The Mark of Gideon

Populations have been on the rise, so they've conjured a galactic surprise, to entrap Captain Kirk, they've done all the hard work, replicating USS Enterprise.

The captain finds himself aboard the Enterprise after beaming down to Gideon with only a lost lady for company.

Third Season Star Trek tried to be more bold in the storytelling but their budget was slashed, Dorothy Fontana had left, and Gene Roddenberry had gone off sulking after the Network called his bluff on threatening to walk away from the show if the show was put in the "death slot" (10pm Fridays, when no one was watching.) The Network did not like or want any more to do with Gene Roddenberry.

So you have producer Fred Freiberger having to produce bottle shows as there was no money for location shoots (with the exception of The Paradise Syndrome) and with bottle shows they have to be good interpersonal stories which focus on characterization and well-written dialog (no visuals.) Hence why Star Trek's third season took on subjects it hadn't in the previous two seasons and the stories were more mature and more ambitious

The Mark Of Gideon is a classic example of what could have been a good story, certainly the premise was: overpopulation and the pro-life vs pro-abortion argument that was going on at the time. Where it falls down is the execution of the story. With no money to tell the story properly scripts have to be butchered, corners have to be cut, and things have to be changed. This is no fun. Hence we get episodes like The Mark of Gideon, And The Children Shall Lead, The Way To Eden, and maybe one or two others that were good story ideas but subsequently poorly executed. (Then there are the real stinkers like The Lights of Zetar, Spock's Brain, That Which Survives, and The Savage Curtain which failed miserably and were just bad in every way.)

So Star Trek's third season was definitely a more mature Star Trek but the slashed budget meant they were doomed from the start. It was not "Fred Freiberger's fault" as some Star Trek fans want to believe. If anyone was to blame it was Gene Roddenberry. His first mistake for Season 3: not elevating Bob Justman to Producer, instead bringing in an outsider, Fred Freiberger. The talent was sitting righ there in front of his nose. Stupid decision, Gene!

The council on Gideon, a non-federation planet, agrees to a delegation of one: Captain Kirk. But when Kirk beams down to the co-ordinates supplied, he finds himself not in the Gideon council chamber but back on the Enterprise, and very alone. His entire crew has disappeared!. After searching the ship from top to bottom, Kirk eventually encounters a beautiful young woman named Odana (Sharon Acker) who hasn't the foggiest how she got there. What in the blue blazes is going on?

Sadly, the answer to this question isn't very satisfactory.

It turns out that Kirk has been beamed down to an exact replica of his starship on Gideon, designed to confuse the captain while Odana, actually the daughter of Gideon Ambassador Hodin, tries to seduce him (not difficult - this is old horndog Kirk we're talkin' about!). It transpires that the Gideons are after the meningitis virus in Kirk's bloodstream, which they intend to use as a means of population control on their overcrowded planet. The duplication of the Enterprise seems like a pointless endeavour since Kirk could just have easily been beamed down to a secure room with armed guards, thus saving the Gideon's a lot of time, trouble and materials (where they got such detailed plans of the Enterprise is another matter).

Also, seeing as the overcrowding problem stemmed from the Gideons' sanctity of life, it seems like an awfully strange move to now introduce a nasty virus into the population in order to whittle down the numbers. It makes the carousel in Logan's Run seem like a humane answer by comparison.

4/10. It disnae make any sense, Captain.

The Enterprise arrives at the planet Gideon to begin some kind of interstellar relations. Gideon is rumored to be a paradise but no one in the Federation knows the details. The planet's leaders insist that Kirk beam down by himself, which he does. However, he seems to end up back on an empty Enterprise, wondering where his crew has disappeared to. Unfortunately, this intriguing mystery has a most mundane explanation; it has nothing to do with Kirk entering another dimension or being out of sync, as I hoped when I first saw this as a kid. Most of the episode concerns Spock and the bridge crew dealing with bureaucracy from both Gideon and Starfleet. Even they look bored - how can they expect the audience to get excited? Kirk, meanwhile, spends most of the episode wandering on the other, empty Enterprise, along with a young female who shows up unexpectedly. Expectedly, it's an even more dull sequence of scenes. Every few scenes, a collection of sober, droopy faces pop up on this Enterprise's view-screens; this was meant to be startling or ominous. It doesn't really make sense, is all.

There also isn't much sense to this elaborate scheme concocted by Gideon's policy-makers. They wanted Kirk down on their planet for a certain reason; there was no need for all the grand subterfuge. Once Kirk beamed down, they could have sat him down in any room for an hour or so with another inhabitant to get their plan to succeed. So, it's all a contrivance as far as the plot. Likewise, Spock and the crew are too slow on the uptake in figuring out the bogus coordinates: '..079' vs. '..709' - Spock didn't notice the discrepancy immediately? This is a Vulcan! Hello? Like with many later Trek episodes (in the 3rd season), the show aimed for heavy-handed relevance to tackle social issues and rising problems of the sixties: racism, war, pollution, inequality and, in this case, overpopulation. Once Gideon's problem is revealed, it is an admittedly interesting dilemma, taken to a logical extreme (later, "Soylent Green" in '73 would tackle the issue in a similar manner). But, it's a real slog to get there. This episode also has a shot (two, actually) of the empty bridge, previously seen (attention trivia Trekkers) in "This Side of Paradise." However, that was the real bridge in the older episode, savvy?

Season 3, episode 16. The Enterprise arrives at the planet Gideon to begin diplomatic relations and to have them join the Federation. Kirk beams down and finds himself on what appears to be an empty Enterprise. In the sky, is Spock in charge of the real Enterprise. Kirk finds no one on the fake Enterprise but does find the young girl Odona who does not know how she got there. Spock, in the real Enterprise, must now deal with representatives of Gideon that say that Kirk never arrived. Spock also realizes later that the coordinates given to him are wrong. Back on the false Enterprise, Odona tells Kirk that her planet is very much overpopulated and Kirk believes she's from Gideon but she insists she is not. Then Odona falls ill - her illness is exactly what the Gideon leaders want. Kirk takes her to sickbay where he meets Ambassador Hodin, Odona's father. Odona has a virus, Vegan choriomeningitis, and it is help control the overpopulation problem and that Kirk is part of a secret experiment. Spock must try to find Kirk from the real Enterprise, while Kirk must find a way to get back to the real Enterprise. They also must get to bottom of what is going on at Gideon.

Nothing unusual about Kirk (and crew) ending up in an odd place, disappearing or missing. Nor is it unusual for Kirk (and crew) to be used as a pawn is someone else's game. BUT the way it is put together and played out in this episode is done quite well. In spite of the lower rating, I like it.

8/10