Crazily shaped assignment patches

[CorporalCaptain]

Accidental or not, that this seemingly trivial detail of Dagger of the Mind can be read as symbolizing the neutral neutralizer is both stunning and surprising to me.

As I see it, there are two main ways to read this, assuming it is deliberate. The first is that the neutralizer is a hidden meaning in the more familiar and expected sun-symbol. The second is much subtler, as a sort of summary of the fact that Dr. Adams perverted his own profession.

However it was arrived at, this really gives extra depth to the episode. Bravo!

It's clear now that the emblem was meant to be the sun, and the helping hand of space psychiatry is freeing the bird of mental health.

I assume you mean to say "...of mental illness."

 

[ZapBrannigan]

I assume you mean to say "...of mental illness."

"And this bird can never change..."

 

[Therin of Andor]

The 'Kirk's middle initial' thing in Where No Man... has never bothered me. Oftentimes, a person will say of someone "Procrastination is his middle name" or something like that. I assumed it went back to the Academy, where Mitchell may have said something similar of the 'stack of books with legs' Kirk. Also, I used to jokingly "loan" my middle initial to a friend who had no middle name.

Michael Jan Friedman has the middle initial game as a running gag between Kirk and Mitchell throughout the novel trilogy, "My Brother's Keeper". Funny stuff!