3.11 — “Wink of an Eye”
Plot: Kirk and a landing party beam back aboard the Enterprise having been called to Scalos by a distress signal, but finding no one present on the apparently dead world. Unbeknownst to them, five aliens sneak aboard with them, who are accelerated in time too fast to be seen or heard by the crew. The aliens plan to place the crew in suspended animation, and use the males as breeding stock for the preservation of their race, which has become sterile due to radiation exposure. The first choice of a breeding partner (by Deela, one of the Scalosians) is Captain James Kirk!
Thoughts: This episode is not impressive. The beginning was dull and gave me little to think about, expect for one chuckle–”Oh no! Our advanced intercom system is malfunctioning!” I’m still not sure whether, during the teaser filmed on the planet, the crew was supposed to be indoors or outdoors–not a great set.
Then Kirk is suddenly, unceremoniously accelerated, right into a kiss from the alien babe of a week. That is a fast woman.
After that, it’s talk, talk, talk. There is a jealous alien boyfriend, just like “By Any Other Name.” A bunch of magical technology that makes little sense. A complete failure on the part of the crew to acknowledge the wonder of first contact with an advanced alien civilization, nor the tragedy of the whole civilization dying with its 900,000 inhabitants. Are we that blasé? The five Scalosian survivors seem quite unfazed. Perhaps their emotional makeup is different from ours.
For me, this is the interesting part:
DEELA: They’ll remain here in suspended animation. It will do them no harm. We are saving them for when we need them in the future. You will not last forever. You know that, Captain. Captain, we have the right to survive.
KIRK: Not by killing others.
DEELA: You were doing exactly the same thing. You came charging into that life-support room the minute you knew there was trouble. You would have killed every one my people if you could have.
KIRK: You invaded my ship. You threaten my crew.
DEELA: There is no difference.
KIRK: There is a difference! Your trouble is in you.
I have to say, Deela has a point. It’s all relativistic, isn’t it? They have a right to try to save themselves, and Kirk and crew have a right to defend themselves. It’s fine to say it shouldn’t work this way, but generally it does. I don’t know why there wouldn’t be alternatives–such as placing the Scalosians in suspended animation and rushing them to the nearest intergalactic medical research lab, however. It took Spock and McCoy about five minutes to figure out how to reverse the acceleration; fixing the Scalosians’ reproductive problems doesn’t seem like it could be much of a challenge in comparison. Why are the men sterile, but not the women? If they’re going to interbreed with aliens anyway, why not just go off-world, and start a new life the honest way? Things start to break down the moment you question them.
It is far less interesting, but unfortunately quite distracting, to dwell on the inconsistent time scales in this episode. The unaccelerated crew is sometimes completely frozen relative to the Scalosians, but at other times (generally when the Scalosians aren’t in the room) they seemingly move at normal speed. Melissa N. Hayes-Gehrke, quoted on the episode’s Wikipedia page, critiques this far better than I can:
“Unfortunately, the ramifications of the accelerated living just do not stand up under scrutiny. If a Scalosian stays in one place for awhile [sic] – even just to have a protracted conversation – he should become visible, albeit briefly, to a normal person. We didn’t see any indication that this could happen. Kirk fires his phaser at Deela and she steps out of the way because the beam is moving so slowly. This is patently ridiculous; phaser beams travel at the speed of light, and no object with mass can travel faster than that. From a practical perspective, how do the ship’s doors know to open for the Scalosians, when the ship’s sensors cannot detect them? How can the Scalosians flip and slide switches (like the transporter controls), that are not designed to move so quickly, without breaking them?” Source: http://www.astro.umd.edu/~avondale/Reviews/TOS/s3-winkofaneye.html
There is also no explanation why accelerating a person makes him turn docile, or why Kirk alone is able to resist this effect.
“Wink of an Eye,” sadly, is probably most memorable for the unmistakably post-coital scene where Deela adjusts her hair in the bedroom mirror, while Kirk sits on the edge of the bed, zipping his boot.
1 out of 5 fake distress calls (Gosh darn it! They fooled us again!).
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