Red alert, all hands to battle stations! We have entered into the realm of camp. Tonight's pair of godlike beings take the form of two new age magicians who use, "sympathetic magic," to threaten the Enterprise. I am going to bash this episode a bit, but it does manage to avoid some of the trek tropes, (McCoy finds a man dead and DOESN'T say, "he's dead Jim") but it has way too much mumbo jumbo to be great.
We start on the bridge over a seemingly unoccupied planet. Unoccupied other than the landing party of three that is now missing. They hear from one of the landing party requesting to beam aboard, but when he does he is dead. A voice comes from his body and warns Kirk that the ship is now cursed and they must leave. With Sulu and Scotty on the surface that just won't do, so Kirk beams down with Spock and McCoy.
On the surface they find it foggy which confuses them for some reason. Then three witches appear and warn them off again with what even Spock points out is bad poetry. Then they run across a black cat and follow it into an imposing castle that didn't show up on sensors. Inside they follow the cat into a simple pit fall trap and find themselves chained in a dungeon. Sulu and Scotty show up but they have been brainwashed. Suddenly a magician appears complete with a wand. He spends about 10 minutes trying to talk them into working with him, before his cat turns into Sylvia, the other magician. And when I say magician, I mean it. They use their magic to threaten the ship yada yada yada.
In case you can't tell I am getting kinda bored with having every enemy have godlike powers with some silly weakness. In this case it turns out to be their magic wand. Kirk fails to seduce Sylvia, but fortunately the other magician is apparently less evil and talks about how she is betraying their way or something. Eventually she turns into a giant cat that only appears through doorways and in shadow and kills the other magician. Kirk smashes the wand and everything is as it was, only the two magicians are new tiny green puppets or something.
Me being judgmental: This one wasn't quite as boring as Alternative Factor, but there were lots of scenes that felt like they were being stretched to meet the run time. I am really starting to be ready for Q and some consistency in my godlike beings.
3 out of 10
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