Season 3, Episode 6

First Aired: October 25, 1968

The Plot:

Captain Kirk ignores a warning message, taking the Enterprise into space belonging the reclusive (and powerful) species the Melkotians. Accordingly, due to an innate ability of the Melkotians Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scotty and Chekov instantaneously find themselves on a desolate, mysterious red sky world in a makeshift town resembling Tombstone, Arizona on October 26, 1881, specifically, the date of the famous gunfight at the O.K. Corral. – Looks like somebody’s destined to be someone’s huckleberry!

The Melkotian mischief puts our Enterprise abductees into the position of having to role-play as members of the ill-fated outlaws of the famous gunfight. Pit opposite manifestations of the Earp family and Doc Holliday, Kirk and company seem to be on a fateful collision course towards losing a famous battle in historically deadly fashion. However, verisimilitude is taking a backseat in this recreation when Chekov – designated as the gunfight-surviving Billy Claiborne – gets shot and killed by Morgan Earp (an obviously temporary death in hindsight).

Thus, the ball then firmly falls in the court of Kirk, Spock, McCoy and Scotty to figure out the nature of this extraterrestrial experiment before a fateful 5:01 pm.

Between the Lines:

Star Trek’s inaugural visit to the Old West in “Spectre of the Gun” carries thematic undertones quite familiar to the esteemed space lore with a powerful alien race injecting a bit of humility into our Starfleet crew, testing them at the height of a moment of hubris or folly (See “The Corbomite Maneuver,” “Arena,” or “Errand of Mercy.”). In this case, the consequence of Kirk’s hubris – this time at the hands of the Melkotians – took the form of an apocryphal Old West scenario, drawn from Kirk’s imagination in a similarly accidental subconscious manner to the way Ray “chose” the form of the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man in Ghostbusters.

The Melkotians’ mental illusion was designed to determine if Humans (plus one Vulcan,) were capable of the oft-referenced advanced trait of mercy before opening relations. The episode’s draping of that familiar premise with the skin of a Western theme reflects the Melkotians’ superficial perception of humanity which, based on a snapshot from Kirk’s mind possibly influenced by Old West films and shows, depicted a race coming from bellicose brutality whose true nature needed to be weighed. This carried additional contemporaneous meaning, since the Western was still quite a prevalent genre in the 1960’s when the episode aired.