Wink of An Eye, TOS 3

I really like “Wink Of An Eye,” that’s why it pains me that there is such a gaping hole of logic sucking the sense right out of it. The premise, that a race of beings exist in a hyper sped-up time, is awesome. And that they can drag Kirk into it and, try as he might, he only sounds like a distant buzz to Spock and McCoy. There are two major problems. 1) If Kirk just stood still for a really long time in one place, he’d be visible. How long, you ask? Apparantly not too long because of what is presented in problem two. 2) If Kirk is existing in such a sped-up plane of existance, the shuffling back and forth between story POVs (the others in “normal time”) would be impossible. As it is presented, the others are at complete stand still. By the time Uhura is done shouting “Captain Kirk is gone!” Kirk would have aged, like, two weeks in his new plane of existance. Even if you “buy it” there are inconsistancies. We see Scotty go to the transporter room in “real time,” he then is frozen in Kirk’s time, but then we see other events transpire in “real time” that are happening concurrently, then cut back to Kirk with Scotty frozen again. . .and they are not meant to be time ellipses . . .it is just a foul-up. Too, too bad.

Too bad, also, because there is a really cool B-story here. A race is condemned to infertility and can only avoid extinction by entrapping others. It’s immoral, but as immoral things go, it is understandable. (Hence, one of the few endings in original Trek that isn’t all happy; the Enterprise leaves them with no magic answers and it is implied that the race will die.)

Also also, hints of an “Indecent Proposal”-type C-story as Space Man must watch as Kirk steals the heart of his Space Chick — say, all we wanted was his seed, nobody asked you to make my woman fall in love with you!!

So, I’m willing to give this three insignia because there’s a lot being thrown at you in this episode, even if some of it is half-baked.