Star Trek TOS - Season 3 - Episode 14
Star Trek TOS - 3x14 - Whom Gods Destroy
Originally Aired: 1969-1-3
Synopsis:
Kirk is confronted by one his heroes, now criminally insane. [Blu-ray] [DVD]
Problems
- I find it hard to believe the Federation has only fifteen incurably insane people in its population. (All of which are cured in this episode.) Besides, this would seem to contradict TOS: Dagger of the Mind.
Factoids
- Remarkably, the uniforms in the mental hospital are the same as the ones in TOS: Dagger of the Mind.
Remarkable Scenes
- Garth trying to beam up to the Enterprise and failing "the test."
- The insanity dinner.
- I like the detail about Kirk and Spock becoming great friends at Axanar.
- Garth blowing up Marta.
- Spock Vulcan neck pinching two people at once!
- Spock having to decide between Kirks.
- Spock explaining to Kirk how he decided which Kirk was correct.
My Review
This episode's humor works well, we've seen plenty of Federation officials go insane, but this is true insanity and quite entertaining to watch. Only the magic insanity cure is annoying, despite my affinity for happy endings. It seems the insanity cure works by creating amnesia in the patient. Maybe they just banned this medicine by the 24th century due to the fact that it's a bit unethical to wipe people's memories. A solid 5 for a decent episode, minus one point for the strange medical oddities.
The following are comments submitted by my readers.
You're not quite right with the "Kirk and Spock becoming great friends at Axanar" comment. The episode suggests that they became friends a long way down the road because of what happened *later* at Axanar.
Here's the dialogue in question:
Kirk: But my first visit to Axanar was as a new-fledged cadet on a peace mission.
Garth: Peace mission? Politicians and weaklings!
Kirk: They were humanitarians and statesmen. And they had a dream. A dream that became a reality and spread throughout the stars. A dream that made Mr. Spock and me... brothers.
I don't think you can say that the pair *met* at Axanar.
It's worth noting that the title comes from the phrase "Those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad". The original version of the phrase seems to have come from Sophocles, although the wording was slightly different.