Obsession

TOS Season 2 Episode 13
Air Date: December 15th, 1967

Kirk and Spock are surveying a planet and find some mineral that the Federation needs. But while getting a sample, Kirk smells something that triggers a memory from an encounter he had eleven years before. A gaseous entity that kills people and consumes all their hemoglobin.

Kirk delays a rendezvous with the USS Yorktown in order to hunt this creature. Another Moby-Dick type story. A new security officer Garrovick who Kirk knew his father, the captain of the USS Farragut, Kirk's first assignment.

Kirk and Garrovick beamed down with Kirk and four other security guards. Another encounter with the mist kills one of the security guards and injures another. It turns out that Garrovick hesitated and Kirk relieved him of duty.

The mist then leaves the planet and moves away at warp speed. The Enterprise pursues but can't keep up but when the Enterprise slows down it slowed down too. The Enterprise fires on it but it is ineffectual. Eventually finds a way into the Enterprise.

It attacks Spock, but because Spock is Vulcan with green blood, it has no effect on him. They then lure the creature to a planet and use an antimatter bomb to kill the planet. Kirk used himself as bait and beamed to the Enterprise at the last second. The transporter had some difficulty but they made it.

"I need your advice" - Spock
"Then I need a drink" - McCoy

"Your self-pity's a terrible first course. Why don't you try the soup instead?" - Nurse Chapel

"Gentlemen, may I suggest we no longer belabor the question of whether or not we should have gone after the creature. The matter has been rendered academic. The creature is now after us." - Spock

"Crazy way to travel, spreading a man's molecules all over the universe." - McCoy

"Scott: Captain, thank heaven." - Scotty
"Mr. Scott, there was no deity involved. It was my cross-circuiting to B that recovered them." - Spock
"Well, then, thank pitchforks and pointed ears!" - McCoy