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James T Kirk - William Shatner Spock - Leonard Nimoy Dr 'Bones' McCoy - DeForest Kelley Scotty - James Doohan Uhura - Nichele Nicholls Sulu - George Takei Chekov - Walter Koenig 
OTHER SEASONS Season 1 Season 3 OTHER STAR TREK SHOWS The Next Generation Deep Space Nine Enterprise OTHER TREKS THROUGH SPACE Babylon 5 The new Battlestar Galactica 
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Amok TimeMr Spock starts to exhibit highly unusual behaviour. It's all down to a vulcan mating ritual called Pon Farr in which all the emotion that is usually repressed comes out in violence and rage. Spock must fight and kill for his mate and she chooses that he fight and kill....Captain Kirk. A strong episode for the show to return on with the emphasis on Spock's character and the revelations about his character. It is hard to believe that the Federation could survive if all the races were hiding as much about their culture and past as the Vulcans seem to be doing here, but that doesn't really matter. It's a rip-roaring ride and we've got enough invested in these characters after the first season for it to work well. Written by Theodore SturgeonDirected by Joseph Pevney Top Who Mourns for Adonis?The crew of the Enterprise come under the influence of a powerful being who claims to be a God of ancient Greece and who demands their obedience. Kirk has other ideas. Didn't we do all of this is season 1's Squire of Gothos? To be fair, this is destined to become a favourite story of the Trek canon, reaching its apotheosis in the character of Q who crops up in later incarnations of the show. It rattles along nicely enough, but it is a massive step down from the previous Amok Time. Written by Gene L Coon and Gilbert RalstonDirected by Marc Daniels Top The ChangelingShortly after encountering a dead system where there should have been millions of inhabitants, the Enterprise takes on board a small object that turns out to be an earth probe launched centuries ago. Somehow it has become a machine of incredible power with a desire to wipe out organic infestations. The crew's only weapon is that the machine believes Kirk to be its creator. This is the episode that grew up to be the central theme behind STAR TREK - THE MOTION PICTURE. It works here well enough through the threat established in the early stages and some curiously effective point of view shots, but the machine's willingness to sit around and do nothing for long periods of time just because Kirk says so does undermine the plot somewhat. Spock mind melds with the machine in an effective moment, but the fact that a mind-wiped Uhura can be returned to full memory and potential within a matter of a month or so is just downright unbelievable. Written by John Meredyth LucasDirected by Marc Daniels Top Mirror, MirrorKirk, Scotty, Uhura and Doctor McCoy are slipped into an alternative universe through a transporter malfunction. This new universe is a savage place where the ship is run on military grounds and advancement comes through the killing of one's superior. As Kirk's first officer, the alternative Mr Spock is well capable of killing his captain. It is up to Kirk and his team to find a way back to their own universe before natural selection takes its course. Unaccountably missed out of the reshowing of the series on BBC2, this is one of the best episodes and certainly one that the fans love. We have invested so much in the characters by this point that seeing their counterparts at work is very effective and the storyline is fiercely original (to the point where it is used mercilessly by science fictions shows from here on in). The dark side of the characters and their universe is, in fact, so much fun that you are almost sorry when they get back home as it might have been fun to stay awhile longer. Written by Jerome BixbyDirected by Marc Daniels Top The AppleA team beam down to what appears to be a paradise planet only to discover that the plants can kill and the rocks are like landmines. The Enterprise comes under attack and it is up to the ground team to tackle the local inhabitants and their god to save their friends. We've been here before in season 1's This Side of Paradise. Then the plants instilled euphoria that led to stagnation. This time around there is an underground god that provides for every need and thus creates stagnation. It's a set up straight out of the Eloi situation in HG Wells's THE TIME MACHINE and the plot runs its course with efficiency, but without anything resembling a surprise. Written by Max Erlich and Gene L CoonDirected by Joseph Pevney Top The Doomsday MachineWhole planetary systems have been totally demolished. A federation starship is discovered adrift, only the commanding officer left alive. The cause of the devastation is the ultimate doomsday device, a planet killer that is headed for the most densely populated sector of the galaxy. The Enterprise has been damaged during an ill-conceived attack, but it remains the only hope for billions of lives. Or is it? The Doomsday Machine is a lesson in sustained tension. The face-off between the federation ships and the planet killer is consistently exciting, even edge of the seat stuff whilst the battle of wills between Mr Spock and the commanding officer of the defeated ship means that there is even more tension on the bridge during the quieter moments. The doomsday device is implacable, invincible and utterly alien. It's just a pity that you can see the stars through it. The special effects revamp will take care of that, but it doesn't spoil what is an exceptional action-oriented episode for a second. Written by Norman SpinradDirected by Marc Daniels Top CatspawThere is life on a planet that shouldn't have it. When the beam down team goes missing and only one man shows up dead, Kirk, Spock and McCoy beam down to discover an ancient castle that appears to be the home of a wizard and his cat, who is also capable of transforming into a beautiful woman. This woman, however, wants power even though she already has the power to burn up the Enterprise in orbit by just thinking about it. Following on from the really exciting The Doomsday Machine, Catspaw is something of a disappointment. Firstly, there are themes here that have already been used before such as the theatricality and almost omnipotence of the aliens that are a direct lift from season 1's Squire of Gothos, which was itself already reference this season in Who Mourns for Adonis?. Unfortunately, there is not enough going on to disguise this fact or make it more palateable. Only the idea that an alien might become attracted by and eventually addicted to human sensations when taking on human form, shows any real originality or interest. The moment when the woman dangles a model of the Enterprise over a candle to demonstrate her power is effective, but the cat wandering down a model corridor is equally ineffective. Written by Robert Bloch and DC FontanaDirected by Joseph Pevney Top I, MuddAn android takes over the Enterprise and forces it into orbit around an unexplored planet. Here, they find an old adversary, Harry Mudd, now the sole ruler of a race of androids, all of them programmed to serve him. His plan is for them to serve the crew of the Enterprise whilst he takes the ship and leaves. The challenge for the crew is to find some way to overcome an army of over 200,000 androids all of which are faster, stronger and smarter than they are. Whilst there is humour in STAR TREK there are no truly comedy episodes. At first it appears that this is going to break that rule with the reappearance of Harcourt Fenton Mudd (originally seen in Season 1's Mudd's Women), but when the old rogue is superseded as the enemy by the androids that he thought he controlled and they determine that the best way to save humanity is to protect it from itself then matters become much more serious. The manner in which the crew overcome the logic of the androids is suspect, but entertaining enough. Written by Steven Kandel and David GerroldDirected by Marc Daniels Top MetamorphosisA shuttle carrying Captain Kirk, Spock, Dr McCoy and a female emissary suddenly taken ill whilst trying to prevent a war, is hijacked by an energy being and taken to a remote planetoid, the last person they were expecting to find there is Zefram Cochrane, the inventory of warp drive and a man who should have died 150 years ago. The energy being is keeping him alive and keeping him prisoner and has brought the others to stop him getting lonely. As they try to find a way off planet before the emissary dies, they find that the situation is a little more complicated than they thought. Metamorphosis is something of a rarity in STAR TREK, a love story. In this case the love story between a man and an amorphous blob of energy. Unfortunately, it is undermined by the instability of the emotions on display. Zefram Cochrane at first seems comfortable with the 'companion' who saved his life, but then is appalled when he learns of its love only to be in love with it in human form ten minutes later. To call in unbelievable is to understate the case considerably. There is virtually no action and the episode consists of dialogue upon the nature of love, life and the continuation of existence. All of this makes Metamorphosis a very mediocre entry into the series. Written by Gene L CoonDirected by Ralph Senensky Top Journey to BabelThe Enterprise is carrying the delegations of many worlds to a conference on the neutral planetoid of Babel when the Vulcan delegate, Spock's father Sarek, is taken ill and needs an operation with experimental transfusions from his son. With the Captain stabbed in the back, delegates killed and an alien vessel on their trail, Spock sees his duty elsewhere. The thing about Vulcans is that they're totally logical, right? This insistence on total logic only throws their errant emotionalism into relief. Spock and Sarek haven't spoken for years since Spock chose a career in Star Fleet. Assuming Spock's decision to be logical, why did Sarek disapprove? Assuming it to be an emotional decision based on Spock's human half why didn't Sarek's logic understand this? This aside, the episode is entertaining with enough mystery and emotional involvement with Spock's plight to be great fun. The humorous coda (which are usually cringeworthy) this time around is worth a laugh. Written by DC FontanaDirected by Joseph Pevney Top Friday's ChildA warlike race are sitting on the top of mineral deposits the Federation would like to mine. The Klingons get there before the Enterprise landing party and a game of cat and mouse begins, centred on the approaching birth of a previous leader. STAR TREK can sometimes be a bit pompous or even occasionally ridiculous, but it is rarely dull. This episode, though, proves to be an exception to that rule. The dictates of the alien society are nonsense and the distraction carried out by the Klingons to lure the Enterprise from orbit is so obviously a diversion that Mr Scott ought to have his bridge command rights revoked for being fooled. This is possibly the least impressive episode to date. Written by DC FontanaDirected by Joseph Pevney Top The Deadly YearsAn away team beams down to an experimental colony to find the survivors dying of old age despite being in their thirties. Then the members of the team start to age and Captain Kirk's failing abilities are called into question. The usefulness of our the older members of our ageing society is examined a little bit in an episode that is intelligent, beautifully scripted and nicely played by the main actors. The makeup for the ageing crew members is excellently done, but it is the acting touches that make it convincing. The deterioration of the captain's faculties and the competency hearing that eventually takes his command away is painful to watch in its accuracy. Only the annoying and distracting love interest story detracts from what is an impressive bounce back to form. Written by David P HarmonDirected by Joseph Pevney Top ObsessionOn a mission to a remote planet, the Enterprise team encounter a gaseous entity that Captain Kirk first encountered years earlier when merely a junior officer. As members of his current crew start to die the same way that those of his previous ship did, he becomes obsessed with killing the creature to the exclusion of all other considerations, leading to his staff officers to question his fitness to command. Hang on a minute, didn't we do the whole questioning the captain's abilities bit at length in The Deadly Years, that being the very last episode? Talk about your deja vu. That aside, this is a solid, if unspectacular, episode that passes the time quite nicely, but won't be remembered far after the end credits. Written by Art WallaceDirected by Ralph Senensky Top Wolf in the FoldOn a peace-loving planet, Scotty takes some enforced shore leave following an accident. When a woman turns up dead, he is suspected. When a female officer sent to examine him goes the same way his fate is almost sealed, but when the empathic wife of the chief arbiter of his fate names historical serial killers in her trance before dying, it seems that there is a much more malevolent force at work. Wolf In The Fold is an effective piece of tense storytelling. What starts out as a mystery tale and police story ends up with an exercise in terror that is very well rendered. The manic ramblings of the insane creature throughout the ship as it attempts to create a climate of terror are pretty creepy indeed and the images on the viewscreen that accompany it also effectively display a disturbed, and disturbing entity. The brutality of the murders (off screen of course) add a hard edge to the story that is not always there otherwise. Written by Robert BlochDirected by Joseph Pevney Top The Trouble With TribblesSherman's planet is disputed between the Federation and the Klingon Empire. The force that can most effectively develop it will take ownership, so when the Federation official in charge of the operation declares an emergency it is very serious business indeed. On a lighter note, an unscrupulous trader known as Cyrano Jones is on the space station in orbit of the planet, selling cute balls of fur called Tribbles. Comedy episodes of STAR TREK are not all that common, but they are welcome indeed and THE TROUBLE WITH TRIBBLES is one of the most affectionately remembered of all STAR TREK episodes. The plot is written for laughs all the way through, but the cast play it commendably straight, which makes the comedy all the more effective. Cyrano Jones is a poor man's Harry Mudd for sure, but the stars here are the Tribbles, which are never convincing, but that really hardly matters. Written by David GerroldDirected by Joseph Pevney Top The Gamesters of TriskelionKirk, Uhura and Chekov are kidnapped from the transporter pad to the planet Triskelion where they are to be gladiators fighting for the approval of unseen beings. They rebel, of course, leading to punishment and finally a challenge that puts Kirk's life and those of his crew against the freedom of all the fighters. A fairly stock episode that is enlivened by the tinfoil bikini worn by one of the gladiators and the manner in which Mr Spock, now in charge of the Enterprise, logically outhinks the arguments of the other officers in favour of following his own course of action. The hints that this might be about personal freedom and slavery are a little optimistic. It's just gaudy fun. Written by Margaret ArmenDirected by Gene Nelson Top A Piece of the ActionThe Enterprise encounters a planet previously visited by a starship to find that its culture has been turned into a copy of 1920's Chicago as a result of a book being left behind. Kirk, Spock and McCoy must deal with the criminal masterminds now in charge in order to put right the damage. This whole episode is just an excuse to get the cast into leftover costumes on leftover sets from some gangster project. The fact that it turns out to be fun is something of a surprise. The fact that it is about as deep as a puddle is not a surprise. Written by David Harmon and Gene L CoonDirected by James Komack Top The Immunity SyndromeA ship crewed entirely by Vulcans is destroyed. The planetary system they were investigating is dead. The cause seems to be a giant single cell creature that is unaware of the damage that its feeding is doing and hasn't any intelligence to bargain with anyway. The only solution is to destroy it, but that will mean a one-way trip into the heart of the creature itself. A giant energy-sucking amoeba, noble sacrifice from a member of the crew. Power levels dropping and the possibility of utter annihilation getting ever closer. Nothing here is original and as a result the tension that it is trying so hard to build up never materialises. A thoroughly average episode. Written by Robert SabaroffDirected by Joseph Pevney Top A Private Little WarA planet destined for peace and greatness is knocked off its evolutionary path by the Klingons supplying one tribe with flintlock rifles. The only way to secure the balance is to provide the other tribes with the same weapons, destroying any hope of peace, but at least offering some hope of a future in which global slavery under the klingons is avoided. Interfering in the development of other races is not a good idea, this we know. Everything else about this episode is dull and stupid. The Klingons are trying to establish a dominant power that they can control so they supply flintlocks, not sub-machine guns or phasers or something really effective like that. How likely is that? Kirk chooses to supply the other side, but does nothing about stopping the klingons so where is the balance going to be? There's a deeply unconvincing apelike monster (a man in a very poor suit) and some ridiculous mumbo jumbo in which a woman and a planet restore Kirk. Spock needing to be beaten up to recover consciousness is the only interesting thing to happen. Written by Gene RoddenberryDirected by Marc Daniels Top Return to TomorrowOn a remote, ruined planet, the Enterprise finds 3 beings comprised of pure thought energy. They ask to borrow bodies of the crew in order to fashion robot bodies for themselves. The temptations of real flesh prove to be difficult to give up for the aliens however. What starts off as an interesting examination of the importance of our bodies and our senses in shaping our minds and who we are descends into a petty power struggle and love triangle that is overwhelmed by sentiment and schmaltzy music. There is plenty of entertainment to be had in seeing Spock (his body at least) acting all emotional and evil, but there is much less in the rest of the script which clunks along and even gives Kirk an embarrassingly over the top speech about danger and opportunity. This episode features a guest performance from Diana Muldaur who later showed up on the Enterprise D as doctor Pulaski in STAR TREK THE NEXT GENERATION. Written by John KingsbridgeDirected by Ralph Senensky Top Patterns of ForceKirk and Spock beam down to a planet that demonstrates possession of weapons beyond their level of technology to find that their advancement has been corrupted into a copy of nazi Germany. Only a few weeks after the excuse for using leftover costumes from a gangster production (A Piece of the Action) we get this, an excuse for using leftover costumes from a world war 2 production. What's more, it's exactly the same excuse. The tone is more serious, but then the nazis were never a laughing matter. The flogging scene is, however, a laughable moment and fans of Kirk's bare chest get a bonus in the shape of Spock's bare chest. Written by John Meredyth LucasDirected by Vincent McEveety Top By Any Other NameThe Enterprise is taken over by members of an advanced race from another galaxy capable of immobilising humans with the flick of a switch, compacting them down to complicated shapes and then crushing them to oblivion. They intend to take the vessel through the energy barrier at the edge of galaxy to bring back an invasion force. Can Kirk and the remaining crew find a way to stop them. This is an unfocussed story that has a lot of ideas, but never really quite figures out what it is trying to say and . Is it about our weakness in the face of an advanced society? Is it about our ability to resist? Is it about the effect our body has in shaping us (and didn't we do that just a couple of episodes ago?). It's a bit about all of those, but the plot cannot bring its strands together in any sort of coherent fashion. Then there is the ending in which Kirk and the enemy leader have a bit of a punch up over a woman and then decide to all be friends after all. Convincing is not a word that can be used about any facet of this episode. Written by Jerome Bixby and DC FontanaDirected by Marc Daniels Top The Omega GloryThe team that boards a derelict vessel finds that they have contracted a disease that will reduce them to powder, but on the planet below is an immunising factor. Unfortunately, the search for that is complicated by a rogue captain who is willing to use his phasers to help alter the course of the planet's evolution. The effects of tampering with the development of less advanced races has been central to several of the episodes in this second series, and it crops up again here in this rather uninspired episode. It's more adventure tale than anything else, which leaves it shallow and the excitement to be had is slim at best. Written by Gene RoddenberryDirected by Vincent McEveety Top The Ultimate ComputerThe Enterprise is chosen to test the M5, a computer so advanced that it can run a whole starship with only 20 crew and seems set to do away with starship captains. When the unit goes a bit haywire and starts to destroy stuff, Captain Kirk and the crew must find a way to shut it down before the other ships involved in the wargames are either destroyed or destroy the Enterprise. After a series of disappointing episodes, the show comes good again with an exciting tale that also has something to say about increasing mechanisation and its place in the human world, not to mention the pressure that early success places upon those people who are labelled 'genius' at an early age. The early musings on the merits of man and machine give way to a streamlined action tale that never loses its focus on the humanity at the centre of story. Written by DC FontanaDirected by John Meredyth Lucas Top Bread and CircusesThe Enterprise finds a planet remarkably similar to Earth, so much so that the society that has developed is one of approximately the 20th Century, but a 20th Century where Rome did not fall and came to rule the entire planet. Gladiatorial games are televised and slaves get pensions. Into this world has fallen some Federation citizens and it is up to Kirk to try and rescue them without interfering in the development of the society. The local leader uses his knowledge of the Prime Directive to force the Captain to bring his crew down to take part in the games. For once this is not a story of a society damaged by interference from outside, but an interesting wrinkle in which the world is a parallel of Earth and the need to keep its society pure is a major inconvenience to the rescue efforts. Wrapped around that there are some musings on religion and a particularly insightful moment shared between Spock and McCoy that reveals much about the Vulcan's personality. As for the rest of the plot, well that's just an excuse to use old roman costumes and and stage some rather unconvincing swordfights. The juxtaposition of old Rome and 20th Century America does give some nice moments, though, especially in the television studio recreation of the gladiator games. Written by Gene L Coon and Gene RoddenberryDirected by Ralph Senensky Top Assignment EarthWhilst on a trip back in time, the Enterprise plays surprise host to Gary Seven, a man who claims to be an agent working to save mankind, but an agwnt who knows far too much about the future. Kirk must decide whether to aid or inhibit his activities with the whole future of humanity at stake. This a sub-Mission Impossible story, a spy story that even borrows Ernst Stavro Blofeld's cat from James Bond. The story centres on Robert Lansing as Gary Seven and appears to be more of a pilot for his spin off show rather than a al STAR TREK episode. This is compounded by plot issues such as what the Enterprise is doing travelling back in time in the first place. Is this as routine as it appears, considering the dangers involved. Also, don't security guards search their prisoners for super-useful stun pencil devices any more? This episode also features an early performance from Terri Garr (CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND). Written by Art WallaceDirected by Marc Daniels Top |
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