Star Trek 3x11 "Wink of an Eye"

rating: *

Memory Alpha summary

There are some episodes that are neither good nor bad, are just adventures you take in if you generally like what you've been watching.  I have four distinctions every episode is measured by.  I begin with the premise if it's worth watching at all, it gets at least one of them, whether for a viewer who happens to be a fan of the series, the franchise in general, or if there's a reason to watch for a specific character, and the fourth one as to whether it's essential for any one of the three.  (I always rank character last because for me it's the mark of the best stories regardless of any other factor.)

I begin with all that because there's...really nothing else worth talking about with "Wink of an Eye."  There are countless examples of other episodes throughout the franchise where the ship is hijacked by aliens.  This one happens to feature a particular gimmick in order to achieve it (as in fact they all do), which is that the aliens move faster than our crew (hence the title).

It's the kind of episode that's a reminder that Star Trek at its heart is a science fiction vehicle.  So often the gimmick isn't necessarily geared toward the genre so much as traditional elements either from it or the Star Trek template as it slowly emerged.  So that's all you really need to know.

via Trek Core.  Well, that and a skimpy outfit!

four quarter analysis

franchise * series * essential * character

notable guest-stars:

Majel Roddenberry

Star Trek 3x10 "Plato's Stepchildren"

rating: ****

Memory Alpha summary

There are perhaps as many reasons to loathe this episode as like it.  Reasons to loathe first:

• Guest aliens forcing our characters to do silly things.
• The overly-familiar template of guest aliens having a society our characters need to set straight.
• The overly-familiar template of guest aliens just happening to have patterned their society after something in Earth's past.
• Plato not even particularly being well-represented, so really, what was the point of using him at all?

All that being said, there's at least one great reason to watch "Plato's Stepchildren," and it looks like this:

via CNN

That would be Uhura kissing Kirk, the first interracial kiss seen on television (the Memory Alpha link provides some clarification, but the point stands), an historic event for which this episode, and indeed the whole series, will forever be known.  Sucks that it has to be under the auspices of alien control and all that, but there it is.  It happened.  Glad Star Trek made history like that.

That alone makes the episode must-see for its cultural significance, but there are other reasons, too.  There are franchise-specific reasons, parallels to be accounted for, trends to follow (eugenics, as in Khan; emotional transference, as in Lwaxana Troi in Deep Space Nine's "Fascination").

There's also the plight of Alexander, which becomes the crux of the story.  Alexander is one of the guest aliens, only he's considered inferior to the others.  Our characters end up spending their time not so much fixing the society as fighting for Alexander's rights.  If you like, this might be considered another level of the general Civil Rights push of the episode along with the kiss.

The good, in the case of this episode, easily outweighs the bad.  A real argument could be made for "Plato's Stepchildren" representing not only the third season but the series as a whole, the reason why something that seemed doomed to be lost and forgotten instead became a global phenomenon.  

That's easy to call a classic in my estimation.

four quarter analysis

franchise * series * essential * character

notable guest-stars:

Babara Babcock

Majel Roddenberry

Star Trek 3x9 "The Tholian Web"

rating: ****

Memory Alpha summary

Perhaps the single most important episode of the season, the most iconic one, the one that added the most to later franchise lore (which is surprisingly saying something), "The Tholian Web" boasts iconic visuals (the eponymous web), the debut of important new aliens, another of those lost starships but perhaps the most important one, and Kirk in peril while Spock and McCoy once again try to fill his void.

Like the Andorians and Tellarites, the Tholians would be essentially one-off aliens for virtually the entire run of the franchise until, some four decades later, Enterprise shows up to bring them back.  But, like the Andorians, it would prove well-worth the wait.  First there were the Tholian ships in "Future Tense," then the debut of the Tholians themselves in "In A Mirror, Darkly, Part I" (a true highlight of that episode, especially when Mirror Phlox tortures the hapless specimen!).

The idea and look of the web was echoed in Next Generation for its pilot episode, "Encounter at Farpoint," by Q.

via Star Trek

The missing starship Defiant, also featured in the Enterprise outing "Mirror, Darkly," became a true legacy of Star Trek lore when Deep Space Nine introduced a warship identically named, proving once and for all that the Enterprise wasn't the only ship capable of creating a lineage.

All of that is window-dressing if the story doesn't carry dramatic weight, though, which comes in the form of Kirk apparently being lost bringing the ever-present personality conflict between Spock and McCoy dramatically to the surface.  It's an important moment for the series to see this played out, which is echoed in Star Trek.

All in all, an episode that becomes timeless but worth viewing in its own right, the definition of a classic.

four quarter analysis
franchise * series * essential * character

notable guest-stars:
Majel Roddenberry

Star Trek 3x8 "For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky"

rating: *

Memory Alpha summary

Among the distinctive features of the series that the later franchise never quite managed to live up to are the episode titles, poetic and elaborate.  There was never more poetic or elaborate a title than this one.  Kind of instantly iconic.

But more importantly, "Touched the Sky" is a McCoy episode.  This happened surprisingly rarely, and that's too bad.  McCoy was one of the Big Three, of course, along with Kirk and Spock, and so never hurt for attention, but as far as stories built entirely around him, he was hardly their equal.  Similar to "City on the Edge of Forever," it's a story based on the good doctor developing a medical condition.  Being a doctor, it's too bad that "physician, heal thyself" would need to apply to him at all, but there you go.  It's really a matter of his basic humanity coming to the surface.  McCoy was always considered the most human of the characters, and of course Spock the most alien, with Kirk bridging the gap between them, so there's that.

Like Voyager's "Resolutions," McCoy finds safe haven, but that thrusts him into a whole, fairly typical drama.  Long story short, he helps a civilization heal itself, and is in return granted a cure for his own condition.

via Trek Core

There's a lost episode concerning McCoy's origins, which is addressed directly in Star Trek for the first time, and that would have been nice to see.  Maybe in the future his full story will be explored more fully.  In the meantime we have what we have, which is material like this, which is common for the series.

four quarter analysis
franchise * series * essential * character

notable guest-stars:
Majel Roddenberry

Star Trek 3x7 "Day of the Dove"

rating: ****

Memory Alpha summary

Following Kor  ("Errand of Mercy") and Koloth ("The Trouble with Tribbles"), the appearance of Kang in this episode completes the debuts of the big three Klingons featured in the series who would later appear in the Deep Space Nine episode "Blood Oath."

Like "Errand," "Day of the Dove" is about a conflict between Klingons and Kirk that revolves on weirdo manipulative aliens.  Being that as it may, it's a true highlight of the oft-maligned third season, showing a real flair for the budding Star Trek landscape, something the season did surprisingly often.

By this point, Klingons had appeared often enough that they weren't just familiar but a key component of series lore.  What's interesting is that it seems to anticipate the more nuanced role these traditional foes would develop over the course of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, Next Generation, and DS9, where they weren't just the enemy and in fact could even cooperate with Kirk when necessary.

via Danger Mouse. Leading to this improbable image.

Where fans tend to associate diminished quality with the season and diluted concepts, an episode like "Day" suggests, rather, how the creators began to loosen up a little, in a good way.  Far too often you'll see a critic dismiss genre entertainment for taking itself too seriously.  I have no idea what that means.  But I remember that some of the best material from the second season ("Tribbles," "A Piece of the Action") had exactly this attitude of letting the concept breathe a little.  I do think as the season progressed, it became a little more utilitarian and thus didn't really capitalize on its best instincts, but such a trend suggests that if there had been a fourth season, arguably the best material of the series had been yet to come.  A thought.

four quarter analysis
franchise * series * essential * character

notable guest-stars:
Michael Ansara

Star Trek 3x6 "Spectre of the Gun"

rating: *

Memory Alpha summary

Would you believe that this was actually the first episode produced for the season?  Yeah.

Clearly another attempt to cover all the given genres of the day, and an especially popular one of TV (Gene Roddenberry even famously pitched the series originally as Wagon Train to the Stars), "Spectre of the Gun," which improbably thrusts Kirk and crew into an alien reenactment of the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral featuring the Earps, Doc Holliday and others, actually ended up setting a franchise precedent.

I love making references to other episodes.

Next Generation visited Westerns in "A Fistful of Datas," one of its many holodeck-run-amok episodes, while Enterprise ran across cowboys during its Xindi-infested third season in "North Star."

via The Viewscreen. When you put it like that it makes perfect sense!

Otherwise, do you really need to know much more?  Apparently it was conceived as a spotlight for Chekov.  Presumably because Wyatt Earp was a Russian hero.  Nonsense fun, Star Trek style!

four quarter analysis
franchise * series * essential * character

Star Trek 3x5 "Is There In Truth No Beauty?"

rating: ****

Memory Alpha summary

A classic by any other name, "Is There In Truth No Beauty?" is in a lot of ways an inversion of the series, a beautiful woman who ends up being associated with Spock, not romantically but intellectually.

This is what most of the series strove for.  There are points in the story that are about as generic as possible, developments that occur all the time, just to provide conflict, but the overriding arc of the guest character, portrayed by Diana Muldaur in arguably her best franchise appearance, is a perfect encapsulation of what the whole season had set out as a goal, putting a strong focus on Spock as the acknowledged best character of the series.

via Trek Movie

Muldaur had previously appeared in "Return to Tomorrow" the previous season in an unrelated role, and spent the whole of Next Generation's second season as Dr. Pulaski, who might be viewed as a cynical version of the hopeful Miranda Jones.  Jones is the rare guest character who is allowed to remain strong and even heroic throughout their appearance.  She's a stark contrast to Spock, having studied on Vulcan to master her telepathic abilities, and their dynamic drives "Beauty."

The title alludes to the concept of beautiful women, certainly a running theme in the franchise, and also the alien species Jones is attempting to understand better so that they can become productive partners in the Federation, a little like Picard's experience in Next Generation's "Darmok" or Archer's in Enterprise's "A Night in Sickbay."  It's a philosophical matter in the way Star Trek has often attempted although seldom appreciated by its observers, looking beyond the surface.

It's got a a mouthful of a title, which doubtless has hindered "Beauty"'s reputation over the years, but it deserves greater recognition, and another good argument to give the whole third season another look.  Often the argument was that the series became fatally compromised in its final season, and that ending it was an act of mercy.  But in truth there is greatness to be found within it.  When they really wanted to, the creators could perform real magic.  Such as this episode.

four quarter analysis
franchise * series * essential * character

notable guest-stars:
Diana Muldaur