In this one, an alien race with telepathic powers decides to kill Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scotty and Chekov by forcing them to re-enact the Gunfight at the OK Corral as the Clantons.\u00a0 I can see why CBS would be glad to film this episode.\u00a0 They could reuse some of the old sets from their Rawhide series.<\/p>\n
They were kind enough to throw in a pretty girl as the love interest for Chekov and we did get some western style background music.\u00a0 The whole thing had a kind of Twilight Zone feel to it.\u00a0 The plot device that is used to save our friends is the realization that none of the western setup is actually real so that if Kirk and friends know that the bullets aren\u2019t real then they won\u2019t be harmed by them.<\/p>\n
So, the majority of the episode is Kirk, Chekov and McCoy interacting with the Earps and other townspeople while Spock builds a gas bomb that when tested on a skeptical Scotty doesn\u2019t work.\u00a0 But its failure confirms for Spock that the world they are inhabiting is an illusion that can\u2019t harm them if they can ignore it.\u00a0 At some point one of the Earps that is in love with Chekov\u2019s girlfriend shoots Chekov and apparently kills him.\u00a0 But at the end of the show when Chekov ends up alive McCoy explains it by saying that to Chekov the only thing that was real was the girl.\u00a0 Now that doesn\u2019t make a lot of sense because he did act like he had been shot when it happened but that\u2019s what they give us to hide the plot hole so I guess we\u2019ll have to live with it.<\/p>\n
The climax is the gunfight.\u00a0 Spock has prepared his human friends with the Vulcan mind-meld so that they will thoroughly believe the bullets are fake and so they will not be harmed.\u00a0 The Earps blast away at the four Enterprise crewman and we see the fence behind the crewmen splintered by sustained gunfire as the Earps empty all their guns.\u00a0 Then Kirk beats up Wyatt Earp and draws his gun as if to shoot him but then changes his mind and throws the gun away.\u00a0 Almost immediately Kirk and company find themselves back on the Enterprise and discover that Chekov is unharmed.\u00a0 The alien changes his mind about earthmen and decides he wants to be friends.\u00a0 The show ends with Kirk and Spock discussing the violent nature of humans and how they have overcome it.<\/p>\n
This is not a highly creative script.\u00a0 The plot is similar to several that preceded it.\u00a0 The acting and the dialog are just average and there wasn\u2019t even much humor to make it more interesting.\u00a0 Scotty did get to comment approvingly on the bourbon that the town had to offer for his drinking pleasure.\u00a0 And Chekov was a source of amusement as the crew tried to drag him away from the woman who was infatuated with him. Shatner didn\u2019t have much chance to show off his overacting ability.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ll give this a 5 \/\/ 2.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In this one, an alien race with telepathic powers decides to kill Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scotty and Chekov by forcing them to re-enact the Gunfight<\/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":[2150,38,1355,44,309,265,1691,3316,293,154,1692,837],"class_list":["post-16331","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","category-sff","category-sff-tv-reviews","category-star-trek","category-tv-reviews","tag-gene-roddenberry","tag-review","tag-reviews","tag-sci-fi","tag-sci-fi-tv-review","tag-science-fiction","tag-sff-tv-show-reviews","tag-spectre-of-the-gun","tag-star-trek","tag-tv-review","tag-tv-reviews","tag-william-shatner"],"yoast_head":"\n