Another pretty strong episode. I think Season 3 gets a bit of a bad rap overall. While there have been some stinkers, there have been four or so pretty good episodes so far.
McCoy’s characterisation bothered me in this episode. He seemed to just be disagreeing with anything Spock did. Here he was angry because Spock was searching for Kirk – in previous episodes it’s been the other way around! There is some nice development of McCoy and Spock’s relationship, but it’s undermined by some apparently arbitrary writing to make McCoy as cranky as possible.
A few episodes ago I joked about Scotty being an alcoholic. I think this episode establishes that far from being a joke, it’s actually a fairly accurate assessment. When given a treatment that will save him from losing his mind, he’s most interested in how it will taste with Scotch. Get help!
64 down, 673 to go.