Welcome back to the land of meh. Far from the worst episode so far this season Whom Gods Destroy is a good attempt at a bad idea for an episode. I will be the first to admit I am not super into stories about obviously crazy people, and this episodes villain was totally out of control. So much so that it was unclear why anyone would ever follow him for any reason. I guess he is the one who got them out of their cells, but they are still trapped in a tiny asylum on a hellscape of a planet. He was supposedly a great leader at some point, but by the time the episode happens he is nutty as hell, and sure he has a phaser, but that is pretty much it.
We begin with the Enterprise delivering a special new medicine to an asylum on a world with a toxic atmosphere. Upon beaming down the asylum puts it's shields up again and the head of asylum offers them a tour. They have a famous inmate, Captain Garth, a legendary starship captain well known for his tactics. While on the tour they notice a guy in a cell who looks an awful lot like the guy running the asylum. Being non-idiots they quickly figure out he is in fact the one in charge and the guy leading them is a fake. It the fake head of the asylum turns back into Captain Garth and releases all the inmates who overwhelm Spock and Kirk. They are both imprisoned and the head of the asylum tells Kirk Garth gained the ability to change shapes from some aliens which seems silly if it is that easy, but whatever, bad writing.
We now come to the weakest part of the episode, and it is really too bad that it is so core to the story. Garth turns himself into Kirk and goes to beam back to the Enterprise. Instead of following orders Scotty demands he reply to a chess move, something never done before or since. In fact it is only the kind of thing you would do if you suspected you were about to encounter a shapeshifter of some sort... Garth then tries to convince Kirk to tell him the password first by being nice, then by torture, and then by seduction. None of them work. Garth then tries pretending to be Spock, but since he is crazy it doesn't work.
Now Garth decides to be crowned ruler of the universe to prove he isn't crazy. And then to prove he is crazy he kills his consort by detonating a bomb. Fortunately his insane assistants are also terrible at their jobs so Spock is able to perform the rare double neck pinch and gets a phaser. This leads to the only clever scene in the entire episode when Garth pretends to be Kirk and Spock has to figure out who is real and who is the impostor. It is such a good scene it gets repeated in The Undiscovered Country. When the real Kirk tells Spock to stun them both to figure it out Spock stuns Garth and everything is fine again.
Review: Much like Shatner through most of this episode I found it pretty dull. Also I have figured out by now there is no torture chair you can put Kirk on that will get any information other than that Shatner isn't at his best when pretending to be destroyed by pain rays. The episode does at least not fall apart of feel too much like filler.
4 out of 10
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