KIRK, SPOCK, AND MCCOY MEET A VERY OLD MAN AND HIS ROBOTS

 

Episode Title:  Requiem for Methuselah

Air Date: 2/14/1969

Written by Jerome Bixby

Directed by Murray Golden

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          Naomi Newman as Lieutenant Rahda              Bill Blackburn as Lieutenant Hadley     Roger Holloway as Lieutenant Lemli   James Daly as Flint           Louise Sorel as Rayna Kapec         

Ships: USS Enterprise NCC-1701

Planets:  Holberg 917-G

My Spoiler filled summary and review: The Enterprise has a pandemic on the ship. Rigelian fever has infected twenty-six crew members and has killed three.  If this isn’t solved soon the entire crew will be infected and most likely die.  So, in desperation they head to the uninhabited planet Holberg 917-G because of its source of ryetalyn, a rare element that is the key ingredient of the antidote. 

Saved by Flint

Shortly after beaming down they are attacked by a robot that can neutralize their phasers.  An older gentleman arrives, and identifies himself by the name Flint.  He breaks off the robot’s attack and demands they leave.  Kirk explains that they really can’t leave that they need ryetalyn or they will all die.  Flint is not very sympathetic and he and Kirk start threatening each other.  This all ends when McCoy makes a reference to the Black Plague.  This stops Flint cold and, almost if recalling a memory, he talks of rats infecting people.  He apologizes and sends his helpful robot to gather the substance that the Enterprise needs.

Flint invites the three to his castle.  When they get inside the three of them, especially Spock, are amazed at his art collection.  Spock identifies the paintings by their brush stokes as works of Leonardo Di Vinci, yet these works were unknown.  Upon further observations Spock discovers sheet music that is the clear work of Johannes Brahms.  This eventually drives Spock to drink as he downs a brandy.

Nasty robot

It turns out that Flint isn’t alone on Holberg.  He introduces the three men to Rayna, who he claims to have been raising since she was a small child after her parents were killed.  The young woman is both beautiful and extremely intelligent.  She impressed Spock with her interest in science.  She also appears to have captured the heart of Captain Kirk.   Flint seems to encourage the Kirk/Rayna flirtation even arranging for them to dance.

Flint’s robot finishes the processing of the ryetalyn but it did a bad job and the stuff is now useless.  It will have to redo it; McCoy is now going to supervise but now they are pressed for time.  It is not the only bad thing that the robot does.  When Kirk and Rayna start to get too friendly it attacks only to be destroyed by Spock.  This isn’t much of a problem because Flint has spares.  

Spock suspects something is up

Rayna confronts Flint about the bad robot claiming she could not have summoned it as she was not frightened. She accuses him of trying to kill Kirk, which he outright denies and then says she needs to say farewell for the Starfleet officers will be leaving. Rayna goes to see Kirk to say goodbye, but he kisses her and asks her to leave with. Troubled she retreats insisting she loves him.

Kirk and Rayna hitting it off

The three officers invade Flint’s private lab.  In the lab McCoy finds the processed reytalyn ready to go.  It seems Flint is trying to keep them there.  They then decide to enter the room that earlier Rayna said she was not allowed to go.  Spock tries to enter himself but Kirk insists and that is when they all learn the truth: Rayna is an android.  This lab is filled with different versions of Rayna all with their own assigned number.

Growing closer

  Flint shows up and they confront him.  It turns out the man has another big secret: he is immortal.  He began life as Akharin in 3834 BC, and he lived as a solider.  In a battle he received what should have been a fatal injury but it turns out his body has amazing regenerative powers.  For thousands of years, he would adopt new identities and discard them before anyone suspected.  He knew many of humankind’s greatest figures and was others.  In his long life he was King Solomon, Alexander the Great, Lazarus, Merlin, Leonardo Di Vinci, and Johannes Brahms.  He married thousands of times but desires and immortal companion like himself.  This is the reason for Rayna.  However, he needs the three men from the Enterprise in order to help Rayna achieve her full humanity.

Yesterday's Rayna

  When they try to leave, Flint revels his power and transports the entire starship Enterprise from space to his lap shrunk down to table top size.  On the ship, Scotty and the rest see on the viewscreen what appears to be a giant Captain Kirk looking down at them.  Things are looking quite bad for the crew.

Kirk and Rayna dancing

Rayna arrives and she confronts Flint.  She proclaims that although she is grateful for what Flint has done for her in her life, she is her own person and her life belongs only to her and that means she gets to choose.  She chooses to be with Captain Kirk and she plans to leave with him.   Kirk is cheering her on and after that wonderful speech on female empowerment she promptly drops down dead.   Apparently, the agony of choosing between following her heart and going with Kirk and betraying the man who had made her thing was had caused her circuits to fry ending her life.  Or it could be she just shorted out due to a design flaw, there was a whole room full of dead Raynas in the closet, maybe they just don’t last long.  

Table top Enterprise

Everything is restored.  The Enterprise is put back into space at the right size and McCoy is able to distribute the cure to everyone in time.  We also find out that by leaving Earth, Flint left the environment that gave him his immortality. He is now slowly dying.  According to McCoy he is fine with it and will dedicate his remaining time to trying to help humanity.  The only problem is Captain Kirk, he is broken hearted over the death of Rayna.  He is so sad that Spock thinks his depression will destroy him.  So, Spock does a mind-meld to make him forget Rayna ever existed.

Additional thoughts: So, I want to start by talking about the immortal Flint.  The idea of a man from ancient times who accidently discovers he is immortal and spends his long-life assuming various identities until they ‘die,’ all while rubbing elbows with some of the most famous figures throughout history is a fascinating idea worth exploring.  Due to his long life, he has a castle with a unique priceless treasures created by humanities greatest minds.  It is a great idea.  What I don’t like however is going beyond saying that he knew great figures of history to saying he was the great figures of history and myth.  Alexander the Great, Leonardo Di Vinci, and Johannes Brahms were fascinating people in their own right and shouldn’t be cheapened by pretending they were all the same immortal.  Each came from real families, had real childhoods, and grew up to accomplished great things.  It would fine to say Flint influenced them but don’t say he was them.  I have this feeling when picking historical figures, they probably just picked the first few names that came to mind.  After all, two of the people they mentioned Lazarus and Merlin weren’t even real.  

Kirk's own true love-no mind wipe needed

       Kirk falling so hard for Rayna makes absolutely no sense what so ever and is extremely terrible writing on Bixby’s part.  He knew this woman less than four hours.  Why is so in love with her?  He spent weeks with Edith Keeler and months with Miramanee, so it was easy for me to understand Kirk’s devotion to them.  Yet what is the basis for Rayna?  I don’t see any chemistry.  Is that it though? Is Kirk being drugged again?  Like in the cases of Elaan and Nona?  That might have explained it but we didn’t see any of that.

When Kirk has lost his great loves before, such as Edith Keeler and Miramanee, he just worked to move past it.  Even while drugged he recovered by re-committing himself to his ship, as Spock pointed out, just as Elaan was forced to leave the Enterprise.   So now however Kirk is so wounded by his lost love it is feared he will never recover, (although he seems fine) so Spock decides to do an involutory mind meld and wipe out the memory of her from Kirk’s mind.  I wonder if this co-character assassination on Kirk and Spock served as inspiration of the co-character assassination on Superman and Lois Lane in Superman II.  

Chemically induced to like her but go over her by recommitting to the Enterprise

Considering Flint is a human who seems to have recently left Earth, the source of his immortality, where did he get all this cool technology?  He was able to turn the Enterprise into desktop decoration.  That is some power!  How did he get it?  At the end of the episode McCoy states that he is dedicating his life to helping humanity, well why (I am breaking my own blog rule here) do we never see this technology in Federation hands for the rest of the Star Trek franchise?   Also, if Flint wanted an immortal android companion so badly, Kirk should have just directed him to the planet Mudd.

In the end the story is a good idea: the immortal man so lonely that he seeks to create a perfect companion, but the execution falls short.

FINAL GRADE 2 of 5