Star Trek Enemy Within Views

Movies & TV shows

For decades, whenever William Shatner was asked which Star Trek episode was his favorite, he'd reply, 'The Enemy Within'. It's got me twice. What could be better? The truth is the episode is rather lacking. Star Trek would do the evil twin concept much better after this first effort. The problem is that Shatner plays the two halves so over the top, neither one is very likeable. Furthermore, most people could guess the ending after watching the first five minutes, but it takes forever to get there. On the plus side, there's some good philosophical arguments made about good versus evil, and their importance to us and command. And watching Shatner overact isn't all bad; sometimes it's funny.

In The Enemy Within, the Enterprise crew has to look out for an evil James Kirk when a malfunction in the transporter created two Kirks: an all-evil Kirk and an all-good Kirk. The Enemy Within is a thrilling and well acted Star Trek episode about the human condition. The episode pushes the envelope for late 1960s television as the evil Kirk gets a little too physical with Yeoman Rand - that scene is still shocking to this day. The evil Kirk is a formidable opponent - but is he as bad as one might think? Does the nice Kirk need his evil to be back to his normal self? This is an interesting theme and is dealt with extremely well by the Star Trek writers and filmmakers. Also, the fact that the transporter is not working - since it happens to be creating two different halves of people - makes it unable for the Enterprise to beam an expedition team off of a rapidly cooling planet. This aspect of the story gives urgency to the tale of two Kirks aspect.