Synopsis:
Tasked with delivering a new medicine to a mental health facility for the criminally insane on the desolate planet of Elba II, Kirk and Spock beam down only to be taken prisoner by Garth, a former fleet captain of the Federation, now declared criminally insane. Captain Garth has the ability to perfectly mimic the appearance of anyone he sees and he adopts the guise of Dr. Cory, the governor of the penal colony, first to take control of the institution and then to capture Kirk.
Garth is insane and his plan is to take over the Enterprise disguised as Kirk. With his insane followers and a new powerful explosive that he has discovered, he has grandiose plans to take over the galaxy. However, his initial attempt on the Enterprise is foiled because of a new security measure that Kirk instituted before leaving the ship. When Garth asks to be beamed aboard, Scotty gives a sign "Queen to queen's level three" and requests the counter sign, which Garth does not know.
Garth hosts a dinner to attempt to gather information from Kirk. When conversation and dancing fail, Garth tries to use torture to extract the password from Kirk, but the captain will not reveal anything. Marta, the Orion dancer and prisoner, pleads with Garth that she will get the information out of Kirk, if he will stop the torture.
Marta does begin to seduce Kirk, when suddenly she pulls out a dagger and attempts to stab him. At that moment, Spock arrives and subdues Marta with a Vulcan neck pinch. Armed with a phaser, the two of them make their way to the control room to lower the force field surrounding the planet. Once there, however, Kirk suspects that Spock is actually Garth in disguise and refuses to give the countersign to Scotty.
Now completely insane and past all reason, Garth begins to set up a kingdom, with the rest of the inmates as his subjects. He demands to be called Lord Garth and hosts a grand coronation ceremony with Marta as consort and Kirk as the "heir apparent." Afterward, however, Garth brings Kirk to the control room to watch as Marta is dragged out into the poisonous atmosphere of the planet and then killed by the detonation of a small crystal of Garth's explosive.
Garth then sends his minions to bring Spock from his cell. Spock dispatches both of them and takes their phaser only to find two identical Kirks in the control room when he arrives. Initially hesitant as to who is the real captain, when one of them demands that Spock shoot them both and bring the Enterprise to safety, Spock stuns the other Kirk, who proves to be Garth in disguise. Spock then calls the Enterprise and gives the correct counter sign "Queen to King's level one."
McCoy beams down to the planet and administers the medicine to each of the patients in the facility who begin to recover from their insanity and have no memory of the previous events.
Analysis
Whom Gods Destroy is another of those episodes noted for the passivity of the crew. Kirk, Spock, even Scotty are notable for their inaction, merely observing the development of the story around them. Instead, we are captive to the machinations of Lord Garth. And this remains the major complaint throughout. All of Kirk's plans are negated, as indeed are Garth's. The resulting stalemate becomes increasingly boring and ultimately annoying. The death of Marta should have been shocking, but it came so late in the proceedings that it served only to cement our lack of will to care about the outcome. I wept for Marta, but I was not angry at Garth so much as at the writers, who couldn't think of any better ending for that character.
And finally when we had run through the nonsensical dance scene, torture chair scene, seduction scene, and coronation scene, during which our heroes take no action, we bring Spock out of seclusion to almost instantly save the day. Nothing we had done up to that point in the story made any difference to the outcome. It's hard to argue that Garth had undergone any development or arc in his character, and we were merely accumulating scenes to document the depths of his insanity.
Even the twin dilemma at the climax seemed underwhelming. This was clearly an opportunity for the writers to have Spock do something very clever, as the reference to Solomon seemed to indicate, but the fact that he had at his disposal a phaser that could stun meant that elaborate wisdom was not needed. As Kirk pointed out, he should have just stunned them both, and watched Garth resume his normal form.
For that matter, Why was Kirk, the real Kirk, fighting Garth at all? Garth chose to attack Spock when he reached for the chair, instantly identifying himself as the imposter. Spock should have just stunned him then or overpowered him with his superior Vulcan strength. Instead, Kirk decided to jump in, leading to the two twins locked in a totally unnecessary deadly struggle. The bottom-line here is that the this scene should have been all about intelligent problem solving, Star Trek's bread and butter. But instead it was so full of holes that it was robbed of its triumph.
In the end, the audience is left to look at the spectacle as it flows past. Watching fools be fools, isn't very interesting. Most of the crew are off screen for the majority of the episode, the Enterprise rendered impotent by a planet-wide force field, leaving the mad captain Garth to carry the show on the back of his madness, which wasn't that interesting.
There were a couple of minor quibbles, as well. How could Garth use the Vulcan neck pinch on Marta to subdue her when he was disguised as Spock? This seems like a minor thing, but it effectively undermines whatever credibility the writers had as fair storytellers. The power of this story lies in the mental contest between Kirk and Garth. This is the meaning of the chess reference in Scotty's sign and countersign. The two captains are playing a game of chess for control of the Enterprise, and this is borne out in many clever scenes when Garth creates an elaborate ploy and Kirk sees through it just in time. So when the writers cheat by giving Garth Spock's powers without justification, the audience stops looking for clever solutions. They just assume that the writers will continue to cheat and that any further engagement with the puzzles is a waste of time.
What happened to the powerful explosive that Garth discovered, a single pouch of which could destroy an entire planet?
Throughout its run, The Original Series has an unfortunate habit of resorting to the foolish and bizarre instead of developing a strong plot. Here was another tired example of that failing.
Rating: 2 out of 5.
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