2.20 — “Return to Tomorrow”
Plot: Drawn to a world that has been dead for half a million years, Kirk and his crew are confronted by a disembodied voice calling itself Sargon, which makes them an offer. Deep below the surface of the planet lies the preserved intelligence of an alien race. Lend us your bodies, Sargon says, long enough for us to fashion a new receptacles for our minds, and we will reward you with knowledge beyond your wildest dreams. What does it mean, though, to be without a body? To give up your very self, for the comfort of an alien race? Oh heck, why not–what could go wrong?
Thoughts: Love is in the air! Ah, love. Our timing is off–this should have been the Valentine’s Day episode. Chapel gets hers with Spock, Sargon finds out that 500,000 years cannot cool his ardor for Thalassa, and as for Kirk and Lt. Cmdr. Mulhall… well, you get the idea they’re enjoying themselves, too, in this fun, laid-back little episode.
There’s no B-story here. No huge reversals. Just a grand concept and a lot of thinky scenes about consciousness and the search for progress.
While it’s tempting to fault this episode for lack of ambition, I appreciate that it contains a real science fiction premise. It’s fun to watch these actors play at being different people, and to just think about the episode’s concepts. Imagine being suspended in a globe, changing bodies with a pan-dimensional ancient pooh-bahs of luminous sonority. Why not take a risk, have a snog, and wax rhapsodic about human progress?
There’s the evil Henoch/Spock with his lazy grin, leaning against the door, saying what did you think I was going to do? Give back this body? Have you seen these pecs?
The orchestra fanfare for Mulhall when she first comes on camera is fairly outrageous. Look, a pretty doctor. Yes, the show is sexist, but it’s still trying, in spite of itself, to make the world better. I thought the science officers wear blue?
Too bad Sargon didn’t have the androids from “I, Mudd” or “What Are Little Girls Made Of?” available. The latter didn’t even know they were robots. Sargon and Thalassa could have been happy in those bodies.
4 of 5 captains in love with scientific possibility.
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