(by Collin R. Skocik)
When the Enterprise is hurled halfway across the galaxy, Kirk, McCoy, and Sulu are stranded on a mysterious planet where they are stalked by a strange woman who can kill with a touch.
A story of survival in deep space, this episode tells two parallel stories. We follow Kirk, McCoy, and Sulu as they try to survive on a barren planet with no food or water, and we follow the story of Spock and Scotty and their efforts to bring the Enterprise back to the mysterious planet. The strange woman Losira manages to be in both places at once, killing crew members on the Enterprise as well as haunting the planet; a computer simulation of her was left on the Enterprise before it was transposed through space, just as various computer simulations of her appear on the planet.
Losira is an image of the commander of the Kalandan station that once existed on this planet—or, actually, to be more precise, the planet itself was the station. The Kalandans somehow constructed the planet, and in doing so, wiped themselves out with a deadly disease—probably the plant parasite that Sulu detects. The station’s defenses were set to automatic, so that the landing party as well as the Enterprise fall under attack by automatic systems left behind by a long-dead, ancient civilization. I wonder if this was inspired by the stories of “curses” placed on Egyptologists when they broke into Pharaoh’s tombs. It’s also reminiscent of the ancient monoliths in Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, in which astronaut Dave Bowman is caught in an ancient automatic trap and hurled across the galaxy. In this case, the ancient computer creates an image of Losira, who was the base commander, to “selectively defend against all life forms but our own.”
The fact that she does not register on McCoy’s tricorder, yet is able to kill with a touch, makes me wonder exactly what she is. A hologram is not physical; I’m reminded of the “hard light” holograms of the British sci-fi sitcom Red Dwarf. Perhaps Losira is a plasma hologram. That would account for her solidity as well as the way she kills by instant cellular disruption. I would think plasma would register on McCoy’s tricorder, but it’s the best I’ve got.
To be perfectly honest, I’m not quite sure what this episode is about. It’s an interesting and atmospheric tale, and the storyline on the Enterprise is tense and exciting, but what, if anything, the episode is getting at eludes me. On the one hand, I think it’s Star Trek at its best—the exploration of the unknown, the sense of wonder of deep space, the titillating sense of contact with an extraterrestrial civilization—but at the same time it’s Star Trek at its worst—meandering, directionless, pointless, filling up time with dramatic dialogue and action scenes but packing little meat.
Arthur Batanides makes quite an impression as geologist D’Amato. Although he’s given little to do, Batanides has considerable screen presence and develops his brief role as D’Amato into a likable and interesting character who I would have liked to see more of. Regrettably, he’s killed in the first ten minutes of the episode. On the one hand, it’s a shame to so quickly lose such a promising character. On the other, there’s a brutal honesty to it. We never get to know so many of the nameless redshirts who get killed throughout the series; here’s a guy we get to know and like, and he’s killed as offhandedly as Ensign Guy and Lieutenant Mann.
However, we also see unmistakable proof that senior officers are less expendable than guest stars. Scotty apparently has nothing better to do but wander around the engine room frowning at the odd feel of the ship. So rather than personally going into the next room and checking out the bypass valve on the matter/antimatter reaction chamber, he interrupts some poor guy who’s clearly in the middle of something and sends him off to get killed, while Scotty continues to stand around and look puzzled.
This episode marks the second and last appearance of Dr. M’Benga. An efficient and competent doctor, he makes the mistake of saying “you’re guess is as good as mine” to Spock. Spock is even more literal-minded in this episode than usual, rather testily correcting all the poor illogical humans for every little exaggeration or metaphor or grammatical error or mathematical estimate. After at least fifteen years of serving on a ship of humans, and a long and enduring friendship with Captain Kirk, one would think Spock would have gotten used to human behavior. But then, having trained on Vulcan, M’Benga probably should know better than to use the word “guess” to a Vulcan.
This is my favorite Scotty episode. We’ve seen him work in the Jeffries Tube many times, but this time he goes into a service crawlway in the engine room, deep into the guts of the ship, to play with the matter-antimatter reactor. It’s a joy to see him totally at one with his ship and doing what he does best. I do wonder, though, how he plans to be jettisoned from the ship should things go wrong; he’s in an open crawlway in the engine room. If the module containing the crawlway is jettisoned, the entire engineering section will be exposed to the vacuum of space. What exactly is the “pod” that Spock is expected to jettison? The entire engine room? Perhaps the entire engineering hull? They’re perhaps referring to a saucer separation?
Actually, I might argue that this episode is evidence that the original Enterprise was not designed to do a saucer separation, or they could have done that as soon as Scotty discovered that “this thing is going to blow up and there’s nothing in the universe can stop it.” It’s nice to see Sulu get a big part. George Takei is an energetic and enthusiastic actor, and Sulu is a delightful character who gets far too little exposure.
(Collin R. Skocik is a fan of the Star Trek franchise and has written synopses of all 79 episodes of Star Trek’s original series and the first six Star Trek films.)
Principled Thoughts 