Star Trek TOS - Season 3 - Episode 19
Star Trek TOS - 3x19 - Requiem for Methuselah
Originally Aired: 1969-2-14
Synopsis:
Kirk and crew meet an immortal human named Flint. [Blu-ray] [DVD]
Problems
None
Factoids
None
Remarkable Scenes
- Rayna: "What is loneliness?" Flint: "It is thirst. It is a flower dying in the desert."
- Kirk dancing with Rayna while Spock plays the piano.
- Kirk criticizing his own actions in the end.
- Spock mind melding with the sleeping Kirk, forcing him to forget the whole experience.
My Review
This episode would have been better if it focused more on the plague and less on this mysterious human who's claimed his own planet. The absolute worst detail in this episode is Kirk falling in love with yet another girl of the week. He should have just left Flint alone and left the planet once he had his medicine.
The following are comments submitted by my readers.
I am not sure why Spock felt the need to make him forget this girl of the week, and not Edith or Elaan.
I agree that there should have been more focus on the plague, since it threatened the entire crew of the Enterprise.
Arguably the worst episode of the entire series. Shatner's acting, and the inane dialogue is almost painful to watch, especially when he is "falling in love" with an android. And we know what most of those historic characters Flint claims to have been looked like. And they didn't all look alike. And if we are to suppose that none of those famous people actually died, they all must have simply "disappeared" - again, not credible. Nor would any of them (except his first incarnation) have had a childhood.
While there is a fair bit of appalling acting, this episode has some redeeming and memorable virtues. For one thing, Nemoy delivers a very strong performance Spock's revelation of Flint's genius and past identities unfolds exactly as it should, thanks o some pretty elegant dialogue. James Daly is quite convincing as the inscrutable Flint. Louise Sorel is not only drop-dead gorgeous, but delivers some undeniably entrancing lines ("It is a flower dying in the desert"). Even Kirk's philandering campiness doesn't entirely lack amusement value. There's some classic Star trek to be had here, adn ti certainly isn't the worst episode of the original series.