"The Galileo Seven" presents Spock's first command as full of fraught demands on the emotionally charged humans serving under his unavoidable logic. Starting with a spectacular overhead bridge shot the action transfers quickly from Enterprise to her lost twenty-four foot shuttlecraft, returning only sporadically to highlight Kirk's pestersome guest Galactic High Commissioner Ferris. (How High? Commissioner of What? In the entire Galaxy, really? Sounds like Ferris assigned himself that silly title.) Kirk has only two days to search several systems for the crewmembers lost at his command, sensor-blind from the phenomenon he sought to investigate, and to forget that Ferris was right in the first place.

Why any information gathering would be worth one life is never addressed nor why shuttle flight procedures are so sloppy. (Latimer at the controls?) Then there's also why Galileo carries such an odd crew. The Science Officer and astrophysicist Boma make sense, and Yeoman Mears must come along to make sure everything gets recorded. But why Chief Engineer or Chief Medical Officer? (Scott of course is needed to sparkify the hull and miraculously orbit a shuttle using half a dozen phasers, McCoy is there to live long enough to hear Spock admit a mistake.) Gaetano and Latimer are there well, because the vessel needs to be lightened by the weight of three grown men, and a dramatic claim like that requires severe payoff as the story proceeds.

So many strong performances do not thin the material. We can appreciate if not agree with the hostile assitude of Don Marshall's Boma, and the trepidation of Peter Marko's Gaetano, doomed to the slow lingering death he feared (far worse than "got it quick" Latimer). John Crawford as Ferris disappears from the stage, easily forgotten. As for the crew, kudos for Uhura finding the planet, Sulu spotting the fuel-flare, and Scott standing up for his superior officer. Spock in character learns to modulate his logic with a little emotion, while Nimoy as stuntman is nearly clobbered by several prop-spears that hit forcefully enough to chip bits off the set!

This episode provides the definitive hangar bay sequence, as good as any CGI sequence even if all shuttles are marked identically. It also supplies Spock's maxim, "There are always alternatives" (alluded by Kirk in TWOK though said to Scott here). The ending is both disturbing and abusive, as the surviving Galileo Five (except Boma, never seen again) end up laughing on the bridge, remorseless for the lives lost. This may not be Kirk's finest hour but Spock shines.