A Private Little War

Who else is watching A Private Little War tonight after seeing the new Lower Decks(s2e4)?

I'm glad they didn't show the mating rituals on this episode. lol

It's a decent episode tho. It's got Klingons. Any episode gets an extra gold star for that.

 

I like this episode. Clearly a commentary on Vietnam, I love how the ending is ambiguous but basically says, screw this, we shouldn't be there.

 

"An entire world" would call for some additional assumptions. We saw the Klingons give their side firepower, plus the ability to build more. We never saw them give them the ability to travel beyond the nearest hills, though. And the ability to do so would have been much easier to spot than muskets or machine guns!

Is this one of those planets where the local inhabitants are not native at all, but rather the sorry descendants of an ancient starship crash, confined to a single village and the immediate surrondings? Is the total population the apparent 500 people, or are there other villages elsewhere?

If there's more to the planet, are Klingons at work there, too? Are Feds?

Timo Saloniemi

 

Definitely. It has a touch of sadness that is an interesting idea of "this is completely screwed up." Tyree asking for weapons is painful as well as sad.

 

That's not what it sounds like to me. It seems more like they're committing to open-ended support of one side of a war.

 

...With their body language telling us that they really, really don't want to.

I can't quite fathom the Federation angle here. How does it help anybody if the Federation-backed side triumphs over the Klingon-backed one? The Klingons won't leave it at that. The hill people and the villagers won't swear loyalty to their backers, and even if they did, Starfleet could react with official outrage if the Klingons actually tried to capitalize on the victory of their side. Triumph of villagers over hill people won't be superior or inferior to the reverse case. If a war keeps on going, everybody loses, including the Federation. Why not just withdraw and let Tyree's folks get a new government in a bloodless conquest?

Giving both sides anachronistic weapons isn't going to protect the natural development of the planet. The Feds can't even confess to having done so, so it's not a means of promoting their altruist agenda to third parties.

Timo Saloniemi

 

M'BENGA: Don't let these low panel readings bother you. I've seen this before in Vulcans. It's their way of concentrating all their strength, blood, and antibodies onto the injured organs. A form of self-induced hypnosis.
CHAPEL: You mean he's conscious?
M'BENGA: Well, in a sense. He knows we're here and what we're saying, but he can't afford to take his mind from the tissue he's fighting to heal. I suppose he even knows you were holding his hand.

So Spock was in a self-hypnotized state, and needed a few jolts of pain to shock him back to full awareness of his surroundings.

Oh, and "self-abuse" has an entirely different meaning.

 

If I had to make a list of the top five "most underrated episodes of Star Trek," this one would be on there for sure (along with Errand of Mercy). It's so thought-provoking. The opening action scenes are good too, as is Kirk's battle with the Mugato. I also thought the parts of Tyree and Nona were well-drawn and well-acted.

 

I watched this one last week on Netflix. While not an iconic episode, I think it is a good representation of what Star Trek is all about:
1. It has Klingons
2. It has contemporary social commentary
3. It has 'planet of the week' with human aliens.

 

Nona’s orange bikini top is really funky, but WHO CARES!

 

Even back in 1968, I thought the Mugato looked silly. It looked like exactly what it was -- Janos Prohaska in an accessorized albino ape suit.

 

Mugato | Memory Alpha | Fandom

 

Yes, same here.

 

The way I heard it, the writer was trying to do an anti-Vietnam war episode, but Roddenberry re-wrote the thing to play it down the middle. I've always thought the finished product was a pretty enjoyable outing.

 

I haven't watched this episode for a few years. I'm going to get the blu-ray now.

 

I'm curious - how could the thing have been more anti-war?

What's there not to like? Location shooting, starship action, the heroes split and playing the underdog, bits of Kirk's past and references to earlier adventures. Plus a truly outrageous wild creature costume that sends the imagination reeling. (And an ape suit, too.)

Timo Saloniemi

 

As I recall, the episode casts the intervention as a necessary evil, and not intervening would be worse. I suppose you could write it so that intervening against the Klingons at all is the worse course of action, but I'm not sure what that story looks like.

 

Given how many goodies get packed in the version we get, I'd expect any "worse consequences" version to be longer in the plot, thus having to ditch some of those goodies...

But I could also see such a version getting cropped to omit explicit consequences. It's just that no part of the adventure we get feels much like filler, thankfully enough.

Timo Saloniemi

 

I seem to recall that Kirk's argument on the problem was that providing overwhelming weaponry to one side would create a massacre, but by creating a stalemate, it would prolong the war, but it would preserve Both sides.

I don't remember: Did we ever find out why the Klingons wanted the planet?

 

I don't recall that it's explicitly stated, but I took at as implied by McCoy's dialog from the teaser [http://www.chakoteya.net/StarTrek/45.htm]:

"Hey, Starfleet was right. These roots and soil cultures can be a medical treasure house."​

And, of course, we witnessed their potency later on.