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Synopsis: The Enterprise is lured to a planet by a distress call and is confronted by aliens who want to take over the ship and conquer our galaxy. “By Any Other Name” is an illustration of what might happen to our society if we forgo the senses, including beauty, and emotions, including love, or Eros,… Continue reading Star Trek: The Original Series Season 2, Episode 22: “By Any Other Name”

Synopsis: Starfleet Command orders the Enterprise to go to Ekos to investigate the loss of communication with historian John Gill. “Patterns of Force” is the episode in which a historian is sent to a developing planet as a cultural observer and ends up patterning its development on Nazi Germany. In my last post on “Return… Continue reading Star Trek: The Original Series Season 2, Episode 21: “Patterns of Force”

Synopsis: The Enterprise is directed to a long dead planet, where alien beings want to borrow the bodies of three crewmembers. “Return to Tomorrow” is a physical manifestation of the depth psychological term, inflation. The Enterprise is summoned to a planet by a god-like alien intelligence. A being with a mind so powerful that it… Continue reading Star Trek: The Original Series Season 2, Episode 20: “Return to Tomorrow”

Synopsis: Captain Kirk returns to a planet he surveyed as a young officer to find that the Klingons have armed one segment of the once peaceful population with firearms. In “A Private Little War” there are a lot of themes that are touched on. There is the obvious reference from the late 1960s of the… Continue reading Star Trek: The Original Series Season 2, Episode 19: “A Private Little War”

Synopsis: The Enterprise encounters a large one-cell space organism. Depth Psychology teaches us how to “see through” different viewpoints, other than our conscious ego. In “The Immunity Syndrome” we do get the perspective of two different life forms, on life and death. The first, on death is in the beginning of the episode when Mr.… Continue reading Star Trek: The Original Series Season 2, Episode 18: “The Immunity Syndrome”

Synopsis: Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock and Dr. McCoy beam down to a planet that has patterned itself after a book on the lives of Chicago mobsters of the 1920s. In “A Piece of the Action” the Enterprise is sent to Sigma Iotia II, a planet that was visited a century earlier by the spaceship Horizon.… Continue reading Star Trek: The Original Series Season 2, Episode 17: “A Piece of the Action”

Synopsis: Captain Kirk, Lt. Uhura, and Ensign Chekov are kidnapped and transported to a planet where they are expected to fight for the pleasure of the Providers. This is the episode made famous by the tin-foil bikini, that worn by the character of Shahna, Captain James T. Kirk’s training thrall on the planet Triskelion. And… Continue reading Star Trek: The Original Series Season 2, Episode 16: “The Gamesters of Triskelion”

Synopsis: Tribbles overtake the Enterprise and help Captain Kirk uncover a saboteur. “The Trouble with Tribbles” is one of the best known, most loved, and probably the only episode of Star Trek: The Original Series that through the presence of the soft animal bodies of the tribbles comes close to what could be interpreted as… Continue reading Star Trek: The Original Series Season 2, Episode 15: “The Trouble with Tribbles”

Synopsis: Chief Engineer Scott is put on trial for murdering three women on Argelius II. “Wolf in the Fold” can be seen as an examination of whether evil exists. In this episode, evil turns out to be something alien, something that can take over an individual and drive him or her to do evil things,… Continue reading Star Trek: The Original Series Season 2, Episode 14: “Wolf in the Fold”

Synopsis: Captain Kirk becomes obsessed by the need to kill a sweet-smelling gaseous creature. Depth psychology teaches that one’s psyche is in danger when one becomes possessed by a god. What god is it that Captain James T. Kirk is too closely identifying with in this episode? One choice could be Ares, the God of… Continue reading Star Trek: The Original Series Season 2, Episode 13: “Obsession”