Podcast

Podcast Enterprise: S2S26 Assignment:Earth

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: In today’s episode, we find that the Enterprise has gone back in time to the year 1968.

And They’re apparently on a mission for historical research and 1968 is actually a decade when there’s been a lot of political upheavals and potential for nuclear war. So Kirk and the Enterprise crew, they are orbiting Earth, they have used the deflector shields to prevent themselves from being detected, but they are also shaken by a sort of invisible beam that hits them.

And this is very confusing for them because Earth does not have the technology to attack or disrupt anything in the, on the Enterprise in 1968. But there are something is hitting them anyway, and then they find that this is actually a transporter beam that’s hitting the Enterprise from about 1000 light years away, which is apparently technically impossible, according to Scotty, at least, and also a strange man with a cat in it with a silver collar materializes in the transportation room.

Now this person, he looks human, he talks human, he seems to be too full of himself, he says that he’s He calls himself Seven. He’s an agent of some kind. He says He’s all very vague about his affiliation, but he’s also , very intelligent because he recognizes that the Enterprise is from the future, which technically somebody from 1968 wouldn’t have been able to gauge.

He is not surprised by the technology aboard the Enterprise. He is not surprised that he’s in the Enterprise. He just says that his transporter beam has been disrupted and he’s here now. He talks to his cat, Isis, quite a bit, and also he talks about being about visiting an alien planet and he refuses to elaborate any further.

So finally, there’s a minor skirmish and he is knocked out, taken to the med bay and where Dr. McCoy examines him and finds that he is human, human, but, in perfect health. Now Kirk is in a bit of a quandary here because he doesn’t know if Seven is actually human or an alien appearing as human and he confuses himself and the viewer with this kind of analysis.

But then Seven manages to fight his way out of the Enterprise. He goes back to 1968. He materializes on the planet into a nice on planet Earth in a very fancy office. where he is interacting with some kind of a portal. I think. He interacts with that. And There is also a rocket launch that the United States is undertaking at that time. And This is part of the arms race. They want to show their prowess. There is a lot of undercurrents about sending hydrogen bombs into space and how this should be stopped so that Earth’s people do not fight each other and wipe the planet out.

And Seven is sent by this mysterious alien race to stop that. He interacts with the computer, who gives him timelines, shows him a bit of an attitude. He has to stop this rocket launch so that Earth does not wipe itself out. It gets a little confusing. He also finds himself with a very animated secretary who gets on his nerves most of the time.

And He’s continuing to talk with his cat. But eventually what happens is. Kirk and Spock also teleport down to Earth. They want to stop Seven from disrupting the timeline. Because if, because this event is taking place in the past, If Seven does something to destroy that rocket launch, it would also affect the future. With them in it.

So They have to do something to control whatever Seven is doing, to disrupt Seven’s mission, to find out who the aliens are. None of this happens. Seven finds that he can in fact, use the portal to go right up to the rocket. He opens a panel on the rocket side. He pulls out some wires. He’s disrupting it.

He comes back to his office and then where Kirk and Spock also find him. He uses that fancy computer to derail the rocket, and it’s coming down full speed. This is where Kirk and Spock intercept him, and Kirk, at that point, just as the rocket is coming down to obliterate some countries on Earth and everybody is on high alert, Kirk has another crisis of himself. And he, He is suspecting Seven of destroying worlds, and he doesn’t know who he is, and this is totally the wrong time for all of that.

Finally, he just trusts Seven. I don’t, I, I’m not even sure how to explain it. The rocket does not hit any of these countries. It is detonated in space. There is no harm done. And, The twist at the end is that that rocket, according to the past and future timelines, is supposed to fail.

That launch is supposed to fail. So, eventually, after all that we went through, the past is unaffected and the future is unexpected unaffected and the story ends.

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!

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Podcast Enterprise: S2S25 Bread and Circuses

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 opens, you find that the USS Enterprise is in orbit around a planet called 892-IV. They’re looking for an individual called RM Merik. He’s an old friend of Captain Kirk and he was in command of a spaceship that went missing on this planet and they want to find him before he violates a prime directive. And of course, Kirk, Spock and Dr. McCoy beam down onto this planet. They want to investigate and find Merik, but they don’t want to violate the prime directive and interfere with this planet’s civilization because from their scans they have found that there are cities, there is a civilization, there is a 20th century civilization. Actually, and there is a culture here. According to Federation law, they want to leave it as is. However, they land in this valley type area, they are promptly captured by a couple of people wearing very pale and grubby clothes. And They are threatened with violence and dragged off to the mountains. In the mountains, there are caves where an old man comes out. He trusts Captain Kirk for some reason. And The person who has captured Kirk, McCoy and Spock is called Flavius Maximus, which is a very Roman name. And It seems that these people who are in the caves are escaped slaves who follow the sun. And we don’t know what the sun is. They call themselves the children of the sun. They’re also very focused on peace and brotherhood and that camaraderie and that sort of thing. So they shun all kinds of violence, apparently. Even though Flavius Maximus wants to shoot Kirk, he doesn’t. And it also comes to light that the place that they escape from is Rome, an alien Rome that keeps slaves. The slaves escaped from there. Rome is still thriving. It has come into the 20th century. They have television, they have cars, they have electricity, and they have a television network that actually broadcasts all of their gladiatorial fights. Flavius was actually one of the gladiators over there and he escaped. So now he is one of the best gladiators but he has escaped and now he will not fight.

Kirk still has to find Merik and when he mentions his name to the old man in the cave, he realizes that Merik is now Mericus and he is kind of a high ranking official in the cave.

in the city. And Kirk has to go to the city, find Merikus and as things go, he finds himself captured, imprisoned. He meets Merikus, who is now in a strange mental state because he has to, he has had to watch his crew get killed in the gladiatorial fight. There’s also pre consul, I think, Bala is he, is he called a pre consul or a pro a proconsul Claudius Marcus, I believe his name is, who is almost in charge of the entire empire. And He is a very shrewd, annoying, irritating character who wants to throw Kirk and the rest of them into a gladiatorial fight for TV ratings. And also they managed to bring Flavius back into the arena.

Arena is actually a bit of a joke because it’s a small area in a studio where they have to stand within a rectangular space and fight each other to the death. And this is where McCoy and Spock have a lot of quips also. Spock is able to use his nerve pinch against his opponents, they escape from this area. Kirk has to use his wits to outwit his way out of this hellish Roman empire. And it’s. It’s all very, very surreal, actually, The experience of watching this is pretty surreal. And also, he manages to convey somehow to Spock about the Enterprise, that there is something wrong. And Spock has to use a bit of ingenuity to get the rest of them out of there. And Merik, when it, when push comes to shove, and when it comes to the end of this episode, he uses that last opportunity to get Kirk and the rest of them back onto the Enterprise while being killed himself. And this is where Kirk, when he’s back in the Enterprise, he’s wondering what the children of the sun actually mean.

And Spock thinks that sun worship is a very primitive religion, but then it turns out that it’s not the S U N sun. It is the S O N son. They are followers of some variation of Christianity. And so Kirk feels that this Roman empire will also fall.

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!

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Podcast Enterprise: S2S23 The Omega Glory

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 opens, we find that the USS Enterprise is orbiting a planet called Omega IV, and it’s also getting close to a ship called the USS Exeter, which has had some sort of problem with communication, and it has gone offline, and the Federation wants to know what happened to this ship. So Kirk, along with the landing party that consists of himself, McCoy and Spock, board the USS Exeter along with Lieutenant Galloway, and they find the ship is completely deserted. But after they do a bit of preliminary examinations, They find that it’s not deserted. They find that the members of this ship were actually dead and all the water has been drained out of their body reducing them to just some kind of crystalline dust material. The surgeons log that they find aboard the bridge tells them that there is an infection aboard and the only way to avoid any sort of death, the same fate is to have themselves beamed down to this planet.

That’s the only way. And the captain of the USS Exeter is also down on that planet. So Kirk and the landing party cannot go back to the USS Enterprise. So they beamed down to Omega IV. There they find Captain Ronald Tracy, who is the captain of the USS Exeter.

And here’s where things get a little bit bizarre because they come to a village square. They find one set of people, one group of aliens attempting to behead another group of humanoid aliens. The aliens in charge seem to be more Far Eastern in appearance. They are very humanoid. And the other group of aliens, the supposed savages, look like Europeans.

And one thing leads to another. The aliens in power are the Kohms. And the others are the Yangs. Captain Kirk finds that Captain Tracy is a little off in the head. He’s looking for immortality. There is something in the planet’s atmosphere that protects all of them from disease.

And because of that, according to Captain Tracy, at least The Kohms are living for thousands of years. He wants that kind of longevity for himself. But he also takes a dislike to Kirk and has him imprisoned. While in prison, Kirk manages to somehow befriend some of the Yangs over there.

He also gets beaten up quite often, as we’ll see in this episode. There are a lot of fistfights. Once he’s out of that prison, he also finds that the Yangs have some sort of obsession with freedom, which ties into the American constitution and the Kohms are communists. He manages to bring both these groups together in a very strange turn of events.

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!

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Podcast Enterprise: S2S22 By Any Other Name

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 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!

Stay tuned in for our next episode! Enjoy!

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Podcast Enterprise: S2E21 Patterns of Force

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:  In the beginning, you have the USS Enterprise heading for the planet Ekos, where Kirk wants to look for Professor John Gill, who was actually his instructor at the academy, and Kirk admires this man very much.

Professor John Gill went to the planet Ekos, he disappeared there, and there’s something seriously wrong with this planet, because as the Enterprise approaches, they are accosted by old style rocket with a thermonuclear warhead and this planet is not supposed to have that kind of technology.

So it’s very odd for them and Kirk wants to find out what happened to John Gill. He wants to find out what’s going on in this planet. He and Spock down to this planet, and immediately they find that something is really, really off because it looks like they stepped into the 1930s and 1940s Nazi Germany.

There are the Ecosians here are wearing SS uniforms and they are also hunting down the denizens of the neighboring planet, which is conveniently called Zeon. And they are hunting them, persecuting them, killing them. They also have technologies that they shouldn’t have like guns and jeeps and stuff like that.

So it is a very dangerous situation to be in. Kirk and Spock are almost immediately captured. They also see propaganda videos by a woman called Daras. She’s talking about the Führer, and the Führer ultimately turns out to be John Gill.

Well, now Kirk and Spock are arrested, Kirk is whipped, Spock is whipped there are some issues.There are so many issues, they’re thrown into jail along with a Zeon called, Isak. They use with some ingenuity using their transponders they managed to get out of jail and they also find an underground group of Zeons who are trying to overthrow this government that is very similar to Nazi Germany.

They want to get rid of the Führer also because he started all of this and they also find that the woman who was part of the propaganda video, Daras, is also part of the underground. So she’s working for the Zeons and not for the pseudo Nazi party.

And eventually they managed to, with a lot of ingenuity, come to the so called Nazi headquarters, they want to meet the Führer and confront him.But when they get there, they find that this Government is actually being headed by Melakon, who is the second in command.

And John Gill has been drugged. He’s been forced to say things against his will. And Kirk, using his creativity somehow manages to get access to a broadcasting booth where John Gill is kept drugged and forced to say things.

He convinces him to come out of that stupor and somehow make a proper announcement, denouncing what he has done so far.

And towards the end, you find that John Gill, despite violating the prime directive, despite creating a mess on this planet, what he wanted to do was actually bring about some sort of order and structure. For some reason, he decided to model the government based on the Nazi party, because he thought that if the leadership is benevolent, the planet would be able to function in a good way.

That’s how the episode ends with order restored a new leader in place and the Ekosians attempting to create peace with Zeon and as Kirk says towards the end, absolute power corrupts absolutely.

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!

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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!

Stay tuned in for our next episode! Enjoy!

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Podcast Enterprise: S2E19 Private Little War

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 opens, what you have is McCoy, Kirk, and Spock. They’re on this planet called Neural, and it’s pretty green, and it’s pretty lush. And These three are there to do some scientific experiments on the plants of this planet, because the plants apparently have medicinal value, and These three crew members want to collect samples and kind of develop them into whatever they can be developed into.

But as they are conducting their investigations, they find that the inhabitants of this planet for some reason suddenly have firearms. And as far as they know, this is a planet that is still in its primitive stages. So the civilization here hasn’t become a civilization and they are supposed to be in tribal societies.

And something has obviously happening. to them that they have suddenly got firearms, which is way too advanced for them at this point. And it is here that Kirk sees that one group of tribesmen with firearms is trying to attack another group of tribesmen. And he knows the leader of the other group of tribesmen and he wants to save him because Kirk apparently has been to this planet some 13 years back as as a younger officer and he has befriended this particular tribesman and he saves him from an ambush.

But while all of this is happening, Spock is attacked by an ape like creature called a mugato and apparently that thing’s bites and slashes are poisonous. While they managed to defeat this mugato, he saved his friend, but then that action actually brought them in sight of the other tribesmen, and now they get attacked.

Spock is shot, and they have to make an emergency teleportation back to the ship so that he can be healed. And while this is going on, Kirk is actually pretty confused because like I said before, this is not a planet that has had much development. They are also protected by the prime directive, which means outside interference cannot happen.

So someone or something has broken that and allowed them to develop firearms or they were given firearms as form of some sort of bribe. We don’t know at this point. They get back to the ship. Spock is in very bad condition, and we are also introduced to a new character, Dr. Nenga, who has to treat Spock.

And while and The thing is, now Kirk wants to go back to the planet and try and find out what is happening there and why they have firearms. So he, along with McCoy, teleport, transport themselves back to Neural. When they do that, this mugato comes back, the mate of the mugato, I think, or another mugato, I’m not very sure, comes back, attacks Kirk, and poisons him.

And now he’s in a very serious state. McCoy manages to contact Kirk’s friend and have him take him to the village on Neural. And the Apparently, this friend’s wife has some healing capacity, so she will be able to extract the poison from Kirk, is what we understand. And Kirk’s friend is now chieftain his wife is a very ambitious woman.

She comes back to where Kirk is being stationed. She heals Kirk and now she has designs on Kirk and then eventually you learn that she also wants her husband to be one of the most powerful individuals on that planet. This particular tribe does not have firearms her husband is something of a pacifist.

He does not want weapons and violence, but the other tribe does have weapons and violence, and she wants him to be like that so that the tribes are equal and he gets more power. Kirk, after he has recovered from the poison, somehow takes her point of view because it dawns on him that the other tribe has firearms because of the Klingons. It all gets pretty complicated as as the story progresses. Kirk manages to infiltrate the other tribe along with Spock and his friend Tyree. And they’ve, no, apologies, he manages to infiltrate the other tribe, They find that the other tribe is being given firearms by the Klingons, just as he has suspected, and then now Kirk is completely I wouldn’t call it influenced, but he is kind of swayed by his friend’s wife to kind of arm the peaceful tribe also with firearms and he begins to do so thereby breaking the prime directive.

And as this is happening, One event leads to another, and then It also comes to be that this particular woman, the wife of Kirk’s friend, is also something of a traitor. She wants power. She manages to steal Kirk’s phaser because that is the most powerful weapon she has ever seen.

First of all, she tries to seduce Kirk. When that doesn’t work very well, or it, something goes awry, she steals Kirk’s phaser. She goes to the other tribe, she’s ambushed by the other tribe, and then she’s killed by the other tribe. And this is, Her killing was actually the catalyst that brought about total change on that planet, because Kirk’s friend Tyree, now he decides that he will opt for violence as a form of vengeance and the episode ends there.

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!

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Podcast Enterprise: S2S24 The Ultimate Computer

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 USS Enterprise has been summoned to a space station and Kirk is very confused about this because his crew has most of his crew has been offloaded onto the space station into the security holding area and he has no idea what’s going on. But once there, he is told by Commodore Bob Wesley of the USS Lexington that the great honor has been conferred on the Enterprise. A computer is going to be installed on the Enterprise that will take over most of what the crew does. The ship won’t require a crew after this. This is of course very annoying for kirk because first of all it he wasn’t told about this and secondly, he is very suspicious of this computer Now this computer has been built by a genius called Dr Richard Daystrom. He has made a lot of revolutionary technologies that are used in almost all the starships.

They bring about this computer, the M5, they install it in engineering. Dr. Daystrom is a very smug, confident character who seems to treat this computer as a child. And it is also something that bothers Kirk because he feels that something is going wrong. Part of it has to do with the fact that he might lose his job to this computer. And part of it is something else that he cannot explain. Quickly his fears are confirmed when this computer completely takes over the Enterprise. The first mission that they have, a trial mission is where they have to go to planet Alpha Carinae II. The computer uses its recommendations to recommend a landing party that does not include Kirk because Kirk is apparently non essential personnel. That bothers him. After that, there is a fake drill that wants to check the computer’s capabilities in a fight or in a battle, which it does admirably and passes the test. And Kirk is still unhappy about this because he feels that the computer has way too much power.

It cannot be disengaged. And eventually what happens is the computer manages to take over the Enterprise as these things do. It does not respond to anybody’s commands. It has overridden Kirk’s authority. It destroys a robot mining ship just like that, because it felt like it. It won’t allow anybody to deactivate it because it’s got some measures of self-preservation built in. Then, Kirk also discovers through Spock that this computer is not behaving as a computer should. It’s behaving very erratically and illogically. And then They find that Dr. Daystrom, who’s slightly unbalanced in the head, has impressed his engrams onto the computer, making it behave very oddly. By the time the second mock drill comes along, this M5 is out of control.

It wants to destroy everything in its path. Kirk has to figure out a way to make it stop it. But before he can do that, it has already attacked ships. It has killed people. And finally, what we see is Kirk using a bit of ingenuity. to talk his way into deactivating the computer.

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!

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Podcast Enterprise: S2E18 Immunity Syndrome

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 in a state of exhaustion.

Everybody on board is extremely tired after their last mission and they’re looking forward to some short leave on Starbase 6 and they’re on their way to the Starbase 6. Here, on the way though, Uhura picks up some distorted signals and with some sector coordinates. There’s also a lot of static with this communication, so she can’t make out what they are saying.

Eventually, though she does get through, and this communication is coming from Starbase 6, they want the Enterprise to change course and go to the Gamma 7A system where the Intrepid was last seen investigating. This is a Vulcan ship and something has happened to the Intrepid which the Enterprise must now investigate Kirk is a little reluctant to do it because everybody is so tired.

While they’re in the process of changing course, Spock wasn’t goes into a state of shock because he has apparently suffered some sort of a psychic attack where he has received mental communication of some kind from the Vulcan ship Intrepid, and it seems that everybody on board the Interpret has been killed.

And he also says, eventually later, much later, Spock also says that they were surprised by this death that suddenly, suddenly hit them. And this is a huge mystery. As the Enterprise goes to the Gamma 7A system, they find that there’s something or there’s something completely wrong that the system is dead.

There are no people, there is no life. And they also approach some sort of a dark zone, a dead zone. They can’t see anything. The stars are blotted out and it seems like a gash in deep space. They can’t see anything beyond it. They are not able to probe into it and they’re not able to see it except for this large void right directly in their path.

Spock has trouble trying to figure out what it is exactly and this irritates Kirk quite a bit. But, and as they approach this black zone, it seems that everyone is getting more and more tired. The engines are somehow losing power. There’s a lot of issues with the forward thrust because engineering has issues and the ship’s systems have issues.

And then finally Kirk, after a briefing with McCoy and Spock decides to send some sort of a probe into this dark zone. And by this time, the Enterprise has also entered the dark zone. So they’re losing power. They’re losing light. They’re losing energy. Everybody’s beyond tired and they need to be given boosters.

After some investigation, it is found that this dead zone is actually some sort of a shielding for a single cell creature, an amoeba-type creature that kind of creates a zone around it. It radiates negative energy and it leaches off the energy of anything that approaches it.

And It’s sometimes it’s also capable of killing off entire solar systems. And the Intrepid had approached this creature and it got killed in the process. It’s not actively killing the, um, it’s not actively killing anything that approaches it. And you just die. That’s what it does. And The radius of this thing is about 11, 000 miles, apparently, which is huge.

Both McCoy and Spock volunteer to travel into this creature to try and figure out a way to destroy it. However, Spock wins over McCoy, which causes a bit of irritation for McCoy. And we can talk about it. And He takes a shuttlecraft, goes into the thing to study it, and then through his analysis and studies of this amoeba, they find that they can actually blow it up.

The episode ends like that because they have to, they figure out this way, how to blow it up. They use a certain way to blow it up and you can talk about it. And as there is also some issue with the gravitational pull of this thing, because it’s drawing the ship forward.

They cannot break free of that pull. They rig an explosion, break free of it, move backwards, grab the shuttlecraft with Spock in it and his heroics and whatever jokes he has with McCoy, they grab Spock in the shuttle craft, they go back and this thing was finally killed. And that’s how the episode ends.

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!

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Podcast Enterprise: S2E17 Piece of the Action

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, the USS Enterprise is in orbit around Sigma Iotia II. They’ve arrived at this planet in response to a radio signal from the Horizon, a ship that visited Sigma Iotia II about a hundred years ago. The Horizon, lacking the non-interference directive that later became Starfleet policy, inadvertently contaminated the culture on Sigma Iotia II. The Enterprise’s mission is to check on the planet and its civilization, assessing the impact of this contamination.

Upon approaching the planet, the crew receives an invitation from a character named Bela Okmyx (or Oxmyx, as the pronunciation varies). He refers to himself as “Boss” and requests a meeting with Captain Kirk. Amused, Kirk decides to investigate and beams down to Sigma Iotia II with Spock and McCoy. Upon arrival, they find a world that looks strikingly like Chicago of the 1920s, complete with people dressed in suits, women in frocks, and a gangster-like atmosphere. Almost immediately, they are accosted by gangsters claiming to be henchmen of Okmyx.

The gangsters take them to a large building where they find Okmyx playing pool. He speaks to Kirk in a half-polite, somewhat friendly manner. Spock soon discovers the source of the cultural contamination left by the Horizon—a book about the Chicago mobs of the 1920s. The Iotians, being highly intelligent and imitative, adopted this book as a sort of holy guide, shaping their entire culture around it and turning themselves into gangsters.

Okmyx becomes a problem for Kirk when he demands that Kirk supply him with weapons—specifically, the phasers he calls “heaters.” He wants these weapons to wage war against rival gang leaders and unite all the gangs on Sigma Iotia II under his rule. Naturally, Kirk refuses, leading Okmyx to imprison him. However, Kirk manages to escape by inventing a nonsensical card game called Fizzbin. Despite escaping, Kirk is promptly captured by a rival mob boss, who has similar demands—wanting weapons and control of the Enterprise.

Kirk finds himself in a precarious situation, needing to use all his wits to prevent these gangs from destroying each other and to instill some semblance of unity. There are several memorable scenes, including Kirk’s attempt to drive a car, which adds a humorous touch. Eventually, Kirk manages to bring the two gang bosses, along with others, into one place. He demonstrates the power of the Enterprise, which helps him get their attention. Adopting a gangster persona himself, Kirk talks about cuts and profits, appealing to their interests, even though it’s against Starfleet regulations. Despite the chaos, he succeeds in uniting the gangs.

Finally, the crew of the Enterprise, including Kirk, is released by the gang bosses, and they return to the ship. However, the episode ends with a twist—McCoy realizes he left something very important behind on Sigma Iotia II, which hints at potential future problems.

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!

Continue reading