Overall I’ve found Star Trek to be much more uneven than I had remembered. This episode has some nice moments mixed in with its duds. Critical Notes are after the breakdown.
ONE
Scary music and a dagger wielded high. Stabbing and death. A man with heavy make-up examines his bloody hand. Elizabethan music. Cut to Kirk in the audience. Enjoying the show, he sits next to another, more serious man. “Watch MacBeth,” he says. We see Kirk’s POV of the stage play.
TWO
The play continues. MacBeth speaks to Lady MacBeth, and Kirk’s friend says, “That voice.” He’s certain. It’s Kodos the Executioner.
THREE
(There is no Three.)
Roll credits.
FOUR
Captain’s log. Enterprise left its scheduled course to investigate an amazing discovery of synthetic food. Or not. Cut to Kirk addressing his friend, saying, You diverted a starship on a lie? To accuse some actor of being Kodos?
(Kirk’s eyebrows are weirdly thick. What’s with that? And his friend Thomas, so far, only shows his right side to us. All of his shots are in profile. It’s very awkward, and obvious that we’re waiting for a reveal.)
Kodos, apparently, is dead. Maybe. His body was burned beyond recognition. Thomas finally shows us his left side, turning slowly during dunh-dunh music, to reveal a cheek and eye covering, like a full-face eye patch. He remembers everything Kodos did. And he and Kirk are two of only nine people who ever saw Kodos. Still, though, Kirk resists. Thomas will have the whole company over for dinner tonight, but Kirk returns to his ship.
Whatever he says, though, Kirk immediately goes to the ship’s computer for information on Kodos and this actor, Karidian. We get Majel’s computer voice going over general details. Finally Kirk asks for information about Karidian prior to Kodos’ death. Nothing. Kodos died and Karidian began. Now Kirk compares photo records. Twenty years’ difference make the photos look dissimilar. Regardless, departure is delayed while Kirk beams back down.
At the party, drink in hand, Kirk does a doubletake head turn when a coiffed blonde walks in. She is the daughter and fellow performer of Karidian. Flirting ensues. He invites her to leave the party — interest or manipulation, unclear.
Hahaha, what is on her head? A mantilla-boho hybrid. They walk out. Music swells, he leans in for the kiss, and… yikes. Behind her lies a dead body. It’s Thomas. Lenore seems surprised and shocked.
Kirk comforts the widow — I’ll find out why he was killed — then he private comms the captain of the theatrical troupe’s ship. Oh, haha, it’s John Astin. (That voice is so distinctive.) Kirk tells him to strand the actors so that the Enterprise can transport them. Will do.
Establishing shot of the bridge. And here comes Lenore, right on time. Oh, hahaha. She’s wearing a fur sack. Off the shoulders and barely covering her booty. With sparkle stockings! (How does that thing stay up?!) When she asks for transport because the troupe is suddenly stuck, Spock lifts his eyebrow at Kirk. She calls Kirk a good Samaritan and he has the decency to cringe at his own machinations. Then he hesitates, tricking her into bribing him with an offer of a performance for the crew.
Oh, no! As Lenore leaves Janice enters and they eye each other. Puhleaze! Our Basket Head is a professional. She would never look askance at a woman wearing an oversized fur muff on the bridge.
When Kirk directs the ship away from their previous course, he snaps at Spock. He’s nervous at his double game, it seems. Spock watches it all, thinking. His eyebrow is on a bungee.
Cut to commercial.
On the bridge Kirk still agonizes over the question of Karidian. Spock watches as Kirk accesses the computer again. Nine people can identify Kodos. Kirk asks for the list, and our old Irish pal Riley is on it. (They let him into another episode? Daring.) He directs Spock to transfer Riley back down to engineering, and he’s pretty abrupt about the order.
SWITCH
Spock takes his concerns to McCoy. The captain is acting strangely. Spock finds the arrival of the players illogical. Bones, drinking an aperitif, comments on that cute little Juliet. The two men exchange ethnic slurs against each other, and then McCoy pours himself another.
FIVE
Cut to Kirk giving Lenore a tour of the ship. They flirt. She leans against the hallway window, stretching out her fringe-covered arms. He smiles, he flatters, and all the while he probes. Yup, there’s the kiss. She leans in first.
Cut to Spock at the bridge computer station. He wants a report correlating Kirk, Riley, Thomas, and Karidian. In the hallway, Spock updates McCoy. First he reminds him of Kodos’ story. As governor of a starving colony, he ordered the deaths of 4000 people so that others could eat. The history of Karidian begins at almost the exact moment that Kodos disappears. Do you think Kirk suspects Karidian to be Kodos, Bones asks. He better, answers Spock. Of the nine who saw him, only two remain alive — Kirk and Riley — and the players were in the vicinity of everyone else’s death.
Cut to Riley twiddling his thumbs in engineering, his untouched meal on a tray nearby. He comms up to the rec room where Uhura strums a lute. (Yay! Just don’t let him sing.) As her melancholy soprano comes over the comms, Riley relaxes in his chair, his back to the door. We see a shadow approach. Close-ups of everyone in the rec room listening. Back to Riley and we see a gloved hand with a squirt bottle (!) squeeze something into his milk. More singing, and Riley lifts the glass. Whoa, the camera pushes in for a close-up as he sips. Nope! He takes it away from his lips. He fiddles with the glass, and then drinks. He downs the whole glass as Uhura finishes her song. She asks how he liked it, and we see him choke and gag, calling for help.
Dissolve to Riley in sick bay. His numbers are iffy. Bones and Spock stand over him. If he dies, only the captain is left, and he’ll be the next target.
Cut to commercial.
Bones works on an antidote to the poison administered to Riley. He and Spock take the report to Kirk in his quarters. Kirk goes off — stay out of my private affairs — and McCoy takes Spock’s side. He’s just doing his job, and you know it. Dropping the stubbornness, Kirk opens up. He saw Kodos once 20 years ago. Karidian is only an actor to him. Spock speaks with certainty: it’s him. But Kirk is unsure.
Space-wipe, and Spock continues his argument with Kirk in his quarters. A whiny vibration noise grows in the background. Do you hear it, Spock says. They both recognize the sound: a phaser on overload. Spock starts tearing the room apart while Kirk orders an evacuation of this quadrant. Double red alert!! Kirk sends Spock away as the sound intensifies. Holding his ears he looks desperately around his room. The red alert panel, blinking, shows a phaser behind the glass. Kirk grabs it and throws it down the garbage chute. Spock returns just as it explodes in space, giving both actors a chance to throw themselves into the wall from the impact.
And now, finally, we see Karidian, wearing a fur-trimmed robe. In his quarters he touches props and reads a script, studying his lines. In bursts Kirk without even knocking. Wow, he comes right out and asks if he’s Kodos. His answer: “I’m an actor. I play many parts.” Kirk gives him a paper to read into the computer for voice analysis. As he speaks the camera pushes in to extreme close-up. It’s Kodos’ execution speech. For the last half Karidian doesn’t even read from the paper. (Arnold Moss, by the way, killing the scene.) The two men go back and forth, arguing about Kodos and humanity in general. Karidian goes full Shakespeare at the end of the scene, chewing everything in the room.
SIX
As Kirk prepares to leave, Lenore enters and stops him. She’s cooly furious at the treatment of her father and the sense that Kirk used her.
SEVEN
Riley has recovered but will be confined to sick bay to prevent contact with Karidian. He overhears McCoy and now knows about Kodos and why he was restricted in the first place. Push in on his face as McCoy logs that Kodos murdered Riley’s family. (So the wild Irishman is back in the mix, too, lol.)
Cut to commercial.
EIGHT
The show. A small audience watches as Lenore comes onstage. She introduces “Hamlet”, and we see her broadcast to other parts of the ship. Meanwhile, Kirk and Spock compare Kodos’ vocal pattern with Karidian’s. We have a match, but not exact. McCoy comms in: Riley is gone. And now a comm from Security: a phaser has been taken from the weapons locker. (A lot of moving parts to the plot are now online, eh?) Red Shirts with phasers patrol the halls, looking for Riley, while Kirk heads to the performance.
Karidian plays The Ghost as Kirk moves about backstage. Here’s Riley with his weapon. As Kirk dissuades him we see Karidian, holding a stylized mask, speak his lines. (It’s all beautifully shot and edited, very evocative.)
The scene ends and Lenore in Ophelia garb greets her father backstage. He’s wild, possibly cracking, speaking of a voice from the past. She comforts him, saying that after tonight the last two that can harm him will be gone. What are you saying, he asks. She gets more wild eyed. Don’t look at me like that, she says. Grabbing her, he goes very intense. What have you done?! We see Kirk in the corner hearing it all. Karidian is agonized: You were the one thing in my life untouched by what I’d done. But you’re safe now, father, she says with total crazy eyes.
Kirk steps forward. The play is over. Karidian tries to explain and Lenore snaps, “You have nothing to justify!” She chews some scenery of her own until Kirk calls for the guard. Grabbing his phaser, she dashes onstage, scattering the audience. Yikes, close-up with heavy eye light on her green, wide stare. Kirk stalks closer and she fires, only Karidian jumps in front, taking the beam. When she screams, Kirk disarms her. Crying, she gives (I think) the Juliet death speech, adding the Hamlet players speech. (Lol, it’s a crazy mash-up of Shakespeare’s Greatest Hits.) Kirk lifts her away from the dead body.
NINE
Space-wipe to the bridge and business as usual. McCoy delivers his medical report on Lenore. She remembers nothing and still thinks her father is giving rave performances. Kirk genuinely cared for her, didn’t he, Bones asks. No answer. Just a small, sad smile.
CRITICAL NOTES
Another tricky one that showed its Enneagram when I worked in reverse order. The Nine is obvious and the Eight is lovely. Very dramatic with a build in tension. That leaves Riley’s decision to pursue Kodos as the Seven. Go back a beat from there and you have Lenore at the Six. We can’t know it at the time, but this is the last moment where she seems sane. If she’s supposed to be girlfriend material (a stretch in my opinion, but that’s what the show establishes), the Six is a good scene for her.
However, that leaves us with no Three. Nothing else in the beginning of the plot fits as a Three, either. We briefly see Lenore as Lady MacBeth in the Two. With a few changes, this would’ve worked as a Three. First, she’s barely recognizable. In every other scene Lenore is a platinum blonde. As Lady MacBeth she has mouse-brown hair. Why? Because she’s supposed to be older? Silly. Second, she delivers a line in three-quarter profile, only an obscure player in the show. Give her the proper hair and turn her toward the audience, let Kirk get a look, and a Three begins to take shape. Love Interest In/Love Interest Out. It’s not the greatest, but it would serve.
The rest of the Enneagram falls into line, with the weird interchange between Spock and McCoy as the Switch. This seems a common storytelling ploy: stick in a scene that fits nowhere else and use it to change the momentum.
Once again Kirk has a romantic attachment to this week’s girl. Has this man no restraint, lol? Especially because he’s in some ways gaslighting Lenore, his constant attentions start to become unlikable and tedious. She’s working him, as well, although we don’t know that until the very end. Actually, her whole character is inconsistent and makes no sense. Is she crazy or not? Rational or not? They cast her because her eye color is stunning, she’s a damn good actor in the clutch, and she was willing to walk around in a tiny fur tube. So strange.