I've considered that Flint IS a Highlander Immortal. He fled Earth to escape the Gathering.
Star Trek TOS Re-Watch
- Thread starter Commander Troi
- Start date
I have long assumed Flint manipulated/influenced Kirk in some unseen way to make him behave so uncharacteristically stupid.
I just assumed that Kirk was coming down with the plague that was burning through the Enterprise and thus wasn't thinking straight
That could work. And it would have taken was one line of dialogue to establish that.I just assumed that Kirk was coming down with the plague that was burning through the Enterprise and thus wasn't thinking straight
That would be worse, IMHO. Because now not only is he futzing around while his crew is dying but now he doesn't even care that HE'S dying. And more to the point Spock and McCoy wouldn't seem very interested either!
True enough. But at least it’s a bare bones rationalization. The real problem with some of these third season episodes is the lack of a decent final rewrite or edit to fix obvious flaws.
No episode is perfect and any of them can be criticized, but there are some that have glaring logic flaws that really should have been addressed. There is no episode of TOS I actually hate, but there are a few that really needed a proper final edit or rewrite being being filmed.
Here is one and it’s an episode I really like, “Where No Man Has Gone Before.” When Dehner temporarily weakens Mitchell it has already been established Kirk has to kill Mitchell to stop him. But instead of using the phaser rifle he brought along for that very reason Kirk opts to fist-fight with Mitchell. Was he thinking he could beat Mitchell into submission? At one point he is about to pummel Mitchell’s head with a a boulder until Mitchell stops him.
It was dumb on Kirk’s part. It would have been far smarter, and cleaner, for Kirk to kill Mitchell with the phaser rifle when he had the chance. But just maybe Kirk hadn’t yet reached that desperation point yet to really do what had to be done? That works as a rationalization in an otherwise very good episode on so many levels. But, of course, a western style fist fight is more familiarly dramatic than vaporizing someone with a raygun.
The essential story of “Requiem For Methuselah” is sound enough. But it also hinges on your show’s hero behaving uncharacteristically irrational without any justification for it. Spock did not Kirk’s irrational obsession with Rayna, but he doesn’t pursue it. He doesn’t discuss it with McCoy or even point it out to Kirk he is behaving irrationally. Neither does McCoy. So as it’s written the story not only makes Kirk look bad, but it makes Spock and McCoy look bad as well. This is underlined by the fact both Spock and McCoy question Kirk’s behaviour in “Obsession” at a time Kirk was actually not being irrational.
It happens again in “Turnabout Intruder.” This time Kirk is behaving irrationally and obviously out of character (due to Janice Lester’s consciousness swap) in such a way that both Spock and McCoy should have noted it immediately, but don’t until Kirk (stuck in Lester’s body) brings the issue to the fore. So everyone looks bad in this one given they already had experience with consciousness or life-force swapping from the events of “Return To Tomorrow.”
Sorry, I didn't state my position clearly; I think the entire landing party has the plague! But they are the Enterprise's last hope, so options are limited
I remember Kirk being quite stupid in this one too. But upon rewatching it, I don't think it was that bad. Kirk flirts with Rayna during the waiting time for the cure to be refined and developed. There's no much else he could do until then, but the rest of the time he seems focused on the illness. It's worse at the end, when McCoy already has the cure and yet he doesn't beam up immediately.
This is a little bit like saying John Robinson and Don West should "Just kill Smith." At least, I've seen somebody say that. And they can't, if you put yourself in their place.
If Kirk reports back to Headquarters that he shot Mitchell dead the moment Mitchell was rendered helpless, there would be some questions. There just aren't any precedents for this situation, where a bad guy is unarmed and powerless, but you absolutely must kill him anyway.
It's asking Kirk not only to have moral certainty in the midst of a crisis, which he kind of does, having now adopted Spock's opinion, but also to take a human life cold, with no running start. So when Mitchell is momentary powerless and Kirk starts beating him up, you can ask "What's the plan?"— but there is no plan, because Kirk is caught between knowing Mitchell has to die and not being an ice-cold trigger man on his best friend.
This is not my recollection.
Yeah, McCoy at least was highly suspicious and requested a full medical exam on Kirk. When the brain-waves turned out to be identical to those of "real Kirk", McCoy had to accept (begrudgingly) that he was the same man.
Spock wasn't convinced until he read Kirk's mind (inside Lester). But still, he must have been a bit suspicious to go ahead with the mind-meld.
And I call bullshit on this, story wise. McCoy has shown enough times not trusting technology that he had to know something was still wrong. There is absolutely no way Lester/Kirk could have passed this examination.
Not the hardest thing to fix either. Gary could be so far gone at this point that even though his eyes aren't silver, "normal" Gary isn't really there. So instead of Kirk going directly to the punches, he turns to run toward the rifle, but Gary grabs him. Now it's a fight as Gary tries to preserve his own life until his strength returns. Since Gary is actually fighting back pretty hard and not saying "Jim wait, it's me!" or "Do it!" this could actually work.
Production wise, obviously they wanted "two guys fighting in a ditch" at the end. But even as a kid I wondered what Kirk's endgame was. Dehner clearly says there isn't much time so Kirk goes for the slowest and least efficient means of killing: a brawl. He doesn't take advantage of Gary's weakened state to even grab a rock.
But, then again, Gary is Kirk's best friend. He doesn't want to do it, he has to. In the moment, Kirk is procrastinating, as it's assumed that this is actually Gary he's hitting, not GodMitchell. He can't do it. At the same time, "normal" Gary would make Kirk's resolve weaken further if he gave him time to talk, instead of having to defend himself. So he's raining blows on him to keep Gary quiet, but knows he has to do it and grabs the big rock when he has the advantage. But even then, Kirk stalls before delivering the final blow.
Then GodMitchell comes back and he isn't thinking straight because he could have snuffed Kirk's life out any which way instead of continuing with the physical assault. But Kirk made him mad and anger brings carelessness. Kirk was counting on this, so he maneuvers GodMitchell close to the grave, they both fall in and Kirk makes his desperate scramble now that he's bought himself a few more seconds. He knows the phaser beams won't hurt him and now GodMitchell is in the perfect position.
Well done, Jim!
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