Obsession is a well named episode. It tells a tale of a Captain driven almost to madness by a desire to right the mistakes of the past and to escape the guilt of hesitating in combat. After last nights command failures, this episode seemed to be going down a similar path, but was saved by a tight scene where McCoy and Spock confront Kirk in his quarters over the issue of competence. Rather than a long, drawn out hearing this scene quickly establishes that while Kirk may obsessed, he is driven by a legitimate concern to the safety of all life in the galaxy that probably should be pursued, even at a fairly high cost.
The episode begins with Kirk and Spock leading a team surveying a planet for valuable minerals. Just as they are finishing up Kirk stops, he has noticed a sweet smell that triggers a memory he can't escape. He orders a scan for dikironium and sends a team of security crew looking for a gas cloud with orders to shoot on sight. The team encounters the cloud and all but one are killed before they can shoot. The survivor is badly hurt and is beamed back to the ship. All those attacked by the creature have been drained of all red blood cells. McCoy revives him momentarily and he tells Kirk that he smelled the sweet smell and sensed an intelligence before he was attacked. The crewman dies minutes later. Back on the bridge Kirk orders a scan of the surface and ignores orders from Starfleet to pick up critical medical supplies so he can pursue his white whale I mean energy cloud.
The new head of security, an Ensign Garrovick reports to Kirk and is recognized as the son of Kirk's commander on the USS Farragut, the same ship that encountered the energy cloud thing before. Kirk is short tempered with Garrovick and orders him to form a security detail to beam down to the surface along with the captain. On the surface Garrovick and Kirk each lead teams, but it is Garrovick's team that that encounters the cloud vampire first and Garrovick fails to shoot in time to stop it from killing his two crew. Back on the ship Kirk flips a wig and removes Garrovick from duty. Back on the bridge Scotty informs Kirk that he is maintaining a vent on one of the impulse engines and it will take a half an hour.
Spock shows up in sickbay asking McCoy for advice for probably the first time ever. Spock has learned that 11 years earlier when the Farragut encountered the cloud monster Kirk failed to shoot in time and perceived his failure as being responsible for hundreds of deaths including captain Garrovick, a man he respected deeply. They confront Kirk in his quarters about this and Kirk explains fairly calmly actually that he thinks this thing has the ability to travel through space and is probably a risk to much more than explorers on barren rocky planets. Spock agrees it is worth pursuing, and just then the bridge calls, the creature is moving into space.
The ship gives chase, but can barely keep up at maximum speed. They are forced to slow down, but for some reason the cloud does as well. They are able to catch up with it and fire both phasers and photon torpedoes to absolutely no effect. Ensign Garrovick shows up and asks Kirk if he can return to duty, but he is ignored, but to be fair things are a bit busy right then. He returns to quarters as the cloud flies through their shields and into the vent Scotty was working on shutting down ventilation. Earlier Garrovick through something and hit the controls for ventilation. Spock enters Garrovicks cabin to try to convince him it wasn't his fault, but just then the cloud creature flies in through the vent he accidentally opened earlier. Garrovick runs to get help leaving Spock trapped with the monster. Fortunately his green blood saves him as he lacks the red blood cells the cloud eats.
The cloud creature takes off at high speed, but Kirk knows where it is going for some reason. Of course he is right and they arrive at the home planet of the cloud monsters. Kirk and Garrovick beam to the surface with an anti-matter bomb and a bunch of blood to use as bait. They fight over which one of them is going to self sacrifice to save the other, but in the end Spock and Scotty manage to beam them both back just as the bomb goes off. The episode finishes with Kirk ordering Garrovick back to duty and inviting him to hang out at hear some stories about his father.
The break down: This episode started off with some warning signs at it was going to be a story about the captain freaking out, but still be right and why the hell do people keep questioning him. But it turned out to be a much more human story where the characters actually grew as people and even admitted to having been wrong as things worked out. I can't help but wonder how pissed Starfleet was that their vaccines never got picked up, but obviously not enough to relieve Kirk of command.
8 out of 10
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