the m0vie blog

The first Star Trek pilot, The Cage, was produced in 1964. To celebrate its fiftieth anniversary, this December we are reviewing the second season of the original Star Trek show. You can check out our first season reviews here. Check back daily for the latest review.

Amok Time was the fifth show produced for the second season of Star Trek, but was the first show to air. This isn’t unusual. The production and broadcast order of various Star Trek episodes have not necessarily matched up. On shows like Star Trek: The Next Generation or Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, this was usually due to production delays or changes on specific episodes. On Star Trek: Voyager, the first and second seasons produced episodes that would not be aired until the other side of summer.

However, on the original Star Trek, the production and broadcast order of the episodes is radically different. For example, Friday’s Child was the third episode of the second season produced, but the eleventh broadcast. This makes watching the show in production order on blu ray a delightfully frustrating experience. The first five episodes produced for the second season are split across three different discs.

Sometimes the changes in production order were purely practical. For example, The Man Trap was the first episode of Star Trek to air because it happened to be the most suitable of the episodes that had been produced to that point. The broadcast order of the first season introduced all manner of production and continuity glitches, with uniforms and cast changing seemingly randomly. Still, The Man Trap was felt to be, effectively, the least bad option to introduce new audiences to Star Trek.

Amok Time, the second season premiere, was an entirely different kettle of fish. This was easily the strongest of the three Star Trek season premieres, and there’s a sense that the production team knew this going into the episode. Designed to ruthlessly capitalise on the popularity and success surrounding the character of Spock, the episode was very clearly intended to put the show’s best foot forward for audiences returning to watch the second season. The result is one of the best episodes the franchise ever produced.

Re-watching Star Trek demonstrates what an impression the show made on the popular consciousness at time of broadcast. The series is packed with iconic moments and imagery. Even the show’s much-troubled and much-maligned third season is packed to the brim with images that linger in the consciousness long after the final credits have rolled. In some respects, Star Trek as a pop culture phenomenon is more a collection of iconic moments than classic episodes.

Amok Time is a particularly iconic example. There is no way to get around it.  Amok Time itself provides one of the show’s most memorable climaxes and also one of its best-loved audio cues. Even the most casual of Star Trek fans are familiar with the idea of Kirk and Spock fighting to the death as the drum and trumpet sections go wild. Michael Giacchino was wary of the music theme’s place in popular culture, but still incorporated it into The San Fran Hustle on the soundtrack to Star Trek Into Darkness.

In an interview with Emmy TV Legends, composer Gerald Fried joked that he knew the score was iconic when he started getting royalty cheques from The Simpsons:

I started to get royalty cheques from The Simpsons. I didn’t write any music for The Simpsons! What they did was that when Bart Simpson would get angry and cross the living room or something like that, they quoted the music from Amok Time. Did you know that? I didn’t know that!

Films like The Cable Guy have even lifted the fight sequence directly, pitting two “friends” against one another to the familiar music. T’Pau had an eighties pop band named after her. This properly iconic Star Trek, right here.

Star Trek itself absolutely loves the episode. Vulcan pon farr became a plot point on both Star Trek: Voyager and Star Trek: Enterprise. The weight of fan expectation made sure that Voyager was absolutely obligated to do a “Tuvok has pon farr” episode, even if the show relegated it to a subplot in the last possible season. Casting an attractive young woman as the show’s Vulcan science officer, Enterprise got to its “pon farr plot” towards the end of its second season.

The franchise is particularly fond of re-staging the episode’s climactic fight sequence. Ritualistic duals with exotic weaponry becomes something of a franchise staple in the wake of Amok Time. The first season of The Next Generation even frames something of a gender-reversed homage in the dire Code of Honour, while Enterprise swaps out the Vulcan first officer for an Andorian recurring cast member in United.

There is a sense that the production staff knew this going into the episode. Theodore Sturgeon had been asked to write the script for the first season, but he was not able to get the draft completed on time. Rather than rushing the script, These Are the Voyages: Season Two quotes Roddenberry as patient with Sturgeon’s writing:

This is a critical script for Star Trek! There should be no doubt in anyone’s mind that the Spock characterisation has caught the public’s fancy. Carelessness now may see that character and characterisation irreparably damaged. This must be one of our best and most carefully thought out scripts of the year. If there is any doubt about this, I would much rather see this episode shot a month or two from now, replaced with something less important which we can quickly hammer into shape. Let’s not rush this one!

This certainly fits with the facts as we have them. Amok Time was the fifth episode of the second season produced, but the first to air. The episodes produced beforehand were all troubled to one degree or another. The first three episodes produced were shuffled into the middle of the season, airing seventh, ninth and eleventh.

Of course, there was reason to believe that Amok Time would be a success even without Sturgeon’s memorable and brilliant script. After all, Leonard Nimoy’s Spock had been the breakout character of the first season, to the point where Roddenberry himself was forced to brainstorm with Isaac Asimov about how to keep the audience interested in Kirk. Nimoy was receiving more fan mail than Shatner, and had used this popularity as leverage to renegotiate his contract with the studio.

So the idea of doing a season premiere centring around Spock as a bit of a no-brainer. In particular, a story that centred on Spock’s homeworld, allowing viewers a chance to get a glimpse of Vulcan for the first time. More than that, Amok Time traded on Spock’s status as the show’s most improbable sex symbol by teasing viewers with a glimpse of what Vulcan mating practices must look like. It’s hard to imagine a more perfectly calibrated episode to open the second season.

Amok Time is interesting because it presents the viewer with the first real glimpse into the world of the enigmatic Mister Spock. Literally, in the sense that this is our first trip to Vulcan. However, it also affords us the first real look at Mister Spock’s quarters. We had briefly glimpsed a small section of them in The Menagerie, but this is the first time that the audience has been invited to spend any significant amount of time in them. With beautiful sculptures that evoke Earth’s eastern cultures, shades of red and incense burning, these quarters hint at a more spiritual side to the show’s half-Vulcan character.

Indeed, Amok Time even hints ahead towards Journey to Babel later in the second season. Spock acknowledges that this ceremony takes place on land belonging to his family. “This is the land of my family,” he tells Kirk. “It has been held by us for more than two thousand Earth years.” Apparently Spock’s family is so important that a figure as well known and respected as T’Pau will oversee this ritual for him. “He never mentioned that his family was this important,” Kirk reflects to McCoy.

Of course, this makes a great deal of sense when Journey to Babel reveals that Spock’s father is one of the Federation’s most venerated ambassadors. As such, it seems quite reasonable that Spock’s family would have significant land holdings on Vulcan. It is also entirely in keeping with Spock’s character that he would never discuss this with Kirk or McCoy, just as he would never discuss his pon farr with either of his closest friends.

One of the more interesting retroactive twists on Amok Time is the suggestion that Vulcans aren’t really that concerned with privacy about pon farr. While still treating individual cases as a matter of privacy, it seems like it is reasonably well known in a general sense. It is discussed quite openly in various episodes of Star Trek: Enterprise, and the Doctor seems quite familiar with it in Blood Fever on Star Trek: Voyager. This could easily be written off as an oversight on the part of the writers, but it also suggests that Spock is particularly sensitive about such things.

Still, Amok Time represents the first real look at Vulcan. As a result, it represents the first time that the franchise has visited the home world of a major character – the show hasn’t even visited Earth yet. In a way, Amok Time could be seen as a bit of early world-building for the franchise. This treatment and development of the Vulcans would pave the way for later development of the Romulans and the Klingons. Sins of the Father would not be possible without Amok Time.

In a way, this represents a pretty dramatic shift away from the first season. The first episodes of Star Trek were notoriously lax on continuity or detail. From episode to episode, the show could not seem to decide who Kirk was working for, or what the name of Spock’s species might be. It was only towards the middle and end of the first season of Star Trek that we got familiar terms like “Federation” and “Starfleet” and “Klingon.”

With the return of the Klingons in Friday’s Child and the visit to Vulcan in Amok Time, it seems that the show isn’t just trying to expand its world outwards. It is trying to add more depth and nuance to the world that is inhabited by these characters. Allowing Kirk and McCoy to beam down to the planet surface and witness a rather mystical and traditional ritual, the show is suggesting that Kirk’s mission isn’t just to push the frontier forward and discover new life-forms, but to learn more about the worlds he already knows.

The portrayal of Vulcan here is absolutely fascinating. Far from emphasising the logical nature of Vulcans, Amok Time stresses the emotions that must bubble beneath the surface. “What they are about to see comes down from the time of the beginning, without change,” she advises Kirk. “This is the Vulcan heart. This is the Vulcan soul. This is our way.” It adds an interesting conflict to the heart of the Vulcan character, suggesting the race’s rational and disciplined exterior hides a rather mystical core.

The production design seems to channel a decidedly eastern aesthetic. There is a rather New Age feel to proceedings. This could be seen to reflect Hollywood’s contemporary fascination with eastern philosophy. As Anne MacKenzie Pearson notes in From Thwarted Gods to Reclaimed Mystery?:

Roddenberry’s apparent sympathy for Japanese Buddhism may help to explain the Zen-like atmosphere of Vulcan culture which, like Zen, is presented as very ordered, disciplined and contemplative. Vulcan culture is, of course, also super-rational and, like Zen, has no beliefs in a personal god, yet it accepts a (benevolent) priestly hierarchy that oversees ritual rites of passage (e.g. the Vulcan “pon farr” and “kohlinar”). The moral philosophy of Vulcan culture is based on nonviolence, an important ethical precept of Buddhism. And for all the emphasis on logic and the purging of emotion, there are definite mystical elements to Vulcan ways. The picture seems to reflect a rather typical Western understanding of Zen Buddhism: simple, even austere but mystical, and, above all, supporting a philosophy that locates the search for truth as beginning and ending with the self.

The episode stresses other New Age aspects of the Vulcan character. “T’Pring, parted from me and never parted, never and always touching and touched,” Spock greets his mate, evoking the same sort of telepathy and extra-sensory perception that Roddenberry hinted at in Where No Man Has Gone Before.

Amok Time is also notable for the introduction of the famous Vulcan salute and the iconic “live long and prosper” pronouncement. As Yonassan Gershom notes in Jewish Themes in Star Trek, the gesture was improvised by Nimoy and has its roots in Jewish culture:

Nimoy felt that there should be some kind of distinctive greeting among Vulcans, analogous to a handshake or bow. Alan Dean Foster’s novelisation, based on an early script, has Spock kneeling before the Vulcan matriarch, T’Pau, who places her hands on his shoulders, like royalty dubbing a knight. But Nimoy didn’t care for this idea. Previous episodes had already established that Vulcans are touch telepaths. Therefore, a touch on the shoulders would be an invasion of privacy. Instead, Nimoy drew upon his own Jewish background to suggest the now-familiar salute. Back in the 1960s, hippies who watched Amok Time thought the salute was a variation of the two-fingered peace sign. But we Jews knew better. The Vulcan salute came not from protest marches, but from the pulpit of Nimoy’s childhood synagogue.

These elements that would become so essential to the franchise that US President Barack Obama would greet Leonard Nimoy with the gesture. (Although it should be noted that James Blish wrote the novelisation.)

Interestingly, the original draft of Amok Time featured extended sequences of dialogue in Vulcan. According to These Are the Voyages: Season Two, these were cut with the support of D.C. Fontana:

PLEASE eliminate all the Vulcan dialogue and keep it in English. Saves translation and it will keep everyone informed of which player is where. Also, I anticipate the biggest laugh of the year in Scene 58 when T’Pring utters some large Vulcan pronouncement and Spork stares back at her, saying, “T’Pring! Klart!”

A few words remain in the finished script, just enough to give a bit of local flavour to Vulcan. It is interesting that Star Trek drew the line at a Vulcan language at this point. It wouldn’t be until the films that the franchise reached the point where scenes could be filmed in an alien language – Vulcan in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Klingon in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock.

However, Amok Time is fascinating for what it represents even outside the exploration of Spock’s culture and his home world. Amok Time works rather well as an example of a Star Trek parable, a science-fiction story that works very well as a piece of social commentary on the world around it. In this case, Amok Time was being broadcast towards the end of 1967, in the wake of the “Summer of Love.” It was a period of sexual liberation, often deemed the sexual revolution.

It was a time at which the mainstream was having to confront all manner of sexual expression – often outside the norms as defined by society. Spock is presented as a deeply repressed individual, much like he was in The Naked Time. It’s telling that his first confession to Kirk concerns his own awkwardness around Christine Chapel’s obvious sexual attraction to him. “It is undignified for a woman to play servant to a man who is not hers,” Spock explains, as if complaining about unmarried flirtation.

When Spock tries to explain the process to Kirk, he can only use the euphemism “biological” instead of anything more accurate or specific. As Beth Bailey notes in Sexual Revolution(s), television often found it struggling to deal with the sexual revolution of the sixties:

In 1957 America’s favourite TV couple, the safely married Ricky and Lucy Ricardo, slept in twin beds. Having beds at all was probably progressive – as late as 1962 June and Ward Cleaver did not even have a bedroom. Elvis’ pelvis was censored in each of his three appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1956, leaving his oddly disembodied upper torso and head thrashing about on the TV screen. But the sensuality in his eyes, his lips, his lyrics was unmistakable, and his genitals were all the more important in their absence. There was, likewise, no mistaking Mick Jagger’s meaning when he grimaced ostentatiously and sang ‘Let’s spend some time together’ on Ed Sullivan in 1967. Much of the audience knew that the line was really ‘Let’s spend the night together’, and the rest quickly got the idea. The viewing public could see absence and hear silence – and therein lay the seeds of the sexual revolution.

Kirk tries to encourage Spock to be a little more open about it. “Well, there’s no need to be embarrassed about it, Mister Spock,” he assures his science officer. “It happens to the birds and the bees.” Spock simply replies, “The birds and the bees are not Vulcans, Captain.”

Science-fiction provided an appealing avenue to explore these ideas that couldn’t be openly discussed in the mainstream. As Camille Bacon-Smith observed in Science Fiction Culture, Theodore Sturgeon was among those who helped push that boat out:

In fact, stories with adult themes that included sexuality had no easy time finding an outlet in the United States, where issues of man’s relationships with technology were the norm as well as the stereotype until the New Wave of the 1960s expanded the sexual horizons of the genre. But ever since science fiction’s inception as a literature of technological romance, a subset of writers and fans have grappled with the definitions of sexuality that the genre would embrace. Theodore Sturgeon wrote passionate stories with sexual themes as early as the ’40s. In 1953, when the science fiction fans awarded the first Hugos, Philip José Farmer won the “New SF Author or Artists category” for The Lovers, a novella published in Startling Stories. Sometimes lagging behind the general population, sometimes surging ahead of it, the debate continues into the twenty-first century.

Science-fiction thrives on allegory and metaphor. As such, it should be no surprise that it could deal with themes and subtexts that were not really fodder for more mainstream consumption.

In the same year that Philip José Farmer won a Huge for The Lovers, Theodore Sturgeon published The World Well Lost. As Wendy Pearson explains in The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy, this really shifted the portrayal of homosexual relationships within science-fiction:

Until the 1950s, homosexuality in science fiction and fantasy was either allegorical or used as a mark of evil. Eric Garder and Lyn Paleo note that overt images of homosexuality in this period were ‘overwhelmingly stereotypic and one-dimensional.’ Theodore Sturgeon is usually credited with the first sympathetic treatment of homosexuality in science fiction, The World Well Lost, a tale of both alien and human same-sex desire that sympathises with its characters’ dilemma even as it see no possible happy ending for either the alien lovers or the human spaceman in love with his captain.

As such, the rather strong sexual subtext of Amok Time seems unlikely to be a coincidence. With Amok Time, Sturgeon rather heavily heaps even more sexual subtext into the relationship between Kirk and Spock.

Spock has always been relatively easy to code as a closeted gay man. He struggles to repress his urges and desires so that he may function within society. He is intensely private and withdrawn with the people around him. He has an awkward relationship with his father, who blames Spock for deviating from the life that was planned for him. Spock’s one romance of the first season – in This Side of Paradise – ends after a wrestling session with Kirk in the Enterprise’s transporter room.

Sturgeon plays up all those elements rather dramatically. Spock rejects the female crew member with an obvious attraction to him. Spock refuses to talk about his personal life, even when Kirk assures him that sex is a perfectly natural biological function. Once again, Spock sublimates his sexual urges into a fight with Kirk. Amok Time features Spock strangling Kirk in the middle of his “blood fever.” In an earlier insert, we practically see the eyes rolling back in Spock’s head.

It almost goes without saying that strangulation is coded as a method of murder with a heavy sexual subtext. Of course, it would have been very difficult for McCoy to revive Kirk had Spock beheaded him, and most other forms of death would likely have been deemed inappropriate for the audience at home, but it’s very hard not to read a homosexual subtext into that sequence. As soon as Spock has finished, his logic and rationality returns.

“It must have been the combat,” Spock explains to McCoy. “When I thought I had killed the captain, I found I had lost all interest in T’Pring. The madness was gone.” His lust had been sated. Of course, Amok Time could also be read as a commentary on the potential damage done by sexual repression. Spock is so buttoned down that his impulses must find expression in some form or another, so the lead to violence and murder – reinforcing common arguments about the links between sexual repression and violence.

Still, it seems like fandom picked up on the homosexual subtext rather quickly. The first romantic fan fiction pairing Kirk and Spock – The Ring of Shoshern – has been dated to 1967 or 1968. The climax of Amok Time served to make Mister Spock even more an icon than he had been before, with fan mail surging after the broadcast of the episode. Interestingly, Nimoy had noted a similar surge around the time that The Naked Time was broadcast, suggesting that audiences were responding to Spock’s sexual repression.

It is worth noting that – as with most scripts that passed through the production offices – Amok Time was heavily re-written and tweaked by the production staff to help it fit with their vision of Star Trek. This process was painful for Harlan Ellison when he developed The City on the Edge of Forever, but it did lead to a classic episode. With Amok Time, it seems like the process went rather smoothly.

D.C. Fontana was the writer tasked with giving Amok Time its polish, a decision that makes sense given her experience developing Spock as a character. As Fontana explained in These Are The Voyages: Season Two, this afforded her a chance to account for some of the problems with Friday’s Child:

And then, with the so-called love story — the bride and the man she really wants — I put in the fact that she was very calculating, saying, ‘You’ll be gone. I’ll still be here, and Stonn will be here.’ Like the Julie Newmar character [in Fridy’s Child], but Gene didn’t allow it there. So I brought some of that into this one… [And] the characters needed to be more clearly defined and motivated and — since I had become the resident ‘Vulcan expert’ — I got that task… But delving into the Vulcan culture that nobody had ever seen before — the ceremony, the formality, this woman who was the head of the council, T’Pau — that was all basically Sturgeon. But we made it more Star Trek.

Roddenberry had rather ruthlessly and effectively stripped the female guest character in Friday’s Child of any agency and uniqueness, reducing her to a cranky woman who becomes a proper mother as soon as a baby is put in her arms. With T’Pring, Fontana was allowed to develop a more manipulative and cynical guest character.

It is notable that T’Pring is treated like an object for most of Amok Time. As the ritual leads towards combat, T’Pau demands of her, “Thee are prepared to become the property of the victor?” It is a pretty damning indictment of Vulcan culture, even if T’Pring is allowed to choose her own champion. The idea that Vulcan law relegates a female to “property” of her mate is decidedly uncomfortable. T’Pring is not allowed to make her own decisions, except within a very narrow band. She has minimal freedom.

Interestingly, the male Vulcan can “release” the female from their bond, but the female cannot release herself. Sadly, this is not an unusual dynamic in classic Star Trek, where female characters frequently exists as pawns to be manipulated and controlled in games run by male characters. Amok Time just makes this more overt than it is in episodes like Who Mourns for Adonais? or What Are Little Girls Made Of?

However, unlike most of the female characters in the original Star Trek, T’Pring decides to react against the system that would reduce her to little more than chattel. When Spock asks her why she does not wish to be married to him, she replies, “And as the years went by, I came to know that I did not want to be the consort of a legend.” T’Pring does not want her identity to be subsumed into Spock’s. She wants to be more than just “Spock’s mate” or “the mother of Spock’s children.”

She plays the system for all that it is worth, cleverly manipulating events to ensure that the outcome is desirable. It is ruthless and cold, but it affords her considerably more agency than most female characters on the original Star Trek show. Given that Star Trek seems to treat most of its female characters as overly-emotional or fickle, this represents a bold departure – even if it arguably conforms to other unfortunate gender stereotypes. As Fontana notes, T’Pring seems quite like the original version of Eleen from Friday’s Child.

Amok Time also offers another glimpse of Gene L. Coon’s rather cynical view of Federation politics. As with Metamorphosis, one of the smaller moments in Amok Time has Kirk choosing between his duty to the Federation and the needs of individuals. In both cases, Kirk affirms the needs of the individuals over the “greater good.” In Metamorphosis, Kirk isn’t too worry about what the fusion of Nancy and the Companion means for Federation politics. In Amok Time, Kirk ignores orders to take Spock home.

Kirk is ordered to attend a Federation function on Altair Six. Starfleet stresses how vital the Enterprise’s presence is. “Altair Six is no ordinary matter,” Admiral Komack stresses. “That area is just putting itself together after a long interplanetary conflict. This inauguration will stabilise the entire Altair system.” That sounds pretty altruistic and idealistic, right? A nice show of neighbourly support for a planet emerging from a devastating war?

Naturally, this isn’t the whole picture. As with the Federation’s visit to Organia in Errand of Mercy and to Eminiar VII in A Taste of Armageddon, this diplomatic mission is ultimately military in nature. “Our appearance there is a demonstration of friendship and strength which will cause ripples clear to the Klingon Empire,” Komack adds, making it seem as if Starfleet could actually care less about all those people pulling themselves out of the wake of a devastating conflict. It’s just about showing off the Klingons.

Indeed, the episode goes even further, when Kirk reveals that Komack wasn’t necessarily painting the full picture. “I know the Altair situation,” Kirk explains. “We would be one of three starships. Very impressive, very diplomatic, but it’s simply not that vital.” Amok Time suggests that the Federation is ultimately more interested in posturing in front of an enemy (who has signed a peace treaty) than they are with the well-being of one of their own officers.

There are lots of other nice touches to Amok Time as well. The production design is absolutely fantastic. The music is iconic. The direction is superb. Even the script finds room for lots of little character moments that work very well. The short scene with Spock and Chapel reconciling in his quarters is a delightful character beat that could easily have been trimmed from the final broadcast episode, but which says a lot about both characters involved.

Although it was the fifth episode of the season produced, the fact that Amok Time was the first episode to air meant that it introduced audiences to the character of Chekov. A rather blatant attempt to cash in on the success of The Monkees, the only show to get more fan mail than Star Trek, Chekov was a character who added a bit more international flavour to the crew. Roddenberry famously boasted that he was inspired to create Chekov based on fan mail from Russia, which is a questionable piece of Star Trek lore.

Still, Amok Time does demonstrate some of Chekov’s potential appeal. Sitting at the helm and navigation station at the front of the bridge, he provides somebody to whom Sulu can talk. The cutaways to Sulu and Chekov add some nice levity to Amok Time. However, the show could equally have done scenes like that with Uhura, which would have given Nichelle Nichols something to do beyond opening hailing frequencies. So adding Chekov does seem like a very cynical move from a show that isn’t quite sure what to do with the supporting cast it already has.

Amok Time is a genuine classic. It’s one of the best pieces of Star Trek ever produced, and made a wonderful start to the show’s second season for those watching at home.

You might be interested in our other reviews from the second season of the classic Star Trek:

• Catspaw
  • Supplemental: (Gold Key) #1 – The Planet of No Return!
  • Supplemental: (Marvel Comics, 1980) #4-5 – The Haunting of Thallus!/The Haunting of the Enterprise!
• Metamorphosis
• Friday’s Child
• Who Mourns for Adonais?
• Amok Time
  • Supplemental: Spock’s World by Diane Duane
• The Doomsday Machine
  • Supplemental: New Visions #3 – Cry Vengeance
• Wolf in the Fold
• The Changeling
• The Apple
  • Supplemental: (DC Comics, 1984) #43-45 – The Return of the Serpent!
  • Supplemental: (IDW, 2009) #13 – The Red Shirt’s Tale
• Mirror, Mirror
  • Supplemental: Deep Space Nine – Crossover
  • Supplemental: New Visions #1 – The Mirror, Cracked
  • Supplemental: (DC Comics, 1984) #9-16 – New Frontiers (The Mirror Universe Saga)
  • Supplemental: Mirror Images
  • Supplemental: Mirror Universe – The Sorrows of Empire by David Mack
  • Supplemental: (IDW, 2009) #15-16 – Mirrored
• The Deadly Years
• I, Mudd
  • Supplemental: (Gold Key) #61 – Operation Con Game
  • Supplemental: (DC Comics, 1984) #39-40 – The Return of Mudd
• The Trouble With Tribbles 
  • Supplemental: The Galactic Whirlpool by David Gerrold
  • Supplemental: Alien Spotlight – Tribbles
• Bread and Circuses
• Journey to Babel
• A Private Little War
• The Gamesters of Triskelion
• Obsession
• The Immunity Syndrome
• A Piece of the Action
• By Any Other Name
• Return to Tomorrow
• Patterns of Force
• The Ultimate Computer
• The Omega Glory
• Assignment: Earth
  • Supplemental: Assignment: Eternity by Greg Cox
  • Supplemental: (DC Comics, 1989) #49-50 – The Peacekeepers
  • Supplemental: (IDW, 2008) Assignment: Earth

Filed under: The Original Series | Tagged: Amok Time, hedonism, kirk, mysticism, ponn farr, repression, sexual repression, spock, star trek, summer of love, t'pau, t'pring, Theodore Sturgeon, vulcan, Vulcans, world-building |