** (2 stars out of 5)Screw purple mountains' majesty: this mysterious planetoid also has purple sky, patches of purple grass, and a woman in sky-purple dungarees. She insists: "I am for you. I must touch you."
This is not as good as it sounds: at her touch your every cell explodes.
Landing party stranded in a quake! Ship hurled 990 light years away! Unstoppable woman popping up from nowhere and killing at random!
Spock is fidgety and persnickety (perspockety?) all episode. Maybe it was when he banged his occipital region against the arm of the chair. Still, the man had his whole brain removed and weathered it better than this...
Mr. Spock refers to the makers of the purple artificial planetoid as 'a very high culture'.
I think I agree. What sort of space weed were they smoking when they built a superheavy planet for the sole purpose of dispensing creepy/sexy telepathic holograms? Holograms which sporadically read as life forms and are genetically coded to destroy only ONE individual intruder at a time? Seems like a weirdly elaborate and inefficient defence plan from a very high culture indeed.
Or is it another broken computer story? If it was broken- what the hell was it supposed to be doing? Deadly purple photocopier, I suppose.
The 'door' effect of Losira the hologram folding up in three dimensions is pretty damn cool.
Triplicating under the lights of her whirlygig disco cube, playing deadly touch football, and with some space weed percolating, this was probably more fun. I can't fault it for looks and action.
So, what is "That Which Survives"?
As Captain Kirk would have it in today's moral that is no moral:
"Beauty... survives."
