Day of the Dove entity

[Greg Cox]

I've watched the episode about 15 times in just the last 30 days, and don't remember the swords turning back into phasers.

That's the thing: by the time the entity leaves, the camera has zoomed so close to our main hero and main villain that their hands and the weaponry they hold can no longer be seen. When we last glimpse a Klingon holding a sword, at the start of the zoom-in, the entity is still there.

But if they wanted to establish that it was just an illusion, they probably would have inserted a shot of the swords turning back into phasers as the entity weakened, like the way the Salt Vampire reverted to its natural form when it died, or the way "The Cage" revealed Vina's true appearance or had the Talosian's "ape-monster" illusion dissolve back into the Keeper's actual appearance. Ditto for the tiny wriggling aliens in "Catspaw" after the spell was broken . . .

They are ways to make it clear that something is "just an illusion."

 

[johnnybear]

I love this one! One of the best of season three! It is also hinted that the entity or another one like it might have been responsible for a lot of earth's bloody history too! Kirk ends it by saying that now we know you we'll keep our eyes open for you! It kept their forces balanced and hoped to feed on the starship personnel probably for eternity! The 390 trapped behind the bulkheads would die because the entity didn't need them for the game!
JB

 

[Timo]

It always feels a bit embarrassing when fantasy fiction tries to claim that humans need alien assistance in order to be evil...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Kobayshi Maru]

It always feels a bit embarrassing when fantasy fiction tries to claim that humans need alien assistance in order to be evil...

Timo Saloniemi

Not that they need per se. More like it helps them becoming evil.

 

[BoredShipCapt'n]

Kang: "We have no devil, Kirk."
(looks up at entity)
"Well, then again..."

 

[johnnybear]

I think it's been said that humans are easily malliable by super light formed entities with a taste for hate and death!
JB

 

[cgervasi]

Plus we don't know what was happening with those about 400 crew trapped. It seems like the writer completely forgot them but I could imagine quite a bit of hostility being generated by 400 trapped people. Especially with the entity's the ability to generate false memories and stimulate suppressed emotions in sophonts.

The 400 people trapped on the lower decks always required enormous suspension of disbelief for me.

It meant that only 10% of the crew were shown, implying they only had access to roughly 10% of the ship. Is that enough to fight a war? Both sides needed separate spaces to strategize, fight, sleep, eat, bathe, use the bathroom, etc.

 

[Timo]

The entity was able to manipulate the heroes with illusions and to insert false memories and atypical thought patterns into their minds. There's no telling, then, how their antics would relate to the physical reality of the ship.

For all we know, those 390 or so crew members were "trapped" in the sense of thinking it was their off shift, so they milled around in their cabins, paying no attention to the emergency around them. The heroes were just made to hear "pleas of help" that were not really there, and tried to pry open doors that never were locked, with phaser cutters they never turned on even though they thought they did.

If there really was some physical locking going on, the entity could easily have locked the 90% of the crew into 10% of the ship and donated the rest to the heroes and villains to roam, though. It had the power to suggest courses of action to its victims, and those 90% might have been told to cram themselves into "survival spaces" of some sort.

After all, realistically, there should have been at least the normal contingent of people at Engineering, plus extra emergency personnel to deal with the entity's hijacking of the engines, but the Klingons faced basically nobody when taking over the facility. Somebody had told the crew to vacate the space...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Mytran]

Continually controlling 392 crewmen to make them believe they were trapped as well as tweaking the emotions of the 76 combatants would have been an additional drain on the entity. Far more efficient to actually trap them somewhere and then transmute the cutting tools to ensure they wouldn't work (while appearing to). The most obvious place to strand the extraneous crew is in the secondary hull - all it would take is a fake evacuation drill and everyone would file down there themselves, problem solved!

I know that the Engine Room features strongly in the episode, but there are enough references to Deck 6 and Deck 7 to make me think that we are looking at one of the engineering sections in the saucer this week, rather than the main facilities in the "lower levels" (several episodes suggest Engine Rooms all over the ship).

I won't disagree however that DOTD really does try to have its cake and eat it too. It wants an empty ship (again!!!) to have as a battleground, but has to account for the leftover crew. It's also a bottle show so all the standing sets need to get used, even though previous episodes show such facilities spread throughout the ship. The empty ship trope had been used several times in TOS by now and it's really starting to come across that the writers feel the majority of the crew are nothing but an annoyance to be disposed of and forgotten about as quickly as possible.

 

[GNDN18]

The empty ship trope had been used several times in TOS by now and it's really starting to come across that the writers feel the majority of the crew are nothing but an annoyance to be disposed of and forgotten about as quickly as possible.

I dimly recall David Gerrold making a similar complaint in TWoST, suggesting that a crew of seven or so would have tightened up the drama. It seems that a large ship crewed by mission specialists that could be featured every week fit with GR's original pitch.

Having 423 Ensign Grants, though, made for shocking, if easy, deaths to move the stories along.

 

[Grant]

The empty ship trope had been used several times in TOS by now and it's really starting to come across that the writers feel the majority of the crew are nothing but an annoyance to be disposed of and forgotten about as quickly as possible.

I dimly recall David Gerrold making a similar complaint in TWoST, suggesting that a crew of seven or so would have tightened up the drama. It seems that a large ship crewed by mission specialists that could be featured every week fit with GR's original pitch.

Having 423 Ensign Grants, though, made for shocking, if easy, deaths to move the stories along.

"You son of a bitch."

 

[GNDN18]

"I see your point."

Unconscious integration, Grant; no offense intended.

 

[Grant]

"I see your point."

Unconscious integration, Grant; no offense intended.

None taken. LOL

 

[Marsden]

It was funny, though!