The death penalty for visiting Talos IV

It seems bizarre to me that Star Fleet would have the penalty for visiting Talos IV, but not anything else. Why is visiting Talos 4 a worse crime then mass murder? It seems completely arbitrary to have the death penalty for what amounts to a tort. Star Fleet should either ban the death penalty completely or have it for only certain types of crimes, but banning for everything besides visiting Talos 4 seems completely insane. I wonder if they completely banned the death penalty by the 24th century.

 

Yeah, it was a little melodramatic and illogical, especially considering that the Talosians had deemed humans not suitable for their purposes by the end of the Cage.

It was the only death penalty on the books until contradicted by Turnabout Intruder.

 

I think it's merely a trick for dissuading people from going there, and probably would never actually be enforced. Although. it's pretty stupid, because the moment you make something verbotten without explaining it, someone's gonna go snooping around to see what's up. If you said, "Uninhabitable. Lethal levels of berthold rays" or something, people would go, "fuck going there". Hide it in plain sight, as it were.

 

It's stupid. But the reason they have the penalty is because they can control you mind. And Star Fleet doesn't need their workers attempting anarchy and/or mutiny. But it's kind of stupid to kill them.

 

For me, the thing of it is... if Talos IV visits get the death penalty, then there are LOTS more other planets that should also carry that same punishment. There are lots of planets equally--if not more--dangerous than Talos IV.

 

I thought the Talosians summed it up...

Your race would learn our power of illusion and destroy itself too.

 

That's a huge leap of logic and not a very good reason to have the death penalty. Putting someone to death because of something they may do in the future is unreasonably punitive and not the sign of an enlightened society.

 

I had the idea that it was the "only death penalty left on the books" because it was simply a hold over penalty from years earlier that was still in place because no one had tried to go to Talos IV anyway so it was never changed.

 

And Doomsday Machine.

Washington State still has the death penalty, but we only use it once every decade or so (you have to go out of your way to receive it). Most of the time you receive a lessor penalty.

 

Really? I don't remember it in DDM. Guess I need to watch it again.

 

it was just a poorly thought out plot element to increase the drama. It doesn't make a lot of sense.

 

I watched Doomsday machine the other day and don't recall any mention of a death penalty...

 

I think slapping the death penalty on visiting Talos IV is immensely logical.

Starfleet knows that the planet is a threat to the entire universe, as its inhabitants can take control of any individual who pays a visit. On the other hand, Starfleet knows that the planet would be an alluring target for people who want their share of lost Talosian treasures from the planet's past, but don't know the risks (or, worse still, believe the implausible Talosian lie that they are "no longer interested"). Yet Starfleet can't reveal the risks, because those, too, would be alluring - no second-rate Trek villain would skip a chance to steal a power that can subjugate the universe.

So basically Starfleet has to kill everybody who has visited Talos IV anyway, but can't tell anybody why. A death penalty without an explanation is both a suitably exceptional deterrent (it always helps in getting your way if people believe you are an unstoppable homicidal maniac) and a help in streamlining the necessary process of executing anybody who would have been co-opted by the Talosians.

The only thing that could reverse this sensible policy would be... Well, the events of "The Menagerie". Kirk proved two things: that Talosians cannot be contained merely by executing people who visited the world (the fake Mendez, lightyears away from Talos, is proof enough of that!), and that despite now demonstrably being perfectly capable of taking over the universe, the Talosians cannot be observed to have done so (meaning either they really are harmless, or then they have already won and taken over everybody and everything, and in neither case is any action warranted or possible).

I would assume that threats of such immense magnitude pop up basically once in a decade, at the rate Starfleet is poking at alien things. And that the threats subsequently are dealt with, so the mysterious death penalty deterrent can be transferred to the next disaster zone (just as we see it hop from GO 7 to GO 4 during the course of TOS) - or then everything is lost forever, Armageddon comes, and a bit of time travel is required to put things right again.

I believe the reference was supposed to be to "Ultimate Computer", where Kirk argues M-5 to death.

It should be remembered, though, that M5 is stark raving insane. Kirk is using this tactic on it because he has previously learned that M-5 is built on the memory engrams of Richard Daystrom, and he has just heard Daystrom argue that murder is wrong and naughty and against "civil and moral laws we've lived by for thousands of years".

It would be easy to argue, then, that Kirk is hanging M-5 on a noose that has otherwise been consigned on the dustbins of history - he just bets that belief in outmoded systems of justice is the crippling weakness of M-5, owing to it being a characteristic of Daystrom's thinking.

Remember that elsewhere in TOS, we saw a system for dealing with criminals that did not include the concept of penalty in any form. If you did wrong, you got brainwashed; if you did really horrible things, you got brainwashed with somewhat stronger detergents, and ended up like Lethe in "Dagger of the Mind".

Timo Saloniemi

 

I got the impression from "The Ultimate Computer" that was more Daystrom's beliefs rather than the law. Due to his engrams being used as a basis for the M-5.

 

My bad, I did mean Ultimate Computer, not Doomsday Machine.

 

Precisely, a mystery is hard to resist and it is not just little children who can derive pleasure from breaking taboos.

 

The thing is, you don't have to visit Talos IV or in fact get anywhere near it for the Talosians to be able to tap into your mind. The Talosians managed to do just that to Kirk and the Enterprise crew (and probably the staff at Starbase 11) without them ever going there.

 

Yes, and it was Spock who did that even though it sounds something Kirk would do. Spock's human half who was not curious but had the need to help someone risking "death." Even though he already knew about it. So since he knew about it it's kind of stupid to kill him. It's almost like Star Fleet want's to kill people who knew what they were getting into.

 

Or, maybe Starfleet saw it as an "Outta Sight, Outta Mind" scenario. The Talosians had already determined Humans aren't what they were looking for, and so they've moved on. Humans start poking around their space, and the Talosians may become interested in Humans again

 

It wouldn't do any good to ignore the Talosians: Pike had stumbled onto their planet by chance (presumably thanks to taking a rare shortcut so that his casualties could get medical care), but the Columbia had reached the world as well, and growing human traffic would soon become a problem (Joe Tyler: "Our new ships can-").

The planet had to be quarantined no matter what, and General Order 7 is probably just that, a very general order about quarantine procedures. But a quarantine would call attention to the planet, and would draw in all sorts of scavengers. If Starfleet pretended there was a mild risk, a great many adventurers would come; if it pretended there was a serious risk, a select few daredevils would decide to get rich by being bolder than others. No matter what, somebody would come. So a death penalty makes sense: it eliminates everybody but the craziest daredevils, and allows for their swift execution afterwards.

As for Spock, it rather seems he was already under the influence of Talosian mind control: an excellent reason for Starfleet to gun him down at once. Except that he apparently was under that influence without having recently visited the planet. And Kirk later fell under the influence without ever having visited Talos (he saw the Mendez illusion in the shuttle), establishing that all quarantine measures were futile, and the death penalty could be dropped.

Timo Saloniemi