1.17 : Shore Leave.

[Dave]

R & R on an inviting Earth-like planet. Well, they are never what they appear to be! McCoy sees a giant white rabbit being chased by a girl, Sulu is menaced by a Samurai warrior, and finds an old fashioned police gun. Others are strafed by aircraft, chased by tigers, or threatened by swordsmen. Kirk meets his Academy nemesis Finnegan, and old flame Ruth. Cue that music and soft focus lens. McCoy is killed by a black knight.

Sulu hasn't been taught to use a tricorder yet. When Kirk shoots the knight that kills McCoy, and they want to take a lifesign reading, Kirk calls to Spock who then walks right across the glade, to get the tricorder from Sulu, to take the reading. As well as Helmsman, isn't he also Staff Physicist, with an interest in life sciences?

 

[Extollager]

Don't care for this one. Loads of consistency issues, etc.; it makes sense as a sci-fi entertainment about on the level of, say, a non-classic Twilight Zone teleplay at best, but it doesn't make much sense beyond that level, notably with McCoy's painful "death." Aside from other problems, it ventures too close to being yet another ST program about aliens who read minds and create illusions. It too obviously is written around TV-show-stock-on-hand, such as a pseudo-medieval gown for the main woman guest star, a pistol for Sulu, and so on. The implication is that crew members who (like McCoy at the end) encounter their sexual fantasies embodied, will have no qualms about coitus with artificial constructs made of cellulose. We might get to a comparable level of decadence long before the period in which ST is supposedly set, but was that what the producers intended then?

The episode has little picky flaws too, such as the obvious chain on the tiger, the vanishing rip on the woman's uniform, etc.

A first-season episode worthy of one of the later seasons when so much of the sf sense of wonder was gone.

 

[Dave]

While I completely agree with you, this kind of episode (like The Naked Time - which TNG revisited in The Naked Now) is one of the few ways that the writers have, of breaking down the more formal relations between the characters, when shown in uniform on the Bridge, and showing us their individual personalities beneath. How else could you introduce so much back-story in one episode? It can, however, become stereotypical, cultural appropriation, and really quite strained, if not even very silly indeed. TNG, DS9 and VOY did even more of this kind of thing on the Holodeck and I disliked those episodes too.

As regards simulacrum women, Mudd brought a harem of them and I don't remember any qualms shown then either.