Star date: 4211.8 (from McCoy's medical log)
Summary: Kirk, Spock and McCoy are visiting an "Eden-like" planet Kirk had previously visited 13 years before. Just as Kirk is telling Spock about how peaceful the inhabitants are, they see three men (villagers) with flintlock rifles lying in wait to ambush another group of men (hill people), including Tyree, the man Kirk lived with during his earlier visit. Due to the relatively primitive nature of the inhabitants, use of phasers is strictly prohibited, but Kirk distracts the villagers by throwing a rock at them. This draws the villagers' attention to Kirk and Spock, and Spock is critically shot before the three can return to the Enterprise.
Upon returning to the ship, Chekhov informs Kirk that a Klingon ship has been sighted orbiting the planet, but he believes the Klingons have not yet seen them. Kirk immediately concludes that the Klingons are responsible for arming the villagers, who had barely learned to forge iron 13 years before. With Spock's recovery in the capable hands of Dr. M'Benga, a specialist in Vulcan medicine, Kirk and McCoy return to the planet to contact the hill people in violation of Starfleet orders. Shortly after arriving, Kirk is attacked by a mugato, a large, white ape-like creature. McCoy vaporizes the mugato with his phaser, but cannot cure Kirk of the toxic poison of the mugato bite. Before losing consciousness, Kirk instructs McCoy to find Tyree, who will be able to help him.
Tyree, now the leader of the hill people, arrives with his wife Nona, who is a Canutu, a race skilled at curing people using the natural herbs and roots of the planet. Nona cures Kirk and, according to custom, believes that Kirk is now unable to refuse her any request. One of the things Nona wants is more powerful guns to use in their fight with the villagers. However Tyree is adamantly opposed to killing and insists that the villagers will eventually return to their peaceful ways. This leads Nona to grow disgusted with him, saying she married the wrong man.
That night, Kirk, McCoy and Tyree infiltrate the village and discover that the Klingons have indeed been supplying the villagers with weapons as Kirk suspected. They return to the hill people's settlement with one of the guns, and Kirk begins to teach them how to use it. In a private conversation, Kirk and McCoy debate the merits of arming the hill people, with Kirk insisting that the hill people must have the same level of weaponry the villagers have, in order to maintain a "balance of power". McCoy is vehemently opposed to this idea, insisting that such an action will only lead to "massacre after massacre". However, Kirk is unpersuaded, and goes off to find Nona in the hope that she can convince Tyree to drop his pacifist stance.
Kirk finds Nona, who attempts to seduce Kirk using an herbal aphrodisiac. Tyree happens to see this and raises the flintlock as if to shoot either Kirk or Nona, but then realizes what he is about to do, and drops the gun in disgust. A mugato then attacks Kirk and Nona. Under the influence of the aphrodisiac, Kirk is slow to react, but eventually he vaporizes the mugato with his phaser. Nona is impressed, and knocks Kirk unconscious so she can take his phaser. She attempts to bring it to the villagers, presumably because she is fed up with Tyree's pacifism, but the villagers disbelieve her claim of having a great weapon and decide to rape her instead. Meanwhile, McCoy and Tyree find a recovering Kirk, who realizes Nona took his phaser. They run to rescue Nona from the villagers, who kill her as soon as they see Tyree. A battle ensues in which McCoy is shot in the arm and Tyree kills a villager by hitting him in the head repeatedly with a rock.
Overcome with anger over Nona's murder, Tyree demands "many more" guns from Kirk, intent on killing the villagers. Kirk calls up to the Enterprise to ask Scotty how long it would take to create 100 flintlocks, then reconsiders, and decides to leave the planet as it is.
This is another good episode, and the main reason it's good is that it doesn't rely on creatures with "god-like powers" or bizarre outer-space phenomena. It is a story which could occur anywhere, and thus stands on the strength of its story-telling. And it stands up very well.
The central point, of course, is the question of arms control. The show subtly, yet unambiguously, makes the point that the introduction of advanced weaponry into this culture is responsible for increased violence and cruelty --- the villagers talk to the Klingon representative about how they've come to enjoy killing. Then there is the more direct question of what to do now that the "serpent" has introduced forbidden knowledge into this "Eden-like" planet, where the "serpent" is the Klingon Empire, and the forbidden knowledge is that of gunpowder. The problem is one that has occurred many times in human history, with more advanced societies arming less-advanced ones for political or economic reasons. It also makes the point that knowledge cannot be unlearned: the knowledge of firearms could not be removed from this planet in the same way that our current knowledge of nuclear weapons cannot be removed from ours.
Kirk seems to be left with two options, both unpleasant: either add fuel to the fire by contributing his own weapons to a villagers-versus-hill people proxy war with the Klingons, or stand idly by while the villagers slowly extinguish his friend Tyree and his people. The bleak choices are well-described in the following dialogue between Kirk and McCoy, some of the best in the series:
McCoy: Do I have to say it? It's not bad enough there's already one serpent in Eden teaching one side about gunpowder, you're gonna make sure they all know about it!Unlike other episodes, in which the writers feel compelled to offer a pat solution at the end, even when the "solution" is nonsense (see for example, "A Piece of the Action"), this episode presents the hard choices, and ends with Kirk still torn between them, just barely inclined to honor the Federation's non-interference doctrine.
Kirk: Exactly. Each side receives the same knowledge and the same type of firearm.
McCoy: Have you gone out of your mind? Yes, maybe you have! Tyree's wife, she said there was something in that root, she said now that you can refuse her nothing.
Kirk: Superstition.
McCoy: Is it a coincidence this is exactly what she wants?
Kirk: Is it? She wants superior weapons; that's the one thing neither side can have. Bones --- Bones, the normal development of this planet was the status quo between the hill people and the villagers. The Klingons changed that with the flintlocks. If this planet is to develop in the way it should, we must equalize both sides again.
McCoy: Jim, that means you're condemning this whole planet to a war that may never end! It could go on for year after year, massacre after massacre ---
Kirk: All right Doctor!! All right, all right, say I'm wrong, say I'm drugged. Say the woman drugged me. What is your sober, sensible solution to all this?
McCoy: I don't have a solution. But furnishing them firearms is certainly not the answer!
Kirk: Bones, do you remember the 20th-century brush wars on the Asian continent? Two giant powers involved, much like the Klingons and ourselves? Neither side felt that they could pull out?
McCoy: Yes I remember. It went on bloody year after bloody year!
Kirk: What would you have suggested? That one side arm its friends with an overpowering weapon? Mankind would never have liked to travel space if they had! No, the only solution is what happened back then: balance of power.
McCoy: And if the Klingons give their side even more?
Kirk: Then we arm our side with exactly that much more! A balance of power! The trickiest, most difficult, dirtiest game of them all, but the only one that preserves both sides.
Of course, there is something the Federation can do, and that is to confront the Klingons about their actions. It appears that this sort of Klingon involvement violates some sort of treaty, and in "real life", I have no doubt the Federation will react in some manner. But Kirk is quite right that his Eden has now changed forever.
Finally, Tyree's transformation from adamant pacifist to bloodthirsty leader is quite a striking example of how the poison of advanced weaponry has completely and irreparably changed this society.
Other observations about this episode . . .
Why are the Klingons arming the villagers anyway? What will they gain by it? That is never made clear.
It sure is convenient that there just happens to a be a doctor expert in Vulcan care when Spock is shot --- a guy we've never seen before and certainly never will again.
Even though the white furry creatures are clearly identified by the cast as "Mugato" or "Mugatu", the actor playing the creature is credited as "The Gumato".
The Moral of the Story: When a society's weapons grow faster than its wisdom, paradise can quickly become hell.
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