Star Trek (TOS) Patterns of Force

Cafe Society
1

I think on all levels…this is the most insane episode of Trek ever written.

The historian who blows the Prime Directive out of the water, John Gill, his plan is apeshit bonkers. How…wha…why?? And how was giving away nuclear and interplanetary ballistic missile technology nessecery?

KIRK’S PLAN is nuts. It’s akin to say…a guy who went to high school with Adolf Hitler, and then moved to England…20 years later deciding to sneak into Germany to speak to Der Fuehrer. And goes about as well. I’m tired of these little ‘strike team/recon missions’ Kirk throws together. Announce who you are and use the full force of a Constitution-class starship to announce your presence with authority!

The writers…oh writers…I give you a teeny pass cause I’m going to assume you just were ignorant and had bought into the myth of "Germany was brutally efficient
" (They wern’t) and “Made the trains run on time” (They didn’t).

I mean, it’s not like the writers could just look on Wikipedia or stop everything to attend a course on “Debunking WW2 myths”

2

The Prime Directive was always bonkers.

Let’s see. Some tribe, off in the jungle, has less technology than we have. Therefore, when an ebola epidemic breaks out, we should let them deal with it on their own, for fear of contaminating their pristine Culture.

Nonsense. Cultures are not virgins. And virginity is of questionable value, anyway.

3

Yeah, I mean, what was the deal with making John Gill some sort of tragic hero? We’re supposed to feel sorry that he dies? The dude was obviously a straight up fascist to even contemplate building up a civilization based on Nazi Germany. Puhleeaazzz…

Star Trek TOS had loads of cringe moments. Remember the Red Jack episode? Spock says with a straight face, “Women experience fear more strongly than men.” And what the fuck would you know about women and their feelings in the off-amok season, Mr Stoic?

4

Not even historians today believe that Nazi Germany was “the most efficient state in the history fo the world.” If that was actually the consensus at one time, it’s been thoroughly debunked now.

I’ve always wondered what piece of information 23rd-century historians stumbled on to require such a drastic revision. (Or maybe it was because so many historical records were lost during WWIII…)

5

You’re telling me that a guy capable of reading the mind of a rock tunneling alien still can’t possibly know what a woman is thinking and feeling?

Wait… no… sounds about right.

6

“Patterns of Force” is bad, but it can’t compare to “The Omega Glory.”

7

Heh. I want to see a short clip of when the American flag is trotted out…but with “AMERICAAAAA FUCK YEAHHHH!!!” dubbed over.

8

On the 23rd century’s knowledge of Nazi Germany - the show never “understood” this, but it’s quite possible that most of what the 23rd century knows about the 20th is all wrong. Lots of records could have been lost. Maybe all they had to go by about WWII is The Producers, an English translation of Mein Kamf with a bunch of pages missing, and a worn copy of The Battle of the Bulge. Their “scholarly” knowledge of the past could be as good as that of New Yorkers in the year 3000 in Futurama.

The redjack episode (Wolf in the Fold) is even more offensive - Kirk Spock and McCoy think Scotty could actually be the killer, because “it was a woman that caused the accident that nearly killed him.” THAT is cringe-worthy, and incredibly offensive, even in the 60s. A little bump on the noggin, and heck, any man could turn into a knife murderer.

I think the only reason they made the space Nazi episode was because they had all those uniforms and props on hand from Hogan’s Heroes. It was cheap. Plus it was close enough to the war that Nazis hadn’t evolved onto the mythical supervillains they have become.*

As for the Prime Directive, I support it for the example given, for primitive cultures. Maybe I’m still stuck in primitive thinking, but saving some people and not others IS interference. Who decides who lives and who dies? Do you want the Feds to be like Kodos the Executioner? The Vians? You save that nice Edith Keeler, because her views on pacifism match yours, and look what happens. You save that nine-year old Dolf from drowning, because you think he has talent as a painter, and look what happens. Letting cultures find their own way is the only way. Who could you trust to have enough wisdom to make those decisions? Not humans, not Q, not the Thasians, not the Organians. The Doud? Best to let nature run its course.

The show’s idea of keeping it for space faring cultures is, of course, absurd.

*I wish I could remember the source of this quote - some vampire movie, one character asks why, if vampires are real, why no one remembers them, believes they exist, if they were around only a hundred years or so ago. The answer, to the effect of “hell, in a hundred years, people won’t believe Nazis were real!”

9

They are still making Star Trek; in a new episode with Picard, they made it a point that he is, among other things, a great military scientist and historian and knows what’s what, but when he mentioned something from WWII like “Dunkirk” on TV, the random TV people didn’t have a clue what he was talking about.

10

Could you clarify this? When did he say this, and who are the “random TV people” who didn’t understand him? Viewers? Network executives? Fictional characters on a show he was in?

11

Both of those were better than “Miri”.

In “Patterns of Force” and “The Omega Glory” they were at least trying to make a point with the parallels of Earth. In “Miri” it was just a stupid gimmick for the cold open. There was nothing in the story that made it necessary. Even the people on the show recognized this; they pretty much ignored the duplicate Earth mystery even within the episode it appeared in and it was never brought up in subsequent episodes.

James Blish recognized the stupidity of this idea. He dropped it when he wrote the book version of the episode and set the story on a regular planet that was just normally similar to Earth.

12

I recall that Bjo Trimble postulated in her ST (TOS) Concordance that the inhabitants were actually “seeded” from Earth. This would explain the mangled American (sacred?) documents and the fact that everyone there spoke English at all. The main problem with her thesis is that nothing in the script said anything like that.

Just last night, while trying to recall every last Third Season episode… without ever even writing them down… [Yes, I really am that nerdy!!!] something hit me about All Our Yesterdays.

Kirk was transported from the Library to an era with Witchcraft paranoia, among other problems. The other two guys ended up in an Ice Age scenario. Both the pretty lady and the neurotic villagers spoke English. I don’t see “seeding” as a solution here.

Now much has been made of the Universal Translator. I suppose that even back in the TOS years the ST folks had them. But how would in actually work in real life? (Assuming that it could work at all. Languages are not codes for each other, for one thing.) When communicating with a friendly alien species, or even a tête-à-tête with the Klingons or Romulans, peaceful or otherwise, everyone would be familiar with the technology. Still, we never saw the inherent clumsiness of cross-language. With a backward species there would be total confusion, along with likely xenophobia, even if a concurrent explanation were offered.
Alternative Factor could fight it out as the worst TOS episode ever, in many, many ways. Certainly the worst of Season 1. Menagerie (a two episode offering) had a list of awards to it, but was an example of a good idea gone very wrong in execution. It’s arguably the second worst of the same season. I may just start a thread about the very worst of all 3 seasons.

13

It was Episode 1, “Remembrance”, and the person who didn’t understand him was the interviewer on a live TV interview. You are right, though, that we don’t know if maybe she was exceptionally uneducated while most of the viewers did understand.

14

All pale before the suckitude of The Empath.

15

To be fair, if I were to mention The Battle of the Monongahela, something that happened less than three hundred years ago, would you know what I was talking about?

16

Of course there is almost an inevitable problem with producing Science Fiction episodes with complete believability. I want to emphasize that in spite of my annoyance with certain specific episodes, all of Star Trek should be taken as metaphors. (As others have said.)

17

I’ve just been re-watching all the episodes of TOS on Netflix. I’m in the middle of the third season and my god it’s a slog. Each episode is more cringeworthy than the last. The last one I watched was The Way to Eden, with the space-hippies. As ludicrous as the episode was, the worst part was the cult leader’s ears. I couldn’t figure out if they were some kind of bizarre fungal infection or ornaments.

For my money, the most morally repugnant episode is The Mark of Gideon. The planet Gideon is a candidate for Federation membership. However, it has become severely overpopulated because they are disease-free and don’t die of natural causes. So their solution is to kidnap Kirk because he is the carrier of a fatal disease, which they wish to use for population control. Sterilization doesn’t work on them because their organs regenerate, and they refuse to consider birth control because of their “love of life.”

In the end Kirk ends up infecting the leader’s daughter Odona, and she agrees to take his place as the vector for the disease on her planet. So rather than impose birth control for moral reasons, they condemn a large part of the population including young people to a painful death! At the end Kirk and the Enterprise go off, apparently finding this a perfectly acceptable solution.:eek:

Of course this is a metaphor for the population explosion in the 20th century as well as the Catholic opposition to birth control, but the solution they ended up with was utterly insane.

18

Oh and i forgot that part of Kirk’s plan was to have a Vulcan impersonate a human…said humans he has trouble understanding at the best of times.*
*I get it…I get it. Spock is an immeasurable asset. Still.

19

Do we really want to nitpick Star Trek when it comes to Earth history? Let’s discuss.

Considering “Patterns of Force” was aired in 1968 and Wikipedia was launched in 2001, that would have been a neat trick. The writers wouldhave had to use the slingshot effect first shown in Tomorrow Is Yesterday to go into the future to consult Wikipedia. But I’m guessing the Federation scientists hadn’t finished studying what had actually happened with the slingshot effect, otherwise tKirk and Spock could have just slingshot back in time to stop John Gill before he started. . . and rescue the crew of the Beagle from System 892 before they had a chance to corrupt the Roman Empire in* Bread and Circuses*. . . or retrieve the copy of “Chicago Mobs of the Twenties” left behind on Sigma Iotia II by the crew of the Horizon. . . or stop rogue Captain Tracey in The Omega Glory.

On the other hand, if KHAAAAAAANNNNNN! had studied Enterprise records a little better, he would have used the slingshot effect to take the ship back to Earth, where he could have used its technological superiority to win the Eugenics Wars of the 1990s which would have altered the timeline causing the entire series to disappear from reruns!

But the real takeaway from this thread should be

THE MOST INSANE EPISODE OF TREK EVER WRITTEN WAS SPOCK’S BRAIN

20

I LOVVVED Trek as a kid…still do…, but this ep and ‘Enterprise Incident’* were the two eps, that just made my brain break. I didn’t get it. A fake Enterprise,…the planet was really so overcrowded it was wall to wall people outside??? They need Kirk’s germs? Everyone is okay with this? WHAT IS HAPPENING???

*As for Enterprise Incident…wait the good guys are STEALING a cloaking device? And no…one…is disturbed about doing this? The morality? The ramifications?