CAPTAIN KIRK FIGHTS A KILLER SPACE CLOUD THAT SUCKS BLOOD!

 

Episode Title:  Obsession

Air Date: 12/15/1967

Written by Art Wallace

Directed by Ralph Senensky

Cast: William Shatner as Captain James T. Kirk    Leonard Nimoy as Commander Spock             DeForest Kelley as Dr. Leonard H. McCoy AKA “Bones”              James Doohan  as Lieutenant Commander Montgomery Scott AKA “Scotty”        Nichelle Nichols as Lieutenant Nyota Uhura                 Roger Holloway as Lieutenant Lemli                        Frank Da Vinci as Lieutenant Brent       Bill Blackburn as Lieutenant Hadley           Majel Barrett as Nurse Christine Chapel      Walter Koenig as Ensign Pavel Chekov                Stephen Brooks as Ensign Garrovick                    Jerry Ayres as  Ensign Rizzo           Jeannie Malone as unnamed Yeoman   Basil Poledouris as unnamed Security Guard          Eddie Paskey as Crewman Leslie                

Ships: USS Enterprise NCC-1701

Planets:  Argus X, Tycho IV

My Spoiler filled summary and review: The episode begins with Kirk and Spock leading a survey expedition on the planet Argus X for the purpose of documenting its tritanium, a substance harder than diamonds, for a later mining expedition.  While conversing with his First Officer, the Captain notices an odd smell.  It is almost sweet like honey and at that moment, a horrified Captain Kirk knows exactly what it is he smells.  He quickly calls his security team over and orders them to adjust their tricorders to look for a substance called dikironium.  Spock states that this substance exists only in theory.  As the redshirts continue to search they think they find something and that is when they are attacked by the killer cloud. 

That is one big pile of...

Two men are dead and one is extremely injured.  The dead men were killed from being drained completely of blood.  McCoy says he has never seen such a thing to which Kirk then points him in the right direction.  Kirk mentions a case eleven years ago during a mission to a different planet, Tycho IV, that is a thousand light years away.  The starship on that mission was the USS Farragut and it had crew members suffer the exact same fatal injuries as these men.   Kirk has McCoy wake up Rizzo, the survivor, but he doesn’t get much out of him. 

Scotty informs the Captain that the ship is ready to leave orbit so they can rendezvous with the USS Yorktown in order to pick up a vaccine vital to Theta VII.   Despite the limited shelf-life of the vaccine Kirk isn’t leaving until he finds what is responsible for killing his men.  He orders sensor scans to be competed looking for more dikironium.

red shirts red shirted

We, the audience, learn through Dr. McCoy that a then Lt. Kirk served aboard the Farragut during his early years as a young officer.  (It must have been while serving on the Farragut that Kirk had gone to Neural and first met Tyree who we encountered just a few weeks ago.)  When the ship was attacked by this creature Kirk acted against it in a manner that the ship’s first officer wrote him a letter of commendation.  However Kirk himself did not feel that way.  In the mind of the Captain he had failed because he had hesitated to fire when first encountering the creature, a gaseous parasite.  Kirk feels that if he didn’t hesitate than he would have destroyed the creature instead it went to kill have the crew.  Among the causalities was Kirk’s mentor, Captain Garrovick.

Then as if fate were against our Captain or this is a work of fiction that needed a little more drama a new Ensign reports to the bridge.  The Ensign is named Garrovick and he is the son of Kirk’s former Captain.  Kirk, who apparently didn’t pay very close to attention to officer transfers this quarter, is shocked to meet the young man.  When they discover Rizzo has died Garrovick is visually disappointed because they were friends.  Captain Kirk offers the young Ensign an opportunity to have some revenge against the creature that killed Rizzo. 

Ensign Garrovick, what a coincidence 

Kirk goes down with Garrovick and others.  The cloud creature is formable it can alter its molecular structure at will.  The mission goes poorly and more red shirts are killed.  After it is over and they are debriefing Kirk is shocked Garrovick admits to hesitating before firing his phaser.  This enrages the Captain and he relieves the Ensign of all further duties and confines him to quarters. Kirk’s overly hard treatment of the young man combined with his refusal to go pick up the vaccine until he was finished with the cloud causes both Spock and McCoy to wonder about the Captain’s mental state.

Kirk in "the hunt"

Spock and McCoy basically pull an intervention on Captain Kirk. An intervention that goes remarkably well all things considered, Kirk doesn’t bite back or act with any anger at all.  At least he doesn’t once he realizes what Spock and McCoy are actually doing.  Once it begins Kirk calmly explains the level of threat that this vampire cloud seems to represent and how he has he has assessed that threat with the need to rendezvous with the USS Yorktown in order to pick up the vaccine.  I have more thoughts on this that I will save for the additional thoughts section.

Growing concern

While Captain Kirk is having his intervention with McCoy and Spock, Ensign Garrovick receives some tough love from Nurse Chapel.  She brings him some food because he wasn’t eating and when he tries to resist she tells him she has medical orders from McCoy that he eats or he will be forced feed.  This works and it turns out Chapel had no such orders and what she was using to pretend she had them was an information disk about an entirely different subject.

Things heat up when the vampire space cloud takes off out to space like a bat out of hell.  Kirk sends the Enterprise in swift pursuit.  It begins to look as if the Enterprise can’t keep up, but then the cloud stops and turns to fight.   Kirk is ready for battle he orders Chekov to fire phasers and photon torpedoes both proved useless against the creature.  In addition to fighting the creature Kirk also has to actively ignore Ensign Garrovick who, with timing on par with only Dr. McCoy, requests to be reinstated that moment. 

Space battle not going so well

The creature then heads directly toward the Enterprise and it manages to get past the shields and into the ship’s ventilation system.  It is at this time, after seeing Ensign Garrovick get on and off the bridge while being ignored the Captain throughout; Mr. Spock decides the Ensign needs a pep talk.  While trying to give the pep talk the creature attacks and Spock’s quick thinking saves the Ensign but he himself is now locked in there.  Garrovick calls for help and Captain Kirk heads down with a security team.  It turns out Spock is okay because his green blood has copper that the creature doesn’t like.  It’s not the first time being a Vulcan saved him from a vampire-like creature.  They managed to get the cloud vampire out by flooding with ventilation system with radioactive waste.  They can someone how do this without killing themselves but I can’t explain how.

Spock tires to pep talk Ensign

 As the vampire cloud flees the Enterprise, Kirk realizes where it is going.  It is retreating to a place where it last battled a Federation Starship: Tycho IV.  Kirk orders the Enterprise there and while he is at it he has a heart-to-heart talk with Garrovick.  The Ensign thought he was in trouble when Kirk brought up with the battle while they were on the bridge but what the Captain wanted to communicate was not the Ensign’s conduct but that the creature was invulnerable to conventional weaponry.  With that Kirk decides they can only fight it with antimatter.  Garrovick volunteers to go on a dangerous mission with Captain Kirk.  They transport down with a container that is filled with antimatter that if it were to get out could destroy a whole continent and strip the planet of its atmosphere.  It also has the side effect of interfering with the transporter.  They had a container full of blood to use as bait but the creature shows up and consumes it before they can set the trap.  Kirk decides that he will stand in as bait to which Garrovick tries to stop him because the thinks he is trying to sacrifice himself.   Garrovick is noble but flawed and since the Kirk is the greatest fighter in the galaxy his attempt to take over fails. As the creature comes for them Kirk then pulls an emergency transport and releases the antimatter.  It is close call but the Captain and the Ensign survive.  With the creature destroyed Kirk invites Gorrovick for some private time to talk about his dad.  

Additional thoughts: Earlier this season we got to see an obsessed starship captain transform into a modern Captain Ahab in Matt Decker who was chasing the Doomsday Machine.  There are times in this episode where Kirk reminds the audience of that with his smilingly singular focus of the vampire cloud damn all else.  However Kirk isn’t Decker, for Kirk never loses control the way Decker did.  Kirk is still conscious of his surroundings.   Kirk can see for example that a direct attack using conventional weapons isn’t working and he needs to come up with another plan.  Decker kept chasing after the Doomsday Machine firing phasers that clearly weren’t doing any damage.  More importantly when Kirk is confronted by both Spock and McCoy about his actions he can manage to rationally explain all of his actions without having to fall back on his rank and authority like Decker did.

Spock trying to fight cloud

Speaking of the intervention of McCoy and Spock I think that may have been my favorite part the episode.  Earlier in the series we saw those two try a Weekend at Bernie’s when Kirk had been split by the transporter.   They propped up the “good” half as so the crew wouldn’t lose confidence in him despite the fact he was clearly deficient.  In this episode they confront the Captain with legitimate concerns giving some of his orders.  There is no concern that the very existence of such an inquiry will ruin anyone.  A negative result could but not the practice of the procedure.  Kirk himself doesn’t even get angry about it but instead uses it as an opportunity not only to explain himself to his senior officers but as reflection on how his commands are being received.  Kirk did make some errors, not being more direct on how he knew about the vampire cloud and its threat was one.  Also not sharing his threat assessment early on with his command crew was another.  Seeing Kirk sit down and go over his thought process with his two officers was one of the best character moments in the series.

Kirk's intervention

On a lighter note, last I checked the USS Yorktown is another constitution-class starship.  So why are they not capable of delivering that vaccine themselves?  Why are they handing it off to the Enterprise like runners in a decathlon?  I think if that ship took a little more responsibly the Enterprise crew would not have that issue to deal with and could focus on space cloud vampire. 

Walking around with just a bit of antimatter 

Given how close Kirk was to Captain Gorrovick I have a hard time accepting that he didn’t know (1) that he had a son, (2) that said son was now old enough to be an officer in Starfleet, and (3) that he was now on his ship.  Doesn’t Kirk pay attention to who is assigned to where on his starship.  He seems to know just about everyone else.

Last but not least, Leslie dies. But we will later see Leslie despite his death later so how is this possible?  I think I have the answer.  The Leslie who has killed here was not Lt. Leslie who often see in the background but rather Crewman Leslie, who is the younger but very similar looking brother to the Lieutenant.  This makes sense when he dies under the leadership of an ensign.  If he was Lt. Leslie than he would have been in charge of that mission and survive it as he often does.

 FINAL  GRADE 5 of 5