Them Archons

[Wingsley]

One neat thing about this ep is that it once again features a guest starring actor who was born in the 19th century: Morgan Farley (1898-1988) portrayed Hacom, the Landru loyalist who finked on everyone and brought the Lawgivers into the Inn. (Love that old-fashioned hairdo of his.)

As far as the apparent disagreement in this thread about characters in this ep freaking out, and whether it's chilling or a hoot, the great thing about "The Return of the Archons" is that it is so well done that you can either get into the "reality" of the story ("the suspension of disbelief", if you will) and find the drama disturbing, or you can step back and see all these actors obviously having a ball going berserk on camera. The earliest example of this is in the teaser when George Takei takes Sulu to "paradise".

I'd say this ep could've been better. (Why do Landru's followers keep time using an all-too Earthlike clock? Why not just use a bell?) Still, it is underrated.

 

[Nebusj]

I have supposed that the Body's zomboid mannerisms resulted from direct control by Landru. Because a lifetime of this suppression had nullified their judgement, whenever the Landru gadget had to take a breather, or whenever it released its hold for whatever reason, the Body would just freak out, having lost all ability to control their impulses.

And for another parallel there's the Akutaimatsuri --- the ``Festival of Bad Language'' --- in the Japanese provinces of Aichi, Nagano, and Shizuoka. Men participating in the festival are driven to a state of such excitement that spontaneously spewing out profanities is to be expected; it's regarded as a transformative experience. (I understand from newspaper accounts that it's also a time when if you want to curse out your boss, your landlord, anyone who fills the rest of your year with petty nuisances, you can and it's not held against you.)

The Red Hour? No, but as science fiction extrapolations based on real-world events go it's rather a restrained speculation.

We don't get very many explanations of what all the components of Landrunian society are about, but then Our Heroes spend rather little time in it and most of the locals refuse to explain the blindingly-obvious-to-them. This is credible on the locals' part and it does mean --- for me, at least --- the society takes on credibility for being underdetermined after a couple of major points.

 

[johcomp]

I vaguely remember (but please correct me if I'm wrong) that in James Blish's adaption of this episode, the Festival is explained as a means of population control... presumably some people ended up being inadvertantly killed during the Red Hour.....

 

[cooleddie74]

I always thought that Landru looked like he should be cutting men's hair. FETH-TIVAAAL!

YOU DON'T MESS WITH THE LANDRU

 

[kissthestar]

He did sport a rather pronounced pompadour.

 

[cooleddie74]

Apparently, feathered bangs are one with the Body.

 

[Jeri]

One of the things I love best about sci-fi is the "what if?" factor. When they pulled out the light panel and the true history of the planet began to be revealed, that's when they hooked me.

I was just going to bring that up; I even made a screen cap of it a while back. The light panel was cool, and Reger's casual unveiling of it was telling. There was more than met the eye there, and he well knew it.

 

[Trevacious]

Let's not forget it's also one of the first eps featuring the patented Kirk fake-out of a sophisticated computer intelligence -- I think the first is in What Are Little Girls Made Of, when he turns Ruk against Dr. Corby.

And confuses Andrea.

 

[MikeS]

Woo-hoo! An unexpected pleasure. A totally new episode to me! I assumed I'd seen this one, but the more I got into it, the more I realised I did not know what was going on. Truly an unexpected pleasure on an otherwise uneventful Wednesday evening.

The first mention of the Prime Directive, the morality tale (Gene's atheism shining through here), the "Kirk talks a computer into destroying itself", all make this a great episode IMO. Bit confused as to how a 6000 year old civilization were Human though.

 

[paustin]

big fav of mine

 

[RobertScorpio]

big fav of mine

Yes...a bit 'heavy handed', but well done and Kirk/Spock at their early best...

Rob