I couldn’t possibly leave off my celebration of the best of Star Trek: The Original Series at my top five episodes, so here are the next five on my list …… my Honorable Mentions.
Tomorrow is Yesterday. In this intriguing first season episode by D. C. Fontana, some sort of violent space storm throws the Enterprise back in time – and it finds itself in orbit around the planet earth in 20th century – and her crew must find a way to get themselves back to their own time. Complicating matters is that the Enterprise is spotted by an air force jet that pursues it with the intent of intercepting it, which ultimately forces them to transport him aboard. And in that moment, the already formidable challenge facing them grow ten times more difficult.
Time travel stories are almost never without flaws in logic and/or believability, so certain elements of this story need to be taken with a grain of salt. But if you can manage that, then you’re apt to find this story exciting and suspenseful. And although the original special effects were quite impressive for 1967, the remastered effects are quite spectacular and actually help the story make more sense- especially the dramatic scene where the Enterprise flies directly towards our sun and then breaks away from its immense gravitational field. It’s hard to think of a moment in the original series when the Enterprise came closer to complete destruction.
By the way, the air force pilot who must be beamed aboard the Enterprise (the ship’s tractor beam, used to keep the craft at bay proved to be too strong for it) is an essential element in this story’s emotional resonance. Captain John Christopher (very nicely played by Roger Perry) is a fairly ordinary 20th century man who suddenly finds himself aboard a strange spacecraft from several centuries in the future, and he reacts in all of the understandable ways that any of us might- at first with fear and mistrust but ultimately with a sense of wonder and gratitude. I may be a Star Trek fanatic, but I have never been one of those fans who get some sort of thrill out of dressing up in Star Trek garb; I’ve actually never even thought about doing that. But whenever I watch the scene where Captain Christopher is up on the bridge for the last time, shortly before he is to be transported back to earth (a process in which he will lose all memory of what he has experienced aboard the Enterprise) I realize that there is a part of me who has always dreamt of being on that same bridge. In a very real way, Captain Christopher is there on behalf of all of us who have dreamt such a dream.
This Side of Paradise. The crew of the Enterprise runs into very serious trouble when they visit the colonists living on Omicon Ceti III. Something on the planet is keeping the inhabitants alive despite them being bombarded by deadly radiation. It turns out that their immunity stems from them being infected by a strange spore that alters their mental and emotional makeup – making them extremely placid – and as the crew of the Enterprise succumbs to the spores, one by one, they desert the ship in order to live an idyllic new life on the planet surface. Kirk is the last to be infected, and he only barely manages to fight off the effect of the spores- and realizes that only fierce emotions can counteract the spell of the spores that have led his entire crew to mutiny. His challenge is to figure out a way to create similar strong emotional responses in each and every one of his crew members; it is the only way he can get them back.
The spores take over every single member of the Enterprise, including Mr. Spock. It is one of just a handful of times in the series when Spock’s Vulcan reserve is completely torn away and we are treated to the sight of him laughing, hanging from a tree, and generally cavorting in very non-Vulcan fashion. We get to see other Enterprise crew members with their personalities completely transformed by the spores, but its the change in Spock that is most shocking- and most memorable.
Spock’s change is not limited to his personality. He also finds himself in love with a human woman among the colonists- Leila, whom he knew once before. He saw her as a friend, but she loved him- and under the influence of the spores he finds himself giving into the romantic feelings for her that he had thus far suppressed. The sudden blossoming of their romance is very sensitively handled, but the scene I love the most comes towards the end of the episode when Leila beams aboard the Enterprise and finds that Spock has shaken off the effects of the spores and no longer loves her as he once did. The beautifully nuanced performances of Leonard Nimoy and Jill Ireland give this scene wrenching emotional weight.
But also quite memorable is the whole scene where Kirk finds himself completely alone on the ship- essentially marooned- as well as the moment in the transporter room when Kirk, having finally been overcome by the spores, is moments away from transporting down before he angrily berates himself for deserting the ship- and rids himself of the spore’s influence. Seeing Kirk perched on the edge of such a precipice is downright frightening, and the moment he becomes himself again is when we experience immense relief perhaps greater than at any other time in the whole series.
The Enemy Within. This episode demands an extraordinary performance from William Shatner, one of his finest ever. In the story, an odd and unprecedented malfunction in the ship’s transporter causes Captain Kirk to be split into two separate men- one gentle and timid and the other savage and decisive. It takes quite some time before they are able to figure out what has happened- but then comes the challenge of apprehending the savage Kirk and then finding a way to combine the two Kirks back together again. (It is Spock who realizes that without his darker half, the more benign Kirk is unable to exert leadership as any starship captain must. All this is a sufficient source of tension and drama- but adding to it is the fact that a landing party is stranded down on the planet because of the transporter malfunction- and at night the planet’s surface temperature drops to well below 100 degrees below zero. Sulu and his landing party face certain death if they can’t be transported back to the ship in time. Their tremendous peril, coupled with what has befallen the captain, combines to make this one of the most tense episodes in the original series.
And William Shatner – not always the most subtle of actors (to say the least) – is to be commended for his superb work here.
The Deadly Years. This is another episode in which the story is tremendously exciting and moving- but only if you’re willing to swallow a few fallacies along the way. Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scott, Chekov and another crew member beam down to a planet to check in with Federation science personnel stationed there- only to discover that most of them have died, and the only two still living have somehow become extremely old. Soon after returning to the ship, everyone in the landing party except Chekov suffer from the same rapid aging process- to the point where Kirk is eventually forced against his will to relinquish his command because he is becoming so forgetful and confused. The competency hearing that is held at the insistence of Commodore Stocker (who happens to be aboard) is a painful, riveting scene- as is the battle scene right after it when Stocker (now in command) has the Enterprise encroach on the Romulan neutral zone and draws an attack. (Stocker has never commanded a starship and has no idea what to do.) Fortunately, a cure for the aging and a means to reverse it is found – and Kirk returns to the bridge just in time to re-assume command and save the Enterprise from almost certain destruction.
I wish the story didn’t resolve itself quite so tidily – with the drastic effects of rapid aging rectified in a fashion that is staggeringly illogical. (As author Marc Cushman rightly points out, there is no way that any injection of a drug- no matter how wondrous – can instantaneously grow back hair that has fallen out. Stopping the rapid aging process is one thing. Reversing it altogether- especially in a matter of a few short minutes- is utterly unbelievable.) Still, the story takes the viewer on a rich journey as these beloved characters grapple with this inexplicable ordeal that has befallen them, aging so rapidly that there is no way to easily come to grips with what is slipping away from them with such stunning speed. I tip my hat to writer David Harmon (and everyone else who contributed to this powerful script) and to Shatner, Nimoy and DeForest Kelley for their persuasive and moving performances.
The Naked Time. In this episode from the first season, yet another strange illness or disease is the central catalyst of the story. In this case, it is a sickness which causes any person suffering from it to lose their normal sense of restraint, forcing certain suppressed emotions or attitudes to the surface.
To be clear, this is not the same story as “This Side of Paradise,” where the spores caused everyone to become placid, cheerful, and disinterested in all matters of duty. In “The Naked Time,” each character is affected differently, depending on what sort of secret chambers of their soul are suddenly thrust to the surface. For the very first crewman affected, he is overtaken by deep and even suicidal despondency. Spock finds himself tortured by the long-suppressed emotions of his human half. Nurse Chapel can no longer resist her intense romantic longing for Spock. And for Mr. Sulu, the normally unflappable ship’s helmsman, the sickness transforms him into an arrogant, sword=wielding swashbuckler.
In some cases, the change in behavior of a given crew member might be downright entertaining- but collectively, the affect of the rapidly spreading sickness is catastrophic to the smooth operation of the vessel. The most serious jeopardy, however, emerges when Lt Kevin Reilly, one of the ship’s navigators, falls under the influence of the sickness, ambles down to the engineering room, locks the doors, and proceeds to play with the controls- and in doing so, inadvertently sends the Enterprise into a deteriorating orbit that will soon cause it to burn up in the planet’s atmosphere. It is a desperate race against time for Kirk and the handful of crew members who remain unaffected. Disaster is ultimately averted, of course, but it is an incredibly close call. (This same disease will make a return appearance in Star Trek- The Next Generation. That’s one of the best compliments that this episode could receive.)
And there you have it: Greg Berg’s top ten episodes from the original Star Trek: The Doomsday Machine, The Corbomite Maneuver, Balance of Terror, The Ultimate Computer, Who Mourns for Adonais, Tomorrow is Yesterday, This Side of Paradise, The Deadly Years, The Enemy Within, and The Naked Time. You may notice that there are no Tribbles on this list nor any other episodes where humor is the predominate flavor. I always preferred my Star Trek to be serious and straight- and still do. There are also no episodes where the Enterprise stumbles upon a planet that resembles some past era of planet earth. Those episodes (Bread and Circuses, Patterns of Force, Miri, A Piece of the Action) always struck me as sort of a cheat- a way to save money on costumes and sets- and also tend to be among the most preposterous story lines. Also missing are some major episodes that are almost universally lauded by critics: Amok Time, City on the Edge of Forever, Charlie X, Arena, Journey to Babel and others. I like them a lot – but for whatever reason none of them resonate with me to quite the same extent as my top ten episodes do. Finally, there are no episodes from Star Trek’s often-derided third season. I thought about including at least one of those episodes – perhaps “Turnabout Intruder” or “The Tholian Web” or “That Which Survives” or “Day of the Dove” – but finally decided to go with my ten favorites, plain and simple.
My hope in posting these reviews is not to convince anyone to like these particular episodes as much as I do- but rather to get you to think about which episodes are most important to you and why. And beyond that, it’s one more way to celebrate the extraordinary legacy of Star Trek, which is alive and well as it begins its second half century of existence.