You can tell the episode has a messed up concept when Spock needs to step and erase someone's memory.
You can really tell that the budget has gone at this point - this was the 77th episode of 80 produced, airing 74th. The ship comes down with an epidemic that kills at least three of its crew, but we never see anyone actually suffering with it. There are possibly zero extras, although I may have missed. Everything off-ship is a redressed set or looks like it.
Plus we got a flying robot that is very clearly on a wire.
****
To get a drug they need to cure this epidemic, Kirk, McCoy and Spock beam down to a seemingly uninhabited planet... where they encounter someone who actually lives there who doesn't want them to take the stuff.
Kirk deals with that situation by threatening a phaser strike from orbit. This is the most sensible thing that he does this episode by some margin.
This someone is an old man called Flint, who has an impressive collection of original art from the greats of Earth... unknown works of original art.
So far this seems to be setting up an interesting mystery. Then a woman called Rayna has to show up and ruin it all. Not a normal woman, those are just fine, but another of the "show me more of that Earth thing called kissing" type. With an emotional inflexibility that would make Kathy Ireland in Alien from L.A. look animated. Louise Sorel, who appears to have done far better as a villain in the soap opera Days of Our Lives, basically decided she was only doing this for "Christmas money". Saying this performance was phoned in would be an insult to phoned-in performances, some of which can be actually be good.
Apparently she was shipwrecked there and raised by Flint... but the body language between them is raising more red flags than a Soviet parade. Also, Kirk falls in love with her.
After some weird behaviour from Flint, who seemingly wants Kirk and Rayna to interact then not interact, we get the big twist at the end of Act Three.
Rayna is an android and not the first version. Then we get the second twist. Flint is an immortal, born in 3834 BC. He was, apparently, all these great artists, going through various identities and also marrying a hundred wives.
He bought this planet and decided to make the perfect woman to settle down with. It's taken 18 attempts so far... and the woman doesn't even "know" she is an android, which is a bit skeevy. Kirk still loves her too, which is rather odd as well. He's not some otaku in a tiny Tokyo apartment
Unfortunately, when Kirk and Rayna fight over what is arguably a sex toy, it manages to cause her emotions to emerge and give a whole new meaning to the term "fatal exception error". Flint then lets them go, the plague is cured and McCoy mentions that Flint is now not immortal - he will die of old age soon.
I've not even mentioned the turning of the Enterprise into a model, which is just silly.
Conclusion
This could have been a good episode if it had just stuck to the original mystery and not added the femme-bot. Instead, it's just tawdry.
3/10
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