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Episode
06
The Enemy Within
Everyone’s got a dark side, except for Kirk. He’s got a living, breathing dark alter-ego. So does this episodes’s special guest, a dog in a unicorn costume. This week in the Mission Log, it’s “The Enemy Within”
I loved this multi-pic image that Mission Log’s graphics guru, Tyler- produced for this episode. This was 1st episode that made me stop and really think -: http://www.2x-file.blogspot.com/2012/09/im-with-dr-mccoy-dear-god-man-please.html
Production still
LOVE the new picture for this show – it’s like The Brady Bunch as if all were played by angry Shatner except the Unicorn-dog, who of course plays Alice.
Love Shatner in this. People can say what they want about his acting but he’s damn good. Look at what he does with this episode and the scene in the Man Trap where he’s trying to shoot Nancy/Salt Vampire and telling McCoy to get out of the way. His earnestness and naturalism are very real. Considering he’s acting in a science fiction show in the mid 60’s where a lot of people didn’t have experience with this stuff and considering what they’re asking him to do, he really does an outstanding job. It’s really his strange pauses with the dialogue that people get hung up on but that was just a choice by the actor. Take that out of the equation and look at his performance. It’s actually very grounded and natural especially for a character that’s larger than life. In fact, more and more what draws me back to this show now is the outstanding acting by the main crew. The scenes with Shatner, Nimoy and Kelly just pop. They’re truly interesting to watch.
People consider Shatner’s pauses strange. I think that’s only because most actors memorize their lines and just recite them — always walking into a scene knowing exactly what to say and how they are going to respond to something that hasn’t happened yet. They all do it, so it has become normal to talk as if one knows the future. Shatner is not normal; Shatner talks as if he is thinking about how he is answering as he is saying it — weighing ideas as they come to him — like real people do. It’s one of the things that makes me think of him as one of the best actors out there
The podcast kept referring to the two sides of Kirk as either good/evil or eros/psyche (soul/desire). But I think a better description of them would be thought vs instinct. Rational thought alone sinks into inactivity without the drive of instinct to turn it into action. Instinct alone goes in pursuit of base-level desires, merely seeking pleasure, without rational thought to direct that energy toward higher or more altruistic goals. What do you think?
Another excellent podcast gentlemen, and I especially liked the philosophical discussion about Kirk’s split duality. Though something that niggled me when I last re-watched it recently: when ‘Evil kirk’ first appeared, did he *know* he was incomplete, separate and different? ‘Good Kirk’ left the transporter and continued his business, albeit a little woozily. Why didn’t Evil Kirk head for the bridge and start confusing the crew in classic sitcom fashion? (I know, I know, he would have been discovered sooner and the show would have been shorter)
He seemed to be aware that something was off, but to what extend you can’t really tell.
Interestingly enough, recent psychology experiments have shown that emotion is necessary for making decisions – no wonder “Logy Kirk” is so undecisive. Of course, that would also imply that Spock and others who follow the Vulcan philosophy would also have a hard time making decisions, with implications for command posts.
True – and we do see Spock at least making some not-so-great command decisions in “The Galileo Seven” and other episodes.
I’m surprised that there’s no explicit mention of “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”, which is proto-science-fiction and which started these kinds of themes. This is a retelling based on a less simplistic idea of human duality than good vs. evil.