Star Trek: The Original Series
Season 1 Episode 4
Original airdate: 29 September 1966

“We’re all a bunch of hypocrites. Sticking our noses into something that we’ve got no business. What are we doing out here, anyway? Bring pain and trouble with us. Leave men and women stuck out on freezing planets until they die.

What are we doing out here in space? Good? What good? We’re polluting it! We’re destroying it! We’ve got no business being out here! No business!”

Given the original series of Star Trek was shot during the ‘60s I think I had a different kind of ‘naked time’ in mind before I watched this episode.

Unfortunately (for me at least) the only nudity on offer is Sulu, who strips to the waist and starts fencing random folk. As in attacking them with a sword, not building a fence around them.

Why does he do that? It’s all part of the plot, of course. As a landing party led by Spock explores a dying planet they come across its research team, all of whom have died in bizarre circumstances.

One of them’s sitting in a shower, fully clothed. Another is sitting at the control deck completely still as if nothing was wrong. And one woman’s turned into a mannequin for some reason (though I don’t think that’s part of the plot, I think it was just shit effects).

One of the landing party comes into contact with a strange red liquid and, upon returning to the Enterprise, starts acting strangely. He starts getting all doom and gloom, then finally turns a knife on himself. Calm down, mate.

The poor lad dies, but not before passing the condition onto other crew members. The thing is, it affects everyone in different ways, destroying their inhibitions.

A crewman called Riley starts acting Irish and tries to take over the ship, shutting down the engines and putting it on a course for destruction.

Meanwhile, the nurse – also infected – declares her love for Spock, while Spock suddenly starts getting emotional (which for a man who’s supposed to have no emotions is odd to say the least).

And then, of course, there’s Sulu, who decides to go ‘taps aff’ and starts attacking the other crew as if he was Dogtanian and the Muskehounds.

It all eventually gets resolved when McCoy develops an antidote (conveniently) and gives it to everyone, letting them focus on bringing the ship back under control.

They do this in a proper cock-teasy way though, because running out of time they decide the only way to right the Enterprise’s course in time is to restart the warp engines: a process that blasts the ship away from danger at such an incredible speed, they go three days back in time.

“Since the formula worked,” Spock tells Kirk, “we can go back in time to any planet, any era”.

“We may risk it someday, Mr Spock,” Kirk replies. You’d bloody better mate, after saying that, or I’ll be furious.

In all this was probably the funniest of the four episodes I’ve seen so far but also the weakest. Hopefully the next gives it a kick up the arse.

Finally, I’d like to point out that this is the fourth episode of Star Trek I’ve watched now and all four have been about the Enterprise being at risk from someone behaving in an abnormal manner.

At this point I’m almost certain that Star Trek wasn’t the series’ original name, but was changed to that because A Load Of Bastards Trying To Wreck a Spaceship From The Inside was considered too literal.

Other thoughts

• This episode’s got Scotty in it, finally confirming to me that he is actually supposed to be Scottish. What a terrible attempt at a Scottish accent though.
• Speaking of terrible, it’s probably just as well that Spock isn’t supposed to have any emotions. When he gets them in this episode Leonard Nimoy gets a scene where he was to weep for a good two or three minutes and it’s one of the worst bits of fake crying I’ve seen since Ricky Gervais pretended to care about people being bullied.
• There’s a wee bit of a scrap between Kirk and Spock in this one. Kirk slaps the piss out of Spock to try and snap him out of his woe, but Spock responds by giving him one massive pimp smack, sending him right over a desk. Kirk better not fuck with Spock again in another episode otherwise he’ll be picking Vulcan fingernails out of his arse for weeks.

Up next – Star Trek episode 5: The Enemy Within