From Newsgroup: alt.tv.star-trek.tos   
   From Address: jphalt@gmail.com   
   Subject: The Slaver Weapon (TAS): my review   
      
   THE SLAVER WEAPON: PLOT   
   Spock, Sulu, and Uhura are on a shuttlecraft, carrying a particularly rare and   
   precious cargo: a stasis box from the time of an ancient race known only as   
   The Slavers. In their day, the Slavers dominated the entire galaxy, until   
   their subjects rose up against them. All that remains of them are the   
   artifacts found in these stasis boxes, glimpses of a past billions of years   
   old.   
   When the stasis box glows, indicating the presence of a second box nearby,   
   Spock lands the shuttle on an ice planet to search for this new find. No   
   sooner have they landed than they are ambushed by the Kzinti, a race of   
   carnivorous warriors who were defeated by humanity centuries earlier. The   
   Kzinti have lured them here for their stasis box - and finding an ancient   
   Slaver weapon inside, they intend to use that power to destroy humanity!   
   CHARACTERS   
   Only three regulars are present for this episode: Spock, Sulu, and Uhura. This   
   actually helps. With only the three of them taking up screentime, the script   
   is better able to characterize them. Spock's curiosity about the stasis box   
   overrides his caution, a mistake that leads them into the Kzinti trap. He   
   makes up for this with his quick thinking, guiding Sulu and Uhura to maximize   
   their opportunities for escape. Sulu acts as the spokesman for the group, and   
   he shows an aptitude for unlocking the weapon's secrets. Uhura gets a bit less   
   to do, ultimately being used as a hostage, but she feels more convincingly   
   in-character than she has in most other episodes, Once Upon a Planet excepted.   
   THOUGHTS   
   Larry Niven, the kind of noted science fiction writer you'd have expected to   
   see writing Star Trek back in its original run, pens this adaptation of one of   
   his own short stories. To an extent, there is some strain. Niven's backstory   
   involving the Slavers and the Kzinti is not an entirely comfortable fit with   
   the Trek universe. But given the overall quality of this expertly-paced   
   script, I find myself easily able to squint and overlook the joins.   
   The main situation is a fundamentally very simple one. The action is confined   
   to just three settings: the shuttlecraft, the Kzinti ship, and the surface of   
   the planet. Save for having to make the Kzinti more human-like in appearance,   
   this episode would have been entirely feasible even on a TOS Season Three   
   budget. The main problem involves the Kzinti trying to figure out how to use   
   the weapon, and the resolution pays off that problem.    
   Arguably, this does put the regulars in the position of being spectators. A   
   couple of escape attempts keep them alive in the plot, but they are mainly   
   there to comment on the Kzinti and the weapon. Still, that is enough to give   
   them a role in the story, and I found Spock's reasoning out of the Slavers'   
   final trap to be an effective bit of writing. Anything more would probably   
   overload the episode, given the constrained timeslot.   
   Finally: Is this the only animated series episode in which characters are   
   actually killed? I think it deserves an extra point for that alone...   
   Rating: 10/10.    
   --- Synchronet 3.15a-Linux NewsLink 1.92-mlp   
    * Origin: http://groups.google.com (1:2320/105.97)   
   --- SBBSecho 2.12-Linux   
    * Origin: telnet & http://cco.ath.cx - Dial-Up: 502-875-8938 (1:2320/105.1)