by Star Trek : That Which Survives
July 28, 2014 in Guest Blogs, Star Trek by GuestBlogs
A Guest Blog by Mindless-Droid
This week’s classic Star Trek episode is That Which Survives. The episode synopsis from the official site is here. The Enterprise is investigating a planet whose geology is so odd it even has Spock stumped. Kirk assembles a landing party to beam down to the planet to study it. As they are being transported a strange woman appears in the transporter room and kills the transporter tech warning that they should not go to the planet.
After materializing on the planet the ship and planet are rocked by an enormous energy surge. The Enterprise is transported 900 light years away. The landing party believing that the ship has been destroyed start to search the planet for food and water to survive. During the search the same woman appears and kills Lt D’Amato. Meanwhile back on the ship Spock and the crew discover that they have been thrown clear of the planet and begin the trip back. Scotty feels that there is something wrong with the ship and he is right as the same woman appears killing another crewman and sabotaging the engines making them accelerate uncontrollably.
On the planet Kirk McCoy and Sulu realize that the woman is a computer replica and can only kill the one she was designed for after Sulu is slightly injured they find the computer base and are surrounded by the replicas. Back on the ship Scotty and Spock devise a way to repair the engines as the Enterprise continues to accelerate faster and faster. Scotty seals the engine sabotage at the last minute and Spock and a security man beam down just in time to destroy the computer generating the replicas and saving the landing party.
After the computer is disabled a message from the last survivor plays. It is then discovered that the planet was an outpost made by a long dead race the Kalandans. In building the planet they unwittingly made an organism that was deadly to them. The computer was set on automatic by the last survivor Losira to defend the outpost.
This is one of the better episodes of season three. You have the mystery on the planet. Kirk and company trying to survive and discover what the planet was and the drama aboard the ship. There are some new engineering sets and they even designed an earthquake set that moved the floor of the planet instead of just shaking the camera. The title also has a double meaning of the landing party trying to survive and the Kalandan computer trying to survive even though the kalandans themselves were long since gone. The Kalandans another of those alien races like the Melkotians or the Tholians that I wish we would have gotten to learn more about. The reveal at the end ties up the episode nicely. You wonder with the power the Kalandans had why not just destroy the Enterprise but it was Losira’s compassion that was ingrained into the computer that made it hesitate to just kill everyone.
That had to be the longest beam out in history.
The poor red shirt Wyatt didn’t even make it off the ship.
They used a new quake stage for this episode instead of just shaking the camera.
Doctor M’Benga makes his second appearance always thought he was a cool character wish he would have been in more episodes.
D’Amato’s in danger but he has a blue shirt on.
I know they are scanning the planet but the constant tricorder whine was getting annoying.
Scotty can sense that the ship feels wrong but Kirk couldn’t tell he was on a replica last week Mark of Gideon was such a bad episode.
Nice Horta reference.
I like how they fleshed out engineering over the course of the series and I still think it is much better than the JJ movies.
Poor Watkins I guess one piece red uniforms are as bad as red shirts.
Is Spock controlling his own brain with that hand held device? It is a reused prop from Spock’s Brain.
Spock is being something of a wise guy this week.
If the Kalandans have the power to hurl the ship 900 light years away why sabotage the ship why not just destroy it?
The new crawlway they designed for this episode was cool especially with the static electricity effects.
Warp 11.2 this was before the warp 10 barrier theory in The Next Generation that you could never reach warp 10 because if you did you would exist at all points in the universe at once.
After kirk’s encounter with Losira I guess you could qualify this episode as another Kirk versus a computer.
So Scotty is just going to stick his hand into the magnetic field that holds the anti-matter. Oh well it makes for good drama.
You wonder why the replicas hesitated until you realize it was Losira’s compassion that bled over from her into the computer replicas.
A bad week for the red shirts two were killed if you count Watkins in his one piece uniform and a blue shirt was killed as well.
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