Episode 61 – TOS 3×06: “Spectre of the Gun”

Do you enjoy bizarre sci-fi-esque westerns like Wild Wild West and Westworld? Alternately, have you been doing a lot of drugs? Then this episode is for you!

Seriously. First of all, the reason given for the Enterprise visiting this planet either makes no sense at all or makes them look like assholes, which always gets us off to a glowing start. Second of all, this episode takes place in a 19th-century Wild West town that apparently did not feel the need to put walls or ceilings on any of its buildings, something that is never, at any point in the episode, commented upon by anyone.

Basically, Kirk, following orders from higher-up, approaches a planet that has done them the damned courtesy of sending a probe telling the Enterprise in no uncertain terms that they are not at home to visitors, thanks. Naturally, this means that when the away party beams down, they find themselves quickly lectured by an almost unbelievably shoddily-constructed Guest Alien who informs them that because they can’t follow simple instructions or respect sovereign space, they must now be executed… in the weirdest fucking way I have ever heard of, even in Star Trek.

Basically, they’re zipped to Pretend Tombstone Arizona, the away team is cast as the Clantons, and the Earps are going to kill them if they don’t skip town by 5pm. Yes, Death by O.K. Corral. Supposedly this was chosen from Kirk’s mind because he (and his crew) must die by the “violence of [his] own past.” The fact that Kirk’s ancestors are from Iowa, not the Wild Wild West, is apparently immaterial to the moment, but… whatever.

Obviously the away team does not perish at the hands of the Earps and Doc Holliday (weirdly cast as Snidely Whiplash-level black hats in this story). But neither do they, really, escape via application of their smarts, as usual. They work out that the whole Wild West set is an illusion, but that the bullets can still kill them if they believe in them. But do we get to see the power of human imagination being wielded as the ultimate weapon against violence and death? No. It turns out that humans? Just too emotional to logically believe that an illusion is unreal.

Like, there are parts of this episode that definitely come out the other side of Bad and all the way back around to This Is Amazing, but the ten minutes of our lives we gave up to Spock doing the most awkward series of mind-melds ever really didn’t help.

Floating sky clocks can only make up for so much.

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