STAR TREK
Obsession

From Wikipedia:

"Obsession" is a second season episode of Star Trek: The Original Series and was broadcast December 15, 1967. It is episode #42, production #47, written by Art Wallace, and directed by Ralph Senensky.

Overview: Captain James T. Kirk becomes obsessed with destroying a murderous entity.

More here.

You know, this might have been a pretty good episode, albeit with a couple of awkward spots, but with a script requiring William Shatner to play well outside his comfort zone, it is fatally flawed. That is, Kirk is forced to confront what he considers to be a profound personal failure from a decade earlier, and Shatner is simply not up to the task. Instead, "Obsession" is pretty mediocre, with only a couple of nice moments.

I mean, Kirk is awful from almost the beginning.

The action gets started quickly. During the teaser, that first short scene before the opening credits, Kirk, planetside with a landing party, gets a whiff, literally, of an alien monster he failed to destroy when he was a young lieutenant serving on the USS Farragut. Instantly, Shatner adopts a sort of tragic attitude, staring off into the distance, carefully adjusting his face into a semi-sad expression, which you'd better get used to because he comes back to it again and again.

This is Shatner's weakness as an actor. He is profoundly comfortable when he is strong and in charge, always fun to watch, but when he has to deal with any sort of vulnerability at all, such as romance, or, in this case, feelings of failure, he resorts to gimmickry and facade. That is, he fakes it. And when an actor doesn't believe in what he's doing, the audience doesn't, either. In many ways, "Obsession" is a case study in why so many people think Shatner is a bad actor. He's not a bad actor, of course, just lazy. When there's nobody around who's willing to call bullshit on that laziness, he sleepwalks his way through whatever doesn't inspire him. Most of the time, this doesn't really undermine the whole project. But because "Obsession" utterly depends on Kirk plumbing the depths of his soul, we're shit out of luck. Just another day at the office for Shatner, and that's how the episode comes off.

It doesn't help, either, that the alien monster here is just a cloud of gas. That wouldn't matter so much if Shatner had shown up for this one, but he didn't, and that just makes this episode's antagonist all the less satisfying. Nor does it help that the young actor playing the son of the Farragut's captain, for whose death Kirk blames himself, and the potential source for some fabulous dramatic conflict, isn't much more than an untalented good looking guy. Scenes between Captain Kirk and Ensign Garrovick might as well be performed by Disney animatronic figures.

But the really damnable thing about "Obsession" is that it has just enough good in it to make you mourn its failure. The story is really interesting, if not well executed. In spite of Shatner's fakery, you really do want to know what's going to happen next. Here and there, you even think they might actually pull it off, somehow redeeming the episode before it ends. I mean, "Obsession" doesn't redeem itself, but there are some shining moments.

Spock and McCoy have a marvelous scene discussing the Captain's irrational behavior. There is a hint of the usual friction between the two, but both of them push it aside for the commander that they love. Very honest work from both of them, starkly contrasting Shatner's inauthenticity. Indeed, Nimoy and Kelley's work is infectious: the scene where they confront Kirk with their belief that he might be losing it clearly inspires Shatner--Kirk is quite good here.

And that's another annoyance. Once he's convinced everybody that he's not crazy, once he's reversed roles with the creature and become the predator himself, the Captain is on home turf, his usual fun self. For the final third or so of "Obsession," he's not bad at all.

There are some other good moments. A space chase at warp eight gets Scotty freaking out over the engines--"We'll blow up any minute now!!!"--which provokes a marvelous dramatic pause ending only when Kirk orders the ship to drop down to warp six. There is a wonderful moment of chaos on the bridge, capped by Chekov's dramatic declaration that the entity has entered the ship.

There is even a replay of the final moments of "The Doomsday Machine," right down to the malfunctioning transporter, right down, even, to using the same music, that I'd love to condemn as plaigarism, except for the fact that it's so well done. And McCoy gets a great line in the midst of the dramatic rehash:

Crazy way to travel, spreading a man's molecules across the universe!

Good stuff, even though you've already seen it before in a much better context.

And I can't forget to mention all the dead red shirts, five by my count, although there may be more. Everybody loves it when red shirts die!

But like I said, in the end, the good stuff just can't save the episode. I mean, it's still Star Trek, after all, and worth watching if only for that, but when you see how good "Obsession" could have been, but wasn't, it really ends up being an exercise in frustration.

But, by all means, watch it anyway.


An episode about gas.

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