LIGHTS OF ZETAR
Only last week I was pining for noncorpeal aliens and here they are, complete with super powers! Spock says that the Zetarans attack the “voluntary nerve functions but there’s also psychic possession and alleged precognition (more likely remote viewing), all in all a good selection of abilities for our evil intruders.
The love story aspect seems a little forced but I guess it was Scotty’s turn to have a romance-of-the-week. Who’s next, Chekov?
There are some nice discussions which expand Scotty’s back story – he got his “space legs” at an early age and has never looked back it seems. However, being in love makes him lose his usual professional edge and he is absurdly naive at times: He misses Mira’s possessed mumbling on the Bridge, dismisses her symptoms, offers platitudes to explain her visions and takes any opportunity to molly coddle her. He’s rather patronising to Lt Romaine throughout, both in his treatment and use of language – in fact he often speaks to her like a child!
Finally, Scotty is quick to dismiss Mira’s psychic powers of seeing into the future, but he’s seen his share of weirdness over the years – he was even around for the events of WNMHGB!
However, this is really Lt Romaine’s story – the bizarre experiences of her first trip into deep space. The Enterprise crew are professional but really just going through the motions, as they’ve dealt with malevolent energy beings many times before. The notion of a species who want to survive even at the cost of other lifeforms is interesting but really just a reshuffle of the plot from
Return To Tomorrow, this time without the pretence of benevolence. It's all elements that we (the audience) have seen before and for that reason isn't super engaging.
For the character of Mira though this is a crazy adventure and a baptism of fire! She also gets the honour of being disbelieved and then interrogated by the senior staff, like so many others before her.
The tale wraps up when she is dispatched to Memory Alpha – but the memory banks are erased and all the staff are dead! What is she expected to do there, rewrite the galaxy’s history from scratch?
MEMORY ALPHA
Is this installation the sole repository of the knowledge it contains? Maybe it should have better security then! Spock spells out the consequences for this ridiculous shortsightedness:
A disaster for the galaxy, Captain. The central brain is damaged. The memory core is burned out. The loss to the galaxy may be irretrievable.
Kirk seems equally puzzled by this bizarre choice which is understandable given how many space storms plague the galaxy, not to mention pesky enemies that might enjoy depriving the Federation of its historical and scientific records.
Even libraries have locks on the doors!
NEW SETS
- Anti gravity chamber: For nearly 2 years we’ve had the door to McCoy’s decompression chamber (from Space Seed) sat in the corner of the medical lab, but this is the first time it is used. The lab itself also turns out to be a lot deeper and wider than had previously been revealed.
- This is the final appearance in the series of the Emergency Manual Monitor so I thought it was worth a mention. We spend a fair bit of time there too, including the rarely seen left hand wall
OTHER THOUGHTS:
- Technically this episode is not a bottle show, but I’m pretty sure that the Memory Alpha set was recycled from Garth’s lunatic asylum (right down to the distinctive Tantalus control panel)
- I wonder how old Mira is supposed to be, given that this is her FIRST deep space mission? (the actress was 36 FWIW). Was Starfleet not her first career choice?
- The WNMHGB music is featured extensively throughout this episode, especially on the Zetarans’ attack runs. In fact; is there any music that wasn’t from that earlier episode?
It could be argued that the score fits thematically though, since both tales deal with forms of psychic possession.
- Kirk states that no natural phenomenon can go FTL. Was the alien gas cloud in Obsession not natural then? Perhaps the invention of a mad scientist somewhere?
- Scotty attributes Mira’s symptoms to “space sickness” which is apparently auditory and visual hallucinations which most people experience during their first deep space mission. REALLY???
- When Kirk is on the landing party, Mr Sulu gets to sit in the command chair again
- The universal translator gets a mention! It did work well in communicating with the energy being in Metamorphosis after all; but does that mean it’s not usually tied into communication channels? Why not?
- Kirk’s attempt at humour at the end of the episode is met with obvious derision by McCoy and Spock – they clearly agree that this was forced and unnecessary.
I never quite understood how the episode ended! Did the Gideonites go ahead with their plan to kill the population? And if so how long would it be before the Gideonites developed their own resistance to the disease?
JB
Agreed, it was completely unclear and seemed to need another draft, much like this week's episode. For example, are the Zetarians utterly destroyed or just driven off? If not dead, what’s to stop them coming back for another go, if Lt Romaine is such a compatible match?
I guess they were really rushing the scripts out by this point in the series!
e
