The Enemy Within (Star Trek: The Original Series)

"The Enemy Within"
Star Trek: The Original Series episode
The evil Kirk makes advances toward Yeoman Rand.
Episode no.	Season 1 Episode 5
Directed by	Leo Penn
Written by	Richard Matheson
Featured music	Sol Kaplan
Cinematography by	Jerry Finnerman
Production code	5
Original air date	October 6, 1966 (1966-10-06)
Guest actors
Jim Goodwin - Farrell Edward Madden - Fisher Eddie Paskey - Connors Garland Thompson - Wilson Don Eitner
Episode chronology
← Previous "The Naked Time" Next → "Mudd's Women"
List of Star Trek: The Original Series episodes

"The Enemy Within" is an episode of the science fiction television series Star Trek. It was first broadcast on October 6, 1966. It is the fifth episode of the first season, written by Richard Matheson and directed by Leo Penn.

In the plot, a transporter malfunction causes the captain to be split into two individuals, a good and evil captain Kirk which come aboard separately, which strands some of the crew of the Enterprise, on the planet till a solution can be found

Plot

On stardate 1672.1, the Federation starship USS Enterprise is on a geological exploration of the planet Alpha 177. Geological Technician Fisher falls from an embankment and injures his hand. He is immediately beamed back to the Enterprise for medical treatment. During the beamup, the transporter system behaves oddly. Nearly losing the technician, Chief Engineer Scott immediately checks over the transporter equipment, but finds nothing wrong. He only notices magnetic dust from some ore samples covering Fisher's uniform when the technician materializes. Scott orders him to have the uniform decontaminated.

Soon afterward, Captain Kirk beams back to the ship. The transporter seems to work smoothly, but Kirk feels disoriented. Scott escorts him out of the room, leaving it empty. A moment later, a second Captain Kirk materializes on the transporter pad and no one is aware of his arrival. This Kirk is the "other half" of the Captain's split persona: a physical manifestation of his more selfish and evil qualities.

The first thing the "evil" Kirk does is head to Sickbay, where he demands a bottle of Saurian brandy from Chief Medical Officer Dr. McCoy. McCoy doesn't understand this sudden, aggressive mood swing.

Back in the transporter room, Scott beams up an animal specimen from the landing party, which appears to be a small, horned, dog-like creature. Two "dogs", however, arrive on the transporter pads. One is extremely vicious, while the other is very docile, yet they appear physically identical. Confirming that the team only beamed one animal to the ship, Scotty realizes that something is very wrong with the transporter system. He is forced to strand the remaining landing party (including Lt. Sulu) on the planet until further notice.

Meanwhile, the evil Kirk, appearing drunk and disorderly, enters the quarters of Yeoman Janice Rand and lies in wait for her. When she arrives, he grabs and assaults her. She manages to fight back, scratching his face with her sharp fingernails, and then tries to escape. She cries out for Crewman Fisher to call Mr. Spock. Unfortunately, the evil Kirk incapacitates Fisher before he can help. Simultaneously, elsewhere on the ship, the good Captain Kirk begins to show signs of weakness, apparently losing his ability to give orders and commands, the so-called "power of decision." With the help of Mr. Spock, the good Captain Kirk gives orders for all crewmen to arm themselves with phasers set for stunning force and locked and for all crewmen to be on the lookout for the impostor, the evil Kirk, who can be identified by the scratches on his face. The crewmen are not to injure the evil Kirk.

The evil Kirk, hearing the good Kirk's orders, hides the scratches on his face with makeup and acquires a phaser from Crewman Wilson, whom he also incapacitates, and then hides in the lower levels of the ship. Anticipating how his other half will behave, the good Kirk finds the evil Kirk on the Engineering Deck, and Spock disables the latter with a Vulcan nerve pinch. Spock observes the evil Kirk showing signs of fatigue. It is quickly surmised that neither Kirk can survive for long in his separated state. Time is running out not only for the Kirks, but also for the stranded landing party, the members of which are slowly freezing to death as night falls on Alpha 177.

Scott reports that the transporter unit ionizer is damaged and would normally take a week to repair; however, he and Spock rig up a connection to power the transporter from the ship's impulse drive. They recombine the dog-creature, but it dies as a result of the strain. Not giving up hope, Scotty continues to work on the problem.

In the meantime, the good Kirk releases his opposite's bindings in Sickbay when the evil Kirk promises not to fight. He promptly overpowers the good Kirk and rushes off to the bridge, where he orders the ship to leave orbit. The two Kirks confront one another on the bridge, and "evil" Kirk collapses whereupon "good" Kirk rushes him to the transporter room. With fingers crossed, Spock dematerializes both Kirks, and finally a single Kirk returns. Demonstrating that his power of command has returned, along with his intelligence and compassion, Kirk's first words are: "Get those men aboard fast." The landing party members are beamed up, and, aside from a "little" exposure and frostbite, they are fine.

Back on the bridge, Kirk is himself once again. He tells Spock: "Thank you, Mr. Spock — from both of us." When asked what to tell the crew, Kirk says that the intruder is back where he belongs and to leave it at that.

Continuity Errors

A glaring continuity error appears at the beginning of this episode: There is no Starfleet emblem on Kirk's shirt from the opening shots on the planet surface, all the way thru to the last shot of "good" Kirk leaving the transporter room after beaming back to the ship. The scene in the hallway where Scotty says to Kirk "It'll profit ya' to have the doctor give ya' a once-over" is where the emblem reappears on his shirt. Another continuity error shows up as the "good" Kirk and Spock locate and capture the "evil" Kirk in the engine room: Close-ups of the "evil" Kirk's hand show him holding a type-1 hand phaser while the long shots show him holding a type-2 pistol phaser. A final continuity error occurred during the production of the episode that was a result of an editing choice in post-production. The scratches of Yeoman Rand on "evil" Kirk's face were on his left cheek, but at 48:30 into the episode during the confrontation between the two Kirks, the scratches appear momentarily on "evil" Kirk's right cheek. This was due to the film of "evil" Kirk being "flopped" (making the image appear to be reversed) so that it would appear the two Kirk's were talking to each other. This trick was used a few other times for the same reason during the run of the series.

Music

This episode is one of the small group for which a full score was written, in this case by Sol Kaplan. Jeff Bond notes, "Although he wrote only two scores for the series, New York composer Sol Kaplan's music was tracked endlessly throughout the show's first two seasons. ... 'The Enemy Within' is a thrillingly intellectual score, by turns overcome with compassion for Kirk's plight and clinically detached in its melodic experimentation with the situation... [T]he aggressive, threatening 'evil Kirk' music made major contributions by being tracked into other episodes."

40th Anniversary remastering

This episode was remastered in 2006 and aired January 26, 2008 as part of the remastered Original Series. It was preceded a week earlier by the remastered "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield" and followed a week later by the remastered "The Changeling". Aside from remastered video and audio, and the all-CGI animation of the USS Enterprise that is standard among the revisions, specific changes to this episode also include:

• The planet Alpha 177 has been recreated digitally to appear more realistic. Not much else was changed in this episode.

Reception

Zack Handlen of The A.V. Club gave the episode an 'A-' rating, noting that while the last act of the episode was somewhat redundant, the first two run smoothly, and describing Shatner's acting as Kirk's good half as "very solid stuff."

External links

• "The Enemy Within" at StarTrek.com
• "The Enemy Within" at the Internet Movie Database
• "The Enemy Within" at TV.com
• "The Enemy Within" at Memory Alpha (a Star Trek wiki)
• "The Enemy Within" Side-by-side comparison before and after remastering at TrekMovie.com
• "The Enemy Within" Full episode for viewing at CBS.com