Sixties City: Shore Leave

The Caretaker
Oliver McGowan

Cadet Finnegan
Bruce Mars

Don Juan
James Gruzaf

Ruth
Shirley Bonne

Alice
Marcia Brown

Yeoman Tonia Barrows
Emily Banks

Lt. Esteban Rodriquez
Perry Lopez

Ensign Angela Martine
Barbara Baldavin

The Enterprise discovers a beautiful, apparently peaceful and uninhabited, earth-like planet in the Omicron Delta region and Kirk concedes to McCoy's idea that it looks like the perfect place to allow the crew some much-needed shore leave. McCoy, Kirk, Sulu and Lieutenant Barrows beam down to the surface to scout around.

They split up and it is only a short while before McCoy claims to have seen a large white rabbit followed by Alice. He is not taken seriously until they come across large tracks that McCoy's 'hallucination' has apparently left behind. Shore leave is postponed pending further investigation. As they walk and chat, Kirk tells McCoy a story from his academy days involving a cadet called Finnegan who used to torment him.

Almost immediately they meet him in the flesh but before Kirk can react they hear a scream from Lieutenant Barrows. Running to her aid, they discover that she claims to have been attacked by Don Juan and that Sulu is pursuing him. Kirk follows suit but is distracted in his chase when he meets Ruth, one of his past lovers. Back on the Enterprise Spock is monitoring the ship's sensors, which are reading an energy fluctuation in the planet's field. This is affecting communications so Spock beams down to the planet to advise Kirk what is happening.

Kirk and Spock return to a prearranged rendezvous point where McCoy is waiting, only to see him killed by the lance of a Black Knight. The landing party also has encounters with a tiger, a samurai swordsman and come under attack from a World War II plane. Finnegan shows up again and Kirk runs after him hoping to get some answers to what is happening.

After a long chase and a fight which Kirk, much to his personal satisfaction, wins, he is none the wiser although Spock by now has come to the conclusion that the planet is capable of manufacturing, almost instantaneously, anything that enters their thoughts. They have not long been searching for hidden entrances and trapdoors when a being, human in appearance, appears from nowhere. He explains that the Enterprise has come to a world designed as a 'leisure park' for an extremely advanced civilisation. Highly sophisticated computers read the minds of visitors and create their thoughts and dreams for them.

On enquiring about the fate of McCoy, whose body has disappeared, the doctor reappears in good health with a fur-clad beauty on each arm, extolling the virtues of the planet's inner workings. With the blessing of the 'caretaker' who agrees to monitor events so that nobody comes to harm, the crew of the Enterprise finally get to take their shore leave, arguably the best they have ever had.