Meet Bem, one of many Star Trek ambassadors who are major tools.
Commander Ari bn Bem is sent to the Enterprise in order to determine whether or not the Federation is ready to interact with his species.
This episode provides examples of:
- "Ass" in Ambassador: Bem starts off by spending weeks of his supposed ambassadorial tour of the Enterprise locked in his quarters, then suddenly insists (despite repeated gentle warnings against it) that he accompany them on their next away mission. During the away mission, he steals their phasers and communicators and replaces them with duds, then harasses the local natives and gets himself caught at spearpoint. The planet itself (or rather, the godlike entity ruling it) needs to tell him to grow up before he starts acting tolerably.
- Detachable Lower Half: Bem can detach parts of his body, including his head and lower torso. Justified by Bem being a colony creature, meaning he is made up of several separate organisms that share a single collective sentience.
- Detachment Combat: Bem is a Pandronian, a colony creature who can separate his head, upper torso, and lower torso (at least).
- Lampshade Hanging: At one point, Kirk asks out loud he how and Spock manage to keep getting kidnapped by aliens and put in cages. Spock assumes that it's a rhetorical question. Later, sounding frustrated by the situation, Kirk asks Spock if he can just use his Vulcan nerve pinch to solve anything; Spock say no.
- Meaningful Name: Sci-fi fans have a term for a bizarre, alien creature who exists only to menace the heroes: "bug-eyed monster", or "BEM". (This Bem is much more nuanced.)
- Punny Name: Bem's name is a reference to B.E.M, a colloquialism used in early science fiction fandom. It stands for "Bug-Eyed Monster".
- Replaced with Replica: After Kirk and Spock fall into the water upon beam-down, Bem replaces their equipment with inert fakes.
- Sufficiently Advanced Alien: The episode has probably the only instance in the entire franchise of a powerful alien looking after a planet of primitives who appears to be genuinely wise and benevolent enough that Kirk doesn't automatically object to the situation on principle.
- Third-Person Person: Bem constantly refers to himself as "this one".
- The Worm That Walks: Pandronians like Bem are colony organisms who are humanoid in shape, but consist of three separate parts (head, torso, and legs) which can move and levitate independently of each other.
