The Return of The Archons

DVD, Star Trek S1 (The Return of The Archons)

The title conjures up images of legend and history since the word 'archon' originates as a title of the nine magistrates of Ancient Athens, so it is fitting that in this context it means the crew or people of the USS Archon, a ship that went missing one hundred years before the episode, dating it to 2167, only a few short years after the Enterprise NX-01 soared the skies of space - it would have been wonderful if we could have seen it in 'Enterprise,' except for the fact that it's a Federation starship, coming after the founding of that organisation, so NX-01 couldn't have met it other than through time travel, or unless the series had lasted at least ten seasons (or skipped a few years into the future), but it's always exciting to hear of the earliest days of starship exploration so it's disappointing that the episode never goes into detail on this lost ship - we don't know who captained her, what class of vessel she was or any other facts apart from the mysterious loss. Not that it proves detrimental to the episode, but it would have made it even better.

We have another one that begins 'hot' - we're right in the midst of the action, with Sulu and O'Neil on the run from we know not what: sinister hooded stalkers, coming for them. It's an introduction that creates tension and grabs you from the off and it's good to see Sulu in a different role from his standard Helm position, even if he fades into the background for the rest of the episode. One thing I couldn't help but realise was how much the story appears to be a judgement on Christianity in particular: generally, though 'TOS' was heavily science based, it didn't have the extreme humanism of 'TNG' and beyond, with attitudes that were more in keeping with a time of greater acceptance for Christian points of view - you only have to look at certain episodes of the series, such as 'Who Mourns For Adonais?' or 'Bread and Circuses' to name two of the more famous examples, to see that God was a part of Starfleet life (why else have a Chapel aboard, as seen in 'Balance of Terror'?). Gene Roddenberry may have had slightly different views at this time than he took on later, as evidenced by the impression he gave of Earth and humanity, even in this episode, compared with a far more idealised version in 'TNG' specifically, which shows his outlook altered over the years. He may even have been under pressure from the studio above not to be too judgemental of 'religious' views, and also the makeup of the audience would have been more attuned to those views back then than the majority now, I would suspect.

This episode proves that Roddenberry didn't completely hold back on his strong views against faith as there are too many specifically selected words and terminology to ignore the intent was to comment on faith, but the episode can be read in more than one way. Firstly, yes, we have 'the body,' the description of those in it as expressing vacant contentment as if their personality and ability to reason and think had been drained away, and Landru, this culture's representation of a man, made god through his philosophy of peace and tranquility for all. It's all rather chilling and paints a shocking picture of those 'caught up' in this lifestyle that has sucked all the life out of them so that Kirk calls their society soulless, without spirit, like a machine. The Borg have echoes of these sentiments, and it's a compelling fear that is expertly examined in much of Trek, the giving yourself over to something that 'absorbs' you totally, subsumes you into it. The Borg were equally as ripe a culture to explore the ultimate loss of individuality, merging 'into the unity of the good' as Landru's followers expressly call it here. But I would argue that what both the Borg and this episode are actually warning of, are cults, whether of personality or of organisation, and the creepiness of it all is as much the familiar phrases and the people who look just like ordinary humans, which means they look like us, and the horror is of seeing us portrayed as calm and vacant one moment and violent in the extreme, the next.

Cults often pick and mix which bits and pieces they choose to accept from Biblical text, so there's enough truth in what they say to ensnare the unwary and those looking for something more in life, and this is exactly what has happened to this culture. But far from being a man-made religion, making up its rules to reach God, rather than accepting God's free offer, their own pride of needing to achieve or accomplish in order to reach some 'thing' higher than themselves, this is, it could be said, even worse, as it's not even a human mind that has organised this society, but a machine. A computer is found to be behind it all (something that would become a running theme in primitive, idol-worshiping cultures of 'TOS' we'd see again and again), but not in some devious scheme to corrupt the populace or to ensure its own survival, but from a programmed sense of what is right and wrong, what is best for the people. The original Landru must have been a charismatic leader to bring the inhabitants of that planet away from the many wars they'd experienced, to a peaceful world. Hmm, what does that remind you of? The name Surak ring any bells? More on that later…

If we look on the plight of these people as being caught up in a cult it is much more palatable and seems less like a hard dig at Christianity, because a cult would make such things as 'the body' seem sinister rather than a group of people following God's Word. In the Bible the body was an analogy for the church to make it easier to understand that there are different parts of the whole and each have different roles and skills. In the Landru cult it merely means a frightening cloud that must be allowed to take over the mind to enable Landru's strict governance to be perpetuated. Spock describes it as a computer when the Lawgivers respond to Kirk's defiance to follow the will of Landru, and they basically can't compute this reaction. But, just like the Borg, they learn and adapt, and once they've had time to 'commune' with Landru, they return to threaten death if Kirk fails to comply, in the same way that a Phaser can take out one or two drones initially, but the Borg always adapt their shielding, the weapons eventually proving useless against them. It doesn't stop the use of terminology like 'blessed be the body' and 'communion,' or 'you heard the word and disobeyed' from gaining negative connotations in the context of the story, not to mention the scary Lawgivers wear robes to resemble monks, which doesn't help dispel the impression of attacking faith as a mindless loss of reason, and the empty words of joy and bland happiness, as if the affected are drugged up.

At the same time there is evidence for the right-thinking approach the Bible advocates, of testing and seeing, not just blindly following. Marplon (according to the credits, or Marphon according to the latest 'Star Trek Encyclopedia,' take your pick!), the good guy who saves Kirk and Spock from being absorbed (although it must have been a temporary condition since both McCoy and Sulu are back to normal by the end, probably because of Landru's destruction), is an excellent case for the positive image of faith: he has long believed in the return of the Archons, in other words that, as the prophecy said, more of the same kind will come to set them free, in the same way that other leaders and Jesus was prophesied to come to set free. It's also interesting that the resistance cells were arranged into threes, and Marplon describes himself as one of the triad, which could be a reflection on the Trinity. And whether Kirk and company like it or not, they do seem to be the fulfilment of prophecy. Admittedly, this side of the story isn't fully explored in much detail, just as the history of the USS Archon is left to our imaginations, but the subtext is there, and that's what makes the episode so fascinating to me: if they were genuinely presenting a case for faith as being a flaw, rather than faith in the wrong thing being flawed, they wouldn't have had Marplon talk of prophecy or maybe even have shown anyone objecting to the overruling flow of the people at the risk of their own lives.

If the message of the episode isn't fully obvious from the writing and execution, the same can be said for other aspects of the universe that was continuing to be created as there are several inconsistencies of both the large and small variety. In the small category we have Kirk call McCoy 'Doc,' which just sounds painfully out of step with the series as we know it. As far back as 'The Enemy Within' Kirk had addressed his Chief Medical Officer as Bones, but it hadn't become that regular as he tended to call him 'the Doctor' or 'McCoy' most of the time, which is why this flurry of 'Docs' is so strange to our ears. One thing's for sure: the writers had certainly not got all their Docs in a row yet… I also found it to be a little strange that Kirk keeps referring to all his officers as Mister. So we have Mr. Leslie, and Mr. O'Neil, Mr. Lindstrom and Mr. Galloway, rather than referring to them by rank. I also felt that one of them stood out much more than the others and was clearly a role designed to be more than a background redshirt - I can't remember which one it was, but he certainly seemed to come into the foreground whenever he was in a scene, as if he was a character that might recur in future. I expect William Shatner made a point of saying Mr. Leslie's name (the second episode in a row when he's woken the stunned Leslie), since he'd suggested the name as a tribute to his daughter!

There are a couple of big details that would later be ironed out or outright changed, and these are the attitude of Earth as paradise, and Spock as a spiritual being. I wouldn't be surprised if this story was the basis for the Vulcan history of Surak overcoming the Vulcans' warlike existence and setting them on a path to peace forevermore, except rather than building a computer to oversee his people and continue/enforce his ways, Surak, being Vulcan, continued on, his katra passed down through the generations so his knowledge and wisdom wouldn't be lost (unless you live in the Kelvin Timeline, in which case it looked like all the Vulcan relics and containers of katras were lost, though who knows, maybe Sarek and the other elders were able to 'download' some into their brains in time, but I'm pretty sure we'll never know what happened since those films don't go into detail and are about to become redundant thanks to 'Discovery' rediscovering the Prime Universe). Yet Spock displays lack of empathy with the people here, calling their Red Hour carousing and vandalising totally illogical! You'd think he'd see the parallels with his own culture and appreciate the need for constraint except for set times, after all, these people don't have Vulcan strength and discipline to restrain their violent emotions, and it could be said the Pon Farr is much like this, except more personal. Perhaps that was why Spock expressed such disapproval, since Pon Farr and other aspects of his heritage had yet to be revealed and they're a secretive race (something their brethren, the Romulans, also never relinquished).

The same could be said for his attitude to the soul, since he doesn't seem to like the idea of such things, preferring the provable, when later he would learn for himself the value and reality of spirit and soul. But he was still relatively young at this time, his brush with death happening decades later so perhaps at this time he was into pure science as his doctrine of choice and hadn't yet learned to be more flexible, either with his human side or his Vulcan beliefs. Another historical point to note is his and Kirk's discussion at the end of the episode about Earth never having got to a place of peace and security as this world was, to which Kirk jokes they were lucky. This apparently flies in the face of Roddenberry's philosophy of the perfection of humanity and the paradise of Earth, which in 'TNG' is prevalent and the driving force of his tenure in charge. Again, it's a question of time, both real world with Gene's ideas and ideals changing, and in the Trek universe: in another century things had evidently become much better. Not to say that Earth is a war-torn horror, since Kirk is clearly being lighthearted about it, and it's more about the sentiment that rough times provide growth, while settled, comfortable times are more prone to producing laziness and settling for less. So I'm sure Earth was a great place at that time, but it hadn't risen to the heights of the 24th Century (even if that century did have the spectre of attack surround it on several occasions, like the Borg or the Breen).

Spock's behaviour is another part of the episode which shows the full character still hadn't been hammered out yet: when the Lawgivers come, he and Kirk surprise them, but rather than perform a nerve pinch to knock out his target, Spock chooses to belt the guy in the chops in a most un-Vulcan-like way, especially odd considering Nimoy himself had suggested a more economical attack much earlier in the season, so why revert to physical violence? It's not like they did it without thinking either, as they have Kirk comment on it, saying something like 'isn't that a bit old-fashioned?' Maybe it was a story thread that was abandoned, because I could easily imagine some rationale being that Spock was reverting to the modes of his ancestors because of some signal that Landru was giving out, or this was an effect from the sonic pulse that knocked him and the others out. It's even more noticeable because later he actually does perform a nerve pinch! There's also the impression he conducted a mind meld on McCoy, as we enter a scene with him probing the Doctor's mind, his fingers on his face in classic mind meld style, but he can't do anything. He actually looks more Vulcan in this episode than any other, I would say, since the cloak he wears (if you ignore the trousers and shoes), is very much like the robe in 'The Motion Picture.'

There's something much more unsettling about the people of this planet because of their attire: they wear Victorian or 19th Century garb, and it looks likely this is another parallel Earth society, the buildings all look period architecture as do the manners and bearing. The difference is that they're more advanced than they seem, as evidenced by a hidden piece of technology, the lighting panel Reger has hidden away - I thought they did an excellent job of presenting this advanced piece of technology, a flat panel that simply provides light, something that in the sixties would have been amazing, but which is easily possible now with smaller lighting elements and better batteries. Technology plays a big part in the story, from the revelation of another Tricorder function (it has the capability to block scanning beams, although in this case they were too strong), to the seeming specificity of Phasers (we see Kirk order a wide beam stun to knock out the approaching zombielike townsfolk; it's a blue beam, where later, when he and Spock blast a chunk of the wall to reveal Landru's true form, the beams are red as if to signify a more powerful setting, which I really like!). I also found the use of the Transporter to create tension a great idea: Sulu requests emergency beam-out, but O'Neil runs away as the Lawgivers approach. Unfortunately, Sulu gets affected, whereas it would have been a better lesson to stand your ground and you'll be safe, instead of running and being absorbed as O'Neil did - come to think of it, Sulu's story never went anywhere, he could have been a danger on the ship, but it's not explored. It also showed they can't beam up a moving target.

The biggest technical triumph was in Kirk launching a thousand logic problems by talking a computer to death, and not for the last time! It would become his stock in trade whenever a culture was being hoodwinked by a machine with delusions of godhood. You'd think Spock would be the one to use logic to defeat a computerised foe, but then he might be a little too close to the subject matter, as Kirk says he'd make a very good computer at the end. The hole they blew through a wall to reveal Landru looked suspiciously like the Guardian of Forever, and I wonder if it was actually cut out and later used as that august creation as it seems more likely that a cash-strapped production would keep hold of every piece of set they could for reuse, rather than it being a huge coincidence when the episodes were only a few weeks apart. Mind you, that's not the only reuse, as much of the story's elements have similarities to 'What Are Little Girls Made Of?' You have the ancient machinery being used to keep a world in order (like that of the Old Ones that Korby uses to make his androids), tall hooded enemies that carry out their master's will (like Ruk), Kirk talking a machine around (as he did to Ruk), and underground rooms and chambers, and I was even waiting for him to place a strong thought in his mind as he was absorbed so that he was able to fight it (as he did with the android copy of himself), except he was saved from the device this time. The only thing missing is a love interest for the Captain, but he does get kissed - during the Red Hour a woman flings herself on his face!

As the former is probably my favourite episode, it's no surprise that I like this one, too. It has pretty much everything, including more of an ensemble feel (in a small way), with Sulu having his moment and Scotty getting to command the ship and sit in The Chair, even if he was powerless to prevent the heat beams from pulling the Enterprise down towards the planet - we're told that if the ship went to warp, or even impulse, the shields would fail, although I wasn't clear on whether this was because all available power was appropriated to keep shields up, or movement itself would have made the ship more vulnerable, but either way it's good to see Scotty on the Bridge and running the place, even if he's no substitute for Kirk, who is obviously one of a kind since no one from the Archon was able to defeat Landru, and Kirk's even the last to succumb to the debilitating sonic wave that incapacitates his Landing Party. We even get the Prime Directive discussed, with Spock bringing it up, though Kirk gets around it by saying it only refers to a living, growing culture, and does this one look like that? Yes, it was fast and loose, but it was the era of cowboy diplomacy, and it fit the mood, as did the somewhat Wild West clothing Kirk and crew wore as they moseyed down the streets. All they needed were six-shooters and cowboy hats and the picture would have been complete! Tamar, played by Jon Lormer, the guy who gets killed by hollow tube blast, had been in Trek before as the illusory main survivor in 'The Cage,' though he went uncredited in that one. And the colourful Hall of Audiences I think was used again in 'I, Mudd,' as it's quite distinctive.

At least this time they didn't disrupt an entire planet, then move on without any assistance for the populace, or the promise that a ship would drop by at some point as had been the case before: no, this time Lindstrom and a team of specialists stay behind to help sort out the mess. Kirk wasn't going to hang around for that, was he? It's not his forte, he's better at tearing down false gods and dictators, then on to the next one. His skill in 'the body' of Starfleet was clear. The ominous terminology and the shocking changes in the people we see help to make this a good episode - it really is horrifying to see them switch from genteel and tranquil to thugs, screaming and wild, a festival of abandon and terror. It's a concept that has been done in sci-fi a lot as we seem to have a fascination with letting loose and allowing our inner emotions to have full control, a whirlpool of rage, desire, hatred, euphoria and all the extremes, rather than the necessary curbing of those flesh-based impulses. Freedom, as some would call it, anarchy, but in reality slavery to themselves, unable to be in control to the detriment of themselves and those around them. One thing Kirk got very wrong was in his insistence that freedom is never a gift and has to be earned, which is certainly contradicting Biblical teaching, which is that God gives us freedom by grace, it can't be earned. The Captain needs to go back and check his scriptures…

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