Episode Title: Dagger of the Mind
Air Date: 11/3/1966
Written by Shimon
Wincelberg (under the pen name "S. Bar-David")
Directed by Vincent
McEveety
Cast: William
Shatner as Captain James T. Kirk
Leonard Nimoy as Lieutenant Commander Spock DeForest Kelley as Dr. Leonard H.
McCoy AKA “Bones” Nichelle
Nichols as Lieutenant Nyota Uhura Marianna
Hill as Dr. Helen Noel Eddie Paskey as
Lieutenant Leslie Frank da Vinci as Lieutenant Brent Larry Anthony as Transportation Man John Arndt as Frist
Crewman James Gregory as Dr. Tristan Adams Morgan Woodward as Dr. Simon Van Gelder Larry Anthony as Mr. Berkley Susanne Wasson as
Lethe Ed McCready as Inmate
Eliezer Behar as Therapist
Walt Davis as Tantalus message
Ships: USS
Enterprise NCC-1701
Planets: Tantalus V
My Spoiler filled
summary and review: The Enterprise is dropping off supplies to and
picking up official records from the colony Tantalus V. The transporter crew almost fails in this
simple assignment until Captain Kirk reminds them that they can’t beam through
shields. Turns out that they picked up
something more than records, a man sneaks out of the box and shows the
transporter crew that they’re just as bad at fighting as they are at transporting through
shields.
Kirk
when speaking to Mr. Spock and Dr. McCoy goes on to explain how he admires Dr.
Tristan Evans, the chief medical director at Tantalus V. Dr. Evans has turned prisons into hospitals where
sick minds can be treated as opposed to simply imprisoned. McCoy has his suspicions, while Mr. Spock seems
to agree. They get emergency call from
the planet explaining that they have had a prisoner escape. When Kirk confirms that the prisoner is
aboard a ship wide manhunt begins.
However the prisoner makes his way to the bridge the phaser. He demands asylum from Captain Kirk to
protect him from his tormentors on the planet, Kirk can’t promise anything at phaser-point
and Spock disables him a Vulcan nerve pinch.
 |
| Captain Kirk doesn't make for a good hostage. |
When the prisoner wakes up in sick
bay he says some wild things to Dr. McCoy.
He says his name is Dr. Simon Van Geller and he is the assistant of Dr.
Adams. He claims that Adams was
torturing him using a device called a neural neutralizer. This is why he appears so messed up. The problem however is that these accusations
that he makes are also made in the company of other random statements that he
utters in between his claims. It’s hard to
tell if what any he says is actually real.
When Kirk confronts Dr. Adams over
the ship’s communication system, Adams, speaking from his asylum on the surface,
has all the right answers. He identifies
who Dr. Van Gelder is and claims that he was doing some experiments and he
tested them on himself. They went wrong
and this is why he went mad.
Kirk seems satisfied with this
explanation, but Dr. McCoy doesn’t buy it.
He tells Kirk he would note his doubts in in his medical log which
requires Captain Kirk to write a response.
Kirk decides to investigate the matter and asked Dr. McCoy to assign him
someone from his staff with a background in psychology. He assigns Dr. Helen Noel, who has the
required background not only in her field but may have had a minor fling with
Captain Kirk.
 |
| Dr. Helen Noel has a history with Captain Kirk |
The two beam down to the facility on the planet and they get a tour from Dr. Tristan Adams himself. Dr. Adams seems friendly and cooperative but
as he shows them the facility Captain Kirk starts to have doubts about the
nature of it, although Dr. Noel finds the facility even more to her approval
as she sees it. Eventually they are
taken to the room with the neural neutralizer; Dr. Adams reminds them that is what
damaged Van Geller. Adams calls it a
failed idea that they only use sparingly to help the most dangerous of
inmates. Kirk communicates with Spock to
let him know that he will be spending a few days there. This destabilizes and already upset Van
Geller who claims they are in danger.
 |
| Adams explaining his operation to his guests. |
Later that evening Kirk is still not
satisfied with Adams’s explanation of the neural neutralizer. If it was a failure why do they still use it
at all? He decides that he and Noel will
have a look at it in private. When they
get to the room with the neural neutralizer Kirk decides to test it on himself
with Noel on the controls. When she
successfully erases his memory of the first test and implants a feeling of hunger in him. Kirk is really impressed with the efficiency of a machine that Adams had
labeled a failure.
Kirk and Noel decided on another
test and Noel chooses to plant a romantic evening with the two of them as a
memory from the Christmas party last year.
Before she can finish however Dr. Adams and his assistants arrive, capture Noel, and Adams begins to use the device to torture Captain Kirk. He has Kirk give up his phaser and
communicator and he convinces Kirk that he is madly in love with Noel and that
he can’t live without her. Then he tortures
him by occasionally referring to her as being gone.
 |
| Kirk under Adams's torture |
Kirk and Noel are confined to his arranged
quarters at the facility. At first Kirk tries to embrace her but
she tells him that it was all a trick of the machine that Dr. Adams had done to
him. Kirk comes up with a plan he has Noel go through the ventilation shaft so she get to the engineering room where
she can cut the power.
 |
| Going through the ventilation system years before Die Hard made it cool. |
Onboard the Enterprise, Mr. Spock decides to take a risk. Vulcans have the power to mind meld which
means they can with touch establish a telepathic connection with whom they are
touching. Spock gets permission from Van
Geller to use this technique on him. It
is a risk because Mr. Spock has never performed a mind meld with a non-Vulcan
before. Using the mind meld he’s able to
get the truth about Dr. Adams and also repair Dr. Van Geller for the damage
that was inflicted on him by mad scientist.
 |
| Mind Meld |
Adams and his assistants take
Captain Kirk back to the neural neutralizer for more torture. For some reason they don't seem to notice that Noel is gone, Adams must have had an obsession with Kirk. Adams is positively gleeful in his torture
of Captain Kirk, he points out how much stronger Kirk is then Van Geller. How he can resist longer and how Van Geller
was already begging him for relief at this point. Fortunately for Captain Kirk at this very
moment Noel reaches the engineering room and is able to cut the power. Adams and his men rush in to the neural
neutralizer room to restrain Kirk but it is at this moment where Captain Kirk
unleashes upon them his fierce fighting skills unparalleled anywhere this side
of the galaxy. He dispatches Adams and
his assistant with ease leaving Adams wounded in the room with a torture
device.
Some of facility's security try to get
the power back on but it turns out Noel also has great fighting abilities as
well and is able to shove one of them into the control panel electrocuting him. Mr. Spock beams down ahead of his security
team to help get control of the situation.
When power is restored Kirk realizes Adams is in the room with the
neural neutralizer. They go to it's location, shut the
machine off, and enter the room but they find the Adams has died of
loneliness. Kirk explains how the
machine empties you out and that by being alone in there without even a
tormentor for company is itself a fatal mix.
 |
| He's dead, Jim. |
Back on the Enterprise, the crew receives word that the recovered Dr. Van
Geller has been able to disassemble the machine and get the facility back on
track. Dr. McCoy has a hard time
believing that someone could die of loneliness and Kirk just lets him know that
he had to have been in that room to understand.
Additional thoughts:
It is interesting to note that when the script was originally written it
was Yeoman Janice Rand who is going to be accompanying Captain Kirk down to the
asylum.
This was rewritten because even though the idea of Yeoman Rand
having a crush on Kirk has already been a little explored at this point, another member of the crew might have a crush on the Captain isn’t
entirely out of bounds. Creating the character of Dr. Helen Noel was a much
better direction. She is much more qualified
than Yeoman Rand to inspect an asylum and it’s also nice to see people who work in the departments on the Enterprise who are
not the head of that department. We get
to meet a doctor who isn’t Dr. McCoy.
Also we saw helmsman who wasn't Mr. Sulu, apparently it Mr. Sulu didn't have a shift on
this adventure.
 |
| Kirk and Noel |
What I also thought was interesting
about this episode was how it really didn’t need to be a Star Trek episode. You could’ve taken the same script change
some of the characters around and made an episode of The Adventures of Superman, Man
from U.N.C.L.E, or even Get Smart
and it would’ve worked.
As for Dr. Adams he wasn’t a very
impressive villain. He was just creepy
good off on torture he kind of reminds me of Ramsey Bolton from Game of Thrones but without the
blood. I mean when he had Captain Kirk under
his control all he had to do was tell Kirk forget all the bad things he saw and
make him give a glowing report on his Captain’s Log. Then do the same with Dr. Helen Noel. But no, like Ramsey, he had to play his
games. If he planned this right every time a Federation official stopped by he
could turn them into one of his mind slaves in overtime take control of the
entire Federation. But no, you like to
play torture games.
I feel bad for all the people at Starfleet Medical; Dr. Adams was one of their foremost researchers in the field of corrective medicine. Then it turns out that he is himself a mentally disturbed person who gets off on torture. Now they have to go over all his research in painstaking detail to determine at what point he flipped and what part of his research is still useful or maybe it might all have to be thrown out. Remember how Kirk so admired him in the beginning? I bet medical students are studying this case well into the 24th century.
In the end of the day is the neural
neutralizer really that bad of an idea?
I mean yes it can get abused but that doesn’t mean it cannot have any
legitimate function. Many things that
have legitimate functions can be abused and one abused the result can be
horrible. Look at phasers, 20th century ovens, and drugs in general. Those are
legitimate things that can be horribly abused.
We saw when Captain Kirk and Dr.
Noel were experimenting with the neural neutralizer it seemed to work fine in a
limited capacity to which it was designed for.
Couldn’t they use it to fix all the damage that Dr. Adams caused? Did Mr. Spock give everyone in the asylum of
mind meld? It doesn’t seem very
practical. Think of all the good you
could do with one of these things under your control.
Just imagine yourself with this
device and a truly evil and despicable person like a real life Ramsey Bolton
under the devices power.
Evil person: “Ah, what is this?”
You: “Murder is wrong. When you think about murdering you become very sad and you want to go home without hurting anyone at all.”
Evil person: “Murder is wrong.”
You: “Maiming is wrong. When you think about maiming a person you become very sad and you want to go home without hurting anyone at all
Evil person: “Maiming is wrong.”
You: “Rape is wrong. When you think about raping a person you become very sad and you want to go home without hurting anyone at all.”
From this point you continue on getting the truly disturbed individual to stop the physical assault, theft, and damage to embrace decency.
Oh well sometimes neither the good
guys nor the bad guys have any imagination.
FINAL GRADE: 3 of 5
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