Title: Patterns Of Force
Airdate: 2/15/1968
Plot Summary
In Patterns Of Force the Enterprise is investigating the disappearance of John Gil, a renowned historian who was last known studying the dual planet system of Ekos and Zeon.
Ekos attacks the Enterprise with a nuclear weapon, technology far ahead of where they should be. Kirk and Spock beam down to Ekos to investigate and find that the population has embraced fascism, complete with Nazi imagery and oppression of anyone from the neighboring planet of Zeon.
Can Kirk and Spock find Gil and undo the damage that has been done?
Risk Is Our Business
Kirk for once tries to clean up someone else wiping their ass with the prime directive. Gil was his professor in the academy and someone he always looked up to. His disappointment in what Gil has done is palpable.
Logical
Spock has to take off his helmet at least twice to reveal his ears. Spock also can take a lashing with the best of them. He mind melds with Gil to get him somewhat out of his drug stupor.
He’s Dead Jim
Bones is a great doctor but needs instructions on how to put on a jackboot.
Helm Sluggish Captain
Not here this time.
Nuclear Wessels
Chekov is able to take care of the missile efficiently.
Hailing Frequencies Open, Sugar
Uhura is at her station picking up the cobbled together communicator signal and getting Bones down to the planet.
My Wee Bairns
Scotty is mostly relegated to transporter chief in this one.
Canon Maker
Sub-cutaneous transponders are used for the first time. Later in Trek there would be use of these as full communicators. Of course here they are never used again.
Canon Breaker
I can’t find anything in this episode that breaks canon per se except that it exists at all.
Man It Feels Bad To Be A Red Shirt
No one dies. Strangely enough.
Technobabble
Nuclear weapons are no match for the Enterprise shields. This somewhat tracks with Balance of Terror where the Romulans tried to nuke the ship. It was much less of an issue here, presumably because it was probably a much more primitive version of the weapon.
The transponders have crystals you can hold up to a light bulb to create a laser you can aim with pinpoint accuracy and melt a jail lock. Sure.
I Know That Guy:
Brian Davis plays John Gil. He barely registers as he’s pretty much drugged or a puppet the entire time so it’s difficult to get a handle on him as a character. He was best know for his role in Intruder In The Dust where he got a golden globe nomination. He did a lot of guest spots on TV and various supporting roles in movies throughout the 50s and 60s.
Skip Homeier plays Melakon. He was a child actor in the 40s and continued work as an adult in various movies and TV shows. He will return again in the equally cringey season 3 episode The Way To Eden.
Richard Evans plays Isak. He was most know on the soap Peyton Place.
Patrick Horgan plays Eneg. He played on the soap The Doctors for a while.
Valora Baum plays Daras. She in a few movies and shows and was an active photographer.
William Wintersole plays Arbrom. He was another soap opera regular, mostly on The Young and the Restless.
What It Means To Be Human – Review
Yeesh. While the plot of this episode is fine enough, Kirk and Spock find a planet contaminated by Earth culture, it’s all in the details. This is not at all dissimilar to A Piece of the Action but where that one was played for laughs, this is deadly serious.
I really don’t understand John Gil. He decides to help Ekos by imposing benign fascism, as if there is such a thing.
Kirk rightly berates him as knowing what the Nazi’s were, what the hell were was he thinking? Gil says it was the most efficient state ever created, confirmed by Spock.
Yeah BULL. Sure you can be pretty efficient if you just murder anyone who gets in your way. But scaling that up leads to corruption and paralysis due to the fact that if you need to make a decision due to whatever your situation is, you can’t because you’re too afraid of making a mistake and getting killed.
This is well-documented in the Soviet Union. Don’t tell me “that was communism” as if that’s different. Two sides of the same tyrannical coin. A rose by any other name as it were.
Yes I get that it did get Germany to turn around in a short time but you can get a lot done at the point of gun. It’s always built on a house of cards. Plus even in Germany itself, it’s now well-known that the various factions of the hierarchy was nothing but backbiting and vying for power, creating a quagmire of inefficiency.
And since I can’t accept that anyone would believe that, even some idiot historian professor, I can’t buy this episode. Granted, our college professors these days are all smug commies who think if THEY did it, we wouldn’t have 100 million deaths. But still, by Trek’s time, they should’ve been wiser than that.
Then there’s the ham fisted references to Jews. Zeon = Zion. Davod = David. Abrom = Abram. We get it. Nazis were bad. Jews took it in the shorts. We GET IT.
Even the Trek stuff made me roll my eyes. Sub-cutaneous transponders? Not a bad idea but they are there for only one reason: to get the crystals so they can make a nonsense laser.
It’s all in the details. The plot itself is straightforward enough. It just falls apart under all the BS.
I don’t know if it’s a no stars episode as I got to give it a half star in predicting the smug incompetence of college professors.