Shore Leave: TOS Season 1 Episode 15

Plot Synopsis

We start this episode with Kirk getting a massage from a Yeomen. They quickly reflect on how stressed everyone on board is because of all of the crazy stuff this ship has had to deal with. Everyone could use some shore leave, and we are in luck, they have found an uninhabited planet with earth-like vegetation which is perfect. A few people are sent down first to scout before letting the entire crew down. Bones is in this group and he sees a white rabbit with a pocket watch run by with Alice chasing behind.

Kirk comes down to the planet thinking that this is possibly a joke that Bones is playing on him, but soon he sees man sized rabbit tracks and realizes something really weird is going on. They cancel shore leave for everyone else still on the ship and investigate things further to try to figure out what is really going on. It turns out that things that people have been thinking about (an old friend, a tiger, a flock of birds, a samurai, etc) manifest and interact with them in the natural way.

At some point Spock calls down and says that there is some kind of energy field draining their power, it is interfering with communication somehow. At that time Kirk was talking to what appears to be an old girlfriend. He is clearly very smitten and doesn't want to leave and says that they don't currently have a good enough reason to leave. I must say the whole thing reminded me of an anglerfish, it certainly appears to be a trap of some kind and Kirk is too mesmerized to run away while he still can. Shortly thereafter Spock realizes that they have a short period of time left to act and beamed down while he still could.

Meanwhile Bones is with the Yeoman who had previously conjured up a change of clothes to a medieval princess looking thing. She conjured up a knight that was going to attack them. Bones refused to believe it was real and asserted that it couldn't hurt him, so he got run through and killed (I imagine this could have been a very dramatic scene had I not known he does indeed live on). Kirk and Spock come upon the scene and investigate. It turns out that the knight's armor was just filled up with a dummy, furthermore all of the stuff on the planet (everything they've been conjuring in addition to the plant life and so forth) all have the exact same cellular structure, it's all manufactured somehow.

Shortly thereafter they realize they while they have been talking both the knight and Dr. McCoy's body have disappeared, and then a guy shows up who says he's the caretaker of this planet. Also, McCoy shows up again, he says they have an amazing facility (I guess underground) where he was able to get patched up, and he has apparently figured out the trick to manifesting his fantasy because he came in tow with 2 beautiful women he remembers from some Cabaret. The caretaker says his race has built this planet as an amusement park where your fantasies can come true. You can relive memories or create any situation you want and enjoy yourself.  The people who run this planet didn't realize that the crew didn't know what they were doing. Kirk tries to ask him more details about their race, but he simply says that they aren't ready to know, but invites everyone down to the planet to have a good shore leave. Kirk says that everyone is going to have a great time.

Why the power drain?

My biggest issue with this episode is the power drain. When it was revealed that something was draining their power, interrupting communications and interfering with transporters, it really looked like they were in some kind of a trap. I'm pretty sure that was the whole point of it, provide some tension and try to lead you down the wrong path. This was of course heightened when bones was killed. But it turned out it was just a misunderstanding, but then why the power drain on the ship? It was never explained and doesn't really make a lot of sense. I was thinking that perhaps someone wanted the communication to be cut off, but certainly once they realized something was up and it wasn't fun anymore, they would change their mind, or at least other people there would want to have communication and it would counteract it. It kinda reminds me of the Corbomite maneuver, in trying to throw in a twist they made things not quite make sense.

Which Yeoman?

I really liked Yeoman Janices character, and was alarmed at the beginning when there was a different Yeoman doing what it would seem she should be doing. I checked wikipedia, and it looks like she's off the show, bummer! It seems that the reason she left are not completely clear, wikipedia gives a run down of them.

Budget running low?

As I was watching this episode, I was wondering if their effects budget was running low. There were not really any special effects here, the whole episode was pretty much just them running around some park. I've seen in commentaries of other shows that they sometimes do this to recoup the cost of really expensive episodes. Not that this is a bad thing necessarily, Data's day is one of those episodes, and it is among my favorites. I'm pretty sure the friends episode where no one is ready is one of those as well, and that is also a great episode.

Getting Kirk to the planet

At the beginning of the episode Kirk was not planning on taking shore leave with everyone else. There was an amusing interaction between him and Spock that convinced him to go. It was one of those things where you knew exactly where it was leading right from the start, but it didn't make it any less great to see play out.

Spock: Captain, there was something I did come to discuss

Kirk: Yes Mr. Spock, what is it?

Spock: I picked this up from Dr. McCoy's log. We have a crew member aboard showing signs of stress and fatigue, reaction time down 9-12%, associational rating norm -3

Kirk: That's much too low a rating

Spock: He's becoming irritable and quarrelsome, yet he refuses to take rest and rehabilitation, now he has that right, but we've found...

Kirk (interrupting): The crewman's right ends where the safety of the ship begins. That man will go to shore on my orders, what's his name?

Spock: James Kirk *smirk* Enjoy yourself captain.

Shore leave for Spock?

Early on in the episode, Spock declares that everyone in the crew needs shore leave, except for him of course. He says

On my planet, to rest is to rest, to cease using energy. To me it is quite illogical to run up and down on green grass using energy instead of saving it.

More ripped shirts

I don't know why this cracks me up so much, but it seems that at every opportunity Shatner rips his shirt and exposes his manly chest.

We also have a ripped shirt from the new Yeoman, and perhaps a continuity error, it seems to me that when she puts her uniform back on later the rip is on the wrong side, unless she put it on backwards or something

Rating

6.5/10

I was debating whether to give it a 6 or a 7 I guess I'll split the difference. It was a bit of fun, and kinda goofy, but it didn't seem terribly well thought out to me, and it lacked a bit of punch I would say.

Intense Debate Comments

I've decided to remove intense debate and go back to the default blogger comments. Of course, ID holds your comment threads hostage so you will stay with it, but luckily I don't have too many. I have taken screenshots and edited them into the bottom of their posts so they won't be lost.

The Menagerie: TOS Season 1 Episode 11 & 12

Plot Synopsis

This is certainly an interesting episode, the original pilot "the cage" was only shown to the television executives. They wanted to repackage that episode and deliver it to the public, so they combined it with another story and made it a two-parter. According to the wikipedia page, with all of their special effects they were having trouble getting things done on time, so this not only kept them from wasting the footage of the original pilot, but it also gave them some breathing room.

We start the episode with the enterprise coming to a starbase, which is apparently an unscheduled visit. Kirk insists that they were called there and the guy in charge of the starbase insists that it didn't happen. Kirk says the only possibility is that Spock lies, which is impossible since he's Vulcan. Of course, he's half human, but that part of him is repressed so it still seems impossible. We soon find out that indeed Spock is behind all of this as he sneaks around and uses recordings of various voices to take control of the Enterprise.

The reasons for doing this are not immediately clear, but we do know that it has something to do with Captain Pike and the forbidden planet Talos 4. Breaking the quarantine is the only thing left that still holds the death penalty. Captain Pike was seriously injured in an accident, he was saving children from a fire, or building collapse, or...something, I forget. The point is, he helped a bunch of people but got really hurt in the process. He is confined to a wheelchair and can only communicate through beeps (one for yes, two for no) but his mind works perfectly.

Shortly after Spock has taken the Enterprise and is en route to Talos 4, Kirk figures out what is going on and follows in a shuttle, he won't be able to catch up, but once he runs out of fuel and is stuck Spock goes back to pick him up and submits for a court marshal. But he has the computer set to autopilot to go to Talos 4, and he somehow tied the engines in with life-support so it can't be canceled. We proceed with the trial in which Spock shows evidence which basically consists of showing The Cage interspersed with scenes of the trial. 

The rest of it was pretty much the same except for the ending. In the Cage, when they let the Enterprise crew go and the girl stayed, a copy of Pike was left there for her to love. In this episode, they seemed to just let the Enterprise crew go and she stayed there, apparently alone. Then they cut back to the ship and Pike was sent down the the planet to be with the Talosians who could give him the illusion of having a body, and effectively escape the confines of his broken body. Then they cut to the same scene with Pike and the girl. I like this ending much better, as the illusion of Pike staying behind always made me a bit uncomfortable.

Characters

Spock: This may or may not be the first time we've seen this, but they talked about how Vulcan's can't lie and therefore Spock shouldn't be able to, but he might be able to break this as he's half human. (Episodes 4 and 5 mentioned that he was half human, but I don't think it has mentioned that Vulcans can't lie yet)

Enterprise: Again, not exactly a character, but learning things about the ship sort of fits in the same category. We learn that the events of The Cage happened 13 years ago, but the opening credits say the ship is on a 5 year mission. I never really thought about it before, but I guess the ship had been around longer in the past, and it is just embarking on this particular 5 year mission recently. I had always assumed that the 5 year mission started when the Enterprise was first built, apparently not.

Rating

8/10

Intense Debate Comments

I've decided to remove intense debate and go back to the default blogger comments. Of course, ID holds your comment threads hostage so you will stay with it, but luckily I don't have too many. I have taken screenshots and edited them into the bottom of their posts so they won't be lost.

The Cage: TOS Season 1 Episode 0

At the beginning of The Cage (at least viewed via amazon instant view) there is a short interview with Gene Roddenberry. It was pretty interesting, he said that this original pilot was not accepted, but they let him shoot another pilot and obviously that one went forward. There were a few interesting items from that interview, apparently the network was unhappy that he didn't have the entire bridge crew as white men. In addition to them being multi-cultural, the first officer was a woman. We might think that women would appreciate this fact, but apparently the women in the test audience said "who does she think she is?" Hilarious! Also, apparently Spock's eyebrows and ears were intended to make him look like a devil. I love it.

Plot Synopsis:

The Enterprise received a distress signal from an unexplored solar system 18 light years away, and it turns out the USS Colombia disappeared from that general area about 18 years ago. Since there is an M-class planet in that solar system, it is possible that there are survivors, but Captain Pike decides to continue on to starbase to help his own crew until they get more evidence that there truly are survivors. In the meantime he asks the doctor in to his quarters, and the doctor gives him a martini because there are things a man will tell his bartender that he won't tell his doctor. I love it! Anyway, in this conversation, we learn that they have just come from a mission where several people died and many were injured. Pike blames himself and considers leaving the service.

They get a second distress call indicating that people did indeed survive the crash landing, and they head that way to help them out. When they get down to the planet, they see a tent city with a bunch of old scientists and one young lady, who was apparently born right around the time of the crash. One thing that caught my attention was a guy on the away team excitedly tells an old scientist that he can make it home soon because "the time barrier has been broken", what does that mean? Anyway, the woman takes Captain Pike off to the side a bit and some big brain aliens pop out from a hiding place in a rock wall, stun Pike, and drag him into the mountain before anyone can do anything about it.

Pike wakes up in a cage with one transparent wall, it appears that he is in some sort of alien zoo. We soon learn that the big brain aliens have some pretty amazing telepathic powers and are able to project illusions into people's minds. The tent city and survivors were only illusions and Pike is soon teleported in his mind to a place similar to the mission they were at earlier where some of his crew had died. He was with the woman from the camp earlier, who claims to be an illusion as well, but Pike isn't buying it. After some more illusion stuff, he winds up in the cage again with the woman. We learn that if you fill your mind with primitive aggressive thoughts, the aliens can't read it, this will come up later.

Meanwhile the Enterprise crew were trying to figure out what to do, they tried shooting at the mountain where Pike was taken underground, but with no success, they even carted down a huge laser which should have blown a hole right through it, but again nothing. We learn later that they had indeed blown a huge hole in the mountain, but the aliens manipulated their minds so it looked like they failed. After regrouping on the ship, they tried to beam another away team down, but the aliens manipulated the transporter operators to only beam the two women down into the cage with Pike. He was instructed to choose between either one of them or the girl who was already on the planet. During the discussion Pike managed to get ahold of one of the aliens. He used the phaser that one of the women had brought down to blow a hole in the cage wall. Even though it looked like nothing had happened, he figured out that the alien just made it seem that way, he threatened to blow the alien's head off if he didn't shut down the illusion, which he did. The jig was up at this point, and we learn that the woman was actually a survivor of the crash, but when the aliens has fixed her injuries she wound up a bit deformed, her beauty was all illusion. This whole thing was for her benefit, so they could get her human companionship. But no worry, they let the Enterprise crew go and gave her the illusion of Pike staying with her. This seemed like a good conclusion, but it seems somewhat...dirty.

Characters:

Pike: We learn that Pike is quite smart, as he figured out what was going on pretty quickly and was able to outsmart the aliens. He also cares a lot about the people under his command, as we found out from his talk with the doctor. He was also stressed from the job to the point that he was considering leaving star fleet.

Spock: Much more emotional that my impression of him. I'm assuming this is one of those things that got changed after the pilot.

The Enterprise: Not really a character exactly, but I did make a couple notes about the ship. It has 203 people on board and apparently it can "break the time barrier". I'm curious of those things will come back later. My impression is that the Enterprise has a lot more people than that, but I don't know where that would have come from, I guess in the DS9 episode "Trials and Tribble-Ations", the Enterprise seemed quite crowded.

Rating:

8/10

I quite enjoyed this episode. I'm not entirely sure how I want to calibrate my scoring system, but I want to save 9's and 10's for episodes that are truly exceptional. I have a feeling I will be giving out a lot of 8's. Please let me know how you would rate it in the comments.