Star Trek: "Is There In Truth No Beauty?"/"The Spectre Of The Gun"

I'm wondering if I should try an experiment when we come back from break (in case you haven't checked a calendar recently, the next two Fridays are holidays, so no Trek till the new year)—maybe I should change the order I watch these episodes, or put more space between them, or, I dunno, get really drunk. Because once again, of the two-pack we're covering today, the first was lousy, and the second was, if not exactly a classic, at least highly enjoyable. I'm not sure if that's just coincidence, or related to the lowered expectations that inevitably follow a mediocre episode. You'd think my expectations would be at their absolute minimum by this point, but impressively, season three of Trek keeps finding new ways to disappoint.
Which is especially frustrating because "Is There In Truth No Beauty?" could've been good. With the exception of "Spock's Brain," I'm of the opinion that everything we've seen so far had at least some potential in the opening scenes, and "Beauty" starts very strong, with one of my favorite concepts in science fiction: the difficulties inherent in contact with alien races. The Enterprise has met their fair share of oddities, but the Medusans that we see in "Beauty" are, up until Spock mind melds with one, eerie, and inexplicable in a way that makes the concept of friendly relations seem not just ludicrous but practically irrelevant. McCoy has some talk about how the race's scientific advances could be of great benefit to the Federation, but what's the common ground? Any human dumb enough to try and view a Medusan goes immediately, violently insane. For the few glimpses we get, the creatures don't even have physical form, just a series of weird, flashing lights. Communication requires a shared point of reference to proceed, and it's hard to imagine what that could possibly be here.
Still, Starfleet has yet to take "unreasonably difficult" as an answer, and is sending an ambassador, Dr. Miranda Jones, to the Medusan home planet to negotiate a relationship between the two groups. Diana Muldaur, who plays Jones, also played the only Star Trek: Next Generation character to eclipse fan-loathing of Tasha Yar, Doctor Pulaski, a stand-in for Beverly Crusher who attempt to recreate the McCoy-Spock relationship by constantly dismissing, insulting, and condescending to Next Gen's break-out android, Data. She's a trifle more likable here, but only because the "Beauty"'s scatter-shot writing makes you feel like the actress is at least doing as good as she can by an playable character. Jones' obsession with her Medusan colleague, Kollos, has tremendous potential, because it's a relationship that can be tragic and creepy at the same time, but it requires a subtle hand to make us understand why Jones would care so deeply for someone she can't touch, and also understand how such a need might not be entirely healthy. So, that's not really going to happen here.
It's hard to follow exactly what themes this episode is pushing, anyway. There's the ever stressed contrast between Jones's beauty and Kollos's supposed "ugliness," although nobody really gets into just how relative such standards are even when they're not being applied to a different species. (Plus, not to be rude about it, but Muldaur, while pretty, isn't a stunner, and the constant references to her stunning-ness had me expecting a third act reveal involving her telepathy and some subtle mind control on the men around her. We did get a decent twist, but that was not it.) Watching Kirk, McCoy, and engineer Mavrick, who came up with Miranda and has some kind of desperate crush on her, throw themselves at the doctor's feet is bad enough, but the way each man in turn blames her for her supposed "coldness" is just irritating and stupid. We've talked about Trek's sexism before, and I have no doubt we'll talk about it again, but it's regrettable that such a generally forward thinking show would fall back on the old "If she doesn't want me, it's her fault!" cliche.
That's stating it too baldly—Mavrick is clearly unsettled even before he gets a glimpse at Kollos—but there is a basic understanding that there's something wrong with an attractive woman committing her life to working in an environment where that attractiveness will go unappreciated. Kirk lectures her about human contact, about want to be loved, and while there's something in what he says, the assumption that she hasn't thought this through before, that she has to be somehow damaged to want to do what she does, is unfortunate, especially in light of the episode's big reveal. We don't find out Jones is blind until after the half-way point, and that seems to resolve the question, because blindness clearly justifies her choices in a way that Kirk can understand. (In McCoy's defense, he knew all along, and still bugged her about it. So, he's consistent.)
Really, though, Jones contradictory character (or is it simple opacity? Muldaur manages to invest her with enough complexity that she isn't a complete waste, at least), isn't as much a problem as the script's refusal to focus. First we get the Medusans, which is already enough of a topic for an hour, then we get Mavrick driven insane by his unrequited love for Jones, deciding to kill Kollos and then going even more insane and screwing up the Enterprise's warp drive to launch the ship into unexplored space. (And hey, it's the barrier at the edge of the galaxy!) Spock has to merge minds with Kollos, who's the only being on board capable of successfully piloting the ship back to where it came from. (I've never really bought that the Sulu has that much control over the equipment, but whatever.) Then Spock gets his own glimpse of the creature, goes a little mad, and Jones has to bring him back, despite being terribly jealous that he seems closer to Kollos than she can ever be.
Summing it up, it doesn't sound so bad, but watching it, things kept veering all over the place, and Jones was never a strong enough center to hold all these impulses together. Nimoy's performance as the Spock/Kollos hybrid is passable (although it is always so damn creepy when he smiles), but the character talks in trite one-liners, and Kollos himself (?) is more a plot MacGuffin than a being, trapped in a box, alone among a race that he can't see or communicate with for fear of destroying them. Instead, all the pathos is focused on Jones, who just can't support it. It's more like a group of men who try and interpret the problems they assume she has than any conflict within her that drives the episode, and that makes the whole thing detached and frustrating to watch. Plus, Spock's IDIC medallion, a blatant attempt by Gene Roddenberry to move some merchandise, is just embarrassing.