Then, when Spock admits that the events of those missions were recorded, Spock mind melds with Kirk. For the life of me, I had no memory of that but loved that in the final episode, they showed some respect to the past episodes. Unlike the last time this happened ( Whom Gods Destroy), Kirk doesn’t ask for a random maneuver he instead goes with the events of The Tholian Web and The Empath.
Speaking of continuity, we do have another “stalemate moment” where Kirk needs to convince Spock that he is who he says he is. But I guess we’ll have to get there eventually. He says “Not precisely, no,” which is not true especially if we start to consider the movies. And the worst for continuity is asking Spock if he’s ever encountered such a mind transfer before. Janice-in-Kirk’s body records a Captain’s log – not very rational! The courtroom scene has probably the most embarrassing comment when Janice-in-Kirk’s body tries to get the courtroom to imagine Janice overpowering Jim. When Kirk-in-Janice’s body has to get out of the sickbay bed, s/he cuts the band but it looked like she could have just slid out from under it. The episode does have some failings beyond overacting.
Well… in a female body inhabiting a male body. Janice just happens to be a nut in a female body. One might argue that having him behave irrationally was a slight against women, but I don’t see it. Scotty specifically comes off as magnificent! His will to stand against Jim knowing that “if Spock thinks it happened, then it’s got to be logical,” is a testament to what he, and the crew at large, thinks of the first officer, but it’s also a testament to what they think of Jim. But watching the crew stand together with Spock against all odds impressed me no end. Janice has possession of Kirk’s body and by default, the law is on her side because no one can really prove she’s not actually Kirk. It would be a while before Trek returned, but we wouldn’t come close to the sexism of this series.Īs much as I don’t love this episode, though, it does have some great moments. In some ways, ending here was appropriate. Even the bridge crew and Nurse Chapel wear skirts that only cover the very minimum of their bottoms. Recent history alone gives us Droxine and Zarabeth, but let us not forget Shahna in The Gamesters of Triskelion or Miramanee in The Paradise Syndrome or Nona in A Private Little War or… well, we could do this forever. “Ok, if you won’t wear sexy attire, what’s the point of strange new worlds?!” And by Surak, there were some sexy outfits. “No more,” says the unseen woman in the production crew, not happy with so many exploited women.
It’s easy to see this episode as the door being closed on all of that. Yet it is funny because so many episodes of Star Trek feature women in ridiculously sexy outfits or viewed through soft focus cameras with evocative music. Janice is Kirk’s enemy because: “Your world of starship captains doesn’t admit women!” Or perhaps because: “Now you know the indignity of being a woman!” It’s largely her interpretation but it carries weight enough to drive her. It goes from watching Shatner overact to a story about how well a group of friends know one another and that becomes, to quote Spock, fascinating. But the episode actually starts picking up once Spock starts to believe Kirk-in-Lester’s-Body. And it leads to one weird episode! Honestly, it must have been a real challenge for Shatner to play a woman in a man’s body and for that, you have to give him, and the episode, some credit. Arriving on the planet Camus II, Kirk meets an old girlfriend who is really rather annoyed that she’s a woman.
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