YMMV / Star Trek S1 E29 "Operation: Annihilate!"

• Angst? What Angst?: The jocular tone of the epilogue is somewhat jarring, considering the deaths of Kirk's brother and sister-in-law are not even mentioned. (A more sombre scene that would have immediately preceded it and wrapped up that subplot was filmed but cut for time.)
• Ho Yay: Needless to say, Kirk and Spock. The aforementioned Angst? What Angst? combined with lines such as "I need you Spock" and "Your affection to Spock" make it seem like Kirk is much more concerned about Spock than he was of his own brother. (To be fair, he arrived after Sam was already dead, whereas with Spock he had a chance to save him, as well as being there to witness his suffering.)
• Retroactive Recognition: As an adult, Peter Kirk's actor Craig Hundley^note who also played Tommy Starnes in "And the Children Shall Lead" became a composer of jazz and electronic music, including the background music for the Genesis Project demonstration video in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Hundley also helped popularize the Blaster Beam, which was featured heavily in the soundtrack to Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: A common criticism is that Kirk goes through a Deus Angst Machina, with his brother dying, his sister in law dying in agony, his nephew having to be kept sedated so he doesn't go through the same, Spock in pain and later blinded, and having to do a Kodos in maybe killing a million people, and as much as Shatner does a great job in having it all pile on (and later official books having it be an important episode for Kirk's PTSD), there's too little time for anything that isn't Spock.
• The Woobie: Spock for the amount of pain he's in, and Kirk gets an array of traumas to go through. While the last scene is Angst? What Angst?, the official bio did some Arc Welding for the more trio-based season two and three, making this episode and Edith the reason Kirk is so co-dependent on Bones and Spock.

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