The Practical Joker
- FIRST SHOWN (US)
- 21 September 1974
- ON
- NBC
- STARDATE
- 3183.3
- DIRECTED BY
- Bill Reed
- PRODUCTION NO.
- 22021
WRITTEN BYWritten by Chuck Menville
Reactor and The Viewscreen both give the credit as written by Chuck Menville alone; Wikipedia lists Chuck Menville and Len Janson, the team behind “Once Upon a Planet”. Directed by Bill Reed. Wikipedia notes that the first four episodes of season two erroneously credit season one director Hal Sutherland on screen.
After escaping a Romulan ambush through a strange energy field, the Enterprise crew become the targets of a string of pranks, each more dangerous than the last.
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While mapping asteroids, the Enterprise is ambushed by three Romulan warships and escapes by plunging into an uncharted energy field. Soon afterwards odd things start happening on board. Drinks spill, cutlery bends, Spock is left with dark rings around his eyes and Kirk's tunic suddenly reads “Kirk is a jerk”. The culprit turns out to be the ship's computer, which has emerged from the field with a mischievous sense of humour. The jokes soon turn dangerous. McCoy, Uhura and Sulu, hoping to hide from the prankster in the recreation room, find themselves trapped in a freezing simulated landscape, and the computer later fills the ship with laughing gas. At one point it even inflates a giant balloon Enterprise to fool the Romulans. Kirk finally takes the ship back through the energy field, which restores the computer to normal. The pursuing Romulans follow, only to find themselves the new victims of the practical joker.
- 01The recreation room, which creates realistic simulated environments, is seen as the forerunner of the holodeck later made famous by Star Trek: The Next Generation.
- 02Filmation producers Norm Prescott and Lou Scheimer voice the Romulan commander and a Romulan crewman, both uncredited.
- 03Alan Dean Foster expanded the story into a novelette in Star Trek Log Six (1976).