Girls in Space

In an old fashioned town, Sulu and crewman O’Neil run, stopping only to call the Enterprise, desperately requesting an emergency beam-out.  Impatiently, O’Neill doesn’t wait around and keeps running.  Sulu, on the other hand, decides to hold his position.  It’s the wrong choice.  Hooded men appear and zap him with a uh, didgeridoo(?) moments before he dematerialises.  In the transporter room, he reappears but something is amiss.  Poor old Sulu is talking like madman and gazing into space as if admiring some sort of invisible ostrich.

The Enterprise is orbiting planet Beta 3 in search of Starship Archon, missing for 100 years.  Yes, it’s taken 100 years for Starfleet to send out a search party.  I hope they’re not expecting to find any survivors.

A handful of crew members beam down in old-fashioned clothes in order to blend in (clearly having learnt a lesson from Yesterday is Tomorrow).  Spock wears a massive hood which is, ironically, more conspicuous than if he let his pointed ears show.  They observe the townspeople walking and talking very slowly.  It’s a little eerie, but in a nice civilised way.  There’s a lot of talk about following Landru’s will.  There’s also a lot of talk about the upcoming festival, happening at noon.  A festival?  Golly gosh, that sounds nice.  And as it’s just a few minutes to noon, it’s probably worth sticking around for candy apples and the bottle stall.

Noon strikes.  The “Festival”, it transpires, is not full of dancing maids, beer-swilling fat men and home bakery stalls.  No, the festival is, in fact, a riot.  Women are attacked, men fight, property is damaged.

I feel the writers missed a great opportunity for Spock to turn to the camera and say “When in Rome…” and start head-butting nearby locals. But no, instead the landing party run and hide.

The riot ends as abruptly as it had begun and it doesn’t take long for the locals to figure out that the Enterprise crew had not participated.  It seems that the crew have attracted the attention of this Landru fellow, whose will the locals obey.  All of a sudden everyone in the town stops, turns and starts marching silently towards the crew.  Slowly.  Kirk and the others make their getaway by increasing their own speed to a brisk walking pace.

They find crewman O’Neil and take him into hiding, but a sonic blast renders everyone unconscious.  They later awaken in a prison.  This won’t look good on your permanent record, boys.

The long and short of it is that Landru has been absorbing people’s individuality into a kind of shared consciousness regulated by the Landrumeister himself.  Many of the landing party’s personalities are absorbed, including Bones’.  However, when Kirk and Spock are taken away, revolutionaries fiddle the system in such a way as to let them retain their free will.  Using all their acting abilities, they attempt to blend in with the brainwashed masses.  Minutes later, Spock and Kirk are taken to Landru to explain themselves.

They learn that he isn’t a real person but, wait for it… a computer.  So that’s two episodes in a row about the dangers of computers?  I guess the writers must have really hated Microsoft or it’s sixties equivalent: Groovysoft.  After unsuccessful attempts to destroy the computer with weapons, Kirk eventually defeats it by pressing Control-Alt-Delete and baffling it with his smoothly spoken words.

So, having completely destroyed Beta 3’s society, the Enterprise flies away, leaving behind a single sociologist to fix the entire planet’s population.  Let’s hope she doesn’t want a day off.

So, just to recap, a computer took over the minds of everyone, making them civilised and eradicating crime, providing peace at the cost of free will.  Okay, I get that bit.   But what was that crazy riot festival about?  What was the point of sending the crew to look for a ship that crashed 100 years ago?  Why did the locals have to chase the crew so slowly? How did some crew get converted just by using the didgeridoos and others had to be strapped into a big machine?  I’m a little baffled. Perhaps Landru is taking over my mind?!!

Cast:
William Shatner as James T. Kirk
Leonard Nimoy as Spock
DeForest Kelley as Leonard H. McCoy
James Doohan as Montgomery Scott
Nichelle Nichols as Uhura
George Takei as Hikaru Sulu

Guest Cast:
Harry Townes as Reger
Torin Thatcher as Marplon
Charles Macaulay as Landru
Brioni Farrell as Tula
Sid Haig as First Lawgiver
Jon Lormer as Tamar
Morgan Farley as Hacom
Christopher Held as Lindstrom
Sean Morgan as Lt. O’Neil
Ralph Maurer as Bilar
David L. Ross as Guard
Miko Mayama as Yeoman Tamura

Creative Staff:
Director:  Joseph Pevney
Teleplay By: Boris Sobelman
Story By: Gene Roddenberry

Official Episode Guide