The Tholian Web
The USS Defiant is missing, and in an attempt to rescue her Kirk is lost and the Enterprise is snared in The Tholian Web (Video; Memory Alpha).
This episode is interesting because Kirk is absent almost the entire time. He’s trapped in “interspace” and the action is all with McCoy and Spock on the Enterprise. Without Shatner hogging the spotlight, it’s nice to see everyone else get some screen time– Chekov and Uhura get nice parts in this episode– but we return to our old enemy and can’t quite get the pacing right.
There are lots of things going on in this episode: rescue attempts and space combat and new aliens and internal conflict and a strange malady are all pulling the crew’s attention. But the effect on the viewer is to wonder why the main plot is being drowned by all this other stuff. Arguably this too-many-things-before-teatime is more “realistic,” but in the process it loses the thread that we as an audience use to navigate the action. They could have played a metanarrative drawing parallels to our using Kirk in the same way– which we certainly do– but they don’t.
That said, the interplay between Spock and McCoy is interesting but poorly executed. McCoy comes off too heavy-handed, seemingly completely unfazed by the loss of his friend. That’s necessary so that McCoy can act as a foil to Spock’s seemingly needless attempts to rescue Kirk, but it plays both characters wrong and comes off the worse for it.
But check out some of this dialog:
Renowned Vulcan Understatement
[The Tholians fire upon the Enterprise]
Spock: The renowned Tholian punctuality.
Scotty is Awesome
McCoy: [The antidote is] a diluted Theragin derivative.
Spock: Theragin? A nerve gas used by the Klingons.
Scotty: Aye, and deadly, too. What’re ya thinkin’, doc, are ya tryin’ to kill us all?
Spock: If I remember correctly, it caused fatality only when used in pure form.
McCoy: That’s right, but in this derivative, when mixed with alcohol, it merely deadens certain nerve inputs to the brain.
Scotty: Aye, any decent brand of Scotch will do that.
McCoy: Well one good slug with this and you could hit a man with phaser stun and he’d never feel it– or even know it.
Scotty: Does it make a good mix with Scotch?
McCoy: It should.
Scotty: [Picks up bottle] I’ll let you know.
Grade
B+
