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.