Tag: sci-fi

Star Trek – The Original Series – Complete Series Review – Season 1 Episode 22 – Space Seed

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I have previously reviewed this episode as part of ShatnerKahn I.  But I think it is desirable to provide a standard treatment for all the Star Trek episodes so I will follow the usual procedure here.

The Enterprise encounters a derelict space ship drifting slowly through space and identifies it as an old Earth vessel from the 1990s.  Upon scanning it they find signs of life and board it.  They discover the crew to be in suspended animation.  Upon rescuing the leader from his sleep they discover that the crew are eugenically produced supermen who were forced to flee Earth after their dictatorships were overthrown.

Their Leader Khan Noonien Singh, played by the inimitable Ricardo Montalban, dissembles his intentions and seduces crewmember Lt. Marla Mcgivers into assisting him in capturing the Enterprise in order to aid his people in finding and conquering an Earth colony for their new home.  The supermen quickly overwhelm the crew and Khan puts Kirk in a vacuum chamber and threatens to suffocate him if one of the crew does not assist him in his plan.  We get a view of Kirk gasping like an out of water goldfish which will earn this episode a very healthy Shatner mockery score.  But McGivers repents of her mutiny and saves Kirk from the death trap.  With the assistance of Mr. Spock Kirk is able to use knockout gas to subdue the mutineers.  But Khan escapes to the engine room and is causing an engine overload that would destroy the whole ship when Kirk arrives for their showdown.  Khan starts by prying Kirk’s phaser out of his hand and then bending it into a curve with his bare hands.  And here Khan makes his famous taunt.  He says, “Captain, I have five times your strength!” in his unique Ricardo Montalban enunciation.  Khan proceeds to toss Kirk around the engine room like a rag doll while Kirk attempts some pretty rudimentary martial arts moves.  I’m not 100% sure but I believe there was a stunt double for Shatner in some of the acrobatics.  But naturally Kirk fights dirty.  He grabs a metal rod and starts hammering Khan in the head and back until he passes out.

In the final scene Kirk convenes a court and dismisses all charges against the supermen if they will agree to exile on a deserted and inhospitable planet.  When asked if he accepts the offer Khan asks Kirk if he knows his Milton.  Kirk nods in understanding.  Then Kirk gives Mcgivers a choice; go into exile with Khan or stand trial for mutiny.  She eagerly accepts exile.

Scotty pleads shameful ignorance as a Scot for not knowing the Milton reference and Kirk explains that in Paradise Lost, Lucifer declares that he would rather reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.  The show ends up with Spock and Kirk wondering what they would find if they were able to come back in a hundred years and see what fruit had grown “from the seed” they were now sowing.

This is one of the quintessential Star Trek episodes.  Kirk is out macho-ed by Khan.  Spock gets to act appalled by the humans’ clear admiration for Khan’s obviously authoritarian methods, to which charge Kirk admits and explains humans have a primitive streak that allows them to admire an enemy for his strength.  In these days of #metoo Khan would never be allowed to rough up McGivers as he does to dominate her into helping him.  Of course, he also plays with her hair quite a bit so he is a romantic too.  One of the ludicrous things about the episode is Kirk giving Khan access to the ship technical manuals.  These allow Khan to capture the ship.  I mean come on!  What part of superman is hard to understand?  Couldn’t he have just given him a game of free-cell to keep him from getting bored?

Kirk’s fight with Khan is also classic.  His shirt manages not to get shredded but he has several awkward and lame looking judo holds that helps qualify this episode for a decent Shatner mockery score.  And above all there is Montalban.  He struts and brags and mocks Kirk for being inferior in all ways.  It’s quite entertaining.

Let’s give this a 9 for the episode and a 7 for Shatner mockery.  9  //  7.  Well done Ricardo.

Star Trek – The Original Series – Complete Series Review – Season 1 Episode 21 – The Return of the Archons

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The Enterprise is investigating the 100-year-old disappearance of an Earth ship called the Archon.  They are in orbit around a planet called Beta III.  Now first of all it’s a hundred years later who gives a damn?  Second of all they send down Sulu and some other guy.  As everyone knows Sulu is the lamest character except for Nurse Chapel.  Anyway, he returns from the planet having been brain washed into a state of placid stupidity.  He talks about Landru as if of a deity.

Kirk, Spock, McCoy and a couple of red shirts go down to the planet and observe the population acting the way Sulu did.  But while looking for a place to stay they observe a ritual insanity where at the stroke of 6 pm all the younger people go on a rampage smashing windows and ravishing the very cooperative women.  But at the stroke of 6 am everyone returns to their normal placid behavior and resume normal life.

Kirk and Spock figure out that the population is controlled by a force that calls itself Landru.  Landru was an historical figure from six thousand years earlier who reformed their civilization into the placid soulless existence it currently has.  The system is monitored by Landru’s robed priests who can deal out deadly force.  At the same time the Enterprise reports that a powerful heat ray is threatening the ship.  All the ship’s power is needed to power the deflectors but because of this, the ship’s orbit will soon decay and destroy the ship.

Finding allies among the native population, Kirk and Spock finally identify that the Landru controlling the planet is actually a six-thousand-year-old computer that has Landru’s knowledge and plan.  But Kirk argues the computer into knowing that the Landru life system is actually a living death and therefore it blows itself up.

This is the first mention of the non-interference prime directive and, of course, the first occurrence of Kirk ignoring it.  Also, Kirk’s ability to talk computers into destroying themselves is an often-repeated plot device that will be seen over and over.  But because these are the first occurrences, I’ll give this episode the pride of place.  Let’s call this a 7.  There is no Shatner mockery to speak of so let’s give the overall score of 7 // 1.

Star Trek – The Original Series – Complete Series Review – Season 1 Episode 20 – Court Martial

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Kirk is on trial for the wrongful death of one of his officers.  Lt. Commander Finney, the records officer, was in an ion pod (whatever that is) during an ion storm and according to the Enterprise’s computer telemetry Kirk jettisoned the pod prematurely before a red alert was declared.  The court martial featured one of Kirk’s old girlfriends as the prosecutor and Elisha Cook Jr. as his defense attorney.  We see a video clip of Kirk jettisoning the pod before the red alert status occurs.  This evidence seems to seal Kirk’s fate.  After this scene we hear Kirk telling Spock that at least Spock’s next captain might not be able to beat Spock at chess.  After hearing this Spock raises an eyebrow.

In the next scene we see Spock in his cabin playing chess against the computer.  McCoy enters and berates Spock for his unfeeling frivolous actions while Kirk’s career is in jeopardy.  Spock explains that he has just beaten the computer five times in a row.  Even McCoy recognizes that this is an impossibility.  They rush down to the trial and Kirk’s lawyer reconvenes the trial on the Enterprise where we learn that Finney is not dead but hidden on the Enterprise and is responsible for faking the accusatory video evidence against Kirk.  In a climactic scene Kirk fights Finney and after a vicious shirt tearing fight defeats Finney and saves the Enterprise from crashing by pulling loose a couple of electrical cables.

As silly as this episode sounds it was actually fun.  Seeing Shatner calmly shrug off the cold shoulder he was getting from his peers at the star base where the trial was taking place was interesting.  And Elisha Cook Jr. was amusing as the eccentric lawyer who preferred paper books to computer files.  The courtroom drama was fairly entertaining.  All in all, I’d say it was a 7.

 

The Shatner mockery index was low.  It really didn’t break a 4.

7 // 4

Star Trek – The Original Series – Complete Series Review – Season 1 Episode 19 – Tomorrow is Yesterday

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In this episode the Enterprise is inexplicably sent back in time by getting too close to a “black star.”  I guess that’s supposed to be a black hole.  They find themselves in Earth’s upper atmosphere above Cape Kennedy right before the first moon shot.  A jet fighter is sent up to investigate the “UFO.”  The Enterprise locates the fighter jet, and fearing that it might have a nuclear weapon, grabs it with a tractor beam.  But this destroys the plane and the pilot is beamed aboard the Enterprise to save his life.

Spock informs Kirk that the pilot cannot be released back to Earth because his knowledge of the Enterprise would alter history.  But then Spock discovers that the pilot’s yet-to-be-born son will be an important man in the future of space exploration.  Therefore, the pilot must be returned or that would change history.

After that Kirk and Sulu beam down to an Air Force base to retrieve evidence from the wreckage of the jet that would prove the Enterprise was a real UFO.  This leads to another man being beamed aboard the Enterprise.  At this point the writers put the plot mercifully to bed.  The Enterprise would fly very fast toward the sun ending up even farther back in the past and then “slingshot” back out and start going forward in time.  Somehow, when they reached the time where each of the men captured from the past had been affected by the Enterprise they would be beamed into the spot where their bodies were.  So, we see the pilot in his plane and suddenly we see the appearance of someone being beamed into his location.  But somehow after the beaming occurs the pilot no longer remembers anything about the Enterprise and goes about his mission and returns to Earth.

And the Enterprise hurtles into the future at faster than Warp Factor 8 and in order to prevent overshooting their “present,” Scotty puts on the brakes and the crew pitches back and forth in their chairs.  They’ve made it home and everyone is happy.

So, this is the first-time travel episode.  So that’s something.  But it’s kind of meh.  The pretense of a rationale for how they went back in time and the even flimsier logic for how they retuned wouldn’t convince the lowliest of geeks.  Spock and Bones bickering about the fate of Kirk during his burglary is kind of contrived and silly.

As for Shatner mockery points, he does get a scene where he has a fist fight with three or four Air Force servicemen.  He gets to roll around a bit and throw some pretty phony looking punches.  But it’s also nothing to write home about.

If you’re interested in the nostalgia of seeing the Enterprise interact with 1960s Americans, I could throw an extra point in and call this a six.  Put that together with the Shatner score and I’ll call this a 6 // 5.

Star Trek – The Original Series – Complete Series Review – Season 1 Episode 18 – Arena

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The Enterprise reaches the Cestus III Outpost and after Kirk and company beam down, they find they have been lured into a trap.  The outpost has been destroyed and the enemy attacks the Enterprise landing party.  Kirk and Spock fight off the attack and once back on the Enterprise chase the enemy into unexplored territory.  But before they can overtake their target both ships are frozen in place and a voice announces that an outside entity, the Metrons, is putting a stop to the fight.  Because the Metrons consider the violence exhibited by the Humans and Gorns (the name of the race on the enemy ship) as barbaric they will minimize the destruction.  Kirk and the Gorn captain will be transported to a barren planet where their personal combat will decide which of the two ships will be destroyed and which will be spared.

The Gorn and Kirk show up on a barren planet that looks a lot like southern California.  The Gorn looks like and is a man in a really phony rubber dinosaur suit.  It turns out the Gorn is inhumanly strong and tough but pathetically slow.  Kirk rolls a boulder on him but to no effect.  And just to put some drama into the situation, Kirk runs into a trap and injures his leg so the possibility that the Gorn might eventually catch him won’t seem completely implausible.

Kirk was given a device to record his thoughts during the trial but the Gorn is able to hear his every word and thereby judge how badly Kirk is hurt.  The Gorn offers to kill Kirk mercifully if he will stop running.  Kirk exchanges insults with the Gorn over their treachery at the   Cestus III Outpost.  But the Gorn claims that the base itself was an act of war by invading their territory.  Eventually the Enterprise bridge is also given an audio-visual transmission of the combat.  And so, Spock is able to annoyingly claim that the humans deserved to be wiped out for unknowingly settling Cestus III in enemy territory.  Also, he cheers on Kirk’s gradual identification of the ingredients for a weapon.  Kirk finds a bamboo cylinder, a rope-like vine, potassium nitrate, sulphur, coal and large sharp diamond crystals.  He converts these into a makeshift firearm.  Just in the (painfully slow} nick of time, he shoots the Gorn.  But instead of finishing him off with the Gorn’s own stone knife, Kirk calls to the Metrons and refuses the kill.  An effeminate young man in a khiton shows up and congratulates Kirk for only being a semi-savage.  He tells Kirk that he will release the Gorn ship and promises to check back with humanity in a few thousand years when they may be ready to dialog with his people.

Kirk returns to the Enterprise and the ship mysteriously finds itself 500 parsecs away from their former position.  Kirk and Spock muse on their changed ideas about the definition of civilization.

Okay, so this is mostly an amusing episode.  The only thing that really annoys me is the idea that Kirk, Spock and McCoy think that if humans accidentally colonized an uninhabited planet that turns out to be in some other race’s home range that they deserve to be massacred.  This is just so self-hating that I would expect it to come from Picard but not Kirk.

That aside, watching Kirk fight a man in a rubber dinosaur suit in slow-motion can’t be anything but comedy gold.  Shatner rolls around and grimaces and gives us a great show.  The Gorn hisses like a snake so he can be heard like a half a mile away.  It’s wonderful.

I’ll give this episode a 9 // 8.

Star Trek – The Original Series – Complete Series Review – Season 1 Episode 17 – The Squire of Gothos

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I’ve liked this episode since the time I saw the original broadcast.  The story can be considered science fiction but I prefer to think of it as comedy.

The Enterprise is in route to some star base when in the middle of a starless void they detect a planet where none should be.  Attempting to avoid it both Sulu and Kirk disappear from the bridge.  Spock assumes command and even the planet has a poisonous atmosphere he beams down a rescue party headed by McCoy.  They find themselves in an Earth-normal environment and enter a building that appears to be a medieval castle.  There they find Sulu and Kirk statue-like in an apparent stasis.  Then they hear someone playing the harpsichord and someone calling himself General Trelayne, the Squire of Gothos, introduces himself to them and releasing Kirk and Sulu to consciousness invites the crew to be his guests.  But guest is just a euphemism for captive.  He toys with the crew members but meanwhile Spock has located Kirk and company on the planet and beams them to the Enterprise.  Trelayne shows up on the bridge of the Enterprise and returns Kirk and the landing party back to Gothos.  He also adds Spock and Kirk’s new Yeoman Teresa Rose who, of course, is a fetching blonde played by an actress named Venita Wolf.

Realizing that Trelayne doesn’t intend to release them Kirk figures out an escape plan.  He guesses that the device that Trelayne uses to perform the various miraculous transformations of matter and energy is hidden in the ornamental mirror in the castle hall.  Kirk uses Trelayne dancing with Yeoman Ross as an excuse to challenge Trelayne to a duel.  When Trelayne fires his pistol into the air Kirk diverts his own shot to destroying the mirror and the mechanism behind it.  Transporting back to the ship while Trelayne is powerless Kirk orders the Enterprise depart the vicinity of Gothos at top speed but before he can warp out of the system, they observe the planet Gothos somehow in front of them again.  After several more futile attempts at escape Kirk heads back to the planet instructing Spock to wait a short time and then leave the system at full speed.

Trelayne is dressed as an English magistrate and he condemns Kirk to death for treason.  But Kirk convinces him that hanging would be boring and instead Trelayne should hunt Kirk for an exciting experience.  While Kirk is hiding, he tries desperately to call the Enterprise on his communicator and tell them to run while Trelayne is distracted but the signal is blocked.  Finally, Trelayne traps Kirk and prepares to kill him with a sabre.  But Kirk knocks the sword out of Trelayne’s hand and slaps him in the face calling him a child.  Just then two voices, a man’s and a woman’s, are heard and Kirk and Trelayne look up to see two shining globes of light.  The voices come from these globes and they turn out to be energy beings and in fact Trelayne’s parents.  They berate Trelayne for mistreating his “predators,” meaning the enterprise crew, and tell him that play time is over and he must come home.  Then Trelayne assumes the tone and diction of a petulant child who doesn’t want to quit playing.  He tells his parents that they promised him he could have Gothos for his plaything and that he was winning against Kirk.  The voices continue to berate him and repeat, “No Trelayne,” to all his entreaties. At least he keeps repeating, “But I woulda won,” over and over again as he slowly fades away.  Afterwards, the voices apologize to Kirk for their son’s misbehavior and promise to let him return to the enterprise without further interference.

Back on the bridge Spock asks Kirk how Trelayne should be characterized in their report.  When Spock rejects the title of God of War, Kirk suggests a little boy, and a very naughty little boy at that.

As I stated above, I’ve always enjoyed this episode as a pure comedy and nothing else.  The Trelayne character is enjoyable as a selfish petulant child who loves play acting and posturing.  There’s nothing much to this story but the clash of Trelayne’s and Kirk’s personalities and even that is just a pretense to allow Trelayne to perform his tour de force.  There is the pretty girl hanging around which is nice.  But these things and the payoff joke at the end are enough.  I give this a 9.  On the Kirk side, he does a shoulder roll or two and some minor acrobatics but nothing really embarrassing so let’s call it a 9 // 2.

Star Trek – The Original Series – Complete Series Review – Season 1 Episode 16 – The Galileo Seven

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The Enterprise is on a mission to deliver medical supplies to a planet that is being ravaged by a plague.  But on route they find a quasar-like object and since these are a high priority of the Enterprise, they send out a shuttle craft (the Galileo Seven of the title) with a crew that includes Spock, McCoy and Scott.  But as soon as the shuttle craft nears the object, the radiation from the quasar drives the shuttle craft off target and damages its communication and navigation controls.

Meanwhile back on the Enterprise Kirk is aware that the shuttle craft has gone missing and that locating and rescuing the crew will be extremely difficult.  On top of this they have on board, Commissioner Farris, whose mission it is to ensure that the Enterprise delivers the medical supplies on time and he has put Kirk on notice that one minute past the scheduled time Farris will assume command of the Enterprise and force it to leave the shuttle crew to perish.

Meanwhile the shuttle craft has crash landed on a planet that is inhabited by twelve-foot tall cave men who hurl equally gigantic spears with deadly force.  Within minutes of landing one of the red shirts is speared.  Spock shows no sorrow for this death and gains the animosity of most of the crew.  When a second crewman is killed by the cave men because of Spock’s ineffective leadership there is almost open revolt and Spock is almost shocked by how poorly his logical approach has fared.

And on the Enterprise the crew has been carrying out a systematic but hopeless search for the shuttle craft on the planet.  Commissioner Farris spends all of his face time badgering Kirk and performing a countdown to their departure time.  He truly is an annoying jerk.  Finally, time runs out and Kirk begins leaving the solar system at slowest speed.

After discovering that their fuel is depleted, they have Scotty repower the shuttle with the phasers they’ve been using to fight off the cave men.  They determine that the power will allow them to reach orbit.  But when the cave men start to attack the ship, they sacrifice some of the power for a high-powered lift off and now barely have enough power to reach orbit.  Based on schedule they know that the Enterprise has already left orbit but Spock decides to forfeit their ability to stay in orbit for a chance to attract the Enterprise’s attention with a rapid burn off of their fuel, basically a flare.  And of course, it works and at the very last minute as the shuttle craft is burning up in re-entry, the shuttle crew is rescued by the transporter.

The episode is centered on the shortcomings of a leader who does not have empathy in his psyche.  Spock is unable to inspire confidence in his crew and his lack of understanding of how the illogical cave men will react results in the death of one of his men.  But finally, when fiery death was staring him in the face he resorted to a desperate intuitive plan and succeeded.  All of this was slightly interesting.  But at the end of the episode when Spock and McCoy are on the bridge with Kirk and he refuses to admit that he acted illogically they accuse him of being stubborn and he agrees.  Then they all start laughing as if this was something hilarious.  This looked incredibly phony.

Alright, so what do I do with this episode?  This is one of those psychological episodes so I should probably go easy on the set up.  But the planetary scenery and the cave men and their artifacts look as incredibly hokey as anything seen on Star Trek.  Then there is the annoying Commissioner counting down the minutes and Kirk snapping back at him in frustration.  But the crew growling at Spock and his incompetent leadership are kind of amusing.  Let’s say a score of 6.  As for Shatner, his only chance for bad acting is the fake laughing at the end of the episode.  But that’s hardly a stellar performance for him.  I’ll say 6 // 4.

Star Trek – The Original Series – Complete Series Review – Season 1 Episode 15 – Shore Leave

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Shore Leave is sort of a fantasy episode wrapped in a sci-fi costume.  It was written by Theodore Sturgeon who was a very good, very unconventional science fiction author of the time.  But from my point of view this story is just an excuse to allow the cast to run around and emote.  Accordingly, it will have a lower episode score but a higher Shatner mockery score.

The Enterprise is exploring a new planet that needs cataloging.  The crew including Captain Kirk are extremely weary from recent emergencies that they have encountered during their extended mission.  Kirk is considering using this seemingly idyllic planet as a location for shore leave for the crew.  During the exploration the landing party encounters some inexplicably strange things.  McCoy meets the White Rabbit and Alice from Wonderland.  When Captain Kirk beams down with his new yeoman, a fetching young woman named Tonia Barrows who is a worthy successor to Yeoman Janice Rand, they also begin to run into impossible things.  Yeoman Barrows is manhandled by a swashbuckling man who resembles her idea of the womanizer Don Juan.  Kirk meets his nemesis from Starfleet Academy, an upperclassman named Finnegan, who back then, tormented him with practical jokes.  Sulu finds a pistol that he has always wanted to try and meets a samurai who chases him with a sword.  Other landing party members are chased by a tiger and strafed by a WW II fighter plane.  And finally, after Yeoman Barrows puts on a medieval princess’s ball gown Doctor McCoy is run through with the lance of a knight on a black charger.

Mr. Spock beams down to inform the landing party that a mysterious force is draining the Enterprise of energy.  He surmises that the strange encounters are some kind of manufactured creations meant to give life to the thoughts that the various crewmen are thinking at the time.  Finally, Kirk chases down Finnegan and they have an epic fist fight after which Spock notes that Kirk very much enjoyed giving Finnegan the comeuppance he earned long ago.  Spock theorizes that the phenomena are meant to be amusements for the participants.  But Kirk reminds him that McCoy is dead.

At this point a man in a long funny robe shows up and tells them he is the caretaker of this world and that his people use it as an amusement park on which to relax.  When Kirk complains that McCoy is dead, of course, McCoy walks back into the scene accompanied by two chorus girls wearing some feathers here and there and each holding onto one of his arms.  Yeoman Barrows who has shown some proprietary interest in McCoy demands an explanation for the girls and McCoy confirms that he happened to be thinking of a cabaret and the dancers just showed up.  The caretaker confirms that no permanent damage will happen on this pleasure world and offers to Kirk the opportunity for his crew to take a greatly needed shore leave and he agrees.

I am of two minds about the intrinsic merits of this episode.  It is somewhat amusing in a broad and casual way.  But I think it goes overboard.  The plot is clearly absurd.  And it’s a departure from the story arc of the series.  The thin plot is fleshed out with the landing party running back and forth reacting to all the strange people and things they encounter.  I’d give it a score of 6 for the episode rank.

But for Shatner mockery it gets points for the fist fight with Finnegan.  Shatner gives of his best.  He rolls around in the dirt and flips and tumbles all over the place.  He even manages to rip away half of his shirt.  And while he doesn’t give us any of his most spastic facial expressions, he does give us a fair number of overwrought expressions and exclamations.  Let’s give it a 7 on the Shatner scale.

So, there we are,  6 // 7.  That’s makes it a fairly balance experience for the Star Trek connoisseur.

Star Trek – The Original Series – Complete Series Review – Season 1 Episode 14 – Balance of Terror

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Another good episode with no Shatner mockery score worth mentioning.  In this episode, the Enterprise is operating close to the Romulan Neutral Zone and has to come in aid of the border surveillance bases that the Federation maintains there.  The Romulans have been quiet since a war fought a century ago but a distress call reveals that an invisible ship has destroyed three of the bases.  Surveilling the mystery ship at a distance Kirk discovers that the Romulans have a cloaking device that makes their ship almost indetectable and they have a super weapon that no shield can stop.  But he also finds their weaknesses.  While cloaked the ship cannot use its weaponry and the Romulan ship does not possess warp drive but must proceed at the slow speeds of an impulse engine.  While eavesdropping on a Romulan transmission they discover that Romulans look like Vulcans and are indeed an offshoot of Mr. Spock’s home planet.  And he informs Kirk that these people are not like the modern logical peaceful Vulcans but instead are fearsome warriors.

Kirk and the Romulan commander play a cat and mouse game in which each tries to anticipate the actions of the other and get the advantage needed to survive.  There are several twists and turns and also tension within the Enterprise as an officer whose family was decimated during the century old war with the Romulans suspects Mr Spock of loyalties toward his distant kinsmen.

For fans of old WW II submarine movies, you’ll see some of the same tactics used here.  At one point the enemy jettisons some materials as debris to fool the Enterprise into thinking the Romulan ship had been destroyed.  In another scene silent running is used to fool the enemy into thinking the Enterprise is incapacitated.

The whole episode is very capably scripted and the acting is some of the best seen in the series.  The actor who plays the Romulan Commander, Mark Lenard went on to play Spock’s father in a later episode and in several of the movies.  The interplay between Kirk and the Romulan Commander is the highlight of the show and the final conversation between them is an excellent set piece that Shatner performed admirably and in an unusually understated style.  No exaggerated emoting going on.

This is a 9//0 episode.  Well done.

Star Trek – The Original Series – Complete Series Review – Season 1 Episode 13 – The Conscience of the King

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This episode is essentially a murder mystery story.  Kirk is the detective and the members of the crew and a band of traveling Shakespearean actors are the props.  The leader of the acting troupe is suspected by Kirk of being a mass murderer who slaughtered four thousand of his citizens where he was a colony leader.  The only surviving witnesses who can identify the murderer are Kirk and Lt. Riley of the Enterprise.  The biggest complication is that, of course, the suspect’s daughter is a buxom blonde that has caught Jim Kirk’s eye.

Other than the love interest, which is slightly tedious, the Shakespearean motif is relatively amusing, with chunks of Macbeth and Hamlet slung around at slightly appropriate moments.  Spock is alarmed by the Captain’s secretive and erratic behavior and McCoy is his usual contrary self.  Outside of the plot we are regaled with Lt. Uhura singing something Star Treky and we are given one last walk through by Yeoman Janice Rand on the bridge.  Apparently she was fired shortly before this episode and this was her swan song.  A pity.  She was pretty.

The plot and the love story resolve themselves as the guilty receive poetic justice and madness and death are the fruits of murder.  I’d give the story a 7.  Shatner has almost no opportunity to perform any tumbling, bare chested gymnastics or over the top histrionics.  I’ll call it a 1 on the Shatner mockery scale.  That a 7 // 1.  Not too bad.