“The Enterprise encounters the wrecked Constellation, whose distraught captain is determined to stop the giant ship that killed his crew”
And we’re back.
I vaguely remember this as the one with the planet-eating thing (maybe), and I know my brother likes it. Commodore Decker is the father of Captain Decker from ST:TMP, pre-Seventh Heaven...
***
Kirk enters the bridge in a looser-fitting version of his green tunic (I’ve heard rumors of crash diets) and is immediately given a report by not-Uhura. So far, so weird.
They’ve received a garbled distress call from the Constellation, and the system they’ve entered has been reduced to rubble and asteroids.
They discover the two innermost planets are intact, but can’t raise the Constellation. Then they find the ship adrift, and go to red alert as we go to the intro.
***
The Constellation is heavily damaged but able to sustain life outside of the bridge. Subspace interference is making it impossible to communicate.
Kirk puts together a landing party to board the Constellation. Aboard, they conclude that whatever happened wasn’t without warning. There are no survivors aboard, but no bodies either.
They find Commodore Decker catatonic in the auxiliary control room. McCoy gives him a shot of something, and he’s able to talk again. He tries to tell them about a “thing” that attacked the ship, then goes catatonic again while Kirk yells at him. They begin playback of the ship’s log, and Decker is able to tell them that he beamed the crew to the third planet. The thing (the devil, evidently, straight out of hell) continued attacking the ship and knocked out the transporter, then attacked the third planet. Decker wasn’t able to beam them back and had to watch the planet and his crew being destroyed. A great deal of Acting occurred during this scene.
Evidently the thing uses an antiproton beam to cut up planets. It was also able to render the Constellation’s antimatter inert.
Based on information from the Constellation, the “thing” is an automated weapon that breaks apart planets for fuel. Sulu was able to plot its course, and it came from outside the galaxy, headed for the most populated part of this galaxy. Welp.
Kirk theorizes that it’s a doomsday machine, like “the old H-bomb,” which isn’t said in quite as goofy a way as it looks written down. Decker doesn’t care about Kirk’s theory, he wants to destroy it. Kirk convinces him to go back to the Enterprise with McCoy and then sits in some dramatic lighting to order them beamed aboard.
Back aboard the Enterprise, the planet killer has returned. It’s long and blue with a big red opening in the front for eating planets. It appears to be pursuing the Enterprise! Cue dramatic music and cut to commercial.
***
The planet killer is gaining on the Enterprise. Kirk asks if it can be deactivated, and Spock declares it to be highly unlikely. Kirk says to lower shields and beam the landing party back, but as soon as shields go down, the planet killer fires on them, and everyone stumbles dramatically to the left.
Transporters and communications are out, leaving the landing party stranded on the Constellation. Kirk has Scotty work on the engines and random crewman Washburn fix the viewscreen.
Apart from minimal damage, there are no casualties, and the planet killer returns to its course toward the Rigel colonies. Spock has the ship follow at a distance. Decker disagrees, and says if the planet killer reaches Rigel, millions of people will die. Spock believes the best course of action is to retrieve the landing party and contact Starfleet Command, but Decker takes command of the ship and wants to attack the planet killer at close range. Spock advises against it because it didn’t work last time, but Decker insists on taking command.
McCoy strongly objects, and Spock tells him that if he can certify Decker is unfit for command, Spock will relieve him of duty, but he needs to provide medical records to back up his certification. McCoy isn’t able to do that and Decker gets all shitty and smug about it. Now, this guy just lost his crew and ship, and McCoy already declared him to be in shock, and the Enterprise has psychiatrists on board when the writers need one to be, but I guess they didn’t need one for an episode with a guy with severe mental trauma taking control of the Enterprise.
McCoy leaves the bridge, and everyone stares at Decker, who manages even to sit in the captain’s seat like an asshole. I’m not certain I’ve seen a character in Star Trek go from zero to dickhead quite this fast. If I’m wrong, and I probably am, post your character suggestions in the comments :)
Meanwhile, the landing party is hard at work getting the Constellation back to some kind of working order. I guess that was to break up the Enterprise bridge scenes.
The Enterprise continues the very stupid plan of attacking the planet killer by itself, even though it very clearly isn’t working. Spock recommends they back off, but Commodore Dickhead insists they keep up the attack.
Kirk gets the viewscreen working and sees the galaxy’s most ill-advised plan in action. Scotty continues working on the impulse controls so they can try to put a stop to all this.
Back on the Enterprise, the shields have failed and they are being pulled into the planet killer by a tractor beam. They have 60 seconds to get out of the tractor beam, but Decker refuses. Spock informs him that to continue the attack would be suicide, and if he refuses to break free of the tractor beam, he will relieve Decker of command due to mental instability. Decker agrees to veer off, but the Enterprise doesn’t have the power to break free, and we go to commercial.
***
On the Constellation, there’s just enough power to move. The camera tilts dramatically and Kirk and Scotty flail and roll around. Eventually they stabilize and head toward the Enterprise. They have one phaser bank and impulse power, and attempt to get the planet killer’s attention away from the Enterprise. This works, fortunately, but the Enterprise still has no shields or warp.
Not-Uhura (Lt. Palmer) is able to contact the Constellation, and Kirk is less than pleased to find out Decker has taken command. He tells Decker to get the Enterprise out of there, but Decker refuses. Kirk then orders Spock to relieve Decker, which he does. Decker refuses to recognize Spock’s authority, and Spock tells him to take it up with Starfleet, assuming they survive. After a bit more pissiness, Decker gives up and Spock has him escorted to sickbay.
On the way to sickbay, though, Decker gets into a weirdly-choreographed 60s fight with the redshirt escorting him, and even though he disarms him, he never actually picks up the phaser laying very obviously on the floor, preferring to weird-fight and then drag the redshirt into another room.
Decker then makes his way to the shuttlecraft bay and steals a shuttlecraft. He tells the Enterprise he’s going to blow up the planet killer from the inside. Spock insists he return, but he says he’s responsible for the deaths of his crew. Kirk tries to convince him to return as well, but he flies into the planet killer anyway. It appears to have no effect whatsoever, making his death pointless.
***
After the commercial break, they discover that the shuttlecraft explosion may have reduced the planet killer’s power slightly. Kirk has Spock beam the landing party aboard apart from himself and Scotty. He asks Spock if blowing up the impulse engines of the Constellation would destroy the machine, but Spock needs to research further.
Scotty rigs a delayed detonator that Kirk can use from the auxiliary control room, and Kirk has him beamed back to the Enterprise. He tells Spock his plan is to blow up the Constellation, but Spock doesn’t believe he can get back to the Enterprise on time because of the funky transporters. Kirk is willing to risk it.
The transporter shorts out again after the detonator is armed - Scotty has 30 seconds to get it fixed. After a few unsuccessful tries, we cut to the Constellation exploding and destroying the planet killer. Then we cut back to the transporter room, and Kirk materializes. All is well.
Kirk and Spock have a moment where they wonder how many more doomsday weapons are out there. Kirk says he finds one to be more than sufficient. Odd way to close the episode, but there you are.
***
This was a pretty good episode. It stuck to what Star Trek does best: smart people using intelligence to solve problems. I mean, yeah, Decker was a dick, but only because he was suffering a major trauma and wasn’t thinking straight. He made bad choices thinking he was saving lives. You don’t always need an overt villain to have conflict. Look at Encanto - they had a problem to solve, and part of the problem was a trauma response leading to worse problems down the road. This is definitely and episode I’d recommend to a Star Trek newbie.
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