📺 Watched: Star Trek The Original Series S1E5 "The Enemy Within"
📺 Watched: Star Trek The Original Series S1E5 "The Enemy Within"
Aka Shatner chews the scenery.
This episode is considered by some to be a "classic", and I enjoyed it, but it was a bit of a letdown after "The Naked Time". The short version is: a transporter accident splits Kirk into his gentle side, and his evil side. The "good" Kirk struggles with his capacity to make decisions as the episode continues, realizing that he needs "the enemy within"1 to be a complete person and that everyone has a mix of good and bad.
I'm glad that the writers decided to add the element of the ticking clock (the stranded away team waiting to be beamed up or else freeze to death), but after we got that in "The Naked Time" it felt a bit hollow here. It's been brought up by many: why couldn't they send a shuttlecraft to retrieve the away team if they couldn't rely on transporters? I'll excuse it for this episode since the show was finding its footing, but if that happened in an episode today I would be less than impressed.
Apparently this episode was notable for the first depiction of rape on TV2.