Welcome
back to Underrated Trek, where I take a special look at Star Trek
episodes that I love…which may not be the most popular or even liked by
most. Last time I talked about an episode that is really pretty good and
well liked. So what about one that I still like even though it is
pretty much either forgotten…or hated? We venture again into third
season TOS for :
Plot:
The Enterprise has been assigned to ferry a spoiled Elasan princess who has been betrothed to a Troyian royal in hope of bringing peace to a star system. Elaan is temperamental and rude, and when she attempts to murder the man charged to teach her manners the job falls to Kirk.
Meanwhile the Klingons are in the area. A spy in the Dohlman’s party sabotages the warp core so it will blow up if the warp drive in engaged. The Klingons try, and fail, to cause this to happen while Kirk falls under the romantic sway of the Elasian tears, which drive men crazy in love! Despite his attempts to fight it he falls for her.
As the Klingons try to engage the Enterprise Spock determines that the necklace Elaan wears is composed of dilithium crystals. Explaining why the Klingons have such an interest in this star system. Scotty restores the ship’s power just in time for the Enterprise to beat the Klingons. Elaan is successfully delivered as she and Kirk say farewell, Elaan clearly heartbroken but Kirk not as he has found his own cure for the Elasian tears.
Guest Star:
France Nuyen is a good actress who really does a good job making Elaan despicable at first, and then likable by the end
What I Liked:
There are two stories here, I will get to the other one in the next section. The one that I like and I think makes the episode a good one is the Klingon plot. Ok the commander of the Klingon vessel is as stock as you can get, but the action scenes are still really good and I like the plan the Klingons had. See they knew Elaan’s planet had dilithium crystals. How did Kirk figure it out? One of Elaan’s wedding gifts was a beautiful necklace made of “common stones” from the planet. The stones turn out to be…oh you get it. But there is good stuff here. The alien sabotaging the ship is good, the way the Klingons tries to trick the Enterprise into jumping into warp until Scotty stops them is good, it’s one of the better Star Trek action scenes. The only problem with this whole thing is that it overwhelmed the other story, and the plot that begins the episode is almost forgotten by the end.
Amazingly enough this is the first appearance of a Klingon Battleship. In the third season! Up until this point it was always a blip or just didn’t appear. I never got that, Romulans got ships but Klingons didn’t? However there is a downside to this since the shots of the battleship were blatantly reused in “Day of the Dove” and “The Enterprise Incident” where they were supposed to Romulan ships! That never made any sense. Thank god for digital remastering which makes these battle scenes so much cooler!
One of the gags in the episode is that Elaan hates her quarters (which are really Uhura’s). This would be so memorable for Scotty that he recalled the event in the TNG episode “Relics”.
And to be fair the early scenes between Kirk and Elaan at first are pretty good. The scenes of Kirk teaching her manners work well. But sadly the stuff between her and Kirk has issues that start when Kirk touches her tears. Let’s discuss that in the next section.
What I Hated:
So last time I talked about This Side of Paradise which had a very sweet romance story. It was well told, well acted, and the romance ended very naturally in the episode. Would you believe this episode is the exact opposite? The “romance” between Kirk and Elaan is just awful. First of all, it’s the very definition of forced since Kirk falls in love with her by touching her tears (yeah the Elasians have chemicals which make men fall for women, sure) and she flips her switch from rage to love way to fast. But this is worth a scene or two of them making out. And how does this romance get resolved? Kirk resolves it all on his own. It’s Spock that explains Kirk’s love for the Enterprise is more powerful than any magical tears. Kirk doesn’t even get a comment about this! This is so forced into the end of the episode I swear it was tacked on when creators realized there was no actual end to this plotline and they realized they had to resolve it somehow. Of course this “twist” makes the romantic stuff totally pointless filler. By the way, there is one point when Kirk is with Elaan. Then we cut to the Bridge and Spock discussing a transmission coming from the ship. Uhura tries to contact Kirk about it…but it takes Kirk a few seconds to answer. When Kirk does he answer he is sitting on the bed with Elaan laying behind him. What were they doing that it took Kirk that time to finally acknowledge Uhura? Ewww.
You know how “Turnabout Intruder” is often maligned for being insulting to women? You could argue we get there here to. Elaan is a temperamental witch who has no regard for rules or even people. How does her turnaround come? Love of course. Gag me. At first it seems like she is just using the love potion thing to keep Kirk at her will but the rest of the episode doesn’t quite see that through. And some criticize that Kirk would “deliver” a woman to be married but don’t forget that they are following rules from another planet and have to do that without risking an interstellar incident. Much the same way Picard oversaw the same thing on an even worst TNG episode.
I talked about how Star Trek has crazy props last time, but another thing the show would do was do silly things to show “the future!”. For instance very rarely do we see normal food. It’s always weird things that don’t resemble food at all. Well, we did see chicken noodle soup once. In this episode, we see Elaan eating green chicken. Why Green? THE FUTURE!!! Thank goodness TNG stopped that nonsense and let people eat normal food!
The scene where they are making out, which is thankfully interrupted by McCoy and Spock. Why did they interrupt them? There isn’t any real reason for them to be there except for McCoy to explain to Kirk what the tears are supposed to. It’s a poorly put together moment. By the way there was a great scene deleted from this episode, you can find the details elsewhere on the internet but I wish they kept deleted scenes back in the old days.
Final Thoughts:Honestly it isn’t the worst season three had to offer but I can understand why this episode is mostly forgotten. The worst part is they had a really good thing going in the first half only to waste it in the second.
Ever wanted to see Star Trek do their version of “Taming of the
Shrew”? How about Cleopatra? Me neither but they made it anyway….
Plot:
The Enterprise has been assigned to ferry a spoiled Elasan princess who has been betrothed to a Troyian royal in hope of bringing peace to a star system. Elaan is temperamental and rude, and when she attempts to murder the man charged to teach her manners the job falls to Kirk.
Meanwhile the Klingons are in the area. A spy in the Dohlman’s party sabotages the warp core so it will blow up if the warp drive in engaged. The Klingons try, and fail, to cause this to happen while Kirk falls under the romantic sway of the Elasian tears, which drive men crazy in love! Despite his attempts to fight it he falls for her.
As the Klingons try to engage the Enterprise Spock determines that the necklace Elaan wears is composed of dilithium crystals. Explaining why the Klingons have such an interest in this star system. Scotty restores the ship’s power just in time for the Enterprise to beat the Klingons. Elaan is successfully delivered as she and Kirk say farewell, Elaan clearly heartbroken but Kirk not as he has found his own cure for the Elasian tears.
Guest Star:
France Nuyen is a good actress who really does a good job making Elaan despicable at first, and then likable by the end
What I Liked:
There are two stories here, I will get to the other one in the next section. The one that I like and I think makes the episode a good one is the Klingon plot. Ok the commander of the Klingon vessel is as stock as you can get, but the action scenes are still really good and I like the plan the Klingons had. See they knew Elaan’s planet had dilithium crystals. How did Kirk figure it out? One of Elaan’s wedding gifts was a beautiful necklace made of “common stones” from the planet. The stones turn out to be…oh you get it. But there is good stuff here. The alien sabotaging the ship is good, the way the Klingons tries to trick the Enterprise into jumping into warp until Scotty stops them is good, it’s one of the better Star Trek action scenes. The only problem with this whole thing is that it overwhelmed the other story, and the plot that begins the episode is almost forgotten by the end.
Amazingly enough this is the first appearance of a Klingon Battleship. In the third season! Up until this point it was always a blip or just didn’t appear. I never got that, Romulans got ships but Klingons didn’t? However there is a downside to this since the shots of the battleship were blatantly reused in “Day of the Dove” and “The Enterprise Incident” where they were supposed to Romulan ships! That never made any sense. Thank god for digital remastering which makes these battle scenes so much cooler!
One of the gags in the episode is that Elaan hates her quarters (which are really Uhura’s). This would be so memorable for Scotty that he recalled the event in the TNG episode “Relics”.
And to be fair the early scenes between Kirk and Elaan at first are pretty good. The scenes of Kirk teaching her manners work well. But sadly the stuff between her and Kirk has issues that start when Kirk touches her tears. Let’s discuss that in the next section.
What I Hated:
So last time I talked about This Side of Paradise which had a very sweet romance story. It was well told, well acted, and the romance ended very naturally in the episode. Would you believe this episode is the exact opposite? The “romance” between Kirk and Elaan is just awful. First of all, it’s the very definition of forced since Kirk falls in love with her by touching her tears (yeah the Elasians have chemicals which make men fall for women, sure) and she flips her switch from rage to love way to fast. But this is worth a scene or two of them making out. And how does this romance get resolved? Kirk resolves it all on his own. It’s Spock that explains Kirk’s love for the Enterprise is more powerful than any magical tears. Kirk doesn’t even get a comment about this! This is so forced into the end of the episode I swear it was tacked on when creators realized there was no actual end to this plotline and they realized they had to resolve it somehow. Of course this “twist” makes the romantic stuff totally pointless filler. By the way, there is one point when Kirk is with Elaan. Then we cut to the Bridge and Spock discussing a transmission coming from the ship. Uhura tries to contact Kirk about it…but it takes Kirk a few seconds to answer. When Kirk does he answer he is sitting on the bed with Elaan laying behind him. What were they doing that it took Kirk that time to finally acknowledge Uhura? Ewww.
You know how “Turnabout Intruder” is often maligned for being insulting to women? You could argue we get there here to. Elaan is a temperamental witch who has no regard for rules or even people. How does her turnaround come? Love of course. Gag me. At first it seems like she is just using the love potion thing to keep Kirk at her will but the rest of the episode doesn’t quite see that through. And some criticize that Kirk would “deliver” a woman to be married but don’t forget that they are following rules from another planet and have to do that without risking an interstellar incident. Much the same way Picard oversaw the same thing on an even worst TNG episode.
I talked about how Star Trek has crazy props last time, but another thing the show would do was do silly things to show “the future!”. For instance very rarely do we see normal food. It’s always weird things that don’t resemble food at all. Well, we did see chicken noodle soup once. In this episode, we see Elaan eating green chicken. Why Green? THE FUTURE!!! Thank goodness TNG stopped that nonsense and let people eat normal food!
Fast Forward Moment:
The scene where they are making out, which is thankfully interrupted by McCoy and Spock. Why did they interrupt them? There isn’t any real reason for them to be there except for McCoy to explain to Kirk what the tears are supposed to. It’s a poorly put together moment. By the way there was a great scene deleted from this episode, you can find the details elsewhere on the internet but I wish they kept deleted scenes back in the old days.
Final Thoughts:Honestly it isn’t the worst season three had to offer but I can understand why this episode is mostly forgotten. The worst part is they had a really good thing going in the first half only to waste it in the second.
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