This episode deserves a slightly different format.
The Writer
This was the easiest-to-follow story by Richard Matheson (of "I am Legend" fame) ever. You should read the novela "I am Legend as a companion to the movies, but you should not read his other stuff unless you want to come away disturbed and not even entirely sure by what. Tangent over.
Questionable Choices
The green shirt is back! Kirk has obviously realized that the crotch accentuating arrow is a little over the top, however, and had it removed! Yes, he has had his personal tailor attend to his wardrobe since 3 episodes ago! The other option is that he liked the shirt so much that he went back to the store and bought a few styles of it. This is not too far fetched, since we hope he has multiple tan shirts and we know he has at least 2 copies of the green shirt with no crotch point, since he and his double both wear them at the same time.
Bad Choices
On to rape, which is the main source of humor in this episode. Oddly, this was filmed before 2010, when the world's teenagers got together and declared rape to be funny (because screw the man!). This was back when it was supposed to be a serious issue. Or at least before then, when it was a non-issue.In this episode, the captain splits into the half of him that leans forward and looks up through his eye lashes and who thinks its totally ok to rape Janice and the half of him which has trouble making decisions. These are apparently the 2 polar halves of Kirk: the rapist half and the indecisive half.
Notice that this is the 3rd episode; 50% percent so far have featured the yeomen being sexually harassed by her colleagues. This is by far the worst is has gotten.
This episode makes me think about how it must feel to be stuck in space like this with people constantly trying to rape you. It is your job to deal with it (and also bring the captain reports. We aren't completely clear on what she does other than that. She seemed to be acting as a thieving waitress for Sulu, but maybe that's just her being his buddy. He has, after all, not tried to rape her.) and you aren't even allowed to change into a skirt which comes down below your crotch. Her uniform is what the stripper comes out of the back room in. This is not me saying that a short skirt is justification for rape, just pointing out that a woman who has been molested might feel more comfortable in a pantsuit. Remember, these are the days of Barbara Eden not being able to show her belly button and I saw Janice's panties in this one.
After the attempted rape happens, Janice is disbelieved then interrogated then mocked (by Spock, clearly proving once and for all that he does not understand Earth humor, or maybe he only understands Earth humor circa 2010.). She is not given any medical or psychological attention during this episode.
Worse Choices
The other distractingly awful thing that Kirk did in this episode was almost kill Sulu and the away team. You see, Kirk came back and was split in 2, then the unicorn-dog had the same problem. Because of this issue, they did not want to bring the away team back and so they let them sit there and freeze to death. Ok, they didn't actually die, but the temperature was low enough that they should have. I'm pretty sure he said it got down to negative 150 at one point. Until it got to negative 40, (around the point where Fahrenheit and Celsius are equal) I was hoping that it was just that I don't understand Celsius and maybe it was higher than I thought, but then I began hoping he meant Fahrenheit as it headed toward negative 3 million degrees.The thing is, they are working on a fix for the captain already. There is no reason to believe that the captain will not pull through and the options are death or being split into their own rapist and wet noodle selves. Whose not going to choose the latter?
In all seriousness, I think Mr. Matheson is trying to show that Kirk's two halves are equally dangerous. I think the idea here is that Kirk is more than the sum of his parts or something, but really it seems to drive home that he is made of really shitty parts. He apparently needs his rapist side to keep his murderer side in check and visa versa.
That being said, we all know that the teleporter would split me into my whiny half and my bitchy half. So who am I to judge?
Pet Peeves and Inconsistencies: Ok, pet peeves may have been the theme of this post, so I just have one more thing to say
- Unicorn dog?
