Saturday Morning Cult-TV Blogging: Star Trek: The Animated Series: "Albatross" (September 28, 1974)

STARDATE 5275.6

The U.S.S. Enterprise delivers life-saving medicine to the planet Dramia, and Captain Kirk (William Shatner) is surprised when the planet’s Supreme Prefect produces a warrant for the arrest of Dr. Leonard McCoy (De Forest Kelley). 

The Prefect claims McCoy is under arrest for the “wanton slaughter of hundreds of people” during a plague that ravaged Dramia 2 some nineteen years earlier.

Kirk can do nothing to prevent McCoy’s incarceration since the warrant is legal and binding. However, he orders the Enterprise to Dramia 2 to investigate the doctor’s guilt or innocence.  One of the Prefect’s men comes aboard the Enterprise to demand the investigation be dropped, but Kirk impounds his craft and classifies him as a “stowaway.”

On ruined, abandoned Dramia 2, Kirk and Spock meet a witness, Koltai, who will vouch for McCoy’s innocence, and he volunteers to speak at the doctor’s trial. 

On the return trip to Dramia, however, the Enterprise passes through a mysterious aurora, and the nineteen year old plague suddenly re-asserts itself, infecting Koltai, Kirk, and the entire Enterprise crew save for Mr. Spock.

Now, only Doctor McCoy -- a man still in custody -- can save the Enterprise.

Over the years, Star Trek has often returned to the idea of an officer on the Enterprise being accused of a crime, an accusation that then warrants an investigation by his dedicated friends.  

On the Original Series, Kirk was held for trial in “Court Martial,” Mr. Spock was held in “The Menagerie” and Scotty in “Wolf in the Fold.” 

In later generations, Riker faced trial in The Next Generation’s “A Matter of Perspective” O’Brien did the same in Deep Space Nine’s “Tribunal” and Paris was tried and punished in Voyager’s “Ex Post Facto.”

McCoy gets his turn on trial in this Animated Series episode, “Albatross.”  Despite the (over)familiarity of the premise – a hero wrongly accused of a crime – this episode nonetheless counts as one of the best of the cartoon canon in my estimation.  

In part, this is because the episode isn’t a sequel to another episode, doesn't feature familiar villains (like Klingons or Romulans), and isn’t pitched on a juvenile or "kiddie" level.  On the contrary, the teleplay by Dario Finelli would fit right in on the Original Series, save for the budget-busting depiction of the Dramians, their shuttlecraft, and their plague-ridden world. I particularly enjoyed the latter element of this story, the excursion to the ruined planet surface, a place now abandoned and feared by citizens of the solar system.

But I also appreciate this episode because it takes time to develop McCoy, a character whom we know very little about.  I know that The Final Frontier (1989) isn’t a popular film with fans, but it is nonetheless one of the few franchise entries to provide any character background whatsoever on Bones.  

“Albatross” fits in the same small category.  

We know that, according to this episode, he was on Dramia 2 nineteen years before was serving aboard the Enterprise, and furthermore, we get to witness the essential nobility of his character here.  Bones doesn’t argue that it is impossible that he caused a plague; he merely argues that if he is responsible, it was the result of a terrible mistake.  Furthermore, he resists jailbreak on Dramia, so as not to make a bad situation worse.  He is, in short, a real hero.

By focusing on McCoy and the crew’s efforts to clear his name, and by avoiding gimmicks like giants or love potions, “Albatross” emerges as one of the most adult and satisfying of Star Trek: The Animated Series.  It’s an episode that deserves a better reputation than it currently possesses.

The only negative in "Albatross:" a big blooper in the final scene. In one frame set in the transporter room, McCoy is seen to be wearing a gold tunic instead of his standard blue one.

Next week: “How Sharper Than a Serpent’s Tooth.”