Star Trek TOS S2E5: The Apple

If your Eden has exploding rocks, colonizers might want them.

See the Star Trek TOS Rewatch Index page for links to all the episodes covered so far.

“THE APPLE” Rating: 6.3/10

A Star Trek episode set on a paradise planet with hidden dangers? Where have we seen that before?!

Star Trek was never shy about recycling ideas. But even by the show’s usual standards, writer Max Ehrlich and director Joseph Pevny are unusually eager to use “The Apple” to revisit already well-mined plot points. The Eden-with-fangs idea was used in “This Side of Paradise”, “Shore Leave,” and “Who Mourns for Adonais?” But we’ve also got the computer-ruling-over-stagnant-society from “Return of the Archons,” and the eternal children from “Miri.” And the mysterious godlike entity from…well, too many to count.

“The Apple” then functions as a kind of default summary of many of Star Trek’s most well-worn themes. It isn’t especially original or inspired. But it does illustrate clearly the connection between the colonial imagination and notions of progress and development.