I think this episode can be summed up with one phrase, “Frank Gorshin with his face painted black on one side and white on the other.” I think that alone provides enough insight into just how low the bar was now set for scripts. So, there is a planet blah, blah, blah where some of the people are black on the right side and white on the left side and the rest of the people have the colors reversed. And one group is the elite and the other group is oppressed as a lesser race. Gee I wonder where the writer came up with that idea?
Oh, it’s pointless to go through this thing. In synopsis, Kirk is trying to referee two of these zebra people. One is a lawman trying to extradite his fugitive back to their planet for punishment. He uses his magical brain powers to force the ship to go where he wants it. Kirk holds him off temporarily by using the destruct sequence. But the alien lawman then deactivates the sequence. Finally, they get to the world and everyone is dead. They killed each other off to the last striped individual. Now get an even stupider sequence. We are subjected to Spock narrating the two striped boobs chasing each other through the ship, “He has passed rec room 3. He’s drinking from water fountain H42B. He’s taking a bathroom break at urinal U13.5.” And both runners look like they’ve been sprinting for a week instead of just jogging in a relatively small ship.
Frank Gorshin and his prey transport off the Enterprise and continue their pursuit on their dead world. Uhura and Kirk mumble some inanities about all the two men have left is their hate.
I object to this episode because it lacks sensitivity toward penguins and zebras which are both species that are black and white. Wouldn’t it have been better if the men were half blue and half green? Although aren’t there some parrots that are blue and green? Oh, what’s an anti-racist to do?
This episode sucks. I give it a 0 // 0. And that’s even though I liked the destruct sequence bit. The rest of it was actually in the negative rating range.
