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.