Weird Star Trek: The Paradise Syndrome (Or: What Does God Need With a Hairpiece?)

"The Paradise Syndrome" may be the most racist episode of Star Trek. There are more popular choices like "Code of Honor" or "The Omega Glory", but in those cases the racist stereotypes were depicted as imaginary alien cultures.

Not so with "The Paradise Syndrome". Its embarrassing Native American stereotypes are depicted as actual Native Americans transplanted to another planet by benevolent (but not too bright) aliens. (There's not one Native American actor in the bunch, but we'll get into that.) Even worse, it's clear that writer Margaret Armen had no idea she was being racist. This is clearly meant to be a sympathetic portrayal, which somehow makes it worse.

It begins with Kirk, Spock, and McCoy beaming down to an idyllic Earthlike planet that’s threatened by an approaching asteroid. The planet has two items of interest, the first being a Native American village on the banks of the same lake where Andy and Opie Taylor used to go fishing. . .

How do the natives not notice three brightly-shirted guys standing in plain sight?

From his vantage point on the other side of the lake, Spock identifies them as Navajo, Mohican, and Delaware. Which is kind of weird because the Navajo came from the American southwest, the Mohican and Delaware were native to the northeast, and none of them lived in tipis. I have no idea how Spock could make that determination, except that he read it from the script.  The other item of interest is this nifty obelisk:

It's made of an alien metal that Spock's tricorder can't penetrate, and it's covered with unfamiliar symbols. The technology needed to construct the obelisk would equal or surpass the Federation's, so Spock doesn't think the natives built it. There's not much time to investigate, though; the Enterprise needs to warp out of orbit within thirty minutes to deflect the asteroid. Any longer, and it'll be impossible for the power of the Enterprise to deflect the asteroid enough to keep it from hitting the planet. (They could have taken care of the asteroid first and THEN investigated the planet, but then the episode wouldn't happen)

After observing the village from afar and wistfully yearning for the Native Americans’ simple lifestyle, Kirk announces that it’s time to go. But first, he wants another look at the obelisk. Spock and McCoy stay behind as he struts up there alone. He walks up the obelisk’s steps, takes out his communicator to call the ship, and is taken by surprise as a trap door opens beneath his feet. Kirk falls into the obelisk down a flight of stairs and comes to rest in front of a control panel. He grabs hold of it to pull himself up and accidentally activates some kind of alien Brain Zapper, which treats us to a classic William Shatner Acting Moment:

Fast forward an unspecified amount of time as Spock, now at the obelisk standing on the very trap door that Kirk fell into, voiceovers that numerous search parties and sensor scans have failed to locate the Captain. Well, since he said that he was going to check out the obelisk, and the obelisk clearly has some kind of trap door built into it, and you said earlier that you can’t scan inside the obelisk, and you couldn’t find him anywhere else, maybe, I don’t know, he’s inside the obelisk. However, since the story needs Kirk to get stranded on the planet, our hyper-intelligent Vulcan Science Officer is prevented from making that particular connection. Spock tells McCoy they’re going back to the ship, and when the doctor protests, Spock reminds him of the urgency of getting to the asteroid in time to deflect it away from the planet. Otherwise, he warns “everyone on this planet will die, including the Captain.” Again, maybe they could've come to spy on the Native Americans after they took care of the asteroid. Spock and McCoy beam up.

Meanwhile, the Brain Zapper has left Kirk with a serious case of amnesia, which is communicated to the audience by Shatner stumbling around the underground chamber and voiceovering "What . . . place . . . isthis? Who . . . amI? Try . . . toremember." He staggers up the stairs he fell down earlier and the trap door opens automatically for him. Kirk walks up into the sunlight, and we're treated to the sight of our first two Native American characters:

The one on the left is Miramanee, the "tribal priestess". She's played by the very white actress Sabrina Scharf in brownface. The one on the right is credited only as "Indian Woman", and is played by another white actress, Naomi Pollack. The producers must've liked how she looked in brownface, because later in the season they cast her as the Indian (South Asian, not Native American) Lt. Rahda. Back in the 60s, actually casting Native American or Indian actors to portray characters of those ethnicities was the farthest thing from the mind of your average Hollywood casting director.

In the first of many moments that make you wonder if William Shatner wrote this episode, the ladies bow down worshipfully the second they catch sight of the amnesiac Kirk:

Or maybe they're covering their faces because they've never seen a bad toupee before

After a brief interlude on the Enterprise where Scotty complains that the engines can't stand Spock's demand for maximum warp speed, we cut back to the planet. It seems that the tribespeople have decided that Kirk coming up out of the obelisk (which they call "the temple") means he's a god, and the tribal council is interviewing him for the job of Lord and Savior.

The Medicine Chief, an argumentative guy named Salish, is skeptical. He insists that the newcomer in the weird pajamas should prove he's a god.

"What does God need with a hairpiece?"

The Tribal Elder explains that a God's main job is to "rouse the temple spirit" when "the sky darkens". He asks Kirk point-blank if he can do this, but Kirk gives a rambling non-answer that makes it clear he has no idea what they're talking about. But everyone forgets about Kirk’s unsuitability for the position of God when he uses a 1960s version of CPR to revive a kid who drowned in the lake. They’re so impressed that they declare him God right then and there and give him Salish’s Medicine Chief gig. One of the perks of being Medicine Chief, it turns out, is that you get to marry tribal priestess Miramanee.

Naturally, Salish is not too happy about losing his job and his fiancée to a bushy-sideburned amnesiac who's less of a deity than the most unimpressive member of the X-Men. And yet the episode clearly depicts Salish as the villain, which makes no sense. I mean, amnesia or no, Kirk has to know that he’s not a god. And yet he pointedly allows everyone to think he is, and even goes so far as to allow the tribe to make him solely responsible for their welfare.

Meanwhile, the Enterprise's efforts to deflect the asteroid aren't going well. After the deflector beam fails to push it far enough off course, Spock orders phaser fire to destroy it. That fails, too, burning out the warp engines in the process. He has no choice to have the ship retreat in front of the asteroid at impulse power for the months-long journey back to the planet.

Back on the planet of bad stereotypes, Kirk (who's now going by the name "Kirok") is running around in full Native American cosplay and setting a wedding date with Miramanee. She wants to get married the very next day. "The sooner our happiness begins, the longer it will last," she says. In case you haven't noticed by now, Miramanee doesn't really have a personality, unless "Stereotypical Native American maiden who talks in Hallmark greeting card sayings" is a personality. Kind of like Commander Riker's holographic girlfriend Minuet, she doesn't seem to have any wants or needs of her own, she just exists to please Kirk. What did she do before he showed up? 

On the Enterprise, Spock is in his quarters studying the pictures he took of the symbols on the obelisk while McCoy chews him out because his plan to destroy the asteroid didn't work. Naturally, McCoy doesn't have any better ideas (he's a doctor, not an asteroid removal expert) he just wants to complain that Spock's decisions are stupid and bad because he's a Vulcan. Rather than report the doctor to Starfleet HR for his blatant racism, Spock just ignores him.

At the obelisk, the Tribal Elder applies some paint to Kirk Kirok’s face, then tells him to wait while he walks the “holy path to the earth lodge” where the wedding will take place. This gives Kirk time to hug himself while he voiceovers about how happy he is. There are some iconic images that just cry out to be made into demotivational posters, and this is one of them:

After his little self-love session, Kirok heads off to the wedding venue only to be accosted by Salish, leading to a fight scene between two stunt doubles.

What's that in Salish's hand, a butter knife? Is he there to stab Kirk or make him peanut butter sandwich?

Of course, Kirk defeats Salish with his patented William Shatner Flying Kick. Salish managed to slightly wound him during the fight, and is elated to see that Kirk bleeds, which is a thing that god's aren't supposed to do. He promises not to rest until he exposes Kirk as a fraud, and then proceeds to do absolutely nothing.

And then we have a wedding. I’m no expert on Native American customs, but I’m pretty sure that none of their marriage rituals involved the groom wearing a robe made from Muppet pelts.

Two months later, Miramanee and a shirtless Kirok are playfully chasing each other through the woods when Miramanee drops the bomb that she’s pregnant with a little Captain Kirok, and with that her fate is sealed. No reason to get attached to Mrs. Kirok, dear viewers, because if the Rules of 1960s Television are harsh on the love interests of main characters, they’re even harsher on the unborn children of such unions. Miramanee and Kirok Jr. are as good as dead.

The seeds of their destruction come from Medicine Chief Kirok’s inability to do the one thing that a Medicine Chief/God is supposed to be able to do. It seems that, while the alien race called the Preservers did a noble thing by rescuing this group of Native Americans from genocide at the hands of white settlers, the planet they plunked them down on is especially prone to asteroid impacts. So, the Preservers “solved” this problem by building the obelisk, whose function is to fire a sort of anti-asteroid phaser beam. However, the thing has a combination lock, and in their wisdom the Preservers only told one member of the tribe (the original Medicine Chief) how to get in and operate it, and the “secret” has been passed down from father to son ever since. Currently, the tribe is in a pickle because Salish’s father died before he could pass the secret on to his son, and now nobody knows it.

What’s the logic in putting these people on a planet where their survival depends solely on the obelisk thingy, and then telling only one guy how to work it? Come to think of it, why does this asteroid deflector even need to have a human operator? If the Preservers were super-advanced enough to build the thing, couldn’t they give it an autopilot?

Also, since they never got around to inventing the telescope, and since the Preservers never bothered to explain to them about asteroids and space and stuff, the only way the tribe knows that an asteroid impact is imminent is when the sky gets dark, the ground quakes, and they start having weather problems. I’m no astrophysicist, but I’m pretty sure that if a giant asteroid is so close to your planet that it’s blocked out the sun and you’re having seismic and weather disturbances, then it’s probably already in the atmosphere, and powerful asteroid deflector or no, you don’t have time to do anything but bend over and kiss your butt goodbye. And what if the asteroid is approaching from the other side of the planet?

Back in their hut, Kirk is explaining to Miramanee his plans to build a system of canals from the lake to irrigate the fields the tribes use for farming, and this is probably the part of the episode that infuriates me the most. Because most Native American tribes weren't hunter-gatherers; they farmed. In fact, until the Europeans introduced livestock to the Navajo, farming was pretty much their only source of food. 

The Mississippian people were good enough at farming to build a huge city in present-day Illinois that supported 40,000 people at its peak in the 12th century CE--more people than London during that same period. So are you seriously telling me that the natives on this planet never thought of digging canals until an amnesiac space captain showed them how? Not only that, but Kirk has also "invented" the idea of making oil lamps out of hollowed-out gourds and stockpiling food to preserve it for lean times. I'm pretty sure that actual Native American cultures figured this stuff out millennia before the Europeans arrived.

Well, sure enough the approaching asteroid causes the weather to get windy, and Salish and the tribal chief insist that Kirk go the obelisk and carry out his one and only job duty. Naturally, Kirk doesn’t know how to get inside the obelisk, and Salish, seeing the chance to get rid of his rival once and for all, incites the tribe to stone Kirk and Miramanee with rocks made of styrofoam. Honestly, you can understand why they're upset. Kirk has been passing himself off as a god and allowing the tribe to wait on him hand and foot, and when the time comes for him to hold up his part of the bargain the only thing he can do is pound the obelisk with his fists and yell "I am Kirok!"

The tribe is scared off when Spock and McCoy beam down, and after Spock restores Kirk’s memory with some kind of Vulcan mind thing, they go inside the obelisk and save the planet by activating the Asteroid Repeller.

How do they get into the obelisk, you ask? Well, it turns out that the symbols on the obelisk are musical notes that spell out the combination to open the door (again, why has the tribe been living in close proximity to this thing for the last four or five hundred years and never been inspired to come up with a written language?) And by sheer coincidence, when Kirk took out his communicator and said "Kirk to Enterprise" it matched the exact set of tones needed to open the door.

So, let's recap. According to "The Paradise Syndrome", James T. Kirk is so awesome that:

1. Native Americans take one look at him and automatically assume that he’s a god.
2. Beautiful tribal priestesses want nothing more than to spend their life doing whatever he wants.
3. The very sound of his name can unlock the secrets of alien technology.

Are we sure William Shatner didn't write this episode?

Oh, one other thing: exactly why does the asteroid deflector even have a brain-zapping ray? It’s like building a toaster oven that also shoots poison darts if you push the wrong button! Yeah, Spock calls it a "memory beam" and attributes Kirk's amnesia to it being activated out of sequence, but why does the thing need a "memory beam"? To implant the instructions for operating the deflector directly into the Medicine Chief's brain? Spock activates it by pushing a single button; it's not that complicated. 

Of course, Miramanee's styrofoam-inflicted injuries are too severe for McCoy and his 23rd century medicine to heal, and she’s going to die. She passes away in in Kirk’s arms, sincerely believing that he was a god after all.

According to this episode, people dying of severe internal injuries look like they're relaxing at the beach

So what happens to the tribe? Does Kirk explain who he really is and where he came from? Does he arrange for everyone to learn how operate the asteroid deflector so the entire tribe's safety isn't dependent on one person? Does he apologize to them for impersonating a deity? None of this is addressed. The moment Miramanee breathes her last, we cut to the Enterprise leaving orbit and the episode is over.

So that’s “The Paradise Syndrome”. For years it was considered one of the better episodes of Star Trek's final season, partially because it was the only one shot on location and one of the few with its own musical score. But now that everyone realizes how racist it is, it's just an embarrassment. Look, I know that doing research was a lot harder in 1968, but did Margaret Armen even try to learn anything about any Native American peoples before writing her script? I guess that in those days, simply not depicting them as savage killers qualified as non-racist. Also, her story has plot holes big enough to fly a C-130 through, and our illustrious Captain Kirk doesn’t exactly behave like a role model.

So what did we learn today?

1. If you're on a mission to save a planet from a giant asteroid, you should definitely deal with the asteroid first.
2. There's no excuse for impersonating a god, even if you're suffering from alien-brain-zapping-ray-induced amnesia.
3. If you're an alien super-race that rescues primitive cultures, maybe put them on a planet that isn't prone to frequent asteroid impacts. And if you just can't help it, at least teach more than one person how to operate the Asteroid-B-Gone.
4. Finally, if you're a white person who wants to write a story about Native Americans, do some amount of research. Otherwise, you might go down in history as being responsible for the most racist entry in a historically inclusive franchise.

Weird Star Trek: Requiem for Methuselah

Star Trek has endured for over five decades. Society has changed a lot during that time, so naturally some once-beloved entries in the franchise are weird and creepy by modern standards. Today we're going to talk about one such story from the much-maligned third and final season of the Original Series: "Requiem for Methuselah".

It starts promisingly enough (for a third-season episode, anyway). We see the Enterprise orbiting a planet as the Captain's Log voiceover explains that a deadly space epidemic is sweeping through the ship and the only cure is a mineral called "ryetalyn". Kirk, Spock, and McCoy beam down to get some and are immediately attacked by a killer robot.

Killer AIs with a single glowing red eye were a big thing in 1969

Just when it looks like our heroes are about to get deep-fried by this flying Mr. Coffee (aka BB-H8), its creator appears and calls off the attack.

His name is Flint. You'd think a guy who dresses like Liberace if he raided Lando Calrissian's closet would be pretty laid-back, but Flint is all business. He's not interested in hearing why Kirk and friends are on his planet, he just wants them gone. Or else.

McCoy begs Flint to let them have the ryetalyn and compares the space disease infecting his crewmates to bubonic plague. This causes Flint to soliloquize about the Plague sweeping through Constantinople in 1334, and abruptly he changes his mind. He even says the Enterprise crewmen can chill at his house while gathers the ryetalyn for them.

Flint's house turns out to be full of all kinds of curiosities, like unknown original works by Leonardo DaVinci and Johannes Brahms. Spock is fascinated, but Kirk can't be bothered. He's got a ship full of sick and dying crewpeople, after all. Then Flint introduces his ward, Rayna Kapec. (He explains that he took her in after her parents died in an accident).

Kirk is polite, but remains focused on his mission to get lifesaving medicine for his sick and dying crew.

Ha ha! Just kidding! What he really does is immediately forget about his crew and start flirting with the pretty lady. They play billiards for a while, and when Spock sits down at the piano to play an unknown Brahms waltz, Flint encourages Kirk and Rayna to dance. But as soon as Kirk makes googly eyes at her, Flint starts looking all jealous and broody. Is he just an overprotective father, or is something else going on?

While the Captain puts his romantic Kirk-Fu on Rayna and Spock plays the piano, McCoy is the only member of the landing party actually doing his job. He checks out a sample of ryetalyn that R2-Die-2 brought back, but it's got impurities that make it worthless. Flint promises to personally supervise the robot as it gathers more. While he's gone, Kirk calls up to the Enterprise and asks Scotty and Uhura to do some research on their hosts.

Later, Kirk finds Rayna in Flint's science lab. He allegedly went there to see if there was any way of removing the ryetalyn's impurities, but as soon as he sees Rayna he forgets all about helping his sick and dying crew. Again.

As for Rayna, she's standing in front of a locked door that Flint has told her never to enter. But rather than puzzle out that particular mystery, Kirk starts hitting her with lame pickup lines and tries to get her to ditch Flint and leave with him. But why? Does he want to marry her? Does he want her for a live-in girlfriend? Previous episodes have made a big deal about how Kirk has chosen to forego having a "normal" life with a wife and kids so he can be a starship Captain. This seems like a strange time for him to suddenly decide to settle down.

Meanwhile the sick and dying crew of the Enterprise is no doubt telling each other "Don't worry, Captain Kirk will get us the lifesaving medicine we need! He's probably digging it out of the rocks with his bare hands right now! He's definitely not trusting a strange killer robot to do it for him while he makes out with some lady he met thirty minutes ago!" But Kirk can't hear them over the sound of all the making out him and Rayna are doing while he trusts a strange killer robot to dig up the ryetalyn for him.

"Of course I don't have more important things to do, why do you ask?"

Characters suddenly falling madly in love with a person they just met was a pretty common 1960s TV trope, so I'm not going to criticize Kirk's infatuation too harshly. But his fixation on Rayna is also kind of creepy. As far as Kirk knows, Rayna has lived alone with Flint on this planet since she was a child. And while she's very well-educated academically, she's about as emotionally developed as a teenager. Why would a man in his late 30s find this attractive?

It's also pretty clear that Kirk is way more into Rayna than she is into him. She's obviously never been in a romance before and doesn't seem altogether comfortable. It really looks like she's going along with his advances because she doesn't quite know how to say no.

But Kirk's amorous activities have tripped the Virgin Alarm on Flint's flying Spaghetti Strainer of Death, and it appears to break up the make-out session.

Forget C-3PO, this is the robot that Spaceballs' Dot Matrix was based on

It ignores Rayna's commands to stop and almost kills Kirk before Spock shows up and vaporizes it with his phaser. Later, Flint apologizes (Accompanied by an identical replacement robot. "Too useful a device to be without," he explains) He says the robot misinterpreted Kirk's actions as an attack, but Kirk suspects that Flint sent it after him deliberately out of jealousy. McCoy and Spock believe that the continuous delays in obtaining and processing the ryetalyn have been manufactured by Flint to keep them there, but why?

Scotty calls with the information Kirk asked for earlier. It turns out there are no Federation records for Flint or Rayna. It's like they don't exist. And McCoy's tricorder readings on Flint indicate that he's 6,000 years old.

Scotty also has an update on the space plague. If they don't start ryetalyn injections in two hours, everyone on the Enterprise will die. Kirk lamely assures him that they'll get it soon, but he seems way more upset about the way Flint orders Rayna around. Spock urges him to focus on getting the medicine their crewmates need so they can not die. But Kirk really isn't listening.

Finally the ryetalyn is ready. Kirk sends Spock and McCoy to Flint's lab to pick it up, while he stays behind to plead with Rayna to leave the only life she's ever known to shack up with a strange dude she just met this afternoon. "Childhood must end," he tells her in the episode's creepiest line up to this point. So he admits that she's basically a child, but he's still totally hot for her? Previous episodes have shown Kirk in romances with strong professional women in his age group, like Dr. Janet Wallace or Lt. Areel Shaw. Why's he now irresistibly drawn to a teenager who's obviously afraid to say no?

However messed up Kirk may be, though, he's nothing compared to Flint. McCoy's tricorder locates the ryetalyn in the lab, behind the locked door Rayna was forbidden to enter. It automatically opens for them. When they go inside they find the ryetalyn, and something else:

It's a cybernetics lab with earlier versions of Rayna, conveniently labeled for expository purposes. She's an android. Flint appears to explain what Spock has already figured out. He's immortal. The reason his house is full of unknown works by DaVinci, Brahms, and others is because he is all those people. He's been married hundreds of times to women who eventually got old and died, and he finally retired to this planet to retreat from humanity and build his perfect immortal mate. He used Kirk to awaken romantic feelings in Rayna, with the idea that once Kirk left she'd be all hot and bothered and Flint would be the only guy in town.

You read that right. Flint apparently spent years trying to groom his android-daughter into a romantic partner, and when that didn't work out his big plan was for Kirk to get Rayna's motor running and then take off, leaving Rayna so worked-up that she'd want to marry her dad. In addition to Brahms and DaVinci, was Flint also Woody Allen in a past life?

Is this Star Trek or Law and Order SVU? You know if Olivia Benson was here both Kirk and Flint would be in cuffs already.

But now that Kirk, Spock, and McCoy know the truth about him Flint decides that they and the Enterprise can't be allowed to leave. So he pulls out a remote control and presses a button that shrinks the Enterprise down to the size of a toy and puts the crew into suspended animation. He figures he'll set them free after a millennium or two. Kirk is not a fan of this idea.

Then Rayna walks in on them, and she's not happy either. She demands that Flint release the Enterprise. Realizing that his romantic prospects with his android daughter depend on it, Flint relents. But Kirk can't just take the lifesaving ryetalyn and go home. Him and Flint each plead with Rayna to stay with them, completely ignoring how increasingly distraught and agitated she's becoming. Finally their argument escalates to 1960s TV fisticuffs.

Spock tries to get them to stop. "Stay out of this!" Kirk snarls. "We're fighting over a woman!" Because who cares what the woman actually wants? Let's just punch each other until one of us is dead, and the victor automatically "wins" her!

You tell em, Captain

They finally stop fighting when Rayna shouts at them. She'll choose what to do with her life, thank you very much. "No one can order me!" she says.

Kirk is overjoyed. He gives a speech that's basically "Yay! Rayna is fully human! She can choose her own destiny now! By which I mean come be my live-in girlfriend on the Enterprise like I want her to!" Flint doesn't get it, either. "No man beats me!" he growls. Both Kirk and Flint claim to love Rayna, but it's obvious they don't respect her. She's not a person to them, just an attractive bauble to be possessed. (Flint even calls her "my property")

They're so busy competing with each other that neither notices what an increasingly hard time Rayna is having with all this emotional drama. She only became fully emotionally-aware a few minutes ago, after all, and immediately she was thrust into the middle of two guys fighting over what she should do with her free will. Only Spock, the "emotionless" Vulcan, seems to understand what's happening and again warns Kirk and Flint to stop. Of course they don't listen, and Rayna suddenly falls down dead.

Spock explains what happened: "There was not enough time for her to adjust to the awful power and contradictions of her newfound emotions." He says. "She could not bear to hurt either of you. The joys of love made her human, and the agonies of love destroyed her." It's funny how the Vulcan is the most emotionally-intelligent person in this episode.

One interesting bit of Star Trek trivia: what happens to Rayna is very similar to what happened on The Next Generation with Data's daughter Lal. She spontaneously developed emotions, experienced a traumatic event when an unreasonable Starfleet Admiral wanted to take her from her father to study her in a lab, then died when her brain went into cascade failure. I don't know if the writer of the TNG episode "The Offspring" did that intentionally, but it's a neat bit of continuity.

Later, back on the Enterprise, Spock visits Kirk in his quarters to report that the epidemic is over and the crew is saved. Kirk is depressed, his mind still on Rayna. "We put on a pretty poor show, didn't we?" he says.

 Wait, "We"? "WE"?

As I recall there were only three Enteprise crewmen on that planet, and two of them spent most of their time desperately trying to get the other one to stop making out with an android teenager long enough to get the medicine to save their shipmates from the Space Plague. So, if you're talking about the total number of Starfleet officers who made an ass of themselves on the planet, then that number would be exactly one, which doesn't qualify for the pronoun "we".

But Kirk falls asleep at his desk before Spock can argue the point with him. Then McCoy shows up to tell Spock that his tricorder readings indicate that Flint lost his immortality when he left Earth, and will die after living out the remainder of a normal lifespan.

As he looks at the sleeping Kirk, McCoy condescendingly tells Spock he feels sorry for him because he can't possibly understand how an emotion like love can affect a person. You know, even though Spock spent the whole episode demonstrating a higher emotional IQ than anyone else.

After McCoy leaves, Spock again demonstrates his emotional understanding by mind-melding with Kirk to ease his painful memories of Rayna.

So what did we learn today?

1. If you're starship Captain whose crew is dying of space plague, and you have the choice of getting them some medicine or making out with a lady with the emotional maturity of a high school student, definitely get the medicine. That way your crew won't die, you won't get embarrassed when the lady turns out to be an android who's younger than some pairs of socks you own, and people won't make fun of you on the Internet for coming across like a creepy cradle-robber who doesn't respect women.
2.  If you're a fabulously-rich immortal dude who wants to build an android wife, maybe make one that's more like the Tricia Helfer-model Cylon and less like V.I.C.K.I. from Small Wonder. And when she decides to assert her rights as a sentient being, don't lay such a massive guilt trip on her that she falls down dead.
3. And finally, if you're a Vulcan first officer, and your Captain ignores your good advice so he can fistfight a civilian over which one of them gets to own an sentient being for romantic and/or sexual purposes, you should nerve-pinch them both and call Olivia Benson pronto.

Until next time, this has been Weird Star Trek.