1x29 Operation: Annihilate!

[8.1/10]. One of the unusual difficulties of watching an older show is that you can be unfamiliar with the rhythms of a season, not just an episode. While the storytelling style and pacing of Star Trek has taken some getting used to for me, I also didn’t know what to expect from the show’s season finale. In the modern day, the last episode of the season is often a chance for increased stakes, the climax of the season’s plots and major cliffhangers (the latter being a device that The Next Generation helped popularize on television). But the business of making a season of television has changed a great deal in fifty years, and I was not sure what to expect from Star Trek’s final installment of its first season.

Imagine my surprise then, when “Operation – Annihilate!” (gotta love that exclamation point) would work as a random episode dropped into the middle of Season 1, but also, subtly, works as a culmination of the show’s themes and character development throughout that season. There’s nothing that specifically marks “Annihilate!” as a finale, but its approach to its three main characters in particular, shows the series willing to step up its game in the closing of its first batch of episodes.

“Annihilate” sees the Enterprise investigating a suspicious progression of societies and planets destroyed through mass-insanity. Of course, Kirk and company show up just as the trouble is reaching a fever pitch, and Kirk has to uncover what’s causing the problem, and wrestle with the moral implications and difficulties of what it will take to solve it. On its face, this is pretty standard Star Trek business, with the planet of the week and ethical crisis to go with that have become quite familiar over the course of the season.

The difference, and the catch, is two-fold. For one thing, when the away team beams down to the planet and discovers a series of flattened, plucked chicken creatures are causing the problems, Spock is attacked and infected by one of them, messing with his head, causing him pain, and putting his life at risk. For another, the planet of the week just so happens to have Captain Kirk’s brother, sister-in-law, and nephew on it, who are dead, dying, and in a coma respectively.

Now the former plot detail is, arguably, not such a novel development. Crewmembers succumbing to the virus of the week is nothing new. We’ve already seen Bones become “of the body,” Sulu go mad in “The Naked Time,” and even Kirk get alternatively hypnotized, cloned, and infected. Spock himself has already gotten hopped up on spores, and we’ve already seen what happens when he goes rogue in “The Menagerie.”

But somehow this feels different. Maybe I’m unduly puffing up the threat in my own mind knowing that this is the finale, but the sense that (a.) this creature is able to overcome Spock’s steadfast mental discipline and loyalty to make him turn on his crewman and try to send the ship on a suicide mission and (b.) it is subjecting him to incredible pain even as he’s able to master it, elevates this threat to him over previous ones.

On top of that, as usual, Leonard Nimoy sells the gravity of the situation expertly. While Bones continually holds his own, Nimoy is, in all likelihood, the best actor on the show, and he communicates the way in which Spock is very much in control, but experiencing unimaginable pain, and trying to hold it together, supremely well. Playing a character experiencing one thing on the inside and trying to project another on the outside is a challenge, but Nimoy pulls it off seamlessly.

But it’s also how other characters react to Spock’s affliction that heightens the perception of the risks involved here. Bones is, for a somewhat sentimental but stiff-upper-lipped character, practically beside himself about the creature’s potential debilitating effects. The episode underlines it a little too much, but Bones’s quiet declaration that Spock is the best first officer in the fleet, something that runs counter to his usual playful jibes at the Vulcan, drives home the magnitude of what’s at stake here.

It’s also part of why “Annihilate” works as a season finale. It’s a small gesture, and one that’s tied up neatly so that the status quo can remain, but it pays off the contentious relationship between Spock and Dr. McCoy that’s existed since the show’s earliest episodes. The “deep down, I respect you” reveal is a bit of a cliché, but Bones confession and Spock’s inadvertent receiving of it (not to mention his subtle reaction to it), adds a dimension to their relationship that feels fit for a major episode.

But the other half of the equation – where Kirk has lost his brother and sister-in-law and is responsible for the health and well-being of his comatose nephew – also makes “Annihilate” unique and worthy of being a finale, because it injects the personal into Kirk’s decision-making, complicating the choices before him. I’m not one to be overly effusive with praise for Shatner’s acting, and he does return to his over-the-top tendencies in places, but the underplayed, haunted demeanor from him in the wake of his family and his first officer being in the line of fire of these things is the best overall performance he’s given in the show so far.

Sure, he still bangs on the table and demands a third option when faced with the choice of killing one million people, including Spock and his nephew, to prevent the spread of the creatures or letting them live and risking that more civilizations suffer this fate. But it adds a wrinkle to the “how do we solve the crisis of the week,” a genuine personal stake in the proceedings, that is reflected in Kirk’s harried reaction and ups the ante.

Despite all that, I have to admit that I laughed out loud at the pulsating poultry pancakes flying around on fishing wire. Again, it’s churlish to complain about special effects from the 1960s, but I couldn’t help but chuckle at the ridiculousness of it all. Still, outside of the moments where the creatures whinny and squirm, the reactions of the actors sell their severity.

The solution to the problem – attacking the creatures with light – is kind of dumb, but works well enough for the episode’s purposes. And Spock volunteering for the test, and ending up blinded (however temporarily) is the kind of selflessness and sacrifice that makes these sorts of installments all the more rich and meaningful. In the end, of course, the day is saved, but it took real struggle and difficulty to get there, and that makes it matter.

The first season of Star Trek has been a rocky road for yours truly. There have been episode like “The Menagerie” that knocked my socks off and episodes like “Miri” that made me want to set a phaser on my television. But through these initial twenty-nine episodes, the show has established its world, and more importantly its characters, in a way that makes the developments in an episode like “Annihilate” meaningful. When a captain who can be harsh in the name of duty and “the mission” is struggling because his family is involved, when a first officer known for his staid self-control is lapsing and struggling, and when a doctor who normally only spits out insults offers praise instead, the contrast and the uniqueness of these moments allows the show to build on what came before, and close out its first season in style.