I've been watching TOS in chronological order and there have been some really excellent serious episodes (Space Seed, Doomsday Machine), many whimsical entertaining episodes, and a handful of extremely random episodes where most of the entertainment comes from laughing at why they decided these story beats were good ideas (The Alternative Factor, Catspaw) and Wolf in the Fold falls squarely into the latter for me.
Three women were brutally stabbed to death (including one Enterprise crew member) and the director made no effort to show any remorse for these characters, which was just plain weird. The idea of the jack the ripper entity jumping from body to body was insufficiently explained (was the short bald guy just possessed by it or was he a manifestation of it?). Why was it OK to kill the short guy out in space at the end if it was just possession? Are we supposed to think that Scotty did the stabbings while possessed? If not why did Scotty get amnesia during every attack?
I think the story had potential and in some ways was remarkably ahead of its time in terms of where straight-up horror/possesion films would go after this was made, but the execution of this episode wasn't very good and the muddled story telling turned into more of a weird comedy for me, sadly to say.
Three women were brutally stabbed to death (including one Enterprise crew member) and the director made no effort to show any remorse for these characters, which was just plain weird. The idea of the jack the ripper entity jumping from body to body was insufficiently explained (was the short bald guy just possessed by it or was he a manifestation of it?). Why was it OK to kill the short guy out in space at the end if it was just possession? Are we supposed to think that Scotty did the stabbings while possessed? If not why did Scotty get amnesia during every attack?
I think the story had potential and in some ways was remarkably ahead of its time in terms of where straight-up horror/possesion films would go after this was made, but the execution of this episode wasn't very good and the muddled story telling turned into more of a weird comedy for me, sadly to say.