This episode explores the "duality" of man. The ying-yang of how and what drives and keeps a man sane. Shatner is challenged as an actor to give us two extremes of one character; a bipolar portrayal, so to speak. The audience witnesses the theory of what drives a man, and that which stables his more aggressive tendencies.
Is the premise true? A single Star Trek episode certainly cannot answer nor adequately extrapolate in a single dramatization, but it is an interesting character study from a purely psychological point of view. While other TV shows were concerned about what dad would do when he got home, Star Trek was examining deep human issues on all levels emotional and scientific levels (or as could be expected by a dramatization of science fiction).
Spock sums up the episode's and author's thrust near the end. And Kirk makes the final observation after being thrust into a kind of psychological rehabilitation courtesy Scotty's "finicky piece of machinery", remarking on a man's self observance. The idea here is to view ones' various personality traits, reign them in, then expunge them to reconfigure the subject back to psychological norms.
Not an episode that comments on any real deep social issues, but one that asks the viewer to look at a fractured man and his reconstitution.
Is the premise true? A single Star Trek episode certainly cannot answer nor adequately extrapolate in a single dramatization, but it is an interesting character study from a purely psychological point of view. While other TV shows were concerned about what dad would do when he got home, Star Trek was examining deep human issues on all levels emotional and scientific levels (or as could be expected by a dramatization of science fiction).
Spock sums up the episode's and author's thrust near the end. And Kirk makes the final observation after being thrust into a kind of psychological rehabilitation courtesy Scotty's "finicky piece of machinery", remarking on a man's self observance. The idea here is to view ones' various personality traits, reign them in, then expunge them to reconfigure the subject back to psychological norms.
Not an episode that comments on any real deep social issues, but one that asks the viewer to look at a fractured man and his reconstitution.