TOS S01E09, Dagger of the Mind
Dir. Vincent McEveety, Wri. Shimon Wincelberg
The Summary: A crazy man sneaks aboard the Enterprise, which forces them to go back and examine the facility he escaped from. When they arrive, however, they find that things are not as they seem.
The Good: This episode is an interesting attempt to take on the topic of mental health, albeit a little ham-handedly. Spock is more recognizably Spock, and I like the tension between Bones and Kirk—the character work is coming along at this point in the season. I actually laughed out loud at the lab party joke with Kirk’s weekly lady. We get to see our first Vulcan mind meld, and that’s really cool. Dr. Noel (Marianna Hill) is great—absolutely the best lady of the week yet—she even gets to kill a baddy!
The Bad: Why, oh why did they not get rid of the pudgy, doesn’t-care redshirt from the last episode? He even got promoted to engineering! The crazy guy (Morgan Woodward) who serves as the inciting incident is…not one of their better guest stars (he’s a bit of a stereotype of a crazy dude). Kirk’s will is stronger than science! That may not be a con for everyone, but I like my Kirk to be at least somewhat realistic. It also makes no sense that the villains wouldn’t just mind control Dr. Noel as well. I know it’s lazy criticism, but parts of this episode are pretty boring, too.
The Review: This is a fine episode without too much to really say about it. Dr. Noel is awesome, but other than that it’s kinda business as usual. It might suffer a bit from the fact that most of the crew has nothing really to do since Kirk and Noel are down on the planet by themselves, so everybody else just spins their wheels for the whole episode. Not bad at all, but there’s not much here anyone would call critical viewing. There’s honestly only about thirty minutes worth of narrative here, if you’re being generous. Like so many episodes of The Original Series (especially season one), there’s a pretty good idea here, but they had no idea how to make it last for the 55 or so minutes one of these episodes runs. In this particular case they mostly fill the time with returning to the Enterprise to hear the crew talk about what they think might be going on, and lament their inability to do anything about it. Either that or killing time before the exciting conclusion where the day is saved. The whole thing is frustrating, because as viewers we know exactly what is going on. Dramatic irony only works if there are some stakes to the characters not knowing what the audience knows, and that is absolutely not the case here.
What’s good here is quite good, however. Pacing issues aside, the basic story is an interesting one. Although I don’t like the mind-control machine here as well as the cloning machine in “What Are Little Girls Made Of?,” I still enjoy the weird science. Here Kirk wins based on sheer will as opposed to a brilliant plan, and that’s less fun, but still engaging. Dr. Noel, as previously mentioned, is one of the most interesting and best “love interest of the week” characters in all of Trek. There are a couple later that are better, but very few. She has more than a single character trait, and is directly involved in the advancement of the plot and defeat of the enemy. That alone puts her in the upper echelon of female guest stars on this show. The fact that Hill actually infuses her with life, humor, and pathos is just bonus. Learning more about Spock’s psychic powers is really interesting as well, in a way that both adds to the lore of the universe and to the character.
If this episode were half the length, we would probably be talking about it as one of the all-time greats. It clearly has many strengths. As it is, though, it’s just a fine episode of the show. Some highlights, some very low points, and all of it averaging out to an hour of TV that you probably won’t turn off at any point, but probably won’t return to either. Definitely recommended for Trek fans (as there’s a lot of value to people who already love these characters), but probably not for the uninitiated.
The Score: 
