Writer: Theodore Sturgeon
Director: Robert Sparr
Producer: Gene L. Coon
"Shore Leave" is a bit of an odd duck. A fan favourite episode, it's also perhaps the beginning of Gene Coon's attempts to add more comedic elements to the series. While previous episodes have had some comic takes, notably "Mudd's Women", under Coon's reign there would be regular "comic relief" style episodes featuring outlandish premises and a great deal of fun. "Shore Leave" isn't quite 100% comedic, there are still moments of danger and drama, and a little bit of intellect, but by the end of the hour, it's clear that it's all be in good, lighthearted, shallow fun.
These lighthearted episodes are usually fan favourites because they're a change of pace and a lot of fun, but they're also a difficult tightrope to walk, as the show does require that some level of credibility remain and not have the series devolve into full camp. The other issue can be that they don't really have enough material for a full hour, and invite a lot of filler.
That's certainly true of "Shore Leave", an episode where the ship comes across an idyllic planet, ideal for rest and relaxation, only to find that anything they happen to be thinking of is replicated -- even if it's deadly. The conflict comes because our heroes don't understand what's happening to them for the majority of the hour, instead acting in wonderment and confusion as things that can't be real keep appearing. McCoy conjures characters from Alice in Wonderland, Kirk meets old friends and enemies from his Academy days, Sulu conjures antique weapons for his collecting hobby, etc.
Its' clear everyone had a lot of fun with this outing, and shooting it outdoors on location really brings a great sense of the wide open spaces and fresh air and idyllic setting in a way that a soundstage never could. It also opens the camera up quite a bit, and we get great tracking shots and crane shots that glide along and keep everything on the move.
However, the freedom of a planet where anything goes proves almost too much, as the episode fills itself with fleeting cameos of ideas, just to keep itself filled so the characters won't have the time to figure out what's going on. McCoy's White Rabbit is a major inciting incident, but never really appears much after. Encounters with a Black Knight are more memorable, but other elements like Sulu's gun and (ugh) samurai, Yeoman Barrow's Don Juan, and the tiger and WWII planes conjured up by utterly pointless characters Martine and Rodriguez, fill the story up with just random ideas that never really contribute much. Seriously, the two characters of Angela Martine and Esteban Rodriguez could be cut from the episode entirely, as they spend all of it apart from everyone else!
The idea that all these things are people's secret fantasies, but also the dramatic necessity that they be threatening, leads to some bad ideas too, like that Yeoman Tonia Barrows dreams up an attack on herself by Don Juan. It's mostly off screen but he clearly physically assaulted her and it all has a nasty "women just wanna get raped, don't they?" connotation to it that doesn't play well. On the other hand, the script rewrite that changed Janice Rand to Tonia Barrows apparently also changed it so she would spend most of her time flirting with McCoy rather than Kirk, and it's nice to see the good doctor get some action for a change.
The biggest sections are on Kirk's fantasies, namely an encounter with an old girlfriend named Ruth (one of many, it seems), and then a running battle with Finnegan, an upperclassman who used to torment Kirk at the Academy. The idea that Kirk can now fulfill the fantasy of beating the crap out of him is probably the best actual utilization of the story's central sci-fi idea, with everything else coming off a bit silly, but even Finnegan - a very engaging antagonist to stand in for the more esoteric threat - serves the episode as a whole lot of filler, as the fistfight at Vasquez Rocks (a place we'll be returning to often) goes on and on and on far past it's welcome!
All of which is to say, this is a fun episode. But it's also like a half hour's worth of story dragged out to an hour, and the mix of tones between the jovial and the dangerous doesn't always work.
Rating: 3 out of 4
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