Reading the "Kirk talks computers down" thread, I am embarrassed to admit, I couldn't remember much more than FESTIVAL and the creepy guy in the bowler. So, I and the whole fam watched it tonight. One of the few my kids hadn't seen yet, too.
It's not an iconic episode, so it gets forgotten, eh? And we really shouldn't fault IT for being one of those Kirk-computer ones, because it was the first. And really, the whole stagnant-but-happy society is a great issue to deal with.
1. Turmoiled times (1960s, now) do lead people to want a perfect, happy place with no troubles.
2. The regimented, directed society is reminiscent of Communism and its attempts at an engineered society with the "New Soviet Man."
3. Just lately I've been wondering about how well democracy works or not. This episode speaks to some of the danger of having a dictator in general.
Plus it has the "creepy townspeople" trope, and it leaves ya guessin a bit about FESTIVAL!
Finally, I wish the ship had not been in mortal danger. That would have made it more of a moral dilemma whether to fry the computer.
What do you think of "Archons"?
And, had your ship been not in danger, would you have left the society as it was? Or would you have fried Landru so that people can suffer, but create and grow?
"The Return of the Archons" reminds me of some backwards places I've been to. You can always tell when a place or an organization is controlled by some clique that doesn't tolerate dissent or any outsiders or outside influence of any kind. People often try to make themselves happy to cope, and they wind up being very weird. It's even creepier to see in real life.
I don't claim to know the mind of the Great Goddenberry, but it does seem to me that GR was making a political statement with this ep, showing that sometimes "interference in other societies", presumably banned by General Order One, aka the Prime Directive, ("...you swear you'd all die before you violated it, am I right?") is not so absolute. ("...life itself is an exercise in exceptions.")
I believe Roddenberry was using this story to show how a local "establishment" can become corrupt and totalitarian, and this can pose a threat to its neighbors much as Communism and Jim Crow did. GR seemed to be saying that sometimes "the plug must be pulled" presumably because a corrupt establishment was too dangerous to be fit to survive. The starship threat angle, as has been pointed out upthread, becomes repetitive in TOS. "The Apple" is the most obvious example. In the 1970's and early '80's novel writers Sondra Marshak and Myrna Colbreath explored several recurring themes first raised in TOS. In their TOS-based novel "Triangle", Spock speculated that a planet the Enterprise was approaching "could be a starship trap", I took this to be the final christening of a "once upon a planet"-style plot device the proved to be an effective staple of political commentaries in STAR TREK. It goes like this: the Enterprise (or some other unfortunate starship like the Archon or the Valiant at Eminiar VII) is out exploring or is dispatched to deal with a situation on a non-aligned alien world. Upon arriving, the starship is ensnared in a trap; the local corrupt establishment turns out to be totalitarian, hostile to Federation visitors and their ideals, and so a powerful attack ensues. The Archon and the Valiant were unfortunate victims of starship traps. Perhaps GO1 contains a "starship trap clause", allowing Federation skippers to override the non-interference directive if the attack makes it clear that an alien world demonstrates the power (and the inclination) to threaten starships.
When Landru attacked the Enterprise at Beta III, it was at least among the first examples of what would become a somewhat well-used plot device we can call the "starship trap". Kirk recognized that an alien society that uses mind control on its people and also shows itself to be "powerful enough to destroy a starship" can be exempted from GO1.
When Proconsul Claudius Markus attempted to pressure Captain Kirk to "order your officers to come down", Scotty was correct to issue a much more limited response with the electro-magnetic pulse blackout of the capital city. Note that even though Kirk mused about ordering 100 Enterprise crewmen to attack the Empire, Markus knew enough about the Federation to dismiss the bluff. Planet IV of System 892 did not represent a "starship trap"-style threat, at least not yet.
I do not fault "The Return of the Archons" with being a "starship trap" cliché, since this was arguably only the second example of such a snare being used on the Enterprise. (The first was "Shore Leave", the next being "A Taste of Armageddon".)
This ep does raise the question in my mind, though, that the Federation should empower its starships to use unmanned probes to sniff out such traps before risking exposure of one of their capital ships.
