Episode of the Week : Patterns of Force
- Thread starter Botany Bay
- Start date
- Status
"Do you know what we do to responsible Zeons?"
If you want to punish them, you make them watch this episode, which I generously gave a 5. The downhill slide of episode quality accelerated with this one. By the time this turkey hit the TV screens of America, all-time classic second season episodes like "Amok Time," "Who Mourns for Adonais," "The Doomsday Machine," "Journey To Babel," and "Mirror, Mirror" must have seemed like they were produced years, not months, before.
Why does this episode bother me? Let me count the ways....
1. Nazi's. What kind of historians uses that example of "efficiency" to "unify" a "fragmented" planet? (maybe new Trek will reinvent this episode and choose ISIS as their "unifying force").
2. Swastikas. See #1. Also, couldn't they come up with an alternative logo for these fools?
3. Zeon for Zion. Talk about hitting the audience over the head with a 10 pound sausage.
4. The Nazi with the crisp British accent. How BBC of the producers.
5. The "let's just forget the impending genocide and all be friends" ending. "Now we'll start to live the way the Fuhrer meant us to live." That may be the most insane (or inane?) line of dialog spoken in the entire series! The fuhrer was the guy who made you Nazis, BritNazi!
I'm sure I can think of more things, but you probably get it by now.
Like "Return To Tomorrow," this episode bears more resemblance to a third season episode than a second season affair. I'm just as excited as watching snoozefests like "The Empath," "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield" or "For The World Is Hollow And I have Touched The Sky" as I am as watching this nonsense.
Final thought: Thank goodness the SS Horizon didn't leave a book on Nazi Germany behind!
If you want to punish them, you make them watch this episode, which I generously gave a 5. The downhill slide of episode quality accelerated with this one. By the time this turkey hit the TV screens of America, all-time classic second season episodes like "Amok Time," "Who Mourns for Adonais," "The Doomsday Machine," "Journey To Babel," and "Mirror, Mirror" must have seemed like they were produced years, not months, before.
Why does this episode bother me? Let me count the ways....
1. Nazi's. What kind of historians uses that example of "efficiency" to "unify" a "fragmented" planet? (maybe new Trek will reinvent this episode and choose ISIS as their "unifying force").
2. Swastikas. See #1. Also, couldn't they come up with an alternative logo for these fools?
3. Zeon for Zion. Talk about hitting the audience over the head with a 10 pound sausage.
4. The Nazi with the crisp British accent. How BBC of the producers.
5. The "let's just forget the impending genocide and all be friends" ending. "Now we'll start to live the way the Fuhrer meant us to live." That may be the most insane (or inane?) line of dialog spoken in the entire series! The fuhrer was the guy who made you Nazis, BritNazi!
I'm sure I can think of more things, but you probably get it by now.
Like "Return To Tomorrow," this episode bears more resemblance to a third season episode than a second season affair. I'm just as excited as watching snoozefests like "The Empath," "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield" or "For The World Is Hollow And I have Touched The Sky" as I am as watching this nonsense.
Final thought: Thank goodness the SS Horizon didn't leave a book on Nazi Germany behind!
In the 60's Nazis=Ratings.
Based on your well thought out teardown, I hereby reduce my vote by 2 points. There. Now I feel better.
C'Mon
Return to Tomorrow ain't so bad- and in both "The Empath" and "...World is Hollow..." McCoy finally gets something to do from the screen writers.
I have no empathy for the execution that season- indeed hollow! (Asteroid world of Yonada interesting concept, though.)
Koo Koo Kool throwback illustration at top of thread. Kudos to the creator.
Oh, and @Feek- Congratulations on your Engine room completion- Judging by those new pics on your site- it looks simply fantastic.
I always liked the cheekiness in this one. If you are going to play god to a primitive planet, you sure don't choose something as wishy-washy as democracy or constitutional monarchy as your sociopolitical model!
It's just that the heroes appear awfully gullible here, attributing benevolent motivations to the chief villain Gill. Easy for them to do when the guy is drugged speechless throughout the episode and dead when the time comes to draw conclusions...
The plot setup provides the ultimate excuse for using the worst of Nazi cliches, as the planet operates on the most worn-down cliches on that bout of indigestion in human history to begin with. Whether that makes for enjoyable entertainment is a matter of taste (or lack thereof), and I sort of prefer Mel Brooks here. But for an attempt at combining fun and science fiction on a budget, I'll give this one a seven anyway, even if I get the kicks from aspects the writer probably didn't intend at all.
Timo Saloniemi
It's just that the heroes appear awfully gullible here, attributing benevolent motivations to the chief villain Gill. Easy for them to do when the guy is drugged speechless throughout the episode and dead when the time comes to draw conclusions...
The plot setup provides the ultimate excuse for using the worst of Nazi cliches, as the planet operates on the most worn-down cliches on that bout of indigestion in human history to begin with. Whether that makes for enjoyable entertainment is a matter of taste (or lack thereof), and I sort of prefer Mel Brooks here. But for an attempt at combining fun and science fiction on a budget, I'll give this one a seven anyway, even if I get the kicks from aspects the writer probably didn't intend at all.
Timo Saloniemi
Does anyone really fall for the old "carry a camera and they will let you in anywhere" trick ?
It's just a variation of the "act with authority and they will (goose-)step aside" trick... But especially apt for the Nazi/Goebbels/Riefenstahl context. It adds hilarity to the scene that Kirk obviously doesn't know the first thing about filming, and is not afraid to show it!
(Or then Ekon has advanced optical technology. The camera filming Gill's speech manages to get a good frontal view despite being bolted onto a side wall...)
Timo Saloniemi
(Or then Ekon has advanced optical technology. The camera filming Gill's speech manages to get a good frontal view despite being bolted onto a side wall...)
Timo Saloniemi
That could have been a budgetary matter, if the show could rent a bunch of Nazi paraphernalia and swastika set dressings cheaper than Matt Jefferies could design and build alien equivalents.
. . . everything I learned about history, I learned from Star Trek . . . Best history teacher I ever had
LOL, I have to admit that I too learned a lot about history from Trek
The Nazis certainly liked to play both sides against the middle, creating redundancies and artificial competition and distrust in order to exert better control over all the players. One could actually argue that the Nazis had to be exceptionally efficient for surviving in such an environment!
The efficiency thing does have a good basis in reality, though: only Nazi Germany could have pulled off the major internal reorganizing that Speer orchestrated when the tide or the war turned. It takes ruthless centralization of the executive branch to achieve such thing, and that centralization always existed at the core of the artificially byzantine Nazi machinery.
Plus, Nazi Germany could make the trains run on time (until they were bombed to pieces, that is). Even if that was simply because Germany always was good at that, and its competitors never were.
Timo Saloniemi
The efficiency thing does have a good basis in reality, though: only Nazi Germany could have pulled off the major internal reorganizing that Speer orchestrated when the tide or the war turned. It takes ruthless centralization of the executive branch to achieve such thing, and that centralization always existed at the core of the artificially byzantine Nazi machinery.
Plus, Nazi Germany could make the trains run on time (until they were bombed to pieces, that is). Even if that was simply because Germany always was good at that, and its competitors never were.
Timo Saloniemi
This episode was entertaining.
I commend the writers for getting a detail about Spock right. I didn't notice this detail until the last time that I saw this episode.
During the torture session that Kirk and Spock endured, the whip marks on Kirk's back were red while the marks on Spock's back were somewhat muted but they were definitely greenish. As McCoy would often say, "you green blooded...".
The make up people got the color right. They could easily and lazily have used the same makeup on Spock as they used on Kirk.
I commend the writers for getting a detail about Spock right. I didn't notice this detail until the last time that I saw this episode.
During the torture session that Kirk and Spock endured, the whip marks on Kirk's back were red while the marks on Spock's back were somewhat muted but they were definitely greenish. As McCoy would often say, "you green blooded...".
The make up people got the color right. They could easily and lazily have used the same makeup on Spock as they used on Kirk.
- Status
Similar threads
