Okay let\u2019s get through the plot outline really quick.\u00a0 Three survivors of a god-like race that destroyed itself a half a million years ago and who now exist as disembodied energy fields inside of spherical containers that allow them to survive for hundreds of millennia have summoned Captain Kirk to loan them three human bodies to allow them to manufacture android bodies by means of their advanced science.\u00a0 While the bodies are on loan the human minds of the volunteers will reside in the spheres.\u00a0 With these android bodies the ancient beings would be available to guide humanity around the pitfalls that had eventually destroyed their own advanced race.\u00a0 The head alien is Sargon.\u00a0 The second is his wife Thalassa and the third is, ridiculously enough, Sargon\u2019s mortal enemy Henoch.\u00a0 Sargon gets Kirk\u2019s body.\u00a0 Thallassa gets the body of Dr. Ann Mulhall (played by Diana Muldaur who might have the prettiest face of any actress to appear on the Star Trek series).\u00a0 And Henoch gets Spock\u2019s carcass.\u00a0 When the aliens inhabit the bodies of their human hosts, they cause the bodies to run hot.\u00a0 Their temperature rises to 104 degrees F and their heartbeat is dangerously high.\u00a0 For this reason, Henoch formulates a metabolic depressant to bring their readings back to human normal levels.\u00a0 But Henoch wants to kill Sargon and keep Spock\u2019s body permanently so he uses a poison to kill Sargon while he is inhabiting Kirk\u2019s body.\u00a0 McCoy manages to stabilize Kirk\u2019s body but Sargon is gone.\u00a0 Now Thallassa decides that she wants to keep Ann Mulhall\u2019s body and bargains with McCoy to cure Kirk\u2019s body of the poison and put his mind back in place in exchange for keeping the body she currently resides in.\u00a0 McCoy refuses and Thallassa tortures him for a while then relents and apologizes for allowing temptation to overcome her moral sense.\u00a0 Once she realizes her mistake Sargon\u2019s voice praises her for recognizing her mistake and then explains that he isn\u2019t dead (duh) but has taken up residence in the Enterprise (Where?\u00a0 The computer?\u00a0 The ventilation system?\u00a0 The plumbing?).\u00a0 He assures them that he will save Kirk himself and stop Henoch from taking over the Enterprise.\u00a0 McCoy is locked out of the sick bay and when he is let back in Kirk and Mulhall are back in their bodies, all three energy spheres are destroyed and Nurse Chapel looks like a zombie.\u00a0 McCoy laments that they destroyed Spock\u2019s mind when they destroyed the sphere he was in, but Kirk says it had to be done.\u00a0 McCoy is told to fill a syringe with enough poison to kill ten Vulcans and head to the bridge with Kirk, Mulhall and Chapel to kill Henoch.<\/p>\n
Henoch is on the bridge torturing Uhura and is just getting ready to start on Sulu when the good guys show up.\u00a0 But Henoch can read their minds and after freezing them in place he orders Nurse Chapel to inject McCoy with the poison.\u00a0 She starts to comply then injects Henoch instead.\u00a0 Registering surprise Henoch pleads with Sargon to allow him to switch bodies then collapses to the deck.<\/p>\n
The resolution is provided by the voice of Sargon.\u00a0 The poison wasn\u2019t a lethal dose.\u00a0 But since McCoy thought it was Henoch thought so too and thus fled Spock\u2019s body.\u00a0 At that point Sargon destroyed him.\u00a0 Suddenly Spock\u2019s body awakens and we find out that Spock\u2019s mind was sharing Nurse Chapel\u2019s body with her.\u00a0 Sargon informs Kirk that before Thallassa and Sargon allow themselves to fade into oblivion and be happy together forever (huh?) they\u2019d like to borrow Kirk\u2019s and Mulhall\u2019s bodies for a last hug and kiss.\u00a0 Permission is granted and after the clinch Kirk and Mulhall regain consciousness rapped in each-others\u2019 arms.\u00a0 Throat clearing and uniform straightening ensues.<\/p>\n
Where to start, where to start?\u00a0 Okay, so I\u2019m giving extra points because looking at Diana Muldaur\u2019s face is quite pleasant.\u00a0 Secondly, Nimoy portraying Henoch as a chuckling villain is kind of fun.\u00a0 I\u2019m deducting points because we didn\u2019t get to see Sulu tortured.\u00a0 But really the episode is mostly Shatner.\u00a0 And he gives generously of some of his hammiest best.\u00a0 When Sargon first takes over Kirk\u2019s body Shatner does a bunch of his spastic face and body contortions that only he can do so hilariously.\u00a0 Then in the reverb voice used for Sargon he tallies up the experiences of being in a body again for the first time in 500,000 years.\u00a0 \u201cLungs filling with oxygen, heart pumping, blood racing through arteries, eyes seeing.\u201d\u00a0 I was half expecting, \u201chair follicles receding on forehead, gall stones blocking bile duct, gastric ulcer tingling.\u201d\u00a0 Later on, Kirk calls a meeting of his officers to ask their opinion on allowing the body loan.\u00a0 When Scotty and McCoy object Shatner gives a version of his impassioned \u201cto boldly go where no man has gone before\u201d speech.\u00a0 What I noticed in the close up is that Shatner\u2019s head had gotten a lot fatter than it used to be earlier in the series.\u00a0 There must have been a lot of booze and cheeseburgers for Captain James T. Kirk over that first season and a half.\u00a0 And finally, Nurse Chapel had some kind of wig that was almost like a blond skull cap and made her look truly ghastly.\u00a0 I\u2019ve got to take some points off for that.\u00a0 So you can see this was a complex calculation.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m going to say \u00a0\u00a07 \/\/ 9.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Okay let\u2019s get through the plot outline really quick.\u00a0 Three survivors of a god-like race that destroyed itself a half a million years ago and<\/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":[237,4,244,2149,240],"tags":[2702,2150,2701,38,1355,44,309,265,1691,293,154,1692,837],"class_list":["post-12519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","category-sff","category-sff-tv-reviews","category-star-trek","category-tv-reviews","tag-diana-muldaur","tag-gene-roddenberry","tag-return-to-tomorrow","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