This episode involves aliens torturing the Enterprise landing party.\u00a0 And I feel as if I were being tortured just by having to watch the episode.<\/p>\n
Kirk, Spock and McCoy beam down to planet blah, blah, blah to evacuate scientists that were observing a star that is about to nova.\u00a0 The scientists have been abducted and almost immediately so are the landing party.\u00a0 They find a pretty girl with way too much make-up and a sensible short hair style, the sort to be found on women playing nurses on soap opera series.\u00a0 She is a mute and it turns out she is a \u201ctotal empath\u201d which McCoy explains means she can heal other\u2019s injuries by transferring them to herself and then healing herself.<\/p>\n
The aliens, called Vians, that have captured Kirk and company have already tortured the scientists to death and placed their dead bodies in clear cylinders so that Kirk and company can see their tortured expressions and become outraged.\u00a0 Now they start torturing the landing party starting with Kirk.\u00a0 This involves taking off Kirk\u2019s shirt and suspending him with manacles and chains by his wrists and then beating him.\u00a0 We can\u2019t see what they are hitting him with.\u00a0 But I imagine it\u2019s either an energy weapon or a sack full of oranges.<\/p>\n
The empath that McCoy has nicknamed Gem heals Kirk\u2019s injuries.\u00a0 Next the Vians tell Kirk he must choose whether their final victim will be Spock or McCoy.\u00a0 McCoy tricks Kirk and Spock by sedating them with his hypodermic needle.\u00a0 The Vians beat him with the sack full of oranges to the brink of death and then Spock and Kirk witness Gem hesitantly trying to heal McCoy.\u00a0 We find out all of this is a test to see if Gem\u2019s people are worthy of being saved from the nova by the Vians.\u00a0 If she possesses the \u201cinstinct\u201d to sacrifice her own life to save another then she passes and her people will be saved.\u00a0 After some diffidence over whether her efforts were sufficient the Vians end the test and save McCoy.\u00a0 Then they scoop up Gem and leave.\u00a0 The episode ends with the landing party back on the bridge and trading witticisms about \u201cGem\u201d being a pearl of great price.<\/p>\n
As you can probably tell by the summary this is a weak episode.\u00a0 A shirtless Shatner suspended by the wrists and writhing in pain has some comic value no doubt.\u00a0 But this is very thin gruel.\u00a0 The Vians are funny looking with their bony skulls and silver dishdashas but other than a slight amount of sympathy for the dying McCoy what are we looking at here?\u00a0 Season three strikes again.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ll give it a 5 \/\/ 5.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This episode involves aliens torturing the Enterprise landing party.\u00a0 And I feel as if I were being tortured just by having to watch the episode.<\/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":[2150,38,1355,44,309,265,1691,293,3492,154,1692,837],"class_list":["post-17221","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-star-trek","tag-the-empath","tag-tv-review","tag-tv-reviews","tag-william-shatner"],"yoast_head":"\n