|
|
|
|
|
Scotty (James Doohan) has fallen head over heels in love with young
Starfleet Lt. Mira (Jan Shutan), so much so that he at times forgets his
duties. Now Mira is on her way to the Federation's library planetoid on a
routine mission, but on the way there the Enterprise is attacked by a
cloud with blinking lights inside, something that's first described as a
space storm, and for a few seconds this blinking cloud that incapacitates
select senses of all crewmembers for a few seconds. Mira is the only one
who faints after the attack, and she's brought to sickbay, but Scotty
insists it's just space sickness. Later the cloud also attacks the library
planetoid, and because the planet has no protective shields, everyone on
it is killed - something Mira has a premonition of. Captain Kirk (William
Shatner) and a landing party beam down to the planetoid but have to
hastily retreat when the cloud attacks again. Mira almost doesn't make it
when teleporting back. Her brainwaves are then analyzed and they turn out
to be exactly the same as the blinking cloud (which has by now been
identified as a sentient being). Eventually, Mira's possessed by the
cloud who turns out to be the spirit of the last survivors from a by now
extinct race who want to have Mira's body to survive. But Kirk, Spock
(Leonard Nimoy) and Bones (DeForest Kelley) figure out the cloud can be
driven out of Mira in a pressure chamber, so Scotty, whom the part of Mira
that's still Mira trusts, pushes her inside one, and under pressure the
cloud is driven out and presumably destroyed forever. One of
the weaker episodes of the series, for one because the threat - the cloud
with blinking lights - our heroes face looks rather ridiculous to begin
with and its intentions are left in the dark until too late in the game. Also
the stakes don't seem too high as one just doesn't care for Mira as much
as for a series regular, and her love story with Scotty is hampered by a
lack of directorial effort to make it feel real paired with James Doohan's
rather shameless overacting. And due to most of the thing being set on the
Enterprise, the episode fails to be visually interesting either. Now fans
will still find things to like about this one, it's just nothing to write
home about.
|
|
|