![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/starbase11.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n- \n
- The enhanced graphics<\/strong> are especially effective in this episode, showing both the Enterprise and another starship in orbit around this starbase, a shuttlecraft flying past, and even repair crew at the hole in the Enterprise hull where the \u2018pod<\/strong>\u2019 that was jettisoned had been (something we never saw in any way in the original episode). Given that this is a starbase, and we shortly see a chart of some dozen starships and their maintenance status, it\u2019s nice to see more than just the Enterprise in orbit.<\/li>\n
- Also much improved: the groundside views of the starbase<\/strong>, with narrow mushroom-like towers in the distance. One shot at the beginning of one of the acts shows a ground-view promenade with pedestrians, amidst those towers.<\/li>\n
- The Enterprise is at the starbase for repairs due to damage suffered in an \u201cion storm<\/strong>,\u201d whatever that is. I never got the impression that the producers or writers had any idea what that was (as with Lost in Space and their \u201ccosmic storms\u201d).<\/li>\n
- Much more is made here of the loss of a crewman<\/strong> in that storm than we ever see about the death of any other crewman throughout the series.<\/li>\n
- This episode has two or three fundamental implausibilities<\/strong> that can\u2019t be rationalized. The first is why there\u2019s an issue about jettisoning the pod before or after going to red alert. Both events are results of Kirk\u2019s subjective judgment<\/strong> of the danger at any given moment. What is there about a red alert that allows Kirk to jettison the pod? Just a permissions thing?<\/li>\n
- The second implausibility is at the heart of the episode\u2019s debate over human rights versus machines. Everyone presumes that computers can\u2019t be wrong<\/strong>. If the \u201ccomputer transcript\u201d says something is so, it must be so. But the evidence from the computer that impugns Kirk isn\u2019t any kind of electronic log of what happened when \u2013 it\u2019s a frame from a video recording<\/strong> of what happened on the bridge, showing Kirk\u2019s finger punching a button labeled (conveniently) \u201cjettison pod\u201d. (As if that\u2019s something so routinely done that it needs a dedicated button on the captain\u2019s chair.)<\/li>\n
- Which leads to the biggest implausibility \u2013 that Finney, the records officer, somehow having altered that image to implicate Kirk (whom he blamed for reporting an error that Finney made years before, crippling his career), also accidentally altered the computer\u2019s chess programming<\/strong>, as Spock deduces by playing several games against the computer and repeatedly winning. What do they have to do with one another? (You have to conclude that familiarity with what computers actually were was very hazy among Hollywood scriptwriters back in the mid 1960s, a theme that would recur through this series, and undercut an otherwise very dramatic 2nd season episode, “The Ultimate Computer”.)<\/li>\n
- And then there\u2019s the silliness<\/strong> about how they locate a man presumed dead who is instead hiding somewhere aboard the ship: They beam down virtually the entire crew to get them off the ship, leaving only senior Enterprise staff, and the courtroom officers and lawyers, on the bridge, and McCoy produces a device that one by one \u2018removes\u2019 the sound of their heartbeats<\/strong> from the cumulative audio feed of all sounds aboard the ship. Well, not all sounds — not their breathing, not any noise from walking around, not their voices. It\u2019s dramatically played, as McCoy finishes and\u2026 there\u2019s one heartbeat left! \u2013 but it\u2019s a ridiculous way to locate a missing crewman.<\/li>\n
- There are also plot infelicities<\/strong>. How the beautiful woman Kirk encounters in the starbase\u2019s lounge, Areel Shaw, is an old flame of his \u2013 and also the attorney who then prosecutes his case. How the best defense lawyer for the job, the eccentric Samuel T. Cogley, happens to be available on the starbase (never mind the anachronism of how Cogley values physical books over computers). And how Finney’s daughter, Jamie, also happens to be here at this starbase. And how her attitude toward Kirk abruptly changes part way through the story [this is in part due to scenes that were written but cut due to time constraints].<\/li>\n
- Cogley does have some good lines, as when he speaks passionately for Kirk\u2019s right to be confronted by the witness against him (i.e. the computer): \u201cRights, sir. Human rights! The Bible, the Code of Hammurabi, and of Justinian, Magna Carta, the Constitution of the United States, Fundamental Declarations of the Martian Colonies, and Statutes of Alpha Three.\u201d Suggesting that even our venerated Constitution might be overtaken by later documents<\/strong>.<\/li>\n
- But Kirk has the best lines, or at least Shatner makes the best delivery, as when he defends his actions in testimony, measuredly, frankly, unapologetically, firmly: \u201cGiven the same circumstances, I would do the same thing without hesitation. Because the steps I took, in the order I took them, were absolutely necessary if I were to save my ship. And nothing\u2026 is more important than my ship.\u201d<\/li>\n
- A bit of mathematical illiteracy<\/strong>: as the ship\u2019s orbit begins to decay (they were maintaining \u201corbit by momentum\u201d but apparently that doesn\u2019t last long) Spock says something about \u201con the order of one to the fourth power.\u201d Yup.<\/li>\n
- Two more understated dialogue deliveries<\/strong> that endure. First, as the court reconvenes aboard the Enterprise, it is Cogley who first suggests that Finney may not be dead after all, but hiding. Is there room to hide aboard a ship this size? Kirk, stunned by the implication of this suggestion, almost whispers \u201cPossibly<\/em>.\u201d<\/li>\n
- And later, as the one heartbeat is left on the audio, Commodore Stone concludes, rather stonily, \u201cSo, Finney is alive\u201d, and Kirk quietly replies with only the barest trace of vindication, \u201cIt would seem so.\u201d<\/li>\n
- And then we have the requisite fist fight<\/strong>, as Kirk finds and confronts Finney, who’s been alive all along. [There was a filmed but omitted scene in which Cogley brings Jamie on board to help subdue Finney, which explains Cogley’s quick exit from the bridge with some errand to run in the previous scene.]<\/li>\n
- And finally, after Finney is subdued and the Enterprise is saved and the case against Kirk dismissed, we have Kirk kiss Areel on the bridge, for old time\u2019s sake, as she departs. The crew around them are careful not to react. Then Kirk sits in his chair, and says defensively to Spock and McCoy, \u201cShe\u2019s a very good lawyer\u201d. And they respond impassively, \u201cObviously\u201d and \u201cIndeed she is\u201d. The abruptly cheerful music underscores this bit of closing Gene Coon humor<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Blish\u2019s adaptation, in ST2:<\/p>\n
- \n
- Blish\u2019s version of this story seems to be derived from a draft or two<\/strong> before the final script. Kirk\u2019s romantic background with Areel is missing; the key issue is whether the ship was a \u201cdouble red alert\u201d rather than just \u201cred alert\u201d; and Finney, at the end, doesn\u2019t sabotage the ship, requiring Kirk\u2019s quick work to repair it.<\/li>\n
- Rather, we get a better resolution<\/strong> of the subplot concerning Jame, Finney\u2019s daughter. In the broadcast script we see her twice: at the very beginning, angry at Kirk for apparently killing her father; and then later, when she\u2019s much calmer and concerned for Kirk\u2019s well-being. She explains her change of attitude as the result of having \u201cread through some of the papers he [her father] wrote, letters to mother and me.\u201d<\/li>\n
- Blish saves those lines for later<\/strong>, and has Jame show up on the ship just as Kirk finds Finney in engineering, resolving that scene<\/strong> in an emotional, rather than violent manner.<\/li>\n
- This may be a case where a character-development plot was sacrificed for the sake of a fist-fight \u2013 between Kirk and Finney \u2013 an action sequence that NBC always appreciated.<\/strong><\/li>\n
- Blish retains most of Cogley\u2019s speech about the rights of men in the face of the machine, but omits the specific examples given in the final script<\/strong>: \u201cRights, sir. Human rights! The Bible, the Code of Hammurabi, and of Justinian, Magna Carta, the Constitution of the United States, Fundamental Declarations of the Martian Colonies, the Statues of Alpha Three.\u201d<\/li>\n
- Blish does not try to rationalize what I\u2019ve always felt were two huge flaws<\/strong> of this episode: how the altered video of the ship\u2019s bridge, when it was or was not at red alert, has anything to do with changed computer logic for playing chess; and the clumsy, implausible manner of locating a missing crewman, by masking out the heartbeats of the last few others left on board.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Kirk faces court martial over the death of a crewman with whom he had a history, in a confrontation that pits human rights against a computerized culture. The enhanced graphics are especially effective in this episode, showing both the Enterprise … Continue reading
- Rather, we get a better resolution<\/strong> of the subplot concerning Jame, Finney\u2019s daughter. In the broadcast script we see her twice: at the very beginning, angry at Kirk for apparently killing her father; and then later, when she\u2019s much calmer and concerned for Kirk\u2019s well-being. She explains her change of attitude as the result of having \u201cread through some of the papers he [her father] wrote, letters to mother and me.\u201d<\/li>\n
- Also much improved: the groundside views of the starbase<\/strong>, with narrow mushroom-like towers in the distance. One shot at the beginning of one of the acts shows a ground-view promenade with pedestrians, amidst those towers.<\/li>\n