The Mark of Gideon

[Gorn Captain]

I've had the TOS Blu-Rays for a while now. I've had the TOS regular DVD's for five years. Before that, plenty of the two episode per DVD editions. Before THAT, stacks of episodes on videotapes taped from syndicated broadcasts. And still, through all of that, somehow, I've never seen the Mark of Gideon until tonight.

And my thoughtful, substantive, deliberate verdict on this episode is...meh.

 

[Shatnertage]

Yes, it's not absolutely awful, but it does have certain...flaws.

I had a similar experience with an episode of TNG a few weeks ago ("Evolution") and incredibly enough, had the same verdict.

 

[TheKeeper]

"The Mark of Gideon" had plot holes larger than the Enterprise replica, but it did have some genuinely creepy moments. Enjoyable if I just feel the episode instead of thinking about it.

 

[Warped9]

My biggest beef with this story is the setup of Kirk being aboard a duplicate Enterprise. All Kirk had to do was go to his quarters or one of his officers and notice certain differences like personal effects missing and the game would be up. Unless Kirk were seriously drugged up (and there's no evidence he was) this plan just wouldn't work.

 

[Jeri]

A claustrophobic production, which reinforces the story theme. It's more an exercise in speculative fiction than science fiction, so I give the details a pass and enjoy what's there. The drama between father and daughter is touching; as in the technical plotline, Kirk is only a catalyst in the emotional plotline, as well. I watched it recently while checking the third-season blu ray set.

 

[Shatinator]

My biggest beef with this story is the setup of Kirk being aboard a duplicate Enterprise. All Kirk had to do was go to his quarters or one of his officers and notice certain differences like personal effects missing and the game would be up. Unless Kirk were seriously drugged up (and there's no evidence he was) this plan just wouldn't work.

I think I always likened it to the paranoid Invasion of body snatchers / Dawn of the Dead-type tales of the 50-60's. Instead of being replaced you're all alone and need to firgure out what happened to the rest of the town/ship/world. It is a very personal type of story, and to work must stay focused on that level. The ep, has some flaws, but really what other 1960s era show it talking about over popualtion and birth control; aside from All in the Family, beside I think that began in the 70's.

-The Shatinator

 

[jtkirk]

And my thoughtful, substantive, deliberate verdict on this episode is...meh.

I haven't seen this episode for quite a long time. I started to watch it the other day & fell asleep halfway through. It's just an ok episode, not bad, but not all that good either. So yeah, "meh" pretty much sums it up for me as well.

 

[scotpens]

Like “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield,” “The Mark of Gideon” is what happens when a writer starts by saying, “I want to do a story about (insert socio-political issue of the week here),” and little things like credibility and plot development are subordinate to The Message.

My biggest beef with this story is the setup of Kirk being aboard a duplicate Enterprise. All Kirk had to do was go to his quarters or one of his officers and notice certain differences like personal effects missing and the game would be up.

And how would the inhabitants of Gideon get hold of such detailed information to replicate not just a starship, but specifically the Enterprise, well enough to fool Captain Kirk? Kirk knows every room, every corridor, every piece of equipment, every square foot of every deck of his ship. Furthermore, if their planet is so overcrowded that everywhere you go there's nothing but wall-to-wall people, where in hell did they find the space to build the thing?

When it was revealed that Kirk hadn't been aboard the real Enterprise all along, I felt cheated. It was like the old standby of having everything turn out to be a dream. Cheap writing.

 

[Timo]

Furthermore, if their planet is so overcrowded that everywhere you go there's nothing but wall-to-wall people, where in hell did they find the space to build the thing?

Shouldn't be a dramatic problem: if it was that important to them, they'd find the space, even if it called for small-scale sacrifices.

Yet the scope of the plan seems a bit odd. If these folks were desperate to obtain a rare disease, and for some reason were forced to steal it from Starfleet, why confuse their Starfleet victim with an elaborate charade? Why not just sedate him, take the disease, infect the volunteer(s), and then 'fess up like they apparently always intended to do?

Kirk being mildly drugged is one way to explain his inability to tell fantasy from reality. A virtual reality setup with heavy drugging and false sensory input, instead of the construction of physical sets, would be the scientifictionally more satisfactory way to execute the plan, though. Kirk could really have been dreaming it all up - if not for the fact that Spock and other heroes later manage to beam down into this fantasyland as well. Or do they beam down onto a medbed and get injected with appropriate drugs, too? Now that would be creepy... And still consistent with what we saw, sort of.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[flandry84]

/\Yep,it's entirely plausible that a society so horrifically overcrowded would have to develop virtual reality technology,if only to protect the sanity of the populace.
This is IMO a very creepy episode,and the decision to cull their own population through an introduced pidemic is,when you think about it,pretty diabolical.
I've actually thought that the Gideonites deserved the epidemic to be even more devastating than their plan expected,turning the planet into a charnel house.

 

[Warped9]

Yet the scope of the plan seems a bit odd. If these folks were desperate to obtain a rare disease, and for some reason were forced to steal it from Starfleet, why confuse their Starfleet victim with an elaborate charade? Why not just sedate him, take the disease, infect the volunteer(s), and then 'fess up like they apparently always intended to do?

Kirk being mildly drugged is one way to explain his inability to tell fantasy from reality. A virtual reality setup with heavy drugging and false sensory input, instead of the construction of physical sets, would be the scientifictionally more satisfactory way to execute the plan, though. Kirk could really have been dreaming it all up - if not for the fact that Spock and other heroes later manage to beam down into this fantasyland as well. Or do they beam down onto a medbed and get injected with appropriate drugs, too? Now that would be creepy... And still consistent with what we saw, sort of.

Timo Saloniemi

Stargate has done this kind of scenario a number of times and quite effectively. But then in the '60s the idea of virtual reality might have been something very vague and iffy to some. Mind you GR did imagine a facility aboard ship were holographic theatre or 3D messages from home could be viewed. This idea is distinctly different than the Talosian mind control because the shipboard facility would have been technological. Strange someone couldn't have conceived of merging the two ideas to come up with a '60s notion of virtual reality: technology tapping directly into the mind via sensory input and drugs to create convincing "real life" scenarios.

 

[jwb]

"The Mark of Gideon" had plot holes larger than the Enterprise replica, but it did have some genuinely creepy moments. Enjoyable if I just feel the episode instead of thinking about it.

I totally agree. The feel of the episode is fantastic. The plot holes, however, are huge.

 

[ToddPence]

I still can't figure out why Spock never thought to try calling Kirk on his communicator when he turned up missing.

 

[scotpens]

. . . Yet the scope of the plan seems a bit odd. If these folks were desperate to obtain a rare disease, and for some reason were forced to steal it from Starfleet, why confuse their Starfleet victim with an elaborate charade?

Well, it worked week after week for Mission: Impossible.

Strange someone couldn't have conceived of merging the two ideas to come up with a '60s notion of virtual reality: technology tapping directly into the mind via sensory input and drugs to create convincing “real life” scenarios.

Seems pretty obvious when you think about it. But then, nobody really predicted the Internet either. The idea of millions upon millions of compact desktop computers in every office, home, and mom-and-pop store, all linked via a global network, would have been unthinkable in the mid-1960s.

 

[maneth]

The plotholes are too big for me. They should've come up with a way to make some sort of contraceptives acceptable to the populace, thus forgoing the necessity of a plague...

 

[GeorgeKirk]

Hell, why couldn't they just colonize other planets, or build orbital habitats? The Gideons, as written, are a bunch of idiots, a Planet of the Gumps. The fact that they dress like giant sperm doesn't exactly help, either.

 

[Timo]

If they could leave their planet, they could also catch these deadly diseases without needing to kidnap Starfleet officers. So this isn't a separate plot hole, but merely part of another one. Or a plot point, if one prefers...

For apparent religious reasons, these people can't practice efficient contraception: they consider life too sacred. The religion also bans most ways of killing fellow Gideonites, although it seems they have found a loophole in this disease thing. It wouldn't be surprising if the religion was also the reason they couldn't leave their home planet.

OTOH, even if they did choose to leave, that probably wouldn't help. Emigration has never solved population problems here on Earth, and it would be logistically extremely challenging to perform meaningful emigration to outer space even with ST technology. Population growth would no doubt quickly negate any advantages the emigration would yield.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[THX1138]

The faces out the window always creeped me out --only effective moments in the episode, in my view.