The Immunity Syndrome (Star Trek)

__NOTOC__ST episode
name = The Immunity Syndrome


The "Enterprise" encounters a giant amoeba
series = TOS
ep_num = 47
prod_num = 048
remas._num = 25
date = January 19, 1968
writer = Robert Sabaroff
director = Joseph Pevney
guest = John Winston Frank da Vinci Eddie Paskey William Blackburn Robert Johnson
stardate = 4307.1
year = 2268
prev = A Piece of the Action
next = A Private Little War

"The Immunity Syndrome" is a second season episode of "" first broadcast January 19, 1968 and repeated June 7, 1968. It is episode #47, production #48, written by Robert Sabaroff and directed by Joseph Pevney.

Overview: The crew of the "Enterprise" encounters an energy-draining space creature.

Plot

On stardate 4307.1, the USS "Enterprise" is en route to Starbase 6. The communications officer, Lt. Uhura, receives a garbled distress call, but all she can make out are the sector coordinates and the name of the ship, the USS "Intrepid", which is manned entirely by Vulcans. Suddenly, the signal is gone and Mr. Spock shudders and feels uneasy. When asked what is wrong, he replies that the "Intrepid" has "died".

Starfleet sends a priority message to Captain Kirk and orders him to investigate Sector 39J where contact has been lost with the colonies in the Gamma 7A system. This is also the last known position of the "Intrepid". Arriving there, Mr. Chekov reports that the sensors show no life readings in the system of a billion inhabitants.

Spock is checked out by Dr. McCoy in sickbay where he explains he was nauseated when he felt the combined shock and terror in the minds of 400 of his fellow Vulcans aboard the "Intrepid" as they died. McCoy is amazed that Spock felt anything with the great distance involved between the two ships, but admits there is a lot about Vulcans he still doesn't understand.

Spock returns to the bridge just as Uhura announces she has lost contact with Starfleet. Kirk has Spock scan a dark ominous form that appears on the main view screen. Spock reports it is some kind of energy turbulence; probably responsible for the death of the system inhabitants and the "Intrepid" crew. Kirk launches a sensor probe into the void. Suddenly a painful, high pitched noise fills the ship that renders half the crew sickened or faint.

Sensor scans from the probe reveal nothing, so Kirk orders the ship to get in closer. When it does, the piercing sound returns and all the stars disappear from the main view screen. The ship is now in a desolate void of nothingness. Dr. McCoy then reports that the sick crew are getting worse and it appears everyone seems to be dying. Spock surmises that the ship has crossed some kind of negative energy boundary where their physical properties cannot exist. All ship's energy, as well as the crew's life force, is being drained away.

Kirk orders full reverse, but the ship moves forward deeper into the void. If forward thrust is applied the ship slows down. Chief engineer Scott, frantically tinkers with controls to give the ship the power it needs, but nothing seems to respond.

The huge expenditure of ship's energy attracts what appears to be an 11,000-mile (~17,700 km) wide amoeba, which appears on the main screen. Kirk launches another sensor probe which reveals the creature is protoplasmic in nature. McCoy believes it is a massive single-celled entity that feeds off raw energy but he needs more data to confirm this.

Spock decides to get the information McCoy needs and requests to pilot a shuttlecraft in closer to the creature. Kirk reluctantly accepts Spock's suicidal request and allows him to launch. He pilots the shuttle up to the creature and penetrates the outer skin, then he makes his way toward the cell's nucleus. Spock transmits data and keeps a log of his progress during the journey. He believes the creature may be ready to reproduce and suggests it can be destroyed from the inside, but his details become garbled and then cuts off. Kirk and McCoy determine that if the creature begins to reproduce, it will spread rapidly and pose a serious threat to the galaxy. They must do something now, but the "Enterprise" only has an hour left until all energy is expended. As Kirk and McCoy meet together to have a drink and discuss various topics, Kirk suddenly realizes that if various activities in the zone have an opposite effect, then using antimatter on the organism should kill it but realizes the Enterprise will have to journey into the creature.

Kirk then takes the "Enterprise" into the cell's body to look for Mr. Spock who is nowhere to be found. Kirk orders Scotty to prepare an antimatter bomb with a timer set for a seven minute delay. The bomb is fired into the cell's nucleus and the "Enterprise" heads out using what little power that remains to slink away. With seconds remaining, Spock's shuttle is finally located and Kirk tells Scotty to retrieve it in a tractor beam. With power levels nearly exhausted, the ship makes its way out of the void just as the bomb explodes. The creature is annihilated, and the shock throws both the "Enterprise" and the shuttle back into normal space. Both ships survive with only slight damage and Mr. Spock returns his craft to the ship.

40th Anniversary remastering

This episode was re-mastered in 2006 and was first aired April 7, 2007 as part of the remastered 40th Anniversary original series.. It was preceded a week earlier by the remastered version of "The Tholian Web" and followed a week later by the remastered version of "And the Children Shall Lead". Aside from remastered video and audio, and the all-CGI animation of the "Enterprise" that is standard among the revisions, specific changes to this episode also include:

*The zone of darkness fluctuates and moves more smoothly.
*The "Enterprise" appears more shadowed in the zone of darkness with its interior and exterior lights more luminous.
*The organism is more enhanced and detailed.
*An exterior shot of Spock's shuttle craft leaving the "Enterprise" bay.
*An exterior shot of the "Enterprise" going through turbulence when penetrating the organism.

Notes

*This episode won an Emmy Award for the special effects by Van der Veer Photo Effects production company.
*In the webcomic "Melonpool", the title character, Mayberry Melonpool, is a "Star Trek" fanatic who has seen all the episodes except "the one with the giant space amoeba." It is a running joke that he always falls asleep or is drawn away from the TV for whatever reason shortly before the episode is shown on TV. However, he eventually "does" see the episode in the June 19, 2004 strip. [http://www.melonpool.com/d/20040619.html]
*This episode underscores the original series confusion about which system of measurement the show would use (metric or customary). Spock gives the amoeba's dimensions in miles, but later on Kirk justifies his "point blank" shot to McCoy by saying the probe could drift "thousands of kilometers" from the nucleus.
*This episode would later be used in Peter David's "New Frontier" series as an excuse by Admiral Jellico to attempt to claim that not all of the "Enterprise"'s adventures were real and that he believed that Kirk simply made things up to see if "people would believe it." The instance with a giant amoeba is quoted.
*This episode makes one of the earliest references to black holes, a term that was coined by theoretical physicist John Wheeler, being first used in his public lecture "Our Universe: the Known and Unknown" on 29 December 1967.

External links

* [http://trekmovie.com/2007/04/09/the-immunity-syndrome-screenshots-and-video/ Remastered FX Reel for "The Immunity Syndrome" at Trekmovie.com]
* [http://www.startrek.com/startrek/view/series/TOS/episode/68756.html "The Immunity Syndrome"] at StarTrek.com
* [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0708467/ The Immunity Syndrome] at IMDB