Kirk on the Nazi planet

I just rewatched Patterns of Force.

Spoiler

John Gill the Führer is catatonic and McCoy dares not to inject him more stimulant than he already has, realizing Gill could die.

Bones leaves the room, Kirk immediately injects the stim, Gill wakes up, stops the invasion and exposes Melakon. The planet is saved from Atomic Space Nazism.

What if McCoy's fears came to be and the Führer had died at Kirk's hands? What would the nazis do then?

 

Melakon would’ve overtly taken over, executed Kirk and company, then carried on with his invasion of Zion.

 

yeah that makes sense.

What Scotty and the Enterprise would do then. Prime Directive notwithstanding, surely someone would come down to investigate.

By the way, I dont like the PD exists in Star Trek. It limits things too much.

 

That's kind of the point. It's meant to... limit things.

But yeah, had Gill died, Kirk and McCoy likely don't make it off the planet. Although no I really don't think Scotty just throws up his arms and says "oh well"... that's not his style. Scotty is 100% getting involved, and if Kirk and McCoy were killed, alot of Space Nazi's are going to feel the wrath of Scotty and I don't think he'd even care about the consequences.

 

the PD is good law, don't want people going to planets and playing God. there should be more leaway in certain circumstances, but it solves more problems than it creates.

As for your question. Yeah, Scotty would have been like, in for a penny, in for a pound, and have stopped the invasion. Maybe after than the resistance would have gotten to Mellikon, and the Dara and Eneg would have taken over.

 

Arrest Kirk and McCoy, put them on a public trial, and declare then sympathizers to their enemies and continue on the war. Scotty steps in, demanding to know Kirk and McCoy's fate, and Melakon states they were enemies of the state, and Scotty has to decide how to intervene.

 

I think Scott would've had to pull out of the situation and hand it off to the Federation.

 

As Mr. Scott famously said in another episode, "The best diplomat I know is a fully activated phaser bank." At the same time, I think he was pretty by-the-book when in the command chair. He was under orders to beam up Kirk and friends in three hours if they didn't make contact, no matter what their condition might be. If he got wind that they had been captured, and it wasn't possible to beam them out of their location, he might have tried some kind of rescue mission with a security team. But if he ended up beaming them up dead, then at that point he wouldn't be able to do anything on their behalf, so he would have to report it to the higher-ups at Starfleet.

Kor

 

I'm almost sure the F word was used in the episode.

As for the spoiler code: this, coming from a moderator. Really

 

I just heard a podcast talking about this episode the other day so it was on my mind. It had me thinking that the Parallel World concept and corresponding use of existing props and locations to save on budget worked to the point that the show got on the air.

In retrospect though, the idea that all these worlds replicated Earth (mostly the USA) gets hard to swallow in an overview of the series.

The lesson of this parable though is not lost and is more relevant than ever today. I still shake my head we haven't learned this lesson.

 

Gill violated the Prime Directive. In the TOS era once cultural contamination occurred, the Prime Directive became irrelevant to that situation. The Federation goal would be to mitigate the contamination. The situation on Ekos (and Zeon, by extension) was so polluted by Gill that Scotty would have had a lot of leeway in rescuing the landing party.

Kirk would have delivered the broadcast instead of Gill. The entire planet would see a Nazi officer they did not recognize delivering a message that Melakon was a traitor. The rest of the scene would play out similar to the episode. Melakon would shoot the booth to attempt to kill Kirk. Kirk somehow would evade the bullets. Isak would kill Melakon, Gene, I mean Eneg would end the violence. Meanwhile Scotty would have received the broadcast Kirk made and either send down a security team or beam up the landing party. McCoy still had his communicator and was in the booth with Kirk.

 

Not so much the firing of the "fully activated phaser bank", but the firepower and threat of same. In many instances, a bluff/threat can be better than actually doing it.

 

Those were his original orders, but remember, Kirk later contacted the Enterprise to have them send McCoy down. So I think Scotty would have assumed those other orders were superseded.

Also, Kirk still had the one working communicator that Spock reassembled ("using parts from both" - one of those little Star Trek dialogues touches I absolutely love), and presumably they sent down McCoy with a communicator as well. So if Gill had kicked the can as the result of Kirk's treatment, I think he would have called for an immediate beamout, and I bet Scotty would have been able to locate both McCoy and Spock - the only Vulcan on the planet, natch. Also, I bet Eneg would have been able to prevent the immediate execution of the "aliens" - I love it how the Starfleet crew and Gill are quite accurately called that - until Scotty could have figured things out.

 

Ah, the Data method.

 

In A Piece of the Action, Kirk's mission to the Gangster planet was to determine the source/effects of the contamination and repair it. Essentially, the same story on Nazi planet. It is the Federation's policy to repair the effects of Gill's interference on the Ekos. Stop their space invasion of Zeon and overthrow the Nazi government. Then send in social workers: "to guide the Iotians Ekosians into a more ethical system. Despite themselves, they'll be forced to accept conventional responsibilities."

 

How sick do you have to be to think that Nazism is a great model for rebuilding a society? In the episode it almost seems like he started out with the best intentions but then things got out of hand.

"Best intentions" and Nazism cannot be in the same sentence.

 

You know, I don't know if they could do an episode like that today. Many people would complain: "Why do you paint all Nazis as bad??? This is an unfair and ahistorical generalization! There were a lot of good Nazis who joined the party just by convenience. And Nazism did a lot of good things!"

 

Sadly, the longer removed we are from horrors of the past the more easily it is to normalize…we remember aquaducts more fondly than the autobahn I suppose.

Gill was worried about a “dangerous anarchy”….Somalia is a libertarian paradise if one took Rand seriously. We have a hatred of institutions now.

So Gill cracked open a moldering history book of events he felt disconnected to…and…big oops.

The Cold War was a heady thing…the community vs the individual.

Gill opened up “blood and soil” a much less noble pursuit.

He stumbled into it…that’s as charitable as one could make it.

Remember, Ayn Rand was big at the time this was aired….a person perfectly happy to see people starve with no safety net….no government…