I found this episode, as Spock would say - 'Fascinating' - for a couple of different reasons. For starters, Captain Kirk managed to come up with the name of the gaseous creature that appeared in the prior episode back in the second season. It was called the melittus and I found it odd that the entity would have a name here and not in the show in which it first made an appearance. That would have been episode #2.13 - 'Obsession'. Of course that can be easily explained away by the time bending properties of star date chronology, so I'll leave it at that.
Now the other thing I have trouble wrapping my head around is the way Kirk and crew disposed of the entity. A super wide dispersal pattern was used by the transporter beam to send the melittus' molecules out into space. But wait a minute - that was a REAL person they sent to his death out there! Unless I'm missing something, the melittus occupied the body of Hengist (John Fiedler); it wasn't a shape shifter. So basically, Kirk kills a guy for being in the wrong place at the wrong time!
But the idea of a Jack the Ripper entity surviving the ages to wreak havoc across space and time was an intriguing one. In a way, this was a reworking of the concept used in another Trek story - "Who Mourns for Adonais?", in which it's surmised that the myths of ancient Greek gods had their origin in aliens who visited Earth in the past. Making those creative leaps of faith often results in some great science fiction. And say, who couldn't use one of those regressive memory checks every now and then?
Now the other thing I have trouble wrapping my head around is the way Kirk and crew disposed of the entity. A super wide dispersal pattern was used by the transporter beam to send the melittus' molecules out into space. But wait a minute - that was a REAL person they sent to his death out there! Unless I'm missing something, the melittus occupied the body of Hengist (John Fiedler); it wasn't a shape shifter. So basically, Kirk kills a guy for being in the wrong place at the wrong time!
But the idea of a Jack the Ripper entity surviving the ages to wreak havoc across space and time was an intriguing one. In a way, this was a reworking of the concept used in another Trek story - "Who Mourns for Adonais?", in which it's surmised that the myths of ancient Greek gods had their origin in aliens who visited Earth in the past. Making those creative leaps of faith often results in some great science fiction. And say, who couldn't use one of those regressive memory checks every now and then?