77 – The Savage Curtain

Grade: D+

Summary

Kirk and Spock are snatched onto a planet where they will team up with Abraham Lincoln and a legendary Vulcan named Surak against some of the most dangerous villains in history. The alien which has staged this Universal Fighting Championship wants to test the concept of good vs evil.

Commentary

There’s nothing special about this episode. At first, when you see Abraham Lincoln floating around in space, it’s a bit weird and you’re curious to see what is going to happen. Then it turns out to be some random “let’s test the Earthlings” episode that has been done to death in this franchise. It wasn’t the first time this had happened in this series, and in fact, it even happened less than 20 episodes before in “Specter of the Gun.” I wish it had been a bit more creative in getting to that point. But they were obviously running out of money and the network wasn’t committed to the show anymore. This third season really has a lot of duds.