ALL SCI-FI

[Bud Brewster]

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This is a good episode, one in which McCoy finds out he’s gong to die, then get’s cured and hooks up with a hot space babe. At last, somebody other than Kirk gets some poon-tang!

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For the World is Hollow & I Have Touched the Sky ep. 65

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___________ For The World Is Hollow . . . Trailer


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There's a drawback to this episode from the get-go. There's this startling revelation about one of the main crew members in the pre-credits sequence.

This early scene has so much dramatic impact that the rest of the episode cannot help but be somewhat anti-climactic in comparison. I've never been able to pin down exactly why this episode is so far down my lis. It seems to have all the right ingredients — a wild sci-fi concept and fairly diverting story.

Is it the pretentiousness of the longest title on the show? Nah.

So, I suppose it does boil down to the first pre-credits sequence. The shocking plot thread at the start is resolved very conveniently at the end and, well . . . more on that later.




The plot has to do with one of those "enclosed world" concepts well known in science fiction. The inhabitants of a huge ship built inside an asteroid believe themselves to be on a typical planet — their 'sky' is actually the inner shell of the asteroid. There was a similar story on at least one other sci-fi TV series (The Starlost), involving a huge ship, and plenty of sci-fi stories & novels have touched on this, I'm sure.

You can also look at this as the outer space version of the hollow Earth concept developed by Edgar Rice Burroughs for his Pellucidar sci-fi/fantasy stories.

It's intriguing and fanciful; the people of this Yonada worldship have a different (and erroneous) view of the universe. They're not stupid, simply misinformed, and need someone like Kirk and his crew to explain the reality of things — kind of like getting away from the whole 'the Earth is flat' view.

The hook to the episode is that things need to be righted fairly quickly, though not immediately — Yonada is on a collision course with a planet, set to strike in a little over a year.




The strange thing about this episode is that when I first saw it as a kid, I didn't really understand the entire set-up. You see, I was already old enough to figure out that the studio set landscapes were fake. The differently-colored skies we would see in many episodes were, I knew, not real.

So, when I listened to the explanation in this episode, that the sky of Yonada was not real, I just couldn't register it. The episode was saying to me, "The make-believe sky in this story really IS unreal this time, even for the characters."

I guess it was too much — too much of an inverse logic or something. When I got into my thirties . . . er . . . twenties, I was finally able to grasp it.




This isn't that bad of a 3rd season episode, but it doesn't really go anywhere with the intriguing concepts. The story falls back on the now-tiresome 'ruling machine gone wrong' plot, with any of the lackluster tension stemming from the main Enterprise trio getting zapped by this Oracle-instrument as punishment.

I also wondered why this machine resorted to heating a room at the end instead of the tried-and-tested zapping attack.

There may be another reason I dislike this episode. After the pushy machines depicted in Return of the Archons, The Ultimate Computer, The Changeling and The Apple, I just couldn't stand another obnoxious set of wires & circuits.

Spare me these boorish mechanical mobsters, please!



The one deviation of the usual scripting is that the high priestess (Kate Woodville) of these people falls for McCoy instead of Kirk (or instead of even Spock or Scotty).

This episode is McCoy's story all the way, and actor Kelley gets the opportunity to show some range here, further developing the sober dramatic aspects of his character.

However, as with the rest of the story, the good set-up is abandoned towards the end. Out of necessity, McCoy essentially abandons (not divorces) his new wife and new life to continue his adventures on the Enterprise so that we can see him in a few more episodes for the rest of the 3rd season.

If there had been a 4th season, we may have seen a sequel to this episode then. As it is, we never find out what happens regarding the McCoy-Natira relationship, and that's a shame. Or . . . a cheat, if you will.

Free Love, 23rd-century style?



Extra Trek Trivia:

~ The asteroid of Yonada is 200 miles in diameter.

~ James Doohan again provides the voice of the nasty machine, the Oracle, in this episode; he also voiced the M-5 in The Ultimate Computer.

~ In the original version of this story, Scotty was the ill crew member; a-Ha! and, he would have a fight scene with Kirk! That would have been something to see.

BoG's Score: 6 out of 10




BoG
Galaxy Overlord Galactus
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)