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TOS · SEASON 33×16

The Mark of Gideon

NOMADIC PICK · GREAT DISCUSSION EPISODEA strange idea worth arguing over.
FIRST SHOWN (US)
17 January 1969
ON
NBC
STARDATE
5423.4
DIRECTED BY
Jud Taylor
PRODUCTION NO.
72

WRITTEN BYWritten by George F. Slavin and Stanley Adams

IN BRIEF

SPOILER-FREE

Kirk beams down to a secretive planet but materialises on an Enterprise with no crew, where the only other person aboard is a young woman who cannot explain how she got there.

SYNOPSIS

SPOILERS
Red alert: the full plot, ending included. Haven't watched yet?REVEAL SYNOPSISHIDE SYNOPSIS

Gideon is in diplomatic talks with the Federation, but its leaders will allow only Kirk to beam down. He seems to arrive back on the Enterprise, which is now completely empty apart from Odona, a young woman with no memory of how she arrived. She tells him her world is so crowded that solitude is a rare luxury, and the two grow close. Meanwhile the real crew cannot find their captain, and the Gideon council blocks every attempt to search for him. When Odona falls ill, the truth emerges: Kirk is on an exact copy of the Enterprise built on the planet. Gideon's people live so long, and value life so deeply, that their world is dangerously overpopulated. Hodin, Odona's father, wants to use the disease Kirk once carried, Vegan choriomeningitis, to bring back death. Spock defies orders, beams down and rescues them. McCoy cures Odona, who chooses to go home as a carrier of the disease.

DID YOU KNOW?

  1. 01Co-writer Stanley Adams played Cyrano Jones in “The Trouble with Tribbles”. The story grew from his concerns about overpopulation, which he discussed with Gene Roddenberry on set.
  2. 02David Hurst and Sharon Acker play father and daughter, though he was only nine years older than her.
  3. 03James Blish's prose adaptation includes a scene, missing from the broadcast version, in which Odona's scorched finger regenerates.
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