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(Crossposted from https://jukeboxemcsa.wordpress.com/2020/05/10/for-your-consideration-a-selection-of-mind-control-in-star-trek/)

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I think it’s safe to say that virtually any science-fiction or fantasy series that continues for more than a half-dozen storylines will eventually drop a few mind control stories in there - ‘Buffy’ had Xander’s love spell, the 'Star Wars’ films had the Jedi Mind Trick, 'Doctor Who’ had literally every damn thing the Master did during the entirety of the 1970s… but 'Star Trek’ provides a very good example of the phenomenon. There are easily a dozen or so episodes that feature mind control in some form as at least a minor theme, like the bodily possession in “Return to Tomorrow” or the perception control of “The Menagerie”. Here are a selection that feature it in enough depth that I would consider them to be 'mind control episodes’, ranked roughly in order of how much they relate to the kind of content that I… ahem… usually post.

(A note: Just because it features mind control doesn’t automatically mean I enjoy something. Speaking personally, I don’t think the original series of 'Star Trek’ has aged particularly well, and many of the episodes are problematic enough to take me clean out of any fantasy they might suggest. You may feel the same way, or you may think that 'Trek’ was never better than when it was the adventures of Kirk, Spock, and the gang. As always with my posts, YMMV.)

Honorable Mention: Plato’s Stepchildren. Strictly speaking, this doesn’t feature any mind control at all - the aliens use telekinesis to force people to obey their wills - but I think it’s interesting enough to put on the list anyway. There’s something almost Brechtian about it, which explains perhaps why it always ranks so low in episode rankings; people feel uncomfortable watching the actors humiliate themselves under the influence of the Platonians. But of course, this is part of the point; just as the characters are being humiliated for the enjoyment of an audience that enjoys suffering, so too are the actors. It’s a story that by its very nature asks you to think about your participation in a power structure, which is far more clever than anyone gives it credit for.

Operation - Annihilate. This one is really, really dark; the alien parasites that control their hosts do so not by direct influence, or even some kind of pleasure conditioning, but simply by inflicting intense (and even lethal) pain as a punishment for non-compliance. It’s better than its reputation suggests, even though there are a lot of problems inherent to the episodic structure of television at the time (Kirk develops a brother, a sister-in-law, and a nephew, two of whom die and the third traumatized, and they’re never mentioned again nor is Kirk’s reactions to their deaths). Suffice it to say, this one’s pretty heavily on the 'pathic side of the mind control equation.

The Return of the Archons. This is another one that’s fairly dark, although not horribly so - on the one hand, the mind controlled characters in this episode suffer from an almost complete depersonalization, becoming appendages of what they term as “The Body” and losing all sense of self. On the other hand, some of the people who are affected are main characters, so you pretty much know that everything’s going to be back to normal at the end of the episode. If you’ve got a thing for George Takei as a blank, devoted slave, this is your jam.

The Naked Time. Okay, so there’s not really a “controller” in this episode - the characters lose control of their inhibitions under the influence of a virus that makes them act giddy and impulsive. But a) that’s definitely a form of mind control, and as the sequel TNG episode makes clear, there was absolutely people who wound up prompted to have uninhibited sex, and b) it’s got a shirtless George Takei chasing people around with a sword, which is easily the best image we ever got in the original series.

This Side of Paradise. If anything, this is an episode that will make you side with the mind control. Basically, alien plants dose people with spores that make them happy, contented, and immune to all disease and bodily damage, and that allow Spock to feel true joy for the first time in his emotionally-repressed life. But Kirk decides he doesn’t like all that shit, so he literally goes around hurling racial slurs until he can get everyone so mad that the spores shrivel up and die, and this is taken to be a good thing because now everyone has to leave the planet and Kirk has a bunch of people he can order around again. I am totally Team Spore, here.

Dagger of the Mind. I’ve described it in greater detail elsewhere on this blog, but this one is pretty much just a straight-up erotic mind control story with all the sex bits taken out at the request of the censors. The villain is a prison warden who’s developed a device to brainwash people, but he’s 100% using it for off-label purposes to make a populace of compliant slaves and has already conditioned most of the staff. When Kirk shows up, he uses it on him to make him want to bone the sexy female scientist he came with, and frankly the least plausible part of it is the rescue. This would take about five minutes to turn into porn.

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