3x24 Turnabout Intruder

[7.6/10] I’m always fascinated by accidental or hastily put together finales. Whether it’s shows like Deadwood or Firefly with final episodes that aren’t meant to be endings and yet still represent a culmination of the themes of the show, or series like Angel or Arrested Development that rush to pay off everything in just a couple of episodes, there’s something compelling about a television show’s big exit, especially when that exit isn’t exactly planned.

“Turnabout Intruder” is and isn’t that for The Original Series. There’s an animated show, a set of four (soon to be five) successor series each indebted to TOS in their own way, and a sextet of films that continue these adventures. But it is still the last outing for this particular incarnation of Trek, and while it’s not the show’s finest hour, it’s a fitting finale for this seminal series.

Just as “Operation -- Annihilate” works surprisingly well as a season finale despite, on the surface, being just another standalone episode, “Turnabout Intruder” works as an ending to The Original Series because it represents two ideas that have been central to the show.

The first is that in the found family that makes up the crew of the Enterprise, these men and woman who’ve lived through nearly eighty episodes know who James Tiberius Kirk is, how he acts and what his character is, and no one can replace, impersonate, or imitate that. I’ve tweaked Star Trek repeatedly for its continuing notion that Kirk is a Great Man™, but the show uses it to good ends here, to show that beyond saving the day or bossing other civilizations around, there is something that is recognizably and inimitably Kirk about the captain of the Enterprise, and even when they can’t prove it, the folks who’ve served with him all these years know it.

So when an old flame from Starfleet Academy pulls the good ol’ Freaky Friday on Kirk and changes places with him, Spock and Bones and eventually Scotty, Sulu, and Chekov know that there’s something amiss. It’s not like they all suspect a body switch at first, but they’ve known Captain Kirk long enough to know that he doesn’t fly off the handle like this, that he doesn’t make those sort of reckless, self-serving decisions (or at least, not in that way), and he is not the smug snake who angrily dresses down subordinates and laughs at the prospect of people dying.

Despite the multiple facets of Star Trek, one of its chief projects has been to let the audience get to know James T. Kirk, what he believes in, stands for, and acts like. It’s allowed the show to signal that something is wrong to the audience in twists like the one in “The Enterprise Incident” And here, it works as a signal to the crew that the man sitting in the captain’s chair on the bridge is not their leader.

It also speaks to the show’s other grand theme -- a recognition of the infinite possibilities of the universe. As Spock himself says, the crew of the Enterprise have witnessed their share of strange occurrences that nevertheless turned out to be real. As bizarre as a mind switch seems (though “Return to Yesterday” and “Whom Gods Destroy” ought to theoretically have prepared them for it), Spock’s words on the stand evince the ethos of the show -- an openness to new experiences and developments that may seem strange to us, but that we should still accept if the evidence points us that way. Star Trek has always been a show devoted to the unusual and unexpected and asked its audience and its characters to accept that. It’s a notion that permeates “Turnabout Intruder” and, in an odd way, brings the episode in line with The Next Generation’s series finale.

But “Turnabout Intruder” is also fitting because it fits the less-than-great parts of Star Trek as well. Its subsidiary theme is one that feels particularly backward -- the notion that women (or at least a woman) a conniving, blinded by love, and too unstable to lead. The depiction of Janice Lester here is regrettable, to say the least, and there’s an unfortunate subtext to her increasing insanity of the old “crazy woman” tropes that contributed to skepticism about their being full and equal members of society for centuries.

On a less pernicious note, “Turnabout Intruder” also offers one last great outing for another recurring feature of Star Trek -- William Shatner’s overacting. I will say this for the episode -- as much as I am apt to resist the “crazy woman” trope and the way it’s deployed here, it does give Shatner the opportunity to go full ham. He shouts and laughs maniacally and contorts his limbs with that trademark Shatner over-exuberance in a way that is fitting as a representation of the extremes of the actors’ performances that often found purchase in the show from week to week.

There’s even a few nice bits of continuity to help cement this finale as remembering (more or less) where the series started and where it’s been. When Lester-as-Kirk orders an execution, Sulu and Chekov get the number of the general order wrong, but note that there’s only one rule in Starfleet that carries the death penalty, a reference to “The Menagerie” which repurposed the show’s original pilot. When Kirk-as-Lester is pressed to prove that he is who he says it is, he brings up Spock’s actions in “The Tholian Web.” Hell, it’s subtle enough to potentially be a coincidence, but Lester-as-Kirk even uses McCoy’s little leg-press machine in sick bay just like he did in “The Corbomite Maneuver.”

But more than anything, apart from the themes, apart from the problematic elements and continuity nods and recognitions of Kirk, “Turnabout Intruder” just tells a compelling story, one with significant stakes and intriguing obstacles. One of the best parts of the episode is that all of the characters, not just Spock, act logically. They don’t instantly know that Kirk isn’t really Kirk, they just suspect something is up when he’s not acting like himself and try to figure out why. When trying to prove his identity, Kirk resorts to shared experiences (as he did in “Whom Gods Destroy”) and when that fails, remembers Spock’s psychic abilities to establish that his mind is his own.

And even when Kirk has the support of his crew, everyone on board from the second-in-command to the folks at the helm realize that their beliefs will do them no good without some objective proof to Starfleet Command. It’s a thorny problem, one where the issue is clear but the solution is elusive, and the characters work diligently to find it while facing personal challenges in how to do so, the sort of setup that creates the best episodes of The Original Series.

“Turnabout Intruder” isn’t one of the best episodes of the show. The retrograde theme and instances of Shatner shatnering drag it down, the resolution with the psychic transference simply breaking down when the time is right (albeit motivated by stress induced from the prospective mutiny) is a little too convenient. But it’s still an interesting premise, bolstered by understandable actions from the main characters on the show who are in a difficult position with their friend and their duty, and it even goes out the way Star Trek should, with Kirk delivering some wistful, mostly vapid rumination on what just happened.

It’s an episode that represents the best and worst of The Original Series and that makes it feel right as an ending to the show proper, before animated spinoffs and further cinematic adventures took shape. There is something holy about these first 79 episodes, the ones that set the stage for the five-decade (and counting) franchise that followed. TOS will never be my Star Trek. I didn’t grow up with it; much of it feels dated or hokey, and even at its best it has problems.

But as “Turnabout Intruder” demonstrates, it’s still a worthwhile, enjoyable, and occasionally transcendent series, one that forged connections between its main characters even in a show without serialization, one devoted to exploring the unusual and unanticipated and embracing the weird and wooly possibilities that promised, and most of all, one that had its missteps and blindspots and bits of ridiculousness, but often found the truth in the fantastical, in a way that made this uneven series always worth watching, just to see where it, the Enterprise, and the noble men and women who populated it, would end up next.

Gosh,

Shatner is bad in this. Sandra Smith ain't much better. They basically continue to play their characters. Shouldn't Shatner subtly incorporate parts of her character? Subtly! We don't know a lot about Dr. Lester's personality but he basically continues to be Kirk. Yes sure, he gives himself away by some unusual character quirks but it's not really convincing. I get it - Dr. Lester wants to be an exact copy of Kirk. Still, the whole performance ain't convincing.

Do you remember this funny Voyager episode in which Shmullus and Seven switched bodies? Ryan nailed it in this episode. She observed the character she had to impersonate thoroughly and she did a great job. This episode is really nothing like the that. Sandra Smith did it all wrong. Did she ever watch captain Kirk on tape? She never tried to impersonate him.

I don't like this episode. It's another example of misogyny. First, I was surprised that she had to resort to such a ruse in order to be able to take command of a ship. It's the damn future. I long suspected the patriarchy might be responsible for the fact that all high ranking officers in this show are male. Well, let's assume that writers wanted to criticize just that. So they designed this episode to highlight this issue. But what did they do? They could have shown the "possessed" Kirk as competent as any other truly male officer. Instead he/she gives himself/herself away for being too emotional, erratic, hysterical. Unfit to command a ship and unable to keep the trust of the crew. That's actually reinforcing the idea that high ranking officers are supposed to be male, logical, cold-blooded men. While women should be nurses, communications officers or yeowomen with fancy hair-dos in short skirts serving drinks at the bridge. It's obvious that this show is from the 1960s.

All that aside, I'm really disappointed by the logic of the plot. In general, I'm prepared to overlook such issues but I don't understand what takes them that long to find out who's the real Kirk. Ask him/her for the command codes or about what happened last week. How could the fake captain answer this? Instead they try endlessly to ascertain whether his latest character quirks are revealing that he's a woman in disguise?

I said it before, I say it again: the penultimate episode would have been a better finale.

Kirk: "Her life could have been as rich as any woman's, if only ..."

Whaaaaaaaat? Last words of an alpha male.