A Guest blog by Mindless-Droid

This week’s classic Star Trek episode is Assignment: Earth. The official site synopsis is here The Enterprise having travel back through time to the year 1968 to study Earth history intercepts an alien transporter beam. Materializing in the transporter room is Gary Seven and his cat Isis. Seven claims to be a human trained by an alien race and sent back to Earth to watch over humanity. Kirk’s dilemma is Seven telling the truth or is he an alien out to destroy the human race.

This episode was the season two finale and was actually a pilot episode for a series that would feature the adventures of Gary Seven his cat Isis well what appears to be a cat and Roberta Morgan. With rumors of Star Trek being canceled Gene Rodenberry hoped to get the series picked up for the fall but Star Trek was renewed and the new series was not picked up but the characters did appear in several Star Trek books and comics.

If I had to skip an episode this one would be it. I’m not a fan of time travel in Star Trek especially when it seems so easy and routine. It can work as in Tomorrow is Yesterday when the time travel is an accident or as in The City on the Edge of Forever where you have an ancient being or machine as the guardian tells Spock that is something of a mystery but when it becomes to common and easy it dilutes the dramatic impact of it. If the Starfleet can just send starships back in time whenever they want who’s to say that there isn’t an infinite number of timelines. Actually you could argue that most of the original series is in a different timeline after the events in the first season episode The Naked Time when the Enterprise is sent back three days in time while cold starting the warp engines. Now I’m confusing myself. Anyway well one more thing although I liked Star Trek IV I always wished McCoy would have said to Scotty “How do you know he did.” after Scotty says about the guy they give the formula for transparent aluminum to “How do you know he didn’t invent the thing.” I digress and this discussion may be better left to another time. See what I did there.

I did like the re-mastered shot of the Enterprise in orbit with the moon in the background one of the few high points. I found it unusual that Spock just so happened to be in the transporter room when the alien transport beam arrived I’m sure no one would be beaming down to 20th century Earth so why was he there? Why would the obviously more powerful and sophisticated alien transport beam lock on to the Enterprises transporter instead of just reaching its destination?

Gary Seven has a cat that turns into a women haven’t we already seen this in Catspaw? So Seven is a human taken to an alien planet trained and sent back to watch over Earth but he knows the Enterprise is from the future because Spock is a Vulcan but he’s from the present this is why time travel episodes give me a headache. Looking back you would know Gary Seven wasn’t a bad guy he didn’t kill the red shirt guard he only put him to sleep. His computer on the other hand has a more annoying voice than the Enterprise’s. So Seven escapes the ship and Kirk decides to risk going down to the planet and who does he take along to 1968 Earth well the alien of course. I know Spock is a main character but why do they always take him along when they know he’ll stick out like a sore thumb.

You knew the second Roberta walked in she would be the one who ends up stumbling upon all the futuristic gadgets and gizmos. One of the good parts of the episode is when she comes to Seven’s defense and points his weapon at Kirk but Seven stops her as the weapon was set to kill. This was the signal to Kirk that Seven was on the up and up. Contrary the struggle with Kirk and Spock was odd and you just knew Spock’s hat would come off. So after returning to the ship and deciding to beam back down again who do we decide to take along the alien of course? Then they give Spock that ridiculous hat. He looked like a tourist. What is it with Star Trek and goofy hats? Later we also have the accidental beam up of the locals which they just beam them right back down. Nothing to see here gentlemen move along move along.

When Seven was headed to the rocket base why beam himself onto the base away from his target? Why not just beam himself onto the rocket gantry? He has a transporter that can transport him half way across the galaxy but he has to hide in a trunk to get to the rocket. Speaking of the rocket the Saturn V is still an awesome piece of machinery and it’s still an impressive sight to see a launch. I wish I could have seen one live it must have been an awesome sight. It’s a shame we have practically moth balled our space program. It seemed a bit of a stretch when Scotty was zooming in right onto the rocket I know he said he was bouncing a signal off of a weather satellite but that was some good bouncing.

After destroying the nuclear weapon and scaring Earth out of throwing more nukes in orbit I guess they forgot to stop the scientists from creating the super humans that whole eugenics thing with Khan must have slipped by Gary and Roberta. At the end Kirk implies that they know of Seven’s and Roberta’s future adventures. If they know such details about two people you would think they would know about major historical events and not have to go time tripping to find these things out. At least no red shirts were harmed in this episode. Next week it’s on to season three and Spock’s Brain. As a Mindless Droid I often wonder “Brain and brain what is brain”.