TOS - 2.19 - The Immunity Syndrome

By this point, the bottle show has already been established as a part of the Star Trek format - an episode set predominantly on the Enterprise as a budget saving measure. There will be bottle shows throughout the history of the franchise, with many of these rising to the challenge and delivering very entertaining episodes. "The Immunity Syndrome" is probably the most bottliest of bottle shows, since it doesn't even feature any guest stars. And, blimey, it is really, really boring.

The episode concerns the Enterprise being tasked to investigate what has happened to the Gamma 7A system and the USS Intrepid. It isn't long before the Enterprise comes across a stranger energy cloud, which it penetrates to discover a gigantic single celled organism that starts draining energy from the starship and its crew, leading to a race against time for Kirk and his crew to work out a way of killing this space amoeba.

There's nothing wrong with this as a premise, but it is executed in a manner that is devoid of virtually all drama. We are told that the crew are feeling ill and McCoy complains about being busy in sickbay, but none of this has tangible effect on the episode since none of the regulars are affected. Instead, we just get random supporting artists collapsing in an over the top manner.

There is an attempt at introducing a dilemma for Kirk when both Spock and McCoy volunteer for an apparent suicide mission which involves flying a shuttle into the space amoeba in order to hopefully determine its weakness. But even this just comes across as a way of filling time since it is obvious that Spock is the best candidate, and any pathos in the situation is undermined by the fact that we all know that Spock is going to be successful and never in any real danger.

Spock discovers that the space amoeba is about to reproduce, further increasing the threat to the galaxy. The script attempts to introduce a metaphor as Kirk and McCoy postulate that humanity could end up being a virus within a galaxy that belongs to the space amoebas, but this doesn't really make much sense and doesn't seem to relate to anything in our real world.

I suppose the main selling point of the episode is in terms of the optical effects used to portray the space amoeba.  These must indeed have been ground-breaking at the time, but unfortunately impressive special effects are not by themselves enough to save the episode.

Of course, the Enterprise crew are able to kill the space amoeba which has the effect of it disappearing completely. The original script apparently finished quite abruptly and so William Shatner and director Joseph Pevney decided to improvise a tag scene. This might have been a better idea if they had been any tension in the climax of the episode and if they had come up with something less horrible that Kirk ogling a random female crew member.

Planetary Gazetteer

The space amoeba has destroyed the Gama 7A system in sector 39J. This seemed to contain a number of inhabited planets, but these are not named.

Starship Spotting

The first starship that was sent to investigate what had happened to the Gamma 7A system was the USS Intrepid which was crewed entirely by Vulcans but this is also destroyed by the space amoeba. It It is mentioned that the Intrepid had a crew of 400, which is similar to that of the Enterprise (generally specified as being in the region of 430). The Intrepid was previously mentioned in "Court Martial" when Commodore Stone rescheduled its repairs when giving priority to the Enterprise.

The (second) Galileo shuttle appears again as Spock uses it to investigate the space amoeba, although it's interior looks completely different from previous appearances (Kirk does refer to it as being a "specially equipped" shuttlecraft).

General Observations

• Three Stardates are given in the episode - 4307.1, 4308.8 and 4309.4.
• The Enterprise is heading to Starbase 6 for a period of rest and relaxation before it is ordered to investigate what has happened to the Gamma 7A system and the Intrepid.
• George Takei is still away filming "The Green Berets". Sulu's position at the helm is here taken by Mr Kyle with John Winston making his 10th appearance as the officer who is usually seen operating the transporter. Wnston here wears a gol uniform rather than his usual red.
• Majel Barret makes her 10th appearance as Christine Chappel, although she is seen only relatively briefly in sickbay.