Sulu making coffee jokes while freezing to deathThe episode opens with much of the ship on the surface of a planet. One of the geologists injures himself falling into a pile of yellow ore and so is required to beam back to the Enterprise. Scotty greets the geologist and scans the ore discovering it to be magnetic, and unusual. Immediately after Kirk beams up and arrives feeling strange. As a result, Scotty guides him down the hall. The transporter room unattended, we see a second transportation occur this time with Kirk appearing again standing in reverse position of how the original Kirk arrived. Quickly the second Kirk shows himself as demanding and inconsiderate. We see him grab people inexplicably, and also to demand brandy of the Doctor. The crew is unaware of the fact that there are two Kirks and so have difficulty sorting out the Captain's strange behavior. Finally, after a planet animal (a dog with a unicorn horn) is beamed up, and inadvertently duplicated the crew realizes that Kirk too was duplicated. Soon after Kirk realizes that something has gone wrong in his being duplicated, that it has affected his strength of will. We discover too that what the split has meant for Kirk, and the unicorn dog, is a splitting of demeanor--one is nothing but good, the other nothing but evil.
Episode Tidbits
Unfortunately, we must suffer through an attempted rape scene in this episode.
"You don't have the luxury of being anything less than perfect." Spock tells Kirk that he cannot show vulnerability in the eyes of the crew, lest he lose command. We discover again that Kirk suffers under the demands of absolute command, and that what that means in this early Star Trek universe is an incredible isolation from most other people. To retain authority the Captain must appear to be above all others in ability. Knowing this we gain a deeper understanding too of the closeness Kirk shares with his officers. Spock and Kirk, as we know, have an incredibly strong friendship. In other episodes we've seen Kirk's ability to spot Spock's limitations, even as others view Spock as impermeable. This early episode reveals that the friendships strength is at least partially dependent on the frailty that each can honestly see in the other when others cannot.
"Do you have a point, Spock?" The doctor asks. "Yes, always, doctor. We have here an unusual opportunity to appraise the human mind, or to judge the roles of good and evil in a man." Spock responds. In this episode, we discover a view that the side of a person that in itself would be perceived as the negative characteristics of a person are integrally intertwined with a person's ability to function in a productive manner. According to Spock's psychological analysis, it is the dominating, aggressive characteristics that Kirk has lost to his counter self that make him able to function as an effective leader. In the last episode we learned that we must face our underlying tendencies and desires and transform them lest they take us over. In this episode, we see a similar lesson. We cannot simply hope to eradicate our own negative characteristics. We must accept that our negative characteristics are actually an integral aspect of our functioning as productive, successful human beings. We must face, in other words, those very parts of ourselves we have otherwise been afraid of. We learn, then, that to be healthy human individuals we must achieve a balance in the various aspects of ourselves.
In this episode we discover Sulu's endless sense of humor for the first time. Even while facing the very real possibility of freezing to death he is busy making jokes of room surface and coffee delivery. Thank god they still enjoy coffee in the future.
The previous episode alludes to Spock's human heritage, but it is in this episode for the first time that the half-human, half-Vulcan reality of Spock's background is fully disclosed.
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