Another comedic episode!\u00a0 The Enterprise travels to a world that was visited a century earlier by an early human space vessel that never returned to Earth.\u00a0 And since the world is almost a hundred light years from Earth, the radio messages from the original flight have just reached Earth.\u00a0 Now Kirk must determine whether the earlier contact has had any detrimental impact on the inhabitants.<\/p>\n
They contact the planet and are instructed by a local leader named Bela Oxmyx where to transport for a meeting.\u00a0 When Kirk, Spock and McCoy arrive they are taken prisoner by Oxmyx\u2019s men who are dressed as prohibition-era gangsters and armed with Thompson machine guns.\u00a0 While traveling to Oxmyx\u2019s office they are waylaid by a carload of rival gangsters who spray machine gun fire at them.\u00a0 We are shown that this world is a replica of 1920\u2019s America and organized as a constant war of gangs fighting it out for supremacy.\u00a0 When they get to Oxmyx\u2019s headquarters we find out that the earlier ship had left a book on 1920\u2019s gang history and the inhabitants of this world have adopted it as a textbook on how to organize their society.\u00a0 Oxmyx demands that Kirk provide him with a supply of phasers to allow him to conquer all his enemies and take over the whole planet.\u00a0 Kirk refuses and the three of them are taken prisoner.<\/p>\n
After that the story is a series of escapes and captures by Kirk, Spock and McCoy from Oxmyx and his rival, Jojo Krako, as they attempt to figure out a plan to repair the damage done to this world\u2019s culture.\u00a0 Eventually by using a show of force with the Enterprise\u2019s phaser weapon set on a wide area stun setting Kirk convinces the mob bosses that they are outmatched and must knuckle under to the Federation.\u00a0 He sets up Oxmyx as the head boss with Krako as his lieutenant and ends the violence between the gangs.\u00a0 And to make it seems legitimate to these criminals he demands 40% of the \u201caction\u201d from the mobsters that will be collected annually by a Starfleet vessel.<\/p>\n
Alright so that\u2019s the plot but it\u2019s just an excuse for a costume farce.\u00a0 And as that it\u2019s enjoyable and somewhat funny.\u00a0 Once Kirk figures out that he\u2019ll have to deal with the gangsters on their own terms he adopts an awful New York accent and starts using the gangster slang.\u00a0 \u201cWe\u2019ll put the bag on Krako;\u201d \u201cput him on ice;\u201d \u201cwe won\u2019t give you the heaters;\u201d and \u201cwe\u2019ll give you a piece of the action.\u201d \u00a0\u00a0Once he adopts this persona, even stealing some clothes from the mobsters for himself and Spock, Kirk (Shatner) hams it up and even attempts to get Spock to talk the slang with limited success.\u00a0 And, of course, these slips by Spock are for laughs which actually work.\u00a0 Later on, we get Spock critiquing Kirk\u2019s lack of skill driving a manual transmission automobile, which is also kind of funny.\u00a0 And the other bit is Kirk trying to convey instructions to Scotty over the communicator in this patois.\u00a0 Inevitably he has to translate it into normal English for Scotty.\u00a0 But when Scotty finally has one of the mob bosses on the Enterprise, he attempts to use some computer-based research into the period slang by threatening the boss with a pair of concrete galoshes.\u00a0 The mob boss looks contemptuous and asks him if he means cement overshoes.\u00a0 Scotty looks crestfallen but gives him his Scottish \u201caye.\u201d<\/p>\n
As I\u2019ve made clear previously, I consider any Star Trek episode that plays it for laughs as a welcome change.\u00a0 When the characters are actually allowed to make their characters somewhat three-dimensional it provides something to keep our interest.\u00a0 Nimoy playing Spock playing a gangster is probably as good as Spock is going to get.\u00a0 Even the very end of the episode goes for laughs.\u00a0 Back on the ship McCoy admits that he lost his communicator on the planet.\u00a0 Kirk acts alarmed and says based on this race\u2019s cleverness at reverse engineering things eventually they would come after the Federation and \u201cwant a piece of our action!\u201d\u00a0 There is a fair amount of \u201cBowery Boys\u201d style fight scenes that give Shatner a chance to embarrass himself but this episode is basically rated based on the success of the comedy.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ll call this an 8 \/\/ 4.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Another comedic episode!\u00a0 The Enterprise travels to a world that was visited a century earlier by an early human space vessel that never returned to<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2645,2150,38,1355,44,309,265,1691,293,154,1692,837],"class_list":["post-11981","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-a-piece-of-the-action","tag-gene-roddenberry","tag-review","tag-reviews","tag-sci-fi","tag-sci-fi-tv-review","tag-science-fiction","tag-sff-tv-show-reviews","tag-star-trek","tag-tv-review","tag-tv-reviews","tag-william-shatner"],"yoast_head":"\n