"Star Trek" The Mark of Gideon (1969)

User Rating:

6.6/10   

Director:

Jud Taylor

Writers:

George F. Slavin (written by) and
Stanley Adams (written by) ...

TV Series:

"Star Trek" (1966)

Original Air Date:

17 January 1969 (Season 3, Episode 16)

Genre:

Adventure | Sci-Fi

Plot:

Kirk beams down to the planet Gideon and appears to find himself trapped on the deserted Enterprise. Spock on the real Enterprise must use his diplomatic skills to deal with the uncooperative inhabitants of Gideon to find the Captian.

Plot Keywords:

Federation | Space | Starship | Computer | Vulcan

Cast

William Shatner	...	Captain James T. Kirk
Leonard Nimoy	...	Mr. Spock
DeForest Kelley	...	Dr. McCoy
Sharon Acker	...	Odona
David Hurst	...	Hodin
James Doohan	...	Scott
George Takei	...	Sulu
Nichelle Nichols	...	Uhura
Walter Koenig	...	Chekov
Gene Dynarski	...	Krodak
Richard Derr	...	Admiral Fitzgerald

Runtime:

60 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.33 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Argentina:Atp

Filming Locations:

Paramount Studios - 5555 Melrose Avenue, Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, USA

Company:

Paramount Television

Goofs:

Plot holes: Given the amount of time Kirk has spends on his ship (the only time he is not on his ship is when he's on an away mission), there is no way that he wouldn't know he was no longer on his ship.

Quotes:

Mr. Spock: I shall beam down at once, Mr. Scott, you have the con.
Dr. McCoy: I'll pick up my medical tricorder and meet you in the transporter room.
Mr. Spock: Negative, doctor. I cannot accept the responsibility for ordering a fellow officer to violate a Starfleet directive. I can make such a decision only for myself.
Dr. McCoy: I'm not asking you to make the decision for me.
Mr. Spock: The situation forces me to do so, doctor.
Dr. McCoy: Well in that case, it's the worst possible decision you can make, Spock.

Movie Connections:

Edited into "Star Trek: The Next Generation: Relics (#6.4)" (1992)

Make Room! Make Room on Gideon!

The Enterprise arrives at the planet Gideon to begin some kind of interstellar relations. Gideon is rumored to be a paradise but no one in the Federation knows the details. The planet's leaders insist that Kirk beam down by himself, which he does. However, he seems to end up back on an empty Enterprise, wondering where his crew has disappeared to. Unfortunately, this intriguing mystery has a most mundane explanation; it has nothing to do with Kirk entering another dimension or being out of sync, as I hoped when I first saw this as a kid. Most of the episode concerns Spock and the bridge crew dealing with bureaucracy from both Gideon and Starfleet. Even they look bored - how can they expect the audience to get excited? Kirk, meanwhile, spends most of the episode wandering on the other, empty Enterprise, along with a young female who shows up unexpectedly. Expectedly, it's an even more dull sequence of scenes. Every few scenes, a collection of sober, droopy faces pop up on this Enterprise's view-screens; this was meant to be startling or ominous. It doesn't really make sense, is all.

There also isn't much sense to this elaborate scheme concocted by Gideon's policy-makers. They wanted Kirk down on their planet for a certain reason; there was no need for all the grand subterfuge. Once Kirk beamed down, they could have sat him down in any room for an hour or so with another inhabitant to get their plan to succeed. So, it's all a contrivance as far as the plot. Likewise, Spock and the crew are too slow on the uptake in figuring out the bogus coordinates: '..079' vs. '..709' - Spock didn't notice the discrepancy immediately? This is a Vulcan! Hello? Like with many later Trek episodes (in the 3rd season), the show aimed for heavy-handed relevance to tackle social issues and rising problems of the sixties: racism, war, pollution, inequality and, in this case, overpopulation. Once Gideon's problem is revealed, it is an admittedly interesting dilemma, taken to a logical extreme (later, "Soylent Green" in '73 would tackle the issue in a similar manner). But, it's a real slog to get there. This episode also has a shot (two, actually) of the empty bridge, previously seen (attention trivia Trekkers) in "This Side of Paradise." However, that was the real bridge in the older episode, savvy?