originally posted 8/5/20
Everyone is in uniforms from the original pilot, The Cage. This episode seems to be set earlier than the last two. Spock is being weirdly “have you noticed I’m an alien?” in his lines.
First appearance of Scotty, wearing a beige tunic and operating the transporter.
They’ve beamed aboard a weird flashing tripod thing that is potentially from a 200-year-old Earth vessel. Also. There’s a new character called Mitchell in a beige tunic. He’s being treated like a main character by we never see him again, so...
It looks like a) no miniskirts, and b) redshirts are now beigeshirts. Sulu is in a blue shirt, and McCoy is not the ship’s doctor.
There’s a female psychiatrist named Dehner that this Mitchell guy tried to flirt with, and when she gave zero shits, he declared her to be a “walking freezer unit.” Charming.
There’s also no Uhura. I don’t like this crew. No Uhura = no Enterprise. This episode is severely weird.
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They’re flying toward a force field that puts me in mind of the warp barrier or whatever that they crossed in the alleged film Star Trek V. Are they going to find Space God? Who knows!
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Ok, this force field is blowing the living shit out of every console on the bridge. Dramatic!
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Dramatic closeup of Mitchell’s bad SFX eyes, complete with freeze frame. DRAMATIC!
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We are now looking at Space Microfiche. Dramatic?
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Oh shit, Dehner is Sally Kellerman! How did I not realize?
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Wikipedia says this was the second pilot, but was the third episode aired, so that explains the weirdness. But I’ll be glad to get back to the regular continuity. This episode is hard to get into.
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FFS, Mitchell, can we not sexually assault the psychiatrist?
OK, he stopped, but hands, my dude. Hands. And don’t recite love sonnets from 1996 because 1965 didn’t know what 1996 would be like, but I do, and WRONG! Not nearly enough irony and clove cigarettes.
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I hate to say this about anybody from the 60s but I kinda dig Sally Kellerman’s long bob.
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Oh hey, Sulu has lines.
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Spock wants to kill Mitchell because Mitchell is psychic now. That’s very unSpocklike. Also, Spock is better when they stop reminding us every other line that Vulcans don’t express emotions.
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Halfway through and it’s still terrible. I’ll tough it out for completeness but this is BAD.
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Mitchell hasn’t actually done anything yet except read fast and use telekinesis to get a glass of water, but they’re going to maroon him anyway. OK.
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Dehner: There isn’t a soul on this planet but us?
Kirk (dramatically): Nobody but us chickens, Doctor!
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Mitchell’s silver contacts aren’t lined up correctly, so he looks all walleyed.
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So far the only message of this episode is different = bad. That’s very un-Star Trek of it.
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Picard wouldn’t have concocted a weird plot to maroon Mitchell. He would have kept him on the crew and only acted against him when he was an actual threat.
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Oh hey, telekinetic strangulation! Now they’re making Mitchell the bad guy in order to make the rest of their actions make sense! And Dehner is psychic too now, because reasons! Time to nuke the planet!
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Mitchell used his psychic powers to MAKE THE PLANET NICE! What a MONSTER!
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Kirk’s reasoning: Mitchell might be bad later, so kill him now.
Seriously, this is the opposite of what Star Trek became. The last two episodes, while weird, were true to the series. This one just had things happen through plot convenience. They even said absolute power corrupts absolutely, but it’s pretty obvious that Mitchell was only reacting to Kirk declaring him to be evil. It’s bad writing from a series that ultimately did so much better.
If I had to chose a TOS worst episode, this is a strong contender.
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