Tonight's Treks

The Savage Curtain is another of my favorite episodes and gets the award for the most creative use of Abraham Lincoln in a sci fi show. When the Enterprise arrives at a volcanic planet they encounter the image of President Lincoln sitting out in space. He beams aboard the ship, and seem to be who he says he is--our 16th president. He asks them to beam down to the planet, where a mysterious inhabitable area has appeared out of nowhere in the midst of molten rock. Once down they encounter the Vulcan hero, Surak, also long dead, but now, not so much.

Also awaiting them is a strange alien of living rock who has set up a test, so that his race may understand good vs evil and which is stronger. The alien plucks four of the universe's most vicious killers from--actually, who knows where (at the end the explanation for Lincoln and Surak were that they were constructed from Kirk and Spock's thoughts, but it's never said where the killers came from.) At any rate, they must battle for the fate of the Enterprise and the jollies of the rock man.

The episode is a little loose but still one of the more innovative of the series. Enhancements help quite a bit where the molten planet is concerned.

All Our Yesterdays is another episode I am quite fond of. The Enterprise races to evacuate the race of a planet whose sun is about to go nova, but when they arrive they find nobody there, except a curious old librarian in a deserted building. He urges Kirk, Spock and McCoy to search through library tapes for a time period they like. Apparently the planet's inhabitants have been escaping into past periods of their history. Kirk winds up stuck in a swashbuckling period, accused of being a witch, and Spock and McCoy get trapped in a snowbound period 5000 years in the planet's past. In this episode, oddly enough, Spock gets the girl, a spicy cave girl played by Mariette Hartley when she was young and hot. I always loved the concept of walking through a door into other time periods, probably because of this episode. The enhancements apply mostly to the ending nova swallowing the planet and are well integrated.