This would have been one of the more poorly received adventure story lines in the first two seasons, but by now in the third season this one feels a bit above average. Not the deepest of concepts, but at least it manages to not fall apart into plot holes and by leaving some questions unanswered manages to be at least a little intellectually stimulating. It is also an episode that has strong parts for both Scotty and Sulu which is especially nice since everything lately seems to be entirely focused on Kirk/McCoy/Spock.
The episode begins with the Enterprise investigating a strange planet the size of earth's moon which has an atmosphere and is apparently only a few thousand years old. Just before beaming down a woman appears and tries to stop them. She fails and then touches the transporter operator killing him. Just after they appear on the surface it is rocked by a powerful quake and they are knocked to the ground. The Enterprise is rocked as well and finds itself almost 1000 light years from the planet. On the surface Sulu discovers the Enterprise is gone and guesses it may have exploded.
Kirk and company begin to search for food and water with no luck. While they search Sulu notices an electromagnetic surge. The redshirt geologist they brought along suddenly sees the woman from the transporter room. She tells him she is for him and then touches him killing him. Back on the Enterprise Spock has the ship head towards the planet at warp 8, but Scotty feels something is off. The woman appears in engineering and questions one of the red shirts there about the antimatter reactor before killing him. The Enterprise suddenly stars accelerating out of control and will explode in about 15 minutes unless they find a way to stop it!
Back on the planet the woman appears to Sulu, but he isn't lured in by her beauty and even tries to hit her with the phaser to no effect. (No, I am not going to make a gay Takei joke.) He trips over a rock and the woman manages to touch his shoulder for a moment injuring him, but before she can finish the job Kirk and McCoy show up. It turns out the woman's touch has no effect on them since she is there for Sulu. They push each other around for a few minutes before she gives up and disappears.
On the Enterprise it is a race against time and Scotty has to crawl back into the engines to try to cut the fuel flow off manually while it is running over powered. Just as he is about to mess it up and kill them all the computer search Spock has been doing tells him Scotty needs to reverse the polarity which he does about half a second before the ship is going to explode and he saves the day, just in time. Back on the planet the woman appears again, this time for Kirk and McCoy and Sulu have to hold her back. They learn she is a protector of the planet, but that all the living occupants have been gone for a long time. Eventually a door in a cliff opens and they find themselves in a computer room. Three of the women show up to kill them all, but Spock beams in just in time to have the red shirt he brought blast the computer saving their lives.
Review: The only big idea in this episode is the concept of a computer defense system which outlives those it is intended to protect. It is never clear how the Enterprise was thrown so far away so quickly, but whatever, it would have been some BS technical excuse anyway.
5 out of 10
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