The Lights Of Zetar

The last hundred survivors of the dead planet Zetar survive through sheer force of will in a non-corporeal form. They have travelled through space for over a thousand years looking for a body which they can take over and live out the remainder of their lives. In the course of their search they killed everyone on Memory Alpha; a planetoid set up by the Federation as a central library containing the total cultural history and scientific knowledge of all Federation members. The lens through which writers Jeremy Tarcher and Shari Lewis focus this story is a romance between Scotty and Lieutenant Mira Romaine a Starfleet specialist supervising the transfer of equipment to Memory Alpha.

A Scotty love story! Has no one learned anything from Who Mourns For Adonais? The answer is yes. A little. This time Scotty is at least involved in a relationship which seems mutual. Unlike the loveless relationship in Who Mourns For Adonais? where Scotty was willing to sacrifice his life for a woman who barely seemed to recognise that he existed; the height of her passion was a reluctant, "all right," when he invited her for coffee.

Apart from that there's very much the sense that The Lights Of Zetar could be Who Mourns For Adonais? with the Apollo plot taken out and the Zetar survivors plot slotted into its place. In both stories Scotty acts utterly obsessed to the extent of disobeying direct orders from Kirk. In both stories there is also the sense that someone on the production team simply looked down a list of episodes and saw there had already been a recent Kirk love story, a Spock love story, a McCoy love story, and a Chekov love story; the only two regular cast not to get a love story are Uhura and Sulu who are both rarely asked to do anything interesting. It's the generic nature of the love plot which really grates; Scotty could be Sulu or Chekov or Lieutenant Kyle. It's like the joke at the end of The Simpsons episode Das Bus where the children are marooned on an island and the narrator says “... eventually they were rescued by, oh, let's say... Moe.”

Star Trek is great at telling unique emotional stories for Kirk and Spock. The City On The Edge Of Forever couldn't be about another character falling for Edith Keeler, and there's something endearing about Kirk's reluctance to talk about Ruth in Shore Leave; as if he is embarrassed by the unexpected reappearance of this ghost from his past. Unfortunately when it comes to other characters the scripting suddenly becomes utterly interchangable. "McCoy falls in love...Chekov falls in love...Scotty falls in love." Anyone could have caught a terminal disease and fallen in love in For The World Is Hollow And I Have Touched The Sky. Still this might simply be a reflection of how television worked at the time; maybe carefully worked out character stories were strictly for the lead actors. For all I know on Gunsmoke Chester Goode, Festus Haggen, and Doc Adams were all having interchangeable romances on a weekly basis. At the end of the episode Scotty gazes moon-eyed at Lieutenant Romaine and says, "now we have all the time in the world". We never hear about Lieutenant Romaine again.

It's frustrating that Jeremy Tarcher and Shari Lewis have foregrounded the Scotty love story. The other concepts are really interesting. There's a spiritual element to the Zetarians who drift around the universe as disembodied minds, possessing people, forcing them to speak in tongues, and giving Lieutenant Romaine the power of second sight. Their psychedelic colours and appearance in extreme close-ups of Lieutenant Romaine's eye probably springs more from Dave Bowman's trip beyond the infinite in 2001: A Space Odyssey which premièred in Los Angeles on 4th April 1968.

Memory Alpha is the Library of Alexandria for the Federation. It is destroyed because, "when the library complex was assembled, shielding was considered inappropriate to its totally academic purpose. Since the information on the Memory planet is available to everyone, special protection was deemed unnecessary. " The line is probably a quick story fix; like M-5's unexpected and never again mentioned ability to generate a force field in The Ultimate Computer. During story development someone probably wondered why everyone on the Enterprise survived their encounter with the Zetarians unlike the people on Memory Alpha. It makes the Federation seem sweetly naive, as if they never expected anyone to attack a library. The line implies that Memory Alpha has no shielding whatsoever, not even against natural radiation which is strange considering cosmic radiation was a known hazard of space travel by 1968. Apparently anyone using Memory Alpha will be sterilized whenever a nearby star coughs. There's also an odd line from Spock about the loss of Memory Alpha being "a disaster for the galaxy," and "irretrievable," because the memory core is burned out. The script seems to be suggesting that Memory Alpha holds its information in an electronic format which is not backed up. It's easy to watch The Lights Of Zetar today and assume Memory Alpha is like the internet but it's not. It's a genuine space library and Spock's line is a relic of days when information was harder to duplicate.

Enterprise crew deaths: None.

Running total: 53

Plato's Stepchildren

The teaser for Plato's Stepchildren is really effective. A lot of this is due to Alexander, played by Michael Dunn with a twitchy nervous energy. His opening info-dump packed lines should fall flat on the screen but he makes the exposition work by portraying Alexander as someone who just cannot stop his mouth from running. "...Platonians. I'm sure you've never heard of us. Our native star is Sahndara. Millennia ago, just before it went nova, we managed to escape. Our leader liked Plato's ideas Plato, Platonius. See? In fact, our present philosopher-king, Parmen, sometimes calls us Plato's children, although we sometimes think of ourselves more as Plato's stepchildren."

At this point we're barely 90 seconds into the episode and Alexander's character is already solidly established as someone a little odd and lacking in social skills; Kirk, Spock, and McCoy certainly think so judging by the look they exchange over Alexander's head as he rambles on and on, and the trio pretend to listen politely. When Alexander says, "excuse me, someone's waiting for you," and then twitches and dances backwards out of the scene it could be taken as yet another aspect of his strange character but it isn't. The Platonians have telepathic powers, and there's another nicely handled moment when Parmen snatches McCoy's hypospray and it floats through the air (it's a shame the cleaned up prints make the wires more visible). Finally the teaser ends not on a reaction close-up of the landing party as might normally be expected, but on Alexander in pain and worried.

This really should feel tired and second hand. Just another bunch of toga wearing demi-gods, as previously seen in Arena and Who Mourns For Adonais? but instead it feels fresh. In the space of two and a half minutes the teaser sets up some intriguing characters and has the audience asking the question all good teasers should raise; what's going on here and what's going to happen to Kirk, Spock, and McCoy?

Act one continues the trend mixing nice understated moments, the contrast between Alexander's struggle to move his chess pieces and the effortless telekinesis of Eraclitus, and bigger moments like Parmen's telepathic delirium. Ultimately your opinion of the story will depend on how you view the later acts when Parman tries to force McCoy into staying by humiliating Kirk and Spock, and later also bringing Uhura and Nurse Chapel down from the Enterprise. Personally I find the humiliation scenes go on too long. They make up the bulk of act two and it's possible to go through a whole suite of emotions while watching; anger, embarrassment (for the characters), boredom, embarrassment (for the actors), horror, embarrassment (for yourself at the fear of being caught watching Kirk pretending to be a horse). Then, after act three provides a recovery period the humiliation scenes start up again, this time with Kirk and Spock dressed in vile red and green togas. It's difficult to know how to read these scenes. The audience is meant to be outraged at the Platonian's humiliation of the Enterprise crew for their own entertainment, but it's also being done for the entertainment of the audience. At what point does the sadism of the Platonians blur into titillation for the audience? Probably around the point where Parmen brings out the implements of torture and Spock menaces Nurse Chapel with a red-hot poker and Kirk starts cracking a whip around Uhura; had someone on the production team seen a bootleg copy of The Avengers episode A Touch Of Brimstone? It went into syndication on American television in 1969.

Apart from those togas what surprises most about the story is how lush it looks. It's easy to mock Star Trek's tendency to use the style of ancient Greece as a symbol for strange alien power, but being able to pull costumes and sets from storage must allow tight budgets to be stretched further than normal and the result is some visually pleasing, and surprisingly large and complex sets. Art director Matt Jefferies has added a small square pond behind the main throne room, and behind that is a view of greenery and a horizon. The whole set has real depth and looks bigger than Apollo's temple in Who Mourns For Adonais? although it is almost certainly smaller. In addition director of photography Al Francis lights the sets beautifully and the result is a rich and colourful world. I can't help feeling guilty for criticising Al Francis in my review of The Tholian Web because here he does sterling work.

Ultimately it's not the big set piece scenes of act two and four which stick in the memory and make the episode work, it's little moments. Bruce Schoengarth the film editor uses some great reaction shots of Philana as she smirks or looks bored or disdainful; she gets surprisingly few lines but her regular reaction shots allow her a constant presence in the story. The slow realisation that Alexander's nervous desire to constantly please is due to hundreds of years of literally being pushed around. The two fops Dioniyde and Eraclitus who mock Kirk and Spock during the revels. "Oh, how faithless and fickle." "Make up your minds." The laughter and applause which accompanies the revels and makes those scenes feel like some bizarre sitcom. Liam Sullivan's delivery of Parmen's line, "how can you let this go on?" which ends act two and Leonard Nimoy's subdued and broken Spock at the start of act three; somehow more shocking than any of the indignities inflicted on him by the Platonians.

Enterprise crew deaths: None again, a six episode run of no deaths for the Enterprise crew.
Running total: 48

The Ultimate Computer

Back in 1990 when the BBC finally decided to start showing Star Trek: The Next Generation I was watching Datalore with my parents. Within about a minute of Lore being reactivated my mum said, “I'll bet he turns out to be evil.” Some stories have a weight of inevitability about them. If a character develops a cough or a headache then they will be dead soon. In The Ultimate Computer it's obvious things are going to go badly from the moment Commodore Wesley tells Kirk the Enterprise will be used to test the new M-5 computer, and that all he has to do is, “sit back and let the machine do the work.”

Sure enough the M-5 goes berserk after mistaking simulated war games for the real thing and, as is always the way in these situations, Captain Kirk talks the M-5 to death. However, if the overall course of the plot runs on rails The Ultimate Computer deserves some credit for taking an unexpected detour on the way. The first two acts are more character driven than might be expected in a rogue computer story as Kirk tries to cope with discovering that the M-5 really can do his job better. This still gives the story a weirdly contemporary edge. Who wouldn't worry about being replaced by a computer? It's odd to see Kirk so rattled. A man who has faced down Klingons and alien invasions, and generally shown himself to be a decision making machine, is faced with the prospect of being replaced by a machine better at making decisions.

MCCOY: We're all sorry for the other guy when he loses his job to a machine. When it comes to your job, that's different. And it always will be different.

KIRK: Am I afraid of losing command to a computer? Daystrom's right. I can do a lot of other things. Am I afraid of losing the prestige and the power that goes with being a starship captain? Is that why I'm fighting it? Am I that petty?

Kirk has dabbled with self-doubt before but it's never really convinced.

KIRK: I could've prevented all of it.
SPOCK: I don't see how.
KIRK: A walk in paradise, among the green grass and flowers. We should've beamed up at the first sign of trouble.
SPOCK: You are under orders to investigate this planet and this culture.
KIRK: I also have the option to disregard those orders if I consider them overly hazardous. This isn't that important a mission, Spock. Not worth the lives of three of my men. I drop my guard for a minute because I like the smell of growing things, and now three men are dead. And the ship's in trouble.

 

In that scene from The Apple Kirk's self-doubt is there to justify the Enterprise crew massacre which it follows. Three crew have been killed and the script needs Kirk to seem affected. It's an artificial script device because once Kirk has beaten himself up over the deaths of Kaplan, Hendorff, and Mallory it's never mentioned again in the episode; not even when Marple is also killed.

Kirk's self-doubt is handled much better in The Ultimate Computer . “I've never felt this way before. At odds with the ship. I sat there and watched my ship perform for a mass of circuits and relays, and felt useless. Unneeded.” It makes Kirk petty and he takes any chance he can to downplay the achievements of the M-5. “All it's done is make the required course changes and some simple turns. Mister Sulu and Mister Chekov could've done that with their eyes closed.” This time self-doubt is not an emotion he indulges in and forgets, it's a theme running through the first two acts. It humanises Kirk because we can relate to what he is going through. He's not declaiming, “why oh why didn't I realise this weird alien planet was alien and weird?” He's faced with the realisation that he is the best person he knows at doing his job, and yet the machine is better.

With this in mind it's interesting to see the end of act one used as a red herring. “Captain, I've located the source of the power shutdowns. It's the M-5 unit, sir. That thing's turning off systems all over the ship.” Scotty's line bluffs the audience into thinking M-5 is out of control. Throughout act one Kirk and the audience have seen the M-5 unit performing flawlessly. Kirk and the audience are both waiting for the M-5 to fail. Kirk because he doesn't want to be replaced in a job he loves, and the audience because they know the M-5 won't be around next week so it's due to be proved faulty at some point. When Daystrom discovers the reason for the shut downs in the opening moments of act two it's designed to confound audience expectations, “as I suspected, it is not a malfunction. M-5 was merely shutting down power to areas of the ship that do not require it.”

In a different episode the M-5 going mad would be the moment of crisis. Act one would have ended with the discovery that M-5 will not allow itself to be turned off and the remaining three acts would have been about the crew's attempts to disable the rogue machine. Instead of being the crisis point for the whole story the M-5 seizing control is the resolution to the plot about Kirk's fear of replacement, and also ups the stakes for the second half.

Ironically it's the characterisation which stops The Ultimate Computer from achieving it's full potential. Not the characterisation of Kirk, Spock, and McCoy which is spot on. In fact McCoy get all the best lines in the episode, and this is some of the best material he's given across the series. “Did you see the love light in Spock's eyes? The right computer finally came along.” The problem lies with the characterisation of the secondary characters which never quite seems right.

Commodore Wesley really dislikes Kirk. There's his “Captain Dunsel” comment (Dunsel apparently being an academy term for a part which performs no useful purpose) made over an open communicator so the Enterprise bridge crew, and possibly the crew in the other ships, can all hear him burn their captain. Then when the M-5 has taken over and is using lethal force during the war games Wesley believes it's Kirk who is out of control. “Jim. Have you gone mad? What are you trying to prove? Break off the attack! Jim, we have fifty three dead here... If you can hear us, stop the attack.” When the Lexington takes damage there's a shot of Wesley on the bridge asking, “what the devil is Kirk doing?” It brings to mind the season one story Court Martial where the other starship captains at Starbase 11 are all too willing to believe Kirk killed Ben Finney. Unfortunately the episode wants to end with a point about the M-5 lacking the human factor by having Wesley make a leap of faith, “the Enterprise looks dead. I'm going to take a chance he's not just laying a trap.” Kirk is gambling on Wesley's humanity, but if Wesley really thought Kirk had gone mad (and note the 'he' in Wesley's line about laying a trap) and murdered so many with his attack, then would Wesley show any compassion?

Likewise Daystrom is written a little off beam. He's great for the majority of the episode, acting exactly like a proud parent indulging his baby, and always trying to find the best motive for the M-5's increasingly bizarre actions. After the M-5 overrides the off switch Daystrom convinces himself it's in the best interests of the unit to not switch it off. When the M-5 destroys an automated ore freighter he describes this as, “minor difficulties,” and when the computer vaporises engineer Harper while directly tapping the power of the warp engines Daystrom tries to dismiss this as an accident. “The ensign simply got in the way.” However, no matter how wilfully blind Daystrom wants to be there is one moment he can't really ignore.

After the M-5 destroys the automatic ore freighter Kirk, Spock, and Daystrom head to engineering to turn off the M-5, only to find it has protected itself with a force field. “ It's not my doing, Kirk,” says Daystrom, and presumably this means the M-5 was not built with the ability to project force fields; this makes sense it would be rather like fitting airbags to a desktop PC. Still it's not just Daystrom who overlooks this new ability. Once M-5 has repelled Kirk, it's never mentioned again, in fact this amazing ability of the M-5 unit is demonstrated and then shuffled off screen as quickly as possible because it's a sticking plaster on the story logic. An easy answer to someone's question during script development wondering why Kirk didn't just head down to engineering with a phaser and melt the M-5 into slag. Sometimes these fixes make the story stronger, see By Any Other Name and the Kelvan's ability to distill humans into solid shapes which results in the memorable death of Yeoman Thompson, but here it fixes one story logic question only to raise another; why doesn't Daystom notice his computer can do things it was not designed or built to do?

Lastly there's M-5 itself which counts as a character because it's based on Daystrom's engrams. It's never clear why the machine goes mad. It just goes from coping with a surprise simulated attack, to taking pot shots at automatic ore freighters, before moving on to mass murder. Still there's enough slack built into the script to allow viewers to supply their own explanations. Given that Daystrom did imprint his own engrams on the machine it's possible that what we see is overconfidence. The M-5 is as frustrated, for want of a better word, at Kirk for constantly taking the Enterprise back under control as Daystrom, “you'll find it won't be necessary for you to regain control of the unit after it's completed each manoeuvre.” It sees the ore freighter as an opportunity to cut loose and show what it can really do. Overconfidence blinds the M-5 to the consequences of destroying the freighter, and once it realises what it has done it has no alternative but to protect itself by destroying any pursuing ship. 

It's easy to watch The Ultimate Computer and wonder what benefits Starfleet expected from the M-5. Yes the computer was incredibly good at small details, such as recalling personnel details even Kirk didn't have instantly to hand, and it could steer the ship as efficiently as a human navigator, and it was better in direct combat, but when have we ever seen the events in an episode hinge on one of those factors? It's difficult to see what advantages M-5 could have brought to the battle against the Gorn in Arena. How would it have dealt with the Kelvans from By Any Other Name or Apollo in Who Mourns For Adonais? But asking this question misses the point. The episode is not about why Starfleet would want to replace Captain Kirk with a computer, it's about what will happen when computers get clever enough to replace even Captain Kirk. Thematically The Ultimate Computer belongs with stories like The Return Of The Archons, or A Taste Of Armageddon where people's lives and deaths are planned centrally by a big computer. That seems to have been the future perception of computers in 1968. Not the internet, but a big central IBM computer which told you when to work, when to sleep, and when to eat your protein pills. This attitude is the reason Commodore Wesley demands to know what Kirk thinks he is doing when the M-5 attacks the war game fleet. The Ultimate Computer is warning that in the future the infallible computer will be your boss, and when it goes wrong you'll still get the blame.

Enterprise crew deaths: Just one, engineer Harper.

Running total: 46

Return To Tomorrow

The Enterprise crew are in pursuit of a mystery and going where no man has gone before. Something beyond the limits of known space has activated the Enterprise distress relays and given the ship a course to follow. According to Spock the Enterprise has travelled, “hundreds of light years past where any Earth ship has ever explored.” It will take over three weeks for Starfleet to receive any messages the ship sends. As a concept this is pure distilled Star Trek, like the reception for the interplanetary ambassadors in JourneyTo Babel, but as a whole Return To Tomorrow is horribly slow, and dull.

Basically there simply isn't enough story to fill the 48 minutes running time. The core concept of the episode is a mindswap. Sargon, the sender of the mysterious signal, is a disembodied intelligence in a sphere who wants to borrow temporarily the bodies of Kirk, Spock, and Doctor Ann Mulhall; Diana Muldaur making the first of two Star Trek appearances, plus she'll be back as Doctor Pulaski for the second series of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Into the crew's bodies will be placed the minds of Sargon, his wife Thalassa, and Henoch, sole survivor from the other side in the conflict which destroyed their race and planet. The borrowed bodies will construct androids which will become the permanent homes of the three minds.

That's the set up to the story, but the transference itself doesn't take place until 22 minutes into the episode. It brings to mind associate producer John D. F. Black's advice to George Clayton Johnson about The Man Trap script, “you don't get the creature aboard the ship fast enough.” Here it takes too long to get to the scene where Sargon, Thalassa, and Henoch once again feel the pleasure, and temptations, of being alive. Weirdly, having moved at a snails pace until now, the story suddenly leaps into action and two and a half minutes from the first mention of a metabolic inhibitor (the presence of these alien minds places great stress on the host bodies, Spock's body can easily cope but it's killing Kirk and Mulhall) act two ends by revealing Henoch is a bad'un. He plans to keep Spock's body for himself and will kill Sargon/Kirk with a doctored metabolic inhibitor. This stop/start storytelling continues into acts three and four. About 90 seconds pass between Kirk announcing, “Spock's consciousness is gone, we must kill his body, the thing in it,” to his regretful, “Spock,” as he examines what he thinks is the corpse of his first officer and friend. The lasting memory of Return To Tomorrow is of an episode which carefully ekes out moments of incident between scenes where the story stops and the characters make speeches at each other.

Some of the speeches are very good. Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scotty, and Doctor Mulhall gather in the briefing room and debate the dangers of agreeing to Sargon's plan in a scene which ends with a line from Kirk which is a mission statement for Star Trek. “Risk is our business. That's what the starship is all about. That's why we're aboard her.” But that line follows four minutes of back and forth about whether to go ahead with something which the audience knows is going to happen because it's the subject of this week's episode. It's great to see the crew chewing the fat like this but by episode 49 the inter-character debate needs to do more than just pad out the running time. Here McCoy objects and is talked round by Kirk while Scotty is tempted by the promise of technological advances. The result is a four minute character scene which doesn't advance the plot or tell the audience anything new about the characters. The only new development is that it is Mulhall rather than Spock who gets to describe Sargon's offer as, “scientifically fascinating.” 

Scenes with Sargon and Thalassa are particularly trying on the patience. Taking their cues from the script both William Shatner and Diana Muldaur opt for measured, declamatory performances; as if they were auditioning for the Charlton Heston role in some Biblical epic. In addition these scenes are often smothered in George Duning's heavy on the strings music which crushes what little subtlety exists in exchanges like:

THALASSA: Oblivion together does not frighten me, beloved. Promise we'll be together.
SARGON: I promise, beloved.
THALASSA: Together forever.
SARGON: Forever beloved. Forever.

Leonard Nimoy makes a better impression as Henoch. While the novelty has worn off seeing Spock act out of character Nimoy makes the script work by playing against the evil intention of the lines. He's charming, pleasant, and sarcastic. His best moment comes early on when praising Spock's body: 

SPOCK: This is an excellent body, Doctor. I seem to have received the best of the three. Strength, hearing, eyesight, all far above your human norms. I'm surprised the Vulcans never conquered your race. 
MCCOY: Vulcans worship peace above all, Henoch.
SPOCK: Yes, of course, of course. Just as we do, Doctor. 

Nimoy plays Henoch like a politician who realises he has gone too far. His “of course, of course,” complete with a reassuring touch on McCoy's arm is very well done. 

Doctor McCoy is also very well written in this episode. With Kirk and Spock both acting out of character he is our link to regular Star Trek. He's the sardonic voice of sanity in the early scenes. Not only pointing out the insane risks of agreeing to Sargon's plan but also lightly mocking the plot as if he is also playing the voice of the viewer at home, “that's the most ridiculous statement I've ever heard.” McCoy's character is just going over old ground, in addition to the briefing scene above there is also a pre-beam down scene where he frets about the danger of using the transporter, but Deforest Kelly plays him very well, and makes the effort to add small moments like his glance at Scotty when dismissing “a list of possible miracles,” as a reason for allowing the transfer to take place.

On the other side of the camera Ralph Senensky is directing again. His work is more distinctive here than it was in Obsession, possibly this is a less demanding script which allows him more time to compose shots. When Sargon/Kirk 'dies' there's a fantastic low angled view of Kirk on the floor with Thalassa, McCoy, and Nurse Chapel kneeling by his body. There's also a great shot of Scotty and Thalassa discussing the android filmed through the framework of the android body. Senensky also seems to be one of the few directors to give director of photography Jerry Finnerman time to really indulge himself with the lighting. The Enterprise sets look brilliant in Return To Tomorrow, and are lit with great slabs of colour; purple in the transporter room and green in the briefing room.

Film editor Donald R. Rode also does some great work with the cutting, and tries to inject some pace into a story which tends towards the languid. There are two brilliant jump cuts, one from Sargon telling the crew they are free to leave to Scotty's outraged, “you're going to what?”, and the second from Kirk's, “we must kill [Spock's] body, the thing in it,” to Uhura screaming. Rode also knows when to allow Ralph Senensky's footage to work on its own terms. Kirk's, “risk is our business,” speech plays out almost uninterrupted as a slow zoom into a close-up of Kirk. Then once Kirk is done Rode cuts to reaction shots of McCoy (looking very unimpressed), Scotty, Mulhall, and Spock, before cutting back to the same big close-up of Kirk which he follows with a matched close-up of one of Sargon's spheres in sickbay. Rode's first work on Star Trek was The Doomsday Machine, and since then he has also worked on The Deadly Years, The Immunity Syndrome, and A Private Little War. He's one of the unsung behind the scenes heroes of Star Trek's second season, and frankly he deserves to have his praises sung as often as possible.

Enterprise crew deaths: It's now been six episodes since any member of the Enterprise crew died, matching the six episode death free period between Errand Of Mercy and Who Mourns For Adonais? If the crew can get through next week without anyone buying the farm it will be the longest death free period in Star Trek.
Running total: 43

Wolf In The Fold

One week after Obsession asked the audience to consider the question “will Kirk sacrifice everything for vengeance?” To which the only answer can be no. Wolf In The Fold asks the audience, “has Scotty suddenly become a murderer?”

How much does this matter? The audience goes into Obsession knowing Kirk's desire for revenge at all costs will take place within strictly defined boundaries. He's not going to strap himself to the anti-matter as bait and shriek, “from hell's heart I stab at thee,” before detonating. The episode succeeds or fails not on the strength of the ending, but on the way the story is told, and Obsession works because it is packed with incident. When the Enterprise crew discover the cloud vampire can travel through space it opens up the story. Kirk is no longer trying to track down a single monster skulking on a planet. Suddenly there's a high speed pursuit. Then the creature turns to attack and invades the ship becoming only the second foe to directly breach the sanctity of the Enterprise under its own power; Trelane was the first; others like Nomad are brought on board.

By contrast Dagger Of The Mind asks the audience, “is there something rotten in the Tantalus penal colony?” The episode fails because the script fills the next three acts with Kirk investigating, and finding that everything in the colony is good, before the reveal at the end of act three that there is something nasty going on after all. The episode doesn't attempt to make the investigation itself interesting or different (the one exception being the introduction of the Vulcan mind meld). There's no acknowledgement that setting up a place as nice, and then revealing it to have a dark secret, is an antique piece of storytelling. The script plods on as if the viewer has never encountered this type of story before and expects us to be amazed at the twist that Doctor Adams, the only other major character in the story, is actually the villain.

So is Wolf In The Fold like Obsession or Dagger Of The Mind? At the start it does look like Wolf In The Fold expects the audience to sit through 48 minutes of seeing Scotty accused of murder, before the surprise reveal of his innocence in the last act. In the teaser, even before the first murder is committed, the script heaps on unconvincing psychobabble to try and make the viewer believe something is wrong with Scotty.

MCCOY: ... Don't forget, the explosion that threw Scotty against a bulkhead was caused by a woman.

KIRK: Physically he's all right. Am I right in assuming that?

MCCOY: Oh, yes, yes. As a matter of fact, considerable psychological damage could have been caused. For example, his total resentment toward women.

But having set up the plot Robert Bloch's script seems to realise it's a narrative dead end to wring drama out of Scotty's predicament. Instead the story takes a turn towards farce, trapping Scotty in more unlikely and implausible situations. There are three murders, and each one makes Scotty look increasingly guilty. One of the problems for a writer is that the audience is often ahead of you in terms of plot development. The script does seem to acknowledge it knows the watching audience are waiting for Kirk and Spock to pull some technological rabbit out of a hat and clear Mr. Scott's name. At least, the watching adult audience knows Scotty can't be the killer. It's important to make the distinction between the way children and adults watch television. I can remember being a much more innocent viewer and essentially taking it on trust that what was shown was really happening.* If I saw Wolf In The Fold when I was younger I would have been horrified at what Scotty was doing.

There is certainly plenty of incident along the way. Aside from the murders we have a planet of prostitutes. “A completely hedonistic society,” as McCoy tells Scotty. Obviously the script can't come flat out and say it, but there are enough hints for dirty minded people like myself. Lines of dialogue trail off into meaningful ellipsis. Looking around the club Scotty asks, “you mean to tell me all these women, that all this is..?” Shortly afterwards Kirk tells McCoy, “I know a little place across town where the women...” Jealousy is disapproved of on Argelius II and men there should not get upset when they see the woman they love flirting with other men. In act two there's a séance, and in act three a courtroom scene. Two weeks after a similar one in The Deadly Years. The courtroom scene here is shorter, and has a better mix of characters. It does spend some time rehashing the plot from acts one and two, but generally it does a better job of moving the story on than the competency hearing in The Deadly Years.

It's worth taking stock of the plot at the end of act two when all three murders have been committed, and trying to work out how the viewer at home might expect the story to develop. Heroes falsely accused of murder are not a new development. Richard Kimble was on the run in The Fugitive from 1963 to August 1967. Obviously Scotty will be proved innocent, and if the murderer isn't a regular it has to be one of the guest cast.

Tark: 10-1. He's the father to Kara the first victim and appears to have no connection or motive for the second and third deaths. He's also not present for the killing of Lieutenant Tracy.

Morla: 5-1. Kara's fiancé. He has a motive for killing Kara, jealousy. Maybe killing her gave him a taste for murder? Like Tark he's not present when Lieutenant Tracy is murdered, but this is a science fiction show so he could have some unlikely gimmick which allows him to be the killer.

Mr. Hengist: evens. He's a petty bureaucrat more concerned about procedure and stopping Kirk muscling in on the investigation than finding out the truth. Like the first two suspects he's not present for the death of Lieutenant Tracy but before leaving he does see her beam down. He also seems too keen to railroad Scotty for the murder. However, in television drama the more suspicious a character the more likely they are to be innocent. He's the person you might expect to apologise to Kirk at the end of the episode by saying something like, “I may not agree with your methods but you get results.”

Prefect Jaris: 2-1 (favourite). Highest official on the planet Argelius II. Two murders take place in his house. His wife Sybo is the third victim. Jaris is also the last person to have the knife before it disappears prior to the murder of Lieutenant Tracy. He suggests Lieutenant Tracy use the “small chamber below this room” where she is killed. Could he have staged the first two murders to divert suspicion when he kills his wife? Jaris chides Kirk with the line, “you're behaving very much like a man who is desperately trying anything to save his friend. Would you be as desperate to save Argelius as a space port for your Starfleet?” Is there a political motive there? Later he mentions “I have already heard talk of closing Argelius to space vehicles.” Blaming three brutal murders on an off-worlder could allow him to consolidate power, and dispose of a troublesome wife at the same time. He is on screen with Kirk, McCoy, Scotty, and his wife at the time of the second murder (a solid alibi) but this is a science fiction show so we could be dealing with clones, or evil duplicates.

Find someone who hasn't seen Wolf In The Fold. Sit them down in front of the DVD and pause at the end of act two. Ask them who they think is the murderer. I'm quietly confident Jaris will be the main suspect.

Of course, none of the above suspects are guilty of murder. The revelation Robert Bloch has up his sleeve is unique. It is simultaneously brilliant and utterly stupid, like a scriptwriting version of Schrödinger’s cat. The murders were actually committed by Jack the Ripper. An immortal, non-corporeal killer, who feeds on the fear of his victims, is capable of possessing people, and is currently animating Mr. Hengist. Probably no one saw that coming. The reveal of the true murderer is mad but actually quite clever. Two clues have been hiding in plain sight for quite some time. First is the location of the story on Argelius II, the planet of the prostitutes. Where else might you expect Jack the Ripper to strike? Secondly there is Sybo's use of the name Redjac. Corrupting Jack's nickname of Red Jack like this is doubly clever. It conceals the identity of the killer from any viewer familiar with Ripper history, and it also makes sense for an empath on another world to be unsure about the precise pronunciation of an unfamiliar name.

From this point on the plot takes a turn towards the endearingly bonkers as Jack possesses the Enterprise computer and threatens everyone with a horrible death. He is finally driven back into Hengist's body and beamed into deep space. To stop Jack's threats making the crew scared, and allowing Jack to feed on their fear, Kirk orders the crew to be tranquillized. Frankly the crew don't look tranquillized, they all look stoned so who knows what McCoy is pumping into them. Certainly Mr. Sulu is in no condition to steer the ship, and the scenes of the happy crew look a lot like those with the orb from the Woody Allen film Sleeper.

Two elements of the plot are left unclear. Firstly, was Mr Scott's hand on the dagger? This is understandably underplayed, the production team wouldn't want any hint that Scotty was involved in the killings. Jack's ability to move from person to person would seem to make it easier for him to possess someone close to the victim rather than try to do the deed as Hengist, and then cloud any witnesses' minds. Scotty's memory loss would then be explained by his mind being overwhelmed by Jack's presence rather than any induced amnesia. In the case of the first two killings the script seems to lean towards implicating Jack in Scotty's body. For the murder of Sybo it's not so clear. Scotty talks about standing up to help Sybo and finding something in the way. “Cold, it was, like a stinking draught out of a slaughterhouse, but it wasn't really there.” This sounds like Jack in his true form. Possibly killing Sybo in panic when it hears her shouting out his names.

Secondly, when does Hengist die? Is it when Kirk punches him, or has he been a corpse animated by Jack all along? It looks as if Jack has been using Hengist's body for years, possibly since he came to Argelius from Rigel. Jack/Hengist tries to escape when accused of being the killer so he knows he is guilty, there's no amnesia, which suggests that whatever did the killing is also the driving force in Hengist's body. It might be possible to argue that Jack leaving Hengist's body is what kills him, except that Jack is later driven out of Jaris with no ill effects. Then when Jack repossess Hengist the body leaps back into life as if nothing had happened. The idea of a walking corpse fits well with the way Bloch played with concepts like possession in Catspaw. There's a degree of gruesome appeal to the idea of Jack finding a good place to store Hengist's body, then leaving to possess someone else, then killing, and then returning to reanimate Hengist once more.

One weakness of Wolf In The Fold is its attitude to women. Bloch presents us with a world where all the women are apparently available to any man who wants them, and no man should be jealous about sharing his woman with any number of other men. Kirk and McCoy have brought Scotty to Argelius II so he can learn to like women again by leering at them, and it is implied having sex with them. Spock says that Jack kills women to feed on their fear because, “women are more easily and more deeply terrified, generating more sheer horror than the male of the species,” a statement crying out for a [CITATION NEEDED]. The women of Wolf In The Fold are to be lusted after, killed, or protected.

One last question. Why choose Scotty? For Kirk to be involved story logic dictates it has to be one of the Enterprise crew, but it's unsatisfying to imagine Robert Bloch picking Scotty at random. Like the joke at the end of The Simpsons episode Das Bus where the children are marooned on an island, “...and eventually they were rescued by, oh, let's say... Moe.” If anyone can be the suspect then choose Sulu. The poor guy's been underexposed this year. His character is turning into a chair with a helmsman attached. It's only going to get worse with George Takei's nine week absence for reshoots on the John Wayne film The Green Berets.

Bloch must have put some thought into the decision. Kirk can't be the suspect, otherwise the show becomes Kirk on trial, and Bloch has accidentally rewritten Court Martial. It can't be Spock because he's never going to be a candidate for a brutal, frenzied crime. McCoy could have been the suspect, and it would have paralleled the original Jack the Ripper crimes where the murderer appears to have had some anatomical knowledge. However, going into too much medical detail about the Ripper crimes would probably be too much for NBC. One way or another Scotty has become the go to character for physical and mental trauma. Apollo beats him up in Who Mourns For Adonais and he's put through the emotional wringer by Lieutenant Palamas; he's killed in The Changeling (he gets better); possessed in Catspaw; aged in The Deadly Years; and now this. Truly he's the Timex of Star Trek characters; he takes a licking and keeps on ticking. 

Enterprise crew deaths: 1. Lieutenant Tracy the penultimate victim of Jack the Ripper. 
Running total: 43

*to the extent that I remember watching an animated version of Rikki-Tikki-Tavi (quite possibly this Chuck Jones version from 1975) and bursting into tears when it looked as if Rikki-Tikki-Tavi hadn't survived the climactic fight. Months later, I saw a repeat of the same cartoon and burst into tears at the same point, because I was convinced that this time Rikki-Tikki-Tavi must have died. Of course it's possible I was just a very dull child.

Who Mourns For Adonais?

Most obviously Who Mourns For Adonais? is very much of its time. At the top of the episode McCoy has a line about Lieutenant Carolyn Palamas, “one day she'll find the right man and off she'll go, out of the service.” A line which could be taken to mean married women cannot serve in Starfleet, or that once Palamas has found the right man she'll have no interest in a career. In a better episode this line might just provoke a shrug at the different values of 45 years ago but there are other problems with the script.

For starters Lieutenant Palamas doesn't have much in the way of a character. She fills the same role as Lieutenant McGivers in Space Seed; to be seduced by the guest villain until reminded of where her real loyalties lie. However McGivers had a reason to fall for Khan. She's a historian fascinated by strong men from history, she doesn't seem to fit in on board the Enterprise and her skills are under appreciated by Kirk. Palamas on the other hand doesn't have any comparable motive for falling for Apollo. At the start of the episode she's in a relationship with Scotty, then she beams down with the landing party and when Apollo starts putting his 5000 year old moves on her she's his. Passed from one member of the cast to another without any say in the matter like a football.

One minute Palamas is arguing with Apollo. “But why? What you've said so far makes no sense at all!” Then when Apollo invites her to frolic like the Greeks of old, “you will know what it is to be a goddess,” and Scotty objects and is zapped while drawing his phaser she doesn't really react. She might at least be expected to run over to Scotty and see if he's injured but Kirk does that. Next Apollo magics her into a new dress and takes her for a walk. “Come,” says Apollo and when Scotty intervenes he is thrown backwards across a table, in a well set up stunt, and knocked unconscious. Palamas isn't really that bothered, she doesn't attempt to leave Apollo's side, and goes off with him into the forest. She doesn't even ask if Scotty's all right. She saw the man she's been dating struck under the chin by a massively powerful being who claims to be the Greek god Apollo. She saw him thrown backwards with a crash of thunder to lie still on the ground. McCoy's diagnosis of Scotty as stunned doesn't occur until after Palamas has gone off with Apollo. Scotty could be dead for all Palamas knows. Now try watching her next scene which starts with Palamas' line, “oh it's lovely,” and ends with Apollo kissing her, and try to make sense of it from her perspective. This is not a complaint about 45 year old sexism. It's simply bad writing.

To be fair to Leslie Parrish, the actress who plays Palamas, she seems to be aware of this problem. She makes Palamas look afraid when all this is going on, but the end result is a character who appears to be frightened by the violence itself rather than showing any concern for Scotty. As if Apollo and Scotty were fighting over Palamas in a nightclub. That said Palamas does get to play an essential role in distracting Apollo at the end of the story, and she gets one of the script's best lines when she has to pretend to be studying Apollo to see how he copies human behaviour.

APOLLO: I am Apollo. I've chosen you.

CAROLYN: I'm sure that's very flattering, but I must get on with my work now.

Much more difficult is the scene towards the end where Apollo calls down a storm after he is angered by Palamas rejection. This can be read as a rape scene. Palamas is alone, and afraid. As the winds blow around her she clutches her dress and holds it down as if to protect herself. Apollo, semi-transparent, appears superimposed over storm clouds as if he is either riding the wind, or actually the storm itself. Then Lieutenant Palamas falls to the ground and shouts, “no,” before we see an extreme close-up of Apollo's face still superimposed over the storm, and then the image cuts to a slow zoom towards Palamas as if the audience is seeing her from Apollo's point of view. Obviously the storm could just be Apollo's anger but there is a precedent within Greek mythology, and even specific myths relating to Apollo himself, to suggest this scene could have a much darker symbolic meaning. Technically it's impressive work. Well edited and well scored, in fact the music throughout this episode is consistently excellent. It also works dramatically within the context of the story, but it's steering the programme into waters it is not really equipped to navigate. If it is intended to suggest Apollo raping Lieutenant Palamas, then it gives the ending of the episode, where the audience are invited to feel sympathy for Apollo, a completely inappropriate tone.

Scotty is subject to some very odd characterisation. He's not acting out of character because Scotty has tended to be written according to the needs of each script, and generally it's left to James Doohan to pull the disparate threads together and make Scotty seem like a person. We've seen him be quietly professional in The Naked Time and The Galileo Seven, distracted in Mudd's Women, and gung ho in A Taste Of Armageddon. In Who Mourns For Adonais? Scotty is written as a lovesick teenager. He cannot keep his eyes off Palamas. And when Apollo takes Palamas from him, his instinct is to lash out. Scotty attacks Apollo three times in the course of this episode. Each time to no effect and each time sustaining more and more damage. In Futurama's Star Trek spoof Where No Fan Has Gone Before there is a running joke about Welshy (Scotty's replacement after James Doohan declined to appear) being killed by Melllvar, and his corpse being electrocuted again and again whenever Melllvar becomes angry. Who Mourns For Adonais? could well be the source for that joke.

It's difficult not to feel that writer Gilbert Ralston is just being lazy. Scotty's madly in love with Palamas because it's simply the easiest way to jam a bit of conflict and peril into the second and third act, not because it's a story the writer wants to tell. If Ralston really wanted to write a story about Scotty in love he would have actually put some effort into making it look like Scotty and Palamas were in a relationship. As it is, it's all one way. Scotty can't keep his eyes of Palamas whereas she never really reciprocates. “Oh all right,” is her response to being invited for coffee, and while he calls her Carolyn she calls him Scotty. He fights and risks his life for a woman who never even puts her arm round him. It actually looks less like love and more like obsession; which is worrying considering Wolf In The Fold is coming up.

Ultimately this all affects suspension of disbelief. The triumph of Amok Time is it makes the audience believe Vulcan exists beyond the confines of the television screen. A strong and enjoyable script makes the audience willing to overlook the implausible elements which might otherwise remind them they are watching a story filmed on a soundstage on Gower Street in Hollywood. It's why Joseph Pevney's occasionally clumsy handling of the Gorn in Arena doesn't affect the overall episode; beyond some good natured ribbing about the quality of the costumes. Likewise it's why the obviously fake spore plants in This Side Of Paradise don't matter. If that episode had been filmed on a soundstage planet filled with equally weird looking alien vegetation they could have passed without notice. Filmed on location and contrasted with real plants and trees they might have wrecked the episode. In fact This Side Of Paradise is so confident it makes the plant's appearance the subject of a joke. “What exactly are we looking for anyway, sir?” asks Kelowitz. “Whatever doesn't look right, whatever that is,” replies Sulu (who worked in the botany department in The Man Trap) oblivious to the bizarre plant slightly to his left.

In Who Mourns For Adonais? the absence of believable reactions from Palamas and Scotty means the episode never gels. Michael Forest puts in very good work as Apollo, and makes some very wordy dialogue sound like actual speech. Walter Koenig makes the most of limited scenes as Chekov.

APOLLO: I am Apollo.
[Kirk reacts]
[McCoy reacts]
[MUSIC: dramatic chord!]
CHEKOV: And I am the tsar of all the Russias.

Not the funniest response in the world but it's an interesting way to puncture the mood by introducing a character prepared to give backchat to the antagonist. Star Trek has not really gone in for sending up the baddies before so this is an interesting direction for the series, and the new character.

Matt Jefferies works miracles on a story which requires Apollo to have his own temple. It's fun-sized in comparison to real temples but it's an impressive set element; possibly the biggest the series has used so far.

Also impressive is the shot which ends act one, Apollo tripling in size and towering over the landing party booming, “welcome to Olympus”. It may be Star Trek's most ambitious effects shot so far. The first effects shot, I think, combining two live action elements rather than using overlaid animation, like phasers, or a glass painting. It's made more complicated by being layered so Apollo stands in front of the temple, and then he himself is partially obscured by a marble table in the foreground (a process Wikipedia tells me is a called a travelling matte which means I know what it's called even if I don't really understand how it works). The contrast is a little bit wonky, and the lighting not quite right but it's impressive given the budget and time limitations Star Trek always faced. Another memorable, and bizarre, image is the shot of the hand gripping the Enterprise. In fact judged purely on the visual side, this is a strong episode. The one oddity is the editing decision which means the shot of the hand holding the Enterprise is not used to bookend the opening titles. It begins act one, but it also seems like the ideal shot to end the teaser.

Enterprise crew deaths: None, again. Apollo throws a lot of electricity around but there are no fatalities. Nobody gets Westinghoused. 
Running total: 26

The Devil In The Dark

Balok is actually nice. Trelane is a child. The Gorn believe they were acting in self defence. Star Trek's three most notable plot twists so far from The Corbomite Maneuver, The Squire Of Gothos, and Arena. The Devil In The Dark can be added to the list because it has two big reveals. The first that the Horta is actually intelligent and not a rampaging monster. The second that it is a mother protecting unhatched eggs.

The plot twists of The Corbomite Maneuver and Arena both generate surprise by coming out of nowhere. Until Kirk and the landing party beam to Balok's ship they, and the audience, have no idea Balok is not what he seems. Likewise until the Gorn captain talks to Kirk he, and by extension the audience, has no reason to see the Gorn as anything except aggressors. (Learning the Cestus III colony was built in Gorn space forces Kirk to re-evaluate his actions and is probably a major factor in leading him to spare the Gorn captain's life. It's fair to say Arena would have ended very differently if the Gorn captain had kept quiet). Pulling a twist out of thin air is not a trick The Squire Of Gothos can use. For the sake of consistent characterisation Trelane must act like a brat throughout the episode. Instead the twist is concealed by having the Enterprise crew express bewilderment at his behaviour, and encouraging the audience to think Trelane behaves the way he does as a result of having unlimited power, and also, most simply of all, by having Trelane played by a 43 year old man.

For The Devil In The Dark writer Gene L. Coon uses the same approach as The Squire Of Gothos. Obviously he would like both plot revelations, the Horta is intelligent and the Horta is a mother, to surprise the audience. However, for the sake of the plot he also needs to carefully seed information showing the Horta is more than just a mindless killing machine. Spock's decision to try a mind meld would be nonsensical without those little hints of intelligence: the sabotage of key machinery, the ability of the Horta to set traps like bringing the roof down near Kirk, and the way it is prepared to wait rather than kill Kirk immediately. Imagine Spock attempting to learn about the transporter malfunction in The Enemy Within by mind melding with Sulu's space dog, that's what The Devil In The Dark would be like. The hints of intelligence are also important for the characterisation of the Horta; and it is a character, not a monster. A script which treated the Horta like a rabid dog for 35 minutes and then suddenly went, “oh actually it's intelligent,” just wouldn't work. It would be like bolting the ending of The Squire Of Gothos on to Who Mourns For Adonais? (“he's not a god he's a very naughty boy”). The twist wouldn't just be unexpected, it would be unbelievable. Making the twists believable without blowing the surprise means Gene Coon spends 35 minutes performing the writing equivalent of close-up magic. There's a lot of misdirection going on.

There are two main lines of misdirection. The first involves borrowing the shape of a monster movie. Well not all of the a monster movie, just the bit where the army turns up to save the day. We skip over all the bits you'd find at the start of a film like The Blob or Invasion of the Body Snatchers where reports of a monster are dismissed as paranoia or mass hysteria. The teaser where Sam, Vanderberg, and the doomed Schmitter get the audience up to speed on events on Janus VI, covers the same ground as scenes of disbelieving cops complaining about crazy teenagers and their stories before dying horribly. We know there's a monster. It's killed 50 people already and the Enterprise crew are here to fight it like the US Army in Them! McCoy comes closest to expressing that doomed-cop disbelief when he refuses to even consider Spock's theory about a silicon-based lifeform. Even that can be seen as part of the misdirection. While the audience focus on another Spock/McCoy disagreement about the nature of the monster they are paying less attention to the way it behaves. Seen in this light Vanderberg's line, “we'll use clubs. We're not being chased away from here. We're staying,” is the equivalent of the scene where the townspeople join forces to fight the ants, or blob, or graboids. Using the shape of a monster movie primes the audience to expect the plot to play out in a certain way.

The second piece of misdirection involves the Horta as mother twist running interference for the Horta is intelligent twist. Gene Coon would like the reveal of both twists to be a surprise, but if one has to be sacrificed to protect the other, then the Horta as mother twist is more disposable.

The story would still work if the only twist was that the Horta was a mother. The Horta's actions could be related to a lioness protecting her cubs. However it's the reveal of intelligence which carries the real emotional weight. Suddenly the Horta isn't just an animal, it's just like us, and it's acting out of love and desperation, like we would. The reveal of intelligence also carries the very Star Trek message of not judging by appearances. And it forces the characters to rethink their actions. Kirk has to go from hunting the monster down to, effectively, negotiating peace between it and the miners. McCoy has to go from not believing in silicon-based life at all, to healing a thinking silicon lifeform. If the Horta was just an animal mother protecting eggs out of instinct then the miners could look guilty, and explain they didn't realise, and talk about how they would be more careful in the future. With the Horta being intelligent the miners have to accept that their actions, destroying the eggs which they thought were worthless silcon nodules, forced the Horta to choose to act as it did. It wasn't a killer until the miners made it a killer. However, as an intelligent being the Horta also has to accept the consequences of what it has done, and decide, if not to forgive the miners, at least to co-exist with them and give up any thoughts of revenge. Mistakes are made in ignorance and solved by communication, the second very Star Trek message of the episode.

So to conceal the Horta is intelligent plot, Gene Coon foregrounds the mystery of the silicon nodules. Spock can't keep his eyes off the one on Vanderberg's desk, and when Kirk quizes him about it the music gives us a significant sting. The script also explicitly links the monster to the nodules revealing they were first found on the newly opened level, just before the monster appeared. In effect the idea is to provide defence in depth. If the audience figure out the silicon nodules are eggs, and the Horta is their protective mother, then they will sit back and smugly think they've got the whole plot of this episode figured out. Allowing them to still be surprised when Spock realises the Horta is intelligent.

In fact the reveal of the Horta's intelligence goes a long way to explaining its actions throughout the episode. It picks off the miners one by one, until reinforcements arrive from the Enterprise. At this point the Horta must realise the enemy's numbers aren't limited, as it hoped, so instead it sabotages the reactor. How does it know to do this? It's never overtly stated but the Horta seems to be telepathic. When Spock makes initial contact the exchange of information is two way. Something the series has never showed us before. When Spock used telepathy to implant a message in the guard in A Taste Of Armageddon or interrogate Van Gelder in Dagger Of The Mind, the information exchange was all one way. Here, for the first time, we see information exchanged to both individuals. Spock learns the creature is in terrible pain. The Horta learns rudimentary English allowing it to write its brilliantly ambiguous message “NO KILL I.” So, if the Horta is telepathic, which seems like a sensible way to communicate miles underground, then it picks up that the reactor pump is crucial to the colony. Not in any detail, because humans don't have the same telepathic ability as Vulcans, but, in the same way Spock's attempt at non-contact telepathy reveals little more than the pain the Horta is in, it picks up the general concept; maybe everyone's worried the pump, the one non-replaceable piece of equipment, will fail. After stealing the pump the Horta also learns Kirk is important, so it isolates him with a cave in. We don't know what the Horta has planned because once it has Kirk alone it still can't communicate. Instead we get the wonderful scene where each time the Horta crawls forwards Kirk raises his phaser, and the creature moves away. Could the Horta have hoped to telepathically negotiate the return of the pump in exchange for the humans leaving its eggs alone? It certainly intends more than just isolating Kirk to kill him. It could have done that easily. It's already killed several armed men.

The realisation of the Horta itself is semi-successful. The Devil In The Dark is directed by Joseph Pevney, who also directed Arena. Like that story, and the Gorn, Pevney occasionally shows us too much of the Horta, particularly in the cavern scene with Kirk. Wide shots are important to show the audience the shape of the creature, but wide shots when the creature is moving clearly give away that it's a suit being moved by someone underneath; when the Horta climbs onto a rock to write its message the whole suit is visibly lifted and the shot would have benefited from being tighter. The Horta looks much better in close-up. Air bladders under the surface make the skin move and look alive. Best of all when Kirk and Spock examine the chunk they phasered off the Horta it still pulses and looks faintly disgusting. As with Arena, Pevney turns his shots into memorable images. The ending to act two is great. Looking up the Horta's tunnel we see Kirk and two guards framed in the hole as Shatner delivers the line, “We knew it was a killer. Now it's wounded, probably in pain somewhere back there. There's nothing more dangerous than a wounded animal.” There's also terrific economy in the editing. At the start of the episode a planet zooms towards us, then we see a beautiful matt painting of an underground complex, and then a lone man in a tunnel with a gun. Within the space of 20 seconds, and without a line of dialogue, we've established location, a claustrophobic atmosphere, and no Enterprise. In fact this must be the least Enterprise focused episode so far. Dialogue in the teaser tells us the ship is on the way, and we see it orbiting the planet while the episode title is displayed. After that we get one more exterior shot of the ship, then a short scene of Scotty on the bridge, and that's it until the end of the episode.

Apparently The Devil In The Dark was the episode NBC used to announce Star Trek would be back for a second season. A voice-over gave the news given over the closing titles. The Devil In The Dark showcases Star Trek's quality, and values. If you wanted an episode to bring the audience back for a second series it's difficult to think of a more appropriate choice. 

Enterprise crew deaths: One. An unnamed security crewman becomes the last person killed by the Horta.

Running total: 26