Title: The Infinite Vulcan
Airdate: 10/20/1973
Plot Summary
In The Infinite Vulcan, the Enterprise investigates a seemingly abandoned planet to discover it’s inhabited by a race of plants, the Phylosians. They are then confronted by a giant humanoid, Dr. Keniclius 5, a refugee of the Eugenics Wars. He leads the Phylosians, and they capture Spock and send Kirk packing. Keniclius plans to clone Spock as he cloned himself (being the “fifth” generation of the original) and bring peace to the galaxy via conquest.
He’s helping the Phylosians, a dying race, who are aiding him in return. McCoy whips up some weedkiller and the Enterprise landing party get past the Phylosians only to confront a giant Spock; Keniclius’ first of many. But the original is to be sacrificed. Kirk goads the giant Spock into assisting the younger one by drawing on its reflexive actions. The clone-Spock revives the original with a mind meld and Keniclius gives up his dreams of conquest. He and the giant clone-Spock will stay behind to help the Phylosians.
Risk Is Our Business
Kirk ain’t leaving without Spock, but does have to beat a retreat until they can figure out their next plan. He comes up with the classic Kirk speech in logically talking Spock 2 into abandoning Kencilius’s mad plan.
Logical
Spock spends most of the episode lying on a bed. Another episode involving Spock’s brain with the same level of quality.
He’s Dead Jim
Bones objects to the plant alien injecting Sulu with an antidote without knowing what it is. I’m torn between Bones being rightly cautious as this stranger might do more harm, vs he doesn’t know crap about what Sulu was stung with, and obviously the natives might have something that would work. As it turns out, Bones was right to be suspicious.
Helm Sluggish Captain
Sulu gets to be on an away team, and as usual, when he goes, shit goes badly for him. He picks up a plant with his hands that he knows nothing about, it pricks him, and there’s poison. Fortunately, he gets an antidote pretty quickly.
He does seem to have a few more things to do this episode. He gets to go back down to the planet to take the science officer role when they go to rescue Spock. I have to wonder if Koenig gave him more to do, as he and Takei were usually relegated to just sitting at the consoles.
Hailing Frequencies Open, Sugar
Uhura is able to find the history on Stabos Keniclius. She also ties all the ship’s power into her comm console and is instantly disintegrated when she turns it on. Naw, just kidding, she establishes the communication with Spock 2 because she’s just that awesome.
My Wee Bairns
Scotty orders using all the ship’s power to communicate with the away team. I am not convinced that the communications system at the highest power available could put a dent in the ship’s overall power. If they used that much power, I’m pretty sure every comm system would just burn out.
Three Arms Are Better Than Two, ya Fuzzy Face
Arex mans his station and provides excellent background decoration. Again.
Getting Animated
When the series was commissioned, the budget didn’t allow for all seven, and so Walter Koenig was left out. I guess everyone felt bad about it, so they gave him an episode to write. We end up with this piece of shit, though it sounds like it wasn’t all his fault. The Infinite Vulcan went through piles of rewrites, and whatever he started out with didn’t really end up on the screen. He was fairly frustrated by the whole process, but he made peace with it years later.
Kirk mentions that there’s been peace for the last hundred years in the Federation. This does place the start of the peace around Captain Archer’s time. This would line up correctly, so well done.
The Vulcan IDIC is referenced. Nice.
Technobabble
Sulu can’t find Spock on the planet as he can’t find any human life forms. Maybe set it for Vulcan, and he would’ve had better luck. Turns out it was the thick walls underground, but he didn’t know that at the time.
What It Means To Be Human – Review
The Infinite Vulcan is a mess. So we got this guy who’s been cloning himself into a giant version of himself and transferring his consciousness into them. Why giants? Don’t know. As interesting as the ideas of giants have been throughout mythology, this dude couldn’t fit on the ship. What was his plan to interact with humanity when being that big is damn near a handicap?
Then he’s apparently not enough; he needs to make a big-ass-Spock? Again, why? Don’t know. Something about how well-ordered and perfect Spock is being half human and half Vulcan. How does that bring about galactic peace? Don’t know.
And hey, if you’re going to do this over a couple of centuries, maybe just pick up a newspaper once in a while and make sure things haven’t changed. “Oh, he was too remote.” Bullshit, you can make giant clones and monsters, you can’t check on Fox News website or something?
As I mentioned, it’s established that the clones transfer consciousness. But Spock-2 is able to mind-meld with OG Spock and copy his consciousness. Even in the movies, it was never really established that it was that easy to copy minds, only move them. So WTF? And what exactly was transferred into Spock 2? Why did he come across as a new person rather than Spock himself wondering why he was a giant? He seemed to accept everything this gay doctor was telling him. Yeah, yeah, some confusion after the transfer, whatever.
Meanwhile Uhura and Scotty nearly use up all the ship’s power and burn out the dilithium crystals just for a phone call? I touched on that above, but that brings me back to the first Harry Mudd episode, which I still won’t let go of. If the ship was that fragile that high-speed internet could empty its gas tank, it would’ve never made it past the moon.
And on top of all of it, we have these plant beings that are subjugated by this weirdo but also they are dying out and they wanted to do what the doctor was doing, but not anymore? Or something. Also we have plant life that looks like dragons.
I’m surprised that at some point, a kitchen sink didn’t fly across the screen.
Decent ending, I suppose, the Doctor realizing he made a mistake and will work towards more positive goals from now on, letting humanity learn from him and vice versa. I’ll give it that, it was a nice Trek ending.
The Infinite Vulcan is just a bad episode all around.
