From Amazon.com
"The Empath" "The Empath" is an absolute must for fans of
Star Trek's recurring shirtless-Kirk-being-tortured motif. Kirk, Spock, and McCoy are taken to a strange laboratory and tortured by powerful aliens while a mute woman is forced to watch--a woman whose empathic abilities are being put to the test. There is, of course, a broader scheme to it all--this is one of the early manifestations of
Trek's eternal conflict between the needs of the many and the needs of the few, or the one. Keep an ear out for one of the all-time great Bonesisms ("I'm a doctor, not a coal miner!") and hang on to those fragile but oh-so-important human emotions.
--Ali Davis "The Tholian Web"
"The Tholian Web" was conceived when writer Judy Burns went looking for a new angle on ghost stories. A physics student suggested she somehow use the theory of infinte dimensions, and out of that came Burns's script, which finds Captain Kirk (William Shatner) trapped between different kinds of space, floating in and out of view of the Enterprise crew. Adding to the dilemma are time constraints (Kirk's oxygen supply is running low), an effort by the arachnid-like Tholians to trap the Enterprise in a gigantic web, sub-space dementia affecting the crew, and rising hostilities between Spock (Leonard Nimoy) and Dr. McCoy (DeForest Kelley), the latter none too happy with the way the Vulcan is running the ship in Kirk's absence. Burns's original conception was to make Spock the spectral Starfleet officer locked in interspace, but the show is quite effective in the way various characters mourn the presumed death of their leader and figurehead. The Tholians don't make another appearance in Trek lore until The Next Generation, but this particular episode won the original series its first Emmy for special effects. --Tom Keogh
Video Details
"The Empath," Ep. 63 - As prisoners of the Vians, Kirk and McCoy are tortured so that Gem, a mute empath, can learn to use her abilities and save her race. "The Tholian Web," Ep. 64 - Kirk is trapped in interspace, and the Tholians, accusing the Enterprise of trespassing, begin to weave an energy web around the ship.
