Episode 66 – TOS 3×11: “Wink of an Eye” – The Not So Much The Neutral Zone Podcast

Ari

January 25, 2017

Episode 66 – TOS 3×11: “Wink of an Eye”

This week, Kirk gets kidnapped by an alien queen to become part of her man-harem.

No, literally.

And we love her.

It starts as all bad days for the Enterprise start: with them answering a distress call. Only when they arrive, there’s nobody home; just an entire abandoned city and a lot of annoying buzzing noises. Are they all dead? Is the distress call merely on repeat from long ago? Maybe we should just go?

The bridge crew views the distress call from Scalos. — Our favourite part of the male aliens’ outfits is the ultra-low-cut shirts. V. snazzy.

But they lose their first redshirt maybe two minutes in, realize five minutes later they’ve brought something dangerous back aboard the ship with them, and then we’re off and running. Mostly the crisis amounts to irritating mosquito-sounds until Kirk, himself, disappears – or rather, is accelerated far beyond everyone else – and finds himself in a bizarro-world where his crew is frozen in place and he’s alone, at normal speed, with Deelah.

Deelah standing on the bridge, with the crew frozen around her. — We have no idea how this outfit works, but it’s a marvel and so is Deelah.

We love Deelah. She knows what she wants, knows what she has to do, and she’s not going to let any insignificant considerations like the objectively unethical shading of abducting people to be your unwilling sperm factories stop her from getting any of it.

Deelah was immediately nominated to our top 10 of female TOS characters. She’s smart, witty, unimpressed by Kirk but also unafraid to say what she wants, and then, uh, take it. She’s in a shitty situation, with her culture and her species on the edge of extinction, but she’s dealing, and did we mention this is the second or third lady in a few episodes to be the undisputed ruler of an entire civilization? I mean, that civilization is down to maybe five people, but still. Plus it seems to be a matriarchy.

Deelah threatens Kirk with her phaser weapon. — Did we mention she outsmarts Kirk about 79 times before the episode is more than fifteen minutes in?

Honestly, this is a pretty solid episode. We get a puzzle, characters whose motivations are clear, and a conflict where you understand why the bad guys are doing what they’re doing, even while you acknowledge that it’s ethically… uh, grey.

We do have some issues with the parting shot/decision on the part of Kirk & Co where he basically dooms the Scalosians to extinction despite having the cure, but up until the last three minutes, it’s a thing of beauty.