Star date: 4307.1
Summary: The Enterprise crew is exhausted after its last mission, and is heading toward Starbase 6 for some much needed R&R, when Spock suddenly suffers an attack of some sort, and somehow intuits that the Intrepid, a Vulcan ship with 400 crew members, has been destroyed. Shortly afterward, the Enterprise receives orders from Starbase 6 to lay in a course for sector 39J to investigate why contact has been lost with the Intrepid and with solar system Gamma 7A. Shore leave will have to wait for a while.
As they approach solar system Gamma 7A, Chekhov's scan shows that all life in the solar system has been eradicated. On the view screen, they see what looks like a hole in the universe: a ghostly ring of misty white, with a dead black center. As they approach this entity, some crew members start to feel weak, and the ship's power levels begin to drop. The ship continues forward, and the energy drain from both the ship and its crew continues, until the ship is immersed in total darkness. McCoy suggests that they should turn back, but Kirk insists that they have a duty to investigate.
Kirk changes his mind in short order, but by this time the Enterprise is being drawn forward by something. They discover that reverse thrust somehow pushes them forward, but they can slow their forward progress with forward thrust. They soon realize that they are in a negative energy field, where all electronic and organic energy is slowly drained, and certain laws of physics are reversed.
As they continue their progress, they eventually find what seems to be the cause of the negative energy field: what appears to be a single-celled organism which is 11,000 miles long and 2,000 - 3,000 miles wide. Since a couple of probes sent out to gather data on the organism sent back limited data, Spock and McCoy both volunteer to fly a shuttle into it, in what is likely a suicide mission. After much agonizing, Kirk decides to send Spock.
Spock sends back more useful information, and seems to have determined a means of destroying the creature, but interference prevents his information from reaching the Enterprise. After communication with Spock is lost, he is presumed dead. Kirk decides to push the Enterprise as close as possible to the organism's nucleus and leave an anti-matter bomb there, reasoning that if it consumes positive energy, negative energy should destroy it. They leave the bomb in the nucleus set with a 7-minute fuse, and with only impulse power remaining, start to back out of the organism's body. On the way, they happen to brush past Spock's shuttle, and latch onto it with a tractor beam. The bomb kills the organism and Spock is reunited with the Enterprise crew. It's Miller time, and Kirk orders the Enterprise to proceed to Starbase 6 at warp 5.
This episode had a simple, straightforward plot, with no real holes in it. On the other hand, the pacing was slow and the ending predictable. So, it sort of rates a "meh".
As a subplot, there was an effort to develop the friendly rivalry between Spock and McCoy, but it doesn't really work. I watched this episode twice (like I do with all of them), and the two dialogues they have --- the first shortly after Spock's empathetic reaction to the loss of the Intrepid, the second as Spock is about to depart on the suicide mission McCoy had also volunteered for --- don't really work. In the first, McCoy refuses to believe Spock suffered a reaction to the death of 400 of his species, which leaves Spock saying that if humans were more empathetic, "It might have rendered your history a bit less bloody." The second is completely independent of the first, and seems to boil down to McCoy expressing a bit of sour grapes about the fact that Spock gets to risk his life while McCoy doesn't. But despite the close-ups on their faces, indicating that the director thought these were speeches of great import, they left me feeling, once again, "meh".
And I have one small quibble with the script. Shortly after entering the negative energy zone, McCoy recommends survival, which I interpret to mean he thinks they should turn back. Kirk forges ahead, telling the crew: "Our orders do not say 'stay alive' or 'retreat'; our mission is to investigate. We're sick and, we're getting sicker. We have no guarantees but we have a good ship, and the best crew in the Starfleet, so do your jobs, carry on." But it seems they could at least start by investigating the phenomenon from OUTSIDE the negative energy zone.
Other observations about this show . . . .
Spock insists that the Vulcans on the Intrepid were "astonished" to be destroyed by the organism, explaining that the planet Vulcan has not been conquered at any time in their history; thus no living Vulcan can comprehend the possibility of being conquered, or, in this case, destroyed. I can't pinpoint the show, but I seem to recall an early episode where McCoy makes a wisecrack about the Vulcans being conquered.
Either way, I find it hard to believe that on a ship of 400 Vulcans, none of them realized the danger they were facing.
Once again, I am amazed by 23rd-century technology. Somehow Chekhov is able to discern that all life in the entire Gamma 7A solar system has been eradicated.
The Enterprise uses up practically all of its energy trying to exit the organism. But after it explodes, somehow power levels increase again, until they're able to head toward Starbase 6 at warp 5. How does that work?
The exterior shots of the Enterprise when they are in the negative energy zone are pretty cool.
Kirk starts of the show with a funny, if somewhat raunchy line, when he's making his Captain's log entry about the need for R&R and states: "I, too am looking forward to a nice period of rest on some lovely . . . (gazes at short-skirted blonde yeoman) . . . planet." He repeats the line at the end of the show, and it's just as funny then.
The Moral of the Story: Eliminating threats to the galaxy is a typical day's work in Starfleet.
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