MR. SPOCK LEARNS IMPORTANT LESSONS ON COMMAND, WHICH IS GOOD SEEING AS HE IS ALREADY THE FIRST OFFICER

Episode Title:  The Galileo Seven

Air Date: 1/5/1967

Written by Oliver Crawford and Shimon Wincelberg (under the pen name "S. Bar-David")

Directed by Robert Gist

Cast: William Shatner as Captain James T. Kirk    Leonard Nimoy as Lieutenant 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          Don Marshall as  Lieutenant Boma            Peter Marko as Lieutenant Gaetano            Rees Vaughn as Lieutenant Latimer                 Grant Woods as Lieutenant Kelowitz          Eddie Paskey as Lieutenant Leslie                 Bill Blackburn as Lieutenant Hadley     Frank Da Vinci as Lieutenant Brent                      Phyllis Douglas as Yeoman Second Class Mears       David Ross as the Transporter Chief         Ron Veto as Crewman          John Crawford as High Commissioner Ferris           Robert ‘Big Buck’ Maffei as the Creature of Taurus II          Majel Barrett as Enterprise Computer

  

Ships: USS Enterprise NCC-1701, Galileo NCC-1701/7, Columbus NCC-1701/2

Planets:  Taurus II

My Spoiler filled summary and review: The episode begins with the Enterprise on a mission to deliver much-needed medical supplies to Makus III.  However on their way there they discover a quasar-like formation identified as Murasaki 312.  Kirk, with standing orders to study such a phenomenon, decides to stop by and check it out.   This is extremely irritating to the Enterprise’s guest High Commissioner Ferris, who dresses like he just came out of one of the more modern Star Trek shows that take place in the past.  He does not like this delay and feels the primary mission should be more important.  Kirk explains they have five days to get there in the rendezvous point is only three days away therefore they have two days to study Murasaki 312.

Wants Captain Kirk to share his priorities. 

I have to say right from the start I actually agree with High Commissioner Ferris.  I mean shouldn’t the medical supplies receive top priority?  The quasar -like formation doesn’t look like is going anywhere and it also looks like they could spend a lot more time than just two days studying it.  So instead of doing a rushed research job why don’t they drop off the High Commissioner and the supplies then had back and take their sweet time looking over the formation?  I think I would be a great senior officer for Captain Kirk with my advice he can avoid all sorts of plot driven irrational decisions that might cause problems for him his crew.  Of course that might make for more boring TV show.

Crash landing everyone out of the boat!  Why aren't shuttlecraft called star boats?

Given that the formation would interfere with transporter signals they decide to use the shuttlecraft, which Lt. Sulu should remind them about the time they forgot about those helpful shuttles while he was stuck on a freezing planet waiting for Captain Kirk to put himself back together.  They send a team of seven led by Mr. Spock in the shuttlecraft Galileo to explore the Murasaki 312.  Mr. Spock’s team consists of Dr. McCoy, Mr. Scott, three lieutenants, and a yeoman.  How much must it stink to have to be that poor little Yeoman?  You’re the only enlisted personnel with three lieutenant commanders, and three lieutenants.  Talk about being a low person the totem pole.  I hope the ship doesn’t crash somewhere and she has a spend time as everyone’s personal servant seeing as everyone outranks her by several levels.

Crashing unfortunately is what they do as the Murasaki 312 causes them to lose control the shuttle and they end up crashing on the planet Taurus II.  On the ship High Commissioner Ferris is furious at the situation he reminds Captain Kirk that he is on a deadline that medical supplies need to be delivered.  Kirk understands that he is on a deadline but he swears he will use his full two days to try to find his missing crewmembers.  Kirk has his crew work double time to try to restore the ships functions so they can be adapted to be used in the quasar -like formation.  He sends out a second shuttlecraft, this one Columbus, to help search for their missing companions.  Throughout the rest of this episode we get cutbacks of the ship where High Commissioner Ferris is pointing at the clock to Kirk telling him that he needs to get a move on.

In between a rock and a hard place for Captain Kirk

On the planet surface the crew the shuttlecraft recovers from the crash.  Spock of has the two lieutenants in gold grab phasers and secure the area.  While he has the lieutenants searching he and Mr. Scott set about fixing the shuttle.  Unfortunately Scotty discovers that in order to lift off the shuttle is going to have to lose some weight about 500 pounds.  This means that three grown men will have to stay behind.  Lt. Boma wonders if they’re going to draw lots, to which Spock says that the final decision will be up to him.  I wonder if Mr. Spock now feels as judgmental as he did on our last adventure about Kodos the Executioner.

The two lieutenants are attacked by natives and one of them is killed.  In addition to that problem many in the shuttlecraft crew are starting to take issue with Mr. Spock’s rather cold handling of the matter.  Dr. McCoy at the start of this mission tried to give Spock a pep talk encouraging him about his first command, and tried to advise him on dealing with humans.  Spock at first is not intimidated by the situation of being in command he explains the McCoy that it just is. Spock is under the mistaken impression that he’s dealing professional Starfleet officers who can set aside emotion, follow their orders, and perform their duty with pure professionalism all the time.  Spock fails to appreciate that some people crack under pressure in fact in this case is everyone who is not a series star or a yeoman seems to break whenever the pressure gets tough.

When the times get tough break under pressure.

Spock in order to keep the natives away comes up with a more nonviolent plan of simply scaring the natives with their superior weapons, as opposed to more violent situation that his subordinates want him to do.  Spock’s plan doesn’t really work and the names will eventually come back and try to harm them.  In the fighting the other yellow shirted lieutenant is killed.  His death makes one thing a little easier: they no longer have to leave anyone behind.  They started needing to strain three but by ditching some equipment on the shuttle they could spare one.  With the death of two crew members it eliminates the problem of having to leave anyone behind.  They could have escaped sooner but the overly sentimental crew member, Lt. Boma, keeps insisting they need to risk their life in order to properly bury their comrades.

In attempting to repair the shuttle Scotty discovered that their fuel was completely drained when they accidentally tried to bypass it.  Later Scotty working his normal miracle skills of engineering is able to use the phasers’ energy recharge the engines.  The natives almost prevent them from escaping by climbing on to the shuttle but Scotty is able to electrify the surface of their shuttle causing them to back away without permanently hurting them.  The shuttle takes off and is heading into orbit.  Unfortunately the Enterprise has run out of time and High Commissioner Ferris has ordered Kirk to leave.  Kirk showing some passive aggressiveness decides to leave at the slow speed legally possible.

Repairing the shuttle

Spock now realizing the situation is desperate ignites the fuel which will light a flare he hopes the Enterprise will see.  This will speed up their deaths if it doesn’t work but to be fair they probably would die anyway if left to their own devices.  The gamble works and Kirk sees the flare he turns the Enterprise around to rescue his comrades.  The engineers who work under Scotty have done their jobs well and adjusted the ship’s equipment so that transporters will work even of the conditions of the phenomenon.  At the last moment the survivors of the party of the Galileo are beamed back aboard the Enterprise.

As the Enterprise is heading towards Makus III to deliver the medical supplies, the bridge crew led by Kirk confronts Spock about his decision to ignite the fuel.  Kirk asked Spock if this was a decision that was of the result of emotion.  Mr. Spock said it was not in fact he had simply carefully and analyzed the problem from all directions and concluded that the situation was hopeless.  Kirk then says that he logically concluded that it was time for an act of desperation.  The bridge crew has a laugh at the expense of the First Officer. 

Additional thoughts: The theme of this episode was supposed to be about Mr. Spock learning how to command amongst us illogical humans.  Unfortunately this is something that Mr. Spock should’ve learned of before now.  Mr. Spock is the first officer as such he should already have plenty of experience commanding others.  In fact in Mr. Spock’s very first appearance in “The Cage” he is giving orders to members of the bridge crew.  If you’re watching the series in air date order the first scene of “The Man Trap” has Mr. Spock sitting in the command chair.  I think a story such as this would work better if were presented in a series of flashbacks in an episode where Mr. Spock was recalling an early point in his career.

McCoy trying to talk with Spock

                Another place where this episode loses its point is the people in the shuttlecraft, or should I say primarily the lieutenants, come off as complete jerks.  They’re always hampering on Spock for the littlest of things.  Spock breathes incorrectly and they are ready to be down his throat about it. They’re always watching him to see if he screws up to so they can use it as an excuse to pounce on him.  The other three members are fine; Dr. McCoy picks on Spock a bit but Dr. McCoy’s always doing it from a good place.  McCoy is trying to help Spock lead the crew better with his goal being an improved situation for everyone, where the three lieutenants almost seem to take some particular joy in harassing him.
 

No, will not get away!

                This is not to say that Mr. Spock does not make some mistakes.  For example critiquing a weapon’s efficiency after it just killed a member of your crew is not exactly very tactful.  However the excessive second-guessing and questioning of loyalty from some of the shuttlecraft crew carries far beyond reason. When Mr. Spock says that three men may have to be left behind is there really a doubt on any of our minds that Mr. Spock would’ve chose himself as one of three? I knowledge my own personal bias after all I like Mr. Spock and I don’t like these one-off characters who won’t be here next episode.  Nevertheless the level of insubordination that is distributed by them seems to be way off base for Starfleet officers.  They’re constantly questioning his decisions; they often seem to forget that in these military type environments decisions aren’t made in a democratic fashion.  

The problem doesn’t seem to be Mr. Spock the problem seems to be these lieutenants.  It reminds me of the real life adventures of John Paul Jones he probably would’ve been much more successful if only had a crew that was equally committed to the tasks that he was.  Captain Jones had to deal with the crew were closer to pirates than they were the officers and men of the U.S. Navy.  Yet Mr. Spock is serving with Starfleet officers whose character should be of a higher ideal than what we saw.  Often they are more concerned about how they were burying their dead than they were with surviving.  Which I guess would’ve ultimately led to quite the conundrum when the last one died after all who is good to give him a proper burial?  Yet the episode shows this to be a problem of Mr. Spock failing to take the cause of corpses over living breathing people.

The Flare!

Another place episode tried to critique Mr. Spock is a decision to try to be as gentle with the natives as he most possibly could.  It should be pointed out that the crew shuttlecraft Galileo crashed into their home and the strange creatures popped out of it.  Why shouldn’t they be scared?  Why shouldn’t they try to defend themselves?  Because Mr. Spock chose to try to scare them is implied that he made the wrong decision because they didn’t scare away so easily.  There is no guarantee that had Mr. Spock responded more violently then they would have stayed away.  Who knows, they may have come back with even greater numbers and more quickly if Mr. Spock a chosen to draw blood.  That point is never brought up, is simply implied that Mr. Spock for not listening to his crew caused people to die.  That is a load of crap.

On a brighter note, I did enjoy seeing Mr. Scott’s engineering skills given a chance to shine.  Mr. Scott had been missing from a number of episodes and to be fair there wasn’t much on those episodes for him to do anyway, no engineering miracles were needed.  The last time those skills were needed credit might’ve gotten more to Captain Kirk or Mr. Spock than Scotty.  It’s great that we get see Mr. Scott be the miracle worker.

FINAL GRADE 3 of 5

KIRK CONFRONTS HIS HITLER (OKAY, MAYBE NOT LIKE HITLER BUT VERY BAD) AND LOTS OF SHAKESPEARE

Episode Title:  The Conscience of the King

Air Date: 12/8/1966

Written by Barry Trivers

Directed by Gerd Oswald

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          Bruce Hyde as Lieutenant Kevin Thomas Riley            Eddie Paskey as Lieutenant Leslie                 Bill Blackburn as Lieutenant Hadley     Frank Da Vinci as Crewman                      Grace Lee Whitney as Yeoman First Class Janice Rand                                Robert H. Justman as Security Guard                    Jeannie Malone as Yeoman                     Ron Veto as Security Guard                          Arnold Moss as Anton Karidian                    Barbara Anderson as Lenore Karidian           William Sargent  as Dr. Thomas Leighton                      Natalie Norwick as Martha Leighton              David Somerville as Larry Matson                   Karl Bruckas as  Kardian actor playing King Duncan                Marc Grady Adams as Kardian actor playing Hamlet                John Astin as Capt. John Daley of the Astro-Queen      Majel Barrett as Enterprise Computer 

      

Ships: USS Enterprise NCC-1701, Astro-Queen   

Planets:  Planet Q

My Spoiler filled summary and review: Some basic back story to this episode:  when Captain Kirk was a teenager, due to his father’s Starfleet career, his family occasionally relocated.  Although he grew up mostly in Iowa there was a year where he lived with his maternal grandparents on the Earth colony Tarsus IV.  When he was there a bacterial infection hit the food supply nearly exhausting it.  Help was a long way away.  Governor Kodos ceased power via martial law and he calculated that the colony of 8,000 would survive if he only had half the amount of mouths to feed.   He then selected via his own personal standard of who was worthy to live and who was going to die.  He then executed the 4,000 that he had personally selected for doom. The executions were wide spread to the point that there were survivors and victims in every family.  It is never made clear who Captain Kirk lost in this incident.  However only nine people had actually witnessed Kodos performing the slaughter and Kirk was one of them.  As tragic as it was it was made even sadder when the colony then received good news: the relief ships had arrived earlier than expected.  Kodos’s slaughter was not only cruel it was now pointless.  There was immediate outrage and calls for Kodos’s head both literally and figuratively.  However it appears that Kodos had been burnt to death.  The body will however was beyond recognition.

The episode begins twenty years after the events on Tarsus IV had occurred.  Kirk, now in command of the US S Enterprise received a communication from his friend to Dr. Thomas Leighton, who himself is one of the nine witnesses.  Leighton had summoned the Enterprise with the promise that he made an amazing discovery and was able to synthesize food.  This would make all famines a thing of the past.  However before they can get down to business Leighton had Kirk join him to watch a performance of Macbeth.   Leighton accuses the actor of the character of Macbeth a man named Anton Karidian of being the infamous Kodos the Executioner.  Kirk can’t believe it; he tells Leighton that Kodos is long dead and he is chasing ghosts.  Kirk is angry that he diverted a starship on this wacky theory.  He is afraid that when he enters this into his report Leighton may be in serious trouble.  He leaves telling his friend he doesn’t know how he can fix this.

Leighton who lost his family and half his face. 

On the ship Kirk’s curiosity and own personal pain gets the better of him.  He starts looking at old photographs of Kodos and compares them with Anton Karidian.  Kirk sees a similarity but isn’t sure and he asked Mr. Spock’s opinion on Leighton if he is a person who occasionally makes up stories. Spock says he’s not.  Kirk decides to keep the Enterprise around little longer and heads to Dr. Leighton’s party.  When he gets there he meets the beautiful and stunning Lenore Karidian, who had played Lady Macbeth earlier.  She is the daughter of the company’s founder and she informs Captain Kirk that “the Great Karidian” does not attend parties.  Kirk flirts with her a bit and learns of the company’s plans that they are leaving soon on a freighter known as the Astro – Queen.   Lenore agrees to go on a stroll with Captain Kirk and on their little stroll they find the body of Dr. Thomas Leighton.

Kirk suspicions are now heightened making him want to keep the acting company will under tight surveillance.  He contacts the Captain of the Astro-Queen, who turns out to be a buddy of his who owes him a dozen favors.  Kirk asks him to fail to pick up the acting company allowing him to be their rescuer.  Lenore comes aboard the Enterprise to ask Kirk a favor of transport in exchange for a performance aboard the ship.  Kirk agrees and he and Lenore do a little bit more strolling through the ship and Kirk even takes her to see the observation lounge.  In addition to accompanying the lovely Lenore more he also re-assigns Lt. Kevin Riley, the former navigator who now works for Lt. Uhura in communications, away from his current assignment to a previous role in engineering.  He does this because Lt. Riley is another one of the witnesses like himself and he is trying to protect him. 

Kirk so callously reassigning the poor Lieutenant made Mr. Spock suspicious.  He decides to investigate to discover what is wrong with the Captain.  Spock quickly uncovers the truth in fact he gets more information than Captain Kirk did.  He discovered the connection between Leighton, Kirk, and Riley as all were witnesses to the murders.   He also discovers that Anton Karidian didn’t exist before twenty years ago and that his appearance coincides with the disappearance of Kodos.  He also noted that only Kirk and Riley of all the witnesses are still alive and that the others all died shortly after the Karidian Company was nearby.  He takes his concerns McCoy who was resists at first but after Lt. Riley is almost killed through poisoning McCoy comes around. 

A request for transport.

Spock and McCoy confront Kirk in his quarters explaining what they know.  Kirk is at first irritated from his officers interfering what he views as a private affair, but ultimately agrees to their help.  Shortly thereafter they hear phaser on overload, someone is now trying to assassinate the Captain!  Kirk searches for the weapon instead of running because if it explodes it may take decks off the ship.  He finds it in the nick of time and drops it down a disposal shoot, which I guess means disposal shoots of the Enterprise are so strong that they can withstand phaser explosions.

  

Kirk decides it’s time to confront Anton Karidian for the truth. When confronted Karidian doesn’t outright deny that he is Kodos but instead he gives cryptic answers to Kirk’s questions.  When asked directly if he is Kodos Karidian responds that if Kirk thinks that he is Kodos then he is.  He points out that he is an actor and he has played many parts.  Kirk has him read aloud so he can record his voice and make comparisons with recordings taken from Kodos.  The speech Kirk has him read is the one that was given before the great crime was committed. 

Face to face with the monster of his childhood.

"The revolution is successful. But survival depends on drastic measures. Your continued existence represents a threat to the well-being of society. Your lives mean slow death to the more valued members of the colony. Therefore, I have no alternative but to sentence you to death. Your execution is so ordered, signed Kodos, Governor of Tarsus IV."

Kirk points out him that he hardly had to look at the paper before reading the statement which Karidian simply responds that he learns his lines well.  Before he leaves Lenore confronts Kirk for his apparent betrayal. 

The voice prints match but not exactly, Kirk still is unsure to Karidian’s actual identity.  Spock however disagrees, he feels the evidence both gathered and circumstantial is enough to arrest Karidian on suspicion of being Kodos.  Kirk still says he has to be absolutely certain for making his move.  At this point Spock should mention there’s no real such thing as absolute certainty but he doesn’t choose to argue the point.

The play however is still on and the company is going to perform Hamlet for the crew.  While getting ready to leave McCoy’s logging in his journal that he wants to keep Riley as far away from both of the Karidains as it is suspected that Anton is Kodos.  Riley overhears him, grabs a phaser and heads down to confront the nemesis from his childhood who murdered members of his family.  McCoy tells Kirk and Kirk instantly knows what Riley intends to do.

Kirk stops Riley

While Karidian is performing Riley is aiming to kill him with a phaser blast.  Kirk however shows up with a security team and talks the Lieutenant down.   Nevertheless as Riley allows himself to be taken Kirk hears the two Karidians talking.  Anton is horrified by his daughter’s confession that she has been killing the potential witnesses against him.  Breaking down Anton looks at her to tell her that she was the only thing that was never affected by the horror that he had committed.  As she sees Kirk and his security team arrive she runs and grabs a phaser from one of the officers and she aims that phaser the Captain but she fails to kill him.  At the last moment her father throws himself in front of the phaser blast saving Kirk and is fatally wounded.  As he lay dying she reads to him from Act II of Shakespeare’s Hamlet “The play's the thing/Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king.”

Murderess revealed 

In the aftermath with Kodos dead everything seems to return to normal aboard the Enterprise.  Dr. McCoy gives an update on Lenore apparently she’s been found to be mentally unstable and she’s being treated at a Federation penal colony hospital.  Lenore still thinks her father is off giving great performances.  McCoy seems to write this off as a happy ending considering what we last saw from a Federation prison hospital I’m not so sure that’s the case.

Additional thoughts: This episode is one of the great ones, not a lot of magnificent science fiction here, but it sure makes you think.  The character of Kodos the Executioner is a fascinating one.  In the post title I compared him to Hitler but in reality that’s not fair at all.  Kodos never wanted to kill anybody and might have never killed anyone had it not been for the emergency famine.  Kodos feels tremendously guilty for what he did and spends his entire life running from it.  Although he is still defensive and thinks he made was the right decision and all would agree had the rescue ships not arrived early or in his view not early enough.  He feels cheated and judge wrongly hence what he runs away, fakes his death, and tries to live out a normal life in a different career capacity.  Or maybe he always had a passion for acting and he use the opportunity of having to start his life over to try something he always wanted to anyway.   

I wish we knew more details of the crime Kodos committed.  The episode goes back and forth on what part of it was bad.  They point out that it was unnecessary as the relief ships arrived early so he killed all those people for nothing.  However had those ships not shown up were his actions still wrong?  Elsewhere in the episode it is pointed out that in the executions the choice of who lived and who died was selected out solely by him on an individual level and that was what made it particularly evil.  Okay so they say randomly killed 4,000 people that would’ve been fine?  But because he was selective about it that is what made it wrong?  We’re not even told what his criteria for survival even was only that had to do with eugenics, however that is very broad answer and could mean almost anything.  If 4,000 people have to die I failed to see why it’s wrong to be selective about it and I don’t see killing people at random to be any more of a virtuous idea. 

There are bit of plot holes in this episode. For one they keep referring to the nine witnesses that could identify Kodos but we see Kirk doing a photo comparison between Karidian and Kodos.  So if we have photos of him why are the witnesses even necessary?  At points they seem to refer that they actually witnessed the crime itself.  But we also have audio recordings of Kodos giving the final command.  What are these witnesses for?  How does killing them protect him?  How good of witnesses are these? Kirk is unsure the whole time despite the fact he was probably 14 when the whole thing went down and should’ve been a reliable witness.  Riley would’ve been about four when this happens so how reliable could he be?  Maybe Lenore just has her father’s luck and that she kills people but it later turns out to be unnecessary.

The Final Fate of Kodos the Executioner 

Oh and the Shakespeare references not only do we get in that of the title of the episode but they are littered throughout.  In the beginning we get Anton and Lenore Karidian playing the roles of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. Now as awkward as it is for a father and daughter to be playing husband-and-wife it is a great clue to the ultimate plot twist.  Anton/Kodos, like Macbeth, is a reluctant murder as I stated earlier he doesn’t really want to kill anyone.  He only did so when fate forced his hand.   Lenore is quite different killing her father’s potential witnesses seem to quite excite her, she proclaimed to Kirk that she gladly would wipe out an entire planet just to save her father. This makes her more evil like Lady Macbeth who wanted her husband to commit murder so to advance his career. And how ironic was it that it was she who accidentally killed her father when he got in way of the phaser blast meant for Captain Kirk.  Lenore nicknamed “the Caesar of the Stars” then continues to reference the play Julius Caesar to Captain Kirk.  When he arrived to their final confrontation she looks at him and says “tell the Senate Caesar art come.”  Referencing the line where Caesar chooses to go to the Senate house where he will be assassinated.

On a lighter note there are some other things I noticed that were smaller but nonetheless enjoyable.  One of them was Captain Kirk’s conversation with the Captain of the Astro-Queen. I love the Kirk has such a reputation throughout the Federation that he was able to get a favor from the freighter captain because the captain owed him a dozen.  It was one of those untold tales of Star Trek that add such richness to their characters.

So what’s with all these former navigators leaving that post to come work under Uhura?  Is she this great boss to have and everyone wants to work for her directly?  In the previous episode we saw Lieutenant Farrell filling in for her directly and now Riley is said to be in communications as well.  Also shouldn’t Riley be the last person who Kirk wants to put in engineering?  Doesn’t he remember the damage that Riley caused last time he was there? Now granted he was infected with the Naked Virus but so what? Just strikes me is bad luck.  Also allowed to eat on the job?  I never noticed anyone mowing down on the bridge, but Riley has a full plate of food with him as he sits in engineering.  Why doesn't he go to the mess hall after a shift like everybody else?  Then there is the slow uniform change if Riley and Farrell have moved over to communications shouldn’t they be switching from gold to red?  Maybe it takes a while for the new uniforms come in so that the sport their old ones?  That would explain why Sulu’s fill-in was still in a red uniform whereby rights he should’ve been in the gold one.

In the end this was a great episode.  I wish later in the series they would address Captain Kirk's reaction to the fact that he owes his life to Kodos the Executioner. 

FINAL GRADE 5 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