16 – The Galileo Seven

Grade: B-

Summary

Captain Kirk has to deliver medical supplies to a Federation planet that desperately needs medicine. Along the way, the Enterprise encounters a quasar. Apparently, Starfleet has standing orders to investigate all quasars whenever they are encountered. They send a shuttle craft near the quasar to investigate it. The shuttle goes off course and out of control.

Commentary

Spock does a great job here in charge, and I like his management style. He is decisive, in control, and logical. But I have to say the way these officers treat Spock is just ridiculous. I really can’t believe that any actual Starfleet officers would ever act this way. Even Spock seems to lose his temper at these guys, by the middle of the episode. If Spock gets angry at them, I can only imagine what a full human being would have done.

I must also admit I can’t stand the commissioner on the ship. I don’t think there’s any reason for him to be in the episode except to generate some artificial tension. It’s already tense enough, having lost the shuttlecraft and the seven officers aboard it. The commissioner basically serves the same purpose as the 6 officers who harass Spock, except his target is Captain Kirk.

If there’s one thing I do like about this episode, it’s the ending when Spock has to make an irrational decision. And yet, he reaches this decision completely logically. Sometimes you aren’t left with very many alternatives.

But let’s get back to the seven people on the Galileo. Spock is there because he is the commanding officer and he is the science officer. I’m OK with that. There is also another science officer named Boma. That’s probably just fine. There are two other officers named Gaetano and Latimer, who wear yellow shirts, which signifies command. I’m not sure why they would need to be on this particular mission. It would seem to me that they should have been science officers instead, since this was a scientific mission. The other three are the ones I have a real problem with. Why is Dr McCoy on this mission? What possible reason could there be for sending the Chief Medical Officer and ship surgeon on a mission to study the quasar? If they needed a medic, they should have sent a backup doctor, not the ship surgeon. I also don’t understand why Scotty is on this mission either. Yes, he definitely served a purpose in the episode, but on this mission, he really didn’t need to be there to help study the quasar. Finally, there’s a yeoman on board as well, and she serves absolutely no purpose at all. This really could have been the Galileo Four instead of Seven.

Of Note

This is the first time we see a shuttlecraft in Star Trek. They could have used it in the previous episode week when they couldn’t beam down more than one person toward the end of Shore Leave.

This is also the first time that I don’t like the enhanced special effects. The launch of the Galileo shuttlecraft looked especially unrealistic. The rest of the effects are fine, even if they look a little fake.