The Infinite Vulcan by: Walter Koenig and directed by: Hal Sutherland

 

“The Infinite Vulcan” is written by: Walter Koenig and is directed by: Hal Sutherland.  It was produced under production code 22002, was the 7^th episode of Star Trek: The Animated Series, and was broadcast on October 20, 1973.

 

“The Infinite Vulcan” is the result of Leonard Nimoy’s very important advocacy on behalf of George Takei and Nichelle Nichols allowing them to be cast as Sulu and Uhura in Star Trek: The Animated Series.  Mainly because hiring a constant cast of six, the show did not have enough money to engage Walter Koenig as Chekov, instead double casting James Doohan and Majel Barrett as two new characters, but Koenig was approached to write a script for the series.  “The Infinite Vulcan” is the first episode of any Star Trek show to be written by a cast member, and Koenig in production hated the experience.  This is an episode that underwent over ten drafts which is more than a standard 22-minute episode of television would understand, and it would be the only script from Koenig.  As a story, “The Infinite Vulcan” perhaps suffers the most from the several redrafts and the marks of a first time writer, yet it somehow becomes this incredibly entertaining episode to watch.  This is not a so bad it’s good episode, heck I wouldn’t even call the episode a bad episode since Koenig’s script actually goes with good ideas commenting on the ideas of a man creating a master race as a peacekeeping force and brainwashing a species of aliens to believe that he is right.  The villain of the episode is Keniclius, a doctor who survived the Eugenics Wars through cloning himself and transferring his consciousness into successive bodies.  It’s a brilliant idea and it almost works as an episode despite the tone taking itself to be incredibly goofy and weird.

 

Keniclius also decides to use Spock as the member of his master race while also making himself and Spock giants.  Yes, there is a giant clone of Spock that ends up draining the life from the original Spock, yet somehow this episode ends with the idea that both Spocks can live and the clone and Keniclius can live to rebuild the civilization of this planet.  As an episode perhaps the biggest issues here are the pacing, the first half of the episode in particular is incredibly rocky as Sulu gets poisoned by a plant and cured before Keniclius and consequently the conflict of the episode can appear, and the fact that the plot is a bit too derivative from “Space Seed” without the complexities of that episode.  There’s a lot that happens in “The Infinite Vulcan” but without nearly as much of the substance making the episode suffer from having too much that the ideas just don’t have enough time to be explored.  Walter Koenig of course isn’t a writer by trade and this is perhaps why these mistakes are here, or it could be the ideas Gene Roddenberry contributed in some of the rewrites.  Yet, despite all of this, this is still a particularly solid episode of television.  Koenig being on Star Trek for two years allows him to write a script understanding what makes an episode work on a technical level even if it isn’t quite as deep in terms of theming of what has come previously.  The real shame is that Koenig didn’t try to write anything else because of some of the rougher aspects of production.

 

Overall, “The Infinite Vulcan” works because instead of being ashamed of the general insanity of the premise it wholeheartedly embraces it.  The image of a giant Spock being cloned by another giant clone man is enough to really make the episode work on the whole, despite being an episode where the first half struggles with being too stuffed.  7/10.