The Enemy Within

I did not care for this episode.

The first 23 minutes or so, and the last 10, were highly entertaining as Chill Kirk and Dick Kirk (as they appear in my notes) played a cat and mouse game of Concussed Kirk chasing Rapey Kirk, but the entire middle after capturing Asshole Kirk was duller than Alexander’s mek’leth.

Zing!

It felt like they had a solid plot in separating Kirk’s impulsive hothead side from his intelligent chill side, but then they needed to pad out half an hour.

There’s just not enough interesting material to pad it out. Sure, there’s the Spock/McCoy riffing science/heart, but once it’s established that these are two halves of one Kirk it’s BORING. I kept looking at the clock to see when they’d finally figure out the transporter crap and save the away team, whom I only care about because Sulu is down there and he proved to be a fun guy in the last episode.

What a card.

So without much interesting in the way of the plot’s concept, I’m left with the actions and attitudes of Drunk Kirk and Stoned Kirk (as they appear in my notes.)

This is your Kirk on meth.

This version of Kirk tried to rape Yeoman Rand, there’s no way around it. He didn’t succeed, but he assaulted her, and she was clearly traumatized by it, even willing to let it go almost! That poor woman. Let’s not also forget he physically assaulted Fisher afterwards. No wonder Janice leaves the ship, she probably couldn’t get over the man she moons over harboring an animalistic lust inside that gets brought out by a technological glitch. I’d have transferred the fuck off the Enterprise too, it was nothing special yet. 

Then there’s your Kirk on weed, who seems very relaxed and calm and supposedly embodies Kirk’s intelligence, yet all he does is kind of mosey around like he’s got a concussion, leaving Spock to solve all his problems. Did Harvey Weinstein Kirk get all the motivation for action as well? 

Topical!

For a few minutes I was wondering why not just beam the away team up, have a ton of security armed with stun set phasers in the transporter room, and drag a pile of stunned split-up crewmen to the sick bay to sort out later? Even toss a couple of red shirts in to test the re-fusion. 

I like to imagine Chill Sulu as a total gymbro going “No need to get me to sick bay, Mr. Spock, I’d prefer to head to the gym and get my protein shake on, do some reps, maybe fence a little with Riley” and Evil Sulu going “WHERE IS MY RAPIER AND LT. RILEY I’M GONNA TAKE HIM HOME AGAIN!”

He’s lucky he pulled his shit in the 23rd century, Picard cleaned out engineering after the D’s experience with restructured water molecules. 

Of course, that thought was vetoed when Evil Kirk started dying on everyone. 

Let’s talk about Wilson.

Wilson enters an empty transporter room and sees his captain acting weirdly before bailing and says nothing to anyone about it!

Nice Kirk tells Scotty not to leave the transporter room unattended, so I’m assuming that it’s protocol not to do so - Scotty screwed up a little, but Wilson enters the unattended room and see his captain acting strangely after an issue with the transporter! His boss isn’t there! He should have contacted SOMEONE!

I don’t even care to talk about the alien doggo, this episode was garbage and an example of bad TOS. Yeah, there’s Kirk’s little “I’ve seen a part of myself no man should ever see” at the end, Spock’s coy amusement after he says his bit to Rand, and some stuff about “you can’t let the crew sense weakness” but I’m out of anything positive to say about this episode.

Rating: 2/5; SKIP.

This is a totally nonessential episode that aged badly and drags throughout its entire middle.