The Enterprise arrives in Melkotian space, Kirk's aim to set up relations with the secretive race. The Melkotians don't take kindly to visitors, however, and, as a form of punishment, seemingly send the 'big five' (Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scotty, Chekov) to a warped version of Tombstone, circa 1881, based on information they plucked from Kirk's mind. When I saw this episode in my early years, my first thought was that the budget for the show had really been curtailed by this point: they couldn't even set up a complete 'Old West' town - what, they ran out of wood? Was wood too expensive by this time? Of course, I missed the key line of dialogue from McCoy: the characters themselves realized the town was incomplete. Bits and pieces were selected from Kirk's brain, creating a surrealistic hodgepodge of history and stylized staged drama. I wasn't even acquainted with the term 'surrealism' when I first viewed this episode, young as I was, so it wasn't until years later that I started to appreciate the gloomy dramatic elements of this eerie ghost story - an almost nightmarish stroll among some phantoms and shadows of a violent past era.
When I was younger, my favorite moments in this episode involved Kirk's somewhat comical attempts to communicate 'his reality' to some of the residents of this half-baked town: to the bartender, to the cowardly sheriff Behan, and to the main antagonists themselves, the cold-eyed Earps. But, in my later years, these scenes became the weaker aspects to the story: why was Kirk wasting his time running around trying to convince apparitions of who he really was? Why waste time trying to make peace in the face of a predestined, preordained clash of wills? Make no mistake, minutes after their arrival to this fake Tombstone, the 'landing party' has already deduced that they're trapped in some strange illusion; they're not sure of its exact nature yet, but they realize it's some replay of history, a recreation of reality, but unreal in essence - they know the aliens tapped into Kirk's mind. So Kirk's lame efforts are at odds with the nature of this storyline - the thing's a head trip and those scenes stray from the premise, as if Kirk is trying to make meaningful contact with natives of just another planet, as with most episodes.
To me, the strengths of this episode are the moments when the Trek-makers adhere to the eerie play of shadows premise: the Earps and Doc Holliday are the best sample of this; they're consistently portrayed as some ghostly, almost demonic versions of lethal western characters. I wonder what direction the actors received for their portrayal - probably something like 'act as if you're zombies.' Morgan and Wyatt in particular come across like some bizarre wax figures come to life. The stylized presentation of the 'not quite there' town, as if half of it is trapped in another dimension, remains a trippy excursion into Twilight Zone territory, exemplified by that clock hanging in mid-air where a wall should be; the viewer's mind is also drawn to that clock because we're constantly reminded of how it's closing in on 5:00, the time of our heroes' doom. It's a countdown to doom, quite effective. Oh, and, Chekov is shot and killed in this episode; yes, this is Chekov's final episode...just kidding. Check out the film "Tombstone"(93) for another interpretation of this page of American history.
