originally posted 8/16/20
“A deranged doctor escapes to the Enterprise from a planetary penal colony. As Kirk investigates, he is brainwashed by the colony’s maniacal director.”
We open with crewmen loading “infra-sensory drugs” into the transporter. Does it mean anything, or is it just sciencey?
Also: Tantalus Colony. Foreshadowing?
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They’ve beamed up a box that says “do not open.” I think we’ve found our escapee!
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Yep. That didn’t take long. The crewman doesn’t notice the guy climbing out of the box and sneaking up on him.
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60s Karate Chip of Doom!
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The escapee switched clothes with the crewman. Lucky he knocked out a guy who wears the same size! And lucky for him no one is going to notice a really old, wild-eyed crewman...
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60s Chokehold of Doom! And now he has a phaser!
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Another karate chop of doom on the redshirt who was guarding the bridge with his back to the turbolift
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Vulcan neck pinch!
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It’s interesting how on the Enterprise D the security chief is on the bridge, but on the original Enterprise, security consists of Spock sneaking up on the target as a distraction while Kirk kicks the phaser out of his hand and then Spock comes in with the neck pinch. I’m taking that as them wanting to show a Kirk and Spock as badasses instead of delegating the responsibility.
I don’t even know who the original Enterprise security chief is. Even the Enterprise from the eponymous series had Malcolm Reed. If someone knows and wants to pop in with that answer, I won’t object. Clearly they have security but their security seems bizarrely inept, and from TNG onward they tended to have entire crews of people who are REALLY GOOD at their jobs.
Not a criticism, just an observation. This is a different show for a different audience.
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Kirk is ready to send the intruder back to the penal colony, but another difference between this and TNG is Picard would have kept him onboard and started an investigation, and Kirk just wants to move on. Bones raised a concern about how there’s a grain of truth in the crazy things the guy is saying, and wants to study him, and Kirk literally said “Not our problem.” That’s cold, Captain.
***
The guy can’t say his name without distress, so it’s pretty obvious something’s going on at the colony.
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They’ve discovered that the escapee was an associate director of the colony, Dr. van Gelder. This was Spock investigating on his own, not under any orders. WTF, Kirk?
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Kirk contacts the colony and they confirm that van Gelder was a doctor there, but was performing unauthorized experiments on the patients. Bones enters in time to hear this and warns Kirk that it doesn’t sound true based on his observations of van Gelder. Kirk explains that the colony director, Dr. Adams, is really good at reforming prisons. He’d rather listen to a stranger he admires than his own chief medical officer. Again, WTF, Kirk?
***
Every time they talk to Adams, it sounds like he already knew what they were talking about and has the answer they want to hear. Plot point or weird writing? We’ll see...
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Bones has now forced Kirk to start an investigation by pointing out that he has a duty to report any concerns in his medical log, meaning Kirk has to respond to those concerns in the ship’s log. So Adams wants Kirk to beam down with as few crew members as possible. That can’t go wrong, she types with heavy sarcasm.
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Seriously though I don’t like how dismissive Kirk is of Bones in this episode. It’s weirdly out of place. He knows Bones is a great doctor - he just saw him cure a plague in the last episode. Plus, the “not our problem” line seems extremely un-Star Trek.
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Ok, I’ve played it back twice now and I swear Kirk just asked Bones to recommend someone on his staff with “psychiatry and phrenology experience.” It may have been “phenology” but I don’t know how that would relate to the situation.
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Now they’ve dropped the phenology/phrenology and are emphasizing a background in rehabilitative therapy, which makes a lot more sense.
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And it’s a woman. Shocking. She and Kirk met at the science lab Christmas party, and I take it there was some fraternization.
Memory Alpha says this character was meant to replace Janice Rand as the love interest. Would have been nice if she’d been meant as a valued member of the crew, but different show for different times. I’ll be saying that through gritted teeth every time there’s sexist bullshit, and I’m glad they moved away from that with later shows. I mean, there was definitely some unresolved tension between Picard and Crusher, and between Riker and Troi, but all four of those characters had agency and contributed to the show and the ship.
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JFC, her uniform skirt is so short her matching underpants are in full view. WTF, Roddenberry?
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They’ve introduced a therapist called Lethe, who wears a dress made of a shower curtain and has a flat affect. Psychiatrist Helen Noel, she of the forgotten bottom half of her uniform, finds nothing strange about this. Her purpose so far is to smile a lot, insist on being called Helen, and not contribute.
She just tried to contribute and Kirk talked over her to say her advice isn’t needed until he asks for it, and Adams declares Kirk to be the winner of that round. Pardon me while I puke.
What’s worse is that her contribution is to tell Kirk not to bother looking at what Adams is calling a “failed experiment.” So she’s wrong, but being dismissed in a really unsettlingly sexist way, and it’s JUST SO PROBLEMATIC
***
Van Gelder is trying to tell Spock and McCoy about a neural neutralizer. Meanwhile, it turns out that’s the “failed experiment” Kirk was looking at. Adams says it doesn’t work but they keep using it in the hopes that it’ll suddenly start being effective. Helen attempts to agree with him by telling Kirk that meds are bad, but Adams cuts her off to keep talking about the neural neutralizer.
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They allowed Helen to complete a sentence! It was defending the neural neutralizer, of course, but she was actually allowed to complete a thought!
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After everyone leaves, we see very clearly that it’s actually a torture device.
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Helen Noel is the worst.
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Van Gelder is trying to convince them to leave, but Kirk decides they’re staying in the facility overnight, because reasons. Helen declares van Gelder to be delusional without knowing anything about him. McCoy, who is not a psychiatrist, is convinced something is up, but the actual psychiatrist is dismissing his symptoms entirely. And she declared meds to be a bad thing, which, as someone who takes citalopram to function, I find pretty damn offensive. Did Roddenberry not like psychiatry? WTF?
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Vulcan mind meld sighted!
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Uggghhhh. Kirk went to Helen’s room to get her opinion on what she saw during the tour. She assumed he wanted to get laid. Then she got offended that Kirk was “questioning the methods” of Adams. I mean, is Adams paying her to shill for him?
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Van Gelder is able to tell Spock and McCoy about the neural neutralizer during the mind meld. Yep, Adams is erasing people’s minds and brainwashing them.
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Kirk is actually volunteering to let Helen use the neural neutralizer on him. What the living crap, Kirk?
He tells her to give him an unusual suggestion to make sure the thing is working. She changes his memory of the Christmas party where they met so that the fraternization isn’t just implied, they totally hooked up. And then Adams’ people grab her while Kirk is in the machine, and Adams is planting the suggestion that Kirk is in love with Helen, and if he doesn’t bone her, he’ll be in unbearable pain. Yuck.
At least maybe Helen can see that Adams is evil now?
***
Helen is sneaking though the HVAC ducts, while Adams does another treatment on Kirk. Hooray, she may stop being useless temporarily!
Wait, no, the giant “off” switch is giving her trouble.
***
Kirk chop!
And Helen just kicked a guy into a high voltage circuit. I knew someone would get fried, but I wasn’t expecting Helen to do anything useful.
Frying the dude overloaded the circuit and the force field that kept the transporters front working is down. Meanwhile, Dr. Adams got fried by his own neural neutralizer. That was convenient.
Apart from Helen Noel being the actual worst, it was an interesting episode.
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