Wanderlust

2.18 — “The Immunity Syndrome”

2.18 — “The Immunity Syndrome”

Plot: The Enterprise is diverted to Gamma VII-A to investigate the sudden death of the entire solar system, its billions of inhabitants, and the loss of the Vulcan starship Intrepid, which was patrolling the area. Arriving there, they find a hole in space, which turns out to have been created by a giant single-celled organism, 11,000 miles across, which is larger than the diameter of Earth. The massive unicellular organism sucks energy from the ship and lifeforce from its crew, leaving them in desperate circumstances with a limited time to survive. Kirk must decide whether to send Spock or McCoy on a suicide mission on the shuttlecraft to explore the center of the creature and try to find a way to destroy it.

Thoughts: There are some great lines in this episode, especially the starchy dialogue between Spock and McCoy. Even when Spock is near death having turned down the shuttlecraft life support systems, he takes the time to get another dig in. “Shut up, Spock, we’re rescuing you.” Great moment. 

Spock’s explanation about how Vulcans can’t understand death because their planet has never been conquered sounds important, but is completely Incomprehensible. Memory Alpha points out that McCoy referred to Vulcan being conquered in “The Conscience of the King.” Silly Vulcans, they can’t make up their minds.

The amoeba looks good. This is a fairly apocalyptic episode, with death everywhere! Billions of native lifeforms, 400 Vulcans, either Spock or McCoy, the organism itself. Still, I found it hard to get sucked in. The episode moves slowly, the drama is turgid and sometimes overwrought, and the countdown clock is poorly managed. I perked up for Spock’s scenes in the shuttlecraft and his duel with McCoy over who will get the privilege of dying for the Enterprise. I’m not sure I could be that noble.

Spock’s dialogue sensing the deaths of the Vulcans aboard the Intrepid presages Obi-Wan Kenobi sensing the deaths of all the lives on Alderaan. When I grew up, it was Star Trek vs. Star Wars, so it’s a little weird thinking of George Lucas as a Trek fan, paying tribute to his favorite bits.

The last three episodes, “The Gamesters of Triskelion,” “A Piece of the Action,” and this, could hardly be more different.

Why are all the patients in sickbay female?

Um, and how much double entendre can you stand? “The area of penetration will no doubt be sensitive.” Oh, myyyyy. The shuttlecraft is basically a sperm in this story, right? They could have done more with this metaphor.

3 out of 5 really big chromosomes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Immunity_Syndrome_(Star_Trek:_The_Original_Series)

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6 responses to “2.18 — “The Immunity Syndrome””

  1. R. Alex Reutter Avatar
    R. Alex Reutter

    I also couldn’t really get into the story on this one.  It’s too bad, because there are a couple of neat things going on; one, the idea of the crew of the Enterprise acting as the universe’s antibodies, and two, that the crew is seriously medicated just to get through the mission.  But nothing really comes of this, just warnings from McCoy.

    Yes, Spock did just feel a disturbance in the Force, as if 400 Vulcans cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced!  Uh, McCoy, maybe you shouldn’t touch the contact empath while he’s in distress?

    So, the telemetry from the probe reports miles, yet later Kirk says that the anti-matter probe could drift thousands of kilometers in the protoplasm.  Science!  We use the metric system!

    Not only are all the patients in sickbay female, but when everyone on the bridge nearly passes out (except Spock), Kirk makes a big deal of telling McCoy that Uhura nearly fainted, but feels all right, while Chekov and others are still slumped over their consoles.  Whaaaaaa?!

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  2. Randi Cohen Avatar
    Randi Cohen

    Agree with Kevin’s take on this one.  My favorite lines are: “I’m sorry, Spock” and “You would not have survived it.”  Excellent delivery.  In fact, excellent delivery by Nimoy of the most ridiculous out-of-character nonsense, like “you should have wished me luck”.  My respect for his ability to play this role to perfection only grows.

    Worst line, of course, is “on some lovely… planet”.  I hope that ensign sues Kirk for sexual harrassment.

    The one semi-interesting philosophical point to me is made early in the episode and is about the limits of human compassion beyond what is immediately tangible to us.  I have often had this quarrel myself with humanity (animal husbandry practices & flame wars on the internet being present-day examples though I’m sure there are many more both current and historic).

    Yes, the whole “Vulcans can’t comprehend dying” is so ridiculous given everything else we’ve learned about their culture to date. 

    Minor quibbles: 

    -Why use a decibel when it is meaningless?  I.e. announcing something will occur in 7.3 seconds if it takes you about a second to actually make the announcement?    

    -If ship’s power is dead, why are the lights still on?  

    I normally don’t notice the score too much, but this one was super-annoying, perhaps because it was obviously being used to drum up necessary tension in facing an essentially faceless enemy.

    Rating: 2.5 out of 3 botched acetylcholine tests.

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  3. Kevin Black Avatar
    Kevin Black

    I have a quibble with the way they cavalierly toss off the deaths of billions in some dialogue and never deal with that. We’ve seen this kind of thing before, I think, in “The Doomsday Machine,” “Operation: Annihilate!” and maybe a few others. Billions of life forms including all traces of entire biospheres and civilizations–that’s either a tragedy of immense proportions, or nothing is. I want to see the Star Trek episode or film about that. The fact that they all seem to be more concerned about the 400 Vulcans on the Intrepid makes Spock’s point about the limits of compassion better than he thinks it does.

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  4. Randi Cohen Avatar
    Randi Cohen

    True dat. Also while spock likens in the creature to a virus, clearly it is more similar to a bacterium.

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  5. R. Alex Reutter Avatar
    R. Alex Reutter

    The death of 400 Vulcans is a tragedy, the death of billions of humans is a statistic.  — Joseph Stalin  (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Joseph_Stalin#Misattributed)

    Perhaps “The Immunity Syndrone” gave Abrams further impetus to destroy the entire Vulcan planet.  🙂

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  6. R. Alex Reutter Avatar
    R. Alex Reutter

    Yes!  And it’s totally unnecessary to try to liken it to a virus when bacterial infections can be extremely nasty — maybe we were still in the post-WWII penicillin euphoria, before we noticed that we were breeding resistant strains…

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