Reviews

Except for a decent ending with some good lines by Steed, this is one of the worst Emma Peel episodes. The villains are unpleasant without being at all interesting (especially the two rustics), and the action makes no sense from start to finish. If you are running a criminal operation like Little Storping, you would keep a low profile, rather than calling attention to yourself by pointlessly smashing people's possessions. And what kept them from killing the four dissenters, rather than locking them in a makeshift dungeon? Worst of all, why didn't Mrs. Peel hightail it back to London to get help from Steed as soon as she found Croft dead (or even sooner, after she came to after the fake crash, since she had already seen Forbes dead)? Clearly her car was still working, since she followed the doctor to his surgery.

The first half of the episode is not as good, but the last half, showing the four remaining Enterprise crewmen trying to overload the Kelvans' emotions is one of the most entertaining episodes. Good performances by Stevens, Bouchet, and Fortier in particular.

But unless Kelvan biology is totally different from any other living organism I've ever heard of, it's a lunatic idea to think that you can run a multigeneration ship on a 300-year voyage with five Kelvans and four humans. How are they going to produce several new generations of Kelvans? Even if the Kelvans can interbreed with the humans, there isn't enough genetic diversity with nine people, and the descendants who reach Andromeda will be biologically inferior, possibly even feebleminded.

Robert Lansing and Teri Garr were very good in their roles, and the episode was entertaining (though somewhat resembling Tomorrow is Yesterday). Apparently snarky computers are going to be part of our future (voice by Barbara Babcock of A Taste of Armageddon).

The central plot, however, makes no sense: if they already knew that the warhead platform was destroyed 104 miles above Earth, what could they need to know so badly it was worth risking going back in time? The most gaping hole is that Scotty had already indicated the Enterprise could destroy the platform with phasers. Kirk should have given him standard orders to do so immediately if anything went wrong.

The worst of the "super-alien" episodes of Star Trek, with an insipid plot (beings so evolved they are disembodied brains becoming so dissipated they spend all their time wagering on primitive combat) and wooden dialog (sad to see an actor as fine as Joseph Ruskin in garbage like this).

Nothing good can come from a story where one of the main characters is named Galt

This is the bottom of the barrel. Even Spock's Brain was better than this (it at least had a few moments of unintentional comedy). Even as a kid I loathed this episode.

The kid actors actually did their best with a terrible story and script. The fault is not theirs.

There's also a strange continuity error: when the demon appears for the final time, Kirk addresses it as Gorgon (also sometimes misspelled Gorgan in the script). How did he know its name, since no one had ever mentioned it any earlier in the episode?

The entire episode makes no sense. How could an isolated planet gather enough information to build a replica of the Enterprise? And how could it have taken Kirk so long to realize he was on a replica, and not the real thing, when Spock realized it was a non-working replica in about two minutes? And why did no one immediately notice the change in coordinates?

The entire episode exists as a vehicle for Roddenberryesque diatribes against two unrelated themes: bureaucracy and overpopulation. (Also diplomacy, for some reason, even though that plays a substantial part in Federation policy. In A Taste of Armageddon, even though Ambassador Fox is initially treated with derision, his value is clearly shown in the end.)

It is insane to imagine that a civilization that values life would be comfortable unleashing on its population a biological plague for which they almost certainly have no resistance. And their scheme for obtaining the seed of the plague is unimaginably stupid.

Nothing original here: The Enterprise encroaches on alien territory and is threatened with destruction. They have to convince the aliens that they are peaceful in order to avoid being destroyed.