This episode sees Kirk, Spock and McCoy beam down to a remote planet searching for a cure for the deadly Rigellian Fever that is sweeping through the Enterprise. If they don't find and process it within four hours the crew will die. The planet is meant to be uninhabited but they are met by a sentry robot and its owner, Flint. Flint is initially unwelcoming but eventually agrees to help. He invites the team to come to his home while his sentry goes to retrieve the cure. Once in his home Spock notices various interesting items; works that are clearly original but unknown works by Leonardo da Vinci and Johannes Brahms but they all on modern materials! At dinner he introduces them to the Renya; a young woman who is as intelligent as she is beautiful. Almost inevitably Kirk and Renya fall in love. Not long afterwards they discover the truth about Flint and Renya; he is over six thousand years old, he has new works by great people because they were in fact him! Renya's secret is no less surprising; she is an android Flint built as a perfect mate so he would no longer have to suffer the loss as those he loved died of old age.
This is a weaker than average episode; the four hour time limit should create a real sense of urgency but once they are in Flint's home they seem more interesting in his possessions; they may be there to provide early clues to his extreme age but one would have thought our protagonists would have other priorities. Likewise the timescale makes it seem unlikely that Kirk would have time to fall in love with Renya. If all that wasn't unlikely enough Flint finally announces that he won't allow them to leave as he is worried other people will come to his planet; the then 'magically' shrinks the Enterprise and has it appear as a desktop model! The ideas featured could have been more interesting if only we weren't meant to think it all happened within hour hours during which our protagonists are meant to be trying to get a cure to a deadly illness. On the plus side the cast do a solid enough job; James Daly does a decent job as Flint and Louise Sorel nicely captures the android innocence of Renya. Overall a bit disappointing but still far from terrible.
This is a weaker than average episode; the four hour time limit should create a real sense of urgency but once they are in Flint's home they seem more interesting in his possessions; they may be there to provide early clues to his extreme age but one would have thought our protagonists would have other priorities. Likewise the timescale makes it seem unlikely that Kirk would have time to fall in love with Renya. If all that wasn't unlikely enough Flint finally announces that he won't allow them to leave as he is worried other people will come to his planet; the then 'magically' shrinks the Enterprise and has it appear as a desktop model! The ideas featured could have been more interesting if only we weren't meant to think it all happened within hour hours during which our protagonists are meant to be trying to get a cure to a deadly illness. On the plus side the cast do a solid enough job; James Daly does a decent job as Flint and Louise Sorel nicely captures the android innocence of Renya. Overall a bit disappointing but still far from terrible.