First half of the episode, a colony has been destroyed and Kirk is out for blood. Second half of the episode, Kirk wastes a lot of time not constructing a weapon to use in the one-on-one against the gorn because he didn’t listen.
Obviously Kirk wins and gives us the lesson of mercy. What they ignore is another important lesson. If you have two ears and one mouth, shouldn’t you be doing twice as much listening as talking? Well, Kirk was told it would be a battle of ingenuity versus ingenuity, brute strength against brute strength on a planet providing raw materials for use as weapons to kill each other.
What does Kirk do? He “records” his continual complaints about how there are diamonds but no phasers, only to discover later that the Gorn has been listening the whole time and knows he’s wasted all that time. My question: why does Starfleet Academy obviously not provide a course like Wilderness Survival And Defense With Raw Materials In Particular?
The best thing about this episode was Kirk and his crew ignoring the fact that the Gorn’s initial attack was one of self-defense.