Kirk suffering for female attention at the beginning of "Shore Leave"As Star Trek progresses, Kirk is being placed in direct physical contact with women more regularly. In the beginning of the series he would certainly be seen on screen with women, but physical contact did not occur. Now conditions of the episodes tend to push him towards having to touch women for some variety of reasons.
The episode opens with Kirk under obvious physical strain receiving a massage from his female yoeman. Then, suddenly, the scene changes to McCoy discovering Alice herself chasing after her white rabbit on a planet below. The crew is in dire need of shore leave and McCoy is unsure if he might need it so badly he's actually hallucinating.
Though Sulu and McCoy have vouched for the beauty of the new planet (prior to the rabbit and Alice sighting), Kirk is skeptical of the situation, believing it could be too good to be true and in fact refusing to beam down. Quickly though Spock tricks Kirk into realizing he must take shore leave because of his own reduced performance and poor mood.
Odd occurrences continue, though often, initially at least, without the crew's explicit awareness: a centuries old handgun in perfect condition appears below a rock, giant rabbit footprints appear out of nowhere in mud along a shoreline, an acquaintance from Jim's past appears out of nowhere. The shore leave quickly turns into another strange investigation into unexplainable happenings.
The filming style of this episode is unusual in comparison to those previous. The audience is shown the mysteries before the crew is able to discover them. This style of foreshadowing hasn't appeared in any of the previous episodes of this series.
As the mysterious occurrences continue, we begin to realize that they are driven by the imagination of the crew members themselves. That is, just when the crew gets caught up in day dreaming their day dream appears in front of them apparently alive and waiting to interact. In this way, we revisit the final question of the original pilot, "The Cage." There the pilot ends with Captain Pike's romantic interest walking away with an illusory version of Pike himself. The alien closes the episode saying to Pike basically, she has illusion, you have reality, may you be as happy. Here on the day dream planet we get to consider again, if your dreams could come true instantly, would you want them? Ultimately, from this episode we learn that we must control our day dreams too. While they may not take on such a remarkable life of their own in our world, one point of this episode is still that when we are not careful our day dreams can take on a life that affects our own. We must choose what it is we want to focus on in our everyday lives, including our thoughts, in order to choose to make that which we want take hold for us.
Interestingly, this episode also anticipates Beverly Crusher's experience with the ghost that loves her in a mid-series Next Generation episode. There Beverly falls in love with an illusory or ghost-like man that seems perfect for her but turns out to need her physical presence to sustain himself. Again, she must face the question of whether or not she wants the pleasure of an illusion, or to step back into reality instead. There is another similarity between Episode 15 and the condition of Beverly and her ghost lover. Just as he sustains himself with her energy, in Episode 15 some sort of power field within the planet seems to be feeding off the energy sources of the crew and their ship. In this episode, however, we discover by the end that the power field is not using the ship's energy maliciously, but instead for the sake of generating what the crew wants to experience.
McCoy reveling in his love dream with a real crew memberCharmingly, the illusion offers us the chance to see McCoy woo a lady interest for the first time. He even faces his own death by lance for the sake of her, at which time the crew discover the apparently strong, seemingly real effects of their illusion world. Multiple members of the crew seem to suffer death in the midst of this imagination, only to have their bodies then disappear.
In the moment when there is no answer available to the crew for what is happening, Spock again steps in to make the inexplicable explicable by reasoning out the only options that approach reasonable in an unrealistic world. Kirk refuses to simply take Spock's insight, however, instead pursuing his own cavalier approach to solving problems, chasing after one of the illusions to demand answers from it. Here we begin to see how Kirk operating as the lone commander of the Enterprise is a bit of an illusion as well. His character is utterly intertwined with Spock's. While it's been clear all along that Kirk depends on Spock to serve as a second in command, and as the first science officer. We also see more clearly the point Kirk made in the previous episode--that he depends on Spock's consistency to establish his own emotional well-being. Kirk's reckless and erratic institutionalization of authority works partially because of the reliability of Spock. Spock stands as the pillar Kirk has been able to internalize to measure his own bravado against. Spock is not merely a friend and crew member beside Kirk. He is a voice and marker of constancy within Kirk's own character.
I've watched this episode with a friend of mine. He points out, "They always beam down to planets that look like Southern California." However, Episode 15 is actually the first to show such a landscape. The planets previously have appeared far more barren and rugged. This is the first landscape that has appeared as a mix of lush greenery, with sand, and rock formation as Southern California would offer. Also, the makeup has changed in this episode. The Enterprise crew have all taken on a heavier brow. The makeup here resembles that of Major Anthony from I Dream of Jeannie.
Also, in case you're dying for more James T. Kirk sweaty bare skin action, this episode offers some around 39:13.
Favorite Episode Quotation:
The more complex the mind, the greater the need for the simplicity of play. --Kirk explaining the strange imaginary occurrences of "Shore Leave."
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