#the result of seeing Spock in all those silly hats

[thymelessink]

Old men being cute

[per-ineptia-ad-astra]

Star Trek Episode 1.23: A Taste of Armageddon

AKA: Good God Y’all, What Is It Good For?

Our episode begins with the Enterprise on its way to conduct some diplomacy. Kirk elaborates for us:

“Captain’s Log, Stardate 3192.1. The Enterprise is en route to star cluster NGC321. Objective—to open diplomatic relations with the civilizations known to be there. We have sent a message to Eminiar 7, principal planet of the star cluster, informing them of our friendly intentions. We are awaiting an answer.”

Kirk is filling in the time until they get that answer by being a nuisance on the bridge, first hovering over Spock’s shoulder and then going to bother Uhura about whether they’ve received a reply yet. She patiently tells him that yes, the hailing frequencies are open and no, they haven’t gotten a reply yet. Before Kirk can try asking, “Okay, how about now? How about…now?” the lift doors open and a man in a suit with a collar you could dunk a basketball through and a face like people have tried to steps onto the bridge.

[ID: A screenshot of Fox, a middle-age white man with short curled blond hair, blue eyes with heavy bags under them, and a bitter expression. He’s wearing a grayish-brown top with a round collar wider than his entire head.]

He also wants to know if they’ve gotten a reply yet. Kirk tells him no, they’re still waiting for Eminiar 7 to call back. In fact, it’s only since today that they’ve even been sure the Eminians have gotten their signal at all. But just then, Uhura announces that they’ve finally gotten something back from Eminiar, and it’s “Code 710,” repeating over and over. “Is that supposed to mean something?” the ambassador says loudly. Kirk explains to him that Code 710 means that under no circumstances are they supposed to approach the planet—no circumstances whatsoever (something you’d think an ambassador would know). You notice he didn’t say “under no circumstances except the circumstance that you, specifically, think we should do it anyway” but apparently that’s what the ambassador heard, because he immediately tells Kirk, “You will disregard that signal, captain.”

“Mr. Fox, it is their planet,” Kirk points out, but Fox is not impressed by this. “In the past twenty years, thousands of lives have been lost in this quadrant,” he snaps. “Lives that could have been saved if the Federation had a treaty for here. We need to have that port, and I’m here to get it.” Kirk points out that disregarding Code 710 could result in an interplanetary war, but Fox says he’s prepared to take that risk. Oh, you’re prepared to take that risk. I’m sure that will make everyone else who winds up involved in an interplanetary war feel better about it.

Further protests for caution prove equally useless; Fox reminds Kirk that his mission gives him the power of command, and he’s going to exercise it. Kirk’s job is to get them into orbit, and leave the rest to Fox. Then he stalks back off the bridge, leaving Kirk to sit gloomily in his chair for a moment before putting the ship on yellow alert, raising the shields, and having the phaser crews stand by. “We’re going in, gentlemen,” he says. “Peacefully, I hope, but peacefully or not...we’re going in.”

After the titles, we see the Enterprise in orbit around a nice Earth-y looking planet while Kirk gives us a quick update: they’ve made it to Eminiar 7 and are preparing to beam down. “My orders are clear—we must establish diplomatic relations at all cost.” I see, going for the “be friends with us OR ELSE” approach here.

Kirk is on the bridge talking to Spock, getting the lowdown on the Eminians. Apparently their civilization is “advanced,” by whatever metric we’re judging that, and they’ve had spaceflight capability for centuries but have never left their own solar system. First contact was made fifty years ago, at which point Eminiar 7 was at war with its nearest neighbor, and the ship that made that contact, the U.S.S. Valiant, never returned. Spock says it’s “Listed as missing in space.” Right, sure. Same way the Lusitania is listed as “missing in the Atlantic Ocean” I bet.

At this point Fox comes onto the bridge and shoves his way into the conversation, demanding to know, “Kirk, what’s this about you going down alone?” Kirk says, nonsense, he’s not going down alone—he’s taking some redshirts with him and everything. Of course, what Fox really means is, what’s this about Kirk going down there without Fox. Kirk says that whatever Fox’s prerogative as ambassador might be, he’s not going to risk beaming Fox down until he knows “what kind of a reception [Fox is] going to receive.” Which makes sense. You don’t want to just beam your ambassador down into a completely unsecured situation, who knows what might be going on down there. Of course, you also wouldn’t want to beam the captain of the ship down into a completely unsecured situation but, well, you can’t have everything.

“Your safety is my responsibility. Those are my orders, sir,” Kirk tells Fox. Then, before Fox can come up with a rebuttal to this, Kirk leaves him standing there and walks off to talk to Spock. Spock reports that the transporter is ready, and they’ve selected a beam-down spot that they’re guessing from the traffic is near some kind of official establishment. He also reports that they haven’t noticed any signs of hostility from the Eminians, or in fact any sign of the Eminians acknowledging their presence at all—which is odd, because they were scanned when they arrived, so the Eminians obviously know the Enterprise is there. So they’re leaving the Enterprise’s shields down for the moment, but Spock assures Kirk that all defensive details are on general alert, just in case.

Kirk wants the landing party to take some ‘phaser number ones’  when they go down, but keep them inconspicuous. Then he tells Scotty, “The ship is yours. Take care of her until I come back.” With that, Kirk, Spock, and three waiting redshirts depart into the lift, while Fox glowers after them.

We then see an establishing shot of a pleasant enough looking city down on the planet...

[ID: A screenshot of the Eminian city, consisting of several tall white buildings with black and gold detailing and a wide expanse of mowed grass in the foreground. A couple of monorails are visible among the building, and a small group of people can just barely be seen standing on some paths among the grass.]

...before cutting to an interior corridor, where a woman is looking at a device as she walks, flanked by a couple of guards in very silly hats. After consulting her device, the woman says, “They will materialize there.” (How she knows this is never explained.) “Remember your instructions. They are to be treated correctly, nothing more.”

[ID: Three people walking down a corridor composed of several angular archways that are lit in bright green, pink and purple. In the center is a white woman with blonde curly hair, wearing a kind of wrap tied draped diagonally across her chest, colored in blocks of teal, black, white and blue, with black tights and flats underneath it. She is looking down at a gold device in her hands. On either side of her are two men dressed in black one-piece uniforms that each have a colored stripe going diagonally across the torso and down one leg, with a large silver clasp on the shoulder; one guard has a red stripe and one has a purple stripe. They are both wearing a hat of a corresponding color which is tall and somewhat resembles a paper bag standing on its end.]

ah yes, our proud and noble city guards, the Sack Hats

Sure enough, the landing party materializes in a nearby courtyard, next to a nice bit of abstract art. As the woman and her escort walk over to meet them, we get a swell of romantic music and a shot of the woman’s face sparkling in soft focus, for no other reason that I can tell except that she’s a woman. Seriously, she’s not even a love interest in this episode.

Kirk introduces himself and says he’s representing the United Federation of Planets, which is incidentally the first time we’ve actually heard the Federation referred to by its full name. “I know,” the woman says. “I’m Mea 3. I congratulate you on your instrumentation. You’ve come directly to the Division of Control. If you’ll follow me, please?” Oh boy, the Division of Control. That doesn’t sound ominous at all.

Mea 3 leads them back into the building, but as they start to head down the corridor, her professional decorum breaks for a moment. She starts to say, “Captain, I wish...” When Kirk prompts her to go on, she just says, “You were warned not to come here.”

Kirk says he had to come anyway, because orders, what you gonna do, then asks why they were warned off anyway. Mea says it was for their own safety, which baffles Kirk, because he sees no danger here. I mean, how can there be danger if you can’t see any danger? Doesn’t make sense. But Mea 3 says the danger exists anyway. “Nevertheless, you are here. It would be morally incorrect to do less than extend our hospitality. Anan 7 and members of the High Council await you.”

She picks up the pace again, leading the party down another corridor ending with a big door watched over by a couple more guards. Mea takes the group inside, where they are awaited by five men sitting at a half-circle table, all of them dressed in the same black-and-color-stripe uniform as the guards, but without the silly hats. The man in the middle is also wearing a kind of beige shawl over the top of his uniform to set him apart from the rest. Ah yes, beige. The color of authority.

Kirk introduces himself, Spock, and the redshirts: Galway (hello again!), Osborne, and Yeoman Tamura. (Why do you keep bringing Yeomen on these kinds of missions.) The man in the beige shawl stands up and introduces himself as Anan 7. He welcomes them to Eminiar 7 and asks what he can do for them.  Kirk says his mission is to establish diplomatic relations between their people, and Anan 7 immediately says, “That is impossible.” Ohhhhh boy, this is gonna be a long visit.

“Would you mind telling me why?” Kirk asks, very politely but with a look in his eyes that says clearly that he is already SO tired.

“Because of the war,” Anan replies. When Kirk is surprised that they’re still at war after fifty years, Anan tells him that in fact, they’ve been at war for over five hundred years. This catches Kirk off guard because, as he says, they conceal it very well. He then calls Spock up to the front of the class to give a quick presentation on the subject. Spock says they’ve scanned the planet and found it, “Highly advanced, prosperous in a material sense, comfortable for your people, and peaceful in the extreme.” So, very nice planet, 4.5/5 stars, would stay again, so how can there be a war going on when there’s no evidence whatsoever of it?

Nonetheless, Anan tells them that they see 1-3 million civilians dead every year from direct enemy attack. That’s why, he says, the Enterprise was told to stay away: as long as it’s orbiting the planet, it’s in serious danger. Well gee, thanks. The Eminians sure do lean a whole lot on that “you were WARNED to STAY AWAY” thing considering the incredibly tepid effort they made with the actual warning. Sure, they sent out a code, but as we’ll learn a bit later, they’re fully capable of contacting the ship well enough to have a full conversation, and the Enterprise was trying to establish such a conversation for quite some time. There’s no reason we’re told that the Eminians couldn’t have explained specifically why the Enterprise should stay away, or established communications with them at a safe distance—they just didn’t bother.

Spock asks who these invisible people are that they’re at war with anyway, and Anan explains that they’re at war with Vendikar, the third planet in this system—which is something Spock should know, considering he earlier described the Eminians as being “at war with their nearest neighbor�� fifty years ago, and all indications are that this is the same war, but never mind that. Anan says Vendikar (I don’t know why Eminiar 7 has a number but Vendikar is just Vendikar) was originally colonized by Eminiar 7 in the first place, but apparently there was some kind of falling-out, because Vendikar is now “a ruthless enemy—highly advanced technologically.”

At that moment an alarm starts buzzing, and one of the walls of the room slides open, revealing an adjoining room filled with computer banks and screens on the wall. “Please excuse me,” Anan says. “Vendikar is attacking.”

He asks Mea to look after their guests and hurries off into the computer room, leaving the landing party to watch in confusion. Kirk asks Mea if they’re not going to take shelter, but Mea just gives him an odd look and says that there is no shelter. She doesn’t seem especially perturbed by any of this, and when Spock asks her if the attacks are frequent, she calmly says, “Oh, yes. And we will retaliate immediately.”

One of the screens in the computer room, which is showing a large map, suddenly lights up. Mea looks stricken and explains that it’s showing a hit—right here in the city. Since there’s a conspicuous lack of any explosion noises, the landing party is naturally even more confused by this. When Kirk asks Mea what weapons are being used, she says it’s fusion bombs, being materialized over the targets. Not the sort of thing it’s easy to miss, but there’s no sign at all of anything happening. Kirk even calls up Scotty and asks him if the scanners have noticed anything going on, but Scotty says it’s all quiet down there.

While Kirk and Spock are trying to figure out what’s going on, another illuminated spot appears on the screen in the computer room. One of the councilmen points it out to Anan, who grimly muses that “They were warned.” Yeah, keep telling yourself that. The councilman says that this is “Just as it happened fifty years ago.” Considering that fifty years ago was when the Valiant came here and was never seen again, this exchange doesn’t seem to bode well for our heroes—and neither does Anan’s subsequent order for the councilman to alert a security detachment because “they may be needed.”

As the councilman heads off, Anan comes out of the computer room to talk to Kirk. “It was a vicious attack,” he says. “Extremely destructive. Fortunately, our defenses are firming, but our casualties were high, very high.” Kirk is so confused by this that he wonders out loud if it’s all some kind of game, but Anan takes immediate offense, telling him that half a million people dead is no game. Then he tells the other councilmen to “activate the attack units” for an immediate counter-attack.

With this, Spock has finally got this whole thing figured out: “Computers, captain. They fight their war with computers totally.” Kirk protests that computers don’t kill that many people, which is obviously wrong. There are many exciting ways for computers to kill people. Those ones in the background right now could probably take out several just by falling over on them.

Of course they’re fighting with computers, Anan says. The deaths have been registered and the dead now have twenty-four hours to report. Report to what? Why, the disintegration machines, of course.

“You must understand, captain,” Anan explains in the face of Kirk’s increasingly confused and horrified expression. “We have been at war for five hundred years. Under ordinary conditions, no civilization could withstand that, but we have reached a solution.” Spock asks if that means the attack by Vendikar was theoretical, but Anan says that no, it was very real—Anan’s own wife was killed in the last one. It just wasn’t an attack accomplished by any real, tangible weapons. Their computers, and Vendikar’s, calculate where such weapons would strike, and what the damage would be, and the people who became casualties in the simulation must then become such in real life, and report to the disintegration chambers to be killed. “Our civilization lives. The people die. But our culture goes on.”

When Kirk expresses stunned disbelief that the people of Eminiar will just walk into a disintegration chamber when told to, Anan simply replies, “We have a high consciousness of duty, captain.” Right, I bet they do. Enough propaganda will do that for you.

Spock admits that all this does have “a certain scientific logic” to it. Anan takes this to be approval, but Spock coldly corrects him.

[ID: 1. A screenshot of Spock saying, “I do not approve. I understand.” 2. A screenshot of Anan, a middle-aged white man with short graying brown hair, a short brown goatee, and brown eyes, looking off to the side and saying, “Good.”]

no NOT good! weren’t you listening???

Anan then reminds them, once again, that they were warned not to come here and did so anyway, and now “I’m sorry, but it’s happened.” “What’s happened?” Kirk asks, in the voice of a man rapidly approaching his breaking point. Anan grimly explains that once the Enterprise was in orbit around Eminiar, it became a target in the war, and in the attack just now it was marked as being destroyed in a “tri-cobalt satellite explosion” whatever that is. By the rules of Eminian/Vendikaran warfare, everyone aboard the Enterprise is now dead and has twenty-four hours to report to the disintegration chambers—and Kirk and co. will be held in custody to ensure their cooperation.

Of course, the Enterprise may have been warned against approaching the planet, but they weren’t told why they shouldn’t, and certainly not told anything about the simulated war or about the incoming attack, giving them no opportunity to take evasive action or defensive measures as they ordinarily would do when engaged in battle. Indeed, we’ll later see that the Eminian weapons aren’t capable of doing more than lightly shaking the Enterprise when her shields are up—and it seems unlikely the Vendikaran weapons could do much more, since they seem to be pretty evenly matched. The Eminian style of war might be cleaner, by some definition, but it removes all hope of second chances. No taking of bullets for someone else, no deaths averted due to swift action by a skilled commander on the scene or by luck or by someone getting medical attention fast enough. You not only don’t have a say in whether you’re involved in this war if you’re born onto the planet or just happen to be in the nearby vicinity, but no action on your part can ever do anything to avert the preordained death of you or your loved ones. No wonder everyone on this planet is so defeatist about the war. They’ve spent their last five hundred years as a culture having the idea hammered into them that nothing they do individually could do anything to change it.

I’m sure you can just about imagine Kirk’s reaction upon being told that his entire crew is supposed to report for execution, but as soon as he and the security men start reaching for their phasers, they find themselves surrounded by Sack Hats with their own weapons drawn. A couple of them grab Kirk by the shoulders, keeping him from escaping but not from all but vibrating with palpable fury.

“If possible we shall spare your ship, captain,” Anan tells him, apparently trying to be reassuring. “But its passengers and crew...are already dead.”

The comment about sparing the ship was probably meant as nothing more than a bit of filler dialogue, but if so inclined I think you can take it as quite indicative of Anan’s worldview. Kirk dearly loves the Enterprise, sure, but the idea that he would be concerned with the ship itself remaining intact, or would find any degree of solace in that idea, in this moment when the lives of literally everybody aboard are now at risk, is pretty absurd. We know Kirk better than that. It’s not even practically useful to him, since even if he and the landing party survive and could get back on the ship, what would they do then? Try to fly back to Federation space with five people manning a ship meant to have a crew of four hundred twenty? That would just be silly.

But that Anan would say such a thing as he breaks news so incredibly bad perhaps shows that it’s the kind of thing that, were their positions reversed, he would find comforting to hear. It echoes what he said just a few moments ago: “The people die. But our culture goes on.” Anan’s culture evidently places a high enough value on inanimate things and concepts that they consider the loss of individual lives tragic, but worth it to preserve those things. The question is, was their culture being like that what led to them conducting war in this way? Or did five hundred years of living through this endless war and being forced to justify it to themselves change their outlook over time?

After the break, Kirk gives us a quick recap via captain’s log:

“Captain’s Log, delayed: The Enterprise, in orbit about Eminiar VII, has been declared a casualty of an incredible war fought by computers. I and my landing party, though apparently not included as casualties aboard the Enterprise, are confined on the planet’s surface awaiting...what?”

We then see that the landing party are indeed confined, although as far as holding cells go you could do a lot worse; the room they’re in has some nice chairs, a rug, even a coffee table with some mugs on it. Swanky. Kirk’s obviously not taking much consolation in this, though, judging by the way he seems to be trying to wear a furrow in the floor with his angry pacing.

The door opens and Mea 3 enters, accompanied by a Sack Hat. She says she’s been sent to ask if they require anything.

[ID: Kirk, Spock, two male redshirts, and a young Asian woman in a red uniform dress, assembled in a small stone-floored and walled room with two chairs, a couch, a coffee table, a rug, and several pieces of assorted abstract art. Kirk is standing near the door and talking to Mea 3, saying, “yeah we could use some creamer for the coffee if you don’t mind OF COURSE WE REQUIRE SOMETHING”.]

Kirk positively snarls that he requires a great deal, starting with speaking to Anan, but Mea says he’s busy coordinating casualty lists. “He’ll have more casualty lists than he knows what to do with if he doesn’t get in here and talk to me!” Kirk fires back.

Mea, now starting get a bit ruffled, tries to say something about their duty, but Kirk isn’t having it, and tells her that it is not her duty to be cheerfully disintegrated. Actually, Mea says, that is very much her duty now: she’s been declared a casualty and is required to report for disintegration by noon tomorrow. Which is a bit odd, because Mea was in the same room and standing right next to the landing party while the attack was underway, and none of them were declared casualties. Either there’s been another attack in the meantime, or there’s some kind of lottery system in place to determine who dies, out of everyone in a specific area that was designated ‘hit’.

Kirk looks pretty thrown by this for a moment and asks if that’s really all this is to Mea, to dutifully report in and die. Mea informs him that no, she values her life as much as he does his, but she doesn’t have a choice; if people on Eminiar started refusing to report to their deaths, the terms of the agreement with Vendikar would break down and they would have to start using real weapons again. Eminiar would have to retaliate in kind. “More than people would die then. A whole civilization would be destroyed. Surely you can see that ours is the better way.”

“No,” Kirk says. “I don’t see that at all.”

But better or not, as Mea then reminds him, it’s been their way for five hundred years, and they’re clearly pretty stuck in it. At any rate, she’s not interested in arguing about it any more, and turns to leave, then stops to ask Kirk once again if the party needs anything. Kirk just repeats his demand to see Anan, so Mea sighs and leaves them in there to stare gloomily at each other.

Back up on the Enterprise, McCoy is engaged in his favorite pastime: standing on the bridge and grousing. Specifically, while they still don’t have any idea what’s actually going on down there, he’s concerned that they haven’t heard anything from the landing party by now. Scotty agrees that they should have heard back by now, but the fact is they haven’t, and they have no way of knowing why because they can’t raise the group. McCoy protests that dammit Jim Scotty, they can’t just SIT HERE! So Scotty asks what McCoy would have him do, then.

[ID: 1. A screenshot of McCoy looking taken aback. 2. A screenshot of McCoy looking off to the side and saying, “uh...tbh I didn’t think I’d get this far.”]

McCoy is forced to admit—well, more accurately, ‘come close to skirting around suggesting at admitting’--that he does not, in fact, know what they should do. “Would you have me open fire?” Scotty demands. “Of course not!” McCoy immediately replies, but he’s still not happy.

But that’s what happens when you put McCoy and Scotty together for too long. They make a dangerous combination. I always feel like they’re about thirty seconds away from either getting into a raging fist fight or egging each other on into committing arson, it’s just a toss-up as to which.

Luckily, before either of those two things can happen, Uhura reports that there’s a message coming in from the captain, and all disagreements are hastily thrown aside to pick it up. “Good news, Mr. Scott,” Kirk’s voice says. “The Eminians have agreed to the establishment of full diplomatic relations.”

[ID: A shot on the bridge, with Scotty sitting in the command chair, leaning forward, while McCoy stand next to him with his hand on the buttons on the chair’s arm.]

Bones get your hand off the chair console you’re gonna accidentally go to red alert.

Well, that sounds great! So no worries, then? Everything fine? Indeed, everything is so fine that, Kirk goes on, the Eminians have extended an invitation for all personnel to visit the planet for shore leave, and he’s been personally assured that they’ll have a wonderful time.

At this point some dubious looks start getting traded across the bridge. Starfleet might have some remarkably lax standards for what constitutes an appropriate shore leave location, but the middle of an active war zone is pushing it even for them. Plus, there’s that thorny little bit about sending down all personnel, something not typically done due to the minor little issue of the ship needing some people on it to prevent it from crashing into the planet. But Kirk assures Scotty that yes, he really did mean all personnel. Everyone. Send ‘em all. It’s fine—they’ll just beam up some trained Eminians to assume support positions aboard the ship. No worries!

As Kirk’s voice is heard saying this, we briefly switch perspectives to see that Anan is holding Kirk’s communicator up in front of a speaker system of some kind. “Those are my orders, Mr. Scott,” he says sternly in Kirk’s voice.

Scotty, of course, is no fool, and also would saw his own arm off before trusting the Enterprise solely to the care of a handful of absolute strangers, so he assures ‘Kirk’ that yes sirree captain, we’ll get those shore leave parties going right away, and hangs up. Then he gives McCoy a look and says, “Well, now, what do you think of that?” McCoy, rather surprisingly, doesn’t have a fiery opinion on hand about the situation, though he’s clearly got a sense that something’s up. Scotty is rather more certain, and marches over to the computer to have it run Kirk’s message through a voice analyzer. Apparently voice analyzer technology has improved in the Federation since that whole Kodos business, because rather than having to compare a couple print-outs of sound waves the computer just quickly runs a scan and then immediately tells him that nope, not Kirk’s voice, just a close copy. Most likely it’s from, as Scotty guesses, a “voice duplicator.” I think the implication is that Anan was using the machine we saw him holding the communicator up to to imitate Kirk’s voice, but it really could have been presented more clearly.

But never mind the mechanics of how it was done. The point is, as Scotty says, “They’ve got them, doctor. And now they’re trying to get us.”

Back in the holding room where the landing party has gotten Got, Kirk is asking Spock, “Are you sure you can do it?” Spock admits he’s not sure if this is going to work or not, but as he tells Kirk, “Limited telepathic abilities are inherent in Vulcanians.” He then goes over to the door, which we see has a Sack Hat standing guard on the other side of it. There follows a somewhat strange scene in which Spock puts his hands on the door and frowns at it, causing the guard to start looking increasingly uncomfortable and twitchy until finally he moves to open the door. So yes, I guess Spock can telepathically influence people to, at the very least, open doors, even without any direct contact.

Everyone quickly hides up against the walls, and as soon as the guard is within the room, Kirk chops the gun out of his hand and knocks him out, leaving the redshirts to drag him away. Yeoman Tamura asks what they’re going to do now, and Kirk says the immediate plan is to get back their communicators so they can contact the Enterprise. But to do that, they’re also probably going to need to secure some weapons. Kirk tells Spock that they’ll try to go easy, but they may wind up needing to kill, to which Spock nods glumly but says he understands.

The group sneaks out of the room, narrowly avoiding being seen by another passing guard, before heading off down an intersecting corridor. We then see a light set in a ceiling and flashing orange. But the landing party hasn’t been caught yet—this is no alarm but, in fact, an indicator light of some sort, installed above a booth set into a wall with a console set up outside. One Sack Hat is manning the console while another is talking to a woman in a purple toga, or at least something toga-adjacent. The party comes around the corner just in time to see the door to the booth open and the woman step inside it. Then the door closes again, the Sack Hat operates some controls, the light flashes, and the door opens again—now with no sign of the woman. Well, that doesn’t bode well.

As the landing party watches in grim horror, the other Sack Hat proceeds to get into the booth himself. “An entrance, captain, but no exit,” Spock comments. “They get in, but they do not come out.”

Well, given what we already know about the Eminians, it’s not hard to work out what we’re looking at here: this is one of the aforementioned disintegration machines, processing some of the day’s casualties. Given the cultural significance attached to these booths, I would kind of have expected them to be off in their own dedicated space, maybe with a few more guards around in case anyone got cold feet. But apparently they’re just stuck in various corridor junctions in this one very multi-purpose building, which is surely going to cause some traffic problems in these corridors on days with a particularly high body count.

Kirk leads the group in a careful creep down the corridor towards the machine, but as they approach another junction they suddenly and almost literally run into Mea coming the other way. She actually starts to walk right past them without seeing them, but Kirk quickly grabs her by the arm and pulls her off to the side, scaring the bejeezus out of her in the process.

“What do you think you’re doing?” he demands, and then cuts off her flustered stammering by telling her that she’s not going in there. Mea protests that she must and tries to get away, but Kirk’s got her by the upper arm, which as we all know makes it impossible for a woman to escape. “Please, don’t worry about me!” she says, while meanwhile the guard down the corridor continues to somehow be oblivious to all this.

Speaking of which, Kirk directs Spock towards said guard, and Spock sets off down the corridor while Kirk covers him with the gun they took off the chamber guard, still holding onto Mea with his other hand. For someone who supposedly has no qualms about getting in that chamber, she sure isn’t struggling a whole lot against the person preventing her from doing it.

[ID: A gif from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory of Gene Wilder’s Willy Wonka saying, “Help. Police. Murder,” with a totally deadpan expression.]

Down by the disintegration booth, a couple more people have shown up to be, ahem, processed. (And none of them have noticed anything either.) Spock casually strolls up to the Sack Hat, who surprisingly does not shoot him on the spot.

[ID: A gif of Spock walking up to one of the guards with silly hats and saying, “Sir, there’s a multi-legged creature crawling on your shoulder.” When the guard turns his head to look, Spock nerve pinches him.]

Having pulled off that legendary little maneuver, Spock then grabs the guy’s gun and backs up the way he came, while everyone else watches nervously. Including the other guards—apparently only that one had a gun. Once Spock is back with the group, Kirk yells at everyone to clear the area, then shoots the door of the disintegration booth. I might have aimed for the control panel, but apparently Kirk’s idea works too, because the whole thing starts smoking dangerously.

“What are you doing?” Mea exclaims in horror. “Throwing a monkey wrench into the machinery,” Kirk replies, undoubtedly a confusing statement for poor Mea who would have no idea what a monkey wrench is. “You can’t do this!” she yells, but as Kirk points out, he already has. Right on cue, the chamber explodes. Kirk and co. make a hasty retreat, hauling Mea along for the ride.

[ID: A screenshot of the geometric corridor, with a door at the end of it that is emitting large clouds of smoke.]

and thus the execution chamber was itself executed

Back in the council room, the councilmen are sitting around their table listening gloomily to someone radioing in a report about the landing party’s hijinks. Anan looks particularly grim, and sends out an order to the security personnel to find the landing party and “if they resist, do what is necessary.” This is interspersed with scenes of people running away from an explosion. I’m reasonably sure it’s supposed to just be that one explosion, but the editing makes it look as if disintegration booths are blowing up left and right.

Anan moves on to calling up the planetary disruptor banks and telling them to lock onto the Enterprise. I guess he’s figured out by now that they’re not going to report for shore leave. “In ten seconds, open fire,” he says. “Destroy the starcruiser. Those are the orders of the council.”

After the break, we get a report from said starcruiser in the form of a ship’s log from Scotty:

“Ship’s log, stardate 3193.0—chief engineer Scott recording. The captain and first officer are overdue and missing on the surface of Eminiar 7. I have taken standard precautionary measures while we continue our attempts to locate them.”

To kill time while they wait for news, McCoy and Scotty are having a conversation about some flashing lights on one of the consoles.

[ID: A gif showing a goldshirt at work at the helm in the foreground, while in the background McCoy and Scotty are standing at one of the computer consoles, looking at a screen with some flashing colored lights on it. McCoy points at one of the lights and says something to Scotty.]

One of the helmsmen, a Mr. DePaul, starts making a standard station check-in report, but just as he’s getting to the part about the sensors not reporting anything he hastily corrects himself. The sensor readings aren’t zero, they’re off the scale! Man, they should really install more than just those two settings on those sensors.

Immediately after DePaul says this, something impacts the ship, causing the lights to flicker and the bridge to shake a bit, although no one falls over this time. When it all dies down, DePaul reports that the screens are holding firm, and that they just got hit by some real hefty sonic vibrations. “Decibels—eighteen to the twelfth power. If those screens weren’t up, we’d be totally disrupted by now.”

Okay…there’s a couple of problems with this. Eighteen to the twelfth power equals about one quadrillion, or 1,156,831,381,426,176, to be precise. For reference, it takes a mere 194 decibels before a sound is so loud it stops being a sound and becomes a shock wave. The Krakatoa explosion, the loudest sound recorded in our history of recording sounds so far, registered 172 decibels at about a hundred miles away. I don’t know what one quadrillion decibels would do to you, but I’d be willing to bet that “we’d be totally disrupted” is a bit of an understatement. Also, THERE’S NO SOUND IN SPACE.

At any rate, as McCoy muses, this at least proves pretty definitively that their suspicions are correct: the Eminians aren’t feeling real friendly towards them. “Aye, but what about our captain, and the landing party down there, somewhere?” Scotty says. “We get them out!” McCoy replies, because of course he does. “If they’re alive, and if we can find them,” Scotty says. “That’s a big planet.” Right, whereas a small planet we could search no problem.

“Not too big for the Enterprise to handle if it has to,” McCoy snaps back. Steady on there, Bones, we can’t just go around blowing up every planet that Kirk doesn’t come back from on time, there wouldn’t be any planets left.

Scotty points out that while the Enterprise might have Eminiar outgunned, they’re a bit limited on reprisal options at the moment: they can’t fire their phasers with the shields up, and they can’t risk lowering those shields while the Eminians have their crosshairs on them. They could shoot off a dozen or two photon torpedoes, though. Probably not a serious suggestion—though it’s hard to tell with Scotty sometimes—but unfortunately who should walk onto the bridge just in time to hear it but Ambassador Fox, resulting in a swift rebuke that Scotty is to do no such thing.

“Mr. Fox, we’re under attack!” Scotty protests, but Fox isn’t interested. He claims it’s all obviously a misunderstanding.

[ID: 1. A shot of the bridge seen from just in front of the helm, with McCoy, Scotty and Uhura all looking up at Fox, who is standing near the lift. Fox is saying, “And one of my jobs is to clear up misunderstandings.” 2. A very similar shot, with Scotty saying, “so what’s your other job?” and Fox replying, “being incredibly obnoxious of course”. ]

McCoy jumps in to angrily point out that the Eminians are holding Kirk, but Fox waves this off, saying they don’t have any proof of that. I mean, no solid proof, maybe, but they did fake his voice to send a message trying to get everyone to leave the ship, bit hard to come up with an innocent explanation for that one.

“I am responsible for the safety of this ship!” Scotty protests. “And I’m responsible for the success of this mission, and that’s more important than this ship!” Fox replies. Ooh, bad move. Not a good idea to tell Scotty that anything’s more important than the Enterprise at the best of times.

[ID: A shot of Scotty looking confused and betrayed, saying, “the FUCK did you just say”.]

Fox insists that they came here to establish diplomatic relations and dammit, they’re going to establish diplomatic relations, regardless of whether they’re attempting to kill us as we speak. And Fox’s orders—according to Fox, anyway—get priority. He tells Uhura to open a channel and tell the Eminians to expect a priority one message from him. Uhura looks rather less than impressed by all this, but she does it.

“There will be no punitive measures, gentlemen,” Fox says just before he exits back into the lift. “Those are my orders.” I like how he addresses that not just to Scotty but to the whole bridge, presumably expecting that McCoy might just start throwing things out the window at the planet otherwise.

“Diplomats,” Scotty sneers. “The best diplomat I know is a fully armed phaser bank!”

Down on the planet the landing party is hurrying back into their original holding cell, choosing it as a place of cover since, as Kirk explains, it’s the last place the guards are likely to look for them. Mea is still insisting that Kirk has to let her go, because her time is almost up. Kirk asks if she’s really that anxious to die, and Mea starts to say, “You don’t understand--” before Kirk, undoubtedly seeing another rendition of the same rhetoric from before in his future, just cuts her off to talk to Spock instead.

Spock reports that their raids on the disintegration booths have netted them four guns, two complete Sack Hat uniforms, and, most importantly, a communication device. Unfortunately, it’s not able to reach the ship. But Spock thinks that with a bit of time he might be able to jury-rig it to get a longer range.

While Spock gets to work on that, Kirk pulls Mea aside and says that he wants her to give him a complete layout of the complex, especially regarding how he can get to the war room. Unsurprisingly, Mea refuses. “Now listen to me,” Kirk tells her, employing his favorite rhetoric technique of grabbing people by the shoulders. “I’m trying to help you. To save your life, and the lives of millions like you. If you help me, maybe I can do it. If you don’t, you’ll die. We’ll die, and the killing will go on—or are you that fond of the war?”

Mea, for the first time, really hesitates. “I believe you,” she says, looking down sadly. “But...”

“Tell me what I want to know,” Kirk says, still holding her by the shoulders. “Please.”

Back in the council room, Anan is standing at the table, addressing the other councilmen. Their situation’s not looking good: they haven’t been able to take out the Enterprise, they’ve lost a disintegration chamber, the prisoners are running loose, they’re behind on their death quota (the worst kind of quota), and they’re rapidly running out of time to fix any of these problems. Anan openly admits that he doesn’t know what to do now.

But at that point, a messenger suddenly comes in to tell the council that the Earth ambassador is calling them with an urgent message. Anan pauses woefully and says, “What is the greater morality...open honestly, or a deception which may save our lives?” Well, y’all have already committed one deception and didn’t seem too fussed about that, I don’t know why you’re having moral qualms about it now. Apparently said moral qualms aren’t too great anyway, because Anan sits down without waiting for a reply and asks to be put through to the Earth ambassador.

Up on the Enterprise, Uhura tells Fox that a channel is open and that he’ll be talking to “Anan 7, head of the high council of the Eminian Union.” McCoy and Scotty are standing by, ready to start yelling at a moment’s notice.

After brief formalities, Fox cuts to the chase: we came here to make friends, and you attacked us, and also you’re holding our landing party? What the heck? Anan smoothly replies that this was all one big mistake—a sensor error indicated the Enterprise was about to attack them, and, well, they are at war, after all. But no worries, it won’t happen again! Water under the bridge! Not even a thing! And as for the landing party? Don’t even worry about it.

[ID: 1. Scotty standing behind Uhura at her comm station, his arms folded and a disbelieving look on his face. Over the comm, Anan is saying, “You have my sacred word as an Eminian...”2. A shot from a different angle, showing Fox and McCoy standing behind Uhura, as Scotty says, “no good. I’ve known too many Eminians.”]

Fox smugly says that he thought all this just had to be a mistake, giving Scotty quite the eyeball in the process. Scotty is not impressed, and when the helmsman reports that the disruptor beams are no longer hitting them, Scotty immediately tells him to maintain their status anyway. Meanwhile, Anan is going on about how they’re really very eager to establish relations with the Federation and he’s so sorry about all the accidentally-shooting-you business, but we see him pause in the middle of it to mute his mic and tell the councilman next to him, “The moment their screens are down, open fire.”

Oblivious to all this, Fox tells Anan that he expects Kirk to be there when he beams down, and Anan assures him that Kirk will be. Satisfied with that, Fox tells Anan that Eminiar and the Federation are going to be best buds, he just knows it, and he can’t wait to meet Anan in person. Then he hangs up, turns to Scotty and McCoy, and rather snidely says, “Diplomacy, gentlemen, should be a job left to diplomats.” Well, sure, but keeping the ship from getting blown up should be a job left to people with a good track record for not getting the ship blown up.

He then casually adds that they will, of course, immediately resume a peaceful status. “No, sir, I will not,” Scotty replies, in a Superman pose for good measure.

[ID: A shot of Scotty standing behind Uhura, chest out and hands on his hips like Superman, saying, “No, sir, I will not.”]

“What did you say??” Fox demands, stunned and outraged. Scotty is unperturbed. “I’ll not lower the screens, not until the captain tells me to.” Fox tries to remind Scotty that he’s taking orders from Fox and he is to lower those screens as a show of good faith right now, young man!

“I know about your authority,” Scotty replies doggedly, “but the screens stay up.” Fox just stares at him, dumbfounded and clearly at a loss as to how to respond to this. (For a diplomat, you’d think he’d be better at handling it when people don’t do exactly as he wants them to.)

McCoy chimes in at this point to remind Fox that the Eminians have fired on the ship and faked a message from Kirk—and now you want us to trust them, just like that? It’s actually quite restrained for McCoy, but he’s got a good point: the whole “whooops we accidentally fired on your ship, just a misunderstanding, our bad!” thing doesn’t do anything to explain the fact that they faked a message from the captain, something Fox didn’t even attempt to bring up with Anan. But Fox, of course, ignores this. “I want and expect you to obey my lawful orders!” he demands. “No sir!” Scotty insists. “I won’t lower the screens!”

Fox, now in the middle of a full-blown fit, splutters that Scotty is endangering the success of this whole mission, and Fox could have him sent to a penal colony for this! It seems rather unlikely that Fox, however high his diplomatic clout, could have someone sent to prison just like that without at least a court martial first. But who knows how these things work in the Federation? On the plus side, I’m sure the penal colonies are much nicer now that they’ve taken out the brain-melting machines.

“That you can, sir,” Scotty says, without the barest flinch. “But I won’t lower the screens.” Stone. Cold.

“Your name will figure prominently in my report to the Federation central!” Fox fumes, and stalks off angrily into the lift.

“Well, Scotty, now you’ve done it,” McCoy says. Hey! Whose side are you on here?

[ID: A shot of Scotty looking tired and saying, “Aye. The haggis is in the fire for sure...” while McCoy stands behind him with his arms crossed.]

yeah that’s definitely something Scottish people say

Back down on the planet, Anan has retreated to some private quarters and is drowning his woes with a stiff drink, from a bottle that’s a lot more neck than bottle.

[ID: A shot of Anan standing at a low stone table, holding a green glass bottle with an extremely long neck, having just poured it into one of three glasses positioned on the table.]

the perfect design for when what you really want is a high glass: alcohol ratio.

But he’s not even managed to take a sip before Kirk suddenly steps into the room behind him. Anan pauses, obviously realizing he’s there—presumably because he heard the sudden musical sting—and says, “Won’t you join me in a drink, captain? You’ll find our trova most interesting.” First tranya, now trova. I’m starting to pick up a naming pattern with these made-up alien drinks.

Kirk’s not interested in acquiring new tastes at the moment, though. “I didn’t come here to drink,” he says flatly. You don’t say.

Anan points to the disruptor Kirk is currently pointing at him and says, “I presume that is what you used to destroy disintegration chamber twelve.” Kirk calmly remarks that it’s a very efficient weapon, and one that he’s not afraid to use.

“My first impression was correct.” [siiiiiiiiiip] “You ARE a barbarian.”

Anan goes on to say that there’s no need for Kirk to look confused—of course he’s a barbarian. “We all are. A killer first, a builder second. A hunter, a warrior, and—let’s be honest—a murderer. That is our joint heritage, is it not?” Wow. Projecting much?

Anyway, Kirk’s not here to talk about philosophy any more than he’s here to have a drink. What he wants is to contact his ship, so where are the communicators? “In a safe place,” Anan answers calmly. “You take a lot of chances, councilman,” Kirk warns, but Anan, still not intimidated, replies that Kirk may be worried about his ship, but Anan is trying to save a whole world.

Kirk suddenly elbows Anan up against the all and says, “If I were you, I’d think about saving my life.” Good one liner. But it’s ineffective against Anan, who only looks glumly back and says, “Won’t you have a drink, captain?”

You could interpret this as Anan simply calling Kirk’s bluff, and to an extent I think it is that—Anan’s already seen how outraged Kirk was at the idea of this war even before he knew that it would have an effect on him and his ship, and the fact that Anan has received reports about destroyed disintegration machines but no reports about deaths should tell him that at the least, Kirk is not inclined to kill if he doesn’t have to, even in a situation where doing so would further his goals. But I also get the impression that Anan is so unperturbed even by imminent danger because he’s all but given up. Practically everything Anan says throughout the episode is dour, glum, positively Eeyore-ish. Over and over we hear him say some variation on, “I’m sorry, but there’s nothing I can do about it.” Coupled with the fact that his wife has died recently in the same attacks that dominate Anan’s life day in and day out, which he clearly sees no hope of ever ending but has to carry on responding to anyway, it’s not a big leap to guess that he might just have all but stopped caring about his own life.

Kirk, clearly realizing that this tack isn’t working, looks at Anan for a long moment, then slowly backs off, shrugs, picks up the bottle, and pours himself a glass. Careful there. Never trust a drink described as interesting. Then he makes the mistake of strolling away a bit, and while his back is turned, Anan surreptitiously presses a small button under the bar, while saying, “And then we can discuss our differences.”

“I’m not interested in discussing our differences,” Kirk says. “You don’t seem to realize the risk you’re taking. We don’t make war with computers and herd the casualties into suicide stations. We make the real thing, councilman. I could destroy this planet.” Dang! Sometimes you forget Starfleet is supposed to be a military, but not in this episode, huh.

Anan says that’s exactly why he’s not letting Kirk talk to his ship, but Kirk says no, he doesn’t need the ship. “You mean, all by yourself, with a disruptor, you could destroy this planet?” “That’s exactly what I mean.” A heck of a claim there, but it might not be a bluff. If Kirk destroys enough of the Eminian infrastructure to leave them unable to meet their casualties quota, Vendikar would attack, and probably destroy the planet in the process. Despite their guards carrying lethal weapons, at the end of the day Eminiar doesn’t seem to be prepared for much in the way of real, physical resistance, considering the way they responded when Kirk and Spock blew up that one chamber. They probably have no need to be, if everyone is as compliant in reporting in as Mea.

But Anan clearly isn’t taking this threat anymore seriously than the more immediate one being levied against him personally. When Kirk once again demands to know where the communicators are, Anan says, “If I told you, captain, would you walk right out and get them?” “Something like that,” Kirk says. “Very well, captain. They’re in the war room. Go left, down the corridor, left again. They are unguarded.”

Kirk walks over to the door, then pauses and gestures Anan over. As soon as Anan gets within range, Kirk grabs him. He might not have actually seen Anan press the button, but he clearly still doesn’t trust Anan as far as he can throw him—which indeed he does, out the door and straight into the Sack Hat that was right outside. Unfortunately for Kirk, another Sack Hat is just arriving, and he quickly leaps into the fray.

[ID: A gif showing Kirk in a fight with two guards. He barrels into one guard, spins him around, and throws him into the opposite wall, then kicks a second guard in the ribs and chops him on the back of the neck, knocking him the floor. The first guard gets up and tries to punch Kirk but Kirk manages to throw him to the floor, only to have the second guard back up him up against the wall.]

Kirk gives it his best effort, but in the end one of the Sack Hats manages to whack him on the back of the head with the disruptor, which puts him out for the count. Anan examines Kirk and sees that he’s stunned but still alive. “Pity,” he says. “A man like that would’ve...preferred to die fighting. Take him to the council room.” Pretty sure he would’ve preferred not to die at all, actually.

The guards drag the half-conscious Kirk away, letting him dangle between them in a position that must have been hell on the knees.

[ID: Anan watching two guards, walking in very awkward positions, haul a limp Kirk away, his knees dragging on the floor.]

actually I’m willing to bet all three of those people had sore knees in the morning

After the break, we get another exterior shot of the city—in fact it’s the exact same exterior shot of the city-- followed by Fox beaming down at the same place where the landing party originally did. He’s accompanied by a man that I assume is a subordinate of his, based on the fact that his clothing is similar to Fox’s but his collar is much smaller. Must be a status thing.

Anan and an attending Sack Hat stroll up to greet them, and pleasantries are exchanged. But as soon as the two have been led inside, Anan turns to Fox and says, “Mr. Ambassador...I am sorry for what must happen.” Which is never a good way for a conversation to start. Anan proceeds to tell the baffled and increasingly alarmed Fox that he and his aide have been declared war casualties, and will be taken immediately to a disintegration booth so their deaths can be recorded.

Which seems like a significant tactical error, actually. I get that Anan is desperate to start getting the casualties from the Enterprise reported, but Fox is pretty much the only person on that ship who’s not immensely distrustful of the Eminians right now. If they kept up the act for a while longer and let him report in and tell the Enterprise that everything’s fine down here, really, see, I told you—well, it probably still wouldn’t convince Scotty, but it’s definitely going to convince him that something’s amiss if Fox beams down and immediately disappears and is never heard from again. Then again, if the Eminians were that good at tactics this war probably wouldn’t have gone on for five hundred years.

“You mean...we are to be killed?” Fox says weakly, while one of the Sack Hats starts tugging his file folder out of his arms.

“That is correct, Mr. Ambassador,” Anan says sadly, just like he says everything. “I very much regret it, but there is nothing I can do about it.”

He then walks off, leaving Fox to just stand there looking absolutely dumbfounded until the Sack Hat starts hauling the two of them away. Well, that’s a bummer. Not only has he just learned he’s about to be executed, he’s also learned he was wrong. The Eminians were up to something! Even if he gets out of being executed he’s going to have to eat so much crow he might prefer being executed.

Back in the holding cell—where, true to Kirk’s prediction, the guards have still not found the landing party—Spock is sitting on a couch tinkering with one of the Eminian communicators while Mea and the redshirts watch. I say redshirts, but only Yeoman Tamura is still wearing red; the security guys have put on the uniforms they stole from the Sack Hats.

It seems that whatever Spock did—installed a new SIM card, perhaps—was a success, because when he tries to call the Enterprise Uhura picks it up. Scotty immediately rushes over to take the call. The first thing Spock asks about is the ship, which Scotty confirms has taken a few hits but is still doing alright. He, naturally, wants to know what’s been going on with the landing party. Spock tells him that they’ve suffered no casualties, but Kirk is overdue to come back from his little solo jaunt. But never mind that now—the most important thing for the crew to know right now is that no one, under any circumstances, should beam down from the ship, because they’d be killed immediately. No one, you got that? No one. You haven’t beamed anyone down, have you? Because you shouldn’t. It’d be very bad, if you did that.

Scotty’s like, “Well. Uh. About that,” and tells Spock that Fox just beamed down not five minutes ago. “...The ambassador,” Spock says, although his tone says, “aw, goddammit.” He then tells Scotty to get out of maximum phaser range from the planet and wait for further orders, then hangs up. I do have to wonder how Fox beamed down, actually, since the fact that the Enterprise is still in orbit instead of having been shot out of the sky proves that they didn’t drop the shields. Then again, Spock called himself a Vulcanian earlier, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised they hadn’t worked out the whole “no beaming through the shields” thing yet either.

Spock takes a moment to nurse a “well, fuck” expression, then regretfully gets up and tells Tamura he’s going to go rescue that damn stupid bloody ambassador, ugh, I guess, if I have to. Oh, and Kirk too. “You stay here,” he adds, “and prevent this young lady from immolating herself. Knock her down and sit on her if necessary, this is a killing situation. Do what you must to protect yourself. Clear?” “Yes sir.” Man, someone’s just full of snark this episode.

He and the two redshirts in disguise head out, while Tamura turns to watch Mea, who looks at the camera with a somewhat sulky expression, but doesn’t attempt resistance. Speaking of said damn stupid bloody ambassador, Fox and Friend are currently being hauled, struggling, down the endless corridor toward a disintegration station. Actually, only Fox is really struggling, his aide seems rather apathetic towards the situation.

While the Sack Hats are trying to shove Fox into the chamber--despite his protests that he’s “a representative of the United Federation of Planets! A special representative!”--Spock and the redshirts come walking down the corridor, pulling the ol’ ‘you guys pretend to take me prisoner’ trick. They use one of the redshirts ushering Spock into the line as a pretense for Spock to get close to the Sack Hat holding onto the aide, at which point Spock quickly takes him out while the redshirts handle the other Sack Hats.

Fox is all “wait what” but he’s got no time to be confused because Spock none-too-gently herds him and his aide back down the corridor. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he tells the crowd of confused and concerned casualties-in-waiting, “please move quickly away from the chamber, or you may be injured.” Everyone obediently scrambles for cover while Spock and the group back up down the corridor, guns at the ready. When Fox asks what they’re doing, Spock replies, “Practicing a peculiar variety of diplomacy, sir.” Then he blows up the chamber.

Spock says that he’ll take Fox to a place of comparative safety before finding the captain, but Fox stops him and says he knows where Kirk is—the Sack Hats, for some reason, told him and the aide that they took Kirk to the council room under heavy guard. Spock nods and says, “By now, Mr. Ambassador, I’m sure you realize that normal diplomatic procedures are ineffective here.” Fox looks pretty subdued, but he says, “I’ve never been a soldier, Mr. Spock...but I learn very quickly.”

The group heads off past the burning chamber, while various panicked extras run around in the background. I notice no one asked the aide if he might not prefer to be taken to a place of comparative safety.

Cut to: Kirk, not dead, extremely unimpressed. He is, indeed, sitting in the council chamber, being lectured by Anan while some Sack Hats stand around him on guard and the rest of the council watches the exchange, still as superfluous as they have been all episode.

“Surely you can see the position we are in,” Anan is saying. “If your people do not report to our disintegration chambers, it is a violation of an agreement that dates back five hundred years.”

Kirk points out that he and his people can hardly be held responsible for whatever agreements Eminiar and Vendikar made between them, but Anan insists that they will be responsible for the ensuing escalation and everything that will come of it: “Millions of people horribly killed, complete destruction of our culture here—yes, and the culture on Vendikar! Disaster, disease, starvation. Horrible, lingering death! Pain and anguish!”

Kirk listens to all this with the kind of expression you might expect from a man who has firsthand experience with disaster…

[ID: A screenshot from The Galileo Seven of Kirk making his log and grimly reporting, “...that seven of our shipmates still have not been heard from.”]

...disease…

[ID: A screenshot from Miri of Kirk in the diplaidated classroom, sleeves ripped open and baring his arms covered in blue lesions, yelling, “Look at my arms!”]

...starvation…

[ID: Two screenshots from The Conscience of the King of McCoy and Spock walking through a corridor at night, as Spock says, “There were over 8,000 colonists and virtually no food.”]

...horrible, lingering death…

[ID: A screenshot from Arena of McCoy and Kirk kneeling over the injured colonist among the rubble, as McCoy says, “Shock, radiation burns, internal injuries for certain.”]

...pain and anguish...

[ID: A screenshot from Balance of Terror of Kirk hugging Angela Martine to him and saying, “It never makes any sense.”]

...and is now sitting here listening to a lecture about it from someone who has spent a career upholding a system that allows him to deal out death without ever having to face any of those messy, dirty things firsthand himself. In particular I would imagine Anan must remind Kirk of Kodos to some degree. Back in The Conscience of the King, when Spock and McCoy were discussing Kodos’s rule, Spock mentions that the people Kodos had executed died “without pain—but they died.” In many ways it’s the same rhetoric, really—it’s regrettable that all these people have to die, but it’s for the good of the society as a whole. We’ll make it quick and painless. Humane. You understand.

But all Kirk says to Anan is, “That seems to frighten you.”

“It would frighten any sane man!” Anan cries back. He’s still oblivious to the point Kirk is making for, instead doubling down on the same rhetoric we’ve heard from him all episode: we have done away with all that. We’ve done away with all the worst parts of war. Our way is better. Our way is the only way to avoid all that. And now you are going to be responsible for bringing it back. All the pain and suffering, all the destruction and noise and mess. Your fault. “Are those five hundred people of yours more important than the hundreds of millions of innocent people on Eminiar and Vendikar?” Anan demands. “What kind of monster are you?”

In the face of this, and the horrified stares of the other councilmen, Kirk only looks back calmly. “I’m a barbarian,” he says. “You said it yourself.” Level two, thinking about going for Path of the Berserker, haven’t decided yet.

“I had hoped I had spoken only figuratively,” Anan says, barely above a whisper. Oh, looks like someone was willing to dish out a lot of talk about “we’re all murderers” but doesn’t want to live up to it, huh. Kirk says, nope—Anan was totally right, and Kirk intends to prove it to him.

Anan furiously turns away and snaps at one of the councilmen to open a channel to the Enterprise. “You give me no choice, captain. We are not bandits, but you force us to act as bandits.” Okay, I really gotta ask what the heck Anan’s definition of ‘bandit’ is.

Before he can say more, Scotty answers the call, and Kirk immediately lunges forward for the table before the guards can catch him. “Scotty, General Order Twenty-Four in two hours! In two hours!” he yells, before the Sack Hats finally manage to wrestle him back into his seat.

“Enterprise, this is Anan 7, first councilman of the high council of Eminiar,” Anan says, trying to pretend like that didn’t just happen. “We hold your captain, his party, your ambassador, and his party prisoners. Unless you immediately start transportation of all personnel aboard your ship to the surface, the hostages will be killed. You have thirty minutes.” Oh, that’s fine, then. Scotty can do anything as long as he’s got thirty minutes.

[ID: A screenshot from The Naked Time of Scotty saying, “I got to have 30 minutes.”]

Anan insists to Kirk that he really means it—okay he totally just lied about having the rest of the landing party captive but he still really means it okay—but Kirk just shrugs and says that all that means is that he’ll be leaving the party an hour and a half earlier than he would anyway, because General Order Twenty-Four is an order for the Enterprise to destroy the entire planet. Immediately Anan wheels back to the comm and orders the planetary defense system to open fire on the Enterprise, but they can’t—the ship has moved out of range. Thanks Spock!

“You wouldn’t do this,” Anan says desperately. “Hundreds of millions of people.”

“I didn’t start it, councilman,” Kirk says. “But I’m liable to finish it.” ♫We didn’t start the war with Vendikar♫--nah, needs work.

Back in the endless corridor, Spock’s party encounters a couple of Sack Hats, leading to a disruptor-off. The guards go down, but so does Fox’s aide, so they just kind of...leave him huddled up against the wall and keep going. Man, no one cares about that dude, huh.

In the council chambers, a guy comes rushing in to announce in a panic that they’ve received a message from Vendikar accusing them of reneging on the treaty, on the grounds that their time is nearly up but their quota is still short by several thousand. Okay, hold the phone here. Sure, the Enterprise is currently making up a big chunk of that unmet quota, but there’s only about four hundred twenty people on there. As far as we’ve seen the landing party has only managed to destroy two booths, both located in one building in one city out of the entire planet—and given that we saw those booths process about one person every couple of minutes or so, there have to be a lot more than two of them because otherwise they’d never be able to process thousands of people in that time period no matter what was going on! How the hell can they be short by several thousand people? What have you guys been doing? Did everyone get so freaked out about what was going on that they just ran around in circles screaming for the past several hours instead of doing their jobs?

Anyway, Anan tells Kirk that, “You see? It’s started,” and Kirk replies, “You’re wrong. It hasn’t begun.” That really doesn’t mean anything, but okay. Someone else then calls in to report about the landing party’s recent antics, which have left two guards unresponsive and one more disintegration booth destroyed. Kirk definitely has quite a smug look on his face when he hears that, and he reminds Anan that he has less than two hours now.

“What I want or don’t want has nothing to do with it!” Anan insists. “Escalation is automatic! You can stop it!”

“Stop it?” Kirk says, clearly enjoying milking this situation for every drop of dramatic one-liners he can get. “I’m COUNTing on it!”

Up on the Enterprise, Scotty tells Uhura to open a channel to the council. “This is the commander of the USS Enterprise,” he tells them. “All cities and installations on Eminiar 7 have been located, identified, and fed into our fire control system. In one hour and forty-five minutes, the entire inhabited surface of your planet will be destroyed.” At this last, Uhura spins around in her chair to give him a shocked look, even though she certainly heard Kirk give General Order Twenty-Four in the first place. “You have that long to surrender your hostages,” Scotty goes on, paying no mind to this.

In the council room, Anan is finally having an absolute breakdown. “What can I do?” he moans, slumping over onto the council table in abject despair. “Somebody, please tell me.”

Then, for some reason, one of the Sack Hats guarding the door steps forward—I dunno, maybe he was going to give Anan a comforting pat on the back or something, but it gives Kirk the opportunity to trip him. Then he pushes the second door guard into the remaining two Sack hats.

[ID: Kirk and three guards in a tussle against the bland gray wall of the war room.]

gentlemen, you can’t fight in here, this is the war room!

In the confusion Kirk manages to grab a weapon off one of them, which he points at the last remaining guard as he runs forward. Just like that, Kirk is in control of the situation. He chivvies all the guards and councilmen, including Anan, over to the door, then picks up another gun and says, “Now we’ll talk.”

Just after the nick of time, the door opens and Spock and crew come running in with their weapons pointed. There’s immense confusion among everyone for a moment.

“I had assumed you needed help,” Spock says, sounding just a tad reproachful that Kirk managed to get free on his own after Spock went to all this trouble. “I see I’m in error.”

“No, I need the help,” Kirk says, with, it must be said, an incredibly fond smile on his face. He opens the door to the computer room and directs Spock inside, then calls up the Enterprise. “Everything’s secure here,” he tells Scotty. “If everything goes according to plan, you can beam us up in ten minutes. If you don’t hear from us, carry out General Order Twenty-Four, on schedule.” Now there’s a check-in you don’t want to miss. Might want to set a timer or something just in case.

“Aye aye, captain,” Scotty says. “Is there anything else we can do?” “Cross your fingers. Kirk out.”

Kirk hangs up and looks back at Anan. “Death...destruction, disease, horror...”

[ID: A gif from Monty Python’s Flying Circus of Michael Palin, dressed as a cheesy talk show host on a cheesy talk show set, happily saying, “Blood, devastation, death, war and horror.”]

“That’s what war is all about, Anan. That’s what makes it a thing to be avoided. You’ve made it neat and painless. So neat and painless, you’ve had no reason to stop it. And you’ve had it for five hundred years. Since it seems to be the only way I can save my crew and my ship, I’m going to end it for you, one way or another. Mr. Ambassador?”

“Yes, captain?” Fox says, remarkably politely, for Fox. Kirk instructs him to take everyone out into the corridor and hold them there, except for one councilman he has a redshirt usher into the computer room, where Kirk tells him to show them where the communicators and phasers are. With that sorted, Kirk gets a low-down on the computer situation from Spock: they’ve got some attack computers, one for defense, and one for calculating the casualties. All of them are tied into a subspace transmission unit so that they’re in constant contact with the equivalent computers on Vendikar. If contact is ever broken, the treaty immediately becomes null and void. Also, Spock’s locked a circuit so that destroying one key computer will take out all of them. Excuse me, who set up this system? It should not be so easy to destroy all your vital computers at once. Please tell me you at least have a decent surge protector in here.

Kirk has the redshirt haul the wildly protesting councilman away, then shoots the key computer. He and Spock quickly run out and tell everyone to get up against the walls, right before the computers all blow up.

Anan wades through the ensuing smoke and raspily asks if they realize what they’ve done. “Yes, I do,” Kirk says. “I’ve given you back the horrors of war. The Vendikans will now assume that you’ve broken your agreement, and that you’re preparing to rage real war with real weapons. They’ll want to do the same, only the next attack they launch will do a lot more than just count up numbers in a computer. They’ll destroy your cities, devastate your planet. You, of course, will want to retaliate. If I were you, I’d start making bombs. Yes, councilman, you have a real war on your hands. You can either wage it with real weapons, or you might consider an alternative—put an end to it. Make peace.”

Anan insists there can’t and won’t be any peace. “Don’t you see? We’ve admitted it to ourselves. We’re a killer species. It’s instinctive. It’s the same with you, your General Order Twenty-Four.”

Yeah, about that General Order Twenty-Four. It’s pretty weird! The idea that Starfleet has a regulation in place for destroying all life on a planet and that said regulation can be casually invoked by a single captain is not only bizarre in terms of the tone of the series as a whole, it doesn’t even line up that well with what we’ve already seen. We know Starfleet doesn’t give that much autonomy to their captains—what would be the point of even having the Prime Directive if people can just go around obliterating entire cultures whenever they want? And, of course, it’s pretty ridiculous to think that Kirk, who earlier this episode said “We’re gonna use non-lethal force to knock out these guards even though they’re literally trying to kill our entire crew right now” would be so casually down with the idea of committing genocide.

This is all so weird that most people prefer to theorize that the whole thing was an elaborate bluff, presumably some standing arrangement between Kirk and Scotty. The episode never says that it was, but it doesn’t definitively say it couldn’t have been, either—although one minor problem with that is that is that GO24 does get mentioned in a much later episode, where it’s implied to mean basically the same thing as it does here. There’s also the fact that in a minute we’ll hear Kirk, while talking to Scotty with no Eminians listening, say “Cancel General Order Twenty-Four,” instead of anything to the effect of “Hey, our bluff worked,” or whatever.

But, for the sake of maintaining some degree of character consistency, we could say that perhaps GO24 does exist in some capacity, but is not something that would ever actually be used in a situation such as this. Perhaps it’s a purely theoretical protocol that exists in case of some situation that’s never actually yet occurred. Either Scotty knows Kirk and also Starfleet protocol well enough to immediately assume this is a bluff and act accordingly, or—a bit more of a stretch, but still possible-- ‘General Order Twenty-Four’ is a standing code between them that actually means something like ‘beam us up and GTFO pronto,’ which would explain why Kirk has to ‘cancel’ it in the end.

I think what confuses me even more is not just that GO24 doesn’t make sense in the greater context of the series, but that doesn’t even make a lot of sense in the context of this episode. Kirk invoking it doesn’t move the plot forward in any way. Even as a bluff it doesn’t do anything, because it doesn’t in any way lead to Kirk getting the upper hand—he does that all on his own a few moments later just by tripping the guard, and he doesn’t need the leverage from Scotty threatening GO24 to carry out the rest of his plans. I’m not even sure what the in-story motivation for it is, outside of the possibility of it actually meaning something else as just described (which might work as an explanation but is very unlikely to be what was intended because there’s no actual indication of it anywhere). Sure, ordinarily, ‘do what I say or I’ll destroy your entire planet’ would be a pretty effective threat, but Anan already thinks that his planet will be destroyed if he does what Kirk wants—whatever that is, because Kirk hasn’t actually made any specific demands clear to him. From Anan’s perspective it’s just a choice between having his planet blown up by Vendikar, or having it blown up by Kirk, whose bluff he’s already called once when Kirk had a gun to his head. It’s not a big leap to say that he’d prefer trying to call it again to angering Vendiker, who he was very sure would retaliate.

But if GO24 was a bluff in some way, Kirk sure doesn’t feel the need to enlighten Anan of that fact now. Instead he takes a different argumentative tack altogether.

[ID: Two gifs showing a scene of Kirk talking to Anan, with Spock standing next to Kirk and Fox standing behind Anan. Kirk is saying, “All right, it’s instinctive. But the instinct can be fought. We’re human beings, with the blood of a million savage years on our hands, but we can stop it. We can admit that we’re killers, but we’re not going to kill today...Contact Vendikar. I think you’ll find that they’re just as terrified, appalled, horrified as you are, that they’ll do anything to avoid the alternative I’ve given you. Peace or utter destruction. It’s up to you.”]

At this point Fox smoothly cuts in to point out that, whaddya know, here you’ve got a neutral third party with ambassadorial expertise, be a shame not to use him, huh? Anan admits—and boy has it been like pulling teeth to get him to admit even this—that maybe there might be something of a very slim chance. They do have a direct channel with Vendikar’s own council, which hasn’t been used in centuries, apparently. Oh I see, so you’ve just been sitting on that this whole time, huh? Yeah, trying real hard to stop this inevitable war.

The two of them walk off, while Kirk and Spock watch them go. “There’s a chance it may work, captain,” Spock says. Kirk just smiles at him, then pulls out his communicator and tells Scotty to cancel General Order Twenty-Four (see? told ya) and beam them up. You might want to specify that Fox isn’t beaming up too, or there’s going to be an awkward situation here in a minute.

Sometime later, on the Enterprise bridge, Kirk is telling the helmsmen to lay in a course for their next destination. Uhura reports a message from Fox: negotiations underway with Vendikar, outlook hopeful. Kirk and McCoy, who’s hovering protectively near the captain’s chair, exchange nods.

“Captain...” Spock says, “You took a big chance.”

“Did I, Mr. Spock?” Kirk asks. “They have been killing 3 million people a year. It had been going on for 500 years. An actual attack wouldn’t have killed any more people than one of their computer attacks, but it would’ve ended their ability to make war. The fighting would’ve been over, permanently.”

Still, as McCoy points out, he didn’t know his plan would work. Kirk admits that it was a calculated risk, but “The Eminians keep a very orderly society, and actual war is a very messy business—a very, very messy business. I had a feeling they would do anything to avoid it, even talk peace.”

[ID: A gif of Kirk and Spock talking on the bridge. Spock says, “A feeling is not much to go on.” Kirk says, “Sometimes a feeling is all we humans have to go on.” Spock says, “Captain...You almost make me believe in luck.” Kirk replies, “Why, Mr. Spock, you almost make me believe in miracles.”]

With that, the camera pans out and the Enterprise heads on its way. On its own this little denouement probably wouldn’t have been too bad an example of TOS’s tendency to try to end serious episode on comedic notes. Sure, it’s got a bit of that “everyone laughs, fade out” vibe, but it also discusses the heavy events of the episode with a tone that’s less overtly jolly and more a kind of ‘laughing mostly out of relief now that it’s all over’ feel. Except for the fact that after Kirk says his last line, there’s a little Humorous Musical Sting that plays over Spock’s expression in response, which completely changes it from ‘fond friends commiserating over having survived a tough situation’ to a joke at Spock’s expense that doesn’t even make sense as a joke. And that’s why it’s so dangerous for the power of post-production to fall into the wrong hands.

One other thing you might have noticed is a complete lack of any mention of the Prime Directive in all this, not even a half-hearted one like we got in The Return of the Archons. Which is pretty notable considering that what Kirk just did there would appear to be a pretty major violation of said directive—basically the exact opposite of what they’re supposed to be doing, really. It’s perhaps not surprising given both the other examples of early installment weirdness in this episode and the fact that its tone is in general a bit more, shall we say, aggressive than TOS often is. Even at the end no one questions whether what Kirk did was morally right, only how he could be sure it would work.

I think it’s mostly just something you have to ignore, although I actually find it easier to accept that the Federation would not protest too hard about the whole thing in this instance, mostly because of that line from Fox about thousands of lives being lost in the area over the past two decades. I’m not sure why so many people were going through what was apparently a quite dangerous section of space to begin with, but the point is, at some point this war stopped being a matter that was only between Vendikar and Eminiar. It was becoming a problem for the rest of the galaxy as well. Vendikar apparently wasn’t doing anything about it, and with Eminiar’s “well really it’s your fault for coming over here :////” attitude they clearly weren’t about to do anything to rein it in either. It doesn’t much surprise me that the Federation would have turned a blind eye to Kirk violating the directive in this case, considering how many lives he ultimately saved by doing so. They’ve turned a blind eye to worse, let’s be honest.

A Taste of Armageddon is one of TOS’s more powerful allegorical stories, although what it appears to be an allegory for has changed over time. It aired in the midst of America’s involvement in the Vietnam War, and could hardly fail to be at least influenced by that, although I am certainly not the person to be able to dissect the intricacies of that influence. Nowadays, of course, the idea of conducting a war via computers and never having to see the results is a lot less of a sci-fi what-if and a lot more chillingly relevant. The whole thing reads as such an accurate criticism of drone strikes and other such remote forms of warfare that it feels downright prescient.

But for as much as you could read this episode as a comment, prescient or otherwise, on the dangers of how technology might affect warfare, it strikes me as interesting because of the contrast between it and most of the TOS episodes that are in some sense about being leery of technological advances. Often in TOS, when we see computers that are scary in some way—What Are Little Girls Made Of?, The Return of the Archons, The Changeling, The Ultimate Computer, TMP, etc—it’s because those computers achieved some form of sapience and thus, some form of control over the people who invented them. They’re characters, active agents in their own stories. The use of computers in A Taste of Armageddon hits much closer to home because it matches today’s real fears about advances in AI. The fear for us right now is not “will the AI become sentient and kill us all?” it’s “how will more advanced AI be used against us by the people who control it?” The computer here isn’t sapient or aware. There’s no point at which Kirk tries to talk it out of doing what it’s doing, because it doesn’t know what it’s doing. It doesn’t know, or, as far as we can tell from what we see, even remotely have the capacity to know what the numbers it crunches mean in real-life terms. It’s basically just running a very advanced game of Starcraft.

So we can’t blame the computer for what happens. The blame can only be pinned on the people who are using the computer, and not even in a “we created this but now it’s run amok ahhhhhhhhh” kind of way. Every day for five hundred years people went in that war room and chose to use the computer to carry on the war, instead of making any effort to end it. And that’s where the real core of the episode’s message comes in.

To me, the allegory of A Taste of Armageddon has always seemed to be one that can be taken more broadly than being about one particular war, or one way of waging war. It need not necessarily be about war at all. Because one thing the story shows very clearly is the danger of allowing any system, any state of being for a society, to become inevitable. To be viewed as something that cannot be changed, cannot be altered, cannot be acted upon. The Eminians—and, we can assume, the Vendikarians—have bent their societies and their lives around this war for five hundred years, so long that even if the original grievance is still remembered, it surely can no longer be relevant. The Eminians claim that conducting the war this way preserves their culture and society, but the truth is that the war has become their culture and society. How could it not? If you lived every day of your life knowing that at any time the call might come in that your number’s up and it’s time to report for death, how could that not affect you?

We don’t see much of the Eminian outlook—the only two significant Eminian characters are Mea and Anan, everyone else is little more than an extra. But what we do get from those characters is telling. Mea, when pressed on the issue, repeats time and again that their way is the best way and the only way, and that doing anything else would turn out even worse. Anan offers that explanation as well at the beginning, but most of his remarks throughout the episode come down to a deferral of blame. “I’m sorry, but there’s nothing I can do about it” is a refrain he repeats over and over.

Anan takes every opportunity to deny any control over the situation, and/or to deflect blame for it onto someone else. From the beginning he tells Kirk that it’s really his fault that everyone on the Enterprise has to die, because Kirk brought his ship there. Under other circumstances he might have a point about Kirk not heeding the warning (of course we know Kirk did heed it and only approached the planet when ordered to anyway by Fox, but Anan didn’t know that, and it’s mostly irrelevant anyway) but Anan acts as if his planet is gripped by some natural disaster that he can’t control, rather than a war which, as apparently the highest-ranked person on the planet, he has at least some ability to affect. And once Kirk makes his intentions to disrupt the war known, Anan really starts to buckle down on pinning the blame on him. If we go to war, real war, the blood of everyone that dies will be on your hands. Not ours, for starting this war and continuing it for five hundred years. Not mine, for not taking any action to end it. Yours, for doing anything to attempt to change the situation. Because if you’ve convinced yourself that there is only one possible way to handle a problem like this, then by default anyone who would attempt to implement another option must be misguided at best and actively and intentionally malicious at worst.

I don’t read Anan as someone who’s consciously using this deferral of blame as a manipulation tactic or whatever. I think he genuinely believes that he can’t do anything to affect the war. But that doesn’t let him off the hook in any way because I think he believes that because it’s easy. It’s much easier to think that your current course is not only correct but the only thing to do than it is to admit that there’s any chance that lives could have been saved if you had acted differently. And the longer you carry on a course, and the more the cost of doing so stacks up, the harder it is to change it, because doing so feels tantamount to admitting that those costs didn’t have to be paid. You have to carry on, because otherwise it will have all been for nothing. It’s called the sunk costs fallacy. If Anan ever was willing to challenge the status quo—which I doubt, but it’s possible--he’s clearly lost all such ambitions by the time of the episode. It’s hard to change things. Easier to apologize for not being able to change them.

And, of course, that’s all too real a message. Pick a topic, any topic—gun control, healthcare, capitalism, climate change, whatever you want—and think about how many times you’ve heard rhetoric to the effect of, “It sucks but there’s no point attempting to change things because the system we’ve got is the best possible one there could be.” It’s easy to look at Eminian society and their willingness to die when told to by a computer and call it laughable (and, look, I’m not saying it makes total sense—this is a Star Trek episode, after all), but completely preventable deaths occur every day in our societies, often for really no less arbitrary reason. At the risk of getting too intensely topical here, do you really think it would seem any less absurd to the TOS characters that we let people die because they can’t personally afford things that we have to spare?

I think that TOS usually did better when it made its allegories and its moral points more general, rather than attempting to directly mirror a specific real-life issue. I won’t say always, necessarily, but usually it resulted in a stronger episode. In this case I don’t know if it was intentional to make the point more generally applicable, but I certainly think it resulted in a very strong episode.

We have no tallies going up from this episode. Next time, everybody’s gotta get high, in This Side of Paradise.