Star date: 2715.1
Summary: During a routine exchange of cargo into and out of the penal colony Tantalus, someone manages to escape. Tantalus soon learns that someone is missing, and notifies Kirk on the Enterprise. Meanwhile, the escapee, with a crazed look in his eyes, attacks a crewman in the transporter room as well as a security officer before finally coming onto the bridge, pointing a phaser at Kirk, and demanding asylum.
After the escapee is subdued, we learn that he is not an inmate of Tantalus, but is in fact Dr. Simon Van Gelder, assistant to the institution's director, Dr. Adams. Adams explains that Van Gelder had tried an experimental treatment on himself and things had gone wrong, leaving Van Gelder unstable and violent. For his part Van Gelder, struggling as if the words he speaks cause him pain, manages to communicate that Adams is practicing mind control on the inmates, taking away their free will and programming them to feel intense pain if they tell anyone what's going on.
In an effort to learn the truth, Kirk beams down to Tantalus with Dr. Helen Noel, a psychiatrist on the Enterprise. They find Adams to be a genial and compassionate man, consistent with his reputation for making prisons and psychiatric treatment more humane. However, Kirk begins to have his doubts as he notices that others in the prison seem lifeless. As Spock uses the Vulcan mind-meld on the Enterprise to learn the truth from Van Gelder, Kirk and Noel experiment with the "neural neutralizer" which Adams has been using on patients, and realize that Van Gelder was telling the truth. Adams then starts to brainwash Kirk, and it is up to Noel to shut off the prison's security system so that Spock and others can beam down to rescue Kirk. In the end, Adams is accidentally a victim of his own machine, which ends up killing him.
Of the 10 episodes I've watched so far, this one is the best, and it's not even close. Let's hope that it just took the series a few weeks to find its way, and more of the remaining shows will be at this level (though we do have the two-part "The Menagerie" episodes coming up soon, which as far as I can tell are a slightly modified rehash of the original pilot, "The Cage"). There are a number of things which make this episode stand apart from those which came before.
For starters, this is the first show which doesn't rely on a space setting, where someone has super powers or a bizarre disease. This is really a show about humane treatment of the mentally ill, a show which could have been set in the contemporary U.S. --- though of course, the show would have been much more controversial in such a setting.
And let's not minimize the importance of this fact. A major reason many Trekkies give for loving the show is that Roddenberry used it (in much the same manner as Jonathon Swift 200 years before) to present an important message wrapped in the innocuous disguise of space fluff. This show would seem to be the first example of this practice.
Another thing which puts this episode head and shoulders above the others is that the plot doesn't have any holes large enough to pilot a starship through. The script isn't perfect, as we'll see, but it holds together much better than most to this date.
Other things I liked about this episode include:
This is the first time we see another crew member challenge Kirk's authority as Captain. When Van Gelder is first restrained, Kirk simply wants to return him to Tantalus, taking at face value the notion that Van Gelder is a dangerous lunatic. As for Van Gelder's request for asylum, Kirk is all too willing to trust Dr. Adams and the reputation he's built over 20 years as an innovator in humane treatment and rehabilitation of prisoners. Kirk only investigates Van Gelder's claims of abuse because McCoy forces him to do so, informing Kirk that he will enter his doubts in his medical log, thus requiring Kirk to respond to them. Quite a change from the way Spock allowed Kirk to remain in command for the duration of "The Enemy Within".
James Gregory was a great choice to play Dr. Adams. Not only does he play the role well --- the seemingly genial, compassionate Doctor who in reality insists on controlling everyone and everything around him --- but seeing him here reminded me of another time he played a role in a story about mind control: The Manchurian Candidate. Viewers in the 1960's would not have necessarily made this connection, because Gregory appeared in a lot of movies/TV between the release of The Manchurian Candidate in 1962 and this episode in 1966, but it sure stood out for me.
The way we're introduced to Tantalus is great, too. It starts with Kirk and Noel taking a harrowing elevator ride --- not sure what that is all about --- but when we first meet Adams, he's smiling and offering them drinks. And the atmosphere of Tantalus is very much like a spa rather than a prison; the staff all wear light blue robes which have an emblem of an open hand, the sun (or I guess I should say *a* sun, shouldn't be Terra-centric here), and a dove.
And once that sunny impression has had a chance to sink in, we meet the first resident of Tantalus, and notice her dull eyes. Then, like Kirk (but not Noel, strangely --- not a particularly perceptive psychiatrist), we notice that all of the residents other than Adams have the same vacant, dull expression.
Another bit of great writing was the way the story is presented in parallel in two separate locations. Kirk and Noel are learning the truth first-hand by experimenting with the neural neutralizer on Tantalus, while at the same time, Spock and McCoy are learning the truth via Spock's mind-meld with Van Gelder.
The mind-meld is a great device as well, in that it allows us to see the normally emotionless Spock empathize with the feelings of loneliness and horror Van Gelder experienced. By doing it this way, the revelation that Van Gelder is telling the truth has greater impact than it would otherwise.
Things I didn't like about this episode include:
Dr. Helen Noel is an extremely attractive woman, and we learn that she and Kirk had some kind of dalliance (though apparently it didn't go far enough for Dr. Noel's tastes) at an earlier Christmas party. This Kirk/Noel romance thread runs throughout the episode, but it serves no point at all.
In fact, when Adams has Kirk in the chair under the neural neutralizer, he implants the idea in Kirk's mind that Kirk is madly in love with Noel and has been for years --- reinforcing and intensifying an idea Noel had already started to place there. But there's no point to it. For a while I thought that Adams was going to deal with Kirk by making him be madly in love with Noel, then making him kill her, thus getting rid of Noel and leaving Kirk a broken criminal. This would make for great drama, even though it doesn't really make any sense --- Adams wants to get out of this with no one asking any more questions than necessary. But since it turns out that's not Adams' plan, what was the point?
When Van Gelder first comes aboard the Enterprise, he attacks two crew members and storms onto the bridge with a phaser. If what he really wants is asylum, why does he need to attack anyone? That doesn't really make sense.
My only other objection to this episode --- and it's small --- is that it seems far too easy for Noel to move around Tantalus via the HVAC shafts. And for that matter, once she's in the control room, it seems far too easy for her to shut off the power. I know Tantalus is supposed to be more like a spa than a prison, but I mean come on. It IS still a prison.
Other observations about this episode:
This is the first time in the series we see the use of the Vulcan mind meld, when Spock mind-melds with Van Gelder to understand the truth.
Somewhat amusing that Kirk first met 'Dr. Noel' at a Christmas party.
When Kirk and Noel experiment with the neural neutralizer, they do so without Dr. Adams' permission (of course). They know Van Gelder's accusations, so they know what Dr. Adams is capable of if Van Gelder is telling the truth. Seems a bit careless of them to just waltz into the control room.
And it would have been a great dramatic ending if Kirk were to destroy the neural neutralizer with his phaser. Instead, we never really see that enduring Adams' torture has had any effect on Kirk at all.
The neural neutralizer is first presented as a more humane alternative to drug treatment. I wonder what real-world treatments have been championed in that manner, only to find later that they were more brutal?
This is the first time we see a woman actually fight back against oppression, when Dr. Noel kicks one of Tantalus' guards into the power controls. Yay, Dr. Helen! Yes, we saw Dr. Dehner fight Mitchell in "Where No Man Has Gone Before", but that doesn't really count because she was partly a god at that point.
AND FINALLY --- speaking of Dr. Dehner, we've now seen two Enterprise psychiatrists who are 100% completely slammin' babes: Sally Kellerman as Dr. Dehner in "Where No Man Has Gone Before", and now Marianna Hill as Dr. Noel.
The Moral of the Story: Just because someone is ranting like a lunatic doesn't mean what they're saying is nonsense. Sometimes they're ranting like a lunatic because what they're saying is the truth.
No comments:
Post a Comment