Star Trek Retrospective: Episode 47 the Immunity Syndrome
This is another one that is at the same time great and stupid. I liked it a lot because it showed the bonds of friendship between Kirk, Spock, and McCoy as well as showed Mr. Spock at his logical best. However, the solution they came up with is dumb. Spock mentions antibodies and that makes Kirk think of antimatter? Why not antitrust? Or antiserum? One thing that always bugs me about TOS episodes is how often they rely on random coincidences on words from a language spoken on one part of one tiny planet in the universe (Yangs=Yankees, Son=Sun, etc).
Also Spocks data makes Kirk think of creating an antimatter bomb and dropping in on the nucleus of the giant space amoeba? Excuse me but how is that different from carpet bombing the nucleus with photon torpedoes? If I had the ability to create an antimatter bomb that would be the third thing I tried after phasers and photon torpedoes failed, not the last thing after sending my best friend to his death. If you are going to get sucked into a giant space amoeba anyway why not rush in while you still have power and drop every weapon you have that’s stronger than a fart inside the creature? Hell I’d be beaming red shirts out armed with phasers set on overload if nothing else (sorry, but you signed up for Starfleet and put on a red shirt. You knew what you were getting into. Red shirt image courtesy of the Star Trek t shirt category).
Also, if the space amoeba was capable of destroying the universe once it divided what happened to the thousands of other amoebas that it must have spawned from? Shouldn’t this one be the first of a huge wave of giant space amoebas?
However, take all that out of the equation and you have a pretty good episode. Not great but very decent in my opinion.
Dave