Podcast Enterprise: S2E20 Return to tomorrow

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 have the USS Enterprise approaching a sort of destroyed class M planet, which at one point might have had Earth-like conditions. They’re approaching this planet. There seems to be some sort of distressing signal that they’ve picked up. As they come closer, they are faced with a lot of problems, and they also have to listen to this mysterious, disembodied, ghostly speaker that calls itself Sargon. He tells the Enterprise that he is one of the denizens of that planet, and it seems like he’s the only denizen of that planet at this point.

Kirk, Spock, and McCoy decide to have themselves transported down deep below the planet’s surface. There seems to be some sort of chamber that could support human life down there, and Sargon wants to meet them there, so they decide to go. It is also something of a compulsion for them to go meet Sargon because he apparently can control what’s happening in the ship, and he seems to be all-powerful, which is pretty frightening.

They find that Sargon is pretty much a globe of light. He’s a pulsing light within a plastic-type globe, and as Kirk approaches it, he’s possessed by the essence of Sargon. McCoy goes into a panic and tells Sargon to escape Kirk’s body because his temperature and BP are dangerously high. But not before discovering that whatever happened on that planet was some sort of cataclysmic event that took place 500,000 years ago. The people of this planet, Sargon’s people, were explorers. They had a big fight with each other and wiped themselves out. They also went off to lesser-developed planets and took part in their creation myths. This is a little confusing, as they seem to have been the source of the Adam and Eve myth on Earth, which is quickly dismissed. They were also the source of a creation myth on Vulcan, which Spock confirms.

What they want from the Enterprise now is to have the bodies of three people—Kirk, Spock, and Lieutenant Commander Ann Mulhall—whom Sargon commands to meet him using his telepathic powers. They also discover that Sargon was not the only alien on that planet. His wife, Thalassa, has also survived in her essence form, as well as a member of the rival faction. He calls himself Henoch. Against all common sense, Kirk and the crew decide to allow these three entities to possess them: Thalassa into Mulhall, Sargon into Kirk, and Henoch into Spock, which makes Spock grin as it’s a new personality for him.

From there, everything descends into chaos. These aliens have too much power. They haven’t had bodies in half a million years, and they want to keep the human bodies, pushing out the original personalities. Henoch, in particular, doesn’t care that he’s slowly killing Spock’s body. He even convinces Thalassa to do the same thing for a brief time. Everything goes haywire. Henoch wants to kill Sargon, take over the Enterprise, and achieve utter power.

In the end, Kirk as Sargon, Mulhall as Thalassa, and Spock (at least his essence) come together to defeat these alien forces. In a bizarre scene, it’s revealed that Spock’s essence has been stored in Nurse Chapel’s body. After Henoch is evicted from Spock’s body, Spock’s essence is returned to its rightful place. Everything returns to normal. Sargon and Thalassa share a brief romantic moment before choosing ritual suicide, being evicted back into deep space, where they die.

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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