“It’s the end. But the moment has been prepared for.”

Personally, I’ve never been drawn to the idea of casually “marathoning” a television show. The idea of spending days locked inside watching every single episode of some TV show sounds to me like some heretofore unknown circle of Dante’s Hell. I’ve never felt the need to be completionist about television because I’ve always understood the realities of day-to-day, ’round the clock production inevitably mean not every episode is going to be a classic, and I see no need to force myself to sit through obvious misfires in what’s supposed to be my downtime.

Now for a project like this I do, of course, have to watch every episode, or at least almost every episode, because the point here is to get a relatively comprehensive understanding of the history and evolution of Star Trek. But if I were to just watch this show casually, I’d have no hesitation to skip over huge swaths of it because frankly the idea of watching “The Paradise Syndrome”, “Elaan of Troyius” or “Space Seed” again is the antithesis of entertaining to me. My point being I was long under the perhaps mistaken assumption that other people might have a similar viewpoint to mine here, so whenever I’ve been asked by someone to introduce them to a show, I almost always give them a truncated episode list of recommendations instead of flopping a twelve-disc DVD box set on their table. I figure if a friend, who presumably shares at least some of my taste and habits, is asking my advice on Star Trek they’re not likely to find “A Private Little War” any more enjoyable or engaging than I did. So, when a few years back my sister wanted to get into the Original Series, of which she had no prior familiarity, I gave her a crash course on the show, and “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield” was the place I suggested she stop.

I hadn’t seen the Original Series in quite awhile when I made that list, and were I to do it again today I would have done a number of things differently: I’d have taken one or two episodes out and put a great deal more in (mostly from this season, interestingly enough), so apologies for that if you happen to be reading. I’m not sure if I would still have put the cutoff at this episode, because I have not, as of this writing, seen the last few episodes of the third season, though I at least feel I’d be justified in calling it quits here if I were so inclined (and yes, don’t worry, we’ll see the old lady all the way through “Turnabout Intruder” to port, no matter how painful it might be). “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield” marks a number of endings and lasts of its own: It’s the last really iconic episode of the Original Series, mostly due to Bele and Lokai, though there’s something to be said about the art design on “The Cloud Minders”, I suppose.…

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“Monkey in the middle!”

“That Which Survives” opens promising to be one of the most creative and exciting episodes since “The Alternative Factor”, and that it doesn’t quite maintain that momentum for the whole of its fifty minutes is almost beside the point. We’re still in the curious mystical territory the show’s been exploring off and on since “The Tholian Web”, and here Kirk even uses the phrase “ghost planet” to describe an astrogeological impossibility: A planet too young to develop life and an atmosphere, yet which clearly has both. As the landing party is about to beam down, the transport sequence is interrupted by a woman who suddenly materializes, imploring them not to go down, killing the transporter chief in the process. She’s too late to stop the landing party, however, but as Kirk tries to contact the Enterprise Sulu informs him it’s simply not there anymore and that they’re stranded. Back on the ship, we learn the Enterprise has somehow been instantaneously flung to the other end of the galaxy.

So once again we’ve stumbled into a region of space where weird and inexplicable things happen. This time though, the closest analog seems not to be pagan mythology but supernatural horror movies: The mystery woman materializes every once in awhile to a specific crewmember, both on the planet and aboard the Enterprise. Puzzlingly declaring she is “for” them and that she knows everything about them, she gains their trust enough so she can touch them, at which point she explodes every cell in their body simultaneously. The mystery woman is a slasher villain then, and “That Which Survives” works a bit like an old haunted house movie, where travellers have to seek shelter in a dark and foreboding mansion. But it’s also a survival movie, as Kirk, Sulu and McCoy are forced to search for food and water as they’re now cut off from the Enterprise and are unsure if they’ll ever be able to leave. And, in a cruel twist of fate, it seems like the planet they’ve found themselves on has neither.

However, this is just half the story. “That Which Survives” is split between the landing party and the Enterprise at the other end of the galaxy trying to return to where it was. On the Enterprise, the episode plays out entirely differently-While the mystery woman still hunts people down, the challenge Spock, Scotty, Uhura and M’Benga face is an entirely different one: This part of the episode is straightforwardly a thriller in the mould of “The Doomsday Machine”, albeit with the inspired decision to put Spock at the centre and forcing him to react to everything. The crew soon discovers that in addition to throwing them across the galaxy, the mystery woman has somehow also sabotaged the ship’s warp drive. With the warp engines locked and accelerating at a rate beyond Scotty’s control and to a speed at which the Enterprise wasn’t designed to withstand, the crew has fifteen minutes to figure out what’s happened and correct it or the entire ship will blow up.…

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