“This Side of Paradise” begins with the Enterprise approaching Omicron Ceti III, where a colony of humans landed 4 years earlier. Unfortunately, it was later discovered that the planet was bombarded with Berthold rays, which kill animal life with about a week of exposure. So the mission is to be a mop-up operation, clearing away the dead colonists.

Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Sulu, and two others beam down. The landing party contains no members in red shirts(!) and, sure enough, none of them end up being killed. They find a healthy and active colony of humans, where they expected bodies. Sulu gets a great line: “Do you think they could be dead?” I like this line, because it shows that nothing is so far beyond the realms of possibility that a Starfleet officer can’t suggest it. The colony looks like a simple Earth farm (no doubt because it was filmed on one), with no modern technology in sight.

We meet the beautiful Leila, who serves as girl of the week for… Spock! This is achieved through the expedient of mysterious plants on the planet, which spray people in the face with spores. These spores (a) keep the people alive despite the Berthold rays, and (b) turn them into happy pacifists. Everyone is affected, except Kirk for some reason not explained until later in the episode.

Spock changes off-screen into some farmer overalls and spends much of the episode in pastoral romance scenes with Leila. One wonders where he got changed, since they were outside at the time he got spored, and are never shown returning to the farm. McCoy lapses into a southern accent and goes off in search of a mint julep. The entire Enterprise crew is infected too when someone beams some of the plants up. They abandon ship and all beam down to join the farm colony.

The colony leader, Elias Sandoval, tells Kirk to relax and enjoy the good life. Kirk gives a Picard speech, stating that humans weren’t meant to live easy lives, they need challenges. He storms off to beam back to the Enterprise and consider the situation. But how does he beam up if nobody’s up there to activate the transporter?? This is a jarring lapse of continuity within the series, in which it’s pretty well established that the transporter requires an operator on board ship. Kirk then laments in a log entry that unless he can figure out a way to bring everyone to their senses, he is doomed, since he can’t pilot the ship alone. This seems odd, since the captain should presumably be trained in helm and navigation, and the engines should in any reasonable ship manage to stay in one piece long enough for one trip. Perhaps the engines are so unreliable that Scotty really does need to nurse them along constantly, so they don’t explode or something.

Kirk is sprayed by a flower and succumbs briefly to its effects, but manages to throw it off by getting upset about leaving the Enterprise. He realises that strong emotions break the thrall of the spores, and tricks Spock into beaming up, then insults and initiates a fistfight with him. Spock recovers just before bashing Kirk’s brains out with a chair, and the two of them engineer a sonic anger generator. Leila calls and requests to beam up, saying she has “never seen a starship”, which is weird, since she arrived on this planet just four years earlier, presumably on a ship. Spock breaks her heart with his cold logic, which snaps her out of the spore-induced rapture. She agrees they need to evacuate all the colonists.

The anger ray brings everyone on the planet to their senses, and an orderly evacuation is begun. In the denouement, Leila says that Spock never told her his full name. He says, “You couldn’t pronounce it.” This was a surprise – I’d always assumed Spock had no other name. This episode also has the first use in the series so far of the word “Vulcan” as an adjective to describe Spock, although earlier someone also uses the word “Vulcanian” that everyone has been using so far in other episodes. Maybe this is the transition episode! We shall see as the series continues.

Basically this is an episode designed to give Spock a love interest, and to do that they had to devise some form of mind-affecting phlebotinum to release his inhibitions. We’ll see this again later, done in a different way. Basically it’s another way of writing around an established fact of the story universe. Anyway, overall I think this is an okay episode. Not great, but not bad either.

Tropes: Negative Space Wedgie, Uncanny Village, Space Amish, Gaussian Girl, Girl Of The Week, Perfect Pacifist People, Everybody Must Get Stoned, That Cloud Looks Like, Measuring The Marigolds, Only Sane Man, Ooh, Me Accent’s Slipping (in character), Patrick Stewart Speech, Insulted Awake, Emotion Bomb, I Am What I Am.
Body count: None.
(Image © 1966 Paramount Studios, used under Fair Use.)

“A Taste of Armageddon” is another memorable episode, for its exploration of the social issues involved in warfare. It begins with the Enterprise approaching a star cluster and bent on establishing diplomatic relations with the inhabitants of the Eminiar system, known to have developed space flight, but not yet ventured outside their own solar system. On board the Enterprise is the officious Ambassador Fox, whose droopy eyes remind me of Droopy the dog.

The Enterprise sends a hailing message to the populated planet of Eminiar VII, which is replied to with a “Code 7-10” signal. This is a Starfleet code signal meaning to stay away and not to approach under any conditions. One wonder why the Eminians are using a standardised Starfleet code signal if they haven’t made contact with the Federation yet. And of course, as with all inviolable orders in the Star Trek universe, the Enterprise immediately ignores it, this time on the orders of Ambassador Fox, who has the authority to overrule Kirk on this mission.

Kirk, Spock, and three redshirts beam down to assess the situation before risking sending Ambassador Fox down. They are met by girl-of-the-week Mea 3 and a group of guards in extremely funky uniforms complete with bizarre hats and hugely flared overall trousers in bold asymmetric colouring. The landing party is treated civilly and introduced to the leader Anan 7 – they like using numbers as parts of names here. Anan 7 explains that the Enterprise is in danger of attack from a civilisation on Vendikar, the third planet in the Eminiar system, with whom Eminiar VII has been at war for over 500 years, and that was why he warned them to stay away. No sooner has he said this than the nearby combat computers register an attack, which destroys part of the city and kills thousands of people.

Only Yeoman Tamura‘s tricorder registers no explosions or radiation or anything else. Spock realises that the war is fought entirely as a computer simulation. Anan 7 confirms this and says that the calculated casualties have 24 hours to report to disintegration chambers for termination (apparently they use Earth time on Eminiar VII). Kirk is horrified. He is even more horrified when Anan 7 informs him that the Enterprise was also “destroyed” in the attack, and his entire crew must now report for disintegration. Kirk refuses, but Anan 7 explains that everyone must comply with the computer simulation, or else Vendikar will consider their treaty broken and may attack with real weapons. Anan 7 explains that this is a much cleaner and neater way to fight a war – it is war without all the expense or the messy destruction of property and culture. To ensure the Enterprise crew comply with their ordered disintegrations, Anan 7 imprisons Kirk and the other landing party members (who were not declared as casualties). Chalk one up for Kirk’s suspicions over an ambassador’s overtures of peace.

All this happens in a heavily front-loaded barrage of exposition within the first 15 minutes. It’s a shocking scenario, yet if you don’t think about it too closely you may find yourself disturbed by the fact that fighting a war this way does sound cleaner and less wasteful. But something is clearly horribly wrong with the entire situation. It requires people to willingly submit themselves to death at any time, with just a day’s notice. When Kirk expresses incredulity to Mea 3, she explains that it’s their duty – if they don’t report for death, then they will bring terrible and terribly real war and destruction down on their entire planet. This is such a horrible thought that everyone goes along with the set-up.

Kirk and co. are placed in a locked room. An interesting decoration in the room is what looks like an inverted Christian cross, made of flowers. I had to look twice, but this is exactly what it looks like. I’d be tempted to say it was symbolic, but I’m not sure what message they could have been going for there. Spock manages to break them out by applying a “Vulcanian” telepathic suggestion through the wall, affecting the guard posted outside. (They still haven’t switched to the demonym “Vulcan”.)

Scotty, on board the Enterprise, enters a log report in which he mentions that “the captain and first officer” are missing on the surface – making no mention whatsoever of the three redshirts with them! Yes, they’re that expendable. In an attempt to make sure everyone on board dies, Eminiar opens fire on the Enterprise, using a “sonic attack”. It must be a particularly advanced sonic attack for the sound waves to travel through the vacuum of space and affect the Enterprise in orbit. The anonymous helmsman extra reports that the attack is an astonishing “decibels measuring 18 to the 12th power” – or about 10 to the 15th power for anyone who prefers working in decimal notation.

Anan 7 uses a voice synthesiser to impersonate Kirk and tell Scotty back on the Enterprise that the natives are friendly and everyone on board should beam down immediately for shore leave. This makes Scotty a bit suspicious, but pleases Ambassador Fox. Fox orders Scotty to lower the screens (again, they haven’t yet switched to “shields”), which he’d raised during the attack (explained away as a misunderstanding by Anan 7 using Kirk’s voice). Scotty sensibly refuses point blank, which angers Fox, who goes to beam down.

Fox and his nameless assistant are captured as soon as they appear and are dragged off to a disintegration booth. Kirk and Spock have captured some Eminian disruptor weapons and rescue the ambassador, destroying a disintegration booth or two along the way. This causes the Eminians to fall behind in their quotas of disintegrations, making Anan 7 worry that Vendikar will really attack. Kirk gets into a fistfight with two Eminian guards… and loses! Now there’s a first. He’s dragged off to the war room. Anan 7 orders him to tell the Enterprise crew to report for disintegration. Instead, Kirk tells Scotty to implement General Order 24, in two hours, which he then explains to Anan 7 is to destroy the entire planet.

Spock and the redshirts arrive and Anan 7 goes mad with worry that the treaty has been broken and now Eminiar and Vendikar will have to fight a real war. Kirk agrees, and destroys the combat computers! He explains that the fear now consuming Anan 7 is the same as the fear that will be occurring on Vendikar – they won’t want to fight a real war any more than Eminiar. The solution, Kirk says, is to contact Vendikar and agree to stop the war. A sensible outcome, with Fox left behind to mediate a peace agreement as the Enterprise leaves orbit.

Despite it’s share of niggles, this is a good, solid episode, with a very thought-provoking premise and a dramatic climax. It’s one of the episodes that really pushes the boundaries of what an alien society can be like in a mostly believable way. The only real problem, if you think about it, is that everyone on Eminiar (and presumably Vendikar) has been so indoctrinated with the concept of their ongoing war that they’re willing to die at a moment’s notice. I don’t think any society could be that well trained. Someone, somewhere, must have formed some sort of resistance movement to try to break out of the system. Yet that idea is dismissed completely. As Anan 7 shows, they can certainly feel fear of destruction, so it’s not like they are immune to caring about themselves. But nevertheless, it’s hard not to get dragged deeply into this episode and come out of it feeling like it was worth watching.

Tropes: Space Clothes, You Are Number Six, Forever War, Dystopian Edict, Gone Horribly Right, Space Is Noisy, Voice Changeling, Cruel To Be Kind, Start X To Stop X
Body count: 2 random Eminians disintegrated in disintegration booth on-screen, 2 Eminian guards shot by disruptors, Ambassador Fox’s assistant shot by disruptor. Unknown numbers of other Eminians disintegrated off-screen during the episode.
(Image © 1966 Paramount Studios, used under Fair Use.)

Ah… “Space Seed“. A true classic. This is a very welcome sight after “The Return of the Archons“.

Everyone reading this probably knows that this episode forms the back story for the film Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Here, we meet Khan for the first time, a survivor adrift in an ancient Earth ship – a ship dating from the mid-1990s! This is so unimaginably old that it is transmitting a signal in Morse code(!!) rather than anything more modern. Uhura recognises the old “CQ” call sign by ear, showing once again how versatile she is – she could probably operate every system on the ship without the manuals. We also learn that the 1990s were a period of world war. Thankfully that part of the prediction didn’t come true.

Kirk sounds a red alert and various members of the bridge crew run about aimlessly, their random meanderings now with an increased sense of urgency. There’s a delicious bit of Spock versus McCoy banter, then they head for the transporter room, calling the ship’s historian Lieutenant McGivers in to assist. Why a military vessel has a specialist historian on board is something of a mystery. She’s shown as basically having no role on board except to paint pictures of classical warriors and to be on call in case the captain ever needs assistance with Earth history for some reason. I guess it pays to be prepared.

McCoy gives what might be his first rant against the evils of transporters, objecting to being split into component molecules and reassembled elsewhere. He maintains this antipathy to the device throughout his career, to the amusement of everyone else. My reaction is more to wonder why everyone else is so blasé about it. Anyway, they beam over to the drifting SS Botany Bay. The initials “SS” are mentioned, but not explained. One presumes they mean “steam ship”, as such a primitive ship is no doubt powered by steam. On board are people preserved in cryo-capsules of some sort. The first one we see looks suspiciously like a blue-skinned space babe, until we see that it’s just a blue light shining on her face.

One guy wakes up, and of course it’s Khan himself, who is taken to the Enterprise sickbay to recuperate from being asleep for over 200 years. He wakes up and holds a knife to McCoy’s throat, which prompts a moment of awesome from McCoy, who wins Khan over with his bravery. Kirk appears and chats for a minute, before showing Khan how to access all of the Enterprise‘s technical details on the sickbay computer. This is the second time Kirk has been friendly to a fault to someone he really should be more wary of. Who put this guy in charge of a military vessel?

At a formal meal, Khan starts to reveal more of his background and temperament:

Kirk: You have a tendency to express ideas in military terms, Mister Khan. This is a social occasion.

Right at this point in the episode, a huge crack of thunder occurred right outside my window, punctuating Kirk’s statement ominously. Even the weather gods like this episode.

Eventually – and without the help of McGivers, who is busy being seduced by Khan – they identify Khan as Khan Noonien Singh, a genetically engineered warlord from the turbulent time in Earth’s history known as the 1990s. This took some considerable digging through the library computer tapes, as they mention several times earlier that records from this time are sparse and incomplete, and nobody really knows much about the time. Despite this, Scotty confidently declares that Khan was “always my favourite of the 1990s dictators”. Either he has some exceedingly weird and esoteric interests or he’s lying through his teeth.

Using his new-found knowledge of the Enterprise, Khan succeeds in taking over the ship and reviving his followers, leading to the inevitable one-on-one fist fight between Kirk and Khan. This should, by all accounts, by a terrible mismatch, because Khan is genetically engineered to be superior in every way, and states that he has the strength of five men. Despite this, he doesn’t even manage to rip Kirk’s shirt – even a rubber-suited Gorn who can barely move managed to do that! Kirk eventually smacks Khan over the head with a bit of tubing that he pulls out of some vital engineering system or other.

And then what to do with Khan and his übermenschen followers? Kirk calls some sort of formal hearing, which apparently he has the authority to do without referring back to Starfleet, and delivers punitive justice. He banishes Khan and his cronies to the uninhabited Earth-like planet Ceti Alpha V, making a clever allusion to the name of the Botany Bay along the way. He also gives McGivers the choice of court martial for helping Khan, or joining him in exile; she chooses the latter. And then comes the most haunting line of the entire episode:

Spock: It would be interesting, captain, to return to that world in a hundred years and to learn what crop has sprung from the seed you planted today.

Of course that seed would burst into a roaring rampage of revenge a mere 15 years later, in a tale told in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. But that’s a story for another post. Hmm, yes.. I should follow up when I’m done with the TV series by doing the movies.

A fantastic episode. Total win across the board.

Tropes: Everyone Knows Morse, I Want My Jetpack, The Great Politics Mess Up, Human Popsicle, Popsicle Splat, Sealed Evil In A Can, Classic Villain, All Girls Want Bad Boys, Super Soldier, Improvised Weapon, Penal Colony, Rule of Symbolism, Wickedly Cultured, Foreshadowing.
Body count: 12 of Khan’s followers dead off-screen in failed hibernation capsules.
(Image © 1966 Paramount Studios, used under Fair Use.)

“The Return of the Archons” is a strange episode. It begins in medias res again – they seem to have liked doing that in Star Trek – with Sulu and Lieutenant O’Neill attempting to evade what looks like a group of roughly 1850s-era Americans. O’Neill runs off while Sulu beams up, but not before being accosted by what look like cowled monks wielding blowguns. Sulu appears back on the Enterprise, and his mind has been snapped, leaving him in a blissful and non-responsive state.

Following the credits, Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and various expendables beam down to investigate and recover O’Neill. We learn that this is the planet Beta III, and is apparently inhabited by aliens who resemble 1850s Americans and inhabit what looks like the Universal Studios wild west backlot. Apparently a hundred years ago another Earth ship, the USS Archon, was lost on this planet, and Kirk’s mission is to find out what happened to the crew.

Eerie music plays to underline the fact that all the natives seems blissed out in an obviously unnatural way. The landing party is dressed in appropriate costume, so are taken for visitors from another town, and a guy tells them to find a room before the “Red Hour” Festival. We soon learn what this is when the clock strikes six and everyone goes crazy, getting into fights, smashing windows, and sharing passionate embraces. Naturally a woman races up to Kirk and leaps into his arms, kissing him passionately, while Kirk does his best to not fend her off.

The story develops into the discovery that this bizarre society is run by a mysterious “Landru” who “absorbs” people into some sort of telepathically induced state of constant happiness, known as “the Body“. The only time they can let their hair down, so to speak, is during the “Red Hour” Festival. Kirk figures out that Landru is actually a computer and destroys it by arguing logic with it, pointing out that the people are suffering because they have no creativity, thus Landru is evil and must destroy itself. Somewhat surprisingly, this argument works.

Behind the actual plot, there are several nagging questions left completely unanswered. The first expectation is that perhaps one of the Archon crew was the original Landru, and left behind a computer to take care of the natives when he died. But it turns out that the original Landru was a native some 6000 years ago – so the planet was like this when the Archon arrived 100 years ago. Perhaps we’ll get some other interesting story about what happened to the original Archons and how they coped on this strange world. Nope. Apparently they just arrived and got absorbed and that was the end of it. So much potential wasted there.

Then there’s no real explanation of the Festival either. Kirk and Spock surmise that it’s to let off steam that can’t be done when everyone is dosed up on happiness. That sounds sensible at first glance, but then the planet is hardly the Utopia Landru wants, is it? The people go completely bonkers during the Festival – why doesn’t Landru do anything to try to stop it? And with the amount of destruction wrought every night – windows smashed, things burnt down – how do they manage to rebuild it all during the day each time?

Kirk and company are helped by a sort of underground resistance against Landru – people who haven’t been absorbed into “the Body”. The big question here is how do such people exist at all? And what do they actually do when there aren’t strange unabsorbed aliens running around to protect? And then there are the cowled enforcer monks, who wander around ordering people to be happy, and killing anyone who doesn’t obey by pointing their hollow tubes at them. As Spock points out, the tubes have “no mechanism”, ad he can’t figure out how they actually have any physical effect at all. You’d think we might get some hint of an explanation for this – but no, it’s never mentioned again.

And why the heck doesn’t Kirk contact the Enterprise sooner to appraise them of the situation, and learn from Scotty that the ship is under attack? Why doesn’t Scotty call Kirk to let him know?? Why doesn’t the Enterprise continuously monitor everything the landing party says as routine procedure?

And I think this is the first episode where the Prime Directive is mentioned. This Starfleet standing order says that Starfleet personnel are not allowed to interfere with the social development of a world that has not made interstellar contact. It’s the single most important and inviolable rule in Starfleet. Naturally, it’s mentioned and then immediately dismissed by Kirk as not applying in this case, because he regards the current state of affairs on Beta III as stagnant, and not developing.

Some other points of note: McCoy is absorbed at one point. I was thinking that Spock should try a mind meld on him – and he actually does so! Unfortunately it doesn’t seem to work, in another example of having to render an introduced plot device non-working in order to avoid it short circuiting the plot of another episode. And Spock and Kirk actually share a literal “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” moment when they both realise Landru must be a computer.

Tropes: Planetville, Uncanny Village, World Of Silence, A Fete Worse Than Death, Utopia Justifies The Means, Of The People, Path of Inspiration, Master Computer, Deus Est Machina, Individuality Is Illegal, Prime Directive, Screw The Rules, I’m Doing What’s Right, Logic Bomb, Heel Realisation, What Happened To The Mouse?
Body Count: One insane computer.
(Image © 1966 Paramount Studios, used under Fair Use.)

“Court Martial” is exactly what it says on the tin. Captain Kirk faces a court martial over the death of crewman Ben Finney, ejected in an ion pod during an ion storm. Procedure is to only eject the pod containing a crew member during a red alert, and only with sufficient warning to allow the crew member to leave the pod – which is what Kirk says he did, despite the fact that Finney hated his guts for an incident between them years ago. But the Enterprise‘s computer records say he ejected before declaring a yellow alert. This is all resolved in a court martial hearing.

All the action takes place on Starbase 11, which gains the distinction of being one of very few places that the Enterprise visits in more than one episode. We even see a new matte painting of the starbase, showing it in what looks like a red sunset mood. This painting is nice, and better yet, consistent with the daytime matte painting of the same base seen back in “The Menagerie” (which also included a court martial – of Mr Spock). We also again see the Seattle Space Needle-like buildings on flat scenery cutouts through the windows of Commodore Stone‘s office.

We meet Jame Finney, Ben’s young teenish daughter, who accuses Kirk of killing her father. She’s wearing a good example of space clothing – a bizarre skirt made of some shiny reflective material. We meet Areel Shaw, a former love interest of Kirk’s, who has the unenviable job of prosecuting the case against him.

We also meet attorney Samuel Cogley, who defends Kirk, and is a Luddite, preferring a room full of musty old books to a computer that can contain more legal precedent than an entire library. This also comes out in his summing up speech in the court, when his defence is basically built on the premise that computers are impersonal and not to be trusted. Oddly, this argument doesn’t go over well, because the computer has recorded a damning video of Kirk pressing the eject button before declaring red alert. It doesn’t occur to anyone that the video could possibly have been faked. “Computers don’t lie!” declares the Commodore.

Which brings up another oddity. Kirk is shown pressing buttons on his captain’s chair, that are clearly labelled “Yellow Alert” and “Eject Pod”, with the unused “Red Alert” button also there, making a trio of buttons with no room for much else on the chair arm. So the entirety of the captain’s chair’s right armrest is taken up by these three buttons? How often would these buttons be used?? Particularly given every single other time we see an alert sounded in Star Trek, it’s by verbal order?

Some amusing oddities: Spock refers to himself as “Vulcanian”, rather than the later standard “Vulcan”. Areel refers to Dr McCoy on the witness stand as an “expert in psychology, especially space psychology“. And mid-episode, Jame Finney suddenly changes her mind and declares that she believes Kirk and hopes that he evades the court martial charge – this is never satisfactorily explained (though turns out to have been because of extra script material that was cut for time, in which Jame reads some of her father’s letters and realises what a bitter man he was).

Spock eventually cracks the case by the odd expedient of playing chess with the Enterprise computer, prompting incredulity from McCoy. The important point here is that Spock programmed the computer for chess himself, and the computer can never make a mistake, so obviously Spock can do no better than draw with it, yet he beats it five times in a row. This proves beyond any doubt the computer has been tampered with, and the video log of Kirk is fake! Whodunnit? Why, Finney of course, who faked his own death to frame Kirk and ruin his career.

Now they have to track him down, hiding somewhere on the Enterprise. To do this, rather than use scanners or something, they evacuate everyone from the ship but the bridge crew and the court, and use a hypersensitive sound amplifier – capable of “boosting sounds by one to the fourth power“! Except this sound amplifier apparently can’t pick up the sound of anyone talking, and can only amplify heartbeats. McCoy then uses a “white sound” device to cancel out the heartbeats of everyone on the bridge, leaving one heartbeat remaining: Finney!

Kirk goes to confront Finney alone, because of course this is something he’s got to do himself. An inevitable fistfight occurs, complete with Kirk’s shirt ripping – the entirety of which could have been avoided by Kirk heading down there with a couple of armed security personnel. Finney makes a mad speech and eventually loses. We get to see Uhura take the helm as the Enterprise‘s orbit decays due to some Finney sabotage, which is rectified just in time. She’s clearly far too talented to be stuck on communications.

Overall, not a bad episode. The drama of Kirk’s court martial creates significant tension until you learn the twist near the end. And Spock and McCoy get some amusing banter as their irksome relationship begins to develop throughout this first season.

Tropes: Exactly What It Says On The Tin, Courtroom Episode, Space Clothes, Science Is Bad, We Will Not Use Photoshop In The Future, Space X, Smart People Play Chess, This Is No Time For Knitting, Clear My Name, Faking The Dead, Writers Cannot Do Math, This Is Something He’s Got To Do Himself, Wrench Whack, Clothing Damage, Evil Is Hammy
Body count: Ben Finney, killed off-screen before the episode begins… or is he?!
(Image © 1966 Paramount Studios, used under Fair Use.)

“Tomorrow is Yesterday” begins startlingly in medias res, with shots of 1960s air force jets scrambling, which could make you wonder if you were watching the right show. They’re rushing to chase down a UFO (big news at the time), and one Captain John Christopher comes within visual range of the mysterious craft… only to see it is the familiar (to us) shape of the USS Enterprise! What a pre-credits teaser!

It turns out the Enterprise has been thrown back in time by an encounter with a “black star” (the term “black hole” was invented a year after this episode was made, in 1967), and ended up orbiting Earth in an extremely low orbit – within the atmosphere apparently. This is rather low for anything to really be considered orbiting, as atmospheric drag would cause the trajectory to decay awfully quickly – in less than a single orbit, probably. Anyway, they use their remaining power to climb to a higher orbit, but not before they get approached by Christopher in his jet. Uhura picks up radio orders to Christopher to shoot down the “UFO”, so Kirk orders the jet held off with a tractor beam. But our primitive 1960s jets are incapable of taking the stress of a tractor beam – which is odd considering jet fighters are specifically built to handle dozens of Gs of acceleration. To save Christopher, Kirk has him beamed aboard.

Which is his first huge mistake. He should have just let Christopher eject, and thereby short-circuited the entire plot of this episode. Or beamed him from the cockpit directly to the ground somewhere safe. Christopher would have an unexplained story, but nobody would be able to make head or tail of it, and no harm would be done. But no, Kirk has to beam him on board, and then not have him silently beamed back down, or escorted into a holding cell to be beamed down later, but rather Kirk has to go and introduce himself and start showing the Enterprise off to this guy!

Christopher has fun wandering the ship, being shocked to see female crew members (shock horror!), and finding real chicken soup coming out of a slot in the wall. It’s still not clear if the food on board the Enterprise sucks or is actually good. It’s only when Spock points out that Christopher now knows “too much” about the future and can’t safely be returned to Earth that Kirk realises this may have been a mistake. Don’t they give these guys any training in basic time travel paradoxes in Starfleet? I realise this is the first time we see significant time travel in Star Trek (we saw the foreshadowing of it in “The Naked Time“), but really, you’d think a starship captain would know better.

To fix this mess, Kirk and Sulu have to beam down to the Air Force base and steal the radio data tapes and the photos that Christopher took of the Enterprise. Christopher has to be returned, Spock points out, because his unborn son will later go on to be commanding officer of the first manned mission to Saturn. This implies that the first manned mission to Saturn will occur… about this year. It’s depressing seeing just how often future predictions of human space travel are way ahead of reality.

At this point, with Kirk and Sulu in a comedy caper of sneaking data out of an Air Force base to fix up some wacky mess, the episode smells a bit like an I Dream of Jeannie episode. Not necessarily a bad thing in itself, but it feels weird in Star Trek. Kirk sneaks into a supposedly dimly lit room, which is in reality quite well lit by the studio lights, and shines a torch around totally ineffectually. Sulu makes a comment about how primitive the computers are – and for once it really fits, since they are massive machines with giant reel-to-reel magnetic tapes. (Of course the computers on board the Enterprise are also primitive by 2010 standards…)

After some shenanigans all is restored, then it’s time to beam Christopher (and a Base guard, long story) back. But not merely to Earth, they are beamed back in time as the Enterprise does a slingshot manoeuvre around the sun to return to the 23rd century. The result is that Christopher reappears in his jet cockpit, at the same time as he originally disappeared, only this time around the Enterprise isn’t there any more and the jet doesn’t disintegrate. What? How did that happen? For some unexplained reason they’ve gone back a few hours in time and erased their own presence from the first time they were there. It doesn’t really make sense, but supposedly everything is back to how it was as if the Enterprise was never there at all. The ship’s return to the future is cause for some serious camera shaking on the bridge and the crew flinging themselves back and forth as the time warp occurs. Not only does it shake the ship, but apparently rapid deceleration also flashes the lights off and on.

When I saw the opening of this episode, I was unexcited about what was about to unfold, as I recalled it was rather uninspiring. But it had a decent amount of drama and suspense, tempered mostly by Kirk’s idiot decision at the front of the episode that drove the entire plot. I think I was getting it mixed up with a later episode in which the Enterprise travels back to the 1960s… If I remember rightly that one is not as good as this one.

Tropes: In Medias Res, Time Travel, Idiot Ball, Little Green Men, I Want My Jetpack, Time Travellers Are Spies, Hollywood Darkness, Mistaken For Spies, Changed My Jumper, Get Back To The Future, Screen Shake
Body count: None!
(Image © 1966 Paramount Studios, used under Fair Use.)

“Arena“! One of the all-time classic episodes, this one is highly memorable for the one-on-one duel between Kirk and the reptilian Gorn captain.

Well, I thought I knew what this episode was when I began watching it, but it quickly became clear that I didn’t remember how it began. In fact for about the first 10 minutes I was doubting that this was the “Gorn” episode at all. It begins with Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and some assorted hangers-on beaming down to an Earth outpost on Cestus III at the invitation of the commander there. McCoy expresses delight at finally being able to taste a “non-reconstituted meal”. So everyone on the Enterprise lives on reconstituted food? Hmmm.

The name Cestus III is an obvious reference to the ancient Greek and Roman cestus – a glove designed to increase the damage done by bare-fisted fighting. An apt reference to make in this episode, hinging as it does on lust for warfare and gladiatorial combat. On the planet, the landing party find the smoking ruins of the outpost, obviously a victim of an attack. Apparently the attack was powerful enough to convert solid masonry into chunks of half-melted styrofoam.

McCoy beams up with a lone survivor, but the others are stranded when the Enterprise is attacked and Sulu reports they had to raise “screens” to prevent attack – these obviously haven’t been christened “shields” yet. They also handily prevent beaming the rest of the landing party up – another example of the writers having to disable the transporters to prevent them being used to rescue people from trouble. Sulu also reports that, although they are exchanging fire with the enemy vessel, it is “too far away” for visual contact. This is a bizarre piece of unphysical weirdness – they’re close enough to shoot at but not to see? Okay,they have other sensors that might be able to detect things at extreme ranges, but light has a pretty good range too, and they’re firing phasers – if they can expect to hit a target with a beam weapon, how can they be too far away to see it?

Meanwhile, on Cestus III, the landing party comes under attack from an unseen enemy, bombarding them from a nearby hill. Red-shirted Ensign O’Herlihy gets summarily disintegrated in the first two seconds of the attack, and Lieutenant Commander Lang doesn’t last much longer. Kirk wards off the attack with a strong case of foreshadowing by using a mortar to fire an explosive device towards the hill. The enemy vessel races off, the Enterprise picks up the landing party survivors and gives chase.

Kirk displays another bout of Ahab-like obsession with punishment in the name of justice, pushing the Enterprise to warp factor 8, a speed so great that it causes Scotty, Spock, and Sulu to appear in rapid-fire close-ups looking at Kirk with incredulity. When Kirk asks Spock for any information on aliens in the current sector, Spock replies that there is no hard information, there are only rumours and “space legends“.

The chase takes them past an unexplored planet, which is the home of the Metrons, yet another nigh omnipotent race of aliens, who espouse peace and decide to settle the differences of the Enterprise and the still-unseen aliens by placing the captain of each ship on a world specially prepared with the raw materials to make weapons, and letting them duke it out to the death. The winner gets to not have his ship and crew destroyed.

Kirk appears on the planet and we finally get our first look at the Gorn captain, in a supreme moment of dramatic revelation. Even now, when the costume looks incredibly hokey, it still has an impact to see that Kirk is up against a huge, muscular, lizard man! What follows is one of the most iconic fights in Star Trek, as Kirk struggles through an attempted fist fight, then races off to find a way to defeat the stronger Gorn. We see the usual Star Trek rocks that we’ve already seen in “Shore Leave”, and again there are obvious multiple shadows as Kirk races through the beams of light reflectors – this time the reflected light visibly moves across the rocks even.

Back on the Enterprise, the Metrons give the crew a video feed of the battle. Kirk stops near some white powdery stuff, and Spock recognises it immediately as potassium nitrate. Despite the fact that it looks exactly like any of dozens of other random white crystalline salts, or even sugar. See, this is why Spock is the science officer – he can recognise potassium nitrate by sight! Kirk has already passed a sulphur deposit, and a bunch of enormous diamonds just lying around. Spock points out that if he can find charcoal, or even just coal, he can make gunpowder. Kirk does so, and packs it into a crude mortar (foreshadowed!) made from a fat chunk of bamboo or something, and loads it up with diamond shot. This is amazingly effective, and blasts the Gorn captain to near-death.

But Kirk shows mercy and doesn’t finish him off, which proves to the Metrons that humans are worthy to live after all. A Metron reveals himself, wearing a toga. The moral, as Kirk realises, is that the Gorn weren’t attacking Cestus III out of sheer hostility, but because Cestus III was within their territory and they felt threatened, giving Kirk a “we were the bad guys” moment. The Metron spares the Gorn at Kirk’s request and decides humans aren’t that bad after all.

Still an iconic episode after all these years. Despite the poor special effects and sloppy fight choreography, you can’t help getting immersed and feeling that this is a great fight between Kirk and a physically superior opponent. A winner.

Body count: Entire population of Cestus III outpost except one survivor (off-screen), Ensign O’Herlihy, Lieutenant Commander Lang.
Tropes: Red Shirt, Foreshadowing, Pay Evil Unto Evil, Eye Take, Space X, Sufficiently Advanced Alien, Involuntary Battle To The Death, People In Rubber Suits, Lizard Folk, Kirk’s Rock, Styrofoam Rocks, MacGyvering, Bamboo Technology, Humanity On Trial, Crystal Spires And Togas, Heel Realisation.
(Image © 1966 Paramount Studios, used under Fair Use.)

Well, it had to happen eventually. “The Squire of Gothos” is not a great episode. It might have sounded like an interesting idea at the time, but the story has become clichéd to the point where it’s trite.

I didn’t make many notes on this one as I was kind of cringing at the character of Trelane, who is played as over-the-top flamboyant by guest star William Campbell. Well, okay, the script calls for that, but it gets tiring quickly, especially when one knows the ending. Trelane is playful, irrational, and apparently all-powerful, much like Q in the later Star Trek series. There’s a recipe for an annoying character right there.

The Enterprise is basically trapped near Trelane’s planet and Kirk and Sulu vanish from the bridge mysteriously. A rescue party beams down to find them, assuming they’re on the planet, and comes across a castle of all things. Inside the castle they see a taxidermied figure which is clearly the salt vampire from “The Man Trap“. At least that’s an interesting point of note. There’s also a mounted crocodile head, of all things, above the fireplace.

Trelane captures the landing party and treats them to a meal, but the food has no taste. He magics a ball gown on to Yeoman of the Week Teresa Ross. Kirk eventually decides Trelane isn’t all-powerful, but that the mirror he stays near is his source of magical mojo. So he provokes a duel, and then takes the gun and shoots the mirror. I was amazed to hear the destruction accompanied by distinct “boing!” sound effects, like some sort of cartoon.

A failed escape results in Kirk being put on trial by Trelane and sentenced to hang. Kirk talks his way out, offering to let Trelane hunt him for sport. A fight ensues, with some awful swordplay, before the deus ex machina ending, in which Trelane’s parents – a pair of mysterious sufficiently advanced energy beings – scold Trelane for being a naughty child and drag him off for punishment.

Blah, what an ending. If you didn’t know it was coming, you could be left wondering how Kirk is going to engineer an escape from this one. There would be a certain amount of suspense mixed in with the cringing at Trelane’s antics. But in the end Kirk does nothing and is saved by pure dumb luck and even more powerful aliens. All rather unsatisfying.

Body count: None.
Tropes: Large Ham, Aliens Steal Cable, Great Gazoo, Immortal Immaturity, Psychopathic Manchild, Magic Mirror, Stock Sound Effects, Kangaroo Court, Scheherazade Gambit, Hunting The Most Dangerous Game, Flynning, Sufficiently Advanced Alien, Energy Beings, Parent Ex Machina.
(Image © 1966 Paramount Studios, used under Fair Use.)

“The Galileo Seven” is an episode I remember well, because it was one of the ones I had as a Bantam Fotonovel way back in the day when I was a kid. I think of it as a strong and dramatic episode, though perhaps that might be tinged with nostalgia.

The first thing to notice about this episode is that the Enterprise is investigating the Murasaki 312 quasar. Now, having studied quasars for my Ph.D., I know quasars are enormous and enormously powerful phenomena generated by supermassive black holes at the centre of galaxies. They are not something the size of roughly a solar system that you can fly up to and inside and take scientific readings of with a starship of the range of the Enterprise. Of course, nobody knew that back in 1966 when this episode was made, so that’s forgivable. In fact the idea that they were relatively small, close objects similar to what we see in this episode was still scientifically supportable at the time. So no real criticism, but it is odd to see.

Immediately following this plot revelation, we are treated to our first view of one of the Enterprise shuttlecraft, the Galileo, leaving the hangar bay in a majestic scene (albeit a majestic 1960s special effects scene). On board are seven crew members: Spock, Scotty, token Yeoman Mears, Lieutenants Latimer, Gaetano, and Boma, and Dr McCoy. Wait… what? What is Dr McCoy doing on an expedition to scout an astronomical phenomenon? I guess he’s there in case the shuttlecraft shakes from side to side and someone bruises an arm. In plot terms, he’s there to be a foil for Spock’s wrestling with the difficulties of his first command, by arguing for human emotion over Vulcan logic, but that’s hardly a mission role.

The “quasar” produces an ion storm that prompts Sulu to declare, “These readings make no sense!” The Galileo loses contact and is set adrift in the heart of the “quasar”, in what was meant to be a three hour tour…

And this is all before the opening credits!

Anyway, the Galileo ends up stranded on a desert island planet in the middle of Murasaki 312, which conveniently blinds the Enterprise‘s sensors so that they can’t find them. What’s more, they’re on a clock, because they have to deliver a shipment of plague-curing drugs to Makus III before a deadline when they’ll be sent on to a plague-ridden colony, as Kirk is constantly reminded by Commissioner Ferris, who may be the single most smarmy and annoying character in the entire series. Frankly, I’d have paid good money to see Kirk rip his shirt and take Ferris in a fist fight right there on the bridge of the Enterprise.

Things are grim on the planet, with only enough energy to take off with 4 people on board. Spock says the decision of who to leave behind will be his. He then orders the expendable Latimer and Gaetano to scout the area, staying in visual contact with the shuttlecraft. They immediately wander off past some rocks that block their line of sight and encounter an eerie fog. Latimer gets skewered by a positively enormous spear with a stone head – the stone spear point alone was about the size of a large turkey. Investigating, Spock remarks that the spear point is similar to the Folsom points of Earth, although to me it looks much more like a Clovis point. Spock orders the ever more expendable Gaetano to remain on guard near the spot where Latimer got spiked.

Back in orbit, we see a shot of stars streaking past the Enterprise, despite the fact that it’s in orbit about a planet, so stars shouldn’t be going anywhere with respect to it.

Meanwhile, back on the Planet of Doom, Gaetano is approached by a giant hairy ape-man in classic zombie arms-out-in-front pose. Sorry, the poor late Gaetano. Scotty has been working full steam on reconfoogling the Galileo to run on the power from the phasers, while Yeoman Mears has been doing nothing but appearing in soft focus shots and being terrified.

There’s some drama involving Boma being insubordinate to Spock behind his back, to the approving nods of McCoy, over Spock’s use of logic treating people as mere objects. Before lifting off, Spock allows 10 minutes to bury Gaetano (and presumably Latimer) – I’d like to see any gravedigger work that fast – if the hostile natives will allow it. Eventually they take off, with all five remaining passengers thanks to lightening the shuttlecraft, with just enough fuel to make one orbit. Although by this time Commissioner Ferris (booo!) has ordered the Enterprise to depart for Makus III.

Spock’s “illogical” reaction is to dump and ignite the fuel, producing a flare that the Enterprise can see. But without fuel their orbit decays and the Galileo begins to burn up on re-entry – though why it didn’t burn up the first time it entered the planet’s atmosphere without any power is unexplained. Yeoman Mears finally provides a reason for her to be in this episode, with the observation that “It’s getting so hot!” But the Enterprise is on hand and beams the survivors on board just before the Galileo becomes slag.

Yeah, actually not as bad an episode as I make it sound. It has drama and tension and shows Spock in a new light. It’s really the first Spock episode, with Kirk having relatively little to do. If only he’d punched Ferris’s lights out it would have been a great episode.

Body count: Latimer, Gaetano, landing search party member O’Neill (killed off-screen).
Tropes: Science Marches On, Negative Space Wedgie, Readings Are Off The Scale, Cold Equation, Ominous Fog, Streaming Stars, Zombie Gait, Gaussian Girl, No One Gets Left Behind, Captain Obvious, Everybody Laughs Ending.
(Image © 1966 Paramount Studios, used under Fair Use.)

“Shore Leave” is an episode I remember vividly – for being a bit silly. It’s certainly more whimsical and lighter in tone than many other episodes, but watching it again now I found that it wasn’t quite as ridiculous as I remembered.

It does begin oddly, with McCoy and Sulu amongst a landing party on a new planet, apparently covered in idyllic vegetation but with no animal life whatsoever. When Sulu goes off to take some botanical examples (showing again an apparent interest in botany which I’d never noticed before this rewatching of the series), McCoy spots a giant white rabbit complaining that it’s late, followed by an obvious Alice in a blue pinafore dress. Has McCoy been fiddling with his medicinal drugs, you may ask.

The planet they’re on is another ugly and unrealistic looking thing from the orbital view, this time a bright lime green. On the bridge, Kirk apparently has a new Yeoman, replacing the unfortunately lamented Janice Rand. We later learn this Yeoman’s name is Barrows, as she plays an important role as a romantic interest for McCoy.

Kirk joins McCoy on the planet, convinced the doctor’s report of a white rabbit is some sort of joke. They hear a gunshot and run to find Sulu practising with a revolver, which he says he found just lying on the ground. He says it’s a vintage weapon, which would make a good addition to his collection (another case of Sulu having some random hobby for one episode), and has to explain to Kirk and McCoy how it works. This raises the question of how or indeed if Kirk and McCoy recognised the noise of the gunshot that brought them running.

Things get even more mysterious, with a first-person POV shot of some sort of antenna tracking the landing party as they walk across the terrain. Yeoman Barrows suffers clothing damage in an encounter with Don Juan, prompting McCoy to gallantly escort her. Meanwhile Kirk bumps into Finnegan, an old rival from his Academy days, and then Ruth, an old flame. Sulu encounters a samurai warrior, who attacks him with a sword. Also on the planet are extras Lieutenant Rodriguez and Angela Martine (who was the unhappy bride-to-be in “Balance of Terror“). They encounter a tiger, then Angela does one better than getting her fiancé killed in the previous episode, and is strafed to death by a mysterious fighter plane.

There are a couple of small continuity/production errors. The appearance of fictional characters and other people and animals on a planet scanned to be devoid of animal life is explicable as part of the plot. But in a couple of scenes we also clearly see insects buzzing around – a fly and a butterfly – which are not obviously related to the eventual explanation of the other stuff. Presumably these were just random inclusions of insects in camera shot during the filming that they never removed. Also, when Sulu runs along a shaded section of a small gully, you can see him generating three sharp shadows, obviously from film lighting.

Yeoman Barrows fantasises about a beautiful fairy-tale princess dress to replace her ripped uniform, and lo, one appears. She changes into it as McCoy half-averts his eyes. The pair are then attacked by a black knight on horseback, with a lance. McCoy states that “these things are not real; hallucinations cannot hurt me” and stands his ground. Clearly he believes they are merely hallucinating all of these weird people and objects – which raises an interesting question about what he thinks Barrows is really wearing now. The black knight runs McCoy down and kills him!

Kirk encounters Finnegan again and bests him in an inevitable fist fight, magically suffering major shirt damage in the cut between two directly adjacent scenes. He goes down wearing an undamaged uniform, and in the very next shot is shown lying on the ground with his short half torn off! After Finnegan is beaten, Spock appears, beaming down to inform Kirk that the transporters no longer work (after his last risky use of them). This begins the long tradition, seen throughout Star Trek, of the transporters being such a powerful plot device that to enable any sort of story where crew are trapped somewhere, they first have to have the transporters suffer some sort of malfunction or be mysteriously jammed by alien influences.

Spock conjectures that the planet is somehow producing the people and animals in response to the landing party’s thoughts – citing the example of Rodriguez thinking of a tiger just before seeing one. Except at this point they haven’t found Rodriguez again and there’s no feasible way Spock could know that Rodriguez had even encountered a tiger, let alone been thinking of one beforehand! A benign advanced alien then appears and explains that this is a pleasure planet for his race, designed to manufacture anyone’s desires, and that Angela and McCoy have been “repaired” and are now alive again. McCoy shows up in the arms of two fur bikini-clad girls, demonstrating that this is indeed a pleasure planet, to the jealous dismay of Barrows. All is well again!

Except I’ve always found this “resurrection” of McCoy to be a bit creepy, ever since the first time I saw this episode. Apparently all the constructed people are made of plant matter, and as we see in the case of the Black Knight, appear to be plastic dummies on close inspection. McCoy was, for all intents and purposes, really dead at one point, and was somehow brought back to life by being patched up with this same plant material. I’ve always had a hard time seeing this patched-up, revivified version as the real McCoy (so to speak). Lurking in the back of my mind there’s always the fear that from now on the Enterprise‘s medical officer is actually some sort of Stepford clone…

A final point on this episode is that it shows just how amazingly inadequate the Enterprise scanners are. A fantastically powerful and technological construction lurks just under the ground of this entire planet, yet the scans showed nothing – no technology, no refined metals, at all. I guess if you want to hide totally from Starfleet, all you need to do is live in a cellar. We saw this before on Talos IV in “The Menagerie“, in fact – scans showed no technology on the planet, yet there was an entire underground alien civilisation. Maybe they should invest in some ground-penetrating radar.

Body count: Angela Martine, Dr McCoy – both brought back to life by the planet’s manufacturing abilities.
Tropes: Fleeting Passionate Hobbies, Uncanny Village, Standard Hollywood Strafing Procedure, Lying In The Dirt Together, I Wish It Were Real, Your Mind Makes It Real, Amusement Park Of Doom, Pleasure Planet, I Got Better, A Lady On Each Arm, Fur Bikini, Everybody Laughs Ending.
(Image © 1966 Paramount Studios, used under Fair Use.)