Comments

1. Frederick Baptist says:

   February 9, 2010 at 10:31 am

   After hav­ing to endure a num­ber of vol­umes of aver­age at best episodes, we finally get a vol­ume that is wor­thy of keep­ing if you are pick­ing and choos­ing which ones to add to your library. Both episodes involve Capt Kirk and his short-lived love inter­ests and yet both sto­ry­lines and the act­ing that accom­pa­nies them are among the top 5 episodes of Sea­son 3. In the first episode, we learn about self-sacrifice and how a princess has to learn to sup­press her own desires and to give up her true love for the sake of the lives of many oth­ers. Over­all a very good episode with nice twists and moments of excite­ment inter­spersed with the main love theme.

   The sec­ond episode is sim­i­lar to the first in that Capt Kirk gets the girl yet again and yet the emo­tional impact is greater as with the fine act­ing even from Shat­ner makes for a very con­vinc­ing por­trayal of a man bliss­fully igno­rant albeit tem­porar­ily of his respon­si­bil­i­ties and is allowed to fall in love and to enjoy mar­ried life. This is also one of the bet­ter directed episodes of all Trek­dom and the open­ing shot of a beau­ti­ful for­est and nature scene is one of the more endur­ing mem­o­ries that I have of Clas­sic Trek. This is again another very good episode with inter­est­ing sub­plots in this case a rogue aster­oid that keeps the rest of the crew busy while the main theme of Kirk find­ing his true love runs its course.

   Over­all, two very good episodes that rank among best ever episodes of clas­sic Trek. Rec­om­mended.
   Rat­ing: 5 / 5
2. Rob says:

   February 9, 2010 at 12:18 pm

   These episodes are two of the best of the orig­i­nal or any series. In Elaan, not only is Kirk at his best when it comes to deal­ing with a “moody” female but it has one of the great­est space bat­tle scenes. In Par­adise, the Kirk love story will touch you as will some really great Scotty lines like “That Vul­can won’t be sat­is­fied till these pan­els are a pud­dle of lead”. It doesn’t get bet­ter than this.
   Rat­ing: 5 / 5
3. Mario Rosario says:

   February 9, 2010 at 3:17 pm

   My only prob­lem is that with today’s tech­nol­ogy, noone from Para­mount is going to go back to all of the pre­vi­ous Klin­gon episodes and dig­i­tally insert the Klin­gon Bat­tle cruiser (like in Errand of Mercy, Friday’s Child, A Pri­vate Lit­tle War, etc.). They’ve re-done all the Star Wars movies, why? Because the way they look now is what they orig­i­nally wanted to do, but didn’t have the tech­nol­ogy back in the 70’s.
   Para­mount has already altered the sound effects on the Star Trek DVD’s (I have them all), I don’t think re-releasing all the Klin­gon episodes before Elaan of Troy­ius with dig­i­tal footage of the Klin­gon Bat­tle Cruiser would be a big deal…
   Rat­ing: 5 / 5
4. Cseeley6 says:

   February 9, 2010 at 3:49 pm

   Elaan of Troy­ius
   
   Oper­at­ing in the Tel­lun Star Sys­tem under Top Secret orders the Star­ship Enter­prise must trans­port Elann, Dohlman of the planet Elas to the planet Troy­ius. She is to be wed to the ruler of the Troy­ius in the des­per­ate attempt to stop the long run­ning war in the Tel­lun Star Sys­tem between Elas and Troy­ius. Petri, ambas­sador to the Troyian ruler is aboard the Enter­prise to indoc­tri­nate Elaan in Troyian cul­ture and cour­te­sies for the impend­ing nup­tials. The Enterprise’s mis­sion was to make sure that Petri and the party from Elas made it to Troy­ius with­out inci­dent. Fail­ure on the Federation’s part to ensure that the join­ing was suc­cess­ful would result in not only con­tin­ued war within the sys­tem but also would be cat­a­strophic for Fed­er­a­tion plan­ning with the Klin­gon Empire claim­ing juris­dic­tion over the Tel­lun Star Sys­tem. Arriv­ing at the planet Elas the Enter­prise beams up the Dohlman and her party. The Elasians who are from a very long and proud war­rior tra­di­tion don’t deal with their Fed­er­a­tion hosts very well. Kirk orders the Enter­prise to pro­ceed on impulse power to Troy­ius allow­ing Petri time to com­plete his mis­sion. Elaan and the impres­sive guard detail she has with her are less than recep­tive at the crew’s attempt to make the voy­age smooth and make the stay onboard the ship for her and her party com­fort­able. She’s a spoiled, arro­gant child in a woman’s body and demeans every­body she comes into con­tact with. Ambas­sador Petri tries to com­plete his mis­sion and finds out that the “job” is tougher that he thought it would be. On the bridge Mr. Spock’s sen­sors pick up what appears to be a “sen­sor ghost” a read­ing which is dis­cov­ered to be a Klin­gon War­ship pac­ing the Enterprise.

   A des­per­ate and frus­trated Petri takes some advice given to him by Cap­tain Kirk and tries a dif­fer­ent stronger approach with the dif­fi­cult Dohlman. This advice proves to have dan­ger­ous con­se­quences as Elaan who isn’t too recep­tive to Petri’s new found strat­egy stabs him and leaves him for dead. Petri, recov­er­ing in sick­bay from Elann’s attack has a few stern words for Kirk, shar­ing his dis­sat­is­fac­tion with the captain’s advice. The ambas­sador shares infor­ma­tion with Chris­tine Chapel about the bio­chem­i­cal affect that the tears of Elasian women have on males. Any man who is touched by the tears of an Elasian woman will have their heart enslaved for­ever. Petri who has told Kirk that he will not con­tinue deal­ing with him or Elann forces the Enter­prise Cap­tain to assume the ambassador’s mis­sion. Kirk doesn’t take any­thing from Elann and gives the spoiled Dohlman of Elas a les­son in table man­ners she won’t soon forget!

   The Klin­gon ship con­tin­ues pac­ing the Enter­prise rais­ing the stakes of the mis­sion. Kirk attempts to con­tact the ves­sel to learn of the Klin­gon Captain’s inten­tions to no avail. Kry­ton, one of Elaan’s guards sneaks down to the engi­neer­ing sec­tion, elim­i­nat­ing Engi­neer Wat­son and effec­tively sab­o­tag­ing the Enterprise’s warp drive. Kirk attempt­ing to admin­is­ter his les­son on cour­tesy is given a first­hand demon­stra­tion on the affect of an Elasian woman’s tears. Kirk is exposed to the alien tears and finds his judg­ment impaired along with the dif­fi­cul­ties his new found feel­ings for Elaan cre­ate. Kry­ton sends a sig­nal out from the engi­neer­ing sec­tion to the Klin­gon ship. Kry­ton is cap­tured and avoids hav­ing to talk by killing him­self with a phaser weapon he wres­tles away from one of the secu­rity guards. Kirk has Scotty check all of his sys­tems to deter­mine which one fell vic­tim to Kryton’s tampering.

   The Klin­gon ship makes its move against the Enter­prise reveal­ing the result of Kryton’s sab­o­tage. The Elasian guard, who assisted the Klin­gons out of out­rage and jeal­ousy over the wed­ding, rigged the anti-matter pods to blow up once the ship went to warp drive. The Enterprise’s reduced capa­bil­ity and Kirk’s feel­ings for Elaan made the sit­u­a­tion even more dif­fi­cult than already was. The Klin­gons take advan­tage of the Enterprise’s depleted con­di­tion con­duct­ing attacks on the ship reduc­ing her shield power. Sulu’s expert hand with the helm is not as effec­tive due to the ships reduced power and slug­gish response time. Kirk and Spock dis­cover the neck­lace Elaan is wear­ing to be made out of dilithium crys­tals thereby reveal­ing the Klin­gons true inter­est in the Tel­lan Star Sys­tem. Spock and Scotty make the crude crys­tals work in the Enterprise’s dilithium cham­ber allow­ing the Enter­prise to regain full power and crip­ple the attack­ing Klin­gon ship with a bar­rage of pho­ton tor­pe­does. The dam­aged Klin­gon Ship moves off and the Enter­prise resumes its course for Troy­ius. In orbit around Troy­ius Kirk solemnly sees off Elaan’s party as they beam down to the wed­ding cer­e­mony. Kirk was long under the spell of the Enter­prise before Elaan had infected him.

   Kirk and Elaan’s inter­ac­tions make this story enter­tain­ing. The Enterprise/Klingon war­ship com­bat action at the end makes this episode a fun romp!
   
   Rat­ing: 4 / 5
5. Jared Insell says:

   February 9, 2010 at 5:36 pm

   Vol­ume 29 of The Star Trek DVD Series fea­tures two of the show’s early episodes from it’s hap­haz­ard third and final season.

   Although it is not nec­es­sar­ily a ter­ri­ble episode of Star Trek, to be hon­est I have never been to fond of ELAAN OF TROYIUS. The story is rather weak as is the totally uncon­vinc­ing love story between Kirk and Elaan The Dohlman Of Elaas. The story basi­cally has Kirk and the crew try­ing to get the two plan­ets (who have been at war for many years) Troy­ius and Elaas to be at peace with one another by wed­ding the royal mem­bers. How­ever of course the ship turns into a bat­telfield between Elaan and Petri the Troyan nego­tia­tor. Elaan and her guards act com­pletely bar­baric and Krik tries to teach her some disi­pline. Of course Kirk falls in love with Elaan after he touches her tears and they make him her love slave. It’s pretty far fetched if you ask me and thats why this episode suf­fers. The love story is sim­ply not real­is­tic and in the end Kirk acts if he lost true love to the Troyan leader. Uhh? he was seduced and became a tool! There was no love! I’m sorry but I just think this episode was just down­right lame besides Elaan isn’t that attrac­tive in my opin­ion. Still this episode is worth one view, you never know you may like it?
   There is a good scene with The Klin­gon bat­tle cruiser but other then that this episode is a dud to me.

   On the oth­er­hand THE PARADISE SYNDROME is one of the third sea­sons finest episodes. Kirk and the crew beam down to a planet that is being threat­ened by a col­li­sion by an aster­oid. They find Natives Amer­i­can inhab­i­tants as well as a strange Alien Obelisk. Kirk acci­dently gets trapped inside the Obelisk and trig­gers a device that gives him amne­sia. Found by the natives Kirk states he is Kurok (from his dam­aged mem­ory) and the natives believe he is a god from the Obelisk. He seems to set­tle in fine with the natives as he becomes the new tribe med­i­cine chief and mar­ries the priest­ess Mira­ma­nee. Mean­while on the Enter­prise Spock and the crew attempt to fig­ure out how to stop the aster­oid from col­lid­ing with the planet. This episode was extremely well writ­ten and the cast­ing was superb. Some nice act­ing scenes between McCoy and Spock, and Kirk and Mira­ma­nee make THE PARADISE SYNDROME one of the best episodes from Star Trek’s final sea­son. The end­ing has a nice tragic effect to it as well. Superb!

   Over­all Vol­ume 29 has some good and some bad in my opin­ion but it’s all clas­sic Trek so it is worth get­ting regard­less. Besides PARADISE SYNDROME is a lcas­sic Star Trek episode that is well made espe­ciallt for the third sea­sons stab­dards. Rec­om­mended.
   Rat­ing: 4 / 5

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