This the last episode of season 2.\u00a0 We are told at the beginning of the episode that the Enterprise has been sent back in time to 1968 by means of blah, blah, blah.\u00a0 They are there to do research.\u00a0 By a remarkable coincidence they intercept an enormously powerful transporter beam coming from 1,000 light years away.\u00a0 The beam deposits a seemingly human man holding a black cat.<\/p>\n
The man identifies himself as Gary Seven (played by Robert Lansing), a human agent of a far off highly advanced race that he claims maintains a population of humans to visit Earth and influence human history in a way that limits the possibility of self-destruction.\u00a0 Gary tries to convince Kirk to let him continue on to Earth to fulfill his mission which is to harmlessly but frighteningly destroy a nuclear weapon during a launch into orbit.\u00a0 Kirk is unsure of Seven\u2019s story and refuses to release him without proof of the truth of his story.\u00a0 He fears that Seven is an alien enemy trying to destroy Earth by triggering WW III.<\/p>\n
Seven manages to escape from detention on the Enterprise and proceeds to his base in New York City.\u00a0 There he finds out that the agents meant to sabotage the orbital rocket have died in a car crash.\u00a0 He must go himself to the Florida rocket launch and program the rocket to explode 100 miles above Russia thus convincing the Americans and their enemies that keeping H-bombs orbiting the Earth is a very bad idea.<\/p>\n
At this point a woman hired by his two late associates to be their receptionist, Roberta Lincoln (played by a very young Teri Garr in a miniskirt) shows up and further confuses Gary Seven\u2019s mission.\u00a0 Meanwhile the Enterprise has identified the destination Seven transported to and sends Kirk and Spock dressed in mid-century American clothes.\u00a0 They get into an altercation with Roberta and she manages to send for the police.\u00a0 Gary Seven transports to the rocket launch location before Kirk and Spock reach him.\u00a0 Meanwhile the NYPD shows up and Kirk has Scotty beam the two policemen and himself and Spock to the Enterprise.\u00a0 The two policemen are stunned by their transportation.\u00a0 Kirk and Spock exit the transporter and Scotty returns the officers to Earth before they can recover their wits.<\/p>\n
Kirk now knows that Gary Seven has reached the rocket base and he and Spock decide to go there to stop Seven\u2019s plan.\u00a0 They are immediately arrested by the base\u2019s armed guards and hauled off to, of all places, the mission control location.\u00a0 Gary Seven is now on the gantry next to the rocket and has begun reprogramming the rocket.\u00a0 At this point back on the Enterprise Scotty locates Gary Seven on the side of the rocket and attempts to beam him aboard the Enterprise.\u00a0 But as Seven begins to materialize in the Enterprise transporter Roberta Lincoln fiddles aimlessly with the controls of the transporter in New York and the machine finds Gary Seven and brings him to New York.\u00a0 How\u2019s that for ridiculous!<\/p>\n
After that we have Roberta Lincoln realizing that Seven can\u2019t be from the CIA and knocking him out with a metal box.\u00a0 Then Kirk and Spock, who in the interim have been rescued from detention by Scotty, show up and use up all but a few seconds of time needed to detonate the bomb in the upper atmosphere.\u00a0 Shatner uses his confused face to let us know he isn\u2019t sure whether he should do the only reasonable thing and let Seven prevent the nuke from reaching Earth.\u00a0 Spock has to bless his decision by saying there is no information to make a logical decision so Kirk\u2019s human intuition is the only choice.\u00a0 Kirk says, \u201cDo it!\u201d\u00a0 And the show comes to a blessed ending in the glare of a thermonuclear explosion at exactly 104 miles above the ground.<\/p>\n
In the epilogue we learn that history had recorded that the bomb did go off at that altitude and was the impetus for nuclear negotiations between the United States and Russia.\u00a0 And Spock informs Seven and Lincoln that they will have interesting adventures together in the near future.\u00a0 We then see that Seven\u2019s cat Isis can also transform herself into a scantily clad and buxom woman and when Roberta questions Gary about this female rival, \u201cWho\u2019s that?\u201d\u00a0 She transforms back into a cat in time for Gary to tell Roberta, \u201cThat\u2019s my cat.\u201d<\/p>\n
Okay, let\u2019s go over this a little bit.\u00a0 This episode was a sort of pilot for a spin-off starring Lansing and Garr that never happened.\u00a0 And I will say that these two were definitely a notch above the caliber of most of the guest stars.\u00a0 They both had good presence, some comedic timing and decent acting skills.\u00a0 The script although filled with improbabilities piled on ridiculous coincidences moved along quickly and reached a satisfying climax without Shatner breaking out too much of his classic emoting.\u00a0 In fact, having Lansing and Garr dominate the air time was extremely refreshing.\u00a0 And this is one of the few episodes I can think of where Dr. McCoy has almost no time on screen.\u00a0 So, it\u2019s a real win\/win.<\/p>\n
I would say this in one of the good episodes.\u00a0 As mentioned above Shatner doesn\u2019t get to use much of his bag of painful tricks so the Shatner mockery value will be sort of low.\u00a0 Let\u2019s call this an 8 \/\/ 3.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This the last episode of season 2.\u00a0 We are told at the beginning of the episode that the Enterprise has been sent back in time<\/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":[3196,2150,38,1355,44,309,265,1691,293,3195,154,1692,837],"class_list":["post-15307","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","category-sff","category-sff-tv-reviews","category-star-trek","category-tv-reviews","tag-assignment-earth","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-teri-garr","tag-tv-review","tag-tv-reviews","tag-william-shatner"],"yoast_head":"\n