‘Star Trek’ Retro Recap: ‘Catspaw’

Written by John Edward Betancourt 

For the most part, the Star Trek franchise as a whole has stayed away from injecting elements from other genres into its stories and that’s quite the wonderful thing. Because fusing genres often ends in disaster, especially when a series such as Trek has firmly established itself as an intelligent and powerhouse science fiction tale, one grounded in the wonder of science and the human condition. But from time to time, a writer’s room simply cannot resist the draw of seeing what might happen if another genre was gently woven into the fabric of a series that rarely deals in say, horror. And someone clearly wanted to see what would happen if scares were injected into The Original Series and sadly, the end result of this experiment made for one supremely weird and disappointing episode.
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Not because the horror elements weren’t handled in genuinely earnest fashion, for ‘Catspaw’ really does work hard to generate a sense of creepy awe by way of the mysterious death of a crewman and a planet that does look like the setting of a Vincent Price movie. No instead, what allows for the horror elements to fail here is the sheer fact that our characters don’t buy what they’re seeing in the slightest. Because gusty winds and spooky witches and an ominous looking castle are immediately questioned and challenged by Kirk and Spock and Bones, since they firmly and correctly believe that what they are seeing isn’t real in the slightest. And working to solve the mystery of these strange occurrences and keeping level heads in doing so, makes the ‘scares’ present here ineffective and laughable and oddly enough, this episode manages to get more ridiculous as it rolls on.

Because it actually manages to change tone and shift genres once again, which is a cardinal sin in its own right storytelling wise, since it makes things discombobulated for certain, but it happens none the less. For the introduction of a pair of shape shifting aliens dives this episode into the fantasy realm since Korob and Sylvia present themselves as wizards and perform magic tricks grounded in science to try and get information from the crew. What that information is, however, is never made clear. They just… want info and it is weird that this story never addresses what the heck our villains want. Instead the story just presents us with a series of random events and wild moments with our baddies, with most of them focusing on Sylvia and a strange quest for power and sensation that her mysterious species craves and well… that’s when this episode completely falls to pieces.

For the final act of this story features some outright ridiculous moments. Because shortly after Korob decides his friend has gone mad and that Kirk and Spock should be freed, the trio find themselves hunted by Sylvia, who has now transformed herself in a giant black cat. Yes, you read that right. James Tiberius Kirk, captain of the U.S.S. Enterprise, and his first officer Spock, find themselves hunted in a castle by a giant black cat. So, yeah, it really doesn’t get any sillier or stupider than that and truly that’s where this episode lost my attention. Because none of this made any sense, and it was equally as weird to see an evil Scotty, Sulu and Bones trying to stop their friends from getting back to the ship and even though it ends with the defeat of our villains in curious fashion, at that particular point, you simply don’t care.

Because this episode was just an outright mess, filled with underdeveloped guest characters and plot threads filled with plot holes and what’s truly stunning about this sloppy story is that it was written by Robert Bloch, the screenwriter who handled Psycho. Which is a masterpiece of a horror film, so one would think that his skills here would serve him well. But truly I think the fault here just lies in the overall concept. Because horror and science fiction simply don’t mix in a series as intelligent as this and I’m not honestly not sure who made the decision to green light this episode or why, but if I had to guess; it’s airdate of October 27, 1967 likely relates to the decision. Since someone probably wanted to get in on the holiday themed episode craze that television suffered from during that era. Either way, this episode stinks, and it really is the first genuine disappointment of season two and well, it’s best to not dwell on this one and just move on because thankfully, there are plenty more episodes ahead. Until next time. 

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