“The Night of the Legion of Death” is a run of the mill episode. It is very bland and made worse by the large umber of glaring errors within. The Wild Wild West has committed some hum diners in the past that I have easily forgiven because I liked the episode as a whole. As such is not the case here, the scalpel comes out for a brutal dissection.The episode starts out promising. Artie is captured and condemned to hang when he goes undercover to investigate why a territorial governor has bee imprisoned. Jim rescues him from the allows in an exciting teaser, ten has to escape himself y fighting off the new governor’s private army. Gov. Brubaker recently came to power. E is running the territory with a iron fist. It is up to our heroes to arrest him before he can set himself on the path to the presidency.
How do they go about this? Why, by walking right up to Brubaker and serving an arrest warrant. How else? The act sets into motion a show trial, several fistfights, and two log chases before it is revealed Brubaker is actually a cupcake. Te real power behind the throne is his secretary, Deke Montgomery. Our heroes go back to arrest him instead, only to learn he has been exposed as a sadistic fruitcake to the people. Now they will not support him or the quivering mess of a governor.
I said there were errors, did I not? Jim saves Artie while he is in the town square. He is then directed by the governor’s mistress to a secret tunnel that leads to the back of the governor’s mansion. That just so happens to be where he tied up his horse. Really? Jim’s hairstyle changes from scene to scene even though he would have no chance to restyle it. Very bad editing there. The Legion of Death have very distinctive green and lack uniforms, but when they are chasing the wagon driven by our heroes, it is generic stock footage in which they are being pursued by normally clothed bandits. If that was not bad enough, Jim hides I one of those vaults with sliding slabs to store cadavers at one point. Hecan open the drawer he is in from the inside. A moment later, he knocks out the coroner and stuffs him in one of those drawers. While Jim could easily escape, the coroner is unable to open his drawer. There is no explanation why. And so on.
A couple interesting points of note. One, Deke is played by famous character actor Anthony Zerbe. Among his many roles over the years has been as Adm. Dougherty in Star Trek: Insurrection. While many actors have crossed oer from TOS, Zerbe is one of a very few to have appeared with TNG crew. Two, while the territory is never named, the only one to achieve statehood during the term of Ulysses S. Grant was the Colorado Territory. If so, then Colorado has been the subject of three of the last four episodes. I would be inclined to skip this one if I were not a completes. There is not much to recommend it.
Rating: ** (out of 5)
