Ah, “The Trouble with Tribbles“. I would guess that this is probably the most famous single episode of Star Trek ever produced. It certainly stands out as a distinctive episode for its overall humorous mood, which is very different to anything that has come before. This would fit nicely into Star Trek if it had been a sitcom, rather than a drama.

That’s not to say there’s no drama at all though. The overarching story is a tense standoff between the Enterprise crew and that of a Klingon battlecruiser, both of whom are overseeing attempts to establish control over the disputed Sherman’s Planet under the terms of the Organian Treaty (enacted by the Organians in “Errand of Mercy“). Whichever government can demonstrate better development of the planet’s resources will be awarded control of it. They interact under an uneasy truce on the Federation outpost of Deep Space Station K-7, where Federation Undersecretary in charge of Agricultural Affairs Nilz Baris is in charge of a store of quadrotriticale (a strain of wheat), which he wants protected from the Klingons at all costs. Baris goes so far as to issue a Code One distress call to summon the Enterprise, which gets him on Kirk’s wrong side as Kirk sees this as an abuse of an emergency signal.

Some Klingons initiate a bar room brawl by taunting members of the Enterprise crew and their captain. Scotty resists, until they insult the Enterprise itself, at which he throws the first punch. He is humorously chewed out by Kirk, who confines Scotty to quarters, which Scotty sees as a welcome chance to read technical journals. Before this, a waitress in the bar demonstrates a good example of space clothes, in a skimpy outfit with horizontal candy stripes and a set of butterfly wings attached to her back. The bar is in fact the focal point of much of the episode, since it’s here we meet Cyrano Jones, an itinerant merchant bordering on con-man who convinces the barkeep to buy some tribbles, before wandering bemusedly through the brawl. Tribbles are small balls of fuzz which make soothing purring noises, and Uhura takes a liking to one, which Cyrano gives to her as a sample. And here’s where the trouble starts.

The tribble has babies. And the babies soon have babies. McCoy takes one to examine and determines that they are essentially born pregnant and multiply as fast as their food source allows. Pretty soon they are infesting the Enterprise. When they get into the food synthesisers via the air ducts, Kirk suddenly realises the quadrotriticale on board the space station is under threat. Racing to the storage bins, he finds them full of gorged tribbles and no wheat. Baris is livid, blaming Kirk for this disaster and the loss of Sherman’s Planet. Spock calculates that there are 1,771,561 tribbles. But McCoy notices most of the tribbles are dead or dying, and concludes the wheat was poisoned, probably by a Klingon agent. And here the tribbles show their usefulness, as we’d seen in the bar earlier that they hate Klingons. When Kirk approaches Baris’s assistant Darvin with a tribble, it hisses at him, thus revealing him to be the Klingon agent. Kirk thus saves the day, to the annoyance of Baris.

Back on the Enterprise, Kirk wonders where all the tribbles went. Scotty reluctantly admits he beamed them all over to the Klingon ship just before it went into warp, and everyone laughs.

Overall it’s actually a pretty good story, and the constant humour just makes it enjoyable, not annoying. Adding to it is that they’ve deliberately ramped up Chekov’s tendency to claim everything was invented in Russia or first done by a Russian – he claims no fewer than three such incidences in this episode: that Sherman’s Planet was first surveyed by a Russian, that quadrotriticale was a Russian invention, and that Scotch whisky was invented by “a little old lady from Leningrad”. Other points of interest: This is the first time in the series where we get an exterior shot of a space station (as opposed to a starbase, which are on planets). It’s not a bad model shot either. And we see Cyrano Jones and the bartender haggling prices in credits – another clear example of money in Star Trek. Finally, the main Klingon, Koloth, seemed eerily familiar as I watched this episode, but I couldn’t place the actor. It turns out it’s William Campbell, the guy who played the annoying Trelane in “The Squire of Gothos“. His acting style really makes for a snide and conniving, but cowardly Klingon. It fits the episode, but not Klingons in general. Final judgement: A clever and exceptionally good story, with the comedy elements handled well, and integrated seamlessly around a solid enough nugget of dramatic plot to make this a great episode.

Tropes: Call Back, Truce Zone, Straw Civilian, Bar Brawl, I Take Offense To That Last One, McLintock Punch, Unishment, Space Clothes, Intrepid Merchant, Lovable Rogue, Strolling Through The Chaos, Born As An Adult, Exploding Closet, Ludicrous Precision, Everybody Laughs Ending, In The Original Klingon, Now If You Will Excuse Me I Have A Noun To Verb.
Body count: None!

“Wolf in the Fold” is a murder mystery and courtroom drama with a twist. It’s not a Fair Play Whodunnit, but rather a Clueless Mystery, in that the viewer really has no chance to work out what is happening before our heroes do. In fact, the answer is completely unexpected and bizarre. In hindsight, there are certainly hints, but nothing that would actually let you reach the right conclusion without some astounding insight.

It opens on a close up of a belly dancer, who pulls back to reveal an Arabian-styled room in which Kirk, McCoy, and Scotty are enjoying the dancing show. Dialogue reveals that Scotty is on medical recreation leave on the planet Argelius II, enforced by McCoy after an accident aboard ship gave him a head injury. They mention explicitly that the accident was caused by a female crew member, and they need to eliminate Scotty’s resulting “total resentment towards women.” This is a dubious statement which might have trouble flying in such a straight manner on TV produced today. But it’s necessary to build towards the mystery.

Kirk has invited the belly dancer to their table, and introduces her to Scotty, then suggests they take a walk outside in the fog. The implication is that the society is extremely sexually permissive, and that Kara’s “attentions” will “cure” Scotty. Kirk and McCoy head out to a place where the women are… not described as the statement is cut off, but again the implication is pretty clear. They never arrive, as the fog is pierced by a scream and Scotty is found looming over the dead Kara with a bloody knife in his hand.

Scotty is the obvious suspect, and the Argelian prefect Jaris begins an investigation with the help of the Rigellian off-worlder Hengist. (The native Argelians hire off-worlders as bureaucrats since they are far too hedonistic to do such work themselves.) Scotty can’t remember what happened. Kirk gets a Lieutenant Karen Tracy to beam down with a device capable of reading his memories of the past 24 hours. However, when left alone with Scotty she ends up dead too, with Scotty again holding the bloody knife. Again he can’t remember what happened.

Jaris’s wife Sybo has empathic powers and holds a seance-like ceremony to read psychic impressions. We are treated to a cool overhead shot of the ceremony. During it, Sybo goes into a trance and declares that an evil force is present, calling it a series of names: “Beratis”, “Kesla”, “Redjac”. The lights go off briefly, and when they come back on Sybo falls dead with the knife in her back, Scotty standing right behind her. Jaris takes this remarkably well, and agrees to let Kirk hold a hearing on the Enterprise with a computer lie detector (we saw this back in “Mudd’s Women“, although Kirk seems to have forgotten about it when it would have been useful in “The Alternative Factor“). Scotty passes when he says he doesn’t remember killing anyone.

Kirk asks the computer to look up the name “Redjac”, and it comes up with it as a homonym for “Red Jack”, another name for Jack the Ripper, who notoriously murdered several women in 19th century London. Kirk accepts this rather bizarre link at face value far too readily, showing no scepticism whatsoever. He quickly has the computer list similar murder sprees, and discovers they extend off Earth, in a straight line towards Argelius, with the most recent murders occurring a few years ago on Rigel – where Hengist comes from. Hengist tries to escape, but is knocked out by Kirk. Hengist’s body is dead, but the evil entity inhabiting it moves into the Enterprise‘s computer system, taking control of the ship.

Spock speculates that the entity feeds on fear, and targets women because “women are more easily terrified than men” – another interesting piece of 1960s logic that would be questioned today. Another unfortunate implication that is glossed over is that Jack the Ripper targeted prostitutes specifically – which would imply something about the victims so far. Kara maybe, but Lieutenant Tracy?! And Sybo, the prefect’s wife??! Spock sets the computer the task of computing the last digit of pi, which eventually consumes all of its processing power, rendering Redjac harmless. Redjac returns to Hengist’s body, but Kirk has it bundled into the transporter and beamed into space on “maximum dispersion”, which should spread it widely enough to destroy it.

All up, a pretty good episode. The mystery aspect is certainly engrossing, keeping you wondering both how they’re going to prove Scotty is innocent, and how the murders were committed. Hengist is a little obvious as the culprit, because he keeps protesting in his whiny voice about everything Kirk does, but until the reveal it’s completely impossible to figure out how. The Ripper connection is surprising at first, but is worked into the story reasonably well. It’s now you realise that the fog in the opening scenes is significant, evoking Victorian London. The more you think about it, the more clever this episode becomes. Not one of the greats, but a very acceptable instalment.

Tropes: Courtroom Episode, Clueless Mystery, Belly Dancer, Ominous Fog, Hired To Hunt Yourself, Frameup, Spooky Seance, I Have Many Names, Lights off Somebody Dies, Never One Murder, Orgy Of Evidence, Clear Their Name, Lie Detector, Jack The Ripper, Beethoven Was An Alien Spy, Regularly Scheduled Evil, Puppeteer Parasite, Haunted Technology, Emotion Eater, Hysterical Woman, Logic Bomb, Body Surf, Softspoken Sadist.
Body count: The dancer Kara, Lt Tracy, the prefect’s wife Sybo. All stabbed.

“Obsession” is easy to describe. It’s Kirk as Captain Ahab. We’ve seen Commodore Decker play this role in “The Doomsday Machine“, but now it’s Kirk’s turn. He goes on a blind rampage of revenge against a mysterious gaseous creature that sucks the red blood cells from its victims.

The story opens with not one, but two redshirts biting the dust to the creature, during a survey of Argus X for the mineral tritanium, which is 20 times harder than diamond (or “21.4 times harder, to be precise,” as Spock says). That plot element is dropped as soon as Kirk detects a sickly sweet odour, which reminds him of an incident 11 years earlier, in which 200 crew members of the USS Farragut were killed by a weird gaseous entity that gave of a similar smell. Kirk blames himself for the deaths of the crew and quickly turns obsessive about tracking down and killing the “creature”, as he calls it. He does so despite having a deadline to meet another ship to transfer desperately needed medical supplies, ignoring direct Starfleet orders in the process.

This causes McCoy and Spock to team up in confronting Kirk. McCoy is about to declare Kirk unfit to command,with Spock’s back-up, but Kirk argues them out of it with logic. He points out that the creature is a known killer and has space travel capability, so is a threat to the Federation. This is enough for the time being, but Kirk is eventually proved correct later when it turns out that the creature is about to spawn, generating thousands of copies of itself. They chase it through space, but it turns on the Enterprise, making use of a Chekhov’s gun mentioned earlier by Scotty – an impulse engine vent that has been opened for repairs. For some reason, entering this vent gives the creature access to the life support ventilation system – so apparently the air circulation system is directly connected to a vent that opens to space?

What’s more, a room vent is left jammed open by Ensign Garrovick (the son of the captain of the Farragut, who died in the earlier incident and for whose death Kirk blames himself), allowing the creature into the ship proper. Fortunately Spock keeps it at bay with his Vulcan blood, containing copper rather than iron-based haemoglobin. Eventually they confront the creature on the planet Tycho IV, which is where the Farragut incident occurred. They decide to blow it up using antimatter, and Kirk and Garrovick take on the suicide mission of escorting an antimatter bomb and baiting it for the creature. They plan to use artificial blood as bait, but the creature eats it all before the bomb is ready, so they need to lure it themselves. Cue a fistfight between Kirk and Garrovick as the ensign wants to sacrifice himself to kill the creature that killed his father, while Kirk wants to save Garrovick. The creature approaches close enough to almost kill them before they both beam away and detonate the bomb, causing some hairy moments with the transporter before they appear safely aboard the Enterprise. This gives McCoy the chance to display his distrust of the transporter: “Crazy way to travel”. One wonders, however, why they had to lure the creature right on top of the bomb, when they said it was equivalent o “100,000 cobalt bombs” and would “rip half the atmosphere off the planet“. Surely detonating when the creature was… a whole 20 metres away and Kirk and Garrovick could have beamed back perfectly safely would have been just as good.

Other notes: Kirk has some interesting African style artefacts in his quarters. Garrovick gets served some food, which is a delectable looking plate of shapeless primary coloured blobs. And finally, the perennial extra, Lieutenant Leslie, was one of the redshirts summarily killed by the creature in the pre-credits sequence. Yet later in the episode he is seen walking around the backgrounds! And he appears in later episodes too. Canonically this is explained as him “recovering” from his not-quite-dead state, despite him clearly being declared dead. Overall, an okay episode, with a decent enough story, but nothing particularly special or memorable.

Tropes: Revenge Before Reason, Fog Of Doom, Our Vampires Are Different, Red Shirt, Ludicrous Precision, His Story Repeats Itself, Guilt Complex, My Greatest Second Chance, Screw The Rules, I’m Doing What’s Right, The Hunter Becomes The Hunted, Chekhov’s Gun, Wallbanger, Percussive Prevention, More Hero Than Thou, Atmosphere Abuse, Food Pills.
Body count: An unnamed redshirt and redshirt Lieutenant Leslie, redshirt Ensign Rizzo, another nameless redshirt, then another nameless redshirt, and finally the gaseous creature.

Ah, “The Deadly Years“. I remember this one well because this was another of the Fotonovels that I had when I was a kid.

The story is basically that the senior crew members, plus the expendable Lieutenant Galway, succumb to a weird radiation sickness that causes them to age dramatically, just like the research colonists on Gamma Hydra IV, four of whom are dead before the opening credits roll. The final two die of extreme age, despite being 29 and 27. Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scotty, and Galway start aging when they return to the Enterprise from landing party duty on the planet. Only Chekov was in the landing party and remains unaffected, becoming the focus of endless medical tests to determine why he is immune and hopefully figure out a cure. This provides several brilliant moments of comedy relief:

Chekov: Blood sample, Chekov! Marrow sample, Chekov! Skin sample, Chekov! If – if I live long enough, I’m going to run out of samples!
Sulu: You’ll live.
Chekov: Oh, yes. I’ll live. But I won’t enjoy it.

McCoy: Now this isn’t going to hurt a bit.
Chekov: That’s what you said the last time.
McCoy: Did it hurt?
Chekov: Yes!

These are undoubtedly the highlights of the episode.

The two subplots involve yet another ex-girlfriend of Kirk’s, Dr Janet Wallace, and Commodore Stocker, who is keen to take up his command post at Starbase 10. Wallace is, coincidentally, an endocrinologist, who renders assistance to McCoy in studying the disease. Her presence on board is never explicitly explained, though you could assume she is being assigned to Starbase 10 with Stocker. Stocker comes across as very reasonable, wanting to do everything he can to assist Kirk. He recommends going to Starbase 10 where they have better equipped medical labs, but Kirk insists on staying near Gamma Hydra IV until they solve the problem. Maybe it’s just me, but I tend to agree with Stocker on this one. They’re completely ignoring any principles of quarantine anyway, by allowing the obviously afflicted landing party to perform their normal duties and mingle freely with the crew, rather than confining them in sickbay.

The Wallace subplot is simply tedious, having seen very similar stuff before. She left because Kirk was wedded to the job of commanding a starship, she married some other guy, who is now dead, Kirk looks as sexy as ever, Wallace looks good with a soft focus filter, etc., etc., ho hum. The really annoying thing is that this plot is never actually resolved. The episode ends with Kirk cured and Wallace hanging around on board as they head to Starbase 10, and we never see any argument between them, or agreement to keep only their past and go their separate ways, or one last fling, or anything. The entire thing is just left dangling, and of course we never see Wallace again in any other episode.

The Stocker subplot is more interesting, as he becomes worried about Kirk’s obvious and growing memory lapses. He recommends to Spock that a competency hearing be called. I should point out that this is a perfectly reasonable thing for a flag officer to be concerned about – not merely a power grab by Stocker (something we have seen before by Commodore Decker in “The Doomsday Machine“). Kirk, despite his own assurances that he can still command effectively, fails the competency hearing miserably, with plenty of evidence of him repeating commands and forgetting that he signed “important orders”. We observed these incidents earlier in the episode, although the thing he forgot he signed then was quoted as a “fuel consumption report” – hardly the “important orders” Spock mentions in the hearing! Stocker wants Spock to assume command, but Spock declines, saying he is also affected and, despite his superior Vulcan lifespan, is also not fit to command. With Scotty also out of the question, this leaves Stocker as ranking officer to assume command, which he does somewhat reluctantly.

This goes bad, however, when his first order is to head directly to Starbase 10. Across the Romulan Neutral Zone. Even for a desk-bound non-starship Starfleet officer, this must rank as one of the most stupid and indefensible decisions ever. His heart is in the right place, but he’s just inept, which is displayed in due course when a fleet of ten Romulan Birds of Prey attack, and Stocker dithers, unable to give any sensible orders. Clearly he’s not trained for this sort of thing. Fortunately, by this time Kirk has trumped McCoy yet again by determining that Chekov’s immunity must have been caused by the adrenaline rush of being terrified by discovering an aged body on the planet. Wallace and Spock whip up an adrenaline-based formula, which Kirk demands be injected into him first, despite it being potentially fatal. Naturally, he recovers, and races to the bridge in time to bluff the Romulans by broadcasting a message in a broken code that the Enterprise is about to detonate its corbomite device (a recall to “The Corbomite Maneuver“). The Romulans flee, leaving the Enterprise to warp safely out of the Neutral Zone and on a safer course to Starbase 10, with Kirk gaining a cool and dramatic echo effect as he dramatically says, “Warp factor 8!”

The episode ends on a light note, with McCoy saying he’s removed anything breakable from Sickbay, so that when Spock undergoes the convulsions caused by the serum, he won’t smash anything. Fine, except now that the Enterprise has been caught red-handed in the Neutral Zone, isn’t that an act of war, and shouldn’t the Romulans be massing to attack the entire Federation now? The fact that they’ve just started all-out war with the Romulans is simply ignored. Convenient!

A few other notes: Nice shot of an aged Kirk napping in the captain’s chair. McCoy: “I’m not a magician, just an old country doctor!” McCoy gains a strong southern US accent as he ages. All up, a decent episode, marred by some ridiculously incompetent command decisions, both by Kirk and Stocker. The episode is saved and elevated to heights, however, by Chekov, who delivers some of the best and smoothest comedy relief of the series.

Tropes: Rapid Aging, The Immune, Russian Guy Suffers Most, Find The Cure, Plucky Comic Relief, Girl Of The Week, Reasonable Authority Figure, Gaussian Girl, Shirtless Scene, I Can Still Fight, Idiot Ball, Magic Antidote, Call Back, Power Echoes, Snap Back, I’m A Doctor, Not a Placeholder.
Body count: 4 research colonists pre-credits, colonists Richard Johnson and wife Elaine, Lt. Galway, all of old age.

“Friday’s Child” is a story of culture clash, with the Federation, a Klingon representative, and the native Capellans engaged in negotiations over mineral resources of Capella IV. The clash is demonstrated vividly in the opening teaser, when Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and Ensign Ricky Lieutenant Grant beam down to being talks, only to find a Klingon already there. Grant pulls a phaser instinctively and a Capellan warrior kills him instantly with a thrown weapon. Kirk doesn’t retaliate, because the negotiations are too important.

It quickly becomes clear that the Capellans are a warrior race with some unusual and violent customs. The fact that they are depicted some sort of space Bedouins might be seen as politically incorrect nowadays. We are treated to a novel way for Kirk and company to be prevented from radioing the Enterprise for help – the Capellans simply demand their weapons and communicators, or else they’ll call the negotiations off. McCoy, who has spent some time on a previous assignment with the Capellans, saves Kirk from a terrible faux pas of touching a Capellan woman, which according to their customs would necessitate a fight between Kirk and the woman’s brother. (The brother is actually keen on the fight and is disappointed it doesn’t eventuate.)

The story progresses through a leadership rivalry between the incumbent Akaar, who is happy to talk to the Federation, and the ambitious Maab, who wants to grant mining rights to the Klingon (who is never named, but is listed as Kras in the credits). Akaar gets killed in a coup, leaving his widow Eleen heavily pregnant with his heir and wounded. She demands to be killed to maintain her honour, but Kirk, Spock, and McCoy rescue her and escape from Maab’s custody. Eleen is at first angry and refuses to let McCoy examine her, but he slaps her, which causes her to soften to his ministrations. Fortunately, because before long goes into labour.

In orbit, we see Scotty in command again, explicitly recording a log entry. In the B story, the Enterprise is distracted from rescuing Kirk by a distress call, which they figure out is faked by a nearby Klingon vessel. As they return to Capella IV, Uhura picks up another distress call and Scotty summarily ignores it, saying, “Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.” Chekov says that’s an old Russian saying, but this time it’s pretty clear he is deliberately joking, not serious.

Meanwhile, Maab and his cronies are tracking them across the countryside to a familiar rock outcrop, where Kirk and Spock construct some primitive bow and arrows to defend themselves. McCoy gets in the line, “I’m a doctor, not an escalator!” as he helps the pregnant Eleen up a rocky slope. She soon gives birth, but is not happy to see the child, wanting it dead because it links her to Akaar’s dishonour. McCoy and Kirk manage to convince her to love the child, before Maab and company appear.

Eleen appears alone to Maab and says she has killed Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and her baby. Kras demands proof, but Maab trusts Eleen’s honour. Fighting breaks out between Kras and the Capellans, then Kirk and Spock start firing arrows into the fray. Maab sacrifices himself to prevent Kras from killing her, then a Capellan kills Kras. The cavalry arrives in the form of Scotty and a security team. The Capellans declare the baby their new leader, and Eleen becomes his regent, signing the mining treaty with Kirk. An interesting point is just how cowardly Kras acts during all this, the very antithesis of later Klingons.

All up, a moderately okay episode, with a few memorable moments, but nothing particularly compelling. Not bad, but not particularly memorable, either. The clash of culture is an interesting idea, but it’s a bit limited in scope and suffers in modern eyes from being overly clichéd.

Tropes: Culture Clash, Red Shirt, Space Jews, Dr Jerk, In The Original Klingon, Kirk’s Rock, I’m a Doctor, Not a Placeholder, The Cavalry.
Body count: Redshirt Grant, Akaar, Maab, several other natives, the Klingon Kras.

“Journey to Babel” is a memorable episode mainly for the introduction of Spock’s parents, Sarek and Amanda. It’s also a decent political drama and murder mystery story, with a good dose of family tension thrown in.

It begins with Kirk and officers in dress uniform greeting Ambassador Sarek of Vulcan, arriving on board the Enterprise by shuttlecraft. This is the second episode in a row (in screening order, though not production order) in which they use a shuttlecraft when it seems the transporters would be a more sensible option. In particular, this time it’s clear that the Enterprise is in orbit about Vulcan, because Kirk offers Spock the chance to go down and visit his parents, at which point Spock reveals that the Ambassador and his wife are his parents. This revelation occurs after Sarek has already snubbed Spock and requested a different crew member show him around the ship. We quickly learn that Sarek does not approve of Spock’s choice of Starfleet as a career and they have not really spoken for 18 years.

Sarek is on board as part of a collection of over a hundred delegates to a Federation conference on the planet Babel. The actual political plot, while intriguing to watch, is not particularly worth commenting on here, as opposed to the amazingly high collar on Amanda’s gown, which presumably serves to initially hide her human ears until we learn that she is Spock’s mother, and therefore not a Vulcan but a human. Sarek meanwhile quotes his age to Kirk as 102.437 Earth years.

The various ambassadors gather to discuss politics and eat primary coloured space finger food. A pig-man alien named Gav accosts Sarek, demanding to know his position on the political issue du jour. Soon after, Gav is found murdered, his neck snapped suspiciously by a Vulcan martial technique. Kirk is shown gratuitously shirtless in his quarters when informed of the murder, and goes to question Sarek. Sarek logically agrees that he is the prime suspect, his alibi being that he was alone meditating at the time of the crime. While saying this, he collapses and McCoy diagnoses the Vulcan equivalent of a heart attack.

Sarek needs an operation, and transfused blood to survive it. The only source of the rare T negative blood is Spock, who immediately volunteers. Amid preparations for the operation, there is a hard smash cut to a scene of Kirk fighting an Andorian delegate who is armed with a knife. Kirk triumphs and the Andorian is placed in the brig, but Kirk is wounded and Spock takes command of the ship. In the looming crisis of the feuding ambassadors on board, plus the sudden appearance of a mysterious and potentially hostile alien vessel outside, Spock decides his duty to the ship outweighs that to his father and refuses to begin the operation.

Waking in sick bay, Kirk learns of this and gets McCoy to strap up his punctured lung so he can convince Spock he is okay and order him to the operating theatre to save Sarek, intending to immediately hand over command to Scotty. When Spock leaves the bridge, the enemy ship attacks, so Kirk stays to fight. He uses a trick of turning the ship’s power off and drifting in space. The enemy is defeated, and the “Andorian” is revealed to be a disguised Orion in communication with it, plotting to disrupt the Babel conference. The ship self-destructs and the spy commits suicide rather than be captured.

The story ends with Sarek waking up and reconciling with Spock. Although we never get to the Babel conference itself, that is not necessary, as the themes of the story have played out in full and resolved as best they can. This episode is more of a dramatic thriller in mood than most episodes, and benefits from a tightly plotted and interdependent storyline that holds your attention, plus the introduction of Sarek and Amanda. Definitely one of the better episodes.

Tropes: Literary Allusion Title, Forced Into Their Sunday Best, Follow In My Footsteps, I Have No Son, Ludicrous Precision, Pig Man, Ass In Ambassador, Touch Of Death, Shirtless Scene, AB Negative, Smash Cut, Ass Kicks You, I Can Still Fight, Playing Possum, Space Is An Ocean, Cyanide Pill, Well Done Son Guy.
Body count: Tellarite ambassador Gav, Orion spy Thelev, entire crew of enemy Orion ship.

“Metamorphosis” is another one I didn’t recognise from the title or opening scene, but this one came back to me fairly quickly. That implies that it’s not a particularly memorable episode, neither good nor especially bad. And it is indeed in that middle ground.

Kirk, Spock, and McCoy are escorting Federation Commissioner Nancy Hedford to the Enterprise on board the shuttlecraft Galileo. She needs medical attention, before returning to negotiate a peace between warring factions on Epsilon Canaris III. The fact that she’s the only one who can prevent the war is stressed and underlines the urgency of getting her to the Enterprise for treatment. Why they are using a shuttle rather than flying the Enterprise to collect Hedford is never explained. Presumably it’s to allow the subsequent plot, in which the shuttle is pulled off course by a mysterious ionised force.

The Galileo ends up on the surface of a small planet, and the crew get out to explore. A man appears, a human shipwreck victim. It turns out he is the famous Zefram Cochrane, of alpha Centauri, and inventor of the warp drive. He was brought to the planet as an old man by the same mysterious force, and rejuvenated into a young body and sustained for 150 years. (These details seemingly contradict the portrayal of Cochrane in Star Trek: First Contact, but apparently the canon has been massaged enough to make it roughly fit.) He has established an empathic communication with the force, which he calls The Companion. It appears as a blob of plasma when he summons it. Unfortunately, it won’t let anyone leave the planet, and Cochrane is getting bored with not growing old. Hedford gets sicker, prompting McCoy to say she only has a day or so to live. They carry her to a bedroom, which has an incredibly cool 1960s string art thing on the wall.

The shuttlecraft seems dead. Cochrane says that “power systems don’t work” on the planet, although this doesn’t seem to stop Spock using a tricorder, or setting up an electrical gadget to try to shock/disable the Companion. Kirk orders Spock to use the device, but it backfires and the Companion nearly kills Kirk and Spock. Cochrane calls the Companion again, and McCoy points out that it seems to be in love with Cochrane – though how he can tell this by looking at a blob of plasma is rather mysterious. Spock adapts a universal translator and they try talking to the Companion, with McCoy pointing out to Kirk, “Try a carrot instead of a stick”. It’s good to see someone point out that Kirk’s usual order of priority in diplomacy is the wrong way around!

Through the translator, the Companion speaks to them, but initially refuses to let them go, as it is concerned that without human company Cochrane will die. The Companion speaks in a female voice, which confuses Cochrane, until Kirk point out that male and female are “universal concepts” and without a doubt the blob of plasma is female. Interesting… I wonder if Kirk knows about asexual reproduction at all. With some more arguing, Kirk convinces the Companion that it can’t really love Cochrane because they are too different. It vanishes, then the suddenly healthy Bedford appears, healed and fused with the Companion, in the titular metamorphosis. Cochrane agrees to grow old with Bedford/Companion, now that the Companion has forsaken its powers to become human (although it still can’t leave its planet). The Enterprise arrives and the crew get away to safety, Kirk promising not to tell anyone that Cochrane is still alive.

At this point, I was wondering what about the war that Bedford was supposed to prevent. I thought it might be a What Happened To The Mouse? moment, but McCoy poses the same question to Kirk. His answer? “There are plenty of other people who can do that.”

Tropes: Negative Space Wedgie, Continuity Drift, Starfish Aliens, Who Wants To Live Forever, You Have 48 Hours, Translator Microbes, Go Mad From The Isolation, You Fail Biology Forever, Lonely Together, Humanity Ensues.
Body count: None!

“I, Mudd” is a sequel to “Mudd’s Women“, starring the irritating con-man Harcourt Fenton “Harry” Mudd. Unfortunately, where the former was at least moderately tolerable and had the kernel of a decent story driving it, this episode is rather painful to watch.

It starts promisingly enough, with the mysterious newly assigned crewman Norman running rampant through the Enterprise, disabling people with a single rather soft karate chop to the neck, and taking control of the ship from the auxiliary control room. This shows how ridiculously easy it is to override the bridge controls. Someone does 10 seconds of hacking on a poorly guarded terminal elsewhere on the ship, and suddenly the helm doesn’t respond to anything Sulu does. After another completely ineffectual display by the Enterprise security team, Kirk is about to leave the bridge to personally kick some ass, when Norman arrives and declares that the ship is under his control and he is taking it to a mysterious planet 4 days away. Norman says any attempt to regain control will result in the Enterprise being destroyed, which Spock confirms with a glance at his display. Norman then reveals himself to be an android(!) and switches himself off.

After the opening credits, however, things rapidly go downhill, as it’s shown that even after 4 days nobody has bothered to move Norman off the bridge, where he stands blocking access to the turbolifts. Norman switches back on and commands the bridge crew to beam down, where they meet Harry Mudd surrounded by a bevy of beautiful female robots. It turns out he escaped the prison he was left in at the end of “Mudd’s Women”, then did some of his usual tricks, this time explicitly involving the selling of patented technology without paying royalties. You’d think they could have come up with some slightly more glamorous crime, but perhaps it was more important to show that, even in the post-scarcity economy of Star Trek, patents and intellectual property are serious business. There’s even a joke about it: Mudd: You couldn’t sell false patents to your mother! Spock: I fail to see why I should induce my mother to purchase falsified patents.

In a Chekhov’s gun scene, we see Harry show off a robot duplicate of his nagging wife, which he had made by the androids just so he could tell it to shut up and it would do so. The bulk of the episode is then made up of the crew trying to figure out how to escape from Mudd’s custody, despite the thousands of androids who follow his commands but otherwise are willing to do anything to keep the crew happy. It turns out the androids have their own agenda, wanting to serve humanity and cater to their desires, and in order to do so, they will enslave humanity to prevent them from being unhappy.

In the end, Kirk resorts to the reliable logic bomb approach (that he has used against rogue robots twice before), confusing the androids by acting out some truly painful scenes with the crew putting on ridiculous mime and acting sequences. This locks up all the androids except Norman, who is then defeated simply by Kirk telling him that Mudd always lies, followed by Mudd saying, “I am lying.” Kirk manages to reprogram all the androids in a miracle of off-screen editing, and leaves Mudd behind on the planet. Mudd thinks this is okay, until it turns out that 500 copies of his nagging wife have been made, and this time they won’t listen when he tells them to shut up.

Not as bad as “Catspaw”, but entirely uninspiring stuff, and rehashing themes we’ve seen explored in better ways already. Okay, I’m ready for some good episodes again.

Tropes: Robotic Reveal, Robot Girl, Cardboard Prison, Sidetracked By The Analogy, Chekhov’s Gun, Henpecked Husband, Gilded Cage, Zeroth Law Rebellion, Utopia Justifies The Means, Logic Bomb, Fate Worse Than Death, Hoist By His own Petard, Full Name Ultimatum.
Body count: None!

“Catspaw” is without a doubt the worst episode so far in my systematic traversal of every episode of the original Star Trek. Alas, I know there is worse to come, and this one doesn’t really approach the depths of some of the later episodes. It’s not so bad that you remember it because of how bad it is. It’s just completely blah and unmemorable. It’s so unmemorable that it wasn’t until over 15 minutes into this episode that I recognised any of what was going on, despite having seen it before.

This is yet another “Kirk and crew encounter nigh-omnipotent alien being, who toys with them until either Kirk defeats them through his cleverness or by deus ex machina” episode. And it’s easily the least inspiring of any of them. It features bizarre manifestations of “magic” and “spooky” stuff, including a trio of Macbeth-esque witches, some voodoo curses, a castle with a dungeon, and possibly two of the worst special effects seen so far in the series.

Crewman Jackson beams up from the planet Pyris VII, without fellow landing party members Scotty and Sulu, and promptly drops dead on the transporter pad. Despite being dead, a spooky voice emanates from his unmoving mouth, declaring the Enterprise to be cursed. Kirk beams down with Spock and McCoy to investigate and find Scotty and Sulu. They find a spooky fog which is weird since there is no water anywhere nearby. They encounter three spooky ghostly witches, who try to scare them. They find a spooky Gothic castle and enter.

It soon becomes clear that half this episode is padding, as they wander aimlessly around the castle for a bit before anything happens. McCoy and Kirk mention “Trick or Treat”, which perplexes Spock. Okay, fine, this establishes that Spock is an alien and knows nothing about human culture. But then later in the episode Spock turns out to be an expert on human culture, explaining to McCoy and Kirk what a witch’s familiar is. A spooky black cat jumps out, scaring them. They follow the cat and fall into a hole in the floor.

Kirk, Spock, and McCoy awake in a dungeon, shackled to the wall. There is an intact human skeleton shackled next to them, in defiance of the fact that a human skeleton will fall apart if suspended like that. And there’s even a lame joke with Kirk addressing both McCoy and the skeleton as “Bones”. Scotty and Sulu show up, hypnotised. Kirk points out how they aren’t blinking, and Spock remarks, “Neither did Jackson just before he collapsed.” A perfectly fine observation, except that Spock wasn’t in the transporter room and never saw Jackson before he collapsed.

Scotty and Sulu take the captives upstairs, where they meet Korob and Sylvia, the semi-omnipotent aliens du jour. The only real twist here is that Korob an Sylvia don’t get along, with Sylvia wanting to extract some information from the humans at any cost, and Korob, who wants to try to get along, being shouted down. The information Sylvia wants is never actually explained, or in fact mentioned again. Oh, and Sylvia is the black cat from earlier, as strongly hinted at by the fact that the cat leaves the room and Sylvia enters a moment later, dressed in black and wearing the same pendant.

Syliva pulls some voodoo magic on the Enterprise, heating a toy model of it in a candle, causing the ship in orbit to heat up. Kirk agrees to cooperate so she will stop it, then he proceeds to seduce her, but it goes awry and she judges humanity (ho hum, yawn, seen it before) and everyone ends up in the dungeon again. Korob releases them, but Sylvia turns into a giant cat and terrorises everyone with awful special effects shots of a housecat running through miniature castle corridors. Korob gives Kirk his wand and, in a confrontation with Sylvia, Kirk smashes it, destroying all the magic. The castle vanishes and Korob and Sylvia are revealed to be tiny puppets made of pipecleaner and feathers, complete with visible strings. They die, and that’s it.

It’s all so cliché-ridden, and maybe 20 minutes of story stretched to fill 50 minutes. It was actually boring. It has two huge gaping continuity problems, and a major seeming plot point that is never explained. It has two laughable special effects. There is nothing clever in the plot. No wonder I didn’t remember any of this episode from the previous times I’ve seen it.

Tropes: He’s Dead Jim, Ominous Fog, Haunted Castle, Padding, Cat Scare, You Fail Biology Forever, Gallows Humour, Plot Hole, Sufficiently Advanced Alien, What Happened To The Mouse?, Shapeshifting, Hollywood Voodoo, Casanova, Humanity On Trial, Mega Neko, Magic From Technology, This Was His True Form, Special Effect Failure.
Body count: Crewman Jackson keeled over dead on the transporter pad, by “magic”, the aliens Korob and Syliva.

“The Doomsday Machine“, unlike the previous episode “The Apple”, is an episode I know well merely from the title. The Enterprise encounters a terrifying and seemingly unstoppable planet destroying machine, with a hull made of solid neutronium and a horrible maw large enough to eat starships.

Much of the episode is a cat and mouse game of starship combat with this doomsday machine – a name given to it by Kirk when he speculates on its origin and purpose. Backtracking its path through destroyed systems, Spock concludes it has come from outside the Galaxy. Kirk surmises that such a destructive force could only be the ultimate weapon of a war of utter annihilation – a doomsday machine designed to destroy everything if its creators should lose. The parallels to the nuclear mutually assured destruction of the Cold War when this episode was made are obvious. But the episode doesn’t deliver a heavy-handed moral about this – it simply uses this set-up to drive a dramatic and compelling plot, with an Ahab-like rampage of revenge by the destitute Commodore Decker after he loses everyone on board his ship, the USS Constellation.

I think this is the first time we’ve seen another Constitution class starship in the series (I may be wrong, but I don’t recall one before now). Dramatically, it’s damaged, the result of a prior attack from the doomsday machine, and its distress call is the catalyst for the episode in the pre-credit scene. Uhura appears to be off-duty for the entire episode – her role is taken by a Lieutenant Palmer, who gets a lot of lines as there is a lot of communication between the Enterprise and Constellation, mixed up with a lot of subspace interference. Kirk, McCoy, Scotty, and an engineering crew beam over to the crippled Constellation to find out what happened. They find commanding officer Commodore Decker the only survivor, in shock after beaming his entire crew down to the third planet of the system for safety. When Kirk points out the system only has two planets, Decker wails, “I know! That thing destroyed the third planet!”

Scotty says the antimatter on the Constellation has been “deactivated” – I wonder how that is done – but he starts work on getting the impulse engines running. Meanwhile, McCoy escorts Decker back to the Enterprise, where Decker pulls rank on Spock and assumes command, ordering the ship into a revenge chase of the machine rather than going to pick up Kirk. McCoy objects and tries to declare Decker unfit for command, but Spock points out the regulations require a medical examination first, which he hasn’t had time to do.

Scotty gets the Constellation running and it interferes just in time to save the Enterprise from destruction by the machine. Kirk then orders Spock to relieve Decker of command, which he does so by pointing out that Decker is acting suicidally. Spock has Decker escorted off the bridge, but Decker manages to overcome the guard in a fistfight (why don’t they employ competent security personnel?) and steals a shuttlecraft (why don’t they have any security at all on the shuttle bay?). Decker flies the shuttle kamikaze into the machine’s maw, but the explosion barely affects it. However, the fact that it does have any effect at all gives Kirk the idea of doing the same with the wreck of the Constellation.

Spock estimates that blowing up the ship’s impulse engines will generate an explosion equivalent to 97.835 megatons. Scotty sets up a 30 second delay trigger, giving Kirk barely enough time to beam out safely (why didn’t he set up a longer trigger? Or a remote detonation mechanism so they could explode the ship from the safety of the Enterprise??). Thankfully the 30 seconds lasts about 2 minutes of screen time, giving Scotty enough time to repair the suddenly failing transporter and beam Kirk out at the last possible second.

Whew! It’s a whirlwind of edge-of-the-seat excitement. The plot is not overly complex, but it’s full of tension and keeps you glued to the screen. Definitely one of the classic episodes. And we’ll see Commodore Decker’s son appear later, in the first Star Trek movie.

Tropes: Earth Shattering Kaboom, Made Of Indestructium, Doomsday Device, Outside Context Villain, Wave Motion Gun, Off The Shelf FX, Heroic BSOD, Large Ham, Antimatter, Nuclear Physics Goof, General Ripper, That’s An Order, Cardboard Prison, Roaring Rampage Of Revenge, Senseless Sacrifice, Self Destruct Mechanism, Deus Ex Nukina, Ludicrous Precision, Time Bomb, Magic Countdown.
Body count: Entire crew of USS Constellation except Commodore Decker (off-screen before opening, killed when planet they were on was destroyed), Commodore Decker sacrificed himself in attempt to destroy the doomsday machine.