Podcast Enterprise: S1E15: Shore leave

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:

1. Synopsis or summary of the episode
2. Story structure
3. Character analysis
4. Our likes and dislikes

The synopsis:

when this episode begins, you find that the Enterprise orbiting an uninhabited planet in the Omicron Delta region. This planet has no animal life, no insects, no birds. There’s only a lot of plant life. In a lot of ways it reminds them of the earth of old, completely pure and green and park like, and the captain decides that they’ll take their shore leave, but the captain won’t go. Everybody else is ordered to go.

When they get down there, things start going awry almost at once because McCoy finds himself thinking and talking about Alice in wonderland. And then he sees a big rabbit, followed by a little blonde girl.

Sulu, who’s very interested in shooting, finds a gun. There are tigers and Samurais, and then Kirk is tricked into going down by Spock, and when he gets down, he sees people from his academy days, a certain bully called Finnegan. He also sees another woman from his past, whom we don’t know if she’s alive, but she’s definitely not supposed to be there. McCoy is involved in a little romance with the yeoman Barrows. She finds a dress that allows her to dress and appear as a princess, and then there’s Don Juan, who attacks her, and then it goes on like this. You find all sorts of strange things happening.

This planet does not have animal or insect life. And then tigers appear. There are no people. You find all these people from the crew members past here like Finnegan, and then there’s a Ruth and all these people are not supposed to be there. And you also find fictitious characters like Alice in Wonderland and Don Juan appearing, and there’s a Black Knight.

Things go out of control. That Black Night with his lance on horseback manages to kill Dr. McCoy or kill is in quotations because nobody really dies as you find out in the ending. That’s when things start going out of control. Everybody’s frightened. And then a certain alien in a long dress appears and says that this is actually an amusement planet that scans your thoughts and recreates stuff according to what you think about.

And if you’re a little careful, things can be very nice here on this planet. The crew comes down for their shore leave and has a nice time.

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!

Stay tuned in for our next episode! Enjoy!

Acknowledgements

1. Intro music: Music from anchor.fm
2. Shotcut for editing the podcast
3. References: https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/