1605

There’s been times this season when I’ve felt “what the hell have I committed myself to here?” That was last week with Plato’s Stepchildren. And then there’s episode like this week’s where I felt “Man, season 3 sure gets a bad rap, even though it has incredibly good episodes like this one”.

I’ll leave it to our friend dive cubed to get into the nitty gritty in this episode, but I just wanted to comment on something else that has been on the tip of my tongue all 3 seasons so far that finally crystallized in this episode. There’s something about this show, a taste, a flavor, a je ne sais quoi quality that makes it superior to the other Trek shows. And I think I finally nailed it down tonight. This show is sexy. It’s sexy in a way none of the other shows are sexy. I think it comes from being a product of its time. I wasn’t around in the 60s, but it must have been a sexier time, at least judging from TV shows like this one. And from early James Bond movies and other spy movies. And I don’t just mean the outfits they have for their women, or Kirk’s confidence or the frequent kisses or the plots involving sex. There’s all that and more. There’s an undertone of sexiness to so many things in this show. In fact, when it gets overtly sexual, sometimes it even undercuts that sexiness. When Deela is trying to seduce Kirk at the start, it’s more sexy than later when we find out it’s because they must find a mate; suddenly that plot point makes it less sexy.

Anyway, I still haven’t found a way to fully articulate what I mean in this area, maybe I’ll come up with something better as the series moves forward.

The main scene that made this episode absolutely stellar for me is the scene after Deela has revealed herself and her crew. When Kirk is in there with Spock and McCoy, recording a log behind them as Deela looks on, and the passionate arguments they engage in after that log entry about the morality of what they’re doing, about whether Kirk would do the same thing or not. Whether it’s morally justifiable or not. And for a second in that scene, I thought the episode would do something I’ve seen in some science fiction books, where two sides working in different time speeds are able to work together despite one side being in a completely different time speed. Sadly, it turns out that unlike books I’ve read, this episode didn’t really have any interest in actually trying to be consisent with variable speeds, and keeping track of how fast one party was advancing compared to the other. It’s all rather hand-waved away like in most visual sci-fi stories. I suppose when you’re reading a story, there’s time to engage the reader in the timing aspect of such a story and ratchet up the tension. In a visual medium, it would be hard to do without a lot of effort. So I don’t begrudge them taking the easy way out.

It was still a wonderful episode.

And I’m a little disappointed to know that the drink girls who serve the bridge serve coffee.

1606

The one thing the TOS needed was a bar on board. You got some scenes in the mess hall and stuff, but 10 Forward was a great idea. I guess everyone has to go to Scotty to get their drink on. You better like scotch!

I have never seen or read a sci fi story about people who live at an accelerated speed so that you can’t see them and their voices are buzzes. I’ve seen plenty of Flash like speedsters where everyone looks slow compared to them, but they also exist in normal time and can eat cheeseburgers and stuff.

So to me, this episode was interesting for that. I also loved how they didn’t rely on special effects to achieve the slow motion effects (though they did to blink people out from the “normal time” perspective). Every actor just froze in place or slowed down. That was fun to me, I love practical and stage effects.

1607

“Yeoman, is that coffee available or have those circuits been damaged as well?”

So let’s keep going with “Wink of an Eye”. I’ll say up front that I wish I liked this episode more than I do, but I couldn’t really maintain interest. And as a result, I found myself nitpicking more than I might otherwise do, which pulls the episode down as a whole for me. Like, only the men are sterilized, but the women can breed? And how did these aliens get onboard the Enterprise in the first place, can you hitchhike with people beaming up?

Anyway, I think we’ve got the basic plot - for what feels like the hundredth time the Enterprise comes to what should be a deserted planet for a distress call and discovers the place isn’t so deserted after all. Kirk hears insects where none exist, which is kind of silly to me. The accelerated aliens can’t be seen, not even blurs, but we can hear their speech is buzzing? I guess. And by drugging Kirk, who Deela considers “pretty”, he is able to join their sped up existence and become her plaything slash stud horse. I think we’re supposed to sympathize with the plight of these Scalosians, and the drastic measures they’ve adopted to maintain their existence, but I can’t do it. They just seem deeply unlikable and it’s probably best they’re left stranded where they’ll hopefully trouble no one else again.

I was intrigued to discover that, yes, there is actual sex on this show, and not even just slightly implied - Deela wants Kirk for his body and by god she gets it! @Rock8man mentioned above that he considers the show sexy, but in looking back on the series so far I think I’d amend that: Star Trek is deeply horny. Which doesn’t seem terribly out of place in my opinion - we’ve established many times how incredibly dangerous the universe of Trek is, at least the original iteration of the show. The crew of the Enterprise are in constant danger by threats both known and unknown. You could fall afoul of some near-omnipotent being and just be blinked out of existence. It stands to reason that this stress would need an outlet, and we’re constantly seeing crewmen and women reacting to the situation as, you know, one might. Even Romulans face the same basic urges, as do the Vulcans, at least every seven years or so. In the world of Trek, it’s fight, flight or fuck pretty much every day.

One last thing, Memory Alpha tells me the writer of the episode based it on an H.G. Wells short story called “The New Accelerator.” I’m not familiar with this story though.

1608

Awwww, that’s a shame man. I liked it so much, I was just buzzing thinking about it last night and this morning.

I’ve been trying to rattle my brain loose of its cobwebs all morning, thinking about what science fiction stories I’ve read where characters are trying to resolve a situation at different speeds. I know I’ve read at least one major one, perhaps more, but I haven’t been able to think of any this morning.

1609

Not a great episode, but not that bad either. The main male bad guy comes across as really one-dimensional. The main female lead is fun to watch, though–she does arrogant really well.

One of those unusual episodes where they really do tech their way out of it–wow, drink this water and all will be solved! But it is easier to forgive that since they don’t run to that same resolution too often. There is a reason TNG gets made fun of for their technobabble.

1610

Memory Alpha also mentions that the title of this episode calls forward to an episode of Voyager titled “Blink of an Eye” which also uses hyperaccelerated aliens boarding the ship. But I guess I haven’t seen that one, doesn’t ring a bell.

1611

I think that it was kind of mean for Kirk not to share McCoy’s cure with the aliens at the end of the episode. They’ve been looking for a cure for generations, and McCoy working in slow-motion finds it in less time than it takes for them to set up a cryogenic device on the Enterprise.

1612

I disagree. I think their effective “exile” is probably the best possible outcome they could expect, given how many they have no doubt killed in their ongoing attempts to maintain their own existence.

1613

It sounded to me like they’ve been breeding with other species for a while now anyway, so it’s not as if there’s a lot of their original species left. Plus I’m not sure if it’s viable to maintain a species with just 6 individuals breeding. It’s probably a mercy to just let them live out their lives and be the last generation.

1614

“Doctor, please understand if there was any other way to accomplish our purpose …”
“Get on with it.”

This week’s episode is “The Empath”, and at its core it’s another relatively simple morality play - will a person give everything to save another, even someone they barely know, even at the cost of their own life? What if they’re forced to do so as part of an experiment, essentially at the barrel of a gun? I liked this episode not for the forced decisions the Vians impose, but the implication that out among the stars, were we to meet alien beings, we would just as likely meet alien ethical systems.

At the end of the episode, we come to realize that this arbitrary-seeming torture chamber has all been for a “greater” purpose. There are multiple worlds in their solar system, and the sun is going nova. If you had the power to save only one planet, how would you choose who would be saved? Now the Vians’ system is weird, there’s no denying that. The system they’ve set up, basically torture someone to death and see if their empath will risk her life to save them, is weirdly small scale: even if this individual does learn an “empathy instinct”, does that really tell you all that much about their society as a whole? And clearly killing individuals, even if it’s in the service of saving millions more, is a pretty high cost. You’d think the Vians with all their technology could simulate this whole process. But then I guess the outcome wouldn’t be quite so dramatic.

But as usual, it’s the interplay between Kirk, Spock and McCoy that elevates things. It’s long been established that these three would do anything for each other, and yet again we see this play out. And though it wasn’t played for laughs, I did find it a little funny that once McCoy basically puts Spock in command by hypo-ing Kirk, Spock’s first action is to declare himself the next subject of the Vians’ experiment. Only to then get hypo-ed by McCoy again, giving him time only to declare McCoy’s actions unethical before passing out. And he’s right, McCoy knocking them both out to put himself in their place would probably not be looked on favorably by Starfleet medical standards - but of course it’s also possibly the most ethical action, to put himself in the line of fire. Kirk or Spock would have done the same thing, no doubt.

It all gets wrapped up in a fairly pat manner, once more we get a “the secret ingredient is love” ending and the Vians see the error of their ways. But as often seems to be the case, I find that getting their is most of the fun, and the trip was worthwhile this week. Not a classic, but probably one of the best episodes I’ve seen so far this season.

1615

For me, this is the worst episode in the whole series. There is no dramatic tension since you know the ending once the cast of characters is established, the minimalist set is lazy and boring, the aliens serve only as an exposition crutch, and the premise is silly. Some of these sins can be found in multiple TOS episodes, but to top those this one features many all but unendurable minutes of the emoting of McCoy and the mute empath character.

1616

If this is the one with the mute woman telepath, I hated that actress/character. It was like she was a weird mime or something. I guess I’ll watch a bit for completeness, but . . . ehhhhhhhhh.

Only 8 episodes away from my pick for hottest star trek actress/outfit of all time, the princess from “The Cloud Minders”.

1617

Yeah, I never much liked this episode either. Usually I like their minimalist sets, but this one bugged me, and the female lead’s makeup does too. Maybe that’s petty, but given that there is pretty much no plot, there’s not much else to base an opinion on. Plus, the Vian’s heads look like butts.

1618

They are veeeeeeery similar to the aliens that captured Pike and he returned to.

1619

Hey, prosthetics are expensive! And the 3rd season budget was peanuts. Literally, I suspect.

1620

This episode is like those vomit flavored jelly beans. I only need to try it once. And no more.

1621

I really appreciated your reading on this episode. Confession time: I fell asleep twice trying to get through it. I was just sleep deprived, so don’t blame the episode for that. Well, maybe blame it a little bit. I did appreciate the episode’s dialog in explaining to the viewer the difference between a telepath and an empath.

By the way, eventually transporters will be this fast for Starfleet too. They’re just much more advanced since they can instantly teleport instead of taking forever like they do in TOS and Next Gen eras.

1622

What’s the next episode, Elann of Troyius? I don’t think I ever saw that one as a kid. Trojan War parable?

1623

What a beautiful episode this turned out to be.

At first I thought this was a topical episode about the Trump Presidency. How do you teach someone who has got the mind and stubbornness of a toddler anything? How do you even get through to them? Kirk tries to take a stern stance and be the disciplinarian parent, and it kind of backfires. First he almost gets Ambassador Martin Short killed, and then he gets her to cry and despite an earlier warning, he touches her tear, triggering a biochemical reaction which causes him to fall in love with her.

If that wasn’t enough, this episode also has a cat and mouse game going on with the Klingons, and a traitor on board who sabotages the Enterprise, and the best actual combat scenes so far in the Original Series, with tactical situations, power levels calibrations between shields, weapons and maneuverability. I tell you, this episode is a space sim fan’s wet dream.

Oh, and speaking of which, my favorite moment in this episode is when Kirk gets caught with Elaan by Spock and McCoy. They quickly figure out by the passionate kiss what probably happened, so McCoy is trying not to be rude while getting Kirk out of that room. Kirk, meanwhile, is smack dab in the middle of his “biochemical reaction” at its most intense, so when he leaves the room, it’s with a painful erection that makes him walk really stiffly and tenderly out of the room. I can’t believe they went there. And they did so quite obviously.

I even liked the very ending of the episode quite a lot. Any other Trek show would have ended on a poignant moment where you contemplate the love lost for Kirk in service to duty and obligations. But The Original Series seems to have a contractually obligated funny music comedy ending scene that they have to end every episode with. So how does a writer get around this? In this case, quite brilliantly. Instead of leaving what we know about Kirk unsaid, he has McCoy and Spock spell it out in the comedic scene: Kirk didn’t lose his love, because his first love is the Enterprise. Normally I’d find such blatant dialog expressing subtext to be a little cheesy, but because it’s in the comedy scene at the end, it works.

1624

Kirk_slaps_an_alien_girl_that_had_it_coming +1 counter on this one. My count is 4 at least.

Edit:. Awww, she’s growing on me. I can’t believe Kirk threatened to spank her. Ha!