Star Trek Volume 19
featuring the episodes The Changeling and The Apple
One of the most bizarrely-named episodes of the entire Star Trek pantheon, The Changeling (no relation to Odo) is the immortal episode in which wayward space probe Nomad boards the Enterprise, kills Scotty, puts him right back together again, and then gets talked into self-destructing by Kirk thanks to some clever logic (even Spock is impressed). This may all sound rather flip, but don’t get me wrong - it’s one of the most pivotal episodes of the original series (and occasionally one of the most frequently spoofed ones), and if it feels and smells and tastes just a little bit like Star Trek: The Motion Picture, your plotline recycling sensors are working perfectly. Still, it’s excellent stuff.
In The Apple, Kirk and an ill-fated landing party wad the Prime Directive up and toss it over their shoulders (and perhaps they light it on fire first too) as they try to free a primitive culture from the artificial intelligence they worship. This AI, a voiceless gadget called Vaal (and Ba’al…oops, sorry, Vaal is represented by a giant macramè cave entrance fashioned into a serpents’s head - gotta admire the subtlety!), which holds the Enterprise captive in orbit and repeatedly tries to zap, poison-dart and otherwise kill Kirk’s landing party. The one crew member Vaal can’t stop is a female yeoman who not only wards off Chekov’s attempts at 23rd century on-the-job sexual harrassment, but also kicks 35% more alien butt in hand-to-hand combat than any of the guys in the episode’s big fight scene. By the time the credits roll, a primitive culture has learned how to kiss and kill, they’ve lost their god, and most important of all, Kirk and friends are freed at last. Good goofy fun, though it’s peppered with numerous very interesting debates about justifying Kirk’s actions, and is possibly the first mention in Star Trek of Starfleet’s “non-interference directive.” Not like that’s ever stopped us.