Star date: 4657.5 (given 15 minutes in)
Summary: Kirk, Spock, McCoy and two redshirts beam down to an unnamed planet in response to a distress call. They find there a man and a woman who demand that Kirk turn over command of the Enterprise. Kirk and the rest think they're joking, until they paralyze the landing party by pressing a button on their belts. The man, Rojan, explains that he, the woman Kelinda, and a few others are from the planet Kelva in the Andromeda galaxy, that radiation will make their galaxy uninhabitable in a few millenia, and that they are a scout party looking for a new galaxy to conquer. Rojan, Kelinda and the others are the last generation of Kelvans from their spacecraft, born during the centuries-long journey from Kelva. They have found our galaxy suitable, but since communication is impossible over such great distances, they must commandeer the Enterprise and return to Andromeda. It looks like Kirk and the rest are powerless to stop them, since the Kelvans can paralyze them at the touch of a button.
That's not the only weapon the Kelvans have at their disposal. Rojan and Kelinda keep Kirk, Spock, McCoy and the redshirts imprisoned in a cave while three others work with the rest of the crew on the Enterprise to prepare the ship for its journey to Andromeda. Using the same mind control technique he used on Emeniar-7 in "A Taste of Armageddon", Spock lures Kelinda into the cave and they are able to escape momentarily. However, Rojan quickly subdues them and, as punishment, uses other powers of his magic belt to reduce the two redshirts to small styrofoam blocks. Rojan crushes one of them in his hands, killing the female redshirt, but demonstrates that a life form reduced to this state can be restored, bringing the male redshirt back.
Not wanting to risk the death of more crew members, Kirk turns his attention toward trying to neutralize the Kelvan paralyzers. Back aboard the Enterprise, Spock and Scotty locate the central projector for the paralyzers, but are unable to destroy or disable it. The Enterprise begins its journey to Andromeda, which starts by passing through a "galactic barrier". Spock and Scotty rig the nacelles so that Kirk can destroy the ship as they pass through, killing the Kelvans and themselves, but Kirk chooses not to activate the self-destruct mechanism. Once through the galactic barrier, the Kelvans "neutralize" --- that is, reduce to styrofoam blocks --- the entire Enterprise crew except for Kirk, Spock, McCoy and Scotty. The remaining four are left to figure out some way to defeat the Kelvans during the roughly 300-year journey back to Andromeda, which will arrive after everyone on board has died of old age, on a ship led by Rojan's descendant.
The only possibility they have lies in the fact that the Kelvans are not human, but have assumed human form in order to allow them to travel on the Enterprise. As a result of his earlier mind contact with Kelinda, Spock concludes that the Kelvans are not accustomed to human sensations such as touch, taste and emotion. The remaining four thus formulate a plan to overstimulate the Kelvans in their human bodies: McCoy makes Hanar irritable by giving him injections, ostensibly of vitamins. Scotty gets Tomar drunk, and Kirk sparks a love triangle and feelings of jealousy between Kelinda and Rojan. The plan succeeds, with Rojan's jealousy ultimately causing him to engage Kirk in a fistfight. Kirk tells Rojan he is no longer a Kelvan but a human, and Spock points out that he is but the final link in a chain following a centuries-old command. Kirk tells him he can create his own destiny. Rojan decides to remain in our galaxy on friendly terms with the Federation, and returns control of the Enterprise to Kirk.
This is a pretty good episode for the first 45 minutes, but the ending stinks. It's almost as if the writers didn't know how to end it, and so after 48 minutes they decided for everyone to just suddenly be friends. It's a shame they couldn't have written a different ending like, for example, Kirk turns the tables on the Kelvans, reduces them all to styrofoam blocks, and ships them back to Andromeda on a shuttle craft (the Galileo, no doubt). Or pretty much anything else, really --- Rojan's sudden change of heart at the end really ruins an otherwise pretty good episode.
Actually, Rojan's capitulation isn't the only sour note at the end. Rojan is going mano-a-mano against Kirk because he's jealous of the attention Kirk is receiving from Kelinda. It makes sense that Rojan wants to kick his ass instead of simply paralyzing him. But why does Kelinda stand by idly and watch, without paralyzing Kirk or Rojan? And why do Spock and McCoy stand by idly and watch as well, instead of helping out by, say, subduing Rojan and Kelinda with a Vulcan nerve pinch and getting their paralyzer boxes away from them? Terrible writing and terrible directing.
Setting that aside, the plot is pretty good. The Kelvan paralyzer weapon is a great idea: nonviolent, but extremely effective. The ability to "freeze-dry" living beings is an interesting concept as well, thought they could have done more with it. Instead of everyone shrinking down to a plain white block, it would have been a nice touch for each block to have a unique pattern and coloring to reflect the uniqueness of each individual.
And despite Rojan's murder of one of the redshirts, the Kelvans are not a particularly brutal or authoritarian enemy. They are simply doing what they believe they must do in order to save their race. They use force only when necessary, and otherwise treat the Enterprise and its crew with respect. And while this is hardly the first time we've seen the crew of the Enterprise use human exceptionalism to solve their problem, we usually see it used against computers or androids. Watching the Kelvans fall prey to human weakness is somewhat engaging and entertaining.
On the other hand, it does seem that the writers are convinced that humans are the only creatures in the universe prone to feelings of love, jealousy, frustration, gluttony, etc. I would imagine that most alien societies, if any exist, tend to be more like humans than the Vulcanoid/stoic/bland humanoids in the show.
Other observations about this episode . . .
Rojan looks one hell of a lot like the comedian Bob Odenkirk:
Rojan, when the Enterprise crew first encounter him
Bob Odenkirk was actually their first choice for the role,
but he was only 6 years old at the time.
Another of Kelvans, Hanar, bears more than a passing resemblance to the comedian Kevin McDonald, but I couldn't find a decent picture of Hanar to use for comparison purposes.
Spock claims not to understand human emotion, but he certainly knows how to get under Rojan's skin --- on two separate occasions --- to make him jealous of Kirk's relationship with Kelinda.
The scenes where Enterprise crew members are "frozen" with the paralyzer devices seem reasonable, until you think about the physics of it. Unless you're sitting down or lying down, instantaneous paralysis of your voluntary muscle movement would almost certainly cause you to fall over. So the show would be more realistic if the Enterprise folks fell down when they were paralyzed --- not to mention a whole lot funnier.
The scenes where Enterprise crew members are "frozen" with the paralyzer devices seem reasonable, until you think about the physics of it. Unless you're sitting down or lying down, instantaneous paralysis of your voluntary muscle movement would almost certainly cause you to fall over. So the show would be more realistic if the Enterprise folks fell down when they were paralyzed --- not to mention a whole lot funnier.
And on the subject of faking paralysis, Shatner can't freeze worth a damn.
I do have to give the writers credit for a rare consistency. When the "good guys" were imprisoned on the unnamed planet, I immediately thought of the mind-control trick Spock used in "A Taste of Armageddon", and sneered to myself that surely he won't use that ability again, since the writers have probably forgotten that he has it. But I was wrong.
On the other hand, this is the second consecutive episode where the writer's have forgotten about the wise policy Kirk put forth in "Return to Tomorrow", that he and Spock should never beam down anywhere together. And since I'm sure this policy will continue to be forgotten for the duration of the series, I shan't mention it again.
The Moral of the Story: It's great to be human.
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