STAR TREK
"The Lights of Zetar"

From Wikipedia:

"The Lights of Zetar" is a third season episode of Star Trek: The Original Series, first broadcast January 31, 1969 and repeated on August 26, 1969. It is episode #73, production #73, written by Jeremy Tarcher and Shari Lewis, and directed by Herb Kenwith.

Overview: Strange incorporeal aliens threaten the Memory Alpha station and the Enterprise.

More here.

Watch it here.

Notes and pics:

* Hmmm. Scotty's in love again. This always ends badly.



* Nice over the head shot of the bridge.



* Chekov: "I didn't know Mr. Scott would go for the brainy type." Sulu: "I don't think he's even noticed she HAS a brain." I love it when they do Lenny and Carl.





* Nice use of "Where No Man Has Gone Before" music. Sort of ups the weird creepiness.

* Fabulous eye close up. This episode really creeped me out when I was a kid.



* Great shot of the Enterprise in the ion storm.



* This is fucking great.

* Holy fuck. Mira's bizarre speech is giving me chills even at the age of 43.

* It's not just the music. This one is paced and played like a very early episode.

* Scotty's love is creepy, too. Kind of stalkerish. I mean, I suspect Doohan is as bad with love scenes as Shatner is, but his weirdness is working with the overall vibe of the episode.

* Oh cool, now Memory Alpha's getting hit by the storm, too.



* Man, I had forgotten Mira's psychic vision seen in her Hitchcock-like eye close up. Very nice filmic technique.



* Dead Andorian, very cool. I like the other unnamed dead alien, too. Looks like a 1970s Marvel horror comic character. Son of Frankenstein, maybe? Was there a Son of Frankenstein?



* Oh god, another woman doing the bizarre possessed-by-Satan speech thing. This episode is actually scaring me. Love the facial discoloration.



* And her death-face is sublime.



* Mr. Kyle, cool. Haven't seen him in a while. This year, apparently, he's a red shirt.



* Cool, Sulu was in the chair while the senior officers were with the away team. I love it when Sulu's in command.

* Okay, this is some wacked out shit. So why is Scotty poo-pooing it all to Mira? He should be freaking out.

* The attempt-to-outrun-the-storm scene is good bridge procedure stuff.

* Good first contact rhetoric from Kirk.

* Okay, now we're in the briefing room doing a formal Star Fleet investigation. The script's really hitting some good franchise points.



* Okay, in "Mark of Gideon" they go most of the episode without catching the difference in transporter coordinates, but in this one Spock sees the brain wave pattern similarities almost immediately. This is good writing. The former is bad writing.



* Kirk's telling her to let herself be possessed by the entity? Weird. His rationale doesn't even really make sense.

* Okay, now she's possessed.

* Kirk's discussion with the entity is very Star Trek.



* Zetars through Mira: "You will all die." That spooked me when I was five.

* So did her savage growl when she throws Scotty across the room.

* I never have understood why exactly they're doing the pressure chamber thing, but it sure does play well.



* This final Freudian discussion of Mira's psyche is very Hitchcock. Lots of Hitchcock in this one, actually.



* Kirk even gets a nice final quip. The writers have taken great pains to make this one feel like Trek.



* Okay, so the plot kind of falls apart and stops making sense during the climax, but this one's still pretty good. It creates and sets its mood extraordinarily well: this one's retro, evoking the strange feel of the first five or six episodes, and it's actually frightening at points. The inability of the script to satisfyingly resolve the plot problems it weaves is a bit of a let down, sure, but this one's worth seeing simply because most of the episode is out-of-the-ball-park successful.

What an unrecognized gem "The Lights of Zetar" is. I certainly don't think of it as one of the greats, and I don't remember many critics giving it high praise, but it is, indeed, pretty great. A sort of closet classic. Four stars.

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