Star Trek -- Season 1 Episode 24 (This Side of Paradise)

Most of us have dreamed of having no responsibilities.  What if life were one long weekend?  There was no need to clock in or report to anyone.  Even the hardest of workers must have thought it would be nice to have all reward and no work.  Such is the life on Omicron Ceti III.  A group of colonists was sent there with supplies, but weren’t heard from again.  It was later discovered that there was a deadly form of radiation on the planet, meaning that there’s no expectation that they’re still there.

When the Enterprise beams down, it’s soon discovered that the colonists are all alive, but that they’re happy and in perfect health.     The leader of the colony even seems to have grown a new appendix.   What’s stranger is that there’s no sign of their livestock.  The people are in good health, but they have no cattle.

It soon becomes apparent what’s happening.  A flower there produces spores which infect the host body.  The host becomes perfectly happy and content.  The body is also repaired to perfect health and protected from the deadly radiation.  A few members of the landing party are infected.  Then, almost the entire ship becomes infected.  Kirk is left alone on the bridge of an otherwise-empty ship.  He eventually discovers a cure and is able to reverse the effects in Spock.  Together, they reverse the effects in everyone on the planet.

It makes sense.  A stagnant society, like the one that Omicron Ceti III would have had, is exactly the kind that Kirk and crew have fought against in the past.  I have to wonder what would have become of that society had Kirk not snapped out of it at the last second.  Would the children have to be inoculated by the plants?  Would the people even have had children?  Raising one is no easy task.

I also wonder if the plants were ever studied.  Sure, taking the spores as is isn’t great.  However, the ship has found an effective panacea.  I would think someone at Starfleet Medical would be interested in that.  You also have a possible cure for mental issues.  It might be effective against depression or those with homicidal tendencies.  (To be fair, I don’t think it was stated that the plants weren’t studied.)

My one concern with the plot was that it seemed unnecessary to send an entire ship to the colony.  It was known beforehand that there was lethal radiation.  It was assumed that the colonists were dead.  There was no mystery as to what happened.  I’m not sure what warranted sending Starfleet’s flagship.

It also seems a little odd that the entire crew was susceptible.  The crew is majority human, but there are more than 400 people onboard.  I’d imagine that there were at least a few nonhuman crewmembers.  Their physiology should have presented a problem.  The fact that none of the livestock survived would speak to this.  (Speaking of 400 people, there was also no mention of building houses for anyone.  Was everyone going to share one room?)

It’s still a decent episode.  Many of the episodes from The Original Series had similar issues.  However, they seemed to be more about getting a message across rather than worrying about details.  Again, it was never explicitly stated that houses weren’t going to be built or that there wasn’t already enough room.

I have always wondered why paradise was so bad.  In the right context, Omicron Ceti III would have been great.  The planet would have made for the perfect retirement community.  As I said, it could have been great for medical treatments.  It seems a shame to just abandon the planet altogether.

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Star Trek -- Season 1 Episode 17 (The Squire of Gothos)

Undefeatable antagonists don’t generally impress me.  In movies and TV shows, they’re difficult to write for and generally require some greater force to get rid of them.  The protagonists often have to amuse the antagonist, who could easily end any one of them.

When The Enterprise encounters a rogue planet, the find that its sole inhabitant is Trelane, who happens to have god-like powers.  He pulls Captain Kirk and Sulu off the bridge.  When a landing party goes down to the planet, they find something resembling the Earth, but from several centuries ago.  Trelane introduces himself as a retired general and the squire of the planet, hence the title.  He spends the episode entertaining himself and finding new ways to torture the crew of the ship until an intervening force rescues them.

I remember bring entertained by the episode when I first saw it.  It was the first time I had seen such an entity.  Part of the reason that it holds up to some degree is that Trelane is portrayed as being somewhat immature.  He can create food, but doesn’t consider that it’s supposed to have taste.  He fails to account for the speed of light in his observation of Earth.  He’s powerful, but not wise.  In fact, the machine he uses could easily be seen as training wheels.  Destroying the machine slows him, but doesn’t stop him completely.  (Trelane was said to be a Q in a Next Generation-era novel.  I don’t recall if any of this was addressed or not.)

I think the one saving grace of the episode was to have William Campbell play Trelane.  He’s able to do it with just the right amount of flamboyance.  He pulls off that child-like quality without appearing child-like.  According to IMDb, the part was written for Roddy McDowall.   His portrayal probably would have been similar, but I don’t know if it would have been the same.  (I don’t know if any screen tests were recorded, but it would be interesting to see how McDowall would have handled the part.)

This is probably the closest I’ve ever seen a story come to convincingly portraying a powerful being interacting with mere mortals.  Trelane doesn’t seem to have any specific ill will towards the crew of The Enterprise.  He doesn’t want anything from them other than as someone to play with.  The danger is there, but not the specific intent to harm.

This is where most stories of this type fail, in my opinion.  Humans pose no real threat to a being like Trelane, so how can they put up a fair fight?  Kirk is able to get the rest of the landing party off the planet, but he still needs the intervention of Trelane’s parents to leave the planet, himself, and to get the ship safely away from the planet.

It was still an interesting episode.  Trelane was someone who imitated without understanding.  It’s not enough to know what to do.  You actually have to know why, as well.  It’s strange that Q got to come back and Trelane didn’t.  It would have been interesting to see if Trelane had learned anything.

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