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

NEURAL NEUTRALIZER REALLY THAT BAD?

Episode Title:  Dagger of the Mind

Air Date: 11/3/1966

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

Directed by Vincent McEveety

Cast: William Shatner as Captain James T. Kirk    Leonard Nimoy as Lieutenant Commander Spock             DeForest Kelley as Dr. Leonard H. McCoy AKA “Bones”             Nichelle Nichols as Lieutenant Nyota Uhura             Marianna Hill as Dr. Helen Noel    Eddie Paskey as Lieutenant Leslie              Frank da Vinci as Lieutenant Brent        Larry Anthony as Transportation Man              John Arndt  as  Frist Crewman             James Gregory as Dr. Tristan Adams          Morgan Woodward  as Dr. Simon Van Gelder         Larry Anthony as Mr. Berkley                       Susanne Wasson as Lethe              Ed McCready as Inmate        Eliezer Behar as Therapist          Walt Davis as Tantalus message

Ships: USS Enterprise NCC-1701

Planets:  Tantalus V

My Spoiler filled summary and review:  The Enterprise is dropping off supplies to and picking up official records from the colony Tantalus V.  The transporter crew almost fails in this simple assignment until Captain Kirk reminds them that they can’t beam through shields.  Turns out that they picked up something more than records, a man sneaks out of the box and shows the transporter crew that they’re just as bad at fighting as they are at transporting through shields.

                Kirk when speaking to Mr. Spock and Dr. McCoy goes on to explain how he admires Dr. Tristan Evans, the chief medical director at Tantalus V.  Dr. Evans has turned prisons into hospitals where sick minds can be treated as opposed to simply imprisoned.  McCoy has his suspicions, while Mr. Spock seems to agree.  They get emergency call from the planet explaining that they have had a prisoner escape.  When Kirk confirms that the prisoner is aboard a ship wide manhunt begins.  However the prisoner makes his way to the bridge the phaser.  He demands asylum from Captain Kirk to protect him from his tormentors on the planet, Kirk can’t promise anything at phaser-point and Spock disables him a Vulcan nerve pinch. 

Captain Kirk doesn't make for a good hostage.

When the prisoner wakes up in sick bay he says some wild things to Dr. McCoy.  He says his name is Dr. Simon Van Geller and he is the assistant of Dr. Adams.  He claims that Adams was torturing him using a device called a neural neutralizer.  This is why he appears so messed up.  The problem however is that these accusations that he makes are also made in the company of other random statements that he utters in between his claims.  It’s hard to tell if what any he says is actually real.

When Kirk confronts Dr. Adams over the ship’s communication system, Adams, speaking from his asylum on the surface, has all the right answers.  He identifies who Dr. Van Gelder is and claims that he was doing some experiments and he tested them on himself.  They went wrong and this is why he went mad.

Kirk seems satisfied with this explanation, but Dr. McCoy doesn’t buy it.  He tells Kirk he would note his doubts in in his medical log which requires Captain Kirk to write a response.  Kirk decides to investigate the matter and asked Dr. McCoy to assign him someone from his staff with a background in psychology.   He assigns Dr. Helen Noel, who has the required background not only in her field but may have had a minor fling with Captain Kirk.

Dr. Helen Noel has a history with Captain Kirk

The two beam down to the facility on the planet and they get a tour from Dr. Tristan Adams himself.  Dr. Adams seems friendly and cooperative but as he shows them the facility Captain Kirk starts to have doubts about the nature of it, although Dr. Noel finds the facility even more to her approval as she sees it.   Eventually they are taken to the room with the neural neutralizer; Dr. Adams reminds them that is what damaged Van Geller.  Adams calls it a failed idea that they only use sparingly to help the most dangerous of inmates.  Kirk communicates with Spock to let him know that he will be spending a few days there.  This destabilizes and already upset Van Geller who claims they are in danger.

Adams explaining his operation to his guests.

Later that evening Kirk is still not satisfied with Adams’s explanation of the neural neutralizer.  If it was a failure why do they still use it at all?  He decides that he and Noel will have a look at it in private.  When they get to the room with the neural neutralizer Kirk decides to test it on himself with Noel on the controls.  When she successfully erases his memory of the first test and implants a feeling of hunger in him.  Kirk is really impressed with the efficiency of a machine that Adams had labeled a failure.

Kirk and Noel decided on another test and Noel chooses to plant a romantic evening with the two of them as a memory from the Christmas party last year.  Before she can finish however Dr. Adams and his assistants arrive, capture Noel, and Adams begins to use the device to torture Captain Kirk.  He has Kirk give up his phaser and communicator and he convinces Kirk that he is madly in love with Noel and that he can’t live without her.  Then he tortures him by occasionally referring to her as being gone.

Kirk under Adams's torture

Kirk and Noel are confined to his arranged quarters at the facility.  At first Kirk tries to embrace her but she tells him that it was all a trick of the machine that Dr. Adams had done to him.  Kirk comes up with a plan he has Noel go through the ventilation shaft so she get to the engineering room where she can cut the power.

Going through the ventilation system years before Die Hard made it cool.

Onboard the Enterprise, Mr. Spock decides to take a risk.  Vulcans have the power to mind meld which means they can with touch establish a telepathic connection with whom they are touching.  Spock gets permission from Van Geller to use this technique on him.  It is a risk because Mr. Spock has never performed a mind meld with a non-Vulcan before.  Using the mind meld he’s able to get the truth about Dr. Adams and also repair Dr. Van Geller for the damage that was inflicted on him by mad scientist.

Mind Meld

Adams and his assistants take Captain Kirk back to the neural neutralizer for more torture.  For some reason they don't seem to notice that Noel is gone, Adams must have had an obsession with Kirk.  Adams is positively gleeful in his torture of Captain Kirk, he points out how much stronger Kirk is then Van Geller.  How he can resist longer and how Van Geller was already begging him for relief at this point.  Fortunately for Captain Kirk at this very moment Noel reaches the engineering room and is able to cut the power.  Adams and his men rush in to the neural neutralizer room to restrain Kirk but it is at this moment where Captain Kirk unleashes upon them his fierce fighting skills unparalleled anywhere this side of the galaxy.  He dispatches Adams and his assistant with ease leaving Adams wounded in the room with a torture device.

Some of facility's security try to get the power back on but it turns out Noel also has great fighting abilities as well and is able to shove one of them into the control panel electrocuting him.  Mr. Spock beams down ahead of his security team to help get control of the situation.  When power is restored Kirk realizes Adams is in the room with the neural neutralizer.  They go to it's location, shut the machine off, and enter the room but they find the Adams has died of loneliness.  Kirk explains how the machine empties you out and that by being alone in there without even a tormentor for company is itself a fatal mix.

He's dead, Jim.

Back on the Enterprise, the crew receives word that the recovered Dr. Van Geller has been able to disassemble the machine and get the facility back on track.  Dr. McCoy has a hard time believing that someone could die of loneliness and Kirk just lets him know that he had to have been in that room to understand.

Additional thoughts: It is interesting to note that when the script was originally written it was Yeoman Janice Rand who is going to be accompanying Captain Kirk down to the asylum.   This was rewritten because even though the idea of Yeoman Rand having a crush on Kirk has already been a little explored at this point, another member of the crew might have a crush on the Captain isn’t entirely out of bounds. Creating the character of Dr. Helen Noel was a much better direction.  She is much more qualified than Yeoman Rand to inspect an asylum and it’s also nice to see people who work in the departments on the Enterprise who are not the head of that department.  We get to meet a doctor who isn’t Dr. McCoy.  Also we saw helmsman who wasn't Mr. Sulu, apparently it Mr. Sulu didn't have a shift on this adventure.

Kirk and Noel

What I also thought was interesting about this episode was how it really didn’t need to be a Star Trek episode.   You could’ve taken the same script change some of the characters around and made an episode of The Adventures of Superman, Man from U.N.C.L.E, or even Get Smart and it would’ve worked.

As for Dr. Adams he wasn’t a very impressive villain.  He was just creepy good off on torture he kind of reminds me of Ramsey Bolton from Game of Thrones but without the blood.  I mean when he had Captain Kirk under his control all he had to do was tell Kirk forget all the bad things he saw and make him give a glowing report on his Captain’s Log.  Then do the same with Dr. Helen Noel.  But no, like Ramsey, he had to play his games. If he planned this right every time a Federation official stopped by he could turn them into one of his mind slaves in overtime take control of the entire Federation.  But no, you like to play torture games. 

I feel bad for all the people at Starfleet Medical; Dr. Adams was one of their foremost researchers in the field of corrective medicine.  Then it turns out that he is himself a mentally disturbed person who gets off on torture.  Now they have to go over all his research in painstaking detail to determine at what point he flipped and what part of his research is still useful or maybe it might all have to be thrown out. Remember how Kirk so admired him in the beginning?  I bet medical students are studying this case well into the 24^th century.

In the end of the day is the neural neutralizer really that bad of an idea?  I mean yes it can get abused but that doesn’t mean it cannot have any legitimate function.  Many things that have legitimate functions can be abused and one abused the result can be horrible.  Look at phasers, 20^th century ovens, and drugs in general.  Those are legitimate things that can be horribly abused.

We saw when Captain Kirk and Dr. Noel were experimenting with the neural neutralizer it seemed to work fine in a limited capacity to which it was designed for.  Couldn’t they use it to fix all the damage that Dr. Adams caused?  Did Mr. Spock give everyone in the asylum of mind meld?  It doesn’t seem very practical.  Think of all the good you could do with one of these things under your control.

Just imagine yourself with this device and a truly evil and despicable person like a real life Ramsey Bolton under the devices power.

Evil person: “Ah, what is this?”
You: “Murder is wrong.  When you think about murdering you become very sad and you want to go home without hurting anyone at all.”
Evil person: “Murder is wrong.”
You: “Maiming is wrong.  When you think about maiming a person you become very sad and you want to go home without hurting anyone at all
Evil person: “Maiming is wrong.”
You: “Rape is wrong.  When you think about raping a person you become very sad and you want to go home without hurting anyone at all.”
From this point you continue on getting the truly disturbed individual to stop the physical assault, theft, and damage to embrace decency. 

Oh well sometimes neither the good guys nor the bad guys have any imagination.

FINAL GRADE: 3 of 5