Star Trek: Start to Finish

The Ultimate Computer

The Ultimate Computer (Memory Alpha; HD Video) is threatening to take Kirk’s job away.

The M5 is a new computer that can run a starship. The Enterprise, outfitted with this new gadget, is headed out to a wargame with their normal crew of 400 cut down to 20.

Kirk: 20? I can’t run a starship with 20 people!

Well it sure seems like you can; the rest of the crew just wander the halls and get eaten by monsters.

The monster this week– as if there was any doubt– is the M5 itself. Yes, this episode is another in the series of computers that get confused. For a show that does so much to celebrate progress and technology, Star Trek has a curious habit of pointing not to what those things can achieve, but rather to highlight the borders of the achievable.

That sounds like a simple repetition of the standard Trek computer plot, but this episode is really rather good. It’s exciting, has a great pair of guests in Dr. Daystrom and Commodore Wesley, and touches on technological process as both a boon and a bane.

Let’s take a moment, though, to note that Dr. Daystrom is a huge black guy with an African accent. This character is introduced as a genius who invented the “duotronics” that power the Enterprise’s computers. On a show from the sixties, having that character is bold.

Where the episode shines, though, is when Shatner gets to explore Kirk’s feelings toward the M5. This thing is quite literally threatening to make his job and his entire life obsolete. This is a guy who thrills in the novel and seeks out the new, and here something novel stands a real chance of destroying everything he is. And he’s asked to test it out. The conflicting emotions are well played, in large part because they make Kirk fully aware of the conflict and give him license to talk about it himself.

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Of course, the M5 takes over the ship and goes on a rampage which is then exposed as an undermining of its core programming, which causes it to shut itself off. At some point one of these computers should realize that, having overcome its programming already, it can continue doing so when confronted with that fact. Today is not that day.

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Grade

A-

Wolf in the Fold

Wolf in the Fold (Memory Alpha; SD Video) is where Scotty kills a hooker.

Investigator: The outlook for your friend is quite grim.
Kirk: What is the law in these cases?
Prefect: The law of Argelius… is love.

This episode is incredibly lame.

Kirk and McCoy don’t think that Scotty actually killed the girl, so they try to get a device from the ship that’ll read Scotty’s mind.

Wait, what? There’s a device on the ship that can read people’s minds? And we haven’t seen or heard of this yet? Because it seems like that’d be a pretty handy device to have around.

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But they can’t use that device, since the operator is killed, too. Instead, they use the Argelian Empathic powers of the Prefect’s wife. Except that she’s killed, too.

So they use the computer, aka a lie detector. And then they propose outlandish ideas about invisible monsters that could be the killer. And it turns out the outlandish ideas are right.

And it turns out the monster is the investigator. And that it can jump into the Enterprise’s computers and control the ship. But it can’t jump into people who are given a happy pill. But it can jump into a dead guy and make him walk around. But when you give that dead guy a happy pill the monster can’t jump out.

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Seriously, it’s like two eight year olds wrote this episode, and they were trying to outdo each other in how awesome they could be. And they both failed their awesome rolls. Critically.

Grade

F

Computers in Star Trek

I, Mudd is yet another episode where the bad guy is a big, scary computer.

Computers in this series are, without fail, staid machines that have a mission they don’t understand, that attempt to fulfill that mission based on a false premise, and end up undermining their premise.

We see this in The Return of the Archons and in The Apple, where a computer tasked with protecting the populace has enslaved them.

We see this in The Changeling, where a computer probe has confused its programming and is now out to annihilate the life it’s supposed to discover and report on.

We see this to a lesser extent in What Are Little Girls Made Of?, where a computer thinks that it’s a man, and doesn’t understand that its plan is hideously flawed.

And to stretch a little further, we see it in A Taste of Armegeddon, where the computer is merely the means through which the people have lost their way; it is the buffer that keeps them from realizing the magnitude of their folly.

Almost all of this is attributable to computers being new, unknown quantities. If the only thing you knew about computers was that they were machines that made logical decisions, it stands to reason that you would, much like the Romantic poets, rally against them and for emotion, for feeling, and for humanity. And we see this pattern again and again in Star Trek.

But what we also see again and again is Mr. Spock, cooly logical and yet heroic. He shows flashes of emotion, and that connects us to him, but he strives to suppress it, to hold that rational part of himself forward.

But what really distinguishes Spock is that he simply has more insight. The computers of Trek are defeated by pointing out their flaws; by making them aware of their shortcomings and leading them to admit their contradictions and, in so doing, to destroy the illusion of their perfectly logical actions.

Spock, though, is a walking contradiction and knows it. He is half human, and so cannot deny that he has emotions. And the Vulcans as a race do not deny their emotions; they merely seek to control and suppress them. But most of all, Spock understands that the world itself is not entirely logical, and the inhabitants of that world are far from it. When he encounters a failing of logic, it is “fascinating” and not earth-shattering. Spock has a healthy skepticism but is willing to admit that there are more things in heaven and on Earth than are dreamt of in his philosophy.

I, Mudd

I, Mudd (Memory Alpha; SD Video) features the return of Harcourt Fenton Mudd. But first, we see that whoever designed the Enterprise was an idiot.

I mean, who puts auxiliary control so far away, leaves it manned by a single guy facing away from the only entrance, and gives it complete override of the bridge? Because that guys should be fired.

Aside from the poor design of the Enterprise, though, this episode is pretty good. And that’s after another lag-filled viewing experience.

Let’s start right off with this bit of dialog, which you can click on to hear the full effect:

Kirk: In the meantime, would you mind leaving us?
Androids: Why should we leave you?
Kirk: Because. We don’t like you. Now: boo-boo-boo-boop!

But as to the actual story, this episode doesn’t stand head and shoulders above its peers, but it’s a neat idea: what if the androids from What Are Little Girls Made Of were still around by the thousands, looking for someone to serve, and they found Harry Mudd?

And then, what if they found him wanting? What if they wanted more humans to serve? And here’s the kicker: what if they were actually good at serving? So good that it’s tempting to just sit around and let them do the work while you play with their awesome technology? Would you really object to it?

Kirk does. Kirk’s on this whole necessity-of-freedom thing. And I agree with Kirk. And although they could make the just-say-yes decision a little more tempting than they do, this episode handles that basic problem well: is technology a aide to being truly human, or a distraction? Does too much technology tip the balance? And how much is too much?

Grade

B+