Catspaw

Season 2, episode 7. The Enterprise is at Pyrus VII. Sulu, Scotty & Crewman Jackson has beamed down to investigate. The Enterprise has lost contact with them for awhile but Jackson communicates he is ready to beam aboard and when he does, he is dead. A strange voice is heard coming from Jackson so Kirk, Spock and Bones beam down to find out what is going on and what has happened to Sulu & Scotty. When the 3 beam down, they see thick fog, 3 witches, an eerie castle and a black cat upon entering the castle. They meet Korob & Sylvia, end up in a dungeon and find that Scotty and Sulu are in a trance of sorts and obeying the will of the two sorcerers. The sorcerers use their magic against the Enterprise, Bones ends up in a trance-like state while Kirk & Spock try to figure out a way to beat the sorcerers and save their ship & crew. Sylvia becomes very cruel and disputes with Korob. Korob decides to help Kirk and his crew because he feels that Sylvia is going way to far.

One of those "fun" episodes. It first aired just before Halloween in 1967... it really does make a great Halloween show. I still love this episode even though it is not as popular nor rated as high as some of the others.

9/10

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.

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.

Catspaw contains one of the great lines in the series. At the beginning of the episode, the aliens try to scare the landing party with a vision of the 3 witches from Macbeth.

When the witches are done reciting their lines, Kirk says to Spock, "Spock . . . comment."

"Very bad poetry, Captain," Spock replies to Kirk's obvious annoyance.

The previous reviews pan this episode, and for good reason; it's somewhat campy, cliché and mildly unfocused. But, there is an underlined re-visitation of Hephaestus' and his wife theme operating here.

We're treated to some tongue in cheek spookiness in the opening. Was it done intentionally? I'm not sure. There may have been a sincere attempt to create an atmosphere of horror, but it doesn't come off very well. Which may call into question the sincerity of the effort, but then one realizes that the lack of horror and fright is intentional because of the episode's primary focus.

The astute classic Trek aficionado will recall the real chills delivered in the "Wolf in the Fold" episode, nor the scary tension of "Dagger of the Mind". The production team at Desilu was more than capable of presenting frights in the context of a Star Trek episode, so why wasn't it done here? One must keep in mind that the thrust of this episode is the unavailability of a physical reality to the antagonists. This is part of the puzzle. It is essentially both plot and theme.

And here in lies another layer, and, perhaps, one that pokes fun at the material woman who marries a man for the riches he can garnish via whatever ability he has, and not for love. We're shown the material-girl in all her essence. Captain James T. Kirk takes a page out of the Sean Connery's James Bond, and gives as good as he takes from a woman who seeks more of what she already has, but who has sacrificed true emotional satiation for material gain. Kirk shows Sylvia her own folly, and the true value of her own worth and what he thinks of her.

Sylvia invokes her wrath, but Kirk counters with Star Fleet training and his own patented Promethian approach to counter her attacks. Even at the moment of truth Sylvia cannot help but see an opening for gain. Even when Kirk tries to give her another chance, she is relentless in her pursuit of gain. A high tech grifter with supernatural appetites and abilities.

It is fitting that both Sylvia and Korob are exposed for the weak transparencies that they really are. Perhaps a comment on true fear, and what really frightens us; not any manifestation of danger, but what we imagine might be the danger. It is in this vein that the scare factor is kept to a minimum to drive home a larger theme.

The episode is not one of the more sterling in terms of production values, but it is worth a look. The closing SFX shot is somewhat fitting.

Give it a shot.