This evil disembodied entity doesn't use its abilities nearly as well as it could. If it can really alter people's memories, as it did with Chekov, why doesn't it make the Enterprise people forget about its existence whenever they are in danger of discovering it?

Chekov seems to have trouble pronouncing his "brother's" name. He said Piotr two different ways (and Sulu a third).

When Kirk called the ship, he held his communicator out at an odd angle, as though he were saying to the audience (AND the Klingons), "Hey, look what I'm doing!"

Nice touch, beaming the Klingons in with their backs to the room.

Why is Mara's lower lip so pale? At angles it isn't so noticeable, but full face, it stands out like neon. Is a pale lip a sign of Klingon feminine beauty?

When things get transmuted into weapons, they sure change noisily. Two Klingons had their backs to the stuff and only turned at the sound of the change.

I am given to understand that an authentic claymore is roughly six feet long, from the days when the idea was to hack and rend your enemy without finesse. Not something you can pick up and tuck in your belt.

Seems like Klingon female attire used to be more modest in the old days. A lot of things have changed, in fact. In any of the current shows, can you imagine Chekov or anyone else casually attempting to rape a Klingon? She would probably have the man gelded in a matter of moments.

Mara seems slow on the uptake. She sees the alien, and listens to Kirk and Spock discussing it without paying any attention to her (and she probably could have slipped away at the time, too!) Yet she still doesn't believe it.

Did they ever explain just why the crystals were losing power? Was it because of the area of space they were in?

I notice that our "simple country doctor" is quite good with a sword.

Kang had a point. What would have happened if they had started lopping off heads, a la Highlander? Would they still have revived?

Quite right about the sword. It was a basket hilt, still Scottish, but nothing like a claymore. I'm surprised Jimmy Doohan went ahead with the line.
The prop guys messed up a lot back then. William Campbell, when filming Squire of Gothos, refused to do a scene because they gave him a French judge's wig instead of an English one. This ticked Bill Shatner off no end.
Nie touch in this episode, how the Klingons have heard of how the Federation tortures prisoners. Nice 3-dimensional characterization with a touch of cold-war reference.

McCoy must have taken sword fighting lessons since his pathetic performance in "Bread and Circuses."

GUEST STAR PATROL (Make tea, not love)

Michael Ansara (Kang) is a familiar face in movies and TV, as I'm sure you know. I believe he was on "Buck Rogers" as Killer Kane for one season, among his many roles.

The computer`s voice seems to have more of a female intonation than in other episodes (Except in "Tomorrow is Yesterday", which was its first appearance)

As James Doohan noted in his autobiography, the fencing sound effects in this episode sound a lot more like sword-on-shield than sword-on-sword.

What are emergency bulkheads?

It is interesting that even though the overwhelming majority of the Enterprise's crew is trapped because of the hate feeding entity's ability to close emergency bulkheads, Kirk and his group of 40 still have access to the bridge, a turbolift, sickbay, engineering, a transporter room, and various corridors.

One of the Klingons looked like Kirk's security officer aboard the alternate universe Enterprise in "Mirror, Mirror."

Emergency bulkheads are, I gather, a set of bulkheads which can be designed to close off one section of the ship from another in case of an emergency such as a hull breach or a contaminant or some other situation in one section of the ship.

Probably the reason the Enterprise men still had access to engineering, transporter, sickbay, is that the bulkheads divided the saucer section of the ship from the main body. The saucer section of the ship has all these features, while the central body section consists mainly of crew quarters. So what happens in this episode does make sense.

The Fotonovel for this episode has two interesting nits and one very funny one...

1) The stardate given in the Fotonovel is 3372.7- 3375.5. The first stardtae is from "Amok Time", and I don`t know where they got 3375.5 from.

2) Kang`s line "Only fools fight in a burning house" appears twice, once on the lst panel of one page and once on the first panel of the next.

3) The humourous nit: At one point McCoy says "You can`t think of making peace with those friends!" I suppose that was a misprint and it should be "fiends", because if they were friends they wouldn`t need to make peace because they already had!

The years have not been kind to Kang, years later he appears on Deep Space Nine and he looks terrible. All those bumps on his forehead and he's completely lost his sense of fashion.

D.K. & Mf: There are two types of claymores. The older two-hand claymore and the basket-hilt claymore from the 17th century on.

Ahhhh.....

I'm not sure if this is the predessecor to the 47's so prevalent in present-day Trek, but I've found two references to the number '38'.
Kirk is informed that 392 crew are trapped below; subtract 392 from 430 and you get 38. And in Plato's Stepchildren, Kirk is told that there are 38 Platonians present.
Long before there was a Nit-Picker's Guide I was always annoyed when the sound effects guy forgot to add metal-on-metal effects for the second half of the Kang/Kirk sword fight. The wimpy 'flap' 'flap' sound of contact clearly shows the swords to be mere plastic.

The actor/extra/red shirt (David Ross) that is usually called "Galloway" is here called "Johnson." However, in later episodes, he is back to Galloway. Well, Eddie Paskey (Shatner's stand-in) as Mr. Leslie died in "Obsession", but was soon brought back. Check out Susan Howard (Mara) on an NRA infomercial that pops up occasionally-this being a Presidential election year, it will probably be shown a lot.

To Will S-I caught the "38" reference too. I think both Shatner and Nimoy were either age 38 or almost 38 during third season production.

Galloway is never called Galloway again. His only later appearance is "Turnabout Intruder", in which he is not called by name. (The credits say "Galoway" but we can assume it was Johnson.)

GREAT COMMAND: Kirk knows he's in trouble, so he tells Scotty, "Condition Green"....a subtle, coded message to Scotty that things aren't what they should be.

The alien can control everyone's minds, but Kirk and Spock still figured out its intentions. How?

I thought it odd that the alien left the ship from Engineering (in the Primary Hull) but when we see it depart from the outside (stock shot of Enterprise here), it is via the Secondary Hull. Did it give itself one last tour?

I thought Engineering *WAS* in the secondary hull.

No. Engineering was in the back of the primary hull. Those tubes in the back are the impulse engines, which are on the very back of the saucer section.

OK...then why in STII when Khan fired onto the secondary hull (which is commonly called the Engineering decks in "The Enemy Within") the phasors are penetrating the engine room and creating disorder?

The Enterprise had a major redesign for the movies, including a different placement for Engineering. Look it up if you have the blueprints for the original ship, they were published in 1975.
There was a superb David Kimble cutaway drawing of the Enterprise from "ST-TMP" showing the location in the ship of every set from the movie. I think mine is at my parent's house; I hope my mother didn't throw it out. The Engine Room for the movies is in the top of the Engineering hull.
When Scotty charges into the bridge at the beginning of Act III, and says to Spock "Keep your Vulcan hands off me", the way he said "Vulcan" made it sound like that four letter obscenity banned from Nit Central.

RUMINATION: This episode marks the first and last time we get to see a female Klingon until STIII.

Spock says that there's a risk to intra-ship beaming, because pinpoint accuracy is required, lest the transportee wind up inside a bulkhead. But doesn't this count for every single beam down, too? Pinpoint accuracy is required to transport someone down inside a specific room of a building, or in a field away from trees.

I agree, Will, but I always rationalised this by supposing the TOS transporter's targeting scanners weren't so hot at looking inside the ship.

Rather like trying to see your own back, or focusing on your own nose.

Also the point of the transporter was to move something outside the ship inside & vise versa, so the targeting scanners were probably aimed outward rather than inward.

No doubt the transporter designers figured that if someone needed to move something from one area of the ship to another area, they could use those convenient hallways. ;-)

Plus, weren't they travelling at warp?

Yes, I'd say that the targeting scanners would probably be pointing outwards, since those hallways and gangways were pretty handy!
However, moving at warp would complicate things, even though beaming down to a planet always involves movement, anyway; the Enterprise is moving in orbit, the planet is moving along its orbit circle, and the planet is spinning on its axis, forcing the operator to use pin-point accuracy, anyways.

Kang must watch "Spaghetti Westerns"...he flexes his hands when confronting the Enterprise crew on the planet surface.(Just before Chekov yells, "Cossacks!")

EMMY AWARD: Michael Ansara for his portrayal of Kang...priceless. John Colicos supercedes him, however.

Funny you should bring that up, John. One "Trek" urban legend has it that this episode was originally written with John Colicos' Kor as the adversary. Colicos was unavailable, and really wanted to do this ep.
My sympathies are with Michael Ansara, due to the death last year of Matthew, his son by ex-wife Barbara Eden.

NANJAO: Kang's right-hand man, the Klingon with the 'fro... well, forgive me, but he just walks funny. His gait cracks me up to no end.

Well, Nimoy runs like a spastic nerd, too.

Sorry.

Sir Rhosis

On the planet, if you look at the Klingon directly behind Kirk....Its GOWRON!!! Or at least his father.hee hee

NANJAO: Whoa! Mara wears hot leather pants! No wonder Kang loves this woman!

Dude! Are you just now noticing the leather pants!?!

Live long and prosper.

My eyes were elsewhere!

Phil's description says the entity destroyed the Federation colony, but I think the point was that there was no colony, just like Chekov's brother. They did point out that there was no wreckage, no bodies and Kirk accused the Klingons of having some superweapon that left no traces.

But wouldn't the library computer banks confirm or deny the presence of a Federation colony? Surely Spock checked them to confirm that there was one in that sector of the galaxy.

Live long and prosper.

The evil entity probably messed up the computer banks & library computer as well.

Or the crew's perception of those records. This leads to the biggest nit of all -- if the entity can control their minds like this, why did it let them get away with plotting against it (as Todd M. Pence mentioned way back in 1998)?

It could be taken that most of the episode was an illusion. The phasers-into-swords trick may have simply made them think they had swords.

Except that Spock would be the one who would initially report on the data regarding the colony. Admittedly it's been awhile since I've seen this ep, but I don't recall Spock falling under the entity's sway all that deeply or easily. (He seemed to snap out of his feeling of hatred much more rapidly than most of the crew.) I'm not saying it's impossible, but if the entity cannot make him feel hate for long, how likely is it that he could have misread the data? I mean, the entity doesn't seem to be in the Talosians or Melkotians class where psychic abilities are concerned.

Of course, I could be wrong.

Live long and prosper.

Michael Ansara speaks a few of his lines with an accent. Perhaps a result of his Syrian descent?
Chekov here looks like he just visited the barber shop. In many third season episodes, Kirk looked like he needed a haircut.
Also, this is the first third season episode aired with recycled music.

When Kirk is talking to Sulu and Chekov (who are standing by the turbo lift,) Kirk is actually facing the opposite way, more toward the viewscreen.

This was the best episode of the 3rd season so far (in air date order).


Kang appears again, and dies, in the Deep Space Nine Episode "Blood Oath".

And then appears again in Flashback(VOY), in scenes depicting never-before seen events that occurred during ST IV.

oh yea! I forgot!

Luigi, you mean ST VI.

Yeah, that's right. Darn those Roman numerals. Darn them all to Gre'thor!

Luigi- try coprighted McmLXXV

The DVD of this episode (at least on the third season set) adds the "whoosh" sound when the ship goes by at high warp speeds. This is not quite the same sound that the ship makes during the opening titles, but the footage of the ship is recycled from there.

The footage of engineering, with the entity floating, was re-used in "The Tholian Web," with a floating Kirk instead.

RUMINATION:

Kirk says to Spock that the Klingons have maintained a dueling tradition with swords.

This concept would be followed up in STTNG, DS9, & VOY

The TV Land print of this episode ends with the Desilu logo. But, Desilu had ceased to exist a year before, when it was merged into Paramount. In fact, the next to last credit of all third season episodes reads "A Paramount Production."

Not only is Sulu handy with a karate chop, but he must have amazing night vision; he's in the totally darkened Jeffries tube without a flashlight, and yet he can still fiddle with the life support controls.

I guess the writer made Mara a science officer so that she could come to accept the existence of the entity a little faster than say, a yeoman or captain's woman that's still Kang's wife.

Watching Kirk, Spock and Mara (human, Vulcan, Klingon) watching the entity made me think of the next trio that would represent those races the next time we saw them together in the future; Janeway, Tuvok, and B'Lanna.

Of course, the whole point of the scene of Kirk confronting Kang about the ship's trouble was there to set up the first exciting sword fight, but Kirk and security were severely outnumbered in that room by the Klingons. The logical thing to do would have been to remove and question Kang, alone, in a different room. Instead, all of the Klnigon survivors learn at the same time that the Enterprise is in trouble and missing almost 400 crew.

I think this is one of the few times that the crew (and viewers) never REALLY learn the motivations of the alien. It never speaks, and it's up to Kirk and Spock to speculate as to its purpose (staging a war, testing human and Klingon fighting abilities), when in fact it could have been something entirely different.

John A. Lang mentioned on September 18, 2001 that this could have been a 2-parter; I agree. As there were 400 Enterprise crew trapped below decks, wouldn't they be frustrated, angry, and on edge against each other, being cut off from the rest of the ship and unable to help or understand what's going on? They didn't have the benefit of Kirk and Spock's discoveries. How ironic it would have been for the entity to take over lower decks crew and it's up to KANG to save the Enterprise!

The remastered "Day of the Dove" airs next weekend. They probably won't touch the entity animation, so there's not really much to do.

they had the new phaser shot but the Klingon d-7 ship dissapeared....we had no cable for 6 hours wonder if we get the show at 3am...pst, we did

Some nice new orbital shots, particularly the Klingon ship coming up behind them and the destruction of the Klingon ship. The entity animation (apart from it exiting the ship in space) and the schematic of the Enterprise were not changed.

Kang says he'll kill 100 hostages if Kirk betrays him (a callback to "Errand of Mercy"), but at the time Kang only held 6 hostages.

Kirk calls for extra security before materializing the Klingons. Two (2) extra redshirts arrive, to join the one that was in the party. I'd think he'd want at least one for each Klingon. And it looks like just one escorts off the first group, leaving the other two to handle the group from the Klingon ship.

There's a round gizmo on a leg sticking out of a wall near a turbolift. During the first swordfight, one of the redshirts knocks it over. It didn't appear to have any connection into the wall at all. Despite all the hubub, someone in Engineering is right on the ball -- a few minutes later when Chekov runs past it, it's back on the wall.

NANJAO: When Spock notes the entity is becoming more powerful, we see it floating in a hallway that's a mirror image of the above hall. I think they flipped a shot to make it look different.

I still think it makes the most sense to consider most of this episode illusionary. As mentioned in "The Cage", something with this power could cause the Klingons to damage their own ship. No Federation colony, no brother to Chekov, no actual swords or fast healing, etc.

The computer's voice is much higher pitched than normal; it sounds more like Gary Seven's Beta 3.

For some reason the CBS/Paramount logo is at the beginning of the episode.

Since everybody at StarTrek.com got fired, it looks like we won't be getting any online previews.

For some reason the CBS/Paramount logo is at the beginning of the episode.

Not from where I saw it. But, the "Desilu" logo was at the end of the episode. Desilu merged with Paramount midway through the second season, and the Paramount logo was tagged to the episodes at that time. The enhanced episode here in New York aired with the new "CBS Television Distribution" logo that probably supercedes the "CBS/Paramount" logo.

Kang says he'll kill 100 hostages if Kirk betrays him (a callback to "Errand of Mercy"), but at the time Kang only held 6 hostages.

There were only four in the landing party. I think Kang was bluffing and implying that he had kidnapped the colonists that had supposedly lived on the planet.

Whoops, I was trying to remember how many were in the landing party and I thought all six pads were occupied.

Re: the logo, it was the "CBS Television Distribution" logo, and it may have actually been from the show airing previous to "Star Trek", so never mind on that one. The station normally runs an ID between the shows, but didn't this time.

On my oringinal version 3rd season DVD box sex it had the old Paramount logo from 1968.

Kang would later appear, and die, in the Deep Space Nine episode "Blood Oath".

GREAT ENHANCED MOMENT:

The destruction of the Klingon ship.

Awesome!

Next weekend's remastered episode is "Day of the Dove", with "That Which Survives" the following weekend.

This is another episode that I would have seen fit to have been named
"Balance of Terror" instead (besides, or along with, the one that actually was),
because the entity was making sure the forces were equal aboard the
Enterprise.

I watched this last night, on our local station's HD channel. The sound mix was altered a bit. The bridge scenes have an additional layer of background sounds; namely the sounds from "The Cage" and "Where No Man..." have been subtlely added. In the scene when the Klingons are beamed into the transporter room, the background sound almost overpowers the dialog.

Posted by John Lang (2001):

"In the far away shots, it looks like he's** kissing his own hand!
(I've heard of 'being in love with one's self' but this is ridiculous!)"
---------------------------------------------------------------

** Chekov

John Lang, did you see Buddy Love
(played by Jerry Lewis) kissing his own
hand in the original movie
"The Nutty Professor?"

The security guard in the landing party isn't too quick on the draw -- he doesn't grab for his phaser when the Klingons stomp past him. The swipe Kang takes at Kirk isn't well staged. He misses Kirk's chin by a foot. Kirk's payback to Kang later is done much better.

When they first sight the alien, there are some reaction shots of Mara with her in front of a green wall, but wide shots show her in front of a grey wall. They reused a closeup shot from earlier after Chekov attacked her.

NANJAO: In the remastered episode, it looks like the ocean on Beta XII-A has a big algae bloom.

Here's the original story outline for this episode. Plot points that would have severely dated this episode were thankfully dropped.

After learning the ship is on a heading out of the galaxy we see an exterior shot of the ship going toward & away from the camera. The starfield stays the same. (This shot is repeated later in the show.)

Kang seems pretty happy to laugh and be in a good mood to rid the Enterprise of the entity. After it's gone, hopefully he remembered that he's lost his ship AND hundreds of his crew.

Once the entity left the ship, all of it's manipulations-- the ship out of control and losing power, crewmen's injuries regenerating, would come to an end. So while control of the Enterprise might return, anyone in intensive care in sickbay probably died.

Has anyone ever noticed that when Spock tells Kirk that the transporter sequence will take eight seconds that it actually ends up taking about fifteen seconds.

When the entity at the end of the episode leaves the ship Kirk, Kang and the rest are facing away, and looking up, from the square screen which shields the warp engines at the back of the engine room. However, the engineering panels underneath the entity are the ones that were actually to the left of the screen, facing the engines, behind Kirk, Kang, and the rest. Kirk, Kang, and company are facing slightly to the left looking forward when they are laughing at the entity which would mean they are looking slightly to the left of the main entrance into engineering. Does the engineering section have control panels in this area that look just like the control panels to the left of the screen just behind them. There's no other shot of the front of the engineering room which shows anything like this. Although shots from this angle are few and far between we did get a good shot of this area in "The Ultimate Computer" and no panels of this kind can be seen to the left of the entrance into engineering.

At the end, Kirk tell the entity that they know about it and would be on guard against it and its influence. That was not a very smart thing to do. As it left, the entity might have decided to get rid of the witnesses and destroyed the Enterprise. Even in its now weakened state, I don't think it would have presented it with a big challenge. All it had to do was turn off the containment fields of the antimatter reserves, and poof!

True, but Kirk might simply have been chattering and not been understood. Just seeing its combatants talking to it and not fighting each other might have told it, "What's the point - I'm out of here." I think it knows perfectly well, based on its history, that it is rarely detected, and it just had bad luck this time to run into a set of combatants that weren't so easily held under its power. Kirk's crew of Federation reps were trained to prefer peace, while Kang was very aware of the Organian Peace Treaty. He could not know that <*> was taking them out of any Organian notice, but once Kirk could demonstrate reasonable doubt that Kirk started this fight, Kang probably preferred non-hostility.

(The name <*> comes from the Q-Continuum trilogy of novels. <*>, Gorgan and The One were associates of 0, a would-be mentor of a younger Q.)

Why didn't the entity stop Kirk and Spock from reasoning its existence? Why didn't it destroy the Enterprise at the end, when it heavily damaged the Klingon ship? etc.

Well, look at it from the point of view of a gambler with five dollars left, and gambling is his way of living. The entity sank its savings into this, hoping to turn a tidy profit until even it no longer had the energy to hold the beat-up Enterprise together. So, it...

1. Simulated a distress call, maybe even with fake coordinates. The two ships respond, Kirk's team beams down to wilderness coordinates, and wonder where the colony remnants are.

2. Klingon ship arrives, entity causes major explosions - possibly by misleading crew to trigger it themselves, or its the entity's main energy output - putting its chips on the table and rolling the die.

3. With Klingons and Federation together on the surface, the entity instigates a false memory in Chekov to get things rolling, seeing as the natural distrust hasn't caused fighting yet.

4. Still no results! The kind side has gained the upper hand and is trying to keep the lid on things. So, keep communications locked out. All Kirk does is evacuate the Klingon ship to his own, then destroy that ship. Still no fighting?!

5. Okay, let's get them riled up another way. These creatures have such a flimsy ship, they probably can't go intergalactic. Time to lock the controls and send the ship flying out of the galaxy like a bat out of... okay. And the numbers aren't even - whoever heard of giving one chess player 16 pieces and the other 250? Ah, that's how to do it - fool the computer into thinking there's multiple hull breaches, and those nifty isolation doors will close. Bingo! Now, to make the doors resistant to their cutting torches.

6. What gives?! Those guys STILL aren't fighting! Just mouthing at each other in their audible language! Well, here goes... transmutation time... let's see, what would they love to use? Let me read their leaders' minds? Oh, hey, one leader just belted the other across the face and... ah-HAH! That sounds delightfully barbaric and should do the trick. Abracadabra... physical transmutation of atomic structure... and voila! Oh! The leader of the side that's more prone to warfare seems interested!

7. Wait, no, that's not fair, peace-nik leader! You can't have those energy weapons. Abracadabra, and there you go. Instead of phasers vs chess boards, it's sword vs sword. And you other guys need weapons, too, since peace-nik leader was so unsporting as to take away the warriors' weapons.

8. And while I'm at it, I'd better take care of all those other weapons. Now, I've invested a lot of energy here, a pretty hefty opening ante, and I'd appreciate it if you'd kindly give me a return on my ante. I need a bonanza here.

9. Well, it's been going okay. But peace-nik-leader still is being a wet blanket, and they're even fighting each other sometimes. That gives me a bit of energy, but I really would rather they stay in the main spectacle. Healing those injuries is really taking energy from me.

10. They're on to me! Well, there's still plenty of fighting. I'll try and keep them from getting anywhere. Ah, peace-nik leader is gonna try to talk to warrior-leader. Well, time for mind control. Good, peace-nik leader gave up.

11. Not so fast. He's still trying... hm. Time to kill the main power source. Maybe desperation would make them give up all hope. Once you're without engine power in the intergalactic void, nothing to do but fight. And I'd love to arrange the roar of crowds like he said, but maybe I can televise the fighting to those trapped crew?

12. Oh, oh, the warrior leader's spotted me! I must learn to hide when I'm filling up, but I am so thirsty! Oh, no! He's listening! No! Those guys fighting in the corridor... they're all I've got now!

13. AAAACK! The warrior leader is convinced! C'mon, you guys in the corridor... get vicious! Hate! Hate! You can do it!

14. aaaawwwwwwWWWWWWWWW!!!! They've all stopped! I'm getting parched! I've barely replaced my ante and they're stopping!

15. URRRGHH! That's nauseating! It makes me SICK! Laughing! Buddy-buddy! I should've taken more notes from Gorgan and The One. Aaargh! Oh, warrior-leader just pounded the wind out of peace-nik leader... but peace-nik leader is tolerating it!

16. I'm outa here! There's gotta be some guys who aren't so cotton-pickin civilized! This is the biggest turnaround I've seen since the T'Kon. At least those Mongols and Nazis were real sports...

17. Hmmm... these Jem'hadar guys have some potential. I wonder if I can get them to ignore their overseers...

Oh, yes,

9a. Can't have one side freezing in space. Better restore their life support. Maybe that'll make things interesting, too.

Wouldn't Kirk and Co. have consulted the Enterprise database en route to the planet which would have told them there never was a colony there? Or was the entity already messing with their heads?

You've obviously read the stories by Greg Cox, Geoff (and they are pretty good ones).

Todd M. Pence on Tuesday, October 27, 1998 - 10:36 am: This evil disembodied entity doesn't use its abilities nearly as well as it could. If it can really alter people's memories, as it did with Chekov, why doesn't it make the Enterprise people forget about its existence whenever they are in danger of discovering it?
Perhaps it needs people to remember it's exsistance in order to use them to maintain itself.

Johnny Veitch on Saturday, April 03, 1999 - 6:22 am: At one point McCoy says "You can`t think of making peace with those friends!" I suppose that was a misprint and it should be "fiends", because if they were friends they wouldn`t need to make peace because they already had!
McCoy is probably being sarcastic.

Did some digging about the actress that played Mara, Susan Howard, and discovered that she's still alive, she's 71, born Jeri Lynn Mooney, in Texas, and had an impressive run in the series, 'Dallas', appearing in 198 episodes as Donna Culver Krebbs.
You can also google 'images of Susan Howard' to see old and new photos of her. She's an attractive lady, but unrecognizable under all that makeup as Mara, as far as I'm concerned.

The entity kills about 400 Klingons on their ship, for whatever reason, but it has the good manners to trap about the same amount of people on the Enterprise without murdering them.

If it is true that the 38 Klingons and Humans would fight ad eternum it doesn't need the 400 others, does it?

What happened to Lt. Johnson? After Spock nerve pinches him, he just disappears from the episode. It looks like Kirk and Spock just wandered off and left him lying there.

So why doesn't he show up again later on?

Unless some dialogue got cut that mentioned that they locked Johnson in his quarters or something like that.

Kirk doesn't warn the bridge about the Klingons escaping. He rides up the turbolift and seems to think Spock already knows. Which he seems to do, already, since Spock is holding a sword. What was it before it turned into a sword? A tricorder?

Kang cuts off power and life support to the bridge, but they remain there, and show no signs of losing air. Probably because Kang conveniently allowed the turbolifts to still reach the bridge.

If the alien feeds off of hatred, why doesn't it grow stronger when Mara is near it, with Kirk and Spock? She displays hatred of humans from the start, without outside influence. It should be feeding off her personal hatred.

My DVD adds an echo to Kirk and Kang's voices when they declare a ceasefire over ship-wide intercom. It makes sense, as they would hear their voices from every intercom in Engineering, anyway.

Author Greg Cox has hinted, in a few novels, that this entity may have played a role in the extinction of the Cheronian race (Let That Be Your Last Battlefield).

Certainly, the hate that destroyed Cheron would have been a feast to this entity.

That would be an interesting tie-in to another episode, Tim, but it would lessen the true meaning of the episode, 'Let That Be Your Last Battlefield'.
That was about the uselessness of somebody having pure hatred for other races, plain and simple. No drugs or alien influences needed-- it was a message about the inbred ability of humans in the 20th century to hate others for no good reason. Removing the belief (due to an outside influence) of the black/white race that they were better than the white/black would excuse their genocidal attitudes and erase the racism-is-bad message.

When Scotty comes stomping onto the bridge, Sulu utters his name for some reason, then Scotty goes on his tirade as Sulu leaves. Not sure why Sulu's announcing his arrival.

Now much of a 'hazard to the vicinity' could Kang's damaged ship be in a solar system with a planet that has no life signs on it?

And what about the entity at the end?

Yes, they drive it off the Enterprise, but it's still out there. Or is it just someone else's problem now.

Luckily, Picard, Sisko, or Janeway ever ran into it.

---

quote:

One "Trek" urban legend has it that this episode was originally written with John Colicos' Kor as the adversary. Colicos was unavailable, and really wanted to do this ep.

---

Mara was the first female Klingon we ever saw.

Kirk, Kang, Spock, and the others are supposedly looking up at the portside area of Engineering, but that's where Emergency Manual Monitor is located. Meanwhile, it looks like the stations and gangway on the starboard side that we see all the time.

Before Chekov freaks out on the bridge, Kirk orders Sulu to 'take command of Engineering and Auxiliary Control'. How? Those are two different places on the ship!

It was lucky that Chekov got the hots for Mara and pulled her aside. Without that incident, Kirk and Spock wouldn't have found her, had her witness the creature, and gain her trust to accompany Kirk into Engineering.

Dumb alien! It shows up in Engineering to feed on all that hatred, but being out in the open proves its existence to Kang, who rejects it. Should have kept hiding and Kang would have thought everyone else was nuts!

Greg Cox gave this entity it's comeuppance in his story, Night Of The Vulture.

It's part of the 2004 anthology book, Tales Of The Dominion War.