Spectre of the Gun

For my episode choice today I watched another episode of Star Trek. This one was called Spectre of the Gun. In this episode, the mission of the Enterprise was to establish friendly contact with a new race of aliens, the Melkotians. When approaching their planet, the Melkotians sent out a ship to warn then to turn back, but the Enterprise landed on their planet, determined to complete their mission. Five crew members came down to the planet; Captain Kirk, Spock, Scotty, Chekov, and McCoy. They encounter one of the Melkotians, and then find themselves in a recreation of an American frontier town in the 1880’s. They soon realize they have been placed in this situation because it is the day of the famous shooting at the OK Corral, and they are the people that lost.

I thought it was interesting to see how different characters tried to deal with the situation. Captain Kirk was resolved to stay away from any violence, but when he tried to leave the OK Corral and was blocked, he realized he would have to stay. Chekov got very involved with the world he was in, and he ended up dying halfway in.

Another intriguing thing about this episode is the way they got out of it. They tried to use a tranquilizer to subdue the people they were agreed to duel with, but the tranquilizer did not work, even though all signs said it should. This led Spock to realize that since the tranquilizer did not work, they were not in a place that physical laws applied to. All the crew then convinced themselves that the bullets being fired at them were not real, and were safely transported back to the Enterprise to find Chekov safe and sound, albeit confused.

The way that the Western theme was incorporated in was very similar to the Firefly episode I watched earlier, and it did a good job of making me understand what was going on better.

Matthew