Episode of the Week : The Conscience of the King

[Vandervecken]

I'd say that once Kodos became Governor, he would be one from the viewpoint of the computer records, and he and his actions would be described accordingly. How he became Governor is not known. We hear of "seizing" and of a "revolution", which might mean Kodos ousted the previous governor with means that don't really stand up to scrutiny but don't exactly stand out as illegal, either. Say, "Step down and let me be appointed in your place by emergency procedure 47, or else I'll kill you. Oh, and never speak of this to anybody." would do the trick nicely enough.

how could he possibly expect to retain the unlimited power of a Governor who has declared martial law once the emergency had passed

This would not matter if the power was merely a means to an end. Either Kodos wanted to show the world what a splendid leader he was in being able to so cleverly order the killing 4,000 people in order to save another 4,000 - or then he just wanted to kill 4,000 people.

Obviously, it would be madness no matter how one looks at it. Killing 4,000 is not the correct way of stopping the rest from starving - starvation just plain doesn't work like that. If there's going to be a supply of food arriving at some known timepoint, it's always possible to cut the rations (rather than necks); people can survive with essentially zero food for weeks and in some cases months. The survival odds and timescales in starvation (as opposed to, say, asphyxiation) cannot be calculated accurately, and there's no point in erring on the side of cruelty there. If there's no promise of such a supply arriving, then there's no point in killing anybody, or then it might be a good idea to distribute suicide pills to everybody. So we cannot argue that Kodos would have been a reasonable person at any point of the story. Interpreting him as a devious madman carefully setting up a scenario that allows him to order the execution of thousands for the sheer kicks of it is probably among the more rational ways of reading "Conscience"...

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Timo Saloniemi

We'll have to disagree here Timo. I just don't think the computer, programmed in this data bank by historians, would refer to him as "governor"--a legitimate title--and I don't think he would be recorded as having "invoked martial law" if he hadn't had the authority to do so. He'd have been recorded as "revolutionary who overthrew legitimate governor and imposed unlawful dictatorship." There's also the implication of Spock's statement.

But we agree on the madness of a eugenics-based approach to this particular emergency alright! And your explanation of why he wanted this power is reasonable: it was a means to an end, probably to test his eugenics theories. That would explain how he expected to retain power in the long run--he didn't.

Although--a madman driven to murder 4000 people to test his population genetics theories, essentially a truly mad quasi-scientist, doesn't at all jibe with what we see of Karidian. He's a broken, sad man, but no madman.

 

[scotpens]

He's a broken, sad man,
But no madman.

You've got the beginnings of a song there.

 

[The Old Mixer]

Then there was that time that Kodos was the new schoolteacher in North Fork, and gave Mark McCain a whipping....

 

[CrazyMatt]

A very solid 8, perhaps the best episode aired to date (as of its original showing).

 

[Gov Kodos]

I loved this episode for ages, since I was a kid. It's central question coming not long after the Eichmann trial of how long is someone responsible for their crimes? If someone has reformed after years, is trial really justice or revenge? Is that difference important or does the magnitude of the crime play a factor? It brought up a lot of talk with my dad way back when on all this stuff.

By the way Greg, I am looking forward to that novel!

 

[Forbin]

One of my favorite episodes. Barbara Anderson was as beautiful as Grace Kelly or Ingrid Bergman, and perfect in the role. But the poor girl had her cold sore immortalized in romantic closeup for all time! Arnold Moss was perfectly cast as an over-the-top Shekespearean actor. I loved the dramatic pause contest with Shatner:
"Have you gotten... everything you wanted... Captain Kirk?"
"If I had gotten... everything I wanted... youmightnotleavethisrooomalive."


Another logic flaw in the story: If you're a legendary villain trying to hide from the entire universe, why become a famous traveling actor?! Just... hide!

(If that was mentioned already, sorry, I'm at work and didn't have time to read the whole thread).

 

[BillJ]

Another logic flaw in the story: If you're a legendary villain trying to hide from the entire universe, why become a famous traveling actor?! Just... hide!

Maybe he thought the best place to hide was right out in the open? Probably the one place people hunting for him didn't think he'd be crazy enough to be.

 

[Ssosmcin]

Besides, nobody recognizes stage actors. Now if he was doing movies....

 

[Armored Saint]

I suppose constant travelling was safer for him than always staying at the same place. I also suppose the character was inspired by the high-ranking Nazi fugitives and not Hitler himself.

 

[scotpens]

Another logic flaw in the story: If you're a legendary villain trying to hide from the entire universe, why become a famous traveling actor?! Just... hide!

It's called "hiding in plain sight."

 

[ZapBrannigan]

Another logic flaw in the story: If you're a legendary villain trying to hide from the entire universe, why become a famous traveling actor?! Just... hide!

It's called "hiding in plain sight."

He also had to make a living at something, because his assets had been seized and his fake I.D. wasn't good enough to use at the Welfare office. And being an actor didn't involve too much of a background check.

 

[Greg Cox]

Another logic flaw in the story: If you're a legendary villain trying to hide from the entire universe, why become a famous traveling actor?! Just... hide!

It's called "hiding in plain sight."

He also had to make a living at something, because his assets had been seized and his fake I.D. wasn't good enough to use at the Welfare office. And being an actor didn't involve too much of a background check.

They also mentioned in the episode that he only appeared on stage and never met with the public. He skipped the cocktail party on Planet Q and kept to his quarters the whole time he was on the Enterprise. He was a reclusive stage actor who was only ever seen in costume and makeup.

And I didn't get the impression that "Anton Karidian" was a household name in the Federation. He was a distinguished Shakespearean actor in a respected touring company, but hardly a galactic celebrity.

 

[Forbin]

Let's play Six Degrees of Separation from Anton Karidian!

Um.... Ummm....

 

[JimZipCode]

I don't think it's appropriate to have a "night shift" actually deal with the actual problems of beinging night shift, like your body rhythms being off. Maybe just in non duty areas, but you're still kind of randomly making a section of the crew suffer for the other part to have a more "normal" life.

It doesn't work out that way. Read about the "dog watches":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_watch
http://www.history.navy.mil/trivia/trivia03.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watch_system
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watch_system#Traditional_system
http://www.historicnavalfiction.com/general-hnf-info/naval-facts/the-watch-system

Let's say that the ship's day is 24 hrs, and the crew is split into two watches. The watches are typically 4 hours long. So section A works midnight to 4am; section B works 4am to 8; section A works 8am to noon; section B comes back for noon to 4pm; etc. If you stick to that schedule, then each section is permanently stuck in their time slots: section A always gets the midnight-to-4 trick, etc.

Instead, what navies do is they split the 4pm to 8pm period into two "dog watches". Under that plan, continuing the schedule above, section A works the first dog watch 4p to 6, then section B works the second dog watch 6p to 8, and section A works the next regular watch 8pm to midnight.

That means that on day two, section B works midnight to 4am. The two sections switch. Section A gets the midnight-to-4 on Monday, but section B gets the midnight-to-4 on Tuesday. The "dog watch" mechanism lets the sections switch shifts every day.

Perfectly fair.

It's not what we civilians are used to; it sounds pretty tough to me. But it's worked perfectly well for navies for hundreds of years, and probably continues to work in the future.

 

[JimZipCode]

Just saw this episode the other day on Netflix. I always liked this episode as a kid, but I hadn't actually seen it – what, 20 years? 30 years? A long time. That's one reason I chose to watch it: it's not one that I regularly check in with.

I was really impressed with how strong the episode was. I look at shows differently now, than when I was a kid. This is a very solid script: propels us forward from scene to scene. It's a little Twilight Zone -esque, in the sense of being driven by dialogue and history, and not depending much at all on visuals. The two guest stars over-act shamelessly – Shatner looks restrained next to them – but it works, since their characters are actors.

I too am a fan of the early season one feel of the lonely frontier. This ep is very successful in that way, and little touches like talking to the captain of the Astral Queen hint at a larger, more interesting world. I like the scenes of shipboard life with the rec room, lonely watches in the engine room and that sort of thing. I always wished we'd seen more of that kind of thing

Yes. Those aspects were important parts of the "universe building" that Star Trek was doing, and I missed it when they moved away from doing that. To me it's a big reason why the second half of the series it so much weaker than the first half. I tend to like any appearance of that stuff.

There's a section in the middle of this episode, where Kirk does not appear for what feels like a long time. It starts after the sequence with the girl on the observation deck, and continues thru Spock's investigation into Kiridian's background, then the whole thing with Riley & his friends in Engineering and the Rec room, the poisoning, thru McCoy's treatment of Riley, and ends when Spock & McCoy come to Kirk's quarters to talk. On Netflix this is from 0:20 to 0:28. That doesn't sound like much, only 8 mins: but it's 16% of the episode, and it's continuous. An unusually long stretch: I wonder if there is any other continuous stretch of TOS where Kirk is offscreen for 8 mins.