Writer: Art Wallace
Director: Ralph Senensky
Producer: John Meredyth Lucas
When you've watched a lot of Star Trek, there are certain plots that pop up a lot. The planet that parallels Earth development, the evil computer in control of society, the Cold War allegory, the Garden of Eden, and so on. One of the most common, seeing continual revival in the various Trek movies and spin-offs, is "Moby-Dick in space". We saw it earlier this season in "The Doomsday Machine", and get it here in perhaps an even more effective form.
One of the most welcome elements of this rendition is the focus on Kirk. While the good captain has had a lot of good moments this season, it would probably be fair to say we haven't seen an episode properly focusing on him in quite some time, with Spock getting far more attention. Here, we get to see him in the moral wrong, which is a rare position for Kirk -- even if all his suspicions and fears are somewhat borne out as being correct by the end.
This is a monster hunt episode, of a purity not seen on Trek since "The Man Trap", with the moral ambiguity of that episode resolved by allowing Kirk the semi-telepathic sense that the creature being hunted is a being of pure malevolent evil. So killing it is okay! Of course, we don't have the kind of money for monsters that we used to, so this entity is that clasic Trekkian money saver: a gaseous being without solid form!
Similar to "The Man Trap", it won't eat Spock because he's got green blood, but unlike the earlier episode Kirk has a more compelling reason to be devoted to the monster's destruction: this very entity was responsible for nearly wiping out the crew of the first starship Kirk served on out of the Academy, including the captain of that ship.
It's that dead mentor of Kirk whose son who is now involved as a security officer onboard the Enterprise, through the clasic television contrivance of complete coincedence. Kirk of course sees himself in the young officer, and both must deal with their obsession (get it?) with destroying the creature.
The only thing I don't really like about this episode is that in order to furnish a reason why Kirk pursuing his whale hunt is "wrong", they give the Enterprise a rendezvous to pick up perishable medical supplies. Fine enough, but then practically every line of dialogue by a supporting character is someone reminding Kirk about this responsibility. I was practically on Kirk's side when he finally snapped at people to stop reminding him!
But aside from that, this is a great examination of the motives that can drive Kirk over the edge (guilt, primarily) and also a good showcase for Spock and McCoy as a twosome working to try and confront their captain and stop him from making these poor choices.
Rating: 3.5 out of 4
Next Voyage:
No comments:
Post a Comment