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| Kirk and Spock explore a waterworld. |
THE PLOT
The planet Argo has undergone severe seismic shifts, which have turned it from a land planet to a waterworld (minus Kevin Costner, thankfully). While investigating the causes and effects of this shift, Kirk and Spock are attacked by a sea monster and cut off from the ship's sensors. It takes five days for search parties to locate them. When they're found, their entire internal structure has been changed. They can no longer live outside the water!
Dr. McCoy determines that this was done by injection, and so must have been done by intelligent life. Kirk and Spock go back to the planet to find those responsible, in the desperate hope of finding a cure.
CHARACTERS
When McCoy protests that Kirk and Spock going into Argos' waters with no backup will be too risky, Kirk responds by stating that he prefers the risk to having to live his life in a tank. "I can't command the Enterprise from in here," he says. That thought, of being unable to command and unable to be useful, is far worse to him than death. Beyond this, not too much for the characters, though the "big three" of Kirk, Spock, and McCoy all get decent roles.
THOUGHTS
After The Lorelai Signal, Margaret Armen was just about the last writer I wanted to see getting a second try. Fortunately, The Ambergris Element is a much better episode than its predecessor. Armen seems to have been advised to not focus on writing for kids, but instead to focus on writing a decent Star Trek script. The result is still flawed, but it is entertaining.
Like too many episodes, it feels rushed. Once again, we see a decent 50-minute story squeezed a bit uncomfortably into 25 minutes. A final plot turn that has further seismic activity endgangering the underwater city is one complication too many, resulting in a badly rushed climax. This series' most successful episodes have been the ones with the simplest storylines, and by this point in the run that should have been noticed.
Still, this isn't a bad episode. The undersea setting could not have been effectively realized on a live action budget, making it a good use of the freedom afforded by animation. Several of the underwater backgrounds are eye-catching, and even the planet's underwater denizens are well-drawn and reasonably well-animated.
So on the whole: not bad. It's just a shame the writers and producers still haven't learned that the 25-minute format demands that the stories be kept simple.
Rating: 6/10.
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