By 
Title: Day Of The Dove
Airdate: 11/01/1968
Plot Summary
Day Of The Dove begins when Kirk and a landing party beam down to a colony to find it has been completely destroyed. Well “destroyed” isn’t exactly the right word, it looks like it never existed. Meanwhile, a group of Klingons appears in a badly damaged ship. What’s left of their crew beams over to the Enterprise to be taken prisoner but an entity takes control of the ship, converts the modern weapons to swords, and plays on the group’s fears and prejudices to create an endless battle as the Enterprise streaks out of control through space.
Can Kirk convince not only the Klingons to stop fighting but his own crew as well?
Risk Is Our Business
I would say that Kirk is able to shake off the influence of the entity because he’s just that awesome but truthfully he has to struggle against it. There are many times he loses control of himself. I appreciate there were no superheroes here.
Logical
Spock is less affected but certainly not unaffected, as Scotty’s nasty racist tirade nearly gets him to come to blows with the engineer.
He’s Dead Jim
McCoy as well, screaming at Spock and Kirk to start acting like soldiers and complaining constantly how they can’t keep hacking on a man when he’s down as he patches up an Enterprise crewman. He does have a moment of lucidity though later and sincerely apologizes to both Kirk and Spock. Spock to his credit doesn’t take the opportunity to take a shot at McCoy as is typical with their frenemy status but shows real understanding and vulnerability back to him as well.
Helm Sluggish Captain
Sulu actually DOES seem unaffected though certainly he does his fair share of fighting. He also remarks that Chekov doesn’t have a brother when Chekov storms off to “avenge” his non-existent brother which deepens the mystery.
Nuclear Wessels
Chekov gets a proper Chekov scream when the Klingons torture him. He also is the most affected by whatever mind control the entity is doing as he completely makes up a brother and believes he remembers the Klingons killing him. He also gets the most ick moment when he tries to force himself on Mara. I understand it wasn’t really his fault, as Spock notes, but I also didn’t feel too bad for him when Kirk pulled him off her and kicked the shit out of him.
Hailing Frequencies Open, Sugar
Uhura gets very frustrated at one moment when she can’t find anything wrong with her station but nothing works anyway.
My Wee Bairns
Scotty gets himself a right proper Scottish sword. He has no luck getting through the bulkheads where the trapped crewmembers are. He also is downright cruel to Spock at one point, thanks to the entity’s influence.
Canon Maker
We see for the first time that Klingon women serve on their ships, something that would be seen a lot more frequently in the TNG era.
The Organian peace treaty is mentioned, though not by name.
Canon Breaker
Kang says there have been three years of peace since that treaty was signed, even though it was only two years since that episode. Less in fact in real time. One wonders what year of the 5-year mission they were on at this point.
Man It Feels Bad To Be A Red Shirt
No deaths! They kept getting healed up.
Technobabble
For the first time, we see intra-ship beaming, a procedure that’s considered pretty risky in this time period. By the time we get to the TNG era, Picard would beam to the ready room from the bridge just cause he was lazy.
I Know That Guy:
Susan Howard plays Mara. She was one of the main cast in the long-running show Dallas. She was also the first female Klingon ever portrayed in Trek.
But of course, the real name here is the ever-awesome Michael Ansara. He’s been in too many shows to mention, done a ton of voice work, and is generally awesome. He of course was in Buck Rogers ’79 as Kane (one letter short of Kang?! Cool.) And he gave renewed life to Mr. Freeze in the Batman The Animated Series which redefined the character so well that he still is portrayed like this today. He would return as Kang in Deep Space Nine.
I honestly think he may have done more than anyone else in really getting the Klingons to become what they are today. A stoic warrior with a streak of honor. Really just can’t applaud his performance here enough.
What It Means To Be Human – Review
Day Of The Dove is one of the bright spots of season 3 but man… did it hit me like a ton of bricks this time around when I really started analyzing it. Let me get this straight, we have a faceless force willing to provide weapons, medicine, propaganda, and whatever else it needs to get the people to fight each other so it can enrich itself.
Gee. Why does THAT sound so familiar? Seriously, whether it’s getting people in their own country to fight each other using lies, propaganda, or pharmaceuticals or countries to fight other countries to enrich war profiteers, this really was a great comment on all that.
Ok, admittedly a little ham-fisted but maybe we could use some of that these days. Seriously, look at everyone who knows nothing frothing at the mouth to fight some “other.” Chekov absolutely believed a complete and utter fabrication about a brother being killed by Klingons that not only never happened, he doesn’t even have a brother!
Of course current year came along and said “I’ll do you one better, I’ll get these people to cut their parts off themselves and charge them high-priced surgery and medications they’ll use for the rest of their lives until they cancel themselves. Plenty more where that came from thanks to TikTok! Oh, you’re not into that? Well, how about an Eastern European country you’ve never heard of that has a huge Nazi-sympathetic populace and makes you want to fight and die for them? Here’s your weapon and we’ll sell your country more missiles! Don’t look at our bank accounts, just keep cutting things off or whatever.”
Seriously, I was just looking at the parallels and it was striking. Get into people’s heads a little and they’ll believe anything. Sure the alien was using some form of mind influence but it wasn’t direct control. It needed the emotions to be real. What would you call all the drugs and social media we’re dumping into people’s heads?
Ok ok, what about as a Trek episode? Well, I love adding Kang to the lore. The intraship beaming was a nice touch and just as a gladiator episode, it’s a really nice twist on that trope, something The Gamers of Triskelion couldn’t accomplish. Ansara is great as Kang, and Mara is well-played as well. No shrinking violet, I can believe her as a Klingon warrior, even though you have to grade it on a 1960s curve.
Spock and Kirk get some good moments trying to figure out what the heck is going on. I really liked their perplexed reactions to McCoy haranguing them about killing Klingons. The entity can’t keep them all in thrall 100% of the time and that was interesting watching people kinda come in and out of the influence. It gave it all a little bit more of a surreal edge as if you never know when you’re going to act all haywire from one moment to the next.
I really enjoyed it both as a comment on war and propaganda and as a bog standard Trek episode. Well done. And since you introduced Michael Ansara to the Trek universe, I’ll put you over the top for a perfect score.
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