Welcome to the planet of the fish people! Fortunately the Enterprise has an aquashuttle that is both a shuttlecraft and a submersible. And even more fortunately after it is destroyed and they claim to not have another one they do have a surface boat shuttlecraft (not sure how they fly an open topped shuttlecraft down from orbit, but whatever). This is the first TAS episode that honestly felt pretty rushed. They tried to have the same number of subplots they would have worked into a full hour episode but it meant that instead of having time to convince the aliens they just either already hate or already trust Kirk and company.
The episode begins with the Enterprise sending a shuttle down to planet Argo, a planet devastated by earthquakes to the point that almost all the continental surface has fallen beneath the ocean. While exploring in the aquashuttle the are attacked by an unknown sea monster. It destroys the aquashuttle and apparently also leaves time for some of the sentient aliens to inject Kirk and Spock with some sort of mutagen without being seen. This causes both of them to stop being able to breath air and to grow webbing between their fingers. AquaKirk and AquaSpock insist on beaming back to Argo to try and find the people who did this to them. Luckily it only takes a few minutes to find the green fish people, but they fish people are terrified and flee. Kirk and Spock are captured and dragged before the leaders of the fish people. Despite clearly being water breathers they are attacked as being spies of the air breathers. The younger fish people want to help, but the elders insist it is forbidden. Since this episode keeps moving as fast as a speeding tuna the young fish people immediately break their laws and help Spock and Kirk find a cure to being turned into fish people. At the same time the Enterprise learns the underwater city is about to be destroyed by a seaquake. Kirk and Spock have to wrestle a the sea monster from the beginning of the episode to get enough venom to turn back into normal people. It works and the Enterprise even saves the fish people by redirecting the seaquake with the ships phasers.
Review: This is actually a pretty fun episode, but it would have worked better with a little more time. There are a few times where it doesn't seem like they have time to think about things or actually learn anything but the episode has already moved forward. Seeing Kirk grow scales and a fish tail is also clearly amusing.
6 out of 10
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