Customer Reviews

Star Trek - The Original Series, Episode 69: That Which Survives [VHS]

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

In this, the 69th episode of classic Trek, Kirk and crew are exploring ruins found on a class-M planet that seems to have developed a livable climate in only a few thousand years.

The Enterprise landing party is attacked by Losira, a woman who kills a crewman with just a touch of her hand. Meanwhile, the Enterprise is thrown almost a thousand light years away by the planet's hidden defense system.

More landing party members are attacked by Losira, until it is discovered that she can only attack the party member that she calls by name. The remaining party then keep her from attacking the named crewmember. Meanwhile, Scotty repairs some sabotage to the engines that Losira had accomplished before throwing the Enterprise out of orbit, and then hurries back to Losira's world.

Kirk discovers a hidden room with a highly advanced computer, and the defense mechanism there creates three Losiras - which keep them from protecting each other as they had previously. The cavalry, in the form of Spock and a landing party, arrive just in time to deactivate the computer.

The previously taped message reveals that the planet had been artificially enhanced by colonists, who were affected by a disease that killed them all off. The disease then followed the colonists back to their homeworld, supposedly wiping out the entire civilization. Nothing but the computer program, which defends the planet from anyone who is not of Losira's race, remains. The colonist's relief ship never arrived.

Kirk says beauty survives, because the computer continues to project an image of Losira even after delivering the message about the colonist's destruction.

My score - 5 out of a possible 10.

Well, I'm not really sure what we are supposed to take away with us from "That Which Survives." Kirk and Spock do exchange a little meaningful dialouge at the very end, but most of the show was so silly it was hard to swallow. "That Which Survives" (despite, what I think, is a very poetic title) plays out like a bad horror movie. Kirk, Bones, Sulu, and a blueshirt (instead of a redshirt) beam down to a planet (I forget why) and then the Enterprise disapears. A mysterious woman shows up and her touch is deadly. She walks around reciting lines like a robot, touching people and killing them through the whole show. This concept is pretty brainless, but even more brainless is Spock's terrible dialouge. After the ship has been hurled about and Uhura asks him what happened, he says something like, "I believe my cranium unit collided with the armrest of the captain's chair." Everytime Spock sees Scotty he tells to ignore his emotions and get back to work. There is hardly anything worthwile in this show. I would only recommend it if you want a full collection of TOS tapes, but even then don't watch it too often.

As a landing party prepares to beam down to a previously unexplored Class M planet, a beautiful woman, Losira, appears. She touches an ensign and kills him. Already dematerializing in the transporter beam, Kirk and the rest of his party are helpless to stop her. Losira disappears. The surge of power that Losira's appearance caused hurtles the Enterprise 990.7 light years away from where they were. Spock calculates that it will take 11.33 hours at warp 8.4 to return to the planet. On the surface of the planet, Kirk, McCoy, Sulu and geologist D'Amato discover the vegetation is poisonous to humans and the rocks are made of an alloy that did not develop naturally. Losira appears again and kills D'Amato, again, by merely touching him. She vanishes, then reappears, this time for Sulu, but he avoids her and they realize she can only harm the person whose name she calls. Kirk, Sulu and McCoy band together to keep her from killing them. Losira reappears on the Enterprise, in engineering, and kills another crewman. When Scotty insists that something "feels" wrong with the ship, they discover that Losira had sabotaged the matter/antimatter integrator. Scotty repairs the device before it has a chance to explode. On the planet's surface, the landing party finds a chamber in the rocks that houses a computer. They realize that this is where Losira appears from. Losira appears to them again, this time in threes, so that she can touch each officer at once. Spock and a security team arrive and destroy the computer what was projecting Losira's image. A visual recording triggered by the computer shows that the planet was once an outpost of the Kalandan race. It was ravaged by a deadly organism which supply ships unknowingly carried back to their home world. With the computer destroyed, the last of the Kalandans' is also dead.

In "That Which Survives," Kirk, McCoy, Sulu, and a geologist get stuck on a mysterious planet. Meanwhile, the Enterprise is also having problems and there is trouble that it will overload and blow up if Scotty or somebody else doesn't find the problem soon. But that's not the biggest problem that anybody has. There's a woman that keeps appearing both on the Enterprise and the planet that Kirk and the others are stranded on, and if she touches who she says she wants, they will die. The Enterprise crew have to find out if there's a way off the planet that some of the crew is stuck on, but if the ship blows up, there won't be a ship to go back to.

"That Which Survives," in my opinion, is just an average episode. There's nothing all that exciting about it, but it's not one of the worst episodes either. It has a few things such as one of Scotty's lines and the part where Scotty is having trouble fixing the ship, that keep it from being one of the worst.

I would recommend any fan of Star Trek - The Original Series to watch "That Which Survives," but I wouldn't really recommend buying it except to people who want to collect every episode.

As all fans know, this is a third/last season episode. Trrue Trekkies have little good to say about this episode and I agree it is far from perfect but it has some of the nicest visual effects of the series.

The acting is Monday-morning-terrible and the whole production is uneven but this is far from the worst episode. There is an effort and an interesting story, though it seems crammed in a 45 minute network show.

This story might have been better utilized and expanded in a feature film but who will ever know.

For Trek fans only. It deserves a second viewing.

As I mentioned earlier, Season Three entered a slump starting with Wink of An Eye. Unfortunately, That Which Survives is even worse than Wink of An Eye and it continued the Season Three slump.

This episode is clearly in the bottom ten. Spock is so mean. I wish Scotty would have jettisoned Spock into space. The acting is just plain awful and unnecessary scenes were added just to fill time! Spock is not the only one being mean. Kirk destroys Sulu every time he opens his mouth. It was only after Sulu almost died that he was nice to him. I want to say this is the worst of the series but there are a couple of episodes that are even worse.

When the Enterprise is investigating an anomalous planet, a woman suddenly appears in the transporter room when Kirk and landing party are beaming down and renders a touch lethal to the operator. The Enterprise is suddenly flung nearly a thousand light years distant, leaving the landing party stranded. The woman appears again on the surface of the planet and when she touches D' Amato, he dies due to massive cellular disruption.
When the woman reappears, Zulu tries to fight her off but his phaser fails to work. A slight touch causes disruption in his shoulder, yet nothing happens when she touches Kirk. They learn very quickly that she is programmed to kill only a certain person and her touch is harmless to everyone else. By asking her who she is for, the others can use their bodies to shield the intended victim.
Scotty is once again the miracle man as he regains control of the Enterprise and it speeds back to rescue the captain and his landing party. Kirk learns that all of the people on the planet have died and the defense computer is using the image of the last one alive to create the killing entities. The Enterprise gets back in the nick of time and destroys the computer, saving Kirk and his party. This time, the computer is unaware of the presence of the Enterprise.
This episode is another one of the lackluster and forgettable stories of the last season. Once again, they encounter a force so powerful that it can send the Enterprise a thousand light years away, understands how to selectively destroy the cells of a unique individual, yet, this force can be easily fooled and defeated. Once Kirk understands what it is doing, they can stop it. It would have been a much more effective defense if the computer had just disrupted the cells of all people in the landing party simultaneously.

As already noted, this one is a forgettable Trek, to be sure. But somehow, Trek, even when it is bad, is still pretty good.

Outside of a few good moments, such as Sulu firing his phaser at Losira's feet (pretty good explosion FX), and the nifty way the holograms disappear, this one blows pretty badly. Still, it's better than the latest reality drama, or any episode of "Lost in Space."

Watch this one instead of the next "WWF Smackdown" -and save your brain.

"That Which Survives" is a typical Trek story, but it has some fun scenes that prevent it from being a total dud. Mainly just a ho hum show.