The Enterprise arrives at the planet Gideon to begin some kind of interstellar relations. Gideon is rumored to be a paradise but no one in the Federation knows the details. The planet's leaders insist that Kirk beam down by himself, which he does. However, he seems to end up back on an empty Enterprise, wondering where his crew has disappeared to. Unfortunately, this intriguing mystery has a most mundane explanation; it has nothing to do with Kirk entering another dimension or being out of sync, as I hoped when I first saw this as a kid. Most of the episode concerns Spock and the bridge crew dealing with bureaucracy from both Gideon and Starfleet. Even they look bored - how can they expect the audience to get excited? Kirk, meanwhile, spends most of the episode wandering on the other, empty Enterprise, along with a young female who shows up unexpectedly. Expectedly, it's an even more dull sequence of scenes. Every few scenes, a collection of sober, droopy faces pop up on this Enterprise's view-screens; this was meant to be startling or ominous. It doesn't really make sense, is all.
There also isn't much sense to this elaborate scheme concocted by Gideon's policy-makers. They wanted Kirk down on their planet for a certain reason; there was no need for all the grand subterfuge. Once Kirk beamed down, they could have sat him down in any room for an hour or so with another inhabitant to get their plan to succeed. So, it's all a contrivance as far as the plot. Likewise, Spock and the crew are too slow on the uptake in figuring out the bogus coordinates: '..079' vs. '..709' - Spock didn't notice the discrepancy immediately? This is a Vulcan! Hello? Like with many later Trek episodes (in the 3rd season), the show aimed for heavy-handed relevance to tackle social issues and rising problems of the sixties: racism, war, pollution, inequality and, in this case, overpopulation. Once Gideon's problem is revealed, it is an admittedly interesting dilemma, taken to a logical extreme (later, "Soylent Green" in '73 would tackle the issue in a similar manner). But, it's a real slog to get there. This episode also has a shot (two, actually) of the empty bridge, previously seen (attention trivia Trekkers) in "This Side of Paradise." However, that was the real bridge in the older episode, savvy?
