Star Trek Continues ”The White Iris” - Detailed Analysis& Review

While not as memorable as the big tentpole episodes, "The White Iris" is a true classic. This is a very emotional character-driven episode that advances Kirk's arc and adds depth to a number of previous Star Trek episodes. This episode is a great example of what makes Star Trek Continues so special.

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Transcript

Welcomed to Nerd Heaven.

I’m Adam David Collings, the author of Jewel of The Stars

And I am a nerd

 

This is episode 98 of the podcast. 

Today, we’re talking about the Star Trek Continues episode “The White Iris”

 

The description on IMDB reads

Captain Kirk finds himself haunted by guilt from his past as the fate of an alien world hangs in the balance.

 

The teleplay was written by James Kerwin, Chris White, and Vic Mignogna

Based on a story by Vic Mignogna and Chris White.

 

The episode first aired on the 29th of May 2015.

This episode was dedicated to the memory of Leonard Niymoy, placing it in time just after he passed away ,which was certainly a significant and sad moment for all Star Trek fans.

 

Going into this one, I didn’t remember the episode. Looking at the thumbnail and description on the Star Trek Continues website didn’t ring any bells, but I knew I must have seen it before, because I’ve watched all of Star Trek Continues.

 

It gets right into the action from the get go. Some aliens, the Calsins, are expressing their pleasure at the invitation to join the Federation when Kirk is unexpectedly attacked from behind by one of them. He’s beamed to sickbay but is suffering fatal damage to the part of the brain responsible for emotional memories.

 

Spock suggests an experimental drug. It hasn’t even been tested yet. They don’t know the dosage.

Now I have a feeling that in the real world, by administering this drug to a patient, McCoy would be doing something highly unethical and probably illegal. Although Kirk does give his verbal consent.  Still, giving an untested drug that doesn’t have approval to a patient has got to be a huge risk.

 

Kirk sees a vision of Rayna, an android woman Kirk had feelings for in the episode Requiem for Methuselah, one that I don’t remember in huge detail either. Spock erased all memory of Rayna from Kirk’s mind, to spare him the pain of her death. But now he remembers it all again.

 

After just a few seconds of receiving the medication, Kirk is himself again.

And then he’s straight off the bed and back to duty.

 

I get there’s a time-critical situation on the planet, but minutes ago he was near death. Now he looks okay but he’s been given a guessed dosage of an experimental drug. Who knows what kinds of side effects he might experience. I think it’s kind of insane not to keep him in sickbay for observation for a while.

Spock is an accomplished commander and a capable diplomat. And he can always liaise with Kirk from Sickbay. This was a big believability problem to me.

 

Anyway, McCoy, Scotty and Uhura marvel at how nothing can keep Kirk down.

 

Kirk has a lot of guilt over Rayna. In his opinion, while she started out as an android, she was human when he pushed her too far and she malfunctioned, unable to deal with the conflicting emotions inside of her.

 

I’m not sure that human is the right word here, but Kirk clearly saw her as a sapient being.

 

So Calsis, the planet they’re currently orbiting, wants to join the Federation, but their sister world opposes it and will do anything, including assassinating Kirk, to prevent it.

Although I do wonder how they think Kirk’s murder will accomplish what they want.

 

The Federation is giving them a defence grid to protect their world, but Kirk is suddenly hesitant.

Possibly because he’s seeing another vision. Time time, a woman named Nakia. She appears to be a new character created for Star Trek Continues. Interestingly, she is named after the actress that plays her - Nakia Burrise.

 

Nakia is ghostly translucent.

Kirk can’t remember the passcode for the defence grid. He created the code himself, with the understanding he would make the final decision whether or not to give the grid to the Calsins. Nobody else knows it.

See, this is why you use a password management product like KeePass.

 

Kirk leaves Spock in charge while he reports to sickbay for further tests.

 

Spock hopes that Checkov might be able to decrypt Kirk’s forgotten password. It wouldn’t be a very secure system if that were possible. But Checkov mentions that at the academy, he once decrypted something of Xindi origin. This is very cool as it’s a reference to the Xindi who nearly destroyed Earth in Enterprise season 3, a story that took place chronologically