Star Trek (TV Series) The Lights of Zetar (1969) User Reviews

For the love of Scotty

[Tweekums · 7/10 · 18 August 2015]

As this episode opens we learn that Scotty has fallen for Lt. Mira Romaine; a young officer being transferred to Memory Alpha, a remote base that will house a database containing all the Federation's knowledge. Before they arrive the Enterprise observes a phenomenon travelling at over twice the speed of light; Spock deduces it can't be natural. This phenomenon intercepts the ship and effects each of the people aboard; most noticeably Lt. Romaine. She collapses and we see a pattern in her eyes that looks just like the phenomenon. She claims to be perfectly well despite being ordered to sickbay. The phenomenon then strikes Memory Alpha; this time the effects are more serious and all but one person in the station is killed and the computer destroyed. The sole survivor talks in a strange way; much like Mira did after the attack on the Enterprise. Further tests are carried out on Mira and it becomes apparent that her brain waves have been changed to those of the phenomenon. It later speaks through her; explaining that they are the last survivors of Zetar and they are looking for a host body. Kirk is unwilling to let them have Lt. Romaine's body so asks McCoy to find a way to force them out… the only way possible but her at risk but it is a risk that must be taken.

This is a decent enough episode and it was nice to see Scotty have some romance in his life… although I'm sure every viewer would have known something would happen to her during the course of the episode! The aliens were interesting enough but hardly the most original and there was little sense that anybody on the Enterprise other than Lt. Romaine was in much danger. The effects were decent enough, at least in the remastered version I saw. Guest star Jan Shutan does a pretty solid job as Lt. Romaine; it isn't hard to see why Scotty fell for her! The episode does show its age somewhat as Kirk and the McCoy constantly refer to Lt. Romaine, a Star Fleet officer, as 'The Girl'… perhaps acceptable when the show was made but rather un-PC now! Overall though this isn't a bad episode; it certainly entertained me well enough.

"The loss of the galaxy may be irretrievable..."

[classicsoncall · 6/10 · 17 February 2011]

There was a great concept at the core of this story, but unfortunately, it got frittered away with a script that eventually proved embarrassing. The concept had to do with Lieutenant Romaine's (Jan Shutan) brain wave pattern being altered by an alien presence, a cluster of ten life forms in a single entity that arrives aboard The Enterprise as a cloud of twinkling lights. They really could have gone somewhere with this, but instead, went to a place no man had gone before.

Let me back up a bit though. Are we to believe that the Federation was naive enough to establish Memory Alpha, a cultural and scientific repository of all the member planets, on a planetoid WITHOUT a protective shield? What??!! With the example of Kirk's crew facing some kind of danger in almost every episode, wouldn't anyone have been concerned that maybe, just maybe, a Federation enemy might want to sabotage all that knowledge. Klingons... Romulans... anyone? At least the Captain showed some astonishment over the idea.

But then Kirk did the unimaginable - he fired phasers into the brain community because they weren't responding to Uhura's hailing frequency. Did you see the look on Spock's face when Kirk ordered the phaser fire? Man, I thought the Captain was setting himself up for a Vulcan nerve pinch.

The resolution of the story was uninspired as well. How do you pressurize a non-corporeal entity into submission? I'm trying to get a grasp on that; it would be like trying to squeeze a radio wave until the receiver couldn't produce a sound any more.

But you know what really got my attention? I don't know if anyone else noticed, but considering the fact that Lieutenant Romaine was on her first assignment as a specialist, and maybe even the fact that Scotty had an enormous crush on her, how is it that Kirk and Bones found it OK to call her 'girl'? It happened more than once and had a jarring effect whenever I heard it. I hope the Captain wasn't jealous.

Scotty Falls in Love... And Then We Never Hear from Her Again

[Samuel-Shovel · 5/10 · 20 September 2018]

In "The Lights of Zetar", the Enterprise is on its way to Memory Alpha, a planet strictly used as an open-for-all library of data and knowledge. The crew encounters a strange phenomenon not possible in nature, a sparkling of lights that seems to attack the crew and stop it from doing things such as speak or move their limbs. The lights drift away towards Memory Alpha where it kills all the lifeforms on it. It heads back towards the Enterprise in pursuit. A new crew member with a romantic interest in Scotty, Mira Romaine, seems to be unusually affected by these lights. As it turns out, these lights are the remnants of an extinct lifeform. They want to use Mira as a vessel to live out their lives. She must do her best to resist them and retain her own body.

This episode was extremely muddled. I liked that a character besides Kirk had a romantic subplot but it really never goes anywhere. The effects of the creatures are sub-par, the acting seems stiff, the actors uninterested. Lots of these later Season 3 episodes are not my favorite of the series. They make me yearn for the production value and ingenuity of Season 1 & 2 episodes. The only idea I really enjoyed was the concept of Memory Alpha's existence. Beyond this, there's not much to see here.

Scotty in Love!

[Hitchcoc · 7/10 · 10 May 2014]

This is a vehicle to expand the humanity of the crew. Scotty, who is always seen as cool and married to the Enterprise, is, like most of the crew, uninvolved. Kirk is always on the make, but the rest, from McCoy on down, don't seem to have any social life. Each, including Spock, has had his or her heartstrings pulled at times, but it is always unrequited. Here Scotty is taken with Mira, who is on her first mission. I don't know where new crew members come from. So many redshirts and other throwaways seem to meet their demises. Anyway, the ship is like a small town and it would seem everyone would know everyone else. All that aside, Mira has Scotty's attention and it seems to be mutual. Enter the alien of the week, a collection of bright lights (quite beautiful, actually) which have the ability to suck the life out of anyone they declare as a host. Mira, unfortunately, absorbs this creature. Her personality changes and she begins to have visions. The Starship crew is faced with the task of getting this thing out of her as well as freeing the Enterprise from its influence. One can see on Spock's face that the Prime Directive dealing with sentient beings is coming into play, since the alien can communicate with them. Ultimately, it depends on Scotty. This is a decent entry.

A Storm And A Romance

[Rainey-Dawn · 7/10 · 14 January 2017]

Season 3, episode 18. The Enterprise heads to the planetoid of Memory Alpha, where computers hold cultural, historic and scientific information - they are going there to install new equipment. Mr. Scott and Lieutenant Mira Romaine have been working on the project together and forming a romance. When they get close to the planetoid, they encounter a strange energy storm, moving quickly, that has killed the staff at Memory Alpha. That energy storm has also possessed Lt. Romaine when the ship passed into it yet the rest of the crew had strange parallelizations: from not able to move their hands, to not being able to speak. Spock has clearly stated that it's moving to fast to be a natural phenomenon and it's not a storm. Romaine ends up in sickbay because she passed out, McCoy wants to know why only her, Scotty believes it's because it's her first time for space travel and she just wants to know why it happened. They arrive to Memory Alpha to find all dead but one who was barely alive and trying to say something. McCoy's readings say they died because each of them have a different area of the brain missing. Romaine beams down and warns the search party that the storm is on it's way back and will kill them all - she just knows. Kirk confronts Romaine if she could remember what she said when she was knocked out on the ship. They beam back aboard to find out what is this storm exactly while trying to steer clear of it. Scotty still insists to Romaine it's just space sickness and she still thinks it's more. Now they must find out not what it is but what "they" are.

Not too bad of an episode - it is interesting and a pretty good mystery that Kirk and crew must solve.

7.5/10

Too much sci-fi for Trekkies.

[fedor8 · 21 April 2008]

"Scotty In Heat".

TLOZ is one of the best episodes of the 3rd season. It seems most Trekkies (a very goofy species) were appalled by the lack of "meaningful, social/political commentary", i.e. there is no analogy with the Vietnam war, hippies, freedom of speech, and any other modern-day (or at least 60s) issues - which, from what I can tell, is what is needed to appease those nerdy liberals (hence the large popularity of the ultra-PC, plastic ST spin-offs, all of which suck big time). TLOZ has a straight-forward sci-fi story, and that's the way it should have always been. In other words, no American Constitution parallels as in the supremely silly (but somewhat fun so-bad-it's-good) "Omega Glory" episode. I prefer ST when it's immersed in the sci-fi genre, where it belongs ("The Alternative Factor", "The Menagerie", "Wink Of An Eye"), while the political/social-analogy, issue-of-the-day-brought-to-outer-space episodes very often failed, coming off as too preachy and naive ("Assignment: Earth", "The Day Of The Dove", or the supremely awful/embarrassing "The Way To Eden").

The only silly aspect of TLOZ is Scotty's exaggeratedly obsessive attachment to Mira, played by Jan Shutan, one of the most beautiful actresses in the series. Scotty is so blinded by "lurve" that he even fails to report Mira's strange observations, nor does he even encourage her to report them! That way he not only forgets about his true love, the Enterprise, but actually endangers Mira's life, as well. In short: Scotty acts like a full-blown in-puberty adolescent moron throughout the episode. The fact that Shutan would probably rather vomit on Doohan than have a relationship with him doesn't help the realism between them either...

I thought it was hilarious that many consider the eye- and sound-effects bad or cheesy. They were quite effective, showing how much can be achieved with a shoe-string budget, with a little imagination. Those who criticize TLOZ's special effects are the same uncritical dolts who probably shake in their boots whenever they watch the Mugatu jump on Kirk in "A Private Little War"! Besides, TLOZ has no annoying switcheroos ("Turnabout Intruder"), no dull, one-dimensional Klingons, and no annoying kids ("Miri").

All That Glistens...

[Xstal · 6/10 · 17 February 2022]

Scotty's blood pressure's gone through the roof, he's got feelings that make him woof woof, falls for Mira Romaine, a disease of the brain, but at least he's no longer aloof.

A sparkly alien invades the brain of Mr. Scott's new love and causes a few heart flutters.

The Captain's idea

[kennethfrankel · 7/10 · 9 January 2022]

The great idea how to deal with the Zetars was to put the human they latched on to into a pressure chamber. I believe Mr. Spock said "if they follow the Captain's plan ..." I looked several times, but I could not find any mention of such a plan. They could negate gravity inside the chamber, and this had something to do with the fact that the Zetars were out in space for a long time. So what. Also, as a human, anyone might have problems if the pressure was increased rapidly. The usual scuba diving rules would still apply to a human. You can go down at a reasonable rate, but coming back up can cause a person to act like a soda can that was just opened. You must go up slowly and wait at several stages on the way up. Lt. Romaine was floating with no gravity in the air pressure chamber and the pressure was doubling rapidly. How did the Captain and Mr. Spock ever get that idea ? It seems that a scene was left out.

The other issue was the kind of brain wave pattern which was "identical" for the girl and the Zetars. If you looked at such a pattern for a human and recorded it again a minute later it would have a similar but not identical wiggly pattern. Even less likely if you compared it with an alien.

Disco lights in space

[bkoganbing · 5/10 · 2 August 2014]

This Star Trek episode involves a life form or as Mr. Spock says 10 different light forms who light up outer space like a disco ball. Although all the crew members are affected in some way, the one who is totally affected is Jan Shutan who completely collapses after these aliens have briefly invaded the Enterprise.

Shutan is James Doohan's latest girlfriend and I have to say his conduct was most unprofessional as he leaves his post in engineering as his concern for Shutan is so unlike Scotty for whom the Enterprise engines are his first love.

These lights devastate a planet called Alpha Memory which is a giant computer complex for Star Fleet. But DeForest Kelley does come up with a solution that saves Shutan and kills the aliens.

Did you doubt that someone on the Enterprise would?

A subpar episode for Star Trek.

A mixed bag of an episode with slightly more good than bad

[snoozejonc · 6/10 · 13 November 2021]

Enterprise travels to Memory Alpha and encounters a mysterious cluster of lights.

This is an okay episode with a decent concept and some fairly good character moments but unfortunately the story moves too slowly.

I like the idea of what the lights of Zetar actually are and something similar is used to far better affect in the classic TNG episode 'The Inner Light'. However, in this episode the plot unfolds in a frustrating way. It takes such a long a time to get the reveal I find myself tempted to skip through scenes.

Jan Shutan gives a decent performance that makes the best of the role, but it does not help that Mira Romaine is a one off character in whom I have no investment. To compound matters Scotty is written quite annoyingly in his scenes with her. It makes me not want Mira to pull through just to get him back to normal as opposed to acting so possessive, distracted and patronising. This, for me, did not work in 'Who Mourns For Adonis' and it does not work here. It appears particularly bad on a modern viewing as Mira is treated like a child in so many scenes.

On the positive side Kirk, Spock and Bones are great as ever, particularly towards the end of the episode where the banter between them is as good as any episode.

There are plenty of decent visuals that work well, such as the lights and the use of close-up shots of Shutan's eye. I also think the images and effects of the female victim who the landing party encounters on Memory Alpha is very creepy.

William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, and James Doohan all give solid performances, particularly Doohan.

For me it's a 5.5/10, but I round upwards.

My Ship is Being Pursued by Lights in Space!

[Bogmeister · 3/10 · 7 March 2007]

Here it is: the most forgettable Trek episode of the entire 3-year run of the original series. I've seen it a few times over the past 30 years and the only image I could remember until now were these lights flashing in the eye of the female lieutenant, newly-assigned to the Enterprise and the object of Scotty's desires. There are a couple of mildly-amusing scenes of Scotty mooning or swooning over this Lt. Romaine but, otherwise, there's nothing else to elicit even a modicum of interest. Other really low-rated episodes of the 3rd season, such as "Spock's Brain" and "The Way to Eden," at least have that campy ridiculous tone to fall back on or the cheese factor which can be appreciated in our weaker moments. Other boring 3rd season episodes still have some moderately interesting ideas straining to grab our attention, however weakly. Not in this one. This one is just consistently dull throughout - interminably dull, genuinely sleep-inducing - the 'watching grass grow'-type of dull.

The plot has the Enterprise heading towards Memory Alpha, a planetoid functioning as a central library for the entire Federation. This is really the only idea presented here - a galactic library of the future. This concept is soon wrapped up unceremoniously when the library is wiped out by these Lights of Zetar. The Zetar Lights leave, then they return (these are literally flashing points of light). They chase down the Enterprise. They infect Lt. Romaine somehow. She opens her mouth and strange noises come out, like she's about to vomit. The Zetar Lights leave again, then they follow the ship some more. Kirk does decide to fire phasers soon and, you may think, OK, the action is kicking in finally, but he has to stop when Scotty starts crying on the intercom. The top officers sit down with Romaine in the conference room and have a long discussion. The end of this scene, when Kirk explains their final strategy, does contain Shatner's worst acting moment of the series ("If.. we ...can...CONTROL! ..that moment!" accompanied by an odd hand gesture). Oh, yes, there is one nearly-exciting moment when Sulu informs Kirk that...the lights are changing their velocity! Monotony - thy name is Zetar.

Jan Shutan- brilliant casting, haunted character

[XweAponX · 10/10 · 4 December 2022]

This episode, written by the creator and writers of Lamb Chop - Shari Lewis and her husband Jeremy Tarcher, has a lot more happening than just a bunch of fancy lights floating around.

It is Jan's performance, that has convinced me, has always convinced me when I first saw this episode when I was eight years old, on the night when it was first broadcast. There is something going on behind her eyes during this entire performance. Even before her unwilling connection to these mysterious flashes of light, there is something going on, something very deep.

And of course she is attracted to Scotty. This is a completely mutual attraction, total devotion to each other. Unlike the previous one-sided relationships Scotty has had that ended badly, where his girlfriends of the time were victims of "RedJack", or dumped him for Apollo. According to the fan show "Star Trek Continues" sequel " pilgrim of eternity" where the actor that plays Apollo reappears in aged state, Scotty never got over that jealousy that almost got him in serious dren when he was confronting Apollo. This is a lot different than that, in this situation, there is a mention that Mira's father is a retired chief engineer... guess what Scotty is? Only not retired. Which might be why Lieutenant Romaine is attracted to him, looks up to him, and listens to him, and sincerely believes him when he spouts his "space legs" pseudononsense...

He tries to rationalize what is happening to her by his own experiences or by what he knows from others, it was refreshing to hear him admit that he was wrong, and we know how bullheaded Scotty is/was.

As far as the nature of these flying doodads, it becomes less unbelievable as an explanation for what they are finally comes out.

This episode also, instead of telepathy or other overused and overabused para-abnormalities, talks about a persons "pliability", The ability to be faced with new situations and I guess a good word is, subdue them.

With that explanation there, this episode is moved away from "the paranormal" to ideas that may in fact have real world connotations.

It's too bad that the actress never continued the role in the later episodes or perhaps the original series movies of the 80s. A relationship like this would have lasted. There should have been a mention of it in further Star Trek Canon. But this was 1960s episodic television, we rarely saw the return of a character from a previous episode.

As far as the story, it was a totally enjoyable, typical Star Trek story. And once again unfairly panned, just like The Cloud Minders and Spock's Brain, where the only problems were those of production, not of story. Especially in the third season, Star Trek did not have the budget for production. You will notice that between the first episode filmed which was the pilot episode that produces god-men and the last episode, "Turnabout intruder", the hallways of the enterprise were stripped of the extras that were always seen running back-and-forth doing incomprehensible tasks with incomprehensible machinery.

I totally enjoyed this episode and I was affected on a personal level by Jan Shutan's performance. A gorgeous actress, and she's not attracted to Kirk. That is another aspect of this particular episode that is interesting. Kirk is usually the one kissing women on the bridge, this time, "Scotty gets the girl", and what a woman. We get the impression that, she is representing a character that isn't just a "bubble headed booby", she is as good at her job as Scotty is doing his job. So this is a match made in engineering.

Lights, Lights, Everywhere

[sambase-38773 · 7/10 · 7 September 2021]

What we have here is a war. A war between the Lights of Zetar and the light of love. Phasers can't win this fight. They have to find another way. This is a very intriguing episode about identity, survival, and the transcendence of love. Ah, love, that curious Human emotion. It has a lovely light all its own.

My least favorite part of this episode is how mushy Mr. Scott behaves. He's like a mooning school boy with a crush the size of a mountain. They needed to tone that down. I blame both the actor and the writer.

Jan Shutan is outstanding as Scotties love interest and the main interest of the aliens. Her scenes are riveting. Kudos to both her and the director.

But, overall, a quite interesting episode. And the tag scene is one of the funniest in Star Trek history.

Scotty gets a girl

[chrisbaird-ma · 5/10 · 3 April 2013]

The Enterprise encounter a light cloud that has the power to hijack and even damage other people's brain waves. This cloud takes a special interest in a new female crew member that Scotty is smitten over. The cloud tries to take control of the girl's body through her brain. In the end, the light cloud ends up being the spirits of dead humans looking for a body to possess. Not much of this episode makes a whole lot of sense or is very compelling. Why did the spirits seek out this one girl? Why did the spirits of decent humans think they had the right to possess another human? Why did the spirits make the bodies they possess talk like frogs? How can a air pressure chamber possibly drive out spirits and brain waves from the girl? The only reasonable answer to these questions seems to be: "do whatever it takes to move the story along". Scotty asks rather sweetly to his love interest, which is refreshing compared to Kirk's usual domineering womanizing. But his sweetness gets rather pathetic and condescending, like he is trying to pet a little a sparrow.

Interesting but not sterling.

[Blueghost · 24 July 2017]

One of the things I really like about this episode is the lighting. There's a certain visual aesthetic that we see in both science fiction and regular film and TV as we transition from film stock that needs a lot of light to something that's a bit more natural and even.

I bring this up not because the episode is one of the less memorable episodes, but because we're seeing the crew of the starship Enterprise mature some and leave the visual doldrums of a kind of bright color late 1950s 1960's kind of visual, to something that's more realistic and business like. The result is that this episode's story and lack of money is punched up a notch.

Season three episodes are infamous for being low budget because the network wanted to pull the plug earlier. But even so the third Season of Star Trek has a kind of tacit appeal in that the episodes are more character driven than plot driven as per the previous seasons.

The basic tale is a bit of a ghost story, but even so Kirk and Spock bring starfleet's capabilities to bear to address the collective malefactor in this episode. And here's where the show comes close to derailing, because the other stories deal with negative elements in society, things we can relate to, and here we're confronted with something that comes close to being supernatural. And the bad guys are never explained, so the script fails in that regard as both a Star Trek and general science fiction story.

Another strike against the show is that the female guest star has a first and last name, but Captain Kirk and even McCoy and Spock occasionally refer to her as "the girl". Oh well.

In short it's not good science fiction, but it could have been better, and even though the actors give it their all the core premise of the episode falls a bit flat. Again, not a bad episode, but nothing to write home about.

If you're a fan of the show, then you've already made up your mind. Otherwise maybe see it once if you haven't, but there are better episodes in the series.

Take that for what it's worth.

Mr Kyle Has Another Transporter "Issue", Other than That....? It Sucks.

[verbusen · 3/10 · 25 March 2007]

I hate to be harsh on my favorite show of all time, but I am a realist and there were some bad episodes, especially in the later half of season three, as this is an example. OK here are the observations as the plot is discussed by others. Mr Kyle (the bumbling English dude who can do little right except for one episode I saw when he was at the helm and was noted for a citation), has another of his "transporter moments". His most famous one was in "Mirror Mirror" the one where there's an alternate Spock with a goatee, and he is subjected to the "agonizer" by Spock, remember that scene? Well in that alternate universe I predict Kyle is killed for too many transporter "issues", here he is just told to get the hell out of the way so that Scottie can make the damn thing work. The Enterprise is the main set here, again, obviously for the budget's sake. I remember this episode from my youth mainly because of the scene where they discover the dieing technician and because of the totally laughable faces she is making and the weird slow tape noise she is making (that had to be what that was that they used). In finality why does this episode suck so much, its really boring and pointless. Also, Scottie is not going to have a crush on a chick to ignore the ship the way he did, he had love interest's before so that is not going to work. No memorable scenes between McCoy, Spock, Kurt, or Scottie, or any of the other crew (Kyle's repeated transporter malfunctions a slight exception). It just sucks. 3 of 10, places in the bottom 10 maybe bottom 5 or 3 of the worse Trek TOS ever made.

Pretty dull stuff

[planktonrules · 4/10 · 11 December 2006]

I read a book a few years ago by some insiders from the Star Trek show. It was fascinating to hear what they had to say about Roddenberry, Shatner and the whole experience. One of the things about the book that stood out in my mind was their opinion about the 3rd season. Although the show had almost been canceled early on and Gene Roddenberry instigated a letter-writing campaign to save the show, by the final season, they felt that Roddenberry had given up on the show and actually spend much of this season on other projects. This, they said, accounted for the often sub-par scripts used in them. And, looking back at it, season three had plenty of duds and plenty more only watchable episodes that were pretty easy to forget. This episode is one of the forgettable ones, as not a whole lot of energy is in it. There's a weird space killer that makes people talk in a goofy froggy voice and Scotty seems strangely attracted to a froggy-voiced lady that somehow has survived one of these attacks. That's it--the rest of it just isn't worth discussing, as it just seemed to go nowhere.

A beautiful love story

[lwinn-84063 · 9/10 · 2 November 2016]

Although many good episodes exist in the series 3-year run, "The Lights of Zetar" has long been my favorite. Season 3 has a number of love stories, and while TLOZ may not qualify as Star Trek at it's best, by no means is it Star Trek at its worst. If one can look past flaws in the technical writing of the script, one finds a May-December romance in its most beautiful form between Lt. Cmdr. Montgomery Scott and Lt. Mira Romaine. Scotty is a much-beloved character, and it is both satisfying and fitting that in the series last season he should finally have a love story of his own and with a woman worthy of his heart. I invite you to read more about this episode in http://defendinglightsofzetar.blogspot.com.

How do you work this SCREEN SAVER?!

[mylkione · 5/10 · 5 February 2022]

Enterprise is attacked by a sentient screen saver from Windows 2000. Some silly color overlay and dubbing effects follow. Ridiculous miming ensues as well. I guess the budget prevented actual props. Zetar lost all its life, apparently no intelligent life made it into the writer's office for this one.

Mediocre episode

[mhubbard-54657 · 4/10 · 17 May 2017]

This one is essentially "Mr Scott in love", which seems rather contrived, and not very believable, based on our previous experience of Scotty. We observe him blatantly besotted,falling over Lt Romaine, a beautiful and young neophyte to the Space Service. She is some type of librarian or records officer, supervising the storage of data. She is no great actress and has that "Stepford wife" vibe. Scotty is acting like a teenager, even shirking his work. The Captain is a little annoyed, but cuts Scotty some slack, due to his many lonely years. It seems ludicrous though, that the Captain would be putting information about the crew's love life into the official Ship Log.

The next thing you know, an alien life force and/or computer takes over the beautiful lieutenant's mind and tries to destroy the ship! The Doctor and Mr Spock attempt to help undo the damage by studying the intricacies of her psychological profile,focusing on "telepathy" and "ESP" which was all the rage in 1968.

Would true love save the day? Would the Lt's love for Scotty help her break free of the alien? I am pretty sure Leonard Nimoy was rolling his eyes at some of the dialogue.

If you like camp and a plot full of silly holes, this is an episode for you. Naturally we never again hear of the romance between lieutenant and Scotty.

The statements made by McCoy about the Lt's psychological profile were ridiculously dated in 1968, not to mention 2268. Also, the notion of needing an entire planet devoted to a library is anachronistic. Paper books were antiques in the 23rd century , as we know from other episodes. Everything you needed was on the ship's computer, which came true not that many years later!

Another creepy Scotty crush episode.

[termitekeith · 2/10 · 21 June 2020]

You'd have thought the writers would've learned by now that Scotty only true love was his engines. The attempts at romance for our favorite chief engineer always came off as extremely creepy and 'The lights of Zetar' is no exception. The biggest problem is that we simply don't care about the never before or since mentioned Lieutenant Romaine. Jan Shutan and James Doohan have no screen chemistry whatsoever and the whole thing comes of as dirty old mannish. This episode would've been much better if the Lieutenant Romaine part had been given to a crewman we were emotionally invested in like Uhura or Chapel and they could've dropped the romance angle altogether. I liked the idea of incorporeal aliens as opposed to some guy in a suit or a hideous puppet head but the story was so dull and unfortunately because the budget had been slashed to the bone it was soundstage bound. There's just nothing to grab onto here and you'd miss nothing as a Star Trek fan if you never watched it.

I liked this episode

[btdroflet38 · 8/10 · 2 February 2007]

*May contain "spoilers" - so beware...*

Re-using one of my favourite Alexander Courage music pieces (first used in "Where No Man Has Gone", this episode highlights the theme of alien possession, as a young woman called Mira Romaine (Jan Shutan) is used by aliens called Zetars. Although their purpose is somewhat vague, their arrival via a "psychic storm cloud" heralds a bizarre takeover and some interesting side-effects. When the ship approaches Memory Alpha, Mira Romaine starts having visions of impending danger, and the landing party go down to investigate....

Once on Alpha's surface, the backlash of the Zetar arrival is seen. One female technician starts to talk in a slow frog-like garble, then she undergoes a weird horrifying convulsive transformation...and then dies.

Mira is beamed down, but is unable to make head or tail out of what Kirk and the others had witnessed - until she senses that the Zetarians are coming back (apparently sensing their job had not finished 'coz more survivors of their attack have been pinpointed).

Kirk realises the only way to rid Mira of her condition is to subject her to decompression. Scotty, who had taken a serious "fancy" to the "lassie" (apparently having gotten over Lt. Carolyn Palamas "Who Mourns For Adonais" in a big hurry) strongly and uncategorically objects - until he is forced to give in to Kirk's orders.

Mira decompresses, the aliens flee their "host" and the episode concludes with Romaine deciding to stay behind on Memory Alpha to help "clean up" the mess left by the cloud-beings.

Scotty is again left, with a broken heart...poor dude. This was obviously the last hurrah romantically for the engineer since no other lassie has captured his attention away from his "bairns" since...

The viewer has to wonder what the Zetars were, what their intentions were - whether good or for evil - is now left for a new Star Trek series to take on, along with any other dangling plot-thread the original series leaves hanging...

8 out of 10 - only for the afore-mentioned groovy Courage "alien takeover" sequences

The Lights of Zetar

[Scarecrow-88 · 5/10 · 31 May 2012]

Non corporeal lifeforms (once corporeal before their extinction due to a natural disaster), appearing in a cloud of glittering lights (Spock calls them a "community of life units"), have searched for the right kind of "vessel" to live out the rest of their lives, finding a suitable location in the body of a rookie officer, Lt. Mira Romaine (Jan Shutan), on her first tour with the Enterprise. If Mira allows them to take full control she will be lost to them. Mira wants to live and doesn't wish to have her body used by other lifeforms who simply don't want to die. So Kirk, who has proof when the Zetar lifeforms killed scientists at a library on a planet while they were studying (the library has no protective shields; those who built it felt there was no need of shields for a library made for everyone's welcomed use), is rightfully concerned for his Enterprise crew and attempts to back the cloud off with phasers, unknowingly harming Mira in the process. So this is his dilemma: how does he save Mira and stop the Zetar lifeforms from killing his officers? "The Lights of Zetar" will probably be best remembered for giving Scotty a romantic love interest; and, man, does he gush adoringly at her throughout, even forgetting his Engineering duties, much to Kirk's annoyance. Well, the menace of this episode isn't exactly the most sinister looking threat to appear on a Star Trek episode, a cloud of multi-colored lights, but the test before Kirk and company does have its moments, particularly when they beam down to a library station finding innocent alien scientists dead, their corpses lying in heaps. The weird garbled noise and the highly open mouths of those inflicted with the Zetar lifeforms are just bizarre moments during this Trek episode. One victim's face actually "lights up" before perishing to add another touch of surreal to how the Zetarians try to infiltrate and control human(oid) hosts. It seems that the brains of those possessed become so damaged by the Zetarians attempts to take complete control that the results for the most part end in death, chiefly because those inflicted aren't willing to give up their bodies to other invading forces. The episode is okay, I guess, not really what I would consider particularly noteworthy, but it does have a final scene that finds Bones and Spock actually agreeing on something, so that in itself is surprising/amusing. Most importantly, this caters to Scotty so that might be enough to recommend to Star Trek fans…seeing him lovelorn and head-over-heels can be a bit much, though. Even though this will be considered by many as below average for the series, even mediocre Star Trek TOS to me can be somewhat enjoyable. Another odd touch I failed to mention was how the episode shows Romaine's possession, the cloud appears in the iris of her left eye as she goes into a trance. I imagine The Lights of Zetar will, for the most part, be considered another example of how uninspired and average the third season started to become as the series came to a close, Roddenberry's absence noticeable.

"She's gonna blow, captain!"

[BA_Harrison · 4/10 · 23 June 2022]

Scotty is as happy as a haggis doing the highland fling, having fallen head over heels for sexy Lieutenant Mira Romaine (Jan Shutan, 12 years James Doohan's junior), who has been assigned to planetoid Memory Alpha, home to the Federation's central library. Unfortunately, en route to Memory Alpha, the Enterprise encounters a cloud of sparkly non-corporeal aliens who enter Romaine's body. Scotty isn't happy that they beat him to it.

Ventriloquist Shari Lewis was far better suited to writing comedy material for her sock-puppet Lamb Chop than a script for Star Trek (she co-wrote this travesty with her husband Jeremy Tarcher). I think the only reason The Lights of Zetar made the cut was because the show was already on its last legs and nobody really cared any more. This is an uninspired, forgettable adventure, with yet another cheesy visual effect causing problems for Kirk and his crew. The final scene, in which Mira is placed in a pressure chamber to expel the aliens, is one of the most lacklustre endings of all Star Trek TOS episodes.

3.5/10, rounded up to 4 for lovely Ms. Shutan.

Probably the worst Star Trek, if it wasn't for Assignment Earth. Then again assignment earth was not star trek, it was a cheap 007 rip off.

[Bababooe · 1/10 · 16 September 2018]

Basic premise is an entity of beings, Zetars, made of lights invade the Enterprise and tries to possess a hot chick, Lt. Mira Romaine, a woman (girl) that Scotcy is madly in love with. Scotcy puts her on top of a pedestal and disregards her intellect and basically treats her as an object. Kirk, Spot and Boner also act out of character.

Best part of this episode is the idea of an interstellar library, Memory Alpha. This was probably the best scene. After the entity kills everyone there the away team beams down and sees the death. One person before she dies makes some noise and her face turns different colors.

Back on the Enterprise, the Zetars invade again and try to possess Romaine. Kirk dumps Romaine's body into a pressure chamber, killing the Zetars, and the show ends.

This is the worst original Star Trek. It is still worth seeing. It's still Star Trek. But the ideas are half baked. The acting is generally crap. The characters act out of character and generally have little to do.