TOS 6: The Enemy Within

Original air date: 10/06/1966
Star Date: 1672.1

Summary:  Kirk, Sulu, and three other crewman are on a planet called Alpha 177.  Kirk remarks to Sulu that the temperature can go down as low as -120 degrees (Fahrenheit, presumably) at night.  Kirk beams back aboard and, due to a transporter malfunction, is split into a 'good' Kirk and an 'evil' Kirk --- referred to henceforth as 'Jirk'.  Jirk manages to assault two crew members before the situation is discovered: he attacks and presumably intends to rape Yeoman Janice Rand, but another crewman named Fisher walks in as the attack is happening, causing Jirk to leave Rand's cabin and attack Fisher instead.

Jirk is eventually discovered and subdued, and the rest of the show becomes a race against time as Scotty and Spock attempt to fix the transporter before Sulu and the rest of the ground crew freeze to death.  As expected, Scotty accomplishes a minor miracle --- it takes him minutes to fix a transporter that "we can't repair in less than a week" --- and the ground crew are beamed aboard just seconds after Kirk and Jirk are merged back into a single body.  In the interim, Spock waxes philosophical about the role of good and evil in the making of a human leader.

It was hard to watch this episode, because I was constantly struggling with the sheer stupidity of pretty much everything that happened in it.  Something stupid was happening in practically every scene, and usually multiple stupid things were happening.  I'll try to list them in order from least stupid to most stupid:

• Scotty suspects there might be a problem with the transporter right before Kirk beams up, and he orders an underling named Wilson to get a 'synchronic meter' so they can check for problems.  So why doesn't Scotty wait for Wilson to return before beaming up Kirk?
• When they first realize an evil impostor is aboard, Kirk orders search parties to search the ship; clearly he wants Jirk found and taken into custody.  Immediately after this message is broadcast, Jirk orders Wilson to give him his phaser, and Wilson does it.  Somehow Wilson missed the memo.
• When Kirk makes the announcement to the whole ship that an evil impostor is aboard, Jirk is hiding out in Kirk's cabin.  For some reason, no one thinks to look for him there.
• Yeoman Rand scratches Jirk's face when he assaults her, so he needs to try to cover up the scratches to keep from being identified.  So while he's hiding out in Kirk's cabin, he picks up some makeup (face cream?) to cover up the scratches.  Why does Kirk have makeup in his cabin?
• When Kirk and Spock realize that Jirk is likely in the Engineering room, the two of them go to face Jirk alone.  Kirk doesn't want any additional help, and although Spock tells Kirk this is a bad idea, they do it anyway.
• And when Kirk finds Jirk in the Engineering level, he doesn't call to Spock for help.  Instead he just monologues at Jirk about how "you need me" and such.
• After Jirk has attacked Rand and Fisher, but before Jirk has been discovered, the situation is this.  There are credible accounts, from two crew members, that the Captain of the ship has attacked them.  I realize I'm looking at this from a late 20th-century perspective, but I would expect Starfleet to have regulations stating that in such a situation, Kirk must be taken into custody and Spock given command of the ship until the charges against Kirk are resolved.  Instead, Spock concludes: "There's only one logical answer: we have an impostor aboard."  Of course this answer is correct, but Spock doesn't know that.  Kirk should have been relieved of command immediately.
• And Spock should have taken command of the ship (and Kirk should have insisted on it) so there could be no ambiguity about who was in charge.  They didn't really play up this angle until late in the show, but I fully expected there would be more 'who's the real Kirk?' going on.  To make sure Jirk couldn't pull the wool over anyone's eyes, Kirk should have given command to Spock.
• And while we're on the subject of Spock taking command --- we learn that a side-effect of Kirk effectively being split in two is that he is becoming increasingly indecisive, and an increasingly poor leader.  Yet another reason why Spock should have taken command.

But all of that absolutely pales in comparison to the contrived 'ticking clock' device of the four men stuck on Alpha 177.  At the start of the show, it makes sense: the transporter is malfunctioning, don't beam those guys up 'til it's fixed.

BUT!!!

Those guys sit on Alpha 177 as the temperature drops to -21, -40, -70 and finally -117 degrees.  Set aside for a moment the fact that I expect they would be dead in minutes in that situation, instead of holding out for --- well, who knows how long, really, but at least a half-hour or more.  Is there really nothing the crew of the Enterprise can do for these guys?  All we're told is that some thermal heaters were beamed down but, due the transporter malfunction, the heaters didn't work.  So these guys are stuck wrapping what looks like nylon tarps around themselves as the temperature drops to ungodly lows --- and there appears to be a fairly strong wind blowing, too.


The Enterprise didn't have any blankets they could beam down, maybe?  How about a tent, to at least block the wind and let them conserve body heat?  A Thermos full of hot chicken soup?  ANYTHING?!?  This ship set out to travel space on "a five year mission to explore strange new worlds"; didn't it occur to anyone to bring a parka?  Didn't anyone think that one or two of those "strange new worlds" might be COLD?!?

And even setting that aside, are we supposed to believe that the transporter is the ONLY way on or off the ship?  They don't have even one shuttle they could send down to pick these guys up and bring them back the old-fashioned way?

And even if we accept that this 400+-member ship went out on a 5-year mission to explore deep space THIS POORLY PREPARED, why is there even a question about beaming them back aboard?  Unfortunately, the climactic point regarding the 'Kirk as leader' plot comes when Scotty tests the transporter to merge the good and evil parts of a dog back together, and the dog dies in the process.  Kirk must then decide either to attempt the process with himself and Jirk, knowing it might kill him, or wait for more research to be done, which would doom Sulu and the ground crew.  A wonderful conundrum.

Only really?  Not so much.  If Kirk/Jirk go back through the transporter, Kirk *might* die.  If the ground crew doesn't beam up soon, they will definitely die.  So why not go for option 3, where they beam up the ground crew immediately?  They *might* all be split into good and evil parts, but at least they won't die, and all 8 of the men who come back that way can be held by security until the transporter is fixed.

So all in all, this episode had stupidity pretty much everywhere you looked.  And this made it difficult to focus too closely on the main subject of the episode; namely, the good and evil within all of us and how those parts of us make us who we are.  This subject was analyzed most deeply by Spock, in a conversation with Kirk and McCoy:

Spock: "His negative side, which you call hostility, lust, violence; and his positive side, which Earth people express as compassion, love, tenderness."

McCoy: "That's the Captain's guts you're analyzing, are you aware of that, Spock?"

Spock: "Yes.  And what is it that makes one man an exceptional leader?  We see here indications that it is his negative side which makes him strong.  That his evil side, if you will, properly controlled and disciplined, is vital to his strength.  Your negative side removed from you, the power of command begins to elude you."

It's a shame they couldn't find a way to focus on this discussion more, because it would have made the show more interesting.  The problem is, they never really provided even one example of how Kirk's evil side is necessary to his being an effective Captain.  Sure, Kirk becomes indecisive, but that's just how the show was written.  They never really provided a good argument as to why that happened to him.  And personally, I don't buy it.  Sure we all have our base emotions, and from time to time the Jirk in us comes out.  But I don't believe we need a Jirk inside of us, and this show did nothing to persuade me otherwise.

Finally, I really don't like the way the whole assault on Yeoman Rand was handled.  I already mentioned how credible reports of the Captain assaulting not one, but two crewmen, should have resulted in his arrest until the truth was discovered.  But aside from that, even after Kirk has been made whole again, she never receives an apology for the attack.  It's true that under ordinary circumstances, Kirk would never have done such a thing.  But the fact remains that she was attacked, and even though the 'real' Kirk didn't do it, he is still responsible for his evil side; he needs to make things right with her, and he never does.

And Spock's final line of the show is to say to Rand: "The impostor had some interesting qualities, wouldn't you say, Yeoman?"  What the hell is THAT all about?

Finally, a minor detail vis-a-vis continuity.  In the final battle on the bridge between Kirk and Jirk, the scratch on Jirk's face somehow moves from his left cheek to his right.

The Moral of the Story: We are more than the sum of our parts.