The Lights of Zetar

"The Lights of Zetar" is a third season episode of Star Trek: The Original Series, first broadcast January 31, 1969 and repeated on August 26, 1969. It is episode #73, production #73, written by Jeremy Tarcher and Shari Lewis, and directed by Herb Kenwith.

Overview: Strange incorporeal aliens threaten the Memory Alpha station and the Enterprise.

Plot

On stardate 5725.3, the Enterprise heads for Memory Alpha , a planetoid where the Federation has set up a storehouse of computer databases, containing all cultural history and scientific data it has acquired. While en route, the ship detects a strange energy storm, tracking its speed at warp factor 2.6, on a course to the planetoid. Given the storm's speed, it is believed that it cannot be a natural phenomenon.

The Enterprise intercepts the storm which bypasses the ship's shields and penetrates the hull. The exposure to the storm begins to affect crew members' nervous systems differently; Lt. Uhura is unable to move her hands, Mr. Chekov is unable to control his eyes, and Mr. Sulu is unable to speak.

Lieutenant Mira Romaine, aboard to oversee the transmission of newly acquired data from the Enterprise to the Memory Alpha station, faints from the effects of the storm, much to Mr. Scott's dismay, as he is also madly in love with Mira. Dr. McCoy examines her on the bridge. Mira seems paralyzed and unresponsive. She makes strange grunting sounds as she lies on the deck. Mira soon recovers and refuses to be examined any further.

The storm continues straight for Memory Alpha and the Enterprise gives chase. The storm manages to penetrate the station and destroys the main computer core, wiping out the crucial stores of data. Captain Kirk, along with Mr. Spock and Dr. McCoy, beam down to the station to inspect the damage. Meanwhile, Mira has a strange premonition of dead people, apparently of various Federation races.

The landing party finds the staff technicians have been killed, except for one, a woman, who lies unconscious on the floor. She makes the same strange guttural noises as Mira did and her skin seems to charged with a mysterious colored energy. As the energy fades, she quickly dies from what McCoy determines to be a brain hemorrhage.

Kirk then has Mira beamed to the station and is terrified to see the exact scene about which she had the premonition. She then warns that the storm is returning. Sensor scans confirm this and the landing party returns to the ship. Scans of the storm determine that it may be a lifeform, and Kirk tries to communicate with it through the Universal Translator, but gets no response. He then fires phaser warning shots but the storm still approaches. Kirk then orders a full attack, blasting phaser streams through the core of the storm.

This action seems to cause Mira considerable pain and she crumples to the floor. Mr. Scott believes Mira and the storm are connected and begs Kirk to stop his attack. Kirk backs off and Mira is taken back to sickbay for a full medical analysis. Her medical records show that she has an extremely flexible ability to assimilate new knowledge and experiences. A neural scan shows her mental pathways have been adjusted to match those of the intelligence pattern of the storm. It appears the beings are trying to possess her body and completely take over her mind. Lying weak on the examining table, Mira manages to confess her latest vision to Scotty; seeing him die.

Making an attempt to rid her of the alien influence, Mira is placed in gravity pressure chamber. The alien force however, enters the ship and finishes its invasion of Mira's mind. They have now completely taken over her body. The aliens speak through Mira, identifying themselves as survivors from the long dead planet of Zetar. The creatures have evolved to shed their physical bodies and now seek one as tuned to their mental capacity, as Mira, to live out their remaining existence.

Scotty refuses to allow the aliens to fulfill their plan and places Mira in the chamber, exposing her body to conditions that drive out and kill the aliens before they can completely wipe her mind.

With the conclusion of the crisis, Kirk, Spock, Scotty and McCoy all agree to allow Mira to complete her original assignment on Memory Alpha, which will now involve overseeing the salvaging and repairs.

40th Anniversary remastering

This episode was remastered in 2006 and aired June 7, 2008 as part of the remastered Original Series. It was preceded a week earlier by the remastered "The Mark of Gideon" and followed a week later by the remastered "The Way to Eden". Aside from remastered video and audio, and the all-CGI animation of the USS Enterprise that is standard among the revisions, specific changes to this episode also include: [*] A new revision to the Lights of Zetar * to be noted

Notes

• A goof is noticed when Mira is placed in the "anti-gravity chamber", she floats in the air, but her hair hangs down.
• Shari Lewis, the noted ventriloquist behind Lamb Chop, co-wrote the episode. She was a huge fan of the series and not only wrote the episode but also hoped to play the role of Mira Romaine.
• James Doohan performed this episode under protest because he didn't think it believable that "an old Aberdeen pub crawler" like Scotty would fall madly in love with a bookworm like Mira Romaine.
• The (non-canonical) novel Memory Prime by Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens was written as a sequel to "The Lights of Zetar", featuring Scotty's reunion with Mira Romaine and a successor facility to Memory Alpha equipped with about a dozen sentient artificially intelligent systems.
• Strange New Worlds VII later established that Romaine married Morgan Bateson from the TNG episode "Cause and Effect", a fact that Scott disliked intensely.
• This is one of the few episodes to feature Sulu in temporary command. Sulu informs Captain Ronald Tracy he is in temporary command of the Enterprise in "Omega Glory".
• Another goof occurs when the female scientist, lying on her back at the planetary research station, can clearly be seen breathing in back to back scenes despite McCoy's proclamation of her death.

External links

• The Lights of Zetar at StarTrek.com
• The Lights of Zetar at Memory Alpha

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