An offhand quip I made in a different thread made me wonder. All computer software needs to be maintained. Wouldn't Festival be a good time for Landru to run some self checking software?
Return of the Archons...is Landru doing computer maintenance during Festival?
- Thread starter MarcKle1964
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That's actually a good idea. I always figured Festival was like pon farr, a necessary release of the tensions that were kept suppressed the rest of the time. James Blish suggested, rather grimly, that it was a population-control measure to let the Betans kill each other off to an extent, though that seems Rube Goldbergian when Landru could just control when and how often the Betans have sex. And when Festival ended, there weren't any bodies in the street, just broken furniture and stuff.
But it's an interesting thought that maybe it's more about Landru's own need to do periodic restarts and system maintenance, and the human chaos is just a side effect. Or at least, it's meant to serve both the people's need for release and Landru's need for downtime. "Landru needs to restart and install updates outside of active hours. Please leave your computer god on."
But it's an interesting thought that maybe it's more about Landru's own need to do periodic restarts and system maintenance, and the human chaos is just a side effect. Or at least, it's meant to serve both the people's need for release and Landru's need for downtime. "Landru needs to restart and install updates outside of active hours. Please leave your computer god on."
Eh. Maybe. Modern systems have load balancing, parallel systems, etc. Even something as simple as a video streaming box small enough to fit in your hand has such parallelism so that you never, ever see it blink by even 1 frame. It can clean out the digital bellybutton lint and run updates and you'll never know.
Never try to out-stare a cat.
Never try to out-stare a cat.
Apart from the Serial Advanced Technology Attachment and Universal Serial Bus interfaces. Which are not parallel but operate so fast (and likely have queueing protections) so that one errant device doesn't hang up the entire chain. At least for consumer devices. Yon server farms are likely still parallel interface (SCSI) driven, just with integrated databases holding metadata to prevent the need for jumpers that were ubiquitous in 1990.
Even then, with caching and the best MMUs, the occasional reboot is par for the course. Even the Enterprise, though while everyone speaks of its computer as a singular term, there's bound to be auto-switched backups and the command all settle on singular nomenclature out of the risk of being pedantic, especially during a battle where Kirk can't micromanage Scotty so extensively to say "go technobabble the third technobitty by the sixth babbletechy by the bloobetybloob" while being pounded by Klingons and not in a fun way. Kirk knows it all high-level and lets his staff do it and ask questions when needed (apart from the one or two episodes where he really micromanages into extreme levels, for which TMP is an example of someone speaking up about it.)
Let's keep in mind that Landru is such a badly programmed or built computer that it burns out the moment Kirk tells it that it's violating its prime directive. So we shouldn't expect it to be a top-line state-of-the-art system that never needs a restart, particularly after 6000 years of aging and deterioration. (I wonder, what happens if a part breaks down and needs to be swapped out? Do the Lawgivers also do tech support? Or maybe there's a separate class of maintenance thralls we didn't see.)
I'd just blink slowly at mine and he'd blink back and then head bump me and purr.
Honestly, Kirk somehow being able to logic bomb Landru makes more sense with the idea that if it was on it's last legs after 6000 years.
Right. Like, if it has ubiquitous surveillance and there have always been those who resisted the Body, then it must have previously heard the sentiment that it was acting against the good of its people. What was different about when Kirk said it? The fact that there was a hole in the wall? It made little sense as a resolution.
Someone not of the body said it?
Spock quietly mind melded with Landru?
His uniform insignia has a tiny q-code (not that Q) in it that contains a computer virus?
Battery was at 1%?
The reel tape drive broke and the magnetic head hadn't been cleaned?
Logic...finds a way?
Like Curly Howard, I got nuttin'
The ep has interesting ideas but needed work to be great.
Kirk "logic bombed" other machines in the series. In this case, taken as allegory, it may be breaking the cognitive dissonance of brainwashing. It's nice as a parable with a machine that neatly follows a logic diagram, but the reality is that people do not simply give up deeply ingrained beliefs no matter what counter evidence you show them. Mark Twain said, “It's easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.”
As a political tool, it is pernicious. The damage on Beta Three would take generations to repair.
By 1960s logic, the writers probably figured its vacuum tubes overheated and blew out.
The thing about Landru was that no one had seen or questioned him or it, the computer in six thousand years!!!! So apart from the audacity that someone actually did there was the shock and realisation that the utopian fiction of it's programming was over!!!
JB
JB
How do you even start to rehabilitate the population of a planet?
Stirring music plays
"Captains Log Stardate 2025.30 And so our intrepid crew doomed yet another planet to mass death and starvation by meddling in the systems that kept people fed without teaching them about creating something better or providing a way to stay alive until they can. I wish Starfleet would follow up on my recommendations about that." Let's see what Starfleet thinks about that personal log.
Take us out of orbit, Mr Sulu.
"Captains Log Stardate 2025.30 And so our intrepid crew doomed yet another planet to mass death and starvation by meddling in the systems that kept people fed without teaching them about creating something better or providing a way to stay alive until they can. I wish Starfleet would follow up on my recommendations about that." Let's see what Starfleet thinks about that personal log.
Take us out of orbit, Mr Sulu.
I thought Kirk left technical people behind?
Im not sure. Wasn't that Miri?
From Kirk's actual closing log entry in the episode: "Sociologist Lindstrom is remaining behind with a party of experts who will help restore the planet's culture to a human form." Kind of a poor choice of words there at the end of the sentence, but it was established that they weren't being left to fend for themselves.
This plot resolution reveals one of the flaws in Star Trek as a format: treating a whole planet like it was one small town.
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