Star Trek -- Season 2 Episode 20 (Return to Tomorrow)

There were a few Star Trek episodes where I wondered about the implications.  It’s easy enough to write a scenario into a script, but it’s another thing to have actually gone through it or to have to carry it out. As they say, it looks good on paper.  One has to wonder what it actually means to have been implemented.

The Enterprise comes across a planet that’s lifeless and barren.  Except that the crew is greeted by the voice of Sargon, who invites them to a subterranean chamber where he and two others are stored in several orbs.  (The other two are his wife, Thalassa, and his former rival, Henoch.)  The three of them want to use the bodies of Kirk, Spock and a third crewmember to build permanent android bodies for them to live in.

Yes, it’s a risk.  In fact, there’s no good reason why the ship’s top two officers have to volunteer.  There are plenty of security officers onboard.  But, Kirk eventually agrees to let the survivors build their androids.  The androids could last for thousands of years, but will be limited in sensation.  This leads to Henoch wanting to keep Spock’s body.  In the end, the survivors realize that their time has passed.  They agree to depart their respective bodies in peace.

It’s hard to imagine that their consciousnesses were stored in orbs for however many centuries.  It must have been a boring existence.  I can hardly take being trapped indoors for 18 months with COVID.  I can’t imagine what it would be like to be contained in such a small space.

You’d think that they would have just gone ahead and built the android bodies.  True, that would have required resources.  The android bodies would require power and they could have been trapped underground anyway.  But, you’d think they’d maybe build a few anyway just to have them ready when a ship came along.

For that matter, it’s stated that their race seeded several other planets elsewhere.  This would mean that they had their own ships, or at least the capability of building them.  Why not build a ship and leave the planet themselves?  Even if they didn’t have warning that their planet would die, they could build enough android bodies to build a ship.  (There were originally more survivors.  Only three orbs made it to the episode’s present day.)

Ultimately, it’s a shame for the race to die out like that.  To spend all those countless years underground in orbs only to give up.  The tantalizing thing is that this is the first real mention of a race that seeded the galaxy.  There were other episodes that alluded to this, although there’s no mention if this is the same race that was seen in The Chase.  Just to have the three survivors pass on some information would have been nice.

I don’t really dwell on this episode, but I often wonder why more wasn’t done to preserve the last of that race.  I also wonder how the three survivors survived for so long and what actually happened to the others.  It would have been nice to know.

 

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Star Trek -- Season 2 Episode 13 (Obsession)

I’ve come to realize that Star Trek had a lot of contrivances that the subsequent series didn’t have.  For instance, The Enterprise encountered a lot of one-of-a-kind creatures.  There were also a lot of emergencies that could have easily been handled by some other means.  Add to this reused plot devices and you have an episode of Star Trek.

In Obsession, The Enterprise is due to pick up some perishable medical supplies from the USS Yorktown.  For some reason, they’re doing a planetary survey first.  On that planet is a gaseous life form that can drain a person of hemoglobin.  Kirk recognizes this as the same creature that killed half the crew of the USS Farragut, Kirk’s first assignment out of Starfleet Academy.  Kirk is determined to kill the thing before it manages to spawn thousands more like itself.

Ok, so how do they know that there’s one of this thing?  If it goes back to its home planet to reproduce, it’s conceivable that there are thousands or even millions of these cloud creatures draining the hemoglobin out of unsuspecting people.  For that matter, how does it survive like that?  There are plenty of life forms that don’t have iron-based blood.  The Enterprise’s first officer is one such life form.

So, Kirk puts off meeting with The Yorktown.  Why can’t the Yorktown deliver the supplies if it’s so important?  Why schedule two ships to meet up in the first place?  It’s to give Kirk a deadline.  That’s why.

The entire episode seems built around Kirk getting revenge.  You’d think at least one other Starfleet officer would have the same concerns.  Half of the crew of The Farragut survived.  Isn’t there someone Kirk could talk to who would understand?  I’d think Kirk would call one of the surviving crewmates or the relatives of the fallen crewmates to let them know what happened.  Even a passing comment in a later episode would have been nice.

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Star Trek -- Season 2 Episode 9 (Metamorphosis)

Star Trek has a lot of history.  There were occasions where the writers saw fit to introduce a character that was from a long time prior to the main action.  In some cases, like Space Seed and The Neutral Zone, suspended animation was used.  Other characters span centuries because they live for centuries.  Guinan was encountered in 19th-century San Francisco, despite still being alive in the 24th century.  That’s how long her species lives.

Metamorphosis was a bit odd, in that the crew of the Enterprise find themselves in the presence of Zefram Cochrane.  Cochrane is important in that he invented warp drive, at least as far as Earth is concerned.  To find him on an otherwise-lifeless planet is a bit strange.  Stranger yet is the fact that he’s 150 years old, yet looks like he’s in his 30s.  (The actor playing him would have been 34 at the time.)

Another oddity is an energy cloud that inhabits the planet with Cochrane.  He has a shelter built from his ship and enough food to last.  However, leaving’s not an option.  The energy field prevents any form of propulsion from working.   This is a problem as Kirk, Spock and McCoy are transporting a sick ambassador back to the Enterprise for further treatment.

It turns out that the energy field is keeping Cochrane alive.  (The energy field would seem to be Cochrane’s companion, and is thus called The Companion.)  Further examination reveals that The Companion is actually in love with Cochrane, which he initially finds revolting.  When The Companion merges with the rather attractive ambassador, it’s not quite that bad.  The episode ends with Cochrane and the ambassador being left on the planet to live out their days, each presumably aging normally from that point on.  Kirk, Spock and McCoy are allowed to leave.

There were a few things that stuck with me on repeated viewings of this episode.  I’ve occasionally wondered why the Enterprise didn’t come to the ambassador, considering that she was on an important mission.  For that matter, why didn’t The Enterprise deliver her outright.  I’m assuming that they were on some other important mission.  Having the ambassador on a vulnerable shuttlecraft allows for the story to progress.

The big thing for me is how Cochrane lasted that long on a planet with no real companionship, other than an energy field that he can’t directly communicate with.  I probably would have gone crazy long ago.  It’s amazing that he seemed rational at all.

It’s also odd that no one recognized Cochrane.  Granted, no one would expect to find Cochrane on a remote planet, as he was lost in space and would be presumed dead by now.  Also, the average person doesn’t know what every historical figure looks like.  Someone like George Washington, sure.  The big hint, though, would have been that Cochrane not only recognized that Spock was Vulcan, but seemed to think that it was relatively significant.

It’s also kind of strange to me that they didn’t really deal directly with the relationship, other than to have Cochrane weirded out.  Maybe it was a way of showing how far we had come over the course of a century.  A human from that time wouldn’t consider making it with something so strange, yet he’s in the presence of a character who is the result of a human/Vulcan union.  Still, to have The Companion assume human form is avoiding the issue, at best.

It’s also not clear to me if there are other energy fields similar to The Companion.  It’s always odd to me that there’s exactly one of a species.  I get it if the species is nearly extinct.  However, are we to assume that there’s only one energy field out there?  Is The Companion an anomaly?

The episode doesn’t really seem that satisfying.  The conclusion basically leaves Cochrane not far from where he started.  He knows what The Companion is, although it had to change form to become palatable to him.  I don’t think we ever find out what happened to them.  I don’t recall any episode dealing with the aftermath of this episode.  It might have been interesting to see what became of them.

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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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