There is no situation so dire that it can't be solved by Kirk making out with space babes.
Original air date: February 24, 1968
It all starts when Kirk, Bones, Spock and two Red Shirts beam down to a planet to investigate a distress signal from a crashed ship. Turns out, it was just bait put out by the Kelvans who have decided this galaxy is suitable for colonization. Kirk tells them they're quite welcome to some of the galaxy's uninhabited planets. The Federation might even be willing to aid them. However, the Kelvans do not settle, they conquer. And now they're going back to the Andromeda galaxy to tell everyone the wonderful news! Oh, and they'll be needing the starship Enterprise to get there. The trip should only take 300 years, more or less.
The Kelvans force their way on board, hijack it on a course for Andromeda and turn everyone but Kirk, Bones, Spock and Scotty into giant 20 sidersnote . It's up to these four to find a way to take the ship back and restore the crew.
By Any Other Tropes:
- And I Must Scream: The neural neuralizer that the Kelvans use to freeze people in place shuts down all voluntary systems. They can still blink and presumably hear since Rojan continues to talk to them, but they can neither move or speak.
- Becoming the Mask: The Kelvans pose as humans for practical purposes, but they become enamoured by the new senses their human bodies provide them with. Kirk uses this to his advantage.
- Black Dude Dies First: Averted. The cute girl gets crushed to dust while the black Red Shirt is spared.
- Blatant Lies: Spock asks Rojan if he's jealous that Kelinda spends time alone with Kirk. "Of course not!" Rojan answers, obviously aggravated.
- Blue-and-Orange Morality: The Kelvans have apparently rejected pretty much damn near everything to focus on intellectual pursuits. Including emotion and senses, but they still have notions of honor and duty.
- Buffy Speak: By the time Scotty gets down to one of his last, last secret supplies of hooch, he's so sloshed that the only description he can come up with for it is "green".
- Can Only Move the Eyes: The effects of the Kelvan stunning device used in the beginning.
- Continuity Nod:
- A reference is made to Spock's method of escape from Eminiar VII in "A Taste Of Armageddon".
- The episode "Where No Man Has Gone Before" is not only referenced, they use Stock Footage from it (though the remastered version uses all-new effects shots). The Kelvans ran into the barrier on their way into this galaxy, which is why there's only five of them, and why they need the Enterprise in the first place (their ship got smashed). The Enterprise, meanwhile, gets through it a hell of a lot better than last time - not even a single exploding console.
- Crazy Jealous Guy: Rojan becomes increasingly jealous of Kelinda spending time with Kirk. His jealousy gets so bad that he demands that she stay away from Kirk under the threat that Kirk will be neutralized if she doesn’t. He also starts a physical fight with Kirk after seeing him and Kelinda kissing.
- Drinking Contest: Scotty manages to drink a Kelvan under the table. Then he takes away the passed-out Kelvan's magic belt buckle, planning to get it to Captain Kirk... right after he takes a little nap.
- Easily Forgiven: Justified. Kirk is willing to overlook how the Kelvans hijacked his ship, and how one of them killed one of his crew members, in order to talk them into peaceful settlement like he'd tried to at the beginning of the episode. Why justified? Well, you try telling Sufficiently Advanced Aliens that they're on trial for first degree murder.
- The Empire: The Kelvan Empire. Rojan implies they've got several species under their thumb... er, tentacles. Problem is, their home in Andromeda's getting a little too radioactive, so the solution is to spread out to other galaxies. And then conquer them.
- Food Pills: Kelvans insist this is a more efficient method of nutrition, until they try real food.
- Forgotten Phlebotinum: For the journey to Andromeda, the Kelvans make upgrades that allow the Enterprise to travel safely at many times her previous top speed. The upgrades are still in place at the end of the episode, but they're never referred to again.
- A Form You Are Comfortable With: Spock describes the Kelvans' true forms as being very Cthulhu-like.
- Genre Savvy: Kelinda has studied human literature, and as a result she can tell that Kirk is trying to seduce her! However, she welcomes his advances.
- Go to Your Room!: Rojan orders a frustrated and angry Hanar to confine himself to his quarters.
- Good Old Fisticuffs: Rojan is so angry to find Kelinda with Kirk that he lets himself be drawn into a fistfight, even when Kirk dares him to just use his paralyzer. This proves to be the last straw that convinces him that he can't control the physical and emotional responses that come with taking human form.
- Green-Eyed Monster: Rojan can't stand it when Kelinda is with Kirk.
- Human Aliens: The Kelvans have taken on human "shells" which, to all appearances, look and function like ours. And saves on the effects budget.
- Humanity Ensues: The more time Kelvans spend as humans, the more human-like they become.
- Instant People: Just Add Water!: The Kelvans reduce the Enterprise crew to cuboctahedral blocks of their basic elements. (Picture here
◊.) A Redshirt is killed by being crushed while in this form; others are restored. - Intoxication Ensues: The crew takes advantage of the Kelvans' unfamiliarity with their new human bodies to employ two variations: Scotty drinks one of them under the table, while Bones tricks another into taking stimulant injections until he starts acting like a hyperactive child who just washed down a bag of candy with a pot of espresso.
- Leitmotif: Bagpipes for Scotty.
- Literary Allusion Title: Kirk quotes a line from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet to Kelinda, who is fascinated by flowers. "That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet."
- Literally Shattered Lives: Rojan smashes Yeoman Thompson as a way of intimidating Kirk into letting him have the Enterprise.
- Love Makes You Stupid: Rojan completely forgot he had a belt buckle that could freeze people or turn them into crushable blocks when he saw Kirk kissing Kelinda and attacked him with his bare hands. Kirk even points it out; he's too angry to think straight, and was already overstimulated before this.
- The Main Characters Do Everything: A justified example. The Kelvans reduce all "non-essential" crew members to ceramic blocks; "non-essential" turns out to mean everyone barring Kirk, Spock, Bones, and Scotty, and thus it naturally falls to these four to regain control of the ship. Furthermore, due to these characters' high ranks and vital functions note it makes perfect sense the Kelvans would deem them "essential" relative to the rest of the crew.
- Manly Tears: A half-drunk Scotty sheds them when he realizes he has to sacrifice his rare bottle of aged whiskey to save the ship. Keep in mind, he earlier had no qualms about taking everyone's life including his own to keep the Kelvans from accomplishing their objectives. Liquor is Serious Business. The tears turn into Tears of Joy when that bottle manages to get the Kelvan under the table. A proud Scotty kisses the bottle.Scotty: We did it, you and me! Right under the table!
- Men Are the Expendable Gender: Subverted when Yeoman Thompson takes one for the team.
- The Milky Way Is the Only Way: Not only will the journey to Andromeda take several hundred years, there is also an energy barrier surrounding the Milky Way and blocking the way out that the Enterprise barely manages to cross.
- A Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Read: When Spock glimpses into the Kelvan's minds, he feels a surge of mental pain from their incredibly complex thoughts.
- Neutral Female: When Kirk and Rojan get into a brawl, Kelinda stands around looking helpless, even though she's armed with a paralysis ray that could easily bring the fight to a halt. Given that she's a Kelvan woman overstimulated by Kirk's romance, she's no doubt still processing the new emotional experience of being fought over (physically included).
- No-Sell: In order to get out of their cell, Kirk judo-chops Kelinda. After they get caught seconds later, she just casually strolls on past and takes her stuff back.
- "Not So Different" Remark: Rojan says to Kirk, "I think we're somewhat alike, captain." Because Rojan is the leader of his crew, and he recognizes that Kirk suffers when his crew suffers.
- Objectshifting: Aliens from the Andromeda Galaxy have a device that can change people into a small geometric solid. The resulting solids can be easily crushed, killing the original person.
- Orgasmically Delicious: Bones remarks that if one of the Kelvans enjoys his food much more, he'll need a diet.
- Playing Sick: Spock puts himself into a trance to make the Kelvans think he needs to go to sick bay.
- Real Men Wear Pink: Or real aliens in the form of men.
- Red Shirt: Yeoman Thompson is the only female redshirt during TOS's run (a "redskirt")— the only other female Enterprise crewmembers to die on-screen were Lt. Tracy from "Wolf in the Fold" and Lt. Galway from "The Deadly Years", but they both wore a blue uniform rather than a red one.
- Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale:
- The trip is said to take 300 years. Still, going at warp 11 for any length of time is bound to turn anyone into chunky salsa.
- That said, the trip being several million light years is an acknowledgement that even for Sufficiently Advanced Aliens, travelling to the next galaxy is gonna take a hell of a long time. Space is big.
- The energy barrier that surrounds the Milky Way. Just attempt to guess the requirements to envelop an entire galaxy (and probably at least part of its halo).
- Sense Freak: Kirk's plan to wrest control of the ship relies on driving the Kelvans to distraction by bombarding them with physical and emotional sensations they don't know how to handle.
- Sick Captive Scam: After Kirk, Spock and Doctor McCoy are imprisoned by the Kelvans, Spock places himself in a trance in order to appear to be ill. McCoy tells the Kelvans that Spock needs to be taken to the Enterprise in order to be cured, and they fall for it.
- Smart People Play Chess: Spock screws with Rojan's new and unfamiliar tendency toward emotion while beating him at chess.
- The Spock: The Kelvans fit this trope better than Spock himself, as he quickly surmises, although assuming human form makes them capable of emotion.
- Starfish Aliens: What the Kelvans are in their true forms, as Spock glimpses briefly. Apparently they're giant squidlike things with a hundred arms, each of which they can control on independent tasks simultaneously. That'd be a strain even on a modern CGI budget, never mind Trek's (at least, not without looking seriously goofy). They also have no concept of love, food, drink, or the like, having given all of it up in favor of intellectual pursuits.
- Stock Footage: The Enterprise returns to the galactic barrier, seen in the second pilot, "Where No Man Has Gone Before". All footage of the barrier is recycled from the earlier installment.
- Suicide Mission: At first, they consider blowing up the ship rather than letting the Kelvans have it, but Kirk insists on taking a third option.
- Through His Stomach: The Kelvans are offered food and drink to make them more amenable.
- Title Drop: When Kelinda is fascinated by flowers on the planet's surface, Kirk mumbles, "a rose by any other name." He then explains that this is a quote from the great human poet William Shakespeare.
- Two of Your Earth Minutes: The Kelvans' planned voyage should take only "300 of your years." Are Earth time periods common knowledge across multiple galaxies?
- What Is This Thing You Call "Love"?: And flowers? And food? And booze? And drugs? The Kelvans are unused to human sensations.
- What Ever Happened To The Mouse: We never actually get a chance to see what happens to Scotty and Tomar after Kirk makes peace with the Kelvans.
- Would Hit a Girl:
- Kirk would to escape from a desperate situation. Of course, he "apologizes" later.
- Rojan kills Yeoman Thompson, a rare female Red Shirt.
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