The Red Hour?

[Trollheart]

Have I missed something here?
Rewatching "The return of the Archons", I can't see any explanation for the "Red hour", which Kirk and the boys experienced on arriving at the planet. Everyone just went crazy at an appointed hour, fighting, raping, shouting, smashing things up, and then, as soon as the hour was past, back to normal!

Now, they were being controlled or directed by Landru, sure, but what the heck was the Red Hour all about? Was that explained in some deleted scene or DVD extra, cos I sure as hell don't get it!

 

[Timewalker]

Landru was providing the people with a periodic opportunity - compulsion, actually - to let their wilder, more aggressive emotions run loose. They were usually so calm, peaceful, and controlled, but needed an emotional outlet from time to time.

 

[scotpens]

Landru was providing the people with a periodic opportunity - compulsion, actually - to let their wilder, more aggressive emotions run loose. They were usually so calm, peaceful, and controlled, but needed an emotional outlet from time to time.

Right. The reason for the “Festival” was never explicitly stated in the dialogue, but I thought it was pretty self-explanatory. It's kind of like the Vulcan pon farr.

Ever been to San Francisco's Folsom Street Fair? Makes Landru's Red Hour look like a Mormon Sunday school picnic!

 

[T'Girl]

But was Landru directing their actions during this time as well, or were the people actually out from under his control for a few hours a year?

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

Seems somewhat equivalent to Hate Week in 1984...

 

[Zakk]

To this day i never understood it, I feel the episode, had no story one of the worst episode ever.

 

[maneth]

I must admit I don't really understand it either, but yeah, I guess Red Hour is analogous to the Vulcan pon farr.

 

[Hober Mallow]

Landru was providing the people with a periodic opportunity - compulsion, actually - to let their wilder, more aggressive emotions run loose. They were usually so calm, peaceful, and controlled, but needed an emotional outlet from time to time.

This seems to be the obvious explanation. It's just weird that Kirk and Spock don't even address it at the end of the episode.

 

[Trollheart]

Landru was providing the people with a periodic opportunity - compulsion, actually - to let their wilder, more aggressive emotions run loose. They were usually so calm, peaceful, and controlled, but needed an emotional outlet from time to time.

This seems to be the obvious explanation. It's just weird that Kirk and Spock don't even address it at the end of the episode.

More or less my point. I'm not stupid: I sort of guessed it was that, but I think it should have been explained, remarked upon, or even just mentioned before the episode ended. It seemed like it was ignored, almost as if the writer HOPED no-one asked or drew attention to it, as he hadn't really thought of an explanation.

Even the likes of Spock saying "Who knows why they did what they did, Captain? Perhaps Landru realised that a society that tightly controlled needed release once in a while. I will never understand you humans."
Cue McCoy quip, jokey muisc, end theme and camera shot panning away....

 

[plynch]

Explanation got edited out, maybe? Reading the memos TPTB used to circulate regarding story plotholes, I think they would have been all over that if it were never explained in script.

Maybe it was just some spectacle that tv for the masses required in 1966/7?

 

[Doug Otte]

Everything shouldn't have to be spoonfed to the audience. The explanation is implicit in the story.

There is a real world example. In some Buddhist societies, monks have a one-day festival in which they get drunk and generally act wild. The local citizens fund it and take care of the monks.

Doug

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

The fact that the nature of Red Hour "activities" could only be visualized or referred to in the most oblique terms probably exacerbated any editing issues.

 

[Trollheart]

Everything shouldn't have to be spoonfed to the audience. The explanation is implicit in the story.

There is a real world example. In some Buddhist societies, monks have a one-day festival in which they get drunk and generally act wild. The local citizens fund it and take care of the monks.

Doug

There's a difference between "spoonfeeding" and explaining. For one thing, you don't know that the answer postulated here is correct: it's just the interpretation certain people have chosen to take. For all you know, the RH could have been a time when Landru had to be "taken offline", as it were, and without his guidance the people went crazy, not knowing what to do.
I'm not saying that's what happened, I'm just saying that the explanation put forward here is only a suggestion, and therefore the answer is NOT implicit in the story.

 

[MeanJoePhaser]

*Must not make a menstruation joke*

Anyway...it may have been the only time the people had any form of sex, a society where all pregnancies are the result of rape.

 

[johcomp]

I vauguely remember James Blish's adaption explaining the Festival as a means of population control, as, I assume some people were killed as a result of the "madness"

Of course I could be wrong as my original book rotted away years ago! )

 

[T'Girl]

If the people of that planet (the entire planet?) went crazy because Landru simply turned off his control for a few hours, then what happened on the streets after Kirk and Spock destroyed Landru? Or did Landru have to "push" everyone to run wild?

 

[Timewalker]

If the people of that planet (the entire planet?) went crazy because Landru simply turned off his control for a few hours, then what happened on the streets after Kirk and Spock destroyed Landru? Or did Landru have to "push" everyone to run wild?

Landru was never "offline" until Kirk destroyed it/forced it to destroy itself. The Red Hour wildness was part of the peoples' programmed behavior.

At the end of the episode there is a brief conversation with the 23rd century equivalent of a social worker who is among the cultural team sent to help the inhabitants adjust to making a stable society without Landru - apparently the people were so used to being controlled that they simply did not know what to do without Landru. The cultural team member mentions several domestic quarrels in a slightly approving way, and Kirk relaxes - obviously these people are on their way to a normal life, and he himself did the Right Thing Once Again.

 

[scotpens]

There is a real world example. In some Buddhist societies, monks have a one-day festival in which they get drunk and generally act wild. The local citizens fund it and take care of the monks.

Monks Gone Wild!

An example more familiar to Westerners is Mardi Gras. And for American college students there's spring break -- although that's really just an excuse to act a little wilder than they normally do.

 

[Hober Mallow]

Everything shouldn't have to be spoonfed to the audience. The explanation is implicit in the story.

It's not a matter of it being spoonfed to the audience, it's a matter of a story element actually being important to the story. It was an element that was introduced in grand fashion, then dropped and not mentioned again during the entire episode. It's like taking the time to introduce a character at the beginning of a story, only to have him disappear and never mentioned again, with no apparent affect on the story.

When you set up story threads the need to pay off. They don't necessarily need to be explained in great detail, but they do need to pay off in some way. The episode is initially set up as a mystery as to what the heck is going on with this Festival. Then it's dropped and never touched again.

 

[Timo]

They had to introduce at least one tangible reason for why having a Landru wasn't a good idea... If they didn't do that, we'd get "The Apple", where our heroes destroy paradise for no observable reason besides "we didn't like it".

So the audience is supposed to dislike Landru. But forcing us to dislike Landru because he sponsors the Red Hour is sort of counterproductive - it puts Landru in a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" position where both control and lack of it are found objectionable.

I'm not concerned about the lack of explanation here, really. We can and will invent our own; after all, we have to invent a reason for Landru keeping the people calm the rest of the time, too, because that isn't directly given to us, either. Nobody explains why Landru would wish to stifle creativity and thus make his pet society weaker than it could be. Nobody explains why Landru would wish to force people to hide their advanced illumination technology. We just postulate that it is because of... What?

However, the episode does explain that Landru isn't working in the originally intended fashion. He's not doing what the real Landru, the guy whose image the computer monstrosity is projecting, intended to be done with the planet's society. He's explicitly malfunctioning, by promoting a machine version of perfection where the real Landru wanted a human(oid) one.

Isn't it given, then, that everything that Landru has been shown doing, from the Red Hour to the Lawgivers, is automatically objectionable and lacking reason and rhyme? Wouldn't any effort at explaining the Red Hour or the Lawgivers be wasted when the deeper truth is that they are just malfunctions?

I'm more worried about the mixed message being sent: freedom is bad, but freedom is good. Moderation of violence is good, but moderation is evil. The government protects family happiness, but the government is the enemy of happiness. Where's the clever, thought-provoking message in that? "Always aim at the middle"? "Vanilla is the best flavor"?

Timo Saloniemi