The distress call is from a planet called Scallops, which is apparently located just north of the 57th quadrant, and Kirk, Bones, Spock and Ensign Expendable beam down to see what's distressing the Scallopian-Tubes so much. There are no people, but they find evidence of a once thriving civilization. I have to take their word for it, because the whole thriving joint exists entirely offscreen with the exception of one room painted in the vomit green-and-blue colors of a hospital maintenance corridor and the most unrealistic backdrop painting of a skyline since Hanna-Barbera got into the cartoon business.
While Kirk wonders where the people who sent the distress call are, Ensign Expendable can be seen in the background licking doorknobs, chewing gum he's scraped off the underside of a desk, and finally drinking some water from a fountain. Apparently the water on Planet Scallions gives tourists the hot trots worse than a slurp from a Tijuana garden hose, because as soon as he takes a sip Ensign Expendable vanishes, presumably running at light speed to dock a pantload of shuttlecraft in the nearest porcelain star base.
Bones is watching and he's shocked when Ensign Expendable suddenly disappears. He just came down to a mysterious alien planet by means of a device that makes people appear and disappear all over the galaxy like audience volunteers in a cheesy Vegas magic show, yet Ensign Expendable vanishing is apparently some kind of unfathomable space voodoo to the Enterprise's chief medical officer. Bones must also be paralyzed with fear every morning in the mess hall by the transubstantiation that somehow turns his bread into toast.
The boys beam back to the Enterprise and as soon as they do the ship's systems start going nutty and Kirk hears a mosquito buzzing around the ship that he heard buzzing around on the planet down below. I would assume at once that this invisible space mosquito had something to do with the malfunctions, and I would immediately set out some citronella candles on Sulu's console and flip on the bridge bug zapper, but Kirk just waves his hand around, sings a verse of "Shoo Fly, Don't Bother Me" and snaps on the TV.
On the viewscreen we see the distress signal that brought the Enterprise to planet Scallops. The signal is a video that consists of a couple of people in tinfoil dog collars and Reynolds Wrap Kiss the Cook aprons standing around at the Sears Portrait Studio waiting to say "cheese." They don't look so much distressed as annoyed at the long lunchtime wait for their Christmas card photo.
It's discovered that some strange device has suddenly appeared in the Enterprise rec room downstairs, and when Spock examines it he announces that it's an item of alien origin. It's a good thing I'm not the ship's science officer, because upon careful examination I would have said that it was an old spray-painted refrigerator box with some vacuum cleaner hoses sticking out of it.
Spock says it is technology "the nature of which I'm not familiar with." Vulcans: big on logic, not so much on grammar.
In order to pad the episode up by a couple of minutes, everybody decides to sit down and have a pleasant afternoon chat with the ship's com-pu-tore. Spock asks the com-pu-tore what they should do and the com-pu-tore is so quick to recommend surrender that I wonder if it was programmed by an ancestor of the bald captain from the next Star Trek show who was always surrendering to or running away from every space gnat that flew through an open porthole. Or maybe the Enterprise com-pu-tore is just sick and tired of all those yellow crackers Spock keeps shoving in it every week.
The Enterprise's elderly barista wanders up to the bridge to take drink orders. She's carrying a cafeteria tray of coffee, and the instant Kirk takes a sip he's on a psychedelic hayride through Hippietown. Far out, Maynard G. Krebs.
Everyone on the bridge starts to slowly tip sideways like they're standing in the Riddler's lair on Batman. They eventually freeze altogether, and once everyone else is frozen there's suddenly a babe wearing a cheap plastic motel shower curtain standing over by the elevator looking like she's waiting for a space-bus.
Kirk fires a phaser at the shower curtain chick, but she's able to step right past the beam because it's traveling in super slow-motion. We learn that Kirk is now moving super-duper fast and that the people of planet Scarface are called Scoliosis and that they were responsible for the buzzing noise Kirk was hearing earlier because they also move super-duper fast, and when they talk they make the buzzing sound that husbands hear every time their wives start nagging them to go clean out the garage.
The babe in the shower curtain tells Kirk that she's made him go fast so they can repopulate their planet. Or something. I'm still wondering why the phaser Kirk fired didn't blast a hole in the side of the Enterprise, because just because the chick can sidestep it that doesn't mean the energy didn't go somewhere. And -- wait -- if things other than organic matter are transported to this super-fast state just by Kirk drinking spiked coffee, then why doesn't the phaser work really fast too? And if it doesn't work because Kirk has been speeded up, why isn't it trailing very slowly behind him like a ghost-phaser as he walks, along with his trousers and wig? I think the same guy who came up with five million Milky Way quadrants at the beginning of the show is responsible for all the rest of this sciencey-type stuff too.
Kirk sees Ensign Expendable from the start of the show who is now a super-duper fast traitor and he threatens to shoot Kirk with a phaser that Kirk already knows doesn't work, so why doesn't he just flying kick him out of the way? Kirk confronts the Scoliosis in their Reynolds Wrap aprons and tries to shut off their refrigerator-vacuum cleaner but he gets zapped and turns into a Kamikaze Scotsman. Across the room, Ensign Expendable turns into an actor in really bad old age makeup and dies.
Golly, Miss Lane. What with my breakdancing puppet show and Spock and Chekov's Sonny & Cher duet, the Enterprise is sure to win the Federation Follies talent show this year!
The oldest guy in a Reynolds Wrap apron makes out with the babe in the shower curtain, but she tells him to knock it off or she'll punch him in his aluminum foil dog collar.
Down in sickbay, Spock, McCoy and a cigar store Indian are standing around in slow-motion. Oops, that's not a cigar store Indian, it's Nurse Chapel. Yikes.
Kirk is across the room making a taped message for them, but they can't hear it because he's moving too fast. William Shatner mispronounces "docile" like he mispronounced "telekinesis" a few episodes back. Apparently Canadian schools are as crummy at teaching English as Vulcan ones.
Kirk explains his predicament and then sticks a yellow cracker with his message on it in the computer in front of Spock. I figure if it's that important he could have put the cracker in Spock's pocket or in his hand or boot or mouth so he'll be sure to find it, but Starfleet regulation 356-2 clearly states that captains have to hide all vitally important information crackers like Easter eggs.
The babe in the shower curtain explains that her race died out on the planet and in order for the few survivors to continue they have to trick ships with a bogus distress call, spike everyone's coffee with amphetamines then rape the crap out of them at the Number Six Dance later on. She says it's the only way they can procreate. Apparently the concept of "cloning" doesn't survive either science fiction or real life beyond next Tuesday.
Hey, wait a minute. If everything is so super-slow that Scotty has been standing like a statue in the transporter room door for half the episode, how have Kirk and the Scoliosis been able to get around the ship? The elevators and doors wouldn't work for them. Yes, they'd be able to walk through a door that was already open, but they wouldn't be able to get them to open for them. And, hey, now that I think of it, why is it that every door that they've walked through throughout the episode just happens to be already open, with somebody like Scotty already conveniently standing frozen in it to make sure it stays open? And, hey, why is it that when Kirk or the babe in the shower curtain travel from deck to deck, they're suddenly already there so we don't see them trying to get the frozen elevators to work for them?
Oh, hold it a minute; the chick in the shower curtain just flashed her naked hip at me again. What was I saying?
Bones wins the Klingon coloring book and a chocolate bunny when he suddenly finds the yellow cracker Kirk stuffed in the computer hole an hour ago.
Kirk bangs the babe in the shower curtain, and the jealous old guy in the Reynolds Wrap apron gets so mad that he and Kirk reenact the hilarious pillow fight scene in Nordberg's hospital room from The Naked Gun.
Where can I buy the album of that sexy background space music?
Bones and Spock come up with a magic potion that will make Spock go fast too. Spock drinks it and everything around him freezes perfectly still with the exception of actor DeForest Kelley's eyes which follow Spock as he casually strolls out of the room. Good Lord, I know they cut corners in the third season but would one more take of that scene have broken the bank?
Kirk and Spock blow up the evil Electrolux-Frigidaire-box device and send the Scoliosis back to their planet.
Spock gives Kirk a urine specimen to drink and Kirk slows back down. Scotty is suddenly freed from being frozen in the door and is as amazed when Kirk reappears as McCoy was at the beginning of the episode when Ensign Expendable disappeared. At this point everyone knew what had happened to Kirk, and Scotty is the guy who actually runs the technology that transports people and thus sees people disappear and reappear in that very room every day. Yet he's still shocked. Don't microwave a bowl of soup for these guys or they'll burn you as a witch.
Kirk goes back to the bridge to find that all the ship's systems are being repaired at supersonic speed. He says that Spock stayed behind in fast-speed to fix everything that was broken, even though the two of them didn't discuss it. Spock reappears seconds later once everything has been fixed and says that he found it "an accelerating experience." Hah-hah. Sure, Spock just shaved five years off his life, but at least he got a whacky quip out of it.
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