“Kirk and a landing party beam down to what seems like an ideal, Eden-like planet.”
Space California incoming (probably)!
***
We open with a landing party beaming down to a soundstage, thus immediately disproving my pre-recap snark. Kirk, Spock, and McCoy have some expositionary dialogue about how beautiful the planet is but that the last ship got some strange readings. Kirk compares it to the Garden of Eden, which Chekov declares to be just outside Moscow.
They start off toward a nearby village, but a black flower turns toward a redshirt and shoots thorns into his chest, killing him. Kirk angrily declares the planet not to be paradise at all, and we go to commercial.
***
Kirk contacts Scotty to have him beam the body aboard and finds out something weird is going on with the antimatter pods on the Enterprise.
Spock determined there are artificial vibrations underground. Kirk sends two redshirts to investigate, and Spock then says there’s a humanoid hiding in the bushes right behind them.
Chekov starts macking on Yeoman Landon, who seems to be into that. Kirk tells them to knock it off and they all start exploring.
Spock finds and interesting rock. He analyzes it, then breaks it in half to demonstrate how fragile it is. When he tossed half of it away, though, it explodes.
***
Scotty reports from the ship that the drain on the antimatter pods is coming from the village on the surface.
***
McCoy has been analyzing the thorns and declares them to contain a very powerful poison. As he and Kirk discuss this, another black flower starts turning toward them. Spock sees this and pushes Kirk out of the way just in time, but gets hit with the thorns instead.
McCoy starts first aid on Spock, but needs to get him back to the ship. However, when Scotty attempts to beam them up, the transporter fails.
Spock then sits up - whatever McCoy did worked, because he’s totally fine.
Suddenly, there’s a storm, completely out of the blue (or red, going by this planet’s sky color). Another redshirt, Kaplan, is vaporized by lightning.
Another redshirt, Mallory, has made it to the village. He tries to report in, but there’s too much interference. The rest of the landing party heads toward him, but as he’s running back to meet them, he trips over and explosive rock, and that’s it for Mallory.
Kirk blames himself, even though Spock says each death was unavoidable. Then they realize they’re still being followed. Kirk has Spock and Chekov create a diversion, so they start cartoonishly yelling at each other.
Kirk sneaks up behind the person following them and flushed him out, then punches him. The alien starts crying. He looks like an ordinary white dude in a bad wig and reddish body paint - it’s a particularly goofy choice.
His name is Akuta, and he is the “eyes of Vaal.” He has metal antennae implanted in his skull so Vaal can see and hear everything on the surface. Kirk asks him to take them to Vaal.
***
Meanwhile, Scotty reports from the Enterprise that a tractor beam is pulling them toward the surface, and with the warp drive out, they don’t have enough power to escape. Kirk says if he can’t find a solution, he’s fired.
***
Kirk asks Akuta who Vaal is. Vaal appears to be some kind of god. He leads the landing party to a papier-mâché cave shaped like a lizard head, with glowing eyes and stage fog coming out of its mouth. Spock examines it with his tricorder and walks into a force field that knocks him down. Spock is taking quite a beating this episode!
Akuta says Vaal is sleeping, but when he wakes he might talk to Kirk. He leads them back to his village, where Kirk notices there are no children. Akuta doesn’t know the word “children,” then says Kirk must mean “replacements. He says they are forbidden by Vaal. Yeoman Landon asks what happens when a man and woman fall in love, and Akuta doesn’t know that word either. She and Chekov attempt to demonstrate, but Akuta says love is forbidden too.
One of the women wraps a garland of flowers around Spock’s wrist and asks what his name is. When he tells her, evidently it’s the funniest thing they’ve ever heard. The joke is not explained. Akuta leads them to a hut and declares it to be theirs.
***
Scotty reports that the Enterprise is still unable to escape the tractor beam. Kir is grumpy about this.
***
McCoy tells Kirk that the people on this planet are showing no sign of aging. He can’t tell how old they are, other than “adult.”
They hear a gong and go outside to see the villagers heading to Vaal’s cave. They follow, and watch as the villagers are able to enter the cave without the force field.? However, when Kirk tries to approach, the cave’s eyes glow and the ground starts shaking, so he backs off.
He and Spock determine Vaal might be weaker when it’s feeding time, so Kirk has Spock start an analysis. McCoy arrives and says this culture is stagnant, but Spock states that if the culture is working for them, the Enterprise crew has no business interfering.
Scotty confirms that there’s a power fluctuation when Vaal is hungry, but that it’ll take 8 hours to reconfigure the circuits to put enough power into the impulse drive to escape.
***
Back in the hut, Yeoman Landon is upset about their situation. Kirk tells her to sit down and have some fruit. A really awkward discussion ensues about how the villagers would produce a replacement if someone died, considering “love” is forbidden.
Meanwhile, Akuta is receiving some kind of instructions from Vaal.
Chekov and Landon wander off to make out. Two villagers watch them, and then try it out for themselves and declare it to be “pleasant.” The scene goes on way longer than it needs to. Then Akuta shows up and confronts them. He receives a message from Vaal: kill the landing party.
Akuta demonstrates to the male villagers how to kill the landing party - find a heavy stick, sneak up behind them, and crush their skulls. Welp.
***
Back in the hut, Spock tells Kirk that whether they like it or not, this is a viable culture. Kirk disagrees, but Spock invokes the Prime Directive. Kirk maintains that the villagers should have the choice.
They go to Vaal and attempt to communicate, but the lightning comes back. Spock gets struck by lightning but isn’t vaporized because of plot armor. Kirk carries him back to the hut.
Then the villagers attack. They kill the last redshirt, Marple, but the rest of the landing party easily overpowers them and puts them all in a hut.
***
Scotty is ready to try to break free of the tractor beam. Unfortunately, he isn’t successful. He gained another hour before they crash, but it burned up the circuits.
Kirk decides to go see Vaal again. He has Scotty lock onto Vaal and fire, in an attempt to weaken it. The Enterprise fires continuously until Vaal loses all power and dies.
Kirk let’s the villagers out of the hut and explains to them that they’re free. Akuta explains that Vaal took care of them, but Kirk says they can take care of themselves, and they’ll like it.
***
Back aboard the Enterprise, Spock reiterates that he isn’t certain they did the right thing. Kirk and McCoy both say they’ve put the villagers back onto a normal evolutionary path. For some reason, Spock compares them to the story of Adam and Eve. Kirk asks if that means he’s Satan. Spock says no, but Kirk asks if anyone on the ship looks like Satan (a reference to people who thought Spock looked satanic in the first episode). This is a Big Joke and we’re supposed to laugh at Spock for being different. Yeah.
***
This is quite possibly the worst episode I’ve seen so far. Even the iffy ones earlier had something going for them. This IBS just had all the tropes that people laugh at - bad acting, goofy aliens, pseudo intellectual concept with no real depth, multiple dead redshirts, and plot armor for the main characters. And how many episodes so far have had something on the surface preventing the Enterprise from leaving? At least it wasn’t a giant hand this time.
I think I especially disliked both the arrogance of Space America being infalliable, and the complete mockery of any dissenting viewpoint. If they had ended it with Spock being right, it would have been a much better episode.
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