#Kodos the executioner

[goodboigoose]

Conscience of the King of Swords

[cdr2002]

So one of my favorite things the mirror universe does is put characters in positions their prime selves would hate.

Spock is forced into a leadership position neither version of him would particularly want, though his role as a revolutionary does echo his prime self founding the Unficationist movement later in life.

Smiley, similarly, has even more responsibilities thrust on him than the already overworked prime O’Brien. You just KNOW he’s still having to maintain that bloody space station while also leading the revolution and having to shut down Bashir’s stupid gung ho ideas (thank the prophets for Tuvok) and keep him from shooting their own guys (again)

Federation values peace first Georgiou is reflected by a brutal Emperor who later takes delight in working for Section 31, who are practically the Federation’s “Wolf Inside�� to steal a phrase

Freedom fighter Kira is reflected by a slavering dictator who takes a perverse delight in causing cruelty and tries to garner validation while doing it in a manner not at all dissimilar to Dukat.

Tilly is TERRIFIED of Killy and she’s ever really met her.

But what if, for another way to show the mirror universe taking familiar faces and having things go catastrophically wrong? Before anti fascist revolution takes hold and hopefully steers things to a better path, that is.

The wrong people, in the wrong places. The worst people in positions of power.

The novels already had a kernel of this idea with Supreme Legate Dukat as leader of the Cardassian people, and without any Dominion deals to make it happen. Let’s expand on that.

First Minister to Bajor and second most powerful Bajoran after Intendant Kira? Why, Kai Winn of course. She may even take the role of Intendant after Kira’s fall from grace.

Leader of the Klingon people? Many stories give this job to Regent Worf, but I say, what if he is only a regional governor of a section of space under his rule? The throne holder back on Qo’Nos? The man with the cunning to place himself on top? No doubt with Cardassian help for “the good of the Alliance” of course. A man with no respect for Klingon tradition?

I submit to you, Emperor Duras.

Let’s go a century back, to. The Terran Empire would REWARD Kodos for his “original thinking”. A man with such power and prestige that Kirk can’t risk his career to kill him, but he would like to.

And let’s not forget Garth of Izar. Genocide is horrifyingly normal in the Imperial Starfleet, he’s NOT getting mental health treatment. He’s probably still a beloved war hero, maybe even a powerful admiral. A potential contender for the Emperor’s throne after the loss of Georgiou.

Sometimes the darkest reflections are all too familiar.

[marlinswritingarchive]

Tarsus IV: Appendix Of Redacted Files (StarfleetLogs)

There are a number of misconceptions about the Tarsus IV Massacre.

Misconception 1: "The children were the first to go."

This is greatly exaggerated. Of the 4,000+ colonists who died, only 40% of them were children- approximately 1600; which, while a tragedy, was not an act of genocide, but of famine. When the time came, only 162 children were chosen by Kodos to die.

This was the one constant; the one thing that was sacred. All those with parents willing to die for them were safe. And, die they did, when Kodos declared that something must be done.

That is when the rest were killed. There were more than four thousand deaths on Tarsus, of course, but not as many as four thousand disintegrations. However, when they compiled the lists of the dead, they attributed all those unknown deaths to Kodos The Executioner. The true number of victims died with him.

Misconception 2: "It was a natural disaster which came on without warning."

This assumption is perhaps the most understandable. Firstly, because the destruction of the grains was indeed the work of a strange fungus. Second, because it did, indeed appear to be an accident.

Officially, the same fungus that destroyed the crops (and, therefore, the colony) of Epsilon Sorona II also destroyed the crops of Tarsus IV. It was theorised, but never proven, that the Epsilon refugees brought the spores with them by mistake- tramped in on the bottom of boots. Whether intentional or not, the incident was treated as hostile by Kodos and his followers.

The fungus spread fast.

Misconception 3: "There are only nine survivors who can positively I.D Governor Kodos."

There are ten. Two of them currently dwell on the USS Enterprise. Seven are spread across the galaxy. Their names are [REDACTED].

The tenth is a man named Anton Karidian, a man with no history, a man with no past, and a bone structure that no amount of surgery can disguise. Sometimes he looks in the mirror and sees an actor. The rest of the time, he avoids mirrors.

[Flourish. Enter King, Queen, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and attendants.]

It is curious that he does not avoid the limelight.

KING: Welcome, dear Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

Moreover that we much did long to see you,

The need we have to use you did provoke

Our hasty sending...

There are a number of horrors surrounding the events of Tarsus IV which people are quick to minimise. These are all truths, ones which get lost in the mythologising of The Tarsus VI Massacre. For, surely, in the 23rd century, humanity has moved past such petty things as racism, eugenics and misogyny? However, no matter how often people gloss over it, the wording remains the same:

Misconception 4: "Governor Kodos decided who would die based on his own personal theories of Eugenics."

'Personal theories of Eugenics' is a quaint way to describe fascism. Perhaps Governor Kodos was not always a fascist, but he was certainly not always Governor. A military coup, on a colony that was first settled by war veterans, is not at all hard.

Misconception 5: "The body of Kodos was too charred to be identified. His face, burned. His fingertips, burned. However, dental records suggest that this was, indeed, his body, as does the DNA we could gather- blood tests were sufficient. We believe that the warehouse was set on fire by a small group of rebels, once Kodos and his security detail were trapped inside. Governor Kodos is dead, and we regret we could not bring him to justice."

- Source: Kit Ashingtower, Chief Medical Examiner.

There is one final truth; for those in Starfleet who have the clearance to learn it. Within the Federation, details of the massacre will remain confidential for another fifty years before the details are released to the public, but, occasionally, a footnote slips through. Sometimes attached to a personnel file, sometimes a medical file, and, in this case- attached to both.

Misconception 6: "Despite being a direct eyewitness to the events of Tarsus IV, James T. Kirk appears to have no lasting trauma associated with the event, and has passed his psych eval.

He has been declared fit for command."

[2erris-divine]

https://archiveofourown.org/works/67087834/chapters/173216866

Hey! I finished my first ever work on ao3!!

Summary: In which Jim and Leonard trauma bond on Tarsus IV, 2243-2246.

Content warnings in the tags and do apply, read with caution. But if you read it and like it, feel free to leave me comments or kudos!

[lizzyinfandoms]

Uh, just to make sure I’m not going completely insane.

Kodos was very much the very much the villain of Conscious of King, right? And a eugenicists? Because i got into an ugly fight with a friend of my boyfriend’s last night about it where he says Kodos was justified” and “wasn’t actually an eugenicists” and I can’t tell if I’m going crazy or not.

[hopecomesbacktolife]

because this particular scene (and his inflection, tone, etc. when he says this) has lived in my head rent free for years, ever since I first saw tos, here’s a reaction image I made of Kodos saying “I am tired!!”

shoutout to Arnold Moss (Kodos’s actor) for his gravitas, sheer presence, and amazing acting in this episode, too!

[fannishnan]

Nooooo, imagine Cumberbatch as Kodos the Executioner.

The meta level of adding a classically trained actor to play that character would've been gutting.

Casting Benedict Cumberbatch as Khan was the most galaxy brain racebending in Hollywood bc they really thought they'd get praise for making the character less racist by making him white, because they said it'd be problematic to cast someone who wasn't white to "play a terrorist", except Khan wasn't a terrorist before, so they invented a way for it to be problematic and thought people would say "good job" for avoiding that

Help, we took a tragic mastermind and turned him into a terrorist and then made him white to avoid the stereotypes we added to our script for no reason, why are you mad at us. Where's our kudos. We did a tie-in comic where we explain that Khan had plastic surgery to turn himself white so like, it's not even a plot hole

[tprings-hair]

what happened on tarsus iv?

this is my attempt at creating a definitive list of information on what kirk experienced on tarsus iv for fic writers and other fans who want to know wtf is up with kirk's backstory.

(I have a longer, more general post on tos kirk's backstory here.)

"Kodos the Executioner, summary. Governor of Tarsus Four twenty Earth years ago. Invoked martial law. Slaughtered fifty percent of population Earth colony, that planet. Burned body found when Earth forces arrived. No positive identification. Case closed."

let's start with this quote from spock, detailing the information he found on their ship's computer.

first of all: at its core, this episode is tos's take on the nazis who escaped capture. adolf eichmann was only found in 1960, and would certainly have been in the public memory as a high profile nazi who managed to make a new life under an assumed name. he was not the only one to have escaped capture, and I don't think I need to explain which conspiracy theory the circumstances of kodos's faked death call to mind.

this episode was an exploration of what form cruelty and authoritarianism might take in star trek's universe, with a huge amount of influence from shakespeare's work. the two together make up this central dilemma: is it kodos? might kirk be condemning an innocent man? if it is kodos, does kirk have the right to act as judge, jury, and executioner? is it possible for someone who carried out terrible acts to live a new life somewhere else, and not have the violence follow?

SPOCK: According to our library banks, it started on the Earth colony of Tarsus IV, when the food supply was attacked by an exotic fungus and largely destroyed. There were over eight thousand colonists and virtually no food. And that was when Governor Kodos seized full power and declared emergency martial law.

MCCOY: I've heard of it.

SPOCK: You may not have heard it all. Kodos began to separate the colonists. Some would live, be rationed whatever food was left. The remainder would be immediately put to death. Apparently he had his own theories of eugenics.

MCCOY: Unfortunately, he wasn't the first.

SPOCK: Perhaps not. But he was certainly among the most ruthless, to decide arbitrarily who would survive and who would not, using his own personal standards, and then to implement his decision without mercy. Children watching their parents die. Whole families destroyed. Over four thousand people. They died quickly, without pain, but they died. Relief arrived, but too late to prevent the executions. And Kodos? There never was a positive identification of his body.

the thing is, this introduces a number of inconsistencies. it could easily be chalked up to confusion between multiple drafts of the script, but if you want to look deeper and see where the information comes from, you'll notice the two survivors have very different stories than the official starfleet record.

specifically, spock says that they died quickly and painlessly, and though he is sure that karidian is kodos, he does not seem to treat him as a legitimate threat to anyone's safety. we don't know if kodos ever directly killed anyone, or if he only gave the orders. but kirk and leighton seem to agree on the violence: leighton refers to his own injury as "the bloody thing (kodos) did", and kirk recalls kodos "blasting" others out of existence. it's possible kirk was saying it to confuse kodos, so kodos might say "that's not how it happened" and give himself away. it's also possible that leighton sustained his injury at a different time than the massacre. it seems likeliest to me in any case that the information on the ship's computer is not the entire truth.

which also means you can headcanon whatever you want and nobody can tell you definitively that you're wrong. be free with your tarsus iv headcanons.

exploring the tarsus iv lore (or lack of it) has led me to this sort of consensus in the fandom that kirk was looking after a group of children. I think it's a very cool way of exploring how central it is to his character that he has to be in control, protecting people, and fighting back, and I've read and enjoyed some absolutely fantastic fics with that premise. even william shatner seems to agree. in his novel collision course (which gives kirk and spock a sort of alternate first meeting as teenagers and gives some great insights into how shatner viewed kirk's backstory), kirk ().

the ship's computer specifies the number of survivors later in the episode as nine, and lists them as

Kirk, J., Leighton, T., Moulton, E., Riley, K., Eames, D.

before kirk cuts it off. once leighton dies, the last two surviving are kirk and riley.

the novelization by james blish names a couple more characters, and in order of age: Leighton, T., Molson, E., Kirk, J., Wiegand, R., Eames, S., and Daiken, R., which was what they called the role of kevin riley initially. he is specified as being five years old at the time, and kirk is not a child or teen but a midshipman.

and collision course names still more characters. edith zaglada, an eight year old girl who kirk saw killed. donny, tay, and billy are named as other survivors. this novel doesn't get into kodos's motivations or kirk's circumstances, but it gives us two new characters, griffyn and matthew, who are teenagers employed by kodos as bounty hunters for escapees of the initial massacre. starfleet arrives just as edith is shot and griffyn is trying to convince matthew to shoot kirk. we don't really know if kirk knew any of the other survivors, but he mentions edith's name specifically a few times as a death that affected him a lot. it's heartbreaking to watch city on the edge of forever with that in mind. I also can't find a source for anyone calling him JT, but collision course does call him jimmy during the flashback chapters.

crucially, the novel isn't technically canon. so you can have your gang of children led by JT, or you can have jimmy stick with a couple of people, or you could do something totally your own. none of these are wrong! do whatever your heart desires.

if you want some practical details, there's a great post here by @spirk-trek and pt 1, pt 2, and pt 3 of a great post by @pywren. I may make my own tarsus iv headcanon post if anyone is interested, and if I do I'll link it here.

[ao3feed-spirk]

Immutable

read it on AO3 at https://archiveofourown.org/works/52019593 by obsidienne When he is summoned to testify at the trial of Kodos the Executioner, Jim finally allows himself to share his deepest traumas with Spock. Words: 4261, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English Series: Part 15 of The Vulcan Heart Fandoms: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies) Rating: Mature Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Categories: M/M Characters: James T. Kirk, Spock (Star Trek), Hikaru Sulu, Pavel Chekov, Montgomery "Scotty" Scott Relationships: James T. Kirk/Spock Additional Tags: Established Relationship, Past Child Abuse, Childhood Trauma, Trauma, Soul Bond, Vulcan Mind Melds (Star Trek), Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Comfort, Episode Related read it on AO3 at https://archiveofourown.org/works/52019593

[lithiumseven]

“Whom Gods Destroy” really made Kirk, kicked to the ground, listen to his hero shout at him that he would succeed where governor Kodos of Tarsus IV had failed. They really did that

[trekkiehood]

Imagine being a child and being sentenced to death because it is believed that you are not valuable and aren't worth the resources. You are told you will never amount to anything and therefore you will be executed.

Then just out of spite you survive and become the youngest Starship Captain in history who saves multiple planets and becomes one of the most notable and infamous captain in history. You foster peace treaties. You go down in history books. People study your life and tactical strategies for generations.

You are arguably the most valuable asset the Federation has in your life time.

All this and yet you still hear the voice of a madman in your head as he reads that you are sentenced to death so the more valuable people can live.

[robynnemrys]

This is one of the reasons I love Star Trek. They're always making you think. So many of the TOS is analyzing who a person is and what are the fundamental pieces of who you are.

For example, Kirk getting divided into two characters. Evil!Kirk may seem, well, evil but without him Kirk is incapable of being a good Captain as he's unable to make a decision. At the end of the day/episode you have to realize that we are not all good but those negative parts are still a part of who we are and sometimes necessary for us to function. For example, sometimes we need to focus on ourselves to function. And that means being a bit selfish from time to time. It doesn't necessarily make us bad even if it's often seen that way.

I mean some moral dilemmas are more obvious. For example in "The Conscience of the King" we learn about the colony on Tarsus IV and the mass genocide that took place there. There was a fungal infection that destroyed the crops and there was some concern on whether or not they could survive on their stores until help arrived. Kodos, the governor at the time, decided that the best thing for the survival of the colony was to kill off half the population in order for the rest to survive. He chose people based on eugenics and killed off approximately 4 thousand people. He was believed dead but Kirk and another survivor, Thomas, end up recognizing a disguised Kodos among a traveling theater troop. Thomas is later found murdered which only further raises Kirk's suspicions. Aboard the Enterprise, Kirk and another survivor, Lt. Kevin Riley, are both attacked but manage to survive. Riley discovers Kodos is aboard and attempts to attack him in revenge for the attack on himself and the murder of his parents but Kirk eventually talks him down. Its discovered that Kodos' daughter, Lenore, has been attempting to murder any possible witnesses who could testify against her father. Kodos, who believed his daughter was the only thing unaffected by what he'd done, was horrified and when she tries to kill Kirk steps in the way and is killed by her. She goes insane with grief and eventually is institutionalized.

Okay now that we have a rough summary, let's unpack all that.

Firstly, we have the actual events on Tarsus itself. There's the debate on what he's done though the show firmly states that his choice to commit genocide was wrong and earned him the title "Kodos the Executioner." Though some point out that on many other occasions on the show they argue that "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few" which can lead to the argument that the genocide could have been somewhat justified if not for the eugenic basis for who lived or died. The show doesn't explore this but I have read some fics which dive into it.

Next we'll skip to Kevin Riley's storyline. There's the debate on whether his decision was justified. On one hand, we have the argument that murder is never okay but at the same time, Riley lost his whole family because of this man and believed Kodos had just tried to murder him in order to hide his crime. That seems like a pretty good justification to murder someone. I can't recall if Kodos would have been jailed or executed should he be tried for his crimes but I believe there was a chance he'd have been executed so he might have died anyway, so would it have been wrong to let Riley kill him?

Then we have Kodos and his daughter, Lenore. Lenore was born shortly after the Tarsus IV massacre and Kodos believed she was the one thing unaffected by what he'd done. He planned to live his life without ever hurting anyone again however his daughter discovered who he really was at some point and decided to protect him no matter what. She became a serial killer, murdering the few survivors who had seen his face and could testify against him. Kodos seems legitimately upset upon discovering that his daughter has become a murder for him and his decision to live has caused even more death. He chooses to sacrifice himself in order to save Kirk and dies. Kodos seems like a cut and dry villain at first but becomes a more complicated, three dimensional character as the plot progresses. As Tom Hiddleston once said, "every villain is a hero in their own mind" and Kodos exemplifies that well. In his mind he was protecting the colony and ensuring its survival while all the rest of us can see how horrifying his actions were. When given the chance, he tried to live peacefully and seemed genuinely remorseful for what he'd done. Meanwhile his daughter, who had seemed nice through most of the story, turned out to only care for her father and was willing to do anything to protect him which led to her murdering 7 of the 9 eye witnesses who had seen Kodos' face. In her mind she was just protecting her father and couldn't handle his death.

There are many other questions you can ask based on the moral dilemma of this episode. (Heck, you can argue about how gross it is that Kirk, who lived through the massacre, was basically dating Lenore who wasn't born til after said massacre. Granted she did choose to do so in order to get close to him so she could kill him, but still.) But generally we can agree on the obvious ones, eugenics is bad and so is murder. But the rest still make you think which I love. (Plus we get tons of excellent fanfic out of it!)

X

[warpfactornonsense]

Angsty comic time! 

Warning: mild depictions of Tarsus IV and baggage that comes with.

[startreklivebloggers]

KODOS?!

Kodos the Executioner, is totes alive, Jim!

Listen to your buddy!

[japper2]

“Spock and McCoy confront Kirk in his quarters explaining what they know.  Kirk is at first irritated from his officers interfering what he views as a private affair, but ultimately agrees to their help.  Shortly thereafter they hear phaser on overload, someone is now trying to assassinate the Captain!  Kirk searches for the weapon instead of running because if it explodes it may take decks off the ship.  He finds it in the nick of time and drops it down a disposal shoot, which I guess means of disposal shoots of the Enterprise are so strong that they can withstand phaser explosions.”

[scififootball]

How #StarTrekDiscovery ep3 links to the wider franchise's events and themes, including Project Genesis and Kodos. scififootball.com/2017/10/06/mythos-in-star-trek-discovery-context-is-for-kings/