Episode of the Week : The Return of the Archons

[Botany Bay]

Trivia :

Writer Boris Sobelman wanted Landru to be a robot, who ended up having his head fly off. The only thing to get the chop was this idea, deemed too expensive to show, and Landru became a computer instead.

 

[Timo]

Holograms emerging from mainframes is IMHO the best possible mixture of futuristic and archaic, even from the 21st century point of view...

One wonders whether Landru in fact was a more distributed entity than indicated. Sure, one mainframe sparkled and smoked when Kirk defeated Landru, but perhaps the planet featured thousands, all of which blew when Landru mentally short-circuited? That would alleviate the arguments for a one-town planet somewhat - although we would still have to account for the fact that the locals, clearly not a traveled lot, know of the Archons, who therefore probably also hit this same town.

Did Kirk have more clues than he lets us know, about what happened to the Archon and where her crew might have beamed down or shuttled down? This line of thought would also help explain why the heroes initially beam down in a very specific but very incorrect set of clothing...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Botany Bay]

More trivia :

Along the way, this story was known as "The Perfect World", "Paradise XML"*, and "Landru's Paradise".

It was one of the Roddenberry story outlines rejected by NBC as Star Trek's possible first pilot.

* = was this a Roddenberry attempt at Roman numerals?

 

[CorporalCaptain]

I wasn't ever impressed by this episode. The episode itself has a lot in common with a hollow tube. Not the worst, though.

Three.

 

[velour]

Don't be fooled, there's a babe in the episode. She's just dressed down some and bundled.

Just as the Red Hour started, one of the woman on the street pounced on Kirk. She was all over him. I think she was trying to make out with him. She was the daughter of the hotel owner, where Kirk and landing party found shelter.

Wasn't the bald actor in The 7th Voyage of Sinbad?

Peace and tranquility to you.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

I haven't noticed the rock bouncing off a guy's head. But I finally saw something that the director mentioned in an interview.

If I recall correctly: during the Red Hour, the assistant director threw a rock through a store window and it only made a small hole. The director wanted the glass to shatter, so he threw another rock, and that one went cleanly through the existing hole. He couldn't have done that on purpose.

And last time I saw the episode, I saw that second rock fly through the hole in the glass. Nice!

 

[EnriqueH]

I've always enjoyed this episode.

I think my favorite scene was the initial scene where the populace goes crazy and we see those sweaty-faced, mad close-ups of everyone goes nuts.

 

[Marsden]

I could never understand the point of the Red Hour but something occured to me. What if that's Landru's way of showing everyone how bad it would be without his control? "See what happens if Landru doesn't keep you safe, everything is chaos, so just surrender to Landru and everything will be peace and tranquillity." Or some such.

 

[Timo]

Might be. But would these people even do the Red Hour unless Landru specifically controlled them into doing it? It seems every able-bodied man and woman participates, and every past-their-prime one stands aside. Probably not the result of wisdom of old age making the old geezers abstain while none of the youngsters have two brain cells, but of something far more deliberate.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[velour]

. . . (That, plus the Valley. But nothing much comes out of the Valley, apparently.)

Except for Valley Girls and 1970s porn films.

"Are you strangers?"
"Yes. We're... from the Valley."

Valley of the jolly (ho ho ho) Green Giant.

I assume the outdoor scenes of this ep were filmed in the backlot of one of the Hollywood studios.

Perhaps what the writers meant by "valley" was the San Fernando Valley. I don't know, but it might have been an inside joke.

That's an insightful analysis. You take a recurring problem with ST episodes, the one-village-represents-a-planet thing ("A Private Little War", "Friday's Child"), and explore it as a solid sci-fi concept. In this sense especially, but also in general, I think "Archons" has a much more interesting set-up than "The Apple," where a similar machine governance is going on.

One of the things that I really liked about this episode was the unashamedly anti-tyranny, anti-totalitarian theme.
　
Of all the TOS eps, I thought this one did the best job in depicting a totalitarian society, better than "The Apple".

One of the scenes that I remember best was when Kirk tells the two renegades -- the two older men who were not of the body -- that it was time for them to be liberated from Landru, that Landru's plug must be pulled. The two renegades got cold feet and showed abject fear.

Throughout the episode they were constantly in fear of Big Brother Landru and constantly on guard against saying the wrong thing. This seemed a good depiction of life in a totalitarian society.

I loved it when Kirk told them to “snap out of it! Start acting like men.”

Another thing that I enjoyed about this ep was the unintended humor -- the mindless contentment and the ridiculous happy banter.

Overall, one of better TOS episodes.

Joy be to you and contentment.

 

[tafkats]

Not a bad episode, but also not one of the best.

It gets a pass on the "Kirk logics a powerful computer into killing itself" thing since it's actually the episode that invented the cliche.

The portrayal of the society was interesting. I also like how TOS would often drop in a reference to a crewmember with some very specific academic discipline, in this case "Sociologist Lindstrom." (Marla McGivers is another example.) Having that level of academic specialization on board is exactly the kind of thing you'd have to do if you're out on the cutting edge of exploration and you know that, if you don't study everything you can, another ship isn't going to pass the same way for decades.