For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky

"For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky" (Nov. 8, 1968) Old TV Guide synopsis: 'The Enterprise encounters a spaceship ruled by an oracle, who prevents his people from knowing that their "world" is on a collision course with another planet.' A McCoy episode in which he informs the captain that he is dying of an incurable disease, with only a year left to live. Kate Woodville plays Natira, leader of the world of Yonada, all unaware that their 'planet' is actually a ship designed to transport them to a new destination since their people were wiped out by a supernova 10,000 years before. The obstacle that prevents Kirk and Spock from making a course correction is the feared Oracle, imposing the penalty of death through the 'instrument of obedience' implanted in their temples. It's highly improbable that Natira and McCoy could fall in love so swiftly, but such is the way for hour long television (no long courtships allowed).

Season 3, episode 8. The Enterprise finds an asteroid, Yonada, that is on a collision course to Darren V, a highly populated planet and it will be there within 396 days. That asteroid has fired a missile towards the Enterprise - attacking it. Also, everyone on board the Enterprise has gotten a check-up and are in good health, all but Dr. McCoy who learns he has about 1 year to live - he has incurable disease called xenopolycythemia (polycythemia). Kirk, McCoy and Spock beam down to the asteroid Yonada and they find it is populated with humanoids that worship an oracle -- it is a space ship disguised as an asteroid. The High Priestess, Natira, orders the capture of the trio then releases them later on. Natira develops an interest in McCoy and prays to the oracle for marriage to McCoy. Finally Spock and Kirk are released to go back to the ship and McCoy agrees to stay with Natira if that means saving the planet of Darren V. Spock ends up discovering the Fabrini archive that has a cure for McCoy's condition.

Of course we all know that "all's well that ends well" - McCoy will be cured and back on the Enterprise with the others while everything will be smoothed over with the Natira and her people and Darren V will be saved.

An average episode... what we expect from from Star Trek TOS. I will say it's a relief to see McCoy as a "love interest" from a lovely lady.

7.5/10

This was an episode of the original Star Trek series that I really liked. Several millenniums ago a civilized race built a giant spaceship and camouflaged it with material to make it look like a moon that was detached from planetary orbit. The reason was to make sure no one looked at it with any suspicions and that the chosen survivors would arrive at a new world and just take up the civilization again.

It's gone horribly wrong and the ship never really arrived and now the humanoids living there don't even realize they're living inside a giant ship. The artificial sun and stars are their world. And they've got a giant computer which has taken control and everyone on the ship has a control device implanted in their heads so they never question the will of the 'oracle' or their origins.

More than that has gone wrong, the ship is on a collision course with an inhabited Federation planet which brings the Enterprise on a mission to save their associated planet. They discover it is indeed not a floating asteroid or moon, but has signs of life.

Deforest Kelley gets a little romance here. He's got a disease that no doubt he diagnosed himself and has months to live. He and high priestess of the oracle Kate Woodville fall for each other and that doesn't stop her from defending her way of life as she sees it.

An interesting concept that Star Trek deals with is the notion that a place they come to thinks they are the center of a universe. That is something we earth folks had to learn and some of us still haven't.

The Prime Directive about non-interference is something that William Shatner concludes doesn't apply when we're saving two planets from total annihilation. How Shatner and Leonard Nimoy do it you have to see this episode for.

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.

A quite sizable population or entourage, have managed to conceal and to camouflage, their ship in a void, of a large asteroid, a space travelling meteoric comet mirage.

A rock is a hard place to change the culture and mind-sets when they've been cast away for so long.