Shore Leave by: Theodore Sturgeon and directed by: Robert Sparr

 

“Shore Leave” is written by Theodore Sturgeon and is directed by Robert Sparr.  It was filmed under production code 17, was the 15^th episode of Star Trek Season 1, and was broadcast on December 29, 1966.

 

This episode was certainly a trip.  There’s a great premise here, the Enterprise finding a seemingly lush and peaceful planet to take some much needed shore leave, but upon initial inspection McCoy sees a white rabbit in a waistcoat followed by a young girl and the episode spirals from there.  The plot becomes a collection of scenes of classic literature, stock characters, personal regrets, or a random tiger and airplane for some reason coming to life to terrorize the crew.  That’s kind of really the only plot point, McCoy and Angela from the last episode die at one point, McCoy gets randomly resurrected and given two showgirls to ogle over.  Angela may or may not still be dead.  I don’t think the intention was to kill her off here, but you don’t actually see her again so it’s very possible that she doesn’t get resurrected by the magic aliens who run the planet.  The planet is revealed to be a pleasure planet and everything’s okay in the end as the crew gets their leave.  The episode is really surreal, and not just because the premise of the script is absolutely insane.

 

The direction and editing that went into the episode doesn’t follow what’s become the standard for Star Trek or really any sense of television episodes, instead going from set piece to set piece with a pace that feels like that’s what we were able to shoot today so it has to go into the episode.  There is a moment early on in the episode where Sulu gets a pistol and just decides to start shooting it in a scene that is utterly camp, Kirk is menaced by a tiger and his bully from the academy which feels perhaps the most like a fever dream, and a yeomen character clearly meant to replace the unjustly fired Grace Lee Whitney is menaced by several heroic men.  The yeoman character is perhaps what brings most of the episode down whenever she’s on screen mainly because she becomes victim tot several sexist tropes adding to a more stilted performance as Emily Banks isn’t really given much direction as to how she’s to be characterized.  You can tell that the episode had production troubles, but nowhere as badly as they apparently were.  According to cast and crew recollections, Gene Roddenberry took it upon himself to rewrite the script during the filming of the episode after being unhappy with Sturgeon’s original script and script editor Gene L. Coon’s initial rewrites.

 

“Shore Leave” is an episode that honestly feels like it’s had any sense of surrealism surgically removed because Gene Roddenberry didn’t get it.  It’s an episode that’s genuinely complicated to score as the performances from its cast are all aware that they’re working with something without its own identity so bring in over the top performances leading to a very camp episode.  Robert Sparr’s direction is trying to make sense of a pieced together script, the score is working overtime to communicate some emotions from subplots that have seen several iterations, and the end result is not a particularly great episode (nor a bad episode) but one that you’ll at least enjoy the utter camp absurdity of the proceedings.  6/10.