The Good: Intriguing twist on the same old plot, One or two lines, Acting is fine
The Bad: Nothing stellar on the character front, Theme has been done to death on Star Trek.
The Basics: When the Enterprise and a landing party are both attacked by the same holographic woman, Spock must race to rescue Kirk and his team before they are killed.
Long before Star Trek sold out to the Baywatch audience by sticking well-endowed main cast members in catsuits, as the franchise did in season four of Star Trek: Voyager and every subsequent season and spin-off, they had a classier way to highlight the beauty of women. Star Trek is filled with wonderful costumed from gold lame bikinis, to netting to costumes that are essentially two strips of fabric radiating up from the crotch to cover the breasts. With "That Which Survives," Star Trek tried something new; bring a tremendously beautiful woman to the show - in this case the Miss America of the day, Lee Meriwether - and provide her with hair, make-up and costuming that makes her look pretty hideous.
Or maybe I'm just WAY out of touch for what passed for hot from the 1960s!
The U.S.S. Enterprise is exploring a distant planet when a landing party decides to beam down. While the quartet leaving the ship is in the act of transporting, they witness a woman appear and kill the transporter operator. Confused, Kirk materializes on the planet and attempts to contact the ship only to discover it is no longer in orbit! The Enterprise, cast a thousand lightyears away, begins the return trip to the strange planet when another crewman suffers a death by cellular disruption and the ship begins to accelerate out of control! On the planet, Kirk, McCoy and Sulu fall prey to the same woman they saw aboard the Enterprise after she kills the other member of the landing party. Desperate to survive, the landing party tries to figure out who the mysterious woman is, why she is killing them, and how to defeat her!
"That Which Survives" is, at best, a mediocre episode on its own, an even less inspired episode when looked at in the context of the original Star Trek. This is yet another "technology gone amuck" episode, this time in the form of a security system that has outlived the beings it was protecting. It's a decent plot, one that ends up being reused by Star Trek: The Next Generation with "The Arsenal Of Freedom," which is a stronger episode overall. But here it's the novelty of the episode that seems to be what the episode is about. After so many Star Trek episodes where technology has enslaved a people, here is an episode where technology is so efficient it outlives its creators and keeps enduring, even though it has no one left to defend.
Sadly, it is still defeated in the usual Kirk-using-logic-to-confuse-a-computer method. It's sad to see so many sophisticated computers destroyed by the old basic logic gap word problems. If Star Trek had begun in this day in age, no doubt it would be seen as a huge metaphor for the fallibility of Microsoft platforms, but here it's just another in a long line of technophobic themed episodes that seem to have been pretty commonplace in 1960s science fiction.
The woman, Losira, is essentially a killer hologram who destroys a single target with her touch. This is not a bad idea and it is fairly well executed. Actually, I think I might like the visual effect more than most reviewers as Losira essentially morphs into a solid line and then condense to a dot to disappear. It's a neat concept that makes for a speedy getaway, even if the graphic is very 1960s.
I am far more disturbed by the hair and make-up in "That Which Survives." Lee Meriwether's Losira has the worst hair I've seen on Star Trek. Indeed, it looks like someone stuck mousse in her Catwoman get-up (she was one of the Catwomen from the 1960s Batman) and removed the mask with its cat ears and the hair was left molded like that. Moreover, the costume is just plain terrible. Losira is defined in costume through baggy maroon pants with an ascending flap that covers her bellybutton, a basic (though non-supportive) halter top with shoulder flaps and - I kid not - a bib. This outfit is just too terrible for words and one wonders if Meriwether was given a challenge after being accused of being too good looking to appear on a nationally broadcast show looking terrible. If she was, she won with this! Sure, she still has her innate physical beauty, but this is pretty much the closest the costume department could get to a sackcloth for her.
If it seems like I'm obsessing a bit on the costume, there's a very simple reason for that; there is not much that happens in "That Which Survives." Kirk and company beam down to the planet, once per act, Losira appears and takes a swing at one of the crewmembers who is around, before she is stopped and disappears. Meanwhile, the Enterprise is headed back to the planet and to make that more than just a pointless waiting game that does not utilize the crew in any fashion, the ship is sabotaged by Losira and it is stuck accelerating. It's not terribly thrilling.
Nor is it much of a surprise when Scotty finds a way to deactivate the sabotaged warp drive moments before it would have destroyed everyone. Nor is it a surprise when Spock is in command that he acts logically. Nor is it a character leap at all that Kirk, Sulu and McCoy need to rely on one another to stay alive while they await rescue from the Enterprise. Yeah, this is a low character episode. There is no character development among the main crew and Losira's character is simply established as a very straightforward thing.
The only real treat on the character front is the reappearance of Dr. M'Benga. M'Benga appeared in the second season episode "A Private Little War" (click here for that review!) and was the physician who healed Spock while McCoy was stuck with Kirk on the planet. M'Benga studied the ways of Vulcan medicine, so he and Spock get along just fine while McCoy and Kirk are elsewhere. He's a fun character, even if he only appears twice.
M'Benga is enthusiastically portrayed by Booker Marshall and he brings a quiet dignity to the role. He plays off the regular cast well in his brief scenes and makes just enough of an impression to be recognizable to the die hard fans. The rest of the main cast simply does their usual thing. Because there are no great character leaps, none of the main cast are given any parts they need to stretch for.
George Takei gets to scream as he portrays Sulu being attacked by Losira, but that's pretty much the big acting moment of the episode.
As for Lee Meriwether, her presence on Star Trek (as well as Batman) should have been enough for Marlee Matlin to not take flack for her acting career. In addition to appearing on Spin City, Matlin had the recurring role of Joey Lucas on the seven seasons of The West Wing (click here for that review!). People seem to begrudge Miss America acting, but she did great and to be fair to the poorly coifed Meriwether, she plays robotic and deadly just fine in "That Which Survives."
But it's not a complicated part, just like it's not a sophisticated episode. Fans of general drama will not find anything redeeming, fans of science fiction will likely be bored as this is very standard "villain must be stopped" storyline, and fans of thrillers will likely find it not tense enough to be engaging. It's just not enough of anything.
Perhaps it would have been different if Losira had worn a catsuit.
[Knowing that VHS is essentially a dead medium, it's worth looking into Star Trek - The Complete Third Season on DVD, which is also a better economical choice than buying the VHS. Read my review of the third and final season by clicking here!
Thanks!]
5/10
For other Star Trek reviews, please visit my index page for a list of all of the episodes, movies and boxed sets I have reviewed!
© 2010, 2008 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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