Episode: “Catspaw”,
in which Kirk, Spock, and Bones visit a sort of haunted house planet where
Scotty and Sulu have gone missing. Robert Bloch is one of the biggies of horror, but his script is basically a muddled excuse
to pitch a bunch of spooky nuggets at the viewer. There are three hideous
floating witch heads, a giant black cat, a misty old Gothic castle, dungeons,
skeletons, curses, a sorceress and sorcerer, mist, and lots of references to Halloween
(the episode aired just a few days before October 31, 1967). The denouement,
which involves a couple of tiny space lobsters, wins points for total
weirdness. Spock’s blasé reaction to those terrifying witch heads is comedy
gold. So is Chekov’s wig.
