'Errand of Mercy' takes the time-worn 'snobbish alien' theme and gives it a fresh twist, so much so that we don't even realize it as such until the very end. War appears imminent between the Federation and the Klingon Empire, and the Enterprise is dispatched to secure the strategically-placed planet of Organia, and keep it from falling into Klingon hands. The inhabitants of Organia seem incredibly blasé about what is happening all around them; the community Kirk and Spock beam down to resembles a European village around 1700 or so. There is a telling moment early on when the two materialize and passers-by don't even blink. "You'd think they had people beaming down every day," Kirk says. The village elders are intelligent, calm, soft-spoken, and completely unperturbed about the prospect of war or living in a Klingon slave labor camp. Klingons arrive (the Enterprise is forced to withdraw, stranding Kirk and Spock on the planet) and proceed to make the population's enslavement a reality. Two-fisted Kirk wants to lead the Organians in a resistance movement but they haven't the slightest interest. In the end, it is revealed the Organians are not the docile primitives we'd been led to believe, but rather a highly-advanced race of beings who were never threatened by either side in the first place. They are not human at all, rather 'pure energy,' and they only adopted human form for the humans' and Klingons' benefit. The Organians force both sides into a peace treaty and the war is called off as it was just beginning. The episode itself is not quite as satisfying as its premise and plot make it sound; the usual limitations of a weekly series come into play as always, but 'Errand of Mercy' certainly ranks among Star Trek's best.
Review of Errand of Mercy
