Science fiction often holds up a mirror to our world - sometimes a black mirror (ba doom tish) - providing a fantastical commentary on a real-world situation.
One of the biggest real-world issues for the US at the time was the Vietnam War, with footage of the fighting broadcast nightly without government censorship into American homes and young men being drafted to fight in it.
While popular history depicts the war as "America loses to a bunch of rice farmers", in reality it's more complicated than that - for one thing the 'farmers' had pretty advanced weaponry made in the USSR and were themselves highly educated.
****
While examining the planet Neural for medical related herbs, Kirk reflects on the peaceful people of the planet who only use bows and arrows for hunting. At which point, a bunch of guys turn up with flintlock rifles and Spock gets shot. With Spock in a bad way and taken for emergency treatment, Kirk and McCoy dress up in native garb (meaning more pectoral action from Shatner, naturally) to investigate what is going on. Because the locals shouldn't have developed those weapons that quickly.
Of course, it turns out the Klingons are involved, giving one faction firearms technology so they can conquer the planet.
However, we don't really get much action with the Klingons. Instead, as soon as Kirk and McCoy come down, Kirk gets basically attacked by Bigfoot, whose bite is poisonous, so they have to go to a local leader and his wife...
****
This is an interesting concept, but woefully executed.
Firstly, we have Nona, the wife of the tribal leader of the Hill People. She's something straight out of William Ware Theiss' sex-fuelled imagination, dressed in tight leather trousers and a crop top with orange fur on it. It looks very well-tailored... like a sewing machine was involved.
That's something true of all the costumes here and it seems the wig closet was raided too as most of the natives
Speaking of sex, the scene where she heals Kirk using some root via psychic communion and flailing around making moaning sounds is well... I'm surprised that one got through Standards and Practices.
Then there's the rather problematic bit in which it seems she's basically using the herbs to control men... basically roofieing them. This proverbial elephant in the room isn't addressed, but we do see a bunch of other villagers try to rape her in what seems a gratuitous scene, along with an unconvincing death.
Speaking of unconvincing injuries, Spock is seemingly shot through-and-through by a lead ball with no visible exit wound... the penetration of flintlock weaponry was distinctly limited, especially at range. His healing is expected, but as part of that process, we get a pretty ridiculous scene where Nurse Chappell slaps him repeatedly to bring him back round.
The Hill People are problematic. Their diction is reminiscent of Tonto from The Lone Ranger and calling weapons "firesticks" is well, dodgy. They're basically a bunch of white guys playing Native Americans and the whole thing crosses over into cultural appropriation.
This is very much a Vietnam analogy - Kirk indirectly references the conflict himself - and the analogies would have been a lot more present had not Gene Roddenberry rewrote the episode, resulting in Don Inglis having his credit changed to "Jud Crucis" (a word play on "Jesus crucified") in protest.
The basic message of the episode is "the arms race and Vietnam are necessary because peace is impossible", which was debatable then and still is.
At least we don't get a comedy ending, with the episode ending on a sombre note.
****
Conclusion
Overall, like primitive firearms, this misses the target a lot and hits other things.
3/10
