The plot of this episode has the well-worn trope of a creature that feeds off of human emotions.\u00a0 In this one distress calls summons both the Enterprise and a Klingon warship to a planet with each side believing that the other side has destroyed one of their colonies.\u00a0 But when they reach the planet the Enterprise landing party finds no evidence of a colony at all.\u00a0 Somehow the Klingon ship is badly damaged with all but forty of the crew killed.\u00a0 The surviving Klingons beam down and attack the landing party and force Kirk to beam them aboard the Enterprise so that they can take it over.\u00a0 But Kirk alerts Spock using a warning signal on his communicator and the Klingons are beamed up but subdued.\u00a0 The Klingon captain, Kang and his wife Mara, who is also the science officer, of course, rage against the questioning by Kirk about their supposed massacre of a colony.\u00a0 But suddenly the Enterprise crew\u2019s phasers are turned into really phony looking swords.\u00a0 And the Klingons are also armed with swords so the two sides start hacking away at each other.\u00a0 Simultaneously the Enterprise bulkhead doors on most of the ship seal, cutting off all but forty of the crew from subduing an equal number of Klingons.\u00a0 It turns out any injuries from the sword fighting heal at a ridiculous rate so the sides always remain balanced.\u00a0 And most annoyingly the ship is taken over by some outside force that speeds it up to Warp Factor 9 and toward the edge of the galaxy.\u00a0 And finally, just for good measure, the dilithium crystals begin to degenerate and only have enough power to last until the end credits of the show appear.\u00a0 After four or five times that we see some sort of translucent spinning pinwheel thingy hovering around the Enterprise set, we are told that a creature composed of \u201cpure energy\u201d is on board and feeding off the hate of the two sides.\u00a0 It even controls the minds of the crew and puts false memories in their heads like Chekov believing that Klingons were responsible for the murder of his imaginary brother.\u00a0 Even McCoy, Scotty, Spock and Kirk start bandying racial epithets and insults against each other, which is quite amusing.<\/p>\n
Eventually Kirk snaps out of his emotional state and figures out that he must call a truce with the Klingons and stop the fighting before the dilithium crystals are all gone.\u00a0 When Kirk saves Kang\u2019s wife from being sexually assaulted by Chekov, he tries to convince her to help him reason with Kang.\u00a0 After Mara sees the alien, she is convinced and she and Kirk beam into the engineering deck somehow or other and confront Kang with the situation.\u00a0 After a sword fight with Kang, Kirk convinces him of the truth of the alien situation and they yell at the alien and tell it to leave and then Kirk and Kang start yucking it up together and backslapping each other and this hurts the alien\u2019s feeling and it leaves in a huff.<\/p>\n
Surprisingly, this pathetic story was quite amusing to watch.\u00a0 The actor who portrayed Kang, Michael Ansara, was quite entertaining in his Klingon face paint and swaggering insolence.\u00a0 And all the hysterical overacting by Chekov, McCoy, Scotty and of course Kirk was also highly entertaining.\u00a0 Chekov\u2019s attempt to make out with the Klingon woman and Kirk\u2019s outraged attack on Chekov in her defense were equally hilarious.\u00a0 And there was terrible fake sword fighting and bellowing charges of red shirts in all directions.\u00a0 I would say the highlight of Kirk mockery activity was Kirk lifting up Chekov and carrying him away in his arms like a child after he knocked him out for groping Mara.<\/p>\n
I won\u2019t try to defend my opinion of this episode.\u00a0 I openly admit that the plot was hackneyed and idiotic.\u00a0 But it was just the right amount of idiotic to allow Shatner and company to do their thing.\u00a0 Well done!\u00a0 One of the best season three episodes so far.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The plot of this episode has the well-worn trope of a creature that feeds off of human emotions.\u00a0 In this one distress calls summons both<\/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":[3380,2150,3381,38,1355,44,309,265,1691,293,154,1692,837],"class_list":["post-16635","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","category-sff","category-sff-tv-reviews","category-star-trek","category-tv-reviews","tag-day-of-the-dove","tag-gene-roddenberry","tag-michael-ansara","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