Wink of an Eye

TOS Season 3 Episode 11
Air Date: November 29th, 1968

Plot

The Enterprise is responding to a distress call from a planet that has evidence of intelligent life, cities, villages, vehicles. When Kirk, Spock and McCoy beam down, the planet is devoid of the life including plant life, except Kirk gets buzzed by a flying insect. Uhura confirms that there is a current distress call from the exact spot that they beamed down to. While investigating, one of the security officers vanishes into thin air.

The away team beams back to the Enterprise and start analyzing the distress call when different systems across the Enterprise stop working. Kirk then gets buzzed by that insect again. He orders everyone be armed and then force fields lock down the ship, only letting Kirk and Spock get through. They discover a gadget that is partially built in Engineering but when they interact with it they get shoved by something they can't see of interact with.

While waiting for the intruders to make the next move, Kirk gets buzzed again but this time he starts to notice everyone on the bridge is moving at half speed and slowing down. He then meets Deela who hitched a ride up from the surface. She tells him that she wants him to rule her planet with her as King.

Kirk goes down to where the contraption was being built where he meets the security officer that disappeared. For him though a long time has passed and he has sided with the others. When Kirk pushes past him he gets stunned and the security guard defends Kirk and gets killed.

Kirk learns that anyone who ends up in this accelerated time will eventually die since they are cells are not used to hyper acceleration. Deela tells him that they were once like Humans, but a natural disaster caused them to hyper-accelerate which had a side effect of making the men sterile. The only way they are able to survive as a species is to mate with off worlders. They inevitably burn up but are useful for a time. The device they are installing to cryo-freeze the crew of the Enterprise so they can thaw them later and use them to reproduce as well.

Kirk leaves a message for Spock hoping it will traverse hyper-time. He then runs to the transporter and sabotages it to prevent anyone from beaming off the ship. This means that the cryo-freeze device cannot be used yet. Spock continues to analyze the distress signal and starts to hone into a the idea that the content it time compressed. Once he discovers this they are able to watch Kirk's message.

McCoy was able to synthesis an antidote to what is causing hyper-time and Spock enters hyper-time and meets up with the captain. They successfully destroy the cryo-freeze system. Kirk lets Deela and her people return to the planet with the knowledge that they are the last of their people. Spock uses the antidote to get Kirk and himself back to normal time.

Commentary

When they started getting hit by force fields or when the phasers disappeared I realized that the episode was about people who move at a much faster rate that appear invisible. The issue with the episode is that years could go by in mere minutes at the speed dilation they are showing but they do skip ahead in Enterprise time with but the time that passes in hypertime is not that much more. The episode uses hypertime as a tool to tell a story and ignores the science part.

Quotes

"I was looking at him. I was looking right at him, and he. And he just wasn't there!" - McCoy

"Captain Kirk! Where the blazes did you come from?" - Scotty
"Out of the nowhere, into the here." - Kirk

"My compliments to your repair work and yourself." - Kirk
"Thank you, Captain. I found it an accelerating experience." - Spock