episode #14 - The Slaver Weapon

Air Date: 12/15/73    written by Larry Niven (based on his story "The Soft Weapon")

An unusual and exciting episode: to begin with, of the regulars, only Spock, Uhura and Sulu appear in this episode; in a shuttlecraft, they are transporting one of the infamous stasis boxes of the Slaver culture, a galactic civilization that ended a billion years ago. Items inside these boxes remained untouched by time until the boxes are opened. One way to detect a nearby stasis box is another stasis box, and this is indeed what happens. But, the Starfleet officers have been lured from their courier mission by the Kzinti, a hostile alien race that resembles evolved large felines. This Kzinti crew have used an empty stasis box to get their hands on the one Starfleet was safeguarding. Inside this box is a photo (of what may be a Slaver - a hostile-looking reptilian creature), a piece of fresh meat (still fresh after a billion years) and a strange gadget, which may or may not be a weapon.

This episode had a ton of information and ideas, all compressed into a short 24-minute running time, and this is thanks to writer Larry Niven, an old time sf writer who based this on one of his short stories. In a very short span of time, the Kzinti are fleshed out here almost as much as Klingons and Romulans had been up until that point. These cats are strictly meat-eaters and look down on vegetarians and pacifists such as Vulcans. Some of them are telepaths, described as neurotic due to the influx of alien thoughts. They make for very entertaining adversaries. This was also a chance for Sulu and Uhura to shine, even if in animated form. There's quite a bit of action in this one (Uhura gets shot by phasers on 3 seperate occasions!). And, there's the whole concept of the ancient, long gone Slavers and their still-existing boxes; the gadget here proves to be most... illuminating. Some great science fiction for an animated show. BoG's Score: 8.5 out of 10