Title: The Magicks of Megas-Tu
Airdate: 10/27/1973
Plot Summary
While on a mission at the center of the galaxy, the Enterprise are swept through the center of everything and end up in an alien world where all laws of nature and physics fail to work. They are rescued from total system collapse and death by a satyrlike creature named Lucien.
He claims to be happy to have them finally come visiting, but preaches caution. Spock deduces that magic actually works in this universe, but the Enterprise crew’s experimental use of it attracts the attention of Lucien’s people.
They came to Earth and practiced magic, but were hated, feared, and driven out. Then they put the Enterprise crew on trial in a mock Salem but it is actually Lucien they consider at fault. They agree to let the Enterprise go but condemn Lucien to eternal imprisonment.
Defending Lucien, Kirk challenges the court ruling and uses magic himself to fend off the Chief Prosecutor. Impressed by Kirk’s willingness to die for Lucien, who may have been the inspiration for Lucifer, the Megans send the Enterprise back to their own part of space.
Risk Is Our Business
Kirk becomes a wizard to save Satan. I’m not making this up.
Logical
Spock learns magic by moving a chess piece 3 inches. Kirk immediately learns from Spock to become Gandalf. Because Kirk is that awesome.
He’s Dead Jim
Bones notices life support is on the fritz. He also scoffs at Spock about magic and once again Spock proves him wrong.
Helm Sluggish Captain
Sulu tries pilot the ship when the Magix people grab the ship but it ends up with the ship getting cut in half. That’s not going to look good on his driver’s license.
He also does some magic to conjure up a pretty girl which is all kinds of funny now knowing Takei the way we all do.
Hailing Frequencies Open, Sugar
When Sulu conjures up the lady, Uhura is delighted, wishing him good luck. Damn I miss pre-feminism.
Either that or she knows that Takei wouldn’t know what to do with a woman.
My Wee Bairns
Scotty watches the ship while the away team is gone and can’t get anything working on it in this weird universe. Nor can he figure out how life support is working in this weird universe. Dude is really out of his element.
Three Arms Are Better Than Two, ya Fuzzy Face
Arex does make a hilarious face when the big three are whisked away by Lucien.
Getting Animated
So the big problem here is that they just take a jaunt to the center of the galaxy. One, it supposed to be unreachable due to a great barrier. Two, and Star Trek V also committed this sin, getting to it isn’t a Sunday drive, it’s a loooooong ways away. Like Voyager trying to get home distances.
They also reach Warp 10 which is not possible. Yeah, the Original series warp measurements were different than Next Gen era I guess so I reluctantly give that a pass.
Technobabble
Let’s just throw tech out the window in this episode; discussion would be useless.
What It Means To Be Human – Review
I don’t know whether to rate this episode 5 stars or 0 stars. It’s a head-scratcher of an episode.
I can get over the nonsense of them going to the centre of the galaxy. And a race of magical beings kind of brings back some of the ideas of Who Mourns For Adonis as well as the Q. But really doesn’t seem to work as either. Still, it’s a swing for the fences.
As an agnostic/atheist type, I still thought the idea of making Lucien Lucifer was a little insulting. He’s the evil for a reason in mythology, or as a parable or whatever. If they did this to Islam and made whoever is considered the devil in Islam (probably has a name like Goldstein) they wouldn’t have stood for it.
Still, if you’re trying to tell a story about separating myth from reality, I guess I can see what they were going for.
Kirk being able to go from nothing to Dumbledore was too much. These people have been doing this for thousands, maybe millions of years. But he’s Kirk, so yeah, he’s awesome immediately.
I didn’t mind the idea of making a fake Salem Witch trial but it seems like they would’ve been with us on earth far too recently. It came across that there were here before mankind really started civilization, that weird period before cities and nations but after cave dwellers. Yet they were still hanging around? And how did they come and go from Earth to the center of the galaxy?
Oh right. Magic.
Introducing magic as a concept into Star Trek is just problematic itself. It prides itself on being a science fiction show. Even the Q, magical as they may seem, are just highly evolved beings.
I suppose there’s some attempt to explain this with the weird properties of the center of the universe, but then how do they keep their magic when they aren’t there?
It’s all a bit muddled and after due consideration, I just have to say this is just a giant misfire. But a somewhat entertaining one.
(I still don’t know what a Megas-Tu is.)
