3x08 For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky

[4.8/10] I’m in the middle of watching Twin Peaks right now, and it’s an object lesson in the way that ideas for stories and concepts for characters and themes you want to explore are all well and good, but it’s how you execute those things on the celluloid (or in pixels, whatever your fancy is) that really matters. Even the best ideas, the most innovative concepts, can be completely undercut by the way you go about dramatizing them.

That’s assuredly the case for “For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky”, an episode with a great title and little to show for it. There’s some alternate universe where the episode had a better script, some better performances, and tighter storytelling and turns out to be a classic. It features a number of intriguing elements, thrown together.

For one thing, there’s Dr. McCoy having a fatal disease that will leave him dead within a year. The episode cheats against that premise is a convenient way, when overthrowing the latest oppressive group of long-dead, robotic elders reveals a store of medical knowledge that just so happens to contain a cure. But the premise there, that McCoy is a little more fatalistic, a little more willing to put himself on the line and break ranks because he has little to lose, is a solid one.

In the same way, I like the idea that it’s McCoy who falls in love with the alien babe of the week rather than Kirk for once. There’s synergy (and by the same token, convenience) in him meeting Natira right when he knows his death is impending, adding a star-crossed lovers vibe to the whole thing. I’m not much of a “love at first sight” believer, so the whole thing comes off super rushed to me, but there’s potential in the story of two people finding one another at a point when their time together has a seemingly inevitable expiration date.

There’s even an interesting concept behind the “asteroid-as-ship” conceit. There’s some good, sci-fi-y flair to people living on a spaceship that they believe is a planet. As usual, the show gets a bit too heavy-handed with this idea, but there’s even some thematic resonance and commentary in the way the “oracle” that Natira communicates with and the elders that built the ship are steeped in religious verbiage and have pulled the wool over their descendents’ eyes in the name of giving them a better life.

But man, when you smash all of these elements together and try to run through them in forty-five minutes, the results are jumbled and surprisingly dull. I was ready to chalk this one up to the standard Star Trek problem of not enough incident to fill the time allotted. But reflecting on how many stories and developments and themes there are here, that really shouldn’t be the case.

You haves Bones falling in love. You have Natiri torn by her loyalty to Bones and to her people. You have the asteroid ship hurtling toward another planet. And you have Kirk and Spock sniffing around the ship and the body-zapping Oracle to try to figure out how to change its course. Yet somehow, this whole thing is pretty boring for the most part, with little action or excitement, and low character stakes despite the high emotional drama of McCoy and Natiri’s romance.

Maybe it’s just that we already did this, to drizzling results, in “The Paradise Syndrome.” And that just covers the doomed romance and joining another culture aspect -- this must be at least the fifth episode where the Enterprise encounters some alien species organized by robot overlords set in motion by some ancient ancestors. But I think more of it has to do with the fact that this episode basically has two setting: race through plot points or drag things out through interminable scenes focused on character.

Bones is barely committed to staying with Natiri and her people for more than five minutes before the episode quickly erases the decision. The whole obedience chip element is glossed over entirely, with it seeming like the sort of thing Bones wouldn’t cotton to, even for love. And the entire romance is rushed too, with McCoy and Natiri being supposed to have developed this enduring love in a matter of moments that we never really see.

At least “Paradise Syndrome” had the conceit that Kirk was down on the planet for a couple of months. You can try to write it off with the idea that Bones was rattled by his self-diagnosis and hungry for a romantic connection at the end of the his life, but their romance is the core of the episode and “Hollow” dramatises it in a quick, unsatisfying fashion.

It doesn’t help that the actress who plays “Natiri” is terrible and there’s no chemistry between her and McCoy (with Kelley not really selling his emotional state either). Natiri has a lot to do in the episode, and while Star Trek is no stranger to stilted guest actors, is brings down both the plot-heavy and emotional scenes that she’s a part of. The episode leans hard into these romance scenes to try to sell the pairing or communicate the conflict Natiri faces between her commitment to her planet and people and her new love on the other hand, and the fact that they don’t work really hurts the overall effort.

Those quieter character moments aren’t all bad though, especially when Natiri isn’t a part of them. Kirk’s and Nurse Chapel’s reaction to Bones’s self-diagnosis has force to it. Spock and McCoy’s relationship offers the unexpected heart of the show, and the simple gesture of Spock’s hand grabbing McCoy’s arm reveals an affection and sense of comfort from the Vulcan. Scattered amid the doldrums, there’s decent stuff here.

But really, you can say that for most Star Trek episodes. There’s structural flaws in “Hollow” that hold it back -- the pacing, the acting, the story mishmash -- but there’s the elements of a potentially great episode within all of it. That’s the most frustrating thing about the episode -- the good ideas and interesting character directions that are executed in such a disappointing fashion that you wonder why such solid material was wasted on such a blah outing.