History Recap / StarTrekS3E16TheMarkOfGideon

* BerserkButton: Do not even hint to Scotty that his equipment is faulty. (Mind out of the gutter! They're talking about the transporter!)

* IllGirl: Odona seeks to become one and succeeds.

* AdultFear: Kirk wakes up on an empty ''Enterprise'', all the crew members with whose safety he has been entrusted gone without a trace or any clue to what happened to them.

* LiteraryAllusionTitle: A mix of two Biblical myths. Cain killed his brother, reducing the known world population to three and was forever marked for it. Gideon used arbitrary methods to reduce the size of his army.

* DistractedByTheSexy: Kirk is going mad with worry until Odona comes along. One germ swapping kiss followed by an off scene lay, and he's back to worrying about them.

* WeWillHaveEuthanasiaInTheFuture: An extremely overpopulated world is trying to set up a voluntary suicide system, starting by infecting the leader's daughter with a disease. You'd think they find a better way to euthanize people than some painful, (relatively) drawn out disease. Maybe they're all masochists? Odona certainly seems to have a fascination for pain...
** As part of the religious parallels being drawn with the culture, they refuse to consider contraception or to ''directly'' take another's life. But manipulating events to cause people to become ill and die "naturally", that's just fine!

* TheXOfY: The Mark Of Gideon

* OutOfCharacterMoment: Perhaps George F. Slavin and Stanley Adams didn’t need to know TheKirk himself survived a [[Recap/StarTrekS1E13TheConscienceOfTheKing similar massacre]], but they should have known [[TakeAThirdOption he doesn’t so easily accept no-win scenarios]].

!!Tropes for this episode include:

* BrokenAesop: Genocide is ok when the world is overpopulated and people are unhappy about being so dang healthy all the time.

* CurseCutShort: Scotty bites his tongue before insulting the Gideon council before begrudgingly referring to them as "gentlemen".
* DepopulationBomb: Kirk is kidnapped by a vastly overpopulated planet who wants to use germs in his blood to drop a Depopulation Bomb on ''themselves''.

* ArtisticLicenseBiology: Leaving aside the fact that it's impossible for a planet to be "germ free"...if Gideon were completely germ free as said, it wouldn't result in people living very long lives. It would result in a population that had zero immunity...also leaving aside the fact that complex life can only exist in symbiosis with single celled life (a typical human contains 3 time as many bacteria cells as human cells - most of which are beneficial to us). The entire population would be wiped out as soon as any pathogen were introduced. It wouldn't take an exotic, deadly illness like Kirk carried to do it. It would happen the first time they came in contact with alien visitors.

* ArtisticLicenseBiology: Leaving aside the fact that it's impossible for a planet to be "germ free"...if Gideon were completely germ free as said, it wouldn't result in people living very long lives. It would result in a population that had zero immunity. The entire population would be wiped out as soon as any pathogen were introduced. It wouldn't take an exotic, deadly illness like Kirk carried to do it.

* ArtisticLicenseBiology: Leaving aside the fact that it's impossible for a planet to be "germ free"...if Gideon were completely germ free as said, it wouldn't result in people living very long lives. It would result in a population that had zero immunity. The entire population would be wiped out as soon as any pathogen were introduced. It wouldn't take an exotic, deadly illness like Kirk carried to do it, even a cold would do it.

* ComplexityAddiction: The planet needs Kirk's blood to introduce a disease to basically start a plague that will kill off a large percentage of their population. Rather than get this in a more mundane way (like subjecting him to a medical exam on the planet), they go to a huge amount of trouble (and space) to build an entire fake Enterprise, and then still take a blood sample when he's unconscious.

* ArtisticLicenseBiology: Leaving aside the fact that it's impossible for a planet to be "germ free"...if Gideon were completely germ free as said, it wouldn't result in people living very long lives. It would result in a population that had zero immunity. The entire population would be wiped out as soon as any pathogen were introduced. It wouldn't take an exotic, deadly illness like Kirk had to do it, even a cold would do it.

[[caption-width-right:350:''[[Music/CelineDion "Alllllll byyyyyyy myyyyyyyseeeeeeelf..."]]'']]

* DyingDeclarationOfLove: Odona makes one to Kirk. Her passions cool when she realize she's not going to die after all, but has the potential to make many others sick so people can get to dying so everyone can be happy.

* MetaphoricallyTrue: The Gideons never said their planet was a Paradise. They said it ''used'' to be one. They just said the atmosphere was pristine and no one was ever sick. That's what's making the place unbearable.

* MetaphoricallyTrue: The Gideons never said their planet was a Paradise. They just said the atmosphere was pristine and no one was ever sick. That's what's making the place unbearable.

* PlanetOfHats: Kirk is kidnapped by a race whose universal pro-life tendencies had lead to horrible overpopulation, to the point that they tried to start a pandemic with germs from Kirk (who had been exposed to meningitis in the past). Kirk flaunts Humanity's "freedom" hat by stating categorically that he does not want to stay on this planet as their own hemlock dispenser and instead suggests using one of many forms of birth control the Federation had to offer. (Um...you remembered to use one on Odona, right, Kirk?)

* DramaticallyMissingThePoint: Instead of using the negociations with the Federation to prepare a colonization plan, the government of Gideon decide to use the negociator's deadly germs.

* DepopulationBomb: Kirk is kidnapped by a vastly overpopulated planet who wants to use germs in his blood to drop a Depopulation Bomb on ''themselves''. This scheme involves a large amount of FridgeLogic, when one wonders where they found the space to construct a full-scale replica of the interior of the ''Enterprise''. And how they got the specs for the ''Enterprise''. And why they bothered to build it at all when they could have just knocked Kirk out and taken some of his blood right after he beamed down without bothering to trick him. And...

The planet of Gideon has refused anything to do with the United Federation of Planets until recently. The council has agreed to allow a delegation of one...one Captain James T. Kirk. Kirk has himself beamed down to the planet only to find himself beamed aboard his own starship, sans crew. Where is everybody? Kirk searches everywhere, hails everyone he can think of. His voice over the intercom reverberates off the walls of empty rooms. Kirk searches until he finds a rather dippy blonde in sparkly blue and purple PJ's dancing by herself in the corridors. Oh, Donna! No, actually [[GirlOfTheWeek her name is Odona.]] She's not sure where she's from, just that it was so crowded it made a [[TheWho Who]] concert look tranquil. It isn't long before Kirk is BoldlyComing. (You can bet they didn't go into that room to play Parcheesi!) Spock, meanwhile, is playing bureaucratic ping-pong for permission to search for the missing captain.

!!!Tropes for this episode include:

* PopulationControl: the planet's failure to deal with this led to ridiculously extreme overcrowding (though no problems with health or resources, apparently).
* PrinciplesZealot: People of Gideons are against contraception because love and life is sacred, so bringin death and sickness is the only acceptable solution.
* RidiculouslyLongPhoneNumber: Are the proper co-ordinates 875020709 or 875020079?
* SendInTheSearchTeam: Spock wants to do this to find Kirk, but [[ObstructiveBureaucrat neither Gideon or the Federation]] will give permission to do so. He decides ScrewTheRulesImDoingWhatsRight and beams down to go InSearchOf Captain Kirk himself.
* TemptingFate: When Spock decides he will look for Kirk by himself (asking another crew member to accompany him would just get him in further trouble with Starfleet) he announces "I will not be long." Scotty points out that Kirk said the same thing. Wonder if he's seen ''Film/{{Scream 1996}}?
* WellIntentionedExtremist : Gideons are ready to use [[UtopiaJustifiestheMeans lethal and painful methods to restore their paradise]].
* WeWillHaveEuthanasiaInTheFuture: An extremely overpopulated world is trying to set up a voluntary suicide system, starting by infecting the leader's daughter with a disease.
** You'd think they find a better way to euthanize people than some painful, (relatively) drawn out disease. Maybe they're all masochists? Odona certainly seems to have a fascination for pain...
* [[WhatIsThisThingYouCallLove What Is This Thing You Call Pain?]]: Odona is morbidly curious about pain and sickness, having never felt it before. Apparently they not only have perfect health, despite the overcrowding they never run into each other, or trip and stub a toe, etc...

* FridgeLogic: Why don't the overcrowded people just colonize some other planets?
* HeyItsThatGuy: This episode was written by Stanley Adams, better known Cyrano Jones, dealer of the one species that multiply quicker than Gideons...tribbles.

* InferredHolocaust: They barely try to hide this. Odona returns to Gideon, carrying the disease she is now immune to, ready to start a massive pandemic, fully sponsored by the government. And condoned by Captain Kirk, no less. Let's hope they keep control of it while they still have it...

* NightmareFuel: First, Kirk must cope with the AdultFear that the people he is responsible seem to have disappeared without a trace. And then those mysterious green faces out in space accompanied by a creepy ScareChord. So many of them scraping up against the hull of the ''Enterprise'', and in the vacuum of space no less! Captain Kirk hasn't had this many people rush a vehicle he was in since Shatner drove to Comic Con!

* RecycledSet: Apparently a world that is overpopulated with wall-to-wall people has the space and resources to build an entire fake Enterprise just to get Kirk's blood.