2x18 The Immunity Syndrome

[8.2/10] I’m going to pay “The Immunity Syndrome” of the highest compliments I can give to an episode of The Original Series -- it felt like a meat and potatoes episode of The Next Generation. I’m being a little cheeky there, but in truth “Immunity” is the sort of episode I might show a TNG fan to convince them that TOS is worth watching. The has many of the same rhythms that its successor series would use, including the mysterious phenomenon out in space, the conference room debates and frustrations in how to escape it, and the notions of personal sacrifice and camaraderie as the crew risks life and limb to solve the problem. These were the bread and butter of The Next Generation, with less (though not none) of the weekly love interest and swashbuckling material that TOS engages with.

On the other hand, “Immunity” is also an episode that moves pretty slowly. While it’s not always one-hundred percent clear how our heroes are going to overcome their latest interstellar obstacle, it’s reasonably certain that they will, or that the interstitial attempts to use up power to escape will go awry, or that the point black missile will hit its intended target. That creates a certain amount of inevitability to “Immunity” even when the drama is high. The episode often takes its sweet time between when some character announces the next tactic and when it’s executed. In many places, that creates tension and excitement, but in others, the viewer is left cajoling Kirk and company to get on with it already.

Thankfully, “Immunity” balances out all its treknobabble and technical solutions to the big space problem by adding personal stakes and relationships that are just as much a focus of the episode. (You know, personal stakes other than the fact that everyone on the ship will die if they don’t find a way out of this scrape). The easiest of them is the notion that Kirk is exhausted and trying to power his way through this crisis.

That adds character to this challenge. I puzzled for a while at why the episode kept underscoring the fact that the crew had been on a long mission and needed some R&R, but as the story unspooled, it helps create personal reasons this incident is so desperate. The best crew in the fleet is not only facing an unknown adversary, but they’re not at their best and, like the ship itself running on fumes. The episode is a little unclear on whether that’s magnified by the effects of the space amoeba, but either way, it makes the encounter with the creature more than a vanilla scrap with an unknown space entity.

It also affects Kirk personally. He makes an interesting tactical decision here -- enduring stimulant injections to counteract the possible draining effect of the creature (combined with his own tiredness) reasoning that if he can just push himself through these next couple of hours, he’ll either be safe after their escape, or he’ll be dead and so it won’t matter. It adds to the ways in which various members of the crew are taking desperate risks here.

But no one takes a more desperate (er...logical) risk than Spock. My favorite part of this episode is how he and Dr. McCoy jockey to be the one to pilot the modified shuttlecraft into creature. There’s some subtext that it’s the same sort of competition or disagreeableness the two normally share with one another. But there’s stronger subtext that (a.) they both think it’s the right thing to do and they’re seeking to be martyrs rather than glory hounds and (b.) each wants to spare the other. Despite their differences, I think that’s the ultimate tribute to the nobility of the two men -- that their sharpest disagreement seems to be over who gets to die trying to save the rest of the ship.

Their relationship is quite possibly my favorite thing about The Original Series. They have such great frenemy chemistry together, and the scene of Dr. McCoy saying "good luck" before Spock ventures out to fly into the uber-amoeba warmed my damn heart. There is always a sense that even when the men do not particularly like each other, they cannot help but respect and secretly admire one another. They just have different perspectives on things which leads to inevitable clashes and opportunities to rib one another (an act Kirk gets in on too from time to time). But when the chips are down, they want the best for one another and feel distraught when one or the other is at risk, doing everything in their power to make sure that their frenemy is saved.

It tugs the heartstrings when both Kirk and Spock think they’re going to die and record their final commendations. Spock is, true to his nature, not a very emotional guy, but him describing the captain and crew of the Enterprise as “the finest in the fleet” is the Vulcan equivalent of him composing an epic poem to describe his heartfelt feelings for each and every person on the ship. And Kirk, believing he’s facing the end, recording commendations for his bridge crew, and Spock in particular, is another heartening, dignified way for the man to go out (or at least think he’s going out).

Thankfully (and shockingly), he’s not. This is also Scott’s time to shine as he proves his mettle as a miracle working jerry-rigging various power sources on the ship from here to there and helping make it possible for him to escape. The premise of the space around the amoeba -- that they’re essentially in opposite land so it takes forward thrust to go in reverse and antimatter to disrupt the energy-eating beast, is a little simplistic, but still makes for a neat enough opportunity for lateral thinking.

It also provides for some of that trademark Trek imaginativeness. The reveal that the thing causing all this trouble for the Enterprise turns out to be a gargantuan single-celled organism is an inventive one. I’m sure much of this is owed to the remastering, but the fluorescent creature floating in space ahead of them makes for a striking image as they’re pulled closer and closer to it. It’s one of those “boldly go where no one’s gone before” episodes where the crew encounters something legitimately weird and unusual, which always hooks me.

That unusualness contributes to the sense of a captain and a ship at their breaking point. Everyone does their best to keep a stiff upper lip in the face of danger, but they’re clearly running out of ideas and running out of time. That makes the heroics of Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scotty, and the crew as a whole stand out as all the more stark. It’s the same sort of working together to solve problems in difficult situations that made The Next Generation so captivating for me as a child, and it’s encouraging to see that spirit originated in the series that spawned it.

That's as Star Treki-ish it can be: the wonders of space exploration, an inexplicable phenomena, ship and crew obviously in danger. Like other ships in later shows of this franchise it's caught in a bubble, pocket in space, space monster's den, nebula, void or whatever you want to call this. I even like the FX of the creature inside (if you want to call this FX). The staff in all departments and across all ranks work hard to find a way out. Calm, organized, professional (watch this and learn Disco!) I even like Kirk here. He sends Spock because he realizes that the Good Doctor or even he himself isn't the best man for the job. Eventually they succeed (is there another option?) and that's all very entertaining. It's also quite gratifying to co-experience this adventure. From today's perspective this isn't very surprising. Too often future Federation ships faced similar trouble. Thus, I'm not really surprised by the explanation of the phenomena nor the fact that anti-xxxx is used to break free. But I'm fine with that, because crew dynamics is really the core of this episode. It's one of the few episodes where the bickering between Spock, McCoy and Kirk in the end is quite amusing.

(Unwanted advice: Watch at 1.25x. It's not a very fast paced).