Star Trek – The Lights of Zetar

★★★ January 31, 1969 Season 3 Episode 18

If you want to see where we are…and you missed a few…HERE is a list of the episodes in my index located at the top of my blog. 

This show was written by Gene Roddenberry, Jeremy Tarcher, and Shari Lewis

Poor old Scotty…he can’t seem to keep a girlfriend. When he liked a girl before she ended up getting murdered by an alien or another one stolen by a Greek God. In this one, something happens to the one he likes… will it work?

This episode highlights the theme of alien possession, as a young woman called Mira Romaine is used by aliens called Zetars. Although their purpose is somewhat vague, their arrival via a “psychic storm cloud” heralds a  takeover and some interesting side effects. When the ship approaches Memory Alpha, Mira Romaine starts having visions of impending danger, and the landing party goes down to investigate

Once on Alpha’s surface, the backlash of the Zetar arrival is seen. One female technician starts to talk in a slow frog-like garble, then she undergoes a weird horrifying convulsive transformation…and then dies. Mira is beamed down but is unable to make head or tail out of what Kirk and the others had witnessed – until she senses that the Zetarians are coming back.

Kirk realizes the only way to rid Mira of her condition is to subject her to decompression. Scotty, who had taken a serious liking to Mira, gets her to the decompression chamber but not without being zapped by the Zetars that are in her body. 

We never find out much about the Zetars and if they were good or bad although they did kill all of Memory Alpha’s staff. It’s an enjoyable episode. I kept wondering when Kirk was going to jump on Scotty for displaying so much attention to Mira Romaine…although I would do the same thing.

From IMDB:

Shari Lewis decided to write the romantic angle centering on Scotty as a way to deviate from the formula of Kirk always getting the romantic interests. This is the third show where Scotty actively pursues a specific woman. In season two, he wooed Kara in “Wolf in the Fold”, and Carolyn Palamas in “Who Mourns for Adonais?”.

This show was co-written by Shari Lewis and her husband Jeremy Tarcher. Lewis also lobbied to be cast in the guest role of Lt Romaine, but was denied the part. Lewis was a ventriloquist best known for characters such as Lamb Chop, Charlie Horse and Hush Puppy.

The glass-covered portal of the medical decompression chamber is a reuse of a suspended-animation pod from Space Seed (1967).

The overhead zoom shot of the bridge in the teaser was not shot for this episode. It apparently was filmed for (but not used in) The Galileo Seven (1967). Lt. Hadley, rather than Mr. Chekov, is at the Navigator station in the shot. It is noticeable that he is wearing Lieutenant stripes in the shot. The crew is also noticeably wearing the velour uniforms seen in season 1 and 2, not the nylon variety that replaced them in season 3.

This is the final episode in which we will see a Tellarite and an Andorian in TOS.

Final appearance on the show by John Winston as Kyle, though he would return to play the role in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982). In addition, the last episode to feature all seven of the regular characters as well as both Kyle and Chapel.

The Memory Alpha monitor room was the reused control room set from Whom Gods Destroy (1969).

On the Memory Alpha control room main panel, the round indicator light in the middle is a prop that was used in the behavior modification chairs in Whom Gods Destroy (1969) and Dagger of the Mind (1966).

In the fourth act, when Scotty is helping the possessed Mira to her feet before picking her up, James Doohan’s missing finger is clearly noticeable.

Just after Sulu shouts that the shields have been penetrated and everyone runs down the corridor (at around 37 minutes in), a creative male background extra can be seen performing some kind of ‘batten down the hatches’ mime act upon a yellow wall fixture. Looking more closely, one can see that the extra is holding a tool to perform the ‘batten down’ action.

Summary

En route to Memory Alpha, a massive Federation library designed to hold all the knowledge of its member worlds, the Enterprise comes across an entity of twinkling lights that is impervious to the ship’s weapons and can move faster than the speed of light. For Lt. Mira Romaine, it’s her first deep space voyage, but she has the support of Lt. Cdr. Scott, who has fallen very much in love with the lass. When they first encounter the new being, Mira’s body is invaded, and it soon becomes clear that the entity has no intention of releasing her. The challenge for Kirk and Spock is to find a way to rid them of this being, but the only method available may also kill her.

Click here to see the video…preview of the episode

CAST

William Shatner … Captain James Tiberius ‘Jim’ Kirk
Leonard Nimoy … Mister Spock
DeForest Kelley … Dr. McCoy
Jan Shutan … Lt. Mira Romaine
James Doohan … Scott
George Takei … Sulu
Walter Koenig … Chekov
Nichelle Nichols … Uhura
Majel Barrett … Nurse Chapel
John Winston … Lt. Kyle
Libby Erwin … Technician
Barbara Babcock … Zetar (voice)
Bill Blackburn … Lieutenant Hadley (uncredited)
Frank da Vinci … Crewman (uncredited)
Roger Holloway … Lt. Lemli (uncredited)
Jeannie Malone … Yeoman (uncredited)