Turnabout Intruder (episode)

A mad scientist tries to take control of Enterprise by switching bodies with Captain Kirk. (Series Finale)

Teaser


The Enterprise answers a distress call from an archaeological expedition on Camus II and a landing party beams down. Captain Kirk finds that Janice Lester, whom he knows, is gravely ill, and Doctor Arthur Coleman is tending to her.

Lester awakens just as Spock's tricorder picks up life-form readings. Lester becomes unquiet and Dr. McCoy suggests that Kirk stay with her while the others investigate the readings.

Kirk and Lester reminisce about their time together at Starfleet Academy, Lester still resenting her inability to rise to a captaincy. When Kirk examines an apparatus in the room, Lester activates it. It traps Kirk in position on one side of it. Lester takes a place alongside Kirk on the apparatus and effects a life-energy transfer, each from one body into the other.

Act One
Lester (in Kirk's body) discloses to Kirk (in Lester's body) her plan to command the Enterprise, as well as her willingness to kill. She starts to strangle Kirk but is interrupted as the others return. McCoy reports that the rest of the staff on the planet are dead of exposure to celebium, though Coleman says this isn't clear, a disagreement that will affect the choice of treatment. The survivors beam back to the Enterprise.

In sickbay, Lester and Dr. Coleman discuss Kirk, whom they want to keep from reawakening. Coleman knows Lester's plans, and in fact knows that celebium was the lethal agent and Lester caused the deaths by sending personnel to where the celebium shielding was weak. On the surface of Camus II, Coleman had kept the rest of the landing party apart to give Lester time enough to kill Kirk, but he refuses to induce Kirk's death.

McCoy arrives and is surprised to see the Captain in sickbay. Lester, in Kirk's body, transfers responsibility for the patient's care to Dr. Coleman, despite McCoy's strenuous protests. The patient regains consciousness but Coleman administers a sedative.

Act Two
The impostor Kirk orders a course change for a hospital on Benecia colony, even though Spock points out that a course for Starbase 2 would provide a better radiation treatment without delaying the rendezvous with the Potemkin at Beta Aurigae. The new Kirk reacts sternly to being informed of the consequences of his orders.

The Captain next meets with McCoy, who defends his qualifications to treat Lester and has discovered that Coleman was relieved of duty as a chief medical officer on a starship for incompetence. The Captain says his decisions stand but McCoy uses his authority to order the Captain to a medical examination based on "emotional instability and erratic mental attitudes since returning from that planet." The Captain calls this revenge, but the confrontation is interrupted as he is recalled to the bridge.

In sickbay, Kirk as Lester again regains consciousness and calls for McCoy. Dr. Coleman says he is in charge and tells Nurse Chapel that Kirk's claims are symptoms of a paranoia that has been developing for six months. He tells Kirk, "You are insane, Dr. Lester." He orders the nurse to keep Dr. Lester under constant sedation.

Act Three
Kirk, in Lester's body and working not to seem paranoid to Nurse Chapel, asks to meet with McCoy or Spock, but is alarmed to hear in passing of the course change ordered for the Enterprise. After Chapel leaves, Kirk escapes from his restraints.

Nearby, McCoy discusses with Spock McCoy's plans to run tests on "Kirk." News of the Captain's aberrant behavior is spreading around the ship, and both of them are convinced that a fast-onset mental illness began during Kirk's brief time alone with Lester on Camus II. The patient approaches the two – but the Captain had arrived a moment earlier. Lester orders Kirk to be placed in isolation with a twenty four-hour watch.

Soon, however, Spock arrives at the cell to question the prisoner. Lt. Galloway concedes Spock's point that isolation orders have never applied to senior staff. Kirk calmly explains the technology of life-entity transfer, "accomplished and forgotten long ago on Camus II." When Spock protests that Starfleet requires objective evidence, Kirk describes events from their common past, then finally invites the Vulcan mind meld. Spock is convinced and asks Kirk to come with him. Galloway tries to block this. Spock disables him with a Vulcan neck pinch, but not before Galloway can call for help.

The Captain passes McCoy's physical, but McCoy insists on performing the Robbiani dermal-optic test to compare to a previous test. This too reveals nothing. Then they hear on the intercom that the prisoner has escaped. The Captain goes to the cell, Spock surrenders, and the Captain broadcasts throughout the ship a call for an immediate court martial of Spock on the charge of mutiny.

Act Four
The court martial convenes. Scott interrogates Spock, who describes his telepathic evidence that Kirk and Lester have exchanged bodies. But McCoy testifies that the Captain's physical and mental state are as they were when he assumed command of the Enterprise. Spock's logic compels Lester to call Kirk out of isolation to testify. Kirk describes the life-entity transfer, but Lester interrogates him so as to ridicule him.

Lester accuses Spock of inventing the life-entity transfer controversy to assume the captaincy. Spock asserts his intent to reveal the truth and oppose the Captain. Lester regards this as an overt confession of mutiny, though sounding increasingly irrational. She declares a recess, followed immediately by the vote.

In the corridor, the command officers agree that the Captain's state of mind is unprecedented. Scott asks what the Captain will do on losing the vote, concluding that "we'll have to take over the ship" and conceding that that too will be mutiny. But Lester is recording the conversation and extends the mutiny charge, and the death penalty, to them. Chekov and Sulu protest that the death penalty is forbidden, except for General Order 4, which has not been violated. Lester is adamant and has Spock, Scotty, McCoy and Kirk detained in a holding cell to await execution.

Lester schedules a group execution on the hangar deck, with interment to take place on Benecia, but Sulu and Chekov take their hands away from their consoles in defiance. But just then, the life-entity transfer temporarily reverses, as Kirk senses it briefly in the holding cell. Lester runs to meet Dr. Coleman in the archaeology lab to tell him the transference is weakening. Coleman says the only solution is to kill Lester's body but again refuses to do so personally. However, Lester says Coleman is complicit in many murders and now has no choice. He gives Lester a phaser and prepares a doubly lethal hypospray and the two proceed to the detention cell.

Lester disables the cell's force field and orders Kirk to come out, to be the first to be executed. Before she can kill Kirk with the hypospray, the life-entity transfer reverses for good, and Lester weeps over her defeat. Kirk lets Coleman accompany Lester back to sickbay to care for her and laments her sadness.

Log Entries

 * "Captain's log, stardate 5928.5. The Enterprise has received a distress call from a group of scientists on Camus II who were exploring the ruins of a dead civilization. The situation is desperate. Two of the survivors of the expedition are the surgeon, Dr. Coleman, and the leader of the expedition, Dr. Janice Lester."


 * (Log entry made by Janice Lester, acting as Captain James T. Kirk) "James Kirk is returning to consciousness in the body of Janice Lester. The Enterprise is proceeding to its next mission, on the course set for it before I took over command. Now the years I spent studying every single detail of the ship's operation will be tested. With a little experience, I will be invulnerable to suspicion. At last I attained what is my just due - command of a starship. All the months of preparation now come to fruition."


 * (Log entry made by Captain James T. Kirk, acting as Janice Lester) "Captain's log, stardate unknown. I have lost track of time. I am still held captive in a strange body and separated from all my crew."


 * (Log entry made by Janice Lester, acting as Captain James T. Kirk) "Captain's log, Stardate 5930.3. The results of Dr. McCoy's examination have given me complete confidence in myself. My fears are past. I shall function freely as the Captain. I am the Captain of the Enterprise, in fact."

Memorable Quotes
"Your world of starship captains doesn't admit women."
 * - Janice to Kirk, on Camus II

"I loved you. We could've roamed among the stars."

"We'd have killed each other."

"It might have been better."
 * - Janice and Kirk, before their life-energy transfer

"Believe me, it's better to be dead than to live alone in the body of a woman."
 * - Janice, inside Kirk's body

"Youth doesn't excuse everything, Doctor McCoy."
 * - Janice as Kirk, in the transporter room

"I love the life he led. The power of a starship commander. It's my life now."
 * - Janice as Kirk, to Coleman

"You are closer to the captain than anyone in the universe."
 * - Kirk as Janice, to Spock

"You are not Captain Kirk. You have ruthlessly appropriated his body, but the life entity within you is not that of Captain Kirk. You do not belong in command of the Enterprise, and I will do everything in my power against you."
 * - Spock at his hearing, to Janice as Kirk

"You have heard the statement you put into the record. Do you understand the nature of it?"

"I do, sir. And I stand by it."

"It is mutiny! Deliberate, vindictive, insane at its base!"
 * - Janice as Kirk and Spock

"Doctor, I've seen the captain feverish, sick, drunk, delirious, terrified, overjoyed, boiling mad. But up to now I have never seen him red-faced with hysteria."
 * - Scott to McCoy, outside the hearing room

"Headquarters has its problems, and we have ours. And right now, the captain of the Enterprise is our problem."
 * - Scott, to McCoy

"We're talking about a mutiny, Scotty."

"Aye. Are you ready for the vote?"

"Yes, I'm...I'm ready for the vote."
 * - McCoy and Scott, before returning to the hearing room

"The bridge is where you belong."
 * - Scott to Kirk as Janice, in the brig

"You are as I loved you."
 * - Coleman to Janice, after the transference is broken

"I didn't want to destroy her."

"I'm sure we all understand that, Captain."

"Her life could have been as rich as any woman's. If only...if only..."
 * - Kirk and Spock, speaking the last lines of the Original Series

Background Information

 * This is the final episode of Star Trek: The Original Series. It is also the last episode of the franchise to air in the 1960s.
 * This was the second to last episode of TOS to be remastered, and the second last to be aired.
 * Regular blonde Christine Chapel appears with auburn hair in this episode and in.
 * Uhura is the only regular character absent in this, the final episode. The actress, Nichelle Nichols, had a singing engagement at the time.
 * Jeffrey Hunter, who had played Christopher Pike in the first pilot episode, had passed away a week before "Turnabout Intruder" aired.
 * After two years on the series, Roger Holloway finally gets to speak dialogue – all of two words. His character's name (Lemli) was the same as William Shatner's license plate at the time, a mixture of his daughters' (Leslie, Melanie, Lisabeth) names.
 * Lieutenant Galloway reappears in this episode, despite being killed by Ronald Tracey in . He was credited as Galloway (misspelled as "Galoway") even though actor David L. Ross had been recast as Lieutenant Johnson in after the character of Galloway was killed off.
 * The planet Benecia is pronounced differently in this episode than it was in, i.e. "beh-NEE-shee-a" as opposed to "beh-neh-SEE-a".
 * There is a detailed account of the filming of this episode in the 1975 book Star Trek Lives! Co-author Joan Winston had the opportunity to spend six days on the set while "Turnabout Intruder" was being shot. Winston wrote that Shatner was very ill with the flu at the time, and had considerable difficulty in picking up and carrying Sandra Smith, the actress who played Dr. Lester, for take after take. At one point, he said, "You know I love you, baby, but you've got to lose about six inches off that ass," which brought down the house.
 * Winston also recalled many amusing anecdotes that took place during the shooting. For example, William Shatner flubbed the line, "Spock, give it up. Come back to the Enterprise family. All charges will be dropped. And the madness that overcame all of us on Camus II will fade and be forgotten." Instead, he blurted out, "Spock, it's always been you, you know it's always been you. Say you love me too."
 * Shatner clashed with director Herb Wallerstein, when Wallerstein wanted Kirk to exit a scene via what was established as a wall.
 * This episode was inspired by Thorne Smith's 1931 comedic novel Turnabout, in which a husband and wife switch bodies. A film version directed by Hal Roach appeared in 1940.  The novel also inspired a short-lived 1979 TV series that starred Sharon Gless and John Schuck.
 * In this episode, Kirk mentions the events of two previous episodes ( and ) to Spock.
 * The set crew's nickname for this show was "Captain Kirk, Space Queen."
 * The final four episodes of the series opened with the same music cue, taken from the opening titles of and the final two episodes ended with the closing music cue from.
 * Leonard Nimoy (Spock) and Majel Barrett (Nurse Christine Chapel and Number One) are the only actors to appear in both this episode and first pilot.
 * Leonard Nimoy is the only actor to appear in every episode of the series. William Shatner appeared in every episode with the exception of the first pilot,.
 * According to writer Joan Winston (referenced above), who was on the set for the filming of this episode, NBC passed on an option for two additional episodes (a 25th and 26th) for the third season. William Shatner would have directed the twenty-sixth episode.
 * The physical exam scene in sickbay with William Shatner and DeForest Kelley is very similar to the first appearance of those two actors in the first regular-season episode of the series to be filmed,, right down to the detail of a shirtless Shatner undergoing a stress test on the leg-exercising machine.
 * The very last Enterprise crew member to be seen in the original series is Scotty. As he, Kirk, and Spock enter the turbo-elevator at the end of Act IV, we catch a glimpse of his forearm, grasping the control handle, before the doors close.
 * Even as filming was wrapping up, crew members were dismantling the Enterprise sets. Filming was completed on . Production went one day over schedule, resulting in seven filming days. (Inside Star Trek: The Real Story)
 * The final scene ever filmed for the original series was of William Shatner and Sandra Smith in front of the alien transference machine.
 * A scheduled airdate of was preempted by news coverage of the death of former president Dwight D. Eisenhower. This episode was not aired until  for that reason.
 * In his The Star Trek Compendium, author Allan Asherman credits Sandra Smith as the only actor besides William Shatner to have "played" James T. Kirk. This is no longer true following the release of in 2009 featuring Chris Pine, Jimmy Bennett, and an unknown baby as Kirk.
 * Starfleet's General Orders appear to have changed by this time. Sulu and Chekov say that only violating General Order 4 warrants the death penalty.  In, though, it was stated that violation of General Order 7 (the ban on contact with Talos IV) was the "only death penalty left on the books."
 * For story reasons, Janice Lester convalesces in a private, never-before-seen room down the corridor from sickbay.
 * In James Blish's novelization of "Turnabout Intruder" in Star Trek 5, Dr. Arthur Coleman's first name is "Howard" – probably from an early draft of the script. At the end of the episode, Kirk muses about Janice Lester, "Her life could have been as rich as any woman's, if only... if only...."  In Blish's rendition, Spock finishes the sentence, adding: "If only she had been able to take pride in being a woman."
 * Although this was the last episode of the Original Series to be filmed and aired, this episode has a lower stardate than the previous episode,.
 * Spock tells Kirk (in Lester's body) that he has never heard of a successful life-entity transfer being conducted, apparently forgetting the events in . Then again, when the essences of Kirk, Spock, and Dr. Mulhall were confined to the vessels that had contained Sargon, Thalassa, and Henoch, they could not speak or make their presence known. So technically the transfer may not have been total.
 * When Spock and McCoy are talking in the sickbay the doctor is wearing his medical tunic, but a close-up shot shows him in his regular uniform. (A similar error appears in .)
 * Janice Lester, in the body and voice of Captain Kirk, makes a captain's log entry, discussing the status of the conspiracy.
 * Lester's line, "Your world of starship captains doesn't admit women", was taken by some to mean that women could not yet become starship captains by this time. This was later disproved by the introduction of Captain Erika Hernandez in . A female captain would also appear 17 years later on the bridge of the USS Saratoga in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, and of course Captain Kathryn Janeway would take command of the USS Voyager on Star Trek: Voyager, 102 years after this episode takes place.
 * This episode is subtly referenced in the TNG episode . In it, Jean-Luc Picard mentions that they are bypassing an archaeological survey on Camus II, the same planet that this episode begins on. This was mentioned because, with the airing of its 80th episode "Legacy", Star Trek: The Next Generation officially became longer than TOS.
 * Although BBC's first run airdate order during 1969-1971 was very different to NBC's, this was also the final episode screened in the UK, on 15th December 1971.

Production timeline

 * Revised story outline by Gene Roddenberry,
 * Story outline,
 * First draft script,
 * Final draft script
 * Revised final draft script
 * Filmed: –
 * Original airdate,, postponed from
 * First UK airdate

Video and DVD releases

 * Original US Betamax release:
 * UK VHS release (two-episode tapes, CIC Video): Volume 40, catalog number VHR 2436,
 * This volume is a three-episode tape to close out the series.


 * US VHS release:
 * UK re-release (three-episode tapes, CIC Video): Volume 3.8,
 * Original US DVD release (single-disc): Volume 40,
 * As part of the TOS Season 3 DVD collection
 * As part of the TOS-R Season 3 DVD collection.
 * As part of the Star Trek: Fan Collective - Alternate Realities collection

Starring

 * William Shatner as James Kirk

Also starring

 * Leonard Nimoy as Mr. Spock
 * And:


 * DeForest Kelley as Dr. McCoy

Guest stars

 * Sandra Smith as Janice Lester
 * Harry Landers as Dr. Coleman
 * James Doohan as Scott
 * George Takei as Sulu
 * Walter Koenig as Chekov
 * Majel Barrett as Nurse Chapel
 * Barbara Baldavin as a communications officer
 * David L. Ross as Lt. Galoway [sic]
 * John Boyer as a guard

Uncredited co-stars

 * William Blackburn as Hadley (stock footage)
 * James Drake as a security guard
 * Roger Holloway as Lemli

External link


Gefährlicher Tausch Turnabout Intruder Turnabout Intruder ja:TOS:変身！カーク船長の危機 Turnabout Intruder Turnabout Intruder