In the twelfth episode of the third season of Star Trek, Kirk, Spock, and Bones are subjected to brutal rounds of torture at the hands of a couple aliens. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to watch Star Trek.
Trigger Warning: For torture
Well, this was a weird one, though I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. There’s a lot here that’s purposely bizarre, and I appreciate that the show was willing to do something so drastically different from what we’ve seen. And lord, it seemed so much like a ton of past episodes. How many times have these people gone down to make contact with missing crewmembers, only to discover the horrible truth of what happened to them? While you still have that aspect of the story here, “The Empath†quickly veers off in a relentlessly uncomfortable and almost existential direction.
It’s a visual thing, too, since the opening credits unfold on blackness, and nearly every scene plays out on a minimalistic set that’s shrouded in darkness. I actually thought it was brilliant, an almost post-modern taken on what the show normally did. The black backdrops are unnerving, as are the costume designs for the Vians. They’re designed with such a traditional and plain look (borrowing heavily from common tropes for aliens within science fiction) that they’re immediately recognizable as antagonists. And then we’ve got the Empath, Gem (IT SHOULD BE SPELLED “JEM†JUST SO I CAN JUST IMAGINE THE HOLOGRAMS SHOWING UP TO SING WITH HER), whose costuming is in visual juxtaposition with the aliens. It’s very easy, then, to accept the “obvious†roles of these two forces. The Vians were callous, sadistic torturers, and they were exploiting Gem for… well, that’s a mystery, a frustrating one that only gets more difficult to watch as the Vians become more and more heinous in their torture.
It’s through this that Gem reveals that she is an empath, one who does not – and can not – speak. She’s a character I don’t think I’ve ever seen on television, especially since the writers never once make her magically able to speak. Hell, it’s rare for Star Trek, which often brushes over the statistical improbability that every species can speak English. And while I don’t think this makes Gem a perfect character or an ideal representation, it does make her remarkably compelling. Kathryn Hays does not get an easy role here, and she’s able to convey Gem’s complicated journey entirely through facial expressions.
That journey… it’s a weird one. I admit I may have misunderstood some of this because I’ve got a fever and a cold and my brain hurt trying to figure out the final ten minutes of this episode. But my understanding is that the entirety of the torture seen in “The Empath†was a test for Gem only. The Vians – of which there were only two, apparently? – wanted to know which race in their system that they should save from the impending super nova. This is one of those episodes that has a fascinating premise, but all the details are largely perplexing. The framework by which they test Gem is to see whether she’ll put another person before her self, which might make sense if the race Gem belonged to had ever proven to be a selfish species. But it’s a ludicrous idea because the Vians are utterly oblivious to the fact that by kidnapping Gem, she’s probably not in the best mental space to want to put another life ahead of her own.
And yet? She heals Kirk and McCoy to great cost to herself. What’s so absurd is that THIS ISN’T GOOD ENOUGH FOR THE VIANS. No, they believe that she is still selfish because she’s still alive. Like??? What? Why is this the standard by which you judge an entire race? AREN’T THERE OTHER FACTORS THAT ARE IMPORTANT TOO??? I’m thankful that Kirk and Spock point out how absurd this is because… seriously??? You’re talking about saving an entire race, and this is the way in which you judge them. It’s heinous!
That’s not to say that the ending of this episode justifies all of this. It’s great that the Vians now value Gem and her amazing selflessness. But what about all the other races? Did Kirk and Spock accidentally doom them all to annihilation? Not that it’s their fault, mind you, but is no one going to address that? Probably not. THIS EPISODE IS SO WEIRD.
The video for “The Empath†can be downloaded here for $0.99.
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