Title: The Return Of The Archons
Airdate: 02/9/1967
Plot Summary
Sulu and Lieutenant O’Neil are taken by a seemingly primitive culture and turned into mindless zombies. Kirk and crew must understand what this culture is about. At once peaceful yet with a day of mindless rage and murder. What does it mean to be a part of the body? And what happened to the crew of the Archon, a ship they were sent to investigate that disappeared here a hundred years ago?
Risk is our Business
Kirk has a proper “talk a computer into committing suicide” episode. I never get tired of that.
Logical
Spock helpfully lets everyone know what they are seeing. He tells the group they were stunned by hypersonics. And he fails to get through to McCoy with his mind meld.
He also punches out a lawgiver to Kirk’s amusement. “Isn’t that a little old fashioned?”
He’s Dead Jim
McCoy becomes a zombie. DeForest Kelly is pretty creepy as part of the “body.”
Canon Maker
The landing party beams down with the proper attire to blend in. Not sure why they didn’t do that in Tomorrow Is Yesterday.
For the first time the Prime Directive is referenced, though not by name. It’s simply referenced as the policy of non-interference. It will also be the first time Kirk wipes his ass with it.
Landru does call what he does the “Prime Directive” which makes me wonder if that term got in their brains to eventually become what we know as the non-interference policy.
Canon Breaker
This episode never really broke any canon. So it’s got that going for it. Which is nice.
Technobabble
Phasers can be set on wide field to take out a crowd.
The Enterprise has to pour so much power into the shields it can’t move even a tiny bit to break orbit.
Man It Feels Bad To Be A Redshirt
No one dies but a couple of crewmen do fall under the spell of Landru.
I Know That Guy:
Harry Townes plays Rogar in The Return Of The Archons. He’d come back in another Sci-Fi classic, Buck Rogers. Charles Macaulay plays Landru looking like a discount Christopher Walken. Lev Mailer plays Blair, Morgan Farley plays Halcom and Jon Lormer plays Tamar. Lormer would return in For The World Is Hollow and I Have Touched The Sky.
Karl Held plays Lindstrom, Frank DaVinci plays Brent, David Ross plays Galloway and Eddie Paskey plays Leslie once again.
What It Means To Be Human – Review
There are some prototypical concepts that get introduced in The Return Of The Archons that then become much better ideas in The Next Generation, specifically the idea of being absorbed and losing one’s individuality. The Next Generation would take this idea further with the introduction of the Borg.
I like they introduced the Prime Directive here, even if the name was taken by Landru. However, there are so many things that are inconsistent in this episode.
First off is the festival. Why is that a thing? It does establish the strangeness of the populace, how they go from zero to rapey and back at the stroke of a clock. But what’s the purpose? Why would the machine have it at all? Maybe there’s something about suppressing the humanity so much that they need a release, but it isn’t really fleshed out. And why is the daughter freaking out if everyone else turned on and off like a light switch?
Then there’s the absorbing process. For Kirk, Spock, and McCoy they are led to a room, restrained to a machine, and are absorbed. But for Sulu, the lawgiver just taps him with his tube? And how the hell does a hollow tube become an all-purpose weapon?
If Landru can communicate with the body telepathically, wouldn’t he know that someone was faking? No one was added to the body when they faked it, so no new people. If I poured milk into a glass with the cap still on the jug, I notice there was no new milk.
Ok, maybe there are explanations for all this, but the point is they weren’t in the episode.
There are some good points though. The idea of a society stagnant and run by a computer isn’t a bad concept. And I love me some Kirk talks a computer into destroying itself though this certainly isn’t the best example.
Overall this feels like a great concept done in by lousy execution. I do appreciate the effort they put in for the festival. It’s clear the daughter comes back from it totally traumatized and you can read between the lines why. There is so much intriguing to the mystery but it keeps falling apart the farther the episode goes.
I don’t hate The Return Of The Archons as an episode but it’s not high on my list.
