And so to episode 2 of the second season, “Who Mourns For Adonais?” No, despite the fact that this episode deals with Greek gods, that’s not a typo for “Adonis“, it’s a reference to the poem Adonaïs, by Percy Bysshe Shelley.

It begins with the Enterprise surveying the Beta Geminorum system, belonging to the star otherwise known as Pollux, in a piece of well-placed real-world stellar cartography. Approaching Pollux IV, a huge disembodied hand made of some sort of energy field grabs the Enterprise and stops it dead in space. Then a disembodied head appears and cryptically invites Kirk and selected crew to beam down to his planet. Kirk declines and tries to get the ship away, but the hand squeezes the hull, causing Scotty to complain that the hull cannae take the pressure. Apparently putting pressure on the hull – but not enough to actually buckle it – also causes a painful increase in air pressure inside the ship, as everyone clutches their ears in pain while it occurs. The head specifically doesn’t invite Spock, who it says reminds him of Pan, with the pointed ears.

Kirk, McCoy, Scotty, Chekov, and Lieutenant Carolyn Palamas beam down. Palamas is the Archaeology and Anthropology officer. It seems they have specialists in everything on the Enterprise. Earlier we saw that Scotty has a soft spot for Carolyn, but McCoy doesn’t think it’ll go anywhere because currently Carolyn is dedicated to Starfleet. She may find a man outside Starfleet and leave the service, but won’t fall for a fellow officer.

They beam down to an idyllic area which has a small Greek temple in it. The owner of the disembodied head greets them, and introduces himself as Apollo, the god of the sun. He claims to have been on Earth 5000 years before, and has now been waiting for humanity to find him again.

In a strong echo of “The Squire of Gothos“, Apollo takes a shine to the girl of the week, Carolyn, and uses his nigh-omnipotent powers to put her into an alluringly flimsy dress and begin flirting with her, while keeping the men of the landing party at bay and preventing them from contacting the Enterprise. In another echo of that episode, Kirk deduces that Apollo has a power source somewhere and that perhaps they can trick Apollo into a moment of weakness and destroy it.

Meanwhile on the Enterprise, Spock is ordering people around, including instructing Uhura to rig a subspace bypass of the jammed radio circuits to contact Kirk. We see Uhura head deep in a console, soldering circuits, showing she is a practical, hands-on crew member. Which is good, except that her elaborate hairdo is getting in the way and is in serious danger of catching fire from the soldering iron.

Apollo displays some weakness when Scotty, protective of Carolyn, incurs Apollo’s wrath and Apollo unleashes lightning bolts on him. This weakens Apollo and he vanishes for a while. Chekov likens the disappearing act to that of the cat with the smile from a Russian fairy tale. When Kirk amusedly points out that it’s an English tale, with a Cheshire Cat, Chekov sincerely responds, “Cheshire? No, it was Minsk.”

There’s a bunch of padding to make up the 50 minutes of screen time, followed by the Enterprise breaking through the giant space hand and contacting Kirk. He orders phasers fired on the temple, which destroys it, to the impotent horror of Apollo. Kirk gives a Picard speech about humanity not needing gods any more – and goes on to say they get on fine with “just the one”. Apollo sheds tears and then vanishes, following the other Greek gods who have long since given up and spread themselves to the winds of the Universe.

The episode ends without resolving the romantic tension between Carolyn and Scotty, and of course we never see Carolyn again. A rather lame episode, with recycled plot elements and unsatisfactory loose ends, although there are a few moments of drama and interest to keep it from being appalling. Chalk up yet another semi-omnipotent being in the growing catalogue of beings encountered by the Enterprise, and bring on the next episode.

Tropes: Literary Allusion Title, Shown Their Work, You Are A Credit To Your Race, Girl Of The Week, Career Versus Man, Physics Goof, Classical Mythology, Cargo Cult, Physical God, Theiss Titillation Theory, Bolt Of Divine Retribution, The Original Klingon, Padding, Patrick Stewart Speech, Outgrown Such Silly Superstitions, Death Of The Old Gods, Sufficiently Advanced Alien.
Body Count: Apollo, scattered to the Cosmos.

“Amok Time” is the first episode in airing sequence of season 2 of Star Trek. And, after the teaser, the first thing you notice is that the opening credit sequence has changed, with a modified version of the theme song, new graphics, and the addition of DeForest Kelley to the names of William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy. I was excited to watch this episode again, because it’s one of the true classics of the series – in fact I’d say it rivals “The City on the Edge of Forever“. It gives us our first truly deep look at Spock’s background and his home planet and culture, which turns out to be fascinating and surprising.

The teaser begins with a shot of Kirk climbing up a ladder out of a random tube and then out on to a deck, where he meets McCoy. Presumably the lift wasn’t working or something. McCoy is worried about Spock not eating, and Nurse Chapel then passes them with a bowl of Vulcan soup in an effort to get Spock to eat and notice her feminine charms. Spock tosses the soup and yells at Chapel, who leaves in tears. Spock then requests shore leave on his home planet, saying they could drop him off before the Enterprise‘s scheduled rendezvous at Altair VI “with a loss of only 2.8 light days”. I wonder how many light days it takes to do the Kessel run.

With such a reasonable delay, Kirk orders the ship on course for Vulcan. We see new crewman Ensign Chekov for the first time, in the role of navigator next to Sulu’s helm station. Throughout this episode they play a comical duet off one another which almost approaches a Greek chorus, commenting on the greater workings of the plot around them. Starfleet orders the Enterprise to make haste to Altair, where the ship is needed for a grand political display, so Kirk changes course again. Kirk then decides whatever is bugging Spock is clearly important, and orders Chekov to change course again and go to maximum speed, which puzzles Chekov because he says Spock has already ordered the course change.

Kirk confronts Spock about this; Spock does not deny it, but says he was not aware of having given such an order and says it’s possible. Kirk orders the ship back to Altair and Spock to sickbay for a medical. McCoy concludes that Spock is dying and needs to get to Vulcan within a week. Kirk confronts Spock and demands he tell him what’s going on. Spock reluctantly says it’s a matter of “biology” and, as embarrassed as a Vulcan can be, explains that Vulcans must return periodically to mate, as a biological imperative. Kirk treats this in strict confidence and tries to argue with Starfleet that he be excused from Altair to go to Vulcan – but the admiral won’t hear it and orders him directly to Altair. Kirk, naturally, ignores this order and tells Chekov to set course for Vulcan.

This conversation takes place in an interesting set, in part of sickbay, with McCoy present – perhaps his office. The good doctor seems to have an interesting collection of anthropoid skulls decorating several shelves of the room. Nurse Chapel overhears the conversation and goes to tell Spock the good news, by breaking into his private quarters while he’s asleep – apparently they don’t have security of any sort of crew quarters (or Chapel is a good lock-picker). There is a romantic tension moment as Spock thanks Nurse “my name is Christine” Chapel, and asks for a bowl of that soup.

Poor Christine is about to get her heart handed back to her, however, as they approach Vulcan and receive a message from a beautiful woman, who says she will meet Spock at the arranged place. Chapel asks who she is, Spock replies, “She is T’Pring, my wife.” For anyone who has watched the series to now, this is an eye-opening moment of shock, and the first indication that Spock has any sort of family connections at all. Spock explains there is a small ceremony and he would like Kirk and McCoy, as his friends, to stand with him. McCoy is genuinely flattered in a rare moment of camaraderie in what is usually a jokingly antagonistic relationship between him and Spock.

The three beam down and we get our first look at Vulcan. It looks hot. The sky is red – not pink like Mars, but red. The rocks are red, the sand is red (and also sparkly). Kirk and McCoy start sweating and McCoy quips that now he finally understand what is meant by the cliché “hot as Vulcan”. It’s good to see a planet that is so starkly different from the Earth-like planets they normally visit. They enter a ceremonial arena and Spock strikes a small gong, which summons a ceremonial party. T’Pring is there, with various escorts, and carried in on a sedan chair is T’Pau, a stately old woman who Kirk recognises as the only person ever to turn down a seat on the Federation Council.

The ceremony begins, with Spock walking up to strike the gong again, but T’Pring interrupts and shouts, “Kal-if-fee!” Spock lapses into a trance-like state. Kirk and McCoy are confused, but soon learn that T’Pring has invoked an ancient right, whereby she chooses a champion to fight for her hand against Spock. There is an obvious candidate in the wedding party with his eyes on T’Pring, one Stonn, but T’Pring passes him by and chooses Kirk, causing much uproar. (Her choice though is later explained and is flawlessly logical.) Kirk and McCoy confer, and Kirk explains that Spock looks weakened and would probably lose badly to Stonn, so Kirk will fight and try to knock him out without hurting him, or if Spock gets the upper hand he can resign and Spock can retain his honour. Kirk accepts the challenge.

T’Pau instructs that lirpa be brought forth. Spock and Kirk are handed incredibly vicious looking weapons, with huge curved blades at the end of a staff-like pole, weighted at the other end by a heavy metal cudgel. T’Pau then utters the best line of the episode: “If both survive the lirpa, combat will continue with the ahn-woon.” Kirk and McCoy aghast. The fight is to the death!

I’ll stop there so as not to spoil the ending, just go find a copy and watch it if you haven’t seen it before. It’s a terrific episode. There are disturbing messages about women as property, if you ignore the contexts both of when this was made and the fact that it’s depicting an alien society which is meant to be strangely different to human society – but in the context of the episode it makes sense. That can be forgiven on those grounds. And once over that hurdle, there’s nothing not to love about this episode. A strong character-driven plot, revealed character back-story, high drama, and beautiful comic relief from the new regular character who we will grow to love over the next two seasons. Man, why couldn’t there have been more like this, and fewer like… well, some of the lousy ones they made.

Tropes: Forgets To Eat, Not So Stoic, Those Two Guys, Greek Chorus, A Friend In Need, The Talk, Mate Or Die, Conflicting Loyalty, Screw The Rules, I’m Doing What’s Right, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Wham Line, Apron Matron, Grande Dame, Emotionless Girl, Double Weapon, Involuntary Battle To The Death (this episode provides the TV Tropes page image for this trope), Dutch Angle, Wanting Is Better Than Having, Fake Gunshot, Faking The Dead.
Body count: None.
(Image © 1967 Paramount Studios, used under Fair Use.)

“Operation: Annihilate!” is the last episode of season 1 of Star Trek. It took me a while to get to this one, as I knew it would be a bit of a let-down after “The City on the Edge of Forever“. Especially since this is the episode I’ve known ever since I was a kid as “the rubber vomit episode”. But here we go!

The episode opens with Spock tracing a route through space of a mysterious plague of madness, which has been making a straight line through several solar systems over the past few hundred years (including archaeological evidence of the plague on a planet 500 years ago, before humans went into space). The next planet on the path is Deneva, where Kirk’s brother and his family live. Approaching Deneva, the Enterprise detects a Denevan ship headed straight for the sun. They are unable to use tractor beams to save the ship, as Scotty determines they are out of range by consulting… nothing other than his own psychic engineer abilities. (Really. Kirk asks Scotty if they can use tractor beams, and Scotty turns his head slightly, thinks for a second, then says, “Out of range, captain.” No need to look at a screen or gauge or anything!) They fail to rescue the ship’s lone occupant, but do hear him over the radio babbling incoherently about being “free”.

Scans of Deneva indicate the expected human population, but displaying unusually low levels of activity. Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scotty, and a random yeoman and security guy beam down into a city that looks like a funky technology park campus (which it is). A small group of apparently mad citizens attacks them. After stunning these, the landing party finds Kirk’s brother Sam dead, and his wife Aurelan raving mad and son Peter unconscious. Back on board, Aurelan tells Kirk that the planet was attacked by “things”. Kirk beams back down and the party finds a group of strange creatures lurking in the shadows of a building. Spock declares them “not life as we know or understand it”. They appear to be flying rubber novelty vomits. (In fact Wikipedia says the props are slightly modified rubber vomits.) One attacks Spock.

McCoy discovers the creature has injected strands of tissue that have quickly grown into Spock’s nervous system. McCoy can do nothing to remove it, and Spock is left squirming in pain. Spock expresses a desire to be released from bed restraints in sickbay, but Kirk disallows this, having seen how the maddened humans behave. He and McCoy promptly leave, not bothering to post a guard, which allows Spock to escape and attack the transporter chief in a bid to beam down to the planet. Scotty captures him just in time. Spock says he has mastered the pain through mental fortitude and Kirk lets him go down to collect a creature for study – since he can’t risk sending an uninfected person. McCoy discovers the creature is indestructible – nothing will kill it. They speculate, with no apparent evidence, that these creatures originate from outside the Galaxy. They don’t offer an opinion, or even wonder why, they are moving in a perfectly straight line from solar system to solar system. Kirk wrestles with the moral dilemma of either killing the million people on Deneva to stop the spread of the plague, or letting it spread to further planets. He says neither is acceptable and demands a third option.

Kirk himself makes the logical leap that sunlight killed the parasite in the Denevan who declared himself free at the top of the episode. A brief experiment confirms that bright light kills the captured specimen. They then expose Spock to light equivalent to proximity to the sun, which kills his parasite, but blinds him. McCoy had raised the option of Spock wearing protective goggles, but Kirk dismissed this, saying that the people on the planet won’t have any. This seems like a weak argument against protecting Spock‘s eyes! Tragically, Nurse Chapel then appears from the lab and says that it was only the ultraviolet component that was needed, not the visible light – Spock was blinded for nothing.

Kirk orders a set of satellites launched to bathe the planet in high intensity ultraviolet light – so bright that it will “even affect things in the dark in closed rooms”. I guess they didn’t realise when they made this episode that intense UV light is rather dangerous to humans – or maybe they figured giving a million people melanomas over the next 10 years was worth it. In the denouement, Spock reveals he has regained his sight, thanks to a third eyelid in his Vulcan anatomy that shielded his eyes from the worst. Kirk then tells Spock to lay in a course for Starbase 10 – which is weird, since normally it’d be the helmsman who lays in the course.

Tropes: Operation Blank, Excited Episode Title, Apologetic Attacker, Special Effect Failure, Puppeteer Parasite, Idiot Ball, Cardboard Prison, Heroic Willpower, Moral Dilemma, Take A Third Option, Weaksauce Weakness, Kryptonite Factor, Tragic Mistake, Temporary Blindness, Organ Dodge.
Body count: George “Sam” Kirk (off-screen), Aurelan Kirk.
(Image © 1966 Paramount Studios, used under Fair Use.)