Captain’s Blog 5 The Enemy Within
And so we come to one of the most infamous, episodes of Star Trek. With some very familiar tropes of Sci Fi in General, and Trek in particular, its time to face “The Enemy Within”.
While visiting an alien planet, Captain Kirk is split into two. The first, seemingly Kirk, gradually becomes less confident and indecisive as the episode progresses. The other half is immediately savage and predatory. As the crew work desperately to unite the two halves of the Captain, it’s a race against time as an away team is left stranded on the planet below, less they share the fate of the Captain.
Originally, a means to have budget on having the Enterprise, or even a shuttlecraft land or take off every week, the genius of the transporter is that as well as being a device to speed up plots, it didn’t take the writers long to realise that the technology is a plot device in itself, in this particular case, it provides the impoteus for another Sci Fi trope, that of the evil double.
However, although subtlety is not something that can be applied to Shatner’s performance or the writing, It never the less plays with expectations. While the “Evil” Kirk is OTT, the remaining half gradually becomes more ineffectual and useless. Perhaps having that leadership role does require that sense of pushing to get what you need
There is a small continuity issue. Although the transporter is rightly kept out of use until the immediate problems can be resolved, why doesn’t the crew simply deploy a shuttle to rescue the trapped crew? While the use of a shuttle every week would be prohibitive, it is used as early as this first season.
Overall however, there is more here than an ironic enjoyment of Shanter’s overacting. We get to understand that overall out and out passivity is just as deadly as overall aggression, it is how we take this instincts and use them properly – when to step aside and listen to others, and when to be decisive and focused on achieving a specific goal.
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