Season 1, Episode 29 "Operation -- Annihilate!"

"Operation Annihilate!"
Production Number: 29
Air Order: 29
Stardate: 3287.2
Original Air Date: April 13, 1967


Leonard Nimoy has COPD. He wants all of his Trek fans to quit smoking so they don't get it, too. Auntie Archon approves. She has watched two family members die of emphysema, and it's pretty awful. Please Live Long and Prosper, friends.

*******

We open in the midst of a crisis. The Enterprise is entering a part of the galaxy where mass insanity has taken over civilizations, first the more ancient ones and then the next in line centuries later. Finally, a planet two years before the E showed up. The last one in the line is Deneva, and the Enterprise crew is hoping that the insanity hasn't spread that far yet. As they are approaching the planet, Uhura's hails going unanswered, they encounter a one-man space vessel whose destination is the sun. The man in the ship ignores their hails and pleas to stop, and they are unable to keep him from incinerating himself.
"Free at last!" he yells over the comm before burning up.
Defeated, the E turns back to Deneva.
"Hey, Jim," says Bones. "Isn't your brother Sam and his family stationed there?"
Dramatic music!

Kirk's Log 3287.2: The insanity making its way across the galaxy has already reached Deneva, which was colonized a century earlier.
Deneva is part of a freighter route. When Uhura is unable to raise the planet through regular channels, Kirk gives her a private transmitter signal to try. They briefly get a woman's voice asking for help, and Kirk calls her Aurelan, but the transmission is lost right away. Aurelan is Kirk's sister-in-law.
He decides to beam down with Spock, Bones, Scotty, a yeoman, and a Random Red.

They beam into the capitol city, which appears to be deserted. Spock reports over 100,000 people in the city, but almost no activity. As they walk around, I try to discern where this was filmed. Modern art museum? College? (IMDB says Aerospace campus, which explains the buildings and modern sculpture.)

Suddenly, a group of men in jumpsuits comes running at them, brandishing clubs.
"We don't want to hurt you!" they shriek. They actually sound pretty sincere about that.
The away team stuns them, and Bones does a scan.
"Too much brain activity for being knocked out," he muses.

They hear a scream and go running into a building. A brunette in super-fugly Future Clothes is trying to cover a vent and yells that "they're here!" Kirk grabs her to calm her down, and Bones gives her a hypo. She's Aurelan, and Kirk's brother Sam is on the floor dead next to their unconscious son, Peter. Sam is played by The Shat here. Some guys who have baby faces look better with facial hair (season one Will Riker versus seasons 2-7), but in this case, it's weird. The Shat looks funny in a stache.

Bones beams up Aurelan, their kid, and Kirk. Spock is now in charge of the away team.
Upstairs, Kirk asks Aurelan what happened. She chokes out that "things" came from another infected planet with a ship's crew eight months earlier. The things need a human host, and are using the Denevans to build ships to get to get to more planets. They control the host through pain, which is why she's having trouble getting the info out. Then she screams and dies. (BTW, Peter is heavily sedated. We never actually see him conscious.)

As always, I thought I knew this actress from somewhere, but
it turns out that she hasn't been in anything I've seen before.

Kirk beams back down, reappearing on a set of stairs, like some avenging angel. I have to object here - why stairs? Seems like an unnecessarily risky beam. What if he had immediately tripped and broken his neck?

He meets the away team, who are about to investigate a weird buzzing sound. They go into some sort of courtyard and encounter what can easily be described as the Nickelodeon toy Gak, or fake vomit. It looks like something that Gordon Ramsey finds in the back of a walk-in refrigerator in a diner in the mid-west. It flies like a bat and makes squeaking/farting noises. The team sets their phasers to kill, but when they knock one down and scan it, it's not dead and it doesn't register on the tricorder as a life-form.

"Let's GTFO," says Kirk, and they foolishly turn their backs to leave.
One flies up and attaches to Spock's back. Kirk is able to pry it off, and cradles his boyfriend.
"Spock, are you alright?" For some reason, this line warrants dramatic music and a commercial break, rather than the action of the thing jumping onto Spock's back. Okay, whatever.

In sick bay, Bones and Nurse Chapel are doing exploratory surgery on a puncture wound on Spock's back. He keeps coming out of anesthesia. Bones tells Chapel that they're going to close up, and she protests, as "there is more in his system that needs to be removed". He gets mad and yells at her to help him close up.

Yay, Christine is back! I wish they'd stop screwing with her hair
color, though.

Bones takes a specimen cup full of water and jellyfish tentacles to Kirk on the bridge. Spock, Aurelan, and the nephew Peter are full of them. He explains that when the thing attacks, it leaves a stinger, like a bee, and puts out these tentacles, which then wrap around the nervous system. There's no way to get them out. Spock and Peter are screwed.
Spock wakes up and busts out of sick bay. He ends up on the bridge, and throws Sulu out of his chair, trying to take the ship. There's a struggle, and they manage to hold him down and hypo him. Then they tie him to the sick bay bed.

Spock wakes up in the bed later, and tries to convince Kirk and Bones that he can control his pain and the madness that comes with it. "Fuck my human side. Untie me."
"Can't risk it," says Kirk. "Maybe later."
Kirk and Bones leave, and Spock musters some Vulcan control to break his restraints. He hits the transporter room, requesting a beam-down. When Scotty objects, Spock tries to pull rank. Spock easily overpowers the other Red in the room, but Scotty pulls a phaser and calls Kirk.
Kirk and Bones show up with a pair of armed Reds. Spock logicks the hell out of the situation, explaining that he has the pain under control, that they still need a Thing to study, and that as someone who is already infected, he's a prime candidate.
"Agreed," says Kirk, after a bit of thinking. He arms Spock, and beams him down. Bones pitches a fit, saying he's too sick, but Kirk brushes him off.

On the surface, Spock is immediately attacked by a Jumpsuit with a giant key or something. It's a doodad, a ring on a pole. Anyway, Spock puts the Jumpsuit down easily, because Vulcans are the Chuck Norris of alien races. Overcoming another wave of pain, he returns to the courtyard and collects a Thing.
Up in a science lab that we've never seen before, Spock is examining the Thing under glass. Bones tries to sneak in a scan of him.
"Bitch, I'm working here," says Spock, waving him off.
"Excuse me for caring," counters Bones.
"I think it's like a single brain cell," Spock tells Kirk.
Kirk attempts science. "So they're each part of a larger entity. That's totally new and different."
Not really, dude. It's like an army. Each individual is working toward the same goal. Not new or different at all.

Later, in the same lab, Bones and Christine explain to Kirk that they can find no way of killing Thing, let alone how to kill it while saving the human host. Or rather, Bones explains this. Christine is simply photobombing every shot. She's been in three scenes so far, and has only had like, four lines in one of them. Holy crap, Majel Barrett is under-utilized.
Kirk is frustrated because he might have to kill Spock, Peter, and a million Denevans to keep the Thing from spreading across the universe. Ten galleons says the Thing is a space buffalo.

Kirk's Log 3289.8: "This situation sucks."
Kirk calls an officer's meeting. That POC yeoman is there, probably to record stuff. I like her. She doesn't have any lines, but she seems competent at her job, and she isn't throwing herself at Kirk. Bet we'll never see her again.
So Bones says that they can't exterminate a million people, including Spock and Peter. Spock says that they have to kill a million Denevans in order to save billions of others in the galaxy. Kirk says that neither solution is a good one, and wants a third. How realistic, Kirk. Bet the old USS Mary Sue will pull it off, though. Let's see if Spock Disables the Ship first.

In Kirk's quarters a bit later, the OT3 meets to talk about the fact that they have bupkis. Kirk attempts science again by saying that the Denevan who flew his ship into the sun somehow seemed to have gotten rid of the Thing. They list features of the sun.
"How about light?" Kirk finally asks. "Those creatures were hanging out in the shade."
They agree to try light, and put the Thing in a room in yet another science lab.
Damn. All the money for this episode must have gone into building new lab sets. Wonder if we'll ever see them again.
Everyone puts on ski goggles and they throw the switch.

Go Go, Star Trek Rangers!

The Thing has died.
"Now me," says Spock. "I'll guinea pig it for you."
Bones tries to talk him out of it, but they need a human to experiment on, so he gives in. Then he tries to give Spock goggles to wear in the room, but Spock refuses, as the Denevans won't have any.
Why not? You can't figure out a way to give them protective eyewear?
"You'll fry your eyes," says Bones.
You know, usually these episodes are Spirk-heavy, but with Bones' concern for Spock's well-being, this week I'm feelin' the Spocoy love.
Spock decides to risk the eye damage and climbs in. Bones throws the switch. When Spock steps out a few moments later, he says that the Thing within him has died, but that he's blind.
"Worth it," he declares.
I wonder what kind of guide dog he'll get. Please, let it be this one.

Christine rushes in with the test results from the death of the first Thing.
"Um..." says Bones. "Looks like ti was only killed by one kind of light, and I threw the switches for all of them. Overkill."
"Asshole!" yells Kirk. "You blinded my boyfriend for no reason!" He may also be jealous of the Spock and Bones' love.
"Chill, broseph," says Spock. "I hopped into that chair before we got the full test results back. Totes my fault."
Yeah it was. That was shoddy scientific method. Bad Spock. Bad.

Back on the bridge, they've deployed 210 satellites around the planet and are preparing to turn them on.
Um, where did they get 200 satellites? Do they just carry that many around with them?
They turn on the satellites to shine the lights on Deneva. On the surface, the Things begin falling off the walls and ceiling, like flapjacks at a diner with an inexperienced grill cook. And like those flapjacks, they smoke and leave greasy stains on everything.

Kirk calls sick bay to tell Bones that the plan worked.
"Cool," sighs Bones, who is having a pity party.
"It wasn't your fault," says Kirk, trying to make up for the fact that he yelled at the doctor. He probably doesn't want to keep sleeping on the couch.
Bones doesn't answer.

Kirk is talking to the cool yeoman when she finally gets two lines: "Captain! It's Mr Spock!" It would have been nice if she'd had a bigger part, but we got two women of color in decent jobs on television in the 60's, so I'll take it.

Anyway, she was drawing Kirk's attention to the fact that Spock has just casually strolled onto the bridge, eyesight returned.
"Sorry," he says. "Vulcan has a really bright sun, so we developed nictitating membranes. I forgot I had that. Guess I had my eyes closed, in a manner of speaking."
Vulcans have cat eyes. I seriously grow more envious of this race every day.

Vulcans have this, the lucky bastards.

So Spock and Bones trade more barbs that make you want to say "just kiss already!" and they all live happily ever after.

A couple of questions left that we're probably supposed to ignore:
- They never wrapped up the Peter sub-plot. There's a deleted scene where Kirk tells his nephew that he's setting it up so that he can live with another scientist on Deneva, but does Peter really not have any other family that could take him in? That kind of sucks.
- We never find out anything else about the Thing. They never actually gave it a name beyond calling it the Thing, and never attempted to communicate with it and determine why it is leap-frogging across the galaxy, taking humanoid hosts, forcing them to build ships for space travel, and then abandoning them when insanity sets in. One would think that with a title like "Operation -- Annihilate!" that there would be some sort of conquest-type reason for these actions, but none is given. Were all of the Things on Deneva, or were small pockets of them elsewhere? We don't know, and since it isn't discussed, I have to wonder if it's a space buffalo, which is now of course dead.

Despite these questions, I feel like this was actually a pretty good episode. They didn't try to trick us with fake science, and Kirk didn't do anything overly obnoxious, reckless, or lecherous. While I'm glad of these episodes, because it makes for a better-quality program, it also leaves less for me to make fun of, and it makes for a slightly more-boring blog post. Bummer.

So this is the last episode of season one. Next week I'll do a season review, then we'll move onto season two. Roomie's mom must be happy, because I've had her DVDs for seven months now. She wouldn't give us season two until we returned one. Probably smart. Sorry, SuperDoula. All I can say is that at least I've been using them for good and not evil. Well, not too much evil, anyway.

*******

This week's tea is Sweet and Spicy, by Good Earth. While it boasts a list of spices, the one that comes through the most is the cinnamon. I'm not a huge fan of cinnamon, but this one wasn't bad. It was a bit like Red Hots or Big Red gum, without the bite at the end. While I had a hot cup, Roomie tried it iced and said it was lovely. She recommends a slightly more-concentrated cup, and we agreed that it would be good mixed with other things. I tried it in a glass of Mango-orange juice, which was pretty good, but I was also thinking of cider, or perhaps made into ice cubes to go into blended cocktails.

http://shop.goodearth.com/Sweet-and-Spicy/p/GET-301349N&c=GoodEarth@BlackTeas

Halp?

Season 1, Episode 05: The Enemy Within

"The Enemy Within"
Production Number: 05
Air Order: 5
Stardate: 1672.1
Air Date: October 6, 1966


This time, we open on a planet surface set where the crew appears to be gathering samples to study. Supposedly, the "surface sets" are far more expensive to create than the on-ship sets, which is probably why the next two budget decisions were made. Sulu is holding a dog (I think it's a terrier) that's wrapped in orange fur and has a horn and two feeler things. This is the local fauna, apparently.

Hey, kids! Make your own TOS creature at home! Just buy one of these

and some straws (but not the bendy kind, because that would look ridiculous), and a few yards of neon-colored fur from your local craft store - the more Muppet-y it looks, the better. Attach the horn and straws to the top of your dog's head and wrap him/her in the fur. Voila! Your very own dog-thing from Planet Somethingorother.

The other budget-y thing is that one of the crew members gathering "ore" slips and cuts himself and his uniform is covered in yellow paint. It looks like someone literally dipped a paintbrush into a can of Road-Stripe Yellow paint and brushed a strip on either side of his chest. I guess buying powder was more expensive?

Kirk sends the crewman upstairs to get checked out by Bones, and Scotty struggles to get him transported up, as the beamer is hiccuping. It's a few minutes before Scotty can beam up the captain. When he's finally able to do it, Kirk stumbles off the pad, feeling weird. Scotty offers to accompany the captain back to his quarters, and Kirk tells him not to leave the transporter room unmanned, but Scotty replies that he'll only be gone for a second. Gee friends, when would this ever actually be a problem unless it was a plot device? It's like the over-used telephone situation, where one person is on the phone but repeats back to the unknown caller everything they just said so that the audience knows what's going down on the street. In fact, I don't think we even need that line between Scotty and Kirk, because as soon as they leave, the beam glows, and Evil Kirk steps off the transporter pad. How do I know he's evil? He's dramatically lit in an odd way, he's overly shifty-looking, and the music says that he'd like to steal candy from small children. All he's missing is a mustache to twiddle.

 Captain's Log 1672.11 The crew of the Enterprise was doing a specimen-gathering on Alpha 171 when the transporter malfunctioned. They have to get that shit fixed quick because the temps drop to below freezing at night, and pretty much their whole away team is stuck down there until they can fix the beams.

Good Kirk/Bad Kirk sequence: Good Kirk goes back to his cabin to lay down because he doesn't feel well. Bad Kirk goes into sick bay and demands Saurian brandy. Good Kirk does his homework. Bad Kirk terrorizes neighborhood pets. Good Kirk looks both ways. Bad Kirk runs out into traffic, causing several collisions and ruining perfect driving records and low insurance premiums.

Good Kirk is in his cabin, shirtless again. I'm pretty sure that's in his contract or something. Maybe Bill Shatner used to be a nipple model and they're trying to exploit his talents, like how Nichelle Nicholls sometimes sings on the show.

Anyway, Spock comes in and says that Bones tattled on Kirk for roughing up the doctor and taking all the booze like a little bitch. Kirk laughs and says that Bones is just screwing with Spock. The captain gets paged to the transporter room, where Scotty shows them two identical dog-things. The transporter beamed aboard one good dog and a one-headed Cerberus. "The landing party is fucked," says Scotty. They can't beam anyone on board unless they want an evil copy of everyone.

...um, hello? Shuttlecraft?

Just to make things easier for the viewer, the captain has donned a conveniently green wrap-around blouse so we can tell the Kirks apart. This green shirt appears at other times, but is never explained. It's like his "on vacation" shirt, because there are no official uniform markings, but I swear sometimes he wears it while on duty.

Yeoman Rand enters her quarters and attempts to fix her hair, but she fails miserably, as it remains in that basket-weave beehive thing. Evil Kirk jumps out and demands that they knock Federation-issued boots, then he forces and icky-looking awkward kiss on her. They struggle, and she scratches his face. The door opens, and the geologist from earlier (Fisher) is in the corridor. He runs to the intercom to page Spock, but Evil Kirk punches him first.

Spock fetches Good Kirk and tells him what Rand has accused him of, and that Saurian brandy was found in her room. A tearful Rand tells them and McCoy what happened, and that she was unsure, because, you know, he's the capatain, and she didn't want to get him into trouble. Kirk points out that she claims to have scratched him, yet there are no scratches on his face, and she gets confused. But then a roughed-up geologist Fisher comes in and corroborates her story. Everyone is confused but Spock, who says that the only logical answer is that there's an impostor on board. Yes, Spock. I suppose that when you're in a science-fiction drama, the only logical answer is that an impostor exists, and not that your captain is lying.

Captain's Log 1672.9 Temperatures on the surface are dropping and the away team is in danger. Hey, really? We hadn't noticed. I'm pretty sure at this point that log entries are just recaps for viewers who forget the whole plot during commercial breaks. "OMG, that was an amazing ad for Ovaltine! Wait - what was I watching again?"

So Good Kirk is starting to come off as indecisive and unsure. He snuggles the nice version of the dog-thing while talking to Spock. The Vulcan points out that when going after Evil Kirk, they can't kill him, because they have no idea what would happen. he then reminds GK that he doesn't have the luxury of appearing to be less than perfect to the crew. He must not appear wussy, indecisive, overweight, or with less than baby-butt smooth skin. He may never get a pimple, and must always be fit enough to stroll around the ship shirtless. No pressure, though.

1673.1 Good Kirk announces to the crew that there is an impostor on board, who can be identified by scratches on his face. He tells the crew to arm themselves, but to set their phasers to stun rather than kill. Evil Kirk hears the announcement and loses his shit. This is understandable. In his eyes, he is the captain, and now some spineless wimp is declaring himself captain instead? In an effort to make himself look more like Good Kirk, he uses make-up to cover the scratches on his cheek. Maybe he's beamed with it. Maybe it's Maybelline. Evil Kirk opens the door to find a crewman, whom he addresses by name. He tells the crewman to give him his phaser, and they make small talk before Evil Kirk knocks him the hell out.

The temperatures downstairs have reached twenty below. Some heaters were beamed down, but they duplicated and failed to turn on. The attack on the crewman is reported to Spock and Good Kirk. The science officer asks the half-captain where he would go if trying to evade a search. "Engineering," replies GK.

Down in Engineering, the two Kirks play Spy Versus Spy for a bit and Evil Kirk manages to blast a hole in some wiring. GK gives the other a speech about how they need each other to survive. EK starts to scream that he doesn't need Good Kirk, but then Spock rolls up from behind and drops him with a nerve pinch. And that's how they get things done on Vulcan, bitch.

Back in sick bay, Spock waxes poetic about the fact that here was proof that both light and dark sides are needed to survive. He surmises that Good Kirk has become an indecisive wuss because the leadership traits belong to Evil Kirk.

Sulu reports that it's now 40 below. he and the away team huddle under a blanket and he asks if the Enterprise can find a long rope to lower down a pot of coffee or some sake. Dude is probably dying of hypothermia, and he's cracking jokes. Given his penchant for humor, I have to wonder if George Takei wrote any of his own lines. You're pretty much the coolest guy on this ship, Sulu.

Meanwhile, back in Engineering... Scotty has discovered that the wiring that Evil Kirk blasted was running the transporter. Of course it was. ETA on that repair: a whole flipping week.

Good Kirk makes a rather emo log, and Sulu checks in again. 75 below, and he's using hand phasers to heat rocks. He makes a joke about ski season. You know, I'd really like to see the spin-off where Sulu is captain. I would so sign up for that mission. Hell, as long as we're making Christmas lists, I'd like a Doctor Who Christmas crossover special, where George Takei is the companion.
"Where is the heading, Doctor?"
"Not where, Georgie, but when."

 Evil Kirk is dying. Good Kirk takes his hand and gives him the Jack-and-Rose-on-the-raft speech about not letting go. It's a very tender moment for those who ship Kirk with himself. Scotty pages Good Kirk to the transporter room, saying that he's fixed the problem (one week, my ass, Scotty). They decide to knock out the evil dog-thing and send them both through on the same pad. But when they beam them back, only one dead dog-thing returns. They surmise that it died of shock.

1673.1 Spock makes this log, and it's just another recap. "Spock here, everything's the same, life sucks right now, and we're all SOL. More to come!"

Bones plans to do an autopsy on the dog-thing to find out if it really died of shock, or if it was the transporter. he wants some better answers before sending Jim through. Spock wants to finish the repairs to the transporter and risk sending the captains through. Kirk laments on what to do, then decides to do both. Come on, dude. It took the little Mexican girl in the taco shell commercial less time to make decisions.

Deciding that they should both get on the transporter pad, Good Kirk unstraps Evil Kirk from the sick bay bed. EK is nice to him for all of three seconds, then drops the act, and they struggle. Holy crap, Bill struggles a lot in this series. So far, he is always shirtless, wearing ripped clothing, or struggling with someone. I may start keeping track.
Evil Kirk knocks out Good Kirk, and he grabs a green blouse from the captain's quarters so that they look more alike. Running into Yeoman Rand in the corridor, he tells her about the double and how "he scratched my face to make us look alike." An uncomfortable Rand agrees to see him in her cabin later to talk about it.

 He makes his way to the bridge, announces that the away team is toast anyway, and tells the helmsmen to leave. The bridge crew protests, but Evil Kirk tells them to go fuck themselves. Good Kirk enters the bridge and Evil Kirk freaks out, saying that he's going to kill Good Kirk, and that he just wants to live, dammit! The crew seems uncertain as to which one to grab. *sigh* Grab them both, idiots. They're both going to the same place. There's another struggle, and EK gets a hypo to the neck.

In the transporter room, both Kirks get onto the pad, and Good Kirk holds Evil Kirk in a warm embrace, as though they're slow-dancing. No seriously, why do more people not ship K/K?

Spock beams them down and back again, with only one returning. He steps off the pad and booms a command to beam the others on board. Bones remarks that but for a little frostbite, he's sure that the away team will be fine.

So... the guys on the surface have been down there for hours, and this is the first mention of frostbite, despite the fact that that was my first thought. Sulu's last check-in reported that two guys were already unconscious. How have they not all died from exposure by now? Are they really trying to convince me that the technology has advanced so far that their PJ-like uniforms and those thin blankets were keeping them warm enough in temperatures that are twice as low as the lowest temps on Mt Everest? Give me my money back - I'm not buying it.

***

So, setting aside this week's theme of yin-yang/light and dark, an idea sprouts that has since been explored in other science fiction, that of "what happens to The Other?" On the bridge, Evil Kirk yells that he wants to live, and views the rejoining of Good Kirk as a death for himself. He will cease to be as he knows himself, and will be blended back together with Good Kirk to just become Kirk. This "what about me?" idea has been looked at in other mediums and shows, including another Star Trek (Next Gen), where a transporter accident splits Riker into two parts: one that made it back onto the ship, and one that was beamed back onto the now-unmanned station on a planet's surface. Secure in the knowledge that they had Riker on board, the ship leaves, and the other Riker is stranded for some 8 years before being discovered by the Enterprise. In this case, both Rikers are full people, simply created twice by the transporter, and both have full memories of those 8 years. Those years have had their effect on each, and while one continues his career with Starfleet, the other becomes a rebel. In this case, they are not two halves of the same person, but two separate people. There is no talk of splicing them back together again, and the rebel (who changed his name to Thomas) is allowed to go about his business. In another example that I am familiar with, companion Amy Pond falls out of  time sync with her husband Rory and The Doctor while at a medical facility. When they try to rescue her, they find that they have both the Amy that they just left, and an Amy who has lived at the facility, battling euthanasia robots, for a whopping 38 years. The problem here is that if they rescue the Amy who has just entered the facility, they essentially destroy Amy 38. She refuses to help them and requests that they take her with them when they rescue Amy 0. Again, the question is, what happens to that very real person with the very real experiences who wishes to keep on living that way? Do you force them into obsolescence? How will things be altered if left alone?
In this episode of TOS, it is made clear that both halves require each other to live, because the basis is the philosophical idea of a person being made of good and bad, light and dark, and a necessity of balance. Spock insists that he is similar, being made of human and Vulcan parts, and that his intelligence triumphs over both, allowing him to live with his two warring halves.
But sometimes the answer to this question is less clear than "let's put them back together". In the Doctor Who episode, taking Amy 0 back into the TARDIS and not Amy 38 really would wipe out 38's existence. She will have ceased to exist, as well as the memories of things that she had lived through in her years of existing first as Amy 0, then as Amy 38. She pleads her case to Rory and The Doctor, stating that she wants to live.
I suppose that this is not really a problem with a straight-forward answer. It really does depend on the circumstances - can one live without the other? If yes, then what are the other implications of allowing there to be two separate versions of that person? It is not as though they were twins and began life as two people. Both persons were one at some point, and split. It seems as though the passage of time makes a difference.

Okay, sorry for that brief philosophical interruption. I blame it on this week's tea, "Courtesan's Blend" from the Firefly collection by Friday Afternoons (www.fridaytea.com). It's an oolong, with clove, cinnamon, and vanilla flavors, lovely as both a hot tea and a cold one, but a touch too light to be used in a mixed drink, as it would probably be overpowered by the alcohol taste. You can find it listed under Geeky Blends.