The Enterprise reaches the Cestus III Outpost and after Kirk and company beam down, they find they have been lured into a trap.\u00a0 The outpost has been destroyed and the enemy attacks the Enterprise landing party.\u00a0 Kirk and Spock fight off the attack and once back on the Enterprise chase the enemy into unexplored territory.\u00a0 But before they can overtake their target both ships are frozen in place and a voice announces that an outside entity, the Metrons, is putting a stop to the fight. \u00a0Because the Metrons consider the violence exhibited by the Humans and Gorns (the name of the race on the enemy ship) as barbaric they will minimize the destruction.\u00a0 Kirk and the Gorn captain will be transported to a barren planet where their personal combat will decide which of the two ships will be destroyed and which will be spared.<\/p>\n
The Gorn and Kirk show up on a barren planet that looks a lot like southern California.\u00a0 The Gorn looks like and is a man in a really phony rubber dinosaur suit.\u00a0 It turns out the Gorn is inhumanly strong and tough but pathetically slow.\u00a0 Kirk rolls a boulder on him but to no effect.\u00a0 And just to put some drama into the situation, Kirk runs into a trap and injures his leg so the possibility that the Gorn might eventually catch him won\u2019t seem completely implausible.<\/p>\n
Kirk was given a device to record his thoughts during the trial but the Gorn is able to hear his every word and thereby judge how badly Kirk is hurt.\u00a0 The Gorn offers to kill Kirk mercifully if he will stop running.\u00a0 Kirk exchanges insults with the Gorn over their treachery at the \u00a0\u00a0Cestus III Outpost.\u00a0 But the Gorn claims that the base itself was an act of war by invading their territory.\u00a0 Eventually the Enterprise bridge is also given an audio-visual transmission of the combat.\u00a0 And so, Spock is able to annoyingly claim that the humans deserved to be wiped out for unknowingly settling Cestus III in enemy territory.\u00a0 Also, he cheers on Kirk\u2019s gradual identification of the ingredients for a weapon.\u00a0 Kirk finds a bamboo cylinder, a rope-like vine, potassium nitrate, sulphur, coal and large sharp diamond crystals.\u00a0 He converts these into a makeshift firearm.\u00a0 Just in the (painfully slow} nick of time, he shoots the Gorn.\u00a0 But instead of finishing him off with the Gorn\u2019s own stone knife, Kirk calls to the Metrons and refuses the kill.\u00a0 An effeminate young man in a khiton shows up and congratulates Kirk for only being a semi-savage.\u00a0 He tells Kirk that he will release the Gorn ship and promises to check back with humanity in a few thousand years when they may be ready to dialog with his people.<\/p>\n
Kirk returns to the Enterprise and the ship mysteriously finds itself 500 parsecs away from their former position.\u00a0 Kirk and Spock muse on their changed ideas about the definition of civilization.<\/p>\n
Okay, so this is mostly an amusing episode.\u00a0 The only thing that really annoys me is the idea that Kirk, Spock and McCoy think that if humans accidentally colonized an uninhabited planet that turns out to be in some other race\u2019s home range that they deserve to be massacred. \u00a0This is just so self-hating that I would expect it to come from Picard but not Kirk.<\/p>\n
That aside, watching Kirk fight a man in a rubber dinosaur suit in slow-motion can\u2019t be anything but comedy gold.\u00a0 Shatner rolls around and grimaces and gives us a great show.\u00a0 The Gorn hisses like a snake so he can be heard like a half a mile away.\u00a0 It\u2019s wonderful.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ll give this episode a 9 \/\/ 8.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Enterprise reaches the Cestus III Outpost and after Kirk and company beam down, they find they have been lured into a trap.\u00a0 The outpost<\/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":[2316,2150,38,1355,44,309,265,1691,293,2317,154,1692,837],"class_list":["post-9839","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","category-sff","category-sff-tv-reviews","category-star-trek","category-tv-reviews","tag-arena","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-gorn","tag-tv-review","tag-tv-reviews","tag-william-shatner"],"yoast_head":"\n