The Tholian Web (Episode)

The Empath Star TrekFor the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky

The Tholian Web

"The Tholian Web" (TOS 64)

Series	Star Trek
Season	3
Episode	9
Production Number	64
Release Date	15 Nov 1968
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Stardate 5693.4: Kirk is trapped in interphase, while the Enterprise is trapped by a powerful energy web.

The Enterprise discovers another Federation starship, the U.S.S. Defiant, adrift in an unexplored region of space. Beaming aboard in spacesuits, Captain Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and Chekov find the Defiant's entire crew dead: the victims of violence. The ship is rapidly shifting into a parallel dimension and becoming "nonexistent" in this one. The landing party returns to the Enterprise — except for Kirk, who is stranded aboard the Defiant when it vanishes. Spock is able to calculate when and where the ghost ship will rematerialize, and at that time, the Enterprise will be able to rescue Kirk, if his oxygen supply lasts.

The wait proves hazardous. This region of space, due to its peculiar physical properties, renders the ship's crew hostile to one another. Then the Tholians enter the scene and accuse the Enterprise of trespassing in their space, and weave an energized " web" around the Enterprise. The expected "interphase" between universes occurs, but the Defiant fails to rematerialize, and when Kirk is presumed dead, the crew's morale begins to deteriorate even further. Then several crew members, and ultimately the entire bridge crew, see the captain's ghostly figure appear before them. Kirk is alive, Spock realizes, and there is still a chance to save him. The Enterprise manages to flee the Tholian web, taking Kirk's disembodied form along with the ship. The captain is finally beamed aboard, his suit's oxygen supply nearly exhausted.

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