Season 1 Episode 6 ('The Enemy Within')

I can't think of anything particularly clever to say about this episode - which is probably, in fact, continuing a trend started in the first entry - but I suppose that also means I can't think of anything particularly damning.

An unfortunate transporter malfunction ends up creating two Captain Kirks and two Tiggies (well, sort of; it's a dog in an alien costume, I can only assume it's one of Tiggy's ancestors). Good Kirk/Bad Kirk and Good Badly-Costumed-Dog/Bad Badly-Costumed-Dog. Calling them good and evil kind of ruins the nuance that the episode is trying to make, despite the fact that the episode uses that terminology.

Bad Kirk tries to get it on - forcibly - with the yeoman that he's apparently had his eye on all along, as revealed in the previous episode. Good Kirk is too indecisive and compassionate to be much use. Good Dog is small, furry, and doesn't do much. Bad Dog is small, furry, and doesn't do much... from inside a cage because it's apparently very mean. It's a race against time to fix the problem with the transporter before Sulu and a couple of Guys freeze to death on the planet they were collecting samples or whatever from.

Bad Kirk was awesome to watch. Shatner gets a lot of shit for overacting, but he didn't seem like he was overacting in that role, even though - technically - overacting would have been called for, since it should have been more intense and insane and over-the-top than a non-bad-half-of-a-human would find possible. And I'm not saying that he underacted. He just kicked ass. And yelled convincingly.

I'm tempted to call this episode's attempt to reconcile the good and the bad aspects of man, and furthermore, demonstrate that the negative aspects are needed for 'leadership' and command, very Post-War in their sensibility. But I think that might just be me looking for some kind of social commentary where there isn't any, since this is the first episode to not really kick me in the head with its Cold War-sensibility. Still, it's a fun mental quandary that I certainly haven't been able to figure out yet, and I don't imagine anyone else has either, really, outside of just accepting the pragmatic compromise that behaving like a dick sometimes is an inevitable part of behaving decently all the time.

Random stats? Sure. 6 Natty Lights (3 from the last episode; you didn't think I was gonna call it a night after three shitty beers, did you?), 120 degrees below zero on poor Mr. Sulu's nipples, 2 Kirks, and 12-20 nipples on alien-costumed-dogs, depending.