Star Trek Flashback: Arena

Certain episodes of classic Star Trek loom large with the fans. Then there are the rare few that broke out even wider in pop culture. One of those is "Arena."

The Enterprise arrives at a colony to find it wiped out by an alien threat that's still in the area. After a skirmish on the planet, an interstellar chase begins. But that's interrupted when a super-powerful third party steps in to resolve their distastefully violent dispute. Captain Kirk and the reptilian Gorn captain of the enemy ship are transported to an alien landscape to battle it out one-on-one. Kirk seems hopelessly outmatched, unless he can apply reason to his situation... or find empathy for his foe.

There are people who have never watched a full episode of Star Trek who nevertheless know two things about this episode. The first is its location filming at Vasquez Rocks. While numerous episodes of Star Trek and other TV shows have filmed at this picturesque spot less than an hour from Los Angeles, the iconic rock formation featured in this episode has become indelibly linked with Star Trek. (Seriously: "Star Trek Historic Film Site" is a searchable map location.)

The second thing people know about this episode is that Kirk fights a giant lizard. This is a more ignominious claim to fame, thanks to the less than convincing rubber suit. The 2000s remaster of this episode tries to help a little with CG eyelids that blink, but there's no hiding the fact that this suit clearly couldn't move well. And it probably still cost a fortune. So we get a series of fights in which a suited stuntman can't move too fast for fear of hurting William Shatner (who he cannot see), and William Shatner can't dare to play rough for fear of damaging the lizard suit (which cost too much to put at risk). There's no other way to put it: these fights look silly. (So silly, that it was only natural to poke fun at them later.)

It's a shame the cheap looking suit hogs the spotlight, because so much else about this episode seems so expensive. There's extensive location filming -- not just for the titular arena where Kirk and the Gorn fight, but in a lengthy opening sequence where a landing party at the destroyed colony is bombed by an unseen foe. And it had better look good; William Shatner did some of his own stunts in this episode, and famously was so near an explosion when it detonated that he developed tinnitus that he's lived with ever since. Between opening the artillery sequence and the ensuing space chase, this episode is half over before we ever even get to the famous "Kirk and the lizard suit at Vasquez Rocks" material.

The late-onset silliness may also overshadow the solid Star Trek moral at the very end of this episode. The Gorn did not attack without purpose, and our heroes come to realize that they themselves -- not the Gorn -- may actually be in the wrong. Plus, this message in support of empathy and diplomacy comes at the end of a lengthy sequence where Kirk "MacGyvers" (before the term existed, of course) a weapon out of the materials he can kind -- a message supporting "brains over brawn."

And yet -- I wish that more of this episode felt original. We're not even halfway done with the first season, and we've encountered so many aliens with godlike powers that it's hard to keep track. The destruction of outposts and an ensuing space chase were the entire story in "Balance of Terror." So I find it hard to love this episode, no matter how famous it is, when half of it is a rehash and half of what's left is kind of hokey.

Other observations:

• Even with nearly 20 episodes in the can, Star Trek was still finding itself. The ship has "screens" instead of "shields," there's still clearly no concept of the "Federation" as people talk about "Earth outposts," and there's no real consistency between episodes about how fast is dangerously fast for the Enterprise.

• But we do get a vaporized redshirt, expected banter between Spock and McCoy, and a lot of Star Trek characters watching an episode of Star Trek. (Once you notice it, you'll see that characters on Star Trek watch viewscreen clips of themselves and their shipmates more often than you'd expect.) 

• Speaking of "watching Star Trek," Spock gets really weird about it. As he watches footage of Kirk figuring out how to build a weapon from raw materials, he groans "yes, yessssss...." like some kind of villain cheering on his minion.

This iconic episode does have many good moments. But when you're actually watching it, and not remembering it through rose-colored glasses, it has many shortcomings too. Overall, I'd give "Arena" a B-.