"Assignment: Earth" (season two, episode twenty-six; production code: 055; 29 March 1968): Wikipedia-link.
Commentary: In "Tomorrow Is Yesterday" (season one, episode nineteen; January 1967), the Enterprise is accidentally thrown back in time to July 1969 & very nearly changes history. Yet here in "Assignment: Earth," the Enterprise intentionally uses the same time-travel technique to voyage to a slightly earlier time, 1968, to conduct "historical research." The recklessness is breathtaking.
"Assignment: Earth" is a backdoor pilot for a show of the same name. When no network was interested in buying the show, it was decided to rework the pilot as an episode of Star Trek. The plot involves our heroes' encounter with a man code named "Gary Seven," an agent of hidden alien benefactors. Seven insists that he belongs in this era (1968), while Captain Kirk & Mister Spock are interlopers, despite the fact that Seven also plainly identifies himself as the descendant of humans who were taken from the Earth six thousand years ealier by the hidden aliens & trained to the limits of human ability. Gary Seven (Robert Lansing, who is credited immediately after the episode title, before the writing & directing credits) is assisted by a contemporary woman, Roberta Lincoln (the break-through role for a young Teri Garr, six years before Young Frankenstein.)
The most irksome part of the episode is Gary Seven's mission: to prevent the United States from launching an orbital nuclear weapons platform. It is explicitly stated that the U.S. is launching the platform in response to another power (never named as the Soviet Union, but they were the only other nation with heavy launch capability in 1968) have already launched such an orbital weapons platform. Why wasn't Seven tasked with preventing the Soviets from launching their platform in the first place? Why is is moral & safe for the world for the Soviet Union to hang a nuclear Sword of Damocles over the world? The inescapable conclusion is that his alien masters wish the totalitarian Soviet Union to dominate the Earth. Gary Seven is at worst an intentional Communist spy & saboteur or at best a "useful idiot," inadvertantly advancing Communist aims. What a terrible idea for a show!
"Assignment: Earth" has some charm, but overall is a weak conclusion to Star Trek's second season.
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