This is one of the very few times in the original series where the various inconsistencies and illogical premises actually preclude ones enjoyment of the episode. This looks like a script which was not very well critically analyzed by the story editor before it was shot, probably because of time constraints. In addition, the fact that this late in the series, the staff felt that the episodes they were then working on would air once, be watched by no one, and never be seen on television again. How could they know that thirty years later people would still be discussing every nuance of every story? Seen in this light, the errors of this story (which overshadow a pretty good main story idea about overpopulation and the leader of the planet's difficult decision to attempt to sacrifice his own daughter) are forgivable. But let's look at some of the more glaring ones anyway . . .

The Gideons are able to build the "fake" Enterprise by plans of the starship they obtained during negotiations with the Federation. Even if they were able to build an exact replica of this ship based on those plans (they certainly wouldn't lack for manpower), would those plans be able to tell them certain personal touches about Kirk's ship necessary to fool him? For example, how would they know what pictures Kirk had on the wall of his cabin, or the type of plants he kept there, as well as other items of decor?

Soon after Kirk meets Odona, he discovers that someone has taken a sample of his blood. Who did this, and, above all, WHEN?

How do the images of the Gideonites appear overlaid against the star backdrop on the viewscreens and ports of the fake Enterprise? Why do they vanish just as suddenly as they appear?

Kirk postulates that his blood was taken in a nine-minute gap "from the time I tried to beam down to Gideon and the time I found myself here alone." The time Kirk is referring to represents the brief interval when he was beaming through the transporter beam! Where is there time for a nine-minute gap?

Maybe the Gideonites enlisted the help of the aliens from the first episode of the X-Files in abducting Kirk. Remember, when Scully and Mulder encountered these aliens, they also had a nine-minute gap in their memories they could not account for.

And why, why, why, during all the time that Kirk is missing, does nobody on the real Enterprise attempt to contact him on his communicator?

I was wondering about the space taken up to create a completely empty Enterprise. Kirk says in his log that he has searched every room on the ship and found noone, that's a lot of space considering Odona's people are supposed to be so cramped that you can't stand in a room by yourself, can't be alone. If the general public knew what lengths Odona's father went to fool Kirk, there would have been a riot no doubt. And when Odona is dying, she is in a roomy bedroom, so much for being sardines.

A lot of societys are not as individually-oriented as we are. Given the importance of the project - bringing disease - the populace may have thought it a worthy (and brief) use of valuable space.

If the people of Gideon had access to a technology so sophisticated that they could duplicate the Enterprise so carefully it could fool Kirk, and take his blood sample in a way that he didn't notice, why couldn't they invent a condom? Or any other form of birth control, up to and including third-trimester abortions? They certainly don't have any moral scruples about life, because their willing to reduce the population through a plague.

And if these people are so smart, shouldn't they have thought of the (at my last count) 6 billion better ways of going about their plan than putting Kirk on a fake Enterprise for absolutely no reason?

I have a few comments to add: First, in response to Mike's comment, the leader of Gideon DID go through this senseless diatribe about how all life is sacred and that interfereing with its creation (i.e. birth control) in any way was against all their beliefs. I agree with you though, they don't have much in the way of a moral center.

Second, no one on Gideon has even spent TWO SECONDS considering the ramifications of what they intend to do. It's implied that these people have no natural immunity to anything, yet they are going to introduce a virus into the population. Also, even under the most controlled coditions viruses have have the nasty habit of mutating, so even if they could control it at the time it was introduced, they probably wouldn't be able to do so for long.

In short order there would be no one left, but those extraordinary few that DID have some sort of natural immunity. There are those few when speaking of any virus, including AIDS.

When Kirk was calling through the fake ship trying to find someone, they showed sickbay. The wall light was flashing a red alert, although there was no sound.

Why was Odona so startled at seeing someone? Didn't she hear him yelling through the ship?

Spock said that wars no longer prevail in the galaxy. What about the Klingons?

Regarding the Gideonites ability to copy even Kirk's personal touches--this smacks of a spy in the Enterprise midst.

Hodin, in trying to use his diplomatic twistings, came across as very stupid. When Spock's crewmates were making angry comments, he asks, "Spock? Are you still there?" Did he forget that they were on visual? Spock was standing there all the time. Hodin sounded silly instead of sarcastic.

Kirk changed the ship's speed by, apparently, manipulating a couple of tapes. He wasn't anywhere near the navigation/pilot console. If this is how the ship changes speed, why did he always ask Sulu to do it before?

Why did the heartbeats suddenly start? Why weren't they there from the beginning?

When, exactly, did Odona tell Kirk that there was no sickness on her planet? I even backtracked my tape. All I heard her say was that they were immensely overcrowded, not why. In the Blish version, Odona had accidently seared off one of her little fingers, then told a horrified Kirk that there was no pain, and they watched her finger regenerate.

Since when do formal negotiations include discussing a ship's captain's medical records?

These people apparently are so pro-life that they won't use devices to prevent conception. (Yet Hodin mentioned that they couldn't be sterilized because the organs regenerated, suggesting that they had tried it.) How about the rhythm method, which by the Star Trek era should be fairly reliable? Or how about...ABSTINENCE? I should think that the constant mass of people would be a turn-off after a while.

If they're willing to suicide by illness--why not poison? Or decapitation?

Why didn't Kirk try to use his communicator? The Gideonites took it from him, you say? Why didn't he notice it was gone? He might have figured things out that much sooner. Surely he wouldn't have left his communicator behind on the real Enterprise. They never leave home without them.

Phil mentioned the problems of food and water for such a massive population. There's another, less delicate matter. What about waste disposal? If that wasn't dealt with, it could cause disease.

Why didn't Spock just creep up on the two guards and deliver a two-handed pinch? I know he can do it, because he did it on "Whom Gods Destroy."

Yeah. What we're dealing with here is population genetics - where is the carrying capacity of this environment to kick in the Sigismoidal Curve?

Seeing that they have Federation connections and therefore spaceflight, why not just evacuate a portion of the population?

Watching Insurrection this weekend gave me a thought . . . suppose the gideonites had holodeck technology and were able to use it to create the replica of the Enterprise? This would explain a lot, albeit not all, of the problems of this story.

Yeah, it doesn't matter what technobabble excuse you come up with to explain the fake Enterprise. The bottom line is, if the Gideons have the technology to to build a fake ship so real it can fool its captain, then they should have the ability to control their own population. Their so-called moral aversion to killing is hogwash. You can control population growth without killing. Heck, all you have to do is give tax credits to childless couples; no technology required at all.

If the writers wanted to make this story work, they should have posited a race that was unable to control its reproductive cycle. Say, a race that went into heat, like animals, or one that had to reproduce or die (like the Moties in Niven and Pournelle's novel The Mote in God's Eye). Of course, there would have been a problem getting that through 1960's TV censors.

I have to say, the leader of the Gideons is an idiot. Did he really expect Spock and co. to just abandon searching for Kirk on the planet just because he assured them he was not down there? Spock must have been biting his tongue not to say something to him.

The only thing I can add here is that I find it funny every time this episode shows the Gideonites bumping into each other outside the council chamber. It really does look like the Gideon Dance Party. Admission free, providing you bring a Starfleet captain with snap-on hair.

In the Classic NitPickers' Guide, Phil says that overpopulation on the scale of Gideon's would be unlikely because runaway population growth would be curbed by lack of resources. This is not necessarily a nit. In Asimov's Foundation series, the planet Trantor is completely covered by one massive city of 40 billion people dedicated to the administrative tasks of the Galactic Empire. All of the surface area of the planet is covered by buildings, except for a few acres of garden in the Emperor's palace. Accordingly, there is a constant stream of transport ships bringing in supplies and removing garbage. This could be how the Gideons manage to survive. It does also raise the question of how they keep their overpopulation a secret with all those ships coming in and out every day.

NOTE... THIS MAY OFFEND...


I remember reading in 'The Completely Useless Star Trek Encyclopedia' (A very amusing book) once.
Their entry for the planet Gideon goes something to the extent of:
'A planet who is unable to control their population. Why they asked of Kirk of all people to come to the planet is a mystery'

MODERATOR - if this is a little too risque, please delete. I won't be offended ;)

Didn't offend me :)

It's not inappropriate, it's actually kind of funny!

Not only is it not inappropriate, it's so true! Possibly the greatest plot oversight in the episode.

Coming back on the subject of Spock and the two guards: Check out how Spock "subdues" the second guard. For someone with a supposedly "perfect" physique (due to their longevity) this Gideonite sure is one pathetic guard! He is thrown by Spock, and then dramatically tries to lose consciousness. Cracks me up every time!

Actually, there is a partial defense of the premise which unfortunately the writers didn't think of. The Enterprise duplicate might have been built underground. And much of the population might already be living underground. And if the planet has a typical diameter of around 8000 miles, that's a LOT of underground room! I wonder how much of the planet's interior you could convert into living space?
That doesn't excuse the rest of the script.
They could have had media emphasizing non-sexiness, anti-sexiness, like old people on magazine covers, "the least sexy man alive" special issues, things like that.
They give two different sets of coordinates when Kirk beams down and when Spock beams down. The computer or some crewmember should have noticed.
And when you're covering a whole planet, 3 digits just won't work. You'd need about 9 or 10 digits to make it precise enough. That would have made it easier to overlook some transposed digits, but more tedious for the viewers.
People talk about unfertilized eggs being unborn children. So a woman might have a potential for about 100 pairs of twins in her lifetime. Maybe the Gideonites think that's a Good Thing. But then you've got men producing millions and billions of sperm all going to waste...so the Gideonites are still being inconsistent.

I can think of only one reason why this show was produced-it was a bottle show, a show taking place entirely on the standing Enterprise sets. (Hodin's chambers could have been a redress of any conference room set used.) It was cheap to produce-no new sets (wasn't the observation port used before, in "Conscience of the King",) only three guest speaking parts-ideal to keep the budget down to the crippling level it was in the third season. Good camera angle looking up at Kirk from under the table. Cheers to Al Francis for trying a diferent look. Some of the empty ship shots were re-used from "Omega Glory."

One of the optical staff who worked on the TNG episode "Relics" said that getting the background shot for the original Enterprise bridge (for the scene where Scotty re-creates it in the holodeck) was tough because he had trouble finding a background shot of a near-empty or empty bridge from the original series. He says he finally decided to use a brief couple-of-second scene from "This Side of Paradise" when Kirk enters an empty bridge. I'm surprised he didn't think to use a scene from this episode. There are lots of good empty or near-empty shots of the bridge on "Mark of Gideon".

The view screen shot in "Relics" was from "Mark of Gideon." Maybe the empty bridge shot from this ep was not angled so they could use it-it looked like it was shot from the vent of the half-station to the port side of the viewscreen.

Did I say port? I meant starboard. I get those nautical terms confused. The vent in the half station to the right of the viewscreen.

Just before Spock beams down, he tells Scotty and McCoy that he's not going to be very long. Scotty remarks that that's just what the captain said before he left. How did Scotty know what Kirk said? He wasn't in the transporter room when Kirk made that comment!

The Gideonites seem quite technologically advanced. They can build an exact replica of the Enterprise. Why for gawds sake do they not build real starships where they can colonize other planets relieving the burden on their world.

With the birth rate out of control, maybe they should rename this planet to "Viagra"

I've got the perfect solution for Gideon's problems:

Two words - "Soylent Green"

That won't work....I can imagine Kirk coming back in a year or two and yelling,
"SOYLENT GREEN IS PEOPLE!!!!!!"
at the top of his lungs like he yelled "I am Captain Kirk!!!!" In "The Enemy Within" and "Stop it, you're killing her!!!" in "The Gamesters of Triskelion" (A 4th season idea, perhaps?)

The Federation has a golden oppourtunity with Gideon to deal with any personnel shortfalls it has given how healthy the Gideons are and how many there are. You could probably get folks working for Starfleet for dirt cheap simply because it would give them an excuse to get off planet.

Let me get this straight...the Federation gave a detailed schematic of their Starships to a completely new race of aliens? How did the Federation know the Gideonites were really friendly? How did the Federation know they wouldn't use those plans to destroy their Starships and overthrow the Federation?
(Or in this episode, trick a Starship Captain into thinking he's on his ship when he isn't?)

That's like giving the Borg a map to the Earth during "Q Who?" and saying, "We're from Earth, here's a map on how to get there. Do drop in!"

Not exactly a "brilliant" tactic.

The wardrobe worn by the male Gideonites look like something out of "Flash Gordon"

I LOVE the camera angles in this episode....The cameras shoot thru a glass table so we can see Kirk & Hodin discussing the issue at hand.

WHY did Spock order the return of the Gideonite back to the Council Room after beaming him up the the Enterprise? I mean, the Gideonites kidnapped Kirk for crying out loud! What Spock SHOULD HAVE DONE is put the Gideonite in the BRIG and hold him there until the Gideonite Council coughs up Kirk. I mean, kidnapping a Starship Captain SHOULD BE an ACT OF WAR!

True...this ep's emphasis on 'diplomacy' is a little out of character. On the other hand, I've always figured it'd make a GREAT NextGen ep for the same reason.

Small personal nit (actually, an echo of my childhood dissatisfaction with Barbie dolls): In the Blish version, Odona is described as an exotic beauty with black hair and blue eyes. I can still remember how horribly disappointed I was when I first saw this ep (age about 12) and...she's just one more generic blonde.
Same thing happens to Deela in 'Wink of an Eye': Blish = chestnut curls and green eyes 'the colour of wet leaves'; ep = blue-eyed blonde.

(OK, apologies to all you blondes out there. But for us mousy-brown types, this is irritating!)

I don't find either of them attractive. (And I don't find Mudd's Women attractive...so I have no idea why the entire male crew of the Enterprise was hypnotized.)

Jabootu calls this an "informed attribute". They're a website that reviews B movies. In a nutshell an informed attribute is when somebody is mentioned in the script as being incredibly skilled at something and is treated a such by everybody else in the movie, though to the viewer sees a barely acceptable demonstration of that skill. It also applies to beauty.

I don't know if I totally agree with Kirk's actions in saving Odona's life. True, it is hard to simply sit back and let a young woman die, but the whole point of Odona's sacrifice was that by being such an important (as well as young and vital) citizen of Gideon her death would inspire the common people and give them the courage to sacrifice their lives as well. By saving her because he thought she was a babe, Kirk robbed her of her sacrifice and cheapened her gesture in bringing disease to the planet, as well as her martyrdom which she and her father had both agonizingly decided was the best decision. Anyway, that's the way it seems to me. But again, in all fairness, it would have been difficult for me to just let her die as well.

So many nits about this episode, and so little time. Phil mentions how impossible it must seem that the Gideonites could find the room to build an exact duplicate of the Enterprise. It shows a staggering lack of security from a Starfleet point of view, because not only did they get blueprints of the ship, but color schemes as well, right down to the last console and button, otherwise Kirk would have mentioned that this or that console/room/wall was wrong. The Gideonites might not know the function of the buttons, but they could have sold the data to the Klingons, and the Klingons could have constructed their own copy to practice attacks inside; Kang would have had a field day if he knew how the Enterprise was laid out before he came aboard.
How could the Gideonites have duplicated Kirk's quarters? Your own bedroom changes from day to day, with a piece of clothing left out, or clock moved or the color of your sheets. There's a zero percent chance of the Gideonites getting Kirk's room exactly right, because of his personal belongings.
Hodin stresses that life is sacred to his people from fetus to developed being, but what does he think Kirk's Vegan choriomeningitis is going to do to his people? It'll kill them, so what's all this about life being sacred?
Why even bother with a disease? A simple injection of any ol' poison will do the trick. It works in prison death rows.
What's the purpose of seeing the people outside the window? And the main viewing screen? Was Hodin trying to convince Kirk that he was insane?
Spock neck pinches the first guard, then throws the second down the corridor. Nice and dramatic, but why not neck pinch that guy, too?
McCoy comes to the bridge apparently informed. How is that possible? The crisis began just as that scene started, so he couldn't know that Kirk was MIA.

Excellent nits, Will, but a few clarifications:

Hodin stresses that life is sacred to his people from fetus to developed being, but what does he think Kirk's Vegan choriomeningitis is going to do to his people? It'll kill them, so what's all this about life being sacred?

Erm, that's sorta the point of the ep - the Gideonites have now realised how destructive that particular philosophy has become to them and are taking steps to rectify it.

Why even bother with a disease? A simple injection of any ol' poison will do the trick. It works in prison death rows.

Been awhile since I've seen the ep, but in Blish it's stressed heavily that the Gideonites instantly heal/regenerate any injury. Thus a viral or bacterial organism (that can multiply itself faster than this ability could destroy it) would presumably work where a static dose of poison couldn't.

What's the purpose of seeing the people outside the window? And the main viewing screen? Was Hodin trying to convince Kirk that he was insane?

Nope...those are just Gideonites with no place to go. This is a horribly, horribly overcrowded planet, remember. (I would guess in the vicinity of this huge model, even more crowded.)

The Prime Minister of Gideon wasn't thinking straight. He discovered what was in Kirk's blood, and probably got the plans for his ship right down to the last detail when all he had to do was;
A) Steal plans for a phaser.
B) Steal plans for a Klingon disruptor.
C) Or steal plans of the disintegration machines on Eminiar VII.
Each of these methods would have instantly killed a Gideonite without the last 24 hours of life in pain caused by Vegan Choriomenengitis.
So much effort to build a non-working starship when all he needed was a hand weapon or a big room.

Am I the only one who's glanced at one of the Gideon council scenes and wondered "What the heck is G. Gordon Liddy doing on Star Trek?"

Why is Spock GAWKING AND DAWDLING on the faux-Enterprise? He has a tricorder, he should be going where the life readings are...not strolling around the faux-Bridge on the faux-Enterprise...especially when Spock believes the Captain's life could be in danger.

S.S.S., John-Short Show Syndrome
There is no break in the bridge background sound effects between the scenes on the genuine and faux-Enterprise bridges. Were the sound effects editors operating under that much budget tightness that they couldn't afford to do three or four edits?

EASY SOLUTION TO GIDEON'S PROBLEM:

Have the Enterprise take some clean red shirts from the quartermaster and have the shirts beamed down to the people of Gideon. Have the people put on the red shirts then sit back & watch them die!

Spock must have been napping. He failed to notice that the two coordinates that the Gideonites gave to the Enterprise did not match until almost the end of the episode. (Short show syndrome or Spock's brain wasn't hooked up right...you pick)

What Spock SHOULD HAVE said when they beamed up the Gideonite council member was, "Excuse me, sir. Those were not the coordinates you gave us earlier"

I just watched this last night for the first time in ages, and wondered; why is Kirk so amazed that his unmanned starship is still in orbit around Gideon? Where does he expect it to be?

And why doesn't he do anything positive to find out about his predicament? Having ascertained that the crew have disappeared, he just wanders around aimlessly until he bumps into his love interest You'd think his first actions on getting to the bridge would be to try to contact Starfleet, the Federation, the Gideon Council, then run sensor sweeps, check the ship's log, ask the computer what's happened...

I always considered that the Gideonites built the fake Enterprise underground. As such, shouldn't Kirk have felt a difference in pressure in his ears the deeper he got on the ship? Conversely, shouldn't he feel the same difference if the ship was built above ground?
I realize that 'Spock's Brain', 'And The Children Shall Lead', and 'The Way To Eden' are pretty well considered the worst episodes, either from concept or acting, or whatever, but I'd like to nominate 'The Mark Of Gideon' as one of the worst (# 75 or lower out of 78 episodes) because after re-reading this board the number of plot holes (or should I say 'plot CANYONS'?) are just so staggering. I thought 'Generations' was like Swiss cheese, but this episode is pretty bad.
I guess they figured, hey, it's science fiction, so ANYTHING can happen, and our human ideals and logic can be thrown out.
I've recently heard how the poison of certain snakes and spiders is extremely fast (ie, minutes), so I doubt the fabled regenerative powers of the Gideonites could combat such a chemical. It would be a heck of a lot faster, as I said before, than the 24 hours given for Vegan chioromeningitis.
Hodin said they learned of Kirk and his near fatal encounter with the disease. Didn't these dumb Gideonites think it would be better if they lured a civilian that was cured of the disease to stay on Gideonm, rather than the captain of the Federation's flagship?! That's like somebody of great importance to us, missing in a foreign country. Would we just shrug our shoulders and say, 'Oh, well. He's missing. Life goes on.'
As John A.Lang would say, 'Dumb, dumb, dumb!'.

I agree Will, this is a tremendous idea for a story, Kirk beams onto an Enterprise with no one aboard. Its a shame that the writers(one of which was Stanley Adams (Cyrano Jones)) couldn't build a believable story around that premise. Maybe, like the Talosians, Kirk could have imagined it, but to build an exact duplicate down to the last detail on an overpopulated planet is absurd. I nominate this episode to the top ten things that happened in Star Trek that was dumb. I also nominate Ensign Compton for tasting the water in "Wink of an Eye". Joe Tormolen for taking off his glove and scratching his nose in "The Naked Time". Captain Kirk for not just taking the salt monster to a planet rich in sodium chloride "The Man Trap". Captain Kirk again for not sending down the shuttlecraft or blankets to Sulu and the landing party on Alpha 177 "The Enemy Within". and Dr. McCoy for not being able to say Gumato "A Private Little War".

I've recently heard how the poison of certain snakes and spiders is extremely fast (ie, minutes), so I doubt the fabled regenerative powers of the Gideonites could combat such a chemical. It would be a heck of a lot faster, as I said before, than the 24 hours given for Vegan chioromeningitis.

But like I said in reply before, the Gideonites' fabled regenerative powers are supposed to work even faster than that - instantaneously, at least in Blish.

I always considered that the Gideonites built the fake Enterprise underground.

Yeah, that'd work, but unfortunately the visual evidence in the ep directly contradicts that assumption - unless underground was also overpopulated, enough that there would be displaced Gideonites milling around there too.

You do however raise a really interesting point: if the planet's that crowded, why not go underground? Or into the oceans? Or into space - if not under their own power, then under the Federation's, via a request to colonise the next available planet?
Sure, it'd be stressful working all this out, but much less so than condemning the population to a horrible death, you'd think. And given that they were able to find out enough about the Federation to exactly duplicate the flagship, it might not even be all that stressful; just eavesdrop or whatever until you have the plans for emergency habitats.

Hodin said they learned of Kirk and his near fatal encounter with the disease. Didn't these dumb Gideonites think it would be better if they lured a civilian that was cured of the disease to stay on Gideonm, rather than the captain of the Federation's flagship?! That's like somebody of great importance to us, missing in a foreign country. Would we just shrug our shoulders and say, 'Oh, well. He's missing. Life goes on.'

Excellent point. One of those 'so-blindingly-obvious-the-screenwriters-probably-never-even-thought-of-it' points, as a matter of fact.
The only defense I can raise is that the difficulties of luring Joe Federation Citizen to the planet would probably be considerable as contrasted to having a starship captain just sail on in. But again, if they knew enough to rebuild the ruddy flagship...

Of course, as has been mentioned before, the writer of this episode did not expect this episode to be the subject of discussion 40 years later

Still, what was he thinking?!

I think this episode can be considered a commentary on fanaticism. The Gideonites claim that their longevity and health are divine rewards(for lack of a better word) for their reverence for life. However, as fanatics often do, they seem willing to toss aside said reward and the belief that gave it to them when it becomes inconvenient. Of course, in real life, things never get to this horrible level, but they are making a point.

And another thing...(now that I'm on a roll)...
Kirk would have travelled down to the hangar deck. What would he find there? Gideonite-built (inoperative) shuttles? He must have, because he doesn't mention that the shuttles are missing when he dictates his log.
There would be no problem finding the manpower to build a duplicate of the Enterprise (or more specifically, her hallways and rooms), but what must the Gideonites that built such things must have thought as their government constructed such a thing? And did they revel in the temporary openness that Odona did?

And how come Kirk is completely fooled by the mock-up for the entire first half of the episode, despite exploring the whole thing, while Spock realizes moments after he beams onto it that it is a fake?

Spock said the duplicate Enterprise was completely inoperative. However, as I recall, we can hear Kirk's voice over the intercom as he calls engineering to see if anyone's there.

Also, the Gideonites didn't have to build the whole ship. They could have blocked some of it off so Kirk couldn't get in there (like the emergency bulkheads in "Day of the Dove").

The bashing continues...
What if the disease hadn't worked on Odona? What if Gideonites were immune to it? Would Hodin have kept his job if they'd gone to all this trouble just to find out it was all for nothing?

What was the purpose of Hodin placing Kirk alone on his ship, if Odona was just going to die about 24 hours later from the disease? Would he have kept Kirk 'aboard' the fake Enterprise indefinitely? As it was, Odona became sick only hours after Kirk arrived, and then Hodin shows up in the hallway to meet Kirk. They built an intricate, fully-detailed, life-size duplicate of the Enterprise which was needed for just a few hours? Talk about wasteful government spending!

Hodin was able to extract a blood sample from Kirk without him knowing it, leaving Kirk with 9 minutes missing from his memory. Odona at the end of the episode would now be used as the future source of the disease to infect her people. Why not allow Kirk to beam down to the real Gideon chamber, knock him out, extract his blood, infect lots of Gideonites, and allow him to awaken with just a fuzzy memory? Why build a massive fake Enterprise if all they wanted was his blood?

Hodin talks about the Gideonite 'love of life', and yet a minute later he tells Kirk about the 'horror', and 'agony' of life on Gideon. Well, which is it? And how irresponsible must the Gideonites be to bring children in this horrendous world?

Shouldn't the billions and billions of people be starving? Do they all have jobs? If the population is 100 billion, and unemployment is even just 15 per cent, then there would be 15 billion people without jobs; nearly the entire population of Earth multipled by three!

Trying to read through this muddled story, it seems that Kirk's disease isn't directly communicable, but has to be passed directly by blood. They wanted to keep Kirk on the planet as a "donor". They used Odona as the bait. As Phil noted, counting on Kirk's undying love was a mistake. Of course, he did fall for Rayna in a couple of hours....

More gliches. Kirk materializes with a 9-minute memory gap. Presumably, he beamed down somewhere, the Gideons knocked him out and took his blood, then rebeamed him to the fake transporter room.

First, the medical skills. Hodin apologises for Kirk's wound, saying they have no medical skills. Rendering someone unconcious for a precise period of time, with no groggyness or slow awakening, or blanking someone's memory for a precise period of time is extremely advanced medical technology, far more advanced than taking a blood sample. Even allowing the TV cliche of being easily knocked out, Kirk should have been groggy when he arrived in the fake transporter room.

Second, how did Kirk determine this time? He doesn't wear a watch. He could have been going off the chronometer on the fake Enterprise, but there's no telling if that was accurate.

Third, Spock beams to the same coordinates as Kirk -- the fake transporter room. So Kirk beamed there, was knocked out or had his memory erased, had his blood taken, then was rebeamed to the fake transporter room. Why not give him the coordinates of a cell or medical facility where all this could be done? But Spock beams to the fake transporter room using the original coordinates.

Fourth, can they not detect transporter beams? Spock got in without setting off any alarms.

Finally, I was thinking how the fever had to be spread by directly by blood from the captian to Odona. If it will spread by other fluid transfers :-) that would take care of their problem. OTOH, if it could spread venerialy, Kirk would have left quite a wake of destruction behind him.

I think they had the concept of Kirk finding himself alone on the Enterprise and tried to come up with a story to fit it. It's a bad fit.

The G. Gordon Liddy look-alike does a weird move when he gives the alternate coordinates. Instead of just giving them while seated, he gets up and does a 360 degree turn first.

The G. Gordon Liddy lookalike was Gene Dynarski. He played miner Ben Childress in "Mudd's Women" and Cdr. Quinteros in Next Gen's "11001001". He also appeared in at least one episode of Seinfeld. I think that he's wearing a skull cap in "Gideon;" at least it looked like one when Sci-Fi ran the ep this morning.
As a teenager watching this episode for the first time, I felt that there was something missing here; that the story wasn't as fully developed as it should have been (thanks, Todd.) That's more apparent when you stop and think that as a kid, I knew little or nothing about TV and movie writing, especially just how long it takes to develop a story. They apparently needed a bottle show to come in at the budget for the season, and this story was it.
Why does Kirk always seem to buy any baloney that a lady in a slinky outfit is selling? In "Man Trap", he tells Bones to "Stop thinking with your glands." Well, IMHO, he thought with his glands a lot here.

John Lang said: The wardrobe worn by the male Gideonites look like something out of "Flash Gordon".

I noticed that too. The men's (Hodin's and Krodak's) costumes were overlays worn over long sleeved T-shirts. Were the overlays re-used from other episodes? (I don't think so, but...) How much was Bill Theiss' budget cut down to by now, while the series was winding down?

On Thursday, July 03, 2003 - 04:42 pm, glenn nas mentions dumb mistakes throughout the series. He hid the perfect solution in his writing: Using the Warp Speed Breakaway Factor, he can bring whales from the 20th century back to the future with him! LOL Ok, using the WSBF, he can go back in time to M-113 several centuries when there were hundreds or thousands of the salt-suckers, then drop them off on Gideon at the time of the episode! Brilliant solution in that the Gideonites can't regenerate lost salt! Brilliant solution in that the salt-suckers won't be extinct! Another brilliant idea is that Kirk can repeat the trick against any humanoid race that threatens the Federation!

Spock's hearing (& memory) must not be up to par. He fails to notice the difference between the two beaming coordinates until (presumably) hours later. He should have caught it immediately. (IMHO)

When Kirk uses the intercom onboard the fake Enterprise, he mentions sickbay if McCoy is aboard, but during the shot of the sickbay, you can see that the alert indicator on top of the door shows red alert, why is that?

Just exactly WHEN did the Gideonites hurt Kirk? He beams down to the faux-Enterprise & sometime after the main credits, Kirk makes a personal note that he got hurt somehow.

When did the Gideonites do this? In mid-transport?

RUMINATION: Odona is the last woman Kirk gets to kiss until STVI.

John wrote:

>Just exactly WHEN did the Gideonites hurt Kirk? >He beams down to the faux-Enterprise & sometime >after the main credits, Kirk makes a personal >note that he got hurt somehow.

>When did the Gideonites do this? In mid->transport?

Well, Phil's summary of the episode says "Just as Kirk beams down, they render him unconcious" however no dialogue from the epiosde supports this.

Besides, say the Gideonites stunned Kirk the instant he transported down to them. He would still have a memory of a second or two of seeing the Gideonites before they incapacitated him.

Or, they could have released an anesthetic gas into the fake transporter room after he beamed down and then entered the room when he was unconcious. This doesn't address the problem of how they returned him to conciousness standing up alone and believing that he has just transported in.

...During the shot of the sickbay, you can see that the alert indicator on top of the door shows red alert, why is that?

Story-wise, I don't know. The shot was re-used from "The Omega Glory," and the Exeter was on red alert.

The transporter pad that Kirk was shown beaming onto in the teaser was vacant on the reverse angle (a POV shot toward the transporter console.)
For an unemotional man, Spock sure shows a lot of disgust, annoyance and frustration toward Hodin and the Gideons.
I wonder what Scotty was going to call the Gideons when Spock stopped him in mid-sentence.
The stock shots of the view screen are showing a bit of wear here. There's a considerable amount of dirt on them, which wasn't cleaned up for the DVDs.

How can you tell the "Exeter" was on red alert, as you say. In "The Omega Glory", when the team went on the bridge, the ship was not on red alert as you say. The corridors during that episode didn't even show the red alert or the engineering section. Do you have a screen shot to prove this comparasion?

I checked out my DVD of "Omega Glory," and the previous poster was correct in stating that the Exeter was not on red alert. I stand corrected.

Suspected scam post moved to the Dump.

IS THIS TRUE?

No. It's probably an automated phishing scam.

It looked "phishy" to me too.

And it's going bye-bye.

I have to chuckle when I read the phrasing of this particular plot synopsis from a review at amazon:

"Kirk is held by Gideonites who want to use him to solve their overpopulation problem."

Talk about throwing kerosene on a fire!

Todd wrote, way back when: How could they know that thirty years later people would still be discussing every nuance of every story?

Well, now it's almost 40 years, and we're still doing it, as feverishly as ever.

And I'm sure that we'll be doing it when its 50 years old too!

I just noticed this the other day - Sharon Acker wears an ahead-of-its-time (well, before they became trendy) thumb ring on her right hand.
Why is Hodin's title "Ambassador"? Just who was he the "Ambassador" to? Certainly not the Federation.

Shatner's hair (well, what is his real hair) seems darker in this episode, and in most of the third season, than in the earlier seasons. What was he using to color it (and no one can tell me he wasn't) - "Grecian Formula 1701?"

As she lies dying, Odona says to Kirk, "Our journey began here." Where? In an Enterprise crew cabin? No, it didn't, they met in a corridor.
Earlier, Odona, feeling the effect of the infection tells Kirk that she never felt this way before. Then Kirk says he never felt this way before, too. Felt what way? Odona is succumbling to a deadly disease injected into her, so what is Kirk 'feeling' for the first time?
I have no idea why Kirk is being so nice to Odona at the end of the episode. She lied about every single thing she ever spoke to him, until she was dying. Why has Kirk forgiven her? I hate it when people lie to me (especially when I find out they did), and I'm not so forgiving as Kirk was.
Interesting that Spock doesn't particularly like the way Ambassador Hodin and diplomats and bureaucrats act, in general, considering that he, himself, becomes an ambassador and his own father is an ambassador. Perhaps he wanted to change their image for the better? That still means he's in the thick of it later in his life, always around these annoying officials.

I'm not intimately familiar with the editing of this episode, but I certainly hope there's some opportunity for the remastered version to show the surface of Gideon. I think it would add some much-needed dimension to the episode to be able to portray the fake Enterprise from the exterior, perhaps vaguely-Enterprise shaped collection of surface structures (sans engines) interconnected by turbo-shafts, surrounded by milling crowds of tens of thousands of people extending to the horizon.

This would add so much in terms of conveying the fake Enterprise, as well as the horrendous overcrowding on the planet.

The fake Enterprise is enhanced next week..

( at least I got Whom kirk Destroyed)

New shots of the Enterprise orbiting Gideon. Including an extreme close-up of the orbiting ship in the teaser. (Way to go!) Gideon is larger, and has earth-tone color all over. There didn't seem to be a lot of water, which would make Hodin's comment about hoping that Kirk materialized on dry land a bit less relevant.
When Kirk is on the fake bridge checking the chronometer, the ship's chronometer was changed to match what was seen in the enhanced "Naked Time."
The last scene, when Kirk and Odona converse while walking in the corridor, was dropped. IIRC, the scene of Spock contacting the ship from the fake bridge was cut too.

Thanks, I was away last weekend so I couldn't post a summary.

Going back to Steve's comment from 2007, Odona was lying in Kirk's (fake) bed when she said "our journey began here". Mmm hmmm.

You're welcome, Alan.
In the enhanced version, when we first see the Gideons on the viewing screen, their faces look very greenish. The viewscreen shots were cleaned up; maybe they read my post from 7/30/05.
Here's a summary of the episode's original story.

The original synopsis also explains why Hodin was called "ambassador". He was an ambassador to the Federation in the original.

Here's screenshots and a review from TrekMovie.com. Check out that close-up of the saucer section.

Looks like they did a very nice job.

ENHANCEMENT GOOF:

There's still some dirt on the film on the top of the screen when Spock is talking to the Admiral.

When they cut to sublight, Odana says she doesn't feel any change, Kirk starts to explain, then wonders if there is any way to know if they have changed.
I couldn't help, but think of that scene in NextGen's Relics when Scotty is talking about how he could feel differences in the ship at different speeds.

Whoever edited this episode must have been having a very bad day.

1. After Kirk arrives on the GGS Enterprise, he looks for Spock. The pad he's standing on is in his sight ahead of him, and he's not on it!

2. When Kirk comes onto the bridge of the GGS Enterprise (GGS = Gideonite Grounded Structure), there's an odd structure near the top of the screen - if this is the console overhang, it's higher than the chair at the left; if it's the edge of the ceiling cove, it's far too low.

3. When Gideon hails the Enterprise to pretend that Kirk hasn't arrived, the shot of the Gideon council behind a screen obviously wasn't meant to appear on the Enterprise viewscreen, but was matted into it, nevertheless.

4. When Hodin is about to "hang up" on Spock, the shot of Hodin reaching for the button is matted into the viewscreen, implying that it is part of the images that the council is transmitting ("We're gonna hang up on you, watch this!")

5. When Kirk and Odona are heading for the turbo-lift, the camera pans left, ostensibly to circle the entire bridge past Communications, Science and three aux stations to the viewscreen, but there's a jump to the viewscreen, where it shows the Gideonite faces staring gauntly.

When Kirk and later Spock beam to the transporter pad, that is some sharp, precise coordinate set! Two horizontal coordinates and one vertical, and each one only three digits on average!

I was hoping, before seeing the remaster, that the Okudas would slip some kind of telltale imaging in the background where Kirk isn't looking, to hint to us, the audience, that the fake Enterprise isn't what it seems. We know from ST:E "Unexpected" that there's at least one race with holodeck technology that was totally convincing a hundred years earlier, so why couldn't the Gideonites have purchased it and programmed a fake Enterprise, without having to build one? They could even synchronize it so that it knows exactly where Kirk is about to materialize, and makes sure a transporter pad is under his feet. It would be automated so if any other Enterprise officer was brazen enough to beam down, it would kick in, as it did for Spock. Or the holodeck is as large as the Romulan one that Barash made for Riker in "Future Imperfect".

If Spock knows that the transporter can make errors, why wouldn't Kirk beam down with a communicator? If he materializes in the middle of a marketplace and freaks out the customers and merchants, it'd be nice to be able to call for help, eh?

Even a subcutaneous transponder?

All contrived so Kirk can't call for help, even if he's convinced he's on the Enterprise.

When Kirk uses the intercom to try and contact anybody aboard the fake Enterprise, we see other empty rooms and hear his voice calling his shipmates. Yet, when Spock touches some buttons, he establishes that the intercom and all other functions don't operate. Who turned off the fake intercom if nobody knew that Spock had suddenly appeared?

Admiral Fitzgerald warns Spock not to take actions that would start a war with Gideon. Uuuuhhhh...how exactly would that...'war'...take place? The Gideonites don't have spaceships (or else they'd be colonizing other planets to stop their over-over-over-population). Kinda hard to have a 'war' if nobody from the Federation or Starfleet even sets foot on Gideon.

According to the remastered DVD set, Bill Blackburn (the non-speaking actor that plays navigator Lt.Hadley) is one of the faces on the bridge viewscreen that appear behind Kirk and Odona. Blackburn is virtually dead center, just above a woman's face nearet the center of the screen.
He also played one of the Indians in group shots in 'The Paradise Syndrome', and did makeup tests for 'Let That Be Your Last Battlefield' and 'Elaan of Troyius'...Admbassador petri, NOT Elaan, herself!

Kirk says to Odona "We have enough (food) to feed 430 people for five years." How is it preserved for that long? In the 21st century, meat lasts barely a week in a refrigerator. Vegetables get stale, or just plain rot, fairly quickly. Even in the refrigerator. People are advised to discard frozen food that's over a year old.
Plus, the space required to store enough food for those 430 crew persons for that long would be enormous. And, one species may not be able to eat stuff another species can. Even now, food allergies, especially with children, are a big problem.

The comment 5 years of food for a crew of 430 is wrong anyway. It's nearly the end of the third year, so there's really just 2 years of food left, providing the ship has never been re-stocked at a starbase, which I doubt.
And I don't think they actually eat real meat. I've only seen colored cubes on their plates-- probably hunks of cheese-flavored protein, hunks of brocolli-flavored minerals, hunks of banana-flavored vitamins.

Hodin sure seems to have ALOT of political power as just an ambassador. He mentions a prime minister, which should be his superior, but Hodin calls all the shots like he's a king or president.

And his aide sure keeps his little communicator thingamabob in a rather intimate place. It looked like it was under his shirt near his belly button.
What? They culd give the actor a fancy wristwatch with a little piece of tape on it so that he could have the communicator handy and not up his shirt or down his pants?

---

quote:

After Kirk arrives on the GGS Enterprise, he looks for Spock. The pad he's standing on is in his sight ahead of him, and he's not on it!

---

Kirk mentioned in 'By Any Other Name' to Rojan that the Federation had catalogued hundreds of planets suitable for colonization.
Surely at least one of these could have been handed over to Gideon to relieve some of their over-over-over population?

Hodin says that Odona's death at so young an age would prompt other young volunteers to commit suicide.
Uuhhh, right. Young people, who haven't experienced decades and decades of the 'horror that life can be on Gideon' will volunteer, instead of those that are older, or 'the very old', and want to end it all.

There's no telling how old 'the very old' on Gideon are-- those that finally die because their organs can no longer regenerate. They could have a life span of 200 years or 1000 years. And if it is 1000 years, the term 'young' takes on new meaning. On Gideon, Odona could be 177 years old! What would Kirk think if he knew she was five times older than him?

And if Gideon is acknowledged by Hodin as a horrible place to live in, what the heck was Hodin thinking, having sexual relations with his wife and bringing Odona into this hell-hole world?

And I don't think they actually eat real meat.

Kirk had a chicken sandwich with a side of tribbles in "The Trouble With Tribbles." And Kyle ordered chicken soup in "Tomorrow is Yesterday."

But was it real or was it re-sequenced protein?

Um... I can't believe no one else caught this - but just when did the Gideons build this fake Enterprise (and how long did it take)? The whole plot of them using Kirk at all is in itself suspect. What, they're all just sitting around one day thinking, "Hey, ya know that Jim Kirk had a wonderful infection, let's use him!"?

When did they learn of Kirk's infection? From then, when did they decide to build a replica of an entire space vessel (Space vessel, get it, cuz they got no space on their planet, lol).

This is just an awful episode in general, and so many nits to pick...

I was just thinking... what if instead of an actual mock up of the Enterprise, the Gideon's used some sort of holodeck? I don't recall there being anything in the episode that would contradict this.

I actually proposed the exact same thing on this board 15 years ago (scroll up).

I've suggested the same thing. Archer's Enterprise met people with holodeck technology. When they did the remaster, they could have snuck in changing scenery behind Kirk as he moves around the ship. The holodeck could have been installed in an auxiliary meeting room directly off the council chambers.

When they remastered this, they should have changed the screen insert - of Hodin pressing the button to hang up on Spock - so it doesn't appear on the Enterprise view screen. Hard to believe that even Hodin would have his council room cameras set up to show him hanging up on people.

Gideon is shielded against sensors, however, its atmosphere appears to be quite transparent. Ordinary telescopes could have been used to look at the planet's surface and ascertain what was really down there. And come to think of it, the nightside of the planet should have been blazing with the lights of the cities covering the entire land, and revealed to the naked eye that the Gideonite's description of their own world simply didn't add up.

NANJAO. Whatever is shielding Gideon from being scanned from orbit has no effect on similar devices used on the surface of the planet. Spock's tricorder appears to be working just fine after he beams down.

I wonder what the suicide rate on Gideon is.

The crime rate must be very low though, there is nowhere on the planet where someone could commit a crime without having dozens of people witnessing it.

One more thing. The transporter must scan the object it's transporting to work. If Gideon is shielded against such scans, how can the transporter pick up the man in the counsel room and bring him onboard, even if provided with accurate transport coordinates?

The crime rate must be very low though, there is nowhere on the planet where someone could commit a crime without having dozens of people witnessing it.
Seems like it could be a good place for pickpockets and those perverts who like rubbing up against people. ;-)

Murray Leeder on Saturday, December 12, 1998 - 10:49 am: Seeing that they have Federation connections and therefore spaceflight, why not just evacuate a portion of the population?

Where would you evacuate them to? How would you choose who went and who stayed? How would you pursuade the 'departees' to leave? How would you carry out this 'evacuation'?

Mike Konczewski on Wednesday, December 16, 1998 - 7:21 am:If the writers wanted to make this story work, they should have posited a race that was unable to control its reproductive cycle. Say, a race that went into heat, like animals, or one that had to reproduce or die (like the Moties in Niven and Pournelle's novel The Mote in God's Eye). Of course, there would have been a problem getting that through 1960's TV censors.

A planned story for the UK version of Red Dwarf had a similar premise, in which the Cat would die unless he had sex. Unfortunately, the episode was shelved due to a lack of money, and was replaced by Duct Soup.

'Where would you evacuate them to? How would you choose who went and who stayed? How would you pursuade the 'departees' to leave? How would you carry out this 'evacuation'?'

I would say that those are EXTEMELY easy questions to ask, as opposed to;
"Who wants to be injected with an alien poison that'll give you a painful death?"

Formally Nitbreaker

Perhaps it's just as well they didn't get a visit from Dr. Sevrin (The Way to Eden), as his sythococcus novae could have potentially wiped out the whole population!

Even if the Gideon's were able to probe Kirk's mind, while he was unconscious, he was only out for nine minutes.

How could they have built it so fast?

How come the Enterprise scanners didn't pick up all those people?

That's explained in the episode, the planet is shielded against scanners. That's the reason they had to use transporter coordinates provided by Gideon.

That being said I made a comment about that very issue on May 16 2013.

The people of Gideon could have solved their problem if they'd not been so isolationist. Just send some of their people to settle other worlds.

Problem solved.

Exactly. Image the problem being dealt with here...

Hodin; "So, Mr. McCree, because your city of Ottawa is so over-populated, and you're one of the problems, I'm going to have you injected with this disease to solve the problem. You'll be in alot of pain as it slowly kills you, but at least Ottawa will solve its over-population problem."
Tim; "In that case, I'll just move to Montreal, or Kingston or somewhere else."
Hodin; "No, that's okay. We'll stick with the needle."
Tim; "But, I can just move to a different town and Ottawa can become less populated. The Federation can provide transportation to any small town!"
Hodin; "Eehhh...I still like my idea of killing millions of people with a deadly disease for no good reason. Okay; so role up your sleeve..."
Dumbest.
Star Trek.
Concept.
Everrrrr!

Yeah, if only the people of Gideon knew what caused overpopulation?

"We've killed all the storks on our planet, but still the population keeps growing!" ;-)

The Federation would have been more than happy to help the Gideons find a suitable planet for colonization.

Given what was happening, their isolationist stance made no sense at all.

Spock's tricorder worked fine when he was on the fake Enterprise. He tells McCoy and Scotty that he is picking up lifesigns, and dialogue implies that those are from Kirk and a few other people, like ambassador Hodin. Why isn't he also picking up the vast number of Gideonites swarming all around the fake Enterprise?

Wasn't Gideon shielded?

From orbit yes, but probably not when on the surface itself or Spock's tricorder would not work at all.

Sometimes somebody comes up with a brilliant nit, and Francois, you just did. All these years and it never occurred to anyone that the tricorder should obviously pick up THOUSANDS of people behind the fake Enterprise walls.
If I had a No-Prize from Marvel, I'd send it to you!

As Spock would say, most kind.

IIRC the Marvel No-Prize was an empty envelope. ;-)

I wonder if the fake Enterprise is a holodeck of some kind. That would explain how it got built so fast.

Tim, sometimes I'm psychic on the same day as something happens or somebody says something, and sometimes I'm psychic 2 months later.
CTV Sc-Fi Channel re-ran 'The Mark of Gideon' again last night, and the idea of a holodeck hit me. I was going to blow everyone away with such a theory, and you stole it from 2 months ago! (I haven't been back to this thread since my last comment to Francois.)

It never occurred to me (until yesterday), despite 33 years worth of holodeck stories from TNG, DS9 and Voyager, that that was how they tricked Kirk. Just building an exact duplicate of the Enterprise, with all of the rooms looking like they should and color schemes and dimensions seemed so preposterous to me that I've always had a problem with it (the Enterprise is, after all about 22 or 23 decks tall, from Bridge to lower secondary hull), so they'd need to build such a series of rooms and corridors underground or partially above ground, and oh brother is that a crazy idea!
And we can forget about it being an illusion, since how could Kirk, Spock, Odona, and Hodin all share the same illusion?
So, yeah, I'm going with YOUR theory about a giant holodeck tricking Kirk.

Tim, sometimes I'm psychic on the same day as something happens or somebody says something, and sometimes I'm psychic 2 months later.
CTV Sc-Fi Channel re-ran 'The Mark of Gideon' again last night, and the idea of a holodeck hit me. I was going to blow everyone away with such a theory, and you stole it from 2 months ago!

Great minds think alike.

A holodeck is the only answer that makes any sense when you look at things.

This may have been said before: When Hodin said "jealous tradition", shouldn't he have said "zealous"? This harkens back to Todd's first post for the episode: the script was not thoroughly analyzed (not even for grammar) before it was shot, as TPTB felt the series was ending, and just wanted to fulfill the network's episode order as painlessly as possible.

Yeah, by this point, no one cared anymore.

If they only knew...

It occurs to me that the rumbling sound Kirk and Odona hear (she thinks it's a machine, he knows every sound the Enterprise makes and that's not one of them) is never explained.
They hear it, they look around, and it stops. Then they see people on the other side of a window and the people fade away and they see stars, instead.
Huh?
Was the plot by Hodin to make them think they're going crazy?
Was the technology being used to trick Kirk malfunctioning?
The strange sound and the people in the window are never really explained. Maybe because there's no logical reason-- just an excuse to keep the TV viewers watching, at the expense of a good script.

Once again, if this is a holodeck simulation, they're just messing with Kirk.

When Hodin says to Kirk "A long, long time ago", I almost expect him to pick up a guitar and break out into this song.

Sharon Acker (Odona) is Canadian. She was born in Toronto.

As of this writing, she's still with us (she's 86 now).

I can see the council meeting drawing up this plan. Council member number one - "It's very simple. We just kidnap Kirk after he beams down, draw his blood, inject Odona with it, and just keep them in a cell together until she becomes infected."
Council member two - "No, no! We have to build an entire life-size fake Enterprise!"

Scroll up to my April 22, 2020 post, for a possible answer.