3.68 : Wink Of An Eye.

[Dave]

The one with the hyper-accelerated, insect-like buzzing, Scalosians.

Another silly episode, which is quite enjoyable if you ignore the bad science.

Some of the many nits include:

How exactly would something in Scalosian water accelerate time? How could the Scalosians use the Turbo-lifts? (they'd be too slow, conveniently the automatic doors are shown constantly open.) Deela says she came aboard with the landing party. How is that possible without being seen? (she'd be frozen in place.) The biggest nit would be the time differential. At the speed shown (Deela to dodge phaser shots, Scotty to bearly move a step in 7 minutes of dialogue, Mr Spock to repair the whole ship in seconds) most of the episode would occur in a few minutes of real time. This is barely enough time to discover they've been invaded, but never enough to discover what was responsible for Kirk's disappearance, find an antidote, and then accelerate Spock off to save them.

There is a lot of humour though:

The choice of Kirk, womanizer of the Federation, to aid Deela in repopulating her planet. Spock's super-speed tour of the Enterprise.

 

[rde]

You know, if you're going to start nitpicking star trek, you're in for a full-time job. The 'water' thing, for example. It's a television program written in the early 70s, when the writer was specifically told to keep it stupid. The idea, though, is a pretty good one (IMO); check out David Brin's short story The River of Time as an example of how it can be done properly.

And you should refer to episodes that are 'silly' (though I've done so myself many times). It implies that there are episodes that aren't.

 

[Dave]

It was written mid-sixties, and I doubt that any writer was told to keep it stupid. In fact, I think that in general, they did try to keep to what could be extrapolated from current (then) scientific principals. I only think it's silly when they completely ignored that. It is hard to be critical of a 35 year old TV programme. Much easier to criticise the mistakes they still make today.

 

[Extollager]

There's an element of horror in the plot element whereby if someone is scratched he ages rapidly and dies. But the most frightening thing is the enormous false eyelashes worn by Deela.