Star Trek - The Original Series, Vol. 32 - Episodes 63 & 64: The Empath/ The Tholian Web
"The Empath""The Empath" is an absolute must for fans ofStar Trek's recurring shirtless-Kirk-being-tortured motif. Kirk, Spock, and McCoy are taken to a strange laboratory and tortured by powerful aliens while a mute woman is forced to watch--a woman whose empathic abilities are being put to the test. There is, of course, a broader scheme to it all--this is one of the early manifestations ofTrek's eternal conflict between the needs of the many and the needs of the few, or the one. Keep an ear out for one of the all-time great Bonesisms ("I'm a doctor, not a coal miner!") and hang on to those fragile but oh-so-important human emotions.--Ali Davis"The Tholian Web""The Tholian Web" was conceived when writer Judy Burns went looking for a new angle on ghost stories. A physics student suggested she somehow use the theory of infinite dimensions, and out of that came Burns's script, which finds Captain Kirk (William Shatner) trapped between different kinds of space, floating in and out of view of theEnterprisecrew. Adding to the dilemma are time constraints (Kirk's oxygen supply is running low), an effort by the arachnid-like Tholians to trap theEnterprisein a gigantic web, sub-space dementia affecting the crew, and rising hostilities between Spock (Leonard Nimoy) and Dr. McCoy (DeForest Kelley), the latter none too happy with the way the Vulcan is running the ship in Kirk's absence. Burns's original conception was to make Spock the spectral Starfleet officer locked in interspace, but the show is quite effective in the way various characters mourn the presumed death of their leader and figurehead. The Tholians don't make another appearance inTreklore untilThe Next Generation, but this particular episode won the original series its first Emmy for special effects.--Tom Keogh