Ah, those sparkling, crazy eyes...
The Conscience Of The King
- Thread starter Mendon
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I am one of those who like this episode very much. Both Moss and Anderson played their parts so very well, and despite not having seen this one in quite some time, I can still clearly see the scene where Kodos comes off stage and tells Lenore that a voice from the past is haunting him and Lenore tells him that the last 2 that can harm him will be gone. The realization that Kodos has at that moment, then seeing Lenore's madness, followed by Kodos' anguish and anger that he feels is classic acting. This one is one of my favorites.
This thread got me to toss this one into the DVD yesterday.
Simply classic.
Simply classic.
Is this also the episode in which McCoy and Spock are in the mess hall, and McCoy mentions Vulcan being conquored? Would that have been by the Romulans - ?
This episode feels rooted more in the "Golden Age" of television than many later episodes, especially those starting in the second season.
The production is more complex, scenes given more dramatic weight, camera setups more original, lighting darker and more varied, and writing more multilayered and dialogue driven. It's one of the few episodes where the Enterprise feels as massive and spectacular as is claimed or suggested.
I don't find it implausible that only nine surviving people have seen Kodos in person any more than only a small number of people regularly interact with the CEO of a corporation. They may be aware of what his photo looks like, but that's not always the same as meeting and seeing someone face to face or as meaningful or memorable.
Imagine, too, if in choosing which of the colonists were going to be euthanized Kodos put most of the colonists he had interaction with in the group that is to be summarily executed. Through some machination those slated to be killed were put in the wrong group could also explain why there are survivors that can identify the reclusive and obviously immoral Kodos.
The production is more complex, scenes given more dramatic weight, camera setups more original, lighting darker and more varied, and writing more multilayered and dialogue driven. It's one of the few episodes where the Enterprise feels as massive and spectacular as is claimed or suggested.
I don't find it implausible that only nine surviving people have seen Kodos in person any more than only a small number of people regularly interact with the CEO of a corporation. They may be aware of what his photo looks like, but that's not always the same as meeting and seeing someone face to face or as meaningful or memorable.
Imagine, too, if in choosing which of the colonists were going to be euthanized Kodos put most of the colonists he had interaction with in the group that is to be summarily executed. Through some machination those slated to be killed were put in the wrong group could also explain why there are survivors that can identify the reclusive and obviously immoral Kodos.
Well, the dialogue goes like this:
So my theory is that Sarek's folks (or, more specifically, Sarek) got conquered by a certain human teachress because they couldn't take a bit of booze...
That's sort of beside the point: the Feds already had Kodos' face down put, and wouldn't have needed to interrogate a witness for that knowledge.
Perhaps the Feds didn't have Kodos' real identity pegged, though. The name sounds like a nom de guerre picked by the person who took power on the colony and declared himself governor. Kodos/Karidian mentions a coup, after all.
While it would be expected that all 8,000 people on the colony would have some level of familiarity with their original governor, perhaps only nine people really knew the guy who took power by force? Perhaps the Kirk and Riley families had arrived on the same ship? That would explain the "nine witnesses" part just fine - but it wouldn't explain why the witnesses would continue to matter after Starfleet arrived and the Kirks and Rileys no doubt divulged all their knowledge about where "Kodos" had originally come from.
Then again, we don't have to assume that the witnesses would really "continue to matter". After all, the killer going after them was deranged... None of our heroes claimed to see any logic in the killings, beyond the systematic madness.
Timo Saloniemi
But imagine a future not with the 5.5 billion humans on this planet but billions and billions more spread throughout areas of the galaxy.
Then imagine a colony on one entire planet but perhaps with families spread out for miles and miles, where interaction through a centralized government -- save for their being rounded up to be executed -- was sparse and infrequent. A governor could arrive shortly before the colony goes into crisis, declare martial law, execute those he deemed unfit to live, and then barely escape in the ensuing confusion.
That the Federation has records of this reclusive man Kodos may be no more meaningful in his pursuit than the fact that we have records of Osama Bin Laden and can't seem to find him in a few thousand square miles of land -- certainly a more manageable search than throughout a quadrant of the galaxy. Perhaps a relevant historical parallel for the episode was the Nazis and their collaborators who escaped the Nuremberg trials after WWII -- think of the factory worker who is accused even today of being the brutal guard at a concentration camp and known as Ivan, the Terrible, and whose trial is in part tenuous because it relies mostly on eye witnesses who are quite old but still alive to testify against the accused assembly-line worker.
Records can be altered or deleted (we've seen this in TOS before), and in strictly Orwellian terms, are subject to the whims of those that keep them. But eyewitnesses get to keep their memories regardless, and even when governments have stopped looking, they may find themselves pursuing their tormentor. The episode makes the point that the Federation considers the case closed since charred remains of Kodos allegedly were found -- even Kirk initially accepts this explanation -- but when Karidian is seen firsthand, those memories come back.
Kodos was a man driven by schemes of eugenics, authoritarian, brutal, egomaniacal, and more than likely, paranoid; his counterpart in Karidian is also driven by his fragile emotional and psychological state, only now that he is older and weary of pursuit he is wracked with guilt, anxiety, and failure. Even if Karidian had managed to survive all those years his brooding over past crimes was not successfully kept from his daughter. Mad or not, it makes perfect sense that she would strike against the only remaining threat against her father once the authorities have closed the case on his fiery death -- the eyewitnesses who might somehow stumble upon him in the future. And it makes sense that Kodos would try to hide himself in the guise of an actor.
But all this is just the set up for what the rest of the episode is about: whether the past really bears any meaningful influence on the present. The dramatic crux is not whether Karidian is Kodos but whether doing anything to him now will have any meaningful effect on the present. The answer is it does -- not in the sense that the crimes are obliterated or the dead brought back to life but in the sense that a man's conscience -- even that of a villain -- must be freed of its agonies, not unlike Hamlet's or MacBeth's in Shakespeare's plays. Kodos must pay for his crimes -- and he certainly does in part through Lenore's insanity and his death -- but Kirk must appease his own conscience as well by pursuing Kodos -- by pursuing justice -- even if there is no other rational compensation in the present for doing it ultimately.
Then imagine a colony on one entire planet but perhaps with families spread out for miles and miles, where interaction through a centralized government -- save for their being rounded up to be executed -- was sparse and infrequent. A governor could arrive shortly before the colony goes into crisis, declare martial law, execute those he deemed unfit to live, and then barely escape in the ensuing confusion.
That the Federation has records of this reclusive man Kodos may be no more meaningful in his pursuit than the fact that we have records of Osama Bin Laden and can't seem to find him in a few thousand square miles of land -- certainly a more manageable search than throughout a quadrant of the galaxy. Perhaps a relevant historical parallel for the episode was the Nazis and their collaborators who escaped the Nuremberg trials after WWII -- think of the factory worker who is accused even today of being the brutal guard at a concentration camp and known as Ivan, the Terrible, and whose trial is in part tenuous because it relies mostly on eye witnesses who are quite old but still alive to testify against the accused assembly-line worker.
Records can be altered or deleted (we've seen this in TOS before), and in strictly Orwellian terms, are subject to the whims of those that keep them. But eyewitnesses get to keep their memories regardless, and even when governments have stopped looking, they may find themselves pursuing their tormentor. The episode makes the point that the Federation considers the case closed since charred remains of Kodos allegedly were found -- even Kirk initially accepts this explanation -- but when Karidian is seen firsthand, those memories come back.
Kodos was a man driven by schemes of eugenics, authoritarian, brutal, egomaniacal, and more than likely, paranoid; his counterpart in Karidian is also driven by his fragile emotional and psychological state, only now that he is older and weary of pursuit he is wracked with guilt, anxiety, and failure. Even if Karidian had managed to survive all those years his brooding over past crimes was not successfully kept from his daughter. Mad or not, it makes perfect sense that she would strike against the only remaining threat against her father once the authorities have closed the case on his fiery death -- the eyewitnesses who might somehow stumble upon him in the future. And it makes sense that Kodos would try to hide himself in the guise of an actor.
But all this is just the set up for what the rest of the episode is about: whether the past really bears any meaningful influence on the present. The dramatic crux is not whether Karidian is Kodos but whether doing anything to him now will have any meaningful effect on the present. The answer is it does -- not in the sense that the crimes are obliterated or the dead brought back to life but in the sense that a man's conscience -- even that of a villain -- must be freed of its agonies, not unlike Hamlet's or MacBeth's in Shakespeare's plays. Kodos must pay for his crimes -- and he certainly does in part through Lenore's insanity and his death -- but Kirk must appease his own conscience as well by pursuing Kodos -- by pursuing justice -- even if there is no other rational compensation in the present for doing it ultimately.
The thing is, such a colony could never be endangered by a contamination of food supplies.
Even if we're speaking of a global contamination somehow, we're also speaking of a world where far-flung homesteads are viable. So "supplies" should amount to nothing: the planet itself would have to be life-sustaining, and there could never be global starvation even with zero food supplies.
The backstory was poorly chosen anyway, because one can't save the colony from starvation by killing half the people. Starvation isn't alleviated that way: either the planet can provide more food when one waits long enough, in which case rations should simply be cut to match, or then the planet cannot, in which case the remaining 4,000 are just as dead as the executed 4,000, quite regardless of whether they eat the corpses of the executed lot or not.
But again, none of the heroes says it was a reasonable way out of the crisis: Kodos was apparently just as insane as his daughter. Perhaps it's not the circumstances that drive the family mad? Perhaps they are of a deranged stock to begin with?
That's a reasonable approach - but then again, in such a vast galaxy, going after the eyewitnesses would be the worst possible survival strategy for Kodos. That would only increase the chances of identification, after all. So we're back to loco motives and one-track minds, choo choo.
Oh, absolutely. The story works just fine even if the villains are insane; it even requires one of them to be.
All we lose in the insanity is an argument about whether Kodos made a good and necessary choice by performing the coup and the massacre. But that never was a central issue anyway, and the episode would gain nothing by trying to claim that Kodos was acting rationally.
Timo Saloniemi
It might if the colony was existing on imported flora and fauna in addition to supplies shipped that were damaged by a resident fungus that the surveying teams had not correctly or adequately identified -- the episode stops short of telling us whether the colony was on a Class M planet or one that was being terra-formed, for instance. Imagine if it were significantly more hostile as an environment than Earth (somewhat akin to the mining planet shown in the Mudd's Women episode), where the food supplies could be wiped out because they were limited by the conditions of the planet itself.
I was under the impression Kodos wasn't mad so much as an egomaniac and cold blooded intellectual along the lines of a Josef Mengele who saw the crisis as the opportunity to give his pet theories a test drive . . . on some level, I think he believed he was doing the right thing, gambling that if he could keep the brightest, strongest, and heartiest of the colonists alive until the relief ships arrived he might somehow be construed as a hero in the public eye. He was made bitter by a combination of his failure and what little conscience he had about his actions.
But it was Lenore who went after them rather than Kodos or Karidian himself -- she is a madwoman of course but even if she wasn't a 19 year-old going to great lengths to protect her father is common; that she was homocidally deranged made it entitrely plausible that she would be murderous in engagement.
I'm interested to know if Kodos is an earthling or a human from another world, one which might not find his actions so wrong or illogical . . . the impression I get is he could be either, perhaps a Greek named Kodos or an alien of the same name. It would be interesting to consider how politics might have played into giving Kodos governorship if he belonged to a race the Federation was trying to convince to join at a time when that part of the quadrant was more or less wide open.
Perhaps the importance of the 'nine people' isn't about whether they can verify Kodos is Kodos; perhaps there are only nine people who actually witnessed Kodos give the order (and not some underling/general) and could testify to that fact.
Hmm... Hadn't thought about that. Clever and neat.
The computer does say "There are nine actual eye witnesses who can identify Kodos-" but it is cut, perhaps in mid-sentence, by Kirk saying "stop" and asking for names. Perhaps the computer would have continued "-as the person giving the execution order" or something.
Then again, Leighton and Spock also settle for saying that there were nine people who had seen Kodos with their own eyes, no further qualifier attached. So we're deep into speculation country in any case. Perhaps the nine witnessed a key moment - either one incriminating Kodos, or then one revealing his true identity rather than his assumed one. But the heroes and side characters all seem to agree that visual ID was somehow crucial, even though good photos existed of the criminal. This really yells for the further speculation...
Timo Saloniemi
The computer does say "There are nine actual eye witnesses who can identify Kodos-" but it is cut, perhaps in mid-sentence, by Kirk saying "stop" and asking for names. Perhaps the computer would have continued "-as the person giving the execution order" or something.
Then again, Leighton and Spock also settle for saying that there were nine people who had seen Kodos with their own eyes, no further qualifier attached. So we're deep into speculation country in any case. Perhaps the nine witnessed a key moment - either one incriminating Kodos, or then one revealing his true identity rather than his assumed one. But the heroes and side characters all seem to agree that visual ID was somehow crucial, even though good photos existed of the criminal. This really yells for the further speculation...
Timo Saloniemi
As for the "nine actual eye witnesses" thing... it might just simply be that these nine individuals are the only survivors who had actually met Kodos face to face. I mean, if you think about it, how many people out of a random group of four thousand have actually met Barack Obama, or thier state governor for that matter, face to face.
With Kodos coming to power rapidly in a coup just before the massacre, this makes even more sense. Less people would have actually met him, and he could easily eliminate those who have in the massacre. Also, he would have been in the perfect position to doctor all records the Federation would come to possess.
Therefore, eye-witness testimony would be cruical. With the existing records not being reliable, the witnesses would be the only threat to Kodos.
On a side note - I seem to remember hearing somewhere, I don't know where, that Hoshi Sato and her family were among the four thousand killed by Kodos.
With Kodos coming to power rapidly in a coup just before the massacre, this makes even more sense. Less people would have actually met him, and he could easily eliminate those who have in the massacre. Also, he would have been in the perfect position to doctor all records the Federation would come to possess.
Therefore, eye-witness testimony would be cruical. With the existing records not being reliable, the witnesses would be the only threat to Kodos.
On a side note - I seem to remember hearing somewhere, I don't know where, that Hoshi Sato and her family were among the four thousand killed by Kodos.
I'd say 100% of them - provided that the entire US was 8,000 people strong, or that the state in question had that population.
That is, unless the colony was founded only a few weeks earlier, all these 8,000 people would have been living in the same community for some time, with no other people and no other communities anywhere near. Who in a town of 8,000 doesn't know the mayor by sight? The blind?
Apart from that, everybody knows exactly what Barack Obama looks and sounds like. People of the early 19th century might have had a less firm grasp of what President Adams looked let alone sounded like - but any state leader after the 1950s would be as familiar a person as one's uncle, in terms of sight and sound if not smell. Unless the people of Tarsus IV were extreme luddites, they would have had close visual and auditory contact with their governor through technological means. That is, unless the governor was an extreme recluse or a newcomer/usurper.
We could positively identify Obama from a newscast today. An eyewitness could add nothing substantial to the identification - and would probably be considered less reliable than the newscast, since memories can be subjective or untrue and cannot be tested, whereas the newscast may be carefully and objectively analyzed over and over again even if it is an attempted forgery.
This just brings up the issue of who committed the massacre. Even in the age of hand phasers more powerful than an infantry company, Kodos would have needed cohorts. And those would probably have been better witnesses than any of the victims or bystanders. That is, unless they were fanatics disinterested in saving their own necks by squealing on their compadres.
Perhaps the cohorts came with Kodos? It would certainly make sense that a bunch of traveling criminals could stumble onto a vulnerable colony and decide to take power, perhaps even organizing an artificial famine to better facilitate their ascent to power. Also, Jim Kirk is a starfarer, and now we have reason to believe his parents were, too; perhaps the Kirks could have been aboard the same ship that delivered Kodos and his merry men? Certainly the colony wouldn't be visited by too many ships, or else a famine could not happen.
That was something ah so cutely inserted in the records the Mirror Archer found aboard USS Defiant in the ENT episode "In a Mirror, Darkly". Of course, we don't know for sure if those records pertained to the TOS universe, or perhaps to some similar, parallel but not identical one... All we know is that the Defiant wasn't perfectly identical to her TOS namesake in all interior detail.
Timo Saloniemi
Kodos' worst mistake, if he wanted to stay safe and unidentified, was becoming an actor in a travelling theater troupe. Here he is prancing around the galaxy displaying his kisser and his voice in front of hundreds of random crowds that could (and did) include the very witnesses he was trying to hide from.
The best strategy to stay safe and free would have been to go settle down somewhere quietly and lead a normal, unobtrusive life.
Unless his guilt made him WANT to be caught...
The best strategy to stay safe and free would have been to go settle down somewhere quietly and lead a normal, unobtrusive life.
Unless his guilt made him WANT to be caught...
i am watching this episode right now while i am recovering from surgery. it is one of my favorites i love the remastered shots of the enterprise in this episode.
I think the "nine eyewitnesses" refer to Kodos himself giving the order. Kirk gave Karidian the speech to read into the intercom to compare voiceprints; he might have remembered from memory.
I think this episode is great. Arnold Moss is a little OTT ("I am TIIIRRREEDD!") but he's great as Karidian.
I think this episode is great. Arnold Moss is a little OTT ("I am TIIIRRREEDD!") but he's great as Karidian.
I just could never get into this episode when I was a kid, but I've recently come to appreciate it a whole lot more. It might even be an episode I might choose to watch (and did a week or two ago). What I find odd is that Kodos didn't actually try to fabricate his early history for the official records so there would be less of a chance for someone like Kirk to see an interesting transition between the histories of the executioner and the actor.
Perhaps official histories are difficult to forge in the 23rd century? It didn't take long for Kirk to blow Harry Mudd's "Leo Walsh" story out of the water, either. You can always claim you were born on Bumdahl, Beta Kappa III in 2217, and operated a souvenir stand ever since (oh, and saw a blimp once), but entering that into official UFP records might be near-impossible.
Timo Saloniemi
Timo Saloniemi
