Things I never noticed before.

Throughout Errand of Mercy, everyone mistaknely believes that Organia is a stagnant society that has undergone no change for thousands of years. In fact, Spock reports these findings to Kirk early on in the show shortly after they have landed....after he has walked through the automated doors that lead to the council chamber where Kirk is waiting.

Why is it then that no one happens to notice these automated doors to the elder's council chamber? People are walking through these doors constantly and yet no one thinks to ask how it is that such a primitive society has managed to develop sensor operated doors.

 

I always just thought it was far developed but stagnant. First it developed into a very high level and then just stayed there.

 

I'd watched TOS for over 20 years before I finally noticed the lizard sculpture inside sickbay by the door

 

Developed enough to have automated doors but everything else is still medieval? I mean, they don't even have running water.

 

Was running water mentioned in the episode? We've never seen a toilet on the Enterprise either but I still assume they have one.

 

You think they have running water? Also, at the beginning of the ep, Spock points to a medieval castle.

 

Even as a child, I thought the doors were opened and closed by people pulling on ropes, or working levers. Perhaps people standing right outside the council chamber, either side of the door.

The big castle we saw at the beginning of the episode, it likely had a main gate, opened (and closed) by chains and a muscle powered mechanism.

In reality, it was the same with the turbo-lift doors on the Enterprise's bridge set, guys with ropes.

The Romans, who were pre-medieval, had running water, large aqueducts feed the water to it's destination, feed by gravity.

During the actual medieval time period, there were cisterns in some homes, just like the water towers in some communities today but smaller. Water pressure by gravity.

There were also pumps powered by animals.

 

Sure, but we're talking running water as in you walk up to a sink and turn on a tap. I think it was a continuity error myself. People just got used to doors opening and closing "by themselves" on the show and just stuck with it. Or, maybe the stage hands in charge of opening the turbo lift doors needed to work (union laws maybe?).

The point is, that it seems most incongruous to the mood the Organians were trying to set. Kinda like walking onto a planet that is technologically advanced in every way except that when it comes time to count something, people break out an abacus.

 

I think it was the first hint to us (the audience) that things were not what they seemed. It seems doubtful that unions rules required them to to keep "door openers" employed or they forgot the door wouldn't be automatic.

 

That certainly seems the most reasonable explanation. I certainly never thought otherwise, though it does still leave you wondering why Kirk and Spock never give it a thought. Or maybe they did.

 

That's how a cistern works. you walk over and turn the faucet handle , water flows out of the cistern.

You do know there was running water in America prior to the advent of electricity?

")

 

My grandmother once told me about the time when she and my grandfather bought their farm and moved in. He'd promised her that the place had running water...

"It had running water, all right," my grandmother told me. "I had to run and get it."

Yep, she had to go downhill to a creek and haul the pails back uphill...

 

And that's precisely the impression I got from Organia at first which is why automated doors seemed so out of place and the fact that Kirk and Spock don't notice it is ever stranger.

 

I don't think they did. They both seemed convinced that the Organians were both simple and perhaps a little simple-minded as well. Hence, the great shock at the end of the episode when they discover that the Organians are "as far above them as they are to the amoeba." That may not be an exact quote but Spock does say something to that effect toward the end of the show.

 

I think the doors were a subtle clue, as Nerys Myk does. In production, those doors had to have been opened like that deliberately, so the director must have made a choice to give some hints.

Another hint, far less subtle, was when the Klingons started beaming down and one of he council members told Ayelborn about it. They couldn't hear the beaming, and even if he could, everyone else would have heard it too. In hindsight, it seems to be another clue that the Organians are not what they appear.

I think both Kirk and Spock were too distracted by their goal of denying Organia to the Klingons to pay proper attention to the inhabitants.

 

I wonder if the goats and oxen in that picture are Organians, or "conventionalizations."

 

A third hint is at the initial beam-down of our heroic duo. When they arrive at the city wall, they arrive at a completely deserted scene. But when they stop sparkling, suddenly the place is bustling with people and animals. It's as if these materialized on cue - which is exactly what they must have done, in retrospect.

Timo Saloniemi

 

So why were Organians role play as humanoids, anyway? Was it just for the occasion of the war? Or was it done for regular entertainment, which the Klingons and Feds interrupted?

 

Nice rationalization for needing a still scene for the beam-down dissolve.

 

I'd argue they didn't normally do humanoid bodies, as there were none there when Kirk and Spock beamed down. But apparently Starfleet had somehow come to the conclusion that there were humanoids living on Organia before the episode even began, as Spock was able to tell Kirk this much in the teaser...

Perhaps the Organians had done the humanoid thing out of sheer curiosity when UFP explorers first came nosing in, and had to do it for consistency's sake when Starfleet returned.

With beam-down locations like old Earth or Iotia, the background was nevertheless filled with props. But this time they kept the assorted barrels, carts, piles of rotting bodies and other medieval classics out of the picture altogether, until the crowd pours into the frame... Which makes the contrast all the sharper.

Timo Saloniemi