The ultimate computer

[BillJ]

Quite plausibly, the Evil Empires would simply fold when their already distressing qualitative and thus quantitative inferiority...

I seriously doubt either one would shirk away from engaging the Federation because of M-5. If nothing else, if M-5 is that big of leap, it may cause the Klingons and Romulans to declare war before it is available fleet wide.

 

[Knight Templar]

Starfleet would never have to worry about Klingons or Romulans again, which would probably account for roughly 100% of the relevant combat missions.

Why? The Klingons and Romulans would obviously know of such experiments and may even have agents involved. Remember, Spock said military secrets are the most fleeting of all.
.

Spock said that about the cloaking device.

Which is still a huge advantage throughout all of Star Trek's recorded history that we have to date.

 

[BillJ]

Spock said that about the cloaking device.

Which is still a huge advantage throughout all of Star Trek's recorded history that we have to date.

Is it really though? Even the uber-cloaks seem to have a relatively short shelf life before sensors are advanced enough to again detect them.

 

[UnknownSample]

Why M5 waited until being installed on the Enterprise to show its psychosis: Daestrom was deeply bitter about perceived or real betrayals and disrespect from colleagues and superiors, and the loss of his reputation, and was anxious to triumph again, and in some vague unspecified way, beat his enemies down into the dust. So he bided his time, gradually and patiently developing his new work, but with the huge ultimate victory in mind that would make all the years of work and patience worthwhile.


M-5 felt the same way, of course, so it was also waiting for the moment of triumph (installation on the Enterprise) to begin striking back. Daestrom could suppress and manage his rages, until the big moment, and so could his computer offspring. Daestrom though was a human and a scientist, thinking mainly in terms of rubbing his success in his colleague's faces. M5 was put in control of (and "became") an extremely powerful and deadly starship, and its revenge was inevitably going to take a very different form. It was almost a newborn, with a giant loaded gun in its hand. It couldn't make gloating, triumphant speeches at scientific conferences, it could only vent its less-focused rage with phasers.


It may have wanted to show that it could execute perfectly all the tasks it was designed for, proving its superiority, establishing its total success, for gloating purposes, before beginning to strike back at "the world". Daestrom's bitterness might have been more against "the world" in general than against specific people, emotionally anyway, since there were so many imitators and detractors. M5 would have that too. So it struck out indiscriminately.

 

[The Grim Ghost]

Starfleet would never have to worry about Klingons or Romulans again, which would probably account for roughly 100% of the relevant combat missions.

It's not as if Kirk ever won - or even chose to fight - a battle against an opponent stronger than those Klingon or Romulan battle cruiser triplets. But when facing such super-opponents, Kirk needed his human cleverness chiefly in order to save his own life and that of his crew. A ship flown by a computer would not have to worry about such things, and episodes such as "Doomsday Machine" or "Immunity Syndrome" would actually have high odds of ending in swift UFP victory.

I can't see any downside to equipping a starship with a working M-5. Although no doubt Starfleet would build ships optimized for compatibility with M-5 (or M-7, or M-12) once an old-fashioned starship had demonstrated the concept. And some of those ships might carry crews, while others might not. That's more options than Starfleet has "now".

Timo Saloniemi

Ah, see I was talking about a purely M-5 driven ship with no humanoids aboard.

But I still see plenty of disadvantages even with a human crew and an "m-5 button" to hit in combat.

We only see the M-5 in pretty straight forward combat. We have no way of knowing how it would perform in other environments against trickier or more esoteric enemies.

We see again and again in TOS that wily humans often find ways to best super intelligent computers. That this didn't happen in the M-5 test run doesn't prove much, especially considering that the Starfleet ships were blindsided by believing they were in a war games situation.

 

[Timo]

We only see the M-5 in pretty straight forward combat. We have no way of knowing how it would perform in other environments against trickier or more esoteric enemies.

How would that be a downside? If M-5 can't do well in such circumstances, Kirk doesn't press the panic button. If it does excel in "tricky" combat, then Kirk learns to press the button there, too. There's no downside, not to a properly working M-5 that agrees to being overridden.

We see again and again in TOS that wily humans often find ways to best super intelligent computers.

Which is good news for humans, and bad news for their enemies!

Also, while Kirk talks computers to death, Romulans and Cardassians talk humans to betraying the Federation. I doubt a M-5 working as promised (that is, a computer that doesn't comprise the sum total of the damning weaknesses and odd morals of its creator) would switch sides all that easily.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Wingsley]

If we assume, for a moment, that multitronics impressed with the engrams of living Federation citizens (presumably starship commanders) were doable and did not produce the disastrous results that the M-5 wargames showed us, then the Federation would likely wind up pursing a significantly different paradigm of space vessel design and deep space exploration.

Consider that Commodore Wesley told Kirk in the transporter room:

WESLEY: You've had a singular honour conferred on you, Jim. You're going to be the fox in the hunt.

KIRK: What's that?

WESLEY: War games. I'll be commanding the attack force against you.

KIRK: An entire attack force against my ship?

WESLEY: Have you heard of the M-5 multitronic unit?

KIRK: That's Doctor Richard Daystrom's device, isn't it? Tell me about that.

SPOCK: The most ambitious computer complex ever created. Its purpose is to correlate all computer activity aboard a starship, to provide the ultimate in vessel operation and control.

WESLEY: How do you know so much about it, Commander?

SPOCK: I hold an A-7 computer expert classification, Commodore. I'm well acquainted with Doctor Daystrom's theories and discoveries. The basic design of all our ship's computers are Doctor Daystrom's.

KIRK; What has all this got to do with the Enterprise?

WESLEY: You've been chosen to test the M-5, Jim. There'll be a series of routine research and contact problems for the M-5 to solve, plus navigational maneuvers and the war games problem. If the M-5 works under actual conditions as well as it has under simulated tests, it will mean a revolution in space technology as great as warp drive. When your crew has been removed, the ship's engineering section will be modified to contain the computer.

KIRK: Why remove my crew?

WESLEY: They're not needed.

KIRK: How much security does this gadget require?

WESLEY: None. Doctor Daystrom will see to the installation himself and he'll supervise the tests. When he's ready, you'll receive your orders and proceed on the mission with a crew of twenty.

KIRK: Twenty? I can't run a starship with twenty crew.

WESLEY: The M-5 can.

KIRK: And what am I supposed to do?

WESLEY: You've got a great job, Jim. All you have to do is sit back and let the machine do the work.

Wesley's underlined quote is most significant.

Apparently, the Federation was cautiously optimistic that multitronics could revolutionize space travel through radical changes in both ship personnel assignments (or lack thereof) and space vessel design. I would expect the Federation to regard this revolution as a way to transform space vessels and their behavior in a very radical way.

It's not hard to imagine what a multitronically-controlled starship might look like. Imagine a powerful, unusually agile space probe a fraction the size of a Constitution-class vessel. Something that could outmaneuver ordinary starships. Many tasks would be carried out by "drone" robots/androids (think Data, only maybe not as refined or "human"). If living people are required on a mission, a transport-tug starliner module (or modules) could be attached.

The notion of a multitronically-controlled "starship" could be like what would become Sisko's Defiant a century later. Only the foundational "vessel" would be manned, maintained, repaired and configured mostly by machines with supposedly superior abilities and speed. A "starship", in this context, could easily be reconfigured to a new mission profile with stunning ease and speed.

 

[Timo]

In light of this speculation, it is particularly interesting to look at the redone Woden from the very episode, as well as compare her to the Antares from "Charlie X" and the nameless drones from "More Tribbles". The script already featured the idea that the Federation uses robotic ships for some tasks, and TOS-R expands this with those "optional crew modules"; this in turn helps out the "Charlie X" script where the mission and identity of the Antares was in flux - something we could now easily accept from this highly modular design.

It rather looks like Wesley got his revolution sooner than he thought: it came to him retroactively!

Timo Saloniemi