Water breathers? Whaaaat? Gosh that reminds me of the abysmal The Threshold from Voyager. One of the worst episodes in the history of the franchise. They are gain "arressted". How often can Kirk be trapped or imprisoned? The underwater world doesn't look good. Everyone often stands or sits like this wasn't underwater. Only sometimes they actually dive. But they love their mysticals water creatures. Be it sirens, Lorelei or this mermaids... Only thing I like: shuttles (or is this a dedicated device) are transformed into speed boats. With such a design, you could easily become the king of Lake Como.
Don't like this epiosde. Execution is too poor. Story is too shallow.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParent2017-07-25T19:18:55Z
[5.4/10] Full disclosure here folks, I may just be burning out on the adventures of the TOS-era cast, so take this rating with a grain of salt. This episode is halfway between a typical Star Trek episode and a typical Saturday morning cartoon episode. The plots are pretty shopworn -- Kirk and Spock go meet an alien species, something bad happens that makes them sick/injured/trapped, and they find the solution just in time to have a We’re Not So Different moment with the aliens.
In this instance, the aliens are big seamonkeys who turn Kirk and Spock into aquatic creatures who can only breathe in the water. There’s some neat stuff in depicting the underwater culture, but for the most part it’s the usual “suspicious of outsiders” and “the long long ago” shtick. There’s some minor intrigue from the fact that the seamonkeys are fixated on preserving knowledge, but otherwise it’s a standard issue adventure with little that bad, but little to recommend it either. The episode certainly drags things out or throws in plot obstacles that seem like filler, but generally it’s fine if predictable in where things will go.
(As a personal aside, I have the chance to see The Wrath of Khan on the big screen in early August, so I’m going to try to catch up with everything prior to that movie before then. But I may try to slow down and savor the other TOS movies rather than try to watch all of them before Discovery debuts, which was my original goal.)