Writer: Robert Bloch
Director: James Goldstone
Producer: Gene Roddenberry
This episode is written by Robert Bloch, best known for writing the novel upon which Psycho was based, as well as many other horror stories, including being a member of the Cthulhu Mythos circle of writers and a Lovecraft correspondent.
Which may explain the "sci-fi" pulp magazine feel of this episode, with its lost ancient civilizations (even called Old Ones, in a Lovecraft reference), indistinguishable from human androids, mad scientists, melodramatic love story, bottomless pits, contrived plot elements, and fuzzy character motivations.
The plot is that Nurse Christine Chapel, who in her sole previous appearance we learned is secretly in love with Mr. Spock, is also the fiancee of the eminent and respected Dr. Roger Korby, a famous "medical archeologist" -- a profession that apparently means he digs up ruins of old civilizations and then adapts their medical knowledge for modern day use? Anyways, he's been missing for five years and she signed up aboard a starship to see if, I guess by chance, it would happen to find him? Which seems like a way worse idea than just chartering a ship?
Anyways, she's lucky, because the Enterprise does find him, on an ice world with a complex network of underground caverns. Except his research team is composed entirely of androids -- including a female one who he keeps insisting he didn't build for sex even though he obviously did -- and Kirk's redshirts keep getting killed by a 7 foot tall monster android left behind by the Old Ones and played by Ted Cassidy ("Lurch" from The Addams Family).
Yes, the Old Ones discovered the secret to making perfect androids, but then (of course) their mechanical servants revolted and destroyed them, and now Ruk (Ted Cassidy) is the only android left. Korby has figured out how to create the androids, and even transfer human consciousnesses into them for practical immortality! But Kirk doesn't trust this, as the anroid copies can be programmed, with Korby saying that personality programming could eliminate fear, hate, etc. but to Kirk it sounds too much like playing God and totalitarianism and all that.
So Korby makes an android Kirk copy (of course), but Kirk manages to ensure the android Kirk isn't a perfect copy so when it goes back to the ship Spock realizes something's amiss and comes down to rescue everyone -- but since he doesn't arrive in time to actually affect the plot, this entire subplot is pointless, other than to give William Shatner the chance to play scenes opposite himself, which he clearly enjoys doing (finally, another actor he respects!)
Meanwhile, Kirk also uses logic to turn Ruk against Korby, in the episode's coolest scene. Unfortunately, that goes nowhere because Korby just shoots Ruk with a phaser. Kirk uses the power of nonconsensual kissing to turn Andrea the SexBot against Korby, but that ends up not affecting the plot either. Eventually, in a scuffle, it turns out Korby himself is an android (a twist everyone saw coming) and Kirk and Chapel point out that human Korby was a total pacifist, while android Korby kills people with the unthinking efficiency of a machine. Droid Korby realizes that indeed the process has in fact altered him for the worst, and kills himself.
It's an entertaining story, and worth seeing just for Ted Cassidy's Ruk, but it's ultimately not about anything. There isn't enough of a theme or a point to hang the show on, other than a lot of stock pulp sci-fi plots. We don't even learn a lot about Nurse Chapel, other than that she was Korby's student when she got engaged to him, which seems really problematic to me. Granted, it's sort of the same backstory as Reed Richards and Sue Storm from Fantastic Four (Chapel and Korby even resemble Reed and Sue) but it's a weird backstory that does her no favours.
If the episode had ended with Ruk's realization that survival trumps obedience ("YES! THAT WAS THE EQUATION!") and turning against Korby, that would have been an ending. But instead the episode limps along to its weaker ending. It's an all right hour, but nothing special.
Rating: 2.5 out of 4
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