Star Trek TOS The Lights of Zetar. S3 E18

Synopsis: The Enterprise is given a mission to Memory Alpha, an installation set up by the Federation solely as a central library containing the total cultural history and scientific knowledge of all Federation planetary members.

The Enterprise is delivering equipment and a specialist named Lieutenant Mira Romaine to Memory Alpha when it encounters what appears to be a "storm," though it is unusual in its intensity and in its ability to exceed light speed in its pursuit of the ship.  The storm, characterized by an intense visual display of lights, does invade the bridge, affecting everyone there.  It seems to have a particular effect on Lieutenant Romaine, causing her to collapse.

After leaving the Enterprise, the "storm" heads directly for Memory Alpha, and reaches there before Kirk can arrive. When the away team reaches the facility, they find the memory core burned out, and all personnel dead or dying.   Mira Romaine begins to have premonitions, such as the sight of the dead personnel on Memory Alpha, or the knowledge that the alien storm was returning, reflecting a connection between herself and the alien lights. Mira also has a problem beaming back to the ship along with the others.

With everyone back aboard, the Lights have returned and begun pursuit of the ship one more. Kirk fires phasers at it and ends up causing pain to Lieutenant Romaine. Clearly there is some connection betweeen Romaine and the lights that Spock now identifies as a collection of 10 distinct life units. When the lights overtake the ship, Mira is overcome by the life units who occupy her body and speak with her voice.  

The Lights identify themselves as being from the planet Zetar.  Specifically, "the desires, the hopes, the mind, and the will of the last 100 of Zetar."  These remnants of Zetar insist that they must be allowed to survive, by any means necessary.  Kirk, however, tells them that the price of their survival is too high.

Scotty puts Mira into a kind of pressure chamber, and Spock increases the pressure, eventually driving the lights out of Mira and destroying them.  

Analysis

There is no question that this is one of the better episodes of the third season, but somehow I always manage to fall dead asleep about halfway through.  This is entirely my own fault, I am sure.  

Part of the issue is that this is a dialogue heavy episode, with much of the plot development coming through discussion and conversation, but I think a deeper problem is that there is very little continuity between the problem and its resolution.  The problem is Coherence.

While unusual and interesting things happen, they don't appear to fit together in a meaningful way that creates a larger story.  The lights kill everyone at the Memory Alpha facility but not on the bridge of the Enterprise, and we don't really know why.  Even when the question was asked during the episode, only a vague answer (they resisted) was offered.  One of the researchers, and earlier Mira herself, begins speaking in a distinctive creaking sound with exaggerated facial gestures.  But again we are given no explanation as to why this is meaningful, and it doesn't form a piece of the larger puzzle we put together at the end. Why was Mira left behind when the party returned to the ship?  We never got a good explanation of what happened. In short, the clues we receive along the way are vague, revealing little that is concrete about the problem.  

Compare this with, for example the episode where Kirk heard an insect-like buzzing, which was later revealed to be the vastly sped up aliens taking over the ship.  By introducing that effect early, we are able to connect the later story with the former in a satisfying moment of epiphany.  "So that's what Kirk was hearing!"  Only in this episode, we get no similar payoff.  We  don't know why Mira was making the same grotesque faces as the victim at the library.  And that piece of the story never makes sense.

Early in the story, Spock declares that there are 10 life forms that make up the lights. Later, the Lights themselves declare that they are the "last 100 of Zetar," introducing an odd and unnecessary contradiction. Are there 100 or 10?  And why introduce these numbers into the narrative if they don't matter in any way?

Kirk decides to put Mira into a pressure chamber, but that's not based on any experience we've had with the aliens up to this point.  It is solely his own idea. 

Because these clues to the mystery are so poorly explained, they don't really point in an actionable direction, and we don't really use them in formulating a solution.  As a result, the audience is strangely detached from the final resolution.  No particular reason was offered for why pressure would cause the Zetarans to leave Mira, as opposed to heat, for example, or light or inducing a coma, or a number of other ideas.  And once having left, why did they remain in the pressure chamber?  They could pass through the walls of the ship, and through the ship's shields, so there was no reason for them to stay and be killed. The narrative fails because the solution doesn't grow out of what we've learned during the course of the story.


Memory Alpha
The concept of Memory Alpha as a repository of all knowledge in the Federation was a brilliant creative idea.  Unfortunately, it was an idea lost in this particular episode, because its actual function played no role in the developments of the story.  As far as I could discern, the outpost could have been a mining colony for all the impact it had on the narrative.  It's a shame that such a story rich idea was just thrown away, and thrown away literally since the Zetarns destroyed it unintentionally.  Spock kept going on about how irreplaceable it was, but that didn't motivate any urgency on Kirk's part, who didn't make any overt move to try to protect it or salvage any of the data.  

If Kirk was so complacent, it's hard for the audience to generate some sadness about it.  All that was left was for Spock to shrug as if to say, "You humans are the reason why we can't have nice things."  At the end of the episode, they intended to drop Mira back at Memory Alpha, presumably to install that new equipment she brought into the smoking hardware of the central memory core that the Zetarans just fried. 

All the other station personnel were killed, and with the emergency beam out, the away team just left them to decay. So I'm guessing Mira has a little bit to clean up before she can get started on what will doubtless be a lonely job.  Let's kick off months of isolation with the disposal of a half-dozen bodies before moving on to cataloging just how much of the vast wealth of the Federation's knowledge has been carelessly lost due to the hubris of politicians who don't want to create a bad impression.  It's just what Dr. McCoy ordered, to get over a little psychological distress.  Good, honest work.

One odd thing was the continual references to Mira Romaine as "the girl," which seems unnecessarily patronizing.   Part of her characterization was a narrative that Mira was a young officer, a fresh Starfleet commission, perhaps unused to the rigors of space and the discipline of the chain of command.  This was the reason suggested for why she was abrupt and almost disrespectful with senior officers.  I think it was to reinforce the idea of her youth and inexperience that Kirk and Mr. Scott kept referring to her as a "girl."  It was also suggested that this brashness on her part enabled her to fight off the attempts of the Zetarans to take control of her mind.

Scotty was alternately delightful and annoying.  Mira was good as an outspoken fresh graduate, and made the most of her scenes with Mr. Scott

Rating:  3 out of 5.  I want to rate this higher but it needed a more coherent story.