Court Martial is really an odd episode

[GSchnitzer]

No, I saw that too, that she says she was reading over letters between Kirk and Finney that convinced her he couldn't have killed him. She makes a point of having to have to tell him before she breaks down and cries. It made it to the screen somehow. Though so much was cut during syndication to cram in commercials it's a wonder there was any story left at all sometimes. It's wierd to see cut scenes you never saw before 40 years later like that weird scene in the Honymooners where Gleason addresses the audience directly live to say Merry Christmas.

We do have the scene in the Teaser with Jame--the "I wanted a good look at the man who murdered my father" scene. We also have the later scene where Jame tells Cogley that he needs to get Kirk to accept a ground assignment because she read some old letters and never realized how close Kirk and her father were. (So viewers are remembering correctly: that scene is there.)

But the episode doesn't have the following scene from the script--from right when the court reconvenes to rest the case and hear the verdict, just before Spock and McCoy rush in:

ANGLE - KIRK, COGLEY

Kirk is doodling on a pad. Impatiently, he throws down the pencil. Cogley doesn't seem to notice.

COGLEY
Jim. . . how well do you know that
girl? Jame - Finney's daughter.

KIRK
Since she was a child.

COGLEY
(musing)
I suppose that might explain her
attitude. Curious though - children
don't usually take such a dispassionate
view of the death of a parent.

KIRK
She didn't at first. She was
out for my blood. Almost
hysterical. She kept saying:
murderer - murderer.

COGLEY
(almost a take)
Why didn't you tell me that before.

KIRK
I didn't think it was important.
Is it?

ANGLE IN ON Cogley.

COGLEY
(thoughtfully)
I don't know yet.

(It looks like someone realized that this is pretty much the same thing as Cogley's "No, but I might be getting ready" scene from a little earlier.)

But probably the most strightforward scene about what happened was in Act 4--right when Cogley leaves the bridge to tend to a matter "of vital imporance to this court." He pauses briefly to have a quick sidebar with Kirk:

TWO SHOT - COGLEY, KIRK

A conference between lawyer and client in the courtroom, which no one else can hear.

COGLEY
It's in your hands now.

KIRK
At this point, I'll try anything.
(incredulously)
But the idea of Finney being
alive --

COGLEY
I began to suspect that when
you told me about the change of
heart his daughter had about
you. If she knew he wasn't dead,
she had no reason to blame you
for anything.

KIRK
But how could she know?

COGLEY
You said she had been reading
her father's papers. . . probably
the general tone of what he had
written. A man suffering delusions
of persecution wants to set down
his complaints. She read them
. . . she knows the kind of man you
are. . . and she's fundamentally
fair and decent.
(beat)
Or maybe it was just instinct.
Thank God there's that much
of the animal left in us.

 

[scotpens]

But what I find REALLY odd is Cogley's attitude against computers and related technology, his preference for hardcopy books and so on.

I can understand his attitude if he was a 1960s man, preferring the real paper past of his youth over the modern-day dehumanizing computerized society.
But Cogley isn't a 1960s man. He is a well-educated lawyer of the 23rd century.

Essentially, Cogley is a 1960s man. All the characters in Trek TOS were written as contemporary human beings. If the show had portrayed humanity as significantly changed, the audience would have found it too difficult to relate to the characters.

. . . But we're rationalizing because the 1960s idea of computers isn't the same as the reality we're familiar with. Then computers were large and very expensive. Today computers are getting smaller, cheaper and ever more pervasive in being applied to all manner of things we could never have envisioned before. . .

Indeed, Cogley reflects the then-current idea of computers in this exchange:

COGLEY: A computer, huh? I got one of these in my office. Contains all the precedents. The synthesis of all the great legal decisions written throughout time. I never use it.
KIRK: Why not?
COGLEY: I've got my own system. Books, young man, books. Thousands of them. If time wasn't so important, I'd show you something. My library. Thousands of books.
KIRK: And what would be the point?
COGLEY: This is where the law is. Not in that homogenized, pasteurized synthesizer.

When the episode was written, who could have known that less than 50 years into the future, the complete, unabridged texts of those "thousands of books" would be instantly accessible and portable, thanks to the internet and e-readers?

. . . If you catch enough sci-fi of that era you get a sense that a lot of people felt somewhat threatened by machines that could "think" more efficiently than man and were becoming evermore sophisticated.

There was a pervasive concern in the 1950s and '60s that human workers were being rendered obsolete by automation. Is anyone old enough to remember the satirical slogan "I am a human being -- do not bend, fold, spindle or mutilate"?

(For that matter, is anyone here old enough to remember punch cards?)

 

[Warped9]

(For that matter, is anyone here old enough to remember punch cards?)

Yes.

I remember our high school computer being locked away in a separate, air conditioned, dust free room. This would have been in the early to mid '70s.

 

[scotpens]

(For that matter, is anyone here old enough to remember punch cards?)

Yes.

I remember our high school computer being locked away in a separate, air conditioned, dust free room. This would have been in the early to mid '70s.

Your high school had a computer? Mine had a couple of state-of-the-art IBM Selectric typewriters. And lots of filing cabinets.

 

[Warped9]

(For that matter, is anyone here old enough to remember punch cards?)

Yes.

I remember our high school computer being locked away in a separate, air conditioned, dust free room. This would have been in the early to mid '70s.

Your high school had a computer? Mine had a couple of state-of-the-art IBM Selectric typewriters. And lots of filing cabinets.

Apparently. It was sequestered away and very few people were allowed in there.

 

[Knight Templar]

I remember our schools computer lab.

Every time we had a thunderstorm it knocked them out for two days and we spent the class playing paper football.

 

[Captrek]

Note, this episode probably goes a long way to justifying Kirk's legendary distrust of computers.

I’m sure his encounters with M5, Landru, Nomad, among others, don’t help either.

Notably, all these episodes come after Conscience of the King, so they must, if anything, exacerbate a deep distrust that’s already there.

I could've sworn that in the final episode Jamie Finney references letters between Kirk and Finney and realizes that Kirk could never have deliberately killed her father.

No, only in the script (and maybe in Blish's novelization -- could that be what you're remembering?).

No, I saw that too, that she says she was reading over letters between Kirk and Finney that convinced her he couldn't have killed him. She makes a point of having to have to tell him before she breaks down and cries. It made it to the screen somehow. Though so much was cut during syndication to cram in commercials it's a wonder there was any story left at all sometimes. It's wierd to see cut scenes you never saw before 40 years later like that weird scene in the Honymooners where Gleason addresses the audience directly live to say Merry Christmas.

My memory must be going. I haven't seen the ep in ages...

No, I'm pretty sure just before they go back to court Jamie comes in and pleads with Cogley to make a deal for Kirk or something to that effect. She says she had been rereading her dad's letters and realized Kirk could never have deliberately killed him. It is in the episode.

You all will surely like chakoteya.net. It has transcripts of every episode, from all five series, and all 11 movies (but not every version of every movie).

From the Court-Martial transcript:

[Kirk's room]

(The door opens)
KIRK: Jamie. This is Lieutenant Commander Finney's daughter.
JAMIE: Mister Cogley, we've got to stop this. Make him take a ground assignment. I realise it wasn't his fault. I won't make any trouble. Make him change his plea.
KIRK: It's too late for that, Jamie, but I'm glad you don't blame me anymore for what happened.
JAMIE: I was just so upset that night. I'm sorry.
KIRK: Don't say any more.
JAMIE: But I have to. I never realised how close you and Dad had been until I read through some papers he wrote, letters to Mother and me. I don't know how I ever could've thought that you. Mister Cogley, ruining Jim won't change what's happened.
COGLEY: That's very commendable, Miss Finney, but most unusual. After all, Captain Kirk is accused of causing your father's death, and the evidence would indicate his guilt.
JAMIE: I was just thinking of Jim.
KIRK: I know, and I thank you. I have to go and change. You ready?
COGLEY: No, but I may be getting ready.

 

[xortex]

Did you write that sig? Wow. Excellent and a little scary.

 

[Mutai Sho-Rin]

(For that matter, is anyone here old enough to remember punch cards?)

Programmed mechanical engineering problems on an IBM 360 with punch cards in 1965/6. Yep, old enough.

 

[Captrek]

Did you write that sig? Wow. Excellent and a little scary.

Yes, I did. You’re the first to comment on it. I’m glad you like it. Thanks!

 

[T'Bonz]

I not only remember punch cards, but used them.

Bonz, former computer programmer, BC. (Before children, not before Christ).

 

[Sir Rhosis]

^^^You made me laugh!

 

[MikeH92467]

I not only remember punch cards, but used them.

Bonz, former computer programmer, BC. (Before children, not before Christ).

Thanks for clearing that up *ducks flying frying pan and runs out of the room*

 

[Captrek]

I not only remember punch cards, but used them.

Bonz, former computer programmer, BC. (Before children, not before Christ).

Thanks for clearing that up *ducks flying frying pan and runs out of the room*

So much for my theory that T’Bonz is Mother Mary.

 

[jayrath]

You're all missing it. Cogley has lots of ideas up his sleeve, but the basis of what becomes his defense is for Kirk to be faced by his accuser.

Pretty fundamental. I think we can all agree that we'd never want to be libelled by a machine. Even today, we should completely trust credit card reports? Kirk underwent identity theft on a grand scale.

 

[Knight Templar]

I still find it appalling that Starfleet was fully prepared to endorse sweeping the whole matter under the rug if Kirk just disappeared quietly. Even though they thought that Kirk had blasted a guy into space to die because of an old grudge.

Or did they?

Given Starfleets willingness to "forget the whole thing" for the "good of the service" I'm wondering I Starfleet ever believed Kirk was guilty at all. Sure, they have the computer records, but I'm sure that there were a lot of experts in Starfleet who knew how records could be falsified.

I'm beginning to think in actuality Starfleet didn't believe Kirk was guilty at all but hoped he would go along and "take one for the team" and when it had all blown over and people had forgotten they would start working to rehabilitate his career.

 

[GSchnitzer]

You're all missing it. Cogley has lots of ideas up his sleeve, but the basis of what becomes his defense is for Kirk to be faced by his accuser.

Pretty fundamental. I think we can all agree that we'd never want to be libelled by a machine. Even today, we should completely trust credit card reports? Kirk underwent identity theft on a grand scale.

That's not the basis of Cogley's defense. It it were, Cogley would have asked (no, he would have demanded) that Kirk be permitted to face his accuser--the Enterprise computer. But he didn't. Instead, he simply rested his case--until Spock and McCoy ran in. Cogley could have requested at any time during the proceedings that Kirk be allowed to face his actual accuser. But Cogley didn't exercise that option until Spock's new chess evidence came to light. Evidently it wasn't a defense strategy Cogley had been all that interested in pursuing

 

[ToddPence]

Some other really odd things about "Court-Martial".

1. The whole thing about a detachable pod from the ship being necessary to take readings during a storm, with readings necessarily being taken manually from within the pod. In no other episode is this convention necessary, all phenomena that the ship investigates is scanned from her sensors, or by automated probes.

2. Ben Finney's character and the "Records Officer" position. "Court-Martial" gives us the impression that this is one of the most important positions on the ship, yet Finney has never been seen previous to this episode and no mention is made of the position of "records officer" in any of the other 78 episodes of Star Trek.

3. The whole concept of the chess programming being corrupted by tampering with the visual log. What would one have to do with the other? If I go in on my laptop and edit a video file with Windows Movie Maker, it doesn't have any effect on me suddenly being able to beat the computer in Minesweeper. Besides, Spock at the beginning of the episode said that he had run a check of the computer systems and found no trouble. He must have not done a very thorough job!

4. The whole rigmarole with filtering out the heartbeats to determine how many people are really on board. I thought the ship's sensors could do this immediately?

5. According to "Mudd's Women" and "Wolf in the Fold", the people of Star Trek's time have achieved infallible lie detectors. So how come one of these devices wasn't used in Kirk's trial?

 

[Knight Templar]

Good points all:

I'll take a crack at them:

1) To my knowledge we never saw the Enterprise or any other ship in an ion storm before so we have no idea what such a "space weather" phenomena does to sensors or its effects. It is quite possible that it makes communications to electronic devices unreliable and thus direct monitoring necessary.

2) I had an impression that "Records Officer" was a kind of hold over "make work" position (every military has them) from an earlier period of starship travel.

And that Kirk put Finney in this position as a means of giving a former friend a position of some historical importance but not being overly demanding. After all, Finney nearly allowed his and Kirks ship to blow up in the past so obviously Kirk wouldn't trust him with real responsibility.


I also felt Finney resented this gesture mightily.

3) This one I've wondered about but I have no idea. Must be some attribute of future computer programming.

4) I felt Kirk and his crew did this slowly for dramatic effect. A dramatic pause to allow the members of the court to consider things (including the fact that the orbit would decay eventually).

5) I believe in "Wolf In the Fold" it is established that if a person is lying but believes they are telling the truth that the "verifier" can't tell the difference.

I'll add something.

6) With the crew working on repairing the Enterprise how does Finney manage to stay concealed AND sabotage the Enterprise so thoroughly that it almost plummets out of orbit?

Crazy or not, the man must've been one hell of an engineer. He could probably teach Scotty a few things.

 

[Gotham Central]

One of the amusing things about the "Records Officer" is that he is apparently more of a computer whiz than Spock. Its mentioned that only the Captain and the Records Officer could have successfully manipulated the Enterprise's computers yet Spock...the man that managed to manipulate all sorts of records and communications in order to steal the Enterprise earlier in the season...is never mentioned as being capable of managing such a hoax.