Writer: Lee Cronin (Gene Coon)
Director: Vincent McEveety
Producer: Fred Freiberger
Star Trek's third season is notorious among fans for the show's dip in quality. Not that there weren't bad episodes in previous years, but in season three even the good entries tend to feel subpar, lacking the care and attention to quality that had become the show's standard.
There are a few reasons to why season three saw such a drop, as told from a few different points of view. Some see it as the network sabotaging the show so they could justify finally cancelling it, some as the makers of the show shooting themselves in the foot. Both were probably true to some degree.
After the successful fan letterwriting campaign (organized by show creator Gene Roddenberrry) that saved Trek from the chopping block, NBC scheduled the show for Monday nights at 7:30 PM. This was a premium time slot, and thinking that the network had finally recognized the value of the show, Roddenberry agreed to return as showrunner and devote the time and energy to it that he had in the early days of season 1. To network, cast, and crew, this was great news.
Problem. Laugh-In, the popular sketch comedy show, had that slot. They threw a fit. Both it and Trek attracted a valuable college age audience, but Laugh-In was more popular, less controversial, and cheaper to do. They won the time slot battle. Trek would go on at Friday nights at 10 PM -- aka when basically none of its kid, teen, or college student audience would ever see it.
So Roddenberry gave up. Backed his bags, stole a ton of props and original footage and scripts to sell to Trekkies as mail-order merch, kept a nominal Executive Producer title and fee, and decided he was done. Most of the show's regular writers backed out at that point too -- although some have scripts early in season three due to being in development the year before. The show was handed over to Fred Freiberger as showrunner and Arthur Singer as story editor, who tried to do the best they could with a budget that had been slashed again (third season episodes were being made for about half of what season one had been shot for), a crew that was low on morale, and a cast that was on the edge of revolting.
They tried their best, but season three served as Trek's swan song -- it wasn't very good, and nobody watched it. The self-fullfilling prophecy.
But this episode isn't bad. Not great either, though.
It's premise is very simple. The Enterprise has been ordered to make diplomatic contact with the xenophobic Melkotians, despite the Melkotians making it clear they don't want it. Which is a weird mission for the "non-interference" foreign policy of Starfleet, but it's just a cheap way for the episode to force the issue.
Anyways, to throw off the landing party, the Melkotians create an illusion of Tombstone, Arizona, at the time of the OK Corral. With the landing party in the role of the Clampetts, destined to be gunned down. It must be said, this illusion is one of the best uses of Trek's anemic third season budget. Our characters all look the same, but the illusionary Earps and townsfolk see them as their historical counterparts. The buildings are nothing but facades, the sky is blood red, the entire scene is surreal. It's cost saving, but it's also effective in selling the unreality.
Unreality ends up being the point, as no genuine efforts to escape the gunfight succeed, reality re-writing itself to force the issue. Spock realizes that since the entire situation is manufactured in their minds, the bullets cannot hurt them so long as they are sure in their minds they are unreal. So the Earps fire, and nothing happens. Turns out it was all a test by the Melkotians to see if the landing party would kill when threatened. Since they didn't, it proves humans are safe to make contact with. Holy crap! I'm not sure the Melkotians are safe, guys!
"Spectre of the Gun" is smart, eerie, atmospheric and intriguing. Unfortunately it is also extremely dull in long passages. Part of this is because we have seen ideas like this a few times before on the show, but part of it is also that there simply isn't enough story to last out a full hour. So everything is dragged out into an extremely slow pacing that ends up undoing whatever good elements the episode had going for it.
Lack of story, and pacing, will be problems moving forward, too.
Rating: 2.5 out of 4
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