When the shuttlecraft Galileo goes missing inside a quasar, its disruptive effects threaten the search efforts. So does an insistent passenger, Commissioner Ferris, who sets a tight clock on the search before he will use his authority to order Enterprise to another mission. Meanwhile, the passengers of the Galileo try to survive on the planet where they've crashed. Can they repair the shuttle and lift off, or will they fall prey to the monstrous inhabitants? And will the more emotional crew members on the shuttle mutiny against the dispassionate orders of their leader, Mr. Spock?
Focus on the most successful elements of this episode, and it comes as perhaps the best of classic Star Trek to this point. It is, quite simply, a brilliant idea to put Spock in command. Let him put his money where his logical mouth is. Let's see how he reacts when logic fails to anticipate the reactions of illogical others. Let's force him to reconcile the Vulcan and human halves of his nature. Let's run him through the ringer and see how he acquits himself. And, most importantly, let Spock not always be right in his decisions.
To bring all this out in Spock, he must be surrounded by characters who are falling apart emotionally. But necessary though that is, I feel this is where the episode starts to show some weaknesses. The four potential "redshirts" of this episode -- Boma, Gaetano, Mears, and Latimer -- are all varying degrees of unrealistic. They have weird priorities for survival, a general disrespect for the chain of command in general that suggests they've never been on any mission before, and (in an instance or two) borderline bigoted attitudes.
But the drama unfolding aboard the Enterprise is even weirder. Commissioner Ferris is a naked plot device, offering absolutely nothing helpful and existing only to remind Captain Kirk of the ticking clock in the most annoying way possible. He needles Kirk about the hopelessness of the situation, delights in counting down the minutes left in the search, and generally fiddles (in the form of casually sipping coffee) as Rome burns (in the form of a missing crew facing certain death).
The most maddening thing, though, is that Ferris is 100%, indisputably right about one thing. The mission he wants Enterprise to get back to is delivering medical supplies to another ship that in turn will get them to a planet experiencing a global plague. He has a very good case he could be making to Kirk. Rather than constantly being a heel, he could be empathetic about the missing shuttlecraft while reminding the captain that literally millions of lives hang in the balance.
Though maybe it's for the best that Ferris doesn't bring any of this up... because if he did, Kirk's behavior in this episode would be highlighted as unconscionable. Even if you accept that there's no point in the Enterprise reaching the rendezvous point early (can Enterprise not just keep traveling toward wherever that ship is coming from?), there's no moral defense for leaving that ship hanging with a planet full of lives on the line. Kirk's orders to stretch the deadline by not calling back the search shuttles ahead of time, and to then depart at presumably snail-like "space normal speed," are childish at best, psychopathic at worst. I love that Kirk is a captain who stands up for his crew, but the script for this episode doesn't balance the scales in a way that makes Kirk's actions look noble.
The stagecraft of 1960s television is goofy but charming. Building props in two scales to suggest the giant size of the alien inhabitants is great fun. But the sense of danger is undermined by lumbering Frankenstein-like movement, and the lazy way that "weapons" are lobbed into frame by off-camera stage hands. One bit of 60s production that gets a major facelift, though, are the visual effects. In some episodes of the "remastered" Star Trek, the new effects artists go to great pains to depict something you might imagine was possible if unlimited time and money were available to the series at the time. Not this episode. The roiling quasar, upgraded shuttlebay, and the final flight of the Galileo -- all are well beyond any capabilities of the time. (But hey, they do look good!)
Other observations:
- I'm not sure why half these people would be put on a shuttle mission to survey a quasar, but it turns out to be good that an engineer and a doctor are there. (Maybe this should be Starfleet standard procedure.)
- There's a fun moment when Kirk has to go use the science station because Spock isn't there. But Kirk seems more like he's "listening" to the device that Spock traditionally looks into.
- Aboard the shuttle, you get a healthy dose of 60s TV lightning, with actors casting multiple, massive shadows on the wall behind them.
- Star Trek of this era definitely thinks that every alien planet has to have its own unusual soundscape. This planet sounds distractingly like a transporter in mid-cycle.
- It seems like being able to set phasers to stun would be a helpful way to balance Spock's desire to minimize balance with the need to show force to the aliens. But neither characters nor writers seem to remember that this capability was previously established.
- I believe this might be the first Star Trek episode to implement what would ultimately become a budget-saving common practice: scoring the episode with music from previous episodes. If not the first instance, then it's the first time I noticed it, because they're playing a lot of the "hits" that classic Star Trek fans can hum from memory.
- In the final scene, everyone has a laugh at Spock's expense. Like, a weirdly huge laugh. As in, it's a good thing Spock does suppress his emotions, because a whole room of people is just riotously, uncontrollably laughing at something he said that was not intended to be funny.
I love how Spock is used in this story. Many of the trappings of the story definitely hurt its execution. I give "The Galileo Seven" a B.
