Will we ever be free of our monsters, even in the 23rd century? This episode says of course not and, especially in view of what we've seen of the 24th century on the TNG show and other spin-offs, there will always be space-age demons and goblins to terrorize us. Following up on commodore Decker's Ahab-like role on "The Doomsday Machine," now it's Kirk's turn to confront and obsess about his personal devil. Yet, his nemesis, in a key revelatory point of the story, is not some unthinking machine; it really is a predatory monster, killing off red-shirts left and right, like a space-faring shark with malicious tendencies (it breaks the record of red-shirt deaths in "The Apple," even if one of these happen off-screen). Shatner gets to show a bit more range than usual here; he doesn't go off completely half-cocked or deranged, but there's enough edginess in him here to warrant McCoy & Spock briefly teaming up against him, recalling the key scene in "The Conscience of a King."
The story does drive home one point probably a couple of times too many: that Kirk's guilt over not killing the creature years earlier is groundless. McCoy's scene with Kirk, where he points out his captain's possibly overly obsessive approach to the problem, is very good. But then we have Spock going over this ground over and over, it seems, both with Kirk & ensign Garrovick, another guilt-ridden character. Yes, the parallels of what's currently happening in this episode and events of several years ago on the starship Farragut are somewhat eerie, but enough already, Spock. Stop beating the audience over the head with it. Despite this clumsy aspect to story construction, it's a fairly exciting, suspenseful riff on the dangers lurking in outer space, even in Trek's quasi-utopia future. Much later, Captain Picard would be accused of Ahab-like behavior in "Star Trek-First Contact"(96) involving, what else, the Borg. This seems a prevalent theme among starship captains of the Trek mythos.
