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| Commodore Robert April, first captain of the USS Enterprise, with his wife. |
THE PLOT
The Enterprise is escorting Commodore Robert April, the ship's first captain, to a reception on Babel to commemorate his mandatory retirement. The journey is interrupted by the appearance of a strange vessel moving at incredible speeds - headed straight for a supernova! Kirk attempts to warn the other captain, then attempts to divert the ship's course using a tractor beam. What he ends up doing is allowing the faster ship to tow the Enterprise into the heart of the nova!
The ship survives, but the crew find themselves in a parallel universe. Parallel, but opposite. Black stars interrupt a ceaseless white void, while time runs backward. Kirk, Spock, and Commodore April hatch a desperate plan to return home by forcing the birth of a new star - thus creating a simultaneous nova in both universes. But, as Kirk observes, any miscalculation will prove fatal. And he and his crew are growing steadily younger by the minute...
CHARACTERS
In a situation that's basically the reverse of the The Deadly Years, Spock's long natural lifespan means that he grows younger at a slower rate than the rest of the crew. This means he is able to remain useful longer than Kirk, Uhura, Sulu, or any of the others. Despite his interest in the ways in which the alternate reality differ from their reality, Kirk keeps everyone focused on solving the problem at hand.
THOUGHTS
The Counter-Clock Incident is the Animated Series' final episode, making it the final televised adventure of Kirk's five-year mission. It would be nice to say that this is one of the best of the series, but I'm afraid I'll have to settle for calling it about average. Which still makes it a better final televised voyage for the TOS crew than Turnabout Intruder was.
As with most of Season Two's offerings, the episode benefits from an appropriate pace. By the second season, the writers seem to have figured out how to structure their stories for the 25-minute format, and the rushed pace of many of Season One's offerings has not been a significant issue. The effect of the Enterprise flying through the white void with black stars is visually arresting, even if it's very basic in its realization. The story itself is engaging, even if it has a few spaceship-sized holes in it.
The "growing younger" aspect of the plot was probably the high concept on the writer's mind when pitching the story, but it ends up being the weakest element. It's barely dealt with until the climax. Kirk and his crew remain entirely themselves until the final minutes, when they suddenly grow from full adulthood into childhood in about 2 - 3 minutes' screentime. A steadier and more gradual process would have been more dramatically consistent, though it would doubtless have been much trickier both to write and animate.
As with The Deadly Years, there is little consistency in how the crew "de-age." For example: McCoy and Scotty are both older than Kirk; shouldn't they retain their competence past the point at which Kirk loses his?
Despite this, I still found this to be a decent episode. It may not be the ideal series finale, but at least it's enjoyable.
Rating: 6/10.
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