Catspaw

This one's somewhat of an oddity among the Trek episodes of the original series, an episode cobbled together for no other reason than to fit a Halloween theme. There are no other reasons for its existence, no profound ideas explored, no stretching of the imagination. Bloch, the premiere horror writer of the time, penned the script (he also wrote "What Are Little Girls Made Of?" in the previous season). The paradox to this effort, though, is that there doesn't seem to be a sincere attempt to offer scares: the creators and actors approach this with a tongue-in-cheek attitude after the first and only death in the pre-credits sequence. This lightweight approach is most evident in the early encounter with the 3 witches: Kirk asks Spock for a comment; Spock's response, along with Kirk's and McCoy's reactive expressions, sends me into guffaws every time I see it - maybe the single most hilarious moment during the season (and that's saying something, as "I,Mudd" and "The Trouble With Tribbles" are coming up soon). Later, of course, we have the scene in the dungeon, when Kirk refers to 'Bones' and then notices the skeleton hanging nearby. BOO!

There is, admittedly, a half-hearted attempt at exploring the conflict between physical senses and pure mentality. There is a tendency in the Trek series to depict aliens who hunger for the potential of physical sensation we human beings represent. Usually, such aliens may take human form temporarily, as Sylvia & Korob do here, and the new sensations corrupt them - apparently, only we humans can handle the, ah, sensuous nature of the ability to touch something or someone physically (see also the later "By Any Other Name"). But, the episode never really makes it clear what these aliens want - all we get is the Halloween mumbo-jumbo: a foggy mist, the witches, a black cat, crew members turned into zombies, a dark castle with cobwebs and, finally, the warlock and sorceress with a wand. These aliens do prove to have impressive abilities, even by the standards of 23rd century technology, and it is explained that they tapped into our subconscious to produce this bizarre scenario, but otherwise, it's just those silly spooky elements interspersed amid a plodding storyline. There's a brief reference to 'the old ones' by Korob, the beings he and Sylvia serve, which conjures up images of Lovecraft, rather than aliens from another galaxy. The episode is capped by some of the worst FX, involving puppetry, of the series. This was, by the way, the first episode of the 2nd season to be filmed, and so is the first appearance of Chekov.

I think what a lot of these nay-sayer reviewers overlook is that a lot of 10 years and up comprised the viewers of "Star Trek". I was 12. When re-watching the complete series now, I remembered before she did it that Sylvia would hold the small copy of the Enterprise over the candle's flame. Everything we see stays dormant in our subconscious mind. As a child, Halloween was my favorite holiday and I know I was thrilled with this episode. But aside from nostalgia, there really were some really interesting concepts introduced in this episode, about telekinesis. I think it's too easy to dismiss some episodes as stupid- when you aren't aware of the the hidden values of such episodes.

One dead crewman and two missing others prompt Kirk, Spock and Bones to visit planet Pyris VII.

This is a 'so bad it's good' episode, but unfortunately it does not entertain that much outside of some decent lines from certain characters.

The plot is a mish-mash of ideas from other episodes, with a 'spooky' Halloween-like theme, used to explore aspects of humanity such as consciousness, fear, and other sensations. It does not work for me as sci-fi, drama, philosophy or anything other than a way to enjoy watching the characters interact in silly situations.

Sylvia, Kirk, Spock, Bones, Chekhov and LaSalle have moments where they are moderately amusing, but nothing particularly memorable. Some of Spock's dry delivery is as good as ever, LaSalle's command moments are solid and Sylvia's general persona is quite watchable. Antoinette Bower is easily the standout performer and displays some decent charisma. Most other cast members are solid, but James Doohan and George Takei might as well not be there.

It feels harsh to criticise the visuals because they are so fun and provide a lot of the enjoyment I took from the episode, but there is no denying how bad the giant cat and string puppets are. The fight scenes are pretty badly edited and choreographed, particularly Kirk's disarming of Scotty and Sulu's martial arts. The less said about Chekhov's wig the better!

When travelling in space interstellar, you may find a cat Barbarella, mix of Jane Fonda, a spy film James Bond(a), find them under a castle in the cellar.

Telepathic and telekinetic torture, as a couple of mindless moggies make mayhem for the Captain and his men.

Holy space-cows what a mess! One of James Pevney's relatively weak early efforts was this Halloween episode of TOS - complete with black cats, witches, zombies, skeletons, dungeons, and magic wands. In retrospect, Catspaw (especially the not-so-special effects) is laughable, but not entirely without merit. Shatner and guest stars Theo Marcuse and Antoinette Bower have some great scenes. Sadly, the very talented Marcuse passed away a month after this episode was aired. Had he lived into his 50s and 60s, he could have become the 1970s and 1980s Vincent Price.

An away team suffers a casualty and a few missing crew members, including Sulu and Scotty. The holy trinity (Kirk, Spock and McCoy) beam down to investigate. On the planet's surface, they quickly encounter a trio of ghosts, a medieval-looking castle, and a black cat. Kitty leads them to a trap and they wake up chained up in a dungeon.

Some would say this is all pure schlock, but there are a few aspects of Catspaw that make it worth seeing. As I have mentioned, some of the acting is quite good. It's also worth thinking about the ambiguity of what goes on in the episode. On one hand it comes off as just another omnipotent alien episode, but these aliens are pretty different, and its not clear how much power they really have outside of their own minds and the minds of the Enterprise crew. Unfortunately, though these ideas are raised in the episode, they are also inadequately explored in this straightforward goth adventure story.