on 2024-12-19
Space, the final frontier. These are the podcasts of the Podcast Enterprise. Its only mission: to explore story structures, to analyze our favorite characters and plotlines, to boldly talk what everyone has seen before
We will analyze all episodes of Star Trek: The Original Series or TOS for short using the following guiding structure:
- Synopsis or summary of the episode
- Story structure
- Character analysis
- Our likes and dislikes
The synopsis:
When this episode opens, you have the Enterprise answering a ship’s distress call and captain Kirk forms his landing party that includes himself, Spock, McCoy, Lieutenant Shea and Yeoman Thompson. They beamed down to this planet looking for survivors. Now, what happens there is that planet looks quite uninhabited. And yet, Yeoman Thompson’s sensors pick up a human presence somewhere over there. And that is when the landing party, including Kirk, is accosted by a male and female human They look human, but then they tell Kirk and the crew that they’re not actually human.
They are members of the Kelvin empire of the Andromeda galaxy. And they’re here to take over the Milky Way, simple as that. And they want the Enterprise. So what happens now is Kirk and the landing party cannot allow this, but these Kelvins have technologies that they haven’t seen before. They’re able to paralyze people at will with some belt device that they have.
And then they also. Imprison Kirk and the landing crew so that they can be begin preparations to take over the Enterprise. Their idea is to take over the Enterprise, modify its engines and capacities and take it all the way back to Andromeda so that they can bring back more people. And this is a trip apparently that will take 300 years after the modifications to the Enterprise.
So while Kirk and the crew and the landing party is in the small jail cell. They’re blocked off by bars that their phasers cannot penetrate. They try tricks. Spock tries his mind meld. Nothing happens other than him getting a whiplash, a mental psychic whiplash. And then the, As punishment would be one of the Kelvins Rojan, the male Kelvin in charge of the entire operation kills both not kills.
He actually reduces human Thompson and Lieutenant Shea to some sort of dehydrated, chalky geometric form and he actually crumbles one of those forms thereby killing Yeoman Thompson and he says this is the punishment that all of Kirk’s crew is going to face, including Kirk, if they don’t do as he says.
Now this turns into a huge issue. They take over the Enterprise. There, there are very few Kelvins. I think there’s only Rojan, Kelinda, the woman in they found, they met on the planet along with him, there’s Hanar, and Drea, who’s the NA navigator and Tomar. So all of these Kelvins are now about the Enterprise, the crew of the. Enterprise. The human crew of the Enterprise is having a problem. The Kelvins are physically in human form, but they are not quite human and they’re getting used to human form. So there are some foibles and quirks that they have to get used to.
They have to cross a negative energy barrier at the end of the Milky Way to so that cross over into Andromeda and both Spock and Scotty decide to come up with an idea that will somehow explode the ship once they cross the barrier but Kirk is hesitant to give the order which turns out to be a bit of a mistake because after they cross the barrier Rojan decides to turn most of the crew almost all of the crew into those little chalky geometric shapes because those are non essential personnel according to the Kelvins.
The only essential personnel are Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scotty. That’s all they need. They don’t need anybody else. They don’t need Uhura. They don’t need you know, they don’t need Nurse Chapel. They don’t need anybody. Now, this is when Kirk realizes that the Kelvins are not quite human, but they are in human form.
They are literally trapped in their human bodies. And They did this so that they can enter the Enterprise and make that voyage back to Andromeda. But. Because they are in human form, they are also experiencing human emotions, and so Kirk decides to have a little fun with them, and maybe distract them long enough to get the ship back.
So he decides to seduce Kelinda, who knows she’s being seduced, but she finds it very amusing. Tomar is taken care of by Scotty, who gives him a lot to drink, and he knocks himself out drinking. Hanar, the other Kelvin is taken care of by Dr. McCoy, who injects him with all sorts of things and has him so jittery and nervous that he starts disobeying orders.
And Rojan suffers the most of all because he seems to be jealous of Kelinda and Captain Kirk. And that, drives him insane. So they don’t know how to deal with these human emotions. And this episode actually focuses on that, how much the human psyche and the, how much the human body can do. And if you’re not used to it, it’s going to drive you crazy.
And eventually there is a fist fight because there has to be a fist fight. And after that, Rojan, he is too tired to argue anymore and gives the controls of the Enterprise back to Kirk.
That brings us to the end of this episode. Thank you for listening to the Podcast Enterprise. Please do share your reviews with us and please share this podcast with any of your writing friends or trekkies. Live long and prosper!
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