KIRK DECIDES TO TRESPASS AND HIS LANDING PARTY ENDS UP IN A WESTERN

 Episode Title:  Spectre of the Gun  

Air Date: 10/25/1968

Written by Gene L. Coon

Directed by Vincent McEveety

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”        Nichelle Nichols as Lieutenant Nyota Uhura          Eddie Paskey as Lieutenant Leslie                 Bill Blackburn as Lieutenant Hadley    Roger Holloway as Lieutenant Lemli       Walter Koenig as Ensign Pavel Chekov                 Jeannie Malone as unmanned Yeoman              Ron Soble as Wyatt Earp               Don Keefer as Bonnie Beecher        Charles Maxwell as Virgil Earp               Rex Holman as Morgan Earp            Sam Gilman as Doc Holliday            Charles Seel as Ed            Bill Zuckert as Johnny Behan              Ed McCready as Barber            Abraham Sofaer as Melkotian (voice)       Richard Anthony as Rider   Paul Baxley as 1st Cowboy     Bob Orrison as 2nd Cowboy                        Gregg Palmer as Rancher

Ships and Space Stations: USS Enterprise NCC-1701

Planets:  Melkos

My Spoiler filled summary and review: The Enterprise is on a mission to the planet Melkos under orders to make contact and establish diplomatic relations.   Since the Melkotians are known to be xenophobic this is going to prove to be quite the task.   As the ship gets closer a buoy shows up on an intercept course.  If the Enterprise alters its path the buoy follows.   The whole thing starts to be a reminder of The Corbomite Maneuver, until the buoy speaks.  Everyone on the bridge hears it in their own language.  Kirk hears English, Spock Vulcan, Ensign Chekov Russian, and Lt. Uhura hears it in Swahili.  The message is the same: stay away. 

Buoy wants them gone!

Now you would think an organization like the Federation would respect their wishes, but this is a crew that goes boldly.  So Kirk, citing his orders to establish peaceful relations says he intends to do just that whether the Melkotians want him to or not.  Kirk orders the Enterprise into orbit around the planet and forms a landing party of five (himself, Spock, McCoy, Scotty, and Chekov) to beam down.  When they do they are surprised to discover fog as the sensors did not indicate they would have any.  The landing party also discovers that none of their equipment works.  A Melkotian revels themselves and Kirk tells them they are peaceful while pointing a phaser in their direction.

Melkotian who Kirk points a phaser at!

All of the sudden the world transforms around them and they are now in Tombstone, Arizona on October 26, 1881.  This was the day the famous Gun Fight at the O.K. Corral occurred.  However there is something terribly off.  It almost as if the Melkotians are short on their studio budget, for all the buildings only have a front wall with nothing on the sides or back.  All the townspeople are oblivious to the fact that their homes and businesses would be in a lot of trouble if it rained.  They also see the Enterprise landing party as the Clanton gang.  In particular Kirk is Ike Clanton, Scott is Billy Clanton, McCoy is Tom McLaury, Spock is Frank McLaury, and Chekov is Billy Claiborne.   Their phasers have been exchanged for six-shooter revolvers.  Spock concludes that the Melkotians have taken this from Captain Kirk’s mind because they hold him responsible for the intrusion. 

Okay we get to be in a Western

Not wanting to get in violent confrontation Kirk tries to reason with the Earps. He finds Wyatt Earp not in the mood to negotiate.  The only one of them who seems to be having a good time is Chekov whose character has the affections of a pretty girl named Bonnie.  Kirk gets desperate and tries to tell the towns people the truth and no one believes him thinking that he is joking.  With the truth failing Kirk and crew decide to get out of town, which ironically is what they should have done at the start of this episode.  However a force field prevents them from leaving. 

Since it appears the Melkotians are going to force them to relive the historic event as it happened Kirk doesn’t trust their six-shooters to work as a successful defense.  They decide to build a tranquilizer weapon that will knock out, not kill, their opponents.  McCoy ironically gets his supplies from Doc Holiday who is scheduled to shoot at him today.  While this is going on Morgan Earp comes to challenge Chekov over his girl.  Instead of a knife, Chekov makes a worse error and brings a charge to a gun fight and is promptly killed.

The remaining crew is devastated but there is one clear silver lining: Chekov’s character Billy Claiborne survived the gunfight at the O.K. Corral.  For the first time since they got here they were able to change something.  Kirk orders a test on the new tranquilizer weapon and Scotty volunteers.  Then in the funniest scene in the whole episode the weapon fails.  Kirk and crew decided to stay right where they are and not even go to the O.K. Corral.   However moments later they are transported straight there.

Normally they are the good guys!

Well it seems they are all doomed.  However Spock has an observation, the reason the tranquilizer failed is because it wasn’t real.  If that is not real neither are their weapons.  The other three point out that Chekov was killed, and then Spock said he wasn’t certain that he was but if so it was because his mind tricked him into thinking he was dead.  Spock knows their bullets are not real and therefore he cannot be harmed by them.  McCoy points out that as human beings they can’t be so certain, that is when Kirk suggests a mind meld to make them so.  Spock performs it and when Earps and Holiday show up their bullets pass right though the Starfleet officers harmlessly. 

That is when Kirk remembers that he is the greatest fighter in the known galaxy and decides to take down Wyatt Earp with moves based on such speed and grace that Earp is helpless in the attack.  Kirk is almost going to kill him but when he sees the fear in Earp’s eyes and remembers how his fight with the Gorn ended he relents.  This proves to the Melkotians that the Federation’s intentions are peaceful and with that the illusion ends and they are all now back on the Enterprise’s bridge with a living Chekov.   It had all been an illusion they had never left, and they conclude Chekov was alive because he was focused on the girl.  The Melkotians are satisfied and they invite the Federation in for continued contact making the Enterprise’s mission a success.   

Additional thoughts: This actually reminds me of an episode of The Real Ghostbusters that I watched as a kid.  In that episode the Ghostbusters also had to play he part of the Clantons, when the ghosts of the Earps and Doc Holiday came back to clean up the town again. 

Given that Starfleet has the Prime Directive it seems odd that they want their starship captains to establish contact with unknown aliens with instructions that by “contact” they mean exactly the type of relationship that the Federation deems as desirable regardless of what these new peoples want.  That seems almost imperialistic to me.   If Kirk’s orders were to make contact with the Melkotians the moment they encountered the buoy and its message was: “We are the Melkotians, now go away,” one would think Kirk would be like “Well, we made contact and they told us to pound sand, mission accomplished.”   Not the result they wanted but I fail to see why they shouldn’t accept it.

Kirk seems a little jealous of someone's luck!

So the Melkotians are powerful enough to reach inside your head to create powerful illusions yet they can’t finish the job with the same illusions.  Buildings missing three walls and only a skeleton population in the town, you would think if they were pulling this all out of Kirk’s head that they would be able to finish the job.  It turns out that the show really did run out of money in the budget so they had to be creative and that is what they came up with.  Good way of improvising on the part of Vincent McEveety.  

Yes, something is missing

Another thing that bothered me about the episode was Kirk’s extremely stupid behavior that I find really out of character.  Not only does he, under orders, try to impose himself on the Melkotians when he first sees one he points his phaser directly at them to demonstrate his peaceful intentions. During the illusion he suggests to Spock they should try to build a communicator to contact the ship where he should clearly see that whatever mechanism the Melkotians were using to cause their original communicators to malfunction will most likely also stop a coupled together one.  Worst was when he tried to reason with the townspeople that he and his friends were from “the future” and they weren’t the Clanton gang.  Kirk should have realized by the three walls missing on all the buildings that this was some sort of alien creation not an act of time travel.  He has time traveled to the 1960s not once but twice, and he went back to the 1920s via the Guardian of Forever.  He knows what time travel is like and this isn’t it.  These aren’t real people and there is no way they could be reached by having them feel the fabric of his shirt.  Kirk should be better than all of this.  I would expect more from Gene L. Coon. 

Then there is Spock, who not only seems to be completely on board with this whole trespass thing, is in this episode often “right” but for the “wrong” reasons.  The one character who is defined by logic and reason and yet his logic in this episode is as flawed as the buildings with missing walls.  The biggest moments of this are in the episode’s climax.  He concludes the bullets can’t hurt them because they are not real based on the fact that the tranquilizer failed where it otherwise should have worked.  Except that at this point we have already scene Chekov killed by the bullets.  The reason we are then given is that because Chekov believed the bullets were real that is why they could kill him, but Scotty had every reason to believe the tranquilizer was real and yet that failed.  Spock did add the Chekov might not be dead, I wish they stuck with that reasoning instead of ‘he’s dead because he believed.”  At least the ending would have made a little more sense.

Chekov's focus!

Chekov is clearly a lover not a fighter.  I mean when someone has a gun on you and you are armed that weapon is your best chance of survival not a charge.  Yet that is what we saw from our dear Ensign.  Now granted if you wanted to catch Morgan Earp in state of surprise then maybe there is some logic in a charge, I imagine he was quite surprised.  However his gun solved his problem as Indiana Jones’s would over a decade later.

I really did love the failed tranquilizer scene.  That was hilarious.  My favorite part is when it was clearly not working Scotty tires to help by sticking his face directly in the fumes!  At that point it was clearly a failure even if Scotty did pass out.  It’s not as if the Earps and Holiday are going to stick their faces in it.

FINAL  GRADE 3 of 5

TWO CAPTAINS DUKE IT OUT ON A FAKE EARTH!

 

Episode Title:  The Omega Glory

Air Date: 3/1/1968

Written by Gene Roddenberry

Directed by Vincent McEveety

Cast: William Shatner as Captain James T. Kirk    Leonard Nimoy as Commander Spock             DeForest Kelley as Dr. Leonard H. McCoy AKA “Bones”              George Takei  as Lieutenant  Hikaru Sulu              Nichelle Nichols as Lieutenant Nyota Uhura          Eddie Paskey as Lieutenant Leslie                 Bill Blackburn as Lieutenant Hadley       Roger Holloway as Lieutenant Lemli                        David L. Ross as Lieutenant Galloway                                      Frank Da Vinci as unnamed security guard                 Ed Fury as unnamed security guard             Morgan Woodward as Captain Ronald Tracey                       Ed McCready as Dr. Carter     Roy Jenson as  Cloud William          Irene Kelly as          Sirah                    Morgan Farley as Yang Scholar            Lloyd Kino as Wu             Frank Atienza as Kohn Villager               Adele Yoshioka as Kohm Servant

Ships: USS Enterprise NCC-1701, USS Exter NCC-1672

Planets:  Omega IV

My Spoiler filled summary and review: The USS Enterprise arrives in the Omega system and goes into orbit around the fourth planet to find their fellow Starfleet vessel and sister ship, USS Exter already there.   The ship isn’t responding to hails and the sensors aren’t picking up life forms aboard.  Since sensors are not always perfect, Captain Kirk decides an investigation is in order.  He forms an away team of himself, Mr. Spock, Dr. McCoy and Lt. Galloway. 

The Enterprise and the Exter

The four men board the ship via the transporter when they fully materialize they begin to look around.  There is no one on board but they do notice all these uniforms lying around with some strange substance in them.  They find all the shuttle craft in shuttle bay and no transporter logs to account for the entire crew’s disappearance.   Dr. McCoy looks into the “abandoned’ uniforms and with his tricorder discovers a horrible and disgusting truth.   That “substance” around and in the uniforms is the crew.  It’s all that’s left of their bodies when all of the water was removed.    They have seen the human reduced like this before but it was under a controlled environment by the Kelvans.  The Kelvans were at least able to restore the humans to their pervious form, providing that the objects the humans were turned into were not damaged.  This however was just plain ugly death.    

The turn on the final log entry from the Exter’s chief medical officer, Dr. Carter, who warns that if anyone is listening to this message is on the ship then they too are infected.  The only hope they might have is if they beam back to the surface as the Captain went down and seems okay.  The Doctor then dies and Kirk glances over and sees the empty medical uniform next to the command chair where he had been sitting.  

Once a CMO no dust

Not needing to be told twice the away team quickly heads down to planet’s surface by transporter.  As they arrive they find themselves in the middle of an execution, Kirk wants to interfere but won’t do to the Prime Directive.  However the whole thing is called off by Captain Tracey himself.  Tracey explains several things to his fellow Starfleet officers.  First he explains that the virus that killed his entire crew is incurable and they can only survive so long as they are on the planet’s atmosphere. 

Captain Tracey shows them around

Tracey then explains the political situation.  There are two groups down here.  The “Kongs,” who resemble humans of East Asian descent, are peaceful, civilized, and welcoming.  The other groups are the “Yangs” who are brutish and savage.  The Yangs cannot be reasoned with.  They also resemble human Caucasians.  As a Caucasian himself, it took a little while to get the Kongs to trust him.  Right now the Kongs are under heavy threat from the Yangs.

 Dr. McCoy uses the equipment sent down from the Enterprise to research their condition.  They have something bad and it reminds McCoy of one of the plague weapons from the 1990s. (So if they went back to Ceti Alpha V Kahn should be able to recognize it.)  Spock however has developed another more pressing concern.  From his interactions with the Kong villagers, Spock has learned that Captain Tracey has been more than friendly.  He is in fact aiding them in their conflict and has gone so far to battle Yangs using his phaser.  As evidence Spock points to an empty phaser battery that Tracey had discarded near an area where Spock and Galloway were attacked by Yangs.  Upon hearing this McCoy tries to defend him as a captain who just lost a crew and had found hospitality amounts these villagers.   Naturally he would want to defend them from harm.  Spock points out that it doesn’t matter and reminds Kirk of his duty. 

One Captain reveled to be a traitor 

Kirk feels conflicted at first about what he must do.  It is a conflict that he doesn’t need to resolve however as Captain Tracey gets the jump on them with a phaser.  Lt. Galloway tries to pull his on phaser quietly but Tracey vaporizes him.  That’s right he doesn’t stun him, he vaporizes him.  Tracey then takes Kirk’s communicator and calls up to the Enterprise to tell Sulu, who is in command because Scotty is clearly on vacation, that their illness has caused the away team to fall unconscious and they don’t want to send anyone else down here for fear of making it worse.

Tracey then tries to recruit Kirk to his cause, apparently forgetting he just killed one of his men right in front of him.  Tracey points out that the guard Wu is over 400 years old, and his still living father is over a thousand.  Tracey said this planet is the key to discovering a super-immunity that can give them a dozen lifetimes.  Kirk pretends to be interested but it is just a ruse to get Tracey to point his phaser away from him.  Kirk attacks him using his amazing fighting skills that are known to be peerless throughout the galaxy.  Actually it turns out he does have a peer, for Tracey also has a similar set of amazing fighting skills. Tracey defeats Kirk.  He places Spock in his own cell and Kirk a cell with a male and female Yang. 

Kirk battling a couple of Yangs!

Kirk gets to practice his fighting skills in his cell as the two Yangs try their best to defeat the Captain.  From his own cell Spock is able to land a quick nerve pinch on the female which allows Kirk to focus on the male and outfight him.  Later the male, who we later learn is named Red Cloud, hears Kirk use the word “freedom” with Spock that he identifies as one of his people’s worship words.  Kirk and Red Cloud bond a little and work together to remove the bars from their decaying cell.  However, Red Cloud betrays Kirk by using a bar to hit Kirk from behind on his head.  Kirk is knocked out and the two Yangs escape.

Getting hit on the head gave Kirk a nice nap about eight hours long.  When he comes to he gets Spock out of his cell and they head for Dr. McCoy.  When they reach McCoy he has quite the tale to tell with his research.  It turns out the true story of USS Exter is the disease that killed her crew could have been avoided all together had her landing party stayed on the planet a few more hours.  The planet’s atmosphere that had exposed them would have run its course and they would have been fine.  They are fine now to go back to the Enterprise.  Also Tracey’s idea of a thousand year life is a delusion.   The life cycle of the people of this planet was extended due to natural evolution.  Tracey’s life expectancy is the same as it ever was.  

Helpful nerve pinch!

Tracey then enters armed with a phaser and looking overwrought.  He explains the Yangs attacked by the tens of thousands and even though he drained multiple phasers it was not enough.  Tracey takes Kirk outside and threatens him demanding that he call his ship for more.  Kirk tries to explain how that is pointless but relents just to demonstrate its pointlessness.  Kirk and Tracey fight again but this time the fight is unresolved as they are both captured by the Yangs.

This is the point we find out we are on a fake Earth it turns out the Yangs are really the Americans with “Yangs” short for “Yankee.”  The Kongs are the Chinese Communists.  They bring in the US flag and try to say the pledge but the way they recite their “holy words” is garbled and Kirk is able to correct them.  As we are about to get our dish of Americana, Tracey being a spoil sport tries to ruin everything by trying to convince the Red Cloud that Spock is the devil.  This almost works but Kirk gets Red Cloud to agree to let him and Tracey fight it out.  As they are fighting Spock uses his telepathic mental powers to make the female Yang, Sirah, to open the Starfleet communicator.  Lt. Sulu beams down with two security guards (interestingly no one seems to think he is a Kong) and takes Tracey into custody.  Kirk explains to Red Cloud and his people more about the “holy words” that are meant for everyone not just a few.     

Additional thoughts: I am really not a fan of Hodgkin's Law of Parallel Planet Development.  I think it just shows a complete lack of imagination.  The crew of the Enterprise should be running to alien civilizations not more Earths.  The one interesting thing about this fake Earth is, unlike the others we have encountered before, this one seems older than us.   In Miri the long lived children were said to be centuries old.  That would mean our worlds probably developed at the exact same time with the only difference being in their 1960s they tried to extend their life and instead caused the zombie apocalypse.  The Roman Earth from Bread and Circuses was an Earth that not only had a Roman Empire but a 20^th century Roman Empire.  This means their Earth was three hundred years behind us.  Yet the Earth that we encounter in this episode had people living on it who were thousands of years old and they all were born after the Great War.  This means out in the galaxy there was another Earth developing their societies exactly like ours but thousands of years ahead of us.  The only difference is with them taking a very different turn in their 1990s.  I guess we can see what became of Earth if Kahn was left unchecked.

One thing this episode screws up is the racial demographics of the participants, which is odd when you consider that Star Trek generally speaking is noted for its diversity.  According to census data at the time the United States was 87% White, 10% Black, 2% Hispanic, Native Americans and Asian Americans were under 1%.  So the “Yangs” instead of being all white should have been mostly white with over ten percent of their number being people of color.  While China may have been the Communist nation with the largest population, Communism got its start in the Soviet Union.  So even if the “Kongs” should be mostly Asian there should be a sizable Slavic minority.   

Captain Tracey won't accept defeat!

So here is what I think the episode is trying to say.  During the Cold War it was not unusual for movie and TV propaganda to try to depict our side as a “good and virtuous side” and the Communists as the evil and vicious side.  A good example would be The Manchurian Candidate. In this episode when we first meet the Kongs they are the civilized, reasonable and productive people; where the Yangs are angry violent savages by comparison.  It isn’t until we meet the Yangs that we discover that they have depth and maybe even a reasonable grudge.  In fact the American audience learns they are us. The episode is trying to challenge the perception of the good guy/bad guy mentality.  We first encounter the Kongs who we see are decent people and start to hate the Yangs for how they threaten them.  When we learn the Yangs are us the episode wants us examine our own prejudices in how we regard certain people as enemies.  That being said, the episode doesn’t live up to its task.

Oh no! Fake Earth time

If any Starfleet captain loses his or her crew it is important to know you can’t ever trust them again.  Captains care for their crews and their sanity surviving them is very unlikely.  First we saw Matt Decker and now Ron Tracey both men of fine reputation whose mind was unable to cope with their loss.  Decker turns into Captain Ahab and Tracey gets obsessed with finding the fountain of youth.  Starfleet needs to establish a regulation that if a captain loses his or her crew that captain must be immediately committed for their safety and that of others.

Kirk explaining what the holy words mean!

              My favorite scene in this episode is when Captain Tracey has Kirk at phaser point and demands he call up to the Enterprise to have them send down more phasers and packs.  Kirk tries to explain that this won’t work but Tracey is beyond reason at this point, so Kirk is like okay and opens his communicator to make the request.  As soon as he makes it to Uhura she immediately calls Sulu over and they are both like WTF!  They try to respectfully explain that such an order doesn’t make any sense, as Kirk predicted they would.  Tracey has moment where he remembered how Starfleet officers actually behave.

When your Captain says something really stupid!

I actually enjoyed this episode.  It starts out interesting with the missing crew, and continue to be so with a captain who was violating the Prime Directive, it is too bad it falls off the rails with the fake Earth nonsense and insensitive racial set up for the Yangss and Kongs.

Holding a relic!

 

FINAL GRADE 4 of 5  

THE SMARTEST STUPID PERSON IN THE UNIVERSE

 

Episode Title:  Patterns of Force

Air Date: 2/16/1968

Written by John Meredyth Lucas

Directed by Vincent McEveety

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”        Nichelle Nichols as Lieutenant Nyota Uhura                 Bill Blackburn as Lieutenant Hadley           Walter Koenig as Ensign Pavel Chekov                Richard Evans as Isak             Eddie Paskey as Trooper                   Frank Da Vinci as Soldier at Party              Roger Holloway as Soldier at Party                       Valora Noland as Daras               Jeannie Malone as Blonde in Audience          Skip Homeier as Melakon                       David Brian as John Gill                 Patrick Horgan as Eneg            William Wintersole as Abrom             Gilbert Green as S.S. Major               Lev Mailer as S.S. Lieutenant             Ed McCready as S.S. Trooper          Peter Canon as Gestapo Lieutenant         Paul Baxley as First Trooper         Chuck Courtney as Davod        Bart La Rue as Newscaster         Benjie Bancroft as.          Soldier at Party       Sean Morgan               as Second Trooper        Joe Paz as S A Brigadier     Basil Poledouris as Trooper       Robert Strong as Soldier at Party

Ships: USS Enterprise NCC-1701

Planets:  Ekos and Zeon

My Spoiler filled summary and review: The Enterprise is on a mission to the planet Ekos looking for a lost Federation official named John Gill.  Ekos is in a system with another planet named Zeon.  Both planets have humanoid populations but Zeon is the more technologically and culturally advanced of the two having achieved both space flight and planetary unified government.  Ekos however has been fractured into small warring states for a number of years.  John Gill was sent there as an observer.  Gill himself is a professional and accomplished historian.  He was Captain Kirk’s history professor at Starfleet Academy.  Spock didn’t take his class but had read his publications and was impressed with his analysis. Spock especially liked Gill’s interpretation of history through causes and motivations rather than dates and events.   

Travel the universe and still run into Nazis!

Suddenly the Enterprise is attacked with an interplanetary missile with an armed nuclear warhead launched from Ekos.  They manage to destroy with ease but that raises another concern as Ekos were centuries away from such technology at last report.  Kirk decides to that he and Spock will have to investigate directly.  Kirk doesn’t want the Enterprise to stick around in orbit too long.  So he has Scotty drop them off and then come pick them up at a set time.  To insure and immediate extraction Kirk has Dr. McCoy place emergency transponders under their skin. 

Not so good at playing Nazi

Kirk and Spock beam down wearing civilian clothing that their records say match the local population.  When they get there they find a young man being chased by a squad of SS Nazis.  Wearing uniforms that seem to have come straight out of the 1930s or 40s, the squad beats up the poor man and drags him away.  Kirk wanted to interfere but their code of non-interference.  Thinking about this Kirk asks Spock about what are the odds that another culture could have developed an ideology identical to the Nazi party of Earth.  Spock says it’s impossible and I have lot more to say about that in the additional comments section because I don’t want to rant here.

Let's play the game who can get whipped the longest and not cry!

Kirk and Spock then come across a public broadcast.  In the broadcast they learn that the Nazis have managed to dominate the entire planet, which actually makes them much more successful than the Earth Nazis. Their target however in place of Jews and other minorities is the people of the planet Zeon.  They are trying to find every Zeonian living on Ekos and eliminate them before launching and interplanetary attack.  Kirk and Spock also learn of a new hero of the fatherland, a woman by the name of Daras.  Kirk reacts with some amusement when the broadcaster refers to the Enterprise as invader who was “ultimately destroyed.”  Lastly, they learn that John Gill is the Führer.  That last part is the most shocking of them all.  Kirk thought Gill was one of the gentlest people he had ever known. 

They decide they need to confront Gill, the two beat up some Nazis and steal their uniforms.  After leaving the two Nazis beaten and naked, Kirk and Spock head to Nazi headquarters. However they are caught immediately when Spock is forced to remove his helmet and expose his ears.  Next we see Kirk and Spock taking a whipping in the Nazi prison.  After the two Starfleet officers are put in a cell.  They find the Zeonian from earlier who the Nazis had captured.  His name is Isak and from him they learn that his people had sending over groups to Ekos to help them become more civilized and develop their planet.   While they received some support from the locals this also triggered the rise of the Nazi Party.  Kirk and Spock dig out their tracers and use the crystals inside to build a make-shift laser.  They beat up and steal the uniform of another Nazi and use the stolen uniform and some pick pocketing skills to get access to their lab where they are holding their communicators.  They find the communicators in pieces but take them anyway. 

Isak takes them to the Underground a place where the Resistance hides from the Nazis.  They are introduced to Abrom, their leader, and he is skeptical but trusts Isak’s recommendation.  Isak also learns that his wife has been killed brutally by the SS.  Later, it looks like they are discovered but it turns out Daras, the woman from the newsreel is actually a resistance spy.  She had been rewarded for exposing her father as a traitor to the party.  It was his idea so she could get into a trusted position.  Kirk revels to the Resistance that he and Spock are from another world, in fact a Federation of Planets, and the Führer is one of their people gone rogue. 

As a hero of the Fatherland, Daras is invited to party headquarters for the announcement of the Final Solution to the Zeonian problem.  As they sneak into the party they are able to get a glace of Gill, who was behind a secure bunker and he looked out of it.  The speech he was giving on camera seemed to be dubbed over.  Now once again in communication with the Enterprise, Kirk has Lt. Uhura send down Dr. McCoy dressed as a Nazi military physician.  After almost nearly getting caught, and especially odd that they didn’t considering they met the Chairman while they were imprisoned, Kirk gets his team into the same room with Jon Gill. When he is revived Kirk is able to confront him about what he had down.  Gill explained that the world was tearing itself apart and he felt that National Socialism was the answer so long as the racist and genocidal elements were removed.  He claimed the Nazi was the most efficient state Earth ever knew.  Spock clarifies his arguments for Kirk.  However it seems Gill was very wrong and that this type of government naturally generates hatred.    Deputy Führer Melakon is now the real power.  He seized control, drugged Gill to use a figurehead, and is waging the war on the people of Zeon. 

Escape with homemade lasers

As he recovers Gill gets on the radio again, to tell them that they have all been betrayed, ends the war, and recalls their space fleet.  A gun fight then ensues and the Führer and Deputy Führer are both killed.  It turns out the Chairman of the Party was also a Resistance spy with the two major leaders dead, he and Daras feel that they can lead their planet and Zeon back to peace.  Kirk and Spock are both hopeful that the two planets will one day join the Federation together.

I can play Nazi and pick pocket

Additional thoughts: Back when I was eleven in 1992 my cousin Tim who was about fifteen explained the concept of a “really smart dumb person” to me.  The example Tim gave was kid he went to school with who generally got good grades and was regarded by his teachers as rather smart.  “But,” he said, “if he were given a basketball that had the autographs of every member of the Dream Team on it, he would go out and try to play basketball with it.”

In response to the horror in my eleven year old mind of someone carelessly abusing such a precious object I asked him what he would do.  Tim answered “Simple, I would have him pass me the ball and then I would run away with it.  He is so dumb he wouldn’t understand what had just happened.  He would just figure that without his basketball he couldn’t play basketball anymore so he would just go home and do his homework.” 

Later I would learn the phrase “people smarts” or “street smarts.” It appears John Gill was deprived of those traits.  He might have been good as a historian but like my cousin’s classmate he was a really smart dumb person.  I mean who goes to a planet whose native inhabitants are ravaged by war and thinks “You know what this chaotic planet needs? Nazism, and lots of it!”   Even if you thought that there could be a begin sort of fascism that may create order from chaos, why didn’t you make up your own symbols, salutes, and all the rest?   He could do something like the Wave Experiment for example.  No, he decides what he must do is plagiarize the entire Third Reich.  You get the impression that Gill must have been thinking about this for quite some time. 

Not really a Nazi

The funny thing is fascism once had its defenders and admires even in the United States.  Joseph Kennedy is a famous example.  However this was before its true nature became exposed to the entire world.  Gill has knowledge looking back at the Nazis that is centuries old to say he should have known better is the understatement of the millennium.

 There are also some holes in the narrative.  Primarily how long was Gill there for?  In the beginning they state that Kirk had studied under him at the Academy and that he has been out of contact for months.  Now granted how long he was out of contact is not necessarily an indication of how long he was there, however given everyone actions it seems like he had been there for only a short time.  Until we actually get to Ekos.  Daras states that she grew up admiring him this would indicate that he had been there her whole life, and no one in the Federation was aware of his activities. 

A meeting of real Nazis and fake Nazis

Gill had to be there long enough to come to the conclusion the planet was helpless on its own, form a Nazi party, take over one of the states, conqueror the rest of the planet, then get overthrown and drugged by the Deputy Führer.  I think he would have to have been there for at least a decade and a half.  He must have left right after teaching Kirk’s class.

Asleep at the wheel

There are also problems with in the metaphors.  In this the people from the planet Zeon are more advanced and had been coming to Ekos to try and help them catch up.  The Ekosians see them as interfering outsiders, and despite their benevolence that is not entirely wrong even with the Nazi reaction definitely being wrong.   In real life the Jewish community had been living amongst the gentiles of Europe for almost two thousand years.  Some victims of the Holocaust had been war heroes for Germany in World War I, despite the Nazi demand to drive them out the truth was they were a part of these European communities not apart from them. 

You feel as if the average human "people smarts" IQ went up five points!

I am glad in this episode we got to see the effects of contamination like in A Piece of the Action, as opposed to the tired troupe of Hodgkin's Law of Parallel Planetary Development.  Although I was sort of taken back when Kirk asks Spock what the chances of a parallel world forming a Nazi party with the same symbols and set of beliefs as Earth’s Nazis, Spock’s response was to tell the Captain it was all but impossible.  At which point Kirk should have responded with, “Are you sure, Mr. Spock?  Didn’t we come across a 20^th century type Roman Empire just a few months ago?  What about that planet last year with the immortal kids that looked like Earth from the 1960s?  Impossible? We run into this stuff all the time?”  It would have been better if Spock just quoted a number.

FINAL GRADE 3 of 5

THE CREW OF THE USS ENTERPRISE FIND SOME OLD KIDS ON A FAKE EARTH

Episode Title:  Miri

Air Date: 10/27/1966

Written by Adrian Spies

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”             Eddie Paskey as Lieutenant Leslie              Jim Goodwin  as Lieutenant Farrell          Grace Lee Whitney as Yeoman First Class Janice Rand            David L. Ross as Security Guard # 1                      Tom Anfinsen      as Crewman                  John Arndt as  Ingenieur Fields    Kim Darby as Miri                      Michael J. Pollard  as Jahn                       John Megna as Little Boy                       Keith Taylor as Jahn's Friend                       Ed McCready as Boy Creature                         Kellie Flanagan as Blonde Girl        Stephen McEveety as Redheaded Boy             Iona Morris as Little African American Girl                            Phil Morris  as Boy - Army Helmet                     Darleen Anita Roddenberry as Flowered Dress Girl                  Dawn Roddenberry as Little Blonde Girl             Irene Sale as Louise        Lisabeth Shatner as Girl in Red-Striped Dress,                  Melanie Shatner  as Brunette Girl                       Scott Whitney as Small Boy

Ships: USS Enterprise NCC-1701

Planets:  Fake Earth

My Spoiler filled summary and review: The Enterprise is responding to distress signal coming from an unexplored region space.  When they arrive at the solar system where the distress signal originated the crew, to their utter shock, find a planet that is an exact duplicate of Earth. The only difference from space is there doesn’t appear to be a very large population and there also are no space vehicles around the planet of any kind.  Unsure of how this duplicate of Earth came to be they still make it a priority to answer the distress signal.

Found a zombie

An away team beams down the planet that is comprised of Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, Dr. McCoy, Yeoman Rand, and two redshirts.  When they arrive they find this fake Earth seems to be Earth of the past.  Kirk assumes that the early 20^th century but Spock more correctly points out that is from the 1960s. (In other words, it represents the present day when this episode was created and aired.)  Yet the entire society seems to be in a state of decay.  The city looks to have been abandoned for centuries.  At one point they get attacked by a strange zombie creature.  They manage to fight him off but the creature dies as a result.   They come to the conclusion that this distress signal may have been automated.

While looking around the away team gets the impression that they’re being watched and they can hear children laughing in the distance.  Ultimately they find a young girl named Miri.  She is shocked to see them.   In addition to being shocked she is also terrified as she calls them ‘grumps’ and to her ‘grumps’ are always bad.  She explains grumps get sick and when they get sick they get violent.  As Miri spends some time with them she starts to trust the away team particularly Captain Kirk who she develops a crush on.  However her trust also turns quickly to renewed horror when she and the away team discover that they are infected with the same illness as her ‘grumps’ with only Mr. Spock excepted.  Kirk asked Miri if she can take them to the local hospital so they can get some information on what it was that was hurting them.   While all this is going on they’re still being watched by children in hiding.  The leader of the children, Jahn, wonders what it is his friend Miri is doing hanging out with ‘grumps.'

What is Miri doing with the "grumps"?

At the hospital McCoy uses an old-fashioned microscope to identify the disease that they’ve been affected with.  It is something that affects only adults.  The children are alive because even though they are infected their illness will lie dormant until they hit puberty.  What they find strange is everything around them seems to have been neglected for almost three centuries.  If the children die upon attaining puberty how are they replicating the population?  McCoy has the Enterprise send down some 23^rd century medical equipment so they can run tests and try to see what they can do to create a cure for this disease.  In the show they use the word “vaccination” but that term is not correct considering the going to try to cure people who already have the disease and vaccination is more preventative than anything else.

Finding Miri

The research however is going get slowed down when the children cause a distraction allowing their leader, Jahn, to sneak in and steal their communicators.   Now without contact with their ship they are all alone in doing the research, or to be precise is Dr. McCoy and Mr. Spock doing it by themselves.  This is difficult for the disease get stronger in them as time goes along.  Before they lost contact with the ship they learned they only had a few days. 

She is a sucker for a pretty face.

While continuing to research the virus it also turns out that the crew of the Enterprise is really talented when it comes to research and sorting of paper files.  One would think that that would be a lost art in the 23^rd century but this crew was right on top of it. Since this is a planet that somehow is a complete duplicate of Earth it means the notes are in English.  No universal translators required here just old-fashioned reading skills.  With their old-fashioned reading skills they’re able to learn the terrifying truth.  This planet during the 1960s had its history deviate with the Federation’s Earth by developing the life extension project.  They believed that they had the ability to extend the human lifecycle so that their bodies only age one month for every century that passes.  Unfortunately the experiment resulted was a carrier virus that caused every single adult human to be turned into a zombie and die.  It did however work on prepubescent children and that is how these kids are still around where it appears the infrastructure has been in a state of decay for three centuries.   

Woman scorned

I originally thought that the crew found the exact hospital where it turns out the experiments were done that led to the creation of this virus was to be a bit of overloaded plot armor.  However they did come to this planet because of the distress signal it makes a little bit of sense the same place that was the origin of the trauma was also the source of distress signal. One can imagine the horror that the fake Earth’s scientists must’ve gone through when their great miracle they thought they were giving their planet backfired and they were surrounded by a world where nearly everyone was rotting from the inside out.

Doctor heal thyself

In response to seeing Captain Kirk comforting Yeoman Rand, Miri becomes the woman scorned and betrays the away team to the other children.  They kidnap Yeoman Rand so Kirk goes to retrieve her.  He confronts Miri and reminds her that she has the virus as well and earlier when they saw her old friend Louise who had succumb to her infection.  Kirk points out that in time she will die just like them without help.  To make matters worse the kids are running out of their food supply. All the stored food from the before times only has about three months left so despite their condition of only aging a month after hundred years they will be dead three months when the food runs out.  This convinces Miri to take her to see the other children.  It takes some time including Kirk surviving an attack from the children when Captain Kirk is ultimately able to convince the children that he has a best interest at heart and he can help them.

While Kirk was away trying to get their communicators back and saving Yeoman Rand, Dr. McCoy decides that he cannot wait and injects himself with the potential cure.  Kirk returns with the children and they all see that Dr. McCoy is cured.  This saves the away team immediately and it saves the children of long-term.  As they return to the Enterprise Kirk explains to the children are going to be taking care of.  The Federation is sending out childcare specialists and resources to help get these kids on their feet.

Additional thoughts: The first thing that one notices in this episode is the casting.  With the setting of an away team from the Enterprise on a planet full of children the studio is required to cast a number of children.  And it appears the way they chose to address this was by having the cast and crew bring over their own children to play the child characters.  Gene Roddenberry brought both of his daughters, as did William Shatner, and Grace Lee Whitney brought her son.  For the older young people the episode had Kim Darby, who would go on to star in  True Grit (1969), as Miri and Michael J. Pollard, who I remember as the magical imp from the 5^th dimension Mr. Mxyzptlk on the Superboy TV series, as Jahn. 

Tied up by a bunch of kids!

                The problems I have with this episode however come down to the devil being in the details.  In the very first scene we see a duplicate Earth.  Okay, so how does this duplicate Earth come to be?  This is one of a couple of big elephants in this room yet it’s one that is never answered.   Did this duplicate Earth slip out of some sort of parallel universal dimension?  We’ll never know they never say.  One of the most important details and is completely overlooked.

                The next issue I have is with these ancient children.  Okay so I understand that these children have been children for now 300 years and in that time have only aged three months.  But as we come to know them it is very apparent that they aren’t mentally deficient in any way; there’s nothing wrong with their minds and yet in those 300 years they have gained neither knowledge nor wisdom.  That is ridiculous when you think about the fact that children learn at a speed multiple times what adults are capable of.  These kids should be pretty self-sufficient yet they all are in danger of dying not because of the potential illness that they carry but because they could run out of food.  Apparently before all the adult humans died they made sure to have at least 300 years-worth of food on storage.  Okay it probably stretched out for 300 years because of a much smaller population.  Which leads me to wonder if there are any other colonies of children in these other cities or did they just all die out?  Again no answer.

Infected Kirk

I felt the food storage was placed in the story to give us a sense of urgency for the children.  You could make an argument the crew should just follow the Prime Directive and leave them alone.  Even if they do naturally perish when they hit puberty it takes them 1,200 years to age a single biological year.   So they started out at five and hit puberty all around the age of thirteen, to them that is 9,600 years of life.  It is not like they’re being cheated.  This also leads me to wonder what the long-term impact is.  Did Dr. McCoy’s serum that the cured the disease in adults also rob these children of their slow aging childhoods?  If so isn’t Dr. McCoy’s cure for them more of a curse as they have more life without it?  Or do they still have their slow aging childhoods and then age regularly as adults?  What does this mean for their children?  If the children inherit their slow childhoods will the parents die of old age long before their child actually ages a single month biologically?  These are also questions to which no answers are provided in the episode.

Telling the kids what is what.

As far as the exterior goes I take it the writers of this episode never read the book The World Without Us (2007) which would make sense considering the book wasn’t published until 31 years after this episode.  For an Earth without functioning adults it was still rather sturdy even after 300 years.  It was useful that all of the written records were still in such fine condition.

I noticed that Sulu and Uhura were not in this episode.  They must’ve been working different shifts this week.  There was no great piloting the need to be done on the Enterprise so having a stand-in helmsman was perfectly fine.  I did wonder what Lt. Farrell, a navigator, was doing filling in for Lt. Uhura.  Doesn’t she have other communications officers working under her who can fill in for her during these times?  Why do they need a navigator for sitting in that chair?  Is Farrell looking to change jobs?  If so he’s got to have to get himself a red shirt.

Speaking of redshirts there were two of them on the away team this time, not counting Rand.  They went to a planet where adults turn into zombies and yet they both made it out alive.  These two are the best redshirts ever, and Captain Kirk should take them on every away mission. 

Even though a lot of my additional thoughts are negative I want to point out that this episode is certainly watchable and it does have a dramatic effect with the virus that leads to a good deal of excitement.  In the end of the day when I want to complain about something I just normally have more to say then when I want to say something good.  Terrible character flaw. 

FINAL GRADE 3 of 5