Question: When is a Star Trek episode not a Star Trek episode?
Answer: “Assignment: Earth”

By all accounts this episode serves one purpose: to be a pilot for a new series to be developed by Gene Roddenberry. As such, he whores out his current series and uses it as a launch point for a sci-fi, spy-mystery thriller which feels like a bizarre version of Mission: Impossible! (By the way: I’m looking to set a record for the number of times I use a colon ‘:’ in a review … how am I doing?) The episode itself takes place in 1968 with almost all of its scenes on Earth itself. Maybe the series thought it could recreate some of the magic from “The City on the Edge of Forever” but any allusion to that episode quickly evaporates under the glare of an oppressively awkward and ill-conceived story. The end result is an episode which feels as alien to Trek as Spock does to 20th century humans.

The episode is about a powerful alien, named Gary Seven, who has been sent from a hidden planet to help the poor wayward humans of the 20th century survive their own vices. He does so by way of an array of gadgets, tricks and so forth, infiltrating government agencies and the like. But the basic premise is a surprisingly pessimistic (and defeatist) one from Roddenberry: that humanity cannot possibly overcome its own shortcomings without outside help. Does Roddenberry really mean to imply that there is no hope for humanity – short of intervening aliens?

And, too, the whole “intervening alien” story is nothing but smoke and mirrors. Gary Seven has incredible resources so it really isn’t especially suspenseful or dramatic to see him infiltrate heavily secured areas. And the whole question regarding whether or not he was there to do good or to do evil really didn’t add anything to the episode. As a matter of fact, it resulted in a particularly contrived climactic scene.

Even the guest stars, who get a chance to shine, don’t fare particularly well. Robert Lansing, as Gary Seven, proves competent but unremarkable. And Teri Garr is memorable – but oftentimes just too annoying to be compelling.

“Assignment: Earth” simply fails to accomplish any measure of success. About all there is to carry it forward are a handful of interesting scenes – and the cat which, as Spock says at one point, is “oddly” compelling.

Filed under: Original Series