3.4 — “And the Children Shall Lead”
Plot: What does the Enterprise find, responding to a distress call on the planet Triacus? Dead bodies strewn everywhere, apparently from a mass suicide. The children of the research party survive, apparently unconcerned and unaffected by their parents’ deaths. Creepy, huh? Determined to get to the bottom of this, Krik takes the children on board the Enterprise, where they soon start to take over the ship.
Thoughts: This is a very dark episode. For the line “We’ll have to kill them.” For scenes of mass suicide, and rejoicing at expressions of childhood trauma. For the accidental beaming of a pair of security guards into deep space–in a scene in which the audience knows what is happening, but Kirk is two steps behind. To make a long story short–I like this episode much better than I expected!
Starting back from the beginning–is it always automatically going to be just Kirk, Spock, and McCoy beaming down in all the landing parties now? Don’t tell me they dug all those graves by themselves. Nice UFP pennant–but it doesn’t seem very sturdy.
It’s great, at long last, to be seeing new areas of the Enterprise again. Behold, the cafeteria and the arboretum!
The writers/producers must have thought kids were quite resilient back in the 1960s. McCoy’s thesis seems to be that as long as they can cry, they’ll be okay. Since each of these kids is a patricide as well as an orphan, I’m not so sure. How developed are social services in space, anyway? Is there interstellar foster care? An outer space adoption agency?
The redhead kid (Craig Hundley) has bad luck. Besides playing Tommy in this episode, he also played Kirk’s newly orphaned nephew in 1.29 –“Operation: Annihilate!” (in which episode, he also filmed a scene on the bridge). Craig’s wikipedia page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craig_Hundley) is totally fascinating. Check it out–I don’t want to spoil it.
Perhaps they could have cast a better actor to play the Angel/Gorgan, but I’ll give him points for being creepy. He’s the spirit of evil, and comes off as a pedophile. I like the idea of having to conquer the fear within you to prevail. This episode is at least moderately well thought out. I don’t mind an episode being a little bit slow-moving when there is genuine suspense and I can’t tell how the episode will end. I don’t recall ever seeing this one before–it’s the kind of show you would expect to remember.
The scene with Kirk and Spock in the turbolift is quite slasherific! I also enjoyed watching Chekov try to arrest Kirk and Spock.
Chekov training a phaser on the captain, while under the control of an alien intelligence… does this remind anyone else of Star Trek II?
3 out of 5 nasty bowls of vanilla coconut synthesized ice cream.
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