Star Trek - The Original Series, Vol. 28, Episodes 55 & 56: Assignment: Earth/ Spectre of the Gun
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List Price: $19.99
Features
• Closed-captioned
• Color
• Dolby
• DVD-Video
• Full Screen
• Subtitled
• NTSC
In Theaters : 08 September, 1966
DVD Release : 10 July, 2001 |
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Star Trek - The Original Series, Vol. 28, Episodes 55 & 56: Assignment: Earth/ Spectre of the Gun description
"Assignment: Earth"
The final broadcast episode of Star Trek's second season was this clever and funny story in which the Enterprise travels back in time to 1968 (the year this program aired) to discover how the nuclear arms race came to an end. Captain Kirk (William Shatner) encounters a strange fellow named Gary Seven (Robert Lansing), who claims to have been trained by extraterrestrials in sabotaging the escalating nuclear threat. With the ambivalent aid of a nervous secretary (Teri Garr), Seven (yes, there was a Trek character with that name before Voyager) attempts to carry out his assignment, but Kirk isn't sure if he can be trusted. Lansing's droll and somewhat imperious performance is nicely counterpointed by Garr's cute confusion, and the eerie presence of his familiar--a black cat named Isis--adds a hint of hoodoo exotica. (Don't blink at the end or you'll miss the really exotic creature Isis briefly turns into.) "Assignment: Earth" was actually the pilot for an intended Gene Roddenberry-produced TV series that never happened. Too bad... But speaking of eerie, Spock (Leonard Nimoy) at one point refers to an important assassination that will soon take place. A week after this episode's original airdate, Dr. Martin Luther King was murdered. "Spectre of the Gun"
In this taut, exciting episode, the Enterprise trespasses Melkotian space and is punished in a unique fashion. Kirk (William Shatner), Spock (Leonard Nimoy), McCoy (DeForest Kelley), Scotty (James Doohan), and Chekov (Walter Koenig) are all transported to the planet's eerie surface, where they are trapped in a re-creation of 1881 Tombstone and mistaken for the Clanton brothers, doomed principals in the infamous gunfight at the OK Corral. Despite their efforts to avoid trouble, Kirk and company can't seem to avoid their fateful duel with the Earp brothers and Doc Holliday (Sam Gilman). When Chekov is shot dead by Morgan Earp (Rex Holman), the danger is all too clear. The strange Twilight Zone look and atmosphere of this episode--tumbleweeds and Old West facades popping up in a black void--grips one's imagination and doesn't let go until the very end. Fans of Captain Kirk's street-fighting style will especially enjoy the thrilling climax. --Tom Keogh |
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Star Trek - The Original Series, Vol. 28, Episodes 55 & 56: Assignment: Earth/ Spectre of the Gun Customer Reviews
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And So Season 2 Ends and Season 3 Begins!
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This volume would come under the "nice-to-have but not essential" category if you are picking which volumes to keep. We have a couple of strange episodes here but for different reasons.
In the first episode, the Enterprise clearly plays second fiddle as Gary Seven and his assistant played by the multi-talented comedianne, Teri Garr, take the leading roles as an episode of Trek is sacrificed so that a pilot for a new sci-fi adventure could be showcased and mooted for public acceptance. Based on the evidence of this episode, it may actually be a shame that this attempt at a spin-off creation didn't succeed as there is enough here to suggest that Gary Seven may well have gone on to be quite a good series. Overall, this was a pretty decent episode to end the second season and it was a lot better than the previous few episodes that were major disappointments given what we had seen in the first season and the first half of the second.
The second episode of this volume is the beginning of the third and final season and is actually a good one. It's as if the powers that be realised just how badly the second half of the second season was and they decided to suck it up and we have here what overall is a very well-acted and well-written episode with a unique plot. A superior race of beings employ a very interesting method in determining whether or not to engage alien visitors on a friendly level based upon their reactions to situations created entirely in the mind of the one in charge (here Kirk) based on the premise that the leader reflects the overall thinking of the masses and should the leader fail to show the requisite behaviour when faced with the hypothetical situation, the entire band would be sent off on their merry way. For this reason, this episode ranks among my personal favourites although admittedly not among the all-time best Trek episodes ever.
In conclusion, this volume represents a significant improvement over the previous few volumes and is a good way to end season two and begin the next. |
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Star Trek - The Original Series, Vol. 28, Episodes 55 dvd movie.