Did I just sit through a half hour of classic Trek and not see Captain James T. Kirk?  I sure did!  That was unexpected, to say the least.  To add to the surprise, it’s a story by sci-fi giant Larry Niven.  To think that just one year later he’d be giving us the last two episodes of Land of the Lost – two excellent episodes I might add – it just enhances my opinion of his writing talents. 

This episode is another 25 minutes of well written drama, even if it’s both animated and a bit of a repeated idea in genre television.  The basic idea is that there’s ancient tech of massive power.  This is something I realize Star Trek was exploring a lot in animated form especially after the superb episode The Magicks of Megas-tu.  It’s the idea of ancient aliens and the gods from outer space; can we have more advanced technology out there that predates what we have today?  I’m not sure I believe we’ll even find out for our own planet, but it has always made for some exciting speculation.

One of the things I’ve always loved about Trek is that it has a sense of humor.  Frequently this is intentional, but not always.  Now, I grant you this came first, but I had never seen this series all the way through until now, so I’d seen the 1979 comedy The In-Laws long before this.  It’s a magnificent comedy and holds up to this day, chiefly for the performances of Peter Falk and Alan Arkin.  But there’s a bit where the heroes are being shot at and Falk has to remind Arkin to run “serpentine”.  When Spock has to remind the landing party to run “zigzag”, I couldn’t help but laugh while thinking of the scene from The In-Laws.   I felt a little silly about that because the circumstances were far from the same, but it’s such an iconic scene that I often use it in my real life as well, so it was no wonder it came to mind with Spock.  Another, admittedly lighter, chuckle came from Uhura referring to this week’s enemy, the Kzinti, as “unhappy neurotics”.  

In a nutshell the episode wins me over because it posits that the advanced races actually value peace, despite having made a very powerful weapon.  Here’s the thing: a weapon can be used offensively or defensively.  If used for the latter, you want something strong enough to work as a deterrent.  But if it’s used offensively, the creator of that weapon has a right to limit its use.  When the Kzinti get their hands on it and wish to use its maximum power offensively, it is programmed to destroy the one using the weapon.  I think that speaks well of advanced intellect: it knows there’s a time for protecting and a time for peace; advanced intellect doesn’t want to wage war on anyone.  

Out of sheer curiosity, I went over to Wikipedia after watching this episode because I was curious if anything was said about the advanced plot point.  I know there’s often a Reception section which talks about how the episode was received at the time.  Interestingly it was described thusly: “by far one of the best and most literate of the animated episodes.”  It does not specify why but I think if we consider the nature of the weapon, that’s got to be a big part of it.  It also mentions that Riker commented on the species in a TNG episode, which make me wonder if Dr. T’Ana (Lower Decks) was one of the Kzinti but alas she is not.  Oh well.  For such a great episode, I suppose it was too much to ask.

At least I didn’t have anything to pick on McCoy over this time around.  Maybe things just go bad for him when he’s in Jim Kirk’s company and an episode with Jim means he has less room for mistakes.  Who can say?  I’m sure he’ll get another chance as we approach the final two episodes of season 1.  ML