Thoughts on Star Trek (2) – The Original Series, Season Two

I’ve been (slowly) making my way through the complete Star Trek canon, with the goal of watching every episode and every movie and jotting down my reactions to each. Here’s the second installment, looking at the second season of the original series.

If you’d like to catch up:

The Original Series, Season One

One quick note – I’m watching the original series in the order the episodes were produced, not aired. Air dates were chosen by the networks and sometimes resulted in some odd continuity. Production order gives a much better indication of how the series progressed and evolved.

Here’s how I’m doing this. Each entry starts with a code for the series (TOS: The Original Series; TAS: The Animated Series; TNG: The Next Generation; DS9: Deep Space Nine; VOY: Voyager; ENT: Enterprise; MOV: the movies), followed by the season number, the episode number and the episode title. Then, to help refresh your memory, I’ve given the episode synopsis from Memory Alpha, the premier Star Trek wiki. Then the date the episode first aired. Then, in case you still don’t remember it, my own quick description of which one this is, based on whatever I think is the most memorable part of the story. Finally come my own thoughts on the episode, neatly bulleted. Sometimes I have a lot to say, sometimes I don’t. Let’s get to it!

TOS 2×1. Catspaw

The Enterprise crew finds witches, black cats, and haunted castles on a distant planet.

First aired  October 27, 1967.

The Star Trek Halloween special!

• I like the three witches. They’re spooky. Spoooooooooky!
• This is Lieutenant DeSalle’s final appearance on the show, having appeared twice last season. He goes out on a good one – he’s left in charge of the ship while the away team is gone. Honestly, this is the first time he stood out for me. I’m not sure why I didn’t notice him before – he’s pretty hunky, and I’m pretty shallow.
• This is Chekhov’s first appearance, and his wig is frigging ridiculous. It’s supposed to make him look like the Beatles, I think, but it’s enormous. Remember on The Flintstones, when they got their scary neighbors the Gruesomes to play “bug music” and they all wore Beatles wigs that just sort of sat on top of their over-sized monster heads? It’s like that.
• This episode falls a bit flat, but all the horror and magic iconography is fun. And the “giant” cat striding through the set model is hilarious.

TOS 2×2. Metamorphosis

On an isolated asteroid, Kirk finds Zefram Cochrane, inventor of the warp drive, who has been missing for 150 years.

First aired November 10, 1967.

The one without James Cromwell.

• Kirk, Spock, and McCoy are in a shuttle with Commissioner Nancy Hedford, taking her back to the Enterprise for treatment for a life-threatening virus she’s contracted. It does seem a bit off that the three most senior members of the crew are running missions like this, but I guess when your name’s in the opening credits, sometimes you have to do the grunt work.
• Commissioner Hedford is pretty nasty but I suppose facing death might do that.
• They’re on-board the Galileo when they’re hijacked towards a mysterious planet. This is the second shuttle by that name, since the first was destroyed in “The Galileo Seven.”  They should probably stop naming shuttles that, it seems a little unlucky.
• Cochrane is cared for by the Companion, a creature of formless energy, and he says they’ve been “close in a way that’s hard to describe.” They’re boning. I’m not sure how, but they’re boning.
• The universal translator uses a female voice for the Companion, so they accept the energy creature as gendered in human terms, which is strange enough – even if the creature had a gender, how the hell would the translator know that? But then learning the creature is female leads them to realize that it’s in love with Cochran. Because it couldn’t possibly be in love with Cochran if it was male, or genderless, or some other type of gender that only energy creatures have. Kirk even says, “The idea of male and female are universal constants.” No, they’re not! Screw you, 1967!

TOS 2×3. Friday’s Child

The Enterprise becomes involved in a local power struggle on planet Capella IV, where the Klingons want mining rights.

First aired December 1, 1967.

The one where the Klingons and the Federation negotiate with a primitive tribe for mining rights and oh my god I’m asleep already.

• Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and security officer Lieutenant Grant beam down to the planet. Guess which one doesn’t beam back?
• Julie Newmar plays Eleen, the wife of the “Teer,” or chief, of the tribe. She’s a bit of a stock character, the snooty aristocrat who acts unreasonably for seemingly no reason other than to keep the plot moving, but she’s Julie Newmar so she’s amazing to watch. Her and McCoy are a particularly good double act.
• Scotty has to take the Enterprise away to answer a distress call, which strands the landing party on the planet for a while. This is already feeling like an overused plot device.
• “I’m a doctor, not an escalator,” may be my favorite McCoy-ism. I won’t give you the context; it’s funnier without.

TOS 2×4. Who Mourns for Adonais?

The Enterprise is captured by an alien claiming to be Apollo, the Greek god of the sun.

First aired September 22, 1967.

Oh, you know this one. Giant Greek god.

• I don’t know, he deserves happiness and all but I always find it creepy when Scotty flirts.
• Oh, good, another omnipotent alien story. Can never have too many of those.
• Apollo says not to bring Spock down to the planet because the Vulcan reminds him of Pan, and Pan always bored him. I’m sorry, but if you’re tired of the god of rutting sex you’re tired of living.
• The god who abducts them is Apollo so I don’t know why we should be so concerned with who’s mourning for Adonais.
• Like Lt. McGivers with Khan in “Space Seed,” Lt. Palamas falls for Apollo instantaneously for seemingly no other reason than that he’s just such a big strong powerful handsome manly man. I would love to see an episode where one of the male crew comes close to commuting mutiny and treason because he’s got the hots for one of those sexy green alien dancers.
• The basic plot of this episode has been done before and will be done again, but this episode stands out for a reason – the cliche is done well here, mostly thanks to guest stars Michael Forest as Apollo and Leslie Parrish as Palamas.

TOS 2×5. Amok Time

Suffering through his first infliction of pon farr, the Vulcan biological mating urge, Spock must return to Vulcan to marry his betrothed or he will die. However, when the Enterprise arrives at Vulcan, complications at the ceremony may endanger Captain Kirk as well.

First aired September 15, 1967.

The one that inspired decades of Kirk/Spock slash fiction.

• So Vulcans have to mate or die once every seven years. I’m kind of surprised nobody else in the Federation seems to know about this. I know Vulcans are private but that’s a pretty big thing to leave out of someone’s medical record.
• Spock’s so mean to Nurse Chapel! She just wants to feed him some plomeek soup! It sounds delicious!
• I’d be irritable too if I hadn’t had sex in seven years.
• On beaming down McCoy says, “Hot as Vulcan. Now I understand what the phrase means.” It was unclear before? Seems like a pretty straightforward saying. “Oh, it means Vulcan is hot? I get it now.”
• So, wait…this appears to be the first time Spock has gone through this ceremony. He was promised to T’Pring at seven years old, so I guess the pon farr doesn’t take affect until later in life (unless Spock was a very mature fourteen). Does that mean he’s…untouched? Or is he able to get busy with humans while waiting for the seven-year-itch to come along?
• T’Pau! Give me love, give me heart and soul!
• I call bullshit on Vulcans’ claims to be unemotional. All that shame over the pon farr, plus T’Pring and Stonn having an affair? How logical is that? They’re just an entire species of people with resting bitch face, that’s all.
• Spock had an orgasm during the fight with Kirk, right? That’s why the pon farr blew over?

TOS 2×6. The Doomsday Machine

The Enterprise discovers a superweapon capable of destroying entire planets, and a commodore whose crew was killed by the machine jeopardizes the crew on a crazed mission of revenge.

First aired October 20, 1967.

The one with the giant space Fleshlight.

• Commodore Decker looks like he is always drunk.
• The planet killer is an enormous penis sleeve. I can’t see it as anything else.
• This story being a take-off on Moby Dick doesn’t help the penis sleeve visual.
• Another episode where the primary plot obstacle is someone of a higher rank making bad decisions. That’s getting a little lazy.
• Who’s that white lady sitting in Uhura’s chair? All of the regulars (outside of the Holy Trinity) get subbed in for once in a while, since the actors weren’t contracted for every episode, but I really notice it when Uhura’s missing.
• William Shatner is a good actor. There, I said it. He’s great in this episode. He plays his last moments aboard the Constellation, where the plan is about to fall apart because Scotty is still working on the transporter just as Kirk needs to be beamed off before the ship explodes, perfectly. He’s slightly panicking but holding it together, playing for comedy but not so much so to undercut the dramatic tension. He can chew as much scenery as he wants in torture scenes, he’s earned it.
• There’s a reason why certain episodes are remembered by everyone. It’s because they’re really good. This is one of those.

TOS 2×7. Wolf in the Fold

Scotty is suspected of killing several women while on shore leave on Argelius II. However, a more sinister force may provide a connection between this murder and many previous around the galaxy, including a rampage on ancient Earth.

First aired December 22, 1967.

The one where Scotty maybe killed some ladies a little.

• Sometimes the core idea of a Star Trek episode is a shining example of the best of the science fiction genre, and sometimes it’s just batshit crazy. This is the latter.
• A female crewmember makes a mistake that injures Scotty, and he develops “total resentment towards women.” This resentment is apparently a medical condition requiring treatment by McCoy, and not just Scotty being a chauvinist dick.
• That treatment is a recommendation for shore leave on a planet with a hedonistic sexually permissive culture, where they set Scotty up to get laid with an exotic dancer. He goes off with them and McCoy and Kirk are satisfied that he’s cured. Because misogynists don’t like sex, I guess, so…Scotty must not be one anymore? Where did McCoy get his degree?
• Kirk suggests he and McCoy leave that bar to go to another place he knows where the women are equally permissive. It’s a whorehouse. Kirk’s taking McCoy to a whorehouse.
• I hope the new movies revisit “The Planet Where Any Woman Will Have Sex with You, For Real, No Questions Asked.”
• We’re not even to the opening credits yet, by the way.
• Yadda, yadda, yadda, trial scene, trial scene, trial scene, Jack the Ripper did it. Spoilers! He’s an incorporeal alien who can possess people and also ships’ computers somehow. He feeds on fear so they beat him by getting the entire crew high. Groovy.
• I’m glad Scotty’s innocent of murder but he’s still a chauvinist dick.

TOS 2×8. The Changeling

The Enterprise finds an ancient interstellar probe from Earth, missing for 265 years, which has somehow mutated into a powerful and intelligent machine bent on sterilizing entire populations that do not meet its standards of perfection.

First aired September 29, 1967.

The one where Uhura gets mind-wiped by a floating can opener.

• While hailing a planet and not receiving a response, Kirk reminds Uhura to check a special frequency. Bitch, don’t tell Uhura how to check frequencies. Uhura knows how to check frequencies.
• Four billion people dead before the opening credits. Man, the death toll on original Star Trek is crazy.
• I know it’s just on wires, but the Nomad model floating around the ship looks pretty cool. There’s a lot to be said for practical effects.
• Uhura gets her brain erased. I find that scene really disturbing. I mean, Scotty gets killed, but he gets better. Uhura has to be, in Spock’s words, “re-educated.”
• Spock can mind meld with computers now? Sure, why not.
• Kirk logics the computer to death. Computers in the future are really susceptible to being logiced to death.
• The implications of Uhura’s re-education are disturbing. She’s at a first grade reading level, do they really get her all the way through her whole education, including her Starfleet training, to the point where she can serve as an officer again? What about all her memories, did she forget her family, her friends, her entire life? It sure seems so. That’s one of the saddest things I can imagine happening to a person.
• Luckily, continuity wasn’t really a thing back then, so she’s completely back to normal by the next episode. Onward!

TOS 2×9. The Apple

The Enterprise crew discovers an Eden-like paradise on Gamma Trianguli VI, controlled by a machine that is revered by the local humanoid primitives as a god.

First aired October 13, 1967.

The subtle title might have misled you, but this is the one that’s a play on the Garden of Eden.

• That’s a heck of a big landing party. LOADS of redshirts to bump off.
• Yup. Redshirts dropping like flies.
• I do love how every single thing on this planet, right down to the rocks, can kill you. They’re killing off a lot of redshirts, but they’re doing it in very inventive and entertaining ways.
• Despite the high body count, the story isn’t glossing over the deaths. The plot may consider these characters disposable, but Kirk doesn’t. It’s well written.
• The Vaalians have ruddy skin and terrible wigs, but they’re super buff and run around in loincloths. They’re kind of like hot Oompa Loompas.
• About what percent of the times when Scotty’s been given command of the Enterprise has the ship been unable to beam the landing party to safety because of mysterious technological reasons? Eighty-five? Ninety?
• Despite the villagers being quite happy and not in any apparent danger, Kirk decides to completely upend their society. Spock mentions the Prime Directive. I’m surprised they don’t all just laugh at this point. “What, that old chestnut?”
• “Well, we killed your god. You’re on your own now, completely innocent and uneducated society. Enjoy getting to understand the concept of death. Laters!”

TOS 2×10. Mirror, Mirror

A transporter malfunction sends Kirk, McCoy, Scotty, and Uhura into a parallel universe where the Federation is replaced by an evil Empire, Kirk is a despot, and Spock is a cunning pirate.

First aired October 6, 1967.

The one that introduced goatees into the pop culture lexicon as a short-hand for evil parallel universe duplicates.

• The Halkans won’t give the Federation mining rights to their dilithium, because Halkan society is completely peaceful and even one life lost as a result of the dilithium would violate their ethics. Kirk tries to convince their leader Tharn that the Federation is peaceful, and we’re obviously supposed to side with Kirk, but…Tharn is right. Peaceful intentions or not, the Federation gets into fights all the time. That dilithium would be powering up some deadly weapon before the episode was over.
• I know the mirror universe is evil but it is also way sexier. Lots more skin on display, lots more swagger, and Spock looks terrific with a goatee.
• It’s kind of weird that the transporter beamed the landing parties into their duplicates’ clothes. That’s pretty precise.
• I love when Uhura’s in on the action. Her “I’m scared” when Kirk orders her to the evil bridge feels out of character, although Nichelle Nichols does her best to make it the bravest declaration of fear on television. I assume it’s the writer feeling the woman needs to be all womanly. I consider that five second dialogue exchange non-canonical, and you can’t convince me otherwise.
• Nice bit of continuity, calling back to “The Menagerie,” that evil Kirk got his command by assassinating the previous captain, Christopher Pike.
• I like how the evil away team are just so darn evil that they can’t even hide it and are instantly arrested by the real Enterprise crew. Evil Kirk could teach his good counterpart a lesson or two in scenery chewing – Shatner is not holding back.
• I’ll bet Kirk kind of wishes his universe’s Enterprise had an official position for “Captain’s Woman.”
• “Tantalus field” is an interesting name for the device that kills people by instantly wiping them from existence. By interesting, I mostly mean confusing. If it’s named for the mythological Tantalus, it should torment people by holding grapes out of their reach. The other thing Tantalus is associated with is cannibalism, so maybe the victims are all being beamed to the ship’s larder.
• The scene where Uhura distracts evil Sulu by seducing him, then backhanding him, is pretty much the best thing ever.
• I love that Uhura dives right into the brawl against evil Spock. Between that, the Sulu backhand, and overpowering the phaser-wielding Captain’s Woman, Uhura kicks a whole lot of ass in this episode.
• I know I talk about Uhura a lot. I’m not sorry.
• This is not the first parallel universe story in science fiction, but it set the bar for every one that came after. It’s justly remembered as one of the best episodes of Star Trek. I think it might be my personal favorite.

TOS 2×11. The Deadly Years

The Enterprise discovers a colony full of rapidly-aging scientists. Whatever caused the rapid aging afflicts the ship´s landing party as well. Kirk, Spock, McCoy and Scott are shocked to discover they are aging decades each day and will soon die unless a cure can be found. The unaffected Chekov may be their only hope for survival.

First aired December 8, 1967.

They all get old.

• Chekov sees a dead body and freaks the hell out. It’s so out-of-character that it’s obviously necessary for the plot, which kind of gives the whole episode away.
• Elderly Kirk falling asleep in the command chair is hilarious.
• Kirk’s competency hearing is pretty obviously padding.
• The foolish commodore throwing his authority around got old a while back.
• The funny thing about Commodore Stocker, though, is that he’s right – Kirk is unfit for command. The only problem is that Stocker himself is no good at it either, but doesn’t have an aging disease to blame.
• Not a terrible episode – they make the most of the whole aging thing – but everything with Stocker, the hearing and the Romulans feels tacked on.

TOS 2×12. I, Mudd

Harry Mudd, now ruler of a planet of androids, captures the Enterprise and attempts to imprison Kirk for revenge.

First aired November 3, 1967.

The other one with Mudd – with the sex robots, not the space prostitutes.

• How the heck does Norman the android infiltrate Starfleet so easily? He signs on the Enterprise as a lieutenant while it’s at a starbase. He serves on the ship for three days and nobody ever checks his references? Can you just show up to work anywhere in the future and they assume you’re supposed to be there?
• Yay, Uhura’s beaming down!
• Oh my gosh, it’s Harry Mudd behind all this! If I hadn’t read the title card I might have been surprised.
• Mudd has made a robot replica of his nagging wife solely so that he can tell her to be quiet and she has to obey. That is fucked up.
• Uhura is all about the idea of putting her brain into a robot body. That’s a side of her we haven’t seen before. I blame that mind wipe a few episodes back.
• Time to logic some more computers to death. Or illogic them to death, but it’s roughly the same idea.
• The routines the crew do to confuse the robots are delightful. Also, these robots are really, really easy to confuse.

TOS 2×13. The Trouble with Tribbles

A dispute over control of a planet brings the Enterprise to a space station, where they must deal with Klingons, edgy Federation officials, and a previously-unknown species of small, unbearably cute, voraciously hungry and rapidly-multiplying furry creatures.

First aired December 29, 1967.

The one with the tribbles. Duh.

• I really want the backstory behind Sherman’s Planet. Who was Sherman? Why is it his planet? Did he discover and and so got to name it? And he wanted to name it after himself, but rather than call it “Sherman,” he called it “Sherman’s Planet,” so everyone would know it was his property? That sounds like something a six-year-old boy would do, like hanging a sign on his bedroom door saying, “Sherman’s Room! Mom Keep Out!!!” I think I wrote the backstory myself.
• That running joke about Chekov claiming that every significant historical person or event hails from Russia never gets old. Which is good, because he makes it about fifty times in this episode alone.
• Okay, yet another plot pushed forward because of an idiotic incompetent Federation official who outranks Kirk throwing his weight around. There must be some serious cronyism going on in the Federation because every other Commodore or Ambassador is a goddamn asshole.
• Kirk: “I have never questioned the orders or the intelligence of any representative of the Federation, until now.” Good dig, but a bald-faced lie.
• Cyrano Jones gives Uhura a free tribble as a loss-leader. That’s just good business sense, if you ask me.
• McCoy calls the tribbles bisexual, although I think he means asexual. He obviously isn’t on Tumblr or he’d know the difference.
• Scotty beams all the tribbles over to the Klingon ship, and it’s meant to be a funny ending because of how much the Klingons hate tribbles, but all I ever think when I watch the last scene is how the Klingons are just going to beam all those adorable little fuzzballs into the vacuum of space.
• This is another episode deservedly remembered as great. It’s funny while staying grounded in the established reality of the series, and the guest cast is terrific. I’ll take Cyrano Jones over Harry Mudd any day.

TOS 2×14. Bread and Circuses

Kirk, Spock, and McCoy are captured on a planet that resembles a Roman Empire with 20th-century technology. They are set to die at the hands of gladiators for the sake of public spectacle.

Are you not entertained?

Originally aired March 15, 1968.

• Three hundred years into the future and they’ve forgotten what television is. That seems overly optimistic.
• The planet is basically nineteen-sixties Earth technology with ancient Roman culture. Spock says, “Complete Earth parallel. The language here is English.” Which doesn’t make a lick of sense, of course, but it sure is convenient.
• Oh, Jesus, this is the Jesus episode.
• “The Children of the Son,” which Kirk and his crew misapprehend to be “The Children of the Sun,” are the Christian analogues for this episode. The pro-Jesus tenor is not handled with the greatest of subtlety.
• Kirk wants to arrest and prosecute Captain Merik for violating the Prime Directive, which seems a little hypocritical. Sure, it’s super important to follow the Prime Directive when it’s some other captain…
• The modern version of the arena is a television show called Name the Winner, complete with sports commentator and canned applause. It’s clever. All of the jokes about television are pretty good, actually.
• Kirk is assigned a slave girl to tend to him. At first he thinks she’s been given to him as some kind of trick, but she promises him there’s no deception. So he’s like, okey-dokey, and has sex with her. With a slave. Who’s been given to him. Who specifically says that he owns her. Because, I guess, it seems like she’s into it? On a world where slaves are routinely executed for disobeying their masters? No power imbalance there, no sirree! Screw away, Captain! (And remember, this is the pro-Christianity episode.)
• The episode ends with Uhura revealing to them that the slaves worship Christ, not the sun, and everyone’s like, ooh, that’s awesome. Christianity’s going to take over this planet and it will be a world of total love and brotherhood. Yay! It is a seriously weird ending.

TOS 2×15. Journey to Babel

As the Enterprise comes under attack on the way to a diplomatic conference on Babel, one of the alien dignitaries is murdered, and Spock’s estranged father Sarek is the prime suspect – but he is also deathly ill, and only Spock can save him.

First aired November 17, 1967.

The one with Spock’s parents.

• Ooh, aliens! I like the look of the Andorians – the blue guys with the antennae – and the Tellarites – the pig guys. Nobody does bipedal prosthetic-faced aliens like Star Trek!
• Kirk doesn’t figure out the the Vulcan man and the human woman who are a married couple are Spock’s parents? That seems a little thick, it’s not like Vulcan-human hybrids are particularly common. Plus, he’s been to Spock’s ancestral home and went through that whole Pon Farr thing already – all that bonding they’ve done, and Spock never mentioned his parents’ names? And it’s not like Spock’s dad isn’t a pretty prominent Federation official, you’d think it’d be in Spock’s personnel record, which Kirk would be familiar with. Okay, fine, it’s all to set up a good dramatic line before the opening credits (“Captain, Ambassador Sarek and his wife are my parents.” Duh duh duuuhhhh!), but come on.
• I like the little hand-touching thing Sarek and Amanda do. It seems a very Vulcan way for him to show that he loves his wife while maintaining the illusion that he doesn’t feel anything.
• This is a terrific episode. It really hinges on the performances of Leonard Nimoy, Mark Lenard as Sarek, and Jane Wyatt as Amanda, and obviously they’re all fantastic, with really subtle dynamics among the three of them.
• With such great performances at the heart of the episode, the obligatory action plot could have just gone by the numbers and the episode still would have been memorable. But everything with the murder mystery, the traitorous fake-Andorian and the space battle against the enemy ship is gripping.

TOS 2×16. A Private Little War

On a planet with a primitive civilization, the Enterprise discovers that the Klingons are providing a Stone Age society with increasingly-advanced weaponry.

First aired February 2, 1968.

The one with that horned white ape. Oh, and Klingons.

• Spock comments, again, on how Earth-like the planet is. You can stop pointing that out, Spock. They’re pretty much all Earth-like at this point. The budget doesn’t allow for more than one or two non-Earth-like planets a season.
• This is the first of two appearances for Dr. M’Benga, and the first real hint that there are other Medical Officers for McCoy to be the Chief Medical Officer of. M’Benga specializes in Vulcan physiology, so he probably would have been useful in the last episode when Sarek was dying. I guess it was his day off.
• The mugato – the horned white ape with a venomous bite – is a marvel. The ape suit looks so soft I want to give him a hug. Watching him bite Kirk is my favorite part of this episode.
• M’Benga walks in on Chapel holding the unconscious Spock’s hand. Awkward! Later he tells her that if Spock wakes, she should do whatever he says. Not a problem!
• The native men’s blond wigs are huge and ridiculous.
• Okay, so the conclusion of this episode reveals that it was a Viet Nam parable all along – in fact, Kirk explicitly references this war to justify his arming of the natives to the exact same level of technology that the Klingons have been arming their rivals. Kirk’s reasoning, and ethics, are dubious at best, but at least McCoy’s opposing viewpoint is given voice. I find myself thinking that to avoid a war between the Federation and the Klingons, Kirk sacrificed the people of this planet (who were pacifists, by the way) to years of a bloody war of their own. Not too heroic for the hero of a sci-fi adventure show. Still, Star Trek is often at its best when it tackles difficult subjects, and it’s interesting that the episode ends intending for us to be unsure if Kirk has done the right thing.

TOS 2×17. The Gamesters of Triskelion

Kirk, Uhura, and Chekov are kidnapped by aliens and forced to fight other aliens so that a mentally superior race can gamble on the winner.

First aired January 5, 1968.

Spartacus, but with aliens, and the Romans are brains in a jar.

• Uhura’s in the away mission? She’s beaming down to the planet, right off the bat in the pre-credits teaser? Oh, I already know I’m going to like this one.
• And the first commercial cliffhanger is the threat of Uhura about to be raped. With the emotional focus being Kirk’s reaction it. Ugh. She does fight the guy off all on her own, at least, because Uhura is a badass. But still.
• Uhura’s trainer is the guy who tried to rape her, and he was a big burly handsome man. Kirk’s trainer, of course, is a sexy, sexy woman. Kirk, being Kirk, seduces her to get information and to gain her sympathies. Wouldn’t it have been nice if Uhura could have done that to her trainer? Wouldn’t that switcheroo have been so much more interesting than an attempted-rape scene?
• Okay, all that aside, this is a fun episode, if a little by-the-numbers. And Uhura kicks ass multiple times, so I’m can’t help but love it.

TOS 2×18. Obsession

A survey of Argus X brings the Enterprise crew in confrontation with a vampiric cloud that killed a crew Kirk was on years ago, captained by the father of an ensign currently assigned to the ship.

First aired December 15, 1967.

The one with the silent but deadly cloud. (Except this one smells nice.)

• Kirk, Spock, Ensign Rizzo and a security team are carrying out a planet survey. You know what? I feel good about the redshirts’ chances this time out! I think they’re finally gonna beat those odds!
• Oh. Never mind.
• Kirk’s a real asshole in this one. Nothing’s messing with his mind or anything. He winds up being right about everything, of course, but he’s still a dick to everyone.
• It’s a very small thing, but the antigravity device with which Kirk and Garrovick move the bomb is a simple effect done very well.
• This is a fairly run-of-the-mill episode – another Moby Dick pastiche. Ensign Garrovick’s redemption storyline is the best part – I’m glad he survives (though of course we never see him again).

TOS 2×19. The Immunity Syndrome

After Spock senses the destruction of the Vulcan-manned starship Intrepid, the Enterprise encounters an enormous single-celled organism that feeds on energy which threatens the galaxy as it prepares to reproduce.

First aired January 19, 1968.

The one with the giant space amoeba.

• Kyle’s at the helm. Sulu hasn’t been on an episode in forever. George Takei was off filming something else, apparently.
• There’s a lot of button-pushing in this episode. By that I mean, most of the tension, and the resolution of that tension, depends on talking about what to do with the controls – “Maybe we can escape if we push this switch! It didn’t work! Throw that switch, quick! It worked, hooray!” – but dressed up with technobabble. That’s the problem with writing an episode featuring an unintelligent adversary who can’t be communicated with. I’m starting to understand why similar episodes usually resort to the cliched “unreasonable ambassador/commodore/station commander” character just to add a little interpersonal conflict.
• There’s a nice moment, when Kirk has chosen Spock over McCoy for a vital mission he almost certainly won’t return from (spoiler – he does), where we see the friendship behind the Science and Medical Officers’ bickering. A lot of writers forget this – too often you’d think the two genuinely despised each other.
• This is not a particularly memorable episode. Not bad, but not that good, either.

TOS 2×20. A Piece of the Action

Returning to a planet last visited by an Earth ship 100 years earlier, theEnterprise finds a planet that has based its culture on the gangsters of Earth’s 1920s.

First aired January 12, 1968.

The one with the gangsters, of course!

• The premise of this episode is that an entire culture could be so soft-willed and easily influenced that their entire way of life, from dress to language to interpersonal relationships to the very laws that form the foundation of their society, is shaped by what’s written in one single book. Ridiculous!
• Given the description, “an intersection just at the end of the block, near a yellow fire plug,” Scotty finds the precise beam-down coordinates in seconds. Damn, he’s good!
• I love that the book Chicago Mobs of the Twenties was published in 1992 but looks like a First Folio.
• I would like to learn how to play fizzbin, the nonsensical card game Kirk makes up to distract his guards. I’ll bet some Trekkies somewhere have codified the rules.
• This is a great episode. William Shatner in particular is obviously having so much fun with the contrasts between the gangster and the sci-fi settings. When Star Trek does a comedy episode right, it’s golden.

TOS 2×21. By Any Other Name

Extragalactic aliens hijack the Enterprise and turn the crew into inert solids, leaving the four senior officers on their own to exploit their captors’ weaknesses.

First aired February 23, 1968.

Remember that Saturday Night Live sketch set at a Star Trek convention, with William Shatner, and he makes fun of the Trekkies for not having lives? Remember at the beginning, where Phil Hartman introduces the other guests, and one of them is a woman who was in one episode, where she was transformed into a cube, and crushed? That one.

• As a Doctor Who fan, I get a little jealous when a sci-fi show understands the differences between a solar system, a galaxy, and a universe. Classic Doctor Who tended to use them somewhat interchangeably, but here, the enormous difficulty of intergalactic travel is a major plot point, described accurately.
• The dead redshirt in this episode is a woman, Yeoman Thompson. That’s sort of a sign of how this show was ahead of its time, in a weird way – a woman can play a disposable minor character as well as a man.
• On the other hand, Nurse Chapel is particularly dim in this episode when she doesn’t understand that McCoy and Spock are faking an illness to fool their guards, even though the ship is in enemy hands and one of the enemy aliens is right there with them.
• They revisit the energy barrier at the rim of the galaxy, from “Where No Man Has Gone Before.” Continuity callback! I guess it doesn’t give psychic powers anymore, since nobody mentions that possibility.
• Kelinda, the beeeee-yooooo-tiful female alien, is, in her true form, a massive creature with a hundred tentacles. Nevertheless, she finds Kirk irresistible.
• They win with the power of friendship! Now that’s very Doctor Who.

TOS 2×22. Return to Tomorrow

Three survivors from a race that died half a million years ago “borrow” the bodies of Enterprise crew members so they can build android bodies for themselves.

First aired February 9, 1968.

The one where Kirk, Spock and the female-guest-star-of-the-week agree to swap bodies with some seemingly benevolent aliens, and it goes about as well you’d expect.

• Sulu’s back! Hooray! Ten whole episodes he was gone, filming The Green Berets.
• Explaining how the Enterprise crew could be his descendants, Sargon says, “As you now leave your own seed on distant planets…” He’s got Kirk pegged, that’s for sure.
• Oh, you know Chapel was digging having Spock’s consciousness inside her body. So…many…jokes…

TOS 2×23. Patterns of Force

The Enterprise, searching for a missing Federation historian, discovers that the historian has apparently contaminated the cultural development of the planet where he was assigned as a cultural observer to have it follow the societal path of Nazi Germany in the 1930s and ’40s.

First aired February 16, 1968.

Pretty much the same as the Roman one and the gangster one, but with Nazis.

• Say this for Star Trek, it is not afraid to keep visiting the same well.
• Before beaming down, Kirk has Spock and himself injected with subcutaneous transponders, with orders for Scotty to beam them aboard at a set time if they can’t be reached. It’s really a quite sensible precaution, given how their away missions usually go. Makes me wonder why they’ve never done it before…and never do it again…
• A shirtless Kirk scene is always appreciated.
• The alien Nazis are persecuting the “Zeons,” whose members include “Isak” and “Abrom.” Just in case the bad guys being actual Nazis wasn’t enough for you to get the comparison.
• Kirk and Spock recognize that something is wrong with John Gill, the Federation historian who has become the Fuhrer, because of the nonsensical inspirational jingoistic platitudes he spouts in his speech. It basically sounds like any speech from any candidate for any U.S. national office today.
• Kirk asks Gill, who is supposedly both good and brilliant, why he chose Nazi Germany as the template for a new government for the alien world, and his answer is essentially, “Eh. Seemed like a good idea at the time.”

TOS 2×24. The Ultimate Computer

The Enterprise tests a computer that, if successful, could replace Kirk as the captain.

First aired March 8, 1968.

Damn machines! They’re taking all our jobs, amirite?

• A computer is installed that can do the job of running the Enterprise all by itself. I’m guessing…and I’m going out on a limb here…that it’s going to go wrong.
• Dr. Daystrom is kind of a dick to Kirk. It’s not nice to taunt someone with the prospect of losing their job. Not in this economy.
• Spock is so far up Daystrom’s ass he could do a Vulcan colon-meld.
• Commodore Wesley is a dick to Kirk too, teasing him that he no longer serves any useful purpose. That’s no surprise, though, as commodores in the Star Trek universe are contractually obligated to be dicks.
• Captain Kirk is getting really, really good at talking machines to death. I’ll bet by now he could convince a vending machine to hang itself.

TOS 2×25. The Omega Glory

The Enterprise discovers the derelict starship Exeter drifting in space, its entire crew killed by an unknown plague and her captain missing.

First aired March 1, 1968.

The one with the starship captain who goes bad. Yeah, another one.

• Lieutenant Galloway appears in this episode. He’s been in a bunch of episodes since the first season, doing not a lot in some very crucial episodes. He’s in the landing party down to the planet of the Guardian in “The City on the Edge of Forever,” and he guards the storage bin filled with tribbles that pour out onto Kirk in “The Trouble with Tribbles.” They don’t always bother, but I really enjoy when the producers make an effort to keep the recurring minor characters (some just extras, with no lines at all) consistent.
• Kirk gets on his hypocritical high horse about the prime directive again in this episode, criticizing Captain Tracey for using his phaser to defend the friendly villagers from the attacking bloodthirsty savages. As if Kirk wouldn’t have done exactly the same thing.
• Tracey immediately loses any moral superiority he might have by vaporizing poor Lt. Galloway. Sorry, Galloway. You can only avoid that redshirt curse for so long.
• The Asian-looking people are the good ones, and – twist! – the white people are the savages! Kirk refers to them as “the white civilization” and “the yellow civilization.” Blergh.
• The savages are the Yangs and the villagers are the Kohms, and Kirk and Spock realize they’re degradations of the words “Yankees” and “Communists,” because that makes sense to them. So the white savages were the good guys all along! Uh…yay?
• This planet had an American civilization, complete with American flag, Pledge of Allegiance, Constitution, and the Christian Bible. Are there any planets in Star Trek that didn’t evolve to be like Earth? And can someone tell the writers that sometimes they can make their metaphors a little less on-the-nose? We’ll still get it, promise.
• This episode is…not great. Really rams that American exceptionalism down your throat.

TOS 2×26. Assignment: Earth

The Enterprise travels back in time to 1968, where the crew encounters the mysterious Gary Seven who claims to be sent by advanced beings trying to help Earth.

First aired March 29, 1968.

The one that’s actually an episode of a completely different show that never got made.

• The Enterprise can travel through time whenever they hell they want now. Just a routine mission to 1968, no big deal.
• I like the foggy vault door thing Gary Seven uses to transport himself. It’s nifty. The nice thing about this being a backdoor pilot is they could spend the dough on giving him a really cool office.
• Hey, that’s Teri Garr! She’s quite charming in this. I’m sort of sorry it never got picked up, if just to see more of her as Roberta Lincoln.
• I think the cat is my favorite character, though. She turns into a sexy lady for just a second at the end, I assume to make all the suggestions sprinkled throughout the episode that Gary Seven is fucking his cat more palatable.
• Spock: “Captain, we could say that Mister Seven and Miss Lincoln have some interesting experiences in store for them.” Or not.
• Not a bad episode, but a little unfortunate to end the season with a backdoor pilot starring a completely new cast. Makes it all the better that the show was renewed – this would have been a terrible series finale.