I disagree with other reviewers who say this is a rubbish story - it's inspired and inspiring: - both The Avengers (Who's Who, 6/5/67) and The Prisoner (Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling, 7/1/68) adopt and adapt this premise and base their stories around it. The casting is superb but 33% predictable - when you see James Gregory in the cast list you know he will be playing a dude who will f..k your mind or any part of you to earn an outer space dollar or half a kelligram of outer space kudos - and so it seems here, he having invented a rather unattractive (even by 1960s decor standards) ceiling lamp which can not just lobotomise his subjects without the need for invasive surgery; but implant his own psyche into their brains - it could be called a "mind bonk" - but I'm sure Dr Adams (James Gregory) would call it "mind love" and could justify his actions to the highest court of all. Naturally - and obviously - James Tiberius Kirk's mind is sufficiently powerful to resist the mind bonk - and predictably he does so here - as we his audience must know he will. All told then, a supreme episode - spoiled only by Morgan Woodward's entrance - far better to have the crate from which he emerges hinged at the back giving a cartoon effect as he emerges? - any which way up the dozy transporter operator would be none the wiser as his back was turned. And as another rewiever has commented, let us not forget this episode's guest babe is the lovely Marianna Hill (check her out nude in the film El Condor) - in a skirt so short she shows her knickers while remaining perpendicular - then descending at high speed in a lift with Kirk where he comments on the intimacy of their previous tryst with: "It's a long way down!" Easily on a par with Celeste Yarnall in The Apple and the girls in Spock's Brain; but for my money Nurse Christine Chapel is Star Trek's best mini skirt babe: she doesn't know how lovely she is - but she wears her mini skirt uniform because she has to - and she looks lovely in it - so she gets my vote as best Star Trek mini skirt girl.
Review of Dagger of the Mind
