originally posted 8/29/20
“Kodos, a fugitive mass murderer, is a 23rd-century Shakespearean actor. When a friend is murdered, Kirk asks a Shakespearean troupe to investigate”
Right off the bat, that’s a weird episode description, Netflix...
We open with a dramatic stabbing in 60s-era Shakespearean costumes. It’s Macbeth! We know this because Kirk’s friend tells Kirk to watch Macbeth. 60s-era Shakespearean acting ensues. But Kirk’s friend isn’t watching intently because of the performance, he recognizes the actor’s voice as that of Kodos the Executioner!
***
Turns out his friend, Tom Leighton, lured the Enterprise there on false pretenses. The friend is convinced this actor is Space Hitler, and I’m pretty sure that only showing the friend in profile is so we can get a dramatic reveal of him having a messed-up left side of his face.
***
I was right. He not only has an eyepatch, he has an entire-side-of-the-face patch.
***
Turns out Kirk is one of the 8 or 9 remaining people who saw Kodos. That’s convenient.
***
Back on the Enterprise, Kirk does some research and discovers the actor Anton Karidian has no history prior to 20 years ago, and looks an awful lot like an older Kodos. He decides to go to the cocktail party Leighton is having for the troupe.
***
The cocktail party music is just a weird 60s lounge music rendition of the opening theme. Ok.
***
Oh lord, Kodos’s 19-year-old blonde daughter Lenore just showed up, and Kirk, ever the creep, is hitting on her. Assuming Wikipedia is correct and this episode takes place in 2266, Kirk is 33. This girl is 19. Creepy-formula math (half your age plus 7) states that the youngest woman he should date would be 23. Back off, Kirk.
***
Kodos never meets people personally or attends parties, which is Totally Not Suspicious At All.
***
They leave the party together to take a nice walk on a soundstage. They’re about to kiss when Kirk spots a body (not hers). It’s Tom Leighton! Oh noes!
***
Leighton’s wife is bizarrely unaffected by his death. Not for plot reasons, she’s just written that way.
Kirk contacts the transport ship that was going to take the troupe to their next performance and says he’ll take them instead.
Lenore beams aboard in some kind of weird, boxy fur minidress and the shiniest tights of all time. She trades a performance by the troupe for the crew for a ride to their next destination.
***
Lt. Riley, the super obnoxious guy who took over Engineering in the previous episode “The Naked Time,” is also one of the nine people who saw Kodos in person. Considering it was 20 years ago, Kirk would have been 13 and Riley may have been under 10, but time means nothing to Star Trek unless they’re traveling through it.
***
Spock interrupts McCoy’s drinking to ask if he thinks Kirk is acting weird. McCoy would rather just get back to his drinking. He also referred to Lenore (playing Juliet, I guess) as “a pretty exciting creature.” Ick.
McCoy tries to get Spock to drink, but Spock refuses. McCoy then asks him to at least not disapprove of him.
***
Kirk and Lenore are having another romantic walk. Lenore says the ship has “all this power, surging and throbbing, yet under control.” She asks Kirk if he’s like that too. I do not want to see Kirk surging OR throbbing, thank you.
***
Lenore asks Kirk about the women of his world, and if they’re just “people” instead of “women.” And...yep, this episode is indeed written by a man. A man called Barry, no less. Thanks, Barry, for having a woman declare other women to not be people.
***
Surging and throbbing commences. Fortunately, we cut away to Spock trying to figure out what’s up with Kirk.
***
Spock is now explaining to McCoy, for the audience’s benefit, what Kodos did. Essentially he had half the population of the colony on Tarsus IV killed because of a food shortage, instead of rationing the food until help could arrive. Kodos was allegedly killed but his body couldn’t be positively identified. Kirk and Riley are the only surviving eyewitnesses, and per Spock, every time a witness dies, a member of Karidian’s troupe is nearby.
***
Riley is on duty in Engineering, by himself. He contacts the rev room and asks Uhura to sing him a song. She starts singing something weird about green skies where her heart is, beyond Antares and all that.
Meanwhile, someone sneaks up and sprays poison into Riley’s milk. He chugs the milk, as one does, and collapses dramatically.
In sick bay, Spock says McCoy needs to save Riley, because if not, Kirk is the next target. Because fuck Riley, we need to protect Kirk.
***
McCoy theorizes that since the poison was a common lubricant aboard the ship, and looks milky, Riley was a dumbass and drank it by mistake. Spock disagrees because you’d have to be pretty stupid to confuse a container of industrial lubricant with a glass of milk.
***
Spock is convinced Karidian is Kodos, but Kirk is less sure, and doesn’t want to accuse him without proof. McCoy wants to know what the plan is if they do determine Karidian is Kodos. I’m not sure why they don’t go ahead and arrest him, and let Starfleet use DNA or something to determine the truth, but ok. The writing on this episode is a little janky and Kirk’s motivations aren’t very clear.
***
And now there’s a phaser set to overload in Kirk’s quarters. I think we can now assume there’s a murderer in board. (And yes, I know who it is, but I’m saving that for the end of the episode in case someone reading hasn’t seen it)
***
Kirk discovers the phaser and drops it into a disposal tube, where it explodes safely outside the ship.
***
Meanwhile, Kodos/Karidian is in his weirdly pink and blue quarters. Kirk enters and begins his interrogation by straight up asking if he‘s Kodos.
He gives Kodos/Karidian a partial speech to read to compare to a recording verified to be Kodos. He eventually stops reading and starts reciting instead. Kirk points this out but Karidian says he memorizes quickly. He then kind of outs himself by defending Kodos’s actions, but still denies being him.
Kirk shows to leave but Lenore shows up and asks if he was just using her to get to her father. He admits that at first he was. This goes over about as well as you’d expect. He tells her that if he’s Kodos, Kirk has shown him more mercy than Kodos showed the people of Tarsus IV. If he isn’t, they’ll let the troupe off at their destination, no harm done. She asks who he is to say what harm has been done, and he replies “Who I have to be.” Because PARALLELS.
***
McCoy is recording in the medical log that Riley is fully recovered, but confined to sick bay (which autocorrect turned into “dick bay” just now...that’s an entirely different kind of series...) to avoid contact with Karidian. He then says, out loud, where Riley can overhear, that Karidian may be Kodos, who killed Riley’s entire family. I don’t think he meant to be overheard, but OF COURSE Riley heard him.
***
Another 60s era Shakespearean performance, this time of Hamlet. Is Karidian going to play the world’s oldest Hamlet? We’ll see...
And Riley left sick bay, and a phased is missing from the weapons locker.
***
Oh good, Karidian is playing the ghost of Hamlet’s father. That’s a lot more appropriate.
***
Riley is backstage with a phaser. He’s convinced Karidian is Kodos. The voice comparison was close, but not close enough for Kirk. He stops Riley and sends him back to sick bay.
***
Lenore tells Karidian backstage that the last two who can hurt him will be gone when her performance is over. Karidian is Not Pleased. He says she was the one thing in his life untouched by what he did. Kirk overhears this.
Karidian admits to Kirk that yes, of course he’s Kodos. Kirk tries to have him arrested but Lenore steals a phaser and runs onstage. She tries to shoot Kirk, but Kodos jumps in the way and is killed instead. Everyone just kind of stands around watching her breakdown when she realizes he’s dead.
***
McCoy gives Kirk his medical report and Lenore doesn’t remember anything, and doesn’t know her father is dead. She’ll be institutionalized for quite some time.
***
So this episode was interesting conceptually but the writing was all over the place. The timing didn’t make a lot of sense - Kirk and Riley would have been very young, but if Lenore had to be born after the events on Tarsus IV, it had to be long enough ago for her to be an adult. Not sure why she couldn’t have been adopted or something so she could have been older but not around during Kodos’s massacre. And they didn’t make Kirk’s motivations very clear - McCoy saying he was after vengeance was more a guess than anything. I feel like another script revision or two would have made a much better episode.
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