crazy power-hungry captains Archive

81

Star Trek Re-Watch: “Turnabout Intruder”

Turnabout Intruder
Teleplay by Arthur Singer
Story by Gene Roddenberry
Directed by Herb Wallerstein

Season 3, Episode 24
Production episode: 3×24
Original air date:  June 3, 1969
Star date: 5928.5

 

Mission summary

The Enterprise has arrived at Camus II where a team of researchers exploring a long-lost civilization have sent out a distress signal. When they beam down they find that only two scientists have survived the mysterious circumstances: Dr. Coleman, the surgeon, and Dr. Janice Lester, the expedition’s leader and an old flame of Kirk’s. Dr. Lester is bedridden from radiation poisoning and seems on the brink of death. Kirk goes to her, but she can barely speak. (He’s just that impressive.) He stays with her as Spock, McCoy, and Dr. Coleman detect weak lifesigns elsewhere on the station and exit in pursuit.

While Kirk and Dr. Lester arbor some residual tenderness towards one another, they have some resentment issues like you wouldn’t believe:

JANICE: I hoped I wouldn’t see you again.
KIRK: I don’t blame you.
JANICE: The year we were together at Starfleet is the only time in my life I was alive.
KIRK: I never stopped you from going on with your space work.
JANICE: Your world of starship captains doesn’t admit women. It isn’t fair.
KIRK: No, it isn’t. And you punished and tortured me because of it.
JANICE: I loved you. We could’ve roamed among the stars.
KIRK: We’d have killed each other.
JANICE: It might have been better.

Kirk, in his wisdom, doesn’t respond to that particular remark. Instead he explores the room he’s in a little bit. Short attention span, that captain. Against the back wall of the sick room is a lighted structure, with some kind of alien markings all over it. With his back turned to Janice, Kirk inspects the strange wall. Seems… wall-y. Yep. Well, that was productive. Meanwhile, Janice pulls out a remote control and points it at Kirk. With a buzz from the remote he is pulled against the wall and immobilized. It’s a trap!1 Dr. Lester, smiling, gets out of bed easily–so much for radiation sickness–and walks toward him. On the side of the structure are two switches, and she flips one and then stands beside Kirk against the wall. Thanks to the wonders of crappy special effects, we see a shadow of Kirk lift out of his body and overlay onto hers, while a shadow of Lester lifts out of her body and onto the captain’s. They’ve switched bodies!

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28

Star Trek Re-Watch: “Whom Gods Destroy”

Whom Gods Destroy
Teleplay by Lee Erwin
Story by Lee Erwin and Jerry Sohl
Directed by Herb Wallerstein

Season 3, Episode 14
Production episode: 3×16
Original air date:  January 3, 1969
Star date: 5718.3

Mission summary

Kirk and Spock beam down to Elba II, a planet that houses an asylum for the “few remaining incorrigible criminally insane of the galaxy.” The asylum is in a sealed complex because Elba’s atmosphere is poisonous: presumably a feature and a not a bug. Kirk and Spock are bringing Dr. Donald Cory, the governor of the so-called colony, a medicinal cure for the crazy people left there. (I’d guess Dr. Cory was on someone’s shit list since all he governs is a group of 15 psychopaths, but maybe the alternative was Triacus?)

The newest arrival to the funny farm is Garth of Izar, a former fleet captain for the Federation and a hero of Kirk’s. Kirk would like to meet him, so Dr. Cory leads his visitors through the Rogue’s Gallery: an Andorian rockin’ a bright red pimp coat, a pig-faced Tellarite, and a green Orion slavegirl named Marta who seems perfectly rational until she tries to explain that Dr. Cory isn’t Dr. Cory at all. Silly girl. But when they reach the last cell, they find a battered and beaten Dr. Cory inside, suspended in mid-air! A broing and camera shake later, the Dr. Cory they thought they knew appears in his true form: Garth of Izar, or as he prefers to be addressed, “Lord Garth, Master of the Universe.” He locks Kirk in the cell with Dr. Cory, releases the other inmates, and has his droogs drag Spock away.

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