Whom Gods Destroy by: Lee Erwin, from a story by: Lee Erwin and Jerry Sohl, and directed by: Herb Wallerstein

 

“Whom Gods Destroy” is written by: Lee Erwin, from a story by: Lee Erwin and Jerry Sohl, and is directed by: Herb Wallerstein.  It was filmed under production code 71, was the 14^th episode of Star Trek Season 3, the 69^th episode of Star Trek, and was broadcast on January 3, 1969.

 

Maybe it’s just because Season 3 of Star Trek having had such a recent run of bad episodes, maybe it’s just the over the top campy quality of “Whom Gods Destroy”, or maybe I’m just insane, but there is a lot of enjoyment to be had with this episode.  There really shouldn’t be: the episode is a grab bag of already established Star Trek tropes, far more than the series’ general tendencies to reuse ideas of godlike aliens and planets that are carbon copies of Earth as an excuse to break out historical costumes.  The plot has largely the same setup of “Dagger of the Mind” with the general commentary on mental illness, the isolated location being reminiscent of the setting of “What Are Little Girls Made Of?”, the shapeshifting aspect of “The Man Trap”, and having sequences of two Kirks where one is incredibly over the top allowing William Shatner to go full William Shatner a la “The Enemy Within”.  Some of the set pieces are actually reused and redressed from “Dagger of the Mind” while the costumes of the institution’s patients outside of our major villain are sourced from “The Menagerie” and “Journey to Babel”.  That’s six individual episodes that “Whom Gods Destroy is aping material from.  Despite the mixing of several tropes and ideas from previous episodes of Star Trek, something that while limiting wouldn’t necessarily make a failure of an episode, “Whom Gods Destroy” has the biggest issue of sustaining its second and third act.  The premise is that the insane Captain Garth, played by Steve Ihnat, has taken over the only Federation facility for the criminally insane, has learned how to shapeshift and rewrite his own biology, and wants to conquer the galaxy using the Enterprise as Kirk and Spock are delivering a medicine that will assist in rehabilitation of brain tissue.  The trouble comes with the fact that Kirk, Spock, and Scotty have anticipated potential trouble by establishing a code phrase before Kirk or Spock could be beamed up, so Garth has to use his cunning and madness to discover it.

 

The discovering the code phrase is sadly not enough to really sustain the full hour-long plot, and feels on some level the script attempting to hold back from going full camp insanity with the patients running loose on the Enterprise.  Ihnat’s performance knows exactly what sort of material he is having and there are points where it’s clear in between takes when Shatner has to play the shapeshifted Garth as Kirk there is this eternal battle to one-up each other in who can be the most expressive.  The sets, despite being colorful and Herb Wallerstein’s dynamic direction, feel like they are limiting the actors and these performances need to be unleashed fully on the Enterprise sets and to Scotty and McCoy (who is sadly all too small of a role this week).  Despite not sustaining the fifty minutes, this can’t help but be an episode that I have at least some fun with and that’s probably due to the rather odd tone.  This is an episode that doesn’t feel like any tone Star Trek has taken before, instead taking more cues from the 1966 Batman series: the patients feel like Silver Age escapees from the Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane, Herb Wallerstein loves some creative angles (though not many Dutch angles), and Batgirl herself, Yvonne Craig, has a pretty scene chewing guest role in this episode.

 

Overall, while “Whom Gods Destroy” isn’t a particularly good episode, it feels in many ways like a glimmering light of entertainment in the third season of Star Trek.  It’s largely a piece that makes no sense logically and has things happen because without them happening, the plot wouldn’t allow Kirk and Spock to succeed, but the camp elements just make it a lot of actual fun to watch which has been missing this season especially.  It’s like taking all of the Star Trek tropes and putting them into a blender and then setting that on fire for utter insanity for a bad time but a pretty fun time.  5/10.