Podcast Enterprise: S1E29 Operation annihilate

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: The USS Enterprise is approaching the planet Deneva. Captain Kirk is actually very nervous at this point because there’s something wrong with down there in Deneva, and Uhura is not able to communicate with the people there, and his brother is also down there.

And Spock very helpfully says that there’s some pattern of mass insanity that has been jumping from planet to planet, and now it’s going to be on Deneva. And Kirk is naturally very worried about this. There’s no response to their calls. While they’re approaching this planet, they find that a small ship, a Denevan ship is flying towards the Denevan sun, which is very hot, and then it gets very close to the sun. It disintegrates, but not before the Enterprise picks up an exclamation where the person on the Denevan ship says he’s free, and whatever it is, it’s gone. He’s free and he dies.

That’s it. So now, the issue is they have to get down on Deneva and with a small landing party. When Kirk teleports down there, he finds that the place is more or less deserted. It’s supposed to be a hugely populated planet, but there’s nobody there. However, they go down there, they look for people, and then, it looks like some people are coming out to attack them, but they don’t want to attack them, but they’re being forced to attack them against their will.

It seems they’re being controlled by something else or someone else We don’t know at this point. Kirk eventually finds that his brother is dead. His sister-in-law is acting crazy. His nephew is unconscious. So the sister-in-law and nephew, they take them back to the Enterprise and there they find that the sister-in-law is being controlled by something in her body.

She’s trying to tell them what went wrong on Deneva, but she’s not able to because something is choking her from within. And she starts screaming. Things go from bad to worse. Eventually she passes away, but they have to find out what is going on Deneva. So Kirk and the landing party, they return with Spock and they try to find whatever this infestation is, the source of this infestation.

And then they come across these icky, plasticy looking huge, pink colored creatures that are sticking to the ceilings and walls and making weird noises. One of them attaches themselves to Spock, and from then on he is also infected. He undergoes excruciating pain. He tries to talk, but this thing tries to prevent him from talking.

It’s controlling his thoughts, it’s controlling his emotions, but through his sheer Vulcan physique, he’s able to push down the pain and control whatever it is this thing is trying to do. The Enterprise must naturally now try and dissect these parasites. Parasites that are infecting people and turning them insane.

And they find that it’s some sort of brain cell or those creatures are some sort of loose brain cells of a creature that we never really see. They’re flying all over the solar system infecting people from planet to planet, bringing them down.

Driving them insane and through a lot of trial and error, to cut a long story short, they find that the only way to kill it is to throw intense light at it. So that’s the only way it can be killed. There is no other way of getting rid of it. It is resistant to almost everything. So the sample that they have in the lab, they take it to a chamber and subject it to that light, which I believe is 1 million candles per square inch intensity.

So when they do that, they find that the thing is dead. So naturally now Spock has to be cured and Spock being Spock decides to have himself cured without protecting his eyes from the intense light because the people down there on the planet cannot have that sort of protection. So he goes into the chamber, they switch on the light, and he goes blind.

And then after that, very conveniently they find that they don’t have to throw the full spectrum of light at the creature, just the ultraviolet light. So seed satellites are released all around the planet that release high intensity ultraviolet light, and the creatures are killed restoring order to some extent, and I’m sure we are gonna talk about this later, but Spock does regain his sight.

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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Acknowledgements

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