On the bridge TV-screen there is a little green glowing blob that abruptly becomes a big green glowing blob. I figure Chekov must have leaned his elbow on the zoom function on the bridge's TV remote control because no one gave the order to amplify the image on the screen, and ghost ships don't just hop through space like that, d-d-d-do they? Quick, I'm scared, somebody hold my hand! Not you, Sulu!
The green blob is the USS Defiant, which is floating in space waiting for a plot to come around. Unfortunately for the Defiant, it's this one.
Kirk beams over to the g-g-g-ghost ship with Bones, Chekov and Scotty. For some reason the landing party is wearing beekeeping outfits. They've beamed to a million different hazardous planets, asteroids, planetoids, tunnels and alien ships without putting on hazmat suits, but this time for some reason beaming to a fellow Federation ship identical to their own and filled with oxygen they decide now's the time to dig in the bottom of the costume trunk and break out the space suits. I wonder for a moment if their sartorial choice has been dictated solely to service the plot, but of course that can't be the case. I'm sure it was completely necessary for them to wear those beekeeper outfits, even though they never wore them before and even though there is no explanation given for why they are wearing them now for the first time ever.
The beekeeper outfits are air tight except for the giant mesh window screens in front of their faces, but I guess in outer space oxygen molecules are too fat and just bounce off the screen like lazy junebugs on a Ju-ly night, Boss Hogg.
The entire crew aboard the Defiant is dead. If it was a swarm of killer space bees what done 'em in, those beekeeper outfits are looking like a pretty smart choice now. And Scotty wanted them to dress like firemen.
Downstairs, Chekov gets dizzy. Maybe he's allergic to bee stings like this kid I knew in grammar school who threw rocks at a beehive during recess and got chased down the street by a swarm of angry bees and wound up in the hospital. True story. Stupid kid.
The Defiant is fading out of our universe and the landing party has to hurry and beam back to the Enterprise. Naturally there's only enough power to beam back three people at a time. Kirk tells everybody else to go back first, and Spock argues just long enough so that only he, Chekov and McCoy make it back to the Enterprise. Kirk vanishes along with the Defiant and William Shatner goes to his dressing room to pout that he only has about five lines in this week's episode.
Spock talks to the com-pu-tore! and the com-pu-tore! says that it'll take two hours to do some calculations, probably because Spock just stuck a big yellow cracker in it.
Chekov goes nuts and Spock says it's "murderous fury" but I say it's "bad acting."
A triangle flies up to the Enterprise and a red Mardis Gras mask tells Spock to leave the neighborhood. In the meantime, Bones is downstairs making medicinal snow-cones from a bunch of unlabeled plastic bottles.
The triangle shoots at the Enterprise and Spock shoots back and Bones takes time out from making snow-cones to tell Spock he's a crummy captain for defending the ship.
The red masks on the triangle who want the Enterprise to leave are Thermians. Since Spock has to search for his dead captain who vanished into a different universe from our own which exists in another dimension that has drifted to unknown coordinates, Spock defies the Thermians and stays put because he has until the local news comes on at 11:00 to find Kirk alive.
Another Thermian ship shows up and they bump butts and begin secreting parallel lines of energy in space. The energy beams begin to form a cage and Spock says they'll be trapped and unable to leave in a couple of hours. It seems to me that torpedoes and laser beams make sense as weapons -- even a spike on the front of a ship for high-speed space-poking makes sense -- but a technology that assumes an enemy will just sit there for a day and a half and let you build a buzzing yellow cage around them doesn't have very many practical applications. But, hey, I ain't Patton, so what do I know?
Spock has a wake for Kirk even though things are kind of busy right now and even though I thought he thought Kirk was maybe still alive, so maybe it'd make more sense to have the wake after he confirms Kirk is dead and he's gotten out of the area of space where the cage-building triangles are crapping beams of light around his ship.
Bones is at the wake even though he's supposed to be down in the lab urgently making more snow-cones, and he and Spock go to Kirk's cabin to stick a yellow cracker in the computer because Kirk's last request was that his two best pals feed a jaundiced Triscuit to his laptop. On his computer, Kirk's recording tells the two of them to knock it off, so Spock goes back to the bridge and Bones goes back to Signore McCoy's Eye-talian Ice Shoppe in the cellar.
My official
medical diagnosis as ship's chief surgeon is that you've got the vapors,
which is a common ailment among girls. The cure is getting married and
making babies. Now whip me up a cake, dammit.
With an alien race building a massive electrified fence around the Enterprise, Uhura thinks it's a good idea to go slip into a caftan and play "mirror, mirror on the wall" in her quarters (the answer might not be Snow White, but it sure ain't Nurse Chapel). Kirk floats across her mirror and because this is the Sixties Uhura runs screeching out into the hallway like she's just seen an icky spider in her hairbrush. Bones tells her she couldn't have seen the captain and, because this is the still Sixties, she swoons. Frankly, I like the Sixties better than whatever century this is now, where all-new TV convention would demand Uhura sass-talk, beat the crap out of Bones to show how tough she is, then strip down and practically rape him. TV sure has gotten better in the past forty-five years. Hey, let's all send thank-you notes to Gloria Steinem!
Downstairs in engineering, a guy goes nuts like Chekov and jumps on Scotty's stunt double. The guy is lucky it's 1960s Scotty and not bloated 1980s Scotty from the movies or they'd be scraping him off the ceiling with spatulas.
Because the area of space is unstable, everyone might go nuts, which is why Bones is making snow-cones and sticking yellow crackers in the computer in his lab.
Chekov is tied down to his bed with some seatbelts. He's yelling all over the place, and I notice that people not only still get cavities in the future, they're back to getting metal fillings. Or maybe in the 24th century metal fillings are some retro, primitive fad like tattooing and piercing are now. Frankly, getting unnecessary holes drilled in your teeth makes about as much sense as that Tweety Bird on your ass, honey.
Ghostly floating Captain Kirk appears again, and this time Scotty is the one who sees him and since he's a levelheaded boy and not a ditzy emotional girl like Uhura, Bones believes him.
Kirk floats around the bridge a little bit, and is alternately big and small which must be a result of some sort of crazy interdimensional spatial distortion and doesn't have anything to do with the special effects crew not being able to hold the overlapping image steady.
Bones gives up on the snow-cones and instead brings Spock and Scotty some melted Orange Julius and says it's the cure that'll keep them all from going nuts. Delicious and life-saving. Orange Julius. Ask for it by name at your nearby Dairy Queen!
The aliens continue to build the deadly killer electric fence outside and Kirk is still floating around peeping through windows at female crew members while they're showering and engaging in sexy pillow fights. Down in the bar, Spock and the boys enjoy a relaxing happy hour, chatting about the weather and the upcoming Klingon U. vs. Starfleet Academy football game, without a thought or a care about how the oxygen is at that very moment running out in ghost-Kirk's beekeeper suit.
Spock finally wanders back to the bridge and tells Bones to be ready with an oxygen stick because Kirk's air must be out by now, although I still say his oxygen probably fell out the rusty screen door in front of his face the moment he drifted into outer space.
Spock flies the ship out of the electronic fence and the Thermians shake their fists in the air and yell that if the Enterprise had just given them eight more days to finish it they'd have taught them a real lesson, and how.
Spock finally gets arund to beaming Kirk back home. Instead of passing out or being dead, Kirk drops to his knees in an exhausted but manly way and takes off his beekeeper hat. Kirk says the most terrifying part of his ordeal was looking out Uhura's mirror with no one being able to hear him as he screamed for the love of God for her to not get naked for fan dancing practice.
So it turns out it was a good thing Kirk wore his beekeeper outfit after all, even though there weren't any bees, and I'm sure he'll make sure he wears his magic beekeeper suit on every mission from now on even though I can't quite recall him ever wearing it again. The end.
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