Star Trek episode"For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky"

"For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky"

Season 3, episode 8.

The Enterprise encounters a spaceship made into the center of an asteroid. It's on a collision course in a year and a half with a Federation planet.

When Chekhov gives the heading of the asteroid, in numbers, Spock immediately, without consulting the computer, calculates that it will hit the planet in 300+ days (he gives the exact number but I forget). I didn't know Spock had all of the orbits of every planet in relation to the ship memorized, even in his Vulcan brain. It's like they didn't want to take the extra seconds to show Spock consulting a computer.

They beam down and are, of course!, captured by the inhabitants, who are oblivious to the fact that it is in fact a spaceship.

McCoy diagnoses himself with some rare illness without a cure, giving himself a year to live.

Kirk then pimps out Bones to make moves on the High Priestess of Yonada, whom he marries in this episode, so Kirk and Spock can scout the asteroid.

We find the asteroid comes from the planet of the Fabrini, whose sun went supernova 10,000 years ago and destroyed the solar system.

What I don't understand is how Spock is so well versed on a people, a written language, and a solar system of a world that was destroyed 10 millenia ago. Sometimes Spock is just way too much of a walking encyclopedia.

And why has this asteroid been flying for 10,000 years and still not reached its destination? That would put this Fabrini way out of Federation territory, especially in Kirk's time.

And another miracle, Spock finds the cure for McCoy's incurable disease in the Fabrini medical banks.

McCoy and the High Priestess go their separate ways, however, Kirk says they can rendezvous in 390 days when the asteroid comes to the end of its journey. What happens to this woman?