Our episode begins with a belly dancer that showcases remarkably moveable breasts, a lot of skin, and a bunch of plastic tiki-style attire. What the heck? It turns out belly dancing in space includes a mix of Middle Eastern and Hawaiian attire merged together as, what Bones calls, "a completely hedonistic society."
As if this isn't unfortunate enough, Scotty has a serious fascination with our magically breasted woman, as do both Bones and Kirk. Kirk, however, has invited our dancer over for the enjoyment of "her good company" specifically because Scotty likes her so much. Unfortunately, Kirk's pimp-tastic behavior has seriously pissed off not only a cape-wearing mystery man inside the same bar, but also another man wearing a costume remarkably like that of the drum clashing dancing monkey so common to Hollywood's version of the classic Middle Eastern movie of this same time period, the late 1960's.
Our DancerEpisode Summary
Using the dry-ice low-hovering fog of the planet as an allurement, Scotty convinces our dancer to go for a walk with him in the night. Immediately following his departure, Kirk and McCoy erupt into hedonistic masculine giggles about how their work is never done--leading his men to their fulfillment, and delivering and then fulfilling prescriptions of pleasure, respectively. Yes, the episode really does open just so baldly.
Having fulfilled their duties in helping Scotty "hook up", our captain and doctor are now free to explore "a place on the other side of town where the women are just so...." We never hear explicitly what the women actually are.
In the midst of their movement to the other side of town, our officers hear a woman scream. Rushing to investigate, they discover the dancer dead, stabbed a dozen times, and a short distance away Scotty is holding a knife. Now, Scotty is a suspect in a murder investigation. Strangely, Scotty doesn't remember a thing beyond leaving the bar with his "bonny lass." Additionally, Scotty has a large bump on his head, accompanied by a concusion.
We meet, now, the lead police authority of the planet. He has the highest legal authority on the planet, excluding the government official, who holds final say in all matters. These two, then, represent the leaders of the planet. In ask about local legal procedures, our ship's officers discover that (1) "the law of the planet is love", and also (2) that the planet used to rely on empathic powers to determine the truth of the situation in the midst of crimes, though such crimes are now rare in this place. In fact, the planet residents, we discover, can be regarded as sheep, devoid of extreme emotions, and rich is soft cuddly feeling for each other.
The government official tells us his wife has these empathic powers long ago relied on, and states that she will perform an investigation. Immediately the legal authority protests, but the official is firm on the matter. Kirk and McCoy agree to the empathic investigation, but only after also offering to use too their psychotricorder from on board the Enterprise. We've never heard of a psychotricorder before, but it turns out that such equipment has the capacity to fully read the memory of anyone examined with it, as long as privacy is actually maintained. Remarkable!
In the midst of preparing to investigate, the female technician sent down from the Enterprise with the psychotricorder is found dead, stabbed to death, just as the dancer. Rushing to answer a scream, McCoy and Kirk again discover Scotty completely unconscious in the room alone with the murder victim. The privacy demanded in the situation serves well for hiding the source of the crime, and for making it appear that Scotty must be the main suspect.
Now, with two murders, and Scotty as the only clear suspect, a deeper investigation is taking place. To investigate using the empathic powers of the official's wife, a seance occurs. The wife of the planet's leader goes into trance and shouts that evil evil is in the room, a woman hating evil that will never die. (Oh no! Surely patriarchy has some shelf life? Please lord, please?) Then, suddenly, in the midst of her pronouncements of evil evil evil in the room, the light goes dark, and a scream is heard. When the lights come up again, the empathic woman too has been stabbed, and her blood is found on Scotty.
Now even Kirk must accept that the evidence strongly points to Scotty, though we know Scotty has too much Scottish tranquility to actually murder anyone. Kirk, and McCoy convince the leaders of the planet to beam the suspects of the case (the two men from the bar with their odd costumes are now included as suspects, simply by having been in the bar that night), as well as the investigators, and our crew, onto the Enterprise. It turns out, there on the ship, is a machine that can without a doubt read the entirety of a person's memory.
In the midst of investigation, the machine continually confirms Scotty's truth telling as he confesses to the facts he recalls. In the midst of questioning Scotty also confirms that there was something ghostly in the room that he felt between him and the murdered woman. In response to this, the planet's lead legal enforcement shouts repeatedly about the absurdity of the suggestion, and his doubt that the Enterprise machine could really be accurate, though the machine continually confirms that Scotty is telling the truth. Ghostly figures accurately presented? Yes! Scotty's innocence, it would seem, hangs on proving the reality of a ghost. Strange.
The investigation continues, with the second suspect now being questioned. It turns out this suspect, the caped man, had been engaged to marry the dancer from the beginning of the show, and the monkey dressed man was her father. In the midst of questioning of the previously-caped suspect, we discover that though they were engaged, the dancer did not love him, and he, therefore was jealous of her. The planet's leader is horrified. Jealousy is no emotion fit for sheep. Spock and Kirk together begin to think through the evidence, utilizing too the information shouted during the seance.
Profoundly, in the midst of the study by our officers of the evidence, with the help of the computer, they realize that words that occurred in the midst of the seance actually translate to the English name "Jack the Ripper." They realize too that all the evidence involved in the case actually points to the existence of an energy-based mass, mass murderer of women that feeds on death and fear, and is able to assume physical form but then also take gaseous form. My god! The ghostly figure Scotty encountered then could be real! In the midst of the investigation, the planet's legal authority continually throws fits over the apparent absurdity of the idea that a Jack the Ripper phantom that oscillates between physical and gaseous form could be to blame rather than Scotty. Honestly, who could blame him for doubting the idea? It does seem surprising that our murderer could be an alien ghost. But, the wonders of space may never cease.
Eyeing the fits of our legal authority, Spock clearly begins to suspect his odd behavior. But, unfortunately, we then immediately after receive our first blight on Spock's character. He announces that he suspects the Ripper phantom attacks women because it feeds on fear, and women are more prone to terror then are men, they being weaker in emotional constitution than men are. Oh Spock! Do you really believe such things? I realize all the women you encounter wear dresses so short we can see their bum, and shoes so tall they're probably really are more afraid all the time than the men surrounding them --afraid of falling on their heels, and flashing their bum, that is. But, still. I've been holding you as an example of the potential goodness that can be found to love. Socio-political beliefs are part of the balance that it takes to find goodness in another. Please, don't make me doubt you.
We might grant Spock escape from such universalizing comments by assuming his remark has social dimensions, rather than him making a claim about anything like "the natural state" of women. If we allow for this, then Spock is a creature of his time, which we must admit, is the late 1960's U.S.A. on planet earth, not the future of outer space. With this in mind, we may maintain our true love for him, even as we are disappointed. Oh dear Spock. Please, be strong. Do not let the poor influences of your social situation ruin your high moral standards. We need you.
Back to the episode... Holy dear lord god, Star Trek! Our alien presence this time isn't just different from us humans, it's verging on paranormal. It turns out, then, that Star Fleet would have us understand that all things can be explained. What we may take to be unexplained, or even unexplainable, phenomenon need not be ruled out as heresay, but instead might be understood as alien creatures we just don't readily encounter. Our ghost stories, then, might be generated by encounters with alien life forms we simply don't have the scientific means to explain.
The crew begins to question the computer regarding patterns of mass murders of women throughout the galaxy and realize that there is a history of mass murders that follow a clear line between Earth, and our episode's planet. They discover too that the last recorded murders occurred on the planet the legal authority supposedly originated from. In the midst of questioning the legal authority, then, now the main suspect, his body collapses, immediately dead, and we discover the Jack the Ripper phantom has escaped from controlling the body, and taken flown into the ship's computer, thereby taking control of the entire Enterprise. That's right, we have a murderous phantom at loose in the ship trying to instill fear and terror through out the crew.
The Jack the Ripper Phantom ReAnimating the Body of the Planet's Legal Authority and Feeding Off a Female Crew Member's FearKirk, McCoy and Spock administer giddy-producing tranquilizers to the entire ship's population, thus avoiding the potential production of fear or terror entirely. Spock then instructs the ship's computer to work on the number pi, thus immobilizing the phantom's ability to utilize the ship, since the computer is otherwise engaged. As a result, the phantom rushes out of the computer, and is able to reanimate the dead body of the planet's legal authority. Quickly, Kirk and Spock tranquilize the body, and then beam it out into space with the widest possible dispersal. Spock then explains that the phantom's consciousness may continue to exist in separate tiny molecules of thought spread all over space, but it will die eventually.
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