Tom Salinsky

S03E07 Day of the Dove (). Unlike a couple of recent stronger episodes which started badly and then found a groove, this begins with a wonderfully tense stand-off between the Federation and the Klingons, but rapidly unravels once the common enemy sneaks on board and – yawn – everyone starts going nutso.

We begin when the landing party beams down to planet Feather Boa and are swiftly joined by the surviving Klingons whose have a different and cheaper transporter effect. These are the Klingons we all know, swarthy, glowering and warlike. They have heard about Federation death camps and so we have a wonderful opportunity for these two warring groups to explore each other’s cultures. But the crew once again close their eyes and count to ten to permit a spinny red thing to come on board and before long, everyone is giving in to their worst impulses and waving ancient weapons around.

And when I say giving into their worst impulses, there’s a very, very upsetting moment where it looks as if Chekov is planning to rape the Klingon woman Mara. Dude. No.

S03E08 For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky (). Only a few weeks after Kirk was snarling at friends for no good reason, here we have Nurse Chapel at odds with Dr McCoy, and it turns out this is because McCoy has diagnosed himself with incurable space plague. The doc pulls himself together and they beam down to what turns out to be a powered asteroid which will collide with the colony NotEarth V at around the same time they McCoy is scheduled to drop dead. Coincidence?

The landing party is taken captive and brought underground by guards wearing particularly dopey looking helmets which resemble those games where you have tilt a plastic box to guide a little ball into a hole. Kate Woodville as Natira is nothing we haven’t seen before but she makes a good job of the ice queen / noble savage who wants McCoy to be her mate and (other than he’d be written out of the series) I’m not sure what the dilemma is here. If he believes he only has a year to live, why not live in adored comfort? We never find out as he changes his mind about staying between scenes. That said, Spock’s hand of friendship on McCoy’s shoulder when he finds out about his condition is very affecting.

S03E09 The Tholian Web () is one I think I’m supposed to like more than I did. Don’t get me wrong, it’s pretty good, although it does begin with quite a familiar set-up, in which following the return of the away team, the crew starts acting nutso. This is communicated mainly through handheld cameras and distorting lenses. As is not uncommon with this run of episodes, this story throws everything at the plot and hopes to keep finding enough incident to fill 50 minutes, rather than exploring a single strong and original idea. So, we also have the fact that Kirk has “phased out” with a stricken ship and now the Enterprise is faced with some creatures called Tholians, who like many warlike alien races have an innate sense of drama, so rather than blasting the helplessly drifting Enterprise out of the stars, they elect to construct a web to entangle the ship after a sufficient time has passed.

The captain having been presumed dead, this becomes a Kirk-less episode, more or less, which puts Spock in the captain’s chair and at the centre of the narrative. They even hold a wake for Kirk. What is great about this episode (and what I imagine fans love about it) are the debates between McCoy and Spock on the nature of the duties of command, which is never less than compelling. TNG wishes it had character dynamics as good as these. Even Uhura gets something to do this week.

So, while I don’t believe for a moment Kirk is dead, the reactions of the crew feel real which makes up considerably for the contrived plotting, and Spock and McCoy fibbing to Kirk’s face about his final orders is very sweet. (Vulcans can lie!)

S03E10 Plato’s Stepchildren () brings the Enterprise into contact with a super-advanced spacefaring race with telekinetic powers but no penicillin. They have based their culture on Plato’s Republic, because heaven forfend we should meet an alien race that is actually, you know, unfamiliar. At least this time they found the money to build the whole set – this looks great and the physical effects aren’t bad either in a sort of Mary Poppins way.

“Where I come from, size shape or colour makes no difference,” Kirk tells a little person, and even manages to refrain from objectifying any women at all.

The inhabitants are so delighted with McCoy’s medical skills that they decide they want him to stay. So, it’s another episode, another quixotic alien with godlike powers – and it’s a return to that doughty TOS dilemma, the gilded cage. NBC won’t allow the Platonians to pull off limbs or pluck out eyes, which presumably they’re capable of, so instead they have to humiliate Kirk and Spock by making them cavort and sing and do drama school animal exercises. While avoiding any unpleasant violence this also makes a series which often flirts with silliness look totally ridiculous. It’s justified better here than in Catspaw, but it’s still not good.

Whereas several recent episodes have chucked three or four different story ideas at a plot to keep it going, this sticks to one idea but can’t find any interesting ways of developing it – even the chemistry of the Big Three seems absent, although Nimoy in particular is as good as ever.

S03E11 Wink of an Eye () is the one where the alien intruders are invisible because they move so fast. This is never treated with any rigour, logic or scientific understanding, but, if you can get past that (and some other dopey decisions like those highly impractical neck controls, positioned on one of the few parts of your body you can’t easily see) then this does present a suitably challenging problem for the crew to solve. Alas, the enemy is a foxy chick who has the hots for Kirk, but on the plus side, there’s some dramatic camera work, and some decent problem-solving. Not bad, but the glory days of Season One are far behind us.

S03E12 The Empath (). Yet again, the Enterprise turns up just in time for the aftermath of a catastrophic event which has left no-one alive. Rashly, Kirk sends the ship away but then – who’dathunkit? – the same thing starts happening to the Big Three. First they stumble onto a Fringe physical theatre show with lighting effects and interpretive dance, then they’re stuck behind an invisible wall while big-foreheaded beige aliens observe them. The Cage is the gift that keeps on giving, isn’t it? And we get those partial sets again, but they work far better here than in Gunfight at the Half-Built Corral.

The interpretive dance lady is Gem, the empath of the title. When she heals Kirk’s wound, she briefly acquires it herself which has a nice fairy tale logic to it, but a lot of this is just running about, being captured, escaping, seeing illusions, being captured again, until 50 minutes is spent.

Revoltingly, the Big Foreheads want to know whether Gem’s people are worthy of being saved and presumably would let them die by the millions if she didn’t sacrifice her life to save McCoy. The music tells us that something beautiful and noble is happening, but the premise is nauseating and it takes the Big Three ages to notice this fact and object to it.

Too strong for the BBC who didn’t show it until 1994 – and the sight of Shatner (or his stunt double) strung up by the wrists is certainly a very powerful one, but this feels reheated and over-familiar.

S03E13 Elaan of Troyius () brings an honest to goodness Bridezilla on board the ship, from a planet where the men are all assholes and the women are all sexpots (the costuming and hairstyling are also absolutely SNL-ridiculous this week).

Elaan’s attitude to Kirk is fun, as is Kirk’s wry acceptance of her giving him orders, when into this sitcom-level stuff comes a Klingon warship, and the space battle at the end is a highlight of the episode. Ultimately, this Taming of the Shrew knock-off quickly becomes an after-school special and then briefly an S&M space fantasy when Elaan wants to know more about this thing called “spanking”. No, really. That’s a thing that happened on this show. And just when I thought this was as stupid as it could possibly get, Elan turns out to have super-love-potion tears, for fuck’s sake. Although the fact that Kirk just shrugs off the effects because he’s effectively married to the Enterprise is actually kinda badass.

I also note that Vulcan mind-melding is no longer an intensely personal, frighteningly alien, rarely-used ability; it’s now treated as a standard piece of Star Fleet kit, which can be used to extract confessions at any time. Yikes.