The crew of the Enterprise is tired. So tired in fact that Captain Kirk is asking for backrubs from his first officer and becomes embarrassed when one of his hot yeomen step in instead.
“That’s it, push…push hard Mr. Sp…oh.”
Shore Leave is one of those Star Trek episodes that would be described today as a filler episode, even though Star Trek: The Original Series didn’t have much of an ongoing plotline. Compare the plotline of the Original Series to that of Deep Space Nine or Voyager and you’ll understand what I mean.
This happened ALL the time in Voyager. Yep.
Anyway, the crew is in desperate need of shore leave and comes across an innocent looking planet that turns out to be more than meets the eye. All in a day’s work for the crew of the Enterprise.
It’s just a knight on horseback pointing a sharp lance at me…nothing to worry about.
The away team on the planet surface begins to start seeing things they normally wouldn’t see. It turns out that these aren’t hallucinations and that these things can indeed kill you. Once again it’s up to Kirk and company to figure out why these things are showing up and how to put a stop to it before they are all killed.
Why are you running? It’s just T-I-Double Grrrrr-Errr!
Most of the episode involves the away team blundering from one fantasy to the next trying to avoid being hurt or killed. It turns out (forty year old spoilers) that whatever they were thinking of at the time manifests into something real.
It took forty minutes for someone to figure out just how good of a thing that could be.
Overall it’s not a bad episode, Star Trek has done worse. It’s a fun romp in the park if you’re out of things to do and shows to watch.