Return to Tomorrow

TOS Season 2 Epsiode 20
Air Date: February 9th, 1968

A distress call from a planet that was once a habitable class M planet but for over a half million years it has held no atmosphere. Once the Enterprise gets close enough a disembodied voice calls out to them and tells them that they can save them from certain doom. Kirk, Spock and Lt. Ann Mulhall (played by Diana Muldaur who is known in TNG as Dr Pulaski) transport 3 miles under ground to where three beings who have shed their bodies and are trapped in spheres. They ask to borrow three bodies while they build androids to host their bodies.

We learn that their civilization once spanned the stars and were at war with another faction but when they started dying off they made a truce. Only three now remain, the leaders Sargon and Henoch of the two factions and Sargon's wife Thalassa. After a long debate they agree to do it. Since their energy is too great for a human body, they can only last for a short while before killing the host.

Henoch has his own plan though, to steal Vulcan bodies since they can withstand more punishment and hope to live forever using hosts instead of androids. He even convinces Thalassa that it is a better life but after killing Sargon and his host Kirk, she realizes her mistake. But it turns out Sargon was even more powerful then Henoch could imagine and was able to transfer his consciousness out of Kirk and into the ships computer.

After reviving Kirk and kicking Henoch out of Spock's body, they decide it is better if they just dissolve into nothing instead, be one with the universe if you will.

Leonard Nimoy was given a chance to play a different part in this one, actually showing some emotion. This episode hints at the idea that all life in the galaxy may have spawned from colonists of this long dead civilization. Something similar that was addressed in TNG. It will be interesting to see how they contrast.

"They used to say if man could fly, he'd have wings, but he did fly. He discovered he had to. Do you wish that the first Apollo mission hadn't reached the moon, or that we hadn't gone on to Mars and then to the nearest star? That's like saying you wish that you still operated with scalpels and sewed your patients up with catgut like your great-great-great-great grandfather used to. I'm in command." - Kirk

"Can robot lips do this?" - Thalassa

"But there comes to all races an ultimate crisis which you have yet to face." - Sargon