Kirk: "I must say I've never seen a top sergeant that looked like you."
Harnesses, whips, nudity, disembodied brains. How can I possibly complain? (Well, I can. I'm a critic. It's my job. Or it would be if I were getting paid for this.)
The idea of technologically advanced humans being tossed into a Roman style arena to fight for their lives is compelling and they might have pulled it off if the writing had been better and they'd had a bigger budget to work with. This story desperately needed to be a lot bigger; one tiny arena and three or four fighters just wasn't convincing, and there should have been an audience other than three disembodied brains. Exotic armor. Lirpas and ahnwoons, perhaps. Tigers would have been good. Better costumes all round, perhaps. Galt the master thrall looked like he was Dracula going to a Halloween party.
Shatner fans who enjoyed Kirk's romantic exploits certainly got their money's worth, though. He spent most of the episode shirtless with artful whip scars all over his chest as he seduced a starlet wearing a silver harness and not much else. As far as zaftig alien babes go, Shahna was the bomb; I loved her huge mane of green hair that actually went with her eyes. Kirk may have started out manipulating her, but he ended up all protective and ready to take punishment for her. As he did for Uhura.
(Poor Uhura. Kirk gets a gorgeous drill thrall he can romantically manipulate, Chekov gets drill thrall comic relief, and what does Uhura get? Sexually assaulted. It doesn't seem quite fair.)
All that said, wagering the lives of his entire crew against his own personal fighting ability wasn't Kirk's finest moment. I wish they'd found a better plot resolution than that. And how did Kirk win the fight? Nearly all the participants broke the rules by leaving their colored area during battle, and Kirk won a battle to the death without actually killing Shahna. Maybe the Providers were just ready to throw in the towel and Kirk gave them an excuse. Yes, I'm reaching.
The B plot featured McCoy and Scott giving Spock an incredibly hard time as Spock insisted on following his wild theory of where the Captain went, and of course, Spock was right. It looked and felt like filler, probably because it was.
Ben says...
Okay, if you read some of my comments you may have suspected that I resort to, shall we say, hyperbole, but the following is absolutely true.
Labor day Weekend 1984, The Anaheim Convention Center
I am standing in line to buy an 8x10 picture of Shahna, Kirk’s green-haired trainer. Angelique Pettyjohn, the statuesque beauty who played her, is patiently signing the photos for all the glassy-eyed fan-boys in the surprisingly long line. I finally reach the front of the line and blurt out how I was excited to get her autograph (no doubt in fluent Nerdling, my native tongue). She smiled and asked me which picture I wanted. I looked down and was faced with photos of her as Shahna posing with her training weapon in full costume, or similarly armed but wearing nothing at all.
It would be hard to fully explain just how stunning this was to me (a nerd so thin and gawky that only my coke bottle glasses kept me from being blown away by every stray breeze and with no prospects for ever knowing the touch of a woman) in that year (an era not yet overwhelmed with easily downloadable porn and an array of pop stars who could double as strippers). I was literally struck dumb, but it was at that precise moment that I became a man. I squeaked out a "that one," hardly daring to meet her gaze. She smiled, said some nice words about fans, and signed the picture (I won't say which one).
Miss Pettyjohn passed away as a young woman, and by all accounts her life had ups and downs, but to this day she occupies the same hallowed space in my imagination that Princess Leia in her brass bikini occupies for so many others.
Back to Billie for bits and pieces:
-- Star date 3211.7... except later, Spock said it was 3259.2. Gamma 2 and Triskelion.
-- The three-pronged symbol of Triskelion looked like a three-legged swastika. A troystika. Having nothing to do with Counselor Troi. Or with an evil menage a trois.
-- I assume the disembodied brains were wagering for the sake of wagering, because what could quatloos possibly be worth to them? No expensive houses or Italian cars, and caviar, champagne and Godiva chocolate wouldn't mean anything to a brain. At least they moved on to a much better game. Sort of like live action Sims.
-- Spock and McCoy talked about transportees not surviving if they were disassembled atoms for an hour. That was interesting.
-- The final fight scene included an Andorian competitor.
-- It sounded like Leonard Nimoy had a cold.
-- I have to mention that silver harness again. Every time I watch this episode, I expect her to pop out of that outfit.
Quotes:
McCoy: "Hope? I always thought that was a human failing, Mister Spock."
Spock: "True, Doctor. Constant exposure does result in a certain degree of contamination."
Kirk: "What's happening to Lieutenant Yuheera?"
I swear he said "Yuheera". Seriously, why didn't they loop that line? Yuheera?
Spock: "Doctor, I am chasing Captain Kirk, Lieutenant Uhura and Ensign Chekov, not some wild aquatic fowl."
Cheesy fun, but semi-embarrassing. One out of four quatloos,
Billie
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Photo credit: Memory Alpha
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