Day of the Dove

Quick Overview: An alien force drives the crew of the Enterprise into brutal conflict with the Klingons.

On stardate 5630.3, the starship USS Enterprise receives a distress call from human colony apparently under attack by an unknown vessel. On arrival, the Enterprise finds no sign of an enemy ship. Captain Kirk, along with himself, beams down a landing party to investigate the planet, but they find no evidence of a human settlement either.

Back in space, the Enterprise goes on alert as a Klingon vessel suddenly pulls into orbit with them, however, as the crew watch, a series of strange explosions occur on the Klingon ship that leave it dead in space. The surviving crew of the Klingon ship, led by Commander Kang, beams down to the planet, where they quickly capture Kirk's landing party.

Kang denies attacking any human colony, but accuses that his ship was fired upon, unprovoked, by the Enterprise, and he demands that Kirk surrender his ship. After a struggle, Kirk pretends to agree, and goes quietly, however, he managed to trigger a security alert to Mr. Spock on the bridge, just before beam up. When Kirk's team, along with their captors, return to the Enterprise, Kang and his crew are "held" in the transporter, beam, re-materializing later, and finding themselves surrounded by an armed security force. The Klingons surrender.

Unbeknownst to the crew, a strange swirl of energy manages to sneak on board the Enterprise undetected. The entity interfaces with the ship's main computer and suddenly, the Enterprise fires on the Klingon ship, destroying it completely. The ship then jumps into warp at maximum speed, on an uncontrolled heading to the edge of the galaxy. Fear and anxiety begin to rise as the ship races out of control. Emergency bulkheads begin to close throughout the ship, isolating Kirk and some of his men with the Klingons.

At the same time, mysterious racks of bladed weapons appear throughout the ship and the crew's phasers disappear; replaced by swords and knives. Now armed with the primitive weapons, a savage melee breaks out between the Klingons and the Enterprise crew. Kirk manages to fight his way back the the bridge where Spock reports that he has detected an alien presence that seems to have taken over the ship. Spock begins to work on a way of getting rid of it.

Meanwhile, the Klingons have taken over engineering and begin to shut down life support to the rest of the ship. Oddly, their attempts are futile, and life support is restored completely on its own. In fact, severely injured crew, who fought during the skirmish, find their wounds have rapidly healed, almost as if to keep both sides of the battle on a matched footing. Kirk and Spock surmise that the alien intruder is playing some kind of twisted wargame, but its motives are unknown.

Kirk wants his crew to stop fighting, but they find themselves uncontrollably driven to violence through fearful paranoia. Mr. Chekov even roams the ship, seeking revenge for the death of a nonexistent brother. When he finds the Klingon female Mara, who is Kang's wife, he threatens to kill her. Mara is rescued by Kirk and Spock who manage to subdue Chekov.

Mara remains weary of Kirk's help and threatens him with her knife. She tells him of her belief that she and the Klingons will be captured and put into Federation concentration camps for later execution. Kirk tries to calm her down, telling her there are no such camps, and that an alien force is behind what is going on, and trying to control her mind. Mara still refuses to believe Kirk, however the alien entity finally makes an appearance just outside sickbay before everyone's eyes. The being lingers for a moment and then vanishes through a bulkhead. Spock believes the entity may be feeding off everyone's negative emotion, especially fear and anger. He suggests it may have set up the battle between the crew and Klingons so that it has a convenient source of nourishment.

Having seen the alien herself, Mara is finally convinced, and leads Kirk to her husband Kang, who remains holed up in engineering. Mara tries to explain what is going on to her husband, but he doesn't believe it and demands a final duel to the death with Kirk. The two ship captains begin their battle and soon the entity appears to feed off their negative emotions.

Despite the presence of the being, Kang continues fighting. Kirk however stuggles to ask Kang if he would like to spend the next thousand lifetimes to satisfy an alien's desires. Kang realizes the fight is pointless and agrees to a truce. To combat the alien, the Klingons and Enterprise crew begin to show goodwill and positive emotion toward each other. This finally drives the weakened alien from the ship.

Notes

Susan Howard's appearance as Mara was both the first time a female Klingon was seen and the only time on the original series. Howard herself would later go on to play Donna Culver on Dallas.

Originally, the Klingon captain was to have been Kor from "Errand of Mercy." When John Colicos was unable to fit the show into his schedule, the episode was rewritten. Both he and Michael Ansara would reprise the roles later on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

The use of "intra-ship beaming," here depicted as extremely risky, would become much more common (and presumably safer) in Star Trek: The Next Generation and later series.

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