Star Trek (TV Series) The Mark of Gideon (1969) User Reviews

"All my life I've dreamed of being alone".

[classicsoncall · 6/10 · 13 February 2011]

I tried re-watching the relevant scenes to try and understand the rationale for this episode, but was left simply scratching my head. With a strong anti-abortion theme, and the Gideon Council Elder (David Hurst) proclaiming life sacred and love of life the greatest gift, the idea that his own daughter (Sharon Acker) would submit to a radical experiment to adjust the planet's life cycle sounded entirely contradictory. In this case, the 'adjustment' desired amounted to introducing a virus to the blood stream of young volunteers, thereby nullifying the effect of the Gideons' long life span, in effect reducing the overpopulation of the planet. But that flew in the face of Hodin's own ideas about life being the greatest gift. The whole thing just didn't make sense.

On top of that, you had the comical representation of the population of Gideon, herding like cattle in a limited space, and looking every bit like the forerunners of the Blue Man Group, except they weren't wearing blue as far as I could tell. Opposed to violence and warfare, Hodin's two henchmen didn't have any problem attacking Captain Kirk when he got just a little too logical.

The one thing that stood out for me in this story was Spock's comment about the purpose of diplomacy - that being to prolong a crisis. He could have been talking about the Israeli-Palestinian problem just as well back in 1969, because that issue is still going on today. Anyway, with most other Star Trek episodes, even if they weren't very good, they generally managed to establish some kind of continuity from start to finish. This one just keeps looping around in my mind as annoyingly contradictory with a resolution that was anything but.

An interesting commentary on 1960s (and 2000s) culture

[akaminsk · 6/10 · 3 February 2007]

While "The Mark of Gideon" was not the greatest Star Trek episode, if you look beyond the poorly written plot you'll find something more interesting.

Recall the U.S. cultural and political climate in 1969 when this episode aired. (I'm dating myself here.) The feminist or "women's liberation" movement was in full swing, as was the sexual revolution. Abortion was illegal in most states. The Supreme Court's Roe vs. Wade decision legalizing abortion was four years in the future. Then, as now, a fierce debate raged between those who held that a woman had the right to control her own body and those who held that all life is sacred.

At one point in the episode, Hodin, the Gideon ambassador, and Kirk confront each other about solving Gideon's overpopulation problem. Kirk offers Hodin the Federation's assistance with contraceptive medicines and education about how to avoid having children. Hodin counters that the Gideonites love and revere life so much that even to prevent new life from starting would be unthinkable. Of course, deliberate murder or warfare is equally out of the question.

Thus, "The Mark of Gideon" is -- as many Star Trek episodes were -- a thinly disguised commentary on 1960s culture and politics; the sexual debates in this case, with Kirk pro-choice and Hodin pro-life. The episode points out the logical end result of an extreme pro-life position -- massive overpopulation. The episode also displays the irony in the life-loving Gideonites resorting to introducing a fatal disease into the population in order to solve their overpopulation problem.

Forty years later, the same pro-life/pro-choice debate still rages. We continue to make great strides in conquering disease. Perhaps someday we, like germ-free Gideon, will have a planet where no one dies of sickness; where human longevity is greatly increased. Will our entire planet end up with wall-to-wall people, like Gideon? What will we do about it? Star Trek is as relevant today as it was then.

A strange way to deal with over population

[Tweekums · 6/10 · 14 August 2015]

This episode sees Enterprise visiting the planet Gideon to negotiate its possible membership of the Federation. Everything they say makes their world like a paradise but they are isolationists and won't even allow their planet to be scanned. Their one concession is to allow Kirk to beam down. When he does something apparently goes wrong; he rematerialises in the transporter room of the Enterprise… strangely the ship appears to be abandoned and Kirk is suffering from an injury he doesn't remember receiving. He searches and eventually meets one other person; a beautiful young woman who identifies herself as Odona. She claims to have no idea how she got on board; saying that she comes from a world that is so crowded that it is impossible to ever be alone. Alone together they start to grow close while strange things start to happen; we see crowds of people looking through the view-screen and it becomes apparent that the ship might not be moving. It turns out they are on Gideon and that far from being a paradise it is an incredibly overpopulated planet where people live longer and longer but a cultural objection to contraception means babies are born at the same rate as before… they want Kirk for a more radical solution; to introduce a disease.

It is fairly obvious that this is a facsimile of the Enterprise as we repeatedly cut back to the bridge of the real Enterprise where the crew are concerned about what happened to the captain. They have doubts about what the people of Gideon are saying but when they contact Star Fleet they are told it is a Federation matter and when they contact the Federation they are told it is a Star Fleet matter… and neither will give permission for anybody to ignore the people of Gideon and beam down to investigate.

This episode gets off to an interesting start but the fact that Kirk is on a replica ship rather than the crew mysteriously vanishing is resolved too quickly. Once we know this it seems pretty obvious that he is on Gideon. The way Odana describes her world makes it seem terrible but when we see glimpse of it it ceases to be believable… it is so crowded that it is hard to believe such a world could feed itself. It is clearly meant to such that the creators of the series wanted to point out that once healthcare improvements mean most people will live long lives contraception becomes vital… religion is never mentioned but this felt like an obvious comment on Catholic attitudes on the matter. There is also the matter of why they wasted so much of their precious space on building a replica of the Enterprise when they could have just grabbed Kirk when he beamed down. Things were better back on the real Enterprise; it was nice to see Spock's frustration at the refusal of Star Fleet and the Federation to authorise a mission to look for the captain. Overall a somewhat disappointing episode where the message was rather heavy handed.

When Kirk gets abducted by Catholics...

[fedor8 · 18 April 2008]

TMOG has one of the most absurd, illogical plot-lines in all of 60s ST. An over-populated planet of near-immortals, who are supposedly a bright/advanced population, cannot think of a better way to solve the problem than by dying from meningitis. I guess no-one in Starfleet carried Ebola or the plague, huh? (No rats on the Enterprise? Ships usually have them, though...) Ebola and the plague would have been so much more effective; no need for kissing at all; just say "hello" and watch your friend die. These Gideonians are so daft that they never considered the possibility of colonizing other planets! Of course, in order for that to happen they'd need a Starfleet spacecraft to land, to pick them up. But there's no free landing space on Gideon because every inch is covered by silly Gideonians (do they sleep like horses, standing up?), dressed like Woody Allen's "Everything You Always Wanted..." sperm, having to smell each other's armpits from very close proximity. But no matter... I think Starfleet could still have landed several spacecraft on Gideon, randomly splotching several hundred luckless Gideonians, making pancakes out of them. After all, if they're willing to catch a disease for their own kind, then I'm sure they wouldn't mind the comparatively painless demise of being instantly turned into Pizza-Gideonians. Naturally, beaming them up would be easier and death-free, but something tells me that Gideonians would not opt for that: they seem to have a penchant for overly complicated ways of resolving problems. Very much roundabout and around the bush, instead of going head-on into the bush.

Can you get any more roundabout in solving a problem than wasting time, SPACE, and effort in making an exact replica of the Enterprise, just so you can confuse one man enough to make him salivate his bacteria into a girl's mouth? Gideon's government officials must have known that Kirk always uses plenty of tongue action on all his space floozies, hence the quick spread of germs.

When Kirk asks them why they don't use condoms and other neat stuff to cut down on the babies, Gideon's Prime Minister tells him that "for us life is sacred". Who'd think the Catholic faith would make it that deep into the galaxy and that far into the future?? And yet, very strange Catholics they are; the Prime Minister pimps his own daughter just so Kirk can fall in love with her! What kind of Catholic behaviour is THAT? Are these the Space Borgias we've all been frightened of finding out about? Would the sequel reveal that she slept with her famous father??

If they wanted Kirk's blood that badly (and I'm sure many rabid Trekkies could be included here: they'd wear it around their necks like Anjelina Jolie), then why didn't they just ask him nicely to donate a half-liter? (Never mind the fact the whole ST universe has the same blood types.) For all I know, these advanced Space Catholics have at least several bats still hanging around their sad little planet. They could have hired those creatures at a minimum wage to suck blood from Kirk while he was drugged or something, and then let him go back to Spock and McCoy, a little dazed, but saving himself having to kiss that anorexic stick, plus saving Spock the trouble of having to play a diplomat.

"Diplomacy only succeeds in prolonging a crisis". Amen to that, Spock! Just tell that to all those bleedin'-heart liberals... It's nice to see a less pacifistic Spock in Season 3, at least when it comes to his unique brand of philosophy. The episodes in which they almost made him out to be a hippie were very annoying. Spock would rather just get on with it, instead of wasting time negotiating with terrorists and kidnappers. A scientific mind is a practical mind.

TMOG begs one essential question: if the planet is so extremely densily populated, does that mean that every time a Gideonian f**ts, twenty of them scream for fresh air?

Nevertheless, I am amazed how many of these Trekkies nitpick with this episode. I consider TMOG to be one of the better shows. It's not the logic that counts, it's that 60s cheesy feel that ST brings to the table. Besides, the story may be totally implausible, but at least there was an attempt at something original, instead of serving us with yet another bad "switcheroo" episode ("Turnabout Intruder", "The Man Trap") or aliens/enemies with absurdly infinite powers ("By Any Other Name", "And the Children Shall Lead", Charlie X"). TMOG is pure sci-fi, unlike almost any episode of "The Next Generation", which is merely a soap opera set in space. Pickard is a pacifist wuss.

I can't stress enough how UTTERLY BAD all ST spin-offs are.

Btw, Killing Joke used a sample from this episode, the reciting of that number (875020079), on their "Pandemonium" album.

Arbitrary decisions

[snoozejonc · 6/10 · 6 November 2021]

Captain Kirk seemingly transports to the planet Gideon but materialises on a duplicate Enterprise.

This is a reasonably good episode with some interesting ideas and decent performances.

The story contains a fairly ridiculous premise for a deception, but some of the ideas regarding overpopulation I think are quite interesting. I have to admit I appreciate the b-plot of Spock trying to work diplomatically with bureaucrats, as I have experienced this kind of frustration myself in work over the years.

I think Sharon Acker gives a decent performance as Kirk's love interest of the week. She and William Shatner have a good on screen chemistry, but as with all romances portrayed on episodic TV, particularly those involving serial Kirk it is never plausible.

Leonard Nimoy is on good form as Spock makes some futile attempt at diplomacy. Some of the dialogue foreshadows what is to come for this character in TNG.

The visuals are very basic and I get the sense of the production team doing the best they can with the budget available. The crowded populace imagery is simple but relatively effective.

Decent episode with Nimoy

[mhubbard-54657 · 7/10 · 14 May 2017]

The plot is rather thin and weak, full of holes. A diplomatic mission is initiated, blah, blah and only one person is approved to beam down, the Captain. Unfortunately he beams down to what appears to be an empty and crew-less Enterprise. The scenes of Kirk walking about the ship looking for his crew are poignant. Then, lo and behold, a good looking female appears with long blonde hair, and a "Stepford wife" desire to please.

As it turns out, the planet below has had no illness or death for centuries, and is suffering from severe overpopulation. There is literally no room to breathe. The dignitaries wish to introduce illness it order to cull the herd. Our Captain makes some hilarious statements about safe ways to prevent conception as a way to relieve the problem. Funniest thing in the entire series.

Mr Spock eventually figures out the Captain's location and appears and saves the day. This is a decent episode, mainly due to Spock's attempts to deal with the diplomats and Starfleet. The plot is ridiculous.

interesting

[erikwmark · 7/10 · 27 October 2020]

I thought this episode was a lot more interesting than a lot of the season 3 rubbish. Cool set up, interesting idea, if it's not totally plausible or fully developed. Anyway, better than a lot of the surrounding stuff!

Not much sense to be had here.

[melanieakehurst · 6/10 · 9 December 2020]

If the people are all jostling each other shoulder to shoulder and no one can ever be alone, how do they manage to keep breeding? It would certainly put me off having sex in front of a thousand people! Their outfits don't make it easy to have a quickie either. And basically all they had to do was agree that no one had sex any more for a set number of years and they wouldn't need birth control. It's not as if anyone could be doing it in secret. You'd think they'd have thought of that long before they got to the point where they can barely move. Also if this was all to get diseases then surely the more people they beamed down the better so why be so obstructive to Mr Spock? Also, they've never felt pain? Really? Granted they've got no disease but have they never even stubbed a toe? Those people the Captain was fighting with certainly didn't like being kicked in the face LOL. Why does the Captain have to be a sacrifice, a pint of blood should be enough to get them started. That's the thing about diseases, they spread by themselves. Sorry, just too many questions!

Spock Cuts Some Red Tape

[bkoganbing · 9/10 · 26 January 2013]

This episode of Star Trek prime should probably been done with a bigger budget, or when computer graphics came into use. You needed that to show the mass of humanity that was on the planet Gideon. Yet for a television show episode this one was effective and is a favorite of mine from the series.

Captain Kirk beams down to the planet Gideon, but when he materializes it looks like he's beamed into an alternate universe because he's still on the Enterprise, but no one else is. His entire crew has vanished and he soon finds a waif of a young woman played by Sharon Acker.

Acker tries real hard to get William Shatner's mojo going and she's doing her best and he's weakening. But more than a good time with Acker, he wants to find what's going on.

The secret is a frightening one. Two things you should know, what can make a place a paradise can also turn it into a nightmare. Secondly this is an example of the concept of right to life run totally amuck.

While Kirk is in his predicament, Spock is having a dual of words with the Gideon ruler played by David Hurst. Hurst won't let Leonard Nimoy come down and investigate. In the end Spock cuts some red tape, but even Vulcans can lose their patience and what he did was eminently logical.

One of the best Trekkie episodes ever.

What a coincidence

[keysam-02610 · 7/10 · 19 December 2022]

Purely by coincidence, I watched this the day after listening to a fascinating podcast called If Books Could Kill, which reviews "airport" bestseller books which had rather dodgy content, usually on social science issues.

In this instance, the book reviewed was The Population Bomb, written by Paul R. Ehrlich. Ehrlich was among a group of people in the 60s who were convinced that over-population of the planet was going to happen very soon and the book sets out his "theories" about this. Bumping off large numbers of the population, in the same manner as the Gideons are planning to do, was one of his "solutions".

It seems the writer of this episode had bought into the same idea.

I recommend highly listening to this podcast, which thoroughly debunks the whole thing.

As for the episode...it's OK. Like most of series 3, it's a bit rubbish but more interesting to me at least due to the coincidence.

Make Room! Make Room on Gideon!

[Bogmeister · 5/10 · 4 March 2007]

The Enterprise arrives at the planet Gideon to begin some kind of interstellar relations. Gideon is rumored to be a paradise but no one in the Federation knows the details. The planet's leaders insist that Kirk beam down by himself, which he does. However, he seems to end up back on an empty Enterprise, wondering where his crew has disappeared to. Unfortunately, this intriguing mystery has a most mundane explanation; it has nothing to do with Kirk entering another dimension or being out of sync, as I hoped when I first saw this as a kid. Most of the episode concerns Spock and the bridge crew dealing with bureaucracy from both Gideon and Starfleet. Even they look bored - how can they expect the audience to get excited? Kirk, meanwhile, spends most of the episode wandering on the other, empty Enterprise, along with a young female who shows up unexpectedly. Expectedly, it's an even more dull sequence of scenes. Every few scenes, a collection of sober, droopy faces pop up on this Enterprise's view-screens; this was meant to be startling or ominous. It doesn't really make sense, is all.

There also isn't much sense to this elaborate scheme concocted by Gideon's policy-makers. They wanted Kirk down on their planet for a certain reason; there was no need for all the grand subterfuge. Once Kirk beamed down, they could have sat him down in any room for an hour or so with another inhabitant to get their plan to succeed. So, it's all a contrivance as far as the plot. Likewise, Spock and the crew are too slow on the uptake in figuring out the bogus coordinates: '..079' vs. '..709' - Spock didn't notice the discrepancy immediately? This is a Vulcan! Hello? Like with many later Trek episodes (in the 3rd season), the show aimed for heavy-handed relevance to tackle social issues and rising problems of the sixties: racism, war, pollution, inequality and, in this case, overpopulation. Once Gideon's problem is revealed, it is an admittedly interesting dilemma, taken to a logical extreme (later, "Soylent Green" in '73 would tackle the issue in a similar manner). But, it's a real slog to get there. This episode also has a shot (two, actually) of the empty bridge, previously seen (attention trivia Trekkers) in "This Side of Paradise." However, that was the real bridge in the older episode, savvy?

A brilliant premise and message

[lbowdls · 10/10 · 5 October 2020]

I cannot believe this episode is so under rated and derided. From the moment I saw this episode, one if the first I ever saw if the series, it made me hooked on how brilliantly StarTrek evokes how life is and could be in earth. Whenever I discuss the argument of anti abortion with people I make reference to this episode because if there was never any abortion we'd be living face to face on our planet. As well as also telling us how a future might be if all diseases were cured and we'd never die. It is brilliantly logical actually and something which has stayed with me for decades and I've finally found which episode it is and about to watch it again now. Thank goodness.

Overpopulation & Population problem. Plot Problem.

[Bababooe · 6/10 · 27 August 2018]

Kirk ending up in a fake Enterprise is ridiculous. There is a missed opportunity here. It would have been so much better if Kirk beamed down to the middle of an auditorium with a million Gideons. Then show some matte paintings of other areas of Gideon with billons of Gideons.

The idea of a planet of beings who live very long lives, immune to most disease, and that revere life to prevent births and pro-life to outlaw abortion is fine. And the idea of having the Gideon leader's daughter sacrificing her life to introduce disease to the Gideon population is fine. But rather than having this done on a FAKE Enterprise, they could have done this on Gideon with the crowded people.

As others have mentioned, food resources would have dwindled long ago causing famine and death.

The acting was fine. Kirk, Spock, Hodin and Odona did well. McCoy and the rest have little to do. So this is not a great acting episode. The story idea is fine. The script sucks. The writers needed more time and help to build a solid script.

It's still Star Trek and it should be viewed.

People on Gideon apparently have no self control

[chrisbaird-ma · 4/10 · 10 April 2013]

I won't attempt to summarize the plot as it is fairly complex and other reviews have summarized it just fine. My reaction to this episode: either the script writers don't understand population dynamics and human nature, or they do and just wanted to insult Catholics. The message of this episode seemed to be: without vigorous contraception and perhaps even abortion, sterilization, and euthanasia, we are all doomed to be literally buried in a giant mass of living bodies. There's three problems with this statement:

1) People can avoid having too many babies without resorting to contraception, abortion, sterilization, or infanticide. It's called self control. If humans don't copulate, they don't have babies. I know it's no fun to many people to have the self control to not get a girl pregnant, but it sure beats being buried alive in a mountain of living people. The people of Gideon would have learned self-control long before letting their planet get that bad.

2) A planet only has finite resources. The food would run out and become a natural check to the population long before every square foot of the planet became covered with people. It's basic ecology. The creature at the top of its food chain, such as the tiger, has no natural predators, and yet it doesn't reproduce infinitely. The availability of food limits the population of top-level predators.

3) The people of Gideon could have built up. The space above a planet's surface is limitless. For instance, take a walk through downtown New York during rush hour and you may feel like you are on Gideon. But once you step into a building and take the elevator up away from the planet's surface, there's plenty of space.

I enjoyed this episode a lot!

[SusanJL · 8/10 · 24 January 2019]

I enjoyed this episode. I was relieved there weren't the usual extreme fight/torture scenes with Kirk and others being beaten to a pulp or flung around the bridge like rag dolls. Therefore it seemed more realistic to me and not so overly emotive, even campy as I've found SO MANY other episodes to be. Some said it was not as exciting as other episodes, but I found it very enjoyable and a welcome change of pace with intriguing ideas. I might have rated it higher, but found the lady's costume very distractingly dreadful.

Perhaps the most idiotic premise of any Star Trek episode

[wgreview-1 · 2/10 · 14 September 2020]

The entire episode makes no sense. How could an isolated planet gather enough information to build a replica of the Enterprise? And how could it have taken Kirk so long to realize he was on a replica, and not the real thing, when Spock realized it was a non-working replica in about two minutes? And why did no one immediately notice the change in coordinates?

The entire episode exists as a vehicle for Roddenberryesque diatribes against two unrelated themes: bureaucracy and overpopulation. (Also diplomacy, for some reason, even though that plays a substantial part in Federation policy. In A Taste of Armageddon, even though Ambassador Fox is initially treated with derision, his value is clearly shown in the end.)

It is insane to imagine that a civilization that values life would be comfortable unleashing on its population a biological plague for which they almost certainly have no resistance. And their scheme for obtaining the seed of the plague is unimaginably stupid.

Kirk On A Fake Enterprise With The Sick Odona

[Rainey-Dawn · 8/10 · 14 January 2017]

Season 3, episode 16. The Enterprise arrives at the planet Gideon to begin diplomatic relations and to have them join the Federation. Kirk beams down and finds himself on what appears to be an empty Enterprise. In the sky, is Spock in charge of the real Enterprise. Kirk finds no one on the fake Enterprise but does find the young girl Odona who does not know how she got there. Spock, in the real Enterprise, must now deal with representatives of Gideon that say that Kirk never arrived. Spock also realizes later that the coordinates given to him are wrong. Back on the false Enterprise, Odona tells Kirk that her planet is very much overpopulated and Kirk believes she's from Gideon but she insists she is not. Then Odona falls ill - her illness is exactly what the Gideon leaders want. Kirk takes her to sickbay where he meets Ambassador Hodin, Odona's father. Odona has a virus, Vegan choriomeningitis, and it is help control the overpopulation problem and that Kirk is part of a secret experiment. Spock must try to find Kirk from the real Enterprise, while Kirk must find a way to get back to the real Enterprise. They also must get to bottom of what is going on at Gideon.

Nothing unusual about Kirk (and crew) ending up in an odd place, disappearing or missing. Nor is it unusual for Kirk (and crew) to be used as a pawn is someone else's game. BUT the way it is put together and played out in this episode is done quite well. In spite of the lower rating, I like it.

8/10

Coordinated Chaos...

[Xstal · 5/10 · 17 February 2022]

Populations have been on the rise, so they've conjured a galactic surprise, to entrap Captain Kirk, they've done all the hard work, replicating USS Enterprise.

The captain finds himself aboard the Enterprise after beaming down to Gideon with only a lost lady for company.

Good story. Good dialogue.

[smiledaydream · 8/10 · 25 January 2022]

Good story. Good dialogue. This rating is relative to the entire series. For the most part, the dialogue stays together and the plot holds together reasonably well. It's kind of fun. It's not a monster plot which makes it a more interesting story. It's a bit fun to watch some of the population. I'm not sure we can call it misogyny this time since both characters act like 13-year-old's. I they do have a little of a common plot problem where characters don't say obvious information to other characters. It was fun and easy to watch.

Another sub-par episode from season 3

[planktonrules · 4/10 · 9 December 2006]

While there were some very good episodes during the last season of Star Trek, there were probably just as many disappointments--probably because they knew the series was on its last legs and no one in charge really seemed to care. While a score of 4 looks almost average, for Star Trek it is not and the episode was completely forgettable due to poor writing--and an abundance of plot holes.

Kirk is beamed down to a planet to negotiate some sort of treaty or something but instead arrives in an exact duplicate Enterprise. He's all alone until later a lady appears and says she, too, has no idea how she got there. At the same time, the crew of the Enterprise is worried since they lost contact with Kirk and the officials on the planet say they have no idea where he is but also obviously hinder the investigation.

I'll jump ahead and explain the why, as you shouldn't have to watch this episode--it's that dumb. It seems that the planet is actually so overwhelmingly overpopulated because they have no natural disease that they wanted to kidnap Kirk and take germs from him and introduce them to the woman--making her sort of like a "Typhoid Mary" who will help reduce the population through illness instead of instituting reasonable birth control. Huh?! This makes no sense on so many levels. First, why the ruse? They could have gotten germs from almost anywhere--why spend a fortune duplicating the Enterprise down to every minute detail and kidnap the Captain?! This might bring on SERIOUS repercussions from the Federation for kidnapping. Second, if the believe so strongly against birth control, maybe they should consider celibacy or pushing each other in front of buses! Third, if the planet is absolutely choked with people, why build the Enterprise--where will you put it? Fourth, why not start a war and kill of some people like we humans would have done?

subpar Trek plot partly rescued by good acting performances

[fabian5 · 4/10 · 14 September 2007]

This is a poorly conceived Classic Trek episode which was salvaged by the superior acting of the show's primary actors. Kirk beams down to the planet Gideon and finds himself on an exact duplicate of the Enterprise but doesn't realise this since the 'set up' is so convincing--even though he meets Odona, its lone occupant. Surely, Kirk should have sensed some kind of a trap immediatedly. The Enterprise crew can't locate their captain who doesn't materialize where he is supposed to--in the Gideonite council chambers--and are concerned that his life is in danger. But Spock doesn't notice at once that the beam down coordinates the Gideonites gave for Kirk is different from the ones they sent to the Enterprise to beam up a member of the Gideon council later? Any normal crewman would have quickly checked the coordinates and noticed the discrepancy between 079 and 709 and that the Gideonites have deliberately altered the numbers. Several Trek characters move out of their previous characterization with Spock and Kirk appearing less intelligent than they really are. Frankly, this is unforgivable.

The scenes of Kirk with Odona on the empty duplicate copy of the Enterprise on Gideon also don't make much sense especially when you consider that the planet is supposed to be chronically overpopulated. The Gideon council chamber created so much free space for one man when they could have solved their overpopulation problem by having Kirk transport Odona to Dr. McCoy's sickbay for treatment? There is little logic to this show or its script. The Mark of Gideon is one of the subpar shows of season 3--not as horrendous as The Way to Eden--but still bad nevertheless. There is a memorable line which Spock says when Starfleet and its officials refuse to give him permission to beam down to Gideon and locate Kirk: "Diplomats and bureaucrats may function differently but they achieve exactly the same results." So, Spock himself has to violate a Starfleet directive to save Kirk. At least, that action was logical and highlights his loyalty to the captain.

Odona was a wonderful actor--and a good foil for captain Kirk even though their romance has little basis in fact. I guess Kirk's libido was in overdrive in season 3 of TOS. It was not unreasonable for Odona to offer to sacrifice herself and 'die young' in order to let her civilization survive. A noble idea...even if Kirk was left with the short end of the stick by being a guinea pig who supplies a deadly virus to stop Gideon's chronic overpopulation. Most of the episode's scenes are imaginatively written if one excludes the preposterous image of hundreds of anonymous Gideonites crowding the exterior of the Gideonite Council. The touching scenes between Hodin and his dying daughter Odona was well done. Overall, Hodin, Odona, Kirk and Spock's performance elevate the show to a 4 out of 10 rating in my view--still a failure but not a total disaster. If season 3 of Star Trek had a proper film budget, the producers could have had the sets to properly depict Gideon and avoided all the numerous plot holes. Pity!

Star Trek: The Original Series - The Mark of Gideon

[Scarecrow-88 · 5/10 · 30 September 2016]

Kirk agrees to beam down on Gideon when they offer only him the opportunity to do so, as the Federation has tried endlessly to diplomatically ally with the unknown planet. Gideon's commissioner (David Hurst) will not allow Spock to beam down to their planet's surface, to the coordinates Kirk does when he's "missing". Actually Kirk is on a replica of the Enterprise, soon meeting Odona (Sharon Acker) who is exhilarated to have space and be alone, without the cluttered bodies of overpopulation on her planet of Gideon. She acts as if she doesn't know where she came from, but I reckon few will accept Odona isn't from Gideon. The "diplomatic sparring" between Spock and Hurst is fun to watch, if just because Uhura, Scotty, and Bones convey how frustrated and annoyed they are from the refusal, no matter how polite and deceptively agreeable the Gideon counsel might seem when talking Kirk's whereabouts transporting to his position. The whole fake Enterprise chicanery seems a bit elaborate just to poison Odona with Kirk's blood. The ruse to trick Kirk is rather complicated...and the use of a virus to kill folks when Kirk's contraceptives would help to alleviate such t birthing problems is rather drastic and desperate. If anything, the knowledge that there's life elsewhere, space travel, and a chance to find space and alternatives on other planets, other galaxies, should be welcome by Gideon. Other solutions could be available if Gideon allows Starfleet to talk with them. Instead building a ship identical to the Enterprise (a bit far-fetched in itself) and letting Kirk romantically bond with yet another lovely humanoid woman before his blood sickens her seems over the top. I still love an empty Enterprise even if a replica with Kirk and Odona sharing it well. Spock visibly irked and trying to bury it under Vulcan logic is my personal favorite part of the episode. Not all that exciting was the plot to me, though. It is rather flawed in the message it posits...should forms of birth control, be it science or abortion, be offered when a planet is in need of such? Does a cultural belief system resistant to it devour itself? There's a compelling message there, but I think the writing doesn't quite tell an effective enough story.

Population Control

[Samuel-Shovel · 5/10 · 30 August 2018]

In "The Mark of Gideon", the Enterprise heads for the planet of Gideon, a potential new entrant to the Federation of Planets. Its government has specifically asked for the Enterprise to come visit and for Captain Kirk to beam down for diplomatic relations reasons. Kirk heads down to the surface but something has gone wrong. He appears to be back on the Enterprise but now it is totally empty of personnel; he is alone. That is until a strange woman with no idea of her identity shows up to join him. The two try to figure out what has happened and why they have been brought here.

Meanwhile Spock deals with bureaucracy as he attempts to locate the captain. The government of Gideon refuses to allow him to beam down to search for the missing captain; the Federation doesn't want Spock offending a potential new partner, forcing Spock to do nothing.

It soon becomes apparent that Kirk and the mystery lady are aboard a replica of the Enterprise and have been brought there for some type of experiment. Gideon is dealing with a massive overpopulation issue and don't know how to solve it. They oppose the idea of contraception and now live virtually forever so the government has come up with an idea to thin the herd: a plague. Kirk has been selected because of his past with some deadly disease. He has introduced it to his lady companion, the daughter of Gideon's leader; she is now dying. The government plans to use Kirk's blood to introduce the disease en masse to the population.

Finally, fed up with the diplomatic situation, Spock disobeys orders and beams down to where Kirk did. He wanders around the Enterprise before finding Kirk. Spock takes the captain and the sick woman back to the Enterprise. Bones cures her. She plans to head back to Gideon to use her blood to introduce the plague into the population. Everyone seems okay with this...

What a weird episode and concept! The people of Gideon have a screw or two loose it seems. I can understand a culture not wanting to use contraception I suppose, but when overpopulation becomes as bad as it has, why not explore other options besides killing off your population? Gideon is about to become a member of the Federation so I'm assuming they have the ability for inter-planet space travel. Why not send some people abroad? There are plenty of other planets out there!

I thought the beginning of this episode absolutely ruled. I just wish the rest of the episode lived up to it. Kirk wandering around the empty Enterprise in a state of befuddlement was awesome, the eerie sense of quiet and emptiness within its walls. I love Spock's use of diplomatic channels, his cool Vulcan head tossing out banter back and forth with the ambassador. I loved it!

But then the people of Gideon begin to explain the plot of this one and it starts to make little sense very quickly. Odana and her dad are odd characters that I never really got a full grasp on. The people's character designs are lazy, especially the cattle walking around out back behind the scenes. It all felt very cheap and lazy. This episode had some real potential but sadly, it caves in under its own weight.

Not Logical

[jim-laymon · 2/10 · 29 January 2020]

The episode has its moments.

No. Actually not. It has no redeeming moments. The plot makes little sense. The planet is overpopulated but their only solution is to introduce disease instead of controlling the birth rate-even though they dislike birth control.

Somehow they have the power to create an Enterprise mock up with working computers, mechanics, and other systems.

They don't know what pain is yet they obviously have nerves and function like humans otherwise.

Capturing Kirk as an infectious agent didn't require a fake starship.

There are so many other ways the basic plot could have been implemented.

Population 'bomb

[Hitchcoc · 5/10 · 8 May 2014]

This episode has so many holes. Kirk beams down to the surface of a planet, or so he thinks. He finds himself on what appears to be the Enterprise. But there is no crew. After a thorough investigation of the ship he is suddenly face to face with a young woman. She claims she does not know why she is there. Meanwhile, on he real Enterprise, Spock and the gang are trying to negotiate the ability to beam down and look for the Captain. Unfortunately, the officials on the planet refuse to allow this. Kirk, who despite being in grave danger, can't control his hormones and has contact with the young woman. After their tryst Kirk sees faces on the viewing screen. A group of people wearing some kind of hoodie. It turns out that this is a planet where people no longer die (unless they grew extremely old) and they have only to wander the planet, no room, like they were stuck in Time Square on New Year's Eve. The hope is that Kirk will infect the young woman and she will in turn bring disease to the population, decreasing it through mass death. It's unfortunate that there is no satisfactory resolution. I guess it is a lesson in population control.