TOS - 1.29 - Operation - - Annihilate!

The Enterprise is investigating a mass insanity that is destroying civilisations, apparently moving from planet to planet. Kirk arrives at Deneva, the next planet in line, to find that he is too late and it has been infested by alien organisms that have infected the population, causing them great pain whilst also controlling them and making them build more starships in order to transport the infection onward.

This is an episode with a lot of interesting ideas. Unfortunately, it’s probably got far too many for a single episode and so none of the plot-lines are really given enough time to develop.

This mission has a personal element since Deneva is home to Kirk’s brother, Sam, and his family. However, this idea is thrown away instantly when, shockingly, Kirk finds that Sam is already dead and his wife dies soon after. Yes, we get an effective moment of grief from Kirk immediately after finding Sam, but this family connection doesn’t really drive anything in the plot after this, despite concerns from McCoy that it might affect Kirk’s decision making. Kirk’s nephew survives, but he remains unconscious for the entire duration of the episode and he contributes nothing further, not being used as extra motivation to drive Kirk’s actions or even sharing any scenes with his uncle (although such a scene was filmed for the end of the episode but it never made it to the final edit), so this family connection is all a bit of waste. It’s also a bit odd that the producers made the decision was made for Kirk to lose someone else close to him so soon after “The City On The Edge Of Forever”.

“Operation - - Annihilate!” is certainly a bombastic title, complete with its two hyphens and exclamation mark. It seems to be referring to a possible cause of action in which Kirk must consider having to kill the entire population of Deneva in order to stop the aliens from spreading further across the galaxy. This is interesting moral dilemma of the type that later Star Trek shows will often grapple with, but nothing is really done with it here, with Kirk rejecting the idea almost as soon as it is raised, demanding that his team find a third option.

At face value, this is another infection episode like “The Naked Time” and “This Side Of Paradise”. However, this time the problems are being caused by the strange single cell aliens. The design of these is quite effective when they are stationary, especially when there are lots of them lurking in the foreground of shots. Unfortunately, they lose any credibility when they are seen flying through the air and attacking the landing party. The aliens are ultimately revealed to be single celled creatures that together make up a gestalt organism – a fascinating concept that is again not explored and is irrelevant to everything that they do and doesn’t even contribute towards their defeat and destruction.

It is clear at the end of this first season that Spock has become an important character. Leonard Nimoy again gets plenty to do, with Spock becoming infected. Given how wealth of ideas exploding from the episode, it is unfortunate that time is wasted on Spock yet again showing emotions and acting out of character, attempting to take control of the ship, but at least this sub-lot is dispensed with relatively quickly as he is able to use his Vulcan heritage to reassert control. Spock’s more interesting contribution comes when Kirk works out that bright light can kill the creatures and the infection and he volunteers to be the test subject for the treatment. Spock is cured, but since he refused to wear any eye protection (for no good reason) and he ends up blind as a result. There’s great potential in this development, especially with the subsequent kick-in-the-teeth when McCoy realises that it was ultra-violet light that kills the creatures and there was actually no reason to expose Spock to the damaging visible light. Unfortunately, this all occurs in the last ten minutes of the episode and so we don’t get any time to explore McCoy’s guilt or how Spock copes with his new condition. Indeed, it is only moments later that Spock strolls back on to bridge as if nothing has happened. Conveniently, his blindness was only temporary thanks to Vulcan’s having an inner eyelid (which he seemed to have forgotten about previously). Clearly, this is all a result of the limitations of episodic television in the 1960s where the reset button is required at the end of each instalment and there was no opportunity to follow through on Spock’s blindness in the way that Doctor Who could in Peter Capaldi’s last season, but I can’t help feeling that “Operation - - Annihilate!” would have been much more effective if it hadn’t tried to do so much in so little time.

Planetary Gazetteer

Deneva: The main setting of the episode and a beautiful planet that was colonised over a century previously. It is a freighting-line base that is used to send supplies onward to miners in the asteroid belt. The route to Deneva is therefore a common cargo route that Scotty has operated previously. The colony has over a million inhabitants.

Levinius V, Theta Cygni XII and Ingraham B: The three planets that have previously fallen victim to the mass insanity.

General Observations

• Two Stardates are given in the episode – 3287.2 and 3289.9.
• There’s another yeoman of the week (Zara, played by Maurishka Taliaferro). Majel Barrett returns as Nurse Chappel for the first time since “What Are Little Girls Made Of?”. She gets a strange scene in which she objects to McCoy’s methods when Bones is operating on Spock, presumably as a result of her concern for the Vulcan, but it does make her seem somewhat less than professional, especially when we all know what a good doctor he is. It is unsurprising that McCoy is very angry in response.
• Sam Kirk was a research biologist. He was married to Aurelan and they had a son called Peter, the only survivor of the family. Kirk’s brother had been mentioned previously in “What Are Little Girls Made Of?” although it was said there that he had three sons, so who knows what has happened to the other two. The corpse of Sam is played by William Shatner with a false moustache and modified hair style – a surprisingly effective measure that renders him unrecognisable, especially in the brief shot that we see on screen.
• Starbase 10 is mentioned as the destination to which the Enterprise sets course at the end of the episode.