‘Star Trek’ Retro Recap: ‘The Gamesters of Triskelion’

Written by John Edward Betancourt 

​If there is one thing that television shows love to do from time to time; it’s experiment with the types of stories they tell. Which is, something that offers up mixed results when all is said and done. Because sometimes these test stories are weird in nature and make no sense, while other times they provide the audience with something downright special. But what’s truly fascinating about this particular style of storytelling, is that it often happens in the first season of a new series. Because that’s the best time to try and see if something different may or may not stick as the show finds its voice and its overall direction. But now and again, you see it happen down the line as a series rolls on and I’m suddenly noticing its presence in season two of Star Trek.
 
Because year two of the five-year mission has definitely offered up some unique tales as its continued along, the kind that have at times left us scratching our heads, while others have left us in awe and while its bold and fun to see unfold in real time all over again, I have to admit that I’m quite surprised that the show actively worked to see what might stick in year two since it really did find its true north right out of the gate this year. But considering the fact that there was nothing like this on television in the sixties, ‘boldly going’ makes sense since the opportunity was there to do something special, and it just so happens that the next episode in this series once again worked to play in the proverbial sandbox with another vastly different type of tale, with supremely strange results when all is said and done.
 
For it was clear that ‘The Gamesters of Triskelion’ wanted to do something bold by exploring the nature of slavery in an era where peace and prosperity was the norm, and what might drive sentient and technologically advanced beings to do such a thing and had it stuck to that particular idea, this episode would have been brilliant. But somewhere along the way, things went off the proverbial rails since the commentary and the notion were abandoned for excessive violence since Kirk and Uhura and Chekov were forced to fight for the amusement of three disembodied and evolved brains and well, all the ass kicking and over the top musical queues just got boring as time went on and the ending really didn’t make a hell of a whole lot of sense either since Kirk outright risks the lives of his entire crew in order to get away from this crazy world and that’s just reckless.
 
Yet the weird present in this episode doesn’t end with Kirk’s storyline on the planet, there are plenty of strange moments to be found aboard the Enterprise as well since everyone on the ship is outright out of character when all is said and done. For Spock doesn’t trust Scotty’s work in the slightest, which makes no sense since it’s well established now that he’s the finest engineer in the fleet and well, Scotty and oddly Dr. McCoy offer the same stupidity in kind. Because as Spock conducts the search for his missing shipmates and friends, that duo question him every single step of the way and that’s out of place simply because Spock has proven time and time again that he knows what he is doing and that is his logic is sound and all of that, combined with the outright insubordination present on the bridge, just makes this sequence of the story awkward and out of place.
 
If anything, all of this really begs the question, is this episode worth your time and the answer to that question is a resounding… no. Because this one is just all over the place and it makes some weird choices storytelling wise. I mean, I just don’t understand why Kirk was shirtless for most of this one, why there were excessive moments of violence against women and also why, evolved beings of pure thought and in turn logic, are down to play Battle Chess with living and breathing beings. In the end, I really just hope that writer’s room stops with the outlandish storytelling experiments soon and gets back to telling stories that challenge the audience and the characters in intelligent fashion. Because this has been a weird run storytelling wise and the sooner this attempt to push the envelope ends, the better. Until next time. 

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