Philisophically, whoa. What an episode! What brain candy! The idea that our darker more animalistic side is where we garner our strength and then our intellectual side is what tempers and directs that strength is beautiful.
How unfortunate then that the idea needed to be expressed by a woman being attacked in her quarters by the man (or half of the man) she admired.
She had to explain what happened as three men stood around/over her, one of whom was the other half of her attacker (and did not yet know he had split in two).
Then the attacker sees her in the corridor later, mentions why she was attacked (as Hyde impersonating Jekyll), and offers to explain it all later in her quarters where he attacked her in the first place.
In the end, when Jekyll and Hyde are once more a whole man, the woman mentions her final encounter with Hyde and becomes unable to verbalize how she feels about everything. He cuts her off to say “Thank you” and nothing else; the presumption being that she is ready to forgive him even though he never actually apologized for his dark and animilistic urges sneaking into her room and attacking her.
Then, SPOCK uses a very suggestive tone to point out to her that Hyde had many interesting qualities; the presumption here being that now she knows her crush likes her back.
This is infuriating.
Lots of people blame drugs and alcohol for their terrible behavior saying they “weren’t themselves,” but they were. You are never not you. You are always you.
When you choose to use drugs or alcohol or whatever, knowing it’s going to affect your behavior in even the slightest way, then you choose the possibility of doing something awful. It’s a choice. Everything’s a choice.
Obviously, a transporter malfunction is not a choice; but, three men standing over a woman as she describes being attacked by one of those three men is a choice. Not telling anyone there’s a Jekyll-and-Hyde situation is a choice. Not apologizing is a choice. Joking about how sometimes we’re willing to forgive horrible things because of attraction is a choice.
Most women are attacked by men they know, even love. These men make a choice to take advantage of these women’s feelings, of these relationships to fulfill their own distorted “needs.” Women choose to stay because of their own distorted perception of reality.
You are never not you.
You are always you.
Every choice is yours.
She should have at least been allowed to witness the merging of Jekyll and Hyde, maybe even slapped him one last time; if only to elicit the tiniest bit of justice for the harm done to her. As soon as the personality split was confirmed, she should have been informed. It’s as simple as that, and they couldn’t even manage that.