Errand of Mercy

       This episode starts out on the bridge of the U.S.S. Enterprise. Kirk gets a message the Klingons are going to attack the planet Organia. It is the Enterprises' job to protect the Organians. Just shortly after receiving the message the Enterprise is attacked. After a brief battle Kirk deems Sulu in charge and beams down to Organia with Spock. Now there's nothing wrong with Sulu being in charge, but I thought a prior episode mentioned that when Spock and Kirk go out to play Scotty was in charge. I mean I could be wrong and as we have noticed Gene Rodenberry (the creator of Star Trek, if you didn't know) doesn't always pay attention to details, but I was kind of surprised when Kirk gave the long 'protect my ship' speech to Sulu and not Scotty.
      Now Organia is supposed to be this peaceful well adapted intelligent wonderfully placed progressive planet, but when Kirk and Spock arrive they see that not all of this is true. Organia looks like it hasn't changed since knights were gallivanting around saving princesses and slaying dragons. I mean there's a castle and everyone's walking around in clothes one would normally wear to a renaissance. I thought Spock said the place was progressive!
      Kirk and Spock begin speaking to the main counsel about the Klingons, but they don't seem too worried. Kirk tries to press the importance of fighting back against the Klingons, about defending themselves but nothing seems to work. While Kirk is fighting with the counsel Klingons begin to attack Organia. The Organians do not seem to worried about themselves at all. The Enterprise leaves to get back up, leaving Spock and Kirk stranded on Organia with the Klingons attacking and the Organians refusing to fight back.
           The Counsel has Kirk and Spock wear the Organian garb to blend in so the Klingons won't immediately kill them. Kirk is fine, but Spock being a Vulcan is still unsafe so they create this elaborate backstory of why he is even on Organia. Turns out there are Vulcan merchants, who knew?
     

   

          The Klingons arrive led by General Kor and of course buy Kirk as a Organian, almost too much, enough that they appoint him ambassador between Organia and the Klingons, but they don't believe Spock's a merchant for a second. They take him away on the belief he's a spy and put him through their super secret mind scanning/reading test thing that could liquify a normal human brain. When Spock comes back Kirk learns that Vulcans have the ability to protect themselves from such procedures but if Kirk were to do it he would surely die. 

      Now before I go on with the episode I want to take a minute to talk about the Klingons. For those of you way ahead, those who have seen Next Generation you know that a Klingon looks like 

 

so when the first time a Klingon appears and they look like this

 

Not gonna lie I was a little taken aback. 

 

There are some similarities of course. The facial hair and skin color seem to be the main two that pop out at me. Probably because they're the most obvious. But in later years the Klingons get the funky head design and the cool language, neither to be seen in their first appearance. Well, it's safe to say the Klingon's get cooler as the series goes on! 

     Now back to the plot, Kirk and Spock make a plan to get the Organians to care. They use a sonic grenade to blow up Klingon supplies hoping it would spark a reaction out of the Organians. Needless to say it didn't. With surveillance cameras, Kor learns of Kirk's secret plot to rise against the Klingons. He sticks Spock in jail as a spy and when the Organians blatantly give away who Kirk really is he takes Kirk back to his office to 'talk' to him. But really, that's all it is. Kor gives this really beautiful lovely long speech to Kirk and to be honest I have no idea what it was about because after the got a close up on Kor's face in the beginning of the speech I just couldn't stop staring. The makeup they do for his eyebrows is just appalling! You can see his real eyebrows underneath his fluffy fake ones! All I know is at the end of the speech Kor gives Kirk twelve hours to surrender to him or he will dissect Spock and will use the brain tap machine to liquify Kirks brain. 

         At the end of the speech I didn't pay attention to Kor puts Kirk in the same cell as Spock and at once I thought, "You shouldn't have done that! When Spock and Kirk get together they PLOT!" And sure enough once the two are in room together they start plotting. I mean they come up with absolutely nothing but they were plotting. The Organians show up and with much grief from Kirk they rescue Kirk and Spock leaving no trace as to how they got in or out. 

               In the next scene the Klingons become panicked as they try to figure out what happened to the prisoners. They were there one minute and the next they were gone! 

               The Counsel refuses to explain what happened and the Klingons make an announcement to Organia: Give me Spock and Kirk or we'll kill 200 people at a time. But still the Organians refuse to do anything. So of course Spock and Kirk take things into their own hands and with really bad odds they storm the castle. Somehow they face the bad odds and make it to Kor's lair where this big brawl almost happens but is stopped suddenly. Every time someone tries to hit someone or beat another with a weapon they stop hysterically and cry in pain. Something similar happens on the Enterprise when the bridge tries to fight the Klingon ships. The Organians just pop into Kor's lair and explain everything. They made anything that could be used as a weapon 300 degrees. The only to stop it is for Kirk and Kor to stop their war. Kirk actually argues for the point of war for a while then realizes he is wrong and then sometime in the next couple minutes the Organians admit to being several thousand year old energy beings that can never die and then when everything is solved nonviolently they disappear in a cloud of energy in this major WTF moment.
      And then it cuts to the bridge of the Enterprise, there's a thought provoking moment between Spock and Kirk but I'm still left reeling from the last scene so even as the credits go rolling by I'm still going ,"WTF just happened!"