[4.5/10] Maybe I just have something against booming-voiced god-like creatures, because we’ve gotten them multiple times on this show, and it makes me roll my eyes. This episode is a bundle of previous Star Trek tropes that have never been my favorite. For one thing, you have the old chestnut of the ancient alien that visited Earth and, what do you know, guided humanity while being mistaken for a deity. The whole shtick about this giant bird lizard thing being mistaken for a Mayan god and a Chinese dragon is the same sort of well Star Trek has gone to a million times, and it always strikes me as terribly cheesy.
On top of that, our heroes are sent back in time (but not really) to a Mayan civilization, the sort of civilization-hopping that we’ve seen a million times, where what do you know, a native American ensign, whom we’ve never seen before and whom we’ll never see again, just happens to be beamed down and have relevant information. (The episode even seems to forget about him halfway through.) Depicting other cultures with grace and dignity has never been original recipe Star Trek’s specialty.
And if that weren’t enough, we do the whole “you’re animals in a zoo” bit for at least the third time in the young franchise. The fact that it’s at the behest of a creature who calls humanity “my children” just adds to the repetitive nature of the episode.
Even if you can ignore all the repeated Trek tropes, it’s a pretty dull episode, with tons of clunky exposition, stilted exchanges with the magical flying lizard (who’s at least a kind of neat-looking if ridiculously designed and colored thing), and the usual Kirk speech about how far humanity’s come. There’s something half-cool about the giant bubble the Enterprise gets trapped in, and Spock’s means of escaping it, and I like the wisp of depth that the lizard creature is lonely and sad because it tried to help humanity and is no longer appreciated, but that’s meager comfort in a pretty dull, unoriginal episode.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParent2017-08-02T03:41:23Z
[4.5/10] Maybe I just have something against booming-voiced god-like creatures, because we’ve gotten them multiple times on this show, and it makes me roll my eyes. This episode is a bundle of previous Star Trek tropes that have never been my favorite. For one thing, you have the old chestnut of the ancient alien that visited Earth and, what do you know, guided humanity while being mistaken for a deity. The whole shtick about this giant bird lizard thing being mistaken for a Mayan god and a Chinese dragon is the same sort of well Star Trek has gone to a million times, and it always strikes me as terribly cheesy.
On top of that, our heroes are sent back in time (but not really) to a Mayan civilization, the sort of civilization-hopping that we’ve seen a million times, where what do you know, a native American ensign, whom we’ve never seen before and whom we’ll never see again, just happens to be beamed down and have relevant information. (The episode even seems to forget about him halfway through.) Depicting other cultures with grace and dignity has never been original recipe Star Trek’s specialty.
And if that weren’t enough, we do the whole “you’re animals in a zoo” bit for at least the third time in the young franchise. The fact that it’s at the behest of a creature who calls humanity “my children” just adds to the repetitive nature of the episode.
Even if you can ignore all the repeated Trek tropes, it’s a pretty dull episode, with tons of clunky exposition, stilted exchanges with the magical flying lizard (who’s at least a kind of neat-looking if ridiculously designed and colored thing), and the usual Kirk speech about how far humanity’s come.
There’s something half-cool about the giant bubble the Enterprise gets trapped in, and Spock’s means of escaping it, and I like the wisp of depth that the lizard creature is lonely and sad because it tried to help humanity and is no longer appreciated, but that’s meager comfort in a pretty dull, unoriginal episode.