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"Star Trek"
Wink of an Eye (1968)

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4 out of 4 people found the following comment useful :-
Don's drink the Scalosian water before bed., 24 October 2006

Author: copper1963 from Staten Island, New York

Star Trek always had what I called the "Macy's Parade" approach to working within a budget--especially in season three. Matte paintings, props,sets, visual effects shots, all were fair game for the producers to utilize, repaint and reconfigure to save money. They must have thought viewers had short memories. Not "Trek" fans. With that said, this episode did a great job of pulling off a lot with the barest of essentials. The Enterprise's landing party transports down to the planet's surface to find a deserted city. This is odd because they were recently sent a distress signal by the inhabitants of this world. A crew member, planet-side, stupidly, takes a drink from a cascading water fountain and disappears. Kirk and the others hear (but don't see) buzzing insects. They are, needless to say, a little perplexed by this turn of events. They scurry back to the ship. On the bridge, Kirk drinks a cup of coffee and he too disappears. The Scalosians, you see, have been able to accelerate themselves into a state of hyper-space. Their motives are not good--it's a trap. I wonder if one of the ideas for this wacky story, may have sprung from a movie titled "The Time Travelers," and it's low-budget remake, "Journey to the Center of Time." Something to keep in mind when you watch this episode, one of the best from Star Trek's final season. Space trivia alert: Kathie Browne, Kirk's love interest in this story and female leader of the Scalosians, was married to the "Night Stalker" himself, Darren McGavin. Sadly, Ms.Browne and her husband passed away in the last few years. But their cult status as icons of 60's television remains intact.

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5 out of 6 people found the following comment useful :-
The Accelerated Invasion of the Enterprise, 12 February 2007

Author: Bogmeister from United States

We're back to space invaders in this one, similar to "By Any Other Name" in the previous season. These aliens hail from a planet where volcanic upheavals and radiation have accelerated them - make that 'hyper-accelerated' - to the point where they move too quickly for normal humans to see them. It's almost like they're stuck in another dimension (another level) and the concept is similar to the "Flash" comic book character, who moves so quickly at times that everything else appears to be frozen still. There are obvious discrepancies in the way the concept is presented here: though all Scalosians supposedly move at a pace of 100 times that of normal, they go through the same amount of experience in this episode as the normal-moving crew; the crew get just as much done as the invaders during the course of the episode. For example, the Scalosians should have completed their invasion plan in the time it took for Spock to head down to McCoy's medical lab in mid-episode. Right after Kirk is accelerated on the bridge, he heads for the turbolift, but that mode of transport would now take him an eternity; though it isn't mentioned, he must have used the stairs, er, ladders. This seems to be some careless scriptwriting. However, maybe the Scalosians were using the turbolifts in ignorance and this slowed them down enough for the discrepancies to make sense.

Despite a surprisingly slow pace in spots even though this is such an, uh, accelerated episode (we see video tapes of the Scalosians over & over), this comes off as fairly entertaining due to Kirk's odd conflicting attraction with the leader of the invaders, princess Deela, played by actress Kathie Browne like some naughty valley girl from outer space. It's amusing to see Kirk allow himself a very brief lecherous smirk when he first sees her, even as he knows he's in the middle of a hostile invasion. Here's where Kirk's rep as the super-stud of Trek space may have gained the most traction, ahem. There's even a scene of him putting his boots back on after he and the foxy invader have obviously done the nasty deed (since this is the sixties, all other TV episodes on this show never went beyond subtle suggestion, say, a veiled wink or two; by contrast, this scene was very direct). He and Deela obviously felt a genuine sexual heat, much more apparent and honest than the usual family-oriented titillation. In fact, the entire plot of the episode revolves around the theme of survival based on necessary procreation - mating for the sake of a species, but also seeking as much enjoyment as possible in the act. This is almost an episode for grown-ups only. Almost. But, the outfits on the male Scalosians were a bit too kinky for my tastes.

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1 out of 1 people found the following comment useful :-
Great Season Three Episode, But Questions Begin, 23 March 2007

Author: Ralph from World Traveler

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

For season three this is one of my favorites, it also ranks high for the entire TOS run in my book. Kirk shooting the phaser after accelerating remains a vivid memory from my childhood, I just thought that was so cool. Only real criticisms I can think of are the ending, was Kirk that po'd that he just left them there? Where is the branching out the Federation of Planets stuff? At least tell them your going to send back a diplomatic ship to work on a resolution. And why didn't they offer them the antidote that McCoy made? Another criticism I have is Trek TOS encountered all these different alien races for exploration reasons but I never see them adopting any of the stuff they find other than in that episode, never later on. Case in point that Scolosian water accelerates and McCoy has an antidote to counteract it. Wouldn't it have been cool for the Enterprise to be in a hopeless situation in another episode and surrounded by alien ships (take your pick), so Kirk beams Spock on board the alien ship after he takes the acceleration water, Spock disables all the ships and beams back, no problem! Well I guess you can't beam with shields up, so it would have to be another situation, but that acceleration water could have come in handy. Anyway, meeting all those aliens I could see some of the humans learning stuff like levitation and the ability to fly, it would have made things "fascinating". My rating for the coolness of the aliens 9 of 10.

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1 out of 1 people found the following comment useful :-
An interesting concept--one that is very unique, 8 December 2006

Author: planktonrules from Bradenton, Florida

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

The Enterprise receives a distress signal, but when they arrived on the planet, they see it was once inhabited but is now totally depopulated. When they transport back to the ship, something is slipped in Kirk's coffee by an unseen force. Suddenly, everyone but him appears to be moving slower and slower, though it's actually Kirk that is accelerating in speed to such a degree that he seems to disappear--moving too fast for the human eye to detect. Once this occurs, he discovers that there were survivors on the planet and they beamed aboard undetected because they, too, were moving at this hugely accelerated speed. These humanoids plan on putting the ship's crew in suspended animation and using the crew as breeding stock to be thawed out as needed, as the same thing that makes these being accelerate also makes their men shoot blanks, so to speak! The shear originality of the script make this a very memorable episode. While not among the very best, it is well worth seeing and you'll once again see an alien hottie fall for the super-studly Captain.

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Cheerful and original., 21 April 2008

Author: fedor8 (fedor8@yahoo.com) from Serbia

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

One of the very best ST episodes, partly because it offers a real sci-fi premise and not some run-of-the-mill by-the-numbers plot that is so standard it could be used for almost any non-sci-fi TV show. While somewhat similar to "By Any Other Name" (which is one of the worst episodes), the overtaking-of-the-ship shtick is almost devoid of the usual clichés and cheap plot-devices. Kirk's love-interest is played by a charismatic actress who does the role with perfect tongue-in-cheek cheerfulness. The chemistry between Browne and Shatner is very effective, offering a totally different kind of relationship than the other, more standard conquests Kirk has; there is far more humour in it and it looks genuine.

I don't even see any glaring logic problems. A minor point would be that the events in "Spock/McCoy time" were sufficiently long as to imply that Kirk must have spent weeks, if not months, in accelerated time, yet there isn't much evidence that the aliens needed so much time to prepare the Enterprise for freezing. As for annoyances, the only irritating aspect was yet another red-shirt crew member showing an absurd lack of discipline, loyalty and morale, by very quickly taking the side of the enemy - much like the red-shirt gal in the very mediocre "Space Seed" episode. (Those damn red-shirts... either they betray you or they die on you!) Since there was zero explanation as to why "they soon come around to it", I can't accept that idea that acceleration makes humans docile. It certainly had no effect on Kirk, who is supposed to be human, the last time I checked.

Some of the episode's scenes were shot at a tilted angle, something that would be later used ad nauseum in the wonderfully silly "Battlefield Earth".

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