“The Time Trap” is written by: Joyce Perry and is directed
by: Hal Sutherland. It was produced
under production code 22010, was the 12th episode of Star Trek:
The Animated Series, and was broadcast on November 24, 1973.
I’m just going to come right out and say that “The
Time Trap” is an episode that struggles with really doing anything of
note. Joyce Perry’s only script for Star
Trek has an interesting idea at its core, essentially setting things in a
pocket dimension of the space-time continuum where several starships have gone
missing in the past. It’s a great idea,
playing off ideas like the Bermuda Triangle and graveyards of ships because
traveling is often a dangerous thing. Star
Trek as a series has taken ideas of natural danger in space travel, though
like this episode by generally taking ideas from travel by ocean and
translating them to space travel. That’s
what this episode is largely doing on an ideas level, and Joyce Perry as far as
I can tell had a career in television before this episode and following it, working
on Days of Our Lives, an incredibly popular soap opera. I’m bringing this point up specifically because
“The Time Trap” is an episode that honestly struggles because there is this lack
of any interesting conflict driving the plot forward. There is conflict in the episode, in this
pocket dimension there are several different alien species living in harmony,
though unable to largely break the time barrier keeping them there. The Enterprise and a Klingon ship, engaging
with each other, led by Kor from “Errand of Mercy” though voiced here by James
Doohan, both ships being taken out of time and put in this pocket. The conflict of the episode is Perry’s
attempt to replicate the Kirk/Klingon conflict of the original series, but there
is much of the episode working against that conflict being presented as anything
interesting.
The final act of the episode has Kor betray Kirk and
company by hiding a bomb on the Enterprise that will detonate when a certain
speed is reached. As this is the final
act of a 24-minute episode, the planting, discovery, and disposal of a bomb is
just one of those things that happens and our characters brush it off like
nothing because there is no runtime left to really explore it. This is lampshaded by the characters just being
happy to be back in their home time and universe, which I suppose is fine, but
it’s one of many threads of the episode that really don’t get a piece of
exploration. The actual society the Enterprise
is exploring is where Perry devotes most of the script’s time, allowing the animators
once again to go off the leash and animate as many races as they want. There are Vulcans, Orions, Andorians, and
several other aliens that have appeared in this series and the original
series. Perry’s other attempt at conflict
is the idea that anyone stuck in this trap is unable to escape, but this is
overcome with the idea of humanity and the Klingons working together to escape. Perry just doesn’t find a workaround to have
the Council in the trap to wish to stop the humans and Klingons to escape, in
fact they are the ones to tell the Enterprise about the bomb and exactly
where it can be found. There’s also a
moment early in the episode where Spock realizes that sabotage is happening,
but it’s something that doesn’t quite do anything or go anywhere. Perhaps Perry thought there was going to be a
sequel to the episode, because this kind of feels like it’s meant to be a part
one of two.
Overall, “The Time Trap” is a misstep for Star
Trek: The Animated Series. The appeal
of the episode should be coming from the titular trap, though there isn’t
actually any exploration of the society on the other side of the trap. This could be fine if there was some
interesting conflict between humanity and the Klingons, but despite being what
takes up the most of the episode doesn’t actually add much of interest. This is an episode where the conflict doesn’t
add anything and leaves the episode an incredibly meandering one. 4/10.
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