Episode Title: The Mark of Gideon
Air Date: 1/17/1969
Written by George F.
Slavin and Stanley Adams
Directed by Jud
Taylor
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”
George Takei as Lieutenant Hikaru Sulu Nichelle Nichols as Lieutenant Nyota Uhura Frank da Vinci as
Lieutenant Brent Walter Koenig as
Ensign Pavel Chekov Richard
Derr as Admiral Fitzgerald Sharon
Acker as Odona David Hurst as Hodin Gene Dynarski as Krodak Bill Blackburn as Gideon Inhabitant Jay D. Jones as Gideon Guard
Ships: USS
Enterprise NCC-1701
Planets: Gideon
My Spoiler filled
summary and review: The episode
begins with the Enterprise settling into orbit around Gideon. The planet is looking to join the Federation
but it nevertheless has some odd ball requests to make. First, they don’t want to much contamination
of their planet’s culture so they will permit only one representative. Second, that representative must be Captain
Kirk.
Kirk is talking things over with Spock who will handle the transporter controls personally. Kirk beams down only to rematerialize in the transporter room. However, Spock is missing! He looks for Spock but cannot find him or anyone for that matter. The entire crew has disappeared and Kirk is the only one on the ship!
Or has the crew disappeared? For
we the audience see the crew of the Enterprise still on the Enterprise. They are wondering where Captain Kirk had disappeared
to because he isn’t reporting from where he was meant to be. They contract the Gideon High Council and
they claim that they have no idea where Kirk is. They don’t however want anyone searching for
him. That would invite contamination on their
poor planet. Spock has Sulu search space
slowly.
Some times negotiations don't go well! |
As Kirk wonders around the empty starship, he finds a young woman. She demands to know why he brought her
here. She thinks the Enterprise
is wonderful for having so much space.
Kirk doesn’t really know what to make of this woman at first. Her name is Odona but she doesn’t remember
where she is from. The audience can
clearly see that she is this episode’s love interest.
Girlfriend of the week! |
Spock has Uhura try both Starfleet and the Federation bureaucracy itself,
and all they get is the run around. Each
department tries to point the Enterprise crew to each other in an
attempt to resolve the issue. Spock, the
son of a diplomat, has a funny response to the usefulness of both diplomats and
bureaucrats.
Uhura is not having much luck! |
Odona still insists she has no idea where she is from. Kirk tries to tell her she is from
Gideon. He tries to show her that they
are in orbit around the planet. However,
when they get to the bridge, they discover that the ship is no longer in
orbit. Instead, they are in warp drive
toward deep space. Kirk manages to get
the ship out of warp and he was surprised when they didn’t feel any different. The screen shows the ship is stopped
however. Odona confides to Captain Kirk
that where she comes from the planet is over populated. There is nowhere anyone can go to that is already
crowded with people. Privacy is a desire
that many of her people would kill for.
As Kirk comforts her the stars on the view screen change to faces of
people, but the hugging couple don’t see this.
These aren't stars! |
Spock once again tries to get the Gideon High Council to allow them to go
down and form a search. As the two
bicker back and forth the Council finally agrees to allow the Enterprise
to test their transporter by beaming one of the Council members to the
ship. They give their coordinates and
Spock has one of the council members beam aboard. They send him back but notice the coordinates
that they gave for the Council Chamber were different for Captain Kirk.
And Kirk thought the monster on the airplane was bad! |
As Kirk and Odona wonder the halls all of the sudden they hear a strange noise. It sounds like something outside the ship. That should be impossible seeing as they are in space. They go to a view port where they have a window to the literal outside. When Kirk opens the port, he is greeted with a room full of creepy people staring at the two of them. Then they are gone and there are stars again. Kirk turns to Odona for an explanation but she seems to be just as confused. Then she seems ill and collapses.
Kirk then brings her to sickbay he has a strong suspicion that she has Vegan
choriomeningitis a condition that he once had that can be fatal but it is
easily treated. However, Kirk is
interrupted on his way to sickbay when Ambassador Hodin appears. He claims that he is Odona’s father and they
brought him her so her could infect her and allow her to die.
Spock to the rescue! |
Back on the Enterprise, Spock is in communication with Admiral
Fitzgerald at Starfleet Command. The
Admiral makes it clear that even through the Gideons in their request are
beyond weird, they are to take no further action. The Admiral thinks Spock will just forget
about Captain Kirk so he probably doesn’t remember what happened in
“Amok Time.”
Back on the planet and its fake Enterprise,
Kirk and Hodin are arguing about the situation and the fate of Odona. Hodin explains
their population problem and rejects any common-sense approach to the problem
that Captain Kirk offers. (I have more
to say about this in my additional thoughts section.) The only way, according
to Hodin, is to have a young person die of a curable disease so that those on
Gideon can see that it is possible for young people to die. This is a very bad
plan but it does show us that the Gideons are not the greatest of thinkers.
Kirk clearly annoyed at having argue with idiots! |
Spock decides to disobey the Admiral’s order and head down to Gideon
anyway. McCoy wants to go with him but
Spock, forgetting the lessons that he learned in “Amok Time” but also the ones
from the second part of “The Menagerie,” Spock tells the Doctor that he will go
alone. Spock sends himself down to the
same coordinates as Captain Kirk, and like Kirk ends up in the fake transporter
room. After making a log entry, Spock completes his search of the ship and
finds Kirk, Hodin, and Odona in sickbay. Spock contacts the ship and the two Starfleet
officers take Odona with them. On the
ship she is treated and cured of her condition. However, since she had been
infected with Vegan choriomeningitis her blood can be used to infect others so
she goes back to her insane planet.
All cured and ready to infect others! |
Additional thoughts: This story has two really interesting
ideas. The first is the Captain stepping
into the transporter and when he steps out his entire crew is missing. The second is a planet where both disease and
war have disappeared but they now have an extreme population control
problem. Either story would be worth
exploring, but they try to do both and as a result do justice to neither. I don’t think that this episode is bad but it
is just okay. It could have been much
better.
Try
as I might I can’t feel sorry for the Gideons.
This premise might have worked better if they were a pre-warp species
that our crew were exploring and having ended war and disease were in danger of
being wiped out as their oversized population consumed all their
resources. Too many people yet headed
for extinction would have made for a fascinating episode. Instead, we have a planet Gideon whose people are
the source of all their own problems.
You could almost say this episode is supposed to be a warning about the dangers of extreme pro-life anti-abortion politics and almost could have been if it had been executed well, but it isn’t. When discussing the problem with Captain Kirk the first thing Kirk suggests is sterilization, Hodin points out that this won’t work their bodies will just repair the damaged part. After that Kirk suggests that there are alternative as contraception methods. This is when Hodin revels their truth, they can’t use such methods because that would interfere with their cultural beliefs. All life is to be valued from fetus to old person. Since they have no privacy that has ceased to be a cultural requirement for sex, and with their love of life they can’t stop fornicating. They refuse to take preventive measures or give women access to abortion. You can almost hear Meat Loaf sing “I would do anything for some privacy but I won’t do that, and that, and that thing too!" Who can feel sorry for these people?
It gets worse they make contact with the Federation and instead of saying
“hey can we’re over populated could you help us find some planets to relocate a
great deal of our population?” No,
instead they hide their planet like a hoarder hides their house and try to
kidnap the Captain. Why do they do this? Because they think if they can reintroduce
this disease, they can convince enough people to agree to commit suicide by
voluntarily infecting themselves with it, that their planet will return to a
normal sized population. For some reason
they don’t see their “love of life” belief interfering with this as it has
every other possible solution. Now if
they make Hodin and his council more like a Kodos the Executioner-type of
characters then the episode could have been interesting. In a desperate attempt to do something about
the population problem with a society whose culture makes it impossible to
democratically fix, they decide to introduce some foreign plague and virgin-soil
epidemics will take route and drive their population down to manageable
levels. Seeing how the crew of the Enterprise
would handle that would be an episode worth watching. Instead, we have Kirk running around a fake
empty Enterprise for a good deal of the episode.
All by myself... |
I do like that the Gideons found the space to build their very own
underground duplicate interior of the Enterprise. However, I think this
feat has been replicated by Star Trek fans in real life. I wonder what
the crowed and self-centered Gideons thought when their government sealed off
all that space? Also how did the Gideons
get the specs for the Enterprise to begin with?
One too many people |
Gideon was applying to join the Federation but why would the Federation
even want these people? They want to
join the Federation but won’t allow anyone to even see their planet? The Federation should have taken that as a
red flag right there. They don’t even
want you to see their planet then they are clearly people hoarders.
Mr. Spock has seemed to have picked up on Captain Kirk’s habit of
bizarrely timed log entries. Spock beams
down to a fake Enterprise and his first instinct is to make an entry
into that ship’s log!?! I wondered what the Gideon’s make of it when they got to
listen to it. Were they proud that they
were able to replicate the ship to impress even Mr. Spock?
There is one part of the episode I really did enjoy. When negotiating with the High Council, Spock would turn to the crew for advice. Yet, he didn't turn the sound off. So every time Spock turned to the crew and they, especially Scotty, went on rant about how nasty they thought the High Council was the High Council heard the whole thing. I got a good laugh out of that.
One thing is sure he got to hear what the crew really thought of him! |
In closing given his family history it may not be so surprising to see
Spock lose faith in diplomats. "Diplomats and bureaucrats may function
differently, but they achieve exactly the same results."
FINAL GRADE 3 of 5
No comments:
Post a Comment