Production Order Group Viewing 2018

Conscience of the King

Shakespeare has always been such a big part of TOS. And this episode is a Shakespearean tragedy.

Kodos's plan was to eliminate half the population so the other half could live. Isn't that Thanos's idea in the latest Avengers movie?

Ah, Kirk chatting up the lady. He moves fast, they were about to kiss and later do despite hardly knowing each other.

Ooooh, Kirk gets testy with Spock. I wonder what was on Enterprise's schedule that they were delaying by transporting the actors.

McCoy: "Now I know why they were conquered." Spock's people were conquered?

Heh, Lenore's talking about "power" and "surging" and "throbbing." Gee, I wonder what she's thinking about.

It's our old friend Riley! Hopefully he won't sing. Or almost destroy the ship.

So cool to see Uhura playing Spock's harp.

It's interesting Riley has to ask Uhura for a song. Don't they have recorded music on the Enterprise? No CD's, no mp3 files, no youtube? Or he just isn't allowed to listen to them while on duty or just prefers a live version.

Aw, poor Riley.

Pretty cool McCoy defending Spock to Kirk. They argue but do care about each other.

Riley has to break into the weapons locker to get a phaser. How did Lenore get one, and how does she know how to make one explode? Although she does claim knowledge of them later. I don't understand the timing either. Kirk and Spock are in Kirk's quarters and all of a sudden hear the phaser overloading. So when did she put it there? Right before they went in? They were there for some time before it started whining. Can you set a timer on a phaser for when to overload? Or can you make it take several minutes to build up?

So the phaser would have taken out a whole deck, but Kirk can throw it down the garbage chute? Where did the phaser go so that it caused minimal if any damage when it exploded?

Riley overhearing McCoy. Sloppy, Leonard, sloppy.

They talk about how it was 20 years before when Kodos committed his atrocities. It was about 20 years prior to TOS when Nazis were committing theirs. Is Kodos a Nazi stand-in for the audience?

Oooooh, Lenore has gone bye bye.

I couldn't quite make it out. What is the significance of Lenore's final line to her father? "...catch the conscience of the king..."

Kirk did have feelings for Lenore. He has such a reputation as a lady's man and some of that is to pump women for information, but I'm realizing on this series rewatch just how terribly lonely Kirk is. Part of his thing for the ladies is just loneliness, like he can't help but engage with them.

I just saw on the Wiki page for this episode that Grace Lee Whitney was told she was fired before filming this episode. That's a hell of a thing, being told you're fired but still having to make an appearance. I guess that's why it's not more than a cameo.

Usually I go for the episodes with battles, aliens, and monsters. This has none of those, but I liked it. A good story.

Alien Watch! As Tarsis IV is an Earth colony, everyone's human, and there are no new aliens this week. The list remains

Talosians
That big ugly Rigellian guy Pike fought in illusion
Vina as an Orion girl in illusion
Glimpse of other aliens captured by Talosians
Ron Howard's brother
That dog from Enemy Within
Salt monster
That hand plant...Gertrude
Spock (duh)
Charlie's parents (Thasians)
Romulans!
(Ruk)
Miri's planet kids (bonk bonk)

 

This is a fun one that is dragged down a bit by its plot holes. Part of this is just a lack of imagination on how far technology might have progressed, for the sake of plot convenience. So Enterprise security systems are amateurish and someone can sneak a phaser on board AND get to the Captain's cabin unsupervised AND access the cabin AND set to overload without triggering an alarm AND sneak to engineering without being spotted. Surely the ship has cameras in sensitive areas? Oh well, at least after this episode they'll plug those holes in security...

The play within the play is a neat trick from Hamlet, where he seeded in a plot to make his uncle feel guilty about murdering Hamlet's father. In this context, Lenore is doing the opposite, trying to soothe her father's conscience but in Lenore's final scene, it's Kirk whose conscience is being pricked for the way he used Lenore ruthlessly and drove her mad (not much of a nudge admittedly).

I love Rand's final walk on. We know EXACTLY what she was thinking! It's odd that they used her at all with no lines but I suppose the script was written. It adds insult to injury that they deleted all her lines though. I doubt they'll be able to replace her...

Riley is great fun. It's a shame they didn't bring him back for a couple of episodes when Sulu was missing in season 2. It's nice that they give him some depth along with Kirk. The tragic history of Tarsus makes Kirk more sympathetic but why was young Kirk on the planet but not his brother? What happened to his parents? It's a bit woolly.

The episode does add to the impression that Kirk has had a long and varied life and career. He knows people on many different worlds and has friends.

I love the Shakespeare. It fits perfectly in Star Trek. I hope we see some again.

 

What about rolling up their sleeves? Wouldn't that have achieved the same effect? Or just have them wearing medical tunic style t-shirts, with their uniform shirts casually draped over a chair?

 

Are you kidding? You've seen how fragile those uniforms are; they'd disintegrate as soon as they tried that!

Realistically though, though uniform sleeves are fairly tight and velour is quite chunky. How much rolling could they do and still retain elbow movement?

 

Miri last week. Conscience of the King this week. 2 weeks in a row where Kirk emotionally manipulates a younger (or emotionally younger) woman to his own ends. And in both instances nobody cared. Rand seemed to care enough to point out to Kirk that Miri had a crush on him. This week, however, everyone seems to accept as normal that Kirk, a 30-something starship captain, is flirting with a 19-year-old girl.

Granted, she seemed much more mature than 19 util it was revealed she was cray-cray.

We can forgive her crazyness. Poor girl. Her mother wasn't around to counter Karidian's influence. If Karidian was playing Macveth and Lenore was Lady Macbeth, isn't that a touch incestuous? How many times do father and daughter act in plays as husband and wife?

Kirk states something about an "Arcturan Macbeth." Is Karidian from Arcturus?

I like Lenore's description before Hamlet. "Tonight, the Karidian Players present Hamlet, another in a series of living plays presented in space, dedicated to the tradition of classic theatre. Hamlet is a violent play about violent times when life was cheap and ambition was God." A series of living plays presented in space sounds very much like a pitch or tag line. Very nice. Feels real.

20 years ago Kodos, governor of Tarsus IV committed genocide when a food shortage threatened his planet. Half the population, 4,000 people, were executed. It seems they were all killed at one time. They died quickly and without pain, according to Spock, but they still died. Kodos was responsible. His body was never identified so it was unclear if he had escaped Tarsus IV or died. There were 9 living eyewitnesses to the crime. This is where it gets confusing. Kodos was viewed as being responsible. Kodos was the governor. Why the concern about eyewitnesses? It's a matter of public knowledge who the governor is. His picture was probably all over the place and in the news all the time. Bios and photos of governors and rulers and political figures are always at the ready. Plenty of people living in other locations can identify any governor. What was the big deal about these nine eyewitnesses who could identify Karidian as Kodos? This just doesn't make sense. This would be like claiming that only 9 people could Identify John F. Kennedy. Um, no. The entire country could.

Then there are tests. Blood type. DNA. Fingerprints. Facial recognition. Kirk eventually uses voice-print analysis. Now, granted, plastic surgery can change facial features and probably alter fingerprints. Lets say he did that. Doesn't that, likewise, eliminate the usefulness of the 9 eyewitnesses?

Kirk is a 30-something. Let's say 34 (because that was what the Writer's Guide said). 20 years ago Kodos killed people on Tarsus IV. That puts Kirk at 14. The actor playing Riley is 10 years younger than Shatner. Let's say the age difference is the same and Riley was 4 during the massacre. So a 14-year-old teen and a 4-year-old kid. Kirk didn't know that Riley, K was Kevin Riley. He had to ask the computer for confirmation. Apparently Kirk didn't know all the eyewitness survivors.

Security is definitely lax on the Enterprise. Right from the start. Lenore beams up without authorization. How was she able to do that? Can anyone just beam aboard the Enterprise? And then, as mentioned above, anyone can waltz into Kirk's quarters. Eve walked in and took a nap in Mudd's Women and now Lenore sneaks in and plants a phaser on overload. Where did she get the phaser? The unguarded armory? Did she bring it with her?

Dang, McCoy, drinking on the job? Taking a lil sip in the afternoon?

Vulcans were conquered? By whom? When?

What's the deal with all the space paper? Kirk is writing on paper. The voice-print is on paper. Paper everywhere.

Everyone catch the doors to the bathrooms in the quarters? I assume those are doors to bathrooms. Karidian's quarters had a connecting door to Lenore's. There was a door perpendicular next to the door Lenore came through. That wasn't the entrance Kirk used. And why are there swords and daggars on the shelf in Karidian's room? Props? His personal collection? Did they come with the room?

I like Riley asking for a song from Uhura. He must like hearing her sing. She seems to regularly serenade people in the rec room.

Again with Enterprise crew standing idly by during an emergency. When Joe flipped out in the rec room in Naked Time the other crew just stood there and watched. Nobody tried to help. Nobody called for security or medics. Again the same thing. Lenore comes out all crazy on stage waving a phaser. All those people there watching Hamlet just sat there. Nobody seemed to call security. Nobody jumped Lenore. Nobody got in her way of Kirk.

Quick recovery for Riley after his near death experience. One minute they are worried if he'll pull through and the next he's able to steal a phaser and plan to shoot Kodos.

I love the commanding nature of Kirk during the phaser bomb scene. Kirk and Spock work as a team. Kirk's first thought and action was for the safety of the rest of the crew. He gets on the horn and orders an evacuation of the area while Spock looks for the phaser.

The verbiage on the chute Kirk drops the phaser in says something about waste disposal. I always assumed the chute dumped the phaser out into space next to the ship.

 

I suppose it's plausible that they may not have had Kodos' DNA but it seems unrealistic that nobody else who survived was an eyewitness who could identify him or that there were no visual records that were more reliable than children.

 

DNA sequencing wasn't a thing in the 60s, so of course the show didn't postulate its use for identifying Kodos.

 

If this episode were to be filmed today I'd put in a line saying that the week before Kodos 'died' he destroyed/falsified/altered all his personal information on file including his DNA records and all pictures. Then I'd say all his henchmen and close advisors were killed at the same time as Kodos. Maybe the children witnesses were saved even though their parents were selected for execution.
I'm not sure that Kirk was intended to be a child on Tarsus though

 

Yes I think we can give the absence of any mention of DNA a pass given when the show was produced but it is also plausible that they would not have it.

They could have mentioned that the last place he was seen alive was in the school I suppose as he had removed children from their families but again there would have been a lot of other children there surely? Kirk and Riley are human so Kodos was human? Why was such a large human colony so far away from Federation help?

I do like the notion that help is not easily available . It adds to the notion that space is BIG. I think Replicators are a logical progression of transporter tech but I dislike the way they had wave away the energy consumption in TNG. Converting energy to matter would require vast amounts of energy on any larger scale.

I appreciate that the precise nature of food synthesisers is unclear but suggests they have chemical components in store rather than energy to matter. They certainly can't produce turkeys from thin air.

 

Kirk was supposed to be a cadet, at least according to the script development materials I've read.

 

Ah ok so that would explain the absence of parents but not why so few witnesses? I suppose Trek has a record of under age cadets with Peter Preston and Wesley Crusher.

 

In universe, though, DNA should be a thing. And DNA can be found in a hairbrush or toothbrush. One might think DNA or fingerprints or dental records are on file for any government official.

But I keep going back to the supposed need for these eyewitnesses. Perhaps that was all just in Lenore's mind. She was nuts. Until Tom Leyton suspected Karidian as Kodos, nobody was even looking for the man. Yet Lenore was killing the 9 eyewitness survivors.

They don't need the survivors to identify Kodos. That is my point. This would be like needing an eyewitness to identify Richard Nixon. Dude was POTUS. He was in the news daily. He is a historical figure.

Eyewitness testimony is only necessary when the identity of the perpetrator is in question. Nobody questioned if Kodos was innocent or guilty of the crimes. History already convicted Kodos of the crime.

It's simple math, though. Did the early script writer suppose Kirk was a cadet in his early teens? Didn't the writers bible clearly state that Kirk was in his mid 30s? The episode is clear the events were 20 years ago.

 

She may have cozied up to them to find out what they know. If they remembered nothing, good. If they did recall something, she'd have to kill them. Though I suspect she would have killed them anyway to be on the safe side.

The wonders of 23rd century medicine. I bet he was still a little woozy. That would explain how his normal good judgement might be impaired. A shame we never see competent Starfleet officer Riley in action - he's always loopy, lonely, or unconscious.

 

Lenore forgot the double tap. Only way to be sure.

 

True. Even as a youngster I thought the ID angle was weak; even then detectives on TV used fingerprints and blood types. The story is basically a straight-up lift from a Western, where somebody heads to the frontier to reinvent themselves and outrun their past, and the law's highest technologies are the telegraph and wanted posters.

 

You'd think any responsible colonization organization would update their database of identification for their colonists, or heck, that any Federation ship that comes to check on a colony/planet's long-term inhabitants (a la "The Man Trap") would collect DNA, fingerprints, etc of all new members - the newly born, transfers, etc. It would be part of their medical record.

Needless to say, space is a vast wasteland where a man or woman can hide for good or bad reasons.

 

By the end of the episode 7 of the 9 were dead. She wasn't leaving any alive. And I don't see any cozying up to Leyton. Or Riley. Just cold, calculated murder from a 19 year old.

No wonder she knew how to use a phaser. She had already killed 7 people by various means. Knew about poisons too.

 

The Writer's Guide didn't exist on day one of the show and went through several revisions, so it would take a bit of detective work to figure out what was established at this point. And, to be fair, Star Trek isn't today. It was at first more Hornblower in space, and it wasn't uncommon for fairly young men and teens to serve on ships in some countries. Or perhaps think ROTC.
^^^
EDIT
I was incorrect on the first statement. See following posts.

 

There were certainly many, many revisions, but the writer’s guide was available on just about day one (the earliest completed version is dated March 11, 1966).

That version of the guide says Kirk is “about thirty-four” (there’s some wiggle room there; Shatner was actually 35 when filming the first season) and literally calls him “A space-age Captain Horatio Hornblower.” It says nothing about his background or early life.

 

The actress playing 19 year old Lenore Karidian was 21 year old Barbara Anderson.