved to be this way and it isn't just a fluke.

Likewise, Spock points out one of my favorite medical cliches to pick on: McCoy is once again using Federation drugs on an unknown alien. I loved McCoy's response insisting that most humanoid life forms have similar anatomy; the blood may be slightly different and the organ configuration may be slightly different, but medical principles are largely sound across species. I also loved the fact that McCoy conceded the fact that it's hard to give a prognosis on a totally unknown alien despite the anatomical similarities. This is the sort of careful scriptwriting that should have been present in earlier episodes.

As for the story itself, I enjoyed the details concerning extradition law, which made a lot of sense for the situation. The Federation's policy on trying Lokai for his domestic crime before considering extradition back to Cheron certainly seemed reasonable and I thought the off the record note that the Federation would most likely grant extradition after his trial in the Federation was a nice touch. It added some humanity to the usual faceless bureaucracy.

Sadly that nice detail was somewhat undermined by the fact that neither of the half-moon aliens seemed content to wait out Federation due process and mediation. They've been keeping chase for some 50,000 years and yet they acted with such impatience while aboard the Enterprise. If they've been at it that long, why not wait a short while longer to see the process through to the end legally?

At least the commissioner had the good sense to let Kirk complete his humanitarian mission before irrevocably commandeering the ship for a course to Cheron, but it all could have been done with considerably less fuss. Although the manufactured drama did give us an opportunity to explore that delightfully overwrought self destruct scene. The camera work in that scene was a lot of fun although not all of their directoral experiments were a success. We've also seen the unwelcome return of the camera zooming in and out on the red alert light, which is nauseating and serves no purpose.

You've got to wonder how Kirk even knew the commissioner wouldn't be able to stop the auto destruct sequence when he had already displayed what appeared to be limitless control over the ship's systems by that point. Maybe it was a desperate bluff. The half-moon aliens had some pretty vaguely overwrought technology at their disposal in general. Throughout the course of the episode they displayed immunity to phasers, apparent telepathic control over the ship's navigational systems, and somehow temporarily enhanced the warp drive to safely fly faster than its typical capabilities.

Although the Enterprise itself possessed some pretty overwrought capabilities as well. I cringed a bit when the Enterprise somehow globally decontaminated Ariannus entirely from orbit in the space of a minute or two. That's some powerful tech.

Other logical oddities of the story include the scene when Lokai gets up and walks out of sickbay without anyone noticing. Apparently no one was guarding the Federation's detained prisoner scheduled to be tried for grand theft shuttlecraft. Likewise, it's kind of ridiculous to assume that not a single survivor was left on Cheron. Even a total nuclear war would leave some survivors, huddling together far from the blast sites, living off of subsistence farming or something. Though given the overwrought technologies of the episode, perhaps they were all killed by some kind of super-effective biological weapon released into the atmosphere globally all at once like the Enterprise's Ariannus decontaminator.

One final amusement: you've gotta love the cost cutting tricks in this episode. An invisible ship saving them from needing a ship model, the destruction of Cheron which is actually just stock video from World War II, and the fact that we never actually see the half-moon aliens on the surface of Cheron ever. The Enterprise just cynically leaves orbit and dooms them to their mutual annihilation. I can't blame Kirk for doing that, honestly. They've been such poor guests, why bother saving them from their self-inflicted fate? Indeed it's an effective satire of racism. With more polish I have no doubt that this episode could have easily been worth a perfect or near perfect score.

Review

On yet another planet with aliens that look exactly like humans, Kirk is asked to be a delegation of one to negotiate the admittance of an isolationist culture into the Federation whereupon Kirk is abducted and placed into an identical copy of the Enterprise's interior. Inside there is nobody except for a girl who the aliens somehow expect Kirk to instantly fall for so that he'll forget everything else about his life and commit to spending the rest of his days on Gideon with her. As idiotic as it is already for the aliens to expect Kirk to just drop everything and fall for some random girl he just met shortly after facing the possibility that his entire crew has fallen victim to some terrible accident or attack, the reason why they've hatched this scheme is even more stupid: they want to take diseases he's a carrier for so they can commit germ warfare against their own people as a means to solving their overpopulation problem. Seriously, that's the premise the episode expects us to swallow.

Setting aside the already pesky logical problem of how the Gideons even acquired Kirk's medical history to begin with before specifically requesting that the Federation dispatch Kirk and only Kirk to their planet, their whole motivation reeks of painfully faulty logic. Gideon is depicted as being so overpopulated that it's mostly a standing room-only planet. Kirk asks the obvious question of why not simply mandate the use of contraceptives. The Gideon bureaucrat responds mostly with an alien version of Catholicism, by saying that all life is sacred and contraceptives are morally wrong. He goes on to make the even more dubious claim that their culture's love of life is what's made them so disease-resistant and long-lived in the first place. Kirk then points out the blatant hypocrisy of a society that bans contraceptives but condones committing germ warfare against its own people, which is a thinly veiled satire of a society that bans abortion or contraceptives but condones the death penalty.

All that social commentary might have been profound if the Gideons weren't such poor representations of socially conservative religious values. Since nobody is as stupid as the Gideons were during this episode, it's difficult to take any of the social commentary seriously. For instance, why didn't the Gideons just ask the Federation to help them find new planets to relocate to? Or alternatively since killing their own people to cut down on population numbers seems to satisfy their moral code, why not just directly mass execute a large swath of the population rather than hatch this overcomplicated, indirect germ warfare plan?

The Gideons weren't the only ones suffering from faulty reasoning though. The plot itself has some real clunkers too. If space comes at such a premium on that planet, how were they able to build a giant, empty replica of the entire Enterprise interior? Where do they get all their food? How is waste managed? At one point Spock asks a Starfleet admiral for permission to beam down to Gideon to rescue Kirk. The admiral asks Spock if Kirk's life is in danger. Spock doesn't reply as if to concede that Kirk's life probably isn't in danger. Huh? Kirk is being held against his will! Of course his life is in danger! Later on when Spock beamed down to Gideon he was easily able to order the Enterprise to beam the landing party up with his communicator. So why didn't Kirk bring a communicator with him in the first place when he originally beamed down to Gideon?

All things considered it's a terrible episode. That said there are a few nice moments interspersed with the prevailing badness. My favorite moment was Spock's line to the Gideon bureaucrat that "the wars between opposing planetary systems no longer prevail in our galaxy." Ah, Federation propaganda! I also enjoyed how Kirk wandering through the empty Enterprise was intercut with his crew's efforts aboard the real Enterprise to rescue him. And finally the scene when Kirk is tipped off to the fact that the whole thing must be a sham due to the fact that he can hear sound coming from outside the ship which wouldn't happen in a real space ship was a nice touch of scientific accuracy. All in all though you wouldn't be missing much by skipping this episode.

Review

A planet even Spock can't explain! I giggled at such an amusingly goofy opening line and I enjoyed the scientific paradoxes presented by the planet. It's only a few thousand years old and the size of Earth's moon, and yet it has vegetation, significant atmosphere, and Earth-like gravity. Much like the mystery of the scientifically implausible planet, Scotty's near-suicide mission and the landing party's terrific command of survival skills in the sudden absence of the Enterprise were nicely done. I also was struck by how cranky Spock was all episode. I've never seen him so difficult to get along with!

The explanation that the planet was artificially created reasonably explains away all the paradoxes, but the story about the people who created it totally fails to deliver. As Losira slowly starts killing people, her inability to communicate anything resembling a motive gets more and more frustrating. In what is perhaps the longest Star Trek has ever dragged out establishing a character motive, Losira's motives only become apparent in the very last scene of the episode.

At the end we learn that her people, who are yet another alien race that looks exactly like humans, died out due to a disease they accidentally unleashed on themselves while creating that planet. The image of Losira attacking people was due to a computerized defense mechanism that was set to auto attack anyone in the vicinity not of Losira's people. Somehow Losira's personality was fused into the computer before she died, which explains her ambivalence to all the killing she did. The end of the story gave us a motive, but not a reason to care, resulting in quite a flop.

Review

Poor Scotty. He's such a terrific character, but for some reason episodes revolving around him always seem to suck. He and Mira were just insufferable together which wasn't helped by the fact that the show kept intercutting their boring scenes with the crisis situation. The climax of absurdity is Kirk calling a long conference room meeting in the middle of the ship being attacked by the entities in order to slowly and verbosely determine their next move. Kirk occasionally called the bridge to check in with Sulu and to make sure they weren't all seconds from destruction, but that doesn't really save it.

Likewise Kirk's reasoning for why he chose to toss Mira in the pressure chamber to kill the entities was terribly opaque. We have no idea exactly why Kirk thought the pressure chamber was the best move or why he thought it would even work in the first place. For all we know he was just guessing. Another area of opaque reasoning was Spock's rather hasty conclusion that the lights were an alien attack and not a natural phenomenon. Although perhaps by this point in the series Spock is as cynical as we are about the repetitive nature of the plots.

The concept of Memory Alpha as a central repository for all Federation knowledge is also a bit puzzling. Why would only one colony possess all the knowledge of the Federation? Computer data is easily copied. Why not maintain a number of these public space libraries, e.g. Memory Beta, Memory Gamma, Memory Delta, etc. Likewise since the galaxy appears to be filled with any number of hostile aliens, why not equip these crucial facilities with better defenses? At least Kirk seemed irritated with the fact that Memory Alpha lacked shields though.

The only part of the story with any real merit was the philosophy articulated by Kirk's line to the aliens, "the price of your survival is too high." He goes on to say that they are entitled to their own lives, but not that of others. In this short, but profound line Kirk articulates the philosophy of Star Trek quite eloquently. The Federation respects all life, but sometimes despite that respect for life you have to kill in order to survive. A better episode would have wrestled with the ethical implications of killing one sentient being to save another a bit more, but alas, this story lacked sufficient nuances to really do that.

Review

This episode would have been better if it focused more on the plague and less on this mysterious human who's claimed his own planet. The absolute worst detail in this episode is Kirk falling in love with yet another girl of the week. He should have just left Flint alone and left the planet once he had his medicine.

Review

This episode is famous for being terribly bad and overly silly. Essentially a band of dropout space hippies go on a religious quest to find Eden. Then they discover, much to their discontent, that there is no Eden. Fans vigorously bash this episode, but I am less critical. This episode features no incredible technical problems; nothing in this episode couldn't have happened in the canonical Star Trek universe. Indeed, I think this episode holds historical value on many levels. It shows the pointlessness of the whole hippie movement of the 1960s by showing the same pointlessness in the 2260s. Basically, extremist groups guided by religious beliefs never accomplish anything. Another redeeming quality of this episode is the fact that for once the Enterprise doesn't feature superior condescending malicious guests. Instead, they are ignorant, misguided, and in fact have good intentions. Now, admittedly, the acting is ridiculously silly and very over the top. I give it a low rating thusly. But not nearly as low as many fans would say it deserves.

Review

The Ardanans and Troglytes look exactly like humans. Looks aside, these guys make poor Federation members, what with this class inequality and all. One wonders how they were ever accepted into the Federation. Fortunately, it seems the situation was largely resolved. Despite the seeming lack of consistency with a Federation member having social class issues, the episode is largely exciting and visually stunning (especially for its day). Quite a memorable original series episode.

Review

One wonders how much respect an ancient revered European leader like Sir Winston Churchill or an Asian leader like Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi would get on this most blatant episode of Americans in space. Thankfully, McCoy's and Scotty's objections offset Kirk's odd behavior. Unfortunately, yet another alien who forces our cast to fight for its own amusement. One remarkable detail is that Kahless is considered evil in this episode. In TNG he is considered quite the honorable figure. This isn't necessarily a technical problem; surely the Klingons are considered evil by Kirk, and the alien in this episode just extracted that impression in his recreation of Kahless. Ultimately, this episode consists largely of pointless fighting which makes it totally inconsequential. I wish there was less of this in Star Trek.

Review

The last great original series episode before the show was prematurely canceled. Generally the original series' over use of time travel tended to suck, but this is one of nicest uses of it. Spock falls in love with a truly beautiful woman, having lost his emotional control. Spock and McCoy stuck in an ice age while Kirk is stuck in a dark age. It's nice to watch the two storylines unfold, and get a brief look at the people of this world at the same time. It would seem fitting that if a people's sun were to go nova, that some of the people would take refuge by living out their lives in the past. Interestingly, they could alter their own history to better prepare them for that eventual nova. Though this would create a time paradox. If every new altered generation kept going back in time to assist the previous ones, we'd have limitless time with which a society could evolve! Sheesh, time travel gives me a headache, and I seem to have gone off on a tangent. In any case, this is a truly enjoyable episode to watch. One of Spock's greatest moments.

Review

A nice episode, even if an unsuitable end to the series. Granted, it's one of the most blatant displays of sexism in Star Trek I've ever seen. It makes canonical that the 2260s was a (most likely brief) period of sexism in the Star Trek universe. This is isn't necessarily impossible; societies can revert to earlier sentiments, although it is unlikely. Despite likelihood, it's a part of the Star Trek universe and we must accept this. Moving on, this is the first of many "personality swapped" episodes we'll see in Star Trek. This one does it well. Kirk and Lester play each other's parts very nicely, making this episode thrilling. Most fun to watch. The best part is how well Lester has planned her move against Kirk. Personally, if I were Kirk stuck in Lester's body, I'm not sure I would have taken it so well!