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| Spock and Sulu test an advanced alien weapon. |
THE PLOT
Spock, Sulu, and Uhura are on a shuttlecraft, carrying a particularly rare and precious cargo: a stasis box from the time of an ancient race known only as The Slavers. In their day, the Slavers dominated the entire galaxy - until their subjects rose up and overthrew them. All that remains of them are the artifacts found in these stasis boxes, glimpses of a past billions of years old.
When the stasis box glows, indicating the presence of a second box nearby, Spock lands the shuttle on an ice planet to search for this new find. No sooner have they landed than they are ambushed by the Kzinti, a race of carnivorous warriors defeated by humanity centuries earlier. The Kzinti have lured them here for their stasis box. Now, finding an ancient Slaver weapon inside, they intend to use that power to destroy humanity!
CHARACTERS
Only three regulars are present for this episode: Spock, Sulu, and Uhura. This actually helps. With only the three of them taking up screentime, the script is better able to characterize them. Spock's curiosity about the stasis box overrides his caution, a mistake that leads them into the Kzinti trap. He makes up for this with his quick thinking, guiding Sulu and Uhura to maximize their opportunities for escape. Sulu acts as the spokesman for the group, and he shows an aptitude for unlocking the weapon's secrets. Uhura gets a bit less to do, ultimately being used as a hostage, but she feels more completely written for than she has since Once Upon a Planet.
THOUGHTS
Larry Niven, the kind of noted science fiction writer you'd have expected to see writing Star Trek back in its original run, pens this adaptation of The Soft Weapon, one of his own short stories. There is some strain. Niven's backstory involving the Slavers and the Kzinti is not an entirely comfortable fit with the Trek universe. But given the overall quality of this expertly-paced script, I find myself easily able to squint and overlook the joins.
The action is confined to just three settings: the shuttlecraft, the Kzinti ship, and the surface of the planet. Save for having to make the Kzinti more human-like in appearance, this episode would have been entirely feasible even on a TOS Season Three budget. The main problem involves the Kzinti trying to figure out how to use the weapon, and the resolution directly pays off that problem.
Arguably, this does put the regulars in the position of being spectators. A couple of escape attempts keep them alive in the plot, but they are mainly there to comment on the Kzinti and the weapon. Still, that is enough to give them a role in the story, and I found the way in which Spock reasons his way out of the Slavers' final trap to be an effective bit of writing. Anything more would probably overload the episode, given the constrained timeslot. As it stands, this is a perfectly-paced adventure story, highly entertaining and with some actual sense of threat for the regulars (a rarity, in the animated series).
Finally: Is this the only animated series episode in which characters are actually killed? Even if it wasn't such a good piece of animated science fiction already, I'd be tempted to give it full marks for that alone...
Rating: 10/10.
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