“Lion’s Den” - While on an away mission looking for missing Starfleet captains and their survey teams, Kirk, Spock and a member of their security team fall through a sinkhole and end up in a cavern, where they find the missing captains – a Vulcan, an Andorian, and a Tellarite, along with an Orion captain and his slave girl. They are fending off an aggressive creature that has already dragged away human members of their crews, and Kirk and Spock witness it occur again to their security officer. While the other captains are confident that the creature is a prehistoric ancestor of a feline from Vulcan called the le-matya, Spock recognizes its roars and growls as a language of a mysterious alien race the Vulcans have only encountered a handful of times, all of them hostile and without visual contact despite Vulcan attempts to do so. Kirk has also heard of this mysterious alien that date back to over a century prior, considered a Federation of felines, and rumors of it being carnivorous, preferring humanoid life. Spock urges the other captains to be calm; with the assistance of Uhura who is on the surface with another landing party, Spock has a basic understanding of the alien’s language that it is suggesting that it is wounded and requests assistance. While Spock believes its possible engage in a proper dialogue with the alien, face to face, and emerge from the contact unscathed, Kirk and the other captains aren’t so sure Spock will be successful and prepare for combat. Meanwhile, the Orion slave girl suspects something else with the mysterious alien and set out to confront it on her own.
(Two things: a) Its basically the Kzinti, without saying specifically it’s the Kzinti. And b) the story is basically a retelling of Beauty and the Beast, but without focusing on Beauty or the Beast.).
Next episode – “Ode to Joy”
