The Enterprise attempts to claim the peaceful yet strategic planet Organia from the rival Klingon Empire, only to find a curious indifference by the natives to any kind of threat.
- This is the episode that introduced the Klingons, a heretofore unmentioned alien race who are posed as representing an existential threat to the Federation – in obvious analogy to the two sides of the Cold War in the 1960s when the episode was made.
- Indeed, the story opens as the Enterprise reaches “the designated position for scanning the coded directive,” a bit of spy vs. spy fluffery, and Kirk learns that the Klingons are about to attack. His mission is to head for the planet Organia, a strategically positioned world to both sides, and prevent the Klingons from occupying it.
- And suddenly the Klingons attack! And in the enhanced graphics of the remastered episode, we even see the Klingon ship!
- This sight is a bit of cognitive dissonance, because though we see the by now familiar Klingon ship design, that design wasn’t seen in the original series until the third season! The Klingon battle cruiser was designed at built for the third season’s second episode (in production order), “Elaan of Troyius,” though confusingly was first seen in the episode “The Enterprise Incident,” produced later but broadcast earlier – and, in further confusion, in that story occupied by Romulans, who had borrowed the Klingon design.
- In any event, the Enterprise quickly dispatches the Klingon ship (the enhanced graphics show debris scattering), and Kirk and Spock assess the situation.
- The script here is the second in a row by producer Gene L. Coon, famed as a fast writer who could crank out a script in a few days, and it exhibits some common notes with the previous “The Devil in the Dark,” including talkiness. Here at the end of the teaser, characters say and repeat things we already know.
- Kirk leaves Sulu in charge, with instructions to avoid confrontation with any other Klingon ships, and he and Spock beam down to the planet.
- Again, putting the two senior officers in potential danger was… not smart, but it was built in to the TOS premise and was unavoidable in order to make best use of the show’s two lead stars.
- They find a placid, agrarian village, at the base of a hill topped by an ominous-looking castle. An elderly man, Ayelborne, greets them (he speaks English of course) and takes them inside to meet the Council of Elders, which Ayelborne leads. A group of placidly smiling, elderly white men.
- Kirk lays it out: he’s here to help them resist the Klingons, a military dictatorship, who would take control of their planet.
- Ayelborne calmly assures Kirk that the planet is in no danger. Kirk doubles-down, with talk of slave labor camps, prisoners, killings. Ayelborne and the others pretend to confer.
- As they do Spock comes in, from some private reconnoitering, and reports that “This is not a primitive society making progress toward mechanization. They are totally stagnant.” And, “This is a laboratory specimen of an arrested culture.”
- This is a theme I didn’t notice when I watched these shows in the ‘60s and ‘70s, but it stands out glaringly now. Again and again, the Enterprise encounters cultures, both alien and human, who fail to exhibit the kind of ‘progress’ and technological development that Kirk, or the Federation, or more correctly Trek’s 1960s producers and writers, feel is necessary and inevitable for a proper society. We just saw it in “The Return of the Archons” and “This Side of Paradise”; coming up, 2nd season’s “The Apple” comes to mind. In contrast, some factions of humanity, here in the 21st century, are recognizing that ‘progress’ that entails indefinite economic growth that in turn consumes resources on a finite planet and threatens to wreck the global environment… is not sustainable for more than a few more decades, or perhaps centuries. Something will have to give. Even a breakout to other planets, even interstellar travel, would only help the travelers, not the still-expanding population back here on Earth.
- Kirk takes Spock’s cue and spins his appeal to help the Organians feed their people, educate the young, remake their world. He pleads, “All we ask in return, is that you let us help you. Now…?”
- He’s interrupted by Sulu reporting that a fleet (now the enhanced graphics show a fleet! Well, six.) of Klingon ships converging on the planet. With the Enterprise’s shields up, Sulu can’t beam up Kirk and Spock out of danger.
- Again, danger to the Enterprise is a common plot ploy to keep the show’s stars involved on-planet, instead of using that too-convenient transporter to beam themselves away and end the story. We saw similar ploys in “The Return of the Archons” and “A Taste of Armageddon.”
- Act I ends with a rhetorical flourish virtually identical to that in “The Devil in the Dark”: Kirk turning toward the camera and grimly assessing their predicament.
- And then the Klingons arrive, troops of men in glittery uniforms, dark beards, and swarthy skin. Their leader is Kor, compact but sneeringly intense, who marches into the council chambers – where Kirk and Spock have changed into local clothing – to issue orders (in English, of course), threatening to kill any Organians who disobey the slightest of them. Kirk is presented as a local, Baroner, while Spock is passed off as a Vulcan trader. Kirk, even in disguise, cannot hide his disdain for Kor, and Kor notices. In fact Kor recruits Kirk (Baroner) to be a liaison, takes him to his office, and hands out lists of rules – in English of course, quite readable in the blu-ray disc’s resolution. Kor alludes to a device they have, a “mind-scanner,” or “mind-ripper,” which can extract every thought and memory from a man’s mind. Spock, of course, manages to evade its effects.
- Several times, including in this scene, Kor refers to ‘human’ as if this describes both the Federation’s representatives, and the Klingons.
- Kirk and Spock are released, left alone, but Kirk cannot leave well enough alone. That night he and Spock rig an explosion of a Klingon munitions dump, providing a “most satisfactory display.”
- But the next morning Ayelborne protests the violence of the act – and here the story starts to deepen, not as one about whether Kirk can defeat the nasty Klingons, but as one about the mysterious Organians, why they insist they are not in danger, why they are so concerned about any demonstration of violence, by either side.
- In fact, when Kor quickly confronts them, Ayelborne, without any sense of betrayal, calmly informs Kor that ‘Baroner’ is actually Captain James T. Kirk – a name Kor recognizes!
- Kirk becomes frustrated and bitter, at the Organians.
- Kor invites Kirk to have a philosophical discussion, over a drink (there’s a similar scene in “A Taste of Armageddon”), claiming that at base they are similar species. On this planet of “sheep,” they are “Two tigers… predators, hunters… killers. And it precisely that which makes us great. And there is a universe to be taken.” Kirk defies Kor’s request for intel about the Federation, and he and Spock are locked up.
- And then Ayelborne shows up at their cell, having magically unlocked the door and avoided the guard, and lets them out – because they plan violence, which he cannot allow.
- Kor, learning the next morning that his prisoners have inexplicably disappeared, broadcasts via loudspeaker the sound of 200 Organians being killed by Klingon phasers. And promises 200 more deaths every two hours, until the ‘Federation spies’ are turned over to him.
- Here is also, of course, the recurring Trek conceit that one little village represents the entire planet. Here reached by loudspeaker.
- Ayelborne insists that “nothing has changed,” but Kirk, growing increasingly frustrated, demands that Ayelborne return his and Spock’s phasers. Ayelborne accedes, then commiserates with his fellow Claymare that “we cannot allow it. To stop them is…very bad.” They seem as reluctant to interfere, as to interfere to prevent violence.
- Kirk and Spock take off for the citadel – that castle on the hill – and take down a couple Klingon guards to gain entrance into the castle.
- Kirk wonders about the odds of their success, and Spock replies with a replay of a scene from Gene L. Coon’s “The Devil in the Dark” – “Difficult to be precise, Captain. I should say approximately seven thousand, eight hundred twenty-four point seven, to one.” Kirk, skeptical, repeats the number, and Spock confirms it.
- Naturally, it only takes a couple more scenes before Kirk and Spock reach Kor’s office, and hold him at bay with their phasers.
- Kor informs them that a Federation fleet is on its way to Organia, to meet the Klingon fleet. They ponder the potential outcomes. Kor distracts Kirk for a moment, then summons his guards, who rush in—
- –But everyone suddenly finds their weapons too hot to handle. They drop their phasers on the floor. Even physical violence is suddenly impossible—striking another produces a similar sensation of extreme heat.
- We see a brief scene on the bridge of the Enterprise, where Sulu is in charge, and where everyone suddenly leaps up in panic, their control panels too hot to touch.
- Back in Kor’s office, the doors open and Ayelborne and Claymare calmly enter. “We are terribly sorry to be forced to interfere, gentlemen, but we cannot permit you to do harm to yourselves… We have put a stop to your violence.”
- Kirk and Kor contact their respective ships to confirm the situation. On the bridge, power goes off.
- Ayelborne explains, in a metaphysical bit that recalls the Thasian’s words at the end of “Charlie X”; Ayelborne says, “As I stand here, I also stand upon the home planet of the Klingon Empire, and the home planet of your Federation, Captain. I’m going to put a stop to this insane war.”
- Alliances shift. Suddenly Kirk and Kor are on the same side – how dare the Organians interfere in their war??
- Kirk: “You can’t just stop the fleet! What gives you the right??”
- Kor: “What happens in space is not your business!”
- Kirk: “You should be the first to be on our side. Two hundred hostages killed!”
- And the mystery of the Organians gets weirder and weirder. Ayelborne and Claymore: “No one was killed, Captain. No one has died here, in uncounted thousands of years.”
- Kirk and Kor persist: “Even if you have some… power, that we don’t understand, you have no right to dictate to the Federation” – “or our Empire” – “how to handle their interstellar relations. We have the right—“
- Here is the climactic moment. Ayelborne: “To wage war, Captain? To kill millions of innocent people? To destroy life on a planetary scale? Is that what you’re defending?”
- Kirk is stumped. He realizes he’s trying to defend exactly what he should most be trying to avoid. And in this, Kor is on his side. Kirk tries to step it back. “Well, no one wants war… Eventually we would have…”
- Ayelborne: “Oh eventually you will have peace…. In the future you and the Klingons will become fast friends. You will work together.”
- Kor is repelled by the thought. Of course, this is an ironically predictive moment, since by the second Trek series, TNG, the Klingons had aligned with the Federation to the point of having a Klingon officer on the bridge.
- The mystery of the Organians culminates. Claymare: “We do not wish to seem inhospitable, but gentlemen, you must leave.” And he does seem in some kind of physical discomfort. Ayelborne: “Yes, please leave us. The mere presence of beings like yourselves is intensely painful to us.”
- And: “Millions of years ago, we were humanoid, like yourselves. But we have developed beyond the need of physical bodies.” Their appearance, and the entire village, was mere appearance, for their sake.
- And then Ayelborne and Claymare begin to glow, their bodies overlaid by increasingly bright blobs of light. The others in the room shield their eyes. The glowing blobs gradually expand, then fade out, and disappear.
- Spock quickly deduces what they’ve seen: “Fascinating. Pure energy, pure thought. … I should say the Organians are as far above us on the evolutionary scale as we are above… the amoeba.”
- The notion of beings consisting of “pure energy” recurred more than once in Trek, but I remain skeptical that the idea has any kind of physical plausibility.
- And so Kirk and Kor can’t fight. Kor bemuses, “A shame, Captain. It would have been glorious.”
- The final scene, back on the bridge, again with Coonian rhetoric, repeats the point. Kirk: “I’m embarrassed. I was furious with the Organians for stopping a war I didn’t want.” Spock tries to console about how they beat the odds. Very mild Coonian joke by Kirk: “We didn’t beat the odds. We didn’t have a chance. The Organians raided the game!”
Music notes:
- The episode opens, typically, with Alexander Courage’s Enterprise fanfare #1, and then immediately follows it with the Enterprise fanfare #2, written by Fred Steiner for “Charlie X” and used almost as frequently as fanfare #1 throughout the first season.
- The music that underscores the Organians’ transition into energy beings is the Alexander Courage music from “The Naked Time” as the Enterprise plunges back in time.
- This and other posts will be further annotated with comments about how music written for earlier episodes was re-used in later ones.
Blish adaptation, in ST2:
- Follows the broadcast script very closely, though yet again Blish summarizes the set-up and initial encounter with the Klingons, with no dialogue until Kirk and Spock meet the Organian council, and Spock makes his remarks about an arrested culture.
- Blish implies the Klingons are actually an offshoot of humanity: “The Klingons were hard-faced, hard-muscled men, originally of Oriental stock.” I suppose that might explain how they speak English.
- Blish has Spock not only explain what trillium is (a medicinal plant of the lily family), but later mentions that the word has some other meaning to the Klingons.
- Blish collapses the plot a bit: Kirk and Spock explode the munitions dump; Kor immediately responds by phasering 200 Organians; Kirk and Spock surrender themselves in Kor’s office. No scene in a jail cell from which Ayelborne magically releases them.
- As Kirk and Kor talk, Kirk recalls the Spartans, warriors who nevertheless lost to Athens, known as the mother of all the arts. Kor finds the analogy “a little out of date” which again seems to imply a common background.
- The rest follows the script very closely, all the way through Spock’s comparison to an amoeba and Kor’s final line “It would have been glorious” – but then omits the redundant final bridge scene.
