“The Tholian Web”
Written by Judy Burns
and Chet Richards
Directed by Herb Wallerstein,
Ralph Senensky (uncredited)

Season 3, Episode 9
Production episode 3x9
Original air date: November 15, 1968
Stardate 5693.2

Recap: David Mack

The Enterprise nears the last known position of the vanished starship U.S.S. Defiant, which has been missing for three weeks in “unsurveyed territory.” Spock reports unusual sensor readings: space itself appears to be “breaking up,” a phenomenon he cannot explain. As if that alone isn’t sufficient cause for alarm, Scotty warns that there is a slow, continuing, and inexplicable loss of power from the Enterprise’s warp engines.

Chekov sights an object dead ahead: a green-glowing spectre, a ghostly twin of the Enterprise that barely registers at all on sensors. It’s the Defiant, adrift in space and not taking Uhura’s calls.

Dressed like walking electric shavers, a landing party consisting of Kirk, Spock, Chekov, and Doctor McCoy beams over to the crippled Starfleet vessel. They materialize on the Defiant’s bridge to find it deserted except for two corpses: that of the Defiant’s captain, and the man whose hands are locked around the dead skipper’s broken neck.

[Hang on to your phasers, kids—because this episode’s just gettin’ warmed up….]

“For the World Is Hollow and
I Have Touched the Sky”
Written by Rik Vollaerts
Directed by Tony Leader

Season 3, Episode 8
Production episode 3x10
Original air date: November 8, 1968
Stardate 5476.3–5476.4

Recap: Dayton Ward

Bopping along through space, the Enterprise picks up six primitive missiles moving at sublight speeds on an intercept course.

Sublight. … Sub. Light. … Slower. Than. Light.

Rather than dodging them at warp speed, everybody on the bridge pretty much just stands around soiling their respective diapers and waiting to meet their maker, until Kirk finally orders the phasers to end this nonsense. We’re off to a bad start already, aren’t we? Kirk has just enough time to order a course change to the weapons’ point of origin before he’s called down to sickbay by Nurse Chapel.

There, he meets with McCoy, who informs the captain that he’s completed the crew’s annual physicals, and everybody is in ship-shape save for one person: McCoy himself. The doctor has discovered that he’s contracted a terminal disease with no known cure: xenopolycythemia.

Gesundheit.

[Read more]

“Day of the Dove”
Written by Jerome Bixby
Directed by Marvin Chomsky

Season 3, Episode 7
Production episode 3x11
Original air date: November 1, 1968
Stardate Armageddon

Recap: David Mack

Kirk leads a small landing party to answer a vanished colony’s distress signal. They find no trace of the colony or evidence of what made it disappear. Spock hails them to warn of a swiftly approaching Klingon battle cruiser. Kirk orders Spock to sound Red Alert, raise shields, and get ready to throw down, because he blames the Klingons for wiping out the missing colony, whether it was their fault or not.

But wait! The Klingon ship is critically damaged. Several of its officers, all looking like victims of the worst self-tanning disaster in history, beam down to the planet and confront the landing party. The Klingon commander, Kang, backhands Kirk to the ground, accuses him of an unprovoked attack upon his ship, and declares Kirk and his men are his prisoners and that he is claiming Enterprise for his own.

Meanwhile, a few yards away, a spinning blob of light and noise seems quite pleased with itself for spreading lies and fomenting rage, proving Fox News still exists in the 23rd century.

[Read more]

“Spectre of the Gun”
Written by Lee Cronin (Gene L. Coon)
Directed by Vincent McEveety

Season 3, Episode 6
Production episode 3x1
Original air date: October 25, 1968
Stardate 4385.3

Recap: Dayton Ward

The Enterprise crew is at Red Alert as the ship approaches an glowing, spinning dumbbell that refuses to let them pass. Then the thing broadcasts a message that is heard by each crewmember in his or her native language (English, Vulcan, Russian, Swahili, LOLcat, etc.) and transcends all cultural and linguistic boundaries with its simple, elegant message: “Go away.”

Because Kirk has orders to make peaceful contact with the mysterious Melkotians, he disregards the lessons imparted by previous encounters with alien space-thingees that told him to “Go away.” Instead, he orders the Enterprise to proceed on past the space buoy and head for the Melkotian planet. However, forty-odd years later, that beacon is still there, drifting in the void as a warning to the rest of us—to change the channel, swap DVDs, run out into traffic, or whatever.

[Read more]

“Is There in Truth No Beauty?”
Written by Jean Lisette Aroeste
Directed by Ralph Senensky

Season 3, Episode 5
Production episode 3x07
Original air date: October 18, 1968
Stardate 5630.7–5630.8

Recap: David Mack

The Federation Taxi Service dispatches the Enterprise to ferry home Kollos, the mentally sublime but physically horrific Medusan ambassador to the Federation. Because any human who so much as glimpses a Medusan will go insane, only Spock is permitted to greet the arriving diplomat, and then only while wearing a visor left over from the ship’s recent screening of Avatar in IMAX™ 3D.

Kirk beams up Larry Marvick, one of the designers of the Enterprise’s engines. After they leave, Spock dons his shades and beams up Kollos and renowned psychologist Dr. Miranda Jones, whose chief function seems to be portering Kollos in her carry-on luggage.

[Read more]

“And the Children Shall Lead”
Written by Edward J. Lakso
Directed by Marvin Chomsky

Season 3, Episode 4
Production episode 3x05
Original air date: October 11, 1968
Stardate 5029.5

Recap: Dayton Ward

The Enterprise responds to a distress call from a Federation science colony on the planet Triacus. Kirk, Spock, and McCoy beam down to find out that they either missed a memo as well as the most awesome party in the history of Delta Tau Chi that did not involve togas…or else everybody’s dead.

Well, not everybody. Kirk recognizes the colony’s leader, Professor Starnes, stumbling from behind a boulder before collapsing to the ground. McCoy gives him a once-over and declares him dead, to say nothing of being one lucky bastard, because he doesn’t have to watch the remaining fifty minutes of this episode.

[Read more]

“The Paradise Syndrome”
Written by Margaret Armen
Directed by Jud Taylor

Season 3, Episode 3
Production episode 3x03
Original air date: October 4, 1968
Stardate 4842.6–4843.6

Recap: David Mack

Kirk, Spock, and McCoy beam down to a planet so Earth-like it’s covered with Terran plants. They also find a phallic, metal obelisk festooned with alien glyphs (a distant cousin of the Monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey). Spock says its interior is impervious to scans and that it was built by a civilization with technology superior to that of the Federation, which would seem to be anyone capable of making an iPhone.

The trio seeks out the nearest group of life-forms, who appear to be Native Americans—a colony comprising traits of the Navajo, Mohican, and Delaware tribes, according to Spock’s expert eye.

[Read more]

“The Enterprise Incident”
Written by D.C. Fontana
Directed by John Meredyth Lucas

Season 3, Episode 2
Episode 62 of 79
Production episode 3x04
Original air date: September 27, 1968
Stardate 5027.3

Recap: Dayton Ward

Question: What do you think of my new look, Spock?

Answer: You remind me of my uncle, Captain. The one nobody ever liked inviting to dinner.

The Enterprise is cruisin’ along, all by its lonesome, and we’re treated to a rare log entry by Dr. McCoy. It seems the good doctor’s worried about Captain Kirk, who’s been acting pretty much like a big ol’ butthead as of late. His normally top-notch crew is pretty much running around with their tails tucked between their legs, and it only gets worse when Kirk orders a course change that will take the Enterprise into the Romulan Neutral Zone.

Yeah, because that always works out.

[Read more]

“Spock’s Brain”
Written by Lee Cronin (Gene L. Coon)
Directed by Marc Daniels

Season 3, Episode 1
Episode 61 of 79
Production episode 3x06
Original air date: September 20, 1968
Stardate 5431.4

Recap: David Mack

Question: Brain and brain! What is brain?

Answer: The organ about which and without which this episode was written.

[Read more]