Star date: 3619.2
Summary: While collecting tritanium (21.4 times as hard as diamonds!) on Argus 10, Kirk smells an odor from his past and suspects it signals the presence of an unusual cloud creature he had encountered when he was a Lieutenant with the USS Farrgut on his first deep space mission 11 years before. He sends 3 redshirts to investigate with the instructions: "If you see any gaseous cloud, fire immediately." The redshirts encounter the cloud, fail to fire at all, and end up dead --- two immediately on the surface, and the third later in sickbay on the Enterprise.
It appears that the cloud creature has the ability to alter its molecular decomposition, making it difficult to track or locate with sensors. It kills humans by somehow eliminating red blood cells from the body. Despite the fact that the Enterprise is expected to rendezvous with the USS Yorktown to receive "highly perishable" vaccines which are needed on Theta 7, Kirk is determined to remain in orbit around Argus 10 and seek out the creature, even though he acknowledges that "it might cost lives on Theta 7".
The captain of the USS Farragut 11 years before was a man named Garrovick, who was killed by the cloud creature. As fate would have it, Garrovick's son is a security officer newly-assigned to the Enterprise. Kirk beams back down to the surface with him and four other redshirts. They split up into parties of three, with Kirk and Garrovick each leading a party. Garrovick's party encounters the creature, and although Kirk has clearly warned him of the danger the creature poses, Garrovick hesitates briefly before firing his phaser at the creature twice with no effect. Garrovick lives, but the other two redshirts die. When Kirk learns of Garrovick's hesitation, he relieves him of duty and confines him to quarters. We later learn that Kirk's anger at Garrovick is due, at least in part, to the fact that Kirk similarly hesitated when he encountered the creature 11 years before, and ever since has blamed himself for the fact that the creature killed Captain Garrovick and half the crew of the Faragut.
Meanwhile, Spock and McCoy grow increasingly concerned with Kirk's single-minded obsession with the creature, which causes him to go so far as to refuse to even hear messages from Starfleet. They approach Kirk in his cabin and question him, possibly as a prelude to declaring him unfit for command, when Chekhov reports seeing the creature leaving Argus 10 and traveling through space at remarkable speed. After a brief chase, the creature turns and attacks the Enterprise. Kirk fires phasers and photon torpedoes at it to no effect, and the creature enters the ship's ventilation system. They flush it from the ship using "negative pressure" and radiation, but not before the creature enters Garrovick's cabin, getting a taste of Spock and leaving behind a scent which somehow tells Kirk it's heading "home" to Tycho 4 --- the same planet where Kirk encountered it before.
Kirk now realizes that shooting the creature with a phaser would have made no difference --- not for himself 11 years before, and not for Garrovick today. Kirk therefore returns Garrovick to duty and orders him to accompany Kirk to the surface of Tycho 4 to prepare a trap for the creature: an antimatter bomb, with human hemoglobin as the bait. However, the creature arrives and consumes all of the hemoglobin before the trap is set, so Kirk and Garrovick use themselves as bait, ordering the Enterprise to beam them up and immediately detonate the bomb. Kirk then orders the ship to its rendezvous with the Yorktown, and invites Ensign Garrovick to his cabin to hear some tall tales about his father.
Meh.
On this plus side, this episode doesn't have any serious plot holes or surreal jumps in logic. But it's just not very good.
Kirk's behavior is obsessive, and not in the best interests of Starfleet. They write in a payoff for Kirk's obsession at the end, when Spock makes the leap --- clearly not based on his famous Vulcan logic, but a simple wild guess as best I can tell --- that the creature is returning to Tycho 4 to spawn and split into a thousand or so of these creatures, thus posing a much greater danger to the galaxy. Remove that element, which is sort of half-assedly thrown in at the end, and the show boils down to Kirk risking the lives of who knows how many people on Theta 7 so he can pursue a creature which killed a few clumsy redshirts. Not exactly a great cost-benefit analysis by our Captain.
Also, why does Kirk assume that this cloud creature is the exact same one he encountered before? Sure, it's only the second time he's seen one, but the galaxy is a big place --- I've only seen one beluga whale in person in my life, but if I ever see another, I won't automatically assume it's the same one.
The best part of this episode is the scene where Spock and McCoy essentially stage an intervention for Kirk. This, of course, is the right way to approach Kirk about relinquishing command, not ordering a time-consuming "extraordinary competency hearing" like they did in the previous episode.
Other observations about this episode . . .
When one makes physical contact with the creature, it is possible to somehow sense the creature's thoughts/feelings.
Spock comes into physical contact with the creature, but walks away unharmed thanks to his green Vulcan blood, which is copper-based, rather than iron-based, like human blood.
On Tycho 4, as the creature approaches Kirk and Garrovick, Kirk orders Garrovick to return to the ship. Thinking Kirk means to sacrifice himself as bait, Garrovick tries to take his place, knocking Kirk down with another one of those pitiful pseudo-karate chop light taps on the back. Pitiful.
I'd like to know what the rules are for the transporter. The antimatter explosion starts before Kirk/Garrovick have completely dematerialized on Tycho 4, and they don't reappear in the transporter room until a full 65 seconds later.
In the scuffle that ensues between Kirk and Garrovick, Kirk throws Garrovick against a large (~10 feet tall) rock. You can see the entire "rock", which is clearly made of styrofoam or something similar, lift about a half inch off the ground and then settle back.
The Moral of the Story: Sometimes, a good Captain follows his intuition.
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