Was Karidian Kodos?

[Timo]

He does state that if help had arrived sooner he would have been considered a hero rather than a butcher! Not sure how, but there you go!

It should always be emphasized in these discussions that Kodos didn't have a leg to stand on.

There are exactly two scenarios for a shortage of food, and neither of them can be solved by killing half the hungry mouths.

1) Food is gone (save perhaps for a token small supply) and new food only arrives after a known interval of time (regular resupply, emergency resupply, new crop).

2) Food is gone (save perhaps for a token small supply) and there is no new food coming.

In the second scenario, everybody dies in the end, and the killings don't help much. But if the idea is for Kodos and his closest followers to live longer, then killing 50% of the cattle makes no sense - killing 99% and throwing it in the freezer would make a revolt less likely, while killing 1% and eating it fresh (and emphasizing how this is for the common good) would achieve much the same in the absence of freezers.

For the first scenario, the length of the time interval dictates everything. If the interval is long enough, it becomes the second scenario, and the above applies. But if the interval is short enough for 50% to survive without any food, then it is automatically also short enough for 100% to survive.

And if it is short enough for 50% to survive on what little they have, then it is most probably short enough for 100% to survive on 50% of what little they have. Shortage of food is unlike shortage of oxygen or money: the human body can stretch immensely and unpredictably, up to three months of total lack of food if need be.

Of course, if scenario 1 involves crops, then the planet can apparently sustain life. So nobody need starve, or even feel hungry - there's an entire planet for mere 8,000 people to eat between themselves! Crops would probably also involve a cycle of 12 months, considering how Class M seems to be the galactic standard. So there's no way to stretch the three-month endurance of humans by killing half of them for the other half to eat - 99% would have to die to sustain the 1%, and we already discussed that.

So Kodos killed purely for the sake of killing. Which makes one wonder if it wasn't him who arranged for the famine in the first place...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[johnnybear]

Maybe we're missing the real truth that someone posed earlier on that the colonists were murdered and then fed to those that he thought were worth saving! A bit like Soylent Green? Television of the time probably didn't want to comment on canabalism!
JB

 

[MAGolding]

Clearly the writers and rewriters had their wires crossed here, on many issues. So it's up to us to figure out a working alternative to the thing they had in their confused minds.

The saving grace here is that nowhere in the episode does anybody actually say words to the effect of "what Kodos looked like". Kodos' looks are not stated to be a mystery - which is great when we consider there's a photo of him.

The mystery is the nine "eyewitnesses", and what they "saw", and how this will help "identify" Kodos. Those are the three words we have to worry about, not the looks of Kodos. Generally, eyewitnesses see something happen. They then tell the authorities, and out of nine (no doubt conflicting and wildly inaccurate) stories, the truth is deduced. But if something is left unsaid for reason X, it may remain unsaid when the eyewitnesses think Kodos is dead.

Enter Karidian. And enter his daughter, who realizes an eyewitness has identified Kodos. This is reason enough for her to kill the witness, regardless of the thing left unsaid.

So my interpretation is that the eyewitnesses can identify Kodos as somebody (Kirk rudely interrupts the computer at the exact point where "...as XYZ" would be heard), and their identifying Karidian as Kodos is sort of incidental to the whole thing.

This sort of covers all the bases.

- Everybody knew what Kodos looked like.
- Only the nine saw Kodos do something that is revealing to who he was.
- The computer knows that the nine can identify Kodos as XYZ, but also that they have not spoken their piece to the authorities because they thought Kodos was dead, and the authorities did not press the kids further to no apparent gain.
- Lenore kills people who can identify Karidian as Kodos; she doesn't care about them identifying Kodos as XYZ. But the killings obscure the true knowledge the eyewitnesses uniquely had.
- Lenore doesn't need to kill all the 4,000 survivors who all can identify Karidian as Kodos. But she stumbled onto an eyewitness who had more intimate knowledge and was quick to make the connection; killed him but got worried; and started hunting for the other nine.
- For all we know, she nevertheless has also killed sixty-eight others out of the 4,000, and Kirk is none the wiser about that.

The plot works, then. And we don't need to know the exact dirty secret of Kodos' true identity for it to work. My bet is the kids wanted to protect somebody who would be compromised through his or her connection to the true identity of Kodos - and furthermore that the somebody had already died prior to the episode, removing or lessening the need to stay quiet, but Kirk still felt no need to tell Spock anything extra, an Kirk and Riley had no need to discuss the thing between themselves.

Timo Saloniemi

I'm not sure why you keep referring to the nine eyewitnesses as kids. Kirk and Riley clearly count as kids to me, and quite likely Leighton, two. That leaves six other witnesses that we only know as male, since Leonore killed six "men". Thus those those "men" could have been anywhere from babies to retirees at the time of the massacre and still be "men" 20 years later if still alive.

So maybe, Kirk, Riley, Leighton, and six others were in the last group of victims about to be killed when rescuers beamed down to save them. Would those six others be in the same age range as the 2 or 3 kids, or include males of all ages?

Or maybe the six were among perhaps a hundred Starfleet men and women who beamed down to various places in the colony. Maybe 20 beamed down to the execution site and interrupted Kodos when about to kill Kirk, Riley, and Leighton. The 20 witnessed what the 3 kids witnessed. Then a firefight broke out with Kodos's supporters and all but 6 of the starfleet rescuers in the group of 20 were killed, leaving 6 starfleet men plus 3 kids as the witnesses.

We don't know.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

Almost certainly. It seems like he pretty much admitted it during the scene in the theater with Riley, Kirk, and Lenore.

But maybe Kodos had a twin brother. Maybe that twin brother of Kodos the Executioner changed his name from whatever it was before - I always wondered if Kodos was his real time or an alias - to Karidian and started a new life. Karidian said he could no longer remember. Maybe his guilt over what his brother did, and his desire that his brother could have somehow survived, drove him insane and he came to believe that he was Kodos.

You're trying way too hard to interpret the episode in the exact opposite way from which it was intended.

 

[Shawnster]

The thing about the Nine is the greatest mystery in the episode, really.

- The Nine "saw Kodos", and are the ones who can "identify Kodos", but one can point out that only the first of those claims is accompanied with the specifier "only". Can others, that is, people outside the category of "actual witnesses", identify Kodos or not? Is the ability to identify crucial to why Lenore is killing these people, or not?
- Nothing about the looks of Kodos is unknown to the authorities, so how does "seeing" help with "identifying"? Or does it not?
- Why doesn't Leighton remember whether there were eight or nine "of us", both very specific numbers?
- Who are "us"? What connects them? Are the Nine who saw Kodos the entirety of "us", or just a subset?
- Why is the list of the Nine not completely alphabetical, placing Eames after Riley instead of before Kirk? Or is that a mishearing of the name, and it actually begins with some post-R letter? Yeames? Are the remaining four then Zachary, Zephram, Ziggy and Zorn?

The thinking put into this would be fun to quantify. Writers/fans = 0.000001?

Timo Saloniemi

Sigh...


1. Only... Actual eyewitness. Only those 8 or 9 left alive were actual eyewitness to Kodos actions. Yes, millions saw Kodos. But only thoe 9 saw Kodos commit the crime. That is the definition of eyewitness: a person who saw something happen and can provide feedback.

2. See above. Seeing helps identification when an individual saw the crime. The focus is on proving Kodos committed the crime. No trial was held. If Kodos was alive, arrested, and put on trail, those 9 would need to testify.

3. Leighton doesn't remember who is left alive. Lenore has been killing people. Some may have died due to accident, disease, old age, etc... Or Leighton keeps forgetting to count himself. Or one of the 9, says Riley, was really too young to be a reliable eyewitness.

4. See above. Us are the 8 or 9 people linked by the commonality they saw Kodos kill all those people. They saw him throw the switch or pull the trigger ir whatever. Maybe they were in line for execution themselves.

5. After affect of Finney's computer tampering?

You know, the edited scene where Kirk describes Kodos vaporizing the victims in booths puts "A Taste of Armageddon" in a new light.

 

[Gary7]

"Much ado about nothing." -- Shakespeare.

I was just curious what people could be so busy chatting about. Kodos identity was well established. Computer verified voice print identification. Match. Karidian confessed to being Kodos. Numerous people recognized his voice as Kodos. I don't understand how there could be any ambiguity here.

"Twin brother"?

 

[Poltargyst]

Yeah I think the episode makes it pretty clear that Karidian is Kodos. I'm surprised anyone had any question about that.

 

[johnnybear]

There was an edited scene with Kirk speaking of Kodos putting people in booths and vapourising them? Is that true? Where can I see that scene? Sure it's not on my clamshell DVDs!!
JB

 

[MAGolding]

There was an edited scene with Kirk speaking of Kodos putting people in booths and vapourising them? Is that true? Where can I see that scene? Sure it's not on my clamshell DVDs!!
JB

I don't know if the scene was filmed and edited from the episode, but it was definitely scripted:

I saw men, women and children
forced into an anti-matter chamber
... and a self-appointed messiah
named Kodos threw a switch, and
there wasn't anyone inside anymore!
Four thousand people! Dead!

http://www.orionpressfanzines.com/articles/conscience_of_the_king.htm

James Blish used a copy of the script that included this and other lines not in the aired episode for his adaptation of the episode. So I have always imagined that Kodos and his men forced the victims into some kind of transparent disintegration chambers.

Of course there is no canonical statement about the killing methods. Spock merely says that the victims were killed quick and painlessly and Kirk merely says they were blasted by Kodos.

But I always wanted the method to be disintegration in transparent disintegration chambers.

Recently I have thought of a justification for it. Originally Kodos and his followers, who included an engineering whiz, hoped and promised to invent long range interstellar transportation and transport the excess colonists to safer colony worlds. But after accidentally killing a number of prisoners, they realized they could never get it to work. They continued to tell the colonists that they were sending the prisoners to other colonies, but instead used the transportation device to disperse the victims's atoms, or maybe to send their protein molecules into the colony's protein storage units.

James Kirk found out and maybe constructed a subspace radio to contract Starfleet and get relief ships sent sooner than expected. James Kirk, Riley, and Leighton saw group after group disintegrated, then it was their turn, the last batch of the day. They were locked into the chamber with a few others, heard Kodos's speech, and saw him reach for the control switch.

And I imagine what happened then was a bit like the last scene in the first episode of the old serial Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe (1940) when Flash interrupts Ming in his laboratory.

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So the starfleet rescuers shot it out with Kodos's goons while releasing Kirk & Co. from the death chambers. Kirk spotted Kodos trying to sneak away and called for others to capture Kodos. Kirk and some others including Riley and Leighton ran after Kodos. When Kodos got far enough away from the death building he pressed a button on a gadget and the death building and all it's evidence exploded, killing all of Kodos's men and the starfleet group who were fighting in it.

Kodos got away form the pursuers in the confusion of the explosion, and entered the government offices though a secret tunnel to avoid the Starfleet besiegers. He told his men defending the building to hold out to the last phaser shot, saying he had a secret weapon to slaughter the Starfleet attackers. He went ot his office and dragged out the prisoner he kept hidden there, killed him, and used his phaser set on burn to burn the body beyond recognition. Kodos removed his fake beard and other elements of his Kodos disguise to look like his other identity, went back out through the secret passage, and detonated the self destruct, blowing up the government offices, lots of incriminating evidence, his followers, and the besieging Starfleet men.

Kodos probably watched You Only Live Twice too many times and wanted to be a Bond villain.

Then Kodos prepared to resume his normal life, while planning to take up some other false identity as soon as he left the planet.

At least that's in my head canon.

Gary7 said:

I was just curious what people could be so busy chatting about. Kodos identity was well established. Computer verified voice print identification. Match. Karidian confessed to being Kodos. Numerous people recognized his voice as Kodos. I don't understand how there could be any ambiguity here.

Well, maybe there is very, very, very little chance that Karidian could not be Kodos, but the thread does wander off into many discussions of various interesting problems with the episode.

 

[Timo]

Sigh...

Indeed, if it only were that easy. But no, the writers have to machine-gun themselves in the foot...

UFP courts have no need for eyewitnesses in establishing whether the man called Kodos ordered the deaths of the colonists. The have his confession on tape! And connecting a face to the voice cannot hinge on the nine eyewitnesses if 8,000 back then a trillions later on are perfectly aware of who Kodos is and what he looks like.

Yes, the role of the "nine actual eyewitnesses" is defined by the literal-minded computer, as the people who can "identify Kodos". But it must be "identify as X", and X cannot stand for "the man who ordered the deaths", because this would not be limited to the nine at any point.

Anyway, if the eyewitnessed had evidence to offer, they would have offered it already, twenty years before Lenore began killing them. So any rationalization has to introduce reasons why the eyewitnesses would hold back, or why them not holding back would not save them. Of course, when the killer is insane, the latter part is easily covered...

3. Leighton doesn't remember who is left alive.

That's not what he says, though. If he's misspeaking, the above is of course one of the many interpretations.

4. See above. Us are the 8 or 9 people linked by the commonality they saw Kodos kill all those people.

But again that's not what he says. There may be no "us" apart from the eyewitness group, but taking Leighton literally would allow for an "us" to exist.

You know, the edited scene where Kirk describes Kodos vaporizing the victims in booths puts "A Taste of Armageddon" in a new light.

And takes away the last of excuses for Kodos' actions: back then, disintegrating would not have turned people into hamburgers and fries, supposedly.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Tim Thomason]

Really, the colonists made a mistake in electing someone known as "the Executioner".

 

[johnnybear]

The main story tells us though that Tarsus four was a lovely place until severe starvation spread across the planet due to crop failures I'm guessing and Governor Kodos had to keep law and order in the cities until he and his advisors came up with a scheme to segregate the colonists, deciding whether who died and who lived! If Starfleet or whomever had reached the world before the killings started then Kodos would have probably been knighted!
JB

 

[Shawnster]

Kodos' actions: back then, disintegrating would not have turned people into hamburgers and fries, supposedly.

Timo Saloniemi

Who said Kodos was turning the dead into food?

 

[johnnybear]

Who said Kodos was turning the dead into food?

Detective Thorn?
JB

 

[Timo]

..The nine eyewitnesses?

Alas, nobody says that, meaning Kodos killed those people for nothing much. I for one would wish for my sacrifice to serve man.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Greg Cox]

For what it's worth, the new DISCO novel deals with all this in detail.

 

[MAGolding]

Who said Kodos was turning the dead into food?

In my post # 21 I susggested that Kodos MIGHT have done so.