THE CAPTAIN HAS DISAPPEARED

Episode Title:  The Tholian Web

Air Date: 11/15/1968

Written by Judy Burns and Chet Richards

Directed by Herb Wallerstein

Cast: William Shatner as Captain James T. Kirk    Leonard Nimoy as Commander Spock             DeForest Kelley as Dr. Leonard H. McCoy AKA “Bones”              James Doohan  as Lieutenant Commander Montgomery Scott AKA “Scotty”        George Takei  as Lieutenant  Hikaru Sulu              Nichelle Nichols as Lieutenant Nyota Uhura          Sean Morgan as Lieutenant O'Neil                 Roger Holloway as Lieutenant Lemli   Frank da Vinci as Lieutenant Brent     Walter Koenig as Ensign Pavel Chekov                 Majel Barrett as Nurse Christine Chapel      Jeannie Malone as unnamed Yeoman          Bob Bralver as unnamed  Berserk Engineer         Louie Eliass as unnamed Crazed Crewman         Jay D. Jones as unnamed Crewman         Paul Baxley as unnamed  Defiant Captain      Barbara Babcock as Commander Loskene   

Ships: USS Enterprise NCC-1701, USS Defiant NCC-1764, two unnamed Tholian vessels

Planets:  none

My Spoiler filled summary and review: The Enterprise is out looking for her sister ship, the Defiant, that had gone missing in this sector.  They find it adrift with life support off line.  Kirk forms an away team that consists of himself, Spock, McCoy, and Chekov.  When they beam aboard, they find the entire crew dead in what had been a full-scale munity on the ship.  According to Spock such a thing has never happened on a Starfleet vessel before, if you don’t count the time their entire crew decided to abandon the Enterprise for Omicron Ceti III.  I suppose you can say that in that particular case the crew were not in their right minds so it doesn’t count.  As time goes on, they will find the same for the Defiant. 

            The away team continues to explore the ship and it as bad as it seems.  In the sickbay, Dr. McCoy finds dead patients strapped to their bio-beds.  When he goes to put his hand down, he finds it passes through the table as if the table is immaterial!  He notifies Kirk that the ship is dissolving and the Captain orders them all to the bridge.  This area of space has been inter-phasing with other universes occupying the same space in different dimensions.  The Defiant seems to be phasing out of our reality.  They prepare to beam back but the inter-phasing space is playing havoc with the Enterprise’s transporter as well and they can only beam a few at a time.  Kirk orders everyone to go and he decides to stay behind.  As the rest of the away team is safely aboard the Enterprise, Scotty and O’Neil try to beam Captain Kirk back but the Defiant fades away before they can. 

Ship is in a bad state!

Not good!

Despite the Defiant’s disappearance Spock determines that the Captain is not permanently lost.  He calculates the precise time the ship will return with Captain Kirk.  There is however a problem.  The Enterprise can cannot activate any of its systems not already on—like life-support—or it will disturb the area of space and its phasing.  This means they have to sit still for a few hours, but doing so means more exposure to this space for the crew and they are already starting to experience symptoms that is too similar to what they saw on the now vanished starship.  Several members of the crew, including Ensign Chekov, have mental break downs and attack others.

Trying to save Captain Kirk!

Matters suddenly get worse when a Tholian ship arrives claiming that this is their space and Enterprise is violating it by being there.  Despite that status of this space is currently disputed, Spock is able to convince the Tholians that their mission is genuine and if they would just wait a short while the other ship will return.  The Tholian Commander agrees to give them this time.  However, Spock doesn’t consider until it is too late the effect of the Tholian engines on this space.  It causes the Defiant not to appear on its scheduled time. 

The Tholian ship attacks the Enterprise forcing Mr. Spock to retaliate.  The Enterprise easily defeats its opponent but then the defeated ship returns with a friend.  The two Tholian ships combine and then they begin building a giant energy web that if they complete it will sap the Enterprise of its remaining energy and destroy them.  On to top of that the space battle that was forced upon them has destabilized things so that they can no longer hope to recover the Captain.  James Kirk is dead.

Since Captain Kirk is now dead and the ship is breaking down and about to be looked in an energy cage, now seems to be good time for a funeral.  Spock and McCoy feud a bit about McCoy’s attendance.  McCoy reports to Spock that the Klingon nerve gas Theragen could be the key to curing what is causing the madness.  Spock thinks McCoy should be doing nothing but working on that, but McCoy won’t allow Kirk to have a funeral without him attending.  The funeral ends with another crewmember going mad. 

A visit from a ghost!

McCoy and Spock decide it is time to get back to work but McCoy insists that part of that work is hearing the Captain’s final orders.  They go to Kirk’s quarters and prepare the recording of his final orders.  In the recording Kirk predicts exactly how Spock and McCoy were going to be bickering with each other.  He then basically gives the two officers and pep talk and sends them on their way.  

Kirk pep talking from the grave!

Lt. Uhura gets a shock when the “ghost” of Captain Kirk appears in her quarters.  She reports it but everyone assumes given the state of the ship that she hallucinated and her mind was breaking down like the rest.  However other people start seeing it is well and assuming people aren’t having the same hallucination they can rule Uhura sane and Kirk alive.  McCoy is able to develop an antidote for the mental breakdowns that Scotty is happy to mix with some scotch. 

Three toast with a cure!

Spock figures out a way to save Kirk and the ship.  He calculates where the Captain will fully be pulled into our universe and uses the Enterprise’s tractor beam to grab Kirk’s space suit.  Then they tap into the energy discharge from the inter-phasing universes to move themselves free and clear of the Tholian’s web with Captain Kirk in tow.  Once the ship has stabilized they beam Kirk aboard and McCoy treats him quickly to deal with any lingering problems. 

When all is said and done, we return to the bridge of the Enterprise where Kirk gets done explaining to his crew what it was like to be trapped in the other universe.  He then asks Spock and McCoy how useful were his final orders, and the two of them pretend never to have seen them citing the crisis as reason not to have the time.  

A reflective trio of Starfleet officers

Additional thoughts: This episode is really mistitled.  It is called “The Tholian Web” but both the Tholians and their little web have little to do with the story.  They are plot devices and nothing more.  Unlike the Romulans in The Balance of Terror or the Klingons in Errand of Mercy where the new adversaries were the central attraction, the Tholians could have been substituted for anyone else.  Now I do like them using a new bad guy it shows how large space is.  However, if you put them in the title, I would expect them to at least be important.  The title of this episode should have been “Vanishing Starships!”

What an odd time for a funeral.  Spock tries to tell the Doctor that he has more important things to do than attend.  Isn’t that true for everyone?  The ship is physical danger from fading into another dimension or the Tholians whatever gets them first shouldn’t Spock be working on those problems and after they are out of danger arrange a funeral?  What is the point of the funeral if half the attendees lose their mind part way through? If they all die do they think Captain Kirk’s comments to them in the afterlife would be “I’m sorry this ship was destroyed before that happened, did you have my funeral?”

We may all die but we did give the Captain a funeral!

It seemed to me that McCoy was already getting a little crazy with his irrational accusations against Spock for coveting Kirk’s command.   If he didn’t covet it during The Paradise Syndrome, why would he be coveting it here?  Even though he was affected he still was able to whip up a cure in no time.  McCoy’s talent as a doctor can never be understated.

Tholians taking a punch!

However, it was Spock who really shined in this episode. Not only does he have his normal role of explaining everything, he saves Kirk, and gets the Enterprise out of harm’s way to boot. It’s a good thing that Captain Kirk’s space suit is lot sturdier than Captain Christopher’s plane.  Had it been otherwise, Kirk would have been in lot of trouble as they were thrown from the web!

Why is it almost every time we see another Constitution-class starship it has either a dead or soon to be dead crew?  First it was the Constellation.  Everyone on that ship was dead except the Captain, when he ordered them all down to the planet.  The same thing for the Exter, except its crew should have gone down to the planet and stayed for a while, instead only their Captain was on the planet alive.  There was what happened to the Farragut from Kirk’s past and the Intrepid might have been a connie too.  Now we have the Defiant where everyone is dead after being driven crazy.  Seem like the only time we saw a Constitution-class fly next to the Enterprise and live to tell about it was the Lexington, and even that episode saw a few go down.  I suppose since our daring crew is always getting close to being destroyed by the threat of the week it makes since to show a captain and crew that weren’t so lucky.  It helps to reinforce that what they do is dangerous. However, sometimes it makes the rest of the fleet look less than competent.

FINAL GRADE 5 of 5