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| Alien observer Bem is unimpressed with Kirk and Spock. |
For diplomatic reasons, an observer has been assigned to Enterprise for a series of contact missions: Bem, an honorary commander from the recently-contacted planet Pandro. Bem has behaved quite strangely for an observer, sitting out several missions in his quarters. When the Enterprise reaches a planet with a potentially dangerous aboriginal population, however, Bem insists on accompanying the landing party, overriding all of Kirk's objections.
On the planet, Bem detects life signs - then bolts, evading Kirk and Spock long enough to be seemingly deliberately intercepted by the aborigines. Kirk and Spock attempt to free him, only to find themselves captured. When they try to force their way out, they discover yet one more player they hadn't planned on: a superpowerful alien entity, which regards the aborgines as its children and the landing party as a hostile presence!
CHARACTERS
Kirk more or less repeats his pattern from Metamorphosis in his dealings with the aborigines and the entity. He first tries to use force. When the entity blocks that, he must find a way to reason with it instead. Uhura also gets a strong episode, pushing back against Scotty's desire to act by reminding him firmly of the captain's orders and the need to follow procedure in Kirk's absence.
THOUGHTS
Writer David Gerrold returns for this entry, which makes use of animation's freedoms by investing Bem with a quality that would have been impossible for television of its time to realize even passably convincingly. Bem's ability to separate his body into three separate but united parts is a clever conceit, one well-used by the story and one which results in a few strong visual moments.
He also weaves the various aspects of the story together in a way that's thematically consistent, with each plot strand reflecting the others. Kirk and his landing party are there to plant devices to monitor the native lifeforms, effectively to study them. Bem is also there to study, both the aborigines and Kirk. Finally, all of the above are being studied by the alien entity protecting the planet. It all fits, with each strand reflecting the others.
Unfortunately, the episode falls prey to preachiness. Practically the entire second half consists of a series of heavy-handed speeches and exchanges. These also miss the most obvious solution. When Kirk gets Bem to return the communicators and phasers, he opts to use the phasers to cut themselves out of their cages. Wouldn't it have made more sense for him to use the communicator, to have the ship beam them all up? This could have been dealt with by having Kirk try to contact the ship and failing due to some random interference... but he doesn't even try, which has the effect of making Kirk look like a trigger-happy idiot.
Between that plot hole and the preachiness, a promising episode slides into mediocrity. Not one of the animated series' worst by any means. I expect better from writer David Gerrold, though, leaving this a distinct disappointment.
Rating: 5/10.
Previous Episode: The Pirates of Orion
Next Episode: The Practical Joker
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There are also some weird character moments in this episode. Spock says that they're incarcerated frequently because of FATE? That doesn't sound like Spock to me. And Kirk keeps telling people not to take any risks? What happened to Mr. "Risk is our business"? I expected Gerrold to know the characters better than this!
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