Star date: 2947.3
Summary: The Enterprise makes port at Starbase 11, badly in need of repairs after weathering an ion storm. In the storm, Kirk had to make a difficult decision to jettison a pod containing one of his crew members, Lieutenant Commander Ben Finney, in order to save the ship. However, records from the ship's computer indicate that Kirk jettisoned the pod before circumstances warranted, making him culpable in Finney's death either by negligence or malice. Kirk maintains that the ship was at red alert when the pod was jettisoned, while the computer's records show the ship was only at yellow alert.
Base Commodore Stone offers to give Kirk a desk job if he's willing to admit to making an error, but Kirk insists that his actions were correct, forcing Stone to convene a court martial. In the hearings, the prosecution makes the case that Finney held Kirk responsible for a black mark on his (Finney's) record when they were both ensigns on the ship Republic some years ago, and hated Kirk for it. The prosecution contends that Kirk may have reciprocated these feelings, and used the ion storm as a convenient excuse to get rid of Finney. Kirk continues to maintain his innocence, but video records from the Enterprise do indeed show that Kirk pressed a button to eject Finney's pod when the Enterprise was only at yellow alert.
By chance, Spock happens to notice that he can now beat the ship's computer regularly at chess, something he could not do in the past. This causes him to suspect that the computer has been tampered with, and Kirk's lawyer persuades Stone to reconvene the court martial proceedings on the Enterprise. There, Kirk's lawyer argues that since Kirk, Spock and Finney are the only members of the Enterprise crew who could re-program the ship's computer, that Finney in fact is still alive, hiding on the ship, and faked his death and falsified the computer records in order to frame Kirk.
After evacuating everyone but the bridge crew and court martial officials from the ship, the ship's computer eventually determines that Finney is hiding in the Engineering room, where Kirk goes to face him alone. Finney tells Kirk he has sabotaged the ship's engines so that the ship's orbit will gradually decay and the ship will crash into the planet, killing everyone aboard. Kirk informs Finney that Finney's daughter is aboard, leading Finney to lash out at Kirk in despair. Kirk subdues Finney, then makes sufficient repairs to save the ship from destruction.
This episode is pretty good for about the first 35 minutes. Once the setting moves up to the Enterprise, however, things deteriorate badly. But before we get into that, I'd like to focus a bit on what this show tells us about late 1960's attitudes toward computers.
I was born in 1968, so by no means do I have a good first-hand understanding about how computers were viewed in the late 1960's. However, it's certain that people then held much different attitudes about them than we do today. We've lived through wave after wave of viruses, so we know to view any unusual behavior from our computers with a healthy dose of skepticism. We also know that a bug in, say, Microsoft Word is unlikely to cause us any problems when we play Angry Birds. And most important, we've come to accept the idea that all computers are networked, or at least networkable. Long gone are the days when the average person thinks of a computer as being entirely disconnected from the rest of the world.
It's telling to consider some of the fundamental assumptions of this show in light of our current attitudes toward computers. When Kirk first meets his lawyer, Samuel Cogley, he is surrounded by stacks and stacks of old, leatherbound law books. And while he acknowledges he has his own computer with an extensive collection of case law, he gives a brief dissertation on the superiority of books over computers. His reasons for feeling this way aren't really clear, but he's folksy and avuncular, and he wins his case for Kirk in the end, so we're supposed to accept his view as wisdom.
Of course, we know that most lawyers today order leatherbound law books by the yard so they can sit on their library shelves and look impressive. And I'm guessing there are precious few successful lawyers who don't regularly consult Westlaw or some other, similar online resource. The truth is that the digital medium is fundamentally no better or worse than the old, tree-based media for delivering information --- and there are a lot of advantages to carrying a few hundred books around on a tablet instead of in a wagon.
A second, and more plot-critical assumption made on the show is that, in order for Kirk to "face" his accuser --- that is, the ship's computer which presents damning evidence against him --- it is necessary for the court martial to reconvene on the Enterprise. Of course, such an idea sounds silly in today's networked world.
And finally, the entire show turns on the fact that as soon as Spock starts beating the ship's computer at chess, he concludes someone must have reprogrammed the ship's computer. I'm pretty sure this assumption didn't even make sense in 1967 --- either the show's writers didn't really know how computers worked, or they were sure that their audience didn't know --- but in today's world, what Finney did boils down to whipping up a fake video file, which doesn't really even involve programming in the way most software developers understand the term. It certainly would have no impact on the computer's ability to play chess or run any other program.
So, uh, yeah. This aspect of the show is dated at best, and in at least once instance, is deserving of mockery. However, I'm guessing that the average American in 1967 accepted the idea of computers as infallible, and this episode makes hay out of that misperception. And I'm certainly willing to cut the writers generous quantities of slack, given that I have the benefit of knowing 40 more years of the history of computing than they did.
I'm also willing to overlook the whole "conflict of interest" subplot regarding the fact that the prosecuting attorney in Kirk's court martial is a woman with whom Kirk has apparently had a romantic relationship in the past 5 years. I'm guessing this was a novel twist in 1967 as well --- I mean, the part about a woman being a JAG attorney in the first place was probably pretty radical; the fact that she once dated the accused is just icing on the cake. So it's novel and a bit salacious for the viewer. But come on; where are this woman's ethics? And for that matter, there's an underlying theme through the series so far that Kirk is well-known around Starfleet; didn't anyone in the JAG office know about Kirk's previous relationship with Ms. Shaw, and assign her to another case? They're at Starbase 11, for crying out loud, there must have been other attorneys available.
And um, yeah, I'm going to guess that it's actually incredibly unprofessional for Kirk to kiss her on the bridge of the Enterprise at the end of the show.
Anyway, I'm somewhat less willing to overlook absurdity in other aspects of the show.
For example --- gosh, isn't just really, really convenient how the putative computer record of Kirk's actions changes camera angles three times?
No, wait, how about the design of that captain's chair? There's a row of buttons on the arm. Two of them (one yellow, one red) are labeled "ALERT", a third is labeled "JETTISON POD", and two more are unlabeled. Wow! First of all, I'm guessing there are lots of reasons why the ship might go to Yellow Alert or Red Alert, and almost no reasons why the ship would ever Jettison Pod. So why are the three buttons all together in a row like that? And which idiot is responsible for that design, anyway, so that a Captain trying to active a Red Alert might Jettison Pod by mistake (during the court martial the "doctored" video makes it appear that's exactly what Kirk has done).
And why aren't the other two buttons labeled? If they do something, it seems they should be labeled like the others. And if they don't, then why are they there at all?
Then there's the whole matter of smoking out Finney. For one thing, Finney's plan makes no sense. Apparently, he plotted to fake his own death so that Kirk would be court-martialed, and his career ruined. That part is reasonable enough. What isn't reasonable is that even if Finney had succeeded, he still would have been trapped on the Enterprise forever, or at least until it came into dock and he could walk off. Since the transporter room is manned and all transporter activity is logged, he could never have left the ship that way.
(Of course, if he can rig the ship's computer to frame Kirk, then he probably could have rigged it to allow him to transport off unnoticed. In which case, I have to call out his stupidity for failing to do so).
And even if he somehow finds his way off the ship, his career with Starfleet is finished. He's presumed dead, and if he ever shows up alive, someone will figure out that he framed Kirk. So he'll be forced to live underground for the rest of his life.
And if he wants to destroy the ship, why does he pick such a drawn-out means of doing so? He's in the Engineering room with a phaser. Hey, just overload the damn thing (before Kirk finds you, of course). That'll bring the Enterprise down in a hurry.
Then again, Finney has clearly lost his mind, so perhaps it's not too surprising that he came up with such a stupid plan. What IS surprising is that:
- The court believes that Finney is alive based solely on some audio of a heartbeat, indicating that someone is aboard who is unaccounted for. In fact, the court listens to the entire confrontation between Kirk and Finney as evidence in the trial. But recall that in this time period, it's remarkably easy to create fake audio files. Spock created a whole bunch of them in "The Menagerie", and the Gorn did it in "Arena". And now we see that apparently, it's easy to falsify videos as well.
- The court allows Kirk to face Finney in Engineering alone. If I were leading the trial, I wouldn't allow the defendant to leave the room based solely on purported audio of a heartbeat. And if it turns out the heartbeat is Finney's, there's no reason to let Kirk face him. There's an entire Starbase down on the planet, presumably they have some competent security officers, let them handle Finney.
- Especially when it becomes clear that Finney means to destroy the Enterprise by allowing its orbit to decay. Even if Finney is Kirk's problem, once he threatens the Enterprise, he becomes everyone's problem, and all available resources should be brought to bear on it. But no, Spock, the court martial panel, and a few other able-bodied folks just sit around and listen as Kirk goes mano-a-mano with Finney, and then repairs Finney's sabotage of the ship all by himself.
We learn some more trivia about Spock, Kirk and McCoy at Kirk's trial:
- Spock: Serial number S179-276SP. Service rank: Lieutenant Commander. Commendations: Vulcanian Scientific Legion of Honor. Award of Valor. Twice decorated by Starfleet Command.
- McCoy: Service rank: Lieutenant Commander. Commendations: Legion of Honor, Award of Valor, Decorated by Starfleet Surgeons.
- Kirk: Serial number SC937-0176CEZ. Lots of commendations, but most of the time I couldn't understand what Majel Barrett was saying.
The Moral of the Story: Don't be so quick to believe everything a computer tells you.
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