Spectre of the Gun

After “The Paradise Syndrome” managed to make a complete mess out of the sci fi / western blend, it’s nice to have this reassurance that the two genres aren’t completely incompatible.

For the umpteenth time the Enterprise goes messing where it shouldn't be messing. This time our heroes venture gamely into Melkotian space despite a warning buoy sending them an interstellar "get out of our yard" message. So really they have only themselves to blame when the Melkots zap the usual cast of familiar faces (Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scotty and Chekov) out of the ship.

They find themselves in a DePatie-Freling facades-only version of Tombstone, Arizona on the day of the legendary Gunfight at the OK Corral, a setting evidently dredged from Kirk's memories. Bad news: the folks from the Enterprise have been cast as the Clantons.

Figuring that they've been given a death sentence, our guys start trying to figure a way out. They begin by attempting to talk the Earps out of the coming fight. Maybe I've been watching too much Deadwood, but this tactic struck me as exceptionally wimpy. Good or bad, it doesn't work. Chekov pays for the pacifism with his life, gunned down over a dance hall girl.

Noting that Chekov was not wearing a red shirt, Spock concludes that he can't actually be dead. So if the whole thing is an elaborate illusion, they aren't in any real danger, a theory that gains further credence when they try to knock themselves out with gas only to find that against the laws of chemistry and biology the stuff doesn't work. Naturally Spock has the mental power to not believe in the bullets the Earps will soon pump into them, but the rest need a little mind-melding to pull off the trick.

It works, the shots passing harmlessly through them. And in retaliation for the attempt, Kirk punches one of the bad guys around a little. However, their refusal to kill their helpless opponents impresses the Melkots, who shut down the show and agree to peaceful relations with the Federation.

The Melkots are a little too easily impressed. Their half-assed Wild West setting – especially the front-only buildings – is so obviously imaginary that even when I was a kid watching this for the first time I guessed that it was all an elaborate test of some kind. Thus the trick falls victim to the same "observational error" that plagues a lot of psychology experiments: if people know they're being studied, they may behave in abnormal ways. Thus the Melkots shouldn't be deceived; if the Enterprise crew thought the danger was real, they might well not have responded so peacefully.

Episode rating:

Stardate: 4385.3

Episode type: Powerful alien

Written by: Gene Coon (credited as Lee Cronin)

Original air date: October 25, 1968

Is There in Truth No Beauty? / Day of the Dove

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