"You will make an episode with great characters and performances then leave out something important"

Another one of those classic Trek episodes that everyone knows about-the one with the insane man who comes aboard and knows something evil is going on down below on the benevolant planet.  The head Doctor sounding so saccharine that you KNOW he's up to no good, the sexy doctor who goes with Kirk down to the planet and it's another episode where there was plenty of things taken in a classic South Park episode.

The Enterprise just dropped off some supplies to a state of the art mental hospital, but a patient has snuck aboard and demands asylum from Kirk.  Sedated-the man tries to give information about what goes on at the colony but his dementia won't let him get it all out.  Kirk take the Enterprise back to the colony with a lovely doctor to take a closer look at whats going on and find out some unsavory acts are being committed with a new treatment device.

There is a lot about this episode that I like.  If I didn't make it clear above, Marianna Hill as Helen Noel has got to be one of the sexiest women ever in the show's run.  Morgan Woodward as the insane Simon VanGelder, the man who gets aboard the Enterprise is really effective at playing a crazy man without being too caricaturish.  James Gregory as Dr Adams is so dripping with niceness, you KNOW he's evil-playing into the benevolent future of Star Trek and Kirks' assertions to Bones that new mental hospitals are not the dungeons of old, and Helen and Kirk's experimentation on how the treatment machine works is memorable and again it's a story where the a strategy and some thought will win the day, but with a little action mixed in.

Now, here is where I gotta dock this episode, and Charles review below sums it up in the title.  Why is Dr. Adams doing what he is doing?  For the evulz?  For reasons left on the cutting room floor?  Weird experiments?  Yes, we see some pretty vapid faces walking around the institution but what does Adams gain?  We don't know other then we can chalk it up to a pretty twisted man at work, but one we don't know why.

Dagger of the Mnd is also special for the first time Spock uses his Mindmeld, and it's used on Van Gelder with caution that Spock's mind could be damaged.  It was a on the spot creation so that the story could proceed and added considerabbly to how awesome Spock and the Vulcan's could be.  How boring would it be if the say was saved by some lame computer. 

Course if you ask Bones Spock IS a computer, with green blood.

Damn racially insensitve Star Trek characters.  Oh who am I kidding, I love Dr. McCoy.