#Phonepunk#
Banned
Star Trek: The Original Series never fails to surprise me. Recently I viewed for the first time an episode called Spectre of the Gun. The plot? The crew runs into a random space object, soon a floating Melkotian appears and delivers a word of warning. Kirk, of course, ignores this, and continues on.
The entity then transports them all into an Old West set. They are at the OK Corral, a famous shootout from the Old West, and are made to believe that they must re-enact the history, or else irrevocably they might change the future. Only problem: they are on the losing side.
Everyone there sees them as the historic personas they are playing, so they try at first to play their roles. Chekov starts making out with a woman who ends up getting him shot and killed. When this happens, it blows a hole in the "having to replay history" theory, since Chekov's persona actually survived the original battle. As they try and figure out a way out of this (running away is impossible - force fields) the clock slowly ticks down to the eventful shootout. They realize that using era-appropriate materials they can create a tranquilizer bomb. Kirk goes off to try and reason with the rivals, and Dr. McCoy and Scotty and Spock get to work on their last ditch plan.
Kirk arrives after failing to reason with both the other side and the local authority, and demands they test the bomb before using it. They do. Scotty takes a shot of liquor and then sets it off. The bomb does not work. By all known properties of science, it should work, and this leads Spock to conclude that something indeed is very, very off. Just before the shoot out, he realizes they are trapped in a simulation, and that the bullets are not real. It is the mind that is a killer. He reveals this to the group in a very cool monologe:
The problem, of course, is that it's easy to logic your way past getting shot for a Vulcan, but for a human with emotions, even a fraction of doubt could be fatal. The solution? Spock mind melds with each crew member to tell them that the bullets are not real. Brilliant!
Wonder if the Matrix creators ever saw this episode?
Spectre of the Gun - Wikipedia
Last edited: