The Encounter

Description: Season 5, Episode 31

Air Date: May 1, 1964

Plot Summary: Two men have a bizarre "encounter" in an attic. That doesn't sound right...

Review: Up until this year, the only way for many to see this episode was through a DVD/VHS or time travel. Oddly enough, given the PC climate of today's crybaby populace, I'd imagine it would get banned now rather than actually being unbanned after 50+ years. Huh...go figure. Anyway, the controversial aspects should be easy to notice especially when TZ is not known for this kind of tone. Setting aside the drama, was this even a good episode to begin with? Well, not particularly.

Two men walk into an attic and don't come back out. That may sound like the setup for a joke or the premise to a riddle, but that's, more or less, the gist of this story. Fenton is a bitter WWII vet cleaning out his attic when a Japanese man, named Arthur, shows up to answer an ad Fenton had for yard work. Of note is George Takei playing Arthur which only adds to the "Star Trek" alum featured in TZ. Sitting down for drinks in Fenton's musty attic, the two go from one heated exchange to the next. It is implied that an old samurai sword has semi-cursed the two men, but this is ambiguous. Essentially, we learn that Fenton is a brute who killed a surrendering officer for that sword. Arthur, on the other hand, is ashamed that his father was a traitor against the USA during the Pearl Harbor attack; he feels some kind of inner guilt due to this. The two men engage in a few scuffles with the final one ending with Fenton being impaled by the sword; though, I love how there is no wound. Losing his shit completely, Arthur leaps out the attic window, committing suicide. A bit extreme, but why not, right?

I'm not really sure what this episode was trying to get at. Sure, I'll give them credit for not glamorizing WWII the way most do. After all, TZ's crew lived and fought in WWII and know firsthand that it was far from the movie depictions. However, I don't understand the general point to everything. The two men are guilty for whatever reasons but neither comes to term with it. Likewise, the sword's supernatural contribution is ill-defined. It would have been interesting if Arthur had a connection to the sword, and the events were some kind of cosmic fate at work to bring the two men together. Perhaps I'm missing the point...maybe the episode was simply trying to show the darker side of WWII and its effects on different individuals' lives.