Star Trek: Start to Finish

And the Children Shall Lead

And the Children Shall Lead (Video; Memory Alpha) is a neat idea that runs out of steam before the credits and then flails about being boring for forty more minutes.

The nugget of goodness is that an evil spirit has convinced the children on the new colony of Triacus to kill their parents and then take over the galaxy, using the Enterprise as their transport. The spirit gives the kids powers and they chant creepy things and look odd.

I would start a spoilers block here, but there are no spoilers in this episode: eventually Kirk figures out how to turn the kids and wins the day. But it takes him an entire episode of wandering around the ship and seeing people do crazy things before he tries, because “they’re children!”

This episode has Kirk ignoring a blatant threat to the ship, McCoy disappearing into sick bay and not participating in the plot, and Spock being completely unhelpful in bothering to explain how any of this makes any sense at all.

It’d be okay if the kids were hiding something that kept the spirit alive and Kirk had to find the McGuffin, but they’re not. It’d be okay if the spirit could be extracted from the kids and we could see progress as each kid is freed and the plot unfurls, but that’s not the case. It’d be okay if the opposite happened, and the plot slowly reached tentacles into the crew, but it’s not.

What I’m trying to say is that this is a mediocre episode completely ruined by pacing (back to our old nemesis) and a lack of an explanation.

Summary Quote

McCoy: They’re crying, Jim. I don’t know how it happened, but it’s good to see.
[We saw how it happened, and it didn’t make any sense to us, anyway. But it is good to see, because it means that this episode is over.]

Grade

D-

The Paradise Syndrome

The Paradise Syndrome (Memory Alpha; HD Video) starts on a beautiful pastoral scene that looks a lot like Earth but that, by all measures, shouldn’t. There’s honeysuckle, orange blossom, Amerindians, and a giant green monolith. Well, the giant green monolith is a bit odd, I’ll admit.

Oh, and there’s an asteroid hurtling toward the planet.

But then Kirk falls down a secret shaft and gets lost and the Enterprise has to leave to deflect the asteroid and when Kirk wakes up he can’t remember who he is!

Dammit, this is an amnesia episode. Amnesia episodes are crap.

But this one, surprisingly, is not at all.

Begin Spoilers

Kirk is adopted by the natives as a God, and saves a boy from drowning to prove his bona fides.

Spock and the rest of the crew, meanwhile, are failing to stop the asteroid. After burning out the warp engines (they burned them up going “maximum warp,” which is once again Warp 9), they have two months to get back to the planet and activate the monolith, which is a conveniently-placed asteroid deflector, left by “The Preservers” who plucked the Amerindians from Earth and deposited them here many years ago. This incredibly important setting point is dropped in with just enough amazement that you can believe it, but not enough that you can believe it will ever be mentioned again.

No really, Spoilers!

Kirk is still back on the planet, and in those two months he marries the chief’s daughter, and then get her pregnant. Yeah, so this episode is a small event in Kirk’s life.

When the asteroid gets close, though, the natives expect their God to open the monolith and save them, and when he can’t they stone him and his wife, which is not a good thing to do to a pregnant lady.

But the Enterprise arrives in time, they figure out how to open the monolith, and they save the day.

Except Kirks wife, who’s been mortally wounded by a number of rocks hurtled at her by ignorant savages. She’s gonna die. Convenient wrap up of that little plot. (Interesting side note: Memory Alpha claims the original script had her live, which would have complicated Kirk’s choices rather a lot. Does he just leave her there?)

End Spoilers

If you can get over the incredibly cheesy 60s Indian outfits and the incredibly cheesy 60s Indian makeup and the not quite as cheesy 60s Indian actors, this is a pretty good episode. Shatner gets to play real love, which is a dramatic range he doesn’t usually get to play, but he does a pretty good job at it. Spock gets to be all smarty and figure out the puzzle, which is actually kind of neat. McCoy gets to do his concerned-doctor schtick that he’s so good at. And Scotty does his “I canna give you any more” deal, even if he doesn’t give that line.

Awesome Dialog

McCoy: Spock, what is it?
Spock: His mind. He’s an… extremely dynamic individual.

Best Dialog In Perhaps Ever

Kirk: More symbols. Can you read them?
Spock: I do have an excellent eye for musical notes, Captain. They would seem to indicate that–
Kirk: Spock, just press the right button.

Grade

B+; would be more, but the cheese smothers it a bit

The Enterprise Incident

The Enterprise Incident (Memory Alpha; HD Video) finds Kirk taking our favorite starship deep into Romulan territory because he was bored. They are immediately surrounded by Romulans.

This episode is incredibly predictable, and continues the long line of episodes where a woman in a major role neglects her duties because she’s smitten. The woman in this case is the Romulan fleet commander, and her neglect lets our heros win the day, but only because they play the woman’s emotions against her. If a Romulan woman came aboard the Enterprise, Kirk would see through the same trick so quickly it wouldn’t be worth building an episode around.

This is all the more shameful because Joanne Linville plays a very interesting Romulan; a warrior and an executive, wanting passion but ambitious. But her bounds as a character shrink with every line she utters. The gender stereotypes slowly eat away at what starts as a command performance until there’s nothing left by my retrospective sadness that this show that was so progressive in so many ways was still held hostage to Gene Roddenberry’s personal vices.

Awesome Dialog

Commander: How could you do this to me? Who are you that you could do this?
Spock: First Officer of the Enterprise.
[She slaps him]
Spock: [Unflinching] What is your present mode of execution?

Two technical notes: First, the Enterprise here goes Warp 9, which should blow the ship up. Second, this episode features a lot of beaming onto and off of shielded ships, which should be impossible.

Grade

D

Kirk’s Empathy

Kirk will and does go to great lengths for those he cares about, and that empathy is what makes Kirk an interesting character.

He is at his best when he’s fighting against long odds to help those he feels responsible for, because it’s when he stops being an action hero and starts being a guy you root for. His empathy is what connects you into the story, because you want him to succeed in his efforts to protect the other characters.

The flip side is Kirk’s empathy for those he’s just met. There are countless episodes where the crew discovers some enslaved group or oppressed minority or hoodwinked populace and Kirk just wants them to be free. His desire for everyone everywhere to have control of their own destiny is the motive force that drives the series, and it reflects the core ideals behind the show: that sixties-America binge of freedom as unadulterated good, as the axis around which everything turns.

That Kirk is a starship captain is the most fitting piece of the puzzle; he is freedom incarnate, zooming around the galaxy doing things that he wants to do because he thinks that doing them is awesome. That his adventures so often find him freeing people from bondage or escaping bondage himself is part and parcel of the enterprise.

Spock’s Brain

Spock’s Brain (Memory Alpha; HD Video) has a premise as ridiculous as it’s title: a near-naked woman beams aboard the Enterprise from an advanced ship and steals Spock’s brain from out of his head.

Far more important, though, is that this is the first episode of season three, and they switched to blue titles instead of yellow, which is really wigging me out. As if that wasn’t enough, Kirk is thin and Scotty has weird hair.

Back in the fake world, Kirk is setting out to find Spock’s brain within the twenty-four hours Spock’s body can live on its own. They chase the ship to a system with three inhabitable planets that might be hiding the McGuffin. There’s a genuinely neat scene where Kirk, Chekov, Sulu and Uhura all interact as if the rest of the crew matters and it’s not all about Kirk, Spock and Bones. This glimpse of a more inclusive decision-making process reminds me a lot of the Next Generation conference room scenes where all the major characters get together to talk through the problem at hand. Those scenes are a staple of Next Gen but are almost nonexistent in this series.

But then we jump back to Kirk and Bones searching for Spock, with Scotty in tow as a replacement technical wizard. It’s kind of sad that Scotty gets short shrift in so many episodes; Doohan is capable of doing so much with the character, and whenever he’s given the chance we get some great performances, but he just can’t get enough screen time to make it work.

This is another episode that heavily plays on Kirk’s loyalty to his friend, and it treads that already well-trod ground without kicking up any new dust.

But in spite of the ridiculous premise and a bland reveal, this episode is good. Doohan and Shatner perform well, Kelley gets a chance to play his usual love/hate relationship with Spock, and the villainess is neither over the top nor banal.

Best bit of ironic dialog

“I certainly did notice the delightful ass…pects”

Grade

A-

Assignment: Earth

Assignment: Earth (HD Video; Memory Alpha) starts with the Enterprise in 1968 to conduct historical research. No extraordinary circumstances; they’re just there. Or then, I guess. Time travel being new and interesting is so last season.

But oh no! Someone is beaming onto the Enterprise from a thousand light years away! What the heck!?!

Oh, it’s a guy and a cat. They can’t be all that bad. And “Gary Seven” just wants to go down to Earth and make sure everything turns out like our favorite starship crew remembers it. But how can the crew be so sure that he’s not trying to muck up history? (why the heck are they there, again?)

The rest of the episode involves the crew trying to decide if Gary Seven is a good guy trying to help the Earth or a bad guy trying to screw things up. The audience, though, is almost immediately told that he’s a good guy.

That’s a mistake when you’re viewing this as an episode of Star Trek; the tension would be more interesting if you weren’t told. But this is only nominally an episode of Star Trek; this is really the pilot for another show about the mysterious Mr. Seven and his spunky twenty-year-old secretary, and the Enterprise crew is largely relegated to reacting as those two do the interesting parts of the episode.

And I’ve got to say, Gary Seven would have been a pretty neat show. Gary is a good leading man and has a lot of moves that make him fun to watch. The spunky secretary is a bit of an overdone trope but isn’t played too far here; her primary role is as exasperated modern and she does that well.

The show has a heavy dose of Trek (pacifism; utopianism; light humor) but has some decidedly un-Trek aspects: Gary’s computer isn’t cooperative and gives him guff when he’s terse; Gary has no problem lying and sneaking around; the secretary actually wears clothes.

Overall, it’s a good episode, but not great. I’m a little sad the spinoff never went anywhere (at least in the canon).

Grade as Star Trek

B+

Grade as Pilot

A