The Eye of The Beholder

DVD, Star Trek: The Animated Series (The Eye of The Beholder)

Classically 'TOS,' this one: Kirk, Spock and McCoy on a mission to an alien planet, encountering strange new life forms, defending themselves, captured, finding some kind of common ground, and establishing peace of a sort - this is what Trek is all about, and it's great fun seeing the main trio of characters interacting in their typical manner. McCoy is crotchety and interrupts Spock's scientific musings with complaints about sand in his boots, Spock is sarcastic, Kirk has to keep the peace between them, it's just like the series! Also just like some parts of the series it's focused almost exclusively on those three, with Scotty allowed a little to do here and there, but no sign of either Uhura or Sulu (M'Ress is in Uhura's usual seat at Communications), so there's no argument this wasn't authentic and could have been an episode of the original, other than the huge creatures they meet in their quest, which would have been very tricky to pull off in live-action. The point of the mission is to locate a team of six who had beamed down for scientific study of the planet, but who were lost. The highest ranked officer of this team, Lieutenant Commander Markell, goes against the book, according to Kirk, and beams down to search for the three missing members, leaving his ship deserted. I took that as being the action that was against the rules, cited by Kirk, as it couldn't be the Captain or Commander beaming down since he did that all the time, but leaving your ship abandoned wouldn't be sensible.

One of the downsides of the episode that stops it from quite turning into a rounded story, is that we never get to see the Ariel or hear much about the team Kirk and co. search for. We eventually meet Markell, his biologist, Randy Brice, and navigator, Nancy Randolph, but it's never explained what happened to the other three they went down to find, unless the implication is that they died in one of the dinosaur habitats. Mind you, the creatures are slightly unthreatening in some ways - the size of the grey dinosaur that comes crashing down on top of McCoy, and the shaking that happens when it does, would suggest our doctor would have been crushed to death, but he's absolutely fine, other than finding it difficult to breathe under that huge tail. So perhaps it was actually quite soft? Spock uses his intelligence to get McCoy out: instead of trying to lift the tail, dig under it. It still doesn't explain how McCoy managed to end up under the tail of the creature in the first place when it was pursuing them! McCoy would have had to trip over, the monster leap over him and only then come crashing to the ground, but it didn't seem to be in pursuit, it just fell over with a resounding earthquake!

That's the kind of thing that makes it more cartoony than it needed to be, but I did like this idea of them passing through various habitats and seeing weird and wonderful creatures - it was maybe a bit much to give us another sea monster after we'd had them recently in another episode, 'The Ambergris Element,' but I love the calm and professional way they handled the situations where they were under attack and the efforts to be humane. Not behaving melodramatically or turning it into a humorous moment of laughing at their response to peril, as you see so much in modern Trek, so far from a competent or correct response. You have the dignity and sense of Starfleet officers behaving as they ought to in such a situation, something the modern series' could seriously learn from! It's strange that it is just Kirk, Spock and McCoy beaming down alone, although not that strange as they did do that sometimes on 'TOS,' but you'd expect there to be some security guards along for protection - perhaps that was what the Captain meant when he said they would travel light, taking 'only' their Phasers, Tricorders, Communicators and Medical Kit: so exactly what you usually bring then, right?!

As disappointing as it is we don't get to see the Ariel, Markell's ship, perhaps they blew the budget and time on creating the various creatures, culminating in these Lactrans (don't ask me how they knew their name - I'd have to put it down to the telepathy), slug creatures that are many times more advanced and more intelligent than humanoids, but still, much like the Talosians, from where the idea seemed to have originated, they want a zoo of as many species as they can get. They must have had ships, too, in order to go out and capture other species, but we don't get to see them either. There is some amusement to be had when one of their young is beamed up to the Enterprise by mistake and takes Scotty hostage, hiking him up to the Bridge, but the second half of the episode is in no way as interesting as the first and it becomes mainly about using Spock's telepathic abilities to communicate with this race, so it got a bit bogged down with 'everyone think this,' or 'everybody think that,' even if it is good that the situation was resolved by communication, a Trek staple. It seems likely the Lactrans only captured dumb animals, too, as they're happy to let the crew go once it's understood who they are and the Federation they're part of.

Because the majority of the story takes place on an unknown planet there aren't a lot of things to note, but we do get a classic Briefing Room scene complete with Tri-screen, through which they watch Markell's distress signal or last transmission, which was nice - funny how he looks so similar to Kirk! Leonard Nimoy misreads a line, which is understandable since I believe each actor recorded their dialogue separately, but when Kirk makes a statement about the science team being alive, Spock says, "Apparently alive? We cannot be sure," making the first part almost a question when the context required him to emphasise the first word. It's surprising that kind of thing doesn't happen more often on the series when you consider how it was put together. With only a couple of guest characters, the other actors don't have much input - not sure who Markell was played by, but not one of the regulars, though Majel Barrett voices Brice and M'Ress. Arex is seen on the Bridge, and mentioned, but doesn't speak.

It's a shame the early promise wasn't quite achieved as it does get the characters down very well, as you'd expect with the original actors (though that's not a guarantee - just watch 'Picard'), but while it is one of the better examples, it's not quite what I'd call a good episode. The same title would later we used for a 'TNG' episode, and since Trek never reuses old titles (to the extent of actually changing working titles to avoid conflict with what had been used before, one of the things I love about the franchise), this is another indication that as fun as it is, it can't be added to official canon. Although, technically it was 'The Eye of The Beholder' rather than the later 'Eye of The Beholder,' and they did do titles like that a few times ('Muse' and 'The Muse' for example), so the argument doesn't really count!

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