LT. UHURA TAKES COMMAND

 

Episode Title:  The Lorelei Signal

Air Date: 9/29/1973

Written by Margaret Armen

Directed by Hal Sutherland

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” and Lieutenant Carver        George Takei  as Lieutenant  Hikaru Sulu              Nichelle Nichols as Lieutenant Nyota Uhura, Lieutenant Davison, and Dara         Majel Barrett as Nurse Christine Chapel and Theela                  

Ships: USS Enterprise NCC-1701

Planets: Taurean II

My Spoiler filled summary and review: There is a special region of space that could only described as an intergalactic Bermuda Triangle.  According to data that the Federation had been sharing with their rivals the Klingon and Romulan Empires, for the last 150 years, a starship has disappeared from this area exactly once every twenty-seven years four months, a few weeks, and an odd number of days on the dot.  (So, I guess that means five, which doesn’t sound like all that much come to think of it.)  Well, the date is coming up again so Starfleet has assigned the Enterprise to fly down see what happens.  

Nice looking but not so nice!

When they moment comes, they receive a signal that seems more like music.  All the men start to hallucinate, the women do not.  Uhura calls Nurse Chapel and they compare notes seeing that the men have entered their own little world. The ship is lured to the planet Taurean II and Captain Kirk leads and a landing party that consists of Mr. Spock, Dr. McCoy, and Mr. Sulu.  On the planet’s surface they meet these beautiful women.  Kirk asks where the men are and accepts the rather tame explanation that the men are just elsewhere.  The landing party are each given these strange devices to put on their heads and then they are individual brought into a room.

Uhura and Chapel work to get to the bottom of this!

Uhura realizes that the men of the Enterprise are now beyond help, she relieves Scotty of command and takes control of the ship herself.  She orders all female security teams to guard the transporter room so no deluded male goes off and tries to beam down to the surface, and she makes Nurse Chapel the acting Chief Medical Officer.

At this point the landing party realizes that there is something terribly wrong.  They realize the strange women of this planet are doing something to them so they decided to make an escape.  They are determined but they are not quick as the process that is being done to them has caused each member of the landing party to prematurely age.  Despite their aged condition, to be fair three of them have experience prematurely aging, they managed to make it outside the building.  However, they will not be able to out run the young women so they decide to hide in giant urn.  (I am not kidding that is exactly what happens.)  They can’t stay in there forever, so Spock with his Vulcan biology allowing him to retain more of his pervious strength sneaks back in the building and retrieves their communicators.  With that he is beamed up to the ship, where he lets Lt. Uhura know that they need to destroy the signal that is being sent out not only to release the men of the Enterprise but any future ship as well.

Helpless in there hands!

Lt. Uhura then leads her own landing party made entirely of women down to the surface planet armed to teeth with phasers.  They quickly put the phasers to use blasting everything in sight.  Her team saves Kirk’s landing party before their giant urn filled with water to drown them.  Uhura learns from their leader, Theela, that her people had crashed here on a ship and that it was the planet’s environment that caused the women to drain their male crew members.  This would rejuvenate them but it would only last for twenty-seven years. Thus, making them need a new ship of victims.  Uhura then proceeds to destroy the place.

dying Spock helps

Back up on the Enterprise, McCoy’s treatment doesn’t work so they try the only option they have left.  They use the transporters memory of their last transport to “reset” their bodies to their pervious condition before they left the planet.  Also, Uhura has a meeting with Theela.  In the meeting, Uhura tells them that the Enterprise can relocate them and they can just become normal.  Theela accepts with enthusiasm.

Uhura takes command from Scotty!

Additional thoughts: This was very fun episode and such a great opportunity for Uhura to shine.  When I was taking a look at how all the characters were used in the original series, I concluded with Uhura that there were two episodes where she was the second most important member of crew, but none where she was the primary protagonist.  Here we get to see the character live up to the potential that we always knew she had.  She takes charge in a no-nonsense manner and leads the Enterprise to victory.

They mean business!

So, in the episode Uhura makes Nurse Chapel the acting Chief Medical Officer.  Okay, shouldn’t the CMO be a medical doctor.  I thought that was the rules. Are there not any female doctors on the Enterprise?  Is that why it has to go the Head Nurse?  What happened to Dr. Helen Noel?  I love that character and it would been nice to see her again.  Yes, I think the show missed an opportunity here.

Help!

Such a quick trick to cure themselves using the transporter.  Why don’t they do that all the time.  Heck anytime someone has a potentially fatal injury, just stick them in the transporter and wipe the wounds away with the stored memory of their uninjured selves.  I think it would have been better if they explained that because of the nature of the Taureanian attack that they transporter was the key to their survival. Instead now you just created a whole ton of plot holes in the franchise’s future.  

saving the Captain!

 So, the planet is filled with beautiful women who turn out to be kind of mean.  Does this remind you of anything?  It reminded me a little of "Spock’s Brain," with an underground society made entirely of women except for the brute male slaves that they kidnap from the surface.  Also, what happened to the women who were on those other ships they lured in?  Or were they just lucky and every ship that passed by just happened to have an entirely male crew.  Could the women of the Enterprise be the only women that these ladies have encountered?  Diamond cuts diamond I suppose. 

FINAL GRADE 4 of 5