"Obsession" - Season 2, Episode 13
A misnamed episode nevertheless provides a good time.
Star Trek is no stranger to declarative - even literary - episode titles. “Who Mourns for Adonais?” is verbose for network television. “The City on the Edge of Forever,” “The Conscience of a King,” and “Balance of Terror” all announce themselves with their title cards. “Obsession” - one of the rare one word titles along with “Catspaw” and “Arena” - seems to be just as telling. The episode unwinds a failure in Kirk’s past, the murder of his crewmates on the USS Farragut as a young ensign, and his overzealous reaction when confronted with the mere possibility that the being responsible is killing again. Moby Dick and Captain Ahab - already alluded to through the character of Commodore Decker in “The Doomsday Machine” - come to mind. But “Obsession” is not about obsession at all. The episode would be better titled “Survivor’s Guilt” if it wants to go for something obvious.
As said above, “Obsession” begins with the possible return of a threat from Kirk’s past. While surveying Argus 10, Kirk and a landing party of redshirts - really earning their death curse in this one - are attacked by a gaseous cloud that ultimately kills all but the captain. Upon evacuation, Spock and McCoy notice that Kirk’s knowledge of the creature seems familiar. He correctly guessed a specific smell - “like honey” - and predicted that all of his dead redshirts would be drained of hemoglobin. The two senior officers suggest that the Enterprise abandon to planet in order to make a planned medical delivery to the USS Yorktown, but Kirk declines. He wants to know what killed his men.
A vampirically drained victims of the gas monster. One of its victims is Lt. Leslie, seen here, a redshirt played by Eddie Paskey. Leslie had the distinction of appearing, named, in multiple previous episodes. Not to worry though, Leslie can be seen later in the episode walking around and reappears in multiple later episodes as well. Good extras are hard to come by!
“Obsession” skillfully keeps its questions running throughout the episode. Kirk is cagey, leaving Spock and McCoy to wonder where his sudden obsession is coming from. Further, the nature of the creature itself is largely unknown. It is clear Kirk has seen it and can identify it, but what it is and whether it is intelligent or not are kept hidden until close to the end. And just as one question is answered - Kirk had failed to kill a similar, if not identical, creature when stationed on the Farragut and blames himself for a momentary hesitation - the stakes are raised when the creature manages to invade the ship’s ventilation system. Events move, “Obsession” is well paced.
However, it is certainly misleading. The setup - and the hidden nature of the creature’s intelligence - certainly trains the viewer to expect a story dissecting the healthiness of Kirk’s reaction to the creature. The pending medical delivery - which the script endlessly stresses must be done on time - is the plot’s Sword of Damocles. It seems inevitable that Kirk will be forced to choose between his desire for revenge and his obligations as a Captain. It seems likely that the creature may be revealed as simply an anomaly - an unthreatening gas or odd phenomenon - rather than an intelligent monster. A commentary on the dangers of vengeance seems inevitable.
But instead, the episode pivots hard in its second half to confront Kirk’s survivor’s guilt over his past hesitation and failure to kill the beast. It’s aided in this by giving another character - Ensign Garrovick, the son of a Farragut casualty - the exact same character arc. Garrovick is ordered by Kirk to fire at the creature and hesitates; the creature kills two more men before he and Kirk are beamed away to safety. Kirk punishes Garrovick for his failure, and Garrovick becomes morose and self-critical. He wants, needs, another shot. But as is made clear throughout, the crew’s phasers do nothing against the creature; even the Enterprise’s large canons are ineffective. Spock explains this to Kirk and Kirk, actualized, explains it to Garrovick in the end. There was nothing they could have done and the only peace is through the acceptance of their own powerlessness. It is perhaps unfair to grade the episode for what it is not rather than for how it is, but I found the sudden shift in focus a bit jarring and simplistic. Every thought Kirk has about the creature is vindicated and every action he takes is justified. It is a monster, he is right to destroy it, and the Enterprise manages to deliver the medical supplies without a hitch. This is not about Kirk overcoming a flaw so much as it is about him accepting that he was right all along.
Kirk commands Ensign Garrovick (Stephen Brooks) in the ways of their gaseous nemesis. Stephen Brooks came to Star Trek off a staring role in The F.B.I. (1965-1974) as Special Agent Jim Rhodes, but was replaced with a new character after two seasons. The F.B.I. ultimately ran for 9 seasons and over 150 episodes, which active creative involvement from J. Edgar Hoover’s right hand, Associate Director of the FBI Clyde Tolson.
That is not to denigrate survivor’s guilt, but rather to say that the episode sets up a lot of conflicts that end up limply deflating. Once the creature enters the Enterprise’s ventilation system, things narrow as the balloons of its thematic focus fly away. The crew manage to flush the creature out - after Spock survives an attack due to his green blood - and Kirk predicts that it will return home to the site of the Farragut massacre. Once there, Kirk and Garrovick carry down an antimatter bomb and a decanter of blood as bait for the creature - it’s hemoglobin craving well-established. The two lure it in, beam away just in time, and detonate the bomb. Guilt destroyed.
Despite the episode’s odd setup and simplistic resolution, which I argue works against the potency of the survivor’s guilt theme, there are things to enjoy. Ralph Senensky (“This Side of Paradise,” “Metamorphosis”) has a great eye for staging and scene-to-scene momentum, proving his chops as the show’s best intermittent director once again. At one point, when McCoy enters Kirk’s quarters to discuss the Captain’s single-minded behavior, Kirk is reclining on his bed and remains there while McCoy sits next to him, a truly therapeutic framing for the psychology discussed. Nurse Chapel - the returning Majel Barrett - gets her best scene in the series so far, giving Garrovick some tough love and threatening to force feed him through a tube if he doesn’t eat. The creature’s attack on Spock in Garrovick’s quarters is unsettling and tinged with a green color palette that ads to the unease. Much like with his poetic framing of the romantic gas cloud - odd that two of his given scripts involve sentient gasses! - in “Metamorphosis,” Senensky knows the mood to give a certain moment.
Kirk and Garrovick time the detonation of the antimatter bomb as the gas vampire approaches. It’s a fairly standard gas monster, lacking the sparkling beauty of the Companion in “Metamorphosis” and was visualized entirely by a fog machine on set.
Further, the episode does Kirk’s obsession so well that it contributes to the whiplash when it changes course. Perhaps primed by “The Deadly Years” also being Kirk-critical, the first half here - and Shatner’s performance - balances Kirk’s typical declarative, self-assured leadership style with an edge of desperation. He is just ever-so more urgent, more upset, and more commanding with the crew after the creature first attacks. Far from being unbelievable or out-of-character, Kirk’s anxiety is just present enough to be concerning. You truly do believe he may be over his skis here, and McCoy and Spock’s concerned conferencing feels justified. The Captain was to be trusted all along, but everyone’s doubt is earned.
“Obsession” does succeed as what it is then, even though the perfect can be the enemy of the good in criticism. Kirk was never to be doubted, despite the fact that he has problems to solve, and that central tension between outcome and setup lingers after the episode’s momentary, successful thrills have dissolved. Try not to let it get to you.
Stray Thoughts
For once, it’s all in the main piece!
Photo Credits
Moby Dick: https://www.lelivrescolaire.fr/page/15110241
Leslie: https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Obsession_(episode)
Garrovick with Kirk: https://www.cygnus-x1.net/links/lcars/epsd-TOS2-13.php
Garrovick, Kirk, and creature: https://midnitereviews.com/2016/05/star-trek-episode-42-obsession/