Title: The Mark Of Gideon
Airdate: 1/17/1969
Plot Summary
Kirk beams down to a planet only to find himself back on the Enterprise but completely deserted. He comes across a lone woman who doesn’t seem to know how she got there. In the meantime Spock and the crew attempt to locate him but the government of Gideon seems to be giving him the runaround. What is the mystery here, where did Kirk go and how does the immensely overcrowded planet of Gideon figure into all this?
Risk Is Our Business
Kirk wanders around the fake Enterprise trying to get into Odana’s pants for most of the episode. Ok, seriously he’s trying to figure out what’s going on.
Logical
Spock does his best to deal with the bureaucrat’s runaround but finally says the vulcan equivalent of “fuck this” and goes down to the planet himself.
He’s Dead Jim
McCoy cures Donada. The rest of the time he complains rightly about the Gideons behavior.
Helm Sluggish Captain
Sulu sits in his seat and generally keeps his mouth shut. He is told to start scanning in a 360 direction which he says that’ll take years. Spock is unimpressed with his whining.
Nuclear Wessels
Chekov listens to it all trying to find Kirk and deal with the Gideons and looks positively beat down by it all.
Hailing Frequencies Open, Sugar
Uhura does her most difficult work in her career, trying to navigate Federation bureaucracy. Between that and listening to the Gideon pricks, she’s pretty infuriated, though calmly.
My Wee Bairns
Scotty needs to shut his damn mouth when the line is open. But when the Gideons accuse them of having faulty transporters he can’t help but run his mouth. Even when Spock tells him to shut up and go back down to the transporter room, he obeys but not without grumbling all the way to the turbolift.
Canon Maker
The prime directive restraints to make sure you don’t just go in guns a blazing is in full effect here. Unfortunately it’s a textbook example of how an unscrupulous party can take advantage of the Federation’s good intentions. They are able to delay and obfuscate all over the place stymieing Spock’s efforts to try and locate Kirk.
Canon Breaker
Not sure why it was so important to the Federation to open up relations with this planet. They seem to be recluses, they know nothing about the Gideons, and have no resources that are needed. Not even sure if they have warp drive. It’s a head scratcher.
Man It Feels Bad To Be A Red Shirt
No deaths. Or there will be? And it’s a good thing?
Technobabble
We’ve heard of the vague “coordinates” whenever someone has to beam down. “We have your coordinates to beam down” or “Please send the coordinates to your location and we’ll beam you aboard.” But here we see that beaming coordinates are 3 sets of 3 digit numbers. This makes some sense on an X,Y, and Z axis. Where on the planet and at what elevation.
AAANNND since the last number was the one that changed and assuming the final number is elevation it makes sense that Kirk was beamed below the council chambers. We see they have very quick access to the duplicate Enterprise. It’s either built above the building or more likely, underground. In any case changing that one number made all the difference.
I Know That Guy:
Sharon Acker plays the fetching Odana. She did a few films, a few more TV guest spots but finally quit acting by the end of the 80s.
David Hurst plays the infuriating Ambassador Hodin.
Richard Derr plays the somewhat less infuriating, but still annoying, Admiral Fitzgerald.
What It Means To Be Human – Review
So this episode is the reverse of the last one. In Let This Be Your Last Battlefield, I assumed it was old, ham fisted, and outdated and was pleasantly surprised. I remembered this one being an intriguing mystery and an allegory on overpopulation and it was not great at all.
First of all, it’s really interesting that Kirk ends up on what appears to be the Enterprise but the crew is missing. But the writers tip their hand too soon when we go back to the real Enterprise and everyone realizes he’s missing. So wherever Kirk is, we know it’s not the Enterprise and the crew is not missing. That really deflates the mystery way too soon.
Then the idea is ludicrous. Ok you got over population and want Kirk because he’s a carrier of a specific disease. Fine. But you need to create an entire copy of the Enterprise to fool him? I got news for you, if you wanted him to stay for a while, Odona just needed to invite him up to her place for a few days.
Oh what, she’s gonna willingly sacrifice her life, she can’t throw her legs back for a few days too? That’s a bridge too far? Nope, we’re too chaste for that. Better build an entire copy of the Enterprise instead. Yes I know why they did it, ready made sets and they thought they had a clever idea to deal with the budget cuts. Sometimes it works. Here it does not. It was dumb dumb dumb.
Now all that being said, I did enjoy the crew getting exasperated at the worthless diplomats and bureaucrats. Definitely need some DOGE in there. Even Spock just has enough and does what has to be done.
Really this episode is just weird and stupid. I want to like it more than I do but a planet that doesn’t have an ounce of space on it doesn’t have room to build an empty Enterprise. So dumb.
Welcome to season 3.
