For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky

This has everything you'd want to see in a Star Trek episode. Mystery, exploration, encounter with unknown, and a personal insight into one of the characters which lets us know him/her better. I thought this was one of the better episodes and quite enjoyed it.

McCoy is dying. He has but a year to live. Of course, he will not allow Kirk to divulge this to the crew. After a thwarted missile attack, the Enterprise locates the source. It is an asteroid/planet where people live inside, unaware of the grandness of space. They are part of a civilization that built a huge ship when their sun went nova and have been traveling the galaxy for thousands of years. The usual trio beams down to the planet and is taken hostage by a group of soldiers wearing really weird hats and colorful robes. They are also met by a beautiful priestess. It turns out that there is a creator in their past who has been looking out for them, but they must don a kind of implant that forces their obedience to an oracle. Since McCoy and his illness are center stage here, he becomes the focus of this episode. The priestess is so taken with him that she proposes marriage and he accepts. The other, more critical plot element is that this asteroid is on a collision course with a very populous planet; the resulting impact would be devastating. As with the American Indian episode, they must find a way to get things to change course. The twosome must work their way to adjust a force that could destroy them. This is a pretty typical ST episode, neither good nor bad.

Yes ! Remember this was produced in 1968. The Soviets sent troops into Czechoslovakia to crush the Prague Spring, China was consumed by the Cultural Revolution, the world was a very dangerous place. Throughout the centuries tyrants of every stripe and persuasion have tried to control the information their subjects receive and blame so many of their problems and failures on outsiders with malicious intent. A self contained world where people have few if any memories of the "Good Old Days" and no way to contradict what they are told by their rulers, and face severe punishments if they rebel. Truth is what the rulers-or ruler-will decide on. It does recycle the controlling computer idea from "Return of the Archons"-I wonder if those who built the Oracle saw Landru's plans ? The Prime Directive ? As Kirk told Spock in "Return of the Archons " "That refers to a living breathing society ! Do you think this is ?

One drawback to this episode is the startling revelation about one of the main crew members in the pre-credits sequence: there's a scene in this early section which has so much dramatic impact that the rest of the episode cannot help but be somewhat anti-climactic in comparison. The plot has to do with one of those enclosed worlds concepts well known in science fiction: the inhabitants of a huge ship built inside an asteroid believe themselves to be on a typical planet - their 'sky' is actually the inner shell of the asteroid - similar to the hollow Earth concept developed by Edgar Rice Burroughs for his Pellucidar sci-fi/fantasy stories. It's intriguing and fanciful; the people of this Yonada have a different (and erroneous) view of the universe. They're not stupid, simply misinformed, and need someone like Kirk and his crew to explain the reality of things, kind of like getting away from the whole 'the Earth is flat' view. The hook to the episode is that things need to be righted pretty fast - Yonada is on a collision course with a planet, set to strike in a little over a year.

This isn't that bad of a 3rd season episode, but it doesn't really go anywhere with the intriguing concepts. The story falls back on the now-tiresome 'ruling machine gone wrong' plot, with any of the lackluster tension stemming from the main Enterprise trio getting zapped by this Oracle-instrument as punishment (I also wondered why this machine resorted to heating a room at the end instead of the tried-and-tested zapping attack). The one deviation of the usual scripting is that the high priestess of these people falls for McCoy instead of Kirk (or even Spock or Scotty). This episode is McCoy's story all the way and actor Kelley gets the opportunity to show some range here, further developing the sober dramatic aspects of his character. However, as with the rest of the story, the good set-up is abandoned towards the end: out of necessity, McCoy essentially abandons (not divorces) his new wife and life to continue his adventures on the Enterprise, so that we can see him in a few more episodes for the rest of the 3rd season. If there had been a 4th season, we may have seen a sequel to this episode then. As it is, we never find out what happens regarding the McCoy-Natira relationship, and that's a shame. Or a cheat, if you will.

Whilst there is no doubt that William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy are the undoubted stars of the greatest science fiction show of all time, ultimately Star Trek only deserves that title in part due to superb performances from a wider ensemble cast and Deforest Kelly as Dr McCoy is at the head of the remaining crew. In many episodes his conflicts with Spock, his outbursts of moral indignation, or his exhortations for Kirk or others to follow a particular course dominate, but here we have an episode more or less devoted to McCoy. It's a cracking one at that.