Plot: 4/9.
Charlie’s Law 3/9. The crisis wasn’t dealt by the protagonists and the solution could be thought as Deus ex machina. I would have given a higher score if the captain had rescued the naughty boy and the boy had undergone some character development during the process.
Charlie was a young survivor of an air crash who had been lived near the wreckage alone since the age of three, until the Antares recently spotted him and delivered him to the Enterprise. It seemed like the boy was an intelligent and energetic troublemaker from the behaviour of crew on the previous ship. Upon boarding, Charlie quickly became obsessed with the female escort-cum-tutor called Rand, and even presented her her favorite perfume, the origin of which was a mystery to Rand.
The air crash of the Antares and its unfinished last words about Charlie demonstrated a bad omen. Before long, the boy’s rude pass toward Rand was reported to the captain who decided to teach Charlie unarmed fight so as to quench the youngster’s unnecessary libido. However, Charlie got so irritated when the coach made fun of his clumsiness that he vaporized the coach out of rage, and subsequently eliminated the armory of the guards convened by the alarmed captain. Moreover, he prevented the crew from changing the course or communicating with other ships. It turned out the air crash was plotted by the boy and he even threatened to clear out all of them afterward.
Spock, the science officer, turned Charlie’s room into a trap and Rand volunteered to lure him in. But the trap proved futile. In revenge, the boy proceeded to vaporise Rand.
In the end, an alien came to end this farce by returning the crew and claiming it was they who had once given the boy superpower to deal with the famine. Considering his misuse of the irrevocable superpower at present, they finally captured the reluctant boy back into that planet.
(So why did the alien, capable of communicating with the Enterprise, fail to contact any humans during all these years? Why did they not feed the boy themselves or create automatic machines, instead of endowing him with uncontrollable superpower?
Judging from the trepid reaction of the boy, I suppose the aliens’ ulterior motive was to imprison that boy forever with sanctimonious excuses. Therefore they purposely avoided human’s contact and didn’t teach him anything on humanity or customs of his own civilization.
So under that supposition, it seemed a bit irresponsible for the Enterprise to connive at the aliens’ intervention, albeit Charlie’s notorious mayhem and the alien’s plausible maintenance.)
Dagger Of The Mind 2/9. The culprit was foolish and too easy to be defeated.
After the Enterprise recaptured a fugitive prisoner, McCoy, the chief doctor, proposed a thorough investigation of the prison, based on the suspicious mental condition of the prisoner. (From the prisoner’s warnings, it seemed that today’s protagonist was Adams, a psychiatrist in charge of a prison holding a unique method of brainwashing.)
Nothing went wrong during the initial visit and the machine was said to have deranged the prisoner seemed innocuous at the first sight. It was not until the captain tried the machine himself, with the help of his assistant Noel, that they proved the machine had the function of brainwashing.
Their operation was observed by Adams, who then brainwashed the captain into falling in love with Noel before imprisoning the two. However, the antagonist foolishly neglected to brainwash Noel for unknown reasons, allowing her to remind the captain of the truth.
The conscious captain broke the grille for Noel to cut the power of this area. So, when Adams decided to brainwash the captain again, the blackout enabled the captain to knock the antagonists down and find Noel. After summoning the crew to apprehend Adams, they found him dead by the machine strangely—possibly either a suicide to evade the condign punishment or a revengeful homicide committed by his assistant.
The Real McCoy 4/9. The culprit was too easy to be found.
The Enterprise landed on an archaeologically significant, remote and barren planet to do an annual physical checkup on its only two inhabitants here—a couple called Nancy and Bierce.
A crew member died suddenly during the examination, and the only witness, Nancy, claimed he died from eating the alien root. However, the captain thought it impossible for his experienced crew to eat unknown food, which was proved by the autopsy report showing no poison within the corpse—only an abnormal depletion of the salt.
The culprit became clear as more crew members were killed along with the conspicuous absence of Nancy, which was further confirmed by Bierce that he had been conniving the last alien shape-shifter, even after it killed the real Nancy and Enterprise crew.
Finally, Nancy begged the puzzled McCoy to protect her from the captain’s attack, and McCoy indeed confronted his crew on her behalf. But when the captain lured it with salt, it couldn’t help to reveal the original appearance.
The Balance Of Terror 6/9. I was impressed by Spock’s excellent analysis, nonchalance in the face of the mate’s hostility and suspicion, and eventual fulfillment of his own responsibility before complete paralysis—though I anticipated more psychological activities from these crew instead of the sole perspective of the captain.
Today’s protagonist was Romulan who tested their newly developed equipment and weaponry by bombarding the outposts of Federation in the neutral zone. The captain of the Enterprise determined to engage them alone so as to revenge for the outposts as soon as possible as well as to terrorize the Romulan, hoping to deter their further invasion of Federation en masse.
They succeeded eventually in both strategy and tactic. Nevertheless, a woman whose wedding ceremony was conducted by the captain just half a day earlier became a brand-new widow after this battle.
The Naked Time 5/9. The details of the substance and the antidote should have been explored further. Otherwise, the solution seemed superficial.
All the personnel at the La Pig observation station had died suspiciously, and one of the two Enterprise members who spotted their cadaver went demented suddenly and committed suicide. The acute earthquake of the planet forced the Enterprise to retreat without further minute investigation.
Soon, the crew exhibited a similar symptom of delirium in series. One of them called Riley believed himself as the captain and blocked their access to the engine room, which became crucial for the Enterprise to avoid the instant air crash during lift-off.
In the end, the doctor certified the cause as the liquid sample brought from the planet that promoted the binding of water within body and contaminated the crew through perspiration, and thus saved the day by injecting the antidote to the ventilator.
Miri 2/9. The solution was just the doctor’s tedious monologue without any other protagonists’ meaningful contributions or highlights, especially the captain, who played as a stubborn idiot here missing the opportunity to negotiate with Miri and save their lives as soon as possible. Meanwhile, the antagonists and the trouble weren’t tricky enough, and ergo the plot was boring. Finally, after the initial assumption of pestilence by the doctor, I couldn’t believe the captain still dared to risk all of their lives without any decent protections or cautious precautions against the worst conditions, which further deteriorated the portrait of the captain within my mind. This adaption was absolutely worse than the original.
The Enterprise received an ancient SOS signal and decided to visit this seemingly desolate and post-apocalyptic planet. They found the only survivors were kids and collected its history from a girl called Miri, before she found the crew contracted the same deadly disease.
From the record left by the grown-up centuries ago, the Enterprise surmised the disaster stemmed from a medical project intended to abate the natural aging process. Unfortunately, it somehow had went off the track, making only children survive the side effect.
They could have easily developed the antidote by their computer on board, had it not been for the children’s stealth of their communicators. Miri clearly had her method to help them get their communicators back or probably it was her who stole their communicators. But the captain just ignored the option of asking her for help immediately, leaving the doctor must test the newly developed antidote on himself to catch up with the deadline.
The Conscience Of The King 7/9. I was astonished at the dramatic amalgamation of the opera and the reality, as well as by the implementation of the theme of justice (aka. Kirk) versus vengeance (aka. Daiken), though I felt Kirk’s persuasion towards vengeful Daiken could have written more convincingly.
Kirk was coaxed by an old friend to identify whether an actor of a troupe performing Macbeth would be the criminal at large for decades. As the fellow survivor of the holocaust committed by that criminal, Kirk remained skeptical until he found no data existed about the actor before his debut. His old friend was murdered shortly after the conversation. So did the other survivors except Kirk himself and his crewman named Daiken.
Kirk therefore approached the daughter of the actor to get the access to the troupe and hence the reclusive actor. As he courted with the daughter, the fact that Daiken was poisoned actuated him to confront the actor directly. The actor, of course, didn’t acknowledge the accusation directly in front of Kirk, even if Kirk promised he only intended to pursue the justice rather than vengeance.
As the onboard opera began, the sick Daiken watched the broadcast performance and recognized the old nemesis and understood who was his murderer. Kirk had to persuade him to abandon the attempt of murder while the show was going. The actor and the daughter confessed their crimes through the circumlocutory stage lines. Ultimately, the actor admitted his and her daughter’s guilt clearly facing the avenger, but since the daughter had already killed many people to conceal the past crime of her father, she didn’t accept this consequence and tried to shoot the captain desperately—only to be thwarted by her father, who sacrificed himself to save the captain.
Core: 4/9. Only the balance of terror and the conscience of the king were endowed with some sort of depth.
Character: 4/9. Just judged from this anthology, it is hard to memorize the characteristics of any characters except Kirk, McCoy and Spock among 400 complement aboard.
Perhaps it would be better if the author could cast more limelight to others and build more interesting dialogues rather than the perspective of the captain alone constantly. Only Almighty God knows how annoying Kirk’s romantic affairs were to me.