I was not previously aware that Star Trek had done a Halloween episode.
All things considered, I think I preferred it when I didn’t know.
I couldn’t shake the impression that the genesis of this episode was simply in ‘hey, why don’t we have a halloween episode’, rather than any of the other plot points. This makes the rest of the plot feel like something that was just thrown together on a whiteboard over lunchtime.
The episode did manage to create a little something interesting by emphasising the conflict between the two aliens, rather than anything with the regular crew. And it was nice to see truly alien aliens, rather than ‘humans with a different skin colour’, even if they are just on screen for a minute.
(One thing I did like was the use of a cat as the scary monster. I don’t imagine it was hard to get the cat into the role).
The writing for Spock seemed particularly poor this episode. Spock is unemotional, sure, but he seemed almost entirely disengaged from the events in this episode, as if he wasn’t really there.
Still, all that said, I laughed for a good minute on Spock’s line “Don’t let her touch the wand, Captain”. Generally good advice for any of the women Kirk meets around his missions.
(By the way, if you’re counting: out of the 7 episodes of Season 2, 4 of them have involved super powerful aliens with mysterious technology. Time for a new plot device…)
36 down, 701 to go.