73. That Which SurvivesFORMULA: For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky + The Return of the Archons + Day of the Dove
WHY WE LIKE IT: Losira's funky transporter effect.
WHY WE DON'T: For some weird reason, the starring regulars are rather annoying in this episode.
REVIEW: That Which Survives isn't one of the very worst episodes in the canon, but it manages to continually annoy me. What it has going for it: It moves at a good clip, with a fair amount of action and even suspense. Scotty and Sulu get some stuff to do, and they do it well. Glad to see Dr. M'benga again as well. And Losira's transport effect, where she becomes a line and then a dot, like some old television screen shutting off, is original and cool.
What it has going against it: Plenty. First, though they try to justify Losira's feats with "advanced technology", it veers pretty easily into the magical. Consider: She's able to teleport the Enterprise almost 1000 light-years away, though still project herself to it, and then make it fly out of control at a record warp 14.1. The projections can only kill a specific person at a time, but conveniently, she knows the entire crew manifest and seems to read minds. She's also able to make a phaser overload. Her people could make planets. So how did these super-beings become extinct anyway? I think it may be appropriate that Losira's wearing a genie outfit.
Most distressing, however, are the attitudes of Kirk and Spock during this episode. Why are they so grumpy? Kirk snapping at Sulu a couple times is totally unwarranted, and Spock... Geez, Spock is more alien in this episode than ever, and for once, they're not doing the mutiny bit. All of a sudden, he takes every idiom literally, dresses down everyone who makes any comment at all or doesn't take each number to 3 decimal places, and even admonishes Uhura for asking for odds, like he's never calculated them before. These aren't the characters we love. I'm about as impatient with Spock as he is with the crew in this one.
There are other bits I find annoying. For example, the planet set seems more fake than usual - it is me, or do we see the rocks' shadows on the sky during the bouncy earthquake scene? But most of the problems I have with it fall into the categories above.
LESSON: If you don't want Kirk to go after a woman, give her some kind of death touch.
REWATCHABILITY - Low: A fair adventure, but I wish the main characters would lighten up. Star Trek continues its steady decline in quality, I'm afraid.
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