Finally we encounter a dangerous race of aliens determined to conquer humanity that lack godlike powers! I still don't really understand why they thought there would be a powerful energy barrier around the outside of the galaxy, but I guess it was canon by this point so whatever. Also, warp 11 always makes my mind hurt a little bit. Finally, this episode proves why they had to go an invent synthehol, Scotty has bottles of various booze stashed all over his quarters!
Answering a distress signal Kirk beam to the surface of an uninhabited world with Spock, McCoy and two red shirts. Two human looking aliens show up and paralyze them with these little boxes on their belts. The male alien, Rojan, explains they he just conquered them and intends to use their ship to fly to the andromeda galaxy. He sends his people up and they easily take over the Enterprise with their paralysis boxes. Kirk and company are imprisoned. Spock manages to mind probe the guard and Kirk knocks her out (with a hit to the shoulder, classic trek combat) and they steal her paralysis box. But they are immediately caught by Rojan who has a goon turn the two red shirts into some sort blocks resembling giant dice. He then crushes one to show how much he is serious before restoring the other red shirt. During his mind probe Spock learns the aliens are not in their normal bodies, they have taken human form to be able to use the Enterprise.
Spock fakes being sick and the guard takes him and McCoy to the ship. Spock and Scotty rig the ship to explode when it passes through the galactic barrier, but on the bridge when the time comes to decide Kirk won't do it. They proceed into intergalactic space. Not needing the crew any longer Rojan has everyone by Kirk, Scotty, Spock and McCoy reduced to blocks. While enjoying a dinner in the rec room one of the aliens walks in and asks why they are eating. They convince him to try it and he loves it. This along with Spock suddenly remembering more from his mind probe gives them the idea to get the aliens to react emotionally and to start to enjoy being human.
McCoy starts injecting the aliens with drugs to make them irritable, Scotty gets one of them drunk, and Kirk starts a romance with Kelinda, the guard he knocked out earlier. Rojan becomes jealous of Kelinda being with Kirk and orders her to stay away from him, but she ignores him. The guy McCoy has been messing with freaks out on the bridge and Rojan realizes he is losing control. He catches Kirk kissing Kelinda and freaks out in a jealous rage. He fights Kirk hand to hand, but when Kirk gets the upper hand he convinces Rojan to return to the milky way and start enjoying life in human bodies. This of course works because there are only a few minutes left in the episode and they turn the ship around to go home.
Scoring: While not one that gets talked about a lot this is actually probably my favorite, "aliens want something vague from humanity," episode so far. Partially because what they want at first actually makes sense. And what it turns out they really wanted is a big surprise to them.
7 out of 10
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